The cage swings violently backward, and we don’t go nearly as far as I was planning, but we make it to the edge of the walkway, and I quickly kneel down and set her on the floor so I don’t slip backward into the oil.
“Hey!” one of the prisoners hisses. “Me too! Get me out of here!”
“Hey, me too!” another whispers.
“Shut up, all of you!” I snap at them. “You want to bring the guards? I’ll deal with you in a minute. Just shut up for a second.” Turning back to Rajani, I say, “Feeling better yet?”
She sits up, rubbing her head. “Give a girl a second. Do have anything to eat, honey? I’m starving.”
“Uh. No. And weren’t you about to barf?”
“That was so ten seconds ago.” She blinks up at me. “I need food to heal.”
“Food?” I shake my head. “Who made up all these stupid Feyeri rules?”
“Um, an ancient sisterhood of women dedicated to the healing arts?”
“Exactly.” I snort. “A bunch of fruitcakes.”
“Okay, okay. Forget the food. I think I can do it now.” Rajani produces the two skittish faeries from inside her hood and holds them carefully over my shackled wrists. “Can I have my little guy back, or do you still need him?”
I can barely feel the little faerie clinging to my hair, and my head has never felt clearer. “I think I’d like to hang on to him a little longer.”
She nods and looks down at my chains. “Okay. So, let’s, uh, let’s try, oh, I know, balewood.”
The faeries glow a bit brighter and a faint cloud of green dust fills the air, and from within that dust a tangle of balewood vines and yellow blossoms grow out of thin air. Then a few pale tendrils weave down and around the steel shackles, wrapping over and over the chains.
“Now what?” I can’t feel anything happening.
“Keep your panties on.” Rajani grins. “You can rush life, but you can’t rush chemistry.”
“What does that mean?”
The cuffs snap open somewhere inside the tangle of balewood roots, and a moment later the roots themselves loosen up enough for me to slip my hands out. “Nice. What did you do?”
“Balewood leeches all sorts of chemicals out of the soil, which is how it kills other plants. I just used it to leech the alchemic treatments from your chains, and poof, they broke.”
“Awesome.” I rub my wrists and stand up. “What about the Drogori curse on them?”
The chains begin to shriek. No, seriously, the chains themselves begin to scream and wail like a woman trapped between pain and rage, not unlike my friend Sakoya when she found out mid-labor that she was having triplets and still had two to go.
Rajani leaps to her feet as her faeries dash back into her hair. “The curse seems to be working just fine.”
I kick the chains into a pool of oil, which barely muffles the noise, and then we run across the chamber, ignoring the shouts of the prisoners, and I crash through the door with my shoulder. The entire door rips off its hinges and slams into the corridor wall.
“Rajani, let’s go!”
“Wait, where’s my bag?” She’s standing in the open doorway of the jailor’s office full of papers and keys and small boxes. We grab her lightning knife and my hatchet, but she keeps looking around.
“I’ll get you a new bag. Let’s go!” I wave at her.
Rajani paws through the papers and pops the lids off the boxes. “I have to find it!”
“I’ll buy you a new one!” I stomp back into the office. “Hell, I’ll make you a new one from the skins of your enemies, but we have to go!”
“We can’t go! The crystals are in my bag!”
I freeze. “What crystals?”
“The crystal levers from the Valkyrie’s console,” she says, still ransacking the office madly. “I put them in my bag so no one could steal the ship.”
“So, without them…?”
“We can’t leave!”
I blink. Somewhere behind me a cursed chain is screaming, and angry prisoners are yelling, and approaching guards are shouting. I turn toward an old book shelf and smash my fist through it, shattering three shelves and spilling a dozen ledgers and tools on the floor. I hit it again, and again.
“Why! Is nothing! Ever! Easy!”
I suppose this is the point where I just stop caring, because when the first guard runs into the doorway of the office, I grab him by his uniform and throw him back down the hall, knocking six or seven more men to the ground. And I start walking.
