Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (21 page)

S
HE LAY FOR A LONG TIME IN THE DARK, FLOATING IN
and out of her body. The voice kept going, water plinking over stone, wearing away. Her heartbeat was muffled thunder, and the blackness inside her skull was now the softness of a pillow. She could lie still and not think, and everything would be done.

And yet. There was another memory, one that hovered just out of reach. An annoyance, grit in a sandal, the sting of sun on already-burned skin, a poke on an almost-healed bruise.

The Huntsman’s big callused hand trembled on the glass knife’s twisted, ancient handle. His reflections fought too, the mirrors casting back several images of him as he loomed over the little girl on the altar, her eyes rolling with terror, her thin drugged limbs twitching. The smoke was heavy, full of the resinous drug the Queen exuded, mixed with the spices stolen by the close-cropped men and the glowing, harvested fungus. The feral children were all hustled away, and among them was a boy with messy dark hair, the product of an earlier favorite-husband, and so the only one save the Nameless to be unshorn. He was older, and his heart was fine. The Queen said he would make an Okhotnik for Her, one day.

But now, Her husband-Huntsman stood, and the Queen tensed. She was beside him, Her beauty reflecting in each lovingly polished mirror, the great soughing chanting mass of the Biel’y as yet unaware that something was wrong. They bowed and swayed, some of them falling to the floor and gibbering praises of the loveliness overcrowding the mirrors before them, reflected on every wall of this hall, the heart of Underneath where the Queen was the only light.

The crimson jewel at Her throat flashed. Her red, red lips parted.

“Renew Me. Give Me the heart,” she said, and the cry went up.

“The heart! The heart!”

The Huntsman stared at the drugged Nameless. The little girl writhed, twisting on the pale stone of the altar, crusted with the remains of other ceremonies. Unlike the mirrors, the altar was not cleansed until the Great Renewal. The lesser Renewals were left as a reminder, and atop the water-clear mirrors the small skulls grinned down on the ceremony, a few larger ones sprinkled among them. Set in the walls with cement made from the ground-up light-giving fungus, they wept thin trickles of bleaching-clear fluid that must not be allowed to mar the mirrorshine.

The Nameless’s eyes were open a fraction. Blue eyes, so blue. The knife lifted.

“Give Me the heart.” It was unheard-of, for the Queen to have to ask twice, and the first thread of unease went through the ecstatic writhing crowd.

“The heart, the heart!” they cried.

The Huntsman’s lips moved. Why did he hesitate? This one, he seemed to say, but the screams and moans overpowered whatever he would have uttered.

And the drugged girl, sudden desperate strength in her bony bruised and wasted limbs, committed the ultimate sin.

The Nameless rolled free of the altar. She landed on a heap of picked-clean bones, and the gasps and cries of horror began. She scrambled, darting-quick as a cockroach, for a dark gap between two mirrors, and slithered her skinny body through it as the Queen’s fury shook the world.

And later, in the tunnels, as the Nameless wandered sick and shaking, the Huntsman had arrived out of the darkness. “She will have a heart,” he muttered, and pushed her. “That way, go. Run. Run. She will have a heart. RUN!”

And she had run, through a jumble of confusion and terror, the drug working through her and her entire world shattered, to end fallen and limp in the snow while dogs howled elsewhere.

Whose heart had the Queen eaten that night? It was not a Great Renewal, but She had to have eaten something. Dark blood dripping down her white chin, her eyes closed . . . whose heart had She eaten?

And had She thought it was Her daughter’s, until age began to crease Her soft blank skin, and wooden hardness spread over the Huntsman’s skin?

Light, searing her eyes. The murmur went on, a queer atonal chant, and she finally understood it was
them
, the
Biel’y
, mouthing their ritual response just like the girls at St. Juno’s murmured
Mithrus the Sunlord, watch over us all
during chapel every school day.

You are nobody. You are nothing
.

Hands on her, she was dragged out limp and bruised and filthy. It smelled horrible.
She
smelled horrible.

How long was I—

She couldn’t even finish the thought. Smoke billowed. The hall was cramped and dark, cell doors flung open. The coffin-cubes of stone were empty toothsockets, leering as her head lolled and she blinked, weakly. Her heart kept going, her lungs did too, and their hands pinched and poked before they lifted her and bore her on a gray-robed wave. Thirty of them, maybe more, and others in the hall. But the great mass of whispering and movement she remembered from before was absent.

Underneath was curiously small now, and the
Biel’y
were fewer.

Carried through the twisting corridors, the smoke was so thick she could barely see. The past kept looping over into the present, why did she even keep fighting?

