her instruments 03 - laisrathera

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “I would never…!”

  “Have you not?” Urise lifted a brow. Then he smiled and sighed, shaking his head. He touched the backs of his fingers to Hirianthial’s cheek. “Arrogate to God and Goddess all that belongs to them, my son. Give away that which belongs to others to them. To you, the rest may come.”

  “I promise to try,” he answered, still struggling to accept the words. So tempting to reject them out of hand, but knowing the depth of the priest’s experience, viscerally now, he could no more do so in good conscience than he could turn from any other teaching.

  “Good. Now go and make ready. I shall stay and look at the furred peoples.” Urise grinned. “They truly are diverting.”

  Hirianthial found a laugh and gained his shaky feet. “I expect they are. Until I see you again, Elder. Thank you.”

  “Go in Their care, my son.”

  He packed next, and there was little to pack. He felt the absence of his swords painfully, but there was nothing to be done for it; no doubt they were somewhere in Ontine, perhaps in his brother’s untender care, or even lying in the snow by the lake. But he had been brought to the starbase with the clothes on his back, and not even that had survived the fight that had necessitated his arrival. There had been spares in his quarters in the Earthrise, at least, but not much more since most of his effects had accompanied him to the Jisiensire house on Noble’s Row. But it was well that it took so little time, for that left him enough for a different errand. That his lessoning with Urise had left him feeling strange and unsure of his edges somehow made that errand more urgent, for he knew Reese’s people had helped him through similar episodes. That is where he went next.

  “So is there news?” Sascha asked after he entered. The Earthrise’s crew was sharing a single suite in the hotel, and Kis’eh’t was sitting in the shared common room with Allacazam cradled in her forepaws. Bryer was a mounded silhouette near the window, like a vast bird of prey with furled wings.

  “There is,” he said. “One of Fleet Intelligence’s smaller ships will be here tomorrow to pick me up, and then we are returning home to gather information for the scout ship Fleet will dispatch when it is free, in two weeks.”

  Kis’eh’t tsked softly beneath her breath. “A lot can happen in two weeks.”

  “It is why they wish to send the smaller vessel,” Hirianthial said. “To see what might occur, and give warning.”

  “Makes sense,” Sascha said. He stretched, tail curling behind him. “I’m already packed.”

  From the window, Bryer said, “Me too.”

  “I… am not sure there is room for three,” Hirianthial said, startled.

  “Four,” Kis’eh’t said.

  “Aw, no, arii,” Sascha said. “Who’ll keep an eye on the ship?”

  “The ship isn’t going to be vandalized in a Fleet slip,” Kis’eh’t said dryly.

  “And Allacazam?” Sascha pressed as Hirianthial listened, bemused.

  “So we’ll stay on this new ship while the rest of you go off doing your 3deo hero bit.” In Kis’eh’t’s lap, Allacazam turned a sunnily amused yellow.

  “But the Queen?” Sascha asked. “Who’s going to keep the Queen company?”

  That stopped Kis’eh’t. She frowned, opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  To Hirianthial, Sascha said, “She’s been chatting with your cousin. I think they like one another.”

  “She’s a smart woman,” Kis’e’h’t said, feathered ears flicking back. “I like smart people. They’re relaxing to talk to.”

  The thought of Liolesa discoursing at length with the short, phlegmatic Glaseah tickled Hirianthial through his fatigue. “Did she also meet the Flitzbe?”

  “Of course. I promised Reese I’d look after him, so he goes where I go.”

  “And what did my cousin think of him, pray tell?” Hirianthial wondered, his mouth quirking.

  “I think they found each other interesting,” Kis’eh’t said. She scowled at Sascha. “That was a low blow.”

  “Maybe so,” Sascha said. “But I get the feeling there aren’t going to be many berths on this ride, and you’re not going to like the fight, arii. And it really is true that if we all leave, there won’t be anyone with the Queen. Not from our ranks, anyway.”

