*
There was still no sign of a cure, and the death toll was soaring. The last thing anyone needed were complications – or a distraction. But that was exactly what had arisen.
Lord Mosscrow burst into the throne room, dragging the sorcerer Cetas Ophelious by his collar. Healers, runners, guards, servants, the king, Despiris, and Lady Verrikose all glanced up at the rude intrusion.
The coffered double doors banged open against the walls from the Lord Advisor’s rough shove, and then bounced back nearly shut again.
“Of all times, little man,” Crow could be heard muttering to the man he was towing along, “now is the absolute worst you could have picked. There is a ravenous plague preying on innocent bystanders out there; all we need is a ravenous beast to prey on them as well!”
At the foot of the king’s dais, Crow thrust the sputtering sorcerer to his knees, ignoring Ophelious’ protests. “Mr. Ophelious has presented us with a problem.”
Ophelious half-rose to defend himself. “It wasn’t–”
“Shut up, weasel,” Crow cut him off, in no mood for his side of the story. “He came to me whimpering and blubbering, begging for forgiveness for nigh a quarter of an hour before actually getting to the point.”
“I didn’t–” Cetas began again.
“Shut up, weasel.” Cetas Ophelious clamped his mouth shut again. “Really, I don’t know why I ever expected this pitiful little sprout could fill the boots of giants. That’s my own fault, I suppose, but, by the gods, Ophelious, you had one job, and it was your gods-given birthright. Was it really too much to ask? Don’t answer that. Sire, I know this comes at the most inconvenient hour, but then there is never a convenient time for disaster.”
Ophelious drew himself up again. “I wasn’t–”
“Bah!” Crow threw his hands up in exasperation. “You have no say in the MATTER! Not anymore. Which is decidedly the point.” Grabbing a fist-full of the little man’s collar again, this time from behind, Crow hauled him back the way they had come.
“But – noooo!” Ophelious howled pathetically, struggling to escape the humiliating spectacle of being dragged down the runner on the seat of his pants.
Even Slasher, hanging upside-down as ever from his stand, swiveled his head to watch the show.
Ignoring the sorcerer’s objections, Crow threw him out of the throne room and slammed the doors so he would stay out. As if the Lord Advisor hadn’t been the one to drag the man before the king to begin with. Faint little protests issued through the thick coffered panels, but Crow spun on a heel and drew a steadying breath, starting again down the runner as if entering the throne room for the first time.
He stopped at the dais, composing himself. “As I was saying… That bloody pip-squeak practitioner in our employ is proving to be more of a liability than an asset.”
Isavor sat up straighter with impatience. “Crow, if you would kindly get to the point…”
“Forgive me. Of course. Mr. Ophelious has lost control of his menagerie. The beasts have been growing restless, cooped up here with nothing to occupy their carnal instincts. Apparently one has finally liberated itself and flown the coop.”
Displeasure lent a steely edge to Isavor’s hazel eyes. “I am to understand there is a rogue beast loose in the city somewhere?”
“Running amok, doubtlessly up to no good.”
Grim silence followed the ominous revelation.
Recovering his poise, the king remained tactical about the matter. “Why has Ophelious lost his standing as their alpha? Carnal instincts should still bow to the natural pecking order.”
“I’m sure I don’t know, your Majesty. That was the assumption, but what we know of the animal kingdom is subject to unknown phenomena once magic plays a part. Alternative rules may apply.”
“Get Ophelious back in here.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Mosscrow retrieved the offended runt of a man and towed him back to the dais.
Isavor addressed him directly. “Am I to understand that you are losing control of your creatures?”
“I-I-I…I…I…”
Crow jabbed him pointedly in the back.
“I don’t” – the sorcerer gulped – “rightly know, your Majesty. I thought I was established as their master just as you were led to believe, sir – Sire. But my gift has always been a mystery to me. Who is to say what thoughts aspire in a mind contrived from stone?”
“But they were under orders to stay on palace grounds and behave themselves?”
“Yes, Sire. Of course, Sire. I gave the order as you…ordered. One day, they resigned themselves to grousing around on the balcony, and the next… Poof. One gargoyle short. I can’t explain it.”
