He glanced at her, then back at the wall and said, diffident, “The aliens are dead, Your Majesty.”
Her pause then was long enough that she could measure his tension. She watched him swallow, throat moving above the high collar of his uniform. “Dead.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. There were six of them, and five of them died to Liolesa’s Swords. The only one that remains is the high priest’s guest.”
“I presume you have sent someone after these escapees?” Surela said after a long moment. What did she care for the fate of aliens, anyway? “It’s winter. I can’t imagine they’ve gone far.”
“Your Majesty, we have and… we are so far unable to locate them.”
“In the new snow,” she said. “You tell me that over sixty people have vanished, leaving no trail in the new snow. Without provisions or coats or horses to ride. And you can’t find them.”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“I am speechless,” she said at last. “And surrounded, apparently, by amazing incompetence. Remove yourself from my presence while I contemplate the discipline, any discipline, sufficient to your correction for this debacle.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
He bowed and backed out of her study… Liolesa’s study, damn it all, for she had not had time to redecorate, and she wondered now if she’d ever have the time with all her enemies slipping away from her into the wilderness where they could make mischief. At least Athanesin was taking care of Jisiensire’s allegiances. She sighed and sat heavily in her chair, rubbing her brow. Ridiculous. And through the servants’ corridors! She couldn’t punish the servants, not without winning herself a reputation; servants would band together against a noble who turned on them no matter their master or mistress. But she would have to turn them all out somehow before they found some new way to betray her.
Goddess and Lady. It beggared her imagination that Liolesa had ever had such problems. Then again, she had fomented a rebellion beneath Liolesa’s very eyes and succeeded in a coup….
What woman was even now sitting in a warm and distant parlor, contemplating Surela’s removal?
What a useless, horrible, ghastly day. She was ready to be quit of it, and supposed as Queen she had the luxury of doing so. Exiting the study she headed for her rooms, yet another suite that reminded her far too much of her predecessor. On her way, she contemplated how she would fix that. Perhaps it was time to move the royal suite to the opposite side of Ontine. She could convert the rooms that had once been Asaniefa’s and move her family into the suite opposite it. At least then she’d be surrounded by her allies. Goddess knew how she could afford to sleep soundly at night if the guard she’d instated was not capable of keeping an entire phalanx of Liolesa’s soldiers out of Ontine.
She was very glad to shut the door on them. On everyone. On everything. She did it with prejudice and flounced into the bedroom, throwing her shawl onto a chair and stopping short in shock.
There was a body on the floor beside her bed.
“What is the meaning of this!” she cried. “Do my enemies now resort to grotesque messages to instill fear in me?” Backing away, she turned for the door to call for someone to remove the corpse.
Then it spoke.
“Mistress….”
Surela’s hand froze on the door. “Thaniet,” she whispered. And then, horror cresting on an enormous wave: “Thaniet!” She flung herself toward the body, falling to the ground alongside her liegewoman’s head. There was not a place on her body that was not smeared in blood or bruised some hideous color. Surela could barely think of touching her, fearing to make it worse. “Oh, Thaniet! What has become of you! Where did you….” But there was a smear of blood leading from Thaniet’s body toward the wall, where one of the servants’ doors was ajar. “Oh, my dearest. Oh, what has become of you!”
“Please,” Thaniet said, and her voice was so hushed Surela bent to hear it. “Lady. So important.”
“I’m listening. I promise!”
“Alien… is your enemy. Wants… this world… to sell us all….”
Surela’s mouth set in a hard line. This she could well believe, though her heart dropped to hear it. But her liegewoman was not done.
“Priest… too. Priest has… given it to him. Plot… your downfall… Athanesin…”
Now she felt faint. She swallowed.
“…wants your crown.”
“No,” Surela whispered.
