"I will love him until he is black and blue!" Bloodbyrn dove onto the bed after her lord, and gave the assembled heads of state the performance they were looking for.
Chapter the Thirteenth
In which the Ultimate Fiend corrects a Mistake
"I'm sorry."
It was the next morning, as much as sunless Skrea had mornings.
Even if the sun had shone brilliantly down from a blue sky, no natural light would have illuminated the Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, who walked the stone bowels of Castle Clouds-Gather, awkward and uncomfortable, in the company of his new First Concubine.
"You do not need to say so, my lord." Bloodbyrn favored her lord with a narrow amber squint. Bathed and dressed in what was for her a relatively simple cloak and dress, she walked just a little in front of Freetrick, arms stiff at her sides.
"Look, it's just…" Freetrick cleared this throat uncomfortably, "It was my first time, and I wasn't expecting…uh," his voice trailed off. There had been a lot he hadn't expected during that ceremony. The zombie battle, for example. But at least he could look back on that battle and take some pride in the fact that he had prevented himself, then Bloodbyrn, then himself again, from becoming a zombie. And they had killed the creepy un-priest guy, which might have been a good thing. No, what was disturbing to Freetrick was every other part of the ceremony.
"I was surprised," Freetrick tried to explain, "and…um. Well, there was the…uh…that ritual, you did. With…all that blood."
The cloak swished. "I see."
The silence that followed was the silence that comes right before an earthquake. Freetrick felt the pressure of immense forces and expected something heavy to fall on him. He tried to at least brace himself against a metaphorical door frame.
"The first time, though. Thanks for…uh…" He leaned forward, looked into Bloodbyrn's eyes and flinched. "Look, you aren't making this easy."
"Oh yes?" her voice creaked with strain, "and easy did you make last night for me, Feerborg?"
Freetrick sighed. "I'm just saying that there was a lot of weird…dangerous…weird stuff going on last night, and I—"
"Failed miserably," snarled Bloodbyrn and sped up, outpacing him. "Failed, failed the simplest tasks!"
"Now wait a second—"
"—at every task you were given!" Bloodbyrn continued, "my bloody god knows I gave you little enough to do, and still, my lord, you did not accomplish it."
"Oh yes, my day was so striking easy." Freetrick put a foot down and stopped, raising his voice at Bloodbyrn's back. "Oh poor you with your problems choosing the color scheme of the wedding decorations while I was striking tortured for half a day. And stripped naked and drained of a lot of blood—do you know what they did to me?"
Bloodbyrn stopped ahead of him. "I suspect I do," she said coldly, "since it was I who instructed the servants. Do not forget that the entirety of the wedding preparations fell to me."
"And the advice the servants gave me," Freetrick went on, deep in the personal hell of memory, "that horrible combination of torture and striking etiquette class."
"Those tutors did not come cheaply!"
"Those maps of the human body?" Freetrick shuddered at the memory, "What is wrong with you people?"
Bloodbyrn spun around to face him. "Perhaps if my lord had paid attention to those lessons, he would not have performed so poorly in their application."
"Fhyeah, no kidding," Freetrick snorted. "If I had paid more attention to the lessons I would've striking run away—"
But Bloodbyrn was talking over him, "Does my lord have any idea of the effort I expended? Not only in every minutia of preparation---guest lists, catering, seating arrangement for the witnesses, fending off the attentions of the undead, but I was forced to make all of your preparations as well." She threw her hands up, "Who does my lord think wrote his cue cards, hm? Who at the last minute found my lord had studied none of his part in the ceremony and dictated the bloody script even as my dress was being fitted!"
"You could have asked me," said Freetrick, "you could have included me in the planning of my striking wedding."
"It was not a wedding!" shrieked Bloodbyrn. "It was an un-marriage! An ancient and sacred custom of this nation, of which you, Feerborg, are king! Well then, why did you not involve yourself?"