A suspicious notion came to Despiris as she observed the situation from the sidelines. Her gaze shifted to Lady Verrikose, coy as ever at her tea table.
Isavor mulled over these developments. “And there was no evidence of, say, one creature appeasing its carnal urges by…devouring another?”
Ophelious paled, and Despiris didn’t blame him, imagining the carnage of such a scenario. His balcony would have been a bloodbath. “No… No sign of that. Besides, I asked. Asborea reported that the gargoyle flew the coop.”
Isavor barely disguised a sigh, turning it into a thoughtful breath.
“Please,” Ophelious begged. “You w-won’t feed me to my own creatures, w-will you?”
“What?” Isavor demanded, and Despiris couldn’t help but notice Mosscrow shifting guiltily in the background.
“I…I was led to believe…that was the punishment, for a beast-master who loses control of his beasts.”
“Don’t be absurd. I have enough deaths haunting me as it is.”
Ophelious appeared much relieved, until the Lord Advisor caught his eye and glared so threateningly that the little man went wide-eyed with renewed terror and scrambled in the opposite direction.
“Halt, Ophelious,” commanded the king tiredly, and while the sorcerer managed to obey, Despiris thought she could still see his heart thudding against his bony chest. He wouldn’t even be a snack for one of his beasts anyway, she thought. “Please, Lord Mosscrow, attempt to curb your keen eye for poetic justice when threats are not necessary.”
“Certainly, your Eminence,” Mosscrow grumbled.
Isavor turned to Ophelious where he now stood a few paces askance from the runner. “A gargoyle is the species loose, you say?”
“Yes. His name is Shangar, your Majesty. If that…helps any.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Mosscrow snapped. “What do you think we’re going to do – call him back like a dog? You think a name is going to serve any useful purpose in dealing with a wild, rabid beast?”
Encouraged by the king’s support thus far, and the meter-and-a-half between them, Ophelious drew himself up to his full midget height, looking righteously affronted. “It just might. Now stop scaring those nobles halfway across the room with that ogre’s temperament you insist on carrying around like an old, one-eyed, stinking moth-eaten teddy!”
Another round of silence claimed the throne room at Ophelious’ outburst. The bystanders looked on, impressed he’d had it in him.
Less impressed was Mosscrow.
Suddenly realizing what he had done, the sorcerer’s eyes grew wide in alarm, giving him the distinct appearance of a frightened hare. Crow took one stride toward him, and that was all it took to send the scrawny sorcerer scrambling up the steps of the dais and diving for cover in the small slot beneath the king’s throne.
“For the gods’ sake, is there a single soul within these walls who knows how to act civilized?” Lady Verrikose’s crystal-sharp voice chimed throughout the throne room, intercepting Crow’s advance mid-stride. “Is decorum truly a lost art? Children do not belong at court, you two, and if neither of you can compose yourselves, I shall have you both thrown out and assigned a nanny. Is that quite clear to both of you numbskulls? Don’t look at him, Lord Mosscrow. And for pity’s sake, Ophelious, come
out from under that throne.”
Peering cautiously out, Ophelious craned his neck to see past one of the throne’s legs. While obviously hesitant, he seemed equally hesitant to disobey Lady Verrikose, crawling shakily out.
“That’s better,” Lady Verrikose said. “Really, Mr. Ophelious, you must learn to conduct yourself with more assurance. It’s no wonder the beast has lost respect for your authority. How do you expect to command anything when you’re afraid of your own shadow?”
Shamefaced, Ophelious looked at the floor.
Isavor seemed to come to the same conclusion about the sorcerer’s commanding temperament – or lack thereof. He turned to the beastress. “Lady Verrikose – can I count on you to conduct a retrieval of the missing beast?”
“I can try, your Majesty – but as the Lord Advisor pointed out… There are unpredictabilities, given the element of magic and uncharted species. I cannot guarantee I will be able to gain control of a preternatural creature gone rogue. As you know, my gift does not penetrate the minds of homo sapiens – anything that has developed equivalent intelligence may prove just as resistant. And we’ve known from the beginning that these beasts are blank slates that learn from those around them.”
