by Scott Hale
“Soon…” she wheezed. She smiled, drooled all over herself. “Soon…”
A knock came from the door: “Your Holiness?”
Felix stammered, “Don’t c-come in!” Panicking, he grabbed the chair he’d launched earlier, ran over to Lillian. “Get…” He nudged her with it, harder and harder. “Get the hell out of here!”
Again, the door: “Audra of Eldrus is here to speak with you, your Holiness.”
Lillian cackled, even as he broke the skin on her forehead with the chair leg.
Another knock. This time, Audra: “Your Holiness, is everything okay?”
No, goddamn it! He cracked Lillian across her scalp. She stopped laughing and lay stunned in her spit.
He heard Audra order the guards to open the door.
Felix reared the chair back.
And then dropped it behind him.
With Lillian still knee-deep in Justine’s throat, Justine, the top of her head reattached, begun chewing her way up Lillian’s body. Like a snake gorging on itself, the Mother Abbess choked down Lillian. As she did, Justine’s own body began to take shape again, white dress and all. When her mouth closed around Lillian’s head, the old woman lifted her eyes once more to Felix’s, and from the dark recesses of Justine’s cavernous throat, he heard echoed: “Soon…”
There was a rattling of the doorknob. And before he could say otherwise, the door swung open.
Four guards, Penance’s finest, filed into the room, their swords drawn, their veins bulging on their necks.
Felix fell back on his butt, slipping on the drool Lillian left.
Justine, herself again, swept her legs outwards and under her. Pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, she said, weakly, “I’ve fallen.”
Felix hurried to his feet. He helped Justine to hers. She laughed. And when she laughed, it sounded like Lillian.
“Your Holinesses.”
Audra stood between the guards, hair tied up, all dressed in black. Her tunic was stained, and her trousers, just as bad. Her nails were caked in dirt, and her boots had clumps of soil and dried leaves sticking out from under them. It looked as if she’d been gardening.
“Mother Abbess,” Audra said, her tone suggesting she hadn’t forgotten what’d happened in Penance, when she, Deimos, and Lucan had been ambushed by the statues. “Your Holiness,” she added, staring at Felix. “May I have a word with you?”
Old habits kicked in. He started to look at Justine for permission, but instead, he stopped himself and left her side, and joined Audra in her shadows.
CHAPTER XLIV
Audra could tell she’d walked into something she wasn’t supposed to have. As Felix went to her, guilty and shaken, she noticed the floor looked wet, and there were pieces of things, like wadded up paper, all over the place. But it was Justine’s face that ratted them out; that otherwise porcelain veneer turned cherubic red. Her expression was stuck. To the untrained eye it might’ve read as a smile, or shock, but for Audra, who’d gone about her business most of life in the shadows, with shadows, she knew what it meant, and it meant this: “Oh, shit.”
Felix joined Audra at her side. She said to the Mother Abbess, “Would you like me to send for one of our doctors?”
Justine shook her head. As she did so, one eye rolled farther back in her skull than should’ve been possible.
Audra smiled, ignored what she’d seen, since she was going to obsess over it later, anyway, and left with Felix.
The outside of their quarters might as well have been a trench on the edge of some No Man’s Land. It was row after row of exhausted soldiers crammed together in this pillared hall, getting by on crumbs and scraps of sleep. The walls were dark and greasy, from where they’d pressed their palms or the backs of their heads. The ground, a charcoal gray that befitted Ghostgrave’s name, was scuffed and scratched, and littered with trash. The whole hall smelled of stale farts and sweat—the universal stink of misguided loyalty.
