It was quite a long distance. Minutes passed as they made their way down to the cheering crowd, the faces of the fae growing larger. Suri thought it would be funny if one of them in the crowd recognized her from before, when she had been chased on her way into the burning human district. Her red hair and features were uncommon; it seemed possible that someone would know who she really was and wonder what was going on.
But all around the square, of course, were Korka’s hell spawn guards in their copper armor with eerily human faces. Suri was glad for Korka’s armor, so that she didn’t have to touch the flesh of his hand. The metal was cool against her skin, the fingers of the gauntlet large and hard. They could easily crunch bone, two or three times the size of what skeletal fingers Korka must have had beneath.
It’s all a show, a charade. A strong-man performance so that Lodum does not think their new King is to be trifled with. That is why the ceremony is being held in the most public place possible. Lord Korka wants all eyes to witness his dominance.
It was a method of deterring rebellion, if nothing else—also a way to sucker in the vampire lords, who Suri assumed were the ones waiting for them on the wooden platform.
The city’s nobility were lined up in two rows behind two thrones that had been set in the middle. Assuming that everything Lord Korka and Traxan had told Suri was true, it did not change the fact that the Hellfire Guild, under Lord Korka’s command, had threatened the lives of her friends and killed her aunt. Perhaps Hilder, too. There was no way of knowing. All to gain control of Lodum and Suri. All to make ends meet. For these wretches, there was no such thing as a sacrifice too large. They would sell their mothers into slavery if it meant seeing their goals come to fruition.
The ends justify the means, Suri thought, as long as it is your ends that are satisfied.
She realized that she had a fonder taste for vengeance that she had thought possible. The pain from Vestrix’s passing was not something that she would ever forget, or forgive. Lord Korka was not a vampire lord, so she could not easily kill him with black magic, as he claimed she could to the others. So she had to find a way, before he perished from natural causes, to have her revenge.
Foiling the Hellfire Guild’s plans, even if she could, was no longer a tenable option. Suri would have to bide her time long after she became Queen, gained greater insight into what was going on in Lodum, and the overall situation in Faerie—had the time to see things for herself and talk to others, if she could find anyone to trust.
Raja would be a good place to start, Suri thought, and the remaining members of Black Gauntlet. After the ceremony I will demand their release and have them explain to me exactly what is going on.
For a moment, she thought of Raja and what he might be thinking, knowing that the ceremony was taking place. Then she banished the thought from her mind. It would only bring more pain to her, and already she was seeing that the spark of love they had experienced, seeming so strong at the time, was already fading. Not because she was now wearing a wedding gown, but because it had been lust after an adrenaline fuelled chase, and a passing infatuation that had drawn them together—a desire for the exotic.
That was what Suri told herself. Whether that would remain when they met again was another story. She certainly had not expected the lightning strike of hormones when they had touched for the first time.
Suri’s golden feet touched down on the wooden platform at the same time as Korka’s heavy metal boots. On the platform were ceramic vases, multicolored, like bird’s eggs. Some were speckled and some wore solid colors, bright, garish and happy, framing the edges of the platform with a festive spirit. Their sizes also varied, some being as short as to the height of Suri’s knee while others went all the way up to her chin, and more still even higher than that.
More of them were still being carried onto the platform by servants at the time of Lord Korka and Suri’s arrival, these being set at the back of the platform, behind the thrones and Lodum’s nobility who stood standing, dressed in the highest fashion and looked down their noses at the cheering crowd below.
The wooden thrones did not appear to Suri to be very fancy or ornate at all—certainly not the ones, it seemed to her, that Lord Korka mentioned as having been crafted before the vampires had taken control, and were kept in the royal palace. These were simply placeholder thrones. Not that she had anything to complain about. The true thrones were too valuable to be kept outside, where they could be damaged by any number of causes.
