Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 14
Probably. And just as likely, she wouldn’t have cared.
Another reason Delia liked the garden was that almost no one ever came to it but her. In the years since her marriage dissolved, she had come to value her solitude. The reading chair on her porch, the tub with lion’s feet, her kitchen table set with a very simple meal and almost no mess to clean up.
But now someone was here. And not any someone.
Him. Kostye Dvesene.
She had first met him as Aster’s father, years before, an enigmatic man with a strange accent and a mysterious, possibly dangerous past. She had found him surprisingly handsome despite his red hair, which she did not think suited men very well. Kostye pulled it off, somehow. He had flirted with her, which she liked just enough to feel bad about it, because she’d still been married, then. She had decided, on reflection, that he hadn’t been serious, but had merely been trying to get into her good graces so she would admit his daughter to the school without all the necessary paperwork.
After that, she hadn’t seen much of him. If he showed up at all for conferences, he often seemed a little out of it. Eventually he stopped coming entirely. Aster did well in school, but Delia began to suspect her home life wasn’t good. When she’d gone to his house to confront him, she’d gotten far more than she had bargained for.
And now she was here, in some other world, staring across the garden at him.
He didn’t look happy. Did he suspect something? Did he suspect her?
“Hello,” she said. “It’s a nice surprise, seeing you here. What’s the matter?”
“The girl. The one who claimed to by my daughter. She disappeared.”
Play dumb, Delia. She realized how much her own inner voice sounded like her mother. How had she never noticed that before?
“Dusk, you mean? But that was weeks ago.”
He raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said. “There was another, just now.”
“That’s unusual,” Delia said. “Not to mention suspicious.”
“Yes,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and meeting her gaze directly. “It is.”
“What?” Delia said. “Why are you looking at me? Wasn’t I the one who told you Dusk wasn’t your daughter, once you got that damned necklace off me?”
“You did. But I’ve lately been reminded that you also insisted that although Dusk was not my real daughter, I did have one.”
She’s hoped he had forgotten that, as he had forgotten many things in their early days here. She had tried to convince him of the truth, but she now saw that as pointless and even dangerous. Especially since the chancellor, Vilken, arrived. That had changed everything.
So, she lied.
“I was wrong,” Delia said. “I assumed that if Dusk was pretending be your daughter, you must have one.