Clockwork Goddess (The Lesbia Chronicles) (19 page)

"I'm not going to forget a giant forest," Vix replied. "Or houses in the roots of trees. And I'm definitely not going to forget daisies bigger than my brain, or bugs that light the world, or.... or any of this."

Ayla snapped her fingers next to the kindling. A bright purple light leaped from her fingertips and began playing about the wood vaguely after the manner of fire. It emitted warmth and a scent like lavender and berries.

"Forgetting is a blessing," she said as she took a seat in one of the chairs. "Be glad for it."

"Be glad for what?"

Ayla looked at Vix with a dour expression.

"See what I did there?" Vix tried for a little grin, but it withered under Ayla's unimpressed, unamused stare. "You said I should be glad to forget and then I pretended to forget..." she trailed off, knowing full well that the best jokes did not need to be explained to stony faced witch elves.

Chapter Twenty Five

In a little town hall in a little town in a little known part of the middle of nowhere, the queen of Lesbia was holding audience amid the peasants. Surrounded by her guard, she made an imposing sight even in the most humble of surroundings as she sat upon a chair made of rough hewn wood and looked out over a small gathering of her subjects.

While the queen gestured for proceedings to begin, one of her guards kept giggling. The one in the middle. The one whose clothes didn't seem to fit quite right. The one who didn't have the same militaristic precision to her step as the others had.

The peasants did not notice that, for they were far too awestruck by Queen Cadentis, or who they assumed to be Queen Cadentis by the emerald of her station. They marveled at how tall and well formed she was, how full of grace and wisdom and mercy. The queen's party had been in residence of the little townlet of Swansong for three days and would have to remain some time longer, for one of their horses had gone lame and needed to be rested for a time. Now she had agreed to settle a dispute which was threatening to tear the town apart as it became increasingly acrimonious.

"Fyour majefty," a young peasant woman said. Her voice was muffled because she was on her knees and she had pressed her face to the floor. Her hair was red and her buttocks ample beneath her oft mended skirt. She was certainly a buxom lass and her genuflection showed her figure very well. She lifted her head to speak the next words. "My name is Lugwilde. I am in need of your justice."

The queen looked down with regal solemn patience. "What troubles you?"

"Hildegarde has a swine and it trampled my beets. She killed the swine and I asked for half the meat, but she will only give me a leg."

"Because beets and swines are not the same thing," another young woman with blonde braids and buck teeth and who was probably the aforementioned Hildegarde said. "My pig trampled maybe twenty beets, that's barely a meal."

"I could make twenty beets last six months with a little onion," Lugwilde replied. "Your pig's leg has hardly any meat on it. It was a scrawny thing to begin with. Too stupid to at least eat the beets it walked all over."

"Then you won't want to eat it in case it makes you even stupider than you already are," Hildegarde snapped back.

"Enough!" Minerva spoke the word with just enough force to stop the squabbling peasants in their tracks. "You speak of pork and beets to a queen?"

At that moment the short rider with the overly long cloak shuffled forward and murmured something in the substitute queen's ear. Minerva listened for a moment, then nodded.

"My edict is that all shall share their produce in the amount that each finds necessary for sustenance. None shall allow another to go hungry and should you two be found squabbling again, you will both be whipped for it."

Hildegarde and Lugwilde exchanged unhappy looks.

"Your majesty," Lugwilde said. "That's not a fair solution."

"Is it not? Then I suggest you find one between yourselves, lest I decide to enforce the second part of my edict in the first place."

Hildegarde braved another question. "When you say
all
, do you mean..."

"I mean all souls who dwell in this town."

"Even Faith the Simple? She grows no food, weaves no cloth, she deserves nothing."

"I have grown no food and woven no cloth, and yet you have fed me," Minerva said. "Share the fruits of your labors. This is the order of the queen."

"But..."

"Speak no more, Hildegarde!" Lugwilde lifted her voice. "Every time you speak we must give away more of our things. If you keep talking she will make us take off our clothes and given them to one another and you shall not have my scarf, Hildegarde, no you shall not!"

Minerva's gaze was cool as she looked upon the bickering peasants with a displeased eye. "You make light of my verdict, Lugwilde. You will take yourself to the town center, there raise your skirts and await my punishment."

The statement made the commoners gasp as one, but a little twinkle appeared in Lugwilde's eye. "Await your punishment, your majesty? I should be pleased to take it. But should it not also be shared as everything else? Should not all the townsfolk partake in it?"

"She speaks back to a queen," Minerva murmured over her shoulder to Cadentis. "Does she not know what queens are capable of?"

"Show her," Cadentis whispered back. "Use the riding crop."

A short time later Lugwilde's skirts were raised, her round bottom bared to the gaze of the village at large. She seemed to be a particularly shameless maiden, for she moved her hips back and forth in a way which made her cheeks jiggle and bounce for the amusement of the many onlookers.

