However, she’d lacked purpose since being exposed and cast out from her position as queen. She’d soon discovered, though, that her official status as a pariah involved a much softer fall from grace than she had expected. She’d become invisible again to the king. Normal men and women continued to look up to her, though. In dark hallways, or while elbow to elbow in the kitchen chopping vegetables, they whispered seditious thoughts to her about the unholy alliance of Magnus and Gloriatrix. They secretly praised the mater for her reign as queen, however fraudulent it had been. For a time, she dismissed their heresies and held on to her anger toward Lila, feeling used because of her unwitting complicity in the queen’s act of genocide. Then, as the days drifted on, and Magnus acceded further to the demands of Menos, even going as far as to declare his own queen a traitor when her crimes were still very much in question, Lowe started to take these whisperers seriously. When one of the loyalists had told her of a meeting of like minds and souls, Lowe had known that she must attend.
Brock bowed. “Mater Lowelia, you honor us by being here.”
“There is nowhere else to be,” she replied. “The city is buried under piles of shite and sin.”
Those assembled took their seats as she spoke.
“Now,” said Brock, glancing with pride at their guest. “Let us discuss how to reclaim our city.”
Disappointingly, if predictably, the formality and excitement of the clandestine meeting soon degenerated into protests of rage and aimless threats against the Iron menace. Lowelia remembered these kinds of spiraling arguments that led to the center of nowhere from her days dealing with sages and watchmasters, all of whom had had very conflicting ideas on how to execute a war. What were these people doing? What did they hope to accomplish? Talking in a basement wasn’t a productive use of her or anyone else’s time. After a few sands that felt to her like hourglasses, Lowelia stood and slapped her fist into her palm. “I hear a lot of talking, but we are not building a road to doing.” Her audience cringed, but no one replied. “Our city is now filled with villains, criminals, cannibals, and thieves. Our queen, the one whose role I was blessed to play, the one who saved us from certain enslavement, would never have allowed such a travesty to come about.”
“What can we do but talk?” a frustrated, heavy-set man asked and threw his hands up in defeat.
Lowelia punished him with a scowl, and he looked down at the floor. She considered long and hard what to tell these people. She assessed their fitness, spirits, and pride, and found each of them sufficient, except for the man who’d so readily accepted his uselessness. He would have to go before she said anything more. She tipped her head to burly Brock, who worked nights upstairs as tavern enforcer and was familiar with the body language of his superiors; he hefted the struggling man up and out of the room. After a moment, Brock returned and sat down, huffing. Lowelia allowed a beat or two of threatening silence to pass, a trick she’d learned in council.
“Does anyone else share his attitude?” Murmurs and headshakes indicated no. “Cowards are not welcome at my table, so I shall assume none of you will ever voice reservations again. We are at war, my countrymen. In the South. In our very homes. War can be seen on every horizon. What can we do? The answer is simple: We can prepare. We can arm ourselves in the shadows. We can await the return of the true guardian of Eod, she who smote the Iron City with the fury of nature herself.” Lowelia paused, panting in passion, and her eager audience leaned in as if it sensed what was coming. “Our queen is coming home.”
“We’ve heard the rumors,” said one poised older woman with dark skin and cropped hair like a soldier. Wearing a pale gown and gloves, she looked quite fancy for a revolutionary, though who was Lowe to judge? “What have you heard, matron?”
“You ask the right question. Ms…?” Lowelia waved her hand, fishing for a name.
“Miss Abernathy. No mister worth mentioning. Dorothy will do.”
“Dorothy,” repeated Lowelia, and the two women smiled, perhaps recognizing a familiar determination or darkness in the mater.
“And the answer to my question?” asked Dorothy.
“I’ve heard the voice of the queen, and she tells me she is even now making for Eod,” Lowe hissed. “She is not alone, but brings with her an army.”
The grouped gasped and exclaimed as one. “An army?”
