* * *
“What exactly is it that you do all day?” Fingolfinrhod asked one evening at supper. They were dining for a change not in his suite but in the tavern wherein he had first fled into Ys, “from one trap to another,” as he now put it. Food was brought by busty serving wenches, tankards of ale were drawn at the taps, and a fire burning merrily in the hearth sent clouds of bubbles shooting up the chimney. In any other city, it would have been jolly.
When Cat told him, Fingolfinrhod marveled, “But why?”
“It’s a basic military principle: When there’s no advantageous action to be taken, gather information. I’m gathering information. When I have enough, it will tell me what to do.”
“Will it? I doubt that. I learned long ago that there’s nothing to be learned in Ys. Everything and everyone here is exactly what they seem.” Fingolfinrhod gestured at the tavern habitués, all niched into their oak, beveled glass, and polished brass environs like so many opportunistic reef-dwellers. “The drunkards drink, the tosspots toss back pots of ale, and the lackeys … lack, I suppose. Nowhere is there ever anything new, surprising, or strange to be discovered.”
“I saw something strange painted on a wall today.”
“Not possible. Who would bother? Incidentally, Dahut is going to be dropping by my rooms in a bit and I know she’d love to see you.”
“After what she did to me? Fat chance.”
* * *
Cat went to bed early that night, in part to avoid Dahut’s company. As she was drifting off to sleep, a voice came out of the darkness.
“I have lit three candles and snuffed out two.”
Cat sat bolt upright in her bed, just as she had once before. But this time she didn’t bother looking around. She knew that the source of the voice would not be there to be found. “Who are you? What are you trying to do? You don’t scare me. You don’t. You don’t scare me at all!”
As before, there was no reply.
Perhaps for that reason, perhaps not, Cat’s sleep was troubled and uneasy. One dream was particularly vivid: She was swimming in swamp water so brown with cedar tannins as to be almost opaque. Taking a deep breath, she plunged down below the surface, far deeper than should have been possible.
At first there was nothing to be seen. Then, through the murk, came flashes of white, transient as heat lightning, appearing and vanishing in swooping arcs of motion. A serpent’s head with eyes as bright as lanterns appeared directly before her, and its mouth gaped wide, revealing row after row of thorn-sharp teeth. So quickly that Cat could do nothing to prevent it, the serpent looped itself about her body. It was not cool and dry like terrestrial snakes, but slippery and warm. When she tried to struggle free, it tightened its coils and all the breath burst out of her in an explosion of bubbles. The serpent’s tongue tickled her ear and in a voice that was both male and insinuating, it said, “Venit means ‘He Is Coming.’”
Which was when she realized she was naked.
Cat awoke gasping and sweaty with revulsion and fear. Throwing on a robe, she went out in search of something to soothe her nerves.
The servants were off duty and all the city was asleep. Not a single window was lit. But in the pantry, Cat found a box of crackers, some cheese, and a half-empty bottle of vin ordinaire. She took a plate and a glass back with her into the common room.
“Looking for me?” Dahut said.
Startled, Cat lurched, almost spilling the wine. “What are you doing here?”
“I was having sex with your brother. But he fell asleep.” Dahut plucked the glass from Cat’s hand and took a swallow. “So I thought this would be a good time for you and me to have a chat.” She handed the glass back.
Cat put it down on a side table, firmly and forever.
“My parents,” said Dahut, “were wed on the day my father conquered Ys. He took her in open view of the assembled populace. She submitted herself fully to his will. The citizens saw that there was no future in rebellion. There was no love involved in the match. He needed to consolidate power and she wanted to live long enough to ensure the continuation of her line. They came to terms. I was born. On the day I first menstruated, there were celebrations throughout the city. Bells were rung and blood-feasts thrown for the poor. Then, as my mother had stipulated when she agreed to the match, she was put to death. Because she was of noble blood and because he had grown to care for her, my father strangled her with his own two hands. That evening, at a private meal, he and I ate her brains. He was weeping openly. I was not. That was when I first realized that someday I might be a better ruler than he ever was.
