by Gene Wolfe
Cassie shuddered, but said nothing.
“Ink blots out the sun, eh? Darkness over land and sea, cools the air under, and the winds come. Draws ’em, though I don’t know how. Winds bring rain, and the rain makes thunder and lightnin’.” He smiled. “Had a chap at Cambridge explain that once. Drops blownin’ up and down. Makes ’em charged. Static electricity. Ever stroke a cat in the dark?”
Cassie was still trying to think of a reply that would keep him talking when they rounded a point of rock and she caught sight of the palace.
Terrace after terrace rose up the topmost third of the mountain, garden terraces flaming with flowers and accented with palms, each with a white stone balustrade. There were white stone buildings scattered among them, buildings that did not quite look Greek or Roman, low and solid-looking buildings dotted with arches and striped with wide pillars.
“Oh, my gosh!” She spoke without intending to, and knew the inadequacy of any words of hers in the following instant. “Oh, golly!”
Close behind her, King Kanoa said, “Welcome home, Your Majesty.”
“I — I...”
“It makes me feel like that each time I see it. My people built it, you see. It was our high king’s money, that’s true. He furnished the materials and paid for their labor. But it was our hard work and our skill. And he’s our king, after all. We chose him, we lesser kings. The tourists... Well, he won’t let ’em gawk at it. I hope he’ll change his mind someday.”
The wind, and the sound of the surf far below, mingled with Cassie’s sobs.
“Don’t cry, Your Majesty. I can’t put my arms ’round you, ’eh? Mustn’t dare. But Okalani can.”
He spoke in his own tongue. Cassie’s shade vanished, then reappeared. Okalani’s arms, larger and more muscular than the arms of most men, embraced her; and she gasped and sobbed against Okalani’s soft breasts, breasts that smelled of sweat and the sea.
“I feel the same,” King Kanoa told Cassie when at last she had dried her tears. “Pr’aps I said that. It’s not my house, but I feel it even so. It’s the palace of our high king. Ever so many of us live in there to serve him, and I come ’round whenever I wish. When I do, my quarters are ready and waitin’, and there’s always somebody to welcome me.”
“The taxes...” Cassie gulped. “Not from you, I hope. From the shops and things in Kololahi? It must have taken a lot.”
King Kanoa’s booming laughter echoed from the rocks. “Not a dollar, I assure you, Your Majesty. No bl — No ruddy taxes here. I’m s’prised no one told you. Our king pays us, twig? Better ’rangement all ’round. Hires a good many of us, and slips a shillin’ or two to us lesser kings. To be used for the public good, as ’twere.”
Cassie could only stare.
“Good for us, eh? Steel knives, steel heads for our spears, cloth for the ladies when they’re goin’ to Kololahi and don’t want their bubbies showin’. Hospital for those who need it. Good for him, too. High king. Loved by his people. Got his ambassador at the U.N. All that.”
“I — well, maybe I do see.”
“King Wiliama ’Aukailani. That’s how the U.N. knows him, when it does — what I call him in public, too. Bill in private. No side, eh? William, the Sailor of Heaven. As decent a chap as ever I’ve met.”
“I — please, King Kanoa. Would it be all right if I rode in the chair?”
“What it’s for, eh? The chaps who made it would be hurt if you didn’t. They want to carry you and have been waitin’ ever so. Who carried Her Majesty to the palace? Why, I did. Me an’ three mates. All that, eh?”
The very painted chair had been unshipped from the catamaran. Bamboo poles lashed to its legs on either side (inside those legs, so that the seat rested on them) neatly fitted the broad bronze shoulders of two men before and two behind. These men, each of whom might readily have been a lineman for the Seahawks, carried Cassie and her chair with transparent pride, seemingly without effort. Okalani’s parasol, woven of green palm fronds, waved above her head like a banner; and she felt, felt truly and for the first time, that she was in fact a queen, chosen by fate to judge her people and to stand proudly before their gods as their representative.