  The phrasing piqued Hirianthial’s interest. “Our ranks?”

  “Sure,” Sascha said. “’Our’ ranks. Reese’s people. Reese is the Queen’s vassal, and we’re her whatever you call it: employees, retainers, whatever. Her people. We’re her symbol of her commitment to the Queen, right? So we need to show our support for the Queen while she’s out here in the Alliance, so she won’t be alone. No offense to that priest we brought, but he’s Eldritch, and she’s not among Eldritch, right?”

  He stared at the Harat-Shar, surprised, and his expression must have been leading, for it made Kis’eh’t chuckle. “You’ve been listening to me about the feudal systems after all. And here I thought you were busy kissing on Irine.”

  “I was busy kissing on Irine,” Sascha replied modestly. “But I’m so good at it I can multitask. Harat-Shariin talent, you know. So what about it, arii?”

  “It’s well-reasoned,” Kis’eh’t said. She smiled. “Goddess, I am turning part-feudal myself if I can be pleased that I now feel useful.”

  “You need not be feudal to want that, arii,” Hirianthial said. “But if it helps, I will say that Sascha is correct. I would never have thought it, but the symbols will stand, and she will feel it.”

  “All right.” Kis’eh’t nodded. “I’ll stay here with Liolesa and Allacazam. We’ll wait for this bigger ship and come back with her. You two are in charge of keeping Hirianthial in one piece until we can get him to Reese.”

  “Can do.”

  When had they decided that two people would be accompanying him? Much less that they were doing so to be his defense? “I beg your pardon?”

  Bryer shook his feathers with a hissing rustle and stepped away from the window. “Will be done.”

  Sascha said. “All right, good. That’s settled. When do we leave, Boss?”

  “I am not—” He stopped at the sight of their gazes: Bryer inscrutable and unblinking, Kis’eh’t amused, and Sascha almost challenging him to disagree. Theresa had always been their ‘boss,’ and no such title had ever devolved to him, and could not, unless they had decided he and their mistress were sharing power. Did they understand the feudal system enough to know what they implied?

  No question of that.

  He sighed, exasperated and amused. “The ship arrives tomorrow. I will arrange for Bryer’s passage.”

  Sascha grinned, ears perked. “There, see? Wasn’t so hard, was it.”

  “It’s almost as if we can read your mind,” Kis’eh’t added blandly.

  Hirianthial shook his head. “What is she to do with the lot of you.”

  “Unfortunately nothing I’d suggest,” Sascha said, grinning. “But Angels willing, I’ll be around to keep suggesting it until she gives in or finds me a few wives to keep me busy.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The prisoner was gone.

  Surela stared at the empty cell and turned to the guards who’d led her into the catacombs, her guards, in her livery, men she’d been sure were at very least competent at their duties. “Has he been moved?”

  “No, my Lady,” her guide said, his nervousness palpable. “He was here when last we were informed.”

  She glanced down the corridor, hating the chill and the damp and the moisture that gleamed on the floor and made her small, tidy heels feel unsteady beneath her. “You there,” she said, spotting a priest in the Lord’s dark robes. “What has happened to the prisoner?”

  “I cannot say, Your Majesty.”

  “Cannot say?” she asked, astonished. “You deny knowledge to your own Queen?”

  “Your Majesty,” he repeated, impassive. “It is not for me to say. The High Priest has sealed the matter.”

  “Oh has he,” Surela said, lips drawing back from
her teeth. “You may go.” To her guide. “We return.”

  Her mind roiled with frustrations as they mounted the stairs leading back into the palace. Hirianthial gone! Where? Had Baniel killed him already? She had given him to the priesthood, of course—a mind-mage could not be suffered to live, much less one that consorted with mortals—but that was before she’d understood him to have knowledge that she needed. She wondered suddenly if Baniel had known about these things, and if that was one of the reasons he wanted his brother dead so quickly? She paused on the stairs, and her guards halted immediately, waiting on her pleasure.

