by A. F. Dery
“Really, Edmund, is this how you treat your next door neighbor and ally?” she demanded indignantly. “Leaving me out there to find my own way in and having me announced by…what is this, a stablehand?”
The servant looked hurt as he un-bowed. Malachi shrugged one shoulder indifferently.
“And you invited me, let’s not forget,” she added, affecting a pout. “I can’t begin to understand this poor reception.”
That riveted his full attention on her. Malachi rose at once to his feet, striding over to her and stopping about three feet away to offer a sweeping bow. “Ah, Janice, my sincerest apologies-”
“Jana,” she snapped, her eyes narrowing.
“Jana, forgive me, pray do,” Malachi said smoothly. “You know I am not the best versed in these feminine matters of etiquette-”
“Lord Jarel would not be so negligent,” Ossian replied, without much conviction. “And don’t you have a wife around here somewhere?”
“I do indeed, but ah, I am sure you have heard of her delicate condition. She is much grieved to have to miss our little meeting.” Sorry Maggie, he thought with an interior wince in the direction of the ceiling.
“I am sorry to hear that she is unable to come, or to talk any good sense into you about how these things are done, apparently,” she sniffed, casting her eyes about in an obvious search for seating.
“This way, my Lady, this way,” Malachi gestured to the arranged chair. She looked at it, then at his throne, then back at her chair, then sighed.
“Oh very well. I ought to have known not to expect any better from you than from that barbarian up north,” she huffed, sitting gingerly in the chair. Malachi stiffened.
“Have you heard from Eladria of late?” he asked, trying to keep his voice disinterested as he took his own seat and gestured for the servant by the door to fetch the tea.
Lady Ossian snorted. “You mean apart from him randomly locking his borders down like the world is about to end? Between him and you, that’s just all I need. I always said the isolation would drive those Eladrians over the brink one of these days, didn’t I? And now you’ve apparently gone right around the bend with him.”
Malachi flattened a hand to his chest, widened his eyes, and silently mouthed, Me?
“You attacked my men, Edmund. Don’t pretend you don’t know it,” Ossian stated coldly. “You cut them down with those ridiculous machines of yours and even real men this time, I’m told. Finally decided to reform your military and test it out on an old ally, is that it?”
“If you truly believe I’ve so wronged you, my good Lady, then how could you enter my lands, even my own humble abode-” Malachi waved a hand expansively at his audience chamber- “without even a guard to protect you from my malfeasance?”
“Oh, plenty of people know where I am and what will have happened to me if I don’t return in a timely fashion, my Lord,” Ossian replied with a smile that showed dainty, kittenish teeth. “And I truly doubt your dear wife is in any condition to be fleeing the country when the High Lord would be forced to intervene, now is she? No, I suspect I’m quite safe, no matter how many of those metal monstrosities you put around the doors.”
Malachi forced himself to smile and incline his head to her in mute acknowledgment, but under the table between them, his hand clenched on his knee, his arm trembling with the effort to still it. When he finally trusted himself to speak somewhat civilly, he said through gritted teeth, “Of course my allies are always safe with me, Janice. But I must admit that it is difficult to identify them when they send their men over my border to invade my country, but I’m sure you know all about that.”
Lady Ossian looked shocked. “What could you possibly be implying, Edmund? What would I even want with your sorry holding, even were I not bound by the same rules as you?”
“I have no idea, why don’t you tell me? Your men say you told them to attack, told them to cross the border. That there were ‘rogues,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean!”
“Why, I never! And what do you mean, my men said? Are you holding some of my citizens prisoner?” Ossian demanded as the servant finally appeared with the tea. He hesitated at the edge of the room, pot in hand, and Malachi waved him in impatiently, never taking his eyes off the indignant Lady across from him.
