Talystasia: A Faerytale

by Haadiyah Cardinalis

  But Lady Loren was still watching him silently, her eyes pleading. She hadn’t said a word.

  …Snap out of it man.

  “Um … Go for it, Milady,” he whispered, trying to control his nerves.

  A torturous moment passed, and Lady Loren’s desolate susurrus again filled the hall—or at least its immediate radius. “My father and brother … did not die in vain. We will not abandon our purpose, and I will fight as they did for the freedom that is the birthright of all our people … Thank you.”

  Rising on teetering feet and clutching the throne arm for support, Lady Loren shuffled down after her departing uncle, looking for all the world like an arthritic patient dying of some wasting illness. Corin tapped the two head guardsmen and all but sprinted after.

  Now or never. She wants to talk to you.

  “My Lady, I must speak with you immediately,” he called out, shoving through the throng. “That was a scandal.” His mind was awhirl, noting the faces around him: Duke Palin, Baron Seti, Patrician Lacsimilia, Duchess Rosmera, Elder Tenarone, Davin Terrel.

  Lady Loren spun around, the torchlight flickering in her eyes like unwept tears.

  “In private please,” he added when he caught up. Then he cursed himself for a fool.

  But Rose, gazing past him, was not thinking about the former lieutenant’s crimes.

  From every direction the courtiers were flocking in like scavengers to the feeding frenzy, their robes and gowns blood-spattered plumage, the dappled hues of their wigs gaudy plumes crowning their leering smiles and rapacious sneers. Friends and relations she’d thought she’d known, aunts and uncles and cousins who had showered her with lavish gifts and a lifetime of kindness and support, had metamorphosed overnight into salivating buzzards.

  Costellic sounded half-desperate. “Milady,” he was exclaiming wildly, “Please, it’s not what you think. I’m not—if you’d rather—I’d completely understand.”

  Like one clear chime, a recollection cut across the nightmare—

  “… Corin Costellic, at your service. And I am … at your service.”

  I have to take a chance. If not now, never.

  “I will send for you,” she told him, cutting off his guilty babbling. “But come … unarmed?”

  “It would make no difference, my Lady.”

  At least he was honest. And she had no idea why, but he hadn’t killed her yet.

  If this last frail light went out and left her in the dark, perhaps it didn’t matter.

  “… I’ll speak with you later then.”

