The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  Loran nodded. “I wouldn’t accept her terms in any instance, but I’ll remember this.”

  Sireen grinned. “I misjudged you, Jessa, and I rarely do that. Your mother misjudges you more. Use that. I’ll see the members of this council to safety and await you at the Red Army encampment.”

  “See that they are safe,” Jessa said. “But I’m warning you: I’m not some porcelain doll for you to put on the throne and use to further your own agenda. Although Satryn failed me in so many ways, she schooled me well in intrigue—better than she suspects. Don’t make me use those skills, and we’ll know only love between us.”

  Sireen placed her hand on her heart. “You’re free to deny my guidance, but I expect great things from you, niece.”

  Dame Woodhouse interjected, “The aristocracy would feel much more comfortable with Her Majesty than Satryn. Princess Jessa has made an earnest effort to understand our city and represents a softer image of the Dominance.” She turned to Sword. “Could you pour me some wine, Viceroy?”

  Sword waved his hand, and a tendril of bubbly snaked out of the bottle and congealed into a floating sphere. It formed a somewhat small avian shape, and its wings began to flutter like a hummingbird while the body remained still, with effervescent bubbles floating through it. It dive-bombed into Dame Woodhouse’s glass, filling it perfectly to the bell.

  “Amazing! How in the hells did you accomplish that?” Turnbull exclaimed.

  “It’s easy when your second brain can do persistent calculations of fluid dynamics,” Sword explained. “I’m just that fucking amazing.”

  Turnbull shook his head. “Who are you?”

  “I’m still working on that,” Sword said, then paused. Finally he said, “Turnbull, as much as it pains me to put these words together in a sentence, we could use your help.”

  “Given your skill, I would be a liability,” he admitted, then turned to the princess. “Jessa, I wish you every success. Torin would have been lucky to marry you. May I ask whether your child is his?”

  “I wish he had been,” Jessa said, ignoring Cameron’s tortured gaze. “I knew very little of Torin, but he was kind and honest. It’s a legacy that deserves to be remembered.”

  “That means more to me than you know.”

  “Okay, sore subject,” Sword grunted. “Can we go now? I’m bored.”

  “You need a plan,” Loran said gruffly. The Grand Invocus was beaten and powerless, but there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  Sword chugged some bubbly and slammed the bottle down. “Yeah, I got a plan."

  THIRTY-NINE

  Uprising

  SATRYN

  IF THERE IS a god looking down on us, he might see the world as we see the stars in the sky. Unchanging lights flickering in a tranquil void. What we see as global chaos is just a twinkle from the heavens.

  —THE STARGAZER, TRAVELER PROVERBS

  SATRYN HAD SPENT so many months in captivity that it made her giddy to be beneath the open sky. The cold rain pounding her naked skin felt like a reunion with nature. Night had fallen, but the darkening clouds blotted out the stars. The presence of her goddess flowed through her as she stood in the center of Oiler’s Park. All around her lightning fell, hammering her foes as they struggled to launch assaults from behind crudely assembled barricades.

  Kultea’s tentacles swam through the water and brought the fury of elemental might to buildings and houses. She was in ten places at once, her body one with the water that was once Rivern’s lifeblood. Now it was hers to command, and she was aware of the entire city. As troops scrambled, she shattered causeways. As the mages left the Lyceum, she swatted them into paste with tendrils of water.

  She lashed and destroyed gleefully. For a city so proud of its engineers, how easily their silly contraptions shattered. Without the Invocari to freeze the water, Rivern was revealed for what it was—a glorified collection of mud hovels for Genatrovan peasants thinking themselves the equals of the gods.

  The power intoxicated her. Satryn’s own mother, who hadn’t left the Sunken Palace in decades, never really saw what her Heritage was capable of. Had a Tempest been willing to leave the safety of Thelassus, he or she would be unbeatable. Satryn wasn’t just empress; she was a warrior.

  Rivern had defied the Dominance for half a millennium because the Thrycean tyrants were weak and paranoid. Had any of them possessed the stones to truly wield their power, the empire would cover Genatrova. Rivern would be an example to all.

