by Della Roth
He grunts, his eyes turn cold, and his nostrils flare. Then he tries to get up.
“Don’t be stupid, feller,” Dorni says to Roland. I pull away as she hurries to his side, inspects the spikes that pierced his brown fabriskin robe, pants, and into the side of his calf muscle. He groans as her hands pull away with blood on it. “Not too bad,” she mutters, “but only if there ain’t poison on ta points. Wouldn’t put it past Gryan ta do somethin’ like dat.”
“Poison?” Roland asks.
Dorni shifts her intelligent eyes on me. Her threadbare, wrinkled eyebrows arch. The old woman wants to know how I feel about this. It’s complicated cannot even begin to explain things. She nods at me, understanding me, I suppose.
“I told you not to touch anything,” I tell him admonishingly, louder, in case others are listening in.
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Seriously? You must have been looking elsewhere. It touched me after you threw me aside.”
In the distance, the city’s bell tower clock strikes the hour. Three hours until showtime. Or Else. We need to get back to the Palace Skyscraper. Plus, I don’t want to be here when Gryan wakes up.
“Needin’ yer help for dis part, Rahda,” Dorni says matter-of-fact like, almost as if she were asking me to help set a dining room table. Her hands are poised under Roland’s leg. “Pull da rod straight up, now, or he be missin’ sum of da leg otherwise.”
“Uh,” Roland says, his face green. “Let’s think about this, first. Dorni, perhaps you should pull up. You seem like you know your way around something like this.”
“Rather it be Rahda’s fault if it be goin’ wrong,” Dorni replies.
“She’s right,” I say and Roland looks at me sharply. “Besides, we need to get back. It’s a waste of time arguing about it.”
I move to his feet and position my hands in between the visible spikes and hooks and wait for Dorni’s command.
“Now.”
I lift the rod up. I try not to think about how soon this will become a new set of scars for Roland, or how it will bind his memory to me for as long as he lives, and how it’s entirely my fault. His hooded face winces and fresh blood gushes from his calf.
I toss the metal rod aside—it’s heavier than I imagined—and it clangs against the alleyway rocks. The sound scares the children, and they scuttle away. We are now alone in the alley, save Gryan on the ground, though I am not fooled by appearances. No doubt there are dozens of eyes watching us right now. Sometimes, a few well-placed words to the right person will earn them a few coins. It’s how it’s done in these parts.
I shake the old, familiar thoughts from my head and focus on the scene before me.
To gain better access to his leg, Dorni tears the bottom of his soaked trousers up to his knee. She reaches deep into her robe’s pockets, pulls out a waxy, folded packet, and sprinkles dark powder all over his leg and the blood, and then her gnarly fingers rub the rest of it into five round, bedallion-sized gashes.
“Dear Goddess, woman,” Roland hisses, his body tense, every muscle rigid. His hard eyes bore into me.
I admire his bravery in withstanding the pain, but I know I’ll pay for this later. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday soon.
“Da bleedin’ be stopp’d now, an’ da leg numb.” She puts the waxy packet away. “Best ye be gettin’ gone from here. Take dis.” She places my ruined fabriskin robe in my hands, and I feel around for The Pale Waters vial as well as the jarred Charm. It’s still there. I calculate how much time I have to produce a working prototype and I feel confident that it will work as I planned. I’m so lost in my concentration that I nearly forget about Roland.
He refuses to look at me as I help him to his feet. He fixes his hood and the rest of the robe to cover his bloody leg and hops around briefly before putting weight on his left foot.
“This is brilliant, madam,” he tells Dorni kindly, walking around like a brand new man. “The injury is completely numb, but not the entire leg. How long will the medicine last?”
“Til nightfall.”
He kisses her cheek. “Thank you, Dorni. One day I will repay your kindness.”
She blushes instantly.
“Off with ye, now, b’fore other trouble comes ‘long. I will see to Gryan.” I watch as her eyes narrow and darken as she glances at the Grandfather’s guard before she looks at me. “Be careful, luv,” she repeats before she gently touches my arm, looks at Roland with curious eyes, and then disappears inside her shoppe.
