by Jon Hollins
The one good thing about the Emperor’s gaudy display of wealth, Quirk thought, was that it reassured her that he would be very difficult to bribe.
The Verran tugged on the curtain shrouding the object. It got stuck on one of the protrusions. He yanked again. There was a ripping sound, the snap of fabric pulling taut, and then the sound of the Verran stamping his foot. He heaved again, realized it wasn’t going to work, and went to fix the snag. His smile had become something of rictus. Finally he worked everything free, tugged again, and revealed the …
What word best summed it up?
Obscenity?
“May I present to you,” said the Verran dignitary, with another deep bow, “The Conception of Cois.”
The statue—cast in gold—depicted Lawl, king of the gods, lord of law and order, bending his son Toil over, and plowing him like a field. So, the popular legend went, Toil—god of fertility and the field—became pregnant with his father’s seed, and later gave birth to the hermaphroditic god(dess) of love, Cois. A burst of pearls where the two deities conjoined graphically indicated that this was indeed the exact moment of conception.
Love, lust, violence, betrayal, and rape, all wrapped up in a tasteless, ostentatious display of wealth and power. Quirk supposed it was as relevant a way to attempt to seal a trade agreement as any other that had occurred to her.
She, along with the others, had just turned to see the Emperor’s reaction to this masterwork of depravity when their collective silence was shattered by the sound of slow hand claps coming from above.
Every eye turned.
A man stood at the top of the stairs that slowly swept new arrivals down into the ballroom. He wore a simple but voluminous brown robe, the hood pulled back to reveal a bald head and a face lined like a cartographic map. His skin bore a dark tan, but he still seemed pale among the sea of Tamarians. He wore gold earrings, and a sinuous curving tattoo unfurled over his forehead, coming to a point between his eyes. The Emperor’s guards flanked him, but instead of appearing confined, the man stood as if he were the one in command.
Quirk’s childhood at the hands of the barbarous demigod Hethren had bred into her an immediate and violent suspicion of all strangers. As part of her long rehabilitation, she had learned to push that suspicion away just as instinctively. And yet, looking at this man, she found she did not like him.
“What is the meaning of this interruption?” snapped the Emperor, though Quirk suspected he was as glad as any of them for a chance to ignore the Verran dignitary.
The court marshal bustled forward, looking harassed and put out. “My most sincere and humble apologies, your eminence. May I present—”
But the man interrupted him. “I am Ferra, emissary of Diffinax, and I come to beseech your fine court.”
Diffinax.
While Quirk would be the first to admit that there was still much about dragons that she had yet to learn, she knew enough to recognize one of their names when she heard one.
What sort of man would give himself a dragon’s name?
The sort of man, she supposed, who would have an emissary who thinks it’s all right to burst into an emperor’s ballroom and interrupt a private dinner.
But Ferra was still talking, even as he started down the stairs, the court marshal flapping ineffectually in his wake.
“And I see,” the emissary continued, “that I arrive only just in time. I arrive as the filth, the depravity, the chaos of the so-called pantheon attempts to worm its sordid fingers around your heart more tightly. I arrive as your senses are assaulted and insulted by this …” He paused mid-stride to regard the Verran dignitary’s sculpture with a look of disgust that bordered on hatred.
Obscenity, Quirk filled in silently.
“Vileness,” said Ferra.
Impertinent ass, he might be, Quirk thought, but I can’t question his taste in art.
The Verran dignitary had different ideas, however. “Who are you?” he spat. “How dare you enter here—”
“How dare you?” Ferra spat back. “How dare you hold up this wantonness, and worship it? How dare you call this desecration sacred? How dare you insult this man, this emperor, by telling him this is what he should emulate? Is this what you think of him? That he is a rapist? That he is a sodomizer? That he is the father of hermaphrodites?”
“Nothing wrong with a little bit of sodomy,” commented the Emperor’s cousin, with a shrug.
Ferra visibly twitched.
