How stupid and blind he had been not to see the symptoms of Erik’s infatuation. His devotion to her had arisen not from duty, but from an infantile attraction; Erik was a naive, simple, love-struck fool. But what of Lila’s feelings? Was she the puppet master of Erik’s heart? Or was it possible that in shutting her out, he had driven her to Erik? Needing to be alone, sick with disgust, Magnus dismissed his council. “Go back to your chambers,” he commanded. “In the morning, we shall tell Gloriatrix of this whole sordid mess.”
“My king, is that wise?” protested the legion master, rising to his feet.
“Wise?” snapped the king. A blast of wind buffeted the room, turning the curtains into flapping ghosts, throwing sparks from the fire, and whirling papers into tornados. “I am your king. Do not question the wisdom of my judgments. Menos is our ally, and we shall need its aid if we are to match Brutus’s power. Handing over to Menos the war criminals they seek would be the sincerest offering of friendship we could make. Hatred, not love, is what creates strong bonds between enemies. Lila no longer wishes to deceive herself or her people. That is why her magik is evaporating, much as Esmerelda’s once did: her heart has changed. She no longer loves me or what we’ve built.” Anger ripped apart Magnus’s beauty. “I shall honor her wish and grant her a life without lies, without a crown, without me. Lila and Erik must answer for what they have done—to me, to Gloriatrix, to the world.”
Leonitis nodded. After helping the trembling matron rise from her seat, the two left the king’s chamber. Beauregard hovered near his master like a ghost, but didn’t speak. Magnus turned back to the fire. No matter how hard he concentrated, how tightly he shut his eyes, he was unable to stop picturing Erik and Lila writhing together. Was it a fantasy? Or was the reality even worse? Once, in a moment of weakness—or clarity—he had dived into himself and reached out for his queen. He had toppled the grand wall, the twisted thornbush of black ice, he’d erected in his soul to keep Lila at bay. He had then called for his wife of one thousand years. Called and called until his spirit waned from the effort. Alas, the cold plains of his soul had remained empty; only the wind had shouted back. No other voices could be heard; no longer could he sense the warmth of Lila’s spring. What else could he have expected? He had told her she was damned. What else could she, a prideful creature, have done? She would endure; she would live to fight again. He’d shut her out, he’d cast her out, and she’d left. Like his cursed brother, with whom this great splintering of love and trust had begun, Magnus could weep only for himself. No one remained to care for him now.
II
“Almost ready, my liege.”
Beauregard buzzed around Magnus’s head like a gnat, industrious, and largely unheeded in the sunny, breezy chambers of the king. Morning had come early, or so it felt after a long night of talks. The king, still drowning in conflicted vengeance from the evening’s discussions, appeared to be in a waking sleep from which he would or could not stir. Thus, Beauregard played valet today.
He had become used to a certain flexibility in his role as the spellsong of the king, and adopted different jobs from day to day. Without the queen or hammer around, the king appeared to have lost much of his patience for life’s menial grind, and had grown increasingly irritable with the servants. And so Beauregard, used to mending and fending for himself, took up the roles of both household and military companion. He brought Magnus his food, and often stayed to ensure it did not go uneaten. He stitched trousers, took dictation, and composed letters. More and more frequently, he had to help the king bathe.
This morning was no different. Beauregard puffed as he went about his duties: lacing Magnus’s shirt, folding up his sleeves, adjusting the lopsided tilt of his silver crown. Throughout the process, Magnus’s hewn ivory face maintained a sad pout, and the king’s emerald gaze seemed to narrow in and focus on some dark thought Beauregard could not see—probably last night’s explosive revelations. Magnus brooded, and his bleak mood conjured a chill in the room.
Beauregard, shaking, completed his work in silence. He understood the agony assaulting his king. “My king, I’m sorry, but it’s time to go,” he said.
Perhaps not everyone is lost to me, thought the king, as he beheld the patient but charismatic friend and savior who’d stood beside him during his daydreaming. One day, after the war, this comely young man would win the first lass he wooed; it would take only a gleam of his handsome teeth, a toss of his full, dark hair, or the first notes of a song to make his chosen swoon.
