“We’ve got to do it now, Elissa.”
The men she conversed with were wearing strange armor, covered in metals, and they stood to one side of a massive Rixan beast. It was the size of one of the metal-beasts outside roaming the roads, but it had a proboscis of sharp spinning wheels that narrowed down to point. I had never seen its like before, but I could use my imagination – it was the worm I’d heard her speak of, and they meant to breech the Feather Palace’s lower walls.
“The historian says he needs another day.”
The leader of the armored men put his hand on the hilt of some weapon. I recognized the gesture from my own past – and the note of exasperation in his voice. “What difference will a day make?”
“You saw the tape – she doesn’t know about the outside world – about any of it. She can still be converted to our side. He goes to speak to her again.”
“And hopes she finally gets his gist? She’s been dense for three-hundred years now – that’s ten times as long as I’ve been alive.” Other men grunted at this.
“How about we go and talk to her ourselves?” said one of them, patting the side of the metal-monster they stood beside.
Elissa’s eyes narrowed and she looked among them coolly. “Remember that this plan is his plan – and that without him, we would not have this chance.”
“And you’re sure he hasn’t changed his mind? I mean, he waits long enough and he gets to live forever.”
“It has taken him a thousand years to infiltrate up until this point. So yes, he plays a longer game than you and I can comprehend – but he is not a liar.” She looked among them, waiting for one of them to challenge her. “You’ll have your answer today. But make no move till then.”
The man nearest her ground his jaw but then shrugged. “If he’s truly waited a thousand years, I can wait twenty-four more hours. After that, though –“
“Understood.” Elissa nodded curtly and left the room. I swirled up to where the metal-beast was aimed, and marked the wall.
It took me time to flow out and double-back to the palace again, but Ilylle’s blood kept me strong until I reformed and started walking down the halls.
How had she lived for three hundred years? And Yzin for a thousand? The magically inclined lived longer, healthier, but one lifetime was enough for any man.
A clicking sound echoed through the halls. Had the men outside decided to release their machine? I ran forward to where my hall joined a larger one and saw a herd of zoomers racing eight-leggedly toward Ilylle’s great chamber and instantly changed to smoke to follow them.
I reached her room as they did – half of it was on fire and she was madly laughing, starting new flames just as quickly as zoomers could put them out. I gathered myself and swirled around the room’s perimeter, extinguishing all the flames out in my passage before reforming in front of her. She was naked, standing beside her bed where her two servants lay.
“Are you mad?”
Ilylle looked suitably chastened. “No. It’s just – I can do it now. I just wanted to see –“ she pointed at her couch, and a flame arose from the center cushion. The nearest zoomer sprung atop it and extinguished it, then switched paws. Needle and thread emerged, and it began to patch the hole. “See?”
“I see.”
She crossed her room and pulled on a robe, tying its sash loosely. “All I had to do was help Joshan fuck Beza and –“ she made a gesture, indicating the surrounding destruction – the marks on the ceiling, the ruined tapestries, the pile of melted wax. And as if to defy me, she grinned, and lit a different spot on the couch alight.
I’d left her unsated? When I thought she could take no more? I would not be making that mistake again. I slashed my hand through the air. “All this is impressive, but you need to stop.”
“But I have power now!” she said, leaning forward. Her robe slipped open, showing the belly-curve of one round breast. I thought of throwing her on the bed and fucking her until we set the room ablaze, but I didn’t let it show.
“Power, without control, is nothing.” I stepped back from her and surveyed the room’s destruction. “Right now you’re as likely to immolate your people as you are to save them.” When my gaze returned to her I saw her shoulders fall. “Though I am glad you have learned how to access it on your own. It seems we will not need to fuck again.”
I watched her when I said it. I wanted to see the effect it would have on her – if what I gave her could be so easily replaced with metal-puppets. The look she gave me then was dark and pained, and something low inside me stirred. I knew then I’d planted a hook inside her, but she answered, “Whatever you think best, my King.”
“Precisely,” I said. The first wave of zoomers started leaving the room, now that they’d caught up with her destruction. I sat down on the couch, inspecting the hole that’d just been fixed, unable to tell a flame had ever been there.
Chapter Twelve
“Tell me more about Yzin,” he commanded, from his spot on the couch. I tugged my robe closed and tied it tighter so that none of my skin showed. He didn’t want to fuck me anymore? Why? Had I done something wrong? I walked back to my bed and sat on it, half a room away from him.
“He’s always been a councilmember. He’s the one that taught me how to read – and then gave me the screens, as I’ve told you.”
“And he’s been with you for all three hundred of your years?”
I nodded.
“Has he aged?”
I licked my lips in thought. Time passed so slowly for me – but in memories of Yzin from when I was younger, he was too. “A little, yes. His joints creak now.”
My King’s eyes narrowed and he nodded. “When is he coming?”
Joshan answered for me. “In an hour, my Queen.”
Oh no. If Joshan had told me that, I wouldn’t have laid waste to my room. An hour wasn’t much time. “Beza –“ I needed to be bathed, my hair needed tending, and I needed a new dress.