Tor. He’ll live, I guess. Marya, though she won’t miss me for long. Rube and Ellie, poor Ellie. They’ll be okay. Ruby will take care of it. Nico . . . he’ll be fine. They’ll all be fine, really.

She sagged in their hands. The
Biel’y
began to chant more loudly, a slow ancient tune with the edges of the words rubbed away. Once their choir would have shaken the tunnels with its swelling. Now it was an attenuated cricket-chorus, barely stirring the swirling smoke.

Their hands were cold. Not the bruising chill of the stone, just cold in a different way. Uncaring flesh, forgetting itself. Cami hung, jostled from side to side as the human wave below her marched on bare feet, kicking aside detritus until they came to a more-traveled hall, the fungus dripping clear water as its glow turned to a low punky dimness.

She’s tired. She had to bring me here, she’s eaten too many of them. Her . . . followers. And the hunters have probably been bringing others down here for her to feed on, but not enough.
It was like thinking through mud.
That’s why she needs me.

Nico needs me too
, a small voice piped up inside her.
So does Ruby. And Ellie. They all need me.

And yet she’d been nothing but a problem since she’d run out in front of Papa’s car. An extra puzzle piece, a snarl in the yarn, a break in the pattern. Something foreign, alien, forcing its way into other lives.

We are foreigners
, Papa’s voice whispered in her memory.
Always, we are strangers in all lands.

Finally, she was hazily glad he had transitioned. He wasn’t here to see this. Had he known what she was?

My bambina. It is arranged.

Had Papa known? And if he had, had it mattered to him?

It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and I’m . . . here.
She twisted fretfully, took a deep lungful of the smoke. Would it hurt when the glass knife flashed down? Or would she just feel a spike of pain, and then the deep relief of oblivion?

The doors to the mirrored hall were black iron, their surfaces powdered with dried ghost-moss. They creaked and screamed as the
Biel’y
pushed against them, each groan and wheeze echoed faithfully through the bars of their song, an eerie mock-grieving. Did she imagine the tremors in their upstretched arms, the drunken swaying as if her weight was too much for them?

Your fat ass
, Ellie said, softly, and Ruby giggled in her memory, false-summer sunlight golden over them both.

Missing them was a stone in her throat. The knife would flash down, and they would go on without her being the third wheel . . . but the missing-them was all hers.

Even the Queen couldn’t take that.
She
couldn’t take the memory of Papa, either, or of Marya’s hugs and scolding, or Trigger carefully showing her how to tie a neat knot, or Nico in all his different moods. Scowling or smiling, angry or relaxed, and yes, even the face he showed when the hunting frenzy had him and she was reminded of just what
Family
and
blood
meant.

The Queen couldn’t even take Stevens, or Sister Mary Brefoil conjugating verbs, or Sister Frances Grace-Abiding chiding the girls to lift their knees during calisthenics. Or the cold of snow and the sight of Tor’s scars, just like the Nameless’s own.

The mirrors ran with light. It was not the silvery blaze she remembered. This struggling corpseglow was not magnified by the polished glass. Instead, it fell into the mirrors and vanished. The skulls above were still weeping, and streaks had been allowed to pit the smooth glass surfaces. Cracks and dust showed, and the ceiling was black behind its pall of smoke.

The
Biel’y
circled the white stone altar, and little things crunched on its surface as they laid her down. It was crusted with layers of filth and dried fluids best not thought about, carapaces of beetles crackling; little things scuttled away from the touch and weight of her flesh. She squirmed, but two of the
Biel’y
came forward with a long rectangular black velvet box, and when they clasped the silver necklace with its flat not-quite-round medallion around her filthy throat the will to move drained from her. She felt it go, swirling from her toes, the silver stinging as it lay against her vulnerable pulse.

I am, I am
, her heart kept saying. Idiot thing. What did it know?

She didn’t even have a
name
.

They began to sing a little louder, the
Biel’y
, but it was not the massive thundering sound it had been before. Still, the mirrors caught and reflected it, and the incense smoke darkened.

The Great Renewal of the Queen was ten years late. But now, finally . . .

 . . . the hour had come.

“
O
UR
Q
UEEN,
”
THEY MOANED.
“
G
IVE US OUR
Q
UEEN,
our light, our
life! Give us our Queen! Our Queen!”

Tip-tapping footsteps, mincing, She appeared from behind the largest mirror, the frame of black iron skulls and bones dusty now. Cobwebs had crept between eyeholes and thighcurves that would have never been allowed before.

She lifted her arms, and the sleeves of Her pale silken robes fell back. The skin flopped loosely around Her wasted biceps, and Her fingers were claws. The paste dried on the claw-tips had chipped, and Her face, under a thick screen of bone-white powder, was even more cracked and runneled. Blue eyes blazed, and the red jewel at her throat flashed, stuttering.