  A foreboding came to her then. “Take me to Liolesa,” she said to the guards. No, surely she was wrong… Hirianthial had been Baniel’s to dispose of, but the Queen—the former Queen, she reminded herself angrily—had been her prisoner. Baniel would not have touched her—

  There were no guards waiting at the suite. She flung the door open and stared at the empty room. To search it would be futile, she knew; Liolesa was gone. But she ordered it done anyway and returned to her study while they worked, and there she brooded and grew more and more wroth until they delivered the inevitable report that the Queen was gone.

  “Get me Baniel,” she hissed.

  He arrived—in his own good time, she noticed—and by then she was so infuriated she didn’t even wait for the guards to close the doors before saying, “What did you do with her?”

  “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?” he said. How she hated his urbane manners and the cold green glitter of his eyes! Would it be worth it to throw him in his own cell for a while? Could she keep him there? Except then who would conclude the transaction with the mortals and send them away? She would have to sully herself with the arrangements.

  “Where is Liolesa?” Surela said. “And Hirianthial? Or did you kill him already?”

  “He was mine to kill.”

  “This sidesteps my question. Where are they? Answer me!”

  “Gone, Your Majesty,” Baniel said. At her expression, he finished, unperturbed, “Escaped.”

  “Escaped!”

  “Off-world, in fact.”

  She stared at him, shocked that he could admit to this catastrophic failure with such equanimity. Did he truly think himself beyond punishment?

  “That is all you have to say for yourself,” she said, the words black with anger. “You have allowed our enemies to escape—and to the mortal worlds, where they can gather aid and return to crush us—and you have nothing more to say? ‘They’re gone’? Really?”

  “You are overwrought, Your Majesty,” Baniel said. “We are in no danger, I assure you.”

  Despite herself, she felt a faint fascination at this continued evidence of his delusion. “Go on. I would like to hear how you have derived this conclusion.”

  “They have gone to seek aid. But they will not find enough to win back the world.”

  “And how is that possible? Do not these mortals have thousands of their own vessels?” she asked, trying not to grit her teeth.

  “Ten vessels, a thousand, a million… the numbers are meaningless, Your Majesty, if they cannot be deployed.” He smiled. “It is a matter of mortal politics. I assure you I am well versed in them, and I can say with certitude that the Alliance will not have the resources to devote to our little… fracas.”

  “And if you are wrong?”

  “But I am not. Fear not, Your Majesty. I have the matter well in hand. Though if you like, I could educate you on the matter? I can send for our mortal allies and have them explain at length. I am sure they’d be pleased to meet a Queen, see a royal study. Drink sweet almond liqueur. Such opportunities come infrequently to people of their quality.”

  The thought of letting such creatures into the palace proper made her shudder. Bad enough that they were presumably wandering the catacombs. And yet, to trust him with the entire future of her endeavor… what would it matter if she succeeded in winning Liolesa’s former allies to a sulky acceptance of her reign if the woman could return on some spacegoing warhorse and depose her? And too, the matter that Araelis had spoken of… she knew so little. They had consorted with mortals to make her coup possible, and to her all mortals seemed alike. Did that mean that these mortals were allied with the ones Araelis suggested were interested in pillaging their world?

  Who had Baniel made his deal with?

  Could he be trusted?

  “Your Majesty,” he said, softening. “I know you are concerned. But I would not let harm come to you, when you carry all our hopes for a world free of the interference of mortals. Most of them will be departing this evening to protect our interests abroad. They will bar Liolesa’s way, I pledge you. Let me continue to be your obedient servant in this so that you need not soil yourself with the details.”

  “Departing,” she said, wary. “Do they mean to return?”

  “Only once, to collect their pay. I cannot pay them of course until they fulfill their contractual duties. These mortals can be led by their love of money, Your Majesty: dangle it before them, and they are completely predictable. No, they are well in check. They will take care of Liolesa and my brother, and then they will come for their money, and then they will be gone and we may continue in peace.” He tilted his head. “What will you do about the rebellious Houses?”