Exhausted, Thaniet let out a long breath and did not speak again. Was she breathing? Oh Goddess, let her breathe! Surela hovered, frantic. Her one ally in all this mess, who had nearly died to bring her the news that she was beset on all sides, and a good woman besides, a true woman, her only friend, who had stood by her in every circumstance…. “Oh no, no,” she said, hands fluttering as they touched the sodden hair. “No, you mustn’t die, Thaniet. There is no justice in your death. You deserve better…!”
Nothing on this world could heal wounds this grievous. So much blood! But if Thaniet was right, and she had to believe it, then she could not go to Baniel to ask for help from his pet aliens. To reveal that Thaniet had survived… he would kill her. But it was past bearing that Thaniet should die. Who….
Her shoulders squared, even as her nausea redoubled. She thought she would faint, but somehow she didn’t. She leaned down and kissed Thaniet’s temple. “Hold fast, dear one. I will get you help. I pledge it. Only hold a little longer.” She rose and pulled down a blanket, tucking it around her liegewoman’s body. A quick survey of herself found no blood spots, nor dishevelment—she could not afford to be stopped—and pulling her shawl around herself she left her apartments. Outside, she said to the guard, “You are aware of the escape?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Was the Lady Araelis one of those escapees?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Excellent. Take me to her.”
The trip to the Jisiensire suite took too long—Surela could feel the blood growing cold and sticky on the fingertips she kept balled against her palm—and too little a time for her to compose herself. She used the precious few moments between the guard announcing her and her first step to square her shoulders, and entered the room of one of her worst enemies to beg for aid.
But she did not have time to draw breath for the request before Araelis stole it from her, by looking at her, and Goddess and Lord, that look. She thought she’d seen Araelis’s anger. But this… this was something more horrific, a towering, bleak hatred that sent her stumbling back toward the door, reaching behind herself for the handle because she was unwilling to turn her back on that much wrath.
“You,” Araelis hissed. “You monster-keeping bitch!”
Surela stopped, shocked by the epithet. “I-I b-beg your….”
“Pardon? Pardon? NEVER.” Araelis said, advancing on her. Surela backpedaled until she was pressed against the door and couldn’t move. There were tears streaking the other woman’s face, and that made the utter implacability of her hatred the more terrifying. “That you would dare to ask such a thing after what you have done…!”
A new thing. It had to be a new thing, because her usurpation of the throne had not incited this much emotion from Araelis. But what had she done? Nothing! It was Araelis and Fassiana and the Swords who had done something! “If you mean to tell me I should have held still for your escape, I cannot apologize. I had to try to stop you—”
“Escape?” Araelis paused, her eyes losing focus. “What do you… you think that has any bearing on what you’ve done? What you’ve done! You destroyed my House and you dare think it unworthy even of notice?”
Surela lost a breath, her mouth gone suddenly dry. “I have not destroyed your House.”
“You sent your pet monster to the task and he did well enough,” Araelis snarled. “Do you think I would not put the blame on your shoulders? Particularly since he used the Pads your pirate friends brought with them? You ordered them slaughtered like kine! Every one of them! They’ve fired even
the tenants’ cottages!”
“They’ve what?” she breathed, feeling faint.
“Athanesin, damn his soul to an immortal hell. Has done your bidding. And left me with nothing more to lose.” Araelis withdrew.
“I sent Athanesin to compel Jisiensire’s obedience!” Surela cried. “Not to destroy it!”
“Then you should have kept a tighter leash on him.”
She was shaking now. Jisiensire destroyed? She had not wanted that. Had not wanted anyone killed. She could not rule dead people. She could not win the hearts of corpses. She’d wanted Athanesin to intimidate them! It was what he had promised! And to abuse the common folk… that was past bearing. One caretook the commoners! It was their duty! To do otherwise… that was sacrilege, a stain against one’s immortal soul!
“This can’t be true,” she whispered.
