by Ben Galley
In mere moments, the Chimera was poised and ready. The crowd took a collective breath. Dizali raised his hands and plugged his ears. He did not want to be deaf when the Queen was pleading for her life like a factory whelp with a broken back.
By his side, a general raised his hand, held it, and let it fall. The blast was thunderous; the sort of explosion of sound that punched straight to the inner organs. Dizali found himself momentarily breathless.
The gates flew open with a screech and a shower of sparks. One was partially torn from its hinges. The cannonball tore across the grounds and dismantled part of the palace’s grand steps. A few of the queensguards tottered about in the haze of stone-dust, half-stunned.
The bubble collapsed and the eager ranks poured forth like a tidal surge. Dizali and his entourage marched at its head. The roar of boots on gravel meshed with the cries and cheers of the crowd. Dizali grinned inwardly. Public opinion was the currency of power. He was winning hearts today. Karrigan the Bulldog had never been so bold, so righteous.
As the Lord Protector climbed the cracked steps up to the mighty doorway, the soldiers and lordsguards fanned out to surround the palace, blades and guns low and ready. The queensguards immediately buried their faces in the dust, lying spreadeagled. They were mercilessly hauled aside. Dizali would decide their fates when he was done with Victorious.
‘The door!’ He waved a hand, and several lordsguards broke the golden handles from the wood. A few kicks gave them access, and they swarmed through the opulent halls of the huge palace, where gargoyles lingered in every corner, and where purple carpets traced a maze through the endless corridors and rooms. It was one of London’s most ancient buildings, and it never failed to bring a chill to the nape of Dizali’s neck.
With a snarl fixed on his face, he led them up the curving staircases. At the highest level—some ten floors above ground—they came to the grand doors of the Queen’s throne room, studded with jewels and etched with scenes of wherever she and her kind had sprung from. The Lost, as they called it. Some island forgotten in the ice. Dizali spared no time for staring.
The soldiers went to work, throwing their weight against the huge doors. There was no Chimera this time, just brute strength, and it took considerably longer. Dizali spent the minutes rehearsing his words. These were to be the words of revolution and every good usurper knows the benefits of practice. He looked around, counting the scores filling the hall, crowding the stairs. Witnesses all, each with a tongue that would wag on street corners and in taverns, telling the story of how Dizali damned the Queen. He wanted those words to be carved into memory, etched into stone, recorded in books for generations. Like himself, immortalised.
When finally the bolts broke and the doors splintered, a gust of wind rushed inwards. Dizali felt the breeze rustle the waxed strands of his hair and goatee. It was as if the room itself gasped for air. The soldiers murmured between themselves.
‘Onwards!’ yelled a general. Rank by rank the soldiers and lordsguards pushed on, shoulders jostling together. Dizali and his entourage stayed behind this time, waiting for their troops to fan out and fill the vast throne room.
When he emerged from the press of men and women and armour, Dizali looked up at the tall crimson curtain that halved the room and regarded it with a sneer. Hanister stood by his side, fingers twitching and ready. Dizali took a deep breath.
‘Victorious!’ he bellowed, intentionally omitting her royal title.
His lone voice reverberated around the throne room. Echoes piled on top of echoes, until they finally died to eerie silence. There was no rasping, no rattling, no hoarse breathing.
‘Tear it down!’ Dizali ordered. But before anybody could move, she spoke.
‘Come to destroy me, Lord Dizali?’ rattled Victorious, her voice tight and hoarse. She sounded a good distance behind the curtain.
Dizali spoke clearly as he delivered his practised words.
‘Queen Victorious, you have failed this country in its time of need, and spat upon its loyalty. You have been found wanting, and now we people have spoken. We will be heard. The Empire deserves, and shall be delivered with, a finer leader than you—’
He was cut off by a harsh cackle. She sounded madder than ever. He heard a faint clink of something metallic.
‘A curse be upon on any man who stands against the royalty of Europe!’
Dizali could hear murmuring behind him. Their superstitions angered him, even as he felt the hairs rising on the nape of his own neck.
