by Aaron Yeager
The ground shook violently and another plant sprung forth from the muddy ground, this time even thinner than the first, with small umbels of yellow flowers. Athel grunted in frustration, but the sound became a scream as a pair of bats grabbed her hair and began tugging upward. Her arms flailed wildly as she attempted to free herself, giving another pair of rats the chance to land on her back, biting and clawing with everything their small energetic bodies had in them.
Tigera felt the pain of the small animals as their teeth chipped on rings of metal embedded in the cloth. That tricky little tree-witch, he mentally praised, her dress has armor built into it.
Athel threw herself onto her back, forcing the small attackers to leap off to avoid being crushed.
Skipping over the dramatic introduction that had marked her first attempt, Athel threw out another small seed, which sprouted and grew at her command, this time growing into a plant that was little more than a stem with a single three-part leaf.
Tigera laughed as he held his tooth necklace, calling every animal in the caves to him. This dove may not be my angel, but she’s not much of a threat either.
Athel stood up, shock and mud creeping over her face as she looked at the small plants she had grown in the mud.
“Thyme, Dill Weed, and Marjoram?” she said, naming the plants. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” Spirea called out.
“In my rush to get ready, I must have grabbed Alder’s spice pouch by mistake.”
Tigera laughed again. A deep throaty laugh that forced tears to form at the corner of his eyes.
Maybe I should keep her around to provide entertainment, he thought.
Thousands of rats began gathering around Athel. Globs of mud flung from her hair as she looked this way and that. In all directions the dim torchlight caught the reflections of thousands of black beady eyes. Tigera relished the look of fear in Athel’s eyes.
When their backs are to the wall, people look no different than the animals they feign superiority over. What an appropriate end for a princess to be surrounded by her kin.
“Uh, Spiri.” Athel called out as she backed up.
“Yeah?”
“We’re friends, right?”
“Not really.”
“And we’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we?”
“Not that long.”
“Please don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
“Not on your life.”
Just as Tigera was about to command the feast to begin, something about Athel’s comment made him pause. It seemed vaguely familiar for a moment, then his memory locked onto something and he could see clearly what she was saying.
“Wait a minute,” he began, feeling a surge of excitement. “Did you just quote the ending lines from the Tanabori series?”
Athel shifted her weight uncertainly and looked around.
“Um, maybe.”
“You did, didn’t you?” he said, elated. “When The Last Elder sits down with Adama and shares their final cup of green tea.”
“I think it was actually Oolong tea,” Athel corrected in a shaky voice.
“I love those books,” Tigera admitted, the army of rats parting to let him through as he walked forward. “My uncle used to read them to me every night before I went to sleep. And what you said earlier, ‘Justice will penetrate all shadow,’ that’s from Charleton’s Quest, isn’t it?”
“Charleton’s Quest was always my favorite,” Athel admitted sheepishly.
“Wait a minute,” Spirea yelled out. “You mean all this time you’ve just been quoting your stupid adventure novels?”
“There’s no reason to be shy about it,” Tigera encouraged. “I still read those books on long voyages. The Son of Adama is why I became a sailor in the first place.”
“Me too,” Athel gushed. “The way he described the open air and the cloud dragons. I haven’t been able to look at the sky the same way since.”
“Because once a man has sailed through the endless blue...” he began.
“...he can never look up at the sky the same way,” Athel said, finishing the signature line of the series.
Tigera realized that he was smiling from cheek to cheek. He had never met a woman before who had such a hunger for his favorite kind of adventure fiction. Well, he admitted to himself that she had been attractive from the first, but somehow now her beauty seemed to surpass every other animal he had ever known. A beautiful woman who could quote Charleton’s Quest was, to him, like the legendary sea dragons. It was something everyone knew was there, but no one ever actually went out to the Dragon Isles to verify. Something everyone believed existed, but no one had actually seen...until now.
“Hey, just what do you guys think you are doing?” Spirea called out from underneath Murphi. “He’s about to have rats eat us alive and you’re flirting with him?”
“Look, you better shut your mouth,” Murphi warned, twisting her arm further. “If he wants to talk, just get out of his craw and let him talk.”
“No, I won't.” Spirea protested. “He’s pompous and boring, and I suspect he may have scurvy.”
“Hey! I am not boring,” Tigera defended.
One of Tigera’s bats squealed in alarm from its perch high up on the cavern ceiling. Closing his eyes, Tigera’s vision shifted so that he was looking out from the eyes of the small animal. High above them, an old man on a ledge was tossing dozens of small vials over the edge. Tigera opened his eyes and looked up. The vials rained down around them, crashing with a pyrotechnic display of gold and blue sparkles, filling up the cavern with swirling clouds of golden smoke which choked the lungs and burned the eyes. Tigera grasped his tooth necklace, but he couldn’t see or feel any of his animals. Feeling suddenly very alone, he began to run blindly in the smoke, the edges of his vision already beginning to cloud.
Where is my angel?
The air around him began to sizzle and his hair stood up on its ends. Fearfully, he realized that Murphi was summoning up his magic. The clouds of smoke parted around him, pushed away by a perfect sphere of crackling energy with Murphi at its center.