“You’ve probably wondered why I am the way I am. Now you know.”
“I never wondered and I never asked. So why tell me?”
“Because we have so little time to make peace with one another! There is change in the air, an age is coming to an end. Ys is only a breath away from destruction. Surely you feel it. But perhaps a peaceful transition can be managed. I am not without power and my father is great among the mighty. If we—” She stopped. “Now look at that! I spilled a drop of wine on my gown. I can’t go out like this!”
With a snap of her fingers, Dahut summoned up the bridge between her building and Fingolfinrhod’s. “Finish your snack and get dressed. We have a long night ahead of us.”
* * *
Cat didn’t hurry. Still, when she crossed the bridge of shadows to Dahut’s apartments, her brother’s lover hadn’t changed yet. Holding up two dresses, Dahut said, “Ruby or emerald?”
“Emerald.”
Dahut turned her back. “Unzip me.” Then, when Cat had, she shucked off her gown and kicked it away to be dealt with by someone else.
The Horn of Holmdel, Cat saw, hadn’t been put away but lay on a table under a spray of bright sabellids in a barnacle-dotted brass vase. The Horn glowed with an inner vitality that made the rest of the world seem gray. Her fingers yearned to stroke it.
Dahut was adjusting her dress in a full-length mirror. Over her shoulder, she said, “Pick it up, if you like. You can’t hurt it. Play a tune on it! No music you know will have the least effect on anything.”
How was it possible, Cat wondered, as her hands of their own accord lifted the Horn to her lips, for a woman to tempt fate as blithely as Dahut had just done? Her body took a deep breath. Her fingers assumed their positions over the holes. Her lips pursed themselves. Then, without her actually willing it, she began to play. Jesse come home …
Cat’s breath, common and suffused with microscopic impurities as it was, passed through the Horn and was transformed into music of stunning clarity. She closed her eyes to savor it fully.
There’s … The Horn of Holmdel was slapped from Cat’s mouth.
“Who sent you?!” Dahut’s nails dug into Cat’s shoulders. Her face was so close that Cat could smell her makeup. “Speak or I’ll tear your guts out with my teeth!” All Cat could see was those eyes, filled with a savage mixture of hatred and fear. “You couldn’t have known to do that on your own. Who was responsible?”
Cat lifted a hand to her lips and felt blood. She said nothing.
Dahut pushed her away—not violently but gently. “Oh, what’s the use? It’s all over and everything’s fucked and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“I only blew five notes,” Cat said.
“Five! Three would have done the trick. Well, what’s done is done. No point in blaming you. You were weaponized, pointed in my direction, and set loose. As well blame the bullet for the assassination of Lord Baldur.”
“I’m not following any of this.”
“No, of course not. You’re as innocent as I was when I caused the original disaster. Now you’ve released the White Serpent and you probably think you did it on a whim, of your own free will. But this moment has been coming for a long, long time.
“I started to tell you the story of how Ys was sunk beneath the sea. But your brother interrupted me before I got to the good part, the moment many years later when I put
all the clues together and saw the cunning of the conspirators who had woven their plot so long and deftly: The sailing-mistress who, in my youth, had instilled in me a love of the ocean waters. The rumor of a sea serpent as white as ivory that had sent me out on a day I would normally have stayed ashore. The dealer of antiquities who sold me the ancient codex which just happened to spell out the use that could be made of the Horn of Holmdel at a time when I desired such knowledge most. All worked together to put me in a position where I would seduce Prince Benthos into an act of treachery. Once he stole the Horn, the Emperor of the Tides would have no choice but to imprison him. Just to teach his other sons the price of treason. And as long as he was imprisoned, he might as well be used as the central anchor holding together the web of gates and bridges between Faerie, Aerth, and the Empyrean.”
“Umm…”
“So, yes, I did it all for love. But, like you, I was also being used. Zip me up.”
Cat did so.
Dahut grabbed a purse and dumped the Horn of Holmdel in it. “Let’s go,” she said.