At least my story was done. I’d been sure to put it in my desk’s bottom drawer, safe from flame.
Zaan stood and crossed the room, picking something up off of the floor. The collar that I’d worn when he’d seen me last. He ran its leather through his fingers and then looked to me.
“Do you think we can trust him?”
I laughed once, harshly. “What do I know of trust?”
His gaze was critical. “You may trust in me.”
“Only because you don’t want to die.” I leaned down and picked up the dress I’d worn the night before and snatched the collar from his hand.
“Indulge my curiosity and wear it,” he said, jerking his chin at the collar.
“As my King desires,” I said, and walked out.
I tried to find solace in the waters of my pool, or in the sensation of Beza coming my long hair out, in the pulling on of dresses and taking them off again until I wore one that was just right – all the small things that used to satisfy me every day and night before he had come along.
Before I had released him.
Part of me wished I had never found that book, or figured out how it might be read. Then I would never know the depths of my betrayal, or feel half as useless as I did now. Zaan was right, catching things on fire wouldn’t feed Mazaria. Airelle had been built for war – but there were no wars anymore as far as Yzin’s screens told me, just vast inequalities between people who had everything and people who had nothing. I needed to figure out how to be built for peace.
When I returned to my great chambers, the zoomers were done cleaning and it looked none the worse for my morning’s exercise.
I walked over to my desk and pulled open the bottom drawer – and the pages I’d hidden inside were gone. Some overzealous zoomer had claimed them.
“No!” I said, bunching my hands into fists.
“No, what? Is something troubling you, my dear?”
I turned and found Yzin there, standing calmly in the doorway, his eyebrows high.
“N
o – everything’s fine,” I said and gave him a smile. I hoped that it would be. Without the pages, I would have to tell him my ending myself.
I walked across the room to my couch and sat down, gesturing for him to join me. He did so, slowly, and pushed extra pillows behind himself to prop himself up.
And when he was arranged, he turned to look at me. I couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes flickered to my collar. “Do you like it?” I asked, hoping I would be able to read something into his response.
His gaze traced my face, trying to read me as much as I was him. “I do,” he said at last. “Did you enjoy the screen?”
“Up until the ending. It just stopped. But you knew that.”
He nodded sagely. “Not all stories have endings yet.”
“Well I think this one should,” I said. I crossed my hands in my lap to gather strength before speaking again. “I didn’t like the way that it was going, and so I wrote my own ending. Why shouldn’t the woman trapped in the jewel help to get herself out? Does everyone think she’s just happy inside there, with only gemstone for company?”
Yzin’s expression lifted and he leaned forward. “It’s easy to assume things from the outside when gemstone is all you see.”
“In my story, she learns how to fight and she practices, and when the rebels come for her she’s ready to go with them, and they all make their escape, tearing down the palace behind them.”
He went still before responding. “Do you mean what you say, my Queen? Or is it just a story to you?”
Was this a final test of loyalty, or was Yzin really on my side? It didn’t matter. The truth needed to be free.
“I mean every word I say. I always have.”
He crumpled in front of me. “I have waited so long for this day – and it is almost too late.” His hands reached for mine and clasped them tight. “Do you know what you are – do you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you of the world outside?”
I nodded. “I do, finally.”
Zaan reformed behind him. He had a weapon with him, a sword, and I didn’t know where in the palace he’d found it, but he was pointing it at Yzin.
“Traitor, turn around.”
Yzin sat straighter at the sound of Zaan’s voice and did as he was told. “Can it be?” He turned, and laughed. “Zaan!” Yzin named him, as if he were an old friend. Zaan’s eyes narrowed, then widened.
“Rkatrayzin. I did not recognize you. You do not smell as you once did.”
“You – know each other?” I blinked between them.
Zaan placed the tip of his weapon at the side of Yzin’s neck, just below his ear. “We do. Tell me how she died. Now.”
Yzin looked from him to me and back again. “She didn’t.”
“What do you mean she didn’t die? This one tells me it’s been twenty-thousand years –“
“It has been.” Yzin let go of my hands to push the blade away from himself.
“How have you lived that long? And if she is alive, where is she?”
“I will answer, I will answer,” Yzin said, waving his hands. Zaan stepped back but stayed ready as Yzin looked to me. “In the vase – did you find and read the history?”
“I did.”
Yzin sighed aloud. “Bless you for your learning, girl, and your unnatural curiosity.”
“I’m threatening you, old man,” Zaan growled.
“And if I were not prepared to die, I would not be here.” Yzin said, waving Zaan nearer to me. “Move over so that I may see you both. I am, as you said, an elder.”
Zaan said something uncouth in his old tongue, but stepped sideways so that Yzin could look at both of us easily. Yzin’s eyes lingered on Zaan, almost hungrily. “I never thought the day would come when I would again see a Zaibann walking among us again.”
“But the other Kings?” I asked.
“Oh, my Queen, how many lies you’ve been told,” Yzin said with a head-shake. “But that ends now, I swear it.”
“You’ll have to pardon my disbelief,” Zaan said.