She clamped her mouth shut however and stared resolutely off over his shoulder while the servant poured the tea for both of them. When he’d at last finished and set the pot down, he hurried off with a last resentful glance at the woman at table. You and me both, thought Malachi bitterly. This was not going as he’d planned it in his head, not at all. He had not meant to accuse her outright like this, but her feigned ignorance was enough to set his teeth on edge.
When the servant had left, Ossian returned her gaze to him and said coolly, “There has been talk of possible rogues. There have been sightings of Raiders, but I’m sure this is no news to you. They must have traveled at some point past our own borders, but we never glimpsed them if so. However, those men of mine were never told to cross your border. They were almost certainly warned to act at once if there were Raiders seen, but I certainly did not accuse any of your people of going rogue. One of my generals must have misunderstood or possibly the men in question misunderstood what orders they received. Give me their names and ranks and they will be disciplined, I assure you, but you had no business taking prisoners from my people.”
“They were on my land trying to attack my people, I certainly had every business doing whatever the hell I pleased with them,” Malachi growled. “I did not cross your border and stage an attack, Ossian. That was you. And there are no ranks to give- these were militia!”
“Militia?” Ossian frowned, her hand freezing midway between her lap and her teacup. “That makes no sense. No, there had to be a mistake somewhere.”
“So you say. Will you not tell me what is going on? If you’ve heard of Raiders, if you knew they were coming here, why did you say nothing? Why did you do nothing? Do you truly believe they will stop here, at me? You do remember you are obliged to come to our defense? You do recall that my citizens are not fair game to be destroyed even if you think there are rumblings of dissent?” Malachi demanded in a breathless rush. He felt the vein in his forehead throbbing.
“Of course I know my obligations,” Ossian hissed, “And anyone with eyes to see would know there had been Raiders here! You leave your country ripe for them to despoil, more concerned with your private amusements than with what happens to the flesh and blood within your own borders!”
“Enough!” Malachi barked, rising to his feet. “I’ve had enough of you. You will admit to nothing, and blame me for what Lyntara does! You say you know your obligations but you have done nothing- no, I lie! You allow your men to murder mine in a ‘misunderstanding!’ But oh, it was a mistake, so why should I be bothered?” He laughed humorlessly. “Oh yes, I know quite enough of you, Ossian. The governance of my people on my land is my business, not yours, so damn well mind your own and the vows you have made before the High Lord or you will have far more to regret than I ever will!”
“Are you threatening me?” Ossian rose as well, throwing down her napkin onto the table. “I’m sure we are done, Malachi. You are so quick to invoke the High Lord. Don’t think I will keep silent before him. The time is fast coming when you will have to account for all your absurdity!”
Lifting her chin, she turned on her heel and strode from his audience chamber without any further acknowledgment of him while his hands twitched ineffectually in fists at his sides.
I could kill her, he thought angrily, staring at her departure. Cold blooded bitch! I should have known she’d never take responsibility for anything that happened. He was well aware of his past mistakes now, and he felt them keenly, more and more every moment, it seemed. She had no right to hold them over his head, as though she were blameless!
One thing was for certain, however. As much as he wanted to, even now, he could not make himself believe that she had t
ruly been trying to invade in earnest. Her explanation, as unsatisfactory as he found it, was regrettably all too plausible. Had he not only just been thinking the day before how his own men could have acted without his knowledge at the border and had some hand in what had happened? Thankfully it did not appear to be so, or he was sure he would have gotten an earful about it from Lady Ossian!
“At least if any of her blathering is true, it should not happen again,” he muttered darkly, forcing his hands to unclench. That just left those damned Raiders to worry about. It couldn’t be too late to stop them, it simply couldn’t. Though it still made no sense that they had targeted his country, “ripe” or not, he was in the Union and surrounded by allies! Surely even their lord was not so brainless?
“Unless they’ve found out somehow that the alliances are not as strong as they appear,” Malachi said to himself out loud, knuckling his eyes wearily. His encounter with Lady Ossian had certainly not filled him with any confidence that she’d uphold her end, and unless he answered the High Lord’s summons soon, could he really be sure that even he would uphold his?
