by Martha Carr
“Well, good thing I’m used to people judging me for looking different, right?” Cheyenne followed her apparent guide out of the bedroom and into the hall. “And I know how to show respect without trying to look like something I’m not. That’s the real disrespect right there, faking it.”
She stopped as soon as she closed the door behind her and looked at the hall.
“Whoa.”
“Still feelin’ like yourself?” Lumil sniggered and stared at the halfling as Cheyenne’s gaze passed over the walls and the high ceiling of the corridor.
“I’m not what’s different around here. When did this happen?”
“Come on, kid. You knew the system was rewriting itself.”
“Yeah. Didn’t think the system would literally rewrite the walls.”
Lumil took off down the hall with a snort and waved for Cheyenne to follow her. “You’re the one who can see all the way to the core with that beefed-up activator. Don’t tell me you can’t figure out how this kinda reprogramming works.”
Cheyenne slipped the activator out of her pocket and lifted it slowly toward her ear. “The reprogramming I know doesn’t change the physical hardware. What happened to all the black stone?”
“Like you’re not about to figure that out. Hurry up, will ya? Everybody’s waiting, and we can’t get started without you.”
When the activator attached behind her ear, Cheyenne’s eyelids fluttered briefly, and she widened her eyes at all the new information syncing with her magic. Flashing lines of code in green and blue scrolling across her vision brought up new information, programming for rearranging the look and feel, and even some of the city’s structural layout. She only had to think about finding what had changed the black stone walls of every corridor in the Crown’s fortress to a nearly white gray. The coded lines translated from O’gúleesh to English brought up an answer she hadn’t expected:
System rewrite in progress. Program access design under Cycle II recalibrating. Source Order: Ironbreak. Estimated time to completion 25 hours 17 minutes.
The numbers counted down in real-time, and Cheyenne couldn’t help a small laugh. “Persh’al chose all this, huh?”
“Yeah, the troll likes to think he’s all badass, but I’m pretty sure the doom and gloom were startin’ to get to him.” Lumil turned around and pointed at the halfling. “Bet you wouldn’t’ve changed a thing if you decided to stick around as Crown on this side, huh?”
“Well, maybe not as much as this. He got rid of the psycho-drow-murderer look, so that’s a plus.”
They went around the next corner, and Cheyenne found herself pausing to study the lines of new code that were rewriting the histories and commands of the entire system throughout Hangivol. Then she’d come back to the present and hurry after Lumil, who didn’t stop once to wait for her.
“So the whole city changes into whatever Persh’al wants it to be.”
The goblin woman shrugged. “Sure. I don’t know. My skillsets revolve around something a little more physical, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Like your fists.”
“Yeah, halfling. Like my fists. Need a demonstration?”
Cheyenne ignored the goblin woman’s attempt to act pissed off and studied the walls. “Guess he brushed up on his knowledge of all the tech over here.”
“I mean, he got to choose a few things, but the rest of it’s pretty much out of his hands.”
“Who controls the rest of it?”
Lumil turned around with a raised eyebrow. “Is that a real question?” When Cheyenne folded her arms and waited, the goblin woman gave her an answer. “Not any of us, kid. No magical runs the system in Hangivol or anywhere else in this whole ass-backward world. Ambar’ogúl’s running the show on this one.”
Cheyenne cocked her head. “A world full of magicals is in charge of maintenance for a tech system those magicals had to create.”
“Yep.”
“How does that even work?”
“You’re asking the wrong goblin, kid.” Lumil tossed a dismissive hand in the air and continued down the corridor. “Hell, any goblin’s off the list of experts on the subject.”
“So, this place is sentient. Like, inherently and then with the tech, yeah?”
“You lost me at ‘sentient,’ kid.”
Cheyenne couldn’t take her eyes off the constantly updating elements flashing and scrolling across the newly lightened walls that only looked like stone. “I mean it thinks for itself. Heals itself with the deathflame in the pits and rewrites an entire system whenever there’s a new Crown.”