“Yes,” replied Lowelia. “Queen Lila intends to march into Eod and demand, through a show of military force, if necessary, an audience with Magnus. However, she cannot breach the gates of the city on her own, not without causing terrible casualties on all sides. In fact, she swears that nary a man, woman, child, or even housecat will be harmed so long as she needn’t break down the gates. Whatever rumors you may have heard—and I once struggled with such doubts myself—she is not an enemy of life. If she and Magnus are to meet peacefully, someone will need to let her and her forces into the city.”
Awe, shock, and fear spread like a pox through her listeners; their complexions grew pale, and some bit their nails and twitched with electric thoughts. Dorothy and Brock remained the most composed.
Tapping her chin thoughtfully, the graceful Dorothy asked, “From where did the queen get her army? She couldn’t have hired mercenaries, as they’d be more interested in the Iron Queen’s bounty.”
“From the Arhad, I’ve been told,” replied Lowe.
“Impossible,” spat Dorothy, losing her composure. Lowe traced the woman’s anger—for Miss Abernathy was brown of complexion, like the desert wanderers—to some detail of her ancestral or personal history. Dorothy continued, “The Arhadian warriors would never bow to the will of a woman, not even a queen.”
“Miss Abernathy—”
“Dorothy.”
“Dorothy,” continued Lowe. “When I was placed on the throne of Eod, the queen left in my care a handful of far-speaking stones for use in case of emergency. I never heard from her during that time, or for some time after. I kept them in my nightstand, however, out of a fool’s hope that she would one day reach out to me to say…” Lowe stalled on a thought of what she’d wanted to hear from Lila: I am sorry. I am grateful. I am proud of you. I forgive us both. It was all a fantasy. Lowe resumed speaking. “To say that she’d survived the unmaking of Menos and that she was well. Then, finally, the Sisters Three themselves sent me a sign not even a blind woman could miss. Last night, only an hourglass after I’d learned of this meeting and settled into bed, one of the stones spoke. Its message burned so hot that it singed the wood of the drawer in which it was kept—the smoke was what woke me. I could hear only so much; if you’re familiar with far-speaking magik, you’ll know that unless you catch the speaker right at the moment of communication, the message will already have been recorded, and you won’t be able to say anything in return. So I listened, with my ears and all my heart, and this is what the stone said…”
Coughing herself awake from a deep sleep, Lowe realizes there’s a fire and throws herself out of bed. She quickly notices, though, that it’s a small fire; only her squat two-drawered dresser appears to be under threat. Smoke puffs from the cracks: her papers, knitting implements, and even the picture she was never able to tear up and throw away of Euphenia’s child have almost certainly already been reduced to ash. The stones! The far-speaking stones are in there, too! she realizes. Lowe braves a grab at the hot metal handle, fans away a rush of sooty breath, and then bats down flames with an empty pillowcase in order to see what remains to be salvaged. There, lying in a nest of scorch marks and ashes like the egg of a mystical bird of fire, glows a far-speaking stone. It pulses while the other stones cluster around like stillborn eggs with nothing to say. Whoever is speaking through this stone is doing so with so much power and conviction that its message will not be unheard. Risking a second and more severe burn to her already red fingers, Lowe reaches into the drawer, hisses as she touches the sizzling crystal quail egg, and then raises it to her ear. Contact opens the channel, and the queen’s voice floods her head. She nearly
collapses from the twist of joy and shock.
“I come to face the judgment of both my husband and my Fates. I come from the desert bringing an army of a thousand Arhadian women and men strong—and it will have grown larger still when you and I at last meet again. We are ready to face the defilers of our world. If you do not crack the gates for us, we shall pound on them until they are opened. Justice cannot hide, and neither shall I.”
“A thousand Arhadian women and men strong…” puzzled Dorothy. Along with her companions, she pondered the dangerous unknowns implicit in the queen’s proclamation—or threat.