The Emperor, who had been watching with increasing interest, leaned forward, head cocked to one side. “And you,” he said, “you are one who would dare to speak for me? You are one to presume my opinions of sodomy and hermaphrodites?”
Quirk was almost completely sure that the word obsequious had never once entered Ferra’s mind. She was not disappointed.
“I am one,” he said, “who sees a man beset by a world of filth, a man born into a world of excrement. I see a man with the power to lift his people out of the slurry. I see a man who can elevate a whole world. I see a man Diffinax wishes to save.”
The Emperor leaned back. “So,” he said, with a slight curl of contempt to his lips, “you are a man who presumes to speak for a man who presumes I wish to be saved.”
“He presumes nothing,” said Ferra. “Whether or not you desire it or not, you need to be saved.”
“He dares presume my situation now?” The Emperor’s smile was spreading. Quirk, though, had the distinct impression that it was the smile a cat gave a mouse.
“He dares presume the situation of the whole world,” said Ferra without hesitation. “There is nothing he does not dare.”
The Emperor chewed on that like a mouthful of partridge bones.
Ferra was on the ballroom floor now, leaving the still-spluttering court marshal and Verran dignitary behind him.
“Your master is a daring man, it seems,” said the Emperor at last.
“My master,” said Ferra, with a smile to rival the Emperor’s, “is no man.”
And that brought a pause to the conversation. The Emperor was caught flat-footed, suddenly uncertain.
As she spoke, Quirk thought her voice sounded small and timid in the large room. “Diffinax,” she said, “is a dragon’s name.”
Ferra turned to her, and graced her with a smile as thin as a stiletto blade. “Quirkelle Bal Tehrin,” he said to her. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Inhaling seemed to take forever.
The Emperor looked at them both, back and forth, hesitated, then chose to address Ferra. “Your master, is he a dragon?” He did not sound tentative. Recent years of bloody civil war had ensured that no emperor of Tamar would dare show temerity for generations to come. But neither did he sound anxious to know the answer.
“My master,” said Ferra, yanking his attention away from Quirk like a man twitching a blade out of a wound, “is the solution to the madness of this world. My master is a balm to this world’s wounds. My master is the answer to all the prayers that the gods have ignored for too long. My master—”
“Your master is fire and domination.” Again, Quirk’s voice seemed too small in the large room. But she could see it in front of her. That ocean of fire that haunted her dreams, spreading across the world.
“My master,” said Ferra with savage intensity, eyes not leaving the Emperor for a second, “is peace. Long sought after. Long fought for.”
“He is a dragon,” the Emperor repeated, less of a question this time.
“He is many things. One of them is a dragon.”
There was a quiet gasp from the assembled nobles, all but forgotten in the heat of the exchange.
“Dragons kill,” Quirk said, quietly, almost to herself. “They dominate. Dragons are … no, cruel is not the word. That’s a human emotion, and they do not have those.”
She had interviewed hundreds of women and men who had lived under the rule of dragons in Kondorra. She had witnessed firsthand the squalor in which they had been forced to live.
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br /> Ferra shook his head. A look of something like sadness crossed his face. It seemed out of place on his harsh features. “Oh, Ms. Bal Tehrin, how misled you have been. How much you have led others astray. For what? Personal fortune? For the favor of powerful men?”
For a moment, Quirk truly did not understand what the man was saying. The implications were utterly foreign to her thoughts.
“You … I … What?” was all she managed.
“But how can I blame you,” said Ferra, voice dripping with false pity, “when all the gods in the heavens themselves do is mislead us? When no one sets a better example? When you have not yet accepted the wisdom of Diffinax into your life and your soul?”
“These,” said the Emperor as Quirk still reeled, “are serious accusations.”
Ferra waved a hand dismissively. “I do not deal in accusations. Diffinax has taught me to be above such things. I deal in truths. I deal with the world as it is, not how I wish it to be. I see it, accept it, and I question, what will change truly require? How can I leave a legacy of change? How can I make the people look up and remember me with love?”
It was shameless pandering. It was a low, craven pantomime of political seduction. And from the look upon the Emperor’s face, Quirk could see it was working.
