Fox's Bride

by Marling, A. E.

  Her attention refocused on her own shifting reflection. Kohl paint shaded her eyes and stained her cheeks with stylized fox tails. She rubbed a hand from her ear to her chin, worried she could feel the powdered lead soaking through her skin to deaden her brain. The priests must have desecrated her face with the sign of the Golden Scoundrel, and Hiresha felt both embarrassed and disloyal to her own gods. Forgive me, Opal Mind. I will not close my mind to inspiration. I'll do the impossible in your name.

  Their boat rowed to the underside of the lake, where waited a royal barge. Silver hieroglyphs emblazoned the boat's every plank of ebony.

  The fennec’s ears lifted at the music of Pharaoh's voice.

  “Hiresha! You haven't been eaten yet!”

  The enchantress waited to speak until they pulled up alongside the royal barge. She had forgotten about the incident of the Silver Crocodile's Throne. “Being eaten is the least of my concerns.”

  “Wonderful!” Pharaoh wore a headdress of lapis lazuli and gilt thread that draped down her shoulders and chest like striped hair of blue and yellow. “I always tell Vizzy that the Silver Crocodile is just a big, grumpy lizard.”

  Hiresha frowned in thought as a guard helped her onto the barge. Servants irritated her with baskets full of food and a chalice of wine. A spectrum of thirty hues of meat lay before her, from bloody to blackened, from white to red, from crocodile to quail. She could not think of eating, since dread made for a poor sauce, and she accepted only a crystal jar of jasmine tea.

  Hiresha's stomach had felt as twisted as a puzzle box. The tea unlocked the tension with a caress of soothing flavors, and anxiety seeped away in warmth. The fennec, too, seemed to relax, and the corners of the fennec's dark eyes twitched in weariness.

  A breeze cooled her face. The Heart of the City shaded the barge, and if one did not mind looking up to see a fall of hundreds of feet to the point of a pyramid, the outing could be called peaceful. Hiresha began to take full breaths again.

  Pharaoh pranced across the barge. All other conversations were drowned under the stream of her voice, words chased by raptures of song. Between the girl and the pink sapphire pulling thousands of pounds of water from the air, Hiresha began to doubt which commanded the most energy.

  “I love your purple dress. I want one just like it, only more green!

  “I can't wait for my jubilee. Only thirty more years!

  “Look! This is my favorite bird for today.” Pharaoh leaned over sideways to try to match the pose of a bird of paradise. It hung below a perch in a cage, its tail feathers an arcing yellow. “Who's upside down now? Who?

  “Oh, Hiresha! I'm so happy for you. Did you know? I'm related to the Golden Scoundrel. So soon you'll be my great, great, great, great, great, great...” She took a gasping breath, her face radiant with her smile. “...great, great, great, great, great aunt!

  “Did I say enough 'greats,' Vizzy? Vizzy?” Pharaoh gazed around the barge, but the vizier was not aboard. Her face crashed, and her lip quivered. “Vizzy's not here, and—ah!—where's the spellsword? Where have you hidden him?”

  Hiresha said, “In a dungeon.”

  Pharaoh put a finger between her lips and nodded. “That is a good hiding place!”

  By the girl's height, Hiresha guessed her to be over ten years old. The enchantress wished she would act half her age. Hiresha had met a three-year-old with a longer attention span.

  Hiresha said, “The vizier sentenced Spellsword Chandur to death. I was hoping you might consider—”

  “Vizzy always does that!”

  “Yes, well, you are the ruler of the—”

  “Him and the priests, always telling me who I can't marry....”

  Whom, Hiresha thought. Indignation stung her throat.

  “...that I can't make Sandy the guard captain, can't have a dress of rainbows, can't build wings for me, can't ride terror birds, can't hug everyone in Tent Town!”

  Pharaoh flung herself onto velvet pillows. Servants fanned her with palm fronds braided with silver thread.

  Hiresha, too, felt disheartened. If Pharaoh lacked the power to overrule the vizier, then Hiresha would have to turn elsewhere for help. Nonetheless, she persevered and argued for Chandur's innocence. Pharaoh seemed to hear none of it, lying with an arm slung over her temples and sighing.