“Where?”
“To accept our doom gracefully.”
* * *
Minutes later, they were out on the streets.
“This is my city,” Dahut said. “I know it as well as I know my own body. Better, for I have the memories of all its queens, down to the very first and the female line before that, back to a time when we all lived in burrows and were ignorant of fire or speech. I feel its people coursing through my streets, up and down my staircases, in and out of my tenements. I sensed you exploring my heights and depths, my open spaces and hidden crevices, and had to laugh at your folly in thinking you could understand Ys without understanding me.”
They walked past a Coach outlet. Then a Lamborghini showroom with a shark-white Aventador displayed in its window. “A woman can love more than one man at once,” Dahut said. “You think otherwise because you have never been in such a fix, and because you believe there can be no one the equal of your brother. But you’ve never met Prince Benthos. Suffice it to say, it does Fingolfinrhod honor that I could even look at him, much less bed him, after such companionship.”
“To be honest, I try to know as little as possible about Roddie’s sex life.”
“Then you know nothing at all about him either. Yet, armored in ignorance, you hope to discover the innermost secrets of my city. Search quickly, then! There is little time left. Does any of what surrounds you look familiar?”
Cat looked up and down the avenue: Vera Wang, Lanvin, Dolce & Gabbana, Bottega Veneta, Louis Vuitton, Oscar de la Renta. The display windows were as bright as television screens and the walls above them monolithic black slabs. The sidewalks were crowded as she had never seen them before. Mobs of pedestrians spilled into the street, their numbers constantly growing. Every shop and office and apartment building in the city must have emptied itself out to make such a multitude possible. “I’ve been here before, many times. But the shops were different then. And it’s so crowded!”
“At night the bleed-over from Aerth is stronger. Ignore the crowds. Look straight ahead. Those ornate brick arches are the Annihilation Gates.” The twin arches were decorated with sea lions and ocean leopards; bas-relief octopi wrapped their tentacles about the columns, staring blindly over the shopping district; and chained to the pier was a merman whose expression was the epitome of misery. “Beyond them is Gradlon Square.”
“But I’ve been all over the city. How is it possible I’ve never seen the gates or been in the square?”
“Gradlon Square is the heart of Ys. Erenow, I closed my heart to you. But the time has come for reconciliation. Tell me you forgive all that I have done, and I will forgive you the evil you have brought down on me.”
Cat said nothing.
A terrible sadness passed over Dahut’s face. She raised a hand to the corner of one eye, perhaps to brush away a stray strand of hair. Then—
Somebody pointed to the sky. “Look!” Others were pointing as well, as if at a skyrocket or a strange bird or a terrifying machine. “He’s coming!” Meanwhile others pointed not upward but at Cat, murmuring, “She’s here.” Those standing nearest her shrank away.
The voices clashed and echoed from the building walls.
There was a sound like the wind as whispers rose up from all twelve quarters. Then everybody was in motion and all moving in the same direction. Cold hands seized Cat, shoved her forward, urged her along, pinched her when she tried to linger, shoved forcefully at her back. It was like when the ghosts of her fellow dragon pilots had forced her onto the stage of the Blinded Cockatrice. Only this time there were hundreds of hands and even the slightest resistance was impossible.
She was running full tilt when she passed through the Annihilation Gates. Then she was in a public square and the hands let go of her. Dizzily, she stumbled to a stop.
Cat stood at the center of a large empty space, though the square on all sides of that space was so crowded that there was a constant flow of individuals swimming upward to perch on the windowsills and pediments and rooftops of the surrounding buildings like so many pigeons. This was the first time she had ever seen anybody in Ys leave the ground. It struck her how much like flight their motions were. All this time she could have flown! Yet because nobody else did, it had never occurred to her to try.
Dominating the far end of the square was a colossal statue of a hoary old elf-lord, overgrown with mussels, sponges, feather duster worms, barnacles, oysters, kelp, shipworms, hydroids, and bryozoans. He was seated upon a throne of granite and though his expression was fierce, his eyes were closed. “My father,” Dahut said. Somehow, she was standing alongside Cat. “He was no larger than you or I when first he sat down there.”