“Magnus?” prodded Beauregard.
I shall see that you find happiness, even if I am doomed never to feel it again, decided Magnus, smiling at his spellsong. His smile was so dazzling and kingly that Beauregard barely noticed its underlying sadness.
III
On their way to the Chamber of Echoes, the king and the spellsong met with Rasputhane. The spymaster’s face was grayer even than his clothing. News of last night’s events had reached him, and he had only terrible things to whisper in the king’s ear about what had been done. Are you sure? It’s not too late to postpone the meeting and devise another plan. What will Gloriatrix do in reprisal? he asked. Magnus’s answers were terse: Yes. No. We shall see.
In silence, the three men made the rest of the trip through serene, green archways lit with indoor stars, over crystal-inlaid mosaics on the floor, and past glorious frescos of battles and winged warriors—but the palace’s oppressive beauty had no effect on them today. Occasionally, faint choral music could be heard, and soldiers and white-robed fellows bowed to the king and company. After a winding march through the palace, they arrived at the Chamber of Echoes and walked up the grand stairs into the subterranean garden, which struck them for once as annoyingly bright, with its rainbow-casting boulders, stones, and flowers of glass.
A sanctuary from the light and the frothing noise of the falls called to the men from under the shade of the distant white yew; there lay the stone table raised during Queen Lowe’s reign. Five recognizable figures had taken seats around the ancient stone. Lowelia was dressed in her standard charwoman’s attire of apron and white linen shift. She held her own next to Leonitis against the three glaring Menosians on the opposite curve of the table: the Iron lord and frowning gargoyle, Gustavius; the ghastly specter, Elissandra; and the queen of iron, who sat between her two ghoulish totem poles.
As soon as the king and his men entered the muted awning of the great yew’s branches, Gloriatrix barked at Magnus; she’d managed to affect the air of courtesy and respect due an immortal for at most about a day. Magnus considered the astonishing audacity of this woman. The king couldn’t recall ever having encountered a person who had lost everything in one moment—city, people, land—yet still kept all of her pride.
“You’re late, again,” said the Iron Queen. “And you’ve sent a chambermaid and a man in your hammer’s armor to insult me with their bovine stares and seats at a table of rule. I expect an explanation—of this and a number of other things.” Gloriatrix waved her hand at the many empty stone chairs. “Where is the rest of your council? Why have you asked only Elissandra and I to come? Why are we alone?”
Beauregard’s keen senses caught the Iron lord’s hand reaching toward a pistol or blade beneath the table, and he gave the man a warning shake of his head. Although the Menosian seemed to understand, his hand remained where it was. The spellsong chose to match the silent threat. While the king seated himself next to Leonitis and Rasputhane settled in beside Lowelia, Beauregard stayed on his feet, gripping the hilt of his foil.
Magnus rested his pale hands on the table and leaned toward the Iron Queen. “I am not so barbaric as to invite you to my hall, feed you, clothe you, and care for your troops, only to murder you in cold blood without reason.”
“Speaking of provisions,” replied Gloriatrix, apparently no longer concerned she might be at risk, “have you thought further on my plan to reclaim Menos?”
Rasputhane spoke with a hint of irritation. “Only yesterday d
id we receive word of the first of Menos’s survivors from our joint encampments on the front lines of the disaster. It was difficult to make out from the far-speaking transmission what kind of shape they were in. As you know, when our skycarriages and magikal instruments enter the region, they encounter a peculiar interference, one more disruptive than the usual etheric noise. We do know, though, that a handful of survivors have come through the dark fog of your realm. My king will correct any misguided assumptions of mine, though: we shall not blindly move our forces into a disaster we do not understand. Whatever energy or force destroyed the Iron City could still remain in the region.”
Gloriatrix puffed and curled her lip. “Then arrange for an exploratory mission at once. Furthermore, I would like the survivors brought to the Furies. We are well equipped and more than capable of treating our own citizens.”
