Gloriana's Masque

by Eleanor Burns

  “What would be quicker and easier is if you left me in peace, but I see I can despair of that,” grumbled Saskia. “However, if you will make yourself useful, then stay at the door and listen out for the servants while I get it.”

  “While you get what?” asked Maradith, remaining at the door, her ear close to the crack, while Saskia walked out of the small antechamber and into an adjoining room. Looking through the doorway, Maradith could see that it was a grand bedchamber, with elaborately carved wooden furniture.

  “Her illustrious Highness keeps a journal,” replied Saskia, scornfully, as she made for the wall-length armoire and began examining the carvings on its doors. “That witless chambermaid of hers saw her stowing it away. It’s hidden here somewhere. Prince Rowan liked his furniture with hidden compartments, though in his case it was for hoarding portable wealth against the possibility of sudden revolution and exile … much good it did him.”

  “And the chambermaid told you that?” asked Maradith, astounded and slightly disappointed. The woman had seemed so staunchly incorruptible when asked to betray her mistress’s secrets by the Brython officers, but perhaps, thought Maradith, priestesses commanded too much respect to refuse them anything.

  “She told me nothing … intentionally,” explained Saskia, enigmatically. “I have my means. Ancient skills, not something I would expect a machine-slave like you to comprehend.”

  “Telepathy, right? Strangely enough, I have heard of it,” replied Maradith, with deep sarcasm. “Maybe you ought to make more use of it, then we could have breezed over that whole tedious business about whether or not I’m to be trusted.”

  “Oh, you think you’re honest enough,” said Saskia, with an annoyed edge, as she continued her fruitless search for the hidden compartment. “However, you also think that my people are childlike, quaint little savages, picturesque in their way but manifestly unsuited to think for themselves, so you’ll have to pardon me if I’d have preferred to keep you at several kilometres’ distance. Needs must, however.”

  “I do? Shit, I didn’t think I was that bad … Maybe that gift of yours isn’t too reliable, though,” she suggested, with more hope than conviction, but also with some impatience. “You seem to be finding squat, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “If you’ve any suggestions–” began Saskia, caustically, before Maradith, looking carefully at the armoire, interrupted:

  “It looks like a Karsen-Levik Mark IV to me. It’ll be the third door along from the right. Second vine down, fourth bunch of grapes. Press the middle grape. Always the same. That’s a production line model, though it looks like they’ve aged it up a bit. I reckon your Prince Rowan was ripped off with that.”

  “That sounds altogether likely,” said Saskia, indifferently, as she counted the carvings and located the hidden button. It clicked under pressure, and a panel popped open in the elaborately decorated door, expertly concealed in spite of the armoire’s dubious lineage. Say what you like about us Lucinians, we know how to make ‘em. Maradith had a momentary glimpse of a quarto-sized volume, bound in red leather, sitting within the revealed compartment, before Saskia’s hand snatched it out. As she began leafing through it, her look of triumph quickly faded, and Maradith could easily fathom why. Although it was a fairly thin book, to have fitted within such a narrow hiding-place, it was also very full. The pages she could make out were densely crowded with cramped handwriting and diagrams.

  “So what now?” asked Maradith, seizing the initiative. “You can hardly swipe the Queen’s journal and expect her not to notice it’s gone. You think you can read all of that in the next couple of hours, assuming we even get that much time?”

  “I’ll read as much as I can of it. Maybe I can get in here again, somehow … Very dangerous, but … Or do you have a better idea?” asked Saskia, for once without any irony. “Have you got one of these alchemical picture-making devices, perhaps?”

  “In my way,” said Maradith, although with some doubt as she considered the complicated journal. Thin or not, it was still the longest document she would ever have attempted to remember in one go, and she would need to retain the images in her head for several hours in order to have any hope of copying them all. No sleep for me tonight. Still, it was the best option they had, not to mention half the reason why Kasimir had brought her along. And if it saves me from having to do the other half, then I’ll gladly cope with my night shift. “Pass it here, and take a turn by the door,” she ordered, and Saskia grudgingly complied. “I’ve got some work to do. It shouldn’t take too long, but I need to focus. After that, we’d better find the ambassador. He’ll want to know about this.” Not to mention he’ll probably be sorely in the mood for cheering up, the way things are going.

