Moontide 03 - Unholy War

by David Hair

  ‘Good,’ Cera muttered. ‘Viva Elena.’

  ‘Elena Anborn is a nasty little snake. I’d hate to have to track down the squinny bitch myself.’

  ‘Elena is a good person,’ Cera retorted. ‘You didn’t know her as I did.’

  ‘The Hel I didn’t! I offered her a maniple command once – thought she’d fit right in. One of my girls thought so too: took her for a saffy and tried to win her over. Got her fingers burned – literally.’

  ‘You have female soldiers?’ Cera asked, mostly to change the subject.

  ‘Thought that’d get your attention,’ Staria said dryly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, please.’ The Estellan woman scanned the room, then dropped her voice. ‘Just a few dozen girls, cooks mostly, but some can use crossbows and knives pretty well. Plus I’ve a couple of women magi with a taste for cunni juice. I’m not one, in case you’re wondering, but I’m around ’em enough to spot them.’

  Cera flushed. ‘You don’t know me either.’

  Staria gave her a faintly sympathetic look. ‘I know the way of it, girl: you’ve got to pretend like most of your sort do. Men still rule the world, and it’s damnation for anyone who doesn’t want to spread for ’em. I sometimes wonder how Kore or whoever could be so cruel as to make mooners and saffies.’

  Cera swallowed. ‘But I’m not—’

  ‘The signs are there, if you know what to look for. Most don’t see ’em, though, luckily for you. Even Gyle doesn’t have you worked out. He can sniff out a plot in a trice, but he’s emotionally blind: that’s why he thinks he can seduce a girl whose parents he murdered. That’s his weak spot.’ She smiled grimly. ‘There, see: I’ve given you a gift, little Queen: your enemy’s weakness.’

  Cera tried to back out of the conversation. ‘Really, I don’t …’

  Staria silenced her with a gesture. ‘It’s in the way you make eye-contact. You are guarded with everyone – naturally shy, I’d say. But with men, your barriers stay up, whereas a part of you wants to open up to another woman. You don’t trust men; they scare you to be around, but you believe in your heart that another woman wouldn’t hurt you.’ She slurped her ale. ‘That’s your weakness. Another gift: I am generosity itself tonight.’

  Cera thought about that. ‘Thank you, I suppose.’

  ‘I feel for you, little Queen. If you weren’t so obviously imprisoned here, I would offer to take you away and surround you with people who understand. It’s a hard life, but not without rewards. I have many children like you, mooners and saffies from all over: lost souls who honestly believe that they are cursed, who would give all their hearts to be normal but who cannot change their own nature. Some are angry, some belligerent; some try to hide their difference and others flaunt it, but all share the fundamental sadness of the outcast.’

  The mercenary’s voice had taken on a reflective lilt, but then she leaned back with a grim smile. Symone, Gyle’s effeminate red-headed mage-agent, had stolen into the hall and taken a seat at the end of the lower table. ‘Now that one I’m sure even you have worked out.’

  ‘He’s new.’

  ‘Mmm. “Symone Fontaine”, or so he calls himself. But see, I know the only magi Fontaines, and he’s not one of them.’ Staria glanced sideways at Cera. ‘The magi are a small community, and while the Dorobon are insular, I’ve been all over and I know who’s who. That kid is using a made-up identity.’

  Cera peered at the young mage with renewed interest. Symone showed up after Octa’s strike against Gyle. And yes, he is strange …

  ‘Mightn’t he be a bastard? Someone’s well-kept secret ’til now?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Staria scratched her nose, then chuckled. ‘With that one, I’d be more inclined to believe it’s really a woman under those robes, one who got pregnant to a mage and is now pretending to be male.’ She snickered.

  Cera had to think about that. ‘Pregnancy manifestation? Gyle told me of it – he said if I got pregnant by Francis, I might gain mage-powers for a time.’

  ‘Often it’s permanent, especially if you’re bred by a pure-blood,’ Staria replied. ‘But no one ever trains pregnant women so they seldom amount to much.’ Her eyes went back to Symone. ‘Like that wet fish of a maybe-male.’