Malachi sighed. Time enough to deal with all of that, now there was something worse still looming: telling Margaret about his little meeting. Perhaps there was time yet for a cup of tea first, after all.
CHAPTER NINE
It could have been hours, days, or weeks, for all Kesara knew. It could have been ten minutes. If she could have seen...them...perhaps she could have borne it better. For it was not the pain that unhinged her so, it was the plain fact of the teeth, coming at her unseen and indomitable in their onslaught, that drove her past the brink of hysteria and into some nightmarish place she couldn’t escape from. She relived the long months of her apprenticeship to Graegun as if those hours unfolded for her anew: every moment, every cut, every drop of scalding liquid, every touch of heated metal, and then his squeals, more piercing than any she had ever before heard him utter, when he saw her quite unexpected reaction to the snapping teeth of his pet corza lizard one dreary afternoon, an avenue for his delight that he had not even conceived of.
When the door she was still wedged against finally opened, however long had passed, she fell out onto the earth and couldn’t even react. She could hear nothing but ringing in her ears. She stared sightlessly into a muted brightness that refused to resolve itself into any discernible surroundings. When hands touched her neck, her wrists, she was utterly numb, feeling only the pressure of nondescript fingers, checking for a pulse that she earnestly prayed in some distant part of herself would never again be found. She smelled smoke and burning meat and didn’t care if it was her. Let it be her. She had no quarrel with fire. Perhaps the heat would banish the coldness that had settled into her very bones, for she could feel nothing, nothing, and she was so very cold.
She felt herself lifted from the ground and pressed against something metallic, but strangely, warm. Fingers touched her hair, her face, but still, she felt nothing at the contact. She waited numbly for more pain, but felt whatever held her start to shake instead; felt something warm drip onto her forehead like slow raindrops. She turned her face towards it without even knowing why, and now another smell registered to her senses, apart from whatever burned; sweat and soap and pipe tobacco.
Against her will, she burst into tears.
Time blurred again. She drifted, in and out. Her blood felt slow and thick like honey in her veins, her thoughts were in a haze that was not at all unpleasant. She found she could not hold onto one thought before it melted, forgotten, into the next, but she managed to cling, waking and sleeping, to the warm, earthy, soapy scent that had broken into her stupor. She clung to a left knee that ached from an old injury whose origin she did not know, to the way the bones in shoulders she’d never noticed were slightly stooped ground against each other, to the nauseating pounding in the back of a skull that was the twin of her own. She held onto it like an anchor; as long as she held it, she knew she was alive and could not possibly have hallucinated being taken from the cellar, or who had been doing the taking.
If she felt it move beyond her reach, slipping her unseen grasp, she felt herself start to slide back into the darkness of snapping, gnawing teeth; her throat burned from screams she couldn’t stop. They sounded to her like the howling of some wounded beast, and not a woman at all. She couldn’t quite believe they came from her. But it always came back, and eventually- soon or not, she was beyond telling- stopped trying to leave her at all. She curled around this stolen pain like a dragon with its hoard, and any guilt or fear she might have felt at her own behavior wafted through her mind like wisps of cloud, ephemeral and fleeting things that evaporated at a touch or even a lingering glance.
Eventually her blood felt like it ran fluidly again; her head started to clear. She still didn’t quite care about opening her eyes, but she did anyway. She was a room she didn’t recognize, on a bed that wasn’t hers. Everything was stone. She saw a fire burning low in a hearth from the corner of her eye. She was curled up in blankets of a finer weave than any she had seen since her first apprenticeship in Ytar, with blue and green threads entwining. She saw a great, white-clad back seated at a table of some sort against one wall, writing away at a furious pace, and all she could see of that back’s attached head was shrouded in almost shoulder-length dark red hair.
