Frita and Kali both side-glanced to Quintessa, who bellowed “Who was that bitch that came to your bedside, broke into my palace – my palace – and betrayed our town? Was it you?” She pointed at Elissa.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw she lowered her head in deference.
“Quintessa,” said Frita, “we will deal with her next.”
“No,” continued Calix. “At least she says it wasn’t, and I believe her. I don’t remember anyone coming to see me, except Whisper, and you.” He held Quintessa’s stare for about five seconds, and then bowed his own head. “I just saw my chance and ran, your Graces.”
“Straight into this bitch’s arms. How sweet.”
“She heard I–”
“Enough!” Quintessa stomped her sceptre. “I want to hear from her now.”
“Judgement!” called Frita, stomping her own staff.
“No wrongdoing,” said Kali – stomp.
“No wrongdoing,” said Frita – stomp.
There was a momentary silence before Quintessa said, “No wrongdoing.” And there was a little more silence as they waited for the ensuing stomp that never came.
“Okay, then,” said Frita. “No wrongdoing it is. You are free to leave.”
“I will be listening to your radio interviews with interest,” said Kali.
“Thank you,” said Calix, walking backwards. He felt Elissa’s hand tap his shoulder as she took his place.
“State your name,” called the usher.
“Elissa, of the bloodline of Kali.”
“Ah, one of mine.”
Elissa bowed in Kali’s direction. “Not for a few generations, your Grace.”
“Which of my sons was your great, great, grandfather then?”
“I believe it was Geralt, son of Kali, your Grace.”
“Geralt? Ah,” she smiled. She stood and stepped gracefully down from the throne and crossed around sundown with her long green gown, speckled with jewels, flowing behind her.
She approached the two of them; maybe it was the poise, maybe it was the gown or the glittering make-up or the way she smiled easily, but Calix was a little awe-struck by her suddenly near presence. So awestruck, he momentarily failed to compute the conversation they were having.
Kali placed her hands on Elissa’s cheeks and kissed her forehead. “I see my son in you. He was an easy birth. Would you believe me if I said that the deaths of my sons are sometimes more difficult to bear, than the deaths of my daughters?”
“I would not question it, your Grace.”
“Grace... Grandmother,” Kali’s eyes welled with tears. “I am grandmother to at least a third of this town, so many that I do not know, and never will.” She kissed Elissa on each cheek and turned away.
“Have we had enough of this family reunion now?” said Quintessa.
What the? Calix fixed his eyes on Kali, scoping every wrinkle and frown line, searching for imposters of white or grey among the brown hairs. She can’t be more than thirty-five. How is she Elissa’s great, great, great, whatever, grandmother?
“We may proceed,” said Kali, retaking her seat.
“What were you doing in my palace?”
Elissa stood still with her hands behind her back. Her fingers rubbed together as she spoke. “That was not me, your Grace. I was there, of course, earlier that day, to see you.”
Quintessa stood. “The perfect opportunity to plan an intrusion.”
“I will admit that I did want to see Calix, your Grace.” She stood rigid. Even her fingers still now. “I just wanted to see how he was doing. But after your reassurances I lost the need.”
“Is that so?” Quintessa stepped down to the floor and began pacing across the far perimeter. “Did we not have a fight?” As she paced, her sceptre went tap... tap... tap.
“We had a heated discussion, I would say, your Grace.”
“You were angry. You would have wanted to get back at me. You left my presence, found out what you needed to know, and decided to come back later to ‘rescue’ the stranger to get back at me.” Quintessa side-smiled.
“With all respect, your Grace. Why would I risk my place of work? You threatened to burn down The Crank. That place is my home from home, and all my friends work and visit there. As you know, I take special care of the brothers. And when one of them stops coming to The Crank, I’ll go visit them in their place, give them comfort. So I would never do anything to put them in danger.” Elissa’s fingers were crossed behind her back.
“Is this true?” asked Frita.
“Yes it’s true! She was insolent! I threatened her out of anger! She would have known it was a false pretence.”
Kali rose again from her throne. “Quintessa, my dearest, it is not for us to know for one-hundred percent assuredness what someone could or could not think.”
She turned to face the other queens.
“You have acted out before, Quintessa,” said Frita. “It is not unreasonable to think that this girl would have been frightened by your threat.”
“Oh, come on. It’s been years since I’ve broken code.”
Kali took to the floor. “There was that incident with Ryian.”
“I am not on trial here!” STOMP!
“No, you’re not.” Kali placed a kiss on Quintessa’s cheek. “Let us sit and deliver.”
With a raised chin, Quintessa returned to her place, while Kali returned to hers.
“Judgement!” said Frita.
“Guilty,” said Quintessa, sending the loudest thud yet.
“No wrongdoing,” said Kali.
“No wrongdoing,” said Frita.
***
Whisper sat outside the chamber, knees and feet together, hands tucked between her thighs. She’d managed about an hour of sleep, through simple exhaustion: she kept running events through her mind and wondering what she had done wrong. Looking in the mirror and blaming herself, wondering how the stranger – Calix – could have deceived her. What was wrong with her? She stared at her reflection in the glass opposite, superimposed over the town and the distant plains, when the doors to the chamber opened.
