by Mike Shel
“I do not know, Majesty,” said her father. “But then I don’t pretend to possess your discernment.”
The queen’s head, seeming now to Agnes more skull than flesh, nodded slowly, still staring at Kennah. “Marco!” she snapped, causing all in the room to jump. “Bring us that priest of Marcator who yammers on at our Privy Council. Make certain he has his vestments and a sword.”
“Father Elberlin, Majesty?”
“Unless there are additional priests of Marcator on our Privy Council who have escaped our notice.” The clerk Marco left the room by the same door Lady Courlan had employed. Geneviva looked around at the people in her bedchamber, then landed upon the three of them again, still bowing before her. “And this is your daughter, Sir Auric? Agnes by name?”
“Proudly, Majesty, she is.”
“You named her?”
“Her mother chose the name. It belonged to a favorite aunt.”
“Ah, yes. It’s common enough among the merchant and artisan classes, is it not?” Her father didn’t answer. “Let me have a closer look at you, dear. Approach me.”
Agnes wasn’t sure how she managed, but she walked toward Imperatrix Hanifaxa, a rot-toothed skull sitting atop ancient flesh and bones that refused to lie down for proper internment. The odor of rotting meat intensified. Agnes couldn’t be sure if the long black nails at the end of the bony fingers coming to cup her chin were lacquered, or if that was their natural color. An image of the maidservant’s bloody cheek leapt to her mind, and she was reminded of what Lenda told her those talons and teeth had done to the crown prince. She dared not move when those cold fingers touched her.
“Pretty, Sir Auric. She has your peasant’s nose, but it looks as though she must have inherited the rest from her mother. Even that flock of freckles is becoming.”
“Her friends at the Citadel call her ‘Peregrine’ for it, Highness, the nose.” She could hear the anxiety in his voice, despite his attempt at casual banter. But his words had their desired effect—the queen laughed.
“Are you a bird of prey then, Miss Agnes?” asked the queen in a youthful trill. Before she could answer, Geneviva continued. “You have followed your father into the League. Your armor says you are a swordswoman. You will not breed?”
“Excuse me, ma’am?” Agnes managed to croak.
“Breed, lass. Do you intend to produce offspring? So many of your Syraeic sisters neglect to do so, when their fine stock is just what the empire needs. Do you have a beau?”
Raimund’s kindly face flashed before Agnes’s eyes. She wondered if being in the presence of the queen would ruin that serenity of his. “I do, Your Majesty. A priest at the Blue Cathedral. But I haven’t yet considered whether I will be a mother.”
“So wise of Belu to allow her priests to marry, don’t you think, Miss Agnes? Not like those of Marcator and Vanic. No, they fear congress with women will drain their masculine juices best devoted to their deities. Some men are ridiculous, wouldn’t you say?”
Agnes was rescued from this encounter in that moment by one of those priests, a black-robed man with a salt-and-pepper beard bearing a too-big silver sword under one arm and a crystal vial in the other. The servants gave the frowning man a wide berth. He bowed before the queen and spoke in a voice like gravel, as though he had a permanent catch in his throat. “You summoned me, Your Royal Highness? How might this servant of Marcator do your bidding this morning?”
“Ebberin, is it?” she offered.
“Elberlin, Majesty,” he answered, his expression sour. “I’ve been on your council for eighteen years.”
“Yes, Ebberlin. Please anoint this big brute a knight of the realm for me, and I’ll take that.” She snatched the big ceremonial blade from him effortlessly, as though it were no more than a slip of paper.
In a few moments, Kennah knelt before the queen, and the priest Elberlin poured the contents of the vial over his head. Consecrated oil dripped down his hair and into his beard, drops cascading off the oiled leather of his cuirass. The queen stood before him now and touched the flat of the blade to each shoulder. “From this day forward, Sir Kennah Rolenwy thou art. Rise a knight of the realm.” The edge of the blade hovered at Kennah’s neck for a dreadful moment longer. Agnes almost expected the queen to remove trembling Kennah’s head from his shoulders with the sword at the brief ceremony’s conclusion, but instead he stood awkwardly with head and body intact, now Sir Kennah.