  But Cera’s mind had gone racing on. Mater Lune, why hadn’t I thought of it before … Portia!

  Hytel, Northern Javon, on the continent of Antiopia

  Jumada (Maicin) 929

  11th month of the Moontide

  Portia Tolidi staggered from the privy, moaning softly with each step. It wasn’t just the physical discomfort, though that was bad enough. Her stomach was so taut that she thought the skin might split at any minute. Everything itched and ached. Her hips were stiff and her lower back throbbed and her breasts were a torment of stretched skin. Her belly and breasts were marred with silvery marks despite the creams the women applied several times a day, and when she looked in mirrors, her face was far from the porcelain perfection demanded by her uncle and her king.

  What will my fate be when I’m just another used-up woman, surrounded by younger, fresher girls busy thrusting their way up?

  As if the torments of her body weren’t bad enough, her other senses were a torture. Her eyes were fizzing, blurring her vision, scents she was certain she shouldn’t have been able to smell assaulted her from across rooms and down corridors: intimate and imperceptible smells that revealed a person’s identity before they entered the room, as well as what they’d eaten, who and what they’d touched, and what they’d been doing. And her hearing was filled with painful sounds, as if her eardrums had been tightened past enduring.

  I can’t stand this. I can’t take it, not any more …

  She was six months gone and entering the final phase – the third trimester, the midwives called it. She stumbled to her bed, missed and fell to the floor. She got to her knees, groaning, and tried to summon the energy to haul herself up. Her maids were nowhere to be seen, as usual, but she didn’t care because she hated them seeing her like this.

  They’re spies for him anyway, the vicious little leeches.

  She fought for purchase on the rug, got her right leg under herself and pushed, managing to crawl forward and get her stomach onto the mattress. She stayed there, just propped there, panting.

  Someone touched her hips and she gave a small shriek and threw a panicked look back over her shoulder. She met her uncle’s leering, beady eyes. His unhealthy skin was flushed and he exuded alcohol from every pore as he gripped her hips and ground his crotch against her bottom.

  ‘Uncle, please,’ she begged. ‘I’m not—’

  His face was uncaring as he fumbled with her skirts, trying to hike them up and bare her to him. She let herself fall forward and rolled over, tears blurring her stinging eyes. Not this again. I can’t take it any more. ‘Uncle, I’m sick!’ she cried.

  He glowered down at her. ‘Would you refuse the king, eh? Would you refuse your mighty husband?’

  Alfredo got like this sometimes, overcome with a raging jealousy of Francis, or of whomever he’d sent her to. But she’d had no one but him inside her since she’d returned to Hytel. ‘He wouldn’t want me like this,’ she snapped back, her disgust for once overcoming the terror her uncle held over her. ‘Please – I just vomited.’

  He responded by unbuckling his breeches and letting them drop. ‘Come here!’

  ‘Uncle! I’m begging …’

  ‘I’ll teach you to beg! Come here!’ She tried to crawl away, but everything hurt, then he shouted, ‘COME HERE!’ and suddenly something snapped inside her.

  She lashed out, her vision swimming as brilliant light smeared across her eyes. Something uncoiled from the fug of colours, a vivid emerald, then dirty browns, and something like a tentacle or maybe an arm with splayed fingers reached out while she howled her hatred at him. The limb of dark light seemed to take root in his groin and it felt like she was gripping his erect tool, and, more than that, it felt as if she w
as remembering every single time it had been inside her, every penetration, and she hated it, wanted it gone, wanted it to shrivel and wither and die, like a branch, ripped off of a tree. A vast rush of energy seemed to flow between her and her uncle, almost as if they shared one body, though her mind remained free of his, to her vast relief, because all of a sudden she could dimly sense a wave of twisted urges and desires and she knew it would engulf her if she let it.

  Then her mind cleared, as if the impossibility of what she was experiencing had caught up with her, and she collapsed and fell to the ground, completely spent, utterly exhausted …

  … until she turned, as if subconsciously drawn to look, and she stared, aghast, at what she’d done.

  Alfredo Gorgio was no longer a man. He was a eunuch.

