I upturn the shoe and dump the last of the water into Trickle’s head. He clamps his jaws shut to catch it and rolls it around a moment before letting it drizzle down the beard of his mane.
“Not only possible,” Trickle says, “but true. I’ve seen him myself.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I hurl Kervus away from me and whip the boot at Trickle at the same time. The shoe only bounces off the top of his mane and disappears over the lip of the building.
“What do you mean you’ve seen him?” I roar, digging my claws into the brick and hoisting myself around to push my face against the lion’s. “You’ve never told me? What is wrong with you? Where is he?”
There are only droplets of water clinging inside the lion’s mouth and he uses them to push the words out, like an unoiled tin man. “Not…up…to me.”
“Who then?” I roar. “Who has the right to keep him away?”
Kervus sputters up and bobs in the air beside me.
“The one who also made him,” Kervus says.
Truce. I drop away from Trickle and scale back over the ledge of the rooftop. Truce has kept my Bean away. He’s kept my son in his back pocket, obviously to blackmail me into becoming his Queen. Everything I thought I felt in his eyes becomes a black beach, filled with rotted thoughts of hope.
“Take me to my son,” I say, but Kervus shakes his head.
“I can not.”
“Then bring him to me.”
“I can not.”
“What can you do?” I shout. Kervus drifts closer, his fish lips spreading in an excited grin.
“I can ask you to choose me, my Queen,” he wiggles excitedly as he says it. “When your choice is made, our kingdom will lie at your feet.”
I fall back from him, gleaning through the foamy truth of what he is saying.
“Does it?” I say, and Kervus nods vigorously, his earlobes flapping.
“Yes, my heart, my Queen. Choose me and the kingdom is yours.”
I smile beneath my mask and glare down through the tunnels of my eyes at the disgusting little gargoyle.
“Then my choice is made,” I say. “Bring whoever must be brought, so I can tell you all at once. Go now and bring them, Kervus! I believe my kingdom awaits me.”
***
The gargoyles come as dark meteors, comets even, that scream across the sky. They come in every form; animals and dragons, humans and goblins—perching like huge, ugly birds around the entire lip of the building. They huddle and grunt when others get too close. They don’t want to touch or be touched. Standing in the center of the roof, I hear them breathing and grumbling all around me, the tension stretched in the air, as if a fight could break out at any moment.
Jaibu is the first suitor to arrive, landing on the roof in black silence, although his shoulders are thrown back as if he is ready to clash heads in war. Kervus flutters up like a wounded butterfly, full of teeth. He tries to land close to me, but I step away and wave him off with the swipe of one clawed hand. The gust propels him off the roof, shooting him directly between two goblin-looking gargoyles. It takes him a moment to flit back up to his spot. His smile is less confident now.
“My diamond starlight, my Queen,” Kervus begins, but Jaibu interrupts him, jutting out his broad chest. “I am here for your choosing.”
“Presumptuous of you,” Jaibu says. “Considering the company you keep.”
“So you think.”
“As I know. It’s obvious, by viewing the options here, that there is no competition at present.”
“Exactly,” Kervus sniffs.
“Are you inferring that you would be my equal?”
“No, no. Never. That would be an insult. I am your superior, of course,” Kervus says, and the gargoyle panther lunges at him. Kervus dodges Jaibu’s jaws, which crack shut like boulders pounded together. With Kervus out of his grasp, Jaibu turns on me.
“What does this creature know?” Jaibu growls. “Have you made a deal with him? Have you agreed to him?”
A squabble of grunts breaks out along the roof edge, but I keep silent, watching an immense shadow, larger than all the others, darting through the evening sky, toward my rooftop. Jaibu and Kervus follow my gaze and fall silent too. Moag swoops down and drops one mammoth, clawed foot on the rooftop. Truce slides off the gargoyle’s bodily staircase with grace.