“Dude, seriously?” Lumil shook her head and walked faster to put more room between her and Cheyenne. “Bother somebody else with this shit, okay? You’re making my head hurt.”
Cheyenne flicked her fingers and turned down the brightness of the scrolling code lines so she could focus on something else as she followed Lumil around two more turns in the labyrinth of corridors. No one’s gonna be able to answer these questions for me. That’s something I’ll have to tap into when all this is over.
After descending two flights of stairs and making another right turn, they entered a narrow vestibule, where the members of the Four-Pointed Star were waiting for them.
Ember looked Cheyenne over from head to toe and cocked her head. “Lumil was supposed to bring you a change of clothes.”
“Yeah, they’re on the table by that giant-ass bed.”
“Come on, Cheyenne. That’s part of the ceremony.”
“Hey, I’m here to be a part of it, okay? But I’m not putting on all that.” The halfling choked back a laugh. “Looks pretty decent on you, though.”
“Stupid fae and their stupid, good-looking…” Byrd scratched his armpit through the flowy material of his white and orange-embroidered tunic, scowling. “This isn’t a one-size-fits-all kinda thing.”
Lumil punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up. No one wants to hear about your discomfort, okay? There’s plenty of that going around.” She jerked the waistband of her loose pants left and right, pulled them down along her hips, then hiked them back up again and gave up.
Maleshi approached Cheyenne and Ember with a small smile. “Told you.”
Ember rolled her eyes at the general. “Okay, fine. General Hi’et gets one point. I have at least a hundred, so keep at it.”
Cheyenne shoved her hands into the pockets of her trenchcoat and looked back and forth between them. “Points for what, Em?”
The fae girl stared at the double doors leading out of the vestibule and shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips.
“Your Nós Aní assumed your relief at having found someone to take the throne for you would be enough to get you into the monkey suit.” Maleshi jerked on the embroidered collar of her own tunic and shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t do it.”
“Huh.” Cheyenne eyed the general’s uniform, slightly different from what every other magical now wore. “And you got the fancy upgrade.”
“Well, I haven’t made any official promises.” Maleshi shot her a sidelong glance, her silver eyes flashing beneath the artificial lights glowing in sconces along the walls. “But General Hi’et took a place of honor during more ceremonies than you can imagine, kid.”
“Yeah, and General Hi’et shouldn’t talk about herself in third-person. Like, ever.”
“Cute.”
A sharp crack came from behind them as Foltr thumped the end of his staff on the light-gray stone floor. He wore the same material as everyone else, though his ceremonial dress came in the form of a long robe that stopped above his ankles and exposed his crooked red-clawed feet. The old raug came forward, scrutinizing the other rebels in their appropriate attire. He stopped when he saw Cheyenne and frowned. “Should’ve expected this from you.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” She shrugged. “But I’m here. With all due respect. Ready to watch two trolls get married?”
Foltr grunted and thumped his staff again to continue his approach. “If you are
n’t aware of the nuances, hinya, you’re in no position to refuse tradition. That includes the drapes.”
He whacked the thick, hanging fabric of Cheyenne’s trenchcoat with his staff.
“Hey.” She stepped back, trying not to laugh. “This could be a designer coat, Grandfather. You don’t know.”
“Designed by a human and bought by a magical with no respect for the old laws.”
Tilting her head, Cheyenne pursed her lips and stared the old raug down. “Now you’re gonna tell me the old laws apply to a dress code too?”
“Doesn’t matter what I say, hinya. Something tells me you won’t listen anyway.” Foltr stopped, rested both hands on the gnarled knot at the top of his staff, and glared at her.
She waited for him to back down, but he didn’t. The old dude has balls, I’ll give him that. Guess that’s what surviving a million years in this world gets you. She gave him a genuine smile and leaned closer. “Any chance you wanna tell me what ‘hinya’ means? You’re not the first magical to call me that. Or the first raug, even.”
Foltr smacked his lips. “Well, I can’t call you Aranél anymore, can I? You gave that away at the drop of a hat.”
