by Jack Conner
She only inhaled on her cigar, and he wasn’t certain if she’d even heard him. She was studying their surroundings. They were in the pit room at Malahos’s. It was a gloomy, cavernous den peopled by thugs and tattooed lowlifes of all descriptions. Avery and the others had shied away from the place the previous night, but today they had a meeting here—and, of course, Hildra’s contacts, who had insisted on the location, were late. The air stank of grease and sweat and mold. Everything seemed to stink of mold in this town. Loud music boomed, throbbing against Avery’s eardrums and making him down another swallow of beer. It was cheap stuff, but it would do.
Below, in the gladiator pit, doors suddenly banged open and handlers prodded a pair of great, barnacle-covered crustaceans into the arena from opposite sides. The crowd roared louder, banging tabletops and hollering at the limit of their voices. As this was an illegal gambling den, bets flew wild through the smoky air, some on the blue-ish crab with the pink highlights, some on the reddish crab with the green and black spots.
“What are they?” Avery said.
The crustaceans must tower ten feet high or more. They were beautiful, but monstrous, and severely mutated. As he watched, handlers opened another panel and shoved a giant whirled shell into the arena; it glimmered strangely.
“Colossal hermit crabs,” Hildra said. “These gentlemen force a couple of crabs from their shells but only give ‘em one back. The crabs fight to death over who gets the shell. Instinct, I guess. They need their damned home.”
Indeed, the two massive hermit crabs in the arena were both just noticing the shell. As one, they scuttled toward it. The movement seemed to alert them to each other’s presence, and they began slowly circling each other, snapping gargantuan pincers and ogling each other with black eyes on long knotted protuberances.
“It’s repulsive,” Avery said, as the crabs launched into each other, cracking each other’s carapaces with claws and biting at each other’s eye stalks. “Don’t they have any animal rights in the Ysstral Empire?”
“You ain’t in Ghenisa anymore, Doc,” Janx said. “And if you can’t enjoy a coupla big bastards like this goin’ at it, I worry for you.”
Avery drained his beer, then ordered another off a passing waiter. “What do you think?” he said to Sheridan.
If he’d been hoping to engage her in conversation, he failed. “I’ve seen worse,” she said.
Just as he began on his next beer, a couple of sinewy, thuggish individuals sauntered up to the table. Hildra squealed and hugged them, and they did their best not to look embarrassed.
“Gonyss and Halnien,” she said, “meet the gang. Janx, Doc, and, uh, her.”
“A pleasure,” one of them said, Avery thought it was Gonyss.
“You get it?” Hildra said, then jumped up and down when one of them, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, presented her with a small box.
She ripped it open and smiled the widest smile Avery had ever seen on her.
“It’s gorgeous!” she said, and Avery leaned over to see a hook gleaming in the box, along with mount and harness. “I can’t wait to put it on.”
She didn’t mean to wait, either, but tore off her jacket, rolled up the sleeve of her left arm and began attaching her new limb. Avery winced at the scar tissue twisted across her stub. Janx looked on with a warm light in his eyes as the new limb took shape.
“Well?” he said. “How is it?”
She made slashing motions through the air, then experimentally hooked a beer bottle toward her. It wobbled but obeyed, and she laughed and hugged both the thugs once more.
“You came through,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Hey, our pleasure,” one said. “Sorry you lost your old one. You really mean to come with us tonight? You could stay here.”
"Naw. Too many people've seen us here now. And our friends are goin’ somewhere tomorrow that we can’t be sure about. Best to have Janx and me outside in case things go shit-shaped.”
Someone screamed nearby, and Avery looked into the pit to see that one of the crabs had half torn the right claw off the other. Ichor leaked out. Still, the wounded one wasn’t giving up. The two wrestled about, going in circles, both locked onto the other. The wounded one had a tentacle where one of its legs should be and was using this to whack the top of its opponent, slowly causing hairline fissures.
“We’ll be over there,” the man Avery thought was Gonyss said, and pointed to a far corner. “Come over when you’re ready.”
