Misrule, page 5
I go to my rooms and change out of the gown I just ruined by Shifting, my mind still buzzing. Another human after decades without even a whisper from the realms across the sea. What could it mean?
It matters not. Mortania rises. Focus on the High Court.
Perhaps she has a point. Callow hops from perch to perch in my solar until I set her free. She soars away, her happy peals resonating over the wreckage of Briar. I close the window against the brine-soaked chill and stoke up the fire. Run my fingertip along the curve of the scaled snout of a dragon molded into the mantel. The boy imagined me to be such a beast. I could taste his fear. And I’m not sure why it bothers me.
“Brooding?” Regan ambles in unannounced and settles herself in a cushioned armchair.
“No.”
“No, that’s definitely not your brooding face,” she agrees. I shoot her a glower. “Let’s call it pensive, then. About what?”
“Everything. The war. The boy.” I add a log to the fire. “I don’t like that he suddenly showed up here. And he knew about Aurora.”
“He also thought this land was empty”—she points at me—“and that you were a dragon. The princess is just another story to him.”
“You’re probably right.” I pick up a dragon figurine from my desk. The jeweled scales sparkle in the firelight.
“If you’re really worried, have the Starlings see what they can dig up.” She examines the band of a silver ring—a snake that’s wrapped around her first finger in a knot, jaws biting just below the bone spike on her knuckle. The Imps conjured it for her after she told them the twisted serpent was the crest of the Vila court to which her family belonged in Malterre. “Some of Neve’s Shifters are poking around the realms across the sea. They can visit Terault.”
“Neve has enough to do.” And I do not trust her with the errand.
“Gathering intelligence is her job. If you—”
“Send word, then.” My tone is sharper than I intend, and Regan raises an eyebrow. “I’m sorry. It’s just—did you see the boy’s face when he saw the Etherian heads? He hates us.”
“What does that matter?” She laughs. “The human servants hate us, too, but that’s never troubled you.”
“They’ve always hated me. And they deserve their suffering.” I set the dragon down.
“And you think this boy would have been any different than they were a hundred years ago? That he would have treated you any better? Don’t forget that I came here on a ship just like his. And if those sailors had found me aboard”—with the fire at her back, shadows play in the valleys between Regan’s bone spikes—“I would have been thrown into the sea with rocks tied around my ankles.”
Indeed, pet. Mortania thrums.
I wrap my arms around myself, imagining that horrible possibility. A log collapses in the hearth. “I’m glad they didn’t.”
“Me, too.” Regan smirks. “When the Imps aren’t ransacking my wardrobe or setting their traps in my rooms.”
I laugh and try to let the lingering feelings of uncertainty dissolve. Regan is right. I’m wasting energy by worrying about the boy.
“I’m headed to the practice yard, if you’d like to see any worthy sparring.” She gets up and straightens her leathers. Regan loves showing off for the court. And I admit that I enjoy watching her make a spectacle of herself. All that diving and parrying. Her muscles firm and flexing beneath her leathers. A flush climbs up the back of my neck, and I busy myself with a pile of books on my desk.
“Another time,” I tell her. “I’ve some more work to do here.”
“You can’t win the war by reading.” She winks.
“Go on, then,” I shoo her off. “Try not to maim any Goblins.”
“No promises,” she calls over her shoulder.
But just before she crosses through the door—
“Regan.” She turns. But my tongue is suddenly clumsy, and I fumble a little, unsure of the right words. “The boy might be another ignorant human, like the sailors who would have killed you. But not all mortals are like them. When Aurora wakes, you’ll see.”
The clock on the mantel announces the hour. It’s an Imp creation, with each chime a separate and piercing scream. I keep trying to hide the hideous thing, but it always finds its way back here. Even if I break it, the Imps fix it—and then it’s usually worse.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course I believe you,” she answers without a second’s hesitation. “I’ll be glad to meet the princess when the time comes.”
It’s exactly what I want to hear, and what she’s told me repeatedly over the years. So why doesn’t the tightness in my chest loosen?
Perhaps, pet, it’s better that the princess sleeps.
I shove the ancient Vila away.
* * *
—
Two weeks pass, and the ship’s boy miraculously has not decided that a plunge off the Crimson Cliffs is more tolerable than the Imps’ ministrations. Nor have we discovered him curled up in a corner, smoking and boiled from the inside out as a result of any treachery he might have attempted. Instead, Derek learns that the Goblins enjoy a bawdy joke and explicit story—the bloodier the better. And the Imps fight over turns in a rowdy game he makes of spinning them around by their ankles and abruptly releasing them, the aim being to knock down as many of their compatriots as possible. He even amuses them by gamely donning whatever costumes they devise for him and tripping about the palace imitating the accent and posture of various court members.
But I note the way he takes stock of each room when he thinks no one is watching. The dried meat and crusts of bread he slips into his pockets. His human compass is pinned to survive, and it is that instinct that will kill him if he steps a toe out of line.
“Again!” The command of an Imp shrills through the throne room.