  Her death or her salvation. At least he’d be one or the other. Either way, he’d save her from being pecked apart.

  ~~~

  Rose was sitting at her father’s desk as the sky darkened outside. Her head was buried in her hands, the rosewood grain pressed close against her eyes.

  She felt like a stranger in her own home. Everyone she’d trusted her entire life had been playing at nothing more than an elaborate sham.

  And her father … she wasn’t sure she’d understood him either. He’d let his military go to hell. He’d let his city be overrun. He’d gotten his own son killed. And Andreas Telyra, the “sadistic tyrant,” had stopped it. He’d spared her life.

  And still, I denounced him. Was that right?

  There was a knock at the door.

  She raised her head from the desk. “… Come in,” she called tentatively.

  Corin Costellic stuck his head through the door and asked, “Are you suicidal?”

  … Enter the other person whose intentions she couldn’t decipher.

  “You should ask who it is before you say ‘come in.’ And you really should station a couple of guards on that door. I can do that if you wish. You should have them announce when there’s a visitor; you should also have an altered version of the guard announcement to warn you when there’s trouble.”

  She gawped at him, her head spinning. His loquacious rambling left scarcely any room for her own thoughts. Surely someone who was planning on putting a knife through her heart wouldn’t be lecturing her on guard protocols?

  “Oh, well thank—”

  “Another thing. You should stop letting people tell you what to do. Including me.”

  Rose’s jaw dropped. “You’re very—” she sputtered.

  “Rude,” Costellic finished for her. “And your father’s chosen heir would not have been your Uncle Palin.” He averted his eyes from her glare. “Going to deny it, Lady? I’ve seen enough—the man gives orders for you, he gives orders through you, hell, he orders you, he writes your speeches, he is attempting to rule through you. Are you a puppet, Lady Loren?”

  “How dare—” she started automatically.

  “Come off it!” He bolted up to the desk and leaned across it, meeting her eyes savagely.

  She sprang back toward the window involuntarily. Outside, thunder rumbled.

  “I am trying to help you. Do you think I don’t see what you’re going through? Your father and your brother have been killed—you went through … gods know what last night, and you come back to find yourself chosen, not by you, or even by your father, but by something none of us understand, to run a city, and one at war! With itself! You’re not a regent,” he spat, “You’re a ruler, a head of state, the real deal. And now your subjects haven’t the slightest respect for you; but do you really think it’s because of you? Your uncle is full of shit. It’s your throne, Lady. Take it!”

  He was waiting for her to answer, his eyes searching hers, but she was still trying to muster up something to say. Wasn’t he afraid …? He had just committed high treason and here he was, trying to save her throne …?

  He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. There was only a vague, musty impression of childhood. Deja vu, probably.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Costellic blinked slowly out of his reverie. “No,” he said. “No, we’ve never met. I work here sometimes. As a guard. But you’d have never noticed me.”

  “Did you know my father?”

  “Only in passing.”

  “Then what’s all this to you …?”

  Costellic’s face went blank.

  Rose waited patiently for an answer.

  “… Does it really matter? You need a friend, and right now I’m all you’ve got—Your life is at stake.”

  “My life? My life’s already over …!” she raged, slamming her hands down.

  To either side were piles of paperwork representing real-world problems: import invoices and economic reports, bottom lines that either didn’t add up, or did, but in all-too-alarming ways.

  Gone was her old life and its simple pleasures, the piddling uncertainties and Alix’s blissful reassurances that someday he’d take care of the real ones. Now those crises were hers and no one was going to take them away. Why would anyone actually want this kind of responsibility…?

  It wasn’t just her father and brother who had died last night. She didn’t want to be Lady Loren.

  “My Lady …” Costellic was saying delicately, “There is nothing I can say to assuage the grief you must be feeling.”

  “Nothing makes sense anymore. I miss my father, and my brother, and … myself. And for the first time in my life I find myself questioning all of them, questioning my very memory of them!”

  Costellic backed off and started strolling the perimeter of the study, looking up at the framed war sketches on the wood-panelled walls and skimming the titles on the bookshelves.

  “What happened to you last night, if I might ask?” he inquired, spinning the ivory globe.

  She shivered, looking away.

  “It’s okay—” he started, shuttering the windows.

  Droplets punctuated the silence, sliding down the glass.

  “No … It’s just that I don’t actually remember! I woke up on top of the tor,” she explained. “I saw the battle. I raced back here. All that blood? I have no idea where that came from.”