There was a knock at the door through which Elberlin had arrived, and the queen gave leave. Through that portal came a beefy man clad in a robe made of metallic thread that reflected the candlelight illuminating the room, a pale green binding gem set in his forehead. This must be the Grand Chamberlain, Agnes concluded, the queen’s chief sorcerer and foremost bureaucrat. Behind him came the loveliest woman Agnes had ever laid eyes on. She had high cheekbones, an upturned nose, and long, dark hair bound behind her in rings made of mother-of-pearl. Her deep blue eyes shone with a charismatic sparkle. Her lips were made up with vertical stripes of royal blue, and every inch of exposed skin was covered by a pearly white foundation. Intricate filigree decorations were painted on the left side of her face in pale shades of blue. Her ivory-hued gown was simple, but elegant. She curtsied as she stood before the queen.
“Ilanda, darling!” sang the queen. “Look who joins us this morning!”
Ilanda curtsied again, this time to Agnes and her companions. “Belu bless you, Sir Auric. I’m so pleased to see you again. This must be Sir Kennah, and your daughter, Agnes.”
“Yes,” answered her father, some of the anxiety in his tone gone. “I’m pleased to see you as well.”
“We were informed of your entry into the city only yesterday, Sir Auric, else I’m sure Her Highness would have invited you sooner.”
“That’s just it, dear,” said the queen. “We’re afraid we’ve forgotten what it was we wished to discuss with Sir Auric.”
“Countless affairs of state to manage, Your Highness, it’s no wonder some matters slip the royal mind,” responded the countess. “Perhaps you are in need of rejuvenation by Ulwen, Majesty, if you would grant him permission.” Ilanda held out a hand to the Grand Chamberlain, who touched the peridot in his forehead, then the top of his shaved head, then bowed. Agnes thought she detected a slight trembling in the countess’s gesture. “You were up so late last night, puzzling out the machinations of those devious Azkayans, after all.”
“The countess is right, Your Highness,” said the sorcerer, his voice deep and resonant. “It would be my pleasure to provide some measure of relief. Her Majesty has commented several times on the efficacy of my treatments.”
Geneviva seemed to consider this, her skeletal countenance frozen as those feral eyes went distant. “Do you really think it necessary, Ilanda dear?” There was a dangerous edge in that girlish voice.
Ilanda tilted her head and gave the queen a radiant smile and nodded. “I do, Your Majesty.” In some ways it reminded Agnes of Scylla’s manner as she approached them in the woods: disarming, seductive. She realized that this was a performance as well, though the stakes were immeasurably higher. What little her father had told her of the countess last summer described a highly intelligent politician, committed to a seamless façade that led others to underestimate her. Agnes didn’t think this performance seamless; she saw its cracks and tells. Either her father wasn’t as perceptive as she thought, or the strain was beginning to wear on this woman.
At last, the queen nodded her assent. The Grand Chamberlain clapped his hands together to clear the room. Gathered servants and scribes and the sorcerer who had brought the three of them to the queen’s bedchamber began filing out, looks of relief on many faces: another encounter with Geneviva Reges the First survived. Ilanda bade the three Syraeics to remain.
“I am to lie down, then?” asked the queen, a hint of hesitancy in her tone.
“If you
would, Your Majesty,” answered Ulwen, gesturing to the canopied bed.
Geneviva walked over to the bed and climbed onto its downy blankets, lying so that she stared with her savage eyes at the green silk canopy overhead. “We do feel somewhat vexed this morning. Perhaps your treatment will provide some solace, Ulwen.”
“Solace,” echoed the sorcerer. “Precisely the word you used the last time I provided this service for Your Royal Highness.”
Ilanda sat on the edge of the bed and took one of the queen’s bony claws in her own delicate hands, holding it warmly. Ulwen came around the opposite side, retrieving a sphere of clear glass the size of an apple from his robe. “You do give your consent, then, for this ritual, my queen?” asked the man, polishing the globe with the sleeve of his robe.
