Playing to the Gods
Page 49
“Yes, Lady.”
Wafting over to him, wings folded neatly at her back, she sniffed at him. “A sickly one.” She flicked a talon against the light rays. They vanished. The Archduke looked close to death. “For some,” said the Harpy, “magic is a pretty toy. For others, vengeance. For me … it is justice.”
The same finger she had used to touch Cayden now ran down the center of Henick’s chest, clawing it open with a single incision. She removed his heart with a dainty pluck of one talon. He still lived; there was agony in his eyes, the torture of physical pain and the despairing horror of failure. He died only when she took a tentative bite out of his heart, dripping blood, still beating in her hand.
The faerie dragons whirred around each other in excitement, and moved as a single bright cloud to the fallen corpse. They began to feed.
The Harpy, however, spat out the mouthful. “Diseased filth,” she snarled. Then, more swiftly than Cade could see—but with that sweet chiming of black glass—she was in front of Emmot, flicking a talon against his cage. It vanished.
“You don’t dare!” he grated.
She took his face between her hands and used sharp white teeth to bite off his nose. She chewed while he shrieked, then spat him out, too, like chankings, and said, “No crunch. Not like bones. And no salt.”
“No blood,” the Sentinel Lord reminded her.
Still holding his face, her talons digging deep into his scalp and his skull, she inserted her long, steaming tongue into one of his eye sockets and pried out the eyeball. Something white and slithery connected it to his head; she bit down and freed it, then swallowed the eye like an oyster.
Cayden turned his head away. He was within a heartbeat of being very sick indeed, and it wouldn’t do to yark all over the stage, especially not in front of … kin. Emmot kept on screaming, the sound of it going gurgly all of a sudden. Some strange, cold portion of Cade’s mind commented that it could not be the sound of his throat filling with blood. Vampires had no blood. The screaming stopped with the grinding sound of bones being chewed. Cade dared look, and saw Emmot sprawled on the wooden stage, his throat torn out, his head no longer attached to his spine. Faerie dragons thronged about his corpse too.
With his death, the magical curtain collapsed with an almighty crash of shattering glass. There were other screams now—weak, whimpering, terror robbing everyone of breath as for the first time they looked on the Sentinel Fae and the Harpy. Cade saw Mieka and Rafe and Jeska clustered together, hanging on to each other for dear life. With them were Derien and Blye—though how they’d escaped the magic and gained the stage was something he didn’t know, and frankly didn’t care about right now. Miriuzca and Megueris had their arms wrapped around each other. Miriuzca’s face was streaked with tears. Of the three thousand or so others in the theater, Cade looked for only these, to be sure they were safe.
The Harpy glanced about, delicately picking her teeth with one claw. She seemed mildly surprised by the sight of the rows upon rows of people in the audience. Then her shining gaze found Pirro and Kaj, Thierin and Herris.
“I believe,” she said musingly, “I’d prefer to take them with us, if that suits the Seemly Court.”
“As my Lady desires.”
Unfurling her wings, she was gone as suddenly and soundlessly as she had come. The faerie dragons lingered for a moment, then collected together in a gorgeous blur and followed her.
The Sentinel Lord gestured, and the others collected Black Lightning and ascended to their mounts, still circling high above. He scanned the stage and the audience, then turned to Cayden.
“We are not the Gods,” he said sternly, his voice carrying from the wooden wall at the back of the stage to the stone barrier behind the last rows of the theater. “But, like the Gods, we are always watching.”
Always. Not just onstage, but always. From somewhere, Cade found breath to speak. “We’ll remember.”
“See that you do.” Once more he fingered the pouch where the Carkanet now resided, and Cade was astonished to see him very nearly smile. And then he was gone, soared upwards, and the black horses bellowed once and galloped silently into the starry sky.
Cade’s knees wobbled as if he’d drunk dry every tavern in Seekhaven. Blood roared in his ears, and his vision fogged around the edges. His brain stuttered almost to a stop. He couldn’t think.