Once deposited, the King stands in the center of the rooftop with his arms open and announces in a booming voice, “Three suitors have been accepted, and this choosing is for us all, so all of the Gargoyle brethren are welcome to attend. Speak freely, move with ease, you are all welcome to come and see if the Queen chooses to be, and if she will choose a suitor as her King.”
On the King’s words, Trickle turns off his pedestal and steps off the ledge. He blinks his great stone eyes, and I know instantly that he has been granted a reprieve from his blindness. The lion rolls onto the balls of his feet gracefully, but as he strides toward us, I see what a luxury it is for him, not only to see, but also to stretch the stiffness from his bones. His jaw opens and closes a few times, and when he takes his place, he lies on the roof with his mammoth paws folded in front of him, instead of sitting in his usual pose.
Truce opens his mouth, presumably to begin the choosing ceremony, when a scream, from the neighboring rooftop, suddenly cuts through the night. I can’t tell if it is a scream of excitement, pleasure, or pain, but it is a scream that sends a singeing bolt of lightening through my bones, because I know the voice so well. I crane my neck upward, searching for Ayla in a particular window, but the lights of The Boy’s rooms are dark now. My wings extend and in their bowl, I catch the sound of her breathing, coming from somewhere on the dark roof next door; her breath is a fast and panicked sound that puts my whole body on alert. Something is wrong.
Moag lands before me.
“Your attention, Slip. One opportunity is all—no one gets more than that. Your suitors are obligated to tell you their truth, but only here and only now,” Moag’s gaze passes dangerously over the suitors. His tone drops to a menacing growl and drags my flickering attention from the roof next door, to what he is saying to my suitors. “To fail is to be cracked wide open! I shall, even to the strongest,” Moag says, lingering on Jaibu. Then his eyes move to Kervus. “Even to the most cunning,” he says and then, to Truce, “Even to my King. So, ask your asks, Slip, with caution and ears to puzzling.”
Moag gives me one hard stare, and then the great beast jumps, ascending upward, until he is hovering over top of the roof proceedings, locked in the air directly over the King’s head. My eyes rove back to the building next door, the absence of sound grating me even more than the screams had.
Kervus wilts mid-flutter and drops down to stand on the tar. Truce pulls back his shoulders and strides across the roof, coming to stand between the two gargoyles and directly in front of me. His chin is high and his cape billows around him, as he brushes it backward. He doesn’t acknowledge the other two gargoyles, but Jaibu takes a step back, not looking down, but away, over the rooftops, as if there is something more interesting in the direction opposite his King.
“Madeline,” Truce says, tipping my chin to him with the wave of one silver finger. “I understand you’ve made your decision.”
The jaw beneath my mask hardens. I let the agitation build like a bubbling fountain inside me. Torn between aiding my past and choosing my future, it is easiest to proceed from where I stand.
“You knew that I had a son and that he was a gargoyle,” I level the hard track of my eyes on Truce. “I assume you meant to use him as a bargaining chip.”
My voice is made of more stone than I am. Truce drops his hand from me, his eyes widening in a flash of surprise that disappears as quick as lightening.
“Not at all,” he says, stepping backward, and I realize he’s not lying. Of course, he didn’t want me knowing about Bean. If I knew, I’d definitely want to stay and take his kingdom. It only makes sense that Truce will keep my child hidd
en from me, unless I choose Truce as my king. He must know I wouldn’t do it otherwise and he’s right.
“When I become Queen, I will be human again?” I ask. Truce nods with a small, affirmative rumble deep in his throat.
“As a human, I will be the recipient to a gargoyle?”
Another nod.
“As Queen, do I have a choice of who becomes my gargoyle?”
“Somewhat,” Truce says.
“Enough that it’s likely that my son could be my gargoyle?”
Truce eyes drop and his chin follows, in agreement. I can see how he didn’t expect me to put it all together and I suddenly feel more brilliant than I ever have in life or in death. As if my hands are finally wrapped around a destiny that I can really hang onto, and mold into, what I want it to be. I have my fingertips on my Bean, finally, even if it is just the ghost of a touch.
