by Jags, Chris
You’re welcome, Tiera thought sourly. First the peasant does the work for you, now I write your story. Is there anything you will be providing this union?
“It is a fine day,” Stallix noted, staring skyward, his spirits suddenly high.
“Indeed.” Tiera sought for an excuse to return to her chambers. This infernal stroll - with this primping peacock and a mixed entourage of his servants, hers, and an assortment of uneasily segregated soldiers - had neither been enjoyable nor worthwhile. “However, perhaps my prince would excuse me. I have duties I must attend to.”
“Of course.” Stallix waved her away. Tiera wanted to snap his delicate hand off and choke him with it. Instead, she smiled coldly and beckoned imperiously to her retinue, who were adept at reading her moods and trailed her with eyes averted.
She doubted Stallix would miss her presence. The two of them had failed to strike even the dimmest and most fleeting of sparks. This in itself infuriated her, as for all her beauty and wiles she appeared to be unable to captivate any of her intended paramours, from the lowborn to the noble.
I intimidate them, she thought savagely as she swept toward the palace, townsfolk scattering in her path. They are afraid of me. Neither of them are man enough to embrace what I could offer.
By the time she returned to the palace she was in a foul temper. She strode imperiously through the courtyard, guardsmen and stablehands alike swiftly assessing her mood and busying themselves with menial tasks of sudden importance. As she marched into her father’s court, the sight of the unkempt General Gharletto standing at insolent ease in the king’s presence did not improve her disposition. Whatever the general and his liege were discussing, it could wait.
“Have you found him?” Her strident interruption provoked a flurry of knowing glances amongst the courtiers. King Minus arched an eyebrow, his expression disapproving, but he did not berate his daughter in front of the assembly. A later, more private discussion would not be pleasant, Tiera knew, but she didn’t presently care.
“If you refer to the peasant lad,” Gharletto responded, without so much as a m’lady, “We have indeed.”
Tiera’s heart skipped a beat. “Did you bring him back? Is he dead?” She hoped the fool hadn’t executed Simon already; she needed to watch the light leave the ill-mannered buffoon’s eyes.
“No and no,” Gharletto admitted with unusual reluctance. He looked to the king, who nodded nearly imperceptibly. “There has been a development.”
“A development,” Tiera echoed coldly. Behind her, she could sense her handmaiden flinch. Farrow understood that another long, grueling day lay in store for her.
“The lad,” Gharletto tugged at his unruly, beggar’s beard. “Has proved more difficult to take than we at first imagined.”
“Difficult to take?” Tiera snapped, incredulous. “He killed a dragon! How much imagination does it take to understand that a man who killed a dragon might be difficult to take?”
The general cleared his throat loudly. Tiera recoiled theatrically from the wafting stench of his breath.
“The lad,” he continued at length, “Did return to his hometown as anticipated, but we could not have foreseen the alliance he’d forged with a monster of some sort. Between them, they wiped out nearly an entire troop of soldiers. Only two men survived the attack.”
“Then they were incompetent! Have them put to death!”
King Minus intervened. “These survivors managed to kill this monster. They are to be commended, not harmed.”
His tone brooked no argument. Tiera furiously contemplated the worn luxury of the carpet.
“We have placed men at every checkpoint in the kingdom,” Gharletto said. “If the lad tries to pass, he will certainly be captured.”
Tiera’s tongue seemed to move of its own accord. “How about you take the field and capture him yourself?” she said before she could stop herself. A series of gasps echoed about the throne room, which instead of silencing her, only fueled her temper. “Your men have proven themselves incompetent, and it had been countless years since your own last great feat! Maybe it will take the greatest…” She sneered slightly. “…of our warriors to stop a dragonslayer.”
Gharletto stared. King Minus stared. Fans fluttered wildly; the couriers didn’t even dare whisper. Tiera knew she’d gone too far. A vivid recollection of her childhood, feeling her father’s lash across her shoulder blades, sprang unbidden to her mind. Nonetheless, she stood her ground, trembling but defiant.
