by James Stone
‘Look. I didn’t fall to the fires.’ His teeth shone, and his eyes widened as he spoke. ‘As Akanah studied the children of Ranvirus, I decided to let nature take its course. I stood by the teachings of those angels I had met, and I stand by them today.’
‘What exactly did you call me here for?’ she spat.
Fabius laughed to himself. The sun was beginning to set.
‘Magmaya,’ he started. ‘I am willing to forgive this little delinquency. Don’t we all suffer strife and rebellion?’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve one proposition for you, though, my chancellor.’
‘Yes?’ Chancellor? It had felt an age since she’d been called that.
‘Sir Larjun Uliana has recently arrived back from council at Lostgarden. He’s my nephew—a young lad, bold and handsome. Unmarried. To cement an alliance between Ranvirus and the Divinicus of Inamorata, I propose that you and he are betrothed.’
‘What?’ Magmaya exclaimed. Her face was turning red.
‘All women must find themselves a political union of sorts. Besides, I’m offering you a second chance for what you decided in the north.’
‘I don’t represent the north,’ she spat. ‘I was a deserter—I’m not one of them anymore. Besides, I’m not marrying a soul.’
‘You may not be the chancellor any longer, but whether you’re a deserter, bastard, cripple or girl, you’re still a high-born. And if you quit that temper of yours, you might still make good for my nephew. He’s strong-willed, and I hoped someone might’ve liked to balance that.’
‘This isn’t why I travelled south.’
‘No, you travelled south in an act of defiance. Now you must pay for that.’
‘I travelled south because I was afraid of what I was already paying for!’ Magmaya cried and thumped her fist down on the table, spilling her wine. ‘I wanted to start again—to see the Silver City, but every dream I have is crushed before I wake up, dammit.’
‘I won’t hear any more of this,’ he asserted. ‘I’m showing you mercy. My nephew will meet with you on the morrow. Assure your handmaiden dresses you well.’ He paused. ‘Now is there anything else you want, girl?’
‘I want to sleep.’ She stood abruptly, threw the chair back and tossed the rose from her ear into her wine glass, not stopping to watch the petals swim about the red water. She skulked away, letting the garden fall behind her step, as her dress swept the ground once more.
Fabius smiled and finished his meal.
Sixteen
No matter how much she pleaded with Anclyn to make her look wretched, it seemed the handmaiden couldn’t weave her into anything less than beautiful. So Magmaya made an effort to accidentally fray the edges of her dress and spill wine across her belly.
Sir Larjun Uliana, on the other hand, was as handsome as his uncle, and he was quite aware of it. He was a few hours late, of course, but Magmaya was thankful she had more time to make herself look a mess.
He wasn’t as tall as any of the Divinicus, but then again, he wasn’t one. All the same, he’d made a statement of riding to the ground below her balcony on a silvery-white mare, caped in thick lavender from head to toe. A dozen men rode with him, perhaps fools or comrades, scoffing and waving and cheering as he approached the palace, just like in the faery stories.
‘Sweet Magmaya Vorr of Orianne,’ he boomed. ‘Would you come down to me, so I can see your face in the morning sun?’
‘You could come up here,’ she muttered to herself.
He appeared to have heard, though, and sneered, ‘What was that?’ Larjun cocked his head. ‘I will have you know, Miss Vorr, that I have a hundred other high-born girls waiting on me to address them and you are but one. Now once again, if you would be so kind as to come down here and show me that beautiful face, as well as give my men a glimpse of your breasts of yours, eh? You do have breasts, no?’
If she had been a Divinicus, she would have dispatched of him then and there.
She wasn’t, though, and reluctantly Magmaya found herself clambering down the trailing staircases, guards escorting her as she did. Before she even stepped outside, she could smell his wafting perfumes and sour incenses amid the warm breeze.
‘My dear girl,’ he crooned. ‘It is an honour.’
‘Lord Uliana,’ she said, curtsying. He was even more distasteful up close.
‘No, my lady, that’s my father’s name and my uncle’s before him.’ He scowled. ‘Call me Larl, if you must.’
