The Master of Misrule (28 page)

Asterion bent to pluck something out of the river of blood that was already soaking into the sand. A little bull carved from horn lay in the center of his palm.

He handed it to Blaine. As Blaine took it, the world reeled. He found he was looking down at a square of white marble in Temple House. Except that the hall was also a chessboard, and he was standing at its corner.

Blaine was not alarmed, nor even surprised. He understood that this was how their offering was to be made.

He put the bull down on the white square, and the ground quaked. And before his vision could adjust to the checkered paving that stretched around him, and the muddle of mountains and cities and plains that was somehow both above and beneath, he was back in the arena, smiling at Cat.

“A
LL HAIL
M
ISTRESS
C
YBELE
, Queen of Cats!” a disembodied voice boomed.

The woman pranced forward to the edge of the stage, hips swinging and head held high. She was covered in gold body paint, and wearing spiky boots with a leopard-print leotard, slashed to the waist. A ringmaster’s top hat was tilted provocatively on her head. As she swaggered back and forth along the footlights, she cracked a long leather whip to whoops from the stalls.

From their vantage point in the wings, Toby and Flora watched Cybele sashay over to where a cage, partially covered by purple drapes, had been wheeled onto center stage. A drumroll sounded, followed by a cymbal clash from the orchestra pit, as the woman whipped off the cloth. The cage contained a huge lion: the King of Beasts, and Toby and Flora’s next offering.

The lion opened its red throat and roared.

The audience roared back, delighted.

The Triumph of Strength could not have been more of a contrast to the windswept desolation of the Emperor. Flora and Toby looked through the proscenium arch into a grand theater, its tiers undulating with gilded balconies. Everywhere was so festooned with chandeliers, velvet, and plump plaster cherubs that it was like being in the middle of a giant’s jewelry box.

Meanwhile, the wings seethed with activity as stagehands and technicians checked props, and performers limbered up. The show itself appeared to be a hybrid of a zoo and a cabaret, and nobody seemed the least bit concerned that a lion had just been let loose onstage.

Toby and Flora watched as a succession of metal hoops was lowered from the flies. The rings varied in size and hung at different levels from the ground. Although the stage was large, the arrangement looked dangerously cramped—much more so when, at a flick of Cybele’s whip, the hoops burst into flame. The lion growled and shook its head, but at a command from its mistress, it began to leap and twist through the fiery circles, weaving its way around the stage in a kind of graceful dance.

It came to a halt in front of the footlights, and roared again. The hoops had burned themselves out and were hoisted back up into the stage loft. Advancing toward the woman, the lion snarled and lashed its tail, aiming a swipe of its paw at her legs.

But Mistress Cybele cracked her whip and the beast at once crouched low, all aggression gone. Her own face was powerfully catlike, with its wide cheekbones, snub nose and slanting eyes. She tossed back her mane of tawny orange hair. Then she gave a gentlemanly bow, one hand on her hip, the other offered to the lion. Tenderly, it nuzzled her palm before rearing up onto its hind legs to join her for a stately waltz, paw in hand, its shaggy head resting on her shoulder.

The curtain fell to a standing ovation.

Toby and Flora shrank back to allow the lion tamer to stalk offstage, leaving a trio of stagehands to shepherd the great cat back into its cage.

“What are you?” she growled, baring sharp white teeth. Her body paint was smeary with heat. She slunk closer, sniffing them up and down. “Not knights … Nor knaves … Hmm … No, a different kind of animal entirely.”

“I’m the King of Wands and this is the Queen of Cups,” Toby replied, though not quite as boldly as he had announced himself to the Emperor. He had seen how the woman’s muscles rippled as she cracked her whip.

Cybele’s lip curled. “Well, a cat may look at a king, as the proverb goes, and
I
am Queen of Cats. And mistress of ceremonies at the Triumph Cabaret, what’s more. If you’re not here to play my card, you’re wasting my time.”

“As a matter of fact, we came for your lion,” said Flora.

“The Emperor’s already given us his eagle,” added Toby.

“Did he indeed? Yes, I thought I felt a tremor on the
board.… Hmm.” Her sneer softened somewhat and she clapped Toby on the shoulder; he could feel the prick of her sharpened nails through his shirt. “Very well. If you wish to make a play for Androcles, I won’t stop you.”

“Androcles?”

“My partner there.” She gestured to the cage in which the lion was prowling restively. It was not the only big cat waiting in the wings: a panther and a tiger were dozing in cramped crates against the wall. “The Lion’s Den is a thrilling climax for the show. After me, it’s the most popular act.” Her green eyes glinted. “But that only involves players who have failed to entertain. I’m sure royalty such as yourselves will have no trouble impressing the crowd.”

Toby beamed. “You want us to join in the show? Excellent.”

“What kind of entertainment?” Flora asked suspiciously.

“Well, you could test your nerve on the Wheel of Death.” Cybele pointed to a pockmarked circular target board painted with Fortune’s Wheel, and with ankle and wrist straps fastened to the spokes. “It’s very simple: one of you spins while the other one throws the knives. Then there’s the Iron Maiden.” She indicated a glass box pierced with metal spikes. “Our contortionist can get in and out in under two minutes. But if confined spaces don’t appeal, maybe you’d like to improve on the Starlight Sisters’ aerial display.”

They looked behind her onto the stage, where two trapeze artists were skimming through the air at dizzying heights.

