“This is truly historic,” King Ladinas said. “It is rare indeed that the faery kings and queens have any business with each other. You are the rulers of a land, and we are the rulers of a state of mind.”
“And while you are here, you must follow our ways,” Queen Alexandra said. “Things operate very differently in this realm. You must be yourselves. You can’t be the King of the Sun Palace and the Queen Who Bowed anymore. And this tasty elf must be the Sword of the King who has provoked some controversy?”
Axel bowed. “I live to serve.”
“Do you…” She looked him over and then snapped her fingers. “Ladinas, my dear, I would like them to look into the Waters of Truth.”
“Ahhh…yes.”
“Truly, I hope not to burden your hospitality for very long,” Augustus said. “I want to return to my own people, but we’ve had a bitter winter and the people are so hungry that they have to blame someone. The Cobblestone Witch used the tension to start a riot and turn my own people against us. But the longer I stay here, the more I’ll be seen as a coward.”
“But they were going to curse me!” I said. “And the Witch wants to raise my child and rob him of his father! We can’t go back. Not now…”
“We have to go back,” Augustus said. “We can’t just be subjects of the Wicked Revels!”
“From what I’ve heard, trouble has been brewing for a long time,” Queen Alexandra said. “I have heard that the two of you have posed many small rebellions to the court. I think it’s lovely.”
“I think the Witch is the one who has twisted all of our actions,” Augustus said. “She turned our people against us, and she started with King Emriel, so we never had a chance.”
“You are welcome to stay here forever if you must,” King Ladinas said. “But the waters have a way of revealing things that bring clarity to one’s actions.”
“No,” Augustus said. “That isn’t necessary.”
“My lord, what truth could be revealed that we don’t already know?” I asked. “We have already broken so many rules…”
“Rose, I have been fighting my own nature for my whole life,” he said, through gritted teeth. “And now I think I have finally learned to master myself. Yes, once in a while I have allowed you and Axel to master me, but—as you have both observed, I have become the King of the Sun Palace. I made you mine for all the world to see, and whatever they might do to us, they’ll never forget that. I will do nothing to…to regress.”
“I think Augustus is right,” Axel said. “Whatever we see in the Waters of Truth, it won’t matter. Our place is back home and we have our roles. I’ve already put your lives at risk by helping you to break them. All I care about is that I keep the two of you safe, no matter what I have to do.”
“If you stay here, the truth has a way of revealing itself. This is the place where your desires are safe. Succumbing to them will make you stronger.”
“Not for me,” Augustus said.
“I hope you will stay long enough to realize otherwise.”
“Rest for now,” King Ladinas said. “Enjoy the food and wine, and we’ll prepare a cottage for the three of you, where,” he added a bit mischievously, “you can do anything you like. No one here will care.”
Chapter Eight
Interlude
Jeanne had been left behind with the mob, to watch over the Palace of the Sun.
“Burn it to ground, see if I care,” were the Cobblestone Witch’s parting words to her.
Jeanne had watched Augustus fuck Marie Rose on the balcony and was strangely moved. What was secret was now laid bare. The King and Queen left no piece of themselves hidden from their people.
In the olden days, such a rite would have produced an abundant harvest in the spring. Augustus had an instinctive grasp of magic, and as much as Jeanne had always hated the young princess, in the queen she saw a magnificent power to give herself over to her kingdom. The Sun Palace had taught her well.
Jeanne had worked as a highly paid courtesan, a fancy whore, and she never thought a sight like that could shock her. To her, it was a job, but Marie Rose and Augustus loved each other, despite it all. Jeanne wanted to deny that, but it was there for all to see. Her trust in him, and the way that trust made him stronger. She made a powerful king out of him just as he made a queen out of her.
Maybe I understand why Enri and Marianna were preserved in the history of this place forever.
Now the peasants stormed the Sun Palace in the wake of their king and queen’s flight. They ripped bits of gold off everywhere they could find it, they broke plates, they tore tapestries down the middle. They were ripping Rose’s clothes into pieces. The floor was scattered with ribbons and torn petticoats.
Jeanne was afraid to stop them. They were so hungry, hungry enough that they would have eaten the gold if they could.
But they have no idea that the Cobblestone Witch herself caused this winter.
Once everything had been raided and destroyed, many of the peasants went home to sell the bits and pieces they had stolen. The palace was left cavernous and cold. The bodies of a few guards were left on the marble floors, but for the most part, guards and nobles alike had fled.
Jeanne went to her old chambers, and saw that no corner of the palace was left untouched. Someone had smashed the elegant wall panels and broken a portrait of King Emriel, the canvas torn and stomped on.
“Oh, pupkin…” She picked up the two halves, mending his face. “It was just a dream in the end, you and me. They always said…we were just using each other. Maybe it was true. I was tossed aside easily enough. To the court, I was just your whore, and you…you did take good care of me, but I knew the one you really loved was dead and gone, so…”
We were both happy, though, Jeanne thought. I made you laugh. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it wasn’t nothing, either.
I thought it would feel better, to bring down that human girl.
