“It is, at that.” Ramona reached forward and bumped her glass against Margaret’s empty tumbler. “Father’s throne holds no seduction, but I have my own aspirations.”
Forgetting the russet floor, Margaret met Ramona’s eyes and pursed her lips for a moment. What would those aspirations be? When she spoke, it was with care, “I had hoped you could protect the Empire from Amihan.”
“Plague Dog?” Ramona chuckled, finishing her own drink, “Perhaps you’re the one who needs to save her from herself. She always looked up to you.”
“Ha!” Margaret barked, a loud yelp that snapped the tavern denizens out of their sorrowful stupor, back to their games and conversations, “She’s too much like my mother, with none of her kinder traits. She’s a daddy’s girl.”
Ramona lowered her voice to whisper, “You worried about me getting pregnant? Amy is the one who had a child. Before she left on father’s southern campaign. I helped her find an adoptive mother for the boy.”
Margaret’s jaw lowered and she was too stunned to reply. The information sobered her for a moment, and she wanted to answer, a thousand things running through her mind.
I’d have raised her son. Amihan simply walked away from her own flesh and blood?
Margaret’s simmering rage was caught in a quivering moment of confusion. A chill cut across the room, twisting at humid air. It was as though a crystal goblet hit the floor of the fishmonger tavern, spilling shrill contents of magic everywhere. Margaret could see it in Ramona’s eyes. Her lashes fluttered, then pupils dilated, darting around the room.
Turning in her chair, Margaret looped an elbow over the misshapen wood, exhaling long and slow as she unpackaged all her senses and focused on control. It was one thing to flood a room with sorrow or wistful dreams, it was another to expose strangers to the rage that Margaret wanted to express.
Focused on her breathing, regaining her senses, Margaret nearly missed the cloaked figure who had entered the tavern, waving off a waitress with sun bleached dreadlocks.
“We have company.”
Ramona’s voice dropped, throaty and low, her defenses locking tight, then evaporating in the rapidly cooling air. They were barriers, quiet ones, unseen to anyone around them.
Margaret merely nodded, erecting her own subtle boundaries. The cloaked figure was likely a woman, wide in the hips, chest, and shoulders, but she carried herself with willful grace, not unlike the stride of Eric Owens. Beyond her own eyes, parts of Margaret slithered across the room, slipping into the mind of each of the tavern denizens, waitresses, barkeep, even a dishmaid. She was everywhere at once. In this broad connection, their lives blurred together, and dreams became an ugly gray pallet.
Each one of them ceased their drinking, cards falling impotently out of their fingers, sliding across tables, bets ruined. Swayed to Margaret’s will, a hundred fingers tickling their minds, wrapped around vertebrae, nervous systems, kissing souls, shushing them to sleep. With one blink of her eyes, one thought, Margaret could set them against each other with primal terror and bloody-minded greed. Quiet, all who kept company in the tavern watched the woman tossing back her hood of crisp jet.
“Lady Mayhem.”
The cloak was covered in white flecks. The woman’s face was pudgy, with a wide jawline and chin that curved slowly down into her neck. She had deep set eyes, black as ink and long lashes, upon which more ivory powder sat.
I know you, Margaret realized, her inebriation pressed back to quiet recesses of her mind. Aurora Owens, The Second, eldest Owens child, and one-time heir.
“The other Lady Owens.” Margaret nodded, lips suddenly dry and mouth full of cotton.
“May I seat myself?” Aurora’s voice was clear, like her brother’s, biting down on her syllables, no hint of lazy tongue, or slang in her vernacular.
She burns like salt.
“Any member of the Owens family is welcome at my table,” Margaret replied, attempting to hide her own dingy accent, just as she’d attempted with Aurora’s younger brother. “Ramona, please meet Lady Owens, The Second.”
A dusty haze of chalk swept over their table, and Margaret did not release the patrons of the tavern, their eyes glazed, hands lethargic, absent desire.
Aurora scoffed from her sternum, “I no longer take my mother’s name. You may regard me as Lady Cuttersark.”