After an early visit to Aurora, I’ve passed the morning on the dais. The court is busy. A Goblin proudly showed me a dagger he crafted. There’s a hidden button on the hilt that causes an extra, longer blade to fire when it’s pressed. Our recently arrived Imps are getting their bearings. Several have scurried to my side and recounted their nightmares, which they consider to be entertaining dreams. Another turned a broken brick into a teacake with icing piped to resemble a stormy sea. A spun-sugar ship complete with sails was half-sunk in the creamy waves, in honor of Derek’s arrival. The Imp even took care to stain the icing with bits of pink.
“Them’s the dead ones,” he’d clarified with a grin, pointing.
The Demons converse among themselves, playing complex games with markers carved from painted Etherian finger bones. The red and orange rivers traversing their limbs pulse in a focused tempo. Derek, who is again amusing the Imps by tossing them into the air high enough that they can swing themselves onto the rusted chandelier, wipes at his brow with his sleeve. A sleeve that fits, I notice, and his breeches are only a touch loose in the waist. Yesterday, the Imps outfitted him in a uniform at least three sizes too large, cinched together with rope around his middle, with some mountainous wig bedecked with crispy flowers fastened to his head.
Two of the Imps begin quarreling over whose turn is next. Derek rolls his shoulders and kneads at the muscles of his back. For some unfathomable reason, I decide to take pity on him.
“Let him be,” I instruct his keepers, rising from my throne.
The gaggle of Imps scatters. One of them pouts at my spoiling their fun and sticks out his long pointed tongue at me. Another boxes his ears in scolding. Derek bows as I approach. Sweat glistens in a fine sheen over his neck. His shirt sticks to the firm trunk of his torso.
I crook my finger, the smoky green jewel on my signet ring flashing. “Come. It’s time we were better acquainted.”
He wipes his palms on his breeches, glancing about the hall as though someone might come to his aid before I spirit him away. No one does, and he shuffles cautiously along behind me, out a side door and into the gardens.
It’s nearing afternoon, but the sun is dull and the skies are smeared with bruise-colored clouds. I can’t recall if it’s summer or winter. The years are harder to track now that the Court of Seasons is gone. Derek shivers in the breeze, and I’m grateful for my fur-lined gown—one the Imps designed so that the bodice is comprised of intertwined bramble and thorn. Crimson teardrops track down the skirt, like drops of blood.
“Has this place always been so…”
“What?” I enjoy the moment as he scrambles for an acceptable word, and then wave him off. “Don’t trouble yourself. These gardens were immaculate during the time of the queens. The palace employed an army of gardeners, and then there were the Grace-grown blooms. I once smelled a peony that made the taste of chocolate land on my tongue.”
“They could do that?”
“Indeed, and much more.”
But the days of the Graces are long over, and I would not resurrect them for all the enchanted peonies in the world. Gravel crunches under our feet as I navigate the untidy paths. Hedges are barren and black. The prized rosebushes have morphed into huge, rambling things with thorns the length of my hand. Fine sculptures are crumbling or missing limbs or the Imps have recast them so that maidens boast the heads of leering gargoyles or the unsettling bodies of squids or griffins. This is the same garden where I met Aurora. Somewhere, the fountain she admired sits amid stinking earth and withered flowers. Melancholy twinges in my chest, but I shake it away.
“War will do this to a land, I suppose,” Derek comments.
I laugh. “The state of this garden isn’t the result of the war.”
In fact, there’s never been a battle on our soil. Oryn and his Fae courts are quick to retaliate if we trespass on their territory, but they’ve never ventured here. The High King hasn’t even bothered to send an envoy during these decades of conflict. Regan ascribes his silence to his pride or the fact that the Etherians cannot survive on our lands for long. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll soon have the opportunity to ask Oryn whatever we desire—when we storm the High Court and he is kneeling at our feet.
“The barrenness of these lands is due to the Dark Court.” I find the thready magic of a climbing vine and send it slithering in front of the boy’s feet like a snake. He jumps back. “For the last hundred years, our magic has seeped into the land and altered the climate. The fall of the Fae courts contributes as well.”
His brow scrunches. “How could the Fae courts have anything to do with Briar? I didn’t think this land held any magic.”
Branches rattle overhead, stirred by the salty wind.
“Not of its own, no. But we’ve found that it is influenced by Etheria. Each Fae court governs an area of the natural world—seasons, dreams, beasts, and so on. As each court succumbs to our army, the dominion it governs pales with it. The lack of flowers in this garden”—I touch the hollow shell of a puckered and lifeless bud—“has much to do with the demise of the Court of Earth, one of our early conquests.”
He reaches for a charred vine, which crumbles in his hand. “That’s…sad.”
Mortania bridles, and I share her annoyance. I exert the tiniest amount of pressure on the bond between myself and Derek. His curse mark flames scarlet. He yelps in surprise and pain.
“That, ship’s boy, is an opinion. One better kept to yourself.”
A screech cuts through the heavy-bellied clouds. Callow circles into view, lands on my shoulder, and nips at my ear.
Derek stops rubbing his arm and extends a tentative hand to the kestrel. “Remarkable. I’ve never met a bird so tame.”
Callow promptly snaps, earning herself a gullet full of mortal blood.
“She isn’t tame.” I stroke her breast. “She is mine. What of yours? You spoke of a family in…where was it?”