  “Why were you ou
t there?”

  “On the summit? I went out there to watch.”

  “Why?”

  “It made sense to me at the time … I guess. Now I can’t understand why I did it. Like something you do in a dream that seems completely logical when you do it. And then the next morning, it doesn’t.”

  “But you don’t know how you got there?”

  She shook her head. “I remember leaving. I remember the gate was unguarded. After that … nothing. Just waking up and stumbling back down. I hurt my head on the way back. You know the rest,” she omitted carefully.

  “Why are you questioning your memories of Malek and Alix?”

  “Last night … I think we can both agree that Andreas Telyra left of his own accord.”

  Costellic’s look became wary. “… Yes,” he said, drawing the syllable out.

  “I’m not about to spoil your quick promotion. General.”

  “You can call me Corin.”

  Rose wasn’t sure she wanted to be on a first-name basis with Corin-the-traitor.

  “I’d really prefer not to be a general. The reports of my assistance were uh … exaggerated, and it doesn’t feel right.”

  And I hid from this man all night? He’s as terrified of me as I am of him. Maybe he wasn’t coming to kill me at all. For all I know, he was coming to beg me for his life.

  She could ask him, but who knew what the response would be? Perhaps he would panic.

  “No way,” she objected. “You’re a general now. Live with it.”

  “Please? …. Lieutenant, at least? Just call me—”

  “—Your army can call you whatever you want. They’re your army though, Lieutenant.”

  “Your father wasn’t a bad man, Lady Loren. And Telyra isn’t a good one.”

  “I know that. I just don’t think Father always knew what was right, though he thought he did.”

  She hesitated. She hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with Telyra—but she didn’t want to talk about last night. If she didn’t acknowledge seeing the treason—then maybe for all intents and purposes she need not have seen it at all. Then she needn’t execute Lieutenant Costellic, and he needn’t murder her to try and prevent it. It seemed reasonable enough.

  … Traitor.

  The inner accusation was barely a whisper in her brain, but it was enough to bring her scruples crashing down on her. Her head felt like it was splitting open again, not from pain, but from sheer overwhelm.

  Am I a conspirator for not killing this man?

  Her only crime had been to witness his. It had been an accident. How could that be treason?

  Costellic had the nerve to stand here in front of her, speaking the names of the most precious people in her world. She wanted to damn him for that, but the very thought of them now weighed like a stone—or like a crown.

  “Father didn’t tell me everything. This circlet doesn’t come off. I’d heard rumours about that—from Lord Telyra. He’s stated as much publicly, but Father said he was a mad, paranoid liar. I believed him, never even thought to delve into the library records—even though he said the circlet had mystical powers, but wouldn’t tell me what they were. All he ever said was, ‘the right to rule’. Now I realize what a fool I was. He lied to me.”

  Costellic’s deadpan face altered into a new mask of vagueness. “…What do you mean?”

  Rose reached up to try and pry the circlet off, encountered her wig, and left off with a shrug. Scarcely acknowledged fury seethed in her veins. There was already too much to deal with. This on top of it all … if she let the anger in, she’d crack.

  “Exactly what I said. This thing doesn’t just choose once. It chooses every day. If I take it off, it comes back. It’s like a boomerang. I can’t abdicate. I know, you want to laugh, right? I used to laugh at some of the powers my brother and cousins thought the circlet had—like making you fly or breathe underwater. But it does do this. I can show you—”

  “That’s … very interesting.”

  Crazy. He’s thinking “very crazy.”

  She thought he’d say as much, but he simply quirked his mouth and looked at the desk.

  “Then you really are trapped. I knew you couldn’t give up the throne … but I never got why. That explains Lord Telyra; I figured he’d have ditched the gig a long time ago if he could have, with or without a successor. But if he can’t give up the circlet voluntarily, he’d have to die to be rid of it. So would you.” He blinked, his jaw dropping, revelation lighting his eyes. “… Talystasia can’t have a king. Not till Telyra dies, at any rate.”

  “Exactly the conclusion I came to. Each lord or lady may only abdicate through death, and neither of our lines may abdicate at all. The city is permanently divided.”

  “Unless of course either line was reasonable enough to give up lordship anyway. Strip the circlets of the meaning we’ve ascribed to them.”