The crowd tittered and giggled in response. There had never been such entertainment in the village and there probably never would be again, for this was the day one of their number was whipped by a queen. The atmosphere was not at all what one might have expected, there was no solemnity amidst the village ladies. It was quickly taking on the air of a small carnival. Someone was selling sweet nuts, and another was taking bets on how many strokes Lugwilde would receive.

Apart from it all, Minerva held a riding crop in both her hands, flexing it slightly. She made an imposing figure there in the village square dressed as she was in dark clean lines of soft woven fabric which fell loosely from her hips in trousers which were broad enough that they could be mistaken for a skirt if one were not paying attention. Those who managed to tear their eyes away from Lugwilde's bouncing bottom stared at the woman they presumed to be the queen with awed admiration as Minerva swept the crop around to point at Lugwilde's rear.

"Take hold of her," Minerva instructed the two taller riders. "I will have her take every stroke of this."

Lugwilde looked a little less certain of herself as the queen's guard each took hold of one of her arms and ensured that she kept position bent over the wooden saw horse helpfully provided by the town's carpentress.

Minerva took up position behind Lugwilde, her long powerful body poised to deliver punishment. She moved in a graceful arc as she lifted the crop high and bought it down across Lugwilde's bare bottom. It left a pink welt and caused a high pitched squeal to emanate from the mouthy peasant wench.

"Do you see what the wages of insolence are?"

"I do," Lugwilde sniffed, already deeply affected.

"You shall receive them with interest," Minerva declared, bringing the crop down five more times in quick succession.

Each stroke landed like a hissing asp, biting Lugwilde's flesh and leaving a hot red sting behind. It was all too much for poor Lugwilde, who began to cry and struggle so hard that the guards had some trouble holding her in place.

"Let her go," Minerva said, seeing that the peasant was in serious danger of hurting herself in her attempt to get free.

The guards released Lugwilde immediately. The peasant had certainly seen the error of her ways, she was sniffling most piteously and tears were brimming in her gaze.

"Come here," Minerva said.

Lugwilde obeyed slowly. When the peasant was close enough, Minerva extended her hand and brushed her thumb lightly over the apple of Lugwilde's cheek where tears were running. "Do not fight your punishment," she said in soft tones. "You earned it and you must take every bit of it."

Lugwilde's eyes widened as she realized what Minerva was saying. The punishment was not over.

"Put yourself back into position," Minerva said, speaking with an air of calm expectation. "And raise your skirts high."

"Your majesty..." Lugwilde stammered the words,

"I have given you a royal decree," Minerva replied. "Dare you disobey your queen?" The question was delivered softly, but there was steel in her tone which made every soul in the village square fall silent as they waited for Lugwilde's response.

Lugwilde stared pleadingly at Minerva, but there was no quarter in the queen's steady gaze.

"Bend over." Minerva spoke not with the authority of a mere monarch, but one of a woman who was adept in the art of command. Her voice was rich with both empathy and certainty that she would be obeyed. Her gaze fell upon Lugwilde, encompassing the peasant in an aura of quiet charisma from which there was no escape but to obey.

There was a smattering of muttering as Lugwilde turned, bent back over the wooden horse and raised her skirts. She did not look happy with her decision, but she still lifted her bottom for the queen's discipline.

"Good girl." With that scant praise, Minerva slapped the crop across Lugwilde's cheeks, first to the left and then to the right, whipping her arm back and forth so the leather tongue of the crop landed again and again in the inner cleft of the peasant's cheeks, catching the most sensitive parts of her bottom.

Lugwilde hissed, whimpered and sniffled, but she stayed where she had put herself as Minerva plied the crop across tender, reddened skin with a steady and clearly practiced hand. Lines of crop marks soon established themselves as the leather landed in a pattern, hot red marks sitting amid pink clouds of referred heat.

The crowd was no longer laughing. They were watching their queen hold the village miscreant in thrall under her lash with nothing more than the force of her personality. None had ever seen Lugwilde so thoroughly taken to task. Many had tried over the course of village memory, but Lugwilde had always been completely beyond the reach of anything resembling authority - until now.

At length, Minerva was satisfied. She stood back and let the crop rest by her side. "You may stand."

Lugwilde did so slowly, moving with the ginger gait of a very well disciplined young woman. She no longer seemed quite so proud of herself, her eyes were downcast in obvious shame until Minerva tipped her chin up.

"Well done," she said. "If you want something more for yourself than a life of squabbling over vegetables, take yourself to Imperial City. I will write a letter of recommendation to the head of the guard."

Lugwilde's expression turned from shame to surprise. "You would do such a thing for a mere peasant?"

There was a sparkle of warmth in Minerva's gaze as she looked at the chastened peasant. "I would do it for a bright, bold soul who is capable of taking discipline and perhaps even of learning from it."