“You have every right to be angry, Zaibann. I knew Airelle, and I know who you were to her. I was there.” Yzin looked over to me. “I had a small rank in the old court. A ceremonial one – historian. Most who held that title ignored it, but not me. I knew great things were happening, and I wanted the world to know ages later, when it would forget.”
Yzin pushed himself further back in the cushions. “I traveled with the army and got into the council. Airelle was fond of me – or of having someone write her exploits, at least. And so I was there when the decision was made to sacrifice her Zaibann for Aranda.”
“Did you start plotting to betray her at that moment, then? Or did you wait an hour?” Zaan asked.
Yzin ignored him, looking only at me. “You read the book but you weren’t there. Times were dire. Our society was largely magic based, but only few possessed the power – and magic couldn’t shield us from Rixan bombs. Shielding our borders via magic was our only chance – but what we wrought that day -- you know most people do not live as long as Queens do, don’t you?”
“I do. I read it on your screens.”
“Those of us who were present that day, as Airelle siphoned off all the magic from her Zaibann, when Aranda closed its doors – we noticed things. We were more powerful. We healed more quickly. We were physically strong. Anyone possessed of powers who was present wound up changed.”
He looked at Zaan. “We used the time you bought us to infiltrate the Rix, to bring back treasures. Our learned men undid their work and puzzled out their science. Within a year, safe in Aranda’s bosom, we were close to catching up.”
“But –“ Zaan prompted, sword still out.
“But – by then the other councilmen were used to their new lives. Who didn’t want more power, more strength? To undo what Airelle had done would undo those gifts as well. And so Railan led a coup against her.”
“Airelle would have rather died than be captured.”
“We did not give her a choice.”
“You admit you were among their number?” Zaan’s voice was low and tight.
“Railan murdered anyone who disagreed with him. I did not fight him – nor did I aide him – I merely watched in the name of history.”
Zaan made a growling sound and I worried he might slice Yzin’s head off before he finished his story.
“You see, Railan learned how to merge Rix technology and magic and created a device that could drain the power from a Queen and give it to others. He trapped Airelle in one and left her there.”
“But you said she was still alive.” Zaan pronounced every word as a threat.
“She is – in a manner of speaking,” he said, and gestured broadly at me. My heart leapt into my throat as Yzin went on. “The people were too used to being led. So we took a piece of her, and cultivated a new Queen.”
“Cultivated?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said, with a heavy nod. “Our first few experiments were tragic. Too much power, not enough sense – no sense at all, forms that just lay there, bereft of anything but basest life – or beings of so much power that they immolated themselves the second they hit puberty – Airelle was alive through all of these. We trotted her weakened form out at every celebration for our country, practically tied her to a pole and made her perform her duties, before tucking her back inside her box.”
And I knew exactly what her box was – a variation on my dream cradle. My eyes flickered to the monstrosity. I would never let anyone put me in it again. It was hard not to look at it now, sitting by my bed, without setting it aflame.
“Eventually we got the knack of it and created a girl-child. One who we could mold. The process only took a thousand years. After that, lowering our borders and conquering the majority of the world was a mere formality.”
The horrified expression on Zaan’s face was mirrored on my own. Only Yzin seemed untroubled – he was just reporting history.
“It didn’t do to give the
girl too many powers – then she could kill a councilman. If the girls grew too willful, if they wanted to conquer things, or travel Aranda to see the land for themselves, we either drained these for our own benefit, or killed them if they proved too strong.”
Yzin shrugged, as though what he was telling us was commonplace. “Eventually, we settled on this arrangement. If we kept the girls in seclusion, not knowing anything of the outside world except the small bits that we showed them, emphasizing their weakness and our strength, it worked. We gave them mechanical servants to interact with to abate their loneliness, and we taught them enough to keep their minds occupied. They would live a few hundred years quietly, and when they got too strong and too restless, we would tell them about their King.”
I felt my jaw drop, and looked to Zaan. The blade he held was shaking in anger.
“When a Queen dies, a flash of immense power is released. It is possible to trap this power, and use it to regenerate yourself, if you know how. But if you’re too close to the Queen – say, you’re the one that kills her – you’ll be immolated. Several original councilmen died when they got too greedy and killed Queens out of hand.” Yzin paused dramatically here, like he was giving me a childhood lesson he would quiz me on later. “But an angry Zaibann has no fear of death – so all we had to do was tell the girls the right story. They were so eager for something different in their lives – something new – that they all instantly believed.”
Just like I had. Yzin was looking at me, his face somber. I nodded. “Go on.”
“So we created a ceremony. One by one, we plucked Zaibanns up, used enough magic to give their stone cocks strut, and then gave them to the Queens as presents. Talk up the ceremony enough, the magic of their future lives, and they hardly mind being chained to a table and presented to their ‘King’.” Yzin said the word as ironically as possible. “Their mechanical servants push the table forward until they join, and her magic brings him back to life – her very own blood-starved mythological creature. The Zaibann kills the Queen, the Queen’s death kills the Zaibann, empowering the councilmen for another few hundred years, and there you are.”
The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) Page 11