“That’s what she said.” Lowe nodded, then stopped rubbing the blisters on her fingers. “I would never mistake her words. I have learned that our queen is a lady of action. If she says that she marches to Eod with an army of Arhadians—as absurd as that sounds—then roll out a grand carpet and ready your minds for a parade of the absurd. We have already crossed the Feordhan, in that regard. Riffraff and Iron rats are everywhere. She will not stand for it: this city is as much her creation as Magnus’s. And there are things that you do not know about our king...imperfections in his seeming flawlessness…”
Before the king had left Eod to march against his brother, Lowe had heard horrid screaming and grunting coming from the royal wing. She and Erik had shooed all eavesdropping servants away, and then she herself had been shooed away by Erik. The next day, she had been secretly summoned by a mysterious fleshbinder to a cold recess of the palace, a wing no one went these days, where no one would look for a woman beaten and shamed. Sickened by the memory, Lowe remembered her first sight of the battered queen. Oh, my fair queen! What has he done to you? What has that monster done? For the woman before her had been nigh unrecognizable. In a room dank with sweaty fear and nauseating ointments, Lila had lain stiffly on a bed, breathing quietly, her face so shattered that she looked like a swollen victim of plague. Lowe had fallen, then crawled, to the bedside and wept for sands, while the queen—despite her condition—reached out a bandaged hand and stroked her hair. It was this memory that had allowed her to forgive Lila for manipulating her, to forgive her for everything.
“Magnus has also committed sins,” said Lowe after a long pause. “Sins of the darkest kind, for which he must answer. When the queen returns, she will do so as a ruler who does not bow to men, the Iron Queen, or the backward ideals of a society that treat women like cattle.” Dorothy’s face formed the perfect mask of rage. Lowelia looked at her for a moment, then at each of the other men and women in the room. “In telling you this secret, I have made you all complicit in it. You have signed yourselves to Lila’s service. I know the feeling of being trapped by the machinations of espionage. I also know the feats that even the smallest hands can accomplish. Look at what I, handmaiden to the queen and a mater, have managed to accomplish. Think of what wills like mine—working wills, honest wills—could achieve working in concert with one another.”
Lowelia fell silent, allowing her sermon to sink into the spirits of her listeners. She could tell they were listening in the manner of those confronted by fundamental and important questions of freedom, worth, and life. They looked at their hands, the floor, the ceiling. They looked beyond the physical to mysteries, histories, and fears. They looked inside themselves for glimmers of steel that would echo the flash held in the gaze and soul of the woman who stood up and awaited their answer. When at last they found that voice within themselves, the calling to be greater and not lesser, they looked to Lowe, rose, and then pledged their loyalty to the values of Eod—the ones now forgotten by its king. Dorothy and Brock were the first to rise and salute Lowe with the fist of the Silver Watch. They were also the first to offer input on how to proceed.
“We’ll need weapons and information,” said Brock.
“I have a connection I can call upon for those,” replied Lowelia.
“We’ll need disguises,” said Brock.
Dorothy snorted. “You won’t find a better seamstress in Eod. Tell me what you need, and I’ll have it to you by tomorrow.”
“What we need, yes…” said Lowe, and gestured at them to sit. This assemblage, small though it was, boasted tailors, carpenters, bruisers, bakers, earthspeakers, and couriers. And this was not the only band of loyalists conspiring behind closed doors. They would need to find the others, to amalgamate many fragmented groups into one large body. Imagine, she reflected, how many skills and tools such a collective of artisans, working sorcerers, civil servants, and likely even a few soldiers would possess. There must be at least a hundred such rebels. A small number, yes, but enough to start an uprising.
VII
Again, and as with every sand since a chance encounter in the hallway that morning, Beatrice’s pale ghost followed Alastair through Eod’s starry halls. Had she been waiting for him? As a shadowbroker, and a man who’d lived and cheated death for many hundreds of years, Alastair believed he’d mastered the art of stealth, but he could not seem to shake the woman. He took the mustiest paths and darkest hallways he could find. He dashed through crowds, and once tried to lose her by plunging into the raucous lunchtime crowd at the White Hearth. But every time he turned around, he saw the same white head still bobbing behind him.
In the Court of Ideas, he’d played a game of masks and stolen the overcoat of a scholar who’d been paying too much attention to his books to notice the offense. Then he’d joined a huddle of sages and bullshitted his way convincingly through a conversation on the fluctuation of northern etheric currents. Alas, Beatrice’s white countenance emerged from behind a bookcase, and he threw off his disguise and elbowed his way through the knot of learned men. The maze of bookcases should have provided ample opportunities for evasion, but however much he tried, he could not free himself of his pursuer. Every time he looked over his shoulder, there she was.