Something hit the wall beside her and bounced to the floor beside her shoe: one of the mortal contrivances, the one that permitted talk over long distances. “Call him yourself and find out.” When she didn’t reach for it, Araelis sneered. “Take it. I don’t need it anymore. The last person who could have answered me died using it to tell me what you’ve done. There’s no one I have left to talk to.”
With numb fingers, Surela gathered it from the carpet and straightened. Such a small thing, to have brought such devastating news. And if it was true—
It had to be true. Thaniet had said, hadn’t she? Athanesin wanted her crown.
Thaniet.
“Lady Araelis,” she said, hoarse. “There is a matter.”
“A matter, is it?” Araelis laughed bitterly. She sat carefully at the table meant for receiving guests, and made a throne of it with her anger as mantle. “Oh yes. Tell me this ‘matter.’ Let me guess. Your allies are turning against you?”
She flushed. “My liegewoman, Thaniet. She is… she is horribly injured. I had thought if perhaps you had any mortal instruments capable of aid… I ask this not for me, but for her, she is a good woman, she does not deserve to die because… because of her allegiance to me.”
“Doesn’t she?” Araelis asked.
Surela said, “Please. For her sake. I beg you to have mercy for her.”
Araelis smiled without humor, without even pleasure. It was a hideous expression when inspired by irony and pitilessness. “Your ‘mortal’ allies probably had their way with her and left her for dead, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“You are not insensible to the lesson there?”
Surela found she was trembling, hated that it was fear and misery and horror. “No.”
Araelis studied her. “How I would like to have those instruments, solely so I could deny them to you. So I could hurt you, in some small part, on the level that you have hurt me. My own baby’s father dead in the fire-gutted estate that has housed Jisiensire since the end of Jerisa’s reign… and you the author of it all? Oh yes. I would love, very much, to force you to suffer and know it was my hand that struck the blow. But alas for you—and your hapless liegewoman—I have no access to ‘mortal’ medical technology. Nor does Fassiana, before you ask her.”
“Thaniet is an innocent,” Surela said, pleaded.
“And she will die because of your acts. She will not have been the first.” Araelis rested a hand on her belly. “I tire of looking at the face of a butcher. Go away, Surela. Don’t come back.”
Surela let herself out and adjusted her shawl around her shoulders to give herself an excuse not to look up at the guards standing their posts at Araelis’s door. The mortal device caught on some of the floss embroidery and she tugged it free before setting off down the hall, feeling the hard edges against her skin. To whom could she speak to corroborate the news of this atrocity? Jisiensire put to the torch… what was Athanesin thinking! What would keep their enemies from doing the same to them, now that they had begun this? If nobles could destroy one another’s populations, what would be left of their world? It was not done, and he had done it!
And who now would help Thaniet?
Back in her bedroom—Liolesa’s bedroom—Surela settled alongside her liegewoman’s still form with the washing bowl from the dresser. Dipping a towel in it she began to gently clean Thaniet’s face. She worked her way down the woman’s body, slowly, stopping to pour out the water and fetch fresh, and to heat the towel by the fire. The depredations she found wreaked on Thaniet’s body… that such animals had been allowed to touch such a good woman! And that she might be the proximate cause of this… this and everything else!
She had been very sure of herself, that the aliens were the enemy, and to keep them away the only course. Their violence and cruelty did nothing to sway her to a different opinion; she did not want to see Thaniet’s injuries repeated on a hundred bodies, a thousand. But she began to wonder how one could stop them. She was Queen, and Baniel, though her ally, was not controlling these creatures. Athanesin was using their weapons to kill off the population in swaths, and then who would be left to defend them when the aliens came in force? Because she now understood that they would.
What did she do now? Give the crown to Athanesin? He would take it when he arrived, if that was his aim. She could offer to marry him… but what guarantee was there that he would not do to her what others had done to Thaniet? A man who could fire the cottages of farmers could do anything.
