by Jean Lee
And his smell. The sanitary something. Eh, maybe he bleaches his hair.
I think not, the Voice murmurs. It is not happy.
“It really is good to see you, brother,” he says. “I’ve missed you.”
Liam half-smiles and holds his brother’s shoulders in return. “Hello, Keller. I thought for sure you’d be trotting behind Mother’s heels like the good son that you are.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Keller turns to Charlotte now with a curious expression. “You were the one singing, weren’t you? The Who, right?”
Liam instinctively pulls Charlotte behind him, but Charlotte sheathes her bone-knife and pulls away, hand out. “Charlotte. Didn’t think Velidevour knew much about rock.”
“Keller. Are you kidding? The Who’s performance at Leeds was just…fire in sound.” Liam’s head gives a slight tick when his brother bows deeply and pulls Charlotte’s hand up to his mouth to kiss it. “I do like that combination of blonde hair with green eyes,” he grins.
Imp’s a family trait, apparently. “Was that before Keith Moon died?” she asks, blushing, aware of Liam’s stormy gaze on her neck.
“Oh yes. Rather a lot going on in the world back in the 1970s. Made sneaking out of the compound for a concert none too difficult. And what a spirit beating in this hand!” His thumb strokes Charlotte’s fingers before she can tug it free. “The wilderness suits you.”
That does it for Liam. “We should get back to the others,” he says with a not-so-gentle squeeze of Charlotte’s arm.
“The tunnel to Rose House is right there.” Keller points to yet another tunnel hole, this one set halfway up the cave wall. A few old white roots from the tree still hang out, starved and impotent.
Unlike the other Velidevour Charlotte’s seen turn to ash in death, Orna has liquefied. Oil, pus, and lavender goo coagulate in noxious pools in the folds of the broken, flaking snakeskin. A particle of ash settles on the point of a single claw, the rest of the arm bent and contorted, a toy broken beyond repair.
Charlotte’s face scrunches at the narrow, uneven stone staircase built into the wall beneath the broken white roots. Precarious as all get out. Charlotte doesn’t know this guy telling her to use them. Liam’s not wanted his family around, period. But this brother Keller is a Who fan, so… “Whatever. Let’s just get out.” She gives a reassuring nod to Liam, then makes for the stairs. Easier than walking through a tunnel made of roots, at least. Liam’s hand remains spread at the small of her back while he holds his burning blood dagger in the other. The steps’ shadows shake as if frightened.
A second flame, white like moonlight, floods the atrium. “Brother, is it normal around here to run around like the cover model of some romance novel?”
Charlotte barks a laugh and nearly falls off the stairs. “It got shredded when we fought—“
DON’T MENTION THE STELLAQUI! the Voice clamps her trap shut. Trust no one new! Charlotte wishes the stairs were done so she could kick herself. Talking about Captain and the other merfolk would lead to questions about Cairine and Aine, and even a nice-looking Who fan isn’t going to pry that info out of her.
“Orna’s Incomplete,” Liam finishes the answer calmly, his fingertips giving Charlotte a quick little scratch to let her know he understands. “She never liked me clothed for long.”
“Ew, Liam,” Charlotte groans, but Keller asks no more, nor does he joke. Charlotte locks the bears and mermaids away in the basement of her mind and covers the door with a rug and beanbag chair. There. Insert picture of lonely angst here. The leftover hanging roots work well as a handrail, and Charlotte quickens her pace up the last steps into the tunnel, Liam and Keller close behind.
Each brother’s blood dagger flickers like flaming torches: one golden, one white. No more tunnel of roots reaching out to feed off Charlotte’s veli. All has burned away to just another dark, dank passageway. The ash has settled into the damp to make more Pits clay, with only a few sticks of root lying about like the bones in a predator’s cave.
Charlotte senses the white light move down her head, neck, and spine, stopping at her hips: Keller, holding his blood dagger near her side. Her mind fingerpaints a sloppy memory to cover the truth: Knife from Dad, see me getting it from Dad, just a present he picked up on shore leave… “Hold that thing any closer to my ass and I’ll crack your jaw. Clear?”
Keller smirks and turns to Liam. “Oh, I like her.”