  Satryn smiled as she felt a familiar presence approach from one of the canals. With a mere thought, she lessened the torrential downpour around her to a pounding rain. She gazed across the flooded park to see Jessa marching toward her with the priest and Maddox in tow.

  She awaited them eagerly. The priest was no threat and Maddox was harmless. Her daughter, however, was inches from the Coral Trone. There was a Stormord proverb that every step toward power is ten steps from trust.

  “Mother,” Jessa said, “had I known your plans, I could have prevented this vulgar display of power. I had everything well in hand.”

  Satryn laughed. “You had nothing in hand, darling. You were flotsam in the shifting tide of the Assembly’s whims.”

  “Yet I managed to get them out of the city.” Jessa raised her voice over the rain. There was a hardness to her gaze. “Oh, come on, Mother. Who do you think framed you for the murder of Torin Silverbrook? You were supposed to remain in prison, but as usual you’ve disrupted my plans.”

  Satryn sneered, “You’re pretending, Jessa.”

  “No.” Jessa raised her chin defiantly. “You are pretending. I wanted you out of the way because you lack subtlety. While you were hatching your plan for brute force within the confines of your luxuriously appointed prison, I was going about the work of actually destroying the Assembly’s authority.”

  Satryn rolled her eyes. “Jessa, I’m not for one second buying this charade.”

  “Then it is the will of Kultea that the harrowings happened when we came to this city?” Jessa challenged. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

  Satryn paused. It was an audacious lie, but she had no ready answer. The harrowings were random. Yet they had weakened the city, and Jessa had not accused her of them. Kultea’s presence didn’t respond to the question.

  “It was me,” Jessa stated. “I recruited a warlock to spread panic and disorder with his ability to create Nightmares. I started with the Landry house—Rothburn’s principal allies in the Assembly—but I quickly discovered the nobles could be frightened, leaving their estates unguarded for me to steal their secrets and make it look like burglary.”

  “You would never kill for political advantage,” Satryn chided. “You were always too much like your father.”

  Jessa stifled a laugh. “I killed Father.”

  Satryn’s silver eyes went wide. “What did you say?”

  “I killed King Josur Shyford,” Jessa said, glowering. “I crept into his room in the dark of night, where he lay wasting from his illness. He was pathetic, as if someone had crumpled his portrait and tossed it onto his sickbed. It was a mercy to take his red velvet pillow and place it over his face. If he were a Stormlord, he would have been granted a dignified reprieve. Since you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, I had to.”

  “You’re lying,” Satryn challenged.

  “Not about Father.” Jessa smirked. “Do you really think I’m so naïve and innocent? You killed that little girl a long time ago with your vitriol, and ever since I’ve been learning everything you can teach me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “The more I defied you, the more you taught me,” Jessa stated. “Had I been your ally, you would have spared me the hardest lessons: ‘You can have no one close to you. You can trust nothing anyone says. The only way to be free is to have power over those around you.’ I drank in every word, Mother.”

  “You’re better at deception than I thought,” Satryn admitted. “Still this nonsense isn’t fooling me. Nor are y
ou distracting me from neutralizing the threats that crawl from the crevices of this city to challenge me.”

  “You mean those drowned bodies you’ve swallowed in the canal?” Jessa challenged. She raised her hand and tossed three thunderbolts to the sky.

  Satryn laughed with elation as waterlogged corpses crawled from the canals. “Revenants? Jessa, that’s amazing!”

  “I wanted to rule Rivern through the Assembly,” Jessa sneered. “With the nobility fleeing to their country estates, we could have called another election, one that favored Cameron and his coalition. The city could have fallen to the Dominance without so much as a whisper. Instead you ravage it with your weather mischief.”

  “You should have told me.” Satryn wiped a tear from her eye. She walked toward her and embraced her daughter tightly.

  Jessa stiffened.

  She whispered in Jessa’s ear, “Nice try, you ungrateful cunt. You will not usurp me.”