  The fennec roused himself, stretching paws over Hiresha’s lap. He tilted his head to the side to scratch his ear with a back foot. White hairs curled within the ear, which wobbled as he batted it.

  The fox set his paws at the edge of the barge. He barked at his reflection. Hiresha secured him with a hand wrapped over his chest, not wishing him to fall into the water.

  She wanted to be free of the fox but knew she needed him to satisfy the vizier’s conditions, which reminded her that she had mere hours left to find the thief. The jewel duper had wriggled into obscurity by now, she did not doubt, and she would have to search out his hole before Chandur was stung to death by scorpions. An ache tore through her, from curling toes to clenching fingers. Before she realized what she was doing, Hiresha had pulled the fennec closer to a cradle position.

  “Awww!” Pharaoh rolled off the pillows and shoved her face within an inch of the fox's. “I worry I love the Golden Scoundrel so much that my heart will burst, and my eyes will pop out and hurt someone!”

  “I doubt your eyes could achieve a harmful velocity.” The enchantress reserved judgment, however, concerning the lethality of the girl's blathering.

  “Phew! I love him when the god is inside him. And when he isn't, too!”

  “Pharaoh Nephrynthian.” The priest set aside his jar of camel milk, dabbing his lips. “The Golden Scoundrel is incarnated within the fennec. He is always possessed with divine spirit.”

  “He isn't now, silly! How else would the god have time to possess other people? Like Vizzy?”

  The priest spluttered. “The—the only god to incarnate within a person is the Red Lotus.”

  Pharaoh rested her next-to-nonexistent chin on Hiresha's shoulder. “Sometimes a god tries to possess me, but I don't let him!”

  Hiresha frowned at this, but before she could think more on it, a prickling ran over her skin. She recognized a man's voice.

  “My dear hearts.”

  She jerked and bumped Pharaoh. Forcing herself to turn in a more measured fashion, Hiresha saw the Lord of the Feast in a boat carved to resemble a crested ibis. A black spike of a beak curved down from a prow painted with red eyes. All at once, Hiresha felt too high up, too upside-down, and too exposed wearing a backless dress.

  “I heard the gleam of your voice,” the Lord of the Feast said to Pharaoh, “and I smelled the perfume of your maid,” he said to Hiresha, “and I was lured into the sky.”

  Janny wore no scent, and Hiresha glanced at her in concern as the maid trembled, hand clamped across her own mouth. The royal guards eyed him, hands straying over their weapons. One announced him in a measured voice as, “Lord Tethiel.”

  Pharaoh peeked out at him from behind Hiresha. “You like my singing?”

  “And your city.” His fingers were clamped on the seat of the ibis boat. Each of the terror bird feathers in the whorl around his neck spanned longer than a forearm. “The architecture. The beetle-cleaned streets. The crisp desert night. If only I could stay all year. The city is so expensive that only the dead can afford to live here.”

  “I like your feathers,” Pharaoh said. “I think I'd like you more as a bird.”

  “And what kind of bird would I be?”

  Pharaoh looked upward as she thought, toward the pyramid and surrounding boulevards crowded with louse-sized people. “An unhappy bird. Because then you couldn't talk.”

  “Oh ho! I can see why assassins find you too adorable to kill, my heart. And you, Hiresha? Should you like me better as a bird?”

  The idea of Tethiel transforming touched on a deep desire within Hiresha. Trivialities about birds aside, if he were not a Feaster then she could accept his courtship. Or per
haps I would not notice him, she admitted to herself. Maybe I only feel the way I do around him because of his magic.

  She said, “You'll have to excuse me, Pharaoh, Lord Tethiel. Tomorrow I am to wed in the afterlife, and preparations must be made.”

  The enchantress left the barge for her private boat. The Lord of the Feast followed her down a stream in his wooden ibis, but Hiresha urged her rowers to speed. The Feaster was left behind because he had but two men working the oars, and Hiresha suspected the cloth covering their faces hid missing noses and their gloves concealed absent fingers, sloughed off from leprosy.

  Dozing, she thought over her scarcity of options in her dream laboratory. She could think of one other path before she would have to resort to treating with Tethiel to find the thief, the first option dangerous, the latter dubious, but she would pay whatever price to save Chandur. She liked to think she would storm Bleak Wells to release him if enchantresses had that sort of power.

