Call Your Steel

by G. D. Penman

  Metharia smiled at her like a teacher with a prized pupil. “When you deny their new powers and allow every commoner's law, what then? When the nobles deploy their armies against you and the handful of Chosen still in the city?”

  Lucia glinted in the flickering candlelight and her eyes widened in faux shock, “Why, that would be treason. Surely none of them would consider it.”

  Metharia just stared at her until she giggled. “Their soldiers don't benefit from being hired bullies in this city. Not anymore. The roughest of them have already left to find better chances with mercenary companies. The rest will be offered employment in the new city army. Controlled by the council of commons.”

  Metharia seemed to relax again, draping herself forward onto the bed, cup still in hand, “I still don't understand how this council of yours is going to work. Can any commoner from the street just stroll in and pass laws each day?”

  Lucia lifted her eyes back up to Metharia's face, the woman was deeply infuriating when these teasing moods took her. “You know how it is going to work. Each year a commoner can put themselves forward for a place on the council. For the first year, the council of nobles will select the best candidates. In future years the existing council will pick. It is very simple.”

  Metharia lay flat on her front and placed the cup down on the floor by the bed.“Simple and very easy to corrupt. What stops the council from putting themselves back in place each year? Creating a new noble class that can do as it pleases.”

  Lucia smirked. She was quite proud of this part. “The law will stop them. For every year that they serve on the council, they must take a year off. If they have served twice, the gap becomes two years. Thrice makes three years. Besides, even the merchants do not have enough savings to live on indefinitely while their business holdings fall to pieces from lack of attention. They will serve the people. I will see them with food in their bellies and a roof over their heads each night but for anything more they will need to go back into the world and work.”

  Metharia tutted, “And when they supplement the nothing that you pay them with bribes?”

  Lucia cut her off, “They will be investigated by my Chosen and tried for trying to subvert my laws.”

  Metharia looked pained for a moment, “After you have executed a few, the rest will be too scared to take so much as a fallen mushroom.”

  Lucia paused for a long moment, said like that it did sound brutal. She shifted uncomfortably, sitting up straight on the bed as she considered all of this. Metharia interrupted by pouncing on her again with her raking nails and nipping teeth. Seeking out the parts of her that were still soft and driving all concern from her mind with a craftsman's skill.

  Chapter 20- The Turning World

  Lucia's worries returned as they always did when she had time alone to think. She wondered if that was why Metharia stayed at her side for so much of the day when she really wasn't required. The council of nobles had voted on the council of commons and it had been a much-praised idea that had barely scraped by with the required majority. The merchants clearly hadn't wanted to overspend. The first crop of “commons” seemed to contain an unexpected number of noblemen's bastards, and an even greater proportion of commoners who had once been in the service of one of the noble houses that were now out of Lucia's favour but had mysteriously left those positions shortly after rumours of the Eater's latest big idea had started being passed around.

  It was pathetically transparent but it would have to be endured for this iteration at least. Thankfully the positions would empty after a year and she wouldn't have to wait for a generation to die out. With all of eternity, a year did not seem so long to endure. Before her change, even a moment of discomfort had aggrieved her, but now everything seemed to be worth the wait. Her anxiety peaked when a Chosen returned from the border of Ochress’ lands with a plea from a veritable stampede of people fast approaching. Ochress was gone. That seemed to be the only coherent message. Ochress was gone and Vulkas was conquering the defenceless land with a hunger.

  It was the first time Lucia realised the price of her armies and power. It was the first time she considered what Kaius had always tried to hammer into her in his clumsy way. If she was not willing to fight, then she was defenceless against those who were. She could send her Chosen to shepherd these refugees to her city. She was confident that with the new reserves laid aside they could all eat, at least until expansion began. That was not the problem. The problem lay in what her Chosen would do when Vulkas decided to test her. When it threw soldiers and Chosen and war-machines at her envoys of peace, what would she command? There was no time now for careful deliberation. Just an immediate decision that would give life or death to thousands.