‘Larl.’ She nodded and began to walk alongside his mare. ‘Have you heard much about me?’
‘Only that you’re a high-born girl my uncle insists on marrying me to.’ He sniffed. ‘Shoved you in Highport before he got the idea, though. I do hope you’ve bathed since.’
‘A fair amount,’ Magmaya remarked. ‘So how do you like your girls then?’
He laughed. ‘I like my girls to see to my needs, and I shall see to theirs, my lady. That’s all I have to offer any woman.’
Magmaya began to realise how young his voice sounded, how childish he was. The way he pronounced ‘woman’ was the same way an infant pronounced ‘mother’.
‘So, what do you have to offer me in return?’ he continued.
‘I’ve been rather busy lately,’ Magmaya said. ‘I was chancellor in the north,’ she boasted.
‘Yet you ran away all the same, I hear.’
That hurt, she thought. ‘Only after I won a bloody war.’ She knew she shouldn’t have said it, but the words were brewing inside of her. She wanted to punch him in that pretty face of his.
‘I like my girls feisty,’ he said, seemingly unmoved. ‘Though uncle said you were a fair maiden?’
‘How old are you?’ She ignored him.
‘Seventeen,’ he replied loudly. ‘Uncle says on my next name day, he shall take me to a joust at Nemesis Palace. Perhaps if you do me proud, I might take you along.’
Magmaya scoffed. ‘So, have you ever even taken up that fancy sword of yours?’
‘Eclipse is more than a fancy sword!’ He reeled back, voice wavering. ‘I’ll have you know that I stabbed a halfling through the heart when he attacked a Divinicus.’
‘A half—?’ she stuttered. ‘You mean a dwarf? With a feat like that, one of your men would better be suited for me, I think.’
His comrades looked around to one another with gaudy smirks, but Larl was growing red.
‘Shut up!’ he screamed. ‘You know my uncle. He won’t be happy about you talking to me like this!’
‘No,’ she remarked. ‘Uncle won’t be proud.’ But I suppose I’ll have to suffer him later…
‘You’ll regret this spite, wench,’ he cried feebly, but then he turned to his men, cold, and said, ‘Go and take her clothes. And then her tongue.’
Magmaya felt something of a red-hot fear course through her as Larl’s men trotted over with curled fingers and crooked hands. Her legs turned stiff.
She stumbled as they swiped, and her neck ached as they tore at her, and all around her, there was Larl laughing as he sat atop his pompous horse.
‘Leave me alone!’ she cried, and a cold arm fastened around her wrist.
‘Clear out,’ the arm’s voice called, and suddenly, the hands were off her. There were curses and taunts from Larl’s men, then the wrinkled face of a palace guard looking down to her. ‘My lady, did they—?’
She shook her head and dismissed him, catching her breath and buttoning her clothes. She could still feel a thousand hands on her, though, clawing and scraping at her skin. She wanted to be alone.
Magmaya looked back up to her balcony, held herself and sighed. But then, something caught her eye—Cheyne Reed, standing in the window above her own like a cat basking in the sunlight. He appeared to have been watching, she noted, with a grimace about his lips as he did.
He looked to her with a nod and turned away into the manse.
The next dress hung off her body the same as the last. But this one was
either too big or too small, she couldn’t tell, and it was clear it belonged to someone else; Magmaya was borrowing a life from another girl and dressing herself to fit a mask she didn’t own.
Anclyn smiled at her faintly as she dressed from behind a column of decorative water, but there was no denying what she thought. Magmaya hadn’t told her yet that perhaps she had thrown away her only opportunity for stability, so it came as a surprise when she had been told in the early hours that Fabius wanted to meet her again, and within minutes, the dress had been carried in by a pair of suiters. Her eyes were still sore with the anxiety of the day before, but Anclyn insisted on rushing her from her chambers and bathing her in so much incense that her lungs burned.