She debated with herself silently, whether to speak and risk interrupting him or keep her own counsel, but the lingering remnants of lethargy convinced her to choose the latter with very little trouble at all. She shifted a little and realized her feet were tightly wrapped in something, up to her calves. Probably bandages, she thought, but she pushed away the accompanying flicker of memory as something distasteful she wanted no part of. There was pain, but it was irrelevant, well within her capabilities and a dim shadow of a sensation compared to Lord Eladria’s present headache, paired with her own. She reached up and gingerly touched her head; her scalp stung, there was a knot smaller than she would have thought possible under the skin on one side. She hoped she hadn’t lost very much hair. The Eladrian climate demanded all natural insulation, even in what they misguidedly called “spring.”
She let her hand fall back to the bed and somehow, Lord Eladria must have sensed the movement, for he turned to her suddenly. “You’re awake,” he observed.
Kesara would have shrugged, but it was too much work at the moment. “I may be,” she allowed. “Or I could be dreaming.”
“You must know that’s impossible,” Lord Eladria said slowly. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Fair maidens are supposed to dream about handsome Lords. As you can see, you are in no such company, ergo, you are very much awake.”
“You’re not handsome, that’s true,” Kesara admitted, “but as you’re the only Lord I would want to dream of, I’m afraid your presence here neither proves nor disproves anything. Maybe you have another theory?”
Lord Eladria stared at her, brow furrowed, obviously perplexed. Finally he said, “I think you must have hit your head one too many times, Kes. Or maybe it’s all the herbs Graunt’s been feeding you, addling your brain. How are you feeling? I should have asked that straight off.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
He shook his head a little. “No, really, is the pain very bad? Graunt has been...difficult...on the subject of pain management. She seemed to think you’d want to be left alone with it. I wouldn’t hear of it, not until you were well enough to speak for yourself, anyway.”
Kesara frowned. “You’ve been giving me drugs?” She said the last word with all the bitterness and disgust she could muster from the depths of her lethargy and came across, she supposed, as being perhaps mildly annoyed.
“Just herbs for pain relief. They’ve never done much for me, but with the amount it would take to knock me flat...” He shrugged his huge shoulders eloquently.
“Dear gods, you must be joking!” she sputtered, aghast. She clutched the blanket to her chest, feeling somehow violated at the thought of someone tr
ying to stop her from feeling pain. Was this what happened to truly bad Mirrors, that dark, dreadful something that her teachers had warned her about, heavy with omen, but light on specifics?
Lord Eladria frowned slightly. “Of course not. Why should you suffer?”
“Because! It’s what I was made for! It’s what I do! What hell it must be to feel nothing! If I felt nothing now, it could be no dream, but a nightmare!” To her shame, her voice broke at that last declaration and she dropped the blanket, hiding her face behind her hands and trying very hard not to compose herself.
I never used to cry, she thought distantly, and now I can’t seem to stop. Will I soon be dead, then? Is that what this is, some sign of the end?
She normally did not indulge in such morbid thoughts, but it was hard to care about anything, no doubt due to the so-called pain relief in her system. If she hadn’t been so overwrought, she would have laughed at the very words. Instead, inside, she clutched his pain to her heart as she had done to the blankets on the outside before. She could feel it. She felt it now. She would not panic. It was absurd to panic. She’d been fine before him, she’d be fine without him-
It’s started. The thought came with a sense of deja vu. She had thought this before. She had thought it before the cellar.
Kesara vaguely became aware that he was talking to her in a low voice. He’d moved from the chair to her bedside, had taken her hands in his and tugged them from her face. Kesara’s eyes finally met his and she saw worry there.
“I’m sorry,” she said tearfully. And she was, for more than she could say.
“No, I am the one who should apologize, I should have heeded Graunt, I had no idea this would upset you...frankly I still have no idea why it does, but it doesn’t matter.” Lord Eladria squeezed her hands, very gently, and somehow that made her feel worse than she would have if he’d just broken them instead, finger by finger.