The Kingdoms of Evil (34 page)

The newly blooded and consecrated Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil sat before his mighty flowchart, and he brooded.

There was a cough from behind the door.

"Enter," said Freetrick, and this time he did a good job of not wincing when the hinges of the door screeched.

"A horrendous morrow, oh Dictator of Furious Punishments."

"Horrendous morrow, Mr. Skree." Freetrick didn't look up. He needed to get this speech finished so he could practice before the council sessions. If he couldn't overhaul his government, geopolitics would kill him before Skrean nobles even had the chance. Now
there
was an incentive for cooperation. Freetrick groaned aloud.

Mr. Skree's attenuated fingers and toes scuffled across the ceiling. "What worry so creases the face of the Master of Despair?"

Freetrick scowled up at his chamberlain. "I've been getting ready for the Vile Council meeting. Reading reports from the magistrates. Have you
read
this gibberish?" He slapped at the pile of skins with his free hand, "every
possible
decision it's possible to make wrong, the dark nobility has somehow made even worse! It's almost uncanny!"

"Indeed, fiend."

"Mr. Skree, there isn't a province…I mean an um...
despotate
in this kingdom that hasn't experienced a violent uprising in the past five years. How the hell am I supposed to control these people?"

"May the thews and sinews be stripped from this most lowly invertebrate for daring to cast this suggestion upon the tumultuous waters of the mind of the Ultimate Fiend, but the power of necromancy is vast and terrible indeed."

Freetrick snorted. "Necromancy. Don't talk to me about necromancy. Look." He strode to his desk and shuffled through the parchments there. "Look at this!" He thrust the parchment up so Mr. Skree's toenail-colored eyes could run across it.

"'Daily consumption report of the First Citadel of Mortality,'" he read, "'Agonday, 4 Skullmoon Year of the Rein of His Malevolence Despot Feerborg 1:

'Peasants murdered that their mortal energies might feed engines of darkness and shattered dreams: twice thirteen.

'Peasants murdered that their mortal energies might raise the Stones of Doom and unlock the Beast that sleeps at the bottom of the Abject Pit: thirteen and two.

'Peasants murdered that their mortal energies might power the Apparatus of Pinballs and Fear in the rec room: twice thirteen and ten.

'Peasants murdered that their mortal energies might feed the engines of darkness and shattered dreams, before someone told Blogrog we already did that this morning: twice thirteen.'"

Mr. Skree's eyes rose to Freetrick. "May this pitiful pile presume to order more slaves for the First Citadel of Mortality?"

"What? No!" Yelled Freetrick, "this is exactly the sort of thing-" he stopped, and squinted up at his chamberlain, "where would you order them
from
?"

The answer came on a breath of frozen air: "Human Resources."

"Human Resources?"

Red light gleamed in Mr. Skree's eyes. "Their breeding pits are terrible and magnificent, fiend."

"Okay, but what ensures we get the food from our vassals to feed the breeding pits?" Freetrick said, "And how do we keep the monsters they produce in line?"

"Pallid hands," said Mr. Skree, "their veins pulsing with the black blood of the First God, weave dark spells to---"

"I was being rhetorical. Necromancy. We kill people to fuel the necromancy we need to kill more people."

"Elegant," said Mr. Skree, "and diabolical."

Freetrick groaned. How could he explain an unsustainable feedback loop to someone who brushed his teeth with a cloud of beetles?

"The whole system is on the brink of collapse," said Freetrick. "And then we'll get a peasant rebellion, then a foreign invasion, then my assassination by my family, then assassination by my fiancé and
her
family." Freetrick let his hand flop back down and grumbled, "Possibly in that order, if Bloodbyrn knows a good re-animator."

Mr. Skree coughed.

"You think I'm mistaken, Mr. Skree?"

"This mumbling collection of pus must abase itself to the Master of Mayhem, for his terrible eyes can see details that other cannot…" the chamberlain temporized.

"The way this nation is being run is
wrong
."
Freetrick looked down at his pessimistic notes. "Hell, Skrean government policy is so terrible it ought to be held up as a model for first year political science students. Watch closely, boys and girls, and learn what
not
to do."

"Indeed, oh Spelunker in the Depths of Human Anguish," said Mr. Skree. "For such is the function of the Kingdoms of Evil."

Ah yes, the
Covenant
again. "Gibberish," said Freetrick, "I'm going to striking
fix
this place. So let's get ready for the Vile Council, shall we?" He glared through his pince-nez at Mr. Skree, who eventually cleared his throat with a sound like an abused wood-rasp.

"A thousand pardons may be written upon a thousand strips of a servant's flesh, the flesh knotted onto a thousand arrows, the arrows set afire, and then shot into the heart of this most ignominious of pulsating pustules, oh Mighty Evil One…"

"Uh huh?" Freetrick rolled his hand, wishing he had a fast-forward button for his chamberlain.

"But the ugly and worm-ridden ears of this servant have heard orders. Orders which can be ignored only at peril of long and agonizing extinction."

"Wait," said Freetrick, "who's giving you orders aside from me? What did they say?"

"'Have me notified the instant my lord awakens,'" Mr. Skree released a sepulchral, desiccated, and now horribly feminine hiss. "And inform him that his efforts to seduce me by avoiding me entirely have, unsurprisingly, failed to work." Freetrick looked down at his desk, edging closer to hyperventilation as Mr. Skree's terrible recitation ground to a halt. "The un-wedding, my lord, shall take place tomorrow."

