Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1)

by T. Mountebank

  He did not want to be working in his rooms, but conflict on the border with Alena had erupted when the genuine mineral report surfaced showing rich deposits of monazite. Laudin had tried to distance the King from the Ministry of Science’s original publication that no ores containing rare elements had been found at the border town, Ulphia, but the Alenans had responded by violently purging Ulphia of royalists.

  After the third night of public hangings, on the King’s order, a combined arms brigade of infantry and armor rolled across the border. They sealed the town off at the highways to prevent further influx of extremists and set a curfew after dark, transporting away to Erentrude those thought responsible for the worst violence. The Alenan government silently bore it, telling its public the support had been requested, was welcome and temporary, but no one believed it. One hundred years past, when Erentrude and Sierra nearly went to war, the territory had taken advantage to split away from the realm. Reunification had been every king’s ambition since.

  Laudin assured the world it was strictly a police action, but Sierra, on Alena’s eastern border, threatened to call it an invasion. Sierra had been a member of the World Security League for centuries, and with powerful old allegiances, the country was respected, but Erentrude was a dangerous emerging nation full of wealth and vital resources. If Erentrude could not buy the outcome it wanted, the kingdom simply threatened to withhold lithium from the world market.

  The Errian continent was always bristling with threats of war, so not only did Sierra not want Erentrude as a neighbor, the world’s most powerful countries wanted space between them as well. Laudin had spent many days with Sierran President Pavlović assuring him they shared the same desire for an independent Alena. Only now—with the promise of trade in rare elements and the King’s tanks still sitting on the minerals—Pavlović had begun to suggest to Alena a possible alliance.

  Laudin would have gladly thanked the Bound Bride for the show of loyalty in the courtyard that had seen the script flipped, the King standing and her bowed in service. For the first time, Laudin was grateful to have the Bride; President Pavlović had his own fanatics to deal with: the religious who decried involvement in the conflict as an affront to the future Queen Mother.

  Adding to the turmoil was the rise of the charismatic Felix Magnus, voice of the Libertines, calling for civil disobedience from the significant number of skeptics, anarchists, and all other manner of revolutionary types that defined the nihilist nature of Alena. The armor battalion in Ulphia faced roads blocked with many hundreds of protesters sitting with arms linked. The infantry was splattered in paint, either thrown at them or dropped from roofs in balloons. When they didn’t have a thousand red laser pointers blinding their movements, they faced the incessant rhythmic chant of a lyrical question: “Freedom be dumb?”

  Laudin had watched video as Felix Magnus told the crowds, “Our own Prime Minister tells us we are playing a dumb game of politics.”

  And the crowds chanted back the question, “Freedom be dumb?”

  “Freedom, dumb? No. Our freedom is specific. Demand absolute freedom.”

  They returned, “Absolute freedom!”

  “King Remius says our idea of freedom denies moral structure, but his morality is false. Show him we will not feel shame.” And the crowd followed Felix, lifting high in their hands pills, glass vials, pipes, bongs, and oversized syringes filled with paint. “Eat the dogma!” And the crowd went cheering, roaring mad then briefly still as lighters flicked, illuminating the mass of dissidents. Across the video, Laudin could hear the sound of sucking through pipes, the gurgling of bongs, water bottles tipped to swallow pills, and again the roar as smoke exhaled over their heads.

  “How are we to use our freedom? The libertine answers: We will do what we want.”

  And the crowd affirmed, “We will do what we want!”

  Making Felix Magnus seem practically welcome was the emerging armed resistance which intelligence said was equipped with old technology left over from the Sierra-Erentrude standoff of last century, and everyone knew the weapons weren’t coming out of Erentrude.

  “A train wreck.” Laudin shook his head. “The whole thing is one long train wreck.”

  “You should have put that dog down years ago,” Berringer blamed Girard.

  Girard understood that, as things go, the report would have eventually been leaked, but they had been expecting many more years, even a decade, to formalize a protectorate over the lost territory.

  Nevertheless, Berringer was right. She had relied too singularly on the Guard Dog, had indulged his many idiosyncrasies in exchange for his successes, none of which amounted to anything now. And still the Dog was silent. The scientist had passed off the report and escaped to Sierra, but before the Sierrans buried him in seclusion, Girard had seen one last photo of him with a broken arm. She suspected the scientist had somehow gotten the better of the Guard Dog and killed him. A sad, disappointing end.

  The days had been full of sad spectacles. Girard didn’t want to, but she liked Sable. The nun had returned with a confident amusement which Catherine recognized. Catherine imagined if she had ever suffered a maternal blunder, she would have had a daughter much like Sable, a surprising, demented replica of herself. But the creature the mothers put before the King was not to be envied.

  Berringer said it was sleep deprivation, but what Girard saw was a body uninhabited. The Cloitare brought the blinking, breathing thing to the King’s rooms with the optimistic promise it had agreed to wed, but Girard suspected they were merely testing the strength of the nun’s conditioning.

  On the intricate rug before the King’s desk, she stood in the center of four mothers and barely managed to keep her mouth from falling open. Master Aidan stood apart, observing the demonstration from just inside the door. Girard kept expecting him to wave away any association with the group and back into the hall.

