Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  The fellows seemed poised to object, but when they gazed up into the cold countenance of the Iron Queen, they lost their nerve, gathered their papers, and fled. Gloriatrix took the bench, while Gustavius settled on the lip of the fountain. He removed his gloves, splashed a hand through the water, and studied the monstrous fountain-snake, appreciative of its beauty and surprised to see something appealing in this kingdom of toddlers and coddlers. Gustavius sighed and took a moment to reflect on the cruel styles of Menosian design—works such as the black armor he wore, the likes of which might never be seen again.

  Gloriatrix would punish those who had defiled Menos, he knew. Although she seemed appeased by Magnus’s decree, Gustavius could decipher the nuances of her silence. He’d noticed, for example, the narrowing of her eyes when Magnus had mentioned showing leniency toward his queen. The Iron Queen’s present calm, he decided, likely resulted from the fact that she was even now mentally attempting to find a way around the king’s stipulations. Gloriatrix would not let the shaming of her nation—and by extension, of herself—stand.

  Balthazar, thought Gustavius, if you could see how large your little spider has grown. Unfortunately, Balthazar Thule, Gloriatrix’s father, had fed the maggots of centuries ago and was currently no more than a bit of bone, dust, and brown meal in the coffin where he lay—or had once laid. His peaceful rest had almost certainly been shattered when the earthquake and dread sorcery had destroyed the cemetery housing his remains. What would Balthazar, one of Menos’s greatest masters, have done in retaliation? Gustavius asked himself. He would have demanded blood, just as Gloriatrix had; she was truly her father’s daughter. The Iron Queen understood that some crimes, some freedoms even, came only at the cost of death. Gustavius wandered into a long, ancient memory.

  In the gardens tending to the metal flowers, Gustav takes care not to break the blossoms from the stems; he and the other gardener slaves are given the nine-tails for such clumsiness. Gustav is not clumsy, though: he is quick and attentive. Only once has he been threshed, and that was because he had not yet understood the rules. He knows the rules now, and more, for he is clever. While the other slaves of the North bemoan their predicament, he ignores the language of his people and listens to the language of his captors. He spends the afternoons absorbing the chatter of his Iron masters: a woman, her children, and a powerful warchief, he gathers. As he clips hedges and climbs trees, he comes as close as he can to the family. Although he is tall and broad backed, he does not stand out like a pale giant. Instead, he blends in with the slender branches he prunes. His presence goes unheeded, except when the clip-clip of his tools is heard, and he always turns his head downward whenever someone turns to look. The warchief and his offspring do not notice him at all.

  They are a curious family. A mother, fair and always wearing a whimper on her lips. A father, dark, preened and always shining in his tight, regal clothes. The children are far more interesting than their parents. Well, one of them is: a little girl with a strange, beady stare and the soulless awareness of a hawk; her eyes are purple, and he wonders if she is a witch. Her brother certainly is, though he has blue eyes and is too lighthearted to be interesting. It is the girl Gustav studies most in the garden. Sitting in her black dress, gazing around observantly, she is often as quiet as he is. She listens like a hunter. She possesses a majestic and dangerous presence for so small a creature.

  As Gustav does his job exceptionally, better by far than any of his fellow slaves, the warchief treats him well. The other Northern slaves hate him. Men of snow and frozen rocks as they are, they are inept at the tending of green things. His fellow Northmen receive far more beatings, and far less food, than he. One night, several men had attacked him while his rested on his threadbare mattress, his eyes closed. What fools they were: often he closes his eyes to listen, not to sleep. Gustav had broken the jaws and arms of several attackers before the Iron men came and beat them apart. In the morning, the Iron warchief had summoned the garden slaves to the courtyard. He had strutted before them and said: “In a society of the strong, those who work are rewarded. Those who falter become steps for the strong.”

  Only Gustav had understood his words, as he had spent so long listening. The rest of the Northmen had been terrified. Nonetheless, they had known something bad was going to happen even before the warchief pulled a fire-stick off his belt, and then, with three smoky bursts of loud magik, shot dead the men who had instigated the attack last night. Fair, Gustav had thought. A fair man, this warchief. When an ox no longer pulls its load and begins to kick, it is put down for meat; a man should be no different. Gustav had nodded his gratitude and respect, and the warchief had nodded back. In another sand, and after dragging the corpses away, Gustav had been back to working in the gardens.