“Gen! Gen, we have to find my bag!” Rajani calls from the office.
“I’m getting the damn bag,” I snarl.
“But we don’t know where it is!”
“I know exactly where it is.” Two of the guards crawl free of their compatriots and reach for their flintlocks. I grab the guns by their barrels, crush them like flowers, and then club both men with their own pistol stocks.
“How?” Rajani hurries after me.
“It’s something Mother taught me once.” I step over the guards and keep walking. “When something bad happens, you blame the bad guy. So let’s go get the bad guy.”
The dungeons are a bit of a maze, but we find the stairs, mostly by following the sounds of the oncoming guards. And as the sound of the screaming chain fades behind us, and as the number of bruised and moaning guards that I step over grows, we work our way back up to the hall where the captain’s office was, and out to the main courtyard where we first arrived.
Two dozen men and women are there waiting for us, with two dozen rifles all aiming green-glowing alchemic rounds at my head. Captain Oda is there with them, pointing a pistol at me. “Get down on your knees, now!”
They beat me up, throw me in jail, and now they want to shoot me? Again?
I am done.
Done with this town.
Done with these people.
Done holding back.
I keep walking.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the captain asks, cocking her pistol.
“WHERE’S AMARA?!” I roar back at her, spreading my arms and legs a bit to make sure they can’t shoot Rajani behind me.
“I want you on your knees, now!” the captain shouts again.
“AND I WANT AMARA! NOW!”
“Surrender!” The flintlock hammers all snap back, ready to fire.
“YOU SURRENDER!” I admit, this was less than witty.
I leap at them.
They fire at me.
And I slam into a wall.
Not into a hail of acid bullets, but a wall. A wall of golden light.
I crash back down on my backside and I see through the wall of light that the soldiers’ bullets have all shattered on the opposite side of the wall and a thin drizzle of acid is running down to the flagstones.
“Are we all done behaving like angry babies?” a woman asks.
“Who the hell…?” I turn to look at the open gates and see a woman riding slowly into the courtyard. Her mount is a huge unicorn stallion, a beautiful black monster with golden hooves, mane, and tail, and a golden spear shining above its glaring eyes. The woman herself is much smaller, her thin frame cloaked in a long golden dress, her dark face framed by a magnificent black mane of hair, her hands and temples gleaming with golden tattoos, and her forehead blazing with the golden light of a small spiraling horn.
“Oh.” I blink and exhale. “It’s you. You’re the queen, right?”
“Why yes, I am.” The woman smirks. “Now, can I drop this magic barrier and expect everyone to play nicely, or does my big angry friend here need to start throwing his weight around?” She pets the mane of her unicorn, which is flaring its nostrils and baring its teeth furiously.
My pulse slows and my skin cools as she speaks, and I shrug. “I think we’re good now.”
“So glad to hear it, sweetie.” Her Majesty Amina Zarinde nudges her stallion into the courtyard as the little horn on her forehead stops glowing and the wall of light between me and the guards
fades away.
“Now, captain, perhaps you can explain all of this.” The little sovereign waves at the shallow trench that the guards’ acid rounds have eaten into the stone tiles.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Captain Oda bows her head. “There seems to have been a series of misunderstandings this morning. Earlier today, our guards mistook Miss Marev here for the exile Lozen. And following a brief altercation, Her Highness Princess Amara directed her personal guards to arrest Miss Marev and her companion. I am not clear what charges she brought against them.”
“Bullshit charges, that’s what,” I snipe at the captain. Turning to the woman on the unicorn, I say, with an awkward half-bow, “Listen, Your Queen-ness, no disrespect, but I’m just trying to track down my mother, and your people, including your daughter, have all been a big sack of dicks about the whole thing.”
She laughs. “Oh sweetie, you’re just like your mother, aren’t you?”
I frown. “No.”
“Yes, you are.” She looks past me and waves giddily, yelling, “Hello Rajani, you’re looking lovely as always. It’s so nice to see you again!” She looks back down at me and says, “And for what it’s worth, I’m not a queen anymore.” She nudges her mount and the glaring black monster marches past me toward the stables. “I am an empress.”