The two thugs nodded at the group again and slunk away.
“You don’t have to do this,” Avery told Hildra and Janx. “You can come with us to the Palace.”
“Yeah, and what if it’s a trap?” Hildra said. “Either by Onxcor, the Duke or even the Empress?” She shook her head. “Trust me, bones, I’d rather be at the palace than Dojen’s, but I know I can’t trust the rats there, and that gives me the advantage. At the palace, who the hell knows?”
They had all agreed that staying at hotels and motels was too dangerous now; the Duke might be hunting for them, and that would be the first place he’d look. And Hildra was right; they'd been at Malahos’s too long already. Also, it might be prudent to keep moving.
“But once you get set up there, call us," Janx told Avery and Sheridan. "You have the number. When we know you’re safe, we’ll come runnin’. Till then, we need to be on the outside and free to operate if we have to. Plus, the Codex will be safe.”
“I don’t know if it being at this Dojen’s place makes it safe,” Avery said.
“Let them go,” Sheridan said. “I’d rather not serve the Codex up to the Empress so easily. Let’s sound her out first.”
“This is ridiculous,” Avery said. “I doubt Onxcor intends any sort of trap, and the Duke can’t know we’re coming by this means. That’s why we chose this means. But so be it.”
“There ya go,” Hildra said; she wasn’t talking to Avery but the crabs. The one with the tentacle, the blue one, had broken free from the grasp of the red one and was pulling back. Gore dripped from its injured limb, and Avery doubted it would ever be able to use that claw again, but for the moment it was alive.
It made a dash for the shell. The red crab interposed itself, and the fight resumed.
“Can’t believe you’re gonna meet the Empress tomorrow,” Hildra said to Avery. “Wonder what that’ll be like.” To Sheridan, she said, “Why don’t you look excited?”
Sheridan’s face remained inscrutable. “Excited is hardly the word.”
“Oh?”
Sheridan took a puff on her cigar and blew a plume toward the ceiling. “The Empress-Regent guards the Sleeper, and yet longs to Awaken it, as has all her line for thousands of years. And here we show up, outsiders, ready to do that which she’s been impotent to do. All this in an atmosphere of war and prophecy and assassination attempts. There’s no telling what her reaction will be. We must be wary, and we must be thoughtful. By which I mean full of thought.”
“We will be,” Avery assured her. At least now he knew what was bothering her. And it had taken Hildra to open her up. Gods. “One way or another we will ...”
His words trailed off as he heard a wave of concerned conversation sweep the room, breasting where he and the others were and surging onward.
“What gives?” Janx asked a waiter.
The man swallowed. “It’s Maryss Island.”
“What about it?”
Avery was vaguely aware that Maryss Island was one of the many islands that encompassed the non-mainland portion of the Ysstral Empire. He and the others had flown by it days ago.
“It’s been taken,” the waiter said. “Attacked and taken.”
“By who?” Sheridan said, sitting forward. “Octung?”
“Pirates. A fleet of pirates has seized the island.”
Janx released the waiter, who stumbled off, and the four turned confused glances on each other.
“What the hell?” Hildra said. “Why would Segrul’s boys be att
acking the Empire? And it has to be Segrul, right?”
“I have no idea,” Avery said. “And yes, surely.”
“He must realize the Ysstrals will strike back,” Janx said. “They won’t tolerate that shit. Which means ...”
“Yes?”
“It means he’s strong enough to resist them. Or thinks he is.”
Sheridan eyed the glowing end of her cigar. “If they’re working with the mystery party, the mystery party must be close at hand.” She raised her eyebrows at Avery. Grimly, he nodded. When next he looked into the pit, he saw the bloodied corpse of a giant crab lying in the dust. Another crab, tentacle trailing, was just then vanishing into the shell, a victor come into its lair.
* * *
“It is impressive,” Avery said, as the limousine swung around a bend and the Palace hove into view.