“You will not speak that way to the general.” When Minus’ voice was at its softest, the man was at his most dangerous. This was one of those moments. “You will apologize immediately.”
Tiera’s tongue balked, dry and uncooperative. The assembly held their collective breath. Tiera loathed their judgmental gazes. None of them were fond of her. She imagined each and every one of them was enjoying this moment, her pending humiliation, despite their expressions of careful neutrality. In the safety of their own halls this evening, they would laugh loudly at her expense.
Just as she was wrapping her mind about some pretense at apology which wouldn’t taste too bitter in her mouth, Gharletto stepped forward.
“The princess is right,” he said grudgingly, his tone indicating that he felt exactly opposite. “This youth has made a mockery of my forces. He is wilier and more capable than I should have given him credit for, and perhaps a sorcerer if he can command a beast such as this monster my men slew. He requires my attention.”
This was a show of diplomacy Tiera wouldn’t have expected from such a ragged man, and her brow creased with irritation. His false humility had won the sympathy of the king and the court and left her looking like a fool.
“So be it,” Minus said at length. “You will bring me his head.”
“I want to be there when he dies,” Tiera interjected immediately.
“You will bring me his head and take no further chances with the man,” her father overruled her. She subsided, red-faced and furious. Farrow flinched away from her scalding gaze.
“It will be done.” Gharletto stumped out of the hall, looking older and more worried than Tiera had ever seen him.
Good, she thought viciously. A legend has to earn his place, and father has preserved yours too long by putting you out to pasture.
“Father,” she began, as innocuously as she could.
“You are dismissed.” Minus interrupted, his expression severe. “We will speak later.”
Chin tilted defiantly, Tiera swept out of the chamber, Farrow pattering anxiously after her. Dozens of eyes burned insultingly into her back. She dismissed their owners as inconsequential; the court wasn’t currently her greatest concern. She couldn’t decide if she wanted Gharletto to kill the peasant and sate her grudge, or for the reverse to occur so that the kingdom – and her father - would come to understand how pathetically obsolete their great war hero really was.
Her treatment in court rankling in the back of her mind, to say nothing of her impending marriage to that worthless fop, Prince Stalllix, Tiera was unable to quell a sudden urge to connect with poor Merequio, her fallen brother. As she passed his sealed chamber, she began to feel a little reckless. What harm did her father feel it could do to seek solace in his rooms, to commune with his spirit? Certainly it beat the alternative of having Farrow thrown from her tower, which would temporarily lift her spirits but force her to endure the tedium of training a new handmaiden.
Glowering at its stolid guardian, Warrings-whatever, she hurried past the forbidden door and made the ascent to her chambers, her mind seething with resentment for all that she was denied.
One day, father, she thought savagely. One day, you will no longer be able to control me. The kingdom will be mine; I will decide the fate of your precious general, I will have this farcical marriage annulled, and you will not be able to keep me from my brother’s memory forever.
X
The tiny dilapidated cabin proved only barely adequate to shelter Simon and his
companions against the torrential rains which were attempting to drown the foothills of the Banshee’s Teeth. Niu had been the first to spot it through the thickening gloom, no mean feat, tangled in weeds and crowded by trees as it was. The weary fugitives struggled inside just as the wind began to howl and rain began to drum the earth with the kind of passion which seemed to have fled Simon’s life.
The little wooden ruin, long abandoned, was drafty and unstable. One young elm had grown straight up through the ceiling, while an oak had twisted its way out a window, rupturing the frame in the process. The floor, which had presumably always been dirt, was a mat of moss and unhealthy looking grass. Still, provided they stuck to the one corner of the cabin which wasn’t threatening immediate collapse, the travelers were afforded some protection from the angry elements, if not comfort.
Simon and Niu warmed one another with their body heat, which Simon might have found pleasant if his mind hadn’t been miles away. Sasha, who had no need for warmth, stood motionless at one window, getting soaked. The intruders had disrupted a family of mountain squirrels, which occasionally checked in to berate them angrily from a safe distance. Simon’s theory was that the bruxa was attempting to lure them closer through inaction; she looked hungry.