“Empress? Of what?” I can see that the captain wants to strangle me for not using any of her precious decorum, and I wink at her as I walk along next to the unicorn. At arm’s length. Length and a half. Crap, unicorns are scary. I think there’s dried blood on this one’s hooves.
“Empress of all Viraka.” She halts and two grooms step forward to take the unicorn from her as she slips from her saddle and plunges to the ground beside me, where she barely comes up to my shoulder. “As of last week, I rule over the entire continent. Come along, please.”
I glance back toward the open gates and the city beyond. I just want to get the hell out of here, but the chance to talk to the queen, sorry, empress, is probably worth risking yet another pointless fight with the guards later when we have some sort of inevitably avoidable misunderstanding.
So I follow the great Amina Zarinde through a large doorway into a hall, and then another hall, and past some rooms full of sculptures and young people laughing and playing music, and finally we arrive in a large office. There are servants everywhere, some bearing food and drink, some with wash bowls and towels, some with paper and pens, all standing at attention, awaiting their empress’s commands.
There are also several over-dressed men and women gathered at one end of the room. One has the golden horn and tattoos of an Alcani rider, while another has the curling black horns of a Drogori. The others are less exotic, but equally strange in their jewels, daggers, crystals, and elaborate headdresses. They all turn and bow to the empress, but remain where they are, seemingly content to wait and watch.
I steal a grape off a tray as the empress sits behind her massive ebony desk and washes her hands and face.
“Well, I have had an exhausting morning,” Amina says with a smile.
I grunt. “You and me both.”
“Oh, don’t be a grumpus. You’re young. Walk it off.”
“Thanks for the great advice, I’ll get right on that,” I say as I look around at the portraits on the walls. Lots of people I don’t know wearing lots of jewelry. “In the mean time, I really need to get back to chasing my psycho mother around the world. So if you could just ask your girl Amara to return the crystals that control our ship, we’ll be on our merry way.”
Amina sighs. “Oh Amara. One of these days, that girl is going to give me a gray hair that I can’t dye. What did she do this time?”
“She asked us to kidnap her so she can visit scenic Yas Yagaroth with us.” I tuck a braid of my hair back behind my ear. “I said no. She arrested us. I’m starting to think she needs a good kick in the ass.”
“Gen!” Rajani looks shocked. “She’s dying! Where’s your compassion?”
“Compassion, compassion.” I pat my pockets. “Hm. I think I left it back in my cage down in the dungeon.”
“No, Rajani, it’s all right.” Empress Amina leans back in her massive golden throne and sighs. Her slender ears barely manage to poke out from within the great curling mass of her hair. For some reason, that makes me smile. She’s so tiny!
She says, “Amara is deeply troubled, and it’s my fault really. I just… I didn’t know what to do with her. How to handle it all. I can’t tell you how strange and terrible it was when the doctors told me that my baby girl was sick, and dying. I mean, look at me, I’m a freaking empress, and an Alcani, and best friends with a Feyeri, and there’s still nothing I can do for her. I’ve tried everything… I tried…” Her lip trembles and she looks away and covers her mouth.
Great. Now I’m the dick. I shuffle my feet and look down. “Sorry.”
She shakes her head. “It’s my fault. I wanted to protect her, obviously. But there’s no manual for this sort of thing, no guide. And I knew all along that I was trampling on her freedom, every day of her short life, because I wanted to keep her safe, keep her alive as long as I could. For her. And for me. Of course it was a bad choice, but there was no other choice. I was just… trapped. And now here we are. She’s angry, and she has a right to be. But she’s still my baby, and she’s still dying… and there’s nothing I can...” She stares out the window, her lips pressed tightly together.
Rajani says, “Your daughter said something about a young man, and a baby on the way.”
“Oh yes, the boyfriend. The actor.” The empress sighs. “He performs at the White Jacana, I think. Not that that matters, but I did meet him once, and I wasn’t… impressed.”
