Pyramid Schemes

by Peter David

  I wasn’t entirely sure how to react to that. All of the aggravation and bullying that Morningstar had put me through was still fresh to me, and this new attitude of respect and even deference was catching me off guard. But he seemed sincere. “Well, I doubt it will come up,” I said. “But I appreciate the admission.”

  “Not a problem, especially since the queen will doubtless have me execute you, so it won’t be as if you would wind up telling a lot of people.”

  “That’s very considerate.”

  Then the door at the far end of the throne room opened and Entipy strode in. There were two handmaidens on either side of her following along.

  Once upon a time, her face had had merely a sort of vague prettiness, but that time was long gone.

  I gasped, which I suppose I should not have done. I could not help myself, however. When I had first known her, she was barely out of adolescence. Now, though, she was twenty years older and in every aspect a lovely, grown woman. Her hair, the color of which she was constantly changing, was black today. Her formerly round face now had high cheekbones and her piercing eyes studied me as if I were some manner of animal that a scientist was looking over. More than that, though. They were eyes that had seen many things, endured much. They knew love, loss, triumph and defeat.

  I glanced around and realized there was no sign of the jester, Odclay. I wondered what had happened to him. For all I knew, Entipy had had him executed because she didn’t like a joke he’d made. How wonderfully ironic that would have been considering he was her father. Would he tell her that in order to save his own life? Doubtful. She likely wouldn’t believe him anyway.

  Everyone around me bowed to her. I remained upright. Morningstar swatted me in the back of the head to encourage me to bend at the waist, although I had no idea if he genuinely meant it or was just trying to anticipate what she would do for my failing to display proper courtesy. With an annoyed sigh I bent at the waist.

  She did not go to her throne. Instead she strode across the room toward me. She was wearing a full green dress that seemed to be silk with velvet red trim. Entipy drew to within a couple of feet of me and then stood there, just continuing to stare. I was now standing upright.

  “Apropos,” she said. Her voice had deepened a bit. There was a neutrality to her tone, as if we were just being introduced. “Of all the ways I imagined this day was going to go, this was certainly not one of them.”

  “Highness,” I replied. “I am sorry to learn of your father’s passing.”

  “And my mother. Three years ago.”

  “I hadn’t heard. Again, I’m sorry.” I wanted to ask about Odclay, but this was obviously not the time, although I had no idea if I was going to have any more time beyond this moment. She could have me executed with a word.

  She was continuing to regard me closely, as if dissecting me with her gaze. “You look handsome enough. What happened to your ear?”

  I touched the side of my head. “Lost it in a game of poker.”

  Entipy actually smiled at that. “Knowing you, I almost believe it. May I ask what in the world you’re doing here? For all you know, I’m going to have you executed for escaping my father’s justice.”

  I had actually more or less assumed that was going to happen. “I have some news for you.”

  “And you believed that the only way to convey it was to come in person?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would it be?”

  I lowered my voice so that she would be the only one capable of hearing me, since Mace had taken a few steps back as she approached.

  “It’s about our son.”

  Her eyes widened for half a heartbeat and then she immediately managed to compose herself. She spun on her heel, the green dress sweeping along the floor, and said, “Follow me.”

  There were confused looks from the knights. Doubtless they had expected that she would order me killed on the spot, not taken into the back for some private conference. But she was the queen and her wishes were to be obeyed, so I fell into pace behind her and we departed the throne room.

  We entered a private study that was attached to the throne room. The handmaidens followed us in, but Entipy turned to them and said, “Leave us.” Naturally they did as ordered, leaving the two of us to ourselves.

  “What is his name?” she said.

  She was challenging me. Perhaps she thought that I was lying for some reason.

  “Germane. An appropriate one considering his father was Apropos.”

  “Is he…” She hesitated a moment, gathering herself. “Is he here? Is he with you? Has he finally returned to me?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Then what—?”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He is dead.”

  She said nothing at first. If I thought that she was going to burst into tears, I was completely incorrect. Instead she just sat there with level gaze and then asked me a most unexpected question:

  “Did you kill him?”

  “What? No!” I couldn’t quite believe that she even had to ask. “Why in gods’ name would you think that?”

  “Because I have no idea if you would or not. I don’t know you, Apropos. I thought I did, but you fled into the woods rather than marry me. You gave me a host of reasons why, none of which, as I recall, made the slightest degree of sense.”

  “Well, the last thing you said to me was that you found me dull, so…”

  “I would have said anything to hurt you, because you hurt me.”

  “Telling me I was dull was the worst thing you could think of to say to me?”

  “At that moment, yes.” Her gaze dropped toward the floor and she stared fixedly at my boots, but she was not really looking at me. “How did he die?”

  I had had plenty of time to think of exactly what to say, and had still not come up with anything better than the simple truth. “He was slain by a monster. It happened very quickly and I was unable to save him.”

  “Where? Where did this happen?”