  Mother Vesna was trying to prompt Sable to do something, but the nun gave no indication she was aware. Putting her hands on Sable’s shoulders, Vesna walked her two steps closer to the King, whispering to make her react, but she remained vacuous.

  Sickened, Remy had approached and tried to get Sable to see him, but the vacant form showed no sign of intelligence.

  “Well done, Mother Vesna, you’ve created a corpse bride. No one should take any notice.” Girard could not stand to look.

  “This is but her first acceptance. She will be made suitable.”

  The King left the room without speaking to the Cloitare. He had come to hope Sable was correct, that they would break her. She would marry him and he would protect her.

  The inevitability of it made the three advisors uneasy.

  Business

  Marlow would have loved the insurrection. It was the only thing that took the joy out of it for Enzo.

  He was in a newly acquired hangar outside Ulphia waiting for Nika to deliver a stock of batteries from their supplier in Erentrude. She was flying in a wide circle of avoidance around Salt Mountain to evade security at the border.

  Over the last month, Enzo had procured a number of odd buildings besides the hangar. On the outskirts of Ulphia, just beyond the army perimeter to the south, he had a house, and on the perimeter to the east, he had a garage, both were dedicated to selling King Remius’s Ministry of Energy’s counterfeit batteries. Mostly he sold to locals who could prove residence in the city and move through the army barricade, and the locals would then smuggle the batteries to the radicals that had gathered inside the city before the army arrived. The last peculiar structure he had obtained was in the heart of the city: a three-table cafe that traded drugs to the soldiers.

  Enzo had moved his whole schismatic army of loners and freaks to the border town to take advantage of the uprising. Those not in the buildings were dealing out of their pockets wherever they dared. And every one of them was so thoroughly incapable of conforming to anything approximating a social norm, even the illusory one set forth in Alena, Enzo had been obligated to
bring Max as well. The army had allowed the police in Ulphia to stand, but they pressed the police for more arrests and greater enforcement of laws long ignored.

  Back in Erentrude, Enzo’s crew had dealt smartly in drugs and counterfeits, but they would bang all night at the technos, rolling in the warm sunshine of anodyne and synthetics, then snort, inject, or drink themselves precariously close to oblivion. At all hours, you could find them steering recklessly close to the precipice with god only knew what in their possession, but they were loyal. They hated anything that passed as authority so spitefully they would scramble their own brains before talking; though, when Enzo was truly honest with himself, he recognized he had never really tested their resolve. They knew if Max couldn’t free them, Enzo would send Marlow. She had a consummate loathing for confinement—whether it was a jail or a pair of handcuffs—and an equal disdain for the people who confined, despising police, prosecutors, and judges with such hostility, she was particularly useful to Enzo and easy to motivate.

  She would bribe, persuade, haggle, threaten, or kill to prevent any of his people from being sent to prison.

  He had learned of her particular flair for persuasion way back at the beginning while acquainting her with the possibility of synthesized music. He still rolled his eyes to think of it. “Did your parents have you locked in the basement? It was for your own good, wasn’t it?”

  She’d only ever stare at him when he asked.

  She’d heard Max raging frantic about having only just been informed of a dealer’s arrest and having no time to get into the prosecutor’s database to change the charge of possession of illegal substances with intent to supply to a more pleasant public intoxication when she asked in her original, refined, and genteel accent, “Would it not be less difficult to simply convince the judge against incarceration?”

  “Where the fuck did you find this kid?” Max had not formed an opinion of her until then.

  “Sure it would,” Enzo had insisted. “But neither of us can be seen in the courthouse. I’m going to have to ask you to do it.” In the beginning—thank the satirical gods—she had little concept of irony either.

  He always wondered if her first, last, and only explanation of success had been deliberately menacing. “I suggested imprisonment would be … unhealthy.”

  He had never really learned to tell if she was laughing behind those moments of chilling sincerity.

  This new operation spreading through Ulphia could be treacherous without her, but Alena had developed an exceptional tolerance for a person’s right to pursue happiness down nearly any path imaginable, so much that Enzo felt they were safer in the conflict than at home. Mind your own business and keep your hands to yourself was the unwritten law of Alena.

  So far, the police in Ulphia were more concerned with the chaos six battalions of young soldiers could inflict on a civilian population than who was cranking the soldiers up high or dropping them low, and the local authorities were never going to care who was supplying the dissidents with batteries to circumvent the curfews and blackouts or to power up the night rallies. Enzo had the army to fear, but they were half his profit. And he knew the army wasn’t going anywhere, which made him think their move to Alena might be permanent as well.

  Reprisals

  Berringer would later wonder if any of them should have predicted, not so much what, as none of the advisors could have guessed that, but instead that a dramatic turn was unavoidable after the next failed presentation of the Bound Bride to the King. It seemed more obvious in hindsight that someone, perhaps all of them, would break, but it would have been hard to determine who first. He would spend his life wondering if the worst of it could have been prevented.

