~~~~~~
The same night Remy had first taken Sable to the salt flats, he had pulled her back into his bed. He felt again the swelling of power in his chest when she gave herself over to his touch, but he could not convince himself it was real. It was a trick of his mind created by his desire to have her. When the memory of it caught his breath, he would seek her out, trying to prove it was illusion, but all perspective was lost when sound broke from her throat. It was the only time he was certain he controlled her. She would abandon self-possession to follow his lead, trusting his direction like at no other time, and every time he took her over, made her cry out or shudder relief, he felt it the same: with her exhale, fierce intensity would surge into him. It would send him feral, raging in all directions, chaos unfocused until he gave it a purpose, fixed it as his own. The need to conquer and triumph over the material would surface. He would feel invincible and she, as though glad to be rid of it, would fall into sleep.
It was only then he would see the X on her hands, vivid scars turned white that Aidan told him meant she could neither give nor receive, an ancient ritual that marked her at fault. She was adept at hiding them while she was awake, but when she slept, she returned to the terrible ceremony that marred her. Every time he saw them it was the same: she would make one final exhale before guarding her wrist under her body and then falling asleep. If he didn’t free her hand before she started to dream, she would wake up screaming with the memory of people holding her down. Even freed of the weight, she struggled through the night fighting the past, waking him with rumbling growls of hate or pleading denials. Every hour found him murmuring, “Hush, Sable. You are safe. You’re with me,” hoping it was enough to keep her asleep.
He should have faced each day weary, but instead he was filled with passion to take back what had been lost, and then to take more.
He thought of Alena, all her city names were from the saints, just the same as in Erentrude. They were one realm and should never have been separated, but a hundred years past, when Erentrude and Sierra were close to war, Alena had split away. They were long accustomed to voting in a democracy, so they would not come back easily, but when Remy lay with Sable, he knew it could be done; and even more, beside Alena was Sierra. Sable breathed out power and he wanted to expand.
But tonight everything was different. He’d gone to the medical rooms when he learned she had broken into the narcotics and arrived to find her begging forgiveness. Moving forward, he had taken her from Berringer, and then gasped to feel her latch hold. He never understood how she had brought down Aidan. In his mind was the memory of her lost in madness, dragging the Master and Mentor by his robes to the ground. It seemed unreal, a concession made by a man three times her size, but Remy knew it was not feigned in the moment she dropped him.
He knew nothing about anodyne, narcotics, or drugs. He didn’t recognize the heat or the embrace of delirium when she grabbed him. He heard her pleading, “I was wrong, please forgive me,” while pulling him into a space too hot and confined for them both.
At her touch, he exhaled, but he could not draw another breath in. She wasn’t giving, she was taking, and she took until she brought him to his knees.
And he willingly went under into darkness, sinking to a pulse drumming in the night, pounding in his heart, beating frenzy.
He fought the hand that tried to pull him up, cursing the separation, telling Lucas, “Let me go back into the night.”
Berringer had already seen a prisoner vanish into the night, and the phrase didn’t settle well with what he was seeing. When Remy tried a second time to take possession of Sable only to fade unconscious, Berringer stood between them while Branson checked Remy’s pulse. Once the King caught his breath, he came up waving them both away.
“This is ridiculous,” he said to Berringer.
The General knew something was happening, but he could not imagine what. To his mind, there had been far too much activity since Sable was returned, and last night, Remy spent the hours pacing through the palace hoping she might re-emerge. It was exhaustion, Berringer decided. Simple exhaustion.
Thinking to spare his friend further discomfort, the General lifted Sable by the arm to deliver her where Remy could not.
She came up easily and at first staggered beside him, but once they entered the main hall, she regained just enough of her senses to try and shrug off Berringer’s support. Rather than fall away, he gripped her stronger, and when she moved to spin from him, he blocked her then simply walked her on.
“Listen, motherfucker, take your hands off me or we’re gonna brawl.”
Remy was taken aback, certain what he heard was not Sable’s voice. But Berringer laughed like his father and replied, “You, little mother, just drank a bottle of anodyne, so I don’t think you’ll be too much trouble.”
The laugh had fooled her. She relaxed thinking she was walking with someone else. She told him, “It was a very bad idea.”
“The action does invite criticism.”
“Not the anodyne,” she corrected, “but to think I could deceive the Cloitare. Such an awful mistake.”
~~~~~~
“You accepted the rights of a mother,” Isabelle was telling her the next morning. “As you now understand, it comes with obligations. Your first is to affirm your new title.”
Sable was still in the robe from the previous night and had done nothing more than sit upright on the couch in Remy’s front room to receive her.
“I am willing to speak at the Basilica, but it is not my decision to make,” she gestured again, referring Isabelle to Remy.
Sable knew Remy was not aware of what Isabelle really meant. Sable had accepted, Isabelle might have ended it there. That was the worst of it. She had accepted when she should have refused. To receive the title of Queen Mother and the clergy’s support, she had accepted to connect far more deeply with the Cloitare than she expected. Her head was crowded. She was not alone. She wanted to go back and obliterate them with drugs, better drugs than anodyne, something ruthlessly synthetic that would shock the Cloitare mind senseless.
