“Better to be right and dead?” Now Ix was standing.
“Of course,” Saul said.
While the Green Bloods continued their argument, the jaguar knight roused himself. His stretch would’ve sent most men running. The wedding servers had above-average resolve, and one brought a board for him to scratch out his compliment. Hiresha’s studies had prepared her enough to read the general meaning.
“‘Knows when to roar and when to stalk. Bite stronger than roar.’”
“She is but an animal to you?” Tethiel asked. “A beast who thinks of nothing more than her next meal?”
The jaguar knight bent over and licked his own anus. He held eye contact with Tethiel.
The night shook with Tethiel’s laugh. “As my lady mother used to tell me, ‘Ass licking always speaks louder than words.’ And speaking of. Who hasn’t spoken?”
The king brute grunted through his forced grin.
Elbe had a better smile, even independent of its lapis lazuli. She held out both arms. “Hiresha, you are strong. You are powerful, and never more so than when you act with nonviolence.”
The Purest clutched to her hopes. Hiresha would rather scratch jewels than disappoint her, and what a fresh-cut joy it would be to ascend even halfway to Elbe’s expectations.
“And your dresses have been magnificent,” Elbe said. She poked her chin out at Tethiel. “I will break the rules to say it.”
“Technically, this dress is sublime,” Hiresha said. Ice cooled her back, and it misted into a cape of vapor.
“Now I take my turn,” Tethiel said. “My heart, you are the sweet twilight after the longest day. You’re the gleam in the cursed treasure. In a world of more crassness and less meaning, you are more lovely than scheming.”
“You are irredeemable.” Hiresha had to stretch out the tight muscles in her chest to breathe. A buzzing filled her head along with a soft pinkness not at all conducive to clear thinking. “It is not easy to withstand such praise, even when accurate.”
“And the winner?” Fos asked. The fennec looked up as well with his dark tiger-eyes.
“The Talon obeyed the rules and delivered with the most passion,” Hiresha said. “Perhaps I should marry him, though I am concerned about his long-term health.”
“Wed no man,” the Talon said. “Devote yourself to the Winged Flame.”
“I’ll dedicate myself to negotiating and innovating.” Hiresha nodded to Elbe then swept a hand to the rest of the guests. The potato king had slumped onto the table, rubbing its surface. Given the dilation of his eyes, he must’ve eaten a euphoric locust. “And through reasonably peaceful means, all our goals will be achieved. Even yours, Talon.”
His bloodless face wriggled between disbelief and interest. She was thankful he hadn’t begun screaming in protest at mention of avoiding bloodshed.
Hiresha willed her amethyst dragon to soar into view in a burst of wings and scales. The guests’ eyes widened. They cheered. She attempted to detect if Guile had cried out among the others but could not distinguish any unaccountable cries.
“I can assure you,” Hiresha said, “nothing speeds peace talks like a dragon.”
Beneath her amethyst construct, the corsair sailed over a cliff of whiteness and past the end of the fog bank. With a sign from one of Hiresha’s fingers, the ship aimed downward to the sea. The moon was huge in its reflection, a giant globe of rippling light. Storms closed in on it. Whitecaps tossed. Fluorescence stirred in the deep.
Hiresha had reached the sea. For her demonstration she only need find a suitable monster.
Jerani may have lost Celaise forever.
Her eyes had changed. They were the sky of her first dress. They didn’t reflect the stars. Daylight clouds rushed over them, racing up and around. All was spinning. All was falling. All would dash on the rocks and be broken.
Jerani took another step toward her. Under his feet was only glass and below that, gleaming fogbank. Nothing solid to hold him, nothing stable, nothing sure.
“Celaise,” he said.
She didn’t speak, didn’t even look.
“Celaise.” Dryness filled his mouth. He tried to swallow all away. “I figured out how we can do it. How we’ll escape.”
She breathed in. The stars shone. She breathed out, and they darkened.
“The lord promised us two gifts, anything of his.” Jerani flashed one of the vials. Its magic boiled against his palm. “You ask for these. I’ll ask for your freedom.”