Liam carves a small mark into the tunnel wall. The mark hisses like a firebrand. “So you’ve all been just…wandering about the husk of Rose House?” He blinks slowly, the gold of his dagger reflecting in the grey of his eyes.
Keller moves past Liam and Charlotte with an easy step. “They have. One look at the state of things and they thought your carcass dragged into the Pits. They tried questioning Orna’s henchmen. Didn’t get very far.”
“Kinda hard to answer questions when you’re dead.” Charlotte allows herself a quick gulp before they enter the room where Campion had created the illusion of Aunt Gail’s house. She reaches for Liam’s hand, avoids the little rock that Campion had concocted into a piano bench. His hand’s as clammy as her own.
Keller observes them with narrowing eyes. “I wouldn’t do that upstairs. You’ll give them ideas.”
Liam’s heels drag, his breath uneven.
Charlotte’s mind flips back to Cairine’s words to Liam: “Your father had already tried to take my virtue and my life.” If that’s Lord Artair’s habit, then…. “I didn’t wake Liam up only to get shelved in some magic fruit cellar.” And she leads him on, fingers tightly woven in his, the sweat hot between their palms while their bodies shiver in the last cold space before Rose House.
It does look like a cellar of sorts. A drunken rectangle of sunlight shines down where the staircase has been shredded. The basement itself has a few narrow wooden stairs to the door into the reception hall of Rose House. Wooden shelves line the small, narrow cellar, some grooved for wine bottles, others deep for rows of mason jars. A few rusted hooks hang from the ceiling for meat. What kind of meat Charlotte doesn’t want to think. Good thing I got knocked out falling down these stairs before. The tunnel out of the cellar looks like it had once been closed off—hinges hang useless on one side of its entrance, and one row of shelves has been knocked in by chunks of metal—a door, maybe.
“Guess Arlen didn’t care much for traffic through his cellar,” Charlotte says, a knot slowly tying in her chest. “Where is he, anyway?”
Keller sheathes his dagger, gestures to the door, but says nothing.
Liam and Charlotte share a panicked look. There is no slow step this time—they race up and into the hall of Rose House.
28
Gutted
Pain. Sorrow. Anger. And that staleness Charlotte smelled from afar earlier that morning…
The smells hit Charlotte before the sight of Rose House really sinks in. The reception hall itself hardly has need for a door when the wall itself is split down the middle. Claw marks dig deep in the floorboards and walls. Glass debris sparkles all over the front half of the hall floor, making Charlotte instinctively curl her bare toes. A chunk of the staircase has been ripped away, but there’s still enough along the wall for a daring—or stupid—soul to venture a climb up. The gilded dining room is as pristine as ever. Liam’s paintings are gone, but the stained-glass arches look untouched. Huh. You’d think Orna would relish smashing those into smithereens.
The parlor certainly tells such a story.
Every vase of herbs is shattered. Table and chairs all smashed. Bits of china from the tea set are embedded into the ceiling and the wood of the floor. Claw marks run through the walls and ceiling, through the broken door into the music room. The glass on the floor reflects the midday sun and makes it even harder to see beyond into the music room, where a trapped breeze cyclones music sheets a few feet in the air before letting them float gently back to the floor. Charlotte can just make out one carved claw leg of the beautiful cocked
hat grand piano.
The cellar door clicks shut behind Keller, and he joins them beneath the blue arch. “The dining room’s still decent, if you want to sit in there. Not that I care to. Sneeze in that place and you’ll break something.”
“Ha!” Charlotte laughs again before she can help herself. “I mean, I thought that, too. How the hell did Pretty Princess room survive Lady Orna’s rampage?”
Liam picks up a piece of torn canvas off the floor. A bit of mountain, a bit of lightning. Too broken even for memory. “Because that’s where she and I spent most of our time together.” He tosses the canvas into the parlor’s cold grate. “I’m thirsty.” They walk through the reception hall toward the green-rosed arch marking entry to the kitchen.
The counters, cupboards, appliances, all smashed.
“Ar son Dé,” Liam mutters through gritted teeth.
