Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1)

by T. Mountebank

  At the guard station, Berringer watched the screen and felt the sickness spread.

  He went to wake the King himself. “It’s your Bride. She’s taken an axe and entered the convent.”

  They passed the place she’d taken it off the wall.

  “Was it sharp?”

  “What she took wouldn’t need to be.” Berringer knew what horrendous injuries even a dull axe could inflict. He hoped she was just hacking through a lock, maybe breaking into the library vault she had spoken of years before.

  In his robe, Remy stood before the double doors. “Bang on them again,” he told the guard.

  When she’d been behind the doors for close to an hour, Remy told the General, “Get explosives. I want them down.”

  “Remy … Sir … Sire …” Berringer was prepared to plead for restraint.

  “Down, Lucas. I want them open or down.”

  Walking away, Berringer told a guard, “Get Laudin and Girard.”

  ~~~~~~

  In the manner he found most conducive to changing a person’s mood, Laudin was speaking leisurely. “I suspect she has merely gone in with the thing for effect, to grab their attention.” He sounded unconcerned. “I am sure they don’t know we’re here. The doors are thick and no one has heard us at this hour. We risk coming across as rather over-reactive.”

  Remy didn’t look at Laudin. “The doors opened for her, and she did not knock. They are aware I am here.”

  “Ah, yes, though they were likely expecting her.” Laudin shifted. “She is quite capable. Obviously trained. I am sure she is in no danger.”

  When that failed, he tried, “It is clearly a ritual. She has gone to symbolically sever ties. The clergy are quite active at sunrise. I imagine she will walk through these doors with the first rays of light. We could go have some drinks while we wait.”

  “General, where are my demolitions?”

  Laudin knew when the man could not be talked down, but he tried regardless. “Remy, can we consider for a moment the consequences of this action?”

  Around the corner, blind to the King’s distress and deaf to the discussion, Berringer had amassed soldiers and a medical team, and running toward him with bags over their shoulders were Lieutenant Fallon and company to see if there was a less violent way to open the doors. To the men with explosives, Berringer had told them to pick and then check and recheck their munitions with meticulous, exhaustive care. He told Remy, “Soon,” and then the doors began to open.

  In the moment they parted enough to allow passage, one then two more nuns in robes without shape, torn and untied, stumbled forward supporting a fourth. Beyond the vestibule, still in the large first chamber of the cloister, Sable followed with the axe dripping at her side. Berringer could see her dress was a devastating color, streaked dark over gold, and her mouth was scarlet.

  It all happened at once. As Remy pulled the injured nuns past, he called for Sable, but behind her, a group of mothers entered the chamber and one snapped her name with damning censure, “Sister Sable.”

  The tone made Sable tighten her eyes. She hefted the axe into both hands and with booming authority, instructed, “Close the doors.”

  The inner doors sealed before anyone could get near them.

  ~~~~~~

  “Did she do this to you?” Remy asked.

  The nuns that could walk had the Stare. One said, “No.”

  “The four,” said Girard. “These are the four she sent Aidan after.”

  While medics assessed the nuns and removed them, Lieutenant Fallon dropped his bag at the inner door and prepared his gear. He was searching for an electric or magnetic signature, a wireless signal, something to account for how the nuns knew when someone was on the other side without them knocking, without peep holes, or obvious cameras. When he had given up hope of finding an explanation, the doors were pulled opened again.

  The nuns in the chamber were on their knees, faces to the floor, and Sable walked from them trailing a hem soaked in gore. She was, from cruel face to bare feet, splashed in red.

  Remy advanced, shedding his robe, and Berringer stalked beside him to grab the axe from Sable’s hand. When the General called his troops to assist, the mothers rose and refused, denying anyone not of the order the right to enter, and pushed forward to remove them.

  Evicted from the convent, they walked without speaking away from both sets of closing doors, a procession of silence that moved through the halls leaving savage foot-prints that ended in the King’s rooms.

  Remy retreated behind his desk to put something between them, to get distance from the monstrosity. He had never before had his right of command so blatantly, so violently disregarded. It was not a question he ever had to ask. He was furious. “Why? Explain this. Why?”

  She was detached, appearing remote with her own certainty. “The four sisters are in the condition you saw for their loyalty to me. I went to get them out.”

  “I could have gotten them out! With dialogue! You took an axe.”

  “There was no time for discussion. You saw them. One is close to death.”

  “You had no right without asking me.”

  Her expression was too removed to know how this struck her. After considering it for several quiet moments, she must have decided she would have been denied because she demanded suddenly of Berringer, “Would you leave soldiers behind?”

  She was reaching out to him for an approval he could not give.

  Remy exclaimed, “No one left them. You never gave anyone a chance to leave them.” He looked her up and down. “Whose blood? Whose blood is that?”

  She glanced at herself then went far away, gazing blankly ahead.

  “Did you kill Vesna?”

  “Yes.”

  Remy did, and yet did not, expect the answer. He certainly did not expect it to be so casually admitted. He steadied himself and then, showing a false calm, a cool to reflect hers, asked, “How many people did you hurt?”