She could feel the men and women drawing their weapons. Not their swords, but their words. Audra of Eldrus. What was she doing here? Wasn’t she supposed to be dead? Hadn’t they heard she’d announced in Nyxis she was going to kill the King? What gave her the right to come and go as she pleased, with the Holy Child no less? Ultimately, she was a prize to them. For some, a trophy to rise in the ranks; and others, a trophy still, one they’d brag about later to likeminded degenerates about how they’d held her down and had their way with her. Isla would’ve been proud that Audra’s mind had gone there, but unlike Isla, she didn’t revel in these revelations. They scared her. She’d seen her fair share of men and women, and soldiers, and these that guarded Felix and Justine, but Felix in particular, were hardly Penance’s finest. Of course, there were always shitheads, but in here? There were so many the flies didn’t even know what to do with themselves.
It wasn’t surprising, but it was alarming. She’d spoken enough with Edgar since she and Deimos had arrived to fit together the pattern her brother kept noticing. The Holy Order of Penance had made so many missteps that, at this point, it was dancing to the tune of own its inadequacy. From aligning with the Marrow Cabal to splitting Narcissus up on a town-by-town basis, until the army was nothing more than overachieving ass kissers like those parked before her, none of it made any sense. It was one thing to surrender, but the Holy Order was surrendering to stupidity. She’d heard that Felix had been in charge, and sure, some of the developments sounded like some milk-toothed momma’s boy like himself might muster up (Vermillion God, bless his soul), but where were his advisors? Where were the adults? Where was his god, fake though it might be? A religion that’d once been a well-oiled machine was turning into nothing more than junkyard fodder; an afterthought, in an afterword, in the history of the world. Audra was glad the fighting might be coming to an end, but prowling these halls, seeing these prowlers perched like carrion birds outside the door of one of the purest souls she knew, it seemed as if there might be more fighting to come. For flesh and bone, and the bleeding heart of fading glory.
To put it shortly, as Shorty walked beside her: She really had to protect the kid, no matter what. He’d done the same for her. It was only right she should return the favor.
Audra smiled at Felix. He smiled back. But she didn’t think he just got happy because of how happy how she was to see him.
The living statues blocked their path ahead. Twelve of them. Apparently, it’d been too much to hope for that one or all of them had been smashed to bits since Audra had last seen them. She hated them. Once the public found out about them, the Holy Order branded them as angels, and their followers liked that. Some of the even more desperate equated the statues with those chosen and/or childish disciples who ingested seeds of heaven. You’d think the body God had personally handcrafted would’ve been good enough, but you’d be wrong.
Audra knew better when it came to the statues, though. They used to watch her while she’d been imprisoned in Pyra, undoubtedly reporting back to Justine her progress with the Bloodless. Then, that last night she’d seen Felix, after she’d sent the shadows into the Void and fought off the Cult of the Worm, Justine had the statues arrest her, Deimos, and Lucan, and much to everyone’s surprise, let them go via an escape tunnel in the lyceum. She didn’t know what they were, but she knew what they looked like: Children. Children, like Felix; and on that cold night, in their cold and unrelenting grips, as they’d traveled the empty halls of a dying faith, the statues had cried like children; and when they reached the end of the escape tunnel, and the old, iced-over gates had been kicked open, those childish statues, with their star-shaped heads and petrified faces, tried to follow her and the others into the frostbitten night, but couldn’t, for when they crossed the threshold, the stone turned to raw flesh, and they bled out until they went back in; and when they got back in, one, in a fit of rage, had reached out and punched Lucan in the stomach so hard, his organs ruptured; all because, she reasoned later, they were jealous they got to leave.
She didn’t know if Felix knew that. Felix should probably know that.
Felix waved his hands. The living statues stepped aside.
Audra bumped shoulders with one of them, to remind them whose house they were in.
Two of the living statues started after them, but Felix threw up his hand, told them to “Stay,” and like dogs, they obeyed.
Audra had been “royalty” long enough to know what was expected, and what would turn into a side of gossip for the idling rich throughout Ghostgrave. She said to him, “You might want to have a guard or two.”
“I’d rather be alone,” he said, with a thousand-yard stare.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ve just the place.”