Out stepped Calix and Elissa and her heart began to pound. She turned her head – Talk to him, tell him what a bastard he is – but she couldn’t. She felt the shame of someone who had exposed herself, even opened her legs for him, and been rejected.
“Whisper,” he said.
She felt her face go red.
He walked around to her side so he couldn’t be ignored, and knelt down next to her. “I’m sorry I tricked you.”
Tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
“Do you forgive me?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes. He wobbled on his haunches and had to put his hands down to keep steady.
“I had to escape. I didn’t know if I would be safe in the tower if you – if Quintessa – knew the truth. You understand, right? It’s nothing against you. Thank you for looking after me.”
Knowing she would be next to be called, she gave him her other cheek and stood. As she opened the door, she said “You’ve ruined my life,” and entered the chamber. The door closed with a satisfying thud behind her.
Let him live with that.
Sundown looked inviting ahead. A few steps and it could be all over.
“Come forth,” said the usher.
The Queens were murmuring when she stepped down to the floor, and then a hush fell upon them, and their gaze fell upon her. She felt weighed by it – even if she intended to drop through sundown she didn’t know if her feet would allow her to move.
The voice behind said “State your name.”
“Whisper of the bloodline of Quintessa,” she said, keeping her gaze lowered to the floor.
Immediately, her Grace, her mother, stood and stepped down to the floor. She could hear the clacking of her heels. “Whisper, my child. You have failed me, and you have failed our house.” Those heels and legs came into view as Whisper fought to ke
ep the tears out of her eyes.
“Tell me something useful. That woman out there with Calix – was it her who visited with him that night? Gilda was of no use to me.”
She bit her lip. She could lie and say it was – maybe that would get her a reprieve and save her from whatever fate was coming. Didn’t she deserve to be punished though? She had failed in her task – one of the upmost importance.
“I could not say for sure, your Grace. The light was dim and she hid her face from me, and she wore a scarf.”
“Are you good for anything?”
“I am sorry, your Grace.”
Quintessa returned to her throne, sitting down with a stomp.
“This is a matter for Quintessa,” said Frita. “Whisper – should you wish to say a few words, now is the time. Otherwise, Quintessa will pass judgement.”
“No, your Grace.”
“Very well. Judgement!”
This is it, she thought. Her grandmother would be disappointed – she’d been the one to vouch for her. She was a train-girl herself a few years ago, now suffering from arthritis and relegated to the care home in the Northern District. Whisper was meant to fill the void that her mother had left when she died. To continue the tradition. And now it was all over. What man would want her now? One of the brothers? She thought of her poor father, who had killed himself after her mother’s accident, strangling the life from his lungs with a noose rung from one of the trees in the plaza. She remembered her grandmother opening the door to their house as the day was closing in. All the appliances were shot because she’d been too young to turn off everything that relied on electricity, and the alarm had sounded, and she’d called and cried for her father but he didn’t come home, and then the radio ceased and the monitor died and the fan stopped blowing cold air down from the corner of the room. It had become an oven by the time the front door opened. She’d rushed to it, falling unexpectedly into her grandmother’s arms instead of her father’s. The memory slammed into her, and just as the verdict was about to be rung, she stepped forward.
“You are excommunicated from our house.”
She took another step, and then a firm hand gripped her shoulder. It was immovable, and she was too weak to fight it. Sundown became smaller as she was lead away.
***
A girl with a red face and tears streaking her makeup was paraded past Rohen as he entered the walkway. A familiar sight now – the walkway, that was – yet it still unnerved him. It was unnatural. Walking on glass like this. But people did it, every day. It bugged him out being so close to the three unnatural ones. It was like they got under his skin and made it crawl right up until he got home and could lie down somewhere comfortable.
What had he done wrong today, though? Probably that confrontation at the pool. Was it not enough to cold-knee him in the balls and shame him in front of everyone, she had to report the incident to the chamber too?
At the entrance waited an usher, who looked like she really didn’t give a shit, and he flashed her a smile-cum-grimace as his leg seized up slightly.
“This way,” she said, opening the door. “Step up to the floor.”
There they were, the freaks. He supposed his biggest problem (not for him, but for others) was that he had seemingly broken the spell of reverence that these three cast across the whole town. From birth almost, they were taught about the three houses of Frita, Quintessa and Kali, and their immortality. As far as he was concerned, they were nothing more than spiders who had weaved their web of brick and mortar, with the help of Neon City, and who feasted on anyone caught out by it. What kind of life was it anyway? The daily adventures of the insane. For they had to be, not aging or dying like the rest of them; watching generation after generation of their children die.
When he looked at Frita, he wondered if she remembered him and the orgy she had arranged for half-a-dozen of his brothers. Did her talents include deciphering the faces of clones? He doubted it. She might know him as the one who feigned illness to escape to the bathroom. Most likely she had been too wrapped up in the show to notice. Maybe she had been made pregnant that day.