  And so it has been, for a season of summer to the wet rain that passes for winter in the South. Snow does not penetrate the purple shield of poison above Gustav’s new home. During this spell of time, Gustav has listened much. He now knows the slang and colloquialisms of his new masters. He has learned that the warchief’s name is Balthazar, his mate’s name is Isabelle, and the two children, Thackery and Gloriatrix. Gloria, her parents call her for short, though she signals her dislike for the abbreviation with frowns.

  One sweating summer day, while high amid the iron oaks with their thorny leaves and trunks as hard and sharp as fractured onyx, Gustav hears voices he should not. Men. The warchief’s men, yes, but they are speaking of treachery. They whisper of guns, murder, and treason: the whole family is to be killed. The dishonorable warriors lurk behind a barricade of bushes below Gustav. There are two assassins, and Gustav hears them rustling their fire-sticks through the foliage. Balthazar and his family are nearby enjoying an afternoon of sport: father and son toss a ball, mother and uninterested daughter work on needlepoint. The family do not realize death draws near—except, perhaps, Gloria, who gazes to the tree where Gustav’s white shadow hides and possibly even beyond, to the black hedges where the murderers hide. Perhaps she sees her assassins.

  “Frightful little bitch. I’ll get her right between the eyes, then the mother. You take Balthazar and his son,” whispers one of the assassins.

  Gustav had been destined to be neither great nor villainous. In Menos, however, he has learned skills and discovered a pride he never thought he could possess. Although he is no friend to the family, he does not enjoy thoughts of where he might end up next, should his indentureship end. Very quickly, he considers his options. Then, like a white bird of prey, he drops from the branches. His swinging descent carries him over the hedges, and he lands with only a soft thump behind two crouching men, catching them totally unawares.

  Lean, fast, and strong from years of hard labor, Gustav leaps on the spiny back of one man. The man’s armor cuts Gustav as he grapples, though it hurts no more than would breaking the shell of an arctic crab. He has held onto his pruning shears, too, which when closed are as sharp as a shucking knife. Like an arctic crab, the armored man is soft in places, such as beneath his chin, and it is there that Gustav begins his shucking. Blood warms his knuckles, a gurgle plays in his ears…Gustav realizes he has missed the music of the hunt. Red mists and spurts over his flesh, painting him in tribal markings.

  He rises from the corpse, and his appearance is so horrific and surprising that the other traitor freezes in shock. The assassin’s hand starts to move, to free his rifle from the bushes. Gustav’s hand is quicker. He watches the second assassin’s gaze and helmet fill with blood. For a few specks, Gustav twists the shears around in the man’s skull and squats on the twitching body until it stops its dance. One of the assassins had shrieked while dying; the fatal cry will no doubt summon the master or his men.

  Gustav does not flee. Instead, he remains hunched over the two bodies, one hand still clasping the instrument of murder, until the master and little Gloria come running down a green lane toward him. Gustav bows his head to Balthazar, who approaches him with a flame-tipped pistol. “Master Balthazar
,” he says. “These men spoke of hunting your family. I am happy with my place here in your gardens. I do not wish my servitude to end.” Gustav’s Ghaedic is perfect, albeit thick with Northern inflections.

  “You speak!” exclaims Balthazar.

  “Of course he does,” says young Gloria.

  Balthazar and his daughter walk around the lake of blood that soils the garden path. Gloria picks up a stick from the gardens and prods one of the dead. Gustav waits, unwilling to move until he instructed to do so.

  “You’re quite talented with a sharp implement,” notes Balthazar. “I could give you a real blade to swing, something more civilized than garden shears.”

  Is this an offer? Gustav wonders and stays still.

  “Clean up the bodies and go see my men at the gatehouse,” says Balthazar, as he slips his pistol into the folds of his velvet coat. Taking the hand of his daughter—who gives Gustav a smile and waves her bloody twig—he adds, “Welcome to the Ironguard,” then turns and walks away.