We leave the alley, back through the finger-bone curtains, and enter the Palace Skyscraper’s recognized city borders. Several male citizens are singing tales of lost love to passing women. Roland’s earlier admirer is gone.
“What’s the Charm for?” he asks.
“The prototype.”
“What else did she give you?”
My fingers wrap around the vial containing The Pale Waters. I still can’t believe Dorni gave them to me. Why would she give me the most powerful, the rarest element on the continent without asking for payment? Those blessed stones are rumored to have been used in everything from power ceremonies and soul-transformation rituals to poisons and love potions, to destroying the continent.
“She gave me medicine,” I answer.
“I see. Will the Charm work?”
We are across from the Palace Skyscraper.
“Yes, I think so.”
I cross the street without him just to piss him off, but he catches up to me in a matter of seconds and rounds the back of the Palace Skyscraper with me. The back door unlocks automatically as we approach it. Once we are indoors, he pins me against the warm door.
His breath is hot, his scent intoxicating—even intermingled with the coppery smell of blood—and his weight is delicious against me. He is angry and aroused and angry about being aroused.
“I expect you in my apartments at four-thirty,” he growls.
He pushes himself away from me instantly, pivots, and disappears around a corner long before I am able to recover from his nearness.
NINETEEN
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO find the lab from here. I come across plenty of signs, but they appear to be for the service robots and not humans. I am reminded that I should have read that booklet of instructions Cat Evinas told me about when she showed me to my rooms.
Not that Roland really gave me much time alone in my room last night to actually read anything other than his smoldering body language.
I turn corners. Walk through an equal number of bright hallways and pitch-black hallways. One has such a steep incline that, at one point, I’m certain that I am on the third floor instead of the first. I encounter stairs that lead to solid walls.
I discover auditoriums, movie theaters, an indoor swimming pool, wide open spaces that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever, and several more bridges that connect over large cracks in the floor.
I follow the slow, gurgling sounds of the flowing black water river that threads throughout the Palace that, literally on the topmost floor, connects the Palace Skyscraper into the tall mountains behind it. At some point in the far-ago past, Roland’s family apparently expanded the Palace into the mountains, carving into it to selfishly redirect the waterfall from its natural location.
The water is a soothing sound, but it doesn’t lead me to the lab. Eventually, I find the elevator lifts, go down several floors, wind through familiar, though confusing tunnels and pathways, and finally encounter the raised under-lit catlike hallway.
As I near my lab door, I smile as it unlocks and opens silently and then closes behind me. The room is bright, which is how I like it, but it feels plain and devoid without Roland in it with me.
He fires my blood, stirs my senses, and heightens my awareness of him completely. I still have a difficult time believing that I’m here. That I’m near Roland. That I’ve kissed and tasted and felt him. And other than his dark, brooding side, he’s everything I dreamt of over the years. His piercing eyes. His intoxicating pull. H
is apparent attraction to me, which seems both truthful and strategic, like he’s positioning himself to win a battle that I might be the key for.
I suppose I am the key to Roland’s personal battle.
He wants freedom from his scars, from his past, from his father’s barbaric legacy. I pull out the vial that contains The Pale Waters and place it on the lab table. The three small stones are rather innocent looking; plain, even. If I encountered them scattered amongst regular stones and rocks, I wouldn’t have a clue that they were more than rocks, that a thousand years ago, after molten lava cooled and formed its first igneous rocks that developed under the Feeble Princess burial lake, that these rocks inherited the characteristics of its namesake. Pale, smooth, and faultless; much like the Feeble Princess herself. But on the inside, she was a chameleon—able to change herself into anything she wanted—volatile, a warrior, helpless, poisonous, erotic, exotic, and utterly desirable to her subjects, her servants, and her enemies, even when they knew she would be their downfall.
This is her legend. Her power. And the stones formed under her burial lake supposedly possessed elements of her soul. It’s rather elemental, yet mythical, when I think about it.
