Dark Lord's Wedding (62 page)

Jerani had to do it. He had to wade into the meaty smells. The lord scraped something off the cooking brazier and passed it on a knife to Jerani. He took it to the Bright Palm in her chair. His once-father stood behind her. Bright Palm Gio’s eyes were filled with nothing at the sight of Jerani, only light. Still, he saw. He would know what Jerani had done.

The woman Bright Palm didn’t spit out the meat. She chewed. She too was part of this.

The black gleam of Celaise’s gown pierced the corner of his eye. She was there, by the coals. She had come back with the lady. He could look away, but he had to know.

The lord held a strip of meat before her. He lifted it toward her mouth. It steamed and dribbled. It would burn her, deep down in her spirit. She had to turn away. Celaise would push free of the guests and come to Jerani. He knew she would, and they would find the right time and slip away together and leave this madness.

Celaise’s teeth closed on the meat. Her lips brushed the lord’s fingertips. And it was done. It was over.

Jerani rubbed the greasy smoke out of his eyes. After tonight, he would have a long road back to the grasslands. He would have to walk it alone.

It had happened at last. He had always known it would. She had gone where he couldn’t follow. He shouldn’t be sad. Jerani hadn’t a right to feel that burning-bramble itching in his chest. Celaise had never belonged to him. Saying so would be as wrong as claiming a cow. The sacred could not be owned, only protected and served. Jerani couldn’t do that for Celaise now.

She didn’t need him.

Too much excitement crackled in Hiresha’s abdomen for her to be hungry, yet she partook of a token mouthful with the guests. The meat was palatable.

“The juices! Doesn’t even need gravy.” The Talon wiped his lips on a scrap of the Chef’s cummerbund. “My Firelight Lady, how often is human served in the Empire?”

“Cannibalism isn’t common.” Relative to headhunting, that was.

“But then how do you reward victorious warriors?”

“In Worldtop Valley, the dead are traditionally eaten by their families, rather than by warriors, per se. The relatives see it as consuming their grief.”

“Pah! This is joy.” The Talon juggled a hot piece of meat between his hands. He had cooked his heart properly. A pity he would be dead within the year regardless.

Hiresha walked away from him using the many legs of her kraken gown. She swept her hand over the corsair’s railing. The waves heaved close below now. They flashed with reflected lightning. A more sinister glow slid beneath the surface.

“Observe,” Hiresha said, “the Sea of Fangs. Seas have always fragmented the Lands of Loam.”

Tethiel stood beside her. Shadows streamed off him in the breeze. “Sea monsters have kept nations cowed.”

“And for good reason,” Hiresha said.

Thunder crashed, shivering the sails. Crystal creaked against crystal. The force of the sound hit Hiresha’s chest. One of her gown’s tentacles coiled in on itself in a purple-ringed spiral.

Before her in the sea, light rose from the deep. Twinkles of pinks and greens and a golden shine, a band of opalescence moved below the waves. Back and forth it flowed, sometimes closer, sometimes further from sight.

“It’s treasure.” Fos’s broad chin turned with the light. “Sunken treasure.”

“No.” The Talon’s headdress tilted in the same direction. “That’s the Winged Flame come among us. He’s swimming but … where is the steam?”

His voice softened to a murmur. Both men stumbled toward the side of the boat as if sleepwalking. Their half-closed eyes shone with reflected light.

Even Hiresha had to resist its pull. The underwater glints promised her vaults full of precious metals. She would have enough wealth to build another dragon, if she only abandoned her senses and dove into the sea. The light undulated and sent out sprays of waves.

The jaguar knight growled. He caught the Talon’s hand between his jaws and held him back.

Fos shucked off his scimitar. He kicked off one boot, seemed to forget the second, and set his hands on the crystal railing. He would take the plunge.

“Fos.” Alyla’s voice was flat and weak between the rolling thunder. “That’s not treasure.”

Hiresha gave him the chance to save himself. When he leaped off the corsair, she Attracted him back. He moaned in protest. She snapped her fingers with a click and forced him to look at her and away from the sea. “It is treasure, of a kind.”

“An inspiration of terror.” Tethiel teetered over the edge, though the pincers of his fingers had a firm grip on the railing. He peered down.

A pod of dolphins swam toward the shine. They too had been caught in its pull. The dolphins slowed to drift, and one by one the light wrapped round them. Soon they would be dragged from sight.

“The hoard worm is but one of many creatures that have dominated the sea,” Hiresha said. “We need fear them no longer.”

Her hand beckoned, and the amethyst dragon sliced into the waves. She had aimed it with claws first, followed by the gem-encrusted wedge of its head. It displaced the minimum of water, yet whiteness still sprayed all the way up to the guests. Hiresha allowed some to land on her kraken dress, and the suckers pulsed in appreciation.

The dragon wrestled the hoard worm half out of the water. The creature could not mesmerize eyes made of quartz. It couldn’t sting scales of crystal or bite through them. The worm folded around the dragon, trying to engulf it. The creature was more flat than narrow, appearing very much like a pile of gold. Its edges rippled and flopped. Froth heaved up. It attempted to swim away. The dragon held on, though Hiresha didn’t have its claws pierce deeply.

All the flatworm’s light went out, leaving it a grey slickness. Hiresha was hardly fooled. It hadn’t escaped nor died. Her dragon kept its grip. The hoard worm burst with light again.

“What a rare nibblet,” Tethiel said. “If only Emesea were here to see it.”

Hiresha nodded. “We need fear these creatures no longer, for we are greater, yet we should still respect them.”