She was gazing past him, at the guests. They were playing some talking game with the lady. Celaise said, “My dresses are the best part about her.”
Celaise hadn’t been listening to him. Maybe he only thought he had spoken aloud. He worried this was one of those nightmares where he couldn’t talk. A dreamy darkness pressed in, and razor grass he couldn’t see was shredding his legs.
She glanced his way with her eyes full of that whirling death. She glided past without a second look at the shining vial.
“Wait.” She had to hear him, her or no one. He could only whisper so loud. “You promised we’d go together. Don’t you remember?”
No answer.
Jerani knew what had happened. Killing the last Feaster had changed her. The lord had made her more his own. She had feared he would. She wouldn’t escape this wedding.
Unless Jerani freed her. He held the vial. It shook with power. The rest of them clattered in the fold of his robe. If she drank one, it might help her. It could take back whatever the lord had done. She would be herself again, like after a clear drink on a parched day.
She wouldn’t swallow it herself. He would have to force it down her throat. Celaise wouldn’t like that, not right away, maybe not for a long while. Jerani was behind her. Did that make this the best time to try?
Celaise faced him. He hadn’t even seen her turn, it had been so fast. She gripped his arm, and her talons dug through his wrist, shoving apart bones. “Think of doing that again and I’ll fly you into the sky just to drop you.”
“It’s what you wanted. You told me—”
“Could kill you now.” Feathers ruffled from her gown. They cut through Jerani’s robes to prick his stomach. Each was an obsidian blade. “But you’re the lord father’s.”
She let go. She left with the lady, and Jerani was alone.
Strangers and killers surrounded him. He couldn’t get away. A shimmer-shine darkness of the sea surrounded the ship now, and they were sinking closer to the death waters. Jerani could dive into that blackness. No one would miss him.
He leaned on his spear, dragging himself to stand behind the lord. This was Jerani’s place. He could expect no better.
“I lied to you,” the lord said. He gave a knife to a guest. “I told everyone dinner was done, but it is not so.”
The Chef set a grated brazier between the tables. Coals wafted with heat.
The lord pressed another knife into a guest’s hand. “Why ever stop eating, when the dining has gone so well? The Chef created a vision of pleasure. Praise him.”
“Heyah!” The kings pounded their knife handles against the table. The big spellsword raised a fist.
“He has saved our souls,” the lord said, “for a night. Praise him.”
“Yes!” The Talon tossed up a pillow and stabbed it and threw the feather stuffings. He must’ve been excited. Jerani wondered how could they all be so happy?
“The Chef’s last request was to prepare the best banquet in the lands, and he succeeded. Praise him.”
“More. More,” the Green Blood said. The jaguar knight licked his whiskers. Even the Purest bowed her head as if in thanks.
The lord faced the Chef. “No wedding will ever eat better because he’ll never serve another. His reprieve is over, and now the death he earned must come. Kill him.”
The shouts of the guests died out. They stared from their knives to the Chef. What had the lord asked them to do?
The lord steepeled his hands. Each finger was longer than a kni
fe. “Kill him.”
Would the guests thank the Chef then stab him in? Jerani might have to.
The Chef stood with his eyes almost closed. He didn’t look frightened. Trickles of oily sweet ran over his bald head, but that was from the heat of the nearby coals. “I defied my lord,” he said, “so it must be.”
“What a heart he must have.” The Talon rushed past Jerani, knife raised. “What a sea of blood.”
“I ask only,” the Chef said, “my meat not be wasted.”
The Talon cut into the man’s broad chest, cracking through ribs. The Chef faced his death like a warrior. He hadn’t run. He didn’t thrash, even when Jerani speared the man through the thickness of his neck. He told himself this was what the Chef wanted. The man didn’t expect anything better from the lord. This was how the lord repaid his servants.
The big spellsword broke the Chef’s jaw off with a sword pummel. “You never should’ve touched the empress.”
The Chef crumpled. The Talon had his heart out.
Blood rained on the lord but slid off his clothes. “As the Winged Flame isn’t here, my well-done swan, you should eat the heart in his name.”
