Between (26 page)

Another fanfare, longer this time, complex.

“Her Majesty—Empress of Dragons, Queen of the Dreamworld, Weaver of Surmise.”

All voices stilled. All eyes turned as one toward the commanding presence standing at the top of the staircase. An
audible sound of indrawn breath, and then all knees bent and the entire throng, including the Prince, collapsed onto the floor in prostrate heaps of bright silk and satin.

The Queen was tall for a woman, with thick auburn hair falling unrestrained over her shoulders and past her waist. A crown of crystal flashed sparks of scarlet, purple, and vermillion wherever it was touched by the light from the chandeliers. Her gown fit her slender form like a second skin, shimmering in rainbow colors, shifting every time she moved in an ever-varying play of light and color.

Jehenna.

Vivian felt her heart stammer in her chest, her knees go weak. She should have guessed, should have prepared for this moment somehow. George had given her all the clues she needed, but her mind had been so muddled by the changes in her body and the voices in her head that she’d missed the obvious. And so she’d walked right into a trap without a plan or an ally or a hope of escape.

She managed to stay on her feet in the middle of the kneeling crowd, braced for what was surely coming. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement in black and white, picking its way over and around the courtiers toward the staircase.

Poe.

She knew him by now, knew exactly where he was going, and that this couldn’t mean anything but disaster. “Poe! Come back!” Her whisper was as loud as a shout in the silent room, but the penguin ignored her. Vivian wobbled after him, realizing several breaths later that his arrival time at the foot of the staircase would coincide precisely with the end of Jehenna’s royal progress. She picked up her speed to set an interception course, but the slippers and the prostrate courtiers slowed her down.

Poe beat her and Jehenna both by a matter of seconds, taking up a watch-penguin pose that blocked Jehenna from descending the final step unless she altered her course to move around him.

Vivian staggered to a stop right behind him, out of breath.

She met Jehenna’s gaze, unflinching, until at last it was the Queen whose eyes fell. “Dreamshifter,” she proclaimed in a voice meant to carry across the room. “We welcome you to Surmise.”

Several possible responses presented themselves, but Vivian discarded them all, still reeling from the discovery that before Jehenna looked away there had been a flicker of fear in her eyes.

Footsteps approached from behind, and a hand grasped her shoulder, none too gently. “All bow before the Queen of Surmise,” Jared’s voice said, in the authoritative tone of Gareth the Chancellor.

“I don’t.”

A murmur and a rustle spread throughout the hall.

“Don’t be a fool,” Gareth hissed in her ear. “Bow to the Queen.”

“If she insists, I’m sure Her Majesty can make me do the chicken dance. I will do nothing because
you
ask it.” She let her voice carry, instilling as much disdain into her tone as she could manage.

Jehenna’s lips barely moved, her voice pitched for Vivian’s ears alone. “Kneel.”

The voice echoed in her head, louder than the others. A tug at her knees, a pressure on her thoughts, followed. An impulse, no more. Her mind remained free, her body under her own control.

Interesting.

With a show of reluctance, which wasn’t too difficult to summon up, she sank down to the floor and pressed her forehead against the marble tile. Best if nobody knew she had the power to resist.

Jehenna’s voice rang out again, rich, magnanimous. “This is a time of rejoicing—let the wine flow, let all stomachs be filled. Let there be celebration and laughter. Chancellor—let my people be fed.”

Gareth’s voice followed. “You may all rise. The Queen in her abundance invites you all to feast. Take your places, and let the food be served.”

A rustle of clothing, footsteps, a subdued hum of voices followed. Vivian remained on her knees, waiting for the command.

“Get up,” Jehenna said.

Vivian obeyed with some difficulty, wobbling on the unaccustomed heels.

Jehenna leaned toward her and brushed her lips against first one cheek and then the other, whispering. “You think to humiliate me. Never doubt I will extract vengeance magnified a thousand times.”

“I have no doubts at all.”

“Where is the key?”

“Where are the dreamspheres?”

The hazel eyes passed over her from head to toe, not missing the smallest detail, lingering on her scarred shoulders. “I will have the key, soon or late.”

Again that tug on her mind, easily brushed aside. “I don’t know where it is.”

Jehenna took a step toward her. Poe waddled between the two of them, hissed, spread out his wings.

“Remove that creature,” Jehenna ordered.

Before Vivian or any of the guards could respond to this command, Poe darted his head forward and fastened his beak in the fabric of the Queen’s multihued gown. Jehenna gasped and pulled away, dragging the penguin with her. A tearing sound, followed by the chiming of crystal on crystal. Poe stood with a fragment of the gown hanging from his beak, as a cascade of crystal globes hit the floor and rolled in all directions.

Everybody in the room froze.

“Gareth!” Jehenna ordered.

He dropped to his knees and began to gather the dreamspheres.

Vivian braced herself for a bolt of magical lightning, for the soldiers to come and drag her away. But apart from one murderous look, Jehenna ignored her. She swept away to the dais, head held high, as though nothing had happened. One of the courtiers assisted her up the steps and
into an elaborately carved chair at the center of the high table.

Standing alone at the center of the hall, Poe at her side, Vivian felt herself go cold and quiet. She was the central focus for too many eyes, seen and unseen. Voices in and out of her head suggested various strategies that ranged from stabbing Jehenna in the heart to making a run for it. None of these were valid responses, and she had no idea where to go. Besides, her knees shook so hard that if she took a single step on her own, she feared she would fall off these stupid shoes and twist her ankle.

The Queen sat at the table, inclining her head toward the gentleman seated next to her, uttering some sort of pleasantry that Vivian couldn’t hear. He smiled in response. Chatter gradually resumed at the other tables. Gareth crawled about on hands and knees around her feet, gathering the last of the globes and storing them in his pockets.