  He was yowling wordlessly as he stared at his bared groin where his cock had withered to an inch-long twisted stick of dried skin and his scrotum had shrunk almost to nothing. He had clearly endured agony, but there was no blood, nothing that was going to immediately kill him. His face was trying to deny the evidence of his eyes.

  ‘Portia …’ His voice trailed off. ‘You … You …’ He tried to speak, failed.

  One of Rykjard’s magi had tried to tell her something about gnosis in the wives of magi: Pregnancy Manifestation, he’d called it, but she’d not listened – she hadn’t seen any reason to. But now …

  Portia felt an incredible surge of potentiality.

  Sweet Mater Lune! I’ve become a mage!

  Alfredo reached down to his belt, hanging around his ankles, fumbling until he’d unsheathed his dagger. He brandished it at her and screamed, ‘You have to fix me! You have to fix me!’

  She swiped her hand across the space between them and without even touching it sent the knife spinning away. It was as if she had extra limbs, strong, puissant limbs that only she could see. Her vision was clearing now, and her other over-extended senses too. She felt like this discharge of power had lanced a boil of energy. She was filled with the sudden desire to see her torturer choking, and instantly her power – her gnosis – gripped him like a ragdoll and slammed him against the wall. She pinned him there while she squeezed, watching as his eyes bulged and he squeaked and wept for mercy.

  She dropped him. I owe you one thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight deaths, one for every time …

  One death wasn’t enough.

  ‘You will never touch me again.’

  He lay there weeping and looking at his ruined body. Then he looked up at her incandescent face and started pleading, ‘Please, Niece – please.’

  How sweet his helpless desperation sounded.

  ‘You will never touch anyone ever again.’

  He tried to rally, and threatened, ‘I’ll have you burned as a witch! I’ll have you hanged, drawn and quartered! I’ll have you stoned! I’ll—’

  ‘When revealing your state would see you laughed from the city?’ She stalked towards him and started down at him. ‘You would become an object of scorn and ridicule – for the rest of eternity! I think not, Uncle.’ She kicked him, flexing this wonderful power. The impact bent him in two. ‘Do you recall, Uncle, how you laid claim to me from the moment I was old enough to be used? Well, now I lay claim to you, you perverted pezzi di merda! You belong to me now, and so does everything you own!’

  Every indiginity she had ever endured was the price she’d paid for this moment, and suddenly anything at all was possible. She trembled with the fear and pleasure of the moment, as exquisite as any she’d ever experienced. It filled her with a longing to share it.

  ‘I want paper, Uncle. I need to write to my Sister-Queen.’

  Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia

  Jumada (Maicin) 929

  11th month of the Moontide

  Cera Nesti had to blink furiously to keep her eyes dry as she clung to her little brother, though he wasn’t so little any more – though Timori was only nine, he was almost her height now. But there were unfriendly eyes here and she didn’t want to show them how desperately afraid she was for him.

  ‘Darling, where have they been keeping you?’ she whispered, one eye on Gurvon Gyle, openly watching from the balcony above. She looked around the old nursery garden, where she, Solinde and Timori had used to play all day, and stroked his straw-coloured hair.

  Timori nestled against her. ‘I don’t know – not far. I can hear the market criers. They’re funny, I like them.’ He imitated their calls, giggling, and she filed away the information: that was the water-sellers’ call.

  ‘They’re going to let me see you more often,’ she whispered. ‘Magister Gyle has promised.’

  As much as one can trust anything that snake might say.

  Timori looked doubtfully up at the grey-clad mage. ‘He visits once a week but he doesn’t say much. He treats me like a child.’

  Cera smiled at that. Timori Nesti was rightful king of Javon and knew his station. He looked underfed, though; he was too skinny, and there was a fragility about him that she didn’t like. He’d had to deal with the murder of his father and mother and one of his older sisters; the violence might not have touched him physically, but she could almost see the emotional wounds.

  ‘Look, I’ve brought you a new doublet,’ she said brightly, to cheer him up.

  But it was blue. ‘I want a violet one, like your dress,’ he admonished her. ‘We are La Viola, Sissy – we always have to remember that.’

  ‘Sometimes we have to pretend,’ she whispered. ‘Like I do.’

