Beautiful Beasts

by Nicholas Knight

  She feinted, pretending to go for Gegenteil’s feet, then went high. The blade caressed Gegenteil’s forearm, drawing a thin line of blood that would have been much thicker had the beast not twisted away upon contact.

  Straight into Loretta.

  Loretta could not have said what made her lunge for the beast’s throat with her fangs. She missed, but the attack forced Gegenteil back. Instead of taking Gegenteil’s claws to the shoulder in a move that might have torn Loretta’s arm from the socket, her opponent’s strike took Loretta lower in the arm.

  Pain exploded through her arm unlike anything she had ever felt.

  While Loretta had trained with the sword extensively, she had never actually been struck by a live blade. They had always wielded blunted training instruments at the Academy. The claws sinking into her arm were like nothing she had ever experienced. With her heightened awareness, she noticed the color leaving her arm and the flesh go numb. Where it didn’t, her arm burned with agonizing cold.

  Through it all, she screamed, twisting the blade of her sword between them in a maneuver that would have sliced Gegenteil up the middle had she not spun free—ripping her claws free of Loretta’s arm in a spray of red snow.

  Something cold and sharp grazed her lower back above her kidney.

  She twisted and delivered a sloppy counter attack, distracted by the pain in her arm. It didn’t connect. She hadn’t expected it to.

  Gegenteil had put some distance between them and casually held what appeared to be a red icicle with a wicked edge in one hand. Where had she gotten that? Loretta glanced down at her deadening arm. The flesh around the gaping claw wounds was discolored and emerging from the center of each of the punctures was a crumbling pile of red ice.

  Gegenteil had somehow frozen Loretta’s blood as it exited the wounds and turned it into a weapon. She held it up for Loretta to see. “Dead again.”

  Loretta took a long breath and let it out between her clenched fangs. She adjusted her grip on her sword and readied herself to go at Gegenteil again.

  The pale beast cocked her head, one ear twitching as her tufted tail swished behind her. “Really?”

  Footsteps sounded. There were more men and beasts in the entryway to the engine room than there had been before. Had their fight really drawn so much attention? At any moment, they could be stopped. That couldn’t happen. The wizard had become a distant afterthought to Loretta. Her mind had locked upon a single idea and refused to let go or back down: she had to kill Gegenteil.

  A familiar presence drawing near stayed her from launching another offensive. No! He couldn’t be here. Not now. He’d stop her!

  Unconsciously, she turned her head, pulling her attention away from Gegenteil to where Sir Sigmund Moreau had just entered the engine room. He took Loretta in and she could feel him assessing her, Gegenteil, and the entire situation. Her shoulders shook with unreleased energy, with aggression, and with raw desperation.

  “Please,” she whispered, so quietly she didn’t think anyone could hear it.

  Whether or not he heard it, Moreau nodded, and Loretta’s eyes widened as he reached into his coat pocket and produced that wondrous silver flute of his. Her eyes flashed and she grinned, whirling back on Gegenteil.

  “You’re dead now,” Loretta hissed.

  Gegenteil’s ear twitched again.

  The music began. Loretta attacked.

  She had been quick before. Now, she was something elemental. She was the wind itself given a cutting edge.

  A third red line was drawn across Gegenteil’s upper arm as she failed to account for Loretta’s suddenly greater speed. After that, the pale beast was forced to fight Loretta in silence, her entire focus dedicated to avoiding Loretta’s whirlwind of slashes. Loretta chased her, spinning, twisting, and slashing across the engine room.

  The leonine beast dodged, ducked, and dove, never quite where she was supposed to be or barely managing to parry aside Loretta’s blade with her blood knife or claws. But she couldn’t avoid everything. Loretta was too swift, too agile, and her attacks simply too numerous.

  Loretta felt none of the disappointment or frustration that had come before when her strikes had been thwarted, nor the disorientation of having to abruptly alter her trajectory. Every movement was simply absorbed into the next. One continuous, instinctually calculated flow that slowly, relentlessly, decorated Gegenteil with weeping red lines.