Ah yes, Freetrick thought. In all his plans to save himself from assassination, starvation, invasion, and mutilation, he had forgotten all of the real and immediate dangers to his life.

"I suggest," ended Bloodbyrn's message, "that my lord memorize his lines for the ritual."

***

Madene fell heavily and clumsily, breaking branches and twigs, crashing through slender aspen branches in a welter of yellow leaves.

Something wooshed past her in a clatter of yellow aspen leaves and displaced air, and then something struck Madene hard in the back. The person under her exhaled and hands fumbled, trying to find purchase on Madene's Warrior Maiden leathers. But she was still moving too fast. Madene slid through her catcher’s arms and landed, bottom-first, on the muddy ground of a creek bank.

“
Ouch! Istain!” Madene was furious, not that Istain would try to catch her, of course, but because he was bound to be so smug about it. “Look how the mighty have fallen,” he would say, or “I guess men are good for something in Virgin Soil after all.” The asshole. Madene gritted her teeth and opened her eyes.

“
Oh!” Madene had time for nothing but a shocked gasp before Selene—
Selene
— was gone. The tall girl---who had just turned Madene’s fall from crippling to merely painful---now dusted her hands, crouched, and shot back into the air.

Still sprawled on the ground, Madene had to bend her neck all the way back to follow the flight of the Warrior Maiden. She saw Selene twist and the air flash as she unsheathed her sword. A chattering cry in the trees rose to a furious squeal and died suddenly with the sound of blade chopping meat. A dark, furry body plopped out of the branches above and threw up a cloud of leaves where it landed, only a few feet from the other, identical lump of the first goblin.

Madene’s eyes tracked the creature, then widened as its limbs fell open against the ground and its shape became clear. Even with its dark fur and its pointed ears and bushy tail, the body on the ground was undeniably,
disturbingly
human. The hands and face were leathery and black, but perfectly formed, like the hands and face of a baby…

Selene’s feet splashed into the mud behind her. “Did it poke you?”

Madene looked around Warrior Maiden rising from her landing crouch, sliding her grass-slender blade back into its scabbard, her face tight.

“
What?” Madene tried not to tremble as she pulled herself upright.

“
On mbibrí tú?
Did it poke you? Understand me?” Selene knelt by Madene, ignoring the two corpses on the ground. She took a hold of Madene’s arms and brought them up to examine her hands and wrists. “
DeDébhegh pómaigi mé,
how do you say it,
on ndemeobhói
was carrying a—
diglann
a—that is a…a poke, a prick, from a wood urchin.”

“
On ndemeobhói
,” said Madene, stunned. “The…the goblin?”

“
Déa
!” Selene gave a short, emphatic nod as she bent Madene’s arms.
Tá
on
iélse
iádúil
…poison, do you understand me? Did it poke you?” Her fingers dug into Madene’s flesh.

“
Nuh—no,” said Madene. Sweet words,
had it
? Madene looked toward where the first goblin lay on the muddy ground. One of its little hands still clutched something like a red and yellow knitting needle. “I mean. I don’t think so.”

“Are you feeling strange anywhere?
Tá teubhsite tú?
…
gan teubhsiú
—that is, like you can’t feel.”

“
Numb?” said Madene. Selene’s worry was contagious. Oh Truth, was she? “I don’t know.”

Selene grimaced. “Take off your clothes.”

“
What?”

“
Your
silleac
,” said Selene as she seized the bandolier around Madene’s torso. “Take it off!”

Madene didn’t argue. Her fingers fumbled at the tight little clasps down the front of her
silleac
, the tight, buckskin, vest-like upper garment of the Warrior Maidens. Selene’s own garb was the same, vest above and short buckskin pants below, for mobility. Only Selene wore a sword at her hip and gold dueling rings in her hair. The steel-chromium torque of the initiate to the Warrior Maiden mysteries flashed as she bent closer to Madene.

Madene was relieved to see no little holes in the shift she wore below the
silleac
. So was Selene, evidently, for she did not remove the shift, but instead probed her fingers into the flesh up Madene’s arms, over her shoulders and collar.

“
Can you feel this?” She asked, “does my finger feel strange?”

Madene winced, “I don’t think so.”

“
Ndhobhró
,” Selene straightened, “okay.”

“
Okay.” Madene closed her eyes and breathed out in a long sigh.

“
So Istain, is she prettier than me?”

Madene’s eyes snapped open.

“
What? Ha. Selene, I am not falling for that one.”

And she was spinning around, glaring, eyes flashing silver at Istain who had—
of course
—been watching the whole stinking escapade.

“
No really.” Selene’s voice had lost all of its urgency. She tossed her short hair at Istain and stuck out a hip. “I’m wanting your honest opinion, boh-ya. You said you like small women.”

“
I believe I said that while I was holding you, my dear.” Istain was leaning against the slim trunk of an aspen, bending it horribly, with that smug smile he always wore when someone humiliated herself, the one that meant he was about to say something sarcastic. Madene opened her mouth to scream at him—she had no idea what—when Selene reached out and twisted her around so the taller girl’s hip pressed into her waist.

“
But Madene is smaller than me. And, see, her breasts are a little bigger than mine.”

“
Maybe I’m an ass-man,” Istain grinned.

Madene made an inarticulate noise of horror and clasped her arms over her chest, suddenly horribly conscious of how easy it was to see through her undershirt.