“Do your best. Short of sending out the others to hunt their own kin, I’m not certain what other options we have at our disposal.”
The noblewoman inclined her head, elegant as a bowing swan. “Of course, Sire.” Rising with a rustle of skirts to retrieve Slasher, she glided from the room to do as the king requested.
Eyes narrowed, Despiris watched her go. It had seemed like the king’s idea to rope her into the matter and assign command of the beast to her, but Despiris couldn’t help a brooding sense that the woman had manipulated the situation, ulterior motives astir beneath her ever-present, satiny-smooth veil of deceit.
14
Riddles and Rebels
“It has been left to me, up to this point, to teach you everything there is to know about the world. But perhaps there are things you would wish to learn from another.” – Clevwrith to Despiris, after a kiss not well received.
*
Normally, for the nightly gathering in the Huntsman’s Lounge, Despiris would stay just long enough to play a game of chess, or read a bit of a book by the fire, or feed Slasher his favorite Cerinthus leaves (native to the tropical region Embervia, the species had been cultivated into a dwarf hybrid tree that the noblewoman carted around wherever she traveled, which required tedious climate control and care at all given hours of the day). This particular night, however, Despiris stayed long past her usual appearance, past when Lord Mosscrow, the Captain of the Guard, and the king’s cousin Lady Viola had excused themselves and gone to bed.
Lady Verrikose had been absent this night, occupied with the task the king had assigned her.
Rising to pour himself another drink, Isavor measured one out for Despiris as well, coming to the sofa in front of the fireplace to offer it to her.
Despiris shook her head. “I don’t partake.”
“No?”
“Rule Number Thirty-Seven in the SFH handbook. One must abstain from mind-altering substances at all times, lest we compromise sharpness of wit or physical prowess. We have to be prepared at a moment’s notice to outwit and outrun the characters around us.”
“Ah. I suppose that comes as no surprise.” Setting the second glass down on the low table that separated the sofa from the fireplace, the king hesitated a moment, then set his down next to it. “May I?” He gestured to the free space on the leather sofa.
“Please.” It was, after all, him she had stayed to speak to.
Exhaling a weary breath, Isavor seated himself next to her, and for a time they watched the flames crackle beyond the hearth in silence.
Eventually, Despiris spoke. “How go matters in the kingdom?”
Isavor stared unblinking into the fire. “You mean other than the miasma of death and doom that hangs like an unrelenting storm cloud? Sometimes it seems as if the world has paused, everything coming to a stand-still. In other ways, it seems as though it continues without us. Some things don’t change. There is a rampant new thief abroad, taking advantage of shops and stock-rooms left unattended, and streets left unpoliced. He is a peculiar creature, though – stealing mostly sweets and candy.”
Despiris frowned in bemusement. “Candy?”
“Indeed. Obviously he is not a priority of ours, at present, but notable enough to garner attention.”
“Hm.” Peculiar, indeed. “What of the war with Tricova?” She’d been so preoccupied with the Shadowmaster after her return from across the border that she hadn’t paid attention to how that particular crisis played out.
Isavor gestured dismissively. “Nothing came of it. We restored our military presence at the border, and nipped the uprising in the bud.”
“Good.”
“It is hard to be optimistic, in times like these, but I cannot imagine the toll this kingdom would have felt if we’d faced both war and an epidemic. We would have been decimated.”
A grave prognosis, to be sure. “It is times like these that you wonder how personal agendas can still take precedence.”
Isavor glanced sidelong at her, but she kept her gaze focused past the hearth. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it a tad convenient, that, much to Lady Verrikose’s displeasure, she lost her position among the Shadowhunters, and shortly thereafter Ophelious ‘mysteriously’ loses his standing as the beasts’ master so that she is asked to intervene and take command?”
Isavor shrugged. “I also find it convenient that you objected to the creatures’ involvement, and then, following a lead you presented to them, they brought back a drunk instead of the Shadowmaster, incurring their grounding in the first place.”