Rain spattered the windows and glistened off the black towers and domes of the structure, gushing from the mouths of the countless gargoyles that sprouted from it and diffusing the red light from its spider-eye windows. Spider-leg flying buttress made the building look as if it were about to get up and scuttle away. Other buildings crowded in around, but the Palace dwarfed them, massive and black and strangely-faceted. Avery had the feeling as he approached the building that it was watching him.
“Relax,” Sheridan said.
He realized he’d been clenching his fists. “I’m fine,” he said, opening his hands. “It’s just ... well, I’ve had a bad experience with a monarch before.”
“I remember the story. The God-Emperor of Ungraessot urinated on you.”
“Well, near me. That was bad enough.”
The limousine pulled through the gates, then drew to a stop at the steps leading into the Palace’s main entrance, where a liveried woman opened the door and Avery and Sheridan emerged beneath a large stone canopy protecting them from the rain, though Avery couldn’t avoid a shudder from the sudden cold. At the head of the stairs stained-glass windows glowed with red-orange light.
“Lord Avery and Madame Sheridan, I presume?” said a tall man in an exquisite suit. When Avery nodded, the fellow said, “Please. Follow me. The Empress is expecting you.”
Empress, Avery noticed. Not Empress-Regent.
Side by side with Sheridan, he followed the courtier, if that’s what he was, inside, where half a dozen beautifully-outfitted soldiers, three on each side, fell in to flank the party. At first Avery feared they had been captured, but then he realized that the soldiers served as some sort of protective guard. Did the Empress-Regent fear assassination, not only of herself but her guests, within her own palace? If so, things are worse than I thought.
The walls soared high overhead, black and arched like ribs, but knife-thin at their edges and sweeping backward to form deep recesses between the ridges, places that were shadowy and dark yet heavily ornamented with bas-reliefs that, while often abstract, hinted at claws and teeth and demons. Red spider-eyes were set into the walls vertically. The blisters must have housed alchemical lamps, as the light they spilled seemed to flow and pulse, just slightly, like the beating of a heart. A kind of smoky residue hung in the air, or seemed to, though there was no smell, and Avery remembered a similar affect in the house Lord Idris had appropriated for himself in Hissig; that had been of Ysstral architecture, as well. It created a strange, eerie, dream-like effect, as though those who passed through navigated halls out of nightmare. The effect was even more heightened in the palace than it had been in Hissig.
Descended from a race that worshipped the Ygrith, Avery thought. Worshipped, and were altered by them in return. Did the Ysstral royalty truly love this aesthetic? Did they fashion it to evoke fear, or was it simply too deeply engrained in their culture after all this time to change?
The courtier showed him and Sheridan up a flight of richly carpeted stairs and down a high hall, then into what could only be the Throne Room—or a throne room, possibly. It was smaller and more intimate than Avery would have supposed based on the proportions of the building, and he could only conclude that his was the private audience room of the monarch, where the emperor or empress could conduct business away from the formality (and witnesses) of court.
In either case, a woman that must be the Empress-Regent sat a grand black throne on a dais at the head of the chamber, and several guards stood stock-still in recessed niches along the flanks. They resembled people standing in their own coffins. The air was even smokier than in the halls (though again without smell), so much so that Avery had to squint to make out the monarch as the courtier ushered him and Sheridan forward, then encouraged them to kneel before the throne.
“Your Majesty, I present Lord Francis Avery and Admiral Jessryl Sheridan of the Ghenisan Navy. Lord and Admiral, allow me to introduce you to Her Highness, Empress Issia.”
Avery didn’t kneel. “I’m sorry,” he said, squinting up at the throne. “I mean no disrespect. It simply seems poor form, and perhaps even treasonous, for a lord of one country to bow to a foreign monarch. But I confess I don’t know the custom. It may be entirely appropriate.”
The Empress-Regent smiled. “It’s no matter, Lord Avery.” She spoke Ysstran with a dialect he had never heard before—some sort of speech unique to the nobility, perhaps, but one Leshillibn had not shared—and it took him a moment to process her words. She was a handsome woman, if cold: tall and pale, clad in shimmering black, with high-piled and immaculately-coifed blond hair—so blond it was almost white, and might legitimately be white in a few places. It was hard to tell how old she was, but perhaps in her mid-forties. At her side, on the steps of the dais, lounged a boy not much older than Ani, blond and comely and bored-looking.