“My children!”

The
Biel’y
moaned, swaying back and forth. They packed into the hall but could not fill it. There simply weren’t enough of them. Maybe fifty, maybe a few more. Without the Great Renewal, they would all slowly fade.

“My children,” the Queen repeated, and they shrieked in response. Her hands spread, She caught the sound and drank at it, Her reedy voice strengthening. “The Great Renewal is upon us!”

“
Renew, renew!
”

“There shall be a sacrifice!”

“
Sacrifice, sacrifice!
” Shaven skulls under tight-drawn pallid skin bobbed on scrawny necks.

“My new
Okhotnik
, My husband-to-be, went Above, and he brought Me a heart!”

“
A heart, a heart!
”

Tor
, she thought, dimly. Everything was very far away.
Bringing me presents. Were they really from her? Or did he steal them, thinking she wouldn’t notice? Or did she send them out into the world, into Above, and he was just the way they chose to get to what she wanted?

Did it matter? Everything was falling away, drying up. The things the Queen couldn’t take would go with the Nameless into darkness, and maybe the space in the world Above would be filled by something else. Someone else.

Another thought rose through layers of smoky sponge.
How did she find me?

The mirror, maybe. Or, like any charmer, through blood. Had the wooden man been looking for her too? Had he whispered in the Queen’s ear,
she’s alive, I saw her?
Had he regretted giving his heart in the Nameless’s stead?

It wasn’t like it mattered now.

“A fine heart. A fiery heart. And he will give it to Me!”

“
Give it, give it!
”

Behind her, Tor stumbled out of the dark hole. He looked even worse, if that were possible—bruised all over, one of his eyes almost puffed shut. He was in leather, like the wooden man, but it didn’t fit him. The fringe quivered as he moved, his soft glove-shoes scraping, and his black eyes were wide and wild.

A faint faraway anger pressed through the girl’s dry-trickling veins.
I thought she would leave Tor alone!

Something inside her dilated. Just as she’d seen the Strep beating on Ellie, she caught a glimpse of Torin struggling against the Queen’s control—and the consequences. He had fought, and fought
hard
.

And the Nameless was suddenly very sure he hadn’t known the pin and the shawl were the Queen’s poisoned gifts. He had tried to escape, just like she had.

It’s all right
, she wanted to tell him.
We couldn’t get away. But She can’t take everything. She
can’t
eat everything.

In his left hand, the glass knife glittered. Wicked-sharp and curving, its twisted hilt patterned on a horn of a creature long extinct before the Age of Iron, a thread of crimson pulsing in its heart.

The Nameless’s anger fluttered away, a bird’s heart. Maybe more was needed to make the Queen leave everyone alone. To make Her happy, to make everyone happy.

I hope it won’t hurt much.
Her entire body was numb, and cold.
Book. Candle. Nico.
The old charm, worn and threadbare, soothed the last remaining ache inside her. At least, once this was over, she wouldn’t have any scars.

The White Queen’s arms dropped. The
Biel’y
chanted and shuffled, their chorus exhausted, as they gasped through the smoke.

“Now.” Her teeth gritted, Her fingers flexing, the old woman in her motheaten white, her parchment hair falling and unraveling, fixed Tor with a piercing blue gaze. “Cut out the nameless heart. Renew Me.”

Tor stepped forward. He blinked, his jaw working. The mirror beside him held his reflection and hers, and the Queen’s, another shape rippling behind the shrinking old woman.
She
was fading fast, impatient, Her power recklessly spent to bring Her victim here, to force this new
Okhotnik
to Her ancient, hungry will. The new shape would be slender and tall and young, heartbreakingly lovely, and the
Biel’y
would resurge, calling those who wished dark surcease down into the tunnels and dripping darkness.

On the altar, the Nameless stared at her own reflection. Long tangled black hair, her eyes half-lidded, her bruised face slack and peaceful, Tor’s trembling evident even in the mirror.

I thought he wouldn’t be hurt anymore
. The thought rose, slow as bubbles in the sticky caramel Marya made every Dead Harvest to dip apples into. Red, crunching, juicy apples, and the nuts she would roll them in too, golden and luscious. The smell of the sugar, and Marya smoothing her hair.

My little
sidhe
,
Marya breathed in her memory, and the girl’s heart gave a leap.

The new
Okhotnik
’s mouth opened. He cried a word that had lost all meaning, and the
Biel’y
screamed.

“
CAMI!
”

The glass knife flashed. It sliced, and there was a shattering of glass and a wail.

The world exploded.