"I did involve myself," protested Freetrick. "All that time you were in the other room with your dad, when I was fighting off minions with scalpels you know what I was doing? Talking to the priest, trying to get him to tell me what the striking hell was going to happen."
"Oh?" Bloodbyrn raised an eyebrow. "and what did the Hafdern tell you?"
"He told me…well," Freetrick realized he was not going to strengthen his side of the argument, but forged ahead anyway, "he told me he was going to split your belly and spill your hot blood on the stones of the mountain."
She sighed. "And of course you did not warn me."
"I didn't know he really meant to do it!" said Freetrick, "I thought it was some kind of metaphor…anyway," he protested at her angry headshake, "I told him not to! And anyway, I did save your life like three times when we fought all those zombies."
She snorted, "My lord, I am secure in my conviction that if my life had truly been in danger, I would have noticed."
"Wha—" Freetrick sputtered, as Bloodbyrn went on.
"Feerborg, my lord, your protestations are unnecessary. Actually, your actions last night do you credit," her voice cracked over the word, as if it proved harder to say than she had thought, "…credit, as I say, if nothing else. May your blood be drained from you slowly!" The look she fixed on him was so full of venom that Freetrick expected it to dissolve his head and the stone wall behind it.
"Uh, Bloodbyrn?" he said, "what are you talking about?"
Freetrick flinched back as Bloodbyrn shrieked, leapt forward, and whipped out her little black knife. The flinch then turned into a confused twitch as she turned the blade on herself and sent a red spray flying out from her slashed left palm. The air filled with little particles of blood, which oddly, instead of falling, hung in the air like a red mist.
The mist vibrated. Freetrick's teeth buzzed with it, but before he could complain, Bloodbyrn was shouting at him.
"Enough posturing! Enough playacting, by my god and all his blood! Enough." She leveled a finger at him, "You made an excellent attempt my lord, but allow me this moment of gloating in privacy. Are you upset your scheme did not proceed as intended? Hm? Answer me." Bloodbyrn was very nearly succeeding at a light bantering tone of voice, but her consonants had taken on an edge that could slice silk.
Freetrick eyed the buzzing red cloud them uneasily, "Bloodbyrn, I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Oh, my lord, I think you do." The edge slid further out, glimmering like a frozen razor. "after all, you forced me to perform for nearly two hours."
Bloodbyrn's voice grew colder and sharper with each word. Freetrick recalled the word-magic experiments in refrigeration, temperatures that turned the very air into brittle glass.
"Well, perform I did, flawlessly, before my father and all the dark lords of Castle Clouds-Gather. Did it surprise you, my lord, when I could carry on without any help at all from you? How I could fool them into thinking we indeed consummated my concubinage?"
"Bloodbyrn—"
"Only how is it that you did it, my lord?" Now her voice had reached the temperature that levitated metallic objects. Much further and she would get to the theoretical point of no temperature at all, when things either ceased to exist, teleported to another universe, or exploded. "Tell, me, please. Merely to satisfy my curiosity. How did you remain flaccid?"
"How did I" Freetrick blinked, "---what?"
The slap that followed did not terrify Freetrick because it was bullwhip-strong and overflowing with rage, but because he could sense how much she was holding back.
"How did you resist me?" Bloodbyrn's amber eyes nearly glowed with fury, "how could you lie there"
a lower eyelid twitched "…limp! While all my skills and energies were directed at you? How was it that you resisted the call of my flesh?"
"Bloodbyrn," stammered Freetrick, "I didn't do anything!"
"Exactly!" she raged. "You did nothing! You did not complete the consummation! So then are you damaged? Castrated? Diseased?"
"No!"
"What then? Tell me, or may the god of blood send his serpents to replace your lymph with venom!"
"Bloodbyrn I didn't want to!" The echoes thudded between the buzzing inside of the dome of blood vapor.
"You didn't…want to?" Bloodbyrn repeated incredulously. "Of course you wanted to."