Already, the connected mind wanted her to be passive, to stop the raucous emotions that shook the foundations. She was an unsteady addition tacked onto the house, a depraved all-night drug den where she had hidden last night in the smoke.
Isabelle would not give her attention to the King. Her admonishing words were for Sable. “Your adherents slept in the plaza. The world is waiting to hear you speak.” She stood and gave a curt bow to Sable before leaving.
When they were alone, Sable met Remy’s eyes. She had spent much of the night too oblivious for coherent speech and the rest of it sleeping. “You have no reason to trust me,” she told him with all the new connections blazing fresh in her head. She could have tried to shut them down, but then she would turn on Remy a lifeless stare. Instead, she spoke to him with a heavy Cloitare presence in her mind. “I have finally learned and I am sincerely repentant. I promise I won’t do it again.”
“Sable, there are many things I would like to think you would extend to me the courtesy of not doing again. You will have to tell me which of the many you speak.”
It would take the whole day for her to reflect on everything she had done over the years that would offend him. “If we were counting, this would be the third time I went covertly into the cloister against your will only to make things worse for us all. I am promising not to ...” the word that came to mind was sneak, I promise not to sneak around behind you, but that was too awful, so instead she said, “act in opposition to you.”
Remy sat for many moments wondering if he could believe it. In the end, he did not think she was capable, but he inclined his head to show appreciation. He asked, “What did they do to you?”
Sable felt the Cloitare flare with warning. She looked away.
“You oppose me when you do not answer.”
She closed her eyes and agreed. “They moved through my mind.” She shook her head, “You cannot understa
nd that.” It was too subtle. “They froze a path through my mind to travel.” But she doubted this either would make sense to the uninitiated. While the Cloitare screamed for silence, she pushed forward to explain, “Much like all the cities in your kingdom are connected by roads, so too are all Cloitare. Some are seldom used one-lane affairs leading to a small town, like the path to an initiate, and others are superhighways leading to Jenevuede which is comparable to the mothers. My city was laid to ruin, the roads destroyed, the waters tainted. I was an inaccessible blight on the landscape, but the mothers fixed that last night by flash freezing roads through the waste. They brought me back into the one mind. They made me travelworthy.”
Remy was no longer certain what was real. He remembered being pulled into darkness, but to accuse her would make him sound insane, and any admission she might speak would make them both sound crazier.
She reached out to help. “You are the king of land with conquests laid upon soil. Your kingdom is solid not ethereal. Do not be concerned by these troubles that blow in the wind for they are mine to defeat. I wish I had not, but I have created for you a very real problem which gathers outside the Basilica today. I told you I would not act in opposition to you, so tell me what you would have me do.”
“It would be disastrous to keep you from speaking.” He sighed and looked at her. “You do not even know what you have done. When the clergy announced you would speak to the public, riots broke out in front of the Sierran embassy between Cloitare adherents and supporters of President Pavlović. We had to ask Sierra to control the violence, and when they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, we were forced to fly out our staff to keep them alive.”
Sable was grim. “Was anyone killed?”
“We’ve not yet confirmed any deaths, but we’re receiving photos of many religious who were beaten beyond recognition. Girard shows me the signs that Pavlović’s supporters were organized by the government.”
“The embassy?”
“In possession of the rioters. They have demanded President Pavlović support the Alenans, who in turn have their Prime Minister’s house surrounded. They want me out of Ulphia.”
Sable was quiet and thoughtful. When she spoke, she stated a fact, “And you want Alena.”
The simplicity shocked him. He felt it asked him to defend his intention, which pushed him to anger.
But she was without judgment. “I am your most powerful weapon. Use me. I can turn the people to fight for you.”
It was not how he wanted to take back the breakaway territory, but she was right, and his three advisors could not stop reminding him of it. He wanted to keep a stark divide between her and the battle, but regardless of what was said, the Cloitare had made certain she was going to make an appearance. He felt like he was yielding under pressure, but he agreed, “Ready yourself to speak and I will see that the correct words are prepared.”
~~~~~~
It had taken the cars over two hours to move through the crowds to get Sable to the Basilica. It had taken just as long to convince Remy he shouldn’t come. Having to arrange both security and sound with a day’s warning in an already full plaza had been a trying ordeal for the General and every other person involved. It was secure, but the military presence was hardly subtle. To minimize the tension the armed uniforms created, both he and Girard pressed street-clothed agents into the plaza. It was all so unexpected, neither of them expected any organized action against the realm, but if the General had his way, they would reschedule and do it right from the start.
The General was happy the one thing he did not have to contend with was Sable’s contentious behavior. She had spent the morning deferring every decision to Remy or making concessions when pressed to choose.