You mean interrogating our citizens, thought the king. “They will be treated by our finest fleshbinders before being released into your care. We shall all hear their accounts, together, before formulating any strategy to confront the darkness that has claimed Menos.” Magnus savored a long breath, and those who knew what was coming also enjoyed their moment of peace. When he was ready, he said: “You asked why we have sequestered ourselves away this morning, with only the most important advisors and champions of our realms present—”
“And a chambermaid, and some warrior—” added Gloriatrix.
“The most important advisors and champions,” boomed Magnus, angrily, sending out a flash of cold that pimpled the scalps around the table. “I shall establish their importance. I shall explain to you how these men and women have been manipulated by a traitor of our kingdom, a serpent in our garden.” Magnus needed to stop, rein in his rage, and grit his teeth before continuing. “My bloodmate, Lila, is this snake. Aided by the betrayer of his title and honor, Erithitek, the hammer of the king. I say these next words in the spirit of peace and transparency between our nations. I say what I must with my darkest, deepest sympathies and regrets: they were the ones who brought the Iron City to ruin.”
Gloriatrix was speechless.
“I had a dream last night…” muttered Elissandra, air whistling through the gap in her teeth that she refused to fill. Ethereally, as if made of wind chimes, the leaves of the yews rustled above her and lured her attention. Glancing up, she cast herself into the vision: “I see a wall of twisting shadows. A woman, golden, though worn with mud and travel like an old coin, brandishes a scepter. No, an arm—one heinously pulsing with veins of green, radiant blood. A man clings to her, desperate and weak. What strength has bound him to this madness is finally spent. He could be much stronger; one day, he will be. But now, he is weak, and then hit by the tarnished woman. She strides forward and nearly throws herself into the abyss with her talisman of horror. By the Makers! The light! The fire! The howling! Such horrible cries screech from the pit. So great a roar echoes, it is as if Mother Geadhain has been gutted. Flames grow like vines of light from the crevasse. This is the first tolling of Menos’s doom. Here, the end begins.”
Elissandra smiled at the beauty of her dark vision and continued. “Sweetly, the woman—now free of the whispering horde that has possessed her—clings amid the chaos to the man she has condemned. The man and woman whisper soul secrets to one another. They shine, too, with a light, a warmth I’ve seen but once or twice. It is the fire of the truest love.” Magnus’s heart shattered; if the others hadn’t been so bespelled, they would have seen the king slump and swallow a whimper. “Oh, what glorious fanfare: the chorus of the abyss, the rain of rubble, and the spumes of sparks herald the arrival of doom. Death herself has come to see. She wears a skin that I know. So ruined…so ruined. At her feet, the soul-bound lovers cower and clutch at each other. Death speaks to them in her voice of hurricanes and earthquakes. And then a red and radiant doom is born in the hollow under the Iron Valley. And so tolls the bell. So rings the end of Menos.”
An argument began at once. Explanations and protestations were made, although none were heeded. Gustavius stood, drew his pistol and pointed it across the table at the king’s men. His targets rose, waving swords and fists, shouting obscenities at the Menosians. Honoring their elements—ice and iron—the Everfair King and Iron Queen sat calmly amid the storms of their men and exchanged murderous gazes.
“I have seen the Pale Lady, you nattering twits! I have seen Death herself!” roared Elissandra. Her sudden ejaculation produced an immediate hush. Shocked faces gaped at her. With her missing tooth, the stub of a wrist that she’d decorated in silk bandages, and the patch of baldness that she concealed with a scarf, Elissandra commanded the onlookers with an eerie soothsayer’s charm. “Were you not listening? She walks among us now.” She pointed her bound stump at Magnus. “I have seen her poison the ear of your queen.” Next, the stump of doom pointed to Gloria. “I have seen her reap your sons. She wore one child’s skin, and now she wears the flesh of the other.” Finally, Elissandra touched the stump to her face to catch a sudden trickling tear. “I felt her take my Sangloris, and I know there was something he wished to say to me, something I now shall never hear.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, vibrating with emotion, and twitched as a shriek tried to wriggle out; her willpower triumphed. When she opened her eyes, they twinkled with tears and silver currents from rivers deep and distant. “Taken, and yet I could not see him as he went…The rules are breaking. Order is falling apart. I know not what to tell my poor lamblings, though they must hear of their father’s journey into the Great Mystery.”