  “I will have a talk shortly with the Delen Galare,” Surela said. “And after that…” She looked out the window. “We will see. I may ride forth to demand allegiance from them.”

  “And the hostages?”

  “They are not hostages,” she said, irritated. “They are guests… guests, until they see reason.”

  “Your guests, then,” he said, inclining his head. “Will they be staying?”

  “What else? It’s the winter court.” She eyed him. “Almost I think you would have me kill them. Do all men have this bloodthirstiness? Is it inherent to the sex?”

  “Oh, I would never suggest such a thing,” Baniel said. “Surely your way is the best.”

  “Yes,” she said, still considering him. “Very well, then. You may go.”

  “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing. “Thank you for the opportunity to assuage your fears.”

  “Keep me better informed, Baniel. This is a command, not a suggestion.”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him go, uneasy. Her enemies hated her, of course, and would lie to her at any opportunity; she did not put it past Araelis to do such. But she began to wonder if Baniel was as much her ally as she’d thought. It had not escaped her that he had preferred to address her as ‘Your Majesty,’ which was a less intimate title than ‘my Lady,’ when traditionally the Queen was everyone’s liege-lady. Was this subtlety a rejection of his relationship with her… and the duties that came attendant?

  Surela sent for Thaniet and a meal and went to sit before the fire and weigh her options. None of them seemed very appealing.

  The coat the Tams had supplied Reese with did a good job of insulating her from the chill, but very little to shield her from the strangeness of feeling it outdoors. The Earthrise’s dry, recirculated air, vacuumed clean of any smell, had been artificial, something she could control. It was an entirely different experience to stand outside and know that she couldn’t wish away the weather. That it was moving according to some magical collection of variables that planets had and she didn’t understand well enough to predict. That it had a smell—floral and briny and wild—and a texture—moist and clinging—and that it would continue to have, and be those things no matter what one small human woman decreed.

  Ordinarily, she would have found the idea appalling. But somehow she still liked the Eldritch world. She liked listening to the surf in the distance. She liked the crazy ramble of unlikely-looking roses. She liked the intransigence that seemed bred into the bones of anything that had to do with the species. Her crew would laugh, but it made her feel a little bit related to them; stubbornness, even in the face of approaching disaster, was something she could appreciate. Reese petted on
e of the flowers, finding the petals silky until the cold numbed her fingers, and then she hid her hands away in her pockets again.

  And then there was the sky.

  What had Hirianthial called it? Io… gev… something. The sacred caul. She stared up at it and wondered where he was, and Liolesa, and the rest of her crew.

  “My Lady is melancholic.”

  “Am I your lady?” she asked, waiting for Val to draw up alongside her.

  “Point,” he said. “I have not offered and you have not accepted. But I like you, Lady Eddings. I haven’t met a human before. You have a presence.”

  “Oh, do I.” She eyed him.

  He laughed. “And you are unconvinced. That’s fine. I don’t expect otherwise.”

  “Are you out here alone?” she said. “Did they really let you wander off like this?”

  “Oh no. Yon tigress is following at what she believes to be a discreet distance.” He smiled crookedly. “Her thoughts are very busy with a fierceness of devotion.”

  Reese smiled at that. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. So why did you follow me out?”

  “To ask you to please make the attempt,” he said, surprising her with his sobriety. “I would very much like to help you.”

  “You have a debt to repay,” she guessed.

  “I do.”

  She looked out over her castle—her castle! And said, “How do you say it? The roses. What are they called?”

  “Me’enia,” he said. “Say each vowel separately, Captain… most of our words are that way. Meh eh nee ah. Roses. But these are special. They are lioyasea, white roses, the roses of sacrifice. They bloom only in winter, the cruelest season, and grow only by the coast where there are storms. And it’s said they were born of Elsabet’s blood when she died here.”