{In the antechamber, all sea-green velvet and gilt, a small commotion was centered round a tall, good-looking blond boy who was talking with shy eagerness to Jeska and Rafe and Mieka. Cade approached in time to hear Jeska startle everyone in earshot by saying, “You’re more than welcome to come along tonight to our celebration at Wistly Hall, Your Highness.”
The boy, after a glance over his shoulder at his mother in the next room, as if wondering whether he mightn’t get away with it, shook his head and mumbled, “Supper and King lessons tonight with Mum.”
Megs came up in time to hear this, and laughed. “I hope she kept a good grip on the sword.” Leaning up, she gave Cayden an affectionate kiss on the lips. “Sometimes, when she’s knighting somebody wearing a uniform, there’s shreds of shoulder fringe all over the carpet after.”
Mieka snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “Damn! I forgot to ask when I’m gettin’ a sword!”
“You’re not,” Cade said firmly.
The Prince was grinning. “I’m sure we’ve a few spares someplace.”
Before Mieka could yelp his delight, Cade clapped a hand over his mouth and said, “Please, Your Highness, don’t encourage him. He’s behaving himself for now, but it won’t last. He’s handy enough with a knife, but what he might do with a three-foot blade just doesn’t bear contemplating.”
At exactly the same time, Megs and Mieka exclaimed, “You’re no fun anymore!”}
Not now, he begged. Please, not now—I don’t have time for Elsewhens, no matter what they show me—
But they were the futures that would spin from these moments, and he could not resist them. On his knees, one hand bracing himself on the smooth planks of the stage, he felt something cool against his fingertips, and closed his hand around it.
{They walked at the head of a large group through the portrait gallery, to the newest addition: an imaging of Touchstone.
The imager had spared them nothing—not a line, not a sag, not a wrinkle, not a jowl, not a single white hair. The interesting thing about the piece was that uniting each separate portrait was a second one, from an imaging taken just after their first Winterly. Painted in gray tones, just behind the rich colors of the individual portraits, were four very young men—boys, really—unaware of the journey ahead of them but recklessly eager to get started.
The Princess Regent folded the blue velvet cloth that had covered the imaging, and winked at Cayden. Toasts were raised and drunk; the artist collected his accolades. As they walked through the gallery towards the back garden where the celebratory dinner would be served, Mieka touched Cade’s elbow and slowed their pace, let the others get ahead of them.
“I’m glad we’re not them anymore. In the painting behind the painting, I mean.”
“Why? I am, too, but is there a specific reason?”
He hesitated, waiting until Cade met his gaze. “I’m glad I’m not him anymore, because I’m not sure I woulda made enough right decisions again. I did some horrible things—I was a right bastard—but I coulda made even worse mistakes. I can’t trust that I wouldn’t really mess things up, if I had to make those choices again.”
Cade shook his head. “We’d just make different mistakes. Nothing that wouldn’t lead us to right here and now anyway.”
“You’re saying that? You, with all your Elsewhens?”
Laughing softly at how incredulous he sounded, Cade nudged him with a shoulder. “I’ve discovered philosophy in my old age. And my philosophy is that whatever happens is what’s supposed to happen. So here we are.”}
Was that it? Did it really matter for nothing, all his agonizing and fear?
{What I’ve finally realized is that every year refines you in some way. You become more purely yourself, and who you are inside becomes more visible outside. Like those lines framing your mouth. They mean you smile too much, you laugh too much—but how can there ever be too much of your laughter? Those lines are proof that I make you happy. Don’t ever think they mean you’re getting older. They mean you’re mine.
He saw his hand pause, reach over to dip the pen in more blue-black ink. He felt the smile curving his lips as he reached for yet another page to continue the love letter.}
But to whom?
He had no time to chase down the feelings or any images that might have lingered, for there was another scene, another Elsewhen, crowding into his mind.