  It had been so swift to result in such devastating retaliation. Four mothers, including the Mothers Vesna and Isabelle along with Master Aidan, had brought Sable to the King’s rooms. Master Aidan stood with his head bowed just inside the door. Berringer was certain in his reflections that the man’s posture was designed to separate himself from the scene.

  The four mothers centered Sable among them on the carpet again. Berringer and Girard were on one couch facing them while Laudin was across the carpet on another, and Remy stood before his desk.

  Sable had much the same vacant mannerism, only this time she would agree to anything asked of her. Mother Vesna was close at her side making her perform these tricks, saying, “The King would like assurances you have accepted your position and have agreed to wed.”

  Appropriately, Sable responded, “I have.”

  “You will accept your duties as the Bound Bride?”

  “I will.” Her focus floated just beyond them but on nothing.

  “Do you accept your role revealed by the prophets as the Queen Mother, Mother of All?”

  “I do.”

  “You will marry the King?”

  “I will.”

  Mother Vesna, who had never shown pleasure, allowed a satisfied relaxation to demonstrate her triumph. She addressed the King, “The Bound Bride will complete her training with us shortly and will be free to wed. We will speak soon of our requirements.”

  The group shifted to leave, but unexpected to all, and even himself, Remy snatched Sable from their midst. Vesna looked shocked then irate and tried to pull her back, but at the first rash step forward by Remy, Berringer had come to his feet and now blocked Vesna’s attempt. The mothers surged forward, denying the King had the right. Then Girard and Laudin were before the group. Only Aidan stood uninvolved at the back.

  Disturbed by the display, Remy had pulled her across the carpet, asking, “Sable, will you please just trust me and end this opposition?”

  So courteously, she answered, “I will.”

  Girard turned to see the glimmer of hope in Remy’s face and, perhaps disgusted that only she could see the obvious, tersely demonstrated the startling, “Sable, would you like to drink poison?”

  And Sable replied pleasantly, “I would.”

  Remy closed his eyes to the lesson. While he steadied his breath, Sable began to focus on the family pin in his jacket. She reached out to touch the crest, tracing the curve of the bull’s spine.

  To the Cloitare, Remy ordered, “End this quickly and give her to me.”

  With her finger, Sable circled the emblem. Down its tail and back to the red-eyed head, she followed the horns up to Remy’s face and then smiled as though she had not expected to see him. She said simply, “Remy.”

  Then, with a sharp breath of awareness, she appeared in full.

  She snapped, “No.” But afraid she had already agreed to something permanent, she grabbed her wrist, dug at the shackle, and exhaled with relief to find it there, certain they would not wed her with it on.

  She gave Remy a brief smile of reassurance before she switched to her tormentor. Berringer saw the smile grow hungry and the eyes tighten on Vesna. Her approach on the mother was deliberate, bestial, designed for violence. From where Berringer stood, he could hear her every exhale, exaggerated, predatory, and intended to alarm.

  She’d gone deliriously savage.

  Locked on Vesna, she issued cruel, measured threats. “You are not strong enough to break me. I will return again and again to smite you. All your plans will fall to my resolve. I will turn all you see black, then in the darkness, I will hunt you. In the night, I will devour you.”

  All the while Vesna was pushing back into the group, waving Aidan forward, insisting, “Stop her, stop her.”

  “You will know the darkest fear and you will know me as—”

  “Anawa.” The word split the air.

  Sable stopped, the sneer settled, but still she held Vesna in her focus to declare, “I will destroy you.”

  Then, in defiance of all their expectations, she moved to go back to the convent, calling them harshly to follow, “We are far from finished.”

  ~~~~~~

  Berringer thought nothing of it; the Master and Mentor had been marked leaving the palace at sunrise. Before Sable dis
appeared, he had done this twice a year, and every time he’d leave Girard’s people spinning in circles, hunting for him within the hour. He’d return in three days. The news was nothing more than the resumption of routine.

  Then, the following night, as he and Remy shared a drink, he got the call, “It’s the Bride, sir. You’ll want to come. We’re outside the Cloitare doors.”

  He rose to leave, responding, “Tell me.”

  “C. I. U.” Conscious. Injured. Unresponsive.

  The General stopped as he was about to close the door. “Secured for the King?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Later, Berringer would show Remy what the cameras had recorded. The wide corridor was empty all the way to the double doors that dominated the wall. Both doors opened full into the hall. Behind, unseen, the second set would have been opened into the cloister. Blackness rolled forward, filling the antechamber, and then a single dark form was ejected with force. The nun staggered on her own for several steps before stalling and dropping. The darkness withdrew and the doors closed.

  The video showed the guards who were stationed under the cameras step tentatively into view, moving cautiously toward the unexpected scene. They bent to study the form and then the area erupted with activity.

  She lay now with her eyes taped shut to save her vision from the Cloitare Stare that would not end.

  The King’s physician had cooled saline in wine buckets and poured it over her wrist, rinsing the burnt skin that caught under the shackle. At a loss, he had bandaged the whole horrible thing. Dr. Branson could trace the places across her body where hands had grabbed her and he could guess the force required to hold her while someone had cut an X across each palm. He washed away the salt that was packed deep in the wounds and stitched tiny knots into the flesh before wrapping them as well. She all the while had not even blinked.