I wonder if I can use them for the prototype. Maybe the stones contain the Feeble Princess’ chameleon powers. I want to exploit the ability that made her helpless subjects see her differently than what she was in reality.
If I use it, maybe everyone will see Roland differently, too.
***
I make a fresh prototype with the previous ingredients, minus my blood, and add Roland’s Charm. It sizzles in the tube.
Placing protective goggles on my face, I find a granite mortar from a cabinet, remove one milky-white stone, and slowly crush it with the mortar’s matching pestle. A captured scent of jasmine, vanilla, a strong sulfur, and something else I cannot identify is released once in power form.
It has a profound affect on me.
I feel soft, sexy, desirable. I could seduce anyone or anything at the snap of my fingers. I have the notion that if I were to suddenly jump from a tall window, I’d be invincible.
The real me smiles. The Feeble Princess is good. Damn good.
But I’m stronger, and I understand what’s happening. Scientifically speaking, I’m pleased to discover that her chameleon ability isn’t trapped in the fumes. This capability will be in physical form, amongst the stone’s alabaster dust. Though whether it needs to be ingested or not will begin with a few serious risks on my part.
I scoop some of it up, place it evenly on a glass slide, and study it through the microscope. I expect all of the grains to be pale white, but through the microscope, they are a myriad of colors, ranging from onyx black, amber orange, blood red, cyan blue, rose pink, sparkling silvers, and cloud white, all intermixed. I surmised, previously, that there would be various shades of white, ivory, and other pale pigments, but not black. Not blue. Certainly not blood red.
I look up from the microscope and observe the grains still left in the mortar.
White. Not even a slight deviation. I wonder that if because I expect to see white, that I see white, but when I inspect it under the microscope, the grains reveal their true colors. I think for a moment, pondering what would happen if I separate the different colors, but then I shake my head. That would take hours. Days, even. I don’t have the luxury of time at the moment.
I have one hour.
Plus, I want all of the qualities of The Pale Waters. My assumption is that the stone’s essence is only effective if all of its qualities are kept together. I already lost the intoxicating fumes when I crushed it. I still feel some of that euphoria, but I’m no longer thinking about jumping out the window. Should Roland walk in right this instant, I might become much more sexually aggressive, but he is sulking up in his lavish apartments and I am here, trying to find a way to melt his scars away.
Well, melt is a strong word. I can’t do that. I can mask. I can cover. I can deceive. I can create an illusion of someone else. Roland Rexus, but only better. Sexier. Stronger.
Through the microscope, I look again. The colors have shifted hues. Black onyx is now gray. Blood red is peach. Amber orange is yellow. Cyan blue is turquoise. Rose pink is fuchsia. Only the silvers and the whites stay the same. Those are the constant, the foundation, and why, when observed in stone or grain form, the naked eye only sees a creamy ivory shade.
Is it losing effectiveness? Or are the grains in a constant state of change?
Time for an experiment.
I retrieve a drinking glass from this morning’s breakfast, add purified water, and then pour in a small amount of the grains. Stirring the liquid, the grains dissolve entirely, and, taking a fortifying breath, I drink it.
TWENTY
THE LIQUID BURNS MY THROAT LIKE the molten lava that created the rock in the first place. I can feel it swirling in my stomach. Attaching. Attacking. Assembling. Changing. My skull spins and my eyes roll into the back of my head.
Knots form all throughout my torso, muscles clench and unclench, and I hear a piercing scream that can break glass. Everything is so red. I try to resist the pull. Resist the Feeble Princess’ anger. But I can’t. It is too strong.
Then silence, peace, and clarity. Clarity on our society’s class system. Ineffective government. Lack of food, poverty, and starving children.
The unfairness of it all. Dirty. Shame. Guilt.
Slavery. Forced military service. The inherent cruelty commonly displayed in homes, in the streets, out in the open. Kill. Kill. Kill.