Charlotte peers round over his shoulder. “Maybe the House can make a hot plate.”
“And I thought the Pits had swallowed you whole,” a jovial voice booms.
The kitchen table stands, whole and polished, in a cleared space of floor. With the wall between kitchen and herbarium smashed, the stained-glass window of the land Cairine shines with a sacred fairytale glow amongst the splintered beams, thrown plants, shards of glass, and two blackly calm visages.
Liam flexes his fists only once. “Hello, Father. Arlen.”
You must hide Captain’s gift! The Voice steadies Charlotte’s legs and sets her lungs working. Charlotte didn’t even know she’d stopped breathing.
The present-day Lord Bearnard Artair bears some resemblance to the figure Charlotte witnessed in Liam’s memory. He is shorter than Arlen and Liam, his body still rough and stocky, only now beneath a tailored pinstripe suit. His flaxen hair has greyed. But his face shows more wear than anything else: the crescent bags beneath his eyes, the slight jowls beneath his cheekbones. A jagged scar runs down his right cheek. A muscle above the scar twitches a little.
Opposite Lord Artair, with legs crossed to the side and hands folded in the lap, sits Arlen. His eyes slide between brothers with a heartbeat’s pause on Charlotte (she hopes) behind them. “Liam. Keller.”
Charlotte slips a couple steps backwards, untying the red eel leather belt as she goes. Keller starts to turn his head, but Liam butts him into the kitchen with his shoulder. “My brother approaches his prime with ease. Did you see his blood dagger, Arlen? Come, Keller, at least hold it for my old teacher. I’m sure he’d be impressed.”
Back near the basement door, Charlotte shout-thinks, House, where can I hide this?
She can hear Lord Artair tisk, say, “The state of you, boy.” Keller says something on Liam’s behalf— “no seamstresses underground, you know.” Lord Artair goes on, “Well, Orna certainly didn’t overfeed you.”
There! A small cupboard appears at eye level next to the basement door. Charlotte yanks it open, stuffs the bone knife and belt inside, and slams it shut just as Keller says, “And that’s not all I found. The human these commoners talked about, the one that woke Liam up—she’s here, too. Right—”
Charlotte leans against the cupboard door just as Keller pops into view.
“What are you doing back there?” he asks as he unzips his coat. He wears a tight-fitting blue t-shirt with some sort of molecule graphic across his chest.
Charlotte shrugs and walks back towards the kitchen. The cupboard is gone.
Keller looks at her waist. “Where—”
“Where what? My face is up here.” She picks up a chair with a broken back but stable seat, plunks it down in front of Liam—Don’t look at him, Charlie, be the smartass who needs no one and knows no one—and sits herself down with crossed arms. “Name’s Charlotte. Traded places with my sister so she wouldn’t die. And you are?”
Lord Artair slowly pulls out a gold flask from his coat pocket. “You know, I do miss the days of good manners. England was the seat of bloody fine manners for a time. King Henry the....” He takes a swig, holds it out to Arlen. Arlen does not take it. “Which Henry was it?”
Arlen stares. “The Eighth,” he says quietly.
“Yeees.” Lord Artair chuckles and takes another swig. A wisp of lavender escapes the flask before he seals it. “Blast this distance. It’ll be hours before they come with—oops!” He presses his hand to his pursed lips. “I mustn’t spoil the surprise.” He and Keller both chuckle at that.
Rose House seems to shift beneath Charlotte’s feet. A stench of dread wafts from Liam, still stiff and silent behind her. “You never said your name.” She adds a spit bubble for a pop of a period, just like her sister would do with bubble gum.
The chuckle dies on Lord Artair’s lips and in his eyes. Yet the corners of his lips remain turned up with a sick sort of glee. Jeez, Santa Claus to psycho in two seconds flat. “I, human, am Liam’s father, Lord Bearnard Artair. And you will do well to show some respect, lest I find you a fitter meal than what is being served later this day.” His frog-like eyes stare, unblinking, at Charlotte’s face and through it. She can feel him trying to page through her mind, thumbs all licked up and gross.
He’s sizing you up, the Voice says.