  “Reasonable.” She snorted. “Is there anything reasonable about the situation? Neither side will ever do that. We were chosen. Who’s going to give up that? That is meaning. And so far as I can tell, Talystasia never in its history has had a solitary ruler—even before the circlets were found. The only rational claim to the idea that we are meant to have a king at all is connected to the legend of our shared ancestry. But so far as I know, the genealogical records don’t even go back that far. There’s no proof we came from the same place at all before settling here. It’s just a story we pass down to help legitimize the vendetta.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause, and then he spoke again, looking back up at her. “… Lady, your situation is serious. If you have any desire left to live, you need to act, and now. I’ll help you.”

  She stared across at him. “I don’t see what this big threat to my life is, other than you. And no offence, but I don’t know if your idea of help is something I want. This circlet isn’t going to kill me, so what is?”

  “… I’m not a threat to your life, my Lady. But a lot of people are.” He tapped his nose. “I know better than most what happens when a power void appears.”

  “But it … hasn’t,” she said uneasily. “The circlet chose me. I can’t abdicate. I’m trapped. Just as you said.”

  “Your situation isn’t like Lord Telyra’s. Andreas is the last in his line. For whatever reason, the circlets choose blood—the blood of Telyras and Lorens. No one has any hope of succeeding him, so no one has any motive to kill him.”

  “But Alix is dead,” protested Rose. “I’m my father’s only surviving child.”

  “You have aunts and uncles and cousins, remember? Telyra has no living relatives whatsoever that we know of. How many on your father’s side? Dozens? And what about your mother? She didn’t have Loren blood, did she?”

  “But they’re not my father’s descendents! Don’t they have to be descended?”

  “Only from a common ancestor; take Lady Rosmera Loren I for example, your great grandmother. Her cousin was the lord before her. He had no children of his own, and when he was killed, the throne passed to her because they shared a common grandparent. So that’s precedent, Milady, and if I know this, believe me, the courtiers know it too. And at this moment they are gathered like …”

  “… Vultures,” supplied Rose, shuddering.

  “Exactly. And if they see that they can rule through you, then for the moment you’re safe—”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “—But if someday you should see something that really infuriates you, and you realize that you are in a position to act … they will kill you when you do. And then it will be too late. There will be no one to stop them. The loyalty you’d have claimed will by then have been claimed by them. So step up now, before it’s too late … or give up now and get the hell out of this life and save yourself the anguish. But know that if you commit suicide, you’ll have turned your back on the people who need you. You’ll sacrifice your integrity, and you’ll die inside before you even put the knife through your heart. But if you choose to st
ick around and not stand up for what you believe, all you'll do is convert that death into a long, slow one. Your body will live. You won't.”

  Rose opened her mouth to deny the accusation that she might be considering suicide, before realizing with a desolate pang that she was.

  “So I’m a hostage to my conscience …?”

  “Yes. Your choices are now limited by your circumstances. You can’t have your old life back, Lady Loren. I know that’s the hardest thing in the world to hear … Maybe, someday, you can have back some of what you lost, but you will not live to see that day if you don’t make the choice to face your life now. Don’t die, Lady Loren,” he finished beseechingly.

  Rose stared down at the desk, not wanting to confront this brutal new truth. But she knew that if she turned away, she’d already be starting the process he spoke of—she’d be killing herself on the inside. And while she would do almost anything to end the anguish of this gradual, uncontrollable end to who she was, the only way to alleviate the pain would be by burying her conscience and agreeing to be who they wanted her to be. And if she did that, destroying the last extinguishing spark that grieved for her lost life, what hope could there be for a new one …?

  All that would remain would be the vultures, feeding on her heart.

  “Red is not your colour, Milady,” said Costellic.

  The wind blustered at the shutters. She could hear the trees outside groaning in complaint. Pulling a shawl over her shoulders, she looked back at him, but the nominal lieutenant appeared unmindful to the growing cold; he was back to scanning the details of the pictures on the wall.

  “What?”

  “You don’t wear it. It’s one of your personal idiosyncrasies. You associate red hair with Telyra,” he said without turning his head, “and wonder why anyone would want to resemble the enemy, even if it is our dynasty colour.”

  “How do you know that?” she said in shock.

  “Because I’ve seen and heard you across the yard and down the hall. A lot.” He smiled. “You were offended last night when I thought you were a redhead.” He laughed. “I don’t know why I was teasing you. And now you in that wig.” The laugh dissolved to a chuckle. “You look gorgeous, but you look better without it. Red. Isn’t it funny, how it hides the bloodstains?”