Toby gulped. “Uh …”

“It’s only fair to warn you that my patrons are accustomed to the
very
best,” Cybele purred. “The most daring, the most beautiful, the most exotic … It will not be easy to win their applause. So whatever you decide on for your act, I hope for your sake that it’ll be a crowd-pleaser.” She shrugged sleekly. “Otherwise, you might have to try your luck in the Lion’s Den, after all.”

“I’
VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
” was the first thing Blaine said once they’d arrived in the Four of Swords and begun to look around them.

They were in a graveyard that was so large, with tombs so grand, it was almost a marble city. Cypress trees soared into the soft blue night, and torchlight warmed the white stone. Tiny lizards darted through the shadows.

“Was it when you first joined the Game?” Cat asked.

“No. When Misrule gave me the Knight of Wands, this was the move my so-called prize took me to. Should’ve guessed when I saw your card.”

The Arcanum never created the same setting twice, and the first time Blaine had seen these effigies, they had been in the sculpture gallery of a dilapidated museum. The life-sized monuments were lavishly adorned with decorative pentacles, swords, cups and wands, and they all had carved
figures on them, lamenting over urns, kneeling in prayer or lying in stately rest.

“There’re knights sleeping in tombs as far as the eye can see,” said Cat. “How are we to know which one is the man we need for our offering?”

She moved to look more closely at the effigies. Though they were uniformly dressed in flowing robes or chain mail, the statues were otherwise individual portraits, depicting men and women of all ages and physical types. Their faces were very peaceful. Although the memorials didn’t bear any names, they did have epitaphs:
DEARLY BELOVED. MUCH LAMENTED. SADLY MOURNED
.

Cat looked at Blaine hesitantly. “I s’pose you must have, uh, checked them before, in case you recognized your stepdad.”

“Yeah. Took hours. I’d know his ugly mug anywhere but there was no sign of him—alive or dead.” Blaine remembered the long, lonely wander among the galleries, examining each carved face for Arthur’s features, regarding each shadow with suspicion in case his stepfather should suddenly spring out from the gloom.

His face hardened at the memory.

“I wonder what’s the point of this move,” Cat speculated, partly to distract him. “What a player has to do to win it, I mean.”

“
We
don’t have to win anything. We just have to find the right stone bloke.”

After wandering around for a while, they reached one of
the tree-lined paths that quartered the cemetery. In the center of the junction where the four paths met, there was a block of white marble with an iron sword thrust in the center, so that half its blade was buried. Cat thought it might be a war memorial, but instead of a list of fallen soldiers, there was a single line inscribed on the marble:

U
NSHEATHE THE
S
WORD
, S
UMMON THE
S
LEEPERS
.

Blaine raised his brows. “DIY instructions—the Arcanum must be going soft.”

“Was the sword here the last time?”

“Might’ve been. I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it if it was. Arthur was the only thing I was bothered about.” He reached toward the platform. Then he stopped. “Sorry. It’s not for me to go grabbing. You’re sword royalty, after all.”

Cat smiled and shook back her hair. She jumped lightly up onto the block and grasped the hilt. The iron was bitingly cold, but when she tugged it, she felt the blade shift, deep within the stone. She was Queen of Swords indeed. “Whew. Here goes.…”

As she began to pull out the sword, the cypress trees shivered, and torch flames danced. Blaine was seized by a sudden foreboding.

“No, Cat, wait—”

Too late. The sword slid cleanly out of its marble sheath. And the city of the dead awoke.

It began with a grating, grumbling sound, faint at first, and very slow. Stone lethargically scraped on stone. The effigies were stirring on their monuments.

Blaine and Cat watched with a fascination that turned to horror as the moving statues began to crumble at the edges and turn to dust. As the powder blew away, it revealed the bodies encased beneath. The memorial closest to them was of a woman holding a rosary; the figure’s stony curls and smooth cheeks disintegrated to expose a skull, which turned and stared with empty sockets and a moldy-toothed grin.

“This,” said Blaine, snatching up one of the flaming torches, “is not good.”

Cat tasted a bubble of nausea. “God. It’s like being in a zombie flick. Only with
really
special effects.”

At that moment, one of the little lizards scuttled past the skeleton-woman’s crumbling skirts. She stabbed at it, clumsily. Although her bone finger brushed only the end of the lizard’s tail, the creature froze. In the blink of an eye it was covered in fine dust. Seconds later, this had solidified into stone.

“Not your average zombies, then,” Blaine managed to say.

Cat’s grip tightened around her sword.

“Look—there.” She pointed down the eastern avenue. It led to a mausoleum even grander than any of the other memorials they’d seen: a black marble temple that had previously been shrouded in darkness. Now the building was lit up from the inside, and all the stained-glass windows were ablaze.

Could it be a refuge? Or was it a trap?

It didn’t matter: there was nowhere else to go. One touch from a dead hand, and they would be rotting inside stone themselves. And so they began to run.

The sleepers’ awakening was gradual and started from the head. When Blaine and Cat began their flight, nearly all of the dead were free of their stone casing only from the shoulders up. The frames underneath were mostly skeletons of brittle yellow bones. However, not all the relics were so ancient.

Corpses shrugged off dust from shriveled sinews to which scraps of skin and garments still clung. Even more hideous were those in states of recent decomposition. A few bodies were almost intact, though exuding a green clamminess and gusts of mold. Others were bloated and black and crawling with maggots. The smell of putrefied flesh hung sick and sweet in the air.