Dark Lord's Wedding (10 page)

“I’m giving you a lucky stone,” Hiresha said. “It’ll protect you until you earn your brilliant new name, yet you must promise not to tell anyone about it.”

The girl fiddled with the jewel in her hair. “It’s stuck.”

“Promise me, Nahui. You must promise.”

The girl gazed up with eyes bloodshot from coughing. “Promise.”

In another facet, a different Hiresha gave the king an emerald mantis brooch. It would cure his pox. It would also weaken his heart over two months until the organ burst in his sudden death. One Hiresha killed, the other cured. Perhaps the balance was right. Or the dying despot was a sign to the exile Hiresha, to the Lady of Gems in her dawn facet, that she should let the girl expire. If it was prophetic, Hiresha ignored it.

The facets spun about each other and then diverged in a lucid gleam.

Hiresha was carving and polishing the day’s amethysts. The leaves trembled almost imperceptibly from the footfalls of men invading her banyan fortress. She dimmed the dreamlight in her jewels and Attracted a chisel to her hand. Keeping up appearances was such a nuisance. The intruders weren’t Jerani and Celaise. Hiresha knew this man too well by the sound of his mouth breathing.

Macco the King’s Spear peered into the grove. When he spotted Hiresha, his brows quirked with disappointment at the same time his cheeks puffed out with relief. “You’re alive.”

“And why would I not be?” Hiresha pretended to shear off a section of gemstone with the chisel.

“A Feaster got into a nobleman’s house not a day’s walk from here. None got out.” Macco waddled into the grove, hips first, stomach puffed out as if he ate well enough to boast a king’s belly. “Macco knows you work at night. There are lights.”

“True, my death might reflect negatively on your report to the king,” she said.

Another warrior had come in with Macco, the man with the axe. Today Axe-For-Brains was blanched and shaky. His typical abscess of confidence had been drained. Either he had seen a Feaster or else he held them in mortal fear. Maybe he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“Two strangers passed through yesterday. Told Macco you knew them.”

“I can vouch for them both,” Hiresha said.

“Who vouched for you, eh? That’s what Macco wants to know.”

Hiresha wouldn’t belabor this conversation with him again. Her insight had earned a favor from his king. He should respect that, even if he was right to suspect her, as well as the newcomers.

The young woman, Celaise, likely hadn’t been the one to Feast on the noble’s family, since Tethiel planned for her to rule. She had restraint enough to spare the young man who traveled with her.

She wasn’t entirely without good sense. The flawed woman had at last consented to give Hiresha her onyx teeth. Repairing Celaise’s body would take a crystal-library worth of enchantments. Hiresha couldn’t begin any of them until the King’s Spear left. One topic had always sent him running. She would use it again.

“Your miners are failing you. Some have weakened to the point of collapse.”

The King’s Spear shrugged. “The underworld is not for the living.”

“Ventilation shafts may bring more life down from the surface.”

“How would you know, gem carver?”

“I am first a sage, and I’m at your command.” You pride-bloated bullfrog. “If you wish me to advise—”

“The king put Macco in charge, for his courage. Not you.”

“I would not question the wisdom of your courage.”

He waved his spear with its green band in front of her face. “Do you know what this means?”

“Yes.”

“It means Macco does the work of the king.”

“Is that perhaps why they call you the King’s Spear?”

“Yes,” he said, “and all his spears are coated with a Green Blood’s venom.”

“I hadn’t forgotten since last you told me.”

“This spear scratches your cheek and you’re going to die. But not as soon as you’d wish.” He leered at her. “That means it’ll hurt so much you’ll want to be dead.”

With diamond poise, Hiresha restrained herself from rolling her eyes and laughing. To think that mere years ago she had scoffed at actors, and now she was obliged to act for an audience of one.

Hiresha gripped her neck and forced herself to grimace. She dropped to her knees. “No one could not fail to fear you.”