“We do, Grand Chamberlain.”
The sorcerer pressed the sphere to her forehead and held it there, whispering an incantation in the abstruse language of sorcery. As Geneviva’s unsettling eyes closed, he took his hand away from the orb—it remained balanced there, a slight shimmer of orange flickering now within it. Whatever the ritual was, it took several minutes, with the chamberlain making dizzying, complex gestures and more phrases spoken in incomprehensible Middle Djao. At last, with a great sigh, he stood back from the bed.
“It’s finished,” he said. “You have little time, Countess. Use it wisely.”
Ilanda, who hadn’t left the queen’s side and still held her hand, spoke now to her in a gentle voice filled with sweet regard. “Geneviva, you are here now, but only for a few minutes. Sir Auric is present, with his daughter and another agent of the League, Sir Kennah. You may make your request of them.”
“Sir Auric?” The queen’s voice was barely audible, no longer that of a young, vivacious woman, but desperately decrepit, ancient, brittle. “I must ask a thing of you, and it is no small thing.”
“What is all this, Ilanda? I am confused,” Auric whispered to the countess, nervously watching the quivering eyelids of their prone, necrotic queen.
“The true Geneviva, trapped deep within this travesty, released briefly from the dark sorcery that animates her. Speak to her, Auric.”
Auric nodded and stepped closer to the royal bed. “What is it, Your Highness? What request would you make of me?” Agnes approached with him, as though she could somehow protect him from whatever the queen might ask.
The queen was silent for a few moments, lips trembling, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths. She opened her mouth and exhaled at last, the smell of the grave enveloping them all. “We have lived…for one hundred and forty-one years,” she managed, eyes still closed, voice weak and wavering. “I have served as monarch of this empire for…one hundred and eighteen of them. It is not natural…and it is enough. I wish to die. I must die. And you…Sir Auric…shall be the one who will see that it…happens.”
11
The Aerican
See to the queen’s death, thought Auric. He felt strangely alienated from this scene, from his own body. Five of them hovered around Her Majesty’s prone form, a charnel stink mingling with the perfume of burning candles. Ilanda, he noted, was lovelier than ever, but with an unease in her manner so unlike the confident, intelligent woman he had met last year. Given the rumors of what was happening on the Harkeny frontier, he wondered what she was doing here in the capital. He wished he could speak with her in private, ask his questions, but Ulwen had warned that access to this “true” Geneviva was fleeting.
“Your Majesty,” he began, “I do not know how I would accomplish this thing you ask. Since the intervention of the priests of Timilis, none who have dared raise a hand against you have survived, nor have they succeeded in harming you in even the smallest way. Your person is protected by divine forces with which mortals cannot contend.”
“This…is…true, Sir Auric,” said the queen, slow and breathy, each word requiring effort. “Before I can die, that divine hand…must be…lifted from me. This is…in fact…what I charge you with: the…wielder of that…divine hand…must be…slain.”
“I do not understand, Highness. The god’s priests? Such an act of impiety is expressly forbidden by the Tablets of Marcator.”
“The priests…they are only…his instruments. It is Timilis who…needs…killing, Sir…Auric.”
Agnes and Kennah gasped. Auric stepped back, as if by reflex, like a knee jerking at a well-placed blow. “You…ask me to slay the god…Timilis?”
“Sir Auric, word has reached us that you have killed one god already,” interjected Ulwen.
His nerves fraying, Auric sensed his own composure dangerously close to unraveling. “Timilis is a great god, elevated above all others of the pantheon but Belu, Marcator, Chaeres, and Vanic! Whatever it was I killed in that Djao ruin; it wasn’t a greater god receiving homage from millions of worshipers across the empire. Do you imagine I can just storm the heavens and cut off his head? That’s insane!”
“Our world is insane, Sir Auric!” hissed the queen with sudden vitality. “Last year in the Barrowlands you entered the sanctum of a god and stabbed it in its heart! You must do it again or face what catastrophes will most assuredly follow!”
A recklessness filled Auric’s heart as he spoke. “Majesty…how would I even go about finding the god? The alleged deity my sword slew was trapped in a subterranean prison. We can’t count on Timilis laying his neck out for me on a chopping block.”
“Sir Auric,” growled the Grand Chamberlain, offended by what he must have judged as irreverence. Auric made no effort to soften his own annoyed expression as he stared down the sorcerer.
The queen stirred, eyes still shut, the words spilling from her mouth like grain from a torn sack. “The…Aerican…”
Auric turned from the Grand Chamberlain to the queen, the light within the orb poised on her forehead diminished. “The Aerican, Your Majesty?”
It appeared a great strain for her to speak now, the muscles around her mouth taut, the exposed bone of her chin jutting out. “Speak to the…Aerican…Sir Auric. And Ulwen…have a command drafted. Sir…Auric may choose…three from our dungeons…for this…quest we lay upon his…shoulders. Daughter and…the new knight…and those three…no more…may accompany him. Timilis…”
The light in the sphere winked out and the orb rolled from her forehead to the linens on which she lay. “The true Geneviva is gone now,” said Ulwen, retrieving the sphere and slipping it back into his robes. “You must leave the bedchamber now. Only I can be here when the viper awakens. I will have the order drafted, as all of us heard her command.”
Auric attempted to protest, to ask more questions. The Grand Chamberlain insisted they leave, urgency in his tone. Ilanda guided the three of them out of the room through another doorway Auric hadn’t noticed before. They walked through another series of cramped, low-ceilinged hallways before coming to a sitting room with richly upholstered couches and chairs. Tapestries depicting battles from Geneviva’s great naval conflict against the Azkayans early in her reign hung on the walls. The countess slumped into the cushions of a couch without ceremony and bade the others do the same. She sat there for a few moments with her eyes closed, the strain showing on her features.
“I’ve been trapped in the capital for three weeks, Sir Auric,” she said after taking in a deep breath, as though readying herself for a dive to the bottom of a pond. “I was dispatched by Duke Orin to petition the queen for an emergency levy of troops and cavalry across the empire to bolster Harkeny’s forces. You may have heard that the Korsa tribes have a loose union now, under the leadership of a witch-queen who calls herself Magda. Her raiding parties poke and probe at the fortresses along the Selvey River, and we hear horror stories from lost Ursena. Magda even has something approaching a navy—managed a blockade of Westerport for a few days before my father sent a fleet from Sallymont that sent her ships scattering. I’m afraid my skills at persuading the queen
are no longer effective, though she still demands my company. Gods, Auric, it’s been a horror.”
“And now I am in it as well,” he responded, feeling unable to provide her any sympathy. “As is my daughter.”
She opened her eyes then to look at him; penetrating, intelligent eyes. She offered no sympathy in return. “Yes. Yes, you are.”
“Who is this Aerican she spoke of?”
“A visitor, an old black man, presented himself to the queen in the throne room. The crown prince was there, other members of the royal family, her guard, and about a dozen other petitioners. I was in attendance as well, at Her Majesty’s command, sitting on a stool at the foot of the throne. As some of the aristocracy might keep a monkey for a pet.” Auric saw the bitterness the countess usually kept hidden from the rest of the world. “As I said, the Aerican was quite old, but had the bearing of a far younger man. He introduced himself and informed the queen that he had words for her from the lips of God.”
“From the lips of God?” echoed Agnes, who sat up in her chair.
“His exact words,” answered Ilanda. “He said he had a gift for her first and presented that glass orb you saw Ulwen use in the ritual. He went on to say that the ‘Creative Spirit of the Universe’ recoiled from the curse that afflicts the queen and that he could help rid her and the nation of it.”
“And how did the queen take that?” asked Auric.
“She seemed amused, asked me if I thought she or the nation was cursed. I responded with some flighty, empty-headed drivel the court has come to expect from me, an attempt to deflect her. That was when the old man turned to me, stared at me with those ancient eyes…he didn’t speak the words, I heard them in my mind, and may Tolwe flay me. He said, ‘The time will come, Ilanda of Hanifax, when you no longer need wear that mask.’”