“You think I am here for fame?” she said. It was not the right way for her to start her argument, but she could not help herself. Ferra’s accusation was too brazen, too false to ignore.
Ferra finally turned to look at her. His look was one of utter contempt. “I truly do not care why you are here, Quirkelle Bal Tehrin. Maybe it is for the self-aggrandizement. Maybe it is so you can feel superior to your colleagues. Maybe it is so you can impress some dark-eyed student with tales of the Emperor’s table. Maybe it is simply that you enjoy the food. All I know, all I care for, are the lies you use to poison the Emperor’s ear, to keep him turned from the truth and the light of Diffinax.”
Quirk almost laughed in the man’s face. “I do not beg him to worship a dragon, and therefore I am the one clouding his vision?”
Ferra’s mouth twisted in a smile. “And you ask nothing of him? You do not try to steer him toward one course of action over another? You do not stand there and try to use your influence to turn him away from my master?”
“I try to turn him away from enslaving himself to the teachings of an inhuman beast with a psychotic desire for power and wealth.”
She could, she felt, go toe-to-toe with this man. He had caught her off guard at first, but he was as petty, and stupid, and poorly informed as all the other ambassadors and dignitaries, too caught up in his own agenda. He had caught the Emperor’s attention with his boldness, but she had long ago won the Emperor’s respect.
Ferra took a step toward her. It was a move designed to intimidate. Instead she stepped toward him, closed the distance.
He leaned toward her, lowered his voice. “Did you tell him?” he asked. Almost conversationally. Almost intimately. She suppressed a shudder at the thought. “Did you tell him about how you came about your knowledge?”
“Everybody knows how—” she started, not seeing the angle of the attack, because everybody knew of how she had gone to Kondorra. It was why she was famous.
But Ferra continued. “Did you tell him of the people you burned? The women you left as widows? The children you left as orphans? Did you tell him of your dreams of fire?”
Quirk’s breath caught in her lungs. Suddenly the vast ballroom felt too small, too tight, everything pressing in on her.
An ocean of fire, spreading from horizon to horizon.
And no dragon stood at that ocean’s heart. She did. Flame poured from her hands. Her flames wiped men, and women, and children from the world. Her flames stripped the flesh from their bones.
She remembered a night in Kondorra, in a cave, standing before a dragon, flame streaming from her palms, and killing, and killing, and killing.
No. No, she had not told the Emperor about that. She had told no one about that. No one outside of her companions in Kondorra had known about that.
How in the Hallows had this man known that? This ugly, twisted, shit of a man.
“You want to burn me now, don’t you?” Ferra continued, his voice still lowered in that ugly parody of intimacy. “I know you do. I have spent my life with dragons. I know creatures of fire, Quirkelle Bal Tehrin. Part of you wants to watch us all burn.”
“No!” she shouted. She couldn’t help it. Because she had to. She had to deny it. She could never let herself acknowledge the fact that he was right.
The Emperor was staring at her. His Empress. His daughter. His court. All of them. Even poor, golden Toil—captured bent over and humiliated forever—was staring at her. All of them sharing that same look of horror. Because they knew. As soon as she had shouted they had known. She was a liar.
She turned and she ran.
She checked her flight at the palace gates. Servants were staring at her. Guards were looking around for some sign of disturbance. Her hands were smoking.
She breathed, long and shaky, pulling the chill night air into her, trying to get the coldness to sink into her core.
Arsehole. She couldn’t believe what she’d just let happen. But how had he known? How could he have known?
She should go back there. She should show him just how afraid she was of him.
She should make him burn.
No.
She was too worked up, too close to the edge to plead her case tonight. She would only make things worse. She should go back to her garret, to her cot, to her papers, and her ink. She should find her calm again, her peace.
Be the surface of the lake. Tranquil. Unmoving. She ran through the old meditation techniques the priestesses of Knole—goddess of wisdom—had taught her.
She couldn’t even picture the gods-hexed lake right now.