The servants came back around, stopped at each vase, sometimes having to get on each other’s shoulders, to put inside multicolored flowers, the type of them depending on the height of the vase. The longer stalked ones naturally went in the tallest vases. Flowers that looked to be lilacs and roses went into the medium sized ones, that went up to Suri’s knee. It was a beautiful arrangement, and the platform no longer appeared bare with twenty vases or so adding all the decoration that was needed. But that was not the end of it. Another group of servants came directly after the ones who had carried the flowers, and with them they brought a large feast table that was almost as long as the platform was wide: a good thirty feet.
Suri sat impassively, not knowing how to act or what expressions to show to the crowd, that was still as wild and jubilant as when they had first flown into the city. All of the residents of Lodum—at least those allowed into the public square, were caught up in a great fervor, as if they had been waiting for Lord Korka’s rule to come, and that they had fought on his behalf, which this many of them surely did not.
It was strange to Suri, because as far as she knew no one had anticipated the invasion. If there had been massive public support, of the type that was now being shown, certainly Black Gauntlet would have heard about it and prepared for what was bound to happen.
Suri felt like a stranger in a way that she had never felt before. She had always been a stranger in Lodum, true, but this was something different. It was a feeling more complicated, that she knew instinctively she would feel on Earth as well if that second marriage ceremony ever took place in Waco, or wherever the Hellfire Guild decided. She didn’t count on them to go with her suggestion.
Is this what mega-celebrities feel like?
All she did was keep her back straight and chin high, and try not to give anything away. There were many things that she wanted to keep hidden: her deceit, from Lord Korka, what he had told her about the vampire lords and his plan to betray them, and even more from the crowd. Many secrets rested heavy in her heart.
17
Suri
The crowd moved like a singular giant being—or a chemical reaction taking place in an alchemist’s lab. Volatile, unpredictable. Capable of turning on Suri if she showed a sign of weakness and proved to them that she was unfit to be their queen. And then there was the matter of the remaining Black Gauntlet members. Undoubtedly there had been some survivors who now watched the ceremony with great interest, and with good reason could be thinking of Suri as a traitor, seeing how she was going along with Lord Korka’s plans.
Suri drew in a deep breath. She had searched for the Black Gauntlet headquarters when they had flown into the city, and again when they had flown from the royal palace to the square where they now sat. At the time she had been unable to pick it out. Lodum was too large. There were far too many buildings, too closely packed, new and old, of all sizes and shapes and construction material, and she really had no idea where in the city, in which district, the Black Gauntlet headquarters was, or had been, located. Her knowledge of the streets and city proper, directions, and general landmarks was limited to the entry points of the lifts, and from there the direct routes to the human district where she had delivered packages. Wandering anywhere else would make her truly lost.
There were street signs, of course, but they were all in the fae language, of which she knew the basics of speech but not the writing. And so she did not know if the Black Gauntlet headquarters had been completely destroy, turned into a smouldering ruin
like the human district, a charred out corpse of a building, or if the feast hall was still there, and the dormitory, the beautiful bathrooms with the polished wooden floors, Dedric’s anvil, the armory with portraits and armor of legends past hung on the walls, and the courtyard where Raja had taught her sword work, and they had tumbled in the flowers.
She never had received her armor. Touching her dress with a hand, Suri very much wished that she was in a different timeline, where Vestrix had not fallen and they had gone back to Black Gauntlet where she could don her armor, ornate and silly looking as it was, and led the fight to liberate Lodum from the vampire lord and Lord Korka both—wipe out the hell spawn, and do it all in the way that her aunt, the Lady of Arrows, had envisioned.
That would have been the better outcome, but that was not what had happened. So she wore a frilly white dress instead of magical dwarven armor, and a jewel encrusted short sword compelling her to use black magic instead of Sorrow, her trusty old long sword that had been her partner as much as Blackbird since her days fighting slegs at the Academy.
Suri and Lord Korka’s thrones were at the middle of the feast table. The nobles took their seats next to then, no doubt the heads of the most powerful families taken their places closest to the couple to be wed. When the servants brought silver chairs for them to sit on, it reminded Suri very much of the silver chairs in the first room that she had come into after Raja had led her and the other humans out of the catacombs.