Another shout echoes from The Boy’s roof. It is low and gruff, without a specific word, but the sound resonates like anger in my ears.
“Do I have to kill you for this to happen?” I ask.
“No,” Truce answers, but his voice is so soft it is nearly an etching on the air.
“Do I have to marry you?”
“This is not a choosing,” Jaibu barks, stepping forward. I notice the way Moag dips lower to hover even closer to Truce. “This is a collection of games. This is bargaining.”
As the dark panther advances, I turn on him, ready to fight. Moag’s wings splay a little further outward and I feel the waft of them on my head. Trickle gets to his feet.
“Do you have anything to bargain with, Jaibu? Something to sway me toward choosing you?” I ask. The panther narrows his sleek eyes on me.
“Yes,” he growls, but he stops out of arm’s reach to each other. “I have knowledge. I know that this King will kill you. He’s done it before and you are nothing to him, so there is no reason for him not to do it again.”
“Wouldn’t you kill me as well?” I ask. Jaibu is brought up short.
“Not necessarily.”
“Wouldn’t it be necessary, if you wanted to rule the kingdom?”
“Only if I did not fall in love with you.”
“Do you think you could?” I ask, watching the gargoyle try to erase his sour, scowl that appears each time his gaze travels over me. I know the answer, but still wait for the lie. I’m not sure he will honor his obligation to tell the truth, even if it means being ripped to pieces by Moag.
“Anything is possible.”
“And unlikely,” I say. “You accuse me of dishonesty and games, but isn’t that what you are offering me right now?”
“Not at all,” Jaibu says. “At the moment you repel me, so it is difficult to say if I could love you. Gargoyles do not find attraction in each other, but there is no hiding the aroma of life that lingers on a Slip. I thought you’d masked yourself, but now I see that it was a particularly cunning move by our King, to create you in gargoyle form, since the sight of you is so repulsive, the majority of our brethren would never give you a second thought. But I am unique. A soldier once and a soldier now. It is why I persevered to find what was hidden.”
“A soldier,” Kervus groans. His round body burbles up to my eye level, wobbling between his tiny wings. “Ask the whole truth, my Sky Diamond. This animal would love you for your skin and nothing more. He was an executioner in life. He killed women and children, put them to death for their beliefs alone. Hardly a soldier, in the terms provided.”
“And what were you?” Jaibu snaps back. “A useless slug that molested women in dark alleys. What you did was a worse sort of murder. You killed your victim’s innocence and only left pieces of them alive. At least those I executed were my enemies and not left to linger and wonder why I’d done what I had. They were deserving of death as much as I.”
“He would love me for my skin,” I repeat the words to Kervus. “And you? What would you love me for?”
“Well, I,” Kervus stammers. Another shout from The Boy’s roof and my patience wears thin.
“What would you love me for?” I say. Kervus jolts himself to words.
“I would love you for what you are, of course, my Queen. For all that you can give to me. The sweet mercy that is at your fingertips. Yes, that, I would love you for that.”
Every word seems to pass unwillingly over his lips, his face contorting to cover the lies, to shape them into something that would sound more pleasing. But I understand in that moment what he wants and that Kervus is as much a threat as any other suitor standing before me.
“You would love me for my Queenship,” I say. The deformed little gargoyle’s chin jerks up and down as if he is trying to hold it in place. His face appears pained.
“Yes,” he says between gritted teeth. A shriek from the other rooftop is my undoing. Truce’s eyes are on me, curious and assessing.
“You’ve been given an imperfect bouquet, Madeline. Which of us do you choose?”
“Whose thorns are spaced to miss my fingers?” I ask, my attention drifting. It occurs to me that Ayla’s voice could somehow be a trick, to get my hasty decision, but it sounds so real that I am snared between getting my answers and giving them. I turn to the King. “But I haven’t asked you the most important question, Truce. Are you immune to answering truthfully?”