‘—A finer leader than you!’ Dizali hollered. She was being more difficult than expected. ‘The crown no longer holds sway over this Empire. You are nothing but a mad and traitorous Queen. A warmonger. A rotten tooth that needs to be plucked out and cast aside. I hereby pronounce—’
Victorious’ screech sliced through his sentence as well as his ears, making everyone wince.
‘Do they know of your deception, Lord Dizali? Your own unfaithfulness to my Empire? To the crown? To your Queen?’
‘Tear that curtain down!’ Dizali snarled. By his side, Hanister reached for a shade.
Forward came the swords and sharp spears. In went the blades, rending the thick curtain to ribbons. Its shreds were torn aside by eager hands and thrown to the marble floor. Dizali stepped forward, breath held in his throat. Long had he desired to stare upon a royal in the flesh, whatever colour and shape it may be.
They found two circles of armoured queensguards, glassy-eyed and mouths agape, crouched in a ring around their Queen. There was no wobble in their grip; the points of their long lances were disturbingly still. Orders ricocheted around the room. Sergeants barked at the top of their lungs. Armour clanked as two hundred rifles were cocked.
‘Hold!’ cried the generals, but not a soul could not take their eyes off the Queen.
She was enshrouded in a black veil. It tumbled from her head, enveloping her shoulders and waist before spilling to the floor. It obscured all her features and yet it still could not manage to hide her shape, her form, which stole the breath from their throats. Victorious was as misshapen as pummelled dough, over seven foot tall and, clearly, far from human. Two ravens sat on her shoulders, one each side, and their eyes roamed the soldiers’ faces. Something beneath the foot of the veil slithered and scraped on the marble floor.
Victorious raised a hand, also cloaked in black cloth. Five fingers of mottled skin snuck out of its folds. They were long, almost claw-like. She wiggled them in the air, as if scratching at a ghost.
‘You dare to look upon your Queen?’ Her voice was abnormally deep, and tinged with a furious whine.
Dizali took a step forward. He glanced at the nearest of her guards. A thin stream of drool was trickling down the stubble of the man’s chin.
‘I dare! Your reign is over, old witch. The world has passed you and your kind by!’
‘Our kind have trodden on the skulls of whelps such as you since the first dawn. And we shall be here at your sunset!’
Her queensguards burst forth without order. Like clockwork men, they rose up without a sound and charged outwards, captured by Victorious’ spell. Bullets peppered them but they did not flinch. They fought like demons, with no care for their lives or flesh.
A dozen arms and hands pressed Dizali back into the ranks as the fighting erupted. He shrugged them off.
‘See to your soldiers, generals! Give them no quarter. These men are already dead. Do not let her escape!’ They bounded back into the fray, rapiers drawn.
Dizali was like an island in a mad sea. Arms crossed and face impassive, he stood alone, steady in the chaos. In front of him, Hanister thrummed with energy, the skin on his fists rippling as he clenched them. He was rushing hard; Dizali could sense it.
One of the queensguards made it through the clamour of soldiers and lordsguards and charged at the Lord Protector with a broken spear-head. Hanister broke his face before he had taken three steps. Dizali began to walk, slowly, purposefully, towards the Queen. The chaos whirled aro
und him.
By the time he had crossed the curtain line, the last of the queensguards had been shot, stabbed or beaten into pieces by Hanister’s fists. Even now, splayed and torn on the floor, they writhed and twitched. The queen’s hand shook, as whatever magick she was spinning died. She hissed as if in pain.
Dizali moved to stand before the Queen. She seethed in ragged gasps, veil shifting. Her spell had drained her. He pointed an accusatory finger at her face and took a breath to finish his speech. He would see this monster in chains.
‘I hereby pronounce you a traitor to this great Empire, unfit to wear its crown, ineligible to sit on its throne, and no longer its rightful ruler. On behalf of the people of the Empire of Britannia, I say we are tired of your madness, outraged at your treachery, and sentence you to imprisonment in the Crucible, until your dying day.’