Murphi stood tall and threw his arms skyward, and the sphere grew to fill the entire cavern, shoving aside the golden fumes until they were entirely dispersed. In every direction, unconscious rats and bats lay twitching on the floor. Among them were the unconscious forms of Athel and Spirea.
“They were taken out by their partner’s spells?” Tigera said in disbelief as he looked skyward to the overhang far above, where the unconscious form of the old man, presumably their compatriot, half-hung over the edge, affected by his own magic.
Tigera couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Their opponents had managed to hide the existence of their ally until it was too late. They would have won, except that they had brought no protection against their own potions. His esteem for them grew and shrunk at the same time, and he knew this would make a great story someday.
Murphi walked up, looking unabashedly smug as he kicked aside some sleeping rodents and held out his paw. Tigera cursed and pulled out his money pouch, returning his winnings begrudgingly as he looked at the two sleeping Wysterians lying on the ground before them. A few feet to one side lay the sleeping form of the blonde shopkeeper who had been released from her transport crate.
They all looked so beautiful to him as they lay there, their hair strewn about roughly across their flawless and radiant skin, their mouths slightly open as they breathed peacefully. They were the absolute personification of quiet dignity, and the effect of it nearly stole his breath away.
“So, what are we going to do about these three?” Murphi asked roughly, scratching behind one ear.
Tigera said nothing, only smiled wickedly at his partner.
Chapter Twenty Five
Adjudications
Privet knew that he was supposed to keep his eyes fixed straight forward, focusing on nothing as he stood at his post, dressed in his finest Royal Guard formal wear. The thousand-yard stare it
was called, and while he was sure that it served some kind of useful purpose, he was also sure he couldn’t care less as he looked around the Cliffrose Judicial Hall. The seats and tables, walls and windows, even the benches on which the audience sat were made of living wood that grew up directly from the wood of the royal tree beneath them. Wysterian trials were nothing like the legal proceedings Privet had seen in other nations. Everyone in the hall sat quietly with their eyes closed, hands and feet touching the living wood beneath them, communicating their thoughts directly without the use of verbal language at all.
It was unbearably boring to watch. Privet sighed audibly and leaned back against the great ebony doors in front of which he stood, flawlessly etched with the images of Wysterian Queens, a pictorial history of the reign of the Forsythian family for thousands of years. Of course, he noted, the Forsythians had not ruled in an unending chain during that time. There had been several monarchs from other families, and their omission from the royal depictions on the door seemed to Privet like a subtle attempt to rewrite history.
It was technically quite an honor for him to be there, as palace guards were the only men ever allowed within the Judgment Hall, but to him, an honored slave is still no less a slave.
Privet watched Queen Hazel as she sat on the raised judge’s podium, a perfect depiction of the splendor of royalty, her beauty undimmed by the weight of years and duty. Privet could see some similarity between the Queen and her daughter, Athel, but it was rather subtle, more in the way they held their head when they thought, or in the way they tilted their eyebrows when they listened.
No doubt about it, he thought, they haven’t just been training Athel just to follow in her mother’s footsteps; they want her to be her mother.
Everyone in the Judgment Hall opened their eyes and stirred, and Privet quickly brought himself back to attention at his post.
“I thank you for sharing your memories of the investigation,” Queen Forsythia said respectfully to the tall and strong Lady Buckthorn as she rose from the witness stand. There was no need for cross-examination, no need to examine the validity of the evidence. The facts were absolute. Every woman in that hall had seen Lady Buckthorn’s memories as clearly as if they had been their own. It made Privet acutely aware that, although he was born a Wysterian, as a man he would always be an outsider.
He would never know the ‘pure language,’ which is what the women called it when they spoke through the trees. It made a part of him feel embittered, but another part of him felt relieved. Experience had taught him that it was best if others never knew his true feelings. It only brought pain.
He watched Lady Buckthorn with deep reverence as she returned to her seat in the audience. She didn’t just walk; she strode, with great strength and precision. Her inner confidence radiated from her like a comet among a starless sky. Some of Privet’s fondest memories were that of sparring with her eldest daughter, Aden, on several occasions. Aden was a truly remarkable fighter. Even when allowing him to fight her with his full complement of weapons, she had bested him effortlessly with nothing more than her bare hands, and her mother was supposed to be even more skilled than she was.
“I am satisfied,” Queen Hazel said in a commanding tone, which, Privet thought, is when she and Athel resembled each other the most. “Does defense counsel have any more motions to file before judgment is rendered?”
“We do, your honor,” the short, dark-skinned woman said as she stood beside Lady Sotol. There was an audible groan that rippled through the audience. It seemed like the Sotols were doing everything they could to delay the proceedings as much as possible and it was becoming obvious, even to Privet, that they were now delaying just to delay, having long ago lost the hope of winning any verdict other than guilty.
The defense counsel began reading off a dispute, which sounded both petty and technical to Privet, so he stopped listening and instead went back to looking around the room. He found himself wondering if they were going to break for lunch when he noticed that the Queen wasn’t listening either. To the casual observer, she was listening intently, but Privet had spent way too much time around Athel, who would nod her head the same way when she wasn’t really listening to something she didn’t want to hear.
