Dark Lord's Wedding (31 page)

The amethyst construct tinted the sea fog into a haze of purple twilight. Hiresha estimated the dragon’s wingspan would be a hundred and seventy feet. For now, bare spindle-fingers of crystals spread over the beach. She lifted sailcloth, dyed black, to the clawed wingtip. She slatted the canvas and Attracted to hold it in a vice of amethyst.

Footsteps crunched closer on the beach. Even thought his legs had straightened and the sound of his stride had changed, she knew it would be Tethiel tonight. In her other facet he had given her an ultimatum. She had to exile the Bright Palms or he would murder her friends. In this sunset facet he would make different demands.

“Genius is so little appreciated,” Tethiel said, “because it so rarely builds dragons.”

“My construct deserves silk wings,” Hiresha said. “For now, stitched sailcloth will have to suffice.”

“Your dragon can fly. Your crystal castle is built, and you’ll have kings for guests.”

“Everything is going according to wedding plan.” Hiresha should be happy. Yet the sea spume clung to her skin with a cold stickiness. She Repulsed the salt. The foreboding remained. She shouldn’t marry someone who had caused so much grief, was still causing it in her other facet.

“Yes everything, except for one thing.” Tethiel pulled his betrothal necklace from a vest pocket. He hadn’t been wearing it. “What enchantment is this? I feel too well to be right.”

“The magic has regenerated your bodily units, primarily.”

Tethiel dangled the dawn gem at arms’ reach. Pink and orange motes of light flickered over his coat. “Your amulet made me young.”

“It’s not the same.”

“How is it different? My heart, this is the one thing I asked you not to do. The most sacred thing about life is death.”

“I won’t enter holy wedlock with a man pining for the end.”

“Your enchantment faded my scars. It robbed me of my wrinkles.”

She assumed he was now merely being contrary. “You’re a champion of the superficial. You should be pleased.”

“Old age is more than skin deep, and you’ve made my bones young. A man’s faults are his truest friends. You never gave me a chance to say goodbye.”

Hiresha ran her fingers down a length of amethyst wing bone, sealing in the canvas as she went. Impurities in the crystal granted the gemstone its wealth of color. Otherwise, it would only be common quartz. The same could not be said of people. “My enchantment removed some of your flaws. Fear not. Ample ones remain in your mind.”

“Once, you understood that only the flawed could be flawless.”

She let go of the canvas and whirled. Her blue paragon spun up overhead in a bristling of faceted edges. “Shortcomings aren’t valuable, only our strength in overcoming them.”

“You replaced my teeth, regrew my ears, and made me young. Why not just recreate me entirely?”

“Doubtless I should, Tethiel. By the law of averages, your clone wouldn’t be half so ridiculous.”

“I suspect if I gained too much weight to fit my wedding coat, you wouldn’t marry me.”

“Of course I’d stop the wedding,” she said. “Such a sudden increase might mean a tumor.”

“I’ve lied to you. I’ve told you well-dressed truth, but I’ve never defied you.” He tossed the betrothal necklace over the surf toward her. “That’s what your enchantment has done.”

Hiresha caught the dawnstone and descended to him. Her eyes were level with his. Tethiel would never look down on her again.

He gazed from her jeweled feet, dry on the wet sand, up to her face. The corner of his left brow raised. “My, you’re looking especially tall tonight.”

“Yes, I changed myself. I did the same for you,” she said. “We’re now of a height and of an age. We’ll be a match for the wedding.”

“Contrast makes a couple beautiful, not similarity.” Every word scratched her perfect calm.

He had thrown back his betrothal necklace. That might mean the wedding was off, all ostensibly because of a few lost wrinkles. The dawnstone stung her hand with its edges. “This enchantment is priceless. You should be grateful.”

“You scorned my will. That’s why I’m angry with you, my heart. And because you’re dearer to me than satin and sunset.” He reached halfway toward her. In his glove, embroidered dragons moved. Their gold thread crawled through the fabric, and the scaled beasts wrestled over his knuckles and flew down his fingers.

She could take his hand. He might accept the enchantment back. The wedding could progress as planned. “I’m not asking you to live forever. Merely as long as me.”

“I know.”

“I won’t marry to become a widow.” In her other facet, death had destroyed the happiness of an elderly couple. The husband of a venerable arbiter had died. Tethiel’s plague had drained the life out him through hundreds of pustules. The gentleman had wed at the age of eighty. He and his bride had shared only three years.

Hiresha’s fingers grazed Tethiel’s and her skin tried to crawl away. Her hand cramped in protest. Her insides wrenched, and she went cold all over.

No, she could not do it. Hiresha could not despise Tethiel in one facet and marry him in another. She couldn’t stand to touch him, and how repulsive to think of consummating the marriage.

Hiresha withdrew her hand, rolling the dawnstone between her fingers. Parts of the gemstone were yellow, others pink, orange, and gentle red. Together its impurities were beautiful. Tethiel might’ve been half right about flaws. She should tell him that much.

