Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  Jerani eased off her. He lounged next to Celaise, tucked an arm under her head. His smile was as wide as it could be around his face scars. Past him, a few of the llamas stared. They had watched the whole thing. Celaise’s stomach quivered and shriveled.

  “What’s wrong?” He rubbed a thumb over her palm.

  She pulled her hand away. “We’re never doing that again.”

  His smile collapsed. He leaned away from her and pinched his eyes shut. “Guess I should be grateful we had this much time together.”

  “Because you’re leaving?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Yes, he did. How could anyone stay with her? Jerani would run, and when he did she would kill him. No, she mustn’t do that. She would have to let this Feast go. Black wine bubbled in her chest with fermented foulness.

  “I wish we’d never met,” Celaise said. She would’ve been happier alone. And more scared.

  And miserable.

  26

  “I will be wed during the lunar eclipse, ninety-seven nights from now. I hesitate to indulge colloquialisms, yet you may have heard of the astrological event referred to as a blood moon.”

  “Delicious! Every wedding could use celestial extravaganza. But tell me, how did you prophesize the date? Did you read the future in spider webs, or from the entrails of a rabid—”

  “Mathematics is more powerful than prophecy.”

  Jerani spun around in the market. Maybe he had seen wrong. It might not have been him. Past two women arguing over the price of a rhinoceros beetle, beyond a stall overflowing with flower slippers made of ice-blue petals, next to a curtain of hanging candlesticks, stood the tattooed man. The one with blossoms tattooed across his chest.

  “They’re here,” Jerani said to Celaise. “The blossomed man and the sword woman. From the banyan grove, the ones hunting the lady.”

  The scales of Celaise’s viper-skin dress scraped against each other with a harsh edginess. Now she could be angry at something besides Jerani. “I smell them but—ah, there they are. How did you spot them?”

  She sounded surprised he was capable of anything. He flushed everywhere with an itching heat except for his cold hands. Jerani needed all his strength not to slump. He didn’t even have his spear to lean on. The stingers didn’t like men carrying weapons, but they had let the woman carry her swords. Their hilts stuck out from the side of her robes. Maybe that’s what Jerani had glimpsed.

  He had felt something like jaguar whiskers running up his spine. Then he’d looked and seen the couple. Their skin wasn’t much paler than the crowd’s. Jerani wouldn’t have seen that, but the blossomed man wore the same jeweled gauntlets. His metal fingers picked up an onion from a cart. He said something to the woman, and she laughed.

  The couple didn’t hold hands. They still walked through the night market with a closeness deeper than touch. Even when they drifted apart to different stalls, the man and woman had a connection. The woman didn’t glance back toward the man, worrying if he were still there. The man returned with a bottle balanced on two plated fingers. She smiled. They moved on, and no one tried to step between them. The couple had too strong a bond.

  Tears burned deep in Jerani’s eyes, where no one could see them. What if he and Celaise were never so natural together? So at ease. So happy. She might’ve meant what she had told him today in the forest. What a blow after what a wonder.

  “They spotted you.” Celaise hissed at him. She had stepped behind a merchant’s stall full of caged birds.

  “Did they?” The couple hadn’t reacted. Jerani scrambled beside Celaise, even though getting close to her made breathing hard. Wasn’t just that she wore a dress half red, half blue, and all viper. His muscles weighed him down tonight. He wouldn’t be able to outrun the blossomed man if it came to a chase. He flinched when the merchant shouted.

  “Parrots! Quetzals! You’ll love them as pets or savor their meat and feathers. Can’t go wrong!”

  Jerani peeked between the birdcages. The man and woman were strolling nearer and nearer. Moths flitted around them. That made sense. They were almost glowing.

  “They must’ve heard the lady was in this city.” Celaise clamped a hand on Jerani’s arm. Each red-blue finger ended in a single fang that almost pierced his skin. She pulled him past baskets of smelly fish.

  “Maybe they aren’t after anyone,” Jerani said. Fighting that couple would be horrible, no matter who got hurt. “They could just be visiting the city.”

