The Master (3 page)

“You can smell the mimosa,” King Gofimbel said. “I hate mimosa. It's such a human odor.”

There was a slight movement from under the bed and two golden eyes stared out at Wren. They were angry.

No! Don't!
Wren thought.
They'll kill you, too. You know they hate cats. Please . . . one of us must live so Qasim will know what happened. He must be warned to stay away or the king may kill him too.

Gofimbel shrugged off his cape of goblin hides and turned around. He opened a long ivory box sitting on Wren writing table and removed an obsidian blade. He held it close to his nose and then flicked it with his tongue. His voice was almost gentle when next he spoke, using human French. It was as though he didn't believe she was at all lutin, and that he wanted to be sure she understood what was going to happen.

“I truly am sorry about this, but I can't let that child—or you—live. It's a matter of discipline. It's taken me three hundred years to unite the hives. I can't have anyone disrupting the union with a challenge for power, and I am very afraid that this is what Qasim means to do.”

Wren began to cry silently. She didn't beg for mercy, though, because she knew that none would be forthcoming. Nothing had ever looked more pitiless than her king.

“Get on with it,” Gofimbel ordered.

The goblin with the garrote quickly closed the shutters, closing out the moonlight and closing in the noise. Wren closed her eyes and tried to think about the mimosa.

Maybe
, she thought,
if I think about that, it won't be so bad.

Qasim knelt at the side of the bed, uncaring that he squatted in shards of glass from a broken vase that had held a small bouquet of mimosa and orange blossoms. Bastet, more fastidious, sat beside him on a clean patch of rug, head bowed in a show of formal mourning. Neither of them looked at Wren's stiffening body: Qasim because he couldn't bear to see her glorious locks tied tight around her neck, Bastet because she had already seen it.

The emotional desolation Qasim felt was strange. He understood his anger, his impotent rage that Gofimbel should have discovered Wren and their child, whom he had killed in retaliation. But there was another sensation: a wretchedness of spirit that suggested he was feeling something more, some other loss unrelated to the frustration of his ambition.

Qasim comprehended it in part. His affection for Wren had been foolish and unintended, but that didn't mean it hadn't been real. Nor had it been a simple, frivolous physical desire that would eventually be forgotten when she was replaced by someone else. None of his desires were ever simple or frivolous. In that respect, he was more like a human than a goblin.

So, Qasim thought, he was suffering the death of his ambitions, but also something more. Maybe several somethings.

To begin with, though he had done his best to protect her and the baby from Gofimbel, it hadn't been enough. Wren and the child had died because of him—casualties of war, but unwitting ones who should not have come under fire. So he felt guilt; unwanted, but not undeserved. This, too, was a more human reaction than a goblin one.

But, unlike a human, Qasim could not cry. Hobgoblins had not been created with the capacity to weep, and he had never anticipated the need. After all, weeping changed nothing. It didn't alter fate, or soften evil hearts. It couldn't raise the dead or cure the sick, so why should hobgoblins have been given such a visible weakness? What cared the goblin king that by not weeping Qasim was kept from something inside of himself—something that lived in desperate isolation? Better that the king's soldiers never feel anything at all than feel weakness.

But Gofimbel had somehow miscalculated, and inside Qasim did cry out. In his heart—if heart he had—he wailed and asked for Wren's forgiveness.

Of course, there was no answer. She was gone beyond where he could reach her, or make amends. And reparation meant nothing to the dead. He had learned this at Gofimbel's hands. Comprehension of his loss was suddenly absolute:

There would be no future with Wren. They would have no children.

Gofimbel would remain king.

Hobgoblins would remain slaves.

“I failed, Wren.” The words were a wound in his throat.

The realization was terrible. It filled him with . . . grief. That was the word. He felt
grief.

Absently, Qasim reached out for Bastet. The cat permitted the touch. She hated goblins; they were anathema to her race. But Qasim was different. Part animal himself, he understood her. The cat hadn't understood Wren as well, but the half-lutin female had belonged to Qasim, so Bastet had stayed with her in her exile. She had stayed even for her death.