{It took effort these days to climb up to the rooftop garden. Twenty years ago, even ten, he could have bounded up the stairs, if no longer young then at least not yet old. His knee hurt, and his back. Limping slightly, out of breath as he reached the door, he paused to glance towards the far gate. He’d done what Mieka wanted. All the flowers went to the Princess’s Sanatorium. He hadn’t been sure what to do with the candles until Derien suggested lining the drive with them. Megs and Jindra and Blye and Guerys arranged them (and collected the flowers) every evening. By night, they became a double ribbon of multi-colored lights, stark emptiness between them. There were gaps where the candles had burned out. After a fortnight, very few were being left at the gate to replace them.
He went to the river side of the house, staring out over the dark water where no moonglade shone.
His fingers clenched around the withie he didn’t recall bringing with him. It would make a moonglade for him, spread sparkling silver across the water if he so chose. But Mieka wasn’t here to see it.
“I’m still here.” How he hated those words, and their bleak truth. “Ah, damn it, Mieka—why am I still here?”}
Guerys? Who was Guerys?
From somewhere very far away, he heard a shattering of glass.
Chapter 43
“Easy, now. Careful, don’t startle him.”
He had heard glass shatter. He thought so, anyways. Had they performed Window Wall? Was it over?
“Stay back, Dery. We have to bring him out of it gentle-like.”
There was a moonglade, stretching right in front of him in what was otherwise a frightening darkness.
“Out of what? What’s wrong with him?”
A moonglade. This confused him. So they had performed Window Wall, with the Boy seeing the moonglade and shattering the glass with his fists and walking out into the world. But he couldn’t remember, he didn’t remember doing any of it, had somebody pricked him with some frightful new kind of thorn without his knowledge?
“It’s all right, Quill. You’re safe now.”
He hesitated, squinting at the path of silver before him. “Did—did Jeska break the window?” But he was certain sure he’d heard it—hadn’t he?
“What is he talking ab—”
Jeska interrupted smoothly, assuring him, “Shattered to a million tinkling little shards. Lovely, it was.”
“Come on, Cade,” said Rafe, very gently. “It’s over.”
The play was over. The first time it had been performed in full, and he didn’t even remember it.
What he did remember was … was … a rainbow swirl of tiny dragons and Sagemaster Emmot and—
“All over,” Mieka said. “It’s all right. I promise.”
—and a letter such as he’d never written before in his life (never thought he was capable of writing) and the Archduke with one eye ripped out and a Harpy, by all the Old Gods, a Harpy—
“Does he even hear us? Really hear, I mean, and understand? Mieka, what’s wrong with him?”
—and huge hideous black horses and the Carkanet and Thierin Knottinger licking at his own blood and somebody named Guerys had gathered up the flowers and Mieka wanted a sword but he already had one he’d given it to Cade—no, not a sword, a knife, made of steel and silver and amethyst—
Black Lightning’s fear and hate and horror had not been conquered with more and worse. It shamed him that he had taken so long to understand that. But Mieka wouldn’t scold him. Mieka would understand. Mieka knew him. Mieka saw him with absolute clarity—arrogance and stupidity and cowardice and all—and cared about him just the same.
Cade would disappoint him sometimes, just as Mieka had disappointed him. But wasn’t the whole point of it to make each other strive to be the best of themselves, for each other? To live as if the Gods were always watching … because they were.
—but he saw guttering candles from the rooftop and an imaging both filled with color and shaded in gray and no moonglade on the river no moonglade ever again because Mieka was dead—
“Mieka!”
“Right here, Quill. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
“Moonglade—there has to be a moonglade—”
“Ah! Of course there is, Quill, don’t you see it? There it is, old love. Walk the light, just like you’re supposed to.”
He nearly sobbed as the silvery pathway deepened, became substantial—as if light itself could be touched and held. There was a moonglade. Mieka was alive. They were all alive, and Emmot and the Archduke were dead.
Because he really was safe, because he trusted Mieka and Rafe and Jeska, he pushed himself to his feet and took the first step, and then the next, onto the pathway of moonlight. With each footfall, the darkness receded. His legs felt secure and strong beneath him. Within moments he had reached them and they were all holding each other up and that was exactly how it should be. He knew without having to think about it that without them, without that moonglade, he would have been lost.