Evidently, he was indeed keen to the behind-the-scenes rivalry between her and the beastress. A blush crept into Despiris’s cheeks, but she refused to wither in shame for her deceit. “So you are paying attention.”
The fire caught a glint of amusement in his eyes. “You have to pick your battles as king, Lady Despiris. Sometimes it is worth letting others see to their own skirmishes. But please – tell me more about your theory.”
“I find it hard to believe that one specializing in sharing the minds of beasts would readily withdraw for even a moment from the fascinating curiosities you have gifted to her here. Do you really think there is a muscle moved among them which she doesn’t know about? Which she did not sense – feel – as if moving her own body? You put a botanist in a garden of awe-inspiring new specimens, and he will eat, sleep, and breathe those discoveries. You show an astrologist a new constellation, and his world will revolve around those stars.”
Isavor mulled over this theory. “You think she is letting the creatures grow restless?”
“I think she is encouraging them to. Ophelious may be their rightful master, but Lady Verrikose is equipped with precisely the capability to override their natural instincts. To act in their stead.”
“So you do not believe she is faithfully meditating in her chambers, at present, doing everything in her power to bring Shangar back?”
“Hardly. I would wager she’s out there riding the beast’s mind as she has been since it disappeared, faithfully hunting shadows while the rest of us worry about a plague.”
Isavor scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck in consideration. “And what if she is?”
Despiris wasn’t sure how to respond. If the king wasn’t going to take the bait and feel a need to correct Lady Verrikose for her insolence and deceit… What other angle did she have?
“It’s a pointless endeavor,” she tried. “I hardly think the Shadowmaster is skulking about in the open with a plague running rampant.”
“Then let her waste her time. If she is so determined to defy orders, let her punish herself on this futile, exhausting quest of hers. I should think you would be smirking to yourself about such an irony.”
Whe
n he put it like that…she supposed she should. Still, the king’s attitude toward schemers in his midst surprised her. “What is my punishment, then? For baiting your lackeys with a drunk? It does not distress you in the slightest that your arsenal is caught between two deviants vying for their own angle?”
He shrugged again. “It is just another day at court, really. There is always a tangle of politics afoot, thinly-veiled but highly complex manipulation a regular pastime among ever-conspiring nobles. The Shadowmaster’s apprentice and a handful of scheming sorcerers are just the players of the hour.” For the first time since Despiris had acquired her dedicated guard-shadow, Hanzel stifled a yawn across the room. Isavor glanced over the back of the sofa at the man. “Get some rest, Hanzel. We’re fine here.”
Hanzel hesitated. “Are you certain, Sire?”
“Quite. Lady Despiris would have to be a cold figure indeed to murder me at a time like this. Especially when the plague is just as likely to do the job for her. I’ll take my chances.”
“Very well, Sire.” Accepting his dismissal, Hanzel took his leave from the lounge, leaving the king and Despiris alone.
Somewhat surprised, Despiris spent a moment acclimating to the intimate climate.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Isavor inquired.
Confused, she sought his gaze. “About what?”
“Lady Verrikose commanding the beasts. I assume you cannot abide standing idly by. It is clear it does not suit your agenda to have them interfere with the hunt.”
Despiris thought long and hard before replying. “What you said about doubting my motives… About my actions conflicting with my character… You are half right. But it isn’t that I wouldn’t betray my master. Simply that it came at a price. I pay for the decision every day, so I’m bloody well going to be the one to collect.”
“And what is it, exactly, that you gain from paying that price? What do you want out of this? Credit?”
“That makes it sound trite.”
“Legacy, then?”
“That’s closer. But it’s more complex than that.” She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that they’d grown inevitably close during this span forced into isolation together, or if the flickering coals hypnotized her, or if it had merely been too long since she’d let her full self out, but something caused her to open up. There in the quiet lounge in the dead of night, she let slip a moment of authenticity. Of vulnerability. “On the one hand, I am paying tribute to him, engaging to the best of my ability the character he trained me to embody.”
Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2) Page 12