Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (95 page)

“Why are you racing? You know my knees aren’t as good as they used to be,” huffed Dorvain. But there was a smile on his chipped, pugilist’s face: nose broken and mashed, cheekbones lopsided—although his dark beard covered most of that. Leonitis found his brother’s smile as alarming as all of the man’s recent behavior. The great brute was now conspicuously nice to him whenever they met.

“Why are you chasing me down?” replied Leonitis rudely.

Dorvain punched Leonitis’s shoulder. “Come now. I could ask what you’re doing wandering down Kissing Lane. The only men who come down here do so looking for afternoon repasts of the sweaty and slippery
variety. You don’t have anyone in the bushes there waiting for you? Do you?”

Dorvain pushed past his brother and peered into the alcove. All Leonitis could see was the dimple in the branches where he had shoved the sack. Nervous, he made an appeal. “No, nothing like that. You know I like women. I just haven’t found the right one. I wish you would stop teasing me about being a man who likes men. If I were one, I expect you would welcome my beau home for brews and arm wrestles as you do with me.”

Suddenly, the watchmaster blushed and hung his head. “I would.”

Dorvain dragged his feet over to one of the tiny chairs and sat in it. As he looked so pitiable and ridiculous—a large man sitting in a child’s piece of play furniture—Leonitis softened.
Rebellions can wait a sand, and this one won’t be starting without my contribution of firearms
, he thought. Leonitis also took a chair too small for his large body. In a speck, he and Dorvain were knocking knees.

“Ow,” complained Dorvain.

“We picked a terrible place to have a conversation,” said Leonitis. They laughed. “Now, Brother, why have you chased me down today?”

“I feel as if I’ve been chasing you all the time, of late,” said Dorvain, and frowned again. “Ever since this war started, you’ve been…Well…I mean…”

“I’ve been
what
? Busy? I am master of the King’s Legion. I have as many responsibilities as you.”

“I know that!” cried Dorvain, and warmed red with anger. “Too busy for drinks. Too busy to head to the tavern and sweet talk every comely wench we see. I’m not good at that game myself, Brother. The ladies flock to you with your golden braids, pretty eyes, and poetic promises before giving me a second glance. I know you’re busy! Too busy playing soldier-spy for a mad queen—”

Leonitis matched his brother’s rage, though his flame was cold. “Lila’s not mad. She may be the sanest monarch we know. What I did in her service saved our city. What I did saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I shall not allow you to disparage her in my presence. She has guided us into our roles as heroes and men.”

Dorvain stood and threw his chair across the stones with a clatter. When truly angered, they often fought like this: passionately, violently,
with fists instead of words. Many a chamber had been torn apart by their brotherly storms. Although Leonitis was tempted to bash the puffing bull before him, he had no real desire today for their game of wrestling, which would leave them exhausted but finally ready to converse. Why must their fists express their love? Why could they not just speak like men? Leonitis’s time in war had changed him. There was enough violence in the world without adding more.

Sternly, Leonitis said, “Pick up your damned chair, and sit your arse down.
Now
.” Unsure, feeling a bit slapped down, Dorvain wandered off and retrieved the chair. Then he sat as he’d been told. Once his brother settled, Leonitis resumed his reprimanding. “Should we get to the meat of your anger? I shall assume that you’re upset that you and I have not spent much time together in recent months.”

“You could say that, yes,” mumbled Dorvain as he played with the straps on his armor.

“We have responsibilities, Brother. Duties to which we are summoned, duties that are greater than our wants and needs. Duties that demand conviction for deeds both dark and good. Lila served our city and saw that it was protected against the Iron threat. Lowelia did the same. I proudly played my part in Eod’s defense. And this you must hear and understand: I regret not one of my actions, and I shall defend our queen and our city whenever that duty is demanded of me again. Do not forget what she has done for us—her two precious shells washed up on the shores of Carthac. Lila has shown us more kindness than any woman, ever, and that includes our missing mother. The queen stepped into that role, and acquitted herself admirably. Shame on you for your thoughts.”

“I…I…” Dorvain’s voice failed him.

Leonitis stood and strode to the bushes. No longer did he care whether his brother suspected he was up to further subterfuge—the whole of Eod would know of the king’s crimes and guilt in a matter of hourglasses. After rifling through hedges, he extracted the sack and slung it over his shoulder.