The Crystal Sparks, Hawk’s Claw, and the Stewards were milling about bemusedly onstage, mayhap looking for evidence that what they had just seen was real. Miriuzca and Megs were huddled over the King, the Queen, and Prince Ashgar.
“But it did just happen, right?” Rafe whispered.
Cade drew away and nodded. “Go take a look at Emmot and the Archduke—if you’ve the stomach for it.”
“Holy fuck,” Mieka said after a long, shocked squint. “They even took Thierin’s hand with them.”
“Just in case Her Ladyship the Harpy gets peckish on the way home,” Cade said, unable to help himself, knowing that he was punch-drunk when he nearly choked on a slightly mad giggle.
Someone—not Miriuzca or Megs—screamed, “The King! He’s dead!”
It seemed to release something in every one of the thousands left in the theater. Moans of fear, cries of loss, weeping and panicking and trying to escape—all of it quelled by Stewards who had never had to control this many people this powerfully before—
“They could probably use some help,” Rafe said.
“Not my problem,” Cade decided, and the murky haze overtook all his vision once again, and after Jeska and Mieka grabbed him to hold him upright, he knew nothing more.
* * *
“… what that old man said—one of the cleaners, and there’s a job I don’t envy, what with those bodies onstage, and washing all those stone seats after three thousand people have been scared out of their minds—and their dinners—in one direction or the other—”
“Don’t be disgusting, Mieka. What did he say?”
In a deep, gravelly voice: “‘Ain’t nobody dead up there what shouldn’t oughta be.’”
“Hmm. Pithy, succinct—a rather fitting epitaph, I’d say.”
“Probably not what the Archduke had in mind for himself.”
“Where are they going to put him? Once he’s burned and urned, I mean.”
“They’re not. Miriuzca says that both of them are going just as they are into a very deep hole in the ground. Again I quote: ‘The worms can have them, though I can’t but suppose that even worms have more di
scriminating tastes.’”
Cade gave a little snort of laughter.
“Are you awake, then? Finally?”
He opened his eyes. In point of fact, he was awake again—he’d stirred sometime before dawn, trying to turn over, to find Mieka curled up at the foot of the bed like a sleeping puppy. After the hazy thought that he really ought to nudge the Elf into a less awkward position or he’d wake with a Hellish cricked neck, he remembered nothing more until the sound of Mieka’s voice woke him again.
Jeska sat cross-legged on the other bed, and Rafe lounged in the desk chair. Mieka was still at the foot of Cade’s bed, a smile decorating his face.
“You are awake! Somebody yell down to Mistress Luta. She’s been cooking up your favorites all day long.”
Pushing himself more or less upright, he punched a couple of pillows into a backrest. “What have I missed?”
Rafe ticked off points on his fingers. “King Meredan is dead. So are nine Lordships, five Justiciars, a Minister of the Crown, three Ambassadors, and close to a hundred of the audience. Roshian hasn’t left Ashgar’s side. He is, shall we say, considerably muddle-headed—”
“How can they tell?” Cade asked sourly.
“—probably permanently,” Rafe went on, “along with a few dozen others, including the Chief Steward, who was supposed to be shielding the King. Miriuzca was named Regent last night at midnight, there being enough of the government and nobility here to propose and agree to it.”
“You’re running out of fingers,” Mieka observed.
Rafe extended his middle finger and grinned. “Miriuzca is stunned but also rather intrigued to find out that she has magical blood. Those of the audience who discovered the same are just plain stunned. Turns out that purebred Humans aren’t that common in Albeyn. Everybody’s got something of Elf or Piksey or Wizard or Gnome or whatever.”
“Including,” Jeska said, “the eight Good Brothers and Good Sisters who were there, several of whom were of Prince Ilesko’s opinion about magic.” He sniggered. “Until they found out that they have magic, too!”