  CHAPTER EIGHT – THE DARKSHIFT

  Outside the throne room of Kadar Ydril, feeling cold, miserable, and next to naked in his silk clothing, shuffling about awkwardly and painfully in his ill-fitting knee-high boots, Secretary Kasimir awaited his audience with the Queen. Two Shadow Guards flanked the arched doors, carrying long polearms tipped with vicious, jagged blades of obsidian. Unlike the guards he had seen in the street, they also wore sections of black, shiny armour over their body-suits, crafted from varg chitin. Their faces were covered with black wooden masks carved in the form of expressionless faces, the eye-holes obscured with pieces of silk gauze. Still and silent although they were, Kasimir could not get over the sense that they were secretly giggling at him behind those masks, but he was not feeling masochistic enough to turn his telepathy on them and find out for certain.

  After what seemed like an insultingly long period of waiting, the door opened just enough for the Queen’s chatelaine to emerge. She was, for an Alvere at least, conservatively dressed in a long, tight-fitting gown with a silver chain of office around her neck. She looked him up and down with an inscrutable smile that he found in no way encouraging, before delivering her message.

  “The Queen will see you now,” she said, formally although with an archness bordering on disrespect, and pushed one of the doors fully open. Taking a deep, resigned breath, Kasimir stepped forwards.

  Like the rest of the palace, or what remained of it, the throne room was built in imitation of the Lucinian Neo-Gætish style: tall and narrow, with an over-abundance of pillars and pointed arches. Empty alcoves and bare plinths bore mute testimony to the absent statues of Prince Rowan and the long-dead Lucinian governors, which were now being broken down into gravel and thus serving the community in a far more meaningful way than the originals had ever done. The rebel Alvere had made various efforts to bring the place more into line with the traditional aesthetics of their people. Small, hardy trees had been planted in some of the alcoves, and trailing plants encouraged to grow around the pillars. Loose copper wires in the vaulted ceiling were all that remained of the ostentatious galvanic faux-chandeliers, which had been replaced with simple wooden torches. The elaborately carved and upholstered wooden benches had been completely removed, so the courtiers and guests assembled on each side of the central aisle sat and lounged upon homespun rugs, cushions, and on each other, native Alvere not being tremendous respecters of personal space.

  Most of the attendees were indeed Alvere, and they regarded the new arrival with hard and suspicious eyes, but that was well within the bounds of Kasimir’s tolerance. Unfortunately, there were also a few Brython officers with their Alvere mistresses, and they looked at him with undisguised derision and mirth, breaking the formal tranquillity of the occasion with their badly-suppressed sniggers. Lycon was the most senior officer there, standing alone and apart from the throng, to one side of the throne. The throne itself was new: an imposing mass of silverwood, almost certainly carved, although its shape was so intricate and organic that it looked almost as if a tree had grown upside-down, thrusting a huge monolith of twining roots onto the dais. A monarch with less presence would have risked being overwhelmed by it, but as soon as he saw her, Kasimir knew that lack of presence was something Gloriana
was at little risk of being accused of. Her style was simple yet resplendent, her posture relaxed yet confident, and her steel mask unreadable and terrifying. He knew at once that this was not someone who would be easily impressed or intimidated. Just let me get a bit closer, though, and we’ll see how unreadable she really is, he thought, grimly relishing the only advantage that was left to him.

  “Secretary Kasimir,” she greeted him, surprising him not so much with the graciousness of her tone as with her lack of an accent. Native Alvere speaking Lucinian had a tendency to over-stress their consonants and distort their vowels, but hers were as precisely measured as those of a Lyceum doctor of rhetoric. “You honour us with your presence … but what of your companion, Delator Maradith? I extended my invitation to you both. I hope she is not still unwell from your journey.”

  “Well enough, Your Highness,” he replied, keeping a bland tone in spite of his sudden anxiety. Plausible excuse badly needed right now … “She was … a little shy about wearing the, err, garments your chatelaine was kind enough to provide us with.” Technically true, if moderately lame.

