Talystasia: A Faerytale

by Haadiyah Cardinalis

  “What do I need to patch up this time?”

  Julia looked around. Everything was bobbing up and down.

  “How long was I in there with him?”

  “… About five minutes. Maybe less. Why …?”

  She shrugged.

  “Are you forgetting things?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “… That’s not good.”

  “It’s okay, Kalorn. You been up all night … and there’s many others need tending more than me. I knew what I had coming. But I couldn’t stand to see him like that; he doesn’t take care of himself. How could they just leave him up there? Did you even know he was home …?”

  “Your face—“

  She put her fingers up and felt the bruises swelling.

  “Maybe that’s why. You’ll need some ice for that. Come downstairs with me, I’ll get—“

  “I’m going for a ride,” announced a sharp voice from behind.

  Julia swallowed a scream; Kalorn merely rolled his eyes. Lord Telyra was striding down the hall fully dressed with cloak in arm, looking if anything even paler than before.

  “You really shouldn’t,” Kalorn retorted. “The truce is over; times have changed. They won’t hesitate to go after you.”

  “Malek Loren and his son are dead. His family and his military are in turmoil. Do you really think they’re planning to assault me?”

  “… Master, you really shouldn’t.”

  The words escaped her mouth before she even thought them.

  Lord Telyra froze with his mouth open, and pivoted toward her slowly. “You. Look at you. Still trying to have an opinion.”

  “I only—”

  “Times have changed, slave.” He jerked his head at the stairs. “Do you want to see how far I’m ready to go?”

  She stared at him disbelievingly, feeling like he’d just wrenched them both back in time.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  He smirked. “Watch me.”

  “You’re not in much of a condition to go riding my Lord, are you?” interrupted Kalorn.

  “If you say another word about what I should or shouldn’t be doing—I’ll hit her,” he said.

  Kalorn scoffed. “Excuse me if I try to advise you on your health. I’m only your personal physician.”

  “—Yes and that can end any day I like. Particularly if you keep distracting the help. She doesn’t need yours.”

  “You won’t fire me,” said Kalorn fixedly. “You’d have done it years ago. Thanks to me your help can still help, so I think that puts you in a position to consider listening to me. Don’t forget I can quit.”

  “You won’t; you’d have done it years ago,” he rejoined swiftly, turning to Julia.

  “Girl,” he said casually as if nothing had happened, “the tiles on the roof of the northwest tower are in need of replacement. I want that roof repaired; I am sick of the leak, you hear?”

  Again, she stared at him incredulously. First the quip about throwing her down the stairs—and now an order to climb up on the scaffolding with her head still spinning?

  “That’s not my job!” she protested.

  “Your job is whatever I say it is.”

  He’ll just wait for me to fall, and pretend it’s an accident. Is that how it is?

  “I hear you, Lord Telyra,” replied Julia coldly. “But my head is—”

  “—Will be fine. I measure my damage.”

  “I have to help Dorthelda!” she protested. “I promised her I would. Please—”

  “Then you’ll have to work fast,” he answered, raising a hand to forestall her complaints. “I’m exhausted, slave. You are ludicrously thick sometimes. Particularly in the head,” he added, tapping her skull and twirling a lock of her hair around his finger; she recoiled and he patted her cheek. “If that roof isn’t repaired by six tonight, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

  “… Fine, Master.”

  “And slave—if I find you anywhere outside your room when I get home, I’ll fucking kill you.” He smiled, dripping malevolence. “… I’ll see you tonight.”

  Julia watched wordlessly as he turned away, pulling his cloak across his shoulders, concealing the dark stain spreading across his tunic. Then he disappeared down the stairs, his footsteps pounding away.

  “He ripped his stitches!” wailed Kalorn. “Did you see?”

  “He’s … he doesn’t mean that,” said Julia. Any of it. She’d skip the tiles—by nightfall, he’d see reason. He’d drop it.

  Or not.