Lady Cuttersark stepped past Margaret and jerked free an empty chair with unexpected aggression. Ramona gestured with her chin, her own voice taking on airs of court, a form of speech that Margaret could only emulate unsuccessfully, “Magnate of Modus Vivendi, I believe?”
Aurora nodded to Ramona, fingers steepled, as she sat. Her cuticles were dried and torn, her long nails cleanly shorn despite a layer of abrasion that crossed them. Margaret licked her lips, her tongue like sandpaper.
What the hell are you? You didn’t bite like this the day we first met.
“Modus Vivendi was my father’s ambition, an ambition I shared. They look to me now for leadership, and I avow myself as such.”
“What circumstance blesses us with your company, Magnate Cuttersark?” Ramona chirped in reply, but Aurora ignored the younger woman, eyes rolling across the table and falling on Margaret like a great boulder sent to survey a hillside. She drew up one leg to cross the other, cloak falling away to reveal a black dress of lace and lacquered wicker, coated in pale talcum.
“Lady Mayhem, do you normally avail yourself an Alviso gutter whore, or have you been up to visit The Beast?”
Aurora’s words tasted like spoiled fruit. If she wished to break the rules of polite society, Margaret would meet her on equal ground, “Maybe you should speak to the lead battlewitch of the Antecedent Empire as something other than an Alviso gutter whore?” Margaret’s voice turned to a growl as she let slip venom. “If we were men, we could measure our dicks right now. I can promise you, mine is longer than yours.”
Ramona burst out laughing with that final remark and reached to pour herself another finger of whiskey.
Aurora did an excellent job not reacting, “As eloquent as ever, Lady Mayhem,” she replied at last.
Margaret relaxed, if only for the sake of Aurora’s pride, and did her very best to mimic the immaculate court speech of her table companions, “Yes, Lady Lopez and I graced The Beast with our lustrous…” Margaret clenched her jaw, searching for a word and failing, “...grace.”
Aurora looked away, running her tongue across her teeth. It was sallow and white like some kind of albino slug. Margaret had to fight herself to not recoil in revulsion.
“Modus Vivendi take care to watch and listen to the world around us. San Francisco is a key hub, a port among ports, and we make certain it's safety. In this, you would not be surprised that we heard The Beast screech in slumber.”
So, that’s what you’re after, Margaret thought, scolding herself for not realizing sooner, “The Beast is property of my family, Lady Cuttersark. What interest do you have?”
Aurora rolled her eyes, “Yes, yes, House Owens capitulated to the Antecedent Empire, The Beast is your right, your property. Do you think I actually care?”
Well, yes, actually, “If I misunderstand, enlighten me.” Margaret bit out in return.
“My father understood that the world of states and maps had come to an end with the Collapse. The only power in this world is magic. Magic doesn’t serve petty tyrants like Aurora Owens or Alexander Lopez. They serve magic. Do you really think I care who owns the land on which The Beast sleeps?” It was only now that Margaret could see the old Owens woman in her daughter. Her spine straightened as she spoke. “We know you whispered to The Beast.”
Okay, now I’m interested.
“Why forbid it?”
Aurora’s lower jaw jutted forward as she spoke, “The Beast is the grave of Maggi Lopez, her spirit exists somewhere in that thing. It’s the will of ancient power. A will that can awake as readily as it can sleep.”
Ramona leaned back, arms crossed, as she spoke, “It’s not
dead?”
“Far from it, Lady Lopez,” Aurora never looked at the younger woman. Margaret was favored wholly by her grim look, “The Beast is alive and well, no matter how quiet it seems. If that monster walked across the city, it would be devastating. If it stepped deeper into the bay, the displacement of water would drown thousands.”
Margaret laughed despite herself, running a finger across the table, painting an arrow in the pale film that had accompanied Aurora Cuttersark. “You thought we were here to take command of that thing? How do you know that’s even possible?”
Aurora seemed annoyed, working her jaw side to side with frustration. She sighed, paused several seconds, looking between Ramona and Margaret before answering, “Because, I once tried to master The Beast, when Alexander’s army crossed the Sierra Nevada.”
Margaret was satisfied now. Aurora had doffed her pride and humbled herself as much as a noble child could. It was all the victory that Margaret craved.