  “Oh … I am sorry to hear that, but she could have come dressed as she pleased, you know,” replied the Queen, still graciously but with just the hint of a sly undertone. “The clothing, you understand, was merely a simple gift. We are a poor people, Lord Citizen. Noctys silk is all we have to offer, for now. Still, I am overjoyed to see that you were so eager to wear them,” she added, and now even some of the Alvere were joining in on the subdued sniggering at his expense. Lord Lycon himself was grinning widely, even though his eyes were entirely on Gloriana. Like some proud daddy wyvern watching his little girl dismembering her very first prey, bless … “And how becoming they are on you. Do come closer.”

  Kasimir strode down the aisle with as much dignity he could muster, trying his best not to wince as the boots tortured him with each step. Keeping his face respectfully forwards, but casting his eyes from left to right, he was at least relieved not to see any reporters or heliographers on the premises. At least, then, he stood half a chance of confining his humiliation to within these walls. When he was halfway along the room, Gloriana raised a hand, palm outwards, and Kasimir stopped. Close enough now to try it. He attuned his thoughts …

  Nothing.

  Inwardly panicking, he tried again. Nothing. Now terrified, he cast his mental net about randomly, and was slightly relieved to pick up some hazy thoughts and images from the throng. Quite a lot of them related to what an idiot he looked like, although apparently the chatelaine, standing behind him at the door, was admiring his … I didn’t need to know that, he thought, instinctively tugging his depressingly short skirt as far down as it would go. At any rate, it meant that his gift had not chosen this of all days to abandon him, but it still seemed dull and imprecise. He turned his attention upon the Queen again. Nothing. She might as well have been an animated corpse for all he could read of her, and her very presence seemed to have a dampening influence over the mental activity of the whole room, or at least his ability to tune in to it with any clarity. He was not sure whether he found that fact more frightening in and of itself, or the fact that it left with him no advantage at all.

  “You stand in awe,” declared Gloriana, misinterpreting the fear in his eyes. “I am gratified. I confess I had my misgivings, especially when I heard that a delator was being sent. I was sceptical that the Senate would deign to treat with me either seriously or respectfully, but I see that I was mistaken. Your manners are positively courtly.” There were more sniggers from the throng, but Kasimir clenched his teeth and ignored them. The Queen’s voice was at least sincere, and with the cards now decisively stacked against him, to have her goodwill was something. “Please, I would have you come closer,” she said, beckoning him to approach. He continued his painful march through the amused onlookers until he was at the foot of the dais, whereupon the Queen raised her detaining hand. She might as well have spared herself the effort, as he had neither the intention nor the desire to get any closer. He was now barely a metre away from her, and could see through the eye-holes of her mask. On the right side, a wide, brownish eye regarded him with serene superiority, but the left side was a sheer abomination: a black, turbid mass of shifting phantoms that made his own eyes water. Attributing the hideous effect to the wavering light of the torches, Kasimir focused his attention upon the normal eye, which somehow seemed the more polite thing to do in any case.

  “So, my dear Secretary,” she said, although her benevolent tone now had an intense edge to it that suggested the need for great caution. “Pray, let us know your remit. We are all curious. Do you come to acknowledge me? Reverence me? Assassinate me?” she suggested, to another spurt of hilarity from the onlookers. “Or merely to deliver a declaration of war? Enlighten us, please.”

  “I am here in the hopes of securing peace, not war, Your Highness,” he answered, very carefully, although he immediately feared that he had not been careful enough: the Queen’s normal eye narrowed discouragingly, while the patterns in the black orb seemed to swirl even more furiously, like a miniature hurricane punctuated by tiny flashes of red lightning. The torches, it has to be.

  “Peace … The Lucinian Peace?” she asked, her voice still controlled but unmistakably scornful. “We had that here for centuries, first under your governors and then under your pet tyrant, that traitor Rowan. The results of it speak for themselves. Do you dare to deny his corruption? And that your Senate cared nothing for the suffering he inflicted upon us as long as he continued to serve their interests?”

