Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (60 page)

Beauregard shot him a glare of steel, and the king was reminded that he must not fall into another spell of gloom. Snapping back to alertness, he commanded, “Beauregard. Travel to Sorsetta, and see what else can be squeezed from the tight lips of this friend of yours. I met Amara briefly, but found her as unreadable as a shadowbroker. She seemed uneasy in my
presence. I doubt she would be willing to speak as openly to me as to you, who saved her people.”

Beauregard rose and bowed. While disappointed he would again miss training with the king, he felt excited by the prospect of seeing Amara once more. “Yes, my king.”

“Do stop in Bainsbury, too,” added the king. “To provide a service long overdue.”

Bainsbury was where Tabitha Fischer, Beauregard’s mother, lived, and she was indeed owed a visit from her son. Guilt twisted his guts as he realized he’d been postponing telling her about the death of her husband, his father. He’d been lying to her in letters lately, saying that Devlin was
at peace
here in Eod—not a complete fabrication since that statement was never untrue of the dead. Beauregard frowned.

“Gustavius will accompany your man,” said the Iron Queen, surprising everyone. Call her suspicious—and she certainly was—but she didn’t want the king’s man running clandestine errands and listening to secrets alone and unsupervised by an eye and ear of her own. None of her Iron children was more reliable than Gustavius.

The Iron lord stood, bowed, and accepted his assignment without a wrinkle of consternation. “As you wish, my queen.”

Beauregard scowled, less at ease with this arrangement. When he looked to his king, Magnus gave a nod.

“You won’t solve the mystery standing around,” said the Iron Queen, almost playfully nudging the two aides into a trot with her cane. “Run along. The masters of the realms have matters to which they must attend.”

As the men left the glittering chamber, Magnus turned to the violet eyes watching him. “Matters? What matters?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I suppose the morning’s events stole all the attention. The survivors of Menos will return to their Iron bosom today. A ship full of them is scheduled to dock in an hourglass or two. I would think that the heads of both nations should be in attendance. And I believe you did want us to hear their tales together.”

Wearing a seemingly patient expression, Gloriatrix folded her hands atop the ball of her cane. What in all the unholy horrors of the world was she scheming at behind that pleasant smile? The king was reminded of
Thackery’s stare and the webs that were woven behind it. The Iron Queen possessed her brother’s intellect, if nothing else. As they walked toward the arch leading out of the Hall of Memories, Gloriatrix cast a sly, covetous look over her shoulder at the great, mystical chamber that hummed with music and puffed golden mist—and thought of what she could do with all that knowledge.

VI

“We have a guest tonight.”

The broad, unshaven man rose to his feet. Kings, how wearying these days had been as the locusts of the Iron City and the mercenary rats from all corners of the globe had scuttled in, filling their city with plague. But a cure had come tonight, a medicine of hope for the fledgling resistance. Brock looked at the draped shadows just outside the cone of light that shone down the cellar stairs. From there, a cloaked woman came forth. As she drew closer to the circle of twelve tired men and women with their accoutrements and jewelry of gold and white, she removed her hood. Her face was round-cheeked, flushed, and pretty in an understated way. Brock stayed on his feet, and the others rose as well.

If any of these men had known Mater Lowelia before the war, they would not have recognized her now. Her demeanor was cold and stern; her glare flashed steel and fire. Gone was the doughy, sweet caregiver. In her place, rising from the grave of that ghost, was a woman who’d embraced the castration of her sinful husband as an act of justice. A woman who’d killed spies. A woman who’d led a kingdom through the first of its darkest wars, when no other royals had been around to shoulder the duty. Lowe could no longer remember that other woman—that happy woman. She was dead and buried.

However, she’d lacked purpose since being exposed and cast out from her position as queen. She’d soon discovered, though, that her official status as a pariah involved a much softer fall from grace than she had expected. She’d become invisible again to the king. Normal men and women continued to look up to her, though. In dark hallways, or while elbow to elbow in the kitchen chopping vegetables, they whispered seditious thoughts to her about the unholy alliance of Magnus and Gloriatrix.
They secretly praised the mater for her reign as queen, however fraudulent it had been. For a time, she dismissed their heresies and held on to her anger toward Lila, feeling used because of her unwitting complicity in the queen’s act of genocide. Then, as the days drifted on, and Magnus acceded further to the demands of Menos, even going as far as to declare his own queen a traitor when her crimes were still very much in question, Lowe started to take these whisperers seriously. When one of the loyalists had told her of a meeting of like minds and souls, Lowe had known that she must attend.