“Mothers never are,” I mutter.
“But a child is a child,” Amina continues, “And that’s all the more reason to keep Amara here, to keep her safe, to try to keep her with us as long as we can. We’ve beaten the odds so many times already, so maybe…”
I glance at the servants and see that some look sad and some look as blank as statues. Even in this palace full of people, the great Amina Zarinde looks as small and alone as anyone else, like any other person crying and trying not to cry. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I say to her, “Look, Your Empress-ness, overlooking the fact that she’s been a first-class dick today, and I personally never want to see her again unless she’s in a cage and possibly on fire... would it really be all that bad if Amara comes with us? Maybe she’s right. Maybe there’s a cure out there somewhere. I mean… she is dying. It can’t hurt to try, can it?”
There. I did my part. I was all generous and crap. Now say no. Please say no.
Amina shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t allow it. Especially now that she’s pregnant. Remember, I know what it’s like to travel the world and fight monsters and explore the dark corners of ancient places. People get hurt. People die. Sure, it’s fun at first, but the novelty wears off eventually and you realize that it’s actually uncomfortable, and boring, and tiring, and painful… and violent.”
“Life is violent.” I can’t help but laugh a little. “Just walking up to your front door this morning was violent.”
She nods at me. “Your poor eye. I can see you’re no stranger to violence.”
“More of a recent acquaintance, actually.” I touch the scarred skin on the side of my face. “Yesterday was not my favorite day.”
“Violence is a disease, an infection that spreads from person to person,” Amina says in a faraway voice, huddled in the corner of her throne. “Do you know why my guards attacked you today? Because thirty years ago, and half a world away, the Azteran army invaded the Chirika province to mine for gold and silver. So Lozen became a freedom fighter, and the violence changed her, and now violence follows her, and infects those around her, and now here you are, fighting my guards, thirty years later. Because of Lozen, and armies, and gold. How insane is that?”
She shakes her head. “The world is crazy, sometime
s. People are crazy. Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if one day, just one day, everyone woke up and said, today I’m going to eat some food, do some work, hug my kids, and go to bed, all without killing anybody. Just once, just one day. And for that one day, there would be no killing, no suffering, no fear anywhere in the entire world. Why can’t that happen?”
I shrug. “Because people are dicks.”
The empress laughs. The laugh erupts out of her tired, huddle body, out of her thin lips and red eyes, and she smiles like the sun breaking through the rainclouds. “I suppose they are.”
I nod. “So? Yas Yagaroth?”
Please say no.
She smiles and sighs and looks a little sad again. “No, Amara can’t go to Yas Yagaroth.”
I exhale and say, “Okay. Fair enough. Then can you just get our ship’s crystals back from her, please?”
“Crystals? Yes, yes, of course.” The red-eyed Empress of Viraka nods at one of her servants. “Bring Princess Amara here, please.”
The servant bows and strides out. While we wait, Amina and Rajani make small talk, mostly about Rajani’s mothers. I tune them out and steal some more fruit, although since no one seems to care that I’m taking it, I guess it’s not really stealing, and that takes some of the fun out of stuffing my face. I wish they had some spicy chicken on one of these platters.
When the servant finally returns, alone, I already know what’s wrong.
“She ran, didn’t she?” I ask.
The servant glances at me, and then says to the empress, “Her Highness Princess Amara does not appear to be in the palace. Her maid believes the princess to be in the city.”
“The crystals.” I spin to look at Rajani. “Can she fly your ship?”
“Uhm… maybe?”
“Shit!”
I run out of the room, run through the halls, run across the courtyard and out the gates, run through the streets, weaving through the crowds, bounding and leaping across the low rooftops, and all the while my mind is racing and screaming and cursing about this jackass stealing our ship and stranding me here. I know damn well that life isn’t fair, but why is it so damn complicated, so relentlessly twisted and weird and exhausting and stupid?
Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) Page 7