The King’s Spear slapped his belly and then lofted a hand. “Macco has only taken thirteen hostages in battle. Someday he may do greater honor to the gods.”

“Last time you said eight.”

“What?”

Eight hostages in battle. That had been the previous month, and the King’s Spear hadn’t fought as much as a large jungle rodent since. “Never mind,” Hiresha said.

The buffoon and his goons left. Hiresha flitted out of the grove to where Celaise and Jerani slept. Hiresha held them both in deep sleep while implanting the onyx teeth into the bones of the girl’s jaw and skull.

Time washed forward and back around Hiresha. Later the next night, after she had let them wake, once Hiresha had slipped out of this world and back through her own dreams, Jerani spoke to her.

“Celaise told me they were like real teeth again,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Do see that she uses the teeth to chew something more solid than fear. Eating is a poor hobby but a good habit.” Hiresha turned to speak to Celaise, who was flicking her hem of stardust for the fennec to play with. “Your body must be strong and healthy when I reshape your bones.”

Celaise stared.

“Not to worry,” Hiresha said. “I won’t do it while you’re awake. Now, do you have a message for me?”

“What? Oh, yes. The lord father will meet with you on Mindruin Peak.”

“Here’s my counterproposal: No. Cursed mountaintops aren’t required for planning weddings. We’ll meet here,” she said. “I will also have need of a Feaster skilled at crafting faces. Perhaps you know of one.”

“The Mimic, maybe.”

“Send him to me. Or her.”

“I’ll tell the lord father.” Celaise looked up from the fennec’s digging, toward the entrance of the banyan fortress. She rested three fingers against her chin, and she spread her other hand over the constellations that made up her dress. The nerves in her mouth had been deadened to pain; it couldn’t be her teeth that were troubling her.

Hiresha asked, “There’s another Feaster outside, is there?”

“One of my sisters. She wants to meet you.”

“I haven’t enough hours in the day to meet every stray Feaster. Will this be a common occurrence?”

“No.”

“This then is a Feaster of uncommon import?” Potentially the same one who had destroyed a household not too long ago, not too far away.

“She’s the Bleeding Maiden.” Celaise said the name as if it should signify something to Hiresha.

Perhaps it did. People without anything better to do traded stories around campfires, gruesome tales about the exploits of Feasters. Hiresha hadn’t succeeded in ignoring them all. She had glimpsed the Bleeding Maiden before in Oasis City. This Feaster and Hiresha couldn’t have much to discuss, excepting perhaps an intimate knowledge of internal anatomy.

The fennec was scraping at the clay soil. He hadn’t made much progress on this burrow. The fox looked up at Hiresha and yowled, his black whiskers bobbing.

“The ground here is most uncooperative, isn’t it?” Hiresha took the fennec along to ensure her time with the Feaster wouldn’t be utterly wasted.

The Bleeding Maiden resembled little more than a waif, stumbling closer over the rubble. A lost thing, she was, slight and fragile as a sphene jewel.

She caught sight of Hiresha. Her eyes lit with lash-fluttering hope. She reached out with a hand covered in red spots. “Can you help me? My back pains me so.”

The waif limped closer, clutching her side. Moonlight pierced the canopy to fall on her face. She glowed with fever sweat, and the same lesions covered her exquisite features. Those spots would open soon in pus.

She had the pox. She was a plague bearer carrying death for her lord. In one facet he had blighted the Oasis Empire. In this one he had doomed the Dominion of the Sun. Hiresha clutched the fennec against her chest as the future devastated her.

“Can you help me?” The waif reached out again. Thirty-five spots covered her hand.

Before there had been only twenty-seven. Her infirmity was an illusion.

Screams had been scrabbling up Hiresha’s throat. She stifled them to speak in a level voice. “You are a dangerous one.”

The Bleeding Maiden curtsied.

Somehow, the Bleeding Maiden had known. It was as if she had stolen thoughts out of Hiresha’s sunset facet. She had rummaged Hiresha’s mind for her deepest fears.