  Satryn grabbed her daughter’s hair, snapping her head back. She kneed Jessa in the stomach then tossed her body aside as she spun to kick her in the face. Jessa fell to the ground.

  “I don’t care about my legacy,” Satryn declared. “The empire can fold…as long it stands while I live.”

  The priest looked at Maddox. “Do it.”

  Satryn hurled a bolt of lightning into the mage’s chest. She’d find out what this was all about tomorrow, but the idea of his disloyalty displeased her. His body tumbled backward from the force of her blast.

  Satryn smiled. “Now what was it you wanted him to do?”

  FORTY

  Insurgency

  HEATH

  THE SOURCE OF all needless suffering... is time. Childhood haunts us and death threatens us. The only refuge is in the present, the last place anyone thinks to look.

  —THE LIBERTINE, TRAVELER PROVERBS

  HEATH LET HIS springblades free as he tumbled to the side. A lightning bolt struck the ground inches from where he was standing. The thunder was deafening, and the force of the sound threw him back. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled as quickly as he could beneath a park bench as another bolt slammed into the ground.

  Satryn called, “Oh, bravo! You’re quite fast.”

  Heath glanced at Jessa, who was picking herself up from the ground. Sword was splayed out in the grass, his chest still smoking. Breathing heavily, he tumbled out from cover and darted behind a topiary.

  Their plan was in shambles. Jessa was supposed to stab Satryn with the Razor of Setahari when they embraced. Sword insisted the Geas wouldn’t take hold if the hilt were properly insulated with glyph-inscribed silk. It had to be Jessa—not even Sword’s reflexes were quick enough.

  The bench Heath had been under exploded in a cloud of broken stone and lightning. He remained completely still. Satryn could sense motion even through the pounding rain, and he didn’t want to reveal his location. Jessa wasn’t looking good, and Sword was even worse, his chest charred and smoking. It had been a long time since Heath had been on his own.

  Another crash of thunder resounded as Satryn electrified a revenant that rushed toward her. Pytheria and Crateus were fulfilling their part of the plan. The undead rose from the river and charged the Tempest one at a time from different directions.

  Heath took the opportunity to stalk slowly around the topiary. Satryn was a good ten feet away, five feet too far from the range of his springblades.

  Jessa shouted, “Mother!” She unleashed a torrent of lightning that skittered off Satryn’s body like water from a duck.

  Satryn spun and charged her daughter. Jessa moved quickly but not fast enough to avoid getting punched in the face. To her credit Jessa slammed her elbow into Satryn’s side. The women staggered in opposite directions, cradling their wounds before squaring off again.

  “Ungrateful,” Satryn spat. “The Coral Throne would have been yours.”

  “It already is,” Jessa teased. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  Heath sighed. The plan had been to provoke Satryn and lower her guard. But the Tempest never lowered her guard. Not even when it was her daughter. She and Heath had that kind of mistrust in common.

  He crept across the grass as Jessa and Satryn circled each other. Above them massive tendrils of water swayed, ready to strike. Jessa couldn’t override her mother’s power, but she was more resistant to it than any of them. The water wouldn’t drown her, and the lightning would only sting her.

  Heath dived and glided toward Sword’s body, remaining deathly still when he slid to a stop. He slowly moved his hand to Sword’s, grasping his thin fingers in his hand.

  “I did kill Father,” Jessa said, “to put him out of his misery. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize yours.”

  Satryn’s hand exploded in a flash of light, manifesting a flickering blade of electricity. “You’re a Stormlord. I’ll grant you the death of a worthy rival.”

  “I deserve the throne,” Jessa declared. “You’re twisted by the diseases of the pureblood. They’ve made you mad and miserable.” She twirled her wrist and conjured a saber of electricity.

  Their blades clashed in an explosion of light. Satryn was quick and vicious, driving her daughter back with ease. Jessa parried frantically as she tried to fend off the attack. Satryn casually twisted her blade.

  Heath sent his Light through Sword’s body. There was a heartbeat, thin and weak. But it was there. He forced everything he had into Sword’s body.