“Should I ask where you’re going?” asked Dorvain quietly.

“To do what must be done. To bring justice,” replied Leonitis, and left his brother in the garden. There, the watchmaster debated his
worth, his purpose, and his conviction, which seemed feeble next to his brother’s valor.

III

The discovery of the Mistress of Mysteries’ whereabouts required a long hunt through the palace. Elissandra was on the move today. First, she had been seen in the White Hearth; a servant reported that she had dined there. However, the Iron and Everfair monarchs didn’t find Elissandra at the long tables of the White Hearth. What they did find was a trail of breadcrumbs—literal breadcrumbs, scattered over a bench. She’d left only moments before.

As the morning waned, the monarchs also somehow just missed Elissandra and her younglings sparring at the watchmen’s encampment on the outer precipice. Later, the white witch managed to evade the monarchs’ grasps once more at a theater, a concert hall, and even an indoor glade intended for silent contemplation, where Gloriatrix’s cursing drew stares that quickly found the floor when their owners realized who was present.

Confusion and ambiguity had been left in the white witch’s wake. Either Elissandra didn’t want to be found, or this was a most devious ploy to encourage collaboration between the two monarchs. The latter was certainly far-fetched, but it could not be denied that Magnus and Gloriatrix spent more time that day working toward and focusing on a common goal than they had in any of the weeks of bickering that had come before. Not having their aides present—those facsimiles that spoke for their masters—allowed the rulers to see each other as more of what they really were. Ironguards and Silver watchmen, two of each, still attended them. However, when the monarchs decided for the sake of expedience to take the secret tunnels bored through Kor’Keth, they felt it necessary to dismiss them.

“Go find something to do. I no longer need a shadow,” said Gloriatrix, as she and Magnus stood outside a vine-woven gate leading to a crack in the mountain. The crevasse looked deep and thin, precarious and dark. The Iron Queen’s guards had warned her about entering the rift. At first, her soldiers appeared unwilling to abandon her, even by command. “If I
have to ask again, it will be with new Ironguards to replace the ones who lost their lives for the dishonor of disobeying their queen.”

The Ironguards bowed and backed away.

“You may leave me as well,” Magnus said to his silver guardians. Magnus’s soldiers hesitated, much as their Iron counterparts had. “If we meant to kill each other, we would have done so already. We are allies, and an alliance cannot survive without trust. Now go.”

You have more than a bit of hard frost in your manner, Magnus
, thought the Iron Queen.
Not such a wimp and a waste after all
. Perhaps he would be a tolerable ally in this war. She swallowed such compliments, however, and concentrated on the route they took once through the gate—its twists and turns, its branching passages. In her spider’s mind, she wove every detail. Her recall would come in handy later, when she chose to use Kor’Keth’s secret passages for nefarious transit.

They were headed toward the King’s Garden, the last place Elissandra’s ghost had been sighted. It was a beauty the Iron Queen had not yet made the time to see. She was generally so unmoved by nature that being anywhere outdoors seemed a painful waste of her sands. As light and trickling music reached her eyes and ears, though, her dusty, neglected raisin of a heart beat a few times in joy. Magnus creaked open a wiry lattice gate bejeweled with glittering purple flowers that breathed lavender and minty scents. This hedonistic richness prepared the Iron Queen for the forest of variegated trees, of many colors and species, both leafed and pined. There were also rivulets of liquid glass that were creeks, faerytale bridges made of crystal lace, and an effusion of perfumes that battled one another for the greatest sweetness.

“I wonder if we’ve caught her this time,” said the Iron Queen.

She didn’t possess an inner compass or instincts for tracking people down, but finding someone constantly on the move surely required constantly moving oneself, so she set off, although without any particular direction in mind. The ancient arch leading into the palace’s twilight halls was not far away—she spied it through the shimmering bush—and the monarchs made their way toward it. Once there, they asked the guards if a woman and two children had passed that way at some point earlier. One watchman said yes. One appeared unsure. Gloriatrix deduced that the
man’s confusion was an aftereffect of Elissandra’s amnesic presence—her magik that muddled minds and Fates—so she and Magnus began to search the King’s Garden in earnest.