  “Quiet.” The viper skins overlaying Celaise still had their slit eyes. They glared at him. She waved an arm, and shadows covered herself and Jerani with a hiss. Together they crouched behind bigger cages.

  These held slaves. Looking made Jerani’s stomach twist and his throat catch. One man glared from between the bars, challenging all. Others wept, many huddling to cover their nakedness.

  It could’ve been Jerani locked in there. Once it had been. “This is wrong. The lady should stop this.”

  “The Empire is just as bad,” Celaise said. “You work people to death mining salt.”

  “I don’t.” None of that happened on the grassland.

  Celaise sagged lower. Shadows writhed around her. “I know,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She made a sniffling sound. It could’ve been her just smelling the air.

  Jerani reached for her shoulder then drew back. He had his braveness etched across his face, but he couldn’t touch her. If she shrugged him off again it would be too painful.

  “Maybe they never spotted us,” she said.

  “I didn’t think they did.”

  “Let’s get back to the safe house. Wait, your cut hasn’t healed.”

  He couldn’t see where she was pointing in the dark. His shin did throb a bit, where he had been cut in his fall to the filthways. “On my leg?”

  “You have to talk to the lady about that. Tonight.”

  He squeezed the pocket in his robes with the crystal flowers. It would be better to buy the sailcloth wings before having to face the lady, but Celaise had to be right.

  They left the market, heading under an arch of two women statues leaning together to kiss. Beyond them and the sweet-smelling candles, the street darkened. Fireflies trapped in lanterns lit the sign posts but not much else. Something squished under Jerani’s foot. He reached to Celaise. She would be able to see.

  Celaise swished ahead. He stumbled after her. A hooting noise made him jump. A howler monkey must’ve wandered into the city.

  In a whirl of vipers, Celaise faced backward. Her nostrils flared. “They’re following us.”

  The blossomed man and the sword woman strolled out from the arch. He chuckled at something she had said and lifted a lantern. Its brightness cut across the street toward Jerani.

  He reached to Celaise again. This time she took his hand, and they ran. The couple might not’ve really been tracking them, but Jerani wouldn’t look back to find out. He and Celaise dodged around the shadows of other people.

  Someone nearby asked, “Going to the Purest’s rally?”

  “What?” Jerani spun around, walking backward. He almost could see who had spoken. It wasn’t the sword woman.

  The same voice said, “Wasn’t talking to you, boy.”

  Celaise and Jerani raced down a side street, beneath a green window and the muffled sounds of sobbing. They had to pass by the house and its grief. She pressed him against the side of an alley. Then they tiptoed forward. Overhead, moth swarms parted around swooping bats.

  A stink punched Jerani in the face. They must be close to the filthways. A trench opened, and the darkness in it writhed. Couldn’t fall in again. His shin flared with a line of orange pain across his vision. His cut must be rotting. It might kill him.

  Light flashed behind him. Jerani glanced back.

  He bumped into someone. His heart slammed into his ribs.

  A woman cried out. Her voice fell downward then cut off. The silence speared into Jerani.

  He h
ad knocked into someone. He’d pushed her into the filthways. He leaned over the drop.

  A woman was lying with her neck bent. Oh no, was she the woman with the swords? She didn’t move. Fireflies from a broken lantern smeared her with moldy light. Her face was green. Her jaw was open in a dead scream. Redness spread from her side. A spike had torn through her belly.

  Jerani clutched his face. He had killed her. She had just been a girl, someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, and he’d killed her. He clawed at his skin.

  “Stop!” Celaise was beside him. She sounded distant.

  Beetles swarmed out from the rubble and onto the girl. They would eat her while Jerani watched. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t live. He should throw himself in after the girl. A murderer like him had to die. The filthway was filling with her blood.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Celaise’s voice cracked. She was pleading, but not to him. “Please!”

  Her voice faded out to a muffled groan. Jerani set his feet on the edge of the drop. The only thing to do was flip over so his head hit first. That would be fastest. He shouldn’t make Celaise see him suffer. Where was she? He was alone now. That was best. Celaise had to find someone better than him. Was that why she had let him run into the girl? Celaise must’ve seen her. Or maybe not. It didn’t matter.