“Yes.” The Talon swayed, and he spoke with a creepy calmness. “Maybe I should.”
“And the liver must go to the avatar of the Obsidian Jaguar, of course,” the lord said.
The jaguar knight buried his reddened muzzle in the dead man’s body. Jerani had to turn away.
“As his lord, I’ll take my cut.” Sizzling sounds came from the brazier.
What were they doing? Oh no, it was happening. The awful sweetness of cooking meat came to Jerani’s nose, tried to get inside him.
“There is plenty for all,” the lord said, “and no one will tell how much you eat.”
The guests must turn from this. Jerani waited for them to back away, run and be sick over the side of the boat. But they didn’t. Only the city woman had stayed back.
“The bowels I could stomach,” the Green Blood said, “as long as they’re raw.”
The big spellsword caught the elbow of the potato king. “You’re not eating people meat, are you?”
“I believe I must.” He winced toward the lord.
“The kings ate the souls of their honored dead,” the lord said to the big spellsword. “The least we can do is honor a dying man’s wish to be eaten.”
Jerani hid behind the leper knights. They abandoned him to join in the meal. The only other man to hold back was the big spellsword. The king brute had even cracked his mouth open to eat. The lady had returned to take away the gem she had stuck to him.
“Eating human flesh is a grave mistake,” she said, “medium rare.”
The big spellsword turned to her with a look of betrayal.
“When cooked well done, the meat no longer carries an overindulgence of parasites.”
Her words must have broken the big spellsword’s will to fight. He accepted a handful of ribs.
“We came tonight as many,” the lord said, “but by eating together we become one.”
The slicing sounds of butchery, Jerani couldn’t get away from it or the smell. By the Angry Mother, it was too close to cooking beef! Jerani stumbled into a table.
The Purest didn’t startle. She gazed out over the waters.
Jerani clamped his nose. “How do you stand it?”
She didn’t answer him. She only stared at the storm-froth sea. Her calm was awful. Men ate men only steps away, and she acted like it didn’t happen. Could Jerani have been wrong? He looked again, and he shouldn’t have. This woman was as evil as the rest. Or worse.
“Jerani.” The lord’s words gripped him and spun him about. “Be a dainty and serve the Bright Palm her morsel.”
Jerani had to do it. He had to wade into the meaty smells. The lord scraped something off the cooking brazier and passed it on a knife to Jerani. He took it to the Bright Palm in her chair. His once-father stood behind her. Bright Palm Gio’s eyes were filled with nothing at the sight of Jerani, only light. Still, he saw. He would know what Jerani had done.
The woman Bright Palm didn’t spit out the meat. She chewed. She too was part of this.
The black gleam of Celaise’s gown pierced the corner of his eye. She was there, by the coals. She had come back with the lady. He could look away, but he had to know.
The lord held a strip of meat before her. He lifted it toward her mouth. It steamed and dribbled. It would burn her, deep down in her spirit. She had to turn away. Celaise would push free of the guests and come to Jerani. He knew she would, and they would find the right time and slip away together and leave this madness.
Celaise’s teeth closed on the meat. Her lips brushed the lord’s fingertips. And it was done. It was over.
Jerani rubbed the greasy smoke out of his eyes. After tonight, he would have a long road back to the grasslands. He would have to walk it alone.
It had happened at last. He had always known it would. She had gone where he couldn’t follow. He shouldn’t be sad. Jerani hadn’t a right to feel that burning-bramble itching in his chest. Celaise had never belonged to him. Saying so would be as wrong as claiming a cow. The sacred could not be owned, only protected and served. Jerani couldn’t do that for Celaise now.
She didn’t need him.
Too much excitement crackled in Hiresha’s abdomen for her to be hungry, yet she partook of a token mouthful with the guests. The meat was palatable.
“The juices! Doesn’t even need gravy.” The Talon wiped his lips on a scrap of the Chef’s cummerbund. “My Firelight Lady, how often is human served in the Empire?”
“Cannibalism isn’t common.” Relative to headhunting, that was.
“But then how do you reward victorious warriors?”