  Metharia strode swiftly to her side and whispered harshly into her ear. Lucia waved her away and rose from her little padded stool. She shouted through the confusion and the murmurs of her gathered servants, “Defend them all. Bring all of them to me. Tell them that I will protect them. Send runners to the northern forests and tell Walpurgan's people that they too are welcome to the safety of our walls. Send the message to the people of Vulkas too. Everyone is welcome in the Ivory City. Everyone will be protected.”

  The Chosen from the front line was careful to mask the fear on his face but Lucia tasted it and beckoned him forward. She brushed a finger over his filthy face and Marked him. His eyes widened and he looked up at her. “Send every one of my Chosen within the city to me now. They will be coming with you and they will be Marked.”

  Metharia blurted out, “What about the city's defence?”

  Then she put her hands over her mouth and flushed in embarrassment with a little yelp. Lucia gave her a stern look and answered, “I can defend this city just as I did when all of the Eaters alive turned against me. When the whole world came to knock on our gates and I burned them away to ash.”

  The audience chamber fell silent in the wake of her shouting. Suddenly it was filled with cheers. Nobody heard her quiet little sigh. At least she still knew how to work a crowd.

  Lucia had withdrawn to her chamber for the evening when the fighting started. She shuddered at the drain when a half dozen of her Chosen called on her for strength. She gasped as the connections severed. As each of her Chosen died. Her eyes blazed. She paced back and forth across the rugs around her bed until in her frustration they burst into flames about her feet. Metharia had to dart forward from the quiet corner where she lurked to empty a jug of water and put them out.

  Her new Marked could feel the deaths too, through the link, they drew more speed from her and crossed the open country too fast for the naked eye to perceive them. It was too late by the time they arrived. Vulkas’ Chosen were already wading into the refugees, laughing and hacking them to pieces. Even the brief foray into war last year had not been so brutal to watch. Families were cut apart. Children crushed under steel boots, and the screaming reverberated through Lucia’s mind from across the distance. She should have gone herself. There was a fire in her gut and she should have unleashed it on these butchers.

  She had the power, why shouldn’t she have used it? She poured more of her power through the link to the new Marked. Many of them started to stumble as they ran too fast for their eyes to keep track of the ground ahead. She pushed them recklessly onwards until she could not hear the screaming any more. When the last of her Chosen on Ochress’ border was cut down from behind, Lucia picked up a table and threw it at the wall. It did not break. Just clanged and clattered around the room. Even in this she could not be satisfied.

  She stormed out onto the balcony and glared up at all of the stars in the sky, at the moon blazing bright above the horizon and helping her not at all. In frustration, she let out a torrent of flames. The city never truly slept. It rested even less easily with the tents and simple huts of the ghuls’ sanctuary sprung up all around it, but seeing the flames of Lucia, the people on the streets fled indoors fearing some attack from the sky. Each day had brought more of their trust. Now it was so
absolute that they could not conceive of Lucia unleashing her temper or making a mistake.

  With the fire gone, she slumped back against the tower’s wall. Metharia was there with a gentle arm around her waist, guiding her back into her chambers. She trembled in Metharia’s arms then let out a puff of smoke, “I had forgotten how it feels to have so much of my power used. I feel hollow.”

  Metharia shrugged, “Probably why the other Eaters only Mark a few people.”

  She slipped a hand into Lucia’s and tried to pull her towards the bed but Lucia resisted, “I need to concentrate. The Marked will engage them soon.”

  Another connection snapped out and Lucia spun around, trying to place it in her perception. One of her Chosen had died and she did not even know where. Another connection snapped, then another. The cords of power stretching out, taut from the core of her being, flailed around uselessly towards the Glasslands. Lucia’s eyes widened, “Vulkas army is coming. They are marching on us in force. They have just crossed the border.”