  Satryn and Jessa clashed their blades. Jessa struggled to defend herself as Satryn mercilessly beat her backward. Jessa managed to just barely defend herself with clumsy parries; she offered a feeble riposte only to be driven back farther.

  Jessa’s timid, defensive stance, however, proved adequate. She had spent her life protecting herself from her overbearing mother, and a hidden competence lay behind her seemingly uncertain maneuvers.

  Sword coughed. “The fuck?”

  “Satryn’s going to kill Jessa,” Heath said. “You need to get in the game.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Sword leaned up from the grass and waved his hand.

  The Razor of Setahari floated off the ground and floated behind Satryn as she sparred with her daughter. Jessa’s reflexes were working frantically to provide defense. Satryn looked bored.

  The dagger whipped into Satryn’s thigh, slicing the femoral artery and unleashing a torrent of blood from the gash.

  Satryn fell to her knees as Jessa grabbed her throat in her hands and squeezed.

  Satryn laughed to herself, “I didn’t think you had it in you. But if you kill me, you will be next in line. And I guarantee that you will never know a moment of peace.”

  Jessa stared into her mother’s cold silver eyes. “How is that any different?”

  “You are my daughter.” Satryn said digging her nails into Jessa’s forearms.

  Heath charged over, “Jessa, No! You don’t need to do this. She’ll bleed out in less than a minute.”

  Jessa released her mother and let her body fall to the ground.

  Satryn smiled peacefully and said, “I loved you the only way that I knew how…”

  Her eyes shut as the life fled her body. The rain fell harder.

  Sparks flickered across Satryn’s corpse and made their way to Jessa like a swarm of glowing eels. Satryn’s body dissolved as lightning poured through her skin. Jessa jumped backward as they gathered at her feet. “Get back,” she told Heath and Sword. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Heath grabbed Sword’s hand and pulled, but Sword pulled away.

  Heath was about to say, “We need to get back,” before he was ripped off his feet. Oh, right. He’s immortal.

  Sword’s magic hurled them behind a shattered wall, his blade whirling behind him. It landed point first into the soggy earth. Heath rolled and absorbed most of the blow. His shoulder crunched painfully, but he saved his Light and glanced back.

  Jessa doubled over as arcs of lightning crawled under her skin and into her veins, making them throb with b
lue power. Satryn’s body disintegrated into a torrent of lightning. Jessa pulled at her hair and cried out desperately as the power funneled into her. Her body exploded in a corona of electricity. Her back arched upward, and she tossed a pulsing surge of energy into the sky, where it radiated in concentric bursts through the dark clouds.

  The blast knocked Sword back, and a deafening peal of thunder rang out across the park. His body flailed from the shock and fell still. Smoke rose from his flesh even as the rains fell harder.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  Heath nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the young Fodder from the DiVarian estate kneeling beside him. He was wearing a clinking bandolier of potions strapped over his chest. Crouched next to him was the ancient, leering face of Pytheria. At least a dozen shambling waterlogged revenants swayed behind her.

  “Nice sword.” Crateus reached out for Sword’s blade.

  “Don’t touch it,” Heath insisted.

  “Shiny…” Pytheria’s bony hands reached for the hilt. Heath was forced for one instant to imagine Sword in the body of a senile and, possibly undead, necromancer who had single-handedly ruined the reputation of Rivern’s mages with her unethical experiments. The comic horror would almost be worth it.

  “Never you.” Heath glared, and she backed away.

  “Sword!” Jessa shouted as she ran toward his inert body.

  “Guard that blade with your life,” Heath told Crateus. “But don’t touch it.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Your mother’s dead. Why are the tentacles still here?” Heath gazed at the wavering tendrils of water as they reared back for a strike.

  Jessa spun around and raised her hands, shouting, “Return to the Abyss, Kultea!”

  The tentacles paused for a moment then retracted slightly into the canals surrounding Oiler’s Park. But then they all lashed forward in unison. Heath felt the air rush toward them before the force of the strike.