Several days had passed following their flight from Brand. The three of them had fled east across the fields, taking refuge with isolated farmers who were ill-enough informed of current events that if they suspected the trio’s outlaw status, they made no issue of it. Simon abandoned this approach at the third such farmhouse when Sasha, forbidden to eat their hosts, had slaughtered an entire coop of chickens instead. Eventually their travels had brought them to the forested foothills of Cannevish’s greatest mountain range, which in accordance with the directions of their hosts, they were obliged to traverse to reach the kingdom’s eastern border.
Negotiating this gloomy fortress of trees had left them fatigued and undernourished. The three of them spoke little. Niu had tentatively questioned Simon as to his experiences in Brand, but let the matter drop when Simon greeted her queries with monosyllabic hostility. The truth was, Simon was still trying to piece events together himself. Vanyon’s divine intervention was his only explanation as to how three apparently healthy guardsmen had simultaneously been struck down, facilitating his escape. Thinking back upon the scene, it seemed dreamlike, incredible.
Worse, he felt no closure in the matter of his father’s death. His mind flitting back and forth between possibilities, he could hardly credit that it had happened. His inability to visit a genuine grave leant an unreal edge to Veter’s demise. He often imagined that the most important man in his life had somehow managed to escape his guards; that he’d crawled back out of the swamp like the wendigo, torn the rope free from his neck, and disappeared into the wilds, to safety. He knew these were the fantasies of a child, but without a corpse to provide finality, he could not shake them.
In those moments when his personal guilt leant weight to the reality of his father’s death, he indulged in a different fantasy, wherein the spirit of the dead man had reached out from the afterlife to protect his son from the soldiers. Would Vanyon allow such a thing? Simon didn’t know, but he longed for it to be true, as it meant that he had not forfeited his father’s love through his boundless foolishness.
All he felt certain of was that life continued beyond death; that Niu’s strange foreign philosophies were wrong and his father was safe in Vanyon’s kingdom. Or did he know that? Could he be sure? What if Niu was in the right of it? Was there anything he truly knew, beyond question? Simon had never felt so lost or, if he was honest, frightened. He’d even been desperate enough to turn to Sasha, the bruxa being proof that life could indeed continue after mortal death, but her response was not encouraging.
“We have died twice,” she’d told him. “Once as a mortal, once as a vampire. Neither time have we experienced a sign of anything beyond death but nothingness. If we had souls, they did not return with us. Only our memories were returned to mortal form. We do not remember any sense of existence in that void.”
They hadn’t been the words Simon had wanted to hear, so he’d considered them only as briefly as possible. The vampiric witch was hardly a sane or reliable witness, after all.
“I wish you wouldn’t call yourself ‘we’,” he’d muttered instead. The bruxa’s dual nature hurt his head.
Sasha had regarded him impassively. “There is no Afterworld of which I am aware,” she’d rephrased succinctly. Determined that she was wrong, Simon chose to cling to those last five words: of which I am aware.
If only to prevent himself from dwelling upon the tatters of his life, Simon turned his mental energies toward plans of getting Niu to safety. He might, at least, be able to make amends to her. Jynn was miles to the east – Simon couldn’t guess the distance, but far seemed likely – and the Banshee’s Teeth were a formidable barrier. No matter what the obstacles, however, he was determined that she would make it home safely.
Of course, she’d made it clear that misfortune might well await her in her own country, as well. She’d been gifted to the Minus family as a punishment, he recalled, and her life might be worth very little in Jynn. What, then were the other possibilities? Hiding in the wilds, as he’d previously considered, held little appeal for him. Could they attempt to settle in one of Cannevish’s neighboring kingdoms? Might any of them accept foreign settlers?
With these and other worries whirring incessantly in his head, Simon had been enjoying very little sleep.