With a grimace, she pushed out into the night.
The Tamathian University was a reassuring bricolage of stone, mortar, and wood all rammed together in a myriad of disparate architectural styles. Flying buttresses crashed into sterile cliffs of brick. The gentle curves of domes were punctured by angular spires of jutting stone. The gas-filled observatorium bobbed above the dining hall, caught in its mess of tethering ropes.
The gatehouse, one of the oldest structures in the place, was done in the early Brutalist style. A forbidding mass of iron spikes and disruptive stone tumors, making the entrance look more like a wound than a gateway, yet the light that spilled out of it was soft and yellow, and the sight of it filled her with the warmth of home.
Tamper, the doorman, was sitting on a stool inside the gate holding a cudgel that was almost as old and gnarled as he was.
“Mistress Quirk,” he said with a touch of his finger to his forehead.
“Tamper,” she said with a nod and a smile, and the simple ritual of it stilled the trembling that yet touched her hands.
“Mistress Afrit was looking for you.” Tamper’s voice sounded like a door creaking open.
Quirk sighed. That was the last thing she needed. And then, as if summoned by the utterance of her name, like some fairy-tale genie, there was Afrit, bustling across the grass of the courtyard, calling, “Quirk! Quirk! You’re back!”
Quirk closed her eyes, turned to Tamper. “Thank you,” she said to the old doorman. He nodded in return. Possibly off to sleep.
Then Quirk turned to Afrit and assembled her face into something that was as close to a smile as she could manage. “Yes,” she said. “I am back, and it is late, and you are still up.”
Afrit smiled. “I’ve been grading papers,” she said, “and despairing about the youth of this nation.” She was young, dark-skinned, her hair worn long and pulled back into thick braids. She favored the same sort of loose robes that Quirk wore, though whether that was a recent affectation, or simple coincidence, Quirk wasn’t sure. Honestly, she and Quirk had never exchanged more than a few words before Quirk’s fateful trip to Tamathia. But since
her return, and the publication of her folio on dragons, Afrit had flocked to the light of Quirk’s flame like a peculiarly suicidal moth.
“How was the Emperor’s this evening?” Afrit went on unabashed, asking the question Quirk had least wanted to answer.
“Exhausting,” Quirk said. It seemed her best bet for escaping the situation.
“Of course,” Afrit said. “I’m sorry. I forget how late it is.” She smiled and stepped back a little.
For a moment, Quirk dared to hope she would be left alone. But then Afrit pushed on.
“No papers to keep you up late tonight?”
Quirk tried to avoid sighing audibly. “The Chancellor gave me another month off teaching. My lecturing schedule is still quite full though.”
Afrit smiled more broadly. “I shall have to become famous myself one day. It seems to be full of perks. Though I think perhaps I would miss teaching. Don’t you?”
Quirk shrugged helplessly. “Mostly I am just finding fame to be simply tiring right now.”
Afrit had the decency at least to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry. You have needed to tell me twice. I shall let you get to bed.”
Quirk shook her head insincerely. “I’m sorry. I am sure I will be much better company in the morning.”
Afrit nodded. “And I shall do a better job of picking up on obvious social cues.”
Quirk’s smile was at least half-genuine at that point. “Tomorrow,” she said, albeit grudgingly.
“Tomorrow,” Afrit agreed, and a moment later Quirk was finally alone.
Quirk’s garret was long, low, and smelled of dust and paper. She sighed as the door closed behind her. In the darkness she went to where she knew her tinderbox lay, and lit the first candle.
Finally, as she slowly went through the ritual of lighting the garret’s other candles, Quirk felt the last vestiges of her encounter with Ferra sloughing away. Her own space. Where she could be herself without judgments. Where she was not famous, or aloof, or wise, or anything but a thaumatobiologist. The candles by the door lit, she pulled off her cloak and the tall, uncomfortable boots that were popular in the Emperor’s court. She pushed the pins out of her hair, collecting them on a table where a hairbrush and small piece of polished tin lay.