A hush fell on the throne room. All was silent except for the harsh caw of a raven. The queen looked to be shuddering with outrage, though Dizali longed for it to be fear. He spied a general glance at him out of the corner of his eye. They were fools if they thought he had come simply to yell at her.
Dizali waited for the insults, the raging and screaming, but they never came. Victorious simply let her ravens flap to the rafters so very high above, and then shifted under her veil, rasping against the marble. Half of Dizali wanted to rip it aside and stare at her unholy face; the other half shivered at the mere thought of it. The Queen reached behind her, where her immense throne stood against a cascade of scarlet curtain. With great reverence, she picked up her crown. It was a thorny artefact, cast in gold, studded with purple jewels and edged with black iron. She held it high, only to drop it at Dizali’s feet with a clang. It skittered in its own echoes until Dizali pressed it to the marble with his foot.
‘You make your last mistake, Bremar Dizali,’ she hissed. ‘You trifle with forces even you cannot understand.’
‘Take her away!’ The Lord Protector smirked as she began to move, slithering across the marble floor. The ranks parted for her; nobody wished to touch her or get too close. They had seen her true form now. Her true colours. To be ruled by this thing was to be ruled by a beast. No man can stand that. The onlookers all wore twisted grimaces. Even Hanister wore a disgusted look. The taverns would be alight with conversation that evening.
‘Drink it in, ladies and gentlemen, for this is what it tastes like to make history. You have gained your freedom from tyranny today. Your freedom from monstrosity!’ Dizali called after the Queen, spearing her with his final lines, polished and perfect. Victorious halted only briefly, shivering with rage, before shuffling on. Spears followed her.
Dizali dusted off his hands. Storming a palace and sentencing a queen to death in prison. All in a day’s work. Avalin would be proud.
A little sourness crept into his celebration then, at the thought of his wife. But he grinned all the same as he watched the Queen vacate her throne room.
*
When all of Clovenhall was finally asleep; once dinner had been eaten and cleared away, once snores rumbled the beds and the stars cast their distant light across the grounds, Calidae rose from her bed and walked quietly to the door.
It was unlocked, as she had hoped. No silent hands had turned her key once darkness had fallen. Her shoes padded softly on the thick carpet. The stone hallway was dark, save for a few lanterns tucked in alcoves. Silent, too, and just the way she preferred it.
Calidae retraced her paces through the warrens of Clovenhall, her route now embedded in her mind, thanks to a surreptitious practice, post-dinner. She walked casually; not sneaking but strolling. That way, it would be easier to claim trouble with sleep, or natural curiosity. Maybe even an upset of the stomach that only a walk could cure.
Padding down the grand stairs into Clovenhall’s atrium, she turned away from the main door and chose one better suited to her needs. The corridors were still empty. A few servants were tending to balls of bread dough in the kitchens; half-kneading, half-dozing. They bowed to her, and she nodded.
Calidae escaped into the night through the servant’s door and soon found herself on a wet gravel path leading around the mansion. She let her memory guide her, imagining she was walking the carpets. She followed the walls, careful to stay nonchalant, almost bored, should anybody be peeking from the windows; many of which still glowed despite the silence, weaving a patchwork of yellows and oranges through the mighty stone.
Turning a corner onto a dark section of the grounds, she stopped to play at tying a shoe before gazing up at the stars. Imperceptibly, her eyes moved back to the windows. Only two glowed in this part of the northeast wing; one high up in the spiralling tower above her, and another several floors from the topiary bushes. Even in the dark, Calidae could see the thick bars crossing the window-frame.
She plucked two small stones from the path as she straightened up. She yawned and stretched, and as she brought her hands down she flung one of the stones up at the window. The lump of gravel tapped against the glass; a snap of twig in the darkness. Calidae stared at the night sky as if still stargazing, one eye watching the window.
She was about to throw the other stone when she noticed a twitch in the curtains. A small face, black in the contrast of the bedroom lanterns, peered out through a crack. It looked man-shaped, at least. Calidae stared up, and hoping he could see her, nodded slowly. The face vanished from behind the curtain. With a grunt she walked back the way she came.
Inside, Calidae was halfway up the stairs when a voice stopped her.
