Dark Lord's Wedding (44 page)

The colors faded from the panes of her dress. Celaise was overpowering the other Feaster and stealing her vibrancy. Now the woman didn’t wear stained glass but only a shop window.

Hiresha revolved in the air, and polygons reflected off her gown and onto the guests in triumphant topaz hues. “Each time I leave to change dresses, look to this woman. She’ll wear a prelude, which will illustrate the difference between desperate imitation and inspired craft.”

All the magic the Feaster possessed was insufficient to hide her blush.

Hiresha lighted down on the ceiling near Fos Chandur. He would be the last high guest to present her with a gift. Perhaps she should’ve felt more of a surge upon seeing him. It had been years apart for them in this facet, though they spent every day together in the other world. His hard chin and soft eyes were all too familiar.

Uncertainty had left furrows in his brow. His grin quaked, yet his movement was as effortless as always as he knelt before her. He touched her feet, a deference she hadn’t tolerated in years. In him the movement was too graceful for rebuke.

He looked up from her to the Feaster below. “She’s a tin trinket next to you.”

It had to be obvious, then, for Fos to notice.

“Ah, this is for you.” Fos took his gift from the hands of a veiled assistant and presented a fur coat. “You wore it when we saved the Academy. But you must remember. The coat is right there, on your dress.”

Indeed, one panel of the stained glass displayed her wearing the white fur, in her triumph over gravity to defend the Mindvault Academy.

“Looks like a conquering yeti.” Fos gulped on his last word. “In a good way, I mean.”

It hurt when Hiresha chuckled. “You couldn’t know this, yet I only put on the coat as a last resort.”

His face pinched in sour surprise.

“No, Fos. The gift is apt. All too much. The coat saved me. Without it, I couldn’t have rescued anyone, and it came at a great price.” The fur must have been even more impressive when it was still worn by the winter bear.

“Then it’s a heroic coat,” Fos said.

“How quickly its accomplishments were turned against us.” Hiresha couldn’t enchant the fur coat anymore than the wooden pendant, yet his gift had value and thoughtfulness.

Hiresha could declare this gift the best, the truest to her, and the winner. Doing so would likely offend Elbe beyond reconciliation. The Purest had given material wealth that must’ve depleted the city’s coffers, and her coin had bought the wedding palace.

Declaring the fur coat as the best would be poor strategy. Hiresha would have to dance with Fos and his easy strength. She might need to give up Tethiel’s schemes of bringing great powers together under one rule. Hiresha could leave all of it behind and fly off with Fos on the amethyst dragon, live her life like Sagai and Naroh should have.

Then her facets would be all too similar. Abiding Fos in one world already wearied her. Merely thinking about it was like grinding two diamonds together, rounding off their masterful edges until two identical spheres remained, lifeless as glass and devoid of fire.

“Fos, thank you for coming a great distance from the Empire and facing greater dangers at my wedding.”

“Always worried …” Fos glanced to Tethiel, then to the blood-splattered floor. The bodies had been removed. “Always thought this might happen.”

“Human sacrifice at my wedding?”

He lifted his broad hands palms out. “I mean, you have so much power. You’re juggling lives, gems, and hippos for all I know. Wait, let me think what I mean to say.”

“Most advisable.”

His eyes unfocused, both his natural one with the black iris and the mahogany one. Anyone would who saw him would think his gaze exceptional. Their first guess wouldn’t be that one eye had been pulped then regenerated by an enchantress.

If only she could’ve done the same for the hearts of the women she had killed. And in the other facet, she wished her powers could’ve saved all those the Lord of the Feast had slaughtered in his death throws.

Fos had been spared, not out of mercy but spite.
No one punishes us like our friends.
The Lord of the Feast had stabbed her with his thoughts
.

Death glared from every facet in maddening coruscation. Hiresha had to focus on one single world, one agony, one tragedy, where Fos was speaking.

“We defeated a Soultrapper together. You ousted a second one from Morimound. They did whatever they wanted to people, and it wasn’t any kind of good. Hiresha, just don’t end up like them.”

“What an unfair comparison. The Soultrappers brutalized and exploited to power their obsessions.”

“Well, I mean, you weren’t putting hearts back into those women.”

“I was saving lives. All across the lands, I could do as much good if not more.” She had tried to say it with all the confidence it deserved, yet she couldn’t find the right pitch of voice.

“You must be right.” Fos spoke with the slow purpose of trying to remember each word. “But do you suppose the Soultrappers thought they were right?”

Heat spiked within Hiresha’s skull, and miasmas wriggled across her vision in the beginning of a migraine. Hiresha quashed the headache by constricting her blood vessels. “Did the vizier tell you to say that?”

Fos’s chin rose in a lump of embarrassment. Her guess might have been right, or else he was ashamed of her accusation.

Hiresha massaged her right hand. Her smallest finger was pinched as if she hadn’t slipped the skin back on her arm correctly. The epithelial tissue constricted her by turns then felt loose enough to slide off. She must not have repaired all the severed nerve endings.

How rude of Fos to voice her own fear aloud. Hiresha had saved cities from the tyranny of magic. Her own power could be even greater, her rule with Tethiel more dominant. And how fragile, an upstart could come at precisely the wrong time and ruin everything. It had almost happened already tonight. Hiresha could’ve died in her sleep.

She would have to kill those two trapped in her dragon. To think, they could’ve lived out their lives together in happiness. Now the best they could be was a spectacle.