At last he stood and faced her. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. She recognized the rage. But he spoke politely and in courtly tones, as though nothing was amiss.

“My Lady, you must be seated. The guests await you before they begin.”

He put his hand on her arm, urged her forward. She let him, leaning on him a little and keeping her pace as dignified as possible. He steered her toward the dais and the high table. Up the steps. Past the Prince who sat with eyes downcast, past men and women old and young.

Hungry, she realized, looking at the blur of faces. Waiting.

By the time Jared pulled out the chair next to Jehenna and indicated she should sit in it, Vivian felt like a sheep invited to dinner with wolves. Something more than food was on the table tonight. Gareth settled into the place beside her. His knee pressed against hers; his hand slid onto her thigh. On the other side, Jehenna’s elbow dug into her arm. Vivian made herself as small as possible, went still and quiet. Waiting. Gareth’s hand slid upward, caressing. She dug her fingernails into his skin. He retaliated with a brutal
squeeze, fingers bruising deep into the muscle. The breath hissed out between her teeth at the pain.

“Are you well?” Gareth asked, his face a mask of concern.

“Fine.”

“I thought perhaps your wounds were bothering you.” His smile promised many things, none of them good.

Vivian felt the brush of feathers against her legs.

The next instant Gareth jerked his hand away, rocking backward in his chair. Bright blood welled up from the broken skin on the back of his hand, and he stared at it in disbelief.

“Are you well?” Vivian asked.

“Goddamn bird bit me.” Gareth pressed a white napkin against his wounded hand, lips compressed in a cold rage.

Vivian shivered, one hand stroking soft feathers under cover of the table. She should placate him, somehow, but before she could think of a thing to say, a fanfare blew. Massive double doors at the end of the hall slowly opened, held by two young pages resplendent in crimson tunics and feathered hats. A procession of servers paraded in, bearing steaming platters above their heads. They wended their way past all of the other tables and directly toward the dais. Behind them, another procession of servers fanned out through the hall.

The Queen was served first. Then Vivian, then Gareth, and on down the table. Soup for starters, some sort of broth with fleshy lumps bobbing in it. A fishy steam wafted up into her nostrils, and her stomach rolled in rebellion. Voices hammered at her skull, both inside and outside.

Below her vantage point, a bewildering array of humanity talked and ate, the clink of silver and the buzz of voices a constant hum that mingled with the noise in her head to create a nearly intolerable volume. Prince Landon, seated farther down the table, spoke not a word to her or anybody else, eating silently and mechanically. He seemed to have aged since he’d picked her up in her room. New lines on his face, more gray in his hair. Jehenna and Gareth discussed
the state of Surmise with a silver-haired, Vandyke-bearded aristocrat.

Vivian had plenty of time to wonder what game Jehenna was playing, that she should be seated here as guest of honor at this feast rather than locked up in a dungeon somewhere. Or dead.

A server appeared at her shoulder, leaning over to whisper in her ear. “Is the food not to your liking, My Lady? If not, we can bring you something else.” He stank of sweat and fear, and Vivian thought suddenly of Esme. Chances were good that if she didn’t eat, somebody else would be punished.

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” she said, “I was just—it’s great.”

She poked with her spoon at the flotilla of lumpy, flesh-colored objects floating in her soup bowl, looked left and right to note that the Queen and Gareth were engaged in conversation, then fished a lump out and held it under the table for Poe.

When he didn’t take it, she leaned down to see if he was okay and caught a glimpse of something shiny in his beak. She cupped her palm and he dropped an item, round and smooth, and delicately took the lump of seafood.

Vivian tucked the dreamsphere into the pocket of the gown next to the stiletto. Then she spooned up some broth, closed her eyes, and forced it down. Not so bad, after all. The flavor was briny and good, the lumps just tasted like fish, and as she ate she began to realize that she was hungry.

She also began to notice things. A winged creature, more bat than dragon but as big as a cat, fluttered into the shadows and vanished. A slithering reptile shape appeared and disappeared under Gareth’s chair. A naked gray tail twitched from behind a platter of bread. For an instant she was certain that a penguin stood by her chair, bearing a platter of fish, but when she turned her head it was only a fat, middle-aged server, hovering behind her with a goblet of wine. New rooms flickered into being at the edges of the great hall, then disappeared.

The globes, she thought. All were dreams.
All dreams lead to Surmise.

Every person in this room—the Warlord, Gareth and Prince Landon, Esme, the servants and the courtiers—all were here because some dream portal brought them. And with them, why should there not be other elements of dream?

Poe nudged at her knee, rousing her out of her thoughts. She passed the last seafood lump to him under the table and started in on the second course, relieved to note that it looked and smelled very much like chicken.

The silence started at the center of the hall and spread in ripples until the only sound remaining came from the voices in her head. Vivian looked up from her plate, knife and fork in hand, her heart contracting in a spasm of fear.

A man in a scarlet robe stood at the top of the stairs, leaning on a carved wooden staff. His head was shaved bald. Motionless, he waited until every eye was trained on him, every voice hushed, and then he raised his arms above his head, flourishing the staff. His voice rang out in oratorical tones.

“People of Surmise.”

Pause for effect. All eyes had already been directed his way. Nobody moved. In all that vast hall no sound other than that of breath. Gareth’s slightly quickened. Jehenna’s even and regular.

Vivian clamped her hands around the edges of her chair, waiting for the cruel jaws of the trap to spring.

“A dragon has been slain. In the face of this abomination there must be retribution. The usual penalty will be exacted. A death for a death.”

Image after image flashed across Vivian’s memory. Maidens and dragons and death. Her heart battered at the walls of her chest. Instinct screamed at her to flee. Gareth’s arm circled her shoulders; his hand gripped her upper arm.

She was trapped.

Nowhere to run.