“King Kanoa’s Tiny Penniman,” she told herself. “And I’m Mariah Brownlea. I only hope I never meet Vince.” But when at last she was able to tear her eyes from the palace, its beauty and its splendor, she glimpsed another mountain beyond it — a mountain from which rose a plume of smoke, soon whipped away by the wind.
“YOU are not to sit up,” a dark voice told her. “I am here and I will continue to talk until you wake and talk to me, but you are not to sit up. I have a silenced pistol, and I have these glasses so I can see in the dark. There will be a sound like the striking of a kitchen match, and a flash rather smaller than the flash of a cigarette lighter. A flash that will be gone at once. Before it is gone, the bullet will strike you. You may not feel it for a moment or so. Shock does that. Though you may not feel it, it’ll be in your lungs if it’s not in your heart. If you don’t want to be shot, don’t sit up and don’t scream. You’re awake now. How much of this did you hear?”
“I heard you say I wasn’t to sit up,” Cassie said.
“And why? Why are you not to sit up?”
“Because you’ll shoot.”
“Right on. I will. Do I sound like an American?”
Cassie nodded, wondering whether the figure at her bedside could indeed see her.
“Good. I am. I was chosen, in part, for that. I’m a fellow American, and I was chosen in order that you might know that we’re everywhere. Suppose I say to you — I wish to confirm that you are truly awake — number one eighty-one East Arbor Boulevard, apartment three-oh-one. What does it mean to you? Anything?”
“It’s my address. I live there.”
“You live there, but you may die here. Or there. To us they are the same. Who was Brian Pickens?”
“Brian Pickens?” She searched her memory. “Why do you want to kill me?”
“We do not. I’ll explain in a moment. We do not, but we will unless you do precisely as I instruct you. I will or somebody else will. You’ll be just as dead either way, Queen Cassiopeia. Can I call you Cassie? I’d like that.”
“No. Who’s Brian Pickens?”
“Who was, not who is.” The dark voice giggled. “He’s no longer with us. What a shame!”
“Are you a man or a woman?”
“I never saw you onstage. I regret it. One of us did. You danced a hornpipe in a grass skirt, with flowers on your tits. The very exemplar of royal dignity. As for me, I saw you in Kololahi. Your beachwear was amusing, I concede. It ought to have had a little skirt to hide your thighs.”
“I thought you were a man,” Cassie said, “until you laughed.”
“Would a man frighten you less? Then I’ll be a woman for you. The Sisters of the Secret Sea. How cozy! Have you recalled poor Brian?”
If I can just keep her talking, Cassie told herself, someone may come. Aloud she said, “I’m afraid not.”
“He was a paralegal, tall and gangly, with a big nose. I killed him.” The dark voice giggled again. “He had the apartment over yours, and — ”
“Oh, Lord! Yes, I remember.”
“Well you should, Cassie dear, since he died for you. His apartment is ours now. Should you return to your old home, you’ll find us above you. It won’t be pleasant.”
Cassie sighed. “It’s bound to be more pleasant than this. Who are you?”
“A member of a fighting faith. Can’t you guess our god?”
“You said something about a secret sea. So yes, I think I can.” Her thoughts whirling, Cassie tried a ploy that might, she hoped, release a flood of words. “It’s Hanga. It’s the Shark God.”
“Hardly, and you know better. An actress, with no more vocal control than that? Perhaps I may tread the boards myself someday. I couldn’t be worse. You know our god. Are you going to follow my instructions? To the letter?”
“It dep
ends on what they are.”
“Not really. It depends on what will happen if you disobey. I thought I had made that clear. It also depends on the reward you shall have for obedience. First, your life will be spared. Second, you shall rule your little kingdom as its sole monarch, with no pernicious interfering husband. If you like men, you may have a hundred. Or a thousand. If you prefer women, the same. You will be subject, of course, to divinity. As we all are. You’ll find him a kindly master, though one whose precepts must be obeyed to the letter.”
“It’s that dirty Squid God.”
Something hard struck Cassie’s head, leaving her dizzy, in pain, and half stunned.