  “Hurt?” She repeated the word slowly like it was foreign and her mouth had never formed it.

  Berringer took in the whole of it. He knew her dress was not red. The long skirt that escaped the King’s night jacket was staining the wool carpet. Through the lace on her chest, he saw the flesh still wet beneath. In places where the fabric was saturated, it sponged color through the robe meant to conceal it. You didn’t get covered like that unless you had gotten up close, had really gotten stuck into it. It covered her hands, her neck, and colored her mouth like she had kissed them dying and then wiped it away. The axe had been wet straight down to the grip of the handle. She had not hurt anyone. Berringer made the correction for Remy: “How many did you kill?”

  Now it was clear, but she wasn’t going to say. She looked recalcitrant; she looked away.

  Slamming the desk, Remy demanded, “How many?”

  “Eight.”

  The King dropped into his chair. Laudin heaved air from his stomach and Girard hit a short, hysterical note of astonishment. But Sable’s posture defied criticism.

  Remy shook his head and stared at her. “Eight.” The number had no meaning. “Eight,” he said it again. “You killed eight people tonight.” Then near defeated, “What are they going to do? What have you done?”

  “They will do nothing,” she bit the word with contempt. Her hate for the clergy animated her. “They will do as they have always done and maintain the illusion. They will remain silent and unquestionable.”

  “You left them eight bodies. You went in and slaughtered them. Even if we could … just how can any of us avoid questions with eight bodies?”

  “They will hide them, they will burn them, they will enshrine them in oak, deify them in gold, or dig up the flagstones to bury them, and if all else fails, they can damn well eat them, but you need not worry as the Cloitare do not betray their own.”

  “The scars on your hands say otherwise.”

  Sable flinched. The defiance was gone and the color of her cheeks began to match her dress.


  “So,” Remy observed, “you are capable of shame, but for all the wrong reasons.” He swept his hand across her blood-stained appearance, “You have been trained. Who taught you?”

  She met the question with a face full of shock and then dropped her focus to the floor. Berringer watched her breath deepen.

  Remy waited before angrily asking again, “Who trained you?”

  She closed her eyes to say it. “I cannot tell you.”

  Silence as Remy absorbed what she said. Chewing anger, he asked, “And why not?”

  “I gave my word before training.” Her attention stayed low. “I swore not to say.”

  Remy looked at Berringer with fury. “Now I have two of you? Is this common? Do all masters of strategy demand such anonymity? Is she trained in the same way as you?”

  Berringer answered the last question. “Our ways are very different.”

  Remy considered her: the bowed head, the flesh and dress stained. He spoke harshly to dismiss her, “You require sleep.”

  She made herself humble. “I would go to the sister that is near death.” Then in concession to the long night of impertinences, she offered without irony, “If you will permit.”

  Remy pointed at her clothes.

  “I will, of course, change.”