“I have a name, though.”
He blinked slowly at her, then rolled his eyes and moved through the gathered crowd of white-garbed rebels toward the double doors.
“Oh, come on.” Cheyenne gestured at him and looked at Maleshi. “That was friendly conversation.”
“With some things, kid, it’s the same here as it is Earthside.” The general glanced briefly at the old raug’s back and shrugged. “Generation gap.”
Ember snorted. “It’s gotta be worse here. How long is a generation?”
“Few thousand years. Give or take.”
“Yeah, that’ll leave a lotta room for differences of opinion.”
Cheyenne gazed around the vestibule and couldn’t let go of her curiosity. “Seriously, though. Hinya?”
The double doors creaked slowly open into the room beyond, and the dressed-up magicals moved forward in a wave.
“It means, ‘child.’” Maleshi pursed her lips and stared straight ahead as she took off after the others.
Cheyenne blinked.
“Ha.” Ember elbowed her friend in the side and gave her a mocking grimace. “Kinda sounds like you’ve been demoted.”
“Uh-huh.” They walked in at the end of the group heading through the doors, and Cheyenne laughed in surprise. “Still a hell of a lot better than being the Crown.”
Chapter Six
It took her a few seconds to recognize the room when they finally entered behind the others. The courtyard at the center of the Heart looked different with the lighter walls, the cracks and crumbling slabs repaired. The banister around the second-story walkway gleamed bright copper, and all the once-dark forbidding arches leading into the courtyard now had the same double doors, each of them engraved with O’gúleesh runes and intricate detailing.
Cheyenne didn’t have the time to translate the runes with her activator, her focus on the streamers and thin strips of glistening silver hanging from the upper-story balcony. These were draped across the lowest branches of the Nimlothar tree too, which was the only proof that they were in the Heart again and not some ballroom she hadn’t seen.
“Nobody told me we’d be coming right back here,” she muttered, gazing around.
“Not surprising, though, right?” Ember grinned as the gathered magicals spread out through the courtyard, creating a path straight ahead that led toward the base of the Nimlothar. “Pretty much everything that means anything around here happens in front of that tree.”
“I don’t see why. Persh’al’s not a drow.”
Ember opened her mouth for another quick reply, then frowned. “True.”
Persh’al, Elarit, and Corian were already waiting at the base of the tree, each of them wearing a uniform that would’ve fit right in at an ashram or temple but seemed wildly out of place in the violent, chaotic capital city of Ambar’ogúl.
Blood and honor, right? I hope no one’s trying to keep those frocks clean through the rest of the night.
The new troll Crown jerked his chin at Cheyenne and waved her forward. Elarit glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Corian frowned when he saw Cheyenne in her usual all-black, and even Maleshi couldn’t get him to lighten up about it when she leaned toward him and muttered something under her breath.
“You stepped in it,” Ember said.
“They’ll be fine.” Cheyenne slowly trailed her gaze up the twisted, knotted trunk of the last Nimlothar. It had even fewer leaves now, though they still pulsed rhythmically with pale violet light. All the decorations and celebrations in the world couldn’t hide how sick this thing is. That’s what we should be focusing on now—making sure it doesn’t die on us while we’re in party mode.
Scowling at her in his flowing off-white tunic with a collar like Maleshi’s, Corian gestured for Cheyenne and Ember to take their places on his left. When they did, he leaned toward her and growled. “You’re not off to a very good start, Cheyenne.”
“But I’m here.”
“I have half a mind to send you back. We’ve waited long enough to get to this point. What’s another ten minutes?”
“Hey, brother, it’s fine.” Persh’al nodded and winked at Cheyenne. “She’s here, we’re all here, and I’m about to swear the hell into this thing officially. If she doesn’t wanna change, man, really don’t care.”
Corian’s glowing silver eyes never left the halfling’s face. “That’s not the point.”