  “Welcome to the Ironguard…” mumbled Gustavius. He hadn’t thought of that memory in maybe a hundred years, but it had lost none of its clarity.

  “Pardon me?” asked the Iron Queen.

  “Balthazar. I was remembering him, and you, when you were young. When we were young, I suppose.”

  The mention of her father calmed her demeanor. She sighed, then gave a pinched smile. “I sometimes forget how long you have served our family,” she said.

  When Thackery had left his station, the Thules had been stripped of their seat on the Council of the Wise. When Gabriel had died shortly thereafter, they had lost his seat, and with it their remaining power. Through all that turmoil, however, Gustavius’s loyalty had remained unshaken. Gustavius—an appropriate disambiguation from Gustav to denounce his northern ties—had been absorbed into the ranks, had killed any rumors that arose about Gloriatrix, and sometimes their propagators as well. He had warned the opponents of the Thule line that the family was far from forgotten. They did not know, as he did, of the iron in Gloriatrix’s soul. She had faced death, dishonor, and absolute ruin with the attitude that some problems were only more complicated than others. When she said that Menos would rise again, Gustavius believed her. For she had risen, over and over. No matter the depth to which Fate cast her, she clawed her way higher. A throne was where Gloriatrix deserved to be, and he would help her achieve that greatness.

  “‘The kings and queens of our world,’” Gustavius said, “‘Those who claim the right to rule, through whisper and guile and blood of Thule.’ Isn’t that the rhyme you and your father made?”

  “It is. I’m surprised you remember that.”

  “I remember everything. I remember how you gave me my title after I’d spent decades prisoner to the whims of weak fools. You gave me a true chance to serve again. I am honored that you remembered me.”

  “I would never forget the slave who saved my life.”

  They snorted, done with sentimentalities.

  “I know what I must do,” said the Iron Queen. “Thank you for this talk; it has inspired me. The men that tried to kill my family and me so long ago…Do you recall how father flushed out the rest of the traitors?”

  “A murder pool?”

  An old Menosian tradition among mercenaries: offer a bounty so large, a target so tantalizing, that no money-thirsting monster could resist it. At the close of such a pool, the number of dead mercenaries often exceeded that of their assigned quarry. After the attempt on his family’s life, Balthazar had offered half of his estate to whomever could root out all those allied with the council. It became the largest purse ever, a prize so gross that it had become part of Menosian legend. A murder pool of riches. Gabriel, a mercenary prince of the time, had won the pool, and years later, Balthazar’s daughter. Gustavius felt that Gloriatrix was brash for even suggesting such a thing, but was nonetheless curious to know what she would offer.

  “The first step in defeating your enemies is to put them on the defensive,” said the Iron Queen. She rose, straightened her skirt, and walked over to the pillars, where she picked glowing buds off the vines and watched their lights die. “Fear makes people sloppy, and a messy criminal is easily caught. But it is not enough simply to steer your enemies, to wither them from starvation and exhaustion: they must be humiliated. I want the world to know what the Everfair Queen and the king’s man have done. I want the entire world hunting them. A murder pool would do just that—one with a prize so grand it would draw an army of mercenaries, villains, and thugs…”

  She made Gustavius wait for her genius, caused him to stand upright and tight as a steel solider. Children were such awful disappointments, realized Gloria. It would be better to groom an heir through a process of careful selection instead: a trial of ascension, with a murder pool as its first gauntlet. She’d quite outdone herself. At last, and after killing another dozen flowers, she whispered her thoughts to her companion: “I won’t live forever, Gustavius. I want to live for a hundred years more, so that I can ensure a world free of any Immortals, a world prey only to the kinder vices of men. Still, I would be foolish to bank upon the notion of living another century. Who, then, will lead our broken nation when I am gone? Who will build it, brick by iron brick, from the ashes? Sorren is gone and may never return to me. Even if he did…he might prove not to be the child, or man, I recall. Our council had been destroyed in all but name. We have no city to rule or return to. All of Menos, all of the history of our people resides within us, the Furies, and Fort Havok. There is nothing more of Menos in the world.” She paused, panting with passion. “Menos will rise again. You and I know this shall come to pass. Menos needs a steward, a person of iron will and ambition: A soldier, a shadowbroker, man or woman, who does not shy away from blood. A student of politics, economy, and war. I don’t know who amongst the current scraps of our army I would deem to possess such varied skills, or be worthy of such a mantle—they’re all such terrified little things—aside from you. I know, though, that you prefer to serve and not rule.”

