Shadows of the Emerald City (11 page)

I lean forward even more, causing Madrigaard to whimper and grasp more tightly at my neck. When I pick up the spoon and needle, she buries her face in my high lace collar and tucks her wings tight against her bone-ridged back.

The bowl of the spoon has just a few drops of water reflecting from its bottom, a deadly mirror. With the powerful sight in my one good eye, every detail of the room is reflected in that small curved pool: the dark stones arching heavily across the ceiling, dry-rotted, crumbling; the beady glow of Baarg’s eyes as he watches my slow movements with worry, with eagerness, with love; the tattered black muslin billowing at the ogee windows, breezes of this high turret bringing salt from far below, stripped of moisture. All the moisture I can physically withstand is in this one little spoon.

I pass it across the candle’s flame a few times, warming it to room temperature, but not above. I want the burn to come from water, not the heat of a mere candle. When I draw the water into the syringe, letting Baarg tie the strap around my arm, I can think of nothing but the sinuous way the poison slips up the needle: secretive, seductive, almost alive.

When it enters under my skin, I slump in my chair. Madrigaard looses her grip on my throat and tumbles to the floor but I barely notice. Baarg is untying the strap, blowing out the candle, picking up the empty syringe where it has rolled from my slack fingers to clatter onto cold flagstones beneath my chair.

But all I can think about is the fire roiling in my veins; the few drops of that poison, water, cooking me with a slow acidic burn from the inside out.

We always love most that which has the greatest power to destroy us.

The assassin and her metal paramour have murdered my wolves. All forty of them, with their handsome long legs and eyes like diamonds and teeth like polished ivory. I called them to service with my silver whistle, and because of this they’ve died. The land is a far poorer place for their loss.

I know the murderess still comes for me; there’s nothing in her shallow heart that isn’t selfish or cruel. She killed my sister Sally, and when Oz heard of the death he couldn’t help sending her against me as well. My Winkie spies in the Green Monstrosity have confirmed as much.

I weep for them now, the gorgeous wolves, the ichor of my tears stinging rivulets down my cheeks, tainted with the poisonous clean water of yesterday’s indulgence. It’s all I can do not to call for Baarg and his tray here and now.

The silver whistle around my neck is suddenly a heavy thing, burdensome and cold. Grasping it with both fists, I tug, silver links snapping across the back of my neck, showering to flagstones in a glittering rain. I heave the whistle out past the curtains into thin air, where it arcs away from my turret spire. I imagine it falling to the rocks below, picture it mingling with the broken bones of a thousand newborn monkeys not strong enough to survive life among their own.

But a small black streak shoots out the glassless window after it.

“
Madrigaard!” I cry, running to the sill to lean out far above the water of the brine sea lapping at the base of my aerie, my prison, my home.

The small ball of wadded leather unfurls, becomes my darling baby monkeychild. She plucks the silver whistle from the air and flaps, flaps, flaps her small sad scraps of wings, and when she reaches my outstretched arms she lets me clasp her to my chest. Her heartbeat and mine clamor against each other, separated by our ribs, our sheaths of skin, my tattered lace and her sparse wisps of monkeyfur. When she squeals for breath I let her go, and she shoves the silver whistle between my lips.

For a brief instant, I imagine the whistle is covered with sea spray. I imagine natural water burning my lips, my teeth, my tongue—burning all the way down into my heart.

But no. It’s merely cold from the high altitude, from the air, from the hard winter sun that offers no warmth. I glance at the hourglass, but the sands are against me; I can’t endure another shot until the top is emptied of its burden of time. Here is the image hovering always near the surface of my consciousness thoughts: a large amount of water, not a mere spoonful, but an entire bucketful, with the most glorious burning imaginable … just one brief flare of agony, and then no more pain forever.

Madrigaard chirps in query and taps the whistle between my lips. I’ve cried out all the lingering traces of water from yesterday. Through my ichor tears I nod at the small monkey and blow the whistle twice, and immediately the sky begins to darken with wild black feathered birdwings, as though with clouds bringing poison rain.

They are all murderers. The grass man callously stood without expression or regret, killing one by one every wild crow he saw. With my good eye I see them lying broken in a heap at his feet where he tossed them after twisting their necks.

Poor, lovely wild crows.

The hours haven’t filed from my glass yet, but I ring the bell for Baarg, regardless. While I wait for him to bring his tray, I blow the silver whistle three times.

The buzzing starts small at first, but quickly swells to a crescendo. The gorgeous black swarm roils just outside my window, thousands upon thousands of bodies rubbing together in a dark chitinous whirr. I lean out across the stones, the air, too far perhaps for good balance, and thrust my arms toward the sky. The bees land on my hands, my face, the places on my throat and arms where the black fabric of a gown I’ve not removed for longer than I care to remember has rotted and fallen away.

This gown was meant to be my wedding dress once, though it turned from white to black with the unhinged magic of my grief when Oz left me waiting for him at the place and time of our arranging. His poppy-scented dreams had replaced my love in his heart, and when he came to his senses from his trance and found my door closed against him and guarded by winged monkeys, he holed up in his Green Monstrosity with its gaudy glitter and its artifice, and I in my tower. He lives a life of brittle lies, while I embrace the brittle truth. Both are sharp as razors.

Bees buzzing in my ears, my open mouth, the corners of my eyes, I shout into the roiling cloud about the murderess and her paramours, who crushed my defenseless sister, who show such careless disregard for the magnificent wild creatures of this land as they cut their swath across it, killing and looting on their journey to assassinate me in my own home. When I’m through, the swarmcloud wheels upward and away, surging over the landlocked sea toward Lake Quad and the forest of the Fighting Trees. As always, I’m grateful that my bad eye blocks from my long distance sight the toxic blighting glow of the Green Monstrosity where it mars the land.