  “I do.” Jewel fingernails parted the darkness within a mirror. The sapphire Feaster dragged her claws over the inside of the glass, etching it. “I could've stopped the thief, made him beg and choke on his own blood.”

  Hiresha Attracted all the jewels floating in her laboratory. They zoomed toward her hand, and she released the spell and waved the glittering barrage at the mirror. Gems punctured glass, the liquid crystal boiling then smoothing back to a sheet. The feaster scowled the instant before the gems would impale her, and everything in the mirror darkened into a void speckled with multicolored stars. The image in the mirror brightened to show the reverse of the laboratory as if the glass and silver backing were disenchanted.

  The reflection in the yellow dress sighed. “She'll come back.”

  Hiresha said, “One always must let people know how much they are appreciated.”

  What if it were me trapped in the mirror, with the Feaster standing at the center, in control. The thought of working alongside Tethiel both tantalized and repulsed Hiresha. She had no wish to rely on the Lord of the Feast again to solve her problems because she worried it would only strengthen the Feaster within her.

  “Do we think Lord Tethiel was right about a Soultrapper?” The reflection cupped a hand over her mouth. “Would a Soultrapper stop us?”

  The mirrors displayed pilgrims as she had seen them on the streets, carrying tablets to honor the deceased. They bowed with their clay offerings before mausoleums of sandstone, prayed before brass towers, or crept down stairs between buildings to reach tombs below street level.

  Hiresha said, “I admit that a Soultrapper could hide his glyphed corpses most anywhere. His amassed power could be unseemly. If Tethiel is correct in his concerns.”

  The reflection asked, “Do we trust Lord Tethiel?”

  “I trust him,” Hiresha said, “yet not his magic, not how its power influences him. Tethiel might only have implied a Soultrapper is controlling the vizier to make me hesitant to speak to him. Perhaps Tethiel fears being thrown into an oubliette of his own.”

  She returned to the waking world, only to find herself too exhausted to function.

  “Maid Janny.” Hiresha murmured, quiet as the flow of water around them. “The peppermint oil.”

  “Oh, just hate doing this to you.” The maid tipped the enchantress' head back, a perfume bottle unsteady in her hand.

  The sharp-smelling extract splashed over Hiresha's lashes and stung her eyes open. Hiresha gasped. The peppermint method was marginally more effective than smelling salts and less crude than a slap across the face.

  The afternoon heat smoldered. The fox had begun trying to dig his way through her dress again, and she lifted the furry fiend to face level. “You have caused an inordinate amount of trouble.”

  The fox gave an unsympathetic yip. It stared back at her, eyes black as onyx.

  The boat descended to street level. Hiresha, priest, fox, maid, and guards all disembarked and reacquainted themselves with gravity. They traveled by sedan chair past a colonnade where scribes gathered in the shade to conduct business amid scales, mats and carpets, and piles of scrolls. Hiresha suspected the laughter, the lofting of wine cups, the harpist, and the dancing girls were not typical of any but Gods Week.

  Maid Janny made a disgusted noise. “They work during festival?”

  The priest said, “All deals made this week are blessed.”

  Hiresha's tears had washed out the peppermint, but the thought of what she intended to do frightened her to a facsimile of alertness. One power existed in Oasis City separate from the temples and palace, a being that people said was not beholden even to the gods.

  Hopping out of her chair, she strode between the pillars strewn with hieroglyphs. The scribes cheered to see her and the fox. She lifted the animal overhead, his tail scratching her nose.

  “I'll permit a man to touch the Golden Scoundrel.” She puffed the black-tipped tail aside.

  The scribes surged forward.

  “If,” Hiresha said, “he provides an audience with the Silver Crocodile.”

  Men reeled back. Talk silenced. Wine dribbled, and a dancer's dress of brass rings rattled then stilled.

  When the priest cleared his throat, it echoed in the colonnade. “You will not do this. It isn't fitting, for a god's bride.”

  Hiresha glowered.

  “We've all had dealings with the Crocodile,” one scribe said, “if we'll admit it. But no reason to meet it in person.”

  A shrill laugh. “No, none at all.”