She opened her hand, and the dragon let go. The hoard worm plunged into the water and slithered its way down into the blackness. It left one dead dolphin in its wake, which was a waste.

Hiresha willed new lights to rise. Crystal jellyfish floated out from beneath the hull. They shone with her dream power. “Not as bright as the hoard worm, I will grant, yet they have the advantage of devouring only at my command.”

The jellyfish constructs levitated in an arch formation around Hiresha. The quartz beads and filaments of their tendrils tinkled into each other.

“Like wind chimes?” Fos asked. “Only more sting-y?”

“I will not risk human lives when an army of crystal will serve,” Hiresha said. “These are only the first members of the bloom.”

“You’re as mighty as the sea.” Tethiel didn’t hesitate to walk between the crimson tendrils to her side. “And like all things perilous, you’re irresistible.”

She smiled at him. Her gown mirrored her feelings and embraced his arm with a tentacle, sealing its suckers over his hand and sleeve.

Tethiel’s lips had the shape to suggest that, if properly excavated, they would contain a grin. “And you claimed not to be a romantic?”

“I’m not opposed as long as there’s a measurable benefit.”

“Speaking of scrumptious facts.” Tethiel sniffed. “Your hollow dragon is smelling quite full of drowning men.”

“That would be the assassins.” She had not precisely forgotten about Spellsword Sagai and his equally ungrateful companion, Naroh, yet with so much to think about at the wedding, Hiresha had discounted them. Now they would be spluttering inside the dragon. Sea water had slipped down its throat. “I suppose this is the time to disgorge them.”

With a boom of wings, the dragon lifted from the sea. Its neck bent back, and it coughed out two dripping figures. They landed on the corsair. Their four hands were still shackled together by gems. Another Attraction bound them to the crystal deck, holding the assassins facing each other.

The Talon sprang in front of them. “The next sacrifices, My Lady?”

“Perhaps they could serve in decorating my final gown.” Hiresha went to them. Her dress’s suckers made satisfying popping noises as they held onto the deck then released. One tentacle clamped onto Sagai’s tattooed head and lifted his gaze to hers.

The fallen spellsword didn’t beg or even speak. His chest shuddered with suppressed wheezes. His salt-reddened eyes met Hiresha’s then turned back to Naroh.

The jostling inside the dragon had not well suited her, as far as Hiresha could surmise, that or the constant fear of death, or the submersion in salt water. Naroh gagged and jerked her head to the side. The quick motion spared Sagai from a splatter of vomit. She expectorated after it then sagged into him.

He leaned back into her, and the two supported each other to stay upright. With their cheeks pressed together, they both looked up to Hiresha, watchful of what death would fall on them. His expression was resigned, hers defiant. Both their noses dribbled, and their mucus mixed.

How wretched to be obligated to kill people who were friends in another life. Then again, this was Hiresha’s night. She needn’t do anything that didn’t suit.

Her tentacle released Sagai. Hiresha said, “I find myself in a less vengeful vein.”

“Yes, spare her.” The smooth hum of the voice wasn’t Sagai’s but Elbe’s. The Purest brushed close to him then walked to Naroh’s side. “Only by forgiving can we heal.”

“Spare them both,” Tethiel said, “or none at all. Nothing strengthens love so much as death, nothing makes it last longer. Kill half a couple and you’ll sharpen the passion of the other into a lance that could pierce even your dragon.”

Hiresha’s tentacle flicked Tethiel’s flower from his lapel. There was some truth in his fable. Hiresha said, “Then it would seem they both must die. Last time I spared them, and they didn’t appreciate my choice.”

“This time, she will.” Elbe clasped the woman, brushed salt-crusted hair back from her eye. Elbe’s gemstone fingernails hesitated above Sagai’s bald scalp, yet then she laid her palm over his head as well. “This time, they both will.”

The Purest had acknowledged a man’s existence. She had taken Hiresha’s words to heart. She hadn’t only heard but listened. Hiresha counted Elbe as a ruby among dull garnets.

“Their love may be unnatural,” Elbe said above the man and woman, “but it is strong. And they can’t be blamed for Strife making them so.”

“I can’t deny the power of their mutual trust,” Hiresha said.

Sapphire bees twinkled on Elbe’s cheeks. “Then you’ll let them live?”

Naroh drew in her first deep breath at the same time as Sagai.

Two of Hiresha’s tentacles squeezed the prisoners together. “I may yet think of way to pardon my assassins for a second time, one which wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable.”

“You will strive for harmony.” Elbe drew in air to continue speaking.

Tethiel finished for her. “And succeed even if you fall short.”

Sagai turned to kiss Naroh.

She avoided his lips and whispered, “Not in front of them.”

He laughed. She chuckled, blushing, and the pitch of her mirth complemented his.

Hiresha left them Attracted to the deck. To Tethiel she said, “Naroh declined the kiss. They might not be as close as you believed.”

Tethiel straightened a new buttonhole. The red flower had appeared from his mind. “Or love comes in many varieties.”

“As does foolishness.”

“They amount to the same thing.”

Tentacle and arm, Hiresha and Tethiel approached the table of Bright Palm Alyla. The last pact to be made was with her. Across from her sat Celaise, teeming with poise. The disparity between her and Jerani’s plodding stride, Hiresha couldn’t overlook. Each moment he glanced at Celaise. She never returned his gaze, and his expression racked tighter and tighter against his skull.

Hiresha should like to assuage Jerani’s pain, yet she could do little. He had overindulged in the delusion of love.

“If it’s inadvisable to separate couples,” Hiresha said, “what do you intend with that pair?”

“My heart, the only danger is in killing one. In the living, love languishes. There’ll be nothing left between them by dawn.”