"I couldn't!" said Freetrick. "How could I? You were cutting me! And the whips! And all those guys watching! And the striking manacles! And strike it out I'd just killed like three zombies! And the look on your face—" He stopped himself.
Bloodbyrn had looked good naked---very good---but Freetrick couldn't even close his eyes and visualize her without cringing in associative fear. In Freetrick's experience, every time Bloodbyrn looked sexy, something bad happened to him, and he had a pretty strong impression that that was the way she liked it. She was clearly trying to drive him insane. And she was succeeding.
"My lord…" Freetrick had through Bloodbyrn's voice terrified him when it plunged to absolute zero, then when it boiled. Now it was wavering between the two."My lord," She sublimated, "you babble. You refuse to grant me the answer I request." Her voice firmed, but the blood suspended in the air around them bubbled and stank. "Does my lord play a game of tactics with me? Does he withhold valuable information?" She stepped up to him, seeming to tower, although her nose was just level with his sternum. "How were you not enflamed by me to your very marrow? Tell me! Necromantic magics? Some sort of Do-Gooder counter-erotic? A debilitating illness or birth defect you have so far kept hidden? How could I not arouse you?"
Freetrick's head whipped back as he instinctively recoiled from the blow, and he nearly toppled off his feet when she didn't actually try to hit him. Instead, Bloodbyrn's chin and shoulders had curled in toward her chest. She drew her hands up over her mouth as blood rained out of the air around them, and the dominatrix of lower Joublournie and Carnivé, heir to the Clot of Torture, and first consort of the Despot of Skrea sniffed wetly. "What have I done wrongly?"
The hand Freetrick put on her shoulder shocked him almost as much as it seemed to shock her. Bloodbyrn jerked it away with a snarl. "The vulnerability I am displaying is merely a ruse to motivate you to reveal privileged information to aid me in your destruction," she mumbled into her hands, "and not at all a… loss of emotional…" She sniffed again, "control." Her eyes came up to glare at him over her hands. "Idiot."
Freetrick opened his mouth, closed it, and kicked his brain into action. What was Bloodbyrn actually upset about? Okay, he hadn't had sex with her. In front of witnesses. After a zombie battle. But how could she be this angry about that?
Strike it out, she was glaring at him. Freetrick shuffled frantically through possible responses. "Bloodbyrn," he said. "Look. Uh, some things are sexy. And some things are…horrifying. And you don't—you don't striking mix them!"
She blinked. "Do not be ridiculous, of course we do."
Aha. Of course they did. "Fine," said Freetrick, "maybe unholy-undead-blood-smeared…striking…weird sado-masochism does it for you guys in Skrea, but not for me, okay?"
"Does not 'do it?'" Bloodbyrn shook her head, "merciless one grant me strength, my lord, do not descend into your impenetrable Rationalist patois, but instead endeavor to utilize the clearest and most cogent modes of expression of which you are capable."
"True words, Bloodbyrn!" Freetrick hissed, "I didn't like the sex! It wasn't sexy! It was weird! It didn't arouse me. It's wasn't…nice for me, okay?"
"Nice? Nice? Oh…oh" At first Freetrick thought Bloodbyrn was sobbing, but then as she lifted her face and he saw the grin, he leaned back. "Tempest above me. My lord and master has a tenderness fetish. That is…" And the ice-razors snapped back into place with a nearly audible clang, "unbelievable." Very delicately, a knife-edged fingernail scooped the tears from the corner of each eye. There was not a smudge to her makeup.
"I'm sorry—"
"I do not care for my lord's apologies at this time! I wish to say…ugh!" She threw her hands up toward the blood mist over them, "how is it possible that my lord's behavior consistently surpasses my least expectations. Even as I revise them downwards, you find new ways to disappoint me! No, do not interrupt me again, Feerborg."
Freetrick closed his mouth.