  They reached the wall. Gegenteil launched herself straight upward, grabbing hold of a pipe at the zenith of her leap and hurling herself still further up, scaling the wall.

  Loretta followed without hesitation. She bounced back and forth between where a pair of boxy pieces of machinery came together, gaining height before leaping up to grab hold of a pipe leaking steam from the rivets. She swung up from the pipe, transforming the motion into a pirouette that brought her down, spinning blade first, where Gegenteil had landed.

  Gegenteil blocked the sword—barely—with her own blood blade, but was driven back, scaling the pipes. Loretta pressed the attack, spinning and twisting among the pipes—which were suddenly slick beneath her. She slipped, barely catching hold of a pipe before she could fall. A thin layer of ice coated the steel she had been standing on and was spreading up over her fingers.

  Steam rose from Gegenteil’s body, and ice rushed over the pipes in an avalanche. Loretta grinned at her and let go. She kicked off the wall and flipped over onto one of the large gears in the center of the room, skittering across its broad tooth in a decidedly inhuman motion that left no doubt that her bestia seed was that of a weasel. The gear carried her back up as she transformed her recovery into a pounce that brought her crashing into Gegenteil.

  They fell, striking at one another, neither one succeeding, before coming apart. Each hit the floor hard but recovered quickly, leaping upright with predatory grace, to come at each other again.

  Steam continued to hiss from Gegentiel, giving her a spectral countenance as ice formed on the ground at her feet and spread out, slowly encompassing the entire engine room floor.

  Distantly, Loretta thought she might have heard clapping. She dismissed it. The only sound that mattered was that wondrous music that fed her very blood. So long as that music played, she was invincible. The pipes carrying hot water began to scream as the cold pressed in on them. Loretta’s breath came out in a cloud and her sweat froze on her flesh.

  She leapt, spun, and slid on the ice, losing her balance and barely recovering before Gegenteil’s blood blade found her. She twisted away and slipped again. This time she was not so lucky. The blade nearly took her in the stomach, and only a last-instant writhing motion kept it a glancing blow.

  The blood froze as it left her body, becoming a crystalline series of spikes sticking out from the wound. She ignored the pain and struck. Gegenteil caught the sword in her claws. Steam rose from the contact. Ice formed along the blade. An instant later, the weapon shattered.

  Loretta fell back, holding only half a sword.

  Gegenteil flowed forward like water over the ice and caught Loretta in an uppercut that dug her claws up underneath Loretta’s ribcage. Loretta was lifted up, one handed, and brought crashing down into the hard, frozen ground. She saw stars, and a ringing sound drowned out the music.

  Without it, she felt pain. So much pain. Where was the music? She had to give herself over to it again. Let it and that gleeful ferocity inside herself take her. Guide her.

  She kicked her legs up and used the momentum to flip herself upright. Gegenteil caught her in the stomach with a kick before her feet hit the ground, and Loretta flew through the air. When she hit the ice, she continued to skid until she crashed into the wall. She could not have said which impact drove the wind from her lungs.

  That may have been a blessing because Gegenteil pounced upon her, clearing the distance between them in another enormous bound and used the momentum to drive her knee into Loretta’s gut. Spittle, bile, and blood flew from Loretta�
��s mouth.

  She couldn’t breathe. She opened and closed her mouth. Tried to force her lungs to expand. Nothing was working.

  Gegenteil held up the blood blade and caressed her neck with the icy flat of it, leaving melted blood in its passing. “Dead.”

  Loretta coughed. The music was gone, replaced by raucous cheering. Men and beasts alike had gathered around the edges of the courtyard and were clapping. Whooping. She thought she saw a few exchange notes of currency. Had they’d been gambling on this? How crass.

  The thought made her try to laugh, which was a mistake. Thinking was a mistake too, because it made her so much more aware of just how bad everything was. Tears welled up in Loretta’s eyes that had nothing to do with her defeat.

  The wizard was supposed to know how to fix her. To prove that she wasn’t a beast.

  The noise died.

  Loretta was barely able to bring her attention to the small, matronly figure who had just entered the courtyard. Vizcondesa Velazquez eyed them all imperiously, then glided over to stand over Loretta.