  “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. But the threat in his eyes was real, and one of these days, Julia, he will kill you, intentionally or not.” He held her shoulders, searching her eyes. “You’re lucky he hasn’t already damaged you beyond repair; some wounds don’t heal. You’re a sweet girl, and his behaviour disgusts me. But you are doing this to yourself … which frankly has become revolting. Have you forgotten my offer?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve offered it before and I’ll offer it again; I am sure I can arrange a way out of this for you; I don’t want you to wait until it’s too late ...”

  “He won’t sell me.”

  “… Forget selling; my friend in town is a blacksmith; we can get that collar off of you. And a horse you can borrow; without that collar you’d be out the gate in no time, no questions asked. The border to Terravin is just a day’s ride south. We have friends there; I’ve written them about you.”

  “Oh, Kalorn, I can’t tell you what that means to me … but I just can’t.”

  “ … I don’t understand you.”

  “I appreciate your offer—and everything else you’ve done for me—more than you can know. But … it’s not my situation; it’s my life. And my whole life only three … no, two people have ever been there for me. One of them turned on me, all because—”

  “—I remember.”

  “So that hardly counted. The second is you—”

  Kalorn squeezed her hand.

  “The third is Lord Telyra.” She hesitated. “He is a complicated man.”

  “There is nothing complicated about him—it’s a simple formula. He offers you just enough affection that you accept the rest. You’re a participant in your suffering, which is what he wants. That’s why it’s called abuse.”

  “But Kalorn—you’re no different than me. Why stay in his employ if you have no respect for him at all? You’re a skilled man. You could get a job elsewhere.”

  “I stay, because I need to take care of my fam—”