  It was at that point that I filled her in, as briskly and without emotion as I could, how I had first encountered Germane in Rogypt. There were some aspects of the narrative that I omitted, such as that we had competed in the chariot race and that he had tried to kill me. The omission of this particular fact actually attracted her attention. “He despised you,” she said. “If he’d met you, I’d have thought he would have kept his identity a secret and tried to slay you when you didn’t expect it.”

  She really did know him quite well. “Well, he didn’t. Instead he confronted me. And we managed to…to work things out.”

  “Work things out?” She sounded incredulous. “How in the world did you do that? You ran away rather than marry me. You reduced him to the status of royal bastard. What in the world could you possibly have said that would have eased his mind?”

  Do I tell her? Do I let her know that she shares the exact same status as her son: a royal bastard? Do I tell her she’s my sister?

  It had been a question that I had wrestled with for the entirety of my trip to Isteria, and until this moment, I still had not come up with an answer that satisfied me. But at this instant, I knew that I couldn’t tell her. I had just taken away from her all hope of her son returning. Was I also to rob her of her throne? The one thing of any importance left to her in the world?

  “I told him I was a coward.”

  She looked astounded. “You told him what?”

  “I told him the truth, Entipy. I told him I was simply too cowardly, too gutless, to take on the responsibilities that being your mate would have required.”

  “Because you told me that it was because you were worried that I would become bored with you. You said…”

  “I said a lot of stupid things to cover my own lack of resolve. That’s the truth of it, Entipy. I just didn’t have the nerve. It was entirely my fault.”

  “Damned right it was your fault.”

  Her voice trailed off and then, very softly,
she asked, “ The monster…did you kill it?”

  Technically Ahmway and several hundred tons of water had done it, but I was never loath to take credit. “Yes.”

  “And did Germane die well?”

  He died screaming and begging for his life.

  “Fighting until the end.”

  And now it came. The tears started running down her face and she began to sob. For a moment I had no idea what to do, and then I gave in to the obvious course. I rose from my chair, crossed to her, crouched next to her and embraced her.

  Entipy, the girl whom I had perceived as some sort of complete devious lunatic so many years ago, emptied all of her emotions onto my shoulder. The tears flowed and kept flowing, I have no idea for how long. In a way, I was relieved. It showed that she was indeed capable of displaying normal emotions like a human being. She was a grieving mother and I was there to comfort her in the best way that I was able. I patted her on the back, I said soothing and meaningless things to her. I did all that I could to help her deal with her grief and eventually, after a seemingly interminable amount of time, she managed to calm herself.

  “I always feared that he would die violently,” she whispered to me. “When he ran away, I was sure of it. I wanted to help him. I did. But I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Yes, you were,” I assured you. “Don’t blame yourself for his desire to flee.”

  “Thank you.” She was sitting up and wiping the last of her tears from her face. It was as if the regal persona that she bore reinhabited her body after departing for a few minutes to allow her to grieve. “Thank you for saying that. Thank you for everything. And I want you to know…”

  “Know what?” I said when her voice trailed off and she didn’t continue.

  She reached over and took my hand in hers. Her hands were surprisingly cold, but I didn’t withdraw mine from hers. She gazed at me, her eyes filled with sincerity.

  “I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  Oh God…

  “I’ve never stopped,” she continued, “and I’ve never ceased imagining what our lives could be like together. I’ve forgiven you decades ago for walking out. Hell, I forgave you almost from the moment you did it. Not a day has not gone by where I’ve contemplated what I could have said that would cause you to remain here with me. I’ve come up with thousands of different things I could have said. And now you’re here. You’ve come back to me.”

  “I came back to tell you what happened to our son, Entipy. That was the only reason…”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe that. Even you don’t believe that. You could have found other ways to get the news to me. You wanted to come back to me. You wanted to give me life again.”

  “Life again?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand…”

  She released my hand and sat back in her chair. She was no longer looking at me, but to my right, as if addressing…I don’t know…the spirit of our son. “Being queen has been a wonderful experience. You remember what I was like as a teenager. There is no other way to put it: I was a bitch.”

  “No,” I said immediately, which we both knew was a lie. Bitch was actually one of the more restrained words that I could have used.

  “Yes,” she insisted. “I was, and you know I was. No matter what you tell me now, I know that it was my attitude, my beliefs, everything about me, that drove you away. If you aren’t willing to admit that that was the entire reason for your departure, at least admit that it was a partial cause.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  “But I am no longer that girl, Apropos,” she continued. “I have grown up.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “The kingdom is peaceful. We are involved in no wars. Life here is idyllic. It’s everything that any reasonable person could possibly want to undertake. Yet to me, it is empty. I have no husband, no son. I have no one to rule after me, or with me. I need you, Apropos. I need you by my side. I need you…”

  Then, to my astonishment, she dropped to one knee and took my hand once more. She gazed at me with more love than anyone ever had in the entirety of my existence.