  ‘You married him,’ Timori said, his voice accusatory, his big eyes upset.

  Oh dear. ‘I did it so they wouldn’t hurt you, my dearest – only for that. I know you understand.’

  Timori looked away. ‘Maddy and Symone say that you marrying him only proves that you’re—’ He bit his lip. ‘You shouldn’t have married him, Cera. It wasn’t worth it.’

  She seized his head in her hands and turned it up so she was looking straight into his eyes. ‘Timi, I would marry Shaitan himself if it kept you alive. Everything I have done and everything I will ever do will be for you. You are the real king – the one the people are longing for.’

  ‘Symone says they’re going to elect a new king, then they’ll cut off my head.’ He was just a little boy again, and his voice was tremulous.

  Cera squeezed him close. ‘You shouldn’t believe what they tell you, Timi. They are all liars.’ When she was sure he’d taken that in, she glanced around surreptitiously. ‘Tell me about Maddy and Symone.’

  ‘Maddy looks after me. She’s nice. She gives me sweets.’ He giggled. ‘Though she eats more of them than I do.’

  ‘And Symone?’ she asked.

  Timi’s nose wrinkled. ‘He’s mean to me. That’s him there.’

  Cera turned and saw the slender mage in the middle distance, leaning against a wall, examining his fingernails. When he looked up, she could almost feel the malevolence in his pale eyes. She looked past him, feigning nonchalance, though her heart was racing. She remembered what Staria had said and added her own suspicions.

  ‘I’ll tell Magister Gyle that you don’t want Symone near you,’ she told Timi.

  The little boy nodded dutifully, clearly not believing she had any sway with Gyle. She couldn’t blame him for that.

  The grey-clad mage must have got bored, for he chose that moment to descend the stairs and join them. ‘I think that’s enough,’ he said impatiently. ‘Time’s up.’

  ‘It’s only been five minutes!’ Cera protested indignantly. ‘You promised me ten!’ Timi clung to her waist as if he was prepared to fight rather than be prised away from her.

  ‘You misheard me,’ Gyle replied flatly. He clicked his fingers and Symone came forward.

  Timori stayed glued to Cera’s side as the slender young man approached, then his cheeks went white and he wriggled around behind her. Cera studied Symone’s strangely androgynous gait and her mind raced.

  The young mage extended a hand. ‘Come with me, l
ittle King,’ he said in an oily voice, the sort of voice an adult who loathed children might put on.

  ‘I don’t think I know you,’ Cera said, looking straight at him, taking in his details. He had wavy hair, thin whiskers and a narrow visage. His stance was odd: thighs pressed together, back arched and shoulders back, the way a woman of breeding might stand.

  Then she had a flash of intuition too powerful to be wrong: a year ago Elena had unmasked a shapeshifter, a legend among magi, named Coin, who could take anyone’s form, of either gender. Cera had briefly seen the shifter, chained in the tower above – but she’d thought Coin dead. She had been told so by Gurvon Gyle. Why did I ever believe anything he said? she wondered. This ‘Symone’ was Coin, of that she had no doubt. The androgynous face was a clue, but the eyes were confirmation.

  She averted her face, suddenly terribly frightened, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she gripped Timori’s hand and found the courage to breathe again. Letting him go would feel like an awful betrayal, but what choice was there?

  ‘Timi, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but they say you have to go now.’

  ‘I don’t want to! I want to stay with you!’

  ‘You must, darling.’ She bent and whispered in his ear, ‘Be brave, Timi. One day this will be over and we’ll be together again.’

  He wavered, then blurted a farewell and darted past Symone like a sparrow evading a cat. He went pelting through the garden and Symone’s face contorted in annoyance. Once again his eyes met Cera’s, but this time Cera was ready and her mask was in place. The mage scowled warily, then hurried after Timori.

  Gyle looked at Cera. ‘I want a word, Cera.’

  ‘As if I have a choice,’ Cera said, trying to sound indifferent. ‘You promised me ten minutes.’

  ‘To be brother and sister, not king and queen-regent,’ Gyle retorted. ‘Timori lives on my sufferance: the sooner you both forget the Nesti ever held the throne, the safer you will be.’