  The scribes began speaking all at once, in tones of a frightened flock of geese. “Only bad debtors have to meet it.”

  “Ol' Silver Soul doesn't like to be disturbed.”

  “Not polite to go down uninvited.”

  “I must invite myself,” Hiresha said. “There are only four hours of sunlight left this day, and it is my last.”

  “She has taken too much sun.” The priest motioned to the royal guards. “You will escort her to the temple.”

  The guards hesitated.

  A small scribe wearing spectacles and unfashionable grey linen shuffled to Hiresha. He spoke with deliberate softness. “Neither priesthood nor imperial representative may obstruct or forbid any transaction with the Silver Crocodile, given Royal Ordinance Seventeen, Article Three. Elder Enchantress Hiresha, do you wish to exchange promissory notes for hard funds?”

  “No,” Hiresha said.

  “Given your unique situation, a loan seems less than practicable.”

  “My business proposal is also unique. I must speak to the Silver Crocodile in person.”

  The scribe made scrawling motions on his sleeve as he appeared to think.

  “The bride won't forget the forbidden throne.” The priest leaned in close enough to bathe her in his camel-milk breath. “It will know what was done.”

  “They say it is a pragmatic sort of man-eater,” Hiresha said, “and I hardly lounged on its throne.”

  The scribe adjusted a silvery belt over his pot belly. “I will take you, if you'll sign a document that your estate will not pursue recompense if you are injured as a result.”

  While the scribe drew up the agreement, the priest asked for a cup of wine. He downed it, coughing, tearing, and then he gulped another. He strode back to Hiresha.

  “You will take the Golden Scoundrel. If you die, both of you must die together.”

  Hiresha held the fennec in her left arm and put her diamond mark on the scroll. The scribe took her into the narrow streets between warehouses. They had to wait behind a camel burdened with chests, and the animal growled a nasally complaint as a man tugged it down a ramp and into darkness. An arch above the passage bore the design of a pale crocodile.

  A figure in an orange and black mask walked from a cross-street, stopping at the sight of the enchantress. “Hiresha, are you going down to view the Blue Miracle Lake?”

  He removed his mask. Hiresha struggled to remember names, and faces or voices, for that matter, but she believed this was the Royal Embalmer. She though
t it most odd to have chanced upon him again.

  She said, “I have business with the Silver Crocodile.”

  The embalmer stepped close, and the heat from his nearness caused Hiresha's scalp to bead with perspiration. The fennec barked up at him, and the man grimaced back.

  “Hiresha,” the embalmer said, glancing over her shoulder at the priest, “I may only have one title, but I can help you. I care for you. The Silver Crocodile has lived longer than the empire and never once stirred itself to help anyone.”

  Hiresha lowered her voice. “Can you free Spellsword Chandur from Bleak Wells?”

  The embalmer stepped back, laying two huge hands over his bare chest. “I'm an artisan, not a warrior.”

  “Then we have nothing more to discuss.” Hiresha walked under the archway, lurching forward when she misjudged the steepness of the descent. Maid Janny stopped before the arch, wringing her hands, and the priest and embalmer also remained in the sunlight. Only the scribe and the royal guards descended with her, and the men bunched together, muttering.

  Impatient with their timid manner, Hiresha strode to the front and was the first to leave the tunnel. A man-made cavern spread before her in a vastness.

  Darkness filled the stretches of distance between her and five columns of water flowing with light, their cores glittering with enchanted chains. The descending sky rivers illuminated circles of blue in the lake that had given Oasis City its name. Any sight of the shoreline eluded her in the surrounding blackness.

  The fennec squirmed in her grasp. She held onto him. His yips bounced off the unseen walls. Hiresha tucked back her hair, revealing blue-diamond earrings. Their enchantment awakened, bathing light over the sandy soil around her slippers, and the foundations of a brass tower reflected a watery image of her, bright points on either side of her face.

  Pillars of sandstone also supported the streets above. Some had eroded at the base, stained by past flows of water. A few lay toppled, replaced by thicker columns that showed no evidence of discoloration, and Hiresha had to assume either they were enchanted for durability or the tides from the nightly inflows of sky streams no longer reached so high. If the latter, water levels had plummeted.