  She looked at Gegenteil with an expression that demanded explanation.

  Gegenteil bowed. “A training exercise, my lady.”

  The vizcondesa raised an eyebrow. She gave a pointed glance at the broken window to Jacquemin’s workshop and then around at the broken machinery. The ice holding one of the large gears in place crunched as the gear resumed its rotation, and a connection between two pipes gave a BANG, releasing a gout of steam.

  “Things…got a little out of hand, my lady,” Gegentiel said. Her ears lay flat but her tail swished behind her.

  Loretta wondered why she was bothering to lie. The vizcondesa obviously had some notion that this was not an accident. More importantly, Loretta had just been trying to kill her, and her keeper. That was supposed to mean something to a beast, wasn’t it? She understood now as she had not before, why the beasts were so loyal to their keepers. To kill a beast’s keeper was to sever her hold on her own sanity. Her very sense of self was reliant upon her connection to another.

  That thought made Loretta laugh, only it came out as a spasm. Her chest hurt, and more bloody phlegm filled her mouth. She was forced to spit it out or risk choking.

  Everything drifted in and out of focus. Where was Sir Moreau, she wondered. She could feel that he was nearby. Feel his concern for her flowing along their connection. Why had he played his flute for her? She had attacked his ally and embarrassed him in front of his new employers.

  Her eyes found him, his blurry form crossing the courtyard toward her, Gegenteil and the vizcondesa, Master Jacquemin and Moreau’s new, nameless beast trailing behind him. She really needed a name, that one.

  Vizcondesa Velazquez was saying something, but Loretta couldn’t make sense of it. Everything felt so heavy.

  ~

  It was the pain that woke her. It was a slow awakening. The kind that makes the world seem an intrusion upon something warm and pleasant. Were it not for the pain permeating her entire body, Loretta rather thought she would have enjoyed the sensation.

  She groaned and tried to move. Her limbs were too heavy, and she was caught in the sheets. No, not the sheets, she realized. She had been bandaged. Goosebumps broke out over her flesh, and she shivered. The shiver sent fresh ripples of pain through her. All traces of sleep’s warmth vanished, and she was left cold, hurting, and all but immobile.

  “Hey,” said a voice to her right.

  She could at least turn her head, though the motion sent waves of pain through her shoulder and ribs. Moreau’s new beast crouched upon a stool in what had to be the world’s most uncomfortable position, her hands and hand-like feet gripping the edges. Her tail darted about behind her animatedly, the pitch fur giving off a faint glow. At last Loretta knew she wasn’t imagining that.

  “Lunar eclipse monkey,” she said groggily. “Needs a name.”

  The girl beamed. “Sir Moreau gave me a name. I haven’t had one for I don’t know how long!” She rocked back and forth on the stool so much that Loretta thought it might topple over. “It’s so good having one again. I’m Malin.” She bounced from the stool and landed beside Loretta’s bed.

  Loretta suppressed the urge to lash out. Something about the movement simply made her want to bite. Weasel indeed, she thought glumly.

  “Sir Moreau says your name is Sauvage,” Malin said. “After that fight you gave, I can see why. That was awesome!” she shrank back, looking sheepish. “Also, a little terrifying. You’re kind of scary.”

  Loretta forced her mouth to move. “You’re a lot more talkative now.”

  Malin blushed and looked down, biting her lip.

  “An observation,” Loretta said. “I am not chastising you.”

  “Oh,” Malin said, letting out a relieved breath. “Good.” She reached over to the bedside table and picked up a pair of scissors.

  With an effort, Loretta glanced up at the table and found that it held clean bandages, a washcloth, and a bowl of steaming water. Had they expected her to wake up now? Keeping water hot away from a machine wasn’t easy.

  Malin began cutting away the bandages on her arm. The flesh beneath looked like rotted meat. Ripped where the claws had caught her and discolored around that. Loretta had never seen frostbite, but she had read about it at the Academy. It usually occurred at the tips of extremities, though, not at the entry point of a wound.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Malin pressing the hot washcloth to her injury. It stung, and from more than just the heat. Loretta clenched her teeth and refused to make a sound. She was better than that. She had behaved with enough indignity already. What on earth had she been thinking?