  Metharia flew out of the room, calling to servants and nobles, rallying defenders with all haste. There would be no ghuls nipping at their heels this time. Vulkas army was already mobilised and moving. The people of Lucia could have less than three days and their troops were scattered across the dominions. Lucia trusted in Metharia’s counsel and in her military mind. For every minor dispute and skirmish that had arisen with the deserters and bandits roaming her lands Lucia delegated the full responsibility but now that a real battle was coming, she had to resist the urge to jump in.

  In her heart, she knew that Metharia was the best choice to make these decisions, but she had known the same thing about Kaius right up until the moment that she didn’t. Kaius had spoken about peaceful solutions almost as much as Metharia professed her pacifism. Lucia pondered her new inability to trust while Metharia barked orders and marshalled legions.

  The new city regiments did not have banners to call yet. Their soldiers were still employed by the noble houses. Every one of whom was now trying to extract favours in exchange for their support. A thousand deals would have to be struck, and twice as many back-room alliances made, to wage war under Lucia’s new regime. The complexity of all of the checks and balances designed to keep the nobles from going to war on a whim slowed their mobilisation to an agonising crawl.

  Metharia crouched down in front of her while she jerked and shivered as the Marked drew on her strength to supplement their own. She cupped Lucia's reptilian face in her hands and drew her eyes up until they met. “You must recall the Marked.”

  Lucia tried to shake her head but found Metharia's grip tightening, “You must call them back so that we can defend the city. So we can protect your people.”

  Lucia hissed, “No.”

  Metharia's hands slipped down to her shoulders and gave her a shake. “Our people are defenceless. Vulkas marches against us. You told us that. Without the Chosen and the Marked, how will we protect ourselves from Vulkas’ own servants?”

  Lucia stared off through the eyes of her Marked and she saw the the indiscriminate killing. She wilted before Metharia's eyes, “I don't need soldiers. I don't need Chosen. All that I need is me.”

  She stood up abruptly, sending the other woman staggering backwards and making the assorted nobles that had forced their way into the room jump. “I will protect every last one of you. All of the nobles. All of the commons. Everyone, everywhere.”

  Sparks trailed from her fingertips, searing the bed and the upholstery. All of her power was overflowing, even now when she was pouring it out in two dozen directions and the sun was gone from the sky. Metharia stared at her, half in awe. For one long, glorious moment, she believed that Lucia could do it. But only for a moment.

  The new Beloved of Vulkas was a wild man. He stood nearly seven feet tall and was built like one of the oxen that adorned his armour. He had not been selected from the surviving Chosen for his wisdom, but for his fury. He had not been thwarted at the battle of the Ivory City. He had been off in the mountains laying waste to a stronghold of heretics. All that he knew was distaste for those who had failed there, those who had been blinded by ambition, old Hulia among them.

  There were no war-machines now. No squandering of fighting men for the sake of a dramatic entrance, and the chance of startling a few spear-waving peasants. His troops marched across the starlit glass already in formation. Discipline was absolute. The soldiers and Chosen he did not trust to obey perfectly had gone to harass Ochress’ flock, and to provoke the emotional reaction that Vulkas foresaw from this upstart Lucia. He was reliably informed by his runners that she had not only taken the bait, but was squandering her entire force trying to protect an endless stream of refugees. His grin was fierce. It was all going according to plan.

  Dawn found Lucia crumpled on her balcony with her eyes squeezed shut. After the quiet conversations with Metharia, conversations that with anyone else would have been a screaming argument, she had sent the woman away to find a bed elsewhere in the tower.

  The fighting had gone on through the night, heavy and brutal in the glimpses that she caught of it, but her Marked had succeeded in driving off the Chosen of Vulkas and slaughtered any of the more human soldiers still trying to have their way with the fleeing fishermen and their families.