No, Hiresha could never escape as they could’ve to a life of happy inconsequence. The magnitude of her magic couldn’t be hidden.

Hiresha pulled her gaze away from her amethyst dragon. From this angle it seemed to be clinging to the dome upside down. She turned back to Fos and the winter-bear coat he had brought her. Hiresha ran her hands over the rough thickness. Its bristles scratched her palms.

Yes, she admitted the Empire had sent her a thoughtful gift. She couldn’t call it an insult. Most of its value came from sentiment, and she could never enchant it to use against the Empire. Fos had carried the fur, yet the consideration may have come from the vizier.

Hiresha let go of the coat. It floated through the crystal aperture and into the dome. The winter-bear hide joined the cyclone flow of the rest of the hoard. The gift had once meant so much to her, and now it was lost in gold.

“What generosity!” Tethiel’s voice echoed off the crystal walls and her spine. “Those gifts outshine the stars.”

Hiresha could yet summon the fur back. She could choose it and try to flee the blood of this wedding into a simple life. Sagai and Naroh had chosen poorly. They had doomed themselves with decisions that couldn’t be undone. Hiresha would have to be wiser.

“Lady of Gems,” Tethiel said, “which guest gave the greatest of gifts?”

She could delay her choice no longer. Hiresha would have to begin slaying opportunities until but one remained alive.

“
Lest your tastes appear vain, always graciously accept the best. The only sour grape, my bride to-be, is that we can’t hire the greatest singer in the lands. His voice is not for sale.”

“
Then you are not referring to the empress.”

“
The second greatest, then, is Bethul Cavern Throat. He sold himself into servitude in Jaraah for two camels. No one but the caliph’s guests may hear him.”

“
Astonishing how common slavery is in nations where it’s outlawed.”

“
We must steal this legendary voice for our wedding. With your blessing, I’ll recruit Inannis for the heist.”

“
That jewel duper does owe me for grievances. He may kidnap this Bethul Cavern Throat, whom we could then free or otherwise compensate. You’re certain his voice will be appreciated?”

“
His is the natural-born talent that only comes with great practice.”

“
Here we agree. Dedicate your life in ceaseless work to perfecting a craft, and people will only insult you by calling you talented.”

Now Jerani might have to fight. His heart started beating at battle speed, and his fingers throbbed with readiness. The lord had moved closer to the kings.

“The lady should’ve chosen me,” the king brute said. “What kind of gift is gold? Terror bird feathers, that’s what a real queen wants.”

The lord leaned over the table. Butterflies beat over his shoulders, and their wings were splotched in screaming-skull patterns. “The Lady of Gems is no mere queen.”

“Can see that now.” The king didn’t take his eyes off the lady’s dancing. Brave, with the lord so close. Or crazy.

The potato king edged away in a clatter of gold armor. He glanced back to the lady. “Maybe it’s for the best I didn’t have more gemstone to give. Her favor seems uncommonly dangerous.”

“Very,” the lord said, “almost as dangerous as her disfavor.”

The king meant the lady’s glass-shard gown, Jerani guessed. Or maybe it was just her headdress that spiked its way down her back in a jagged hair of many colors. Like blades of razor weed caught in the wind, the glass leaned behind her and would cut through skin at a touch.

The Purest woman hadn’t cried out yet. She held onto the lady’s shoulder and waist, near the shards. The women circled in a dance flight.

Jerani hoped the kings kept watching. Then they wouldn’t get up to surround the lord. Jerani might not have to test his spear against their axes.

“A table full of kings,” the brute said and spat on the glass floor, “and she chose a woman runt?”

“How do you think I feel?” The lord plucked a long candy from a servant’s tray. “At least I can have my fill of happiness.”

The kings grabbed handfuls of the food. Much fell to the floor. The fox darted in with ears folded down to snatch up a candy. The little beast was watched by the golden eyes of the jaguar knight. The big cat also lapped up the sweets.

Jerani liked this. The kings ate instead of fought, and their eyes didn’t make scouting journeys between their axes and the lord. That would mean battle. With enough food inside them they wouldn’t be quick to jump into a fight.

“Don’t worry,” the lord said to them. “We have toxic varieties for a Green Blood.”

The frog-skinned man spun a candy in a pool of slime that had dripped from his fangs. The honey crystals bubbled and let loose a stinking smoke. The Green Blood didn’t eat, didn’t even look at the lady dancing.

The Talon sitting across from him also didn’t. He tapped his knife point against his tongue. He muttered. “The lady is cruel, to spite the Winged Flame, to spite the world. Burn her! And the Purest, she’ll lead her ever further into the profane.”

The jaguar knight made a clicking noise in his throat. It could’ve meant something.

“You’re right.” The king brute slammed the table, and the bird claws on his gauntlet rattled. “The Purest isn’t above us and the gods. Maybe I take her as a wife, here in front of everyone.”

“Careful, my royal jelly,” the lord said. “The lady won’t thank you for raping her guest.”

Now the men were making axe-eyes, not at the lord but the Purest. Jerani’s stomach had gone sore from clenching, and it wasn’t just about waiting for battle. That music the women danced to, that voice from the singer, it moved through the walls and shook Jerani’s bones. That growling chant beat against his insides.

The air trembled with song. Drums slammed in a frenzy, but this voice had more power. The man lifted a hand toward the flying women and hummed an earthquake. Drinks shook in cups. Knives rattled on tables.