Brock bowed. “Mater Lowelia, you honor us by being here.”

“There is nowhere else to be,” she replied. “The city is buried under piles of shite and sin.”

Those assembled took their seats as she spoke.

“Now,” said Brock, glancing with pride at their guest. “Let us discuss how to reclaim our city.”

Disappointingly, if predictably, the formality and excitement of the clandestine meeting soon degenerated into protests of rage and aimless threats against the Iron menace. Lowelia remembered these kinds of spiraling arguments that led to the center of nowhere from her days dealing with sages and watchmasters, all of whom had had very conflicting ideas on how to execute a war. What were these people doing? What did they hope to accomplish? Talking in a basement wasn’t a productive use of her or anyone else’s time. After a few sands that felt to her like hourglasses, Lowelia stood and slapped her fist into her palm. “I hear a lot of talking, but we are not building a road to
doing
.” Her audience cringed, but no one replied. “Our city is now filled with villains, criminals, cannibals, and thieves. Our queen, the one whose role I was blessed to play, the one who saved us from certain enslavement, would never have allowed such a travesty to come about.”

“What
can
we do but talk?” a frustrated, heavy-set man asked and threw his hands up in defeat.

Lowelia punished him with a scowl, and he looked down at the floor. She considered long and hard what to tell these people. She assessed their fitness, spirits, and pride, and found each of them sufficient, except for the man who’d so readily accepted his uselessness. He would have to go
before she said anything more. She tipped her head to burly Brock, who worked nights upstairs as tavern enforcer and was familiar with the body language of his superiors; he hefted the struggling man up and out of the room. After a moment, Brock returned and sat down, huffing. Lowelia allowed a beat or two of threatening silence to pass, a trick she’d learned in council.

“Does anyone else share his attitude?” Murmurs and headshakes indicated
no
. “Cowards are not welcome at my table, so I shall assume none of you will ever voice reservations again. We are at war, my countrymen. In the South. In our very homes. War can be seen on every horizon. What can we do? The answer is simple: We can prepare. We can arm ourselves in the shadows. We can await the return of the true guardian of Eod, she who smote the Iron City with the fury of nature herself.” Lowelia paused, panting in passion, and her eager audience leaned in as if it sensed what was coming. “Our queen is coming home.”

“We’ve heard the rumors,” said one poised older woman with dark skin and cropped hair like a soldier. Wearing a pale gown and gloves, she looked quite fancy for a revolutionary, though who was Lowe to judge? “What have you heard, matron?”

“You ask the right question. Ms…?” Lowelia waved her hand, fishing for a name.

“Miss Abernathy. No mister worth mentioning. Dorothy will do.”

“Dorothy,” repeated Lowelia, and the two women smiled, perhaps recognizing a familiar determination or darkness in the mater.

“And the answer to my question?” asked Dorothy.

“I’ve heard the voice of the queen, and she tells me she is even now making for Eod,” Lowe hissed. “She is not alone, but brings with her an army.”

The grouped gasped and exclaimed as one. “An army?”

“Yes,” replied Lowelia. “Queen Lila intends to march into Eod and demand, through a show of military force, if necessary, an audience with Magnus. However, she cannot breach the gates of the city on her own, not without causing terrible casualties on all sides. In fact, she swears that nary a man, woman, child, or even housecat will be harmed so long as she needn’t break down the gates. Whatever rumors you may have heard—and
I once struggled with such doubts myself—she is not an enemy of life. If she and Magnus are to meet peacefully, someone will need to let her and her forces into the city.”

Awe, shock, and fear spread like a pox through her listeners; their complexions grew pale, and some bit their nails and twitched with electric thoughts. Dorothy and Brock remained the most composed.

Tapping her chin thoughtfully, the graceful Dorothy asked, “From where did the queen get her army? She couldn’t have hired mercenaries, as they’d be more interested in the Iron Queen’s bounty.”

“From the Arhad, I’ve been told,” replied Lowe.