“Which one are you again?” asked Kali.
“Rohen, the seventeenth, your Grace.”
She glanced down at his leg. “Of course. In trouble again so soon?”
“I don’t know, your Grace.”
“We’ve received reports of an altercation,” said Frita, “whereby you did not do as you were instructed. From Hanna, of the bloodline of Quintessa, a lifeguard at the pool. Do you remember the incident?”
“No, no I don’t, your Grace.”
“You do not remember the incident which happened only yesterday?”
“No,” he had heard Calix’s broadcast, and the ensuing rumours. “Maybe it’s this amnesia that’s been going around.”
Frita stomped her staff, and Rohen felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. It knocked him forward, and then because he didn’t have time to ready his leg, he fell down to his knees, just a few feet from sundown.
“Did that knock some memory back into place?”
He looked up. He could get up, but why bother. This was his rightful place, right? He looked from Kali, to Frita, and then to Quintessa, who was sat silent and still, staring into the middleground.
Kali stomped her staff. “You were asked a question, seventeenth Rohen.”
“Maybe that can be your punishment,” said Frita. “A reminder that there have been many before you, and there will be many after you. Like Gentle Joe, so-be-it Rohen Number Seventeen.”
“He is a multiple feloner,” yawned Quintessa. “We need to do something to straighten him out.”
Actual punishment? he thought. “Please forgive me, your Graces. I will remain humbled at your feet until you see it fit to release me.” He kept his head down, staring at the mosaic point of a sunray.
“Do you recall?” asked Kali.
“I do. I had been stuck in my shack in the south for days, running out of water, and with no one to look after me.”
“What does this have to do with the incident?” asked Frita.
“Your Grace, if you will forgive me again. I am outlining the causal factors of my misdemeanour, so that you will not think too harshly of me.”
“Proceed,” said Kali.
“Thank you, your Grace. Finally, I had no choice but to try and get water, and a shower, but my leg would only get me so far as my neighbour. I gave him a credit and he got me a rickshaw. I then went straight to the pool, as I had been hankering for it. Day-dreaming about it. And when the lifeguard asked me to move I allowed myself to get angry, for which I apologise.”
Frita rose from the throne and stepped down to the floor. “You said, correct me if I’m wrong, ‘I can smell your cunt from under the water.’”
He looked at her feet, not daring to look up. “It was a rash choice of words in response to her telling me that I stank. I had not showered for days, your Grace.”
Frita kneeled before him, smelling nothing like chlorine or body odour or anything nasty he could ever have conjured. He couldn’t believe it, but he actually began to shake a little from her presence. He felt her, right there, her head above his, giving him a sniff.
“You’ve since showered, at least.”
“I would not disgrace you like that, your Grace.”
Frita hummed and stood, and turned. He watched her bare feet tiptoe back to their seat. Those legs – the girl, Nya, was no doubt of the bloodline of Frita. Maybe even her daughter. Could he ask? As much as he wanted to, he could guess how bad that might turn out.
“We have heard Hanna’s account. And we have heard yours. Judgement!” Stomp.
“Guilty of disrespecting the houses,” said Quintessa.
And the other two concurred.
“In light of the causes,” said Kali. “I propose the retraining program, maybe a few weeks this time. If you had known your place, you would not have lashed out like that. Any other proposals?”
“No
ne here,” said Frita.
“None here,” said Quintessa. “Except one. He must be joined by the one named Calix. If this stranger is to remain, he must come to love us too.”
Frita and Kali agreed.
“So it is,” stomped Quintessa. “Rohen Number Seventeen, you are free to go. Please register for training with the chamber administration, and take Calix his notice.”
Edic
t
He’d already had enough of the sun: in the shade of the rooftop awning, the heat licked around the edges of the fabric and steamed them all. Elissa and Avery were mildly damp on their foreheads, but Calix was wet through. The humidity was worse than anything Sanctum or the crawler had thrown at him, even from within the Agridome. It took people here an entire lifetime to get used to it, something he’d never have. He could see himself at fifty still twisting the sweat from his clothes.
Not a prophecy he intended to fulfil.
His last twenty-four hours had been spent sleeping (Avery had a spare bed) and giving his hosts the full story. Avery, he noticed, was smart, and always had something to say. At the moment he sat in his recliner absorbing and turning over everything he’d just been told, and would probably have a comment to make before long.
Elissa offered him a bottle of water and said, “Drink up. We don’t want you getting sunstroke again.”
Calix drank half of it and splashed the other half over his face. What this roof terrace really needed was a pool, he thought. How he could lie in one now.
He still couldn’t believe where he was – where he had been. The three towers stood majestic in the distance, which was one thing, but the dome beyond was something else. And more than that; these streets were full of life and buildings and trade and school, and children, so many children. This was the life he had always dreamed of – nothing vast and seemingly impossible like the city lights of old films, nor the royalty that sometimes rode in carriages and on horseback that Annora and he used to make-believe when they were kids. He’d only ever wanted a community, aboveground, where people were free to do what they want.
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 33