“You didn’t cry out.” The dark voice was approving and amused. “That’s very well. I would have had to shoot.”
“Early training.” Cassie felt her own warm blood running from between her finger. “My stepfather punished me again if I yelled.”
“A man after my own heart.”
“Yeah. He was. What did you swat me with?”
“The barrel of my gun. The barrel from which the bullet that will take your life shall come, unless you obey. Listen!”
“All right. I am.”
“High King Willy will return tomorrow. You’ll explain that you wish to swim in the sea, something your people do every day. He’ll agree, and have you carried down this mountain. You’ll return to the sea daily, or almost daily. In the sea, you’ll be instructed further, and tested.”
“Hot dog,” Cassie muttered.
“When your instruction is complete, you’ll speak to your husband of the bestial lust you and he hold so dear. You wish to couple with him in the sea, to couple alone amid the waves. By ‘couple’ I intend the satisfaction of his most dearly held desire, regardless of the form it may take. You’ll do it — there — however filthy it may be.”
“Let him suck my toes?” Cassie tried to sound serious.
It was ignored. “You’ll hint, oh, most enticingly, of the many delights you offer. He’ll come with you, and at the moment of climax he’ll be taken. Leaving you, glorious High Queen Cassiopeia, the black throne. Do you understand what I said?”
“Better than you do, maybe. Did you give that poor paralegal a fighting chance? I’ll bet you didn’t.”
“Nor will we give you a fighting chance,” the dark voice told her. “You’ll die like the stupid cow you are. A cow in a slaughterhouse.”
“Got it. Have you yourself, personally, ever had normal sex? I think you’re a woman. Not a woman like me, but a woman. So have you ever done it with somebody you loved? Somebody who loved you?”
“Pah! Fah!” The dark voice might have been that of an angry cat. “Juvenile posturing! Breeding! Do you think I want to learn what billions already know? My steel dildo is in your face. One moment more, and its ejaculation will blind an eye if it does not pulp your brain.”
Cassie glimpsed a faint gleam on the oiled barrel and grabbed for it.
The pistol fired at once, its weakened flash burning her left cheek. The sound of the shot was lost amid the crash and rattle of broken glass.
The pistol fired again as they wrestled for it. Then its owner had it and fired a third time, not at Cassie but toward a door that had flown open. A woman so large she filled the doorway screamed.
The terrace door, which ought to have been closed and bolted, was neither. For an instant, a slender figure was silhouetted there against tropical stars.
There was another shot, not muffled in the least and followed by three more in quick succession. Then silence. Cassie found her robe on a chair not far from the king-size bed.
The lights came on. “You are hurt! O dearest queen, where do you bleed?”
“I don’t think I do.” Cassie paused, waiting for some indication of a wound. “My face is burned, maybe.”
The maid spun like a bull in the ring and was gone before her flying hair had fallen to her back.
Cassie tied her belt and walked out onto the terrace. There was no one there, but an angry voice sounded from the terrace below. From the balustrade she saw an enormous man bent above a much smaller figure sprawled on the flagstone.
“Hiapo?” Blood trickled into her left eye. She wiped it away.
He looked up. “I here, O Queen.”
There was a faint groan, not Hiapo’s.
“Stay there until I get there.”
A wide stairway, far from steep, led from her terrace to the one below. Afterward, she could not recall taking those steps, only speaking to Hiapo across the sprawled figure. “You shot her.”
“I must, O Queen. She shoot at me.”
“Did she hit you? You’d be hard to miss. Move your left hand.”
He did, and she touched the place where it had been. Much more blood, warm and sticky.
“Give me your gun.” She held out her hand.
He hesitated, then obeyed.
She pushed down the safety, dropping the hammer. “I don’t sleep with mine. I guess that’s a mistake. Go find the doctor, Hiapo. Dr. Schoonveld. Send him to me when he’s through with you.”
Hiapo pointed toward the sprawled figure. “This one, O Queen, may overpower you.”
“While I’m standing here with a gun in my hand? I doubt it. Where’s her gun, by the way?”