A murmur passed through the throng and all faces turned upward. Cat saw a wisp of noctilucent cloud twisting and turning far above, almost like a living creature. Then, as it corkscrewed downward, growing larger, swimming faster, it became the white serpent from her dream.
With a rush like a locomotive coming into a station, the serpent hurled itself down into Gradlon Square, its arrival flinging up trash and making hair and clothing leap and dance. Looping and coiling, the creature came to a stop immediately before the king. Then, with no fuss whatsoever, it transformed into a male figure. He was as beautiful as a statue and equally unencumbered by clothing. His cock swayed lightly in the currents his arrival had set in motion.
Cat blushed and turned her gaze away. Then, because squeamishness was unworthy of an officer and a lady, she forced herself to look. Beside her, Dahut murmured, “Behold the man your song released. For this moment, I could almost forgive you.”
Fingolfinrhod stepped out of the crowd and approached the newcomer. “Prince Benthos, son of Lyr, heir of the Worm Oceanus of the line of Pontus, Great Lord of the Waters,” he said, “welcome.”
“Thank you.” The noble lord looked about, saw Dahut, and extended a hand. “My love.”
For all her personal loathing of Dahut merc’h Gradlon, Cat found herself catching her breath, anxious to hear what she would say, after so many centuries apart, to the lover for whom she had thrown away her dignity, her reputation, and her city. Theirs was a passion like none other in history. So it was a great disappointment when Dahut walked up to Prince Benthos and said, “What kept you?”
“I was imprisoned and tortured,” the prince said matter-of-factly. “It was a small price to pay for this moment.”
They clasped hands. Fingolfinrhod stepped forward and all three hugged formally.
A collective gasp rose up from the crowd. Cat looked to where all were staring and saw that King Gradlon was slowly opening his eyes. They were alive and alert, where the rest of him remained still as stone. Their pupils were as large as dinner plates.
“What the fuck?” Helen said.
“Shush!”
Fingolfinrhod stood forth from the others and said, “King Gradlon has elected to speak through me.” Then, in a deeper, more resonant vo
ice, “Natural order has been defiled and justice long deferred. The guilty are now assembled and the City and Commonwealth of Ys, in my person, may finally judge and be judged. In what little time we have left, let injustice be undone.
“Dahut merc’h Gradlon and Benthos of the line of Pontus, present yourselves.”
Hands still clasped, Dahut and Prince Benthos bowed before the king.
“You stand accused of the crime of dereliction of duty and the sin of selfishness. How do you plead?”
As one, they said, “Guilty.”
Prince Benthos then released Dahut and turned to face Fingolfinrhod. In the same resonant voice, he said, “Fingolfinrhod, heir presumptive to the title of Sans Merci of House Sans Merci, you stand accused of the crime of dereliction of duty and the sin of selfishness. How do you plead?”
Fingolfinrhod shrugged. “Guilty, I’m afraid.”
Dahut now turned to face Cat. Who glared up into Gradlon’s enormous eyes, refusing to let her fear show, and defiantly said, “Not guilt—”
“Silence!” King Gradlon shouted through Dahut’s throat. “If the witness’s testimony is required, you will be called up. The court commands the defendant to present herself.”
Baffled, Cat said, “But I just—”
“You were never the defendant, dear,” Helen said. “Barnacle Bill here is talking about me.” A tingling sensation swept over Cat’s body and she found herself exiled to the back of her own brain, watching as Helen stepped forward to confront her judge.
“You are Helen V—” Dahut, still speaking in King Gradlon’s voice, began.
“I know who I am. Cut to the chase.”
“You were in room 402 in Pennsylvania Hospital when a flight of dragons passed through on a soul raid. Tell us in your own words what happened.”
* * *
Helen was dying, to begin with. But she had a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan. But it was all she had. When the time came, she almost forgot what she’d intended. Still, at the last instant she remembered.
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