Dark Lord's Wedding (37 page)

His nonchalance wasn’t shared by the next guest to arrive on the ceiling. By her songbird dress and exacting bee tattoos, she would be Purest Elbe. Her face stayed too calm and level. She couldn’t seem to bear looking down to the stars below her feet or up to the pendulum candelabras. Her gaze locked straight ahead. She pressed her fingertips against her belly. If not for her gemstone nails, her nail beds would’ve been white from pressure.

The empire man sprang up to greet the Purest. He had to be ignorant of her position. “Never seen a tattoo like that on the face,” he said. “That must’ve hurt. About how many bee stings, do you think? For measuring the pain, I mean.”

The Purest did not acknowledge him. The empire man kept talking. He had to be immune to discouragement, or gleefully unobservant.

“Did you see where that other woman went? I was just talking to her. Or him? Strange, but someone helped me past the sphinx. No, must’ve been that lady down below. I’m not thinking straight.”

The Purest walked by him and pretended to study the jewel amulets. She didn’t look up at the harsh sounds of men shouting below. The sphinx spat back. They had to be arguing over riddles.

The empire man plopped down onto his pillow again and started whistling, all the louder over the yelling below. He was nervous as well. His broken tune echoed back from the dark corners of the grand hall as whispers.

The next guest slid out of the shadows. She wore white, with a bloodstain at the center of her chest. A Feaster, and the Bleeding Maiden, no less. She looked as ill used as ever, her dress frayed just so and in exacting disarray.

“Oh, but are you sure you should sit there?” She nodded to the engraving of the Empire’s golden camel. The place belonged to him, without a doubt, but the trembling fineness of her finger coaxed him to look at another table. “Your sister will be here, your Alyla. Family should sit together, don’t you think?”

“Alyla? Are you sure?” The empire man scratched the angle of his jaw.

The Bleeding Maiden lured him away, next to a setting design of a white heart and a wreath of pale veins. “You can be with her. The tables are all just as close to center, so it won’t matter.”

“If you think that’s best. Seems like Hiresha would’ve planned it out.”

The Lady Hiresha no doubt had. He knew he had been led into something wrong, even if he couldn’t say what yet. Few enough had been born across the Lands of Loam who could resist the Bleeding Maiden, and the empire man wasn’t one of them. His whistling redoubled.

The place-setting design of a blue bee had to be for the Purest. The Bleeding Maiden stole her away to their own table. The two women weren’t meant to sit together, and the servants murmured as much. The Bleeding Maiden silenced them with a pout.

At the center table, two thrones stood side by side and unopposed. The bride and groom would sit alone. The other three tables were squat and low. They had been arranged at the points of a triangle, each table equally near the center but lengthy. The more powerful guests would sit closer to the thrones.

Far from the focus of power, at a corner seat and a position of least importance, the table setting was paneled half white and half black, half pearl and half ebony. The emblem of a mask would’ve been too obvious. This place would be perfect for someone. The Lord Tethiel had chosen well.

The Lady Hiresha had built, and he had masterminded. This wedding was his kind of ploy. A castle of glass could mesmerize people for a century, if it wasn’t torn down in a night.

The empire man’s strained melody bled into a woman’s scream. Her cry was not entirely human, more than high-pitched wail, less than a beast’s defiant roar, too close to the warbling agony of a bird shot through.

The leaders of the Dominion entered the grand hall. Behind them, the sphinx had fallen from her arch.

Her peacock wings blackened into shadows, and she shriveled into the Feaster she had truly been. The emaciated woman clawed at her throat, choking out foam. She had been stricken by venom. Her riddles would be forever lost.

The empire man had stopped whistling.

The once-sphinx slammed her head into the floor, twice, and thrice. Her skull cracked before the glass. Her pain ended.

Now the party would begin.

“
I anticipate a difficulty.”

“
Only the one, my heart?”

“
Who has the authority to marry us? Not Purest Elbe or the Talon. I shouldn’t want a priest of any breed presiding over my ritual.”

“
Even if it were a jaguar knight? No one could question such a marriage.”

“
I’d prefer we marry ourselves.”

“
There’s a someone I can invite who’d not diminish us.”

“
And this is?”

“
A delicious secret.”

Jerani was missing a chain. He counted them between his fingers, pinching at the bands, but none would pry apart into two. He had lost one. The night had only begun, and he had already maimed his chances.

One silver chain had gone to the old woman, one gold to the warrior of the Empire. Jerani was down two golds. Had he given another to someone? He might have, but who? He should be able to remember. He ran his nails along the warrior marks on his brow.

A face half white and half black, a smirking mask, that’s all that came to mind. But what did that have to do with anything? He hadn’t seen anyone wearing a mask tonight. He must’ve dreamed of it some time ago. His heart was beating so hard that his eyes were pounding, flashing black-white, black-white.

No, he’d lost a gold chain. That meant he would have to send away a king. Or worse.

He had to kneel before the jaguar guest to put on his chain. Those royal-orange eyes had flecks of red murder around the edges. The jaguar didn’t blink. Jerani didn’t let himself either. The giant cat padded up the hall and away. Jerani rubbed his bracer of the Obsidian Jaguar and tapped it against his brow in thanks. If only he had charms for all the guests.