Elarit cleared her throat. “The point, vae shra’ni, is that we’ve come this far against all the odds. Maybe you don’t mind waiting another ten minutes just to prove your point, which may or may not be useless, but I’ve spent all day preparing for this to happen. I’d like to spend as little time in this courtyard as possible.”
The nightstalker finally pulled his eyes off Cheyenne to look at Persh’al and Elarit, both of whom smiled expectantly at him and waited. Corian closed his eyes and stepped back. “As you wish.”
The troll woman nodded and lifted her chin. “Thank you.”
Corian grunted and gazed around the courtyard, waiting for the other magicals who’d bothered to be present to find their places and settle their conversations enough to hear him when he addressed them. A quarter of the orc guards who’d come to watch Cheyenne’s slightly-less-than-epic showdown with her psychotic aunt were present now, and they watched the gathered officials and the new Crown at the base of the Nimlothar with eager anticipation.
I wonder how many of them hated to see Ba’rael go and how many are just hiding ‘cause they feel like morons.
Maleshi leaned toward Cheyenne and muttered, “Fair warning beforehand, kid. To keep things from getting awkward when you inevitably interrupt the process.”
The halfling frowned and looked over her shoulder. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, you won’t now ‘cause I’m about to tell you what’s up.” The general glanced at Corian, but the nightstalker gazed straight ahead with his hands clasped behind his back. “We found the loopholes we were looking for. The right path to take that’ll keep any dumbshit with a death wish from challenging your choice of replacement.”
“Okay. They’d be challenging Persh’al at that point, though, wouldn’t they? He can handle it.”
“Yes, but not the way the old laws dictate. Those are just about the only things that haven’t rewritten themselves in the last twelve hours.” Maleshi tilted her head from side to side, scanning the small groups of magicals, who were all dressed the same for the occasion and passing the time by conversing in low tones. “The troll needs more than your word and a few announcements from us to solidify his new position.”
“I told you I’m not staying.”
“No one’s asking you to. We are asking you to bind yourself to the Nimlothar and receive its blessing for Persh’al as the Crown and Elarit as his mate.”
“I know it doesn’t sound like that, but you’re free to do whatever you want after this. I promise.”
“Then what the hell does ‘bind myself to the Nimlothar’ mean?”
Corian cleared his throat and looked at her plaster-dusted black shirt, complete with bloodstains and shredded holes from Ba’rael’s darts, instead of at Cheyenne’s face. “It’s basically the same thing you did with the seed, Cheyenne. That kind of binding.”
“I’m not eating a branch.”
Finally, the nightstalker met her gaze and raised an unamused eyebrow. “It’s a fairly simple spell. I’ll talk you through it. This is the only way Ambar’ogúl will accept your decision. The roots Hangivol put down over the hundreds of centuries with a drow on the throne, they’re not giving up their hold anytime soon. You’ll be the bridge.”
“To what?”
“To putting a troll on the throne.” Corian rolled his shoulders back, trying to hide his discomfort with this topic. “You can go home, but technically, whenever you make the crossing to this side, you’ll still be Crown.”
“No.”
“Trust me, kid,” Maleshi added, “you won’t have to lift a finger if you don’t want to. Persh’al’s swearing in as your steward, more or less. He runs the show when you’re gone, and he can still run the show while you’re here if that’s what you want. You’ll be the only one he has to answer to.”
“What I want is to be done with all this Crown bullshit,” Cheyenne hissed.
Corian glanced at the growing crowd of witnesses as the last of them trickled in through the open doors on the opposite side of the courtyard. “It’s a formality. An entirely necessary formality, or anything we do from here on out isn’t going to stick. If it makes you feel better, we’ll make a new law that anyone who sees the Black Flame walking through the city streets has to flip you off instead of bowing.”
She snorted. “That’s a good start.”
“And this will only solidify your position Earthside.” The aggravation melted away from Corian’s face as he patiently waited for her to absorb the new technicality. “I know your head’s in the right place, Cheyenne. You’ve done everything that was asked of you without knowing exactly what it was. We’re only standing here right now because you chose not to walk away.”