  “You have too much integrity to lie to me,” she interrupted. “Maybe he did something for you once—gave you a job when no one else would, took care of your family when you couldn’t. I don’t need to know the reason … But I know that you have one. And so do I.”

  ~~~

  Corin Costellic had no idea why he was still alive.

  But as of right now, he was, and he was just paces behind Roselia Loren and her uncle, Duke Palin Loren—and that one wouldn’t shut the hell up.

  “We must continue to oppose him. Especially now, when he has exposed his weakness!”

  Her hushed reply seemed scarcely relevant.

  “… He’s confused about something.”

  Roselia Loren—Lady Loren now—was a jarring portrait of vivid magnificence, and cold, remote detachment. She was garbed in a stately brocade redingote in scarlet silk over top of a wine-coloured petticoat embroidered with the roses of her namesake. An elaborate wig of tight ruby curls was piled atop her head, a few strands left free to drape over her shoulders and square neckline. She wore the beautiful gown with its ornate flounces as if it were an elaborate cage made out of rust-coated iron, and underneath it, she was turning into brittle marble, her warmth suppressed by the scarlet prison. On her head, her father’s circlet seemed unnaturally bright in the dim light of the windowless hall, polished to a bloodless shine.

  Her voice, when she spoke, was a frail, thin whisper—something that might blow away on the first in
substantial breeze.

  Palin Loren seemed as disinterested in her new rank as he was in her opinions. He called her by the new title that was hers by right, but he did so with a note of obsequious derision.

  “It is imperative we take advantage of that confusion, my Lady, and strike while we still have the chance—!”

  Lady Loren stopped walking; so did Palin Loren and his dim-wit of a page. She had over a foot of height on the plum-wigged courtier, but the fat, middle-aged man looked down on her like she was a ten-year-old child.

  The roar of the crowd at the end of the hallway seemed to swell with their silence. Corin halted, still several yards behind, motioning his guard to do the same. He had heard of arena sports in the Southern Empire, and how the combatants would enter through a narrow gate to do battle with one another until blood spattered on the sands and the crowd roared their approval from the stands.

  Palin stroked his beard, which was dyed a striking and likely very expensive shade of indigo to complement his wig. “Lady, we thought all was lost when your illustrious father and estimable brother were killed—”

  “He was your brother, and Alix was your nephew,” Lady Loren reminded him, almost inaudibly. “… You speak of them as strangers now.”

  Palin appeared not to have heard her at all. “—but it appears the blood of a woman may carry the throne as well.”

  “… Of course, uncle,” she acknowledged remotely. “Telyra’s mother wore the crown before him, you may recall.”

  “We simply must regroup immediately; you’ve seen these reports, yes Milady …?” He thrust the files from his distracted aide into her hands.

  Glancing down absently, she sifted through them with shaking fingers, but she wasn’t reading.

  “… I have, uncle.”

  “… Telyra all but fled last night. Thanks of course to the daring intervention by General Costellic and his men!” Palin winked over his shoulder.

  Corin winced in disgust—and guilt.

  Going to try to use me, are you? Me and my greatly exaggerated victory? You fool.

  “You were there weren’t you …?” Palin asked her.

  To Corin’s surprise, instead of responding to her uncle, Lady Loren’s lifeless eyes strayed briefly to his own, her thousand-yard stare fragmenting briefly like the clouds above the city.

  Was it accusation? Or conspiracy …? He had no way to guess. Why in the world would she conspire with him?

  But he was certain of what he did know, and fixed the grinning courtier at her side with his darkest stare. The duke’s smile wavered, but not his bullshit.

  “With General Costellic at our front, a motivated young man—” Corin didn’t know Duke Palin personally, but he now longed very desperately to throttle him— “we finally have a chance to take back what is ours. Arouse the morale of the people, my Lady. Give them these facts.” He patted the papers in her hands. “They will thank you for it my dear, believe me. It is important that you secure your place in their hearts.”

  “Is it not enough that I am my father’s daughter?” she asked plaintively.

  Corin didn’t miss her tone. The words were unspoken, but he could hear them all the same: “Do you no longer love me now that my father is dead? Do I no longer have a place in your heart? Are we now strangers too?”

  Palin snorted, sweeping his hand up and down, encompassing all of her. “This is not what they are expecting.” He whispered something to his aide, and Corin caught the vicious, transparent gleam of hunger in his eyes.

  Lady Loren stood by in silence, too stricken to care.

  “…What was that about?” she murmured when Palin turned back.

  “I just had Jerik run a message to the scribes … to pen news of your plans of course. And transcripts of your speech for the distribution center. You are doing the right thing, Roselia.”

  A flash of helpless, trapped rage surfaced in her expressionless eyes like bottled amber. The noble shuffled his colourful robes uncomfortably, and Corin felt his lip twisting in repulsion.

  It seemed strange to be speaking to her after last night, but he did so anyway.

  “Lady Loren,” he broke in with a warning look at the duke, “It is high time for you to be delivering that speech, don’t you think? It isn’t wise to keep the people waiting.”