  Jerani jumped. He tilted his face toward the swarming jaggedness below.

  The dead girl opened her eyes.

  She leapt up, caught him. His insides whipped about as she set him back on the ledge. Her blood seared his side.

  “You’re lucky,” she said, “I already ate.”

  “He’s mine,” Celaise said. She had reappeared, was pulling him away.

  What had happened?

  “Little sister,” the bleeding girl said, “might you possibly tell me about your dressmaking?”

  Oh, she had to be a Feaster too.

  Celaise pushed him down the alley. “Go.”

  Jerani’s knees wobbled. The street lamps ahead of him spun. He had almost died. That Feaster girl had almost killed him. He was hollow and full of shivers. Wait, he shouldn’t leave Celaise with someone so terrible. Only, he couldn’t face that bleeding girl again.

  “Go to the lady, Jerani.”

  He ran down the alley. If he stumbled into the blossomed man and the sword woman, well, that would be a relief.

  Celaise told the Bleeding Maiden about the gowns. While Celaise forced the words from a mouth as dry as sandstone—her mouth—Jerani’s chocolate and chili-pepper aroma fled through the city. At last she had done something right. Jerani would escape.

  “Those dresses will be priceless,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “Will the gem witch understand what a treasure you’re giving her, little sister?”

  Never call me that, you cannibal. Bile slimed and burned all the way up Celaise’s throat. Watching the Bleeding Maiden begin to feed on Jerani had been beyond horrible. Next year, Celaise would defeat the Bleeding Maiden in their duel. Celaise would have to be stronger.

  “The lady will tell me if I make a single stitch wrong,” Celaise said, “I know that.”

  Celaise lifted her skirt of snake spirals to step over a pile of rotting vegetables. Trash clogged the alley. One sack looked to be filled with dead caterpillars.

  “We all know that the lord has been starving you, little sister.” The Bleeding Maiden let her tattered dress get soiled by the street. “Do you think it’s right, what they say about him and the Bright Palms?”

  “What’s that?” Celaise asked. The Bleeding Maiden had to be trying to get something from her, Celaise knew it.

  “That he was captured by them. They let him go after he promised to do whatever they asked. I’m not sure. Could it be true?”

  Celaise wouldn’t give her anything. “I don’t know.”

  “That might be why he’s trying to muzzle us, but you’re worried more about something else, aren’t you? No, you don’t have to hide it from me. I smelled it on you earlier tonight.”

  Celaise’s skin flushed while her insides were rock ice. The Bleeding Maiden wouldn’t mention Jerani after almost killing him, would she?

  “You’re afraid you’ll never be able to love. That Jerani will never satisfy you.”

  Had Celaise really thought that? The Bleeding Maiden had a keen nose. It might be true. It sounded true.

  Celaise shouldn’t talk with the Bleeding Maiden. She was dangerous, but so was the lord father. This elder sister had scared Jerani half to death. The lord father had done the same to Celaise. And talking to him about this would be even more embarrassing.

  “Can a Feaster ever couple?” Celaise asked.

  “For pleasure?” The Maiden touched Celaise on her viper bodice and left droplets of blood. “No. Loving is a soft kind of excitement, and black wine always pulls us the opposite way, to rush-chase-fight-feed.”

  The snake dress chilled Celaise with its scales and chafed across her shuddering chest. She had been right. She and Jerani could never be happy together.

  “You can,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “Make him think he’s loving you, but displace your real self into the shadows.”

  Celaise wanted to be closer to him, not further away. Pointless to tell the Bleeding Maiden that. She wouldn’t understand.

  “Then you can take your pleasure from him. Does he enjoy it? Is he a chaser?”

  “No, he doesn’t like to be frightened.” He loved Celaise, not what she did.

  “You could always take him into your arms and scare the seed out of him. Choking works best.”

  Jerani wouldn’t like that. Celaise had just told her so.

  A dog padded across the street in front of them, carrying its pup by the scruff of its neck.