‘It’s late to be taking walks about the place.’ It was gruff, undeniably Empire. She turned to find Hanister lingering on the carpet below, plucking at his teeth with something silver and sharp.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she replied quietly. ‘It’s strange, being back in a proper bed.’
‘I suspect so, after all that roasting desert,’ said Hanister. ‘I went out there once, when I was younger. Iowa, hot as hell.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Your face.’ Hanister was certainly not backwards in coming forwards. Perhaps he was trying to rattle her. He should be so lucky.
Calidae raised her chin. ‘Not that it is any of your business, Mr Hanister, but no, it does not. It did, but no longer. A kind woman’s salve, fresh sea air, and time saw to that.’
Hanister grunted, eyeing her. ‘So, this boy. What’s his name?’
‘Tonmerion Hark,’ Calidae hissed. She barely needed to act it; the boy was still hers, when all of this was done. She refused to forget it.
‘Hark, yeah. Him. Must be a big lad, to beat a Brother down with nothing but a stool.’
‘Not as big as you think. He was rushing.’
‘Interesting that he didn’t finish you off,’ Hanister hummed.
‘Perhaps there is a shred of decency in him after all,’ she sighed. ‘Now if that will be all…’
‘For now, Miss.’
‘My Lady.’
Hanister grinned and bowed. ‘Milady.’
Calidae flashed him a smile and carried on up the stairs. She walked slowly and carefully back to her room, not wanting to seem in a hurry. No doubt there were other eyes watching from the corners of Clovenhall.
Once the door was shut and locked, she let out a slow breath. When her heart had calmed, she looked at her hands in the dim light of her room. If she looked hard, she could still see the blood, dripping onto ruby grass, dancing in the light of the Bloodmoon. Gavisham’s blood.
Calidae slapped her hands together.
Chapter IV
THE CLOUDY BELLE
29th July, 1867
‘I hate flyin’,’ Lurker grumbled for the third time since leaving the grand steps of the Ivory House that morning. ‘Ain’t natural.’ To Lurker, flight was just hot air and hope, all bundled into something with sharp propellors and a lot of metal.
‘You said that already,’ said Lilain, hands stuffed into her b
ritches. Long Tom the Third was slung over her shoulder, chinking softly against the belt of bullets that kept the rifle company. ‘And if you say it one more time, I’ll throw you in the Potomac.’
‘Good. Then I can swim to the Empire instead.’
Lilain shot him a look wrapped in ice. ‘Enough of your darn moanin’, John Hobble. I won’t hear another peep out of you. It’s bad enough you hecklin’ me to stay and watch the execution.’
‘Don’t you want to see them child-killers hang?’
‘I do, but I ain’t waiting around for another two weeks to see it done. We’re needed now, and time’s a-wasting.’
Lurker tugged at the brim of his new hat. ‘Apparently so.’ The sting of Merion’s departure was still sore.
‘We’ve been through this. Merion has no doubt cooked up another one of his schemes, and going by the success of his last two, then he’ll be needing our help. Especially if he’s with that high-born harlot Calidae Serped. I ain’t that proud to not give it, abandonment or not.’
‘You never know.’ Lurker waved a hand. ‘Third time lucky, they say.’
Lilain tutted. ‘Come on. We’ve got a job to do.’
They were on the hunt for an airship, and even in a busy capital like Washingtown, that was harder than it sounded. They had already been denied by five different captains. Since the attempt on Lincoln’s life, and the breakout of war in the east, the Empire had fallen out of favour, and trade across the Iron Ocean had diminished. Sugar and chocolate from the southern Americas seemed to be far more interesting, and closer too. Besides, the Endless Land had its own war to worry about. The western frontier still burnt with the fire of the Buffalo Snake’s anger, and most of the airships that clamoured around Washingtown’s docking towers were carrying powder, guns, and supplies for the western forts.
As they walked they craned their necks, watching the swarms of airships and airskiffs battling for space in the sky. The droning of the engines made it impossible to keep their voices low. ‘Surely one of these darn windbags’ll be able to take us!’ Lurker hollered.