Hiapo found it and presented it to Cassie, who dropped it into a pocket of her robe.
After that she was alone with the sprawled figure, which moaned from time to time, though not in a dark voice, and once struggled to rise. Cassie tried to craft an adequate remark now that they were alone again, with roles reversed. I need a writer, she thought, and remembered one named Moe Zuckerman. Moe could have given her the perfect line, but he was not there.
“Your Majesty?” Dr. Schoonveld was leaning over the balustrade.
“Here!” she called, and recalled saying the same thing in school.
He hurried down. “Where were you hit?”
“On the head, but my cheek hurts worse.”
For a moment his small chromed flashlight played on it.
“It’s a powder burn, I think.”
He nodded absently, already rummaging in his bag.
His nurse arrived, a tiny Japanese. After her, like elephants following a hare, came five hulking warriors with pistols and short black assault rifles.
Cassie dropped Hiapo’s pistol into her robe’s other pocket. “Look after her first.”
“There are times,” Dr. Schoonveld murmured, “when even royalty is not obeyed. This is one of them.” He swabbed her cheek with a soft something that he dipped into a fluid that was neither water nor alcohol.
“She’s dying!”
“That is so. It may be also that I kick her so that faster she dies.”
“She may be able to tell us something.”
“Lies, Your Majesty. Only lies she tells.” Dr. Schoonveld motioned to his nurse.
“I feel sick,” Cassie said, and as she spoke realized that it was so.
IT was almost dawn when she returned to bed. That bed had been made in her absence, with clean sheets and clean pillowcases. The drapes were closed over the window that the first shot had broken, though its broken pane remained. Outside it, a massive warrior with a black rifle scanned the terrace. She had expected not to sleep at all, but fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
In the corridor outside two men sprang to attention, their bare feet silent on the thick carpet, their rifles rattling as they presented arms. The door — hadn’t she locked it? — opened and closed again, softly.
She heard the snick of the bolt, and knew the embrace of large, strong arms and the spicy scent of some cologne. A rough voice, kind and almost familiar, said, “Go back to sleep, Cassie baby. You’ve had a tough night.”
And she did, feeling warm and safe.
HE was gone in the morning, but there was a note on the pillow next to hers.
My darling, I have been married twice but I have never loved anybody the way I love you. No wom
an I have ever known has been as beautiful or as brave and good. I am a king but I will kneel at your feet very soon. Last night I held you in my arms. I can’t wait to hold you again. Did you feel my kiss? I’m hungry for yours!
Wally (Bill)
Bill Reis held up his hand. “I’m giving you my word, Kandy. I will not attack the Storm King, or his city, with depth charges. Or attack them at all without telling you what I plan.”
King Kanoa nodded and thanked him.
They were gathered around a circular table in a room she had not seen before, King Kanoa, Hiapo, Reis, and Cassie herself. She had said not long ago that she could not be certain she had locked her bedroom door, but thought she had.
Now Reis returned to it. “What about the bolt? Did you use it, too?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then that settles that. She was carrying lock picks, though to pick that lock she’d have to be good with them. What about the outside door, Cassie?”
“I locked it. I know I did.”
Hiapo rumbled, “It was opened before the woman I shot came out, O High King. I see that it is opened. I was not watching when it open. I think our high queen does it.”
Reis nodded. “An escape route. She’d try to get to the beach and into the water, I think. Kandy?”
“I concur.” Looking thoughtful, King Kanoa cleared his throat. “I talked to Iulani. She was the maid who was shot at.”
“She wasn’t hit,” Cassie put in.
“She was grazed, Your Majesty. Nothing serious, just tore the skin. Had it been a bit to the right...”
Reis asked, “What did she have to say?”
“She hadn’t known the door was locked, and said it wasn’t locked when she opened it. She had no key, she says.”
“That fits. This woman — we need something to call her.”
“The assassin? Good as anythin’.”
“Right. The assassin picked the lock, came in, and shut the door behind her leaving it unlocked. Another escape route in case Hiapo came in from the terrace.”