Audra had lived so long in Ghostgrave, that, even after having been gone for a few years from it, she’d still lost some appreciation for the keep. Felix, on the other hand, had never been here. If all went well, here he’d be for the remainder of his days. She decided, then, to give him a tour. If nothing else, it would give them both the time to figure out how much they trusted each other.
Together, they stalked the headstone-gray halls. The two of them at once was almost too much for everyone else to handle. Should they bow? Should they get down on their knees? Should they wipe the drool from their mouths, or should they let it puddle pridefully? You might’ve thought a tornado had spun through Ghostgrave, what with every dignitary pressed up against the walls, terrified, their bodies pretzeled in the hopes of finding the perfect form of subservience for these world-movers. But these halls were already familiar to Felix, and these mouth-breathers, window dressing, so she took him deeper.
First, to the patios, where the gardens that’d nurtured her love for botany still grew along the balconies, chaining each of them together along the keep’s façade—a bridge of life over the murky purgatory of Eldrus’ dimming streets. It was spring still, though summer wasn’t far, and the flowers were gorgeous. Gargantuan Dreampots stood boisterously, their baby-blue bellies striking amongst the pink roots of the Haze that managed to always grow around them. Human-shaped Heartstrings latticed the stonework, while the creeping ivy of Dread covered the small ponds and fountains, leaving an intricate blanket of black weavings like braided hair. There was teacup sized Restore drifting on lily pads of Rest; and thick tufts of Bitter Grass acting as the perfect hiding place for jeweled beetles and water striders. Her favorite among them, and she had a sneaking feeling Felix felt the same, were the Heavenly Horns—the golden, bell-shaped fruits whose ovaries, when cut into, released a euphoric cloud that smelled of clean linen. She’d thought they might’ve been used in religious rituals back in the day, but according to Amon, they hadn’t been. They were just universally liked, and universally agreed upon as being awesome. Given humanity’s knack for disagreeing on everything, it was a start.
“What’s that?” he asked her.
She’d thought he was pointing to God, but actually, he asking about the Archivist’s Tower. She told him about it.
“Who’s that in the window?”
She couldn’t tell at first, but after putting two and two together, she got: Isla.
Next, the kitchens. No one was strong enough to resist the smells inside. The kitchen was huge, always packed, and precisely calibrated to the temperature that practically made napping there mandatory. Roaring fires and bubbling cauldrons set the tone, while the blur of cooks carting off meals for tonight’s dinner set stomachs on edge. Hers was already growling when they came through the door, and Felix laughed when his let out a righteous bellow. The cooks paid them the bare minimum of mind, for it was more important to have something to serve tonight, than to do the usual empty salutes. With that, they flew about the room, laughing like idiots, as they plunged their fingers into pies or took bites out of drumsticks, which they then carried around, like clubs, as they gobbled down grapes and slurped up puddings, and both gagged on some vegetable medley that’d clearly gone bad. Realizing this was the leftovers the servants were given to eat from the dignified, Audra sobered. She was twenty-four, not thirteen, like Felix; and though she had every right to do anything she wanted in Ghostgrave, really, she had no right to come into the kitchens and treat these peoples’ sanctuary as a funhouse. None of the staff knew her, because they were all new. Maybe if Maude or Clarence were still around to vouch for her, to let the others know she wasn’t like her brother or the other brooding diplomats, but they weren’t. No one was, not in the kitchens or most of Ghostgrave. She was just some rich bitch back from the dead.
“You okay?” Felix asked; he’d managed to find half of a peanut butter sandwich.
It was dawning on Audra what she was doing, but there was still time before it was morning in her mind, so she smiled, said, “Heck yeah,” and hurried the both of them out of the kitchens.
More headstone-gray halls. More gibbering dignitaries. She steered him clear of the “pleasure wings” of the keep, the unofficial but may as well be official lavishly decorated rooms where a bunch of lonely old men, varicosed middle-aged women, and sadistic twenty-somethings liked to get their rocks-off with payrolled prostitutes. Audra wondered if Isla had found out about this service her brother offered, and if she did, what she’d do about it. There she was again, thinking about Isla. She cleaned the top of her tongue on her teeth to get the bad taste out of her mouth.