“Oh, Thaniet,” she said, hushed. Was she crying? No. No, she was not. But the feeling in her breast was like anguish, and rage, and terror. There was no crying because she could not push tears past the ball of emotion in her breast, the one that made her tremble as she went gently over broken ribs and shattered bones.
What could she do?
It took Thaniet three hours to die. It was poor comfort that she at least passed on wrapped in warm furs, clean, with her head on the lap of a friend, but it was all Surela could give her. When she was sure of her own legs, she gently set Thaniet’s head on a pillow and followed the blood trail through the door.
It took her some time to find a servant, but she stopped him when she did. “I need help.”
Did she imagine the hesitation? Probably not. These people were Liolesa’s, and no doubt would never be anything else. But the man did answer with neutral politeness, “Of course, Lady.”
“Thaniet… Lady Thaniet…” Surela paused until she could talk without trembling. “She has died, and I fear if I send for the priests to take her they may not bury her.”
This hesitation was longer. Unhappily, the servant didn’t seem surprised by her fears. They’d known, she guessed. Of course they had. Baniel had supported her, and they didn’t trust her. His uncertainty, then, had to do with her breaking ranks with her own allies. She swallowed her pride and said, “Please.”
“Of course,” he said again, gentler this time.
“My bedroom.”
“Yes, Lady.”
At least he hadn’t flinched when she’d called Liolesa’s bedroom her own. As far as Surela was concerned, though, Liolesa could have it back, and all the memories of Thaniet’s death with it.
The servant returned with three others and a maid. Surela insisted that Thaniet remain wrapped in the furs and waited until they’d lifted the body to tuck them more carefully around her lady-in-waiting’s body. Then she kissed the cold brow and said, in the white mode for sanctity and holy vows, “Go you to the Goddess, and forget all the suffering you knew here. And forgive me.”
To the servants, she said, quiet, “Go. And thank you.”
For how long she stood alone in that room, she didn’t know. But she had a debt now, and a duty to attempt to make right some of the errors she’d committed in—yes, Araelis and Fassiana had been right—her witless arrogance. She wanted no part of aliens yet, still thought them best set apart, found the thought of them disgusting, in fact. And she had no idea how to get rid of the ones who’d entrenched themselves in her world. But she could make a start.
The guards outside her room were in Asaniefa’s green and elect
rum. She had to hope they were more competent in numbers than they had been apart. “Fetch me twenty of your fellows,” she said. “And meet me at the study. Arm yourselves. We go to arrest the high priest for treason.”
CHAPTER 13
By now Hirianthial had woken in so many cells that he was utterly unsurprised to find himself in another, and this, somehow, made him want to laugh. Pushing himself upright, he assessed his condition: undamaged, other than a few desultory bruises and scrapes… novel, given his usual state in captivity. Unarmed, naturally. Not hungry or thirsty, so he hadn’t been here long. And surrounded in smooth metal with a halo field for a fourth wall, without so much as a bunk or a drain. An Alliance facility, then, and not meant for long term captivity. Through the floor he could feel… not a vibration or a hum, but something like to them, which suggested engines, and so a ship. Somehow, Soly and hers had run into an enemy ship.
Reese’s words came back to him, about their having to stop meeting in prisons, that cells didn’t suit him. He murmured agreement as if she could hear him, setting a palm on the wall and then passing it over the cool metal, uncertain what he was seeking but prodded to the act all the same—there. Bryer was on the other side of the wall.
How many customs did he contemplate breaking? And yet he did, and without regret or guilt. Why was that? Some memory—not his—of the mindtouch between welcoming souls not being hardship—Urise’s? He could almost hear the priest now: Must all touch be coercion?
He knew better. Hirianthial closed his eyes and reached. /Bryer./
A sense of assent, wordless.
/You’re hale?/
An affirmative.
/Do you know aught of where we are?/
Exasperation? Nothing so extreme. More like a feeling of friction in the Phoenix’s emotions, tagged with the thought that he was the only one capable of finding out, so why was he asking Bryer?
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