Jeanne looked out the window and saw the Lady’s Treat, the little hamlet built for the king’s true love and finally, a gift from Augustus to Rose. The king could have given it to her, but he never did. Jeanne felt forgotten, which was a familiar feeling. As a child, she was always forgotten. As a prostitute, she was only worth something when she spread her legs. The king plucked her from the gutter, but if she hadn’t been beautiful, she would be there still. Only with the Witch had she finally felt like she was standing on her own two feet.
Still, she was a means to an end for the witch as well. Jeanne would bet a gold piece—if she had one—that the witch was not sparing a single thought for Jeanne right now.
Jeanne fell asleep on her old mattress. The sheets and pillows had been stolen, but the bed was still as soft as she remembered.
When she stirred, she smelled smoke. Bonfires?
Jeanne flew to the window and saw some guards running around. She turned to the door and when she opened it, there was smoke drifting up to the landing.
“No!” Jeanne shrieked. “No!”
She tore down the stairs, losing her shoes, straight to the source of the fire, where some bony women with angry leers had set the curtains of the dining room on fire.
“May it all burn, burn, burn to the ground!”
“Stop!” Jeanne said.
“Why should we?” “This is where the king and queen feasted while we starved!”
“The king and queen will never return to this place,” Jeanne said. “But—this is still a part of the history of Ellurine. So many things have happened here. People have fallen in love—and died— Future generations should…“ Jeanne could try and explain, but in the end, this was where her king had lived and died. This had been her home, in the time when she was on top of the world.
She ran toward the curtain and chanted out a spell, putting out the fire.
“Leave this place,” she told the women. “Take what you need and go home. This palace will stand as a monument, so we will never forget what happened here, for better or worse. Someday you wi
ll want to take your children here and show them the rooms where the king and queen feasted while you starved, won’t you? Then it will never happen again.”
“Well, who are you to be talking so fancy?” one of the old women sniffed. The other one just helped herself to a large clock that rested on a side table. “Help me carry this out!” she told the other one, brazenly.
Jeanne flopped into her old seat at the table, next to the ghost of King Emriel. Her toes felt swollen from the cold seeping through her stockings. There was something so miserable about a large room with no one in it, a hearth with no fire, and a table that had been cleared of everything. The charred curtains were still smoking.
“Oh, hell,” Jeanne said, head in her hands. “I’ve mucked it all up somehow, haven’t I? But I don’t even know what could be done.”
Jeanne had always picked herself up, so after a while she picked up a broom and tied her hair back and started sweeping mess up in the rooms and shooing out the squatters. She only let them stay if she liked the look of them, mostly women that she recognized as her own kind—abused and determined, willing to work. Some of them were servants of the palace, others were peasants, but now they were all under Jeanne’s watch and she felt some curious desire to keep the palace intact. They took the guards’ bodies out to the woods, which was the best they could do.
Under the Queen’s bed, she found two of the little dogs shivering. She found scraps of food and coaxed them out. “Come on, Mopsy? Peony? The queen had so many names for you that I hardly know which was which…and whatever your name is…”
When the man mostly known only by his childhood nickname of “Merry”, came riding up to the palace to check on the situation, he found Jeanne in an apron and boots burning debris in a fire out in the palace gardens, right in front of the fountain dedicated to the god of wine, which of course wasn’t operational. Mopsy and her companion, who was once named Storm but was called ‘Dandelion’ by Jeanne, ran around with dirty paws and coats.
“Hello there, Miss!” he called. “Who are you?”
“You work for the witch, don’t you?” Jeanne asked. “I worked for the witch as well. But now, I’m guarding this palace. If you need food, I’ll do my best, and if you want to loot the place, I don’t think I can stop you, but I’m not going to see it burn.”
He swept off his hat, revealing the full glory of his wild, coarse black hair. “That was quite an answer, Miss. I just asked your name.”
“Jeanne du Bariel,” she said, one hand on her hip and the other holding her rake. “We met the other day when the Witch began to set her plans into place. I’d never forget your ugly mug.”
“Madame du Bariel! I beg your pardon.” He dropped off the saddle to his surprisingly nimble feet. “Did the witch ask you to defend the palace?”
“No. She asked me, not long ago, who would rule when the palace fell,” Jeanne said. “She wanted the palace to fall.”
“And you don’t?”
“If you’re here to lecture me about all that’s wrong with this place, I just don’t want to hear it right now,” Jeanne said. “I know all that. I’ve been there on the ground, giving out potions for syphilis and croupy cough and everything else.”
“I wasn’t going to lecture you,” he said. “But you are being a little bit defensive, and it makes me think I ought to poke around in that palace of yours.”
“I don’t care,” Jeanne said. “I just don’t think we should burn it, that’s all.”
Merry looked down at her, being nearly a foot taller, and she stood firm with her rake, but after a minute she started to feel like maybe he could see deeper into her than she liked.
“Well, go on,” she said, giving some of the sticks in the fire a shove for no reason.
She was the King’s Favorite at one time. Merry looked at the young woman with tendrils of blonde hair falling out of the scarf that tied it back, and the sweat on her brow. I’d never have thought. But then, she is still very beautiful. She probably thinks I’m an ogre coming ‘round to pester her. But what’s she hiding? It’s something, all right.