I push the microscope off the table, and it crashes to the floor with a satisfying crunch. It feels good to be so destructive. I spy the six piles of books from the researchers before me. Those idiots. Couldn’t do one damn thing right. Now I’m here to fix their mistakes. Fix Roland Rexus. I grab their books, their tablets, and their notes roughly. They disgust me, and I throw it all into a pile into the corner. I need to destroy it all. I find a blowtorch behind a metal door—I practically rip the door off its hinges—and set the crude pile on fire.
The heat licks at me, laughs at me, tells me how stupid I am. But dear Goddess, watching the fire destroy those books makes me feel so delicious, so sexy, so perfect. I want to feel this way all the time.
I know it’s wrong, it claws at me. The real me screams at me from the inside: Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. And then I scream out loud, but I can’t help it. None of it. The Feeble Princess’ volatile nature owns me for a spell. It quells down only to flare up again; burning, itching, dying ember by ember, as I watch the corner of my lab engulf in flames. And I don’t do a damn thing about it.
I don’t care. Even if I go up in smoke with it, I think it will be worth it.
My head spins again. I collapse to the floor, crumple up like a discarded scrap of paper, and vomit up the vile contents I drank only moments ago.
What have I done?
Smoke is everywhere, and I choke. Half my lab is in flames, walls as black as a moonless night, and I’m as weak as a newborn babe. I crawl to one of the unaffected lab tables and I try to stand up, to pull myself up, but I’m about as effective as the discarded microscope in front of me on the floor. Crawl, dammit! I shuffle to cabinets, drawers, anything, in order to find the fire extinguisher, and only at the last moment, before the fire turns its attention to my side of the room, I find it, lift it out of the cabinet, and spray it until nothing is left.
When I open my eyes sometime later—it feels like hours and not merely moments—the room smolders, crackles, and pops, the fire is defeated—I’m defeated—and the Feeble Princess won that round.
I pull myself to a sitting position and inspect what escaped my destructive behavior. Not much, but my main lab table, the remaining Pale Waters’ grains, still in the mortar, and the prototype are safe.
I check myself. Other than a few cuts on my face—I have no idea what cut me—and red marks on my fingers from the fire, I am unhurt. Roland and his chief of staff are going to kill me wh
en they find out. I groan as I stand up.
I don’t have much time before I’m expected in his apartments. With a working prototype. Or Else.
Or else what? Hell, had I encountered him moments ago, I would have done everything short of assault him, and even that I’m not too sure of. It would have been magic, powerful, enticing, hot, passionate, and explosive. I would have gladly destroyed us both, or died trying.
Thank Heaven no one witnessed my behavior. I won’t be able to hide the product of said behavior for long, though.
I sprinkle in a dash of The Pale Waters’ grains into the now-thick, black liquid prototype. I stir the liquid with a glass rod and allow it to breathe for a few moments.
Sealing the tube, I encase it in a clear rubber sleeve and study for any changes. It feels warmer. The black water turns a milky gray color, and then, after another sixty seconds, into a creamy white hue that’s more solid than liquid. Something’s going on; some sort of chemical reaction.
I wish I had a service robot around to see if the current prototype transformed its metal arm into a human-flesh-arm.
With nothing left to do, I leave the lab to meet Roland at the appointed time.
TWENTY-ONE
IT IS ONLY WHEN I’M ON the lift that I consider my appearance. I’m almost positive that I look like I did jump out of a few windows and barely survived with my limbs intact. Perhaps Roland will have a fabriskin robe I can borrow to throw over my sooty clothes. Before he throws me out of his Palace Skyscraper for being an utter failure. Actually, why waste a perfectly good fabriskin robe before throwing me out? I smile a little at the thought.
Tucking a hand in a pocket, my fingers touch the forgotten coral lipstick. Thoughts invade. Cruel thoughts. If he decides to fire me tonight, then I can complete the mission. I pull the tube of lipstick out of my pocket and examine its gold and red frame carefully. It’s an elegant, little case, something a wealthy woman would carry in her clutch.