  “Thank you for the advice,” Celaise said. She would do the opposite.

  “I look forward to seeing you at the wedding, little sister.” The Bleeding Maiden hugged Celaise with a crushing frailty. Those slender hands had strangled who-knew how many. “But is it wrong of me to wish the lord father marry you instead?”

  Yes, all kinds of wrong.

  27

  “If our invitations are declined, all our plans will fail.”

  “King or freeman, how could they not attend, my heart? I am their greatest fear, and you, their greatest hope.”

  Bodies littered the wedding palace. Their limbs contorted together, elbows bent around the crooks of knees. More people hung from the crystal pillars. These were all men, and they swayed with arms drooping down, ropes crossed over their shoulders in harnesses.

  The people were not dead; Hiresha could identify as much. They only pretended to be. Her eyes still burned with tears. She Attracted the wetness back inside, and a needling agony spread from her sinuses. All these men and women had come to sprawl in wreckage across the foundations of her marriage. They all must hate her. Maybe they had good reason.

  Some peeked at Hiresha, squinting at the gleam of her hands in the night. They whispered and squirmed as if battlefield corpses were coming back to life. One man even swung himself around the column to see her.

  Hiresha could guess who had engineered this protest. Purest Elbe tiptoed between the contorted figures. She lifted a globe of fireflies, and in its yellow gloom her bee tattoos were the sickly green of flies.

  “Lady of Gems, marrying Strife will bring war and death,” the Purest said. “Better to face them now.”

  “Tethiel is not Strife. He doesn’t want slaughters. They are far too inelegant for his tastes.”

  Purest Elbe cradled the sphere of flicking light. “When Strife first came into the Garden of Purity, he pretended to be woman. Man can never be trusted.”

  What an offensive absolute! Spikes of outrage cut through Hiresha’s chest. She needed to scream them out. This woman shouldn’t dare insult Tethiel. She had called him a liar. Hiresha should fling the men off her exquisite crystal pillars. She should Lighten all these people and fly them over the Gargantuan. A thorough dousing might brin
g them to their senses.

  Hiresha rested her brow on her studded palm and breathed out all her heat. She couldn’t blame the masses. Purest Elbe was right to be upset. Tethiel was a liar by definition as an illusionist, even if he didn’t see it that way.

  Purest Elbe knelt before Hiresha, lifting the glass globe. “We can’t believe you want your marriage to bring more Strife into the world.”

  “Your point is made. I’m certain you could blockade the wedding night.” Hiresha would have to force a path through the bodies for her guests. She could do so with ease, with her dragon. The demonstration of force might impress the kings, yet it certainly would lose the City of Gold as an ally. Without the cooperation of Purest Elbe, Hiresha would likely have to commit to the kings’ warmongering.

  “You told us the truth,” Purest Elbe said. “We trust you to do what is right.”

  Hiresha had to admit she could’ve avoided this entire nuisance with a lie. To undo it, she might have to deceive. That was no better. If Hiresha did nothing, then the wedding wouldn’t happen. Without the wedding, the jaguar knight would come after her, doubtless with a menagerie of warriors. If Hiresha didn’t marry, the Bleeding Maiden might overthrow Tethiel. Hiresha might have to roam homeless for the rest of her life.

  She had to marry. She had to lie.

  Or Hiresha needed a new plan.

  She drifted down to Purest Elbe. Hiresha overlaid her hands with the other woman’s on the firefly orb. “Let us find a better way.”

  The entrance to the Garden of Purity was a sorry sight. Women and children with grime under their fingernails clamored for a glimpse of Purest Elbe and, Hiresha had to conclude, of herself. Not one man could be seen, except for Jerani. He strode toward Hiresha with the pink of his palm raised. The stinger guards pushed him back. Hiresha would speak to him after leaving the Purest’s garden. Many needed to be excluded before a place could be considered sacred, apparently.

  Purest Elbe offered a hand down to a boat. It would carry them across a moat, beneath stone arches designed to look like tree branches. Hiresha didn’t have time to be rowed. It was already morning, and she only had until noon. She offered Purest Elbe a hand up.