  “Apropos of Nothing…will you marry me?”

  I stared into her eyes. Into the eyes of my half sister.

  A girl who had effectively stopped living her life when I had walked out on her two decades earlier.

  A girl who had lost her father, her mother. Who had no family, but instead resided in a castle full of knights and servants.

  A girl who had just learned that she had lost her son and felt as if she had no future left to her. How long had she hoped that eventually Germane would return to her? What dreams had I just crushed by telling her that her son would never be coming home?

  She was a girl who had everything and yet had nothing.

  And she wanted me to fill that gap in her life.

  But she was my sister.

  A fact that was known by exactly one person in the entirety of the world.

  Four astounded words etched themselves in my brain:

  Who would it harm?

  I couldn’t believe the thought had even occurred to me, and yet there it was, rolling around in my head, refusing to go away.

  One of the most noble—indeed, one of the only noble—things that I had done in my life was to walk out on Entipy all those years ago, sacrificing my well-being in the spirit of morality.

  And look at what the result had been. She had created a high tower around her heart and never let anyone in, and had raised a son on her own who was condemned to live his life as a royal bastard rather than a prince and future king. What had been the purpose of my departure, really? It wasn’t in her interest, but only in my own comfort level. I had ruined her life in order to distance myself from her, and I had told myself that I was doing it for her own good.

  I had abandoned her and yes, she was a queen and, by all accounts, a good one, but her inner life was pure emptiness.

  Really…what would be the harm?

  She was of sufficient age that I likely didn’t have to worry that we would produce more offspring, so I did not have to worry about possible deformities resulting from the closeness of our relation. For that matter, the child we had produced hadn’t seemed especially deformed. So even in the unlikely event that we did spawn another child, he or she might be perfectly healthy.

  And the fact of the matter was, I actually felt closer to Entipy than anyone else in the world I had ever met. The truth was that all through the years, my thoughts had often returned to her and I had always wondered what had happened to her in the intervening time. Curiously, it had never occurred to me that our one night of passion might have resulted in a child, but that was entirely due to the limits of my imagination.

  We had spent months together, on the run from enemies, doing everything we could to survive. During that time we had grown very close, even though we had done our best to deny it. Yes, we shared the same blood, but that wasn’t actually all that unusual. I had wandered through kingdoms where cousins, and even siblings, had wound up marrying or at the very least had indiscreet affairs. These actions were accepted as the norm.

  The long and short of it was that a union that had seemed anathema to me at a young age now, in my advanced years, did not come across as that much of a problem.

  Did I love her? I wasn’t sure that I was capable of love the way that other men were. But if I was, then certainly Entipy was the one individual in all the world that I could indeed feel that emotion for.

  “Yes,” I said.

  With a joyous gasp, she practically threw herself on me, kissing me passionately. Something within me flinched at first, but then I blocked my knowledge from my mind and allowed myself to give in to the wonderful feeling of her flesh against mine. Her tongue darted forward into my open mouth and danced across mine, and she even giggled slightly like a child as she did so.

  Our mouths parted and I found myself willing myself to put aside my knowledge of who she
was to me. What had been something of vast importance in the past now seemed beside the point. I was indifferent to it.

  Why? Why the change in my attitude?

  In reflecting upon it now, I have to believe that my exposure to Germane, however brief, had awakened something within me. I had spent more or less the entirety of my life believing that isolation and aimless wandering was what the rest of my existence was going to consist of. Yet my time with Germane had led my imagination wandering down the path of speculation. I had wondered, in the entirety of my six month voyage home, what my life would have been like if I had actually had a family. If I had had a wife to love me. If I had lived the life that most men live. Yes, I had had many adventures, many exciting experiences. But I had far fewer days ahead of me than behind me, and in the end, is not a man judged not by the things he accomplishes, but what he leaves behind? None of us are immortal. The things that we do with others, the lives we build and the remnants of what exists after we are gone…that is the closest that any of us will come to living forever.

  I had left nothing. Everyone to whom I had ever felt close was dead. For the most part, I was responsible for their deaths. Entipy was the last one remaining, the last person whom I had ever felt anything approaching love to still be breathing. And she clearly loved me, and had done so for twenty years. Twenty years.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said when I came up for air. “I suppose I have loved you all this time. I just never realized it until now.”

  “Of course I’m right. I am the queen. I’m always right,” she said, for a moment sounding like her old imperious self. “We will arrange the wedding immediately. And tonight will be your wedding night. The most memorable wedding night anyone could have.”

  And she was correct.

  Chapter 18 Flushed Down the Throne

  I was only watching Mace Morningstar’s face when Entipy announced to the assembled court that we were to be married immediately. I have to admit, he reacted with far greater equanimity than I would have thought possible. The Mace Morningstar of my youth: his jaw would have dropped, his utter astonishment would have been unmistakable. Instead Mace kept his face impassive and even joined in with the collective applause.