Neve agreed to have her Starlings investigate the boy, but they haven’t sent word back. And my curiosity about this unexpected addition to the Dark Court grows by the day.
“Terault.” Derek sucks his wound and maintains a healthy distance from Callow. “I have a younger brother and two sisters. And my mother and father.”
“But you must be accustomed to being separated from them, what with your work on a ship.”
“The voyage that brought me here was my first. Before then, I worked odd jobs. Crew hand pays better, though. And we needed the money, even if my mother begged me to stay.”
So he’s poor, with a mother who loves him. An irritating sense of sympathy wheedles my conscience.
“Your maiden voyage ended in a wreck? I pray you haven’t carried such ill luck to our shores. And now your mother must think you dead. How tragic.”
He kicks at rocks. The Imps have magicked his boots so that they appear as though they are made of the writhing tentacles from one of the sea monsters of Derek’s tales.
“Do you suppose that I might send them a message? Let them know I’m alive. That there’s a chance I might come home.”
“You’ve sworn to me,” I remind him, indicating his forearm. “You’re not going home. And we don’t communicate with the human world. Which is why they all think we’re stories.”
“Oh.” A pebble goes skidding into the bushes.
“Even if we did allow such a missive, you wouldn’t exactly have optimistic tidings to report. The Imps consider you amusing today. But perhaps not tomorrow.”
He tucks his fingers under his arms at the next gust of wind. “There’s a stipend for the families if a crew member doesn’t return. That will be something for them, at least.”
Somehow I thought—or even hoped—that he would put up more of a fight. And his lack of a backbone makes goading him immensely less satisfying. I change the subject.
“Were you really oblivious to the Dark Court before you attempted the crossing?” I sweep my staff in the direction of the sea and the Crimson Cliffs, barely visible in the distance. “Your king must have been informed of the fate of the fleets who sailed here over the last century. Or did you think all the ships were capsized by the giant sea serpents from the stories you weave for the Goblins?”
He doles out one of his easy, lopsided grins. “I think it interesting that you call the sea serpents ‘stories.’ ” If he expects a laugh, he doesn’t get it. He scrubs at the back of his neck. “We knew of the other fleets. Even of how the Fae used to flatten human armies who encroached on their lands before Briar was established. But the royals in Terault are desperate. Desperate people commit foolish acts.”
“You sound like you resent them for it.”
He runs his hands through his dark hair. It’s growing out, lending him an unkempt appearance that somehow suits him. I make a note to instruct the Imps to shave it off. “I’d be whipped if any of the soldiers heard me say it, but Terault has to restructure. They cannot rely on what’s worked in the past. Or what the damn astrologers say. If we’re going to survive, we must forge a future that doesn’t depend on Etherium, or anything else we cannot control.”
“You seem to understand quite a bit about politics for someone who spent their time on a ship or working ‘odd jobs.’ ”
He shrugs. “I kept myself informed. I was part of a group, actually—” He slides me a sideways glance, and I scent a secret hanging in the air between us.
“Go on, then. I’m not going to tell anyone. What do I care what happens in your country?”
Callow warbles something that could be a laugh. Derek scowls at us both.
“I was part of an organization. We met and planned what we might do to change the realm. Initially, it was only discussion. But then we began to map out tangible ideas.”
“You’re a revolutionary?” I study him with fresh eyes. He doesn’t strike me as the type. “And would you have been brave enough to stage a coup? Rule yourself?”
“I would have done whatever was necessary for the good of the people.”
In this moment, he actually reminds me of Aurora. That unflinching ferocity that shone through her when she refused to sign her sovereign rights over to a husband, as most Briar Queens had done, and insisted she would be the queen Leythana had been. The comparison should make me warm to the boy, but it does the opposite.
“It’s too bad you’ll never get the chance.”
Derek looks like he wants to answer—maybe beg to be sent back home again. But then he grits his teeth and walks on in silence.
The garden wall is in shambles, granting a view of Briar’s skeletal wreckage and the sea beyond. I wonder how many bodies lie at the watery base of the Crimson Cliffs. How many wrecked ships and rusted swords? Derek leans against the worn stone, taking in the hollow husks of the buildings. The murders of crows, among the only sort of animal that survived the fall of the Court of Beasts, wheeling above the caved-in domes of the Grace District rooftops. The shadows curling like wisps of smoke.
“You did all this, then?”
Callow mutters a warning. “We don’t like your tone, Derek. You weren’t here a hundred years ago. The people of Briar judged me monstrous. I gave them what they wanted.”
“They wanted their realm to burn? Their lives destroyed?”
A hint of Mortania’s silty power lands on my tongue as an achingly familiar rage begins to bubble in my chest. I take one slow step toward Derek, close enough to see his pulse flutter at his throat.
“They wanted a villain. A beast to suit their stilted narrative. One they could use and discard and punish for whatever purposes they devised.” A phantom pain pierces my torso, the ancient echo of one of Endlewild’s “treatments” to cleanse my wicked green blood. Even with my Shifter abilities, I’ve never been able to permanently remove the scar. “And so I took everything they gave me and flung it back at them.”