"Thank you, your majesty." Lugwilde performed a small, somewhat uncomfortable bow. "Your generosity is as copious as your use of the crop."

"And your tongue is still a clear and present danger to your hide," Minerva replied. "Go now, sweet one, and mind your manners."

Chapter Twenty Six

"I need to thank you," Ayla said as she sat staring at the fae flames. She and Vix had not done anything in the short hour since their arrival besides sit and contemplate the whichness of it all.

Vix cocked her head to the side and screwed her face up a little. "Thank me? For what?"

"For accompanying me on this journey."

Vix gave a little shrug. "I had to be somewhere."

Ayla shook her head. "I know better than that. I asked you to walk with me, and you did. I offered no reward and yet you agreed to come with me out of the goodness of your heart, though you must have known it would be a harder path."

"You've been nice to me," Vix said simply. "As nice as anyone ever has been, and a little more besides."

"I have bought you into a situation far beyond your capacity to understand," Ayla said. "I have taken you to a place few humans have ever been, let alone left. And I will yet bring you into more danger."

"Oh well," Vix shrugged. "That's life I suppose."

Ayla turned from the fire to look at her companion. "You have little regard for your life. The living of it, or the end of it."

"Perhaps not," Vix said. "I have toiled long and seen little in return. That is the way life is. This is of no concern to me. If it ends well or ends badly, it will end either way."

"You do not understand how important you are," Ayla said. "You defended me. You could have born a severe punishment for that. Soren was not speaking in jest when she threatened imprisonment."

Vix shrugged again, clearly uncomfortable with the praise, or indeed, any notion that she mattered a jot. "So," she said in an attempt to change the subject. "You have issues with your mother?"

"Issues?" Ayla shook her head. "If I could begin to tell you what the woman I sprang from is capable of your hair would turn gray and fall out."

"I know what you mean," Vix said. "My mother once chased the butcher with a broom for forgetting her order. She got six trotters. She wanted three noses. It was a hard day for everyone."

"You don't know what I mean," Ayla said. "And I am glad for that. I would hope that you would never know such things."

There was a brief moment of silence as Vix digested what Ayla had said, and more importantly, what she had not said.

"I hope you're not going to get all whiny."

Ayla looked up at Vix in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"I just mean," Vix shrugged. "I hope you don't start whining a lot."

"Whining?" Ayla raised a brow at the hengineer. "I hardly think this constitutes whining."

"It doesn't, but I can sense the whine," Vix said, leaning back against the wall.

"If I were to whine, I would be in the right to do so," Ayla said. "If I were to dissolve entirely into a pool of tears, that would also be my right. I certainly have reason for both."

"That's as maybe," Vix said. "I'm just not very comfortable with it. I wouldn't know what to do with you."

"I suppose you would be more comfortable if I were to go sleep in a bush," Ayla replied.

"I would be more comfortable," Vix agreed. "Shall we go find a nice bush for you? There are so many here, and they're so large. You could curl up in them for years if you wanted to."

"I believe this is your attempt at being supportive," Ayla said, the inkling of a genuine smile playing about her lips for the first time since their meeting with the elves. "And I thank you for the intent, if not the execution."

"You're welcome," Vix said. "I do wonder what these elves expect you to do. If the situation is as dire as they are making it out to be, how can you help?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure Soren has something in mind."

"Maybe they're planning on holding you hostage."

"Erwydden would not care," Ayla said. "I have never been of any consequence to her."

"Maybe they want to use your blood in an incantation to banish her to another realm."

"Possibly," Ayla agreed, “but if that were the case they could have had my blood much more simply than this. We will have to wait for Soren to speak with us."

"I'm sure that will be absolutely fascinating. I can't wait to see what she threatens me with next." Vix slid down the wall to sit cross-legged on the floor. She took out her satchel and began whittling components all over again, her fingers moving swiftly in a dance of creation.

Ayla went back to looking into the fire in an appropriately non-whining fashion. All was as it had been, but for one thing - her smile which persisted long after their conversation ended.

*****

Soren made an appearance later that afternoon. She had changed into a splendid aquamarine gown which played up the color of her eyes. It was obvious that she wanted to make an impression and awe them with her majesty. The elf could not have known that Vix was almost entirely awe-proof.

"Hello ladies," Soren said in carefully modulated tones. "Have you settled in?"

Ayla ignored Soren's opening attempt at pleasant conversation. "Tell me what you want."

"I want to welcome you to your home," Soren said. "It has been a long time coming."

Ayla wasn't buying that either. "If you have no use for me, then let me leave. Or state your purpose."

Vix stayed quiet, watching as Soren tried not to let her frustration show.

"Ayla, whether you like it or not, we are family. And this is a crisis of family."