“Poor Lady Cuttersark,” Margaret looked over to Ramona, glee on her lips, “she wonders what it is that an Antecedent whore like me possesses, which she does not.”
Aurora Cuttersark closed her eyes, accepting the slap in the face, knowing full well she’d earned it. “What do you possess that I do not?”
This was all too much for an inebriated Margaret. Her stomach boiled for a second, and she fought off a wave nausea. She had known a hundred people like Aurora Cuttersark in her life, all of them looking down on her, including her brother. The sweet taste of redress had never lessened over decades.
“Why the fuck would I would tell you, Cuttersark?”
4:08am January 18th, 39 Veilfall
San Francisco, California
In her small fingers, Margaret held the eye that does not see.
It was such a diminutive thing, so simple, a glass stone cast in creams, blues and black, looking back at her. There were no ghosts, no stories, nothing. It was a quiet, serene artifact that Margaret would have assumed worthless, had gods and noble witches alike not sought its possession.
Margaret closed the eye in her right palm and turned to the man on a barstool next to her. He was wide in the shoulders with upper arms wrapped in vines of thick sinew and muscle. He smelled like cigars and gunpowder and hummed with aggression.
“I’m not familiar with the Maul,” Further intoxicated, Margaret’s lips were numb, and she lisped through syllables with imagined ease.
The man looked up from his glass tankard, warm froth at the edge, “You didn’t seem that interested b’fore. You just stared at’cha glass eye.”
He favored her with a glance, a stream of beer glistened at his mouth. Under his low brows were two tiny eyes that fumed in his skull, angry for the sake of anger. Margaret liked that anger, that concrete rage. It was an intoxicant, a proxy expression of things she could rarely emote. Absorbing that enmity was as freeing, liberating, as the alcohol that saturated her blood.
“Jealous, Sammy?” Margaret asked, reaching down into her cleavage to hide the eye.
“Naw,” the big man with wide shoulders scoffed, “Just didn’t seem like you cared.”
Returning to the Occidental, Ramona had called the evening short after the departure of Lady Cuttersark. Margaret had accepted this and was even grateful. It gave her a chance to skulk at the edges of San Francisco’s peregrine vulnerabilities. Each step told a new tale of the city’s nature, and Margaret would have been a poor conqueror to leave well enough alone. Early in the morning hours many taverns and bars kept their doors open, brothels buzzed and street whores plied their trade under stuttering light as storefronts readied for the morning business.
Margaret had crossed perhaps a half mile before she found The Metal Hammer. Like the fishmonger tavern, this was a narrow haunt, bent up and thrust between two larger structures. The sign outside was etched aluminum, weathered and bent, hanging from chains thicker than required. Inside was a long hallway, covered in antique photography, stained and faded under yellow plastic. Stools lined the rail bar, and two older men tended drinks, colorful bottles scattered about them, lining dirty and cracked mirrors, a century unkept.
I don’t care, Margaret thought, watching her reflection shift in scuffed glass. She’d washed off much of the grit and oil from her face, but she didn’t present anything more than a common peasant.
“Tell me.”
The words flowed free, and in those words were hooks that dangled above Sammy, bounds of energy and lust, intended to lure and control. Sammy shrugged, took a chug off his beer, then looked down at Margaret, “You ain’t no Owens daughter. The Maul was wance pride a’ the Owens military. Vanguard! We was always on a’ front lines, each of us born an’ bred for war.”
Margaret ran her nails up Sammy’s back, over his cotton tunic, dyed a deep shade of green. When she reached his neck, she lay fingertips into his flesh and slid her hand into his shortly shorn hair. His skin was sticky with old sweat and maybe a little grease.
Sammy is just a boy, no older than thirteen. He was always big for his age, and when it was time to spar an older child, he’d been eager to try his skill against a more experienced combatant. The brawl didn’t last long, and Sammy was brutal. His opponent got a few good hits in, but the fight was over quickly, and Sammy was beating his face so savagely that he could have drowned in the warm copper of fresh blood.