  “I … While I can’t defend … I do believe the Senate at the time felt that stability in the region was the key to saving more lives than–”

  “Do not dissimulate with me, Secretary,” she interrupted, all-too-perceptively. Anyone would think that she was the telepath in the room. “You may not think you owe me the truth, but you certainly owe it to the thousands who have suffered and died here in the cause of Lucinian ‘stability.’ I ask again: do you deny that your nation installed a crony here to rule us by proxy, putting their interests above our own?”

  “I … strictly speaking … cannot deny it,” he answered, crestfallen, although this had a slight positive effect on the expression of her eye, and for once there was no mirthful reaction from the crowd, but rather a sense as of tension lifting. After a pause, Gloriana spoke, her tone gentler but still guarded.

  “That is good. However … you will appreciate that makes us less than enthusiastic about accepting the Lucinian Peace again. Unless you have another kind of peace to offer, I dread to imagine where this is heading.”

  “I am authorised to make a number of reasonable concessions, includ–”

  “Are you? Come closer.”

  Slowly and unwillingly, Kasimir mounted the dais and approached, until he stood at the Queen’s feet. Even this, evidently, was not close enough, as she leaned forwards. Raised upon the throne, she was now at eye level with him, with barely the length of a hand between their faces. She reached for the lower edge of her mask and slowly raised it upwards, leaving her face still in shadow but clearly visible at such a close distance. Kasimir managed not to recoil – he had been prepared for a shocking sight – but only with effort, as her facial wounds were easily the worst he had ever seen, and that false eye right in their midst sealed the deal. It sat amongst the reddened, coarsened, leathery scar tissue like a black, viscous pool in some abysmal landscape, or a portal into the Abysm itself, with lost souls drifting forlornly and grotesquely across its dark surface. The more he imagined them, the clearer they seemed to be, until it seemed almost as if he could read the mournful expressions on their dead faces, count the fingers on their skeletal hands, see the textures of their rotting funeral robes …

  Whereupon it dawned on him that he actually could, and then he immediately knew why his psychic gift had failed him. This knowledge brought him little relief, although it could not help but heighten his respect for the Queen. Very clever, and dan
gerous. When his expression had settled from the shock – perhaps more shock than she had been intent upon giving him – Gloriana addressed him in a quiet, level, yet chilling tone.

  “What do you see when you look at me?”

  Given that there were any number of bad answers to such a question, Kasimir opted for maximum diplomacy as he replied, nervously:

  “I see … the rightful Queen of Alvenheim.”

  “Indeed? Your posture argues differently.”

  My posture? What is she … ? Oh crap, he thought, with sudden and sinking realisation, but there was no going back now. As he knelt before her, a few more harsh, male-voiced sniggers broke from the crowd, but the Alvere were at any rate mostly silent. No doubt this was a serious moment for them. I’m not finding it overly hilarious myself. Just as Kasimir bowed his head, grateful at least not to have to look at the Queen’s hugely disturbing face, a bright flash illuminated the room for less than a second, and an acrid, sulphurous smell was left hanging in the air. Looking around for its source, he noticed for the first time another person in the room who had previously been hidden from view behind one of the pillars. She was a youngish woman in a long, brown travelling dress, but the person herself concerned him far less than the object she was holding: a dark wooden box with brass fittings, including a front-mounted tube with a glass lens that glinted at him, evilly and triumphantly. He stared in horror and fury until the Queen’s voice called him back to attention.

  “Do not look at the heliographer. She is only doing her job. Look at me, Kasimir.” Down on his options, he obeyed. Gloriana now wore a half-smile that he thought had a cruelly victorious air. He conceded it was possible that if she had been able to move the left corner of her mouth, the expression might have been warmer, but probably not. “That’s better. I know I am not a pretty sight, although I used to be, before Prince Rowan sent his minions to ‘stabilise’ Malketh. Most of the villagers were less fortunate than I was, if you can believe that. So tell me, Kasimir: these ‘reasonable concessions’ of yours … Will they bring the dead back to life? Will they un-rape thousands of women and girls? Will they put new skin on my face, or a new eye in my head? Answer.”