“Impossible,” spat Dorothy, losing her composure. Lowe traced the woman’s anger—for Miss Abernathy was brown of complexion, like the desert wanderers—to some detail of her ancestral or personal history. Dorothy continued, “The Arhadian warriors would never bow to the will of a woman, not even a queen.”

“Miss Abernathy—”

“Dorothy.”

“Dorothy,” continued Lowe. “When I was placed on the throne of Eod, the queen left in my care a handful of far-speaking stones for use in case of emergency. I never heard from her during that time, or for some time after. I kept them in my nightstand, however, out of a fool’s hope that she would one day reach out to me to say…” Lowe stalled on a thought of what she’d wanted to hear from Lila:
I am sorry. I am grateful. I am proud of you. I forgive us both
. It was all a fantasy. Lowe resumed speaking. “To say that she’d survived the unmaking of Menos and that she was well. Then, finally, the Sisters Three themselves sent me a sign not even a blind woman could miss. Last night, only an hourglass after I’d learned of this meeting and settled into bed, one of the stones spoke. Its message burned so hot that it singed the wood of the drawer in which it was kept—the smoke was what woke me. I could hear only so much; if you’re familiar with far-speaking magik, you’ll know that unless you catch the speaker right at the moment of communication, the message will already have been recorded, and you won’t be able to say anything in return. So I listened, with my ears and all my heart, and this is what the stone said…”

Coughing herself awake from a deep sleep, Lowe realizes there’s a fire and throws herself out of bed. She quickly notices, though, that it’s a small fire; only her squat two-drawered dresser appears to be under threat. Smoke puffs from the cracks: her papers, knitting implements, and even the picture she was never able to tear up and throw away of Euphenia’s child have almost certainly already been reduced to ash. The stones! The far-speaking stones are in there, too! she realizes. Lowe braves a grab at the hot metal handle, fans away a rush of sooty breath, and then bats down flames with an empty pillowcase in order to see what remains to be salvaged. There, lying in a nest of scorch marks and ashes like the egg of a mystical bird of fire, glows a far-speaking stone. It pulses while the other stones cluster around like stillborn eggs with nothing to say. Whoever is speaking through this stone is doing so with so much power and conviction that its message will not be unheard. Risking a second and more severe burn to her already red fingers, Lowe reaches into the drawer, hisses as she touches the sizzling crystal quail egg, and then raises it to her ear. Contact opens the channel, and the queen’s voice floods her head. She nearly collapses from the twist of joy and shock
.

“I come to face the judgment of both my husband and my Fates. I come from the desert bringing an army of a thousand Arhadian women and men strong—and it will have grown larger still when you and I at last meet again. We are ready to face the defilers of our world. If you do not crack the gates for us, we shall pound on them until they are opened. Justice cannot hide, and neither shall I.”

“A thousand Arhadian women and men strong…” puzzled Dorothy. Along with her companions, she pondered the dangerous unknowns implicit in the queen’s proclamation—or threat.

“That’s what she said.” Lowe nodded, then stopped rubbing the blisters on her fingers. “I would never mistake her words. I have learned that our queen is a lady of action. If she says that she marches to Eod with an army of Arhadians—as absurd as that sounds—then roll out a grand carpet and ready your minds for a parade of the absurd. We have already crossed the Feordhan, in that regard. Riffraff and Iron rats are everywhere. She will not stand for it: this city is as much her creation as Magnus’s. And there are things that you do not know about our king...imperfections in his seeming flawlessness…”

Before the king had left Eod to march against his brother, Lowe had heard horrid screaming and grunting coming from the royal wing. She and Erik had shooed all eavesdropping servants away, and then she herself had been shooed away by Erik. The next day, she had been secretly summoned by a mysterious fleshbinder to a cold recess of the palace, a wing no one went these days, where no one would look for a woman beaten and shamed. Sickened by the memory, Lowe remembered her first sight of the battered queen.
Oh, my fair queen! What has he done to you? What has that monster done?
For the woman before her had been nigh unrecognizable. In a room dank with sweaty fear and nauseating ointments, Lila had lain stiffly on a bed, breathing quietly, her face so shattered that she looked like a swollen victim of plague. Lowe had fallen, then crawled, to the bedside and wept for sands, while the queen—despite her condition—reached out a bandaged hand and stroked her hair. It was this memory that had allowed her to forgive Lila for manipulating her, to forgive her for everything.