While this was going on, Traxan was addressing the crowd, giving a speech about something or another in a dialect of the fae language that Suri did not recognize. It was not the commonly spoken tongue, having a more lilting quality than normal. Something about it made her think of the Queen’s English, and an aristocratic accent implying money and a private school education.
Suri was glad that she didn’t know what the little vampire was saying—it likely would have only pissed her off. Instead she eyed the food that the servants were bringing out and placing on the table, and noticing that more servants were coming out from buildings on the edge of the square, the ranks of hell spawn allowing them to pass through and into the crowd where they walked about carrying platters of food, one in each hand, with the dexterity of a veteran cocktail waitress.
Suri could not tell what kinds of meals were being served to the people below, but the dishes sparkled silver, same as the vampire lord’s chairs. She assumed it was something good, and the whole square, in fact, was decorated in good, festive taste to match the vases on the platform. There were banners and ribbons hanging from balconies of the surrounding buildings, and flower petals thrown from rooftops floating through the air. It was like the first day of an annual festival, which it very well may have been. The details of fae weddings were unknown to her, to say nothing of when nobility was married. Adding to the confusion, Lord Korka was no ordinary King. He was a usurper, and his rule broke Jansilian’s noble line of succession. It was a break from tradition, and the ceremony’s decorations could have been designed to reflect that—or to matched what had been in practice for centuries. He could do whatever he wanted; he was both a conqueror and a King.
Next the food for the main feast table on the platform was brought out. Suri longed for the cooking of the human chefs who had kept them all so well-fed at Black Gauntlet, working from their massive kitchen.
What she got was the kind of thing that people eat to put up the appearance that they have refined taste, but that they don’t actually enjoy.
Even better than morning breakfast at Black Gauntlet would be Chinese food with Amber, eating with chopsticks out of white cardboard carton decorated with red Chinese letters, snuggled up under a blanket and binge watching the newest show on Netflix…Or maybe with Raja. That would be good too. Sitting there, Suri found herself partly hypnotized by the crowd and the bustling movement. She was daydreaming.
Suri took a sharp breath through her nose, lifted her chin and squinted her eyes.
Don’t cry, not now. Don’t cry. It’s all going to work out.
There was no reason to believe that at all, but it was better than thinking the alternative. What good is hopelessness? There is always a change that things will get better, and the likelihood of the situation getting better is slim if you have a negative outlook. It’s always better to be confident—that was what Vestrix had taught Suri. To look forwards, not back, and to not beat herself up over her mistakes, and to every day try to do better than the last.
Traxan continued to give his speech, making jokes that the fae public laughed at, cheered and generally enjoyed. Traxan was a masterful public speaker, a trait that Suri had not anticipated him having given his sour, ornery personality.
Then again, he is a traitorous little ghoul.
It fit that he would be a charismatic manipulator, but sitting there on her throne and watching him hold sway over the crowd, Suri could not in good conscious keep him on the list of people to kill. That space was reserved for Lord Korka only, and the vampire lords, she supposed, if what the old fae warlock had said was true. Suri was still waiting for them to reveal themselves, as he had said would happen. The evidence had yet to appear. As much evil Traxan had done, he had not gone so far as to kill anyone, or construct a place like Turndour Keep. Not that Suri knew of, anyway.
That was when Suri noticed the food that had been set before her on the feast table, and what was being poured into their goblets. It looked to be bloody steaks and organs for her wedding meal, and contents of her cup, and all the others, was a dark, thick, foul-smelling liquid that could only be blood.
There were bits of greens and vegetables, colorful and daintily arranged, mixed in with the meat on her plate. But they did nothing to hide the fact that it was rare meat that looked to be freshly cut, raw, not even cooked.