They were callous scents and calm scents, healing scents and herbal ones, but they all reeked of some other girl—the girl who owned the dress. She longed for the days where everything had fallen into place—that night in the forest—the night she’d told Kurulian everything she’d ever known and everything she’d ever been. But that was a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was an atonement for her sins—perhaps she should’ve taken Rache with her. It was selfish to have acted as impulsively as she did.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have come at all.
‘A rose, my lady?’ The handmaiden held the flower out. ‘It would suit the white of the dress. It is just as beautiful as the last, I think.’
Magmaya shook her head. ‘I must wear only what he wants me to.’
‘And your hair?’
‘My hair…?’ she paused. ‘Has someone worn this dress before, Anclyn?’ she asked after a moment.
‘My lady, I…’ she stuttered.
‘Anclyn.’
The handmaiden looked defeated. ‘How did you know?’
‘It reeks of pipe smoke,’ Magmaya said. ‘And it’s not quite my size.’
‘I…’ Anclyn stopped. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, my lady.’
‘I figured enough for myself,’ she remarked. ‘Spider said there was a sell-maiden Fabius kept safe. It must’ve been hers.’
‘I could get you a new dress, my lady.’
‘No.’ Magmaya shook her head. ‘Perhaps acting like she did is my only opportunity to have Fabius actually pay attention to me.’ Perhaps he might even show me a bit of mercy after yesterday. ‘Did you know her?’
‘No, I…’ Anclyn started, ‘it was many years ago. She was but a passing girl before the Lord Commander took her into hiding.’
‘Was she from Kythera?’
Anclyn nodded.
‘You should’ve told me.’ Magmaya bit her cheek. ‘So, you remember nothing about her? Not even her face?’
‘I was young.’ Her eyes were wide. ‘But I remember her voice; it was warm, and I was very afraid. She was kind to me.’
‘You remember how she spoke, but not what she looked like?’
‘A Summerwitch once told me that nothing was permanent—not even death,’ Anclyn explained. ‘When a man dies, he is born again in the soil, in the buzz of the honeybees and in the song of the birds, she said. So, what good would remembering a man’s face be when the same man would come back with a different one?’ she asked. ‘Besides, I’ve cared for so many and—’
‘Who were these witches?’ Magmaya cut in, concerned.
‘There were many,’ she explained. ‘They worked with unspeakable things: black arts, electrics, silverchange…’
Magmaya nodded and stood, finding herself on the balcony again. The sea breeze sifted through the air and filled her mouth with salt as she looked out to the beaches, following the warm dunes and queer trees and small harbours that ran across the waves to nowhere.
‘Is there nothing you can remember about the girl?’ Magmaya asked at last. ‘Anything I can say—anything I can use to make Fabius at ease with me?’
‘I must not betray the Lord Commander,’ Anclyn asserted. ‘A month we travelled across the Water under the toil of the old masters. The Divinicus liberated us. I apologise, my lady, I shall not speak ill of them. Not here.’
‘No, no,’ Magmaya said, ‘I don’t need you to betray him. I only want to understand. The girl drowned at Highport, no?’
Anclyn thought for a moment before exclaiming, ‘My lady, I remember now—she loved the seas.’
‘The seas?’
‘Yes.’ The servant girl nodded. ‘I remember her telling me how she loved the tides and the trees and the beaches—she wore seashells and ivory I think. Perhaps I do not exactly remember her look…’
‘It will suffice,’ Magmaya said and ambled back from the window, setting herself down before Anclyn. ‘It’ll have to.’
She knew her way back through Fabius’ garden but took her time even so. She made sure to gaze at each flower as if she was a paramour, high off her love, and bask in the low light as it bleached her skin from that new-born sun. Once she reached Fabius, she approached him with a grin, curtsied and sat without being told.
The table was laid out the same—perhaps exactly so for the candles flickered as if they have never been extinguished the day before. Her eyes didn’t leave his as he gazed up her body—the dress against her chest, her hair at her fringe, running down her collarbones to the seams below her breasts. There were no flowers in her hair, for that was how she had been sculpted.
She nodded to the angel opposite and poured herself a glass of wine, beginning to drink without a thought.
‘Magmaya,’ Fabius started with a smile. ‘I am most glad to see you again.’