“In Worldtop Valley, the dead are traditionally eaten by their families, rather than by warriors, per se. The relatives see it as consuming their grief.”
“Pah! This is joy.” The Talon juggled a hot piece of meat between his hands. He had cooked his heart properly. A pity he would be dead within the year regardless.
Hiresha walked away from him using the many legs of her kraken gown. She swept her hand over the corsair’s railing. The waves heaved close below now. They flashed with reflected lightning. A more sinister glow slid beneath the surface.
“Observe,” Hiresha said, “the Sea of Fangs. Seas have always fragmented the Lands of Loam.”
Tethiel stood beside her. Shadows streamed off him in the breeze. “Sea monsters have kept nations cowed.”
“And for good reason,” Hiresha said.
Thunder crashed, shivering the sails. Crystal creaked against crystal. The force of the sound hit Hiresha’s chest. One of her gown’s tentacles coiled in on itself in a purple-ringed spiral.
Before her in the sea, light rose from the deep. Twinkles of pinks and greens and a golden shine, a band of opalescence moved below the waves. Back and forth it flowed, sometimes closer, sometimes further from sight.
“It’s treasure.” Fos’s broad chin turned with the light. “Sunken treasure.”
“No.” The Talon’s headdress tilted in the same direction. “That’s the Winged Flame come among us. He’s swimming but … where is the steam?”
His voice softened to a murmur. Both men stumbled toward the side of the boat as if sleepwalking. Their half-closed eyes shone with reflected light.
Even Hiresha had to resist its pull. The underwater glints promised her vaults full of precious metals. She would have enough wealth to build another dragon, if she only abandoned her senses and dove into the sea. The light undulated and sent out sprays of waves.
The jaguar knight growled. He caught the Talon’s hand between his jaws and held him back.
Fos shucked off his scimitar. He kicked off one boot, seemed to forget the second, and set his hands on the crystal railing. He would take the plunge.
“Fos.” Alyla’s voice was flat and weak between the rolling thunder. “That’s not treasure.”
Hiresha gave him the chance to save himself. When he leaped off the corsair, she Attracted him back. He moaned in protest. She snapped her fingers with a click and forced him to look at her and away from the sea. “It is treasure, of a kind.”
“An inspiration of terror.” Tethiel teetered over the edge, though the pincers of his fingers had a firm grip on the railing. He peered down.
A pod of dolphins swam toward the shine. They too had been caught in its pull. The dolphins slowed to drift, and one by one the light wrapped round them. Soon they would be dragged from sight.
“The hoard worm is but one of many creatures that have dominated the sea,” Hiresha said. “We need fear them no longer.”
Her hand beckoned, and the amethyst dragon sliced into the waves. She had aimed it with claws first, followed by the gem-encrusted wedge of its head. It displaced the minimum of water, yet whiteness still sprayed all the way up to the guests. Hiresha allowed some to land on her kraken dress, and the suckers pulsed in appreciation.
The dragon wrestled the hoard worm half out of the water. The creature could not mesmerize eyes made of quartz. It couldn’t sting scales of crystal or bite through them. The worm folded around the dragon, trying to engulf it. The creature was more flat than narrow, appearing very much like a pile of gold. Its edges rippled and flopped. Froth heaved up. It attempted to swim away. The dragon held on, though Hiresha didn’t have its claws pierce deeply.
All the flatworm’s light went out, leaving it a grey slickness. Hiresha was hardly fooled. It hadn’t escaped nor died. Her dragon kept its grip. The hoard worm burst with light again.
“What a rare nibblet,” Tethiel said. “If only Emesea were here to see it.”
Hiresha nodded. “We need fear these creatures no longer, for we are greater, yet we should still respect them.”
She opened her hand, and the dragon let go. The hoard worm plunged into the water and slithered its way down into the blackness. It left one dead dolphin in its wake, which was a waste.
Hiresha willed new lights to rise. Crystal jellyfish floated out from beneath the hull. They shone with her dream power. “Not as bright as the hoard worm, I will grant, yet they have the advantage of devouring only at my command.”
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