The women guests raked him with their eyes. The kings sized him up then dismissed him with a glance. The cold-glow stare of Bright Palms set him on his heels. He snapped up his spear.

Two of the Bright Palms looked much like any other. The third was his father. Had been his father. Bright Palm Gio hadn’t dyed his hair with the grassland’s red. He didn’t wear his warrior’s robe. Even his warrior marks had gone. Nothing was left of his old self except his weapons.

“Jerani,” Bright Palm Gio said, “how many Feasters are inside?”

Thank the breeze that Celaise wasn’t inside yet! But she would be. Maybe Gio had come to kill her. Tonight Jerani might have to kill the living ghost of his father.

Bright Palm Gio had braided his hair in spiral plaits. It must’ve taken all day. “Jerani, why does the enchantress wed the Feaster lord?”

Jerani had forgotten to answer the first question. Maybe he had better not say anything at all. His skin felt on fire, and he was gagging on his own tongue.

He lifted a silver chain, swallowed once, twice. “You’ll need to wear this.” He didn’t call Gio “father.” Jerani would not.

Bright Palm Gio didn’t nod or show any other sign before leaving. A woman Bright Palm headed the group up the crystal ramp, no hesitation, no fear. She had the leanness of a gazelle. Jerani had given her a gold chain for her gold key. That left him with only one, and there had to be more guests left.

Jerani held his breath while dropping the last gold band over a hairless man-thing with a scalp of speckled blue. ‘
My daring dumpling, if you want to die well, don’t touch the Green Blood.’
Even without the warning, Jerani wouldn’t have made that mistake. The Green Blood looked like any other creature too poisonous to eat.

And Jerani had thought giving a chain to Bright Palm Gio had been hard. If Jerani’s thudding heart had horns, it would have bucked around his chest and gored him to death.

The Green Blood never glanced at Jerani with his snake-slit eyes. He plodded up the glass wall. The others had gasped or laughed. He made a long rattling sound that might’ve come from a throat clogged with venom.

Jerani had to admit he’d lost a chain, before the next king came. He turned to the glass side passages to speak with the Feaster knights. Jerani opened his mouth.

The lord stepped beside Jerani in a surprise of black coat. “Don’t trouble yourself, my berry biscuit. All the kings are arrived.”

Jerani yelped on the inside. No warning at all and Celaise’s lord had come at pounce speed. Jerani asked, “Then I missed a gold chain?”

“In a sense. The unaccountable necklace went to one of my guests.”

“Who was it?”

“Guile.”

“Is that a name?”

The lord wrapped an arm around Jerani’s shoulder. The silver stitching in the lord’s gloves sent spines of chill all the way through Jerani’s chest. A wilted flower was stuck in a buttonhole of the lord’s coat.

Jerani strained his neck looking at the pale flower. It might’ve been one the merchant had dumped in the filthway. No, it must be.

“Do you like it?” The lord sniffed the tattered flower. “Only the fleeting can be beautiful.”

Would the lord kill Jerani for letting the flowers go to waste? The dark-sleeved arm wrapped around him felt like an iron collar. It wouldn’t let him go, not ever.

“My crisp crumpet, this is the happiest and most dreaded day of my life. Is it fair or right that I be the only one overcome? No. I mean to devastate you with generosity.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Have you given thought to your boon? Ask me for anything. Your imagination is the limit, and for most, it’s very limiting indeed.”

Jerani hadn’t given it more thought. He would need to survive the night or the greatest gift would do him no good.

“You’ll desire something ’ere long,” the lord said. “When temptation strikes, succumb boldly. No need to even ask. Take anything of mine, and soon, everything will be.”

“Ah, thank—”

A shriek filled the hallway with shock and pain. Jerani twitched out of the lord’s grasp. It had been a woman’s cry. Maybe. Not Celaise’s, but Jerani still charged up the crystal ramp.

“That would be the Black Sphinx,” the lord said from below. “Poor morsel. She must’ve asked one riddle too many.”

A guest had killed her, a Feaster. The Bright Palms or the jaguar or a king. Jerani needed to know who’d murdered. Soon Celaise would arrive as one of the bridesmaids. She wouldn’t be safe. No one would.

“
If Gangral is the greatest kingdom and its king our most critical guest, we have a problem.”

“
He fears to come, my heart?”

“
He passed his invitation to a royal emissary.”

“
Grievous but understandable. Gangral is far and the journey long. The king might be usurped by the time he returned.”

“
Have you heard of the emissary? The name was Ix.”

“
Ah, Ix, the Green Blood of Gangral.”

“
The venom abomination will be at my wedding? My enthusiasm knows no bounds.”

“
How deliciously devious of the king. No one dares cross a Green Blood. Ix’s venom is the strength of the kingdom, and sending such a power is no slight to us.”

“
We may be satisfied in knowing that we’ve been outmaneuvered and our plans dashed.”

“
That I didn’t say.”

“
An emissary won’t suffice. Inspiring an envoy to bend the knee would mean little.”

“
True. Lesser kings won’t flock to us because we gain the loyalty of an ambassador, no matter how beautifully venomous.”

“
As Ix has the true power, we should declare them the king of Gangral. We can supplant the defunct monarch on our honeymoon. Why are you laughing?”

“
Ix has no ambition. They’re near drowning in apathy. The last thing Ix would want is the weight of a crown.”