At least their nourishment and hydration woes were temporarily suspended. The heavens were presently granting abundant water, while outside the cabin, the wild remnants of a once-tended garden provided carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables. Sasha was Simon’s most immediate concern; her diet being exclusively of blood, Simon had no illusions that she would turn on her traveling companions if faced with the possibility of starvation. How he might stop her when that time came was unclear, and he hoped Niu had been giving the problem some thought, as she was much more adept at troubleshooting than he was.
The rain hammered belligerently on the roof of the crumbling structure for what felt like hours. Simon expected the soggy, drooping ceiling to buckle at any moment. He had to trust that it would hold, that he was meant to be here, that perhaps that the gods had sent the storm as some form of as yet inscrutable opportunity.
He looked down at Niu, nestled next to him. Her wet hood was pulled back, her eyes closed. Bedraggled though she was, he saw only the beauty lurking beneath her unflattering exhaustion, and wondered for the umpteenth time whether she’d put a spell on him. He desperately wanted to stroke her hair, but wasn’t sure how the gesture would be received. His hand extended then curled, indecisively, several times before settling despondently in his lap. Clearing his throat, he spoke instead.
“Do… do you… are you sure you want to go? To Jynn?” he asked clumsily. He longed for her to say It doesn’t matter, wherever you go I will follow and we will be together forever. The melancholy fatalism blanketing him knew that would not be the case.
Niu cracked one eye open.
“At times, yes. More than anything,” she answered after some reflection. “The peril is as great for me at home as it is here, but it is my home.”
“I’ll take you there.”
“That may prove easier said than accomplished. After what happened in your home town they will redouble their efforts to lay their hands on us. And if we get to Jynn…” Her voice caught. “You will not be welcomed. The people of Jynn do not love outsiders. And I…”
“What happened to you in Jynn?” Simon asked before he could stop himself. He recalled her earlier reticence on the subject, but as ever his tongue defied his brain.
Niu sighed. Simon couldn’t tell if she was irritated or resigned. A moment of silent stretched.
“I told you I had a lover. Cihau was his name.” Her voice softened. “He was magnificent. A dancer and a fire-eater, a wonderful entertain
er with the… I do not know how to translate it. An instrument of my people. Every day in the streets of Sindhai, people would stop to watch his amazing performance and give him money. It was easy to fall in love with Cihau. I made many unnecessary trips to market just to watch him move. He was incredible. He mesmerized me. And eventually he noticed me.”
Simon nodded. He hated this other man already, but he said nothing.
“Eventually, he noticed me also. We spoke, we drank together. I sang for him and he taught me to play his instrument. We… became lovers.” Her voice caught. “At this time, I was a handmaiden for the Princess of Jynn. A handmaiden is all I have been, since I was young enough to remember. Only my mistress has changed.”
Simon maintained his silence. Niu was finally opening up, and he didn’t want to break the spell.
“Cihau, he… we met again and again, for many weeks, and we talked seriously of running away together. Cihau had saved up much coin, and I had some of my own. Only my loyalty to my mistress prevented me from accepting his offer. Princess Tau was kind to me, and I did not wish to, as your people would say, stab her in the back. But then…” Her eyes took on a faraway cast and she shifted uncomfortably. “Cihau got the idea into his head that he wanted to see the inside of the palace. Not only see, but…” She smiled sadly. “But perhaps I should not continue.”
“Please do,” Simon said breathlessly.
She hesitated. “He… he wished for he and I to make love in the princess’ own bed. This fantasy became an obsession. I in turn was obsessed with his happiness, so…” She trailed off, eyes distant.
A chill of foreboding competed with a surge of jealousy for Simon’s attention. “And… did you…?”
Niu shook her head. She’d begun to tremble ever so slightly, but her voice was still firm. “No. We had a plan. Cihau was a master of parkour, and…”
“Parkour?” The word was foreign to Simon.
“He could scale even the most featureless buildings in the city. He taught me some of his techniques, although I never became quite as skilled.”