"I have gone many hundreds of years without family. I have been outcast since I came into this world. Why would you think I care about family?"

"Then why did you agree to come here?"

"Because I care for the world outside this place and I know what a threat she is to it. So tell me what you need me to do, and save the platitudes for someone who was not disowned."

"You were never disowned," Soren replied. "You were sent out into the world to learn empathy and humility."

"That's like saying you're not starving us, you're just letting us explore the sensation of hunger. Is there such a thing as dinner in this place?" Vix intervened in the conversation, which seemed to her to be remarkably circular and not at all helping the growling of her stomach.

"There is bread and cheese in my bag," Ayla said.

"Or you could join me for dinner," Soren suggested. "We are roasting pheasants."

"Have the bread and cheese," Ayla told Vix. "It will leave a better taste in your mouth."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean never trust an elf bearing poultry."

Vix found the warning cryptic, but she was inclined to believe Ayla. Having found the aforementioned vittles, Vix satisfied her hunger with the bread and cheese in Ayla's bag, nibbling away while Soren tried to convince Ayla that they were all one big happy family.

"I would beg you to come to the point," Ayla said. "What can I do for you?"

"The question isn't what you can do for me. It's what we can do together for the good of the world. We want the same things. It's time to work together."

"And what is it that we want, precisely?"

"Erwydden must be handled."

"In what manner?"

"She must be removed from the realm of existence."

"She wants to kill your mother," Vix piped up through a mouthful of cheese. "She wants
you
to kill your mother."

A flash of something purely savage lit Ayla's eyes. "Why would you ask me such a thing?"

Soren made a show of wringing her hands before replying. "As you know, it is not possible for an elf to do ill without suffering pain, but you do not bear the pure blood of elves so..."

"So they're hoping you'll be their enforcer," Vix interjected again. "Their little half-breed murderer."

"Silence!" Soren snapped the instruction at Vix.

"Do not speak to Vix that way," Ayla said, rising to her feet. "And do not think to ask me to perform such a vile act. What sickness you must contain to think such a thing."

"Erwydden threatens all of our kind," Soren replied. "She has committed evil time and time again. She imprisoned you for the first fifty years of your life. She. Not I. You blame us for the pains she inflicted on you, and now you tell me that you will stand by and let her wreak havoc once more."

"I did not say I would stand by," Ayla said, her voice charged with barely contained fury. "I said I would not kill my own kin. I am not tainted by her evil. I do not take lives."

"That's not true," Soren replied. "You have taken lives."

"Only when pressed to. I have never sought someone out for the express purpose of ending them."

"That's not true either," Soren said. "You were on a blood journey when you came through our woods."

"That is different," Ayla said. "Besides, I would likely not have killed Ariadne. She would never allow it."

Soren's lips settled into a cold smile. "You have more of your mother in you than you think, Ayla. All I ask is that you put your darkness to good use."

There was silence in which Ayla did not respond, but which every hair on her body bristled as she held herself tautly erect, staring at Soren with unspoken outrage.

"I think you should go back to your pheasants," Vix said. "You're upsetting my friend."

"She is not your friend," Soren said. "She is not friend to anyone. She tolerates you, because you make her feel human. But she is not human, nor is she elf. She is an unholy alliance, one who should never have been born at all. Her existence is a blight and a mystery."

"If you do not leave my presence this instant, I will perform acts on you which will make Erwydden's misdeeds seem minor," Ayla ground out between her teeth.

"There it is!" Soren spoke approvingly. "You can contain the darkness in a way we cannot. Even now I see it coursing through your veins, the anger, the hatred, the urge to do harm. I can only imagine how invigorating that must be." There was a certain wistful tone to Soren's voice, a note of envy.

"Ayla is a healer," Vix interrupted. "She is famous for her skill. She has saved many thousands of lives."

"She is a healer only because she knows what she really is, on the inside." Soren glanced back at the witch. "No number of good deeds will ever erase what is at the core of you, will they, Ayla?"

Vix saw a glimmer of liquid at the corner of Ayla's eye, the beginning of tears. It was enough to send her into a rage of the kind that made women chase butchers with brooms.

"By all the goddesses you're rude!" She pushed in between Soren and Ayla, nudging Ayla out of the way with her buttocks. "First you tell her that you need her help, then you tell her you want her to kill her own mother, then you tell her she's evil on the inside. You need to go back to your pheasants and you need to formulate an apology and you need to come back here and kiss her feet and tell her how sorry you are and you need to come up with a way to solve this problem without murdering anyone! I don't know what on earth you've been smoking, Soren, but it's not good enough. Now go back home and think about what you've done. Go. Now. This instant."

The odds of a softly spoken hengineer succeeding in sending an illustrious elf out of a room were exceedingly low, but for whatever reason, it worked. Soren turned and left without another word.