A murmur passed through the vampire lords. The so-called nobles who were sitting at the table glanced at each other. Some looked slyly in Lord Korka’s direction, as if they had not anticipated him to be so welcoming of their tastes. They were pleased with themselves. No doubt thinking they backed the right horse.
As the first noble, a tall man with jet black hair slicked back from an aquiline face, sighed with pleasure and licked the remnants of blood from his lips, Suri saw the fangs protruding from his upper lip and knew that Lord Korka had told her the truth.
So I will do it after all. Murder the guests at my wedding. I have to kill them, here and now.
It was crazy. The realization set her heart racing, and she felt her face flush.
All of the men and women around her, about fifteen in total, dressed extravagantly for the occasion, were enjoying their bloody meals and drinks. Suri was sick to her stomach. It stood to reason that the rest of what Lord Korka had said about her abilities, and about the vampires on Earth controlling the ungifted, was also true. It sickened her to think of the head of the World Bank, the ECB, Federal Reserve, and all the fat cats who run the show supping on bloody organs, taken from god-knows-where.
She shivered, knowing that it was not simply blood, but human or fae blood, that was being consumed. Her lessons at the Academy had taught her that much about vampires, if not much else.
Traxan gave a flourishing bow and he parted from his position at the edge of the stage, closest to the crowd. The servants had retreated back into the buildings forming the perimeter of the market square. Almost everyone was eating now, commoners and nobles alike. Many commoners in the crowd still held bunches of flowers in the crooks of their arms, and on a nearby rooftop a group of fae musicians took up singing, while others plays lutes and lyres. Suri thought she even spotted a harp.
Do they know? Suri wondered. Do these people who support Lord Korka and the nobles think he is a vampire, or do they know nothing about any of this, simply going along with whoever promises to restore Faerie to its former glory and kick out the humans? Would it even matter to them if they could see the monsters behind the masks?
Suri’s palms started to sweat. She was about
to murder over a dozen people, perhaps more if her black magic spell went a little bit beyond her control. She remembered the smell of the burning human districts, the screams coming from the smoke, and the jeering fae who waited outside to catch those running for their lives. It seemed so long ago, but the feeling that she had at the time to punish all of Lodum for what they had done remained sharp as ever. It would feel so, so good, but only for a brief moment. It would not be justice, and Suri was right to think that Vestrix would not condone it—not only because her aunt was fae, but because it was not honorable, and being honorable was one of the things that Suri had first been taught at the Academy, and that Vestrix had then reminded her of. Taking the lives of ordinary fae caught up in events beyond their control…Making her anger felt throughout the market square…That was what Lord Korka would have done. The ends justify the means.
Suri began chanting the black magic spell that would engulf the entire platform in a death mist, except for the two thrones. Traxan had gone off somewhere, off the platform and out of sight.
Suri sniffed at her goblet and even took a small sip to be sure that it was blood. Her tongue confirmed it, and she set it down on the black tablecloth and slid it as far away from her as she could push it with her fingertip. Turndour Keep came to mind, its pale prisoners, and the evil that had gone on there. It all connected, made sense in her head. That showed the true character of the city’s nobility, who were smiling and laughing and engaging in small talk as the they on the platform and the crowd below joined in a festive meal. Suri doubted the food being passed out to the commoners was as undercooked as what lay on her plate in a small red puddle.
The servants reappeared out in the crowd, bringing feast tables and chairs for the commoners to sit on, and large platters of food to replace the appetizers, the last of which were being taken away in place of the main course. More musicians took up playing on the rooftops. A dragon passed overhead, a small wyrm about a quarter of the size of Gorgax, leaving behind it a trail of thousands of flower petals that everyone oohed and awed at as they watched them fall down from high in the sky. There was no wind so they came down like snow fall, colored purple, pink and white, here and there an orange one, falling and landing on the tables and dishes, much to everyone’s amusement and delight. Everyone but Suri and Lord Korka’s, that is. The new King of Lodum and all of Faerie remained impassive, his great helm hiding his features.
Faerie Queen: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 3 : Part I) Page 12