She downed the wine (sour), looked up to him in agreement and said, ‘I’m glad you invited me.’ She reached across the table and grappled for a yellow fruit, flinching slightly as she realised she’d bitten into the skin. She gave it a disapproving stare and set it down as Fabius bellowed with laughter. Her heart sunk.
‘You can wolf down the bitter wine but not what I grow in my own gardens?’ He smirked. ‘No matter. Another beautiful dress, don’t you agree?’
‘Only as exquisite as the last,’ she replied. He’d brought up the dress already, she thought, was now the time? ‘Whose was it?’
Fabius lowered his glass and licked his lips where the wine had stained them. He wiped his chin of violet and grit his teeth behind the draping handkerchief.
‘What would make you assume it was anyone’s but your own?’
‘Where I came from, I did not have a new dress for each dinner.’
‘This is not where you came from.’ His voice was sweet, but there was a poison underneath that couldn’t find guise in the wine. ‘I can afford the finest trinkets, the finest garden and, of course, the finest drink at the mere snap of my fingers.’ He pursed them together and smiled, knowingly. ‘There is nothing beyond my reach, certainly not a shiny little dress.’
‘You would waste a dress on me?’
‘You’re hardly a waste,’ he said. ‘You and I may have butted heads, but there is no denying you are an important woman, Magmaya. My nephew seemed to have thought so, anyway.’
‘Really?’ She was surprised, feeling cold again.
‘I must admit, I am displeased in the way you treated him,’ he said.
‘He tried to strip me,’ she scorned.
‘He’s a young lad, Magmaya.’
‘That’s no excuse.’
‘You treated him unfairly,’ Fabius replied. ‘I was hoping to court the pair of you. We made a deal, remember? I would forget your delinquencies in exchange for you and him to be betrothed.’
‘I made no such deal.’ She cocked her head. ‘I’m thankful for your hospitality, Lord Commander, but I wouldn’t marry for it.’
‘Then what would you marry for?’
Magmaya sat back in her chair. It was a question she had never particularly thought about; marriage had just never occurred to her. She didn’t think there was anyone she would want to spend her life with, especially so if it was arranged.
‘I don’t know, but I’d have you pick out my we
dding dress,’ she remarked.
‘Don’t try and distract me,’ he said. ‘This isn’t about dresses. This is about what I’m going to do with you.’
‘Then why would you go through the trouble of giving me someone else’s?’
Fabius’ smile turned to something grim. ‘Is this a game to you?’
‘It smells like pipe smoke,’ Magmaya explained.
‘Must have been from some ship outside.’
‘Not many smoking ships outside,’ she bluffed.
‘There are enough,’ he shot back.
There was silence for a number of seconds. Then she asked, ‘Did you love her?’
Magmaya hadn’t meant to have said it quite so early, but the words rushed to her mouth from her gut in an instant as if she hadn’t rehearsed them a thousand times before. A new kind of adrenaline washed through her, and so she didn’t notice Fabius wave his hand, nor the pair of Divinicus guards emerge from behind and take her arms with their iron fingers.
Her mouth turned dry as they pulled her from her chair, and she stumbled into their grip.
‘I meant no offence, Lord Commander,’ she lied, and her heart seemed to burst from her chest, ‘but you pitied her. Why not me?’
‘And who was she?’ Fabius’ voice was like the sun and the moon, life and death all at once; he might as well have been a god.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I never wanted to act like this—’
Fabius cut her off. ‘Is this the work of that damned servitor?’ He motioned to the Divinicus. ‘See to her—’
‘No!’ Magmaya shrieked, Anclyn dancing in her vision. ‘Fabius, please.’
‘Please? Have I not granted you asylum enough? Have I not fed you? Have you not supped at my court and drunk my wine, only to spit in the face of my family?’
‘Please.’ She sunk down. ‘Don’t throw me out, I have no one else. Please!’
He looked to her and bit his tongue. After a moment, he brushed his hand through the air, and the Divinicus released her, arms aching and throat sore. Her heart rose and fell, and for a moment, she felt as if she was going to be sick.