  When it was so close to dawn that she could taste it, Lucia realised just how dangerous her ploy had been. The reason that the other Eaters had so few Marked was because unchecked, even a few could drain you to the point of enfeeblement. With the chaos of last night, she had shed enough weight that her muscles would no longer support her.

  It was like the first few days in the dark again. She was close to empty. It crossed her mind that this probably could not kill her. It might make her wish that she was dead but she seemed strangely resilient. The first hint of sun on the horizon made her gasp in relief. The light and heat swept over her and, with her mirrored scales she seemed to shine brighter than the distant light in the sky. There had been so much power spent that its return was explosive.

  The bony protrusions on her back burst open into full wings. The last of the human feeling skin on her shoulder-blades stretched out into nearly transparent membranes across the extended tendons and spindly bones that shaped them.

  The agony was immediate. No body was meant to change so suddenly, and dozens of tiny tears appeared as she unfurled the new symbols of her inhumanity. The rest of her body was racked with spasms and aches as muscles shifted to support the new structures and thickened to give her flight. Her neck and tail lengthened and thickened to balance her new wings and she panted for the breath to scream.

  Some sound must have escaped, because in a moment Metharia was there, cradling her head in her lap as it continued to stretch. All human features and expressions mangled into this new jutting spear of reptilian madness.

  Her eyes, already stretched so thin and narrow by the changes of the prior year's minor exertions, now began to divide until there were three staring up at Metharia, dotted along under the bony ridge of her brow. Each eye was rolling wildly from this new cacophony of pain. She gained bulk, balancing out her increasing length and crushing her against the balcony's edge, twisting her around as she rolled and hissed and wailed. Metharia clung to her as though her life depended on it. She whispered kind words and gentle sounds of comfort into the tiny indentations that may have been ears. Metharia's eyes were dispassionate, her expression calculating.

  Lucia would hardly notice something like that in her current state and she needed this information to make plans for the future. She twisted her face back into the appearance of pained concern when Lucia’s yellow lit eyes stopped rolling and seemed to focus on her for the first time, two with a slit pupil and one with a double pupil in the shape of a rounded hourglass. She stroked along the ridge of thick scales above the row of eyes with exaggerated care and shushed Lucia. “It’s alright now. It’s all over.”

  Lucia's first attempt to speak came out garbled. She could
not form words with her new mouth, her voice was missing somewhere down her serpentine throat. She lay curled around Metharia, keening and hissing. The rest of the tower went about its preparations, unaware of any change and devoted to their ignorance.

  Metharia kept up her soothing whispers, “Take your time. I think that was your final change. Calm yourself. Just relax.”

  Lucia trembled as the keening went on, shifting in tone and pitch as she tried to form words again. The sounds were quiet at first but grew louder as she became more desperate. It had a rhythm to it as she warbled up and down and when the words finally took shape they were a song, “Dance. This is your... last chance. Dance, dragons...dance.”

  Her eyes did not blink at the same time. Instead they closed in an odd rippling effect along her head from front to back. She drew in breath and spoke, softly but with deep reverberations, “I am alright. Just... a shock. I didn't know I could change so much. I… hope that is it over and done.”

  She shuddered and tried to stand up on her rear legs before promptly toppling sideways into the bannister. She got up on all fours and discovered the new lengths of her limbs. She flicked her tail from side to side and spread her wings to their full spread with a groan. She flexed out her new claws and carved up lines of the balcony's ivory floor.

  Metharia shifted her footing slightly and with rapturous precision, Lucia's head snapped around to look at her. She cocked it from side to side, viewing her with all six of her eyes, one side after the other. Metharia whispered, “My goddess.”

  Lucia snorted and a plume of smoke emerged, drifting up into the sky, “Let's not get carried away now.”

  She moaned and a shiver ran down her spine, waggling her long neck, back and tail all the way to the tip. “It feels so good to be finished! To be complete instead of that strange, half-human mess. I feel like I am myself again. Even if it is a different self.”