“Perhaps I was wrong.” Wrong to consent to marry him.

His eyes were a deep blackness. Nothing could escape their depths. “Maybe you were right.”

“I do value your efficiency, the force of your vision,” she said. “Curious how much easier it is to think well of you when you’re not so close.”

“Beauty is greater when seen from a distance. The truest love wilts with true closeness.”

“That’s why I esteem commitment, not love.”

He gestured to the dawnstone. “Hence we must never undermine each other’s wishes and schemes.”

She should ask him about his desires for her. They could be of a mind concerning copulation. Hiresha couldn’t imagine he would often wish to take off his coat. He might agree with her. If they did, that would result in her feeling worse should she need to break off the engagement.

“I admit,” she said, “to having doubts about the wedding.”

“If you didn’t, I’d doubt you.”

“It’s only thirteen nights from now.” The blood moon was coming all too soon. “We still have all our bills to pay.”

“Don’t fear. My caravan has already left the treasure vaults of Stillness Resounding.”

He had wanted her to doubt him, at least where others might hear; she had concluded as much. Now the guests coming to her wedding would think themselves suitors. They would woo her. They would place themselves in her power, yet if she should choose one over Tethiel, the Lord of the Feast might try to devour them all. She might have to stop him, for good.

A wave splashed coldness up the backs of her legs. She had forgotten herself. She could’ve willed the sea from touching her. “Tethiel, what are your plans for these last nights?”

“A few men and I might go out for something despicable.”

“Then how will it be different from your every night?”

“We’ll have us a Feast, of those sorry souls who would wager their lives for greed.”

“You mean this would be a murder party?”

“A groom should have one last indulgence,” he said. “The entrées will be willing, for a chance to win a key to our wedding.”

Hiresha supposed many more people died across the world for nothing half so grand. “This once then, as long as you’re explicit as to the dangers.”

She turned to the east. Her dragon was there, and the half-set sails of its wings hung listless in the fog.

“I’ll visit my home,” she said. “Perhaps for the last time in this life.”

“
Miss Barrows may never forgive me.”

“
That I can’t imagine, my heart. She bravely indulges in everything, and of all the temptations, forgiveness is the most dangerous.”

“
The wedding won’t have any alcohol. I negotiated it away to the Purest.”

“
You monster.”

A battle would’ve been better than this. Jerani kept to the corners of the cavernous room even though the shadows scratched at the back of his neck. Mosquitoes buzzed past his ears. Leeches wriggled at his toes. They might not be real. Maybe none of this was. Yes, he had to believe that. He hadn’t really seen the lord devour that man in one bite.

The lord rubbed a frilly napkin over his lips. “This world has no place for mediocrity. You must either be abysmal or victorious.”

He held up a key to the winner. The man’s chest heaved. He had been dancing forever. All the others had tired. One groaned on the ground, clutching his ankle. Another had passed out. Or died. The last man standing dripped sweat from his elbows. He had a drunken smile.

“You may choose this key, or an armful of treasure.” The lord waved to a glittering heap of crystal honey jars, gold coins, and embroidered cloth of rich reds and purples.

“I … I’ll.…” The panting man pointed to the key.

“Wise. Very wise.” The lord held up the key. This one wasn’t like Celaise’s. But it must open something just as amazing. The handle glinted in a crescent of silver, as brilliant as the Bull Moon, with studs of dark gems. Half the key’s teeth were crystal. “You could sell this to a matriarch and live a life of comfort. Better yet, you could attend the wedding yourself for enough terrible wonder to last a lifetime.”

The winner lifted the key overhead, and the shadows cheered at him. He had a butterfly tattoo on the back of his neck. He stumbled out of the room’s light.

The chandeliers dripped burning globs of red wax. Those cow-fat candles stank of charred corpses. Jerani edged farther from them. The darkness beside him rippled, and there was Celaise. No, not her. Just a woman with a feather dress. Spiky things dangled from her ears. They might’ve been preying-mantis earrings.

The woman touched his arm with a greasy finger. She leaned in close to speak over the stomping loudness, the hyena laughter, and the slapping of flesh on flesh. Only the lord’s whisper pierced through it all.

“Risk is rewarded. Tedium is executed. Now, who will entertain us in the eating contest?”

Screams made Jerani cup his ears. People scrambled to fill the seats at a table piled high with plates of roasted snakes and skinned iguanas and giant armadillo cooked in its own plating with its head and limbs still attached. One man pushed aside another by the throat. A woman pulled a man away by his cock then sat down to start stuffing her face full of turtle eggs.

“Your stomachs may burst,” the lord said, “but your exploits will live on in legend. A key goes to the greatest eater.”

Each drink on the table held a pair of toads, still alive and mounting each other. Jerani turned away.

The lord stood before him, closer now, too close, a satin flame in the darkness. He seemed to be in all places. Jerani couldn’t escape him. No one could. How could the others eat? Jerani’s cold stomach was sliming up his chest and squeezing into his throat.

“My little sweetmeat, I’m sorry if my dreadful party is boring you.”