Bloody Kings! What sort of hunter was she? Most Menosian ladies were devious, but vapid; they were like pretty snakes—venomous, powerful, to some degree cunning, but with the tiniest of brains. Yet this wife of an Iron Sage was determined and clever; she was of a breed much closer to that of Gloriatrix. She would simply not give up. Feeling the heat, running out of options in a palace that seemed to be growing increasingly smaller, Alastair darted into one of the many indoor arboretums. Shining with green life, it boasted cloisters twined with crystal flowers, splashing brooks, and many other distractions that might throw a pursuer off the scent. Tucking himself in amongst a row of tall, lanky hedges, he closed his eyes; smelling the rich soil, he wished he could sink into the stone, that the earth would swallow him entirely. Make him disappear. He was not practicing magik, only trying to remain so still and silent that he would go undetected even by the sharpest senses.
Rustle. Rustle.
“Hello.”
Fuk. Creaking open his eyes, he saw that with one lean, pale hand, Beatrice had parted the bushes that screened him. She stared at him curiously. “Are you going to come out? It seems a bit tight in there for two.”
Alastair settled himself in more firmly, gripping branches. “What do you want?”
“To talk, you fool. Now come out of there.”
He dawdled, but Beatrice—having none of it—with the same fiendishly strong, icy hand that had pushed aside a row of greenery, yanked him out of the hedges. She used a little too much force, and Alastair tripped and rolled on the grass. Beatrice swept over to the downed fellow. “I do apologize. Sometimes, I do not know my own strength,” she said.
Alastair crawled away from her kindness. Up close, he could sense more than strength beneath the white skin of this woman. Her sickly sweet smell—apricots and overly dried sweet things—and her glimmering, edged beauty were obfuscations that hid a darkness within her flesh. As he so often lied himself, Alastair knew how to spot deceit, and part of the lady El, the part that looked like a woman, was false. Alastair glanced around for other people, and noticed the garden was empty.
“We are alone,” she said and strode forward.
�
�You’re not normal! I shall—I’ll tell someone!” he shouted, hoping a threat would scare her off.
“Oh shut up, you spineless shite of a man,” she hissed. He tried to leap to his feet, but she moved in a smoky ruffle of shadows and spinning silks, and somehow restrained his arm with fingers that had become icy daggers. “I was trying to be polite, but there’s no reason for that now, I suppose. Running away! Ha! That was always your way, though, wasn’t it, Alastair? Is that your real name? It’s certainly not the one I recall. Another lie, of which you’ve told plenty.”
Beatrice dragged him to a stone bench, around which flocked birds that had flown in through some hole in this deceptively sunlit place. The creatures actually turned their small heads and cheeped in fear at Beatrice before fluttering off. Alastair wished he, too, had wings, and was suddenly dizzyingly afraid. What was happening? He contemplated rolling the dice with Charazance for a translocation, but Beatrice, although violent and powerful, didn’t seem to want him dead. Instead, like an angry mother scolding her boy, Beatrice forced him to sit and kept her hand upon his forearm—bruising the flesh, clamping off all blood to his forearm and hand. What was she? Alastair dared not ask. A speck later, she surprised him by releasing her grip.
“I shall let you go, but know that you cannot run from me,” she warned. “Indeed, running only makes the fire rise in my veins. If you antagonize me, force me to hunt, you will bring out the side of my nature that knows no restraint. I caution you against ever meeting my shadow.” She turned upon him a shivering glare. “A second warning for you, man who has lived for hundreds of years, man who”—she waved her hand, her claw, through the air around him as if grasping the unseen—“is not entirely mortal. Do not try your lies, tricks, or whatever magik to which you have bound yourself on me. I shall tolerate none of it.”
Alastair nodded and risked her wrath by shuffling to the other end of the bench. Carefully and with a hunter’s focus, she watched the man reposition himself. “Why so shy? Don’t you recognize me?”
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 46