  “True, my queen,” replied Gustavius.

  “Menos needs a soldier, thief, and spy. Menos needs a mercenary. If we are to hunt the queen and the hammer, I want more from the pursuit than vengeance: I want insurance for our future. I want someone who will carry on the legacy that I, my father, and the great leaders of Menos began. I want an heir.” Gloriatrix strode to her Iron lord, who bowed reverently. “Capturing the hammer and a wild sorceress powerful enough to level a nation should be enough of a trial of ascension. Do you not agree?” she asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “More tests will follow, though I expect only the most ruthless and brilliant person will be able to apprehend the Everfair Queen and claim the prize. I foresee a grave champion, a Menosian in spirit, if not in blood pedigree. We must spread the word far and wide. Magnus did not tell me to be silent. Whoever brings me the queen, alive, and the king’s man, in whatever state, will win the Iron crown and all it represents—in tomorrow’s tense, not while I still have a head upon which the crown can rest.”

  Smiling wickedly, she wandered back to the bench, pondering the dark traits of her future heir.

  “What if the chosen heir somehow fails us? By not learning, and heeding, the Iron way?” asked Gustavius.

  Gloriatrix had already considered this outcome. “It’s not as if we would be bound to our promise,” she replied. “If the heir proves unworthy, we may slit his or her throat and be done with it. I’m sure you have lost none of your skills with garden tools. If necessary, we can always find a less elaborate and entertaining way to fill the throne of Menos.”

  V

  After the miseries of Blackforge, imprisonment, and months away from home, Galivad could think of no greater pleasure than a walk on the east rampart of Eod’s great wall. He waved to men he recognized, and burned his fair skin under the unforgiving sun. Perfecting the moment, his mother, Belle, was present—or rather, a shade of his mother wearing Beatrice’s skin
strolled beside him. She held his arm, and got more than a few queer looks from the soldiers they passed. Galivad and Beatrice weren’t friends, enemies, or even mother and son; he wasn’t sure what to call their relationship. He didn’t care.

  At each day’s end, as evening draped a silver shroud over the land, and after Galivad had finished his duties, he and Beatrice somehow found each other. No matter where they were in the palace, they were drawn together by the invisible threads of family. Although they acknowledged that in truth they were strangers, and that she was a monster, they nevertheless recognized they were bound to each other. Galivad would sing for the Lady El to feed her and cure her of her tremors and hideous urges. She hadn’t murdered or eaten anyone since he’d known her, which he assumed represented progress. And Beatrice, once satiated, would sing along with her kind-of-son in a voice that was only slightly different from the original Belle’s—colder, sharper, and meaner to a tuned ear. Sometimes, they played a game of Kings and Fates. Beatrice was unbeatable, and certainly not letting him win as his original mother would have.

  Sometimes, Galivad was overcome by a revulsion that urged him toward matricide. That bloodlust, though, like Beatrice’s monstrosity, always passed. The one sad consequence of Beatrice’s companionship was that it appeared to have driven Rowena away. Staring down from the ramparts at the black behemoths parked in the desert, the hive of campfires and tents, and the streams of little black men during their daily amble along the wall, Galivad and Beatrice were unexpectedly greeted by Rowena.

  “Galivad, there you are!”

  The broad woman, looking a bit like a burly athlete in her undershirt and pants, hurried toward the pair through the haze of dying sun. She accidentally elbowed a soldier in her haste and then patted him on the back, throwing him off balance even more. She did not stay to help the fellow right himself. Rowena seemed to be burning with news when she met Galivad and his companion, though her lips kept her secrets tightly bound. Nervous, she gazed from Galivad to Beatrice. “Can we have a moment? Alone?” she asked.