Of course he is, for some dinner platter. “Sure thing.” Charlotte points a finger pistol, clicks a trigger noise in her mouth, then whirls herself and the chair up. “So, with your lord’s permission, Liam and I should be cleaning all this of bad magic and enemy innards off. Get all presentable’n’shit.”
“‘Presentable ‘n’ shit.’ You are a fright.” Lord Artair leans back and pats his bowl-full-of-jelly belly. A single ring adorns his hand, just as it did in Liam’s memory, its stone a dark, dark crimson.
The crimson flashes, and a note, low and sad, bleeds into the room. Reaches for Charlotte.
The note wraps itself around her neck like invisible fingers. Squeeze.
But Charlotte holds, her teeth grinding, darkness infringing upon her vision. The broken chair may shake in her hand, the muscles in her cheeks may twitch, but she matches his glare and holds still. Hell, she will pass out standing up if she must.
The note begins to swell.
Liam is looking at her. Charlotte can feel the warmth of him, the wings she knows are trapped inside him with this…ring’s note, and this…thing of a father sitting there. She hears his breath quicken, deepen, then at last he speaks, “I owe this human my life, Father. Is the House of Artair so ungrateful?” China and wood crunch beneath Keller’s shoes as he slowly positions himself behind Charlotte and Liam. “Or is my life worth so little?”
The note dies. Charlotte staggers back into Keller. He braces her against his chest, his lips warm against her ear. “All right?” he whispers. Charlotte nods him off. The heat in his breath sends a flush of blood up her neck and into her cheeks.
Lord Artair changes his posture to face Arlen with hands folded on the table. “Keller, escort this human away, will you? Lady Artair has less patience than I.”
With as much casualness as she can muster, Charlotte tosses her hair, says, “Later, Liam,” and lobs the broken chair out of the way.
“Understand, girl.”
She turns.
Lord Artair’s face twists towards her, the putty of skin around his eyes shining with sweat. “Understand I do not kill you now out of gratitude for awakening my son. Princeborns are not known for their kindness.” He turns back to Arlen. “Are they?”
Arlen says nothing. He simply looks at Charlotte, the mischief in his eyes…unsettling. Just like Rose House, holding its breath as a child in a cramped space during hide-and-seek, needing to move but not sure how without giving herself away.
“Need this?” Keller asks, a hotplate in his hand.
Charlotte glances over her shoulder. Liam’s blood dagger sits useless in its sheath on his back, the leather harness black and bloodied. Liam’s torso still bruised, scarred, splattered with oily grit.
Liam’s still shaking.
Say something, Liam. Get yourself out of the
re. “Need what?” she asks Keller.
“It was on your chair,” he says.
Charlotte shakes her head and walks out. Keller studies the hot plate hard for a moment, then tosses it onto the floor and follows.
29
Yes, Mother
Dozens of points prick the thick calluses of Liam’s feet. There must be splinters galore beneath him. Broken plates and cups. Jars, certainly. And this doesn’t include the modern additions Arlen favored after studying Charlotte’s phone for advances in culinary devices.
His father waits until Charlotte and Keller’s footsteps fade into Rose House. Where would they go—the library? Charlotte’s quarters? Keller’s easy wit and smile, the way he could speak with Charlotte about her music like he understood her, the knave, the…
“Now, where have you been, boy? The commoners above speak such riddled accounts. The human’s surely not to be trusted. And your once-teacher seems to have lost his tongue.” Lord Artair drums a little rat-a-tat-tat on the table with his fingers. “Are all residents of River Vine now accounted for? Or should I be checking the grounds for more? Along the lakeshore,” he gives Arlen a sidelong look, “perhaps?”
Arlen hasn’t moved, not once, through this whole exchange. His wrinkles are all but gone, his hair more pepper than salt. Opposite Lord Artair, Arlen brims with a silent, youthful power. And he wastes none of it on Liam’s father.
Liam looks down upon his own wine-hued skin, at the debris around his toes. “Orna’s followers killed one borderland child and kidnapped another. She had to be stopped before the borderland covenant was frayed beyond repair. Her resources, they were unexpected.” He stands with legs slightly spread, his hands folded at the small of his back. “A result of her cannibalism, I believe.”