  Lady Loren inclined her head and strode forward without comment, once more giving no indication as to whether she even remembered or was aware of Corin’s actions the night before. Shrugging inwardly, he signalled his men and fell in line behind her. Maybe she was toying with him, catlike and cruel underneath that marble skin and those beautiful curls. At every turn, he expected his own escort to jump him from behind and drag him off to the cry of her congenial voice denouncing him for treason. Or perhaps this was a dream sequence—something his deranged mind had conjured up for him in his final moments, and at the end of this corridor awaited not the great hall, packed with throngs from the city, not even the gladiatorial arena of politics, but the executioner’s block.

  Palin was sneering at him with undisguised spite. Corin met his gaze dead on. Did the duke know what he’d done …? Surely he realized a man capable of murdering his childhood role model wouldn’t hesitate to run through a pompous, greedy lout?

  Nothing but ice-water ran in that cold bastard’s veins. He’d never have woken up this morning if the duke knew.

  It seemed increasingly likely that Lady Loren had chosen to tell nobody at all about his crimes.

  They passed over the threshold and into the great hall, where the crowd set on them like a swarm of buzzing, stinging hornets striped with black and red, the twin colours of Loren grief and reprisal. The mob packed the spacious baroque chamber from wall to wall, jostling for space; if there was any blood left on the floor, no one would know. The mirrored walls reflected the teeming masses so that hundreds seemed thousands.

  Corin took his place to the right of the throne. The faces immediately surrounding the dais belonged to men and women he’d learned to recognize over the years, their wigs and clothing gem-encrusted. Red, he noticed, was the dominant colour, not black: rubies, garnets, and spinels. The preponderance were of course Lorens; others were politicians, allies, socialites and friends of the family.

  They were laughing.

  Their harsh red and white makeup cracked with their mirth, as if Lady Loren were the lone child in the schoolyard who didn’t quite fit in.

  Her dress billowed as she took her seat with practiced regal poise, surveying the room silently. Her features were flawless in surreal detail: the shining ruby ringlets falling against the graceful curve of her neck, her soft porcelain skin, her eyes that used to sparkle from across the courtyards, now flat and unfocused—all too vivid to be an hallucination. Leaning out, he could almost have touched her.

  Seeing her there, scared and vulnerable, assaulted by the grotesque visages and the insane laughter, he felt the same protective urge he would have on the schoolyard. At his side, his fist clenched. Just as he had then, he recognized now that these laughing, jovial faces were by far the most hostile in the room—they held neither fear nor shame, confident in their own clout. Considering these ogres were related to her … perhaps she regarded him as just one more, trivial among the countless other players coveting her power. Why bother to kill him? He was just the first droplet in a tidal wave.

  Lady Loren began speaking without any prelude, her voice flat and indifferent as if she were reciting a speech by rote in front of the class. The airy hall became silent, out of respect for the high-backed chair she sat on, and not for the one who sat on it.

  “I come before you in a dark hour. My father, Lord Malek Loren, has passed through the veil and rests now beside my valiant brother Alix and our noble ancestors. They died defending our freedom, our dignity and our lives.

  “I know many among you may question why it is I who am sitting here, why the circlet did not choose someone more experienced. I sit here as your regent until such a time as another ma
y take my place, for I believe that is the task for which the circlet has appointed me. I will do all in my power to guide us through these tumultuous times until stability may again be restored.”

  Regent!

  Corin’s eyes would have burned a hole in Palin’s if the duke had been watching, but the idiot was rocking on the balls of his feet and gazing contentedly off into space. If the chamber hadn’t been so silent, Corin might even have thought he was humming.

  “… The people on the other side of the Wall are not our enemies: Most of them are just like you or I, subject to the rule of a ruthless dictator who pronounces publicly his delight at bloodshed and destruction; this is a man who rapes and plunders, who has murdered innocent women and children in our streets, and even subjects his own people to his sadistic amusements. Andreas Telyra is a tyrant. It is our imperative as decent, humane beings to not only secure our own rights but to free our terrorized brothers and sisters—our long-sundered kindred from across the sea. Things may look dire after the terrible losses of last night—”

  Her clarion voice faltered, and Corin put one foot toward the throne.

  “—But I assure you, my people—that the reports paint a far bleaker picture for the Telyra dynasty.” She lifted the papers from the duke and shuffled through them like a mechanical doll. A solitary tear trickled down her cheek.

  “…Seven city blocks have burned in Talystasia East.”

  Motherfucker. He barely stopped his jaw from dropping. That wasn’t even true. That bastard had actually given her false reports?

  “With civilians to tend to and a city to rebuild, Telyra will not be prepared to fight anytime soon. And while we must likewise regroup, we have an advantage that he does not. At the very threshold of seeming victory, he was … was … was defeated—”

  Lady Loren suddenly swung her head to look at Corin, her mouth agape and painted lips trembling. Her eyes were alight with terror. The audience began to murmur, and again he could hear the sounds of smothered laughter from those standing closest.

  What did she want, advice? He had none. Or was it—

  “… Andreas Telyra’s army turned and rode for home for unknown reasons of their own late last night. ‘General’ Costellic didn’t save anyone—he and his conspirators murdered the company that was assigned to guard the palace and put a knife in our general’s back! Guards—”