“Mmm,” Margaret’s moan was audible. She caught her breath and continued to explore the creases in Sammy’s neck and his lumpy skull with bare fingers, “You’re right, I’m no Owens daughter. I came west with the Antecedents.”
Sammy threw his head back and hacked up phlegm, spitting it across the counter, onto the floor behind the bar. The two older men who tended drinks either didn’t notice or wished to make no quarrel with Sammy.
“Fuck Antecedents. They’s just guests, the Maul’ll drop on them someday.”
Give me all your anger, Margaret stood up from her stool, left foot braced on a rung, her other on the rail. Standing off the ground, Margaret was just tall enough to press her lips into Sammy’s big neck. She could taste the blood on his teeth in childhood memories, burrowed so deep in him now that no nerve twitched without her approval. He was too drunk to realize that a witch ensnared him
“They’re not so bad, Antecedents. You’ll learn to love them, to kneel for them.”
Give me all your anger!
Sammy did. He twisted on his stool, a hundred stones pressing down, his rage was no less tangible than the bar or tankards.
Sammy’s heavy hand reached out for the small woman, dirty behind the ears. She smelled like grease and carbon, and it titillated him. He wanted to break her neck, but not so much as he wanted to fuck her, fuck her mouth closed, fuck the disrespect out of her. He grabbed her throat, pressing her spine to his palm, constricting her breath, slowing her blood flow. If he could just strike her with the glass tankard, right across her skull, that would shut her smart mouth, teach her to come to an Owens bar and talk about kneeling for Antecedents.
Margaret tugged at her hooks, all her threads deep under his skin. He was a ponderous creature, he never felt the tickle of her needles, never imagined the web she was weaving around him. His left hand released the beer and slammed down onto the sticky bartop. His right hand clutched her throat, tightening around her neck just as hard as he wanted to.
Just as hard as she wanted him to.
Margaret bared her crooked teeth, snarling at Sammy, inhaling desperately for whatever air she could pull through her compressed windpipe. Adrenaline chattered in her blood, faster than the alcohol, lifting her away from the marrow of all responsibility.
“It's too bad the 3rd Army never met your Maul,” Margaret rasped, her voice a squeak, each syllable and vowel forced. She could lighten his grip, but it would bore her, “My boys would have eaten you alive.”
No part of Sammy held the reins, he was angry beyond imagining. For Margaret it tasted like she was drinking the sun and swimming naked in moist, humi
d grasses of a summer field, drunk on the odor of deep, rich soil. There was no drug in existence that could compare to that spiraling lust, no whiskey sweet enough, nothing so wicked and provocative. This was where Margaret lived, in the raging human mind. This was between her and Sammy, and when she was done with him, they’d both have taken something they desired.
Rather than allowing Sammy to land endless closed fist impacts on her face, Margaret released the tension in his hands and allowed him to slap her, once, twice, even three times. She was choking on her own spittle and was only content when he split her lip. The blood in his mind became a tangible thing in her mouth. She didn’t allow him to smash her skull into the bar, instead Sammy found himself shoving away the barstools and hammering into her back with his elbow. Her torso was pressed down, forcing her into the bar top, pressing her breasts painfully against ribs. She gasped at air for the first time in many minutes. Her vision was a haze, she’d allowed him to choke her to the edge of blacking out.
She didn’t care what the half-awake denizens of the bar thought. They were no more interesting than crabgrass. This was her private world and if anyone cared to watch, or walk away, that was their own business.
Sammy pressed Margaret’s face down into the bar. It smelled pungent like alcohol and vomit, a million jumbled memories sparked and sputtered around her, and she lost herself as Sammy ripped into her clothes and undergarments. She forgot her safety for a few seconds; he hurt her more meaningfully now, his nails digging into her flesh and carving out bloody grooves.
Margaret allowed Sammy to fuck her with all the hate he could muster. For long minutes she was the personification of everything he truly loathed. She was the Antecedent Empire, she was Alexander Lopez. She was the girl that broke his heart when he was seventeen years old, and the wife that cheated on him. The wife he loved too much to harm for that infraction, the wife he still loved. She was even Aurora Owens, the liege he’d sworn himself to as a child who betrayed his trust with surrender.
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