Elissandra stood up and drifted off on a breeze only she could feel. She did not return to the table. She left behind a vacuum spinning with questions and fear.
“What did she mean?” asked Magnus, very quietly. “Death?”
Remembering back to when he and Lila had touched minds, before their fatal silence, he recalled something in the frenzied mania of her thoughts. Amid her blinding hatred of Menos and her twisted righteousness and grief, had there been a whisper? Or a whisperer? A black tongue licking at her ear? Telling her…what? What did the whisperer say?
“Death walks among us? Poisoning and reaping?” muttered Lowelia; she shivered.
“One never knows what Elissandra means,” said the Iron Queen. “Not even the lady herself. I shall ask her later, once the Fates have lost some of their hold upon her wits. In light of what you have told me, Magnus, I expect justice for my people. What justice do you offer?”
“Justice?” said Magnus, slumped in bewilderment. He wondered if anything that he had done was fair. “I shall offer my queen the same justice I would my brother. A trial for her crimes, and punishment after.”
Gloriatrix slapped the table. “Ha! I deny this justice. What of the hammer? Will he, too, receive the shelter of your mercy? I want blood, King Magnus. Give me blood, or I shall take it for my people.”
“More blood? Is that what you want? Will your people never change?” spat Magnus.
“We are iron, we are blood; we do not change. Meet my demands, or I shall take my Furies and fly to the Bone Archipelago or some place even farther beyond the map edges we know. I shall leave this apocalypse, this messy family affair between a pair of Immortal fools; you and your bleeding-heart soldiers will have to sort it out. I shall start a new Iron regime among the dimmest savages, who will worship me as an Immortal after I descend from the heavens. You may visit this neo-Menos and I shall show you how rule is properly cultivated. That is what will happen if I do not see justice. Do not question whether I am bold enough to do all this and more. You know that I am. Blood, Magnus, or this meeting is over and will be our last.” Gloriatrix stood up when he did not answer her. In a speck, she would leave and never return.
“Wait!” he cried.
The Iron Queen turned, raised an eyebrow, and waited for Magnus to buckle under her pressure. She displayed the most horrific smile—the wrinkled delight of a risen cadaver eating its first flesh—as the king spoke.
“I shall give you blood,” he said. “In my court, Lila and my brother will answer for their crimes; that decision I shall not revoke.” For a moment, Magnus battled a half-century of emotions and guilt over the sentence for his foster son. Someone needed to suffer for the fall of Menos; a name must be given. “However, as for Erithitek…as for my hammer’s fate…I leave his life in your hands, Iron Queen.”
“His life? His execution,” replied Gloriatrix, walking away. “Your terms are sufficient.”
While the others left, some bidding muted goodbyes, Beauregard stayed with his liege. Winter seeped from his master. A skin of frost grew over the slowly breathing king and the toes of Beauregard’s boots. Still, the spellsong did not move. He held, trembling, to his spot. At one point, thinking he saw a glimmer on Magnus’s check, a clear gem that could be a frozen tear, he reached out to the Immortal. The gesture dispelled Magnus’s winter, and broke the king’s shoulders with a sob.
IV
“A fuking fortnight!” hissed Gloriatrix, sneering passersby out of her path as she swept down the palace halls. “For a fortnight or longer, we’ve been bargaining with a charwoman and a soldier. The arrogance and chicanery!”
“Chicanery indeed,” agreed Gustavius.
After a sand of angry striding, Gloriatrix pulled her consort into the first vestry they came across. It was a placid hollow, like an outdoor temple moved indoors, with a circumference of pillars decorated in ivy, fragrant blue roses, and the light buds that were ubiquitous in the palace. A pair of scholars contemplated scrolls on an alabaster bench set before a bubbling fountain of white stone wrought into a coiling, razor-backed serpent. Gloriatrix and her gargoyle companion cast their shadows over the couple. “Leave,” she commanded.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 16