Though it was asked, no one really expected her to wear a Cloitare robe, but in deference to the clergy, she agreed to wear black. She pulled her hair up with sticks and let others pick the simple dress and jewels. She let Remy refuse the invitation to prepare in the convent, though she permitted the mothers to come inside her rooms with Remy present. She interceded and asked Remy to consider what the mothers wanted her to say, and she accepted what Laudin and Girard had written without opinion. She wanted the four sisters to accompany her, but when Berringer maintained it would upset his preparations, she assented to leave them. It was the most docile any of them had seen her.
Berringer was at her side as she entered the Basilica. He and a dozen soldiers filled the rear vestibule with Sable at their center. Outside, the plaza was surrounded in rapturous appreciation, scattered applause, and voices raised high in praise at her arrival. It clamored through the door, but the stones began to absorb more of the tumult as he walked her to the open arch of the side aisles.
The vaulted arcade afforded them room, but she pushed closer to his side. At first he gave her space to take the lead, prepared to walk behind, but then it became clear she was using him as a shield, guiding him forward to remain half hidden at his back. Watching the black mass of robes move down the center nave to accept her, he felt her hand clinch at his jacket to stop.
The Basilica resounded dully with the teeming outside, but inside was sparse, revealing only a few nuns who had managed to transverse the crush of people. Sable scanned the side aisles and overhead to the balcony. She glanced right to the altar from where ten mothers were approaching, and then left where another twelve were filing into the nave. She retreated, pulling the General with her.
“My teams have been here since yesterday. You are perfectly safe,” he assured her.
But she surveyed the assembling mothers and told him, “I’d be safer with the crowd.”
The group of mothers stopped in front of him and laid upon him their collective Stare. He knew only half by appearance and few by name. They wanted him to stand aside, but Sable’s grip told him to remain at guard.
“Queen Mother, if you would,” and one of the mothers reached past him to take Sable’s arm.
Sable slid smoothly aside to hide entirely behind the General, making his voice thunder with the command for the mothers to “Move away.”
He called two soldiers in front of him and then stepped Sable back among many more. “Sable, tell me what is happening.” What he saw before him was a creature trapped, searching for a path of escape.
Her attention lingered on the arch that led to the exit. She looked from the mothers to the exit then returned to him with a decision. “I need to be alone.”
He moved to usher her down the side aisle, but she denied it was required. Before she dropped her head, he noticed it took but an instant for her pupils to disappear. She was going someplace cold and remote, where she was untouchable, and then barely breathing, she went further. Berringer recognized it as she had been there with the King.
When she turned her attention back to the mothers, she met their cool expressions with the deep freeze of barren ice. She pressed through the two guarding soldiers and lifted her face higher to be acknowledged.
The nuns bowed their heads and said in unison, “Queen Mother.”
From among them, Sable addressed just one, “Mother Maisa, I will make my own way to the balcony.”
Maisa though had other plans. “Queen Mother, if you would, first come with me,” and signaled they would walk.
“There is nothing to discuss.” Sable’s frigid refusal pitted her against the mothers in a bitter contest of wills. The stones of the Basilica could not account for the concentrated chill as they stood each other off.
The mothers shifted. Berringer thought they were conferring amongst themselves, whispering words too vague to hear, while Maisa spoke with care, “You will find there is much for us to agree, now come with me.”
It was quickly over, but Berringer saw Sable flinch. He knew from her increased breath her frozen mask was broken, and then he saw defeat bow her head as she followed the turn of the older mother, walking with her toward the altar.
Berringer walked uncertainly behind while the other mothers followed and the soldiers
spread into the aisles.
“As you have allowed, I will prepare you for what you will say.”
Sable wavered going forward, but Maisa walked on snapping, “Come.”
Sable remained slow, but passive, until the altar was before her. While Maisa waited on the elevated platform for the new Queen Mother to join her, Sable turned with the same silent, deliberate, and obstinate step which Berringer was already familiar, walking quickly for the alcove in the side aisle that led to the stairs, the upper floor, and the balcony.
Mother Maisa gathered her robe and raced to push past the General and catch Sable as she began to climb.
“There is much we need to agree, so I will ask you to stop and come away.” Maisa’s words were mostly pleasant, but with one hand on the balustrade, Sable bent gasping with pain.
Berringer was beside her when she pulled her hand from her head and drew herself upright. “Perfectly fine,” she told him and proceeded as though nothing had happened, starting again for the higher level.
“We will go back to the pews,” Maisa enunciated each word.
Every sound uttered by the mother slowed Sable, even swayed her, but she was not stopping. On the second floor, the entire procession walked the arcade.
Falling back against the wall to let them pass, audio technicians stood against batteries the clergy had never before permitted. Lieutenant Fallon raised his head from the sound system, thinking Sable appeared intoxicated, as Mother Maisa adamantly suggested, “You want to come with me.”
Sable breathed against it, but she stopped when the mother took her arm.
Maisa was pressed against her whispering when Berringer came around to look Sable in the face. He didn’t like it. Her expression was blank, completely void of all living expressions.
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 17