“No, Madeline, I am not immune,” he says. “Ask whatever you wish to know.”
“What would you love me for? My skin? My power? The kingdom? I want to know what my use is to you.”
Truce closes his eyes and the words pour in a soft whisper from his mouth.
“It is not exactly a question, but I will answer it all the same. I would love you, Madeline, for the heart that you opened up once, and gave away. I would love you enough to hope that you would find love again. I would endeavor to prove myself worthy of you, even if you choose to never give it again, all the same. I would love you because I need to. I have been loved more than I have loved. What Ariana taught me was that I have not loved someone else more than I loved myself. It’s a pleasure of the living, to love, and as much as Ariana loved me, I never had the desire to return her love to the same degree.
“But when you are near me, everything in me is drawn to you. As much as I desire my self-imposed isolation, to never risk failure again as I did with Ariana, I have no choice in this. I am helpless.
“And I believe that you are helpless as well. You need me to love you too. You need to be shown how deeply you affect a man, how incredibly lovely and loveable you are, aside from what some boy has said, or done, to make you believe differently. Don’t you see, Madeline, how love would educate us both in the most pleasurable way?”
If I could blush, I might, although I’m not stupid. I expect that Truce is trying to seduce me, to gain what he wants with empty compliments, except that not one felt empty. The depth of sincerity in his eyes is so bottomless, I feel I could drown if he hadn’t been making me hold tight to his every word. Fortunately, I am so hidden beneath my hideous mask that I can take the moment I need to regain my composure. I steel myself, separating from the warm flush that spreads through me from the cool flood of common sense.
“What I have to choose from, are three hideous monsters who are not men and who are not human,” I say. I don’t think it sounds as detached as I would like, but I continue anyway. “I think each of you deserve hell, instead of second chances. I wouldn’t choose any of you, except that one of you has something that I want.”
Kervus’s head bolts upward with an even wider, gruesome smile.
“Yes, my Queen, yes,” he whispers breathlessly. “You remember my promise. You’ll give me your favor…”
But I turn from him as a final scream, pure and loud, echoes across the gap of the buildings. It is, unmistakably, a call for help. I push past Truce, moving toward the ledge to get a better look if I can.
“Your answer, my Queen,” Kervus prompts from behind. I spin about and shout up to Moag, “Take me there!”
But Moag r
emains in position over our heads.
“Answer first,” he barks.
“Don’t you hear her? Something’s happening!”
“This is the choosing, Slip. Leave or answer? No. You must answer.”
“She could be HURT!” I shriek. “Take me now! There is no way else to get there!”
“Fly, Slip. Fly there,” Moag says. My arms drag at my sides and my heart churns ashes for only a moment before I step forward, determined to attack the King. If I can get ahold of Truce, he will be my hostage and the gargoyle will have to do whatever the King asks. The black wave of my anger engulfs me, and I know I will do whatever it takes to get to that roof and help Ayla.
And I would’ve done it, if the great stone lion hadn’t bounded forward and plucked me from the roof in his jaws.
***
We sail over the space between the buildings on Trickle’s strong, wide wings, and land hard on the opposite roof. Trickle’s jaws are jarred open and I tumble out. The entire rooftop wobbles under our graceless landing, but the crowd of gargoyles doesn’t follow. Not even Moag.
I get to my feet and hear The Boy’s confused tone from around the stairway closet and lean-to.
“What was that?”
“It felt like an earthquake,” Ayla says. Trickle is beside me, watching for my next move, but the two of us stay rooted like statues as we listen.
“It’s probably the fire department coming because you were screaming like that,” The Boy says.
“Then you shouldn’t have tried to kiss me.”
“You didn’t have to knee me for it. It’s not like you’ve never kissed me before,” he says bitterly. “I’m going to go take a look.”
“Of course you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’d rather go looking for earthquakes instead of listening to what I’m saying.”
Mercy, A Gargoyle Story Page 14