“I smell mimosa and orange blossoms,” Qasim said suddenly. “Wren loved mimosa and orange blossoms. They were her favorite flowers.”

The cat looked toward the shuttered window.

Qasim followed her gaze and then got to his feet. He went to the window, where a small current of air eddied at the shutters' imprecise joining. He pulled the boards wide. Leaning out into the cool morning air, he grabbed limbs from the trees, ripping them free. Not sure what to do with the blossomed branches once he had them in hand, he took them to the bed. Bastet rose onto her hind legs and pawed the coverlet. Understanding, Qasim gently laid the bruised twigs on Wren's small body, softening the grim view and making it look as though she was just sleeping in a bower. The gesture made him feel a little better.

Below them, a door slammed. Bastet hissed a sharp warning and then leapt for the open window. There were two things the cat loathed: one was goblins, the other Queen Mabigon. Qasim had never been certain whether it was the queen herself who bothered the cat, or her constant companion, the ravenous gargoyle.

Not knowing whom to expect—and, at the moment, not really caring—Qasim turned toward the door and waited.

A moment later, the Dark Queen appeared. She came veiled in black and bearing an armload of deep, red roses. Qasim noted that they still had their thorns, and their stems were as ragged as the branches of orange blossoms and mimosa he had torn from the trees. She had probably ripped them off the bushes in the garden.

“You,” he said. He added ironically, “I'm honored.”

Mabigon tactfully left her pet gargoyle outside the door.

“I came as soon as I heard,” the queen said in her dark, smoky voice. She pulled back her long black veil and then scattered her flowers carelessly over Wren's body and face, demonstrating her true indifference to Wren's death. The room filled with the familiar scent of dragon's blood, thickened with myrrh and tickles of clove; it was the queen's favorite perfume, and Qasim realized that he hated it even as it attracted him. “How upset you must be. This does rather end your little plan for freedom, doesn't it, my foolish one?”

Qasim looked at her, wondering how—and why and when—she had heard about Wren. Mabigon was a jealous queen and also a jealous lover. This made her vindictive, a trait that did not endear her to her people. Or to Qasim.

But there was also no denying that she had a terrible, enthralling sort of beauty. It had fascinated him from the first. He wondered why he wasn't moved by it anymore.

“It certainly ended Wren,” he said, surprised at how cold he sounded. Apparently his vocal chords were not connected to his heart, which still wailed.

“What will you do now?” the Dark Queen asked her sometimes lover.

“That rather depends on King Gofimbel. He's bound to be somewhat . . . upset.” Qasim wondered now if Mabigon had been the one to betray him to the king. It would be like her to get someone else to do her killing for her—and she would enjoy having the goblin lord in her debt.

“I've spoken with Gofimbel already,” Mabigon answered quickly. “And he is prepared to let the matter pass without further punishment. Assuming that you are also going to be reasonable.”

So, she
had
been the one to betray him. Was he going to be reasonable about this? Qasim wasn't sure. Wren was dead and he had just decided that no reparation could be made to her. And there was no denying that the queen could still be useful. Nevertheless, a part of him wanted to break the Dark Queen's lovely neck. Gofimbel's might have been the hands that wreaked the murder, but she had certainly guided them. And Qasim could kill her. The creation magic forbade him turning on Gofimbel, but his lover was another matter—and she had foolishly come with just her gargoyle, the arrogant bitch.

“You will do the wise thing, won't you?” she asked.

He ignored her question. “And you?” he asked, distantly curious. “What is to be your pound of flesh for this indiscretion?”

“For this little half-goblin?” The queen's nostrils flared. “She is nothing. A means to an end—a foolish end, which I hope you now realize is impossible. . . . You didn't love her after all, did you?” The queen's voice was a sudden whiplash.

“Love her?” Qasim repeated. He tilted his head as he considered this. He said slowly and truthfully, “I don't think that I can love anyone. I wasn't made that way.”

“Well, then,” Mabigon said with a cold smile, “I have nothing to be jealous of, do I? For I am far more beautiful than she.”

“Far more,” Qasim agreed.