Before Baarg is able to mount the stairs to my high turret, all the poor bees lie broken and dead, heaps of cinders at the murderess’s silver-shot feet. I close my farseeing eye against the sight and slump to the stones.

The two winged monkeys watch me with large eyes, silent. Baarg lopes over with his carefully balanced tray, and though I want the sting of water flushing through me more than anything else in the land, when I open my eyes, I knock the tray from his hand so it goes flying against the wall in a frightful clatter of metal and stone. Candle wax has splashed across my hand and the skin turns red as I watch, but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

I scoop Baarg and Madrigaard into my arms and hug them with a fierceness that both excites and frightens them. Their leathery wings and the hollow twiggy bones inside shudder with their response to my affection. I let them go, gently shove them from me though they both reach for me again with gnarled sticklike paws.

“
Go,” I tell them. “Send the Winkies to parlay with the murderess. Perhaps the similarity of their humanesque form to hers will inspire her mercy.”

The Winkies have failed. They say the murderess refused even to listen to their pleas, and sent the largest of her paramours after them with teeth like daggers and breath like swampgas as he roared. They’re not the bravest people, Winkies. The winged monkeys showed their disgust in the way they do: with feces flung, delivered with taunts and sneers and laughter. The Winkies have no doubt already embellished the tale in retellings amongst themselves, so that their list of grievances against the monkeys and myself probably now involve me beating them with sticks when they returned, or the monkeys pelting them with hot oil or stones rather than the simpler, more scatological reality.

With heavy heart, I fetch the Cap. It symbolizes the covenant between myself and my friends. The winged monkeys are a fierce and loyal people, but it’s time to release them from our bargain. Do they serve me because they love me? Or do they love me because they serve me? We always love most that which has the greatest power to destroy us.

I perform the ritual, donning the Cap and speaking words in the ancient language of the treaty. All my pretty monkeys have gathered to witness the event. The arching walls of my turret room are covered with them clinging to the crevices between the stones, their hard eyes glittering, their needle teeth bared. With their black wings hanging down they look like bats. They jockey for position on the wide stone windowsills, shoving each other out into the air, laughing and screeching, fighting for perches on the backs of chairs and the tops of tables. Madrigaard and Baarg cling close to my skirts, intimidated by the raw unchecked ferocity of their own kind, the violence and the cruel humor. They are all magnificent.

They rarely speak to me, but the largest of them steps forward. I don’t even know his name. Their leader in any given year is always the strongest, the most agile, the most virile of their number. They’ve had many leaders since they came to live in the keep beside the landlocked sea.

“
You invoke the ritual,” says the largest, unfurling his wings to add to his impressive stature, to increase even further his physical dominance in the room. This display is for the other monkeys, I know, and has nothing to do with me. “Why do you do this, knowing it brings an end to the covenant you struck with our people all those generations ago?”

His voice is like gravel on the shores beneath my tower: sharp, hard, and littered with bones.

I feel the sadness of my own smile.

“
An unstoppable assassin is on her way to kill me,” I say, lifting my voice so all can hear. The screeching and laughing has quieted, but scuffles continue along the windowsills and the passage beyond the door to the twisting stairs. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I tell them, “but I want you to be long gone from this place. It’s the only way I know to keep you safe. After this last task, your people are free to go.”

The screeches are deafening. Monkey fists beat monkey chests; wings rub against each other like rustling dead leaves; teeth are bared in pleasure or sorrow.

The leader waits for the clamor to die down. He stares into my face, his expression inscrutable. When the room is completely quiet, he says, “What is this last task?”

And into that same quiet, I answer:

“
Bring her to me.”

The winged monkeys are gone.

They destroyed two of the murderess’s paramours in the battle, though I’m certain they lost a greater number of their own. They’re warriors, fierce and violent and proud. I will miss them, bitterly.

The monkeys tied the prisoners in the courtyard at the base of my keep and left without another word to me. Some few lingered to pelt the leonine paramour with their filth, to taunt him with their screechings from the top of the wall. There’s another, much smaller four-legged paramour the murderess keeps in attendance at all times, who has proven himself most vicious. And then there is
her
.

She’s so ugly that she’s stunning. I can see why men follow her to their deaths.

Each night she goes to lie with the prisoner in the yard. She bares herself to him and whispers in his ear, and they look up at my tower. I feel their gazes even through the dark, even through the stones. And with my good eye, I can see them as they twist together in the moonlight, making plans to kill me for good and take my land for themselves.

It is merely a matter of time. The certainty of this weighs on me. The fickle, cowardly Winkies have all fled to the countryside. The few winged monkeys left behind when their people departed continue to serve me: the infirm, the elderly, those too young to fly. I’m very grateful to Madrigaard for going with them, and pleased with myself for teaching her to be strong, to survive. Baarg is loath to leave my side, and spends most of his time perched in the window overlooking the courtyard, glaring at its leonine resident. He leaves the turret only twice each day, bringing back his candle, his spoon, his silver tray.

I no longer pay any attention to the sands in the glass. I take the water as often as I want, playing with its fire, feeling myself burning on the inside, burning hot enough to melt me into the stones of the floor, to make me nothing that couldn’t be swept out with the dust and dirt. What a relief that would be.

And
her
. Each day she taunts me, plays her cruel mindgames, knowing I’m a prisoner in my own home. No doubt the history books will tell it differently, but history is always written by the victors.

But she certainly is exquisite. I watch her from my high window now, stripping herself in broad daylight to lie with the shaggy man, as Baarg tightens his strap around my arm and gently pushes aside the rotting black lace covering my skin. I grit my teeth as water blossoms its heat in my veins, and see again her bitter beauty as she writhes naked in the courtyard beneath, doubtless counting the days to my destruction.