  He nodded with a numb, unreadable face. “Of course you will.”

  ~~~~~~

  “Mass murderer, who would have guessed?” Girard walked with Berringer outside the King’s rooms. “Well, now that we know in what manner her madness will manifest, wow, did your job not just get more exciting? What are you going to do with her? Do you have enough men for her? You’ll want to remind the ones you’ve put on her that she climbs walls.” Catherine laughed gaily. “I’ve never seen you stepping barefoot across the side of the palace. Never seen you backflip either. What do you call this thing she does?”

  Berringer mumbled, “Whirling Wind.”

  “Whirling Wind.” Catherine played with the words, “Whirling, whirling. Imagine the look on Laudin’s face if she lays waste to a delegation of Sierrans. Whirls us all into a frothy mix of blood and war.”

  The General grumbled, unamused.

  “Strange, isn’t it, that you both have secret masters? If only you were trained in the same art.” Catherine was watching him for a reaction. “Brings to mind the little whispers I hear of acrobatic killers, trained by some illusive old man. This master and his school are so mysteriously hidden, it’s become practically mystical in the telling. Every teenage kid with a sword wants to say he’s been trained by the Laughing Master. Have you heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. Try as I do, I can’t seem to find him.”

  “Excuse me, Catherine.” Berringer pulled away to follow Sable to the medical rooms

  Catherine’s interest was too intense, and even if she were not trying to interrogate him, he would hardly joke about it. The whole night was disturbing enough on its own, but Berringer knew, and he suspected Catherine did as well, it was not in the least common to swear confidence before training. He knew of only one master that asked it.

  Sable had looked to him for support in her actions because she knew who he was. As she whirled around the room trying to kill Vesna, he recognized her as one of his father’s trained pets, little devils designed to torment the son. They were the scourge of Berringer’s youth, those “flipping little monkeys.”

  His father had dug up the lost Way of the Wind in a search through his own master’s collection of writings detailing the methods of ancient schools. Bored and unchallenged, the master strategist revived the art and discovered a deficiency in his prodigy and heir. At the time Berringer left his father’s school to enter the military as an officer, his father had resurrected from the air just two who could successfully harass his son into swearing.

  The Laughing Master thought they were funny as hell. They wouldn’t engage. Their strategy was evasion. You’d step in to block or control, but rather than make contact, they’d just wheel away, spinning you in circles until they could land a knife in your back. There were so many reasons Berringer didn’t like them. There was nothing honorable about them; they were strictly assassins. The forgotten school had called them the Whirling Wind, but ever since Berringer had cursed one a flipping monkey, his father had been training the clever little beasts to ruin his life.

  The secret strategist would have known whom he trained, but he would not have predicted the skills would be held by one that would go feral. Berringer respected his father with great devotion, but he believed the man’s mischievous humor could very well be the undoing of them both.

  The Ties That Bind

  Enzo watched her wrap her arms around her knees and rock. He wanted to yell at Max to stop waiting and do something.

  Nika was bored past screaming. She couldn’t do this shit. This was some shit Marlow could do, sit in a white cell for days on never-ending days turned to weeks into months with the lights hysterically on and only the T-shirt and shorts she was wearing for amusement. She knew the exact number of stitches in all the hems and how the numbers varied as the clothes were changed.

  Marlow had once tried to teach her to attend her thoughts, had told her to observe them and be aware. Nika had done it for a few days with Marlow right beside her, tapping her hand every time her attention strayed. But following her thoughts only served to convince Nika she was completely insane. She’d been repeating the same words and ideas, had conceived nothing original, and all of it was nonsense.

  “It is the understanding that leads to silence,” Marlow had said.

  “Fuck that, bitch.” Nika had swallowed a handful of sedatives and passed out. She woke up declaring, “I never want to play that game again. I do not have the skills for it.”

  They were barely sixteen and Nika had not considered it since. She had said at the time, “We’d have more fun if I taught you to fly.”

  The two had met on a faraway coast while Nika was standing before the flaming hull of a ship. In the first dark of night, she realized she was not alone. It was more a sensation than any noise that made Nika look. And there was a redhead creepily standing beside her, silently studying Nika’s work.

  She was about to tell her to fuck off for the scare, but the girl’s face was so reverent and serene, it reminded Nika of a statue in the children’s cemetery. Nika turned back to the boat and asked a question. When she received no reply—which had been happening a lot since the war—she asked it again in the Sierran language. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

  Marlow returned in Sierran, “It puts off a lovely heat.”

  “It’s alive.”

  The unexpected visitor pondered the notion. “There is energy, but it is not alive in any sense I recognize.”

  The accent was from Erentrude, and the pronunciations were genteel society. Nika looked the girl up and down. She was dressed for the slums. Nika switched languages again, this time to Erentrude. “You’ve seen too many highbrow movies.”

  “Yes,” she agreed in her native tongue. “It is quite irritating, is it not?”

  Nika thought she was spectacularly weird. She pointed at the fire and asked, “You want to see it breathe?”

  The stranger held Nika’s expression sincerely. “Yes, I very much would.”

  “Eat a few of these.”

  The redhead took the bag of mushrooms and handed it back empty. Nika had laughed. “Yeah, you’re gonna see shit breathe alright. You let me know when, and I’ll start another fire.”

  Hours of walking later, Marlow stopped before a Cloitare temple built of wood. She said, “Show me it lives.”

  However weird she was, weirder than Nika, Nika knew right then that she loved her.

  When the flames broke the windows and licked up the walls, Marlow agreed, “It is beautiful, and it is alive.”

  “Let me show you more. It gets so much better when shit explodes.”

  What Nika wouldn’t give right now, in the white walls of
prison, for a lighter. She rocked and tried not to follow her thoughts.

  When she heard the bolt being released in the door, she fought down her excitement. To have a conversation, even just to deny information, would be freedom.

  Enzo watched her walk from the cell. Minutes later, she was returned. She fought at the door but was shoved in regardless, and then Enzo heard her scream a question at the guards before they withdrew.

  ~~~~~~

  Berringer read and then reread the transcript. What interested him was not part of the interview when the prisoner suggested yet again they should all “go snort a line of your daddy’s cum,” it was just something she yelled from her cell: “What were you fuckers doing in Eudokia?”

  Berringer left the report but kept coming back to the question. Something about it stuck. It was the accusation of someone who knew better, of someone who had been there. He wondered what had been on the train that was of interest to her. There was no record the train had been shifting counterfeit batteries, which didn’t mean they weren’t there, the damn sheriff could have been selling them, but the woman was a pilot. Why would she care?

  Puzzling over it, he called the prison, “Keep her awake.”

  Enzo and Max took turns monitoring the screen. The soldiers repeatedly gripped her shoulder to give her a light shake. They kept her moving, walking the short steps of the cell, standing then sitting then pulling her up again when she tried to rest her head against the wall. Deep into the third day, the young soldiers left.

  Enzo slapped Max on the thigh. “The muscles are gone.”

  They watched a trim figure walk in with a chair and motion for Nika to sit on the stone bed. Enzo noted, “That’s gonna be a hard son of a bitch.”

  “Is that …?”

  “General Bear?”

  “Aw fuck.”

  “Corporal?” the General barked out the door. “Why hasn’t she got a mattress? Get one in here now.” He looked Nika over and commented, “You look like you could use a coffee.” Again, he turned his voice out the door, “Bring her a coffee.”