“She is nothing—especially now. Shall we let Prax eat her?” Mabigon asked, indicating her gargoyle, who had crept a few steps into the room, drawn by the smell of death. The creature's gaze was avid as it stared at the corpse.

Unable to explain his reaction even to himself, Qasim was nonetheless offended and even enraged at the idea. “No,” he said, managing to keep his voice calm, in spite of the heat that rolled through him. “I'm going to burn the building. The humans will find her body in bed and think it was an accident.”

The Dark Queen nodded reluctantly. Qasim knew she wanted to watch Prax eat Wren—and make him watch, too—but she was also practical. Anything that looked like a gargoyle attack would arouse the humans and bring on a hunt for the beast.

“Then let's do it and be away. This place stinks of flowers—and you know how I hate being out in the sun.”

And death. It smells of death, Qasim thought. But that didn't bother the queen. And had it been anyone other than Wren, it wouldn't have bothered him either. It was what they traded in, after all.

The hobgoblin reached for the candle at the side of the bed. He lit it carefully and then lifted the flame to the bed curtains. The velvet shied away, but in the end it caught fire, began blazing grandly.

Good-bye, Wren
, he thought as the flames closed in on her.
It may not be our children who bring down the goblins, but the goblins will someday pay. Someday, I promise
.

He suddenly remembered their last kiss—how sweet she had been and how shy, as she had looked up at him with wide golden eyes. There has been mimosa and orange blossoms in bloom then, too, and she'd worn a wreath of them in her hair.

Qasim allowed himself a moment to savor the only happy recollection of his life, and then he slammed the door on her memory.

He would never think of her again.

 

 

 

December 20, 2005

 

Qasim's face twitched. It still hurt, but the surgery in New Orleans had been largely successful. There were just a few sutures in his mouth holding his skin together at the place where his tusks had been removed by a now dead oral surgeon. Contact lenses hid his eyes, though the irises were still an unpleasant shade of gray that resembled the smoke from burning tires, and he'd learned how to roll up his tongue so that it didn't show when he spoke. Really, in spite of the pallor that belonged on someone in a crack house, and his size, he looked quite respectable; he could be any exceptionally muscular man involved in a near-fatal car crash and then stuck in a hospital for months to recover in darkness.

Still, the Christmas crowds tended to part around him, as though these sheep somehow sensed—in spite of his brightly colored shopping bag from Cherries Galore clasped in his now five-fingered hand—that he was not truly one of them. He had actually terrified the clerk in the fruit shop into trembling speechlessness. The boy would probably have to send his uniform to the cleaners after work. It had been an accidental revelation, a moment of unusual discernment on the young man's part and a rare moment of unguardedness on Qasim's, when the boy had looked him in the eye and seen the true monster that dwelled behind the colored plastic lenses. It was potentially inconvenient, too, though it was good to know that he could still strike terror into the human heart without even trying. There would be a time to put such fear to use. Still, if the boy talked, he would have to be taken care of, and Qasim would rather not have the police around, fussing over a body. That would make everyone extra watchful and fearful.

Fear . . . it had its uses, but it was overused in human civilization. Qasim had seen politicians routinely use it to turn the populace into a unified voting block guided to key choices beneficial to society—at least, beneficial to the politicians' society.

Advertisers used low-grade fear, too, and quite effectively. Dandruff, facial lines, body odor, bad breath, gum disease, flared or peg-leg jeans—it was universal, this insidious installation of concern about one's health and appearance. It made the human populace so predictable and dull. Not that they needed much help.

Qasim stood still, eavesdropping on the thoughts around him. Yes, it was here even now: mild but chronic fear and worry. It was everywhere. Just as he'd expected. And the sheep suspected nothing. They didn't know that death walked among them; they just milled about, row upon column upon regiment—human clots of worried eyes and troubled brains, looking at watches, looking at their children, mostly looking at the other humans who stood between them and the throne where the fake Santa Claus held court. And when there was nothing else left to stare at, they gazed into the eyes of the mechanical snowmen shoveling fake snow at the outskirts of this fake North Pole, and they grazed on pretzels and popcorn. The snowmen ignored them, as machines almost always did, but that didn't stop the humans from staring.