It certainly felt as if Elissandra were there. The birds warbled odd songs, but did not chirp or caw. The brooks sounded more whispery than babbling. There was no one about, although it was a bright and balmy day. The place felt under a spell. Elissandra had that effect on nature; she stilled and unnerved it with her presence.

The monarchs passed over bridges, wound through short hedge mazes, and neared the place where the forest thinned. Their intent was to scout the edges and then come back, tracking in lines, to see where in the interior the white witch and her children were hiding. At last they were rewarded for their efforts. They came to the fringe of the King’s Garden, where the many burbles of glass rolled down and over a chasm of stone, and saw a woman—very white and colorfully garbed, with a stumped hand—and two equally spectral children in black watching the lens of pearl power over the sky. The Witchwall had not come down. Magnus hadn’t even begun to tackle figuring out the formula according to which it had been made, the complications that would attend its subsequent unmaking. The Witchwall diverted Magnus’s attention as he walked ahead. Suddenly, he realized he’d reached the grass-laden circle where Elissandra and her children sat upon a squat plinth of stone. The white witch and her children stared at the pearl light above them, as did the king.

“Elissandra, Magnus and I have been looking for you,” said the Iron Queen.

“Isn’t it nice?” replied Elissandra. She didn’t turn, and gathered her children closer.

“Elissandra,” commanded the Iron Queen.

Elissandra lashed her head about like a snake and hissed at the Iron Queen: “No rudeness. Not here; not now. You’ll ruin the flower of peace with your incivility before it has a chance to bloom.”

From the shine in her eyes, and the slight static in the air, Gloriatrix knew that Elissandra was in the thrall of Fate. She hadn’t left her dreamy, half-awake state since coming to Eod. Perhaps the flow of prophecy, growing into a raging rapid as the end times neared, was slowly driving the seer
mad. Elissandra turned around again and resumed her sky watching. The Iron Queen tried a softer tactic. She crept forward, knelt, and whispered to the seer. “The king and I know what you have seen. Others have validated your vision. We know of the great shadow that has cast itself over Menos.” She waited for a reply, assumed the seer still wasn’t listening, and then added, “Death.”

“Sh, sh, sh,” cooed Elissandra softly, then pressed her children’s heads into her breasts, covering their exposed ears; they obeyed, eerily, like dolls. “We cannot speak of this now. I wanted to speak of it earlier, and you should have found me then. Now, I have peace to make.”

“Peace?” asked the king.

“Peace with my sins and sorrows. Peace with my children. Peace with my end,” replied the white witch.

Gloriatrix felt a tectonic shift in her buried emotions: shock, a fear for someone other than herself. “You speak as if you were going to die.”

“I am,” replied Elissandra. Elissandra then uncovered her children’s ears and covered her children with kisses. The white witch stood, took her children’s hands, and walked around the rock to the monarchs. She released her children, and the macabre little people moved, unbidden, to the Everfair King. The strange children entangled Magnus’s thoughts with their gazes, which reflected mysteries, magik, and secrets. They slipped their cold hands into his icy ones and began to lead the king away. “Please watch them for a moment, Magnus. I need to speak to Gloria.”

The children didn’t take the king far; the Iron Queen could hear the three whispering behind her somewhere. Once she and Elissandra had some privacy, the seer kneeled and joined the Iron Queen on the grass. The seer swished her hand through the green blades and smiled at some augur or another. It was sands before she spoke. “I have served your reign and been loyal to you for all of my years,” said Elissandra at length. “I have helped steer the Iron City through its darkest crisis—a voyage not yet over, though started and guided by hope. I would make one request of you, Gloria. Woman to woman. Friend to friend. For I believe that is how we should define a relationship such as ours.”

Gloria restrained a welling up of sentiment. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to look after my children. See that they are provided with the wealth I was to claim from your empire. Ensure they are given the freedom to choose their path in life and society—freedoms we never had. We were denied them by life, by the men we chose, by our culture.” Elissa took Gloria’s hands and caressed them, and the Iron Queen’s tearless front nearly shattered. She’d rarely been touched so warmly, and not in perhaps a hundred years. “You may have a chance, Gloria, to rebuild what you have lost. I can think of no opportunity so precious. You may be able to change who you were through who you are to become.”