Now, the throne room. Ghostgrave’s throne room was different than most throne rooms she’d read about. It had the hallmarks of one: the high ceiling, intricately carved, lovingly painted with black and gold accents so obnoxiously precise that, if you listened hard enough, you could still hear the painter’s neck cracking; the wide open floorspace, tiled, of course, and spotless but for the toys left behind by her siblings two decades ago; the walls, where if there weren’t windows, there were portraits of the royal family—the ones of her mother and father gave her a twinge of grief—and renderings of important events, from the culling of the witch cults in Nyxis, the Great Harvest in the Heartlands, the expeditions into Gelid and the Frozen North, to the long-winter of yore, where demons traded fires for souls, and her great, great, great… very great grandfather Novn had met Annaliese, or Joy, and…
Shit, there she was, in the painting. She’d never noticed her before, the woman in white atop Ghostgraves’ snow-capped towers, the gloom of wintry doom swelling behind her. But wait a minute, the paint looked fresh. It glistened in the light. Audra drew as close as she could without drawing Felix’s attention and saw that Joy’s figure had recently been added, by Joy herself, undoubtedly. There was no sense in her getting comfortable here, though. She wouldn’t be staying for long.
Audra marched across the throne room. With her hand that still had remnants of the Shadow Bladder’s soil on it, she smeared Joy into the background of the painting, where she belonged, until she was unrecognizable, like she ought to be. Like she would be.
“Someone vandalized the picture,” Audra said.
She took him up to the throne. It was uncomfortable, like all thrones ought to be according to her father. A slab of black stone with a seat, two arm rests, and back. No cushion. No cupholder. No place to rest your feet. A king, her father had said, should not be able to relax when considering his kingdom. The thing about it, though, was that he never sat in this throne and considered his kingdom. No one ever had, as much as she knew. That was what made this throne room different than others. It’d always been maintained, but never used. It barely qualified as being symbolic. It was like someone had looked at their culture, and Eldrus’ monarchy, and said to themselves, “We better have a throne room.” That was the whole land, though, wasn’t it? A conscious effort to maintain homeostasis in this fantasy-esque Trauma-dream that just would not come to an end. They were like Night Terrors, in that way. They had Night Terrors in them all.
Nevertheless, Audra had brought Felix here because it was cool, and he dug it. He had the run of the place at a snail’s pace. She kept to the throne, because it reminded her of Dad. That’s when dawn
broke across her mind, and light was shone on her intentions. She was giving Felix the grand tour, but really, it was more than that. She’d been here for two months now, and still Edgar breathed. Like Joy, she’d been left out of the painting, and now, she was putting herself back in. Parts of her wished she’d stayed in Nyxis, where she could drink and fuck and plot Edgar’s murder until the end of her days. It would’ve been easier, simpler. But no, she had to come here, and here, she’d been swayed, by nostalgia and her growing powers. Here, she could make a difference, but with him, Felix, she would make a difference. This wasn’t a tour. This was her turning on all the lights, settling in for the night. She just needed him to be her scheming bedfellow.
Audra took the throne. She threw one leg up over the arm rest, and leaned into her elbow rested into the other. The stereotypical pose for all distinguished women who had no fucks to give. If only Auster could see her now.
Felix wound his way back to her. When he went to sit at the foot of the throne, she made room—there was plenty of it—and he wedged himself beside her. And there they sat, gazing out upon that empty court, like two children readying for a game of make-believe.
“No one—” Surprised by the echo of his voice, he lowered it. “No one comes here?”
“It’s just for show.”
Felix whispered, “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me, too. What a ride, huh?”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
Sensing his unease, she cried, “You got so old! Look at you with your peach fuzz!”
“It’s a moustache!”
Audra cringed.