Could it be that…
“You know, my mam would say that arrogant people do the right thing half of the time, but it’s always the first half,” Merry said. “Then, you’d better watch out.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jeanne said. “I’m not answering any damned riddles.”
“Well, the first half is where they get everyone on their side,” Merry said. “But once they’re basking in that, they have to serve their own ends. And the person who once seemed good now seems…like they’ve tricked you. But it takes time for everyone to open their eyes to it.”
Jeanne hesitated. “You sound a tiny bit insane.”
“I might be.”
“You’re talking about the Witch,” she said. “Well, tell me, then, if you think that’s true, why are you working for her?”
“I’m not quite working for anyone,” he said. “It’s easy to infiltrate something that was never organized to begin with. I don’t think it’s right, what was going on in the palace and the city. But then I don’t think it’s right to kill the king and enchant the queen either. The poor things have just been trying to follow the path laid out for them.”
“What could we do, then?” Jeanne asked.
“I sent the King and Queen to the Wicked Revels,” he said. “For safety. I guess we’ll see, but why don’t you just keep watching over the place? You seem to have a good head on your shoulders.” He met her eyes, somewhat on accident, and quickly got back on the horse, tipping his hat.
Jeanne threw down her rake. “The Witch caused the blizzard that killed the crops,” she confessed. “And—I helped her. I helped her… She said it was for the best, but I don’t think that it was.”
“Ah!” His eyes widened. “If that’s true, then…my mission might go beyond my present business.”
“Sir, I don’t know who you are, but maybe you can help me set things right again.”
“I’m glad you think so. It seems we’re of like mind, so I certainly will try,” Merry said, and selfishly, he was happy he got to spend more time in the presence of the fair maiden with the rake and the apron.
Chapter Nine
Augustus
We filled our plates with faery cuisine such as my ancestors might have eaten: joints of meat, hearty bread, mashed roots, berry tarts and desserts made with honey, mead and wine. Even as we were eating the dancers came around and tried to pull us away from our food and into their merrymaking.
Rose hardly ate; she clapped to the music, her feet tapping. “Augustus, do you want to dance?” She leaned toward me, half-drunk, her hair falling loose, and she was so intoxicating herself that I didn’t need to touch my wine.
“I’m not sure I’m very good at this sort of dancing,” I said. “I’d rather do other things to you.”
“Later,” she said.
“Later? Do you think the rules no longer apply?”
She looked at me and then she looked at the dancers. As soon as she met eyes with them, they started beckoning her. “Come, little human queen, come and dance!” Some creature in the form of a furry wildcat ducked under the tablecloth where we were eating and rubbed her knees. “Dance the night away, little queen,” it said in a squeaky voice from beneath us.
“I think…they do not apply!” she said, flying out of her chair and into the fray.
She was right, of course. She no longer wore the vine that I could control her with. This was not our court and these certainly weren’t our people, and anything that happened here would be as true as a dream. The revelers rarely came to our world except to dance at the Ball de Anon and see plays and operas, that was the sort of fun they were after.
I wondered what I would do in a world with no rules. The thought should have been enticing, but this dance didn’t suit me any better than my own court.
What would I see in the Waters of Truth? Would I be tinkering at my forge and settling in
with my library? Gardening? Making maps? Laying stonework? Hunting?
Or something else…
I looked at Axel, throwing down my napkin. “Help me go after her and let’s put her in her place.”
“As you desire,” Axel said, but his expression had also shifted since we arrived in the Wicked Revels. He had always been loyal and played along with the court, even if he thought us ridiculous, but now his elven haughtiness came to the fore. It was just like the day we first met him, before the Witch cursed him so he could only take his pleasure in Rose and myself. His eyes studied me as if he was assessing me for the first time.
He had captivated us both from the day we met him, and it struck me all at once that the Witch had given us a great prize when she bound him to us. Otherwise, he might have left, where I’m sure many an elven maiden mourned his departure.
Rose danced and skipped through the crowd, taking the hand of one handsome gentleman and then another, each of them daring to cross her path for just a moment before she danced to the next, now taking the hands of a goblin girl. They spun around and then she saw me in pursuit. The goblin girl pointed her toward the woods, and Rose ran down a dark path, laughing.
“Look at her, Axel! What insolence!”
“She’s beautiful,” he said, like he couldn’t help himself.
Of course, she was beautiful. More beautiful, I thought, than she had ever been.
I ran after her, Axel just behind me, as Rose ran down a narrow, curving path through the forest that seemed alive and hungry. The plants and trees of the Wicked Revels were not silent sentinels, but willing participants. In the shadows, faeries drank nectar from the lush flowers; girls were tangled in vines, lifted and spread to be claimed by men in horned masks. We passed one tree that seemed to almost fully encapsulate a woman within its trunk as if it had grown around her, her hands caught in its branches, the lower half of her body absorbed by the trunk. She shivered and moaned in desire, unaware that we were watching.
The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty Page 33