“No, I don’t think I can help you,” Hiresha said. “The illusion you’re wearing is in extremely poor taste.”

“Then maybe I can help you.” Her lesions fluttered off her skin and were gone. “With a warning.”

Hiresha rubbed the fennec’s fuzzy chest with two fingers. The fox sang a whirling trill of notes. He had not been frightened by the Feaster. He had more composure in his black-tipped tail than most men in their ungainly bodies.

“Two are hunting you,” the Bleeding Maiden said.

The Empire might’ve sent more than one assassin. They would both be highly trained spellswords.

“I’ll bring them to you,” the Feaster said. “We can listen to them scream and be friends.”

“Do you mean that the assassins will become friends by screaming together, or that you and I would bond over the experience? Either case sounds unappealing.”

“Then, you want to enjoy their deaths alone?”

“Do I look like a woman of frivolity?” Hiresha asked the fennec.

The Bleeding Maiden managed to scowl and smile at the same time. She may very well dislike being less alluring than a fox. What was certain was that she had a greater understanding of fears than other desires. She peered around her then came uncomfortably close. “I’m afraid the lord father may be tricking you.”

“In which particular?”

“To us, black wine is power,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “To others, it seduces the mind.”

“I’m fairly certain it does for Feasters as well.” Hiresha walked around the banyan fortress. The Bleeding Maiden had to follow.

A misshapen shadow leaned against the banyans. It was Celaise, listening. Excellent. She would do well to hear this.

The Bleeding Maiden clasped her hands over her bandaged chest. Blood had soaked through the linens in a rosette pattern. “When one of us touches you, your heart beats faster. You flush. You swoon with chills, but that’s not love. It’s black wine.”

That did confirm Hiresha’s suspicions. She had always speculated about Tethiel. Back when she had met him in a gazebo on a rainy night, again beneath a tomb tower of brass, and a third time high in the blustery Skiarri Mountains, her moments with Tethiel had been bright points in her sleepy life. His magic had made it so. To think a mere man could so awaken her with a rush of feelings would be most illogical.

“I’m so sorry,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “Did you think you loved him?”

This Feaster was a subtle louse. “Whatever made you think, vapid girl, that I believe in love?”

“But, you are engaged?”

“Love is an invention of singers and storytellers to captivate the masses. A cultural construct, at best. No, Tethiel and I have something greater than love.”

“He threatened you?”

“We have an understanding,” Hiresha said.

“What is it?”

“None of your affair.” Hiresha and he were a pair of anomalies without any need to explain themselves to each other.

“As cold as you are, he loves you.” The Bleeding Maiden pressed her chest, ostensibly trying to stem the redness spreading from her bandages. “I only wish I knew why.”

“Tethiel does seem to have an inexplicable interest.” He had followed Hiresha onto the Dream Storm Sea in a rowboat. He never could’ve known she would gain all the powers of a dreamer.

“He’s a great man.” The bloodstain spread over the illusionist’s dress in petal patterns, at an equal rate in all directions, in defiance of the laws of gravity. Her gaze darted up to Hiresha. “He could be the greatest, if he isn’t led astray.”

“Did you hear that, fennec? I am accused of corrupting a lord of nightmares.” Hiresha’s jewels throbbed in time to her laughter. “I must have done something right with my life after all.”

“He’s being lured from his calling,” the Bleeding Maiden said.

“Which is?”

“To make the world kneel.”

“Far better to fly above the world and invite it to follow.” Hiresha gave the fennec a warning squeeze then swung him into the air. His new jeweled necklace pulsed, Lightening him so he could swim toward the sky. The fox’s tail swished back and forth above them. “Far more inspiring, you must agree.”

“I’m afraid,” the Bleeding Maiden said, “that my brother and sister Feasters may undercut your wedding.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it if they’re all as infantile as you. Really, warning me away from Tethiel? I understand your wish to appear younger, yet you’re insulting me by acting your illusory age.”