The realization made Privet want to laugh out loud, but he held his tongue. The Queen had always seemed larger than life to him. A God of the heavens made flesh and bone, beyond the understanding of any mortal. Now, she seemed like a regular person, subject to the same feelings and passions as any other and just as likely to get bored as he was. This realization caused him to re-evaluate much of what he had observed about her, and the conclusion instantly struck him that she had been very distracted lately.
Privet nodded his head as more evidence compiled in his mind. She had most definitely been very distracted for some time now. Ever since she and the other Braihmin family Matrons had entered the sacred tree, something had been worrying her greatly. Privet looked around for them among the audience. Lady Greenbrier, Lady Cypress, Lady Buckthorn, Lady Lotebush, Lady Bursage, they were all decidedly worried about something, barely paying attention to the court proceedings around them. Privet was shocked at how obvious it was to him now and why he had never seen it before.
Just what happened when they went inside the sacred tree, anyway? He wondered to himself as he looked at the Queen.
It was at that moment that he realized that the Queen was looking directly back at him. He straightened his stance and assumed the thousand-yard stare, but deep down he knew that she had seen him and that she was still looking at him. Her eyes seemed to bore a hole right thought him, and he winced as he wondered what kind of punishment he would garner from this infraction.
“I appreciate the fervor with which you have executed your duties, madam counsel,” the Queen said, although Privet could still feel her gaze on him like a red-hot blade. “However, in the case you cite, Clematis vs. Tamarisk, the verdict had to be delayed because the only defendant was not yet in custody. In this case, the primary defendants are not absent. In fact, only a single member of the Sotol family is still at large, and while I have confidence that the federal authorities will eventually track her down, it would be inappropriate for us to wait until that time to complete this hearing.”
The mention of the fugitive made Privet feel a twinge of guilt. He and the other Guards had done everything to track her down, checking every residence and every ship manifest, but somehow she had made it off the island, slipping through their fingers and leaving a black spot on an otherwise flawless operation. Of course, it was the men who had borne the brunt of the blame, and the fact that he had been missing for a couple of hours during the search while he gave Athel her weekly lesson certainly did not cast him in a favorable light. He had protested, of course, even insisting that the only way she could have escaped the island was with help from someone else, but that had only landed him in even more trouble with his captain. That was probably the reason why he was stuck with the thankless task of sentry duty during the court proceedings.
The defense counsel bowed, accepting the ruling, obviously impressed that the Queen could cite the specifics of that particular case from sheer memory. “In that case, your honor,” she began, taking out another stack of papers, “defense would like to file a motion for the creation of a commission for discovery of fact on the following points...” There was a rumbling of outrage from the audience, and several women stood indignantly and began walking out of the hall.
Queen Forsythia tapped her staff gently, and asked the room to settle. “The sun is high and while I believe that our spirits have patience more enduring than the seas, our bodies require rest and nourishment. We will reconvene this hearing tomorrow morning at sunrise.”
The Queen tapped her staff and the room relaxed. People began quietly chatting as they filed out of the hall. Privet unlocked the heavy doors and swung them open, then turned sideways to allow people to pass by unobstructed.
It was then that Privet came fa
ce to face with Aden Buckthorn, who stopped in her tracks with a small gasp of surprise. Like her mother, she was tall and strong, one of the greatest warriors of their people, yet when she saw Privet she became quiet and timid. The beautiful features of her face, which Privet had always remembered to be so full of life and laughter, fell into a frown. Although she tried, she could not bring herself to look him in the face.
Privet was so shocked he could barely breathe, let alone speak. It had been years since they had last seen each other, yet the pain that built up in his chest was as acute as it was the last time, undimmed by the passage of time. A wound that could never heal, that one learns to avoid agitating, until it is stirred, and the pain is felt anew.
“Mister Tamarack,” she said formally, “I had not thought to see you here.”
Although she was taller than him by several inches, she seemed so small and frail before him now, reduced to nothing by her own feelings of guilt. He caught the faint scent of her perfume, tart like unripe berries, without the slightest hint of sweetness. Very few women could ever wear such a fragrance, but it suited her as perfectly and uniquely, as did her weapons when she held them in her hands.
“It has been a long time, Aden,” he said regretfully. “I have not had the pleasure of meeting your husbands.”
“Um, yes,” she said uncomfortably as she slipped past him. “I must make sure to come by and introduce you to them some day.”
Privet watched her as she walked away, keeping his eyes fixed on where he thought her to be long after she had disappeared into the crowd. He didn’t know what else to say. After all, what could he say to the woman who had robbed him of his freedom?
His thoughts were interrupted by a polite cough from Captain Tallia. While he and the other men wore simple leather armor, she was resplendent in a full white combat dress. Pure Wysterian silk, lined with chain mail and sleek armored plates, a combat gown was a priceless artifact allowed only to a few. “The Queen would like to talk to you,” she said with a smirk on her face, obviously quite pleased that he was in some sort of trouble.