  A tear started welling up in her eye. She blinked it away. She was not so weak as that.

  Malin wrapped fresh bandages around her arm and tilted her head, admiring her handiwork. The eclipse monkey had done a decent job, Loretta had to admit. “You have skilled hands.”

  Malin’s eyes darted up to Loretta’s, a nervous smile tugging at her mouth. “Good enough that you might could teach me…I mean, you know. To fight like that?”

  Loretta raised an eyebrow, and felt one of her ears perk up. The unwanted gesture made her think of the way Gegenteil’s ear had twitched and it soured her mood. “Like what? You’ll note, I lost.”

  “But nobody beats Gegenteil.” Malin threw her hands up in the air. “That’s what everybody says!”

  She was an expressive girl, wasn’t she?

  There it was. “Girl.” At some point, Malin had gone from an “it” to a “her.” It should have felt wrong. A beast was not a woman. It did not feel wrong.

  “She’s got an epitomized pair of seeds,” Malin said, gesticulating.

  “I think you mean optimized,” Loretta said, voice flat to conceal her amusement. Her sister used to get words wrong too, when they were younger. She hadn’t done that in years. Thinking of her twisted a frozen blade deep in Loretta’s ribcage as if Gegenteil had stabbed her. Was Sirena well? Had Lorenz Gage betrayed her yet? A man such as him, it could only be a matter of time.

  “That’s the word,” Malin said, snapping her fingers. “Yeah, optimized. She’s got a lion bestia and a fire globus. Only they said something about it being perverted.”

  Loretta’s ear twitched. “Do you mean, ‘inverted?’”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Malin said, nodding quickly. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means made to be the reverse,” Loretta said, thinking to the classifications of seeds the wizard had shared. “Cold isn’t actually an energy, rather, it is the absence of energy. It seems that she can absorb heat in such a way that it freezes things.”

  Loretta scowled. She had been so badly outmatched, and she hadn’t even realized it. Even there at the end. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more. That she had given everything she had to killing Gegenteil and had not even come close. Or that, despite being able to kill her in an instant, despite knowin
g that Loretta had been trying to kill her, Gegenteil had spared her. A blizzard in the form of a lioness, and she a dancing weasel. The matchup was laughable.

  That brought her up short. Did she actually care about her seeds? Some part of her had expected, perhaps even hoped, for something extraordinary. Special. Was she, on some level, jealous of Gegenteil’s seeds? That was absurd. Yet, she feared it might be accurate. What was wrong with her?

  It was then that she realized Malin was gaping at her, mouth hanging open.

  “What?”

  “You’re really smart,” Malin said.

  “Yes, I am. Would you mind changing the rest of these bandages?” She nodded toward her chest. Her ribs hurt the worst. Gegenteil must have cracked at least a few of them, and that final attack had probably done something to her sternum.

  “Oh right, I’m supposed to be nursing you,” Malin said, leaping to obey.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Loretta said. “It will not take me long to recover to the point that I can walk. Then we can go down to the hot spring.” All of her pains would be washed away in a blissful soaking of heat. Loretta found herself craving more than the healing properties. There had been something about the process of bathing in the spring that had relaxed her spirit as well. She sorely needed that now.

  Malin froze, hands on the scissors. “Uh….”

  “What?” Loretta demanded.

  Malin ducked down, as if Loretta might suddenly leap upright and strike her round the head. “The vizcondesa. She has…um…banned you, from the hot springs. As punishment for…well, she had a lot of reasons, but it all comes down to you damaged her castle and she’s mad about that. Only, I think she’s mad about something else. Gegenteil said you and she were just training and both our keepers agreed, but I don’t think she believed them.”

  Loretta blinked as she tried to sort through the torrent of Malin’s words to the information that was most immediately relevant. She sorted everything else away for later. “She has banned me from using the hot spring to recover?”

  Malin bobbed her head, tail bobbing in time behind her. “That’s right.”