"Well I give not half a lizard's carcass for your perverse tastes," she said. "We shall consume our relationship. Today."
Today? Freetrick's horror briefly overtopped his manners. "True words no! Uh…" he backed away from Bloodbyrn, "I mean…I have work to do, Bloodbyrn."
"What work?" she demanded.
"I have interviews with the dark lords." It was even true.
"Again this nonsense? Please do me the favor of allowing me to express the many ways in which my lord's choice of actions causes me distress."
She then looked up at Freetrick, who spread his hands, "Go ahead."
Bloodbyrn gestured and the blood rained out of the air around them. It left a hot coppery stink in the air. "My lord," she said, voice once again composed, "were circumstances otherwise I would embrace the desire of the Despot of Skrea to engage in some therapeutic sadism," she said, "but I must insist that now is in no way the time for such frivolities. We—you and I, my lord, have much to discuss. Much to do. Much," she glanced at remains of the blood mist on the floor around them, "to be witnessed doing. So, we shall take the next secret doorway on the left—" she indicated a portrait on the corridor wall. One of the yellow eyes glaring from its cut-out sockets winked saucily. "—and thence make our ways to my private chambers, where I keep a collection of certain tools, unguents, and visual aids with which I can, I am sure, aid my lord in overcoming his difficulties."
Freetrick was getting good at talking with Bloodbyrn. Usually, he could guess what she was about to say as she started talking, and by the time her sentence was over, he could put together a pretty good response. Plus he barely shuddered at all with revulsion as the last part of her statement processed.
"You know, what, Bloodbyrn?" Freetrick looked down and met his wife's eyes. "I'm the king of Skrea. I have work to do. So we're going to have to put all of this…" he flapped his hands, "relationship stuff on hold while I work on stopping this country from striking exploding and killing us all."
"My lord, time, is short!" Bloodbyrn grasped his arm. "And we must attempt again to couple at once!" she glanced around, cast a distrustful glance at the yellow-eyed portrait, and shrugged. "Here. If my chambers are inconveniently located, I know of a well-secured room in this corridor. We must only clear out the goblins, and then—"
"Bloodbyrn, later!" he yanked his arm away from her, "I have work to do. Work at being the king."
"Oh, nonsense, my lord." Bloodbyrn gestured as if swatting away a particularly annoying bee. "My lord's work is here, with me, and nothing is of greater importance."
"No," said Freetrick, "it isn't. The interviews—"
"Interviews? Foolishness!"
Freetrick gritted his teeth, fighting hard to keep his voice level. "It's my job, Bloodbyrn."
"Pardon me, but my lord seems to be laboring under a great misapprehension about the nature of his duties as Despot of Skrea. He sits upon the throne. He orders people killed or mutated. My lord's duties and obligations pertain to the Vile Halls, the Dark Synod, the Villainous Council, and…and…" chromed bracelets sparkled as she threw up her hands, "and participating in the community of the aristocracy of your kingdom! And I might add incidentally ensuring the succession with your First Concubine, although" she whispered at him, "my lord's preferences and, more to the point, I think, his capabilities in that direction are already well-established."
"No. Bloodbyrn
, I am not here to play stupid aristocratic games." He overrode her response, "strike it out, if none of you are going to do your striking jobs, everything has to rest on me. Somebody has to run this striking country!"
Bloodbyrn's face drew back, eyes going blank for a moment. "Ah?" Then, to Freetrick's utter bafflement, her red-coated lips twisted in bemusement. "What, does my lord think being a dark lord of Evil involves pushing paper around a desk all day?"
Well, his desk was made of human scapulae, but Freetrick got the thrust of Bloodbyrn's argument. "Bloodbyrn, I don't know how the other kings of Skrea did things, but I can't imagine that they spent all their time dueling and intriguing."
"They most certainly did so." She stepped back, "we most certainly do so."
"So who runs Skrea?"
The Kingdoms of Evil Page 38