The emperor-in-waiting? thought Avery. She makes him sit on the stairs?
“You can kneel or stand at your leisure,” the Empress-Regent told Avery, then seemed to wait for some particular response.
“I think she wants you to kiss her ring,” Sheridan said.
Indeed, Avery saw that the Empress-Regent wore a blackly-glimmering ring on her left hand and that it was tilted in his direction.
“I feel the same way about that as I do kneeling, I’m afraid,” he said. “Unless, of course, that’s an offense to be locked up over. If so, I will gladly kiss it, Your Majesty.”
The Empress-Regent’s lips curled down. “Again, at your leisure.”
“I’ve had quite enough being locked up,” Avery went on, injecting some significance into his words.
“Yes?”
“Your cousin, Duke Leshillibn, has kept us prisoner on Curluth Point for the last week.”
“By the Tomb!” Anger flashed in her eyes. The boy stirred on the stairs, less sleepy now. “You mean ... the riot ... ?”
“That was us escaping,” Sheridan said.
The Empress-Regent sat back, regaining her composure. “That slime ... ” Some emotion flashed across her face, then was tucked away. “I’m most sorry for your inconvenience, Lord Avery, Admiral. Rest assured that I am doing everything in my power to move against the duke, and he will get his justice in due time. Till then there is no recompense I can offer you, at least in terms of his punishment.” She paused. “Why would he imprison you?”
“It has to do with the reason we came here,” Avery said.
The Empress-Regent looked expectant. “And what would that be, exactly, if I may be told?”
“We have come ... to awaken the Sleeper,” Avery said, not without a hint of drama. He had been relishing this moment.
The Empress-Regent eyed Avery blankly. Then, with equal blankness, she turned to Sheridan. Both stared back at her impassively.
“I don’t understand,” the Empress-Regent said. “The Sleeper?”
Avery frowned. “Surely you know what I’m referring to. I mean, I’m under the impression that your kind keep it a secret from the general populace, but you must know.”
Rising from her throne, she descended the stairs, and alarm raced through Avery. He had the manic urge to step back, an
d Sheridan tensed at his side.
Lifting her voice, the Empress-Regent said, “Out! Out!”
At first Avery thought she meant he and Sheridan, and he warred with himself over whether to stay and fight or flee and avoid another stretch of incarceration, but then he noticed the guards filing from the chamber. Others that had been unseen behind the throne vanished also, visible only by a stirring of the shadows.
When she was alone with them, all except for the boy, who looked most interested now, the Empress-Regent met Avery’s gaze. “We limit what we discuss about such things before our familiars. Some know, or at least suspect, but even their knowledge is limited.”
“I see,” Avery said, though he wasn’t sure he did.
Empress-Regent Issia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Just what do you know of my family’s ... beliefs?”
Avery opened his mouth to answer, but Sheridan beat him. “We know what we need to know,” she said. “Forgive my bluntness, Your Majesty, but this is important. Many have died for this, millions, and many more will die still. If your family hadn’t been so godsdamned secretive ...” Sheridan sucked in a breath, but Avery could understand her anger; Octung, and the R’loth as well, had hunted for signs of the Sleeper for many years. If the private cult of the Ysstral royalty had not been so damnedly private, they would have gotten their hands on it much sooner. Good for them. Bad for humanity.
“We had no choice,” the Empress-Regent said, sweeping by them and beginning to pace in as stately a fashion as Avery had ever seen. “If you know much about my forebears, you know they had been blessed by the Ancients.”
“We know,” Avery said. He pictured Duke Leshillibn draining the thought-energies from those prisoners on the rooftop. “They made you, if you’ll forgive the term, inhuman.”
The Empress-Regent nodded slowly. “Or more than human. And we had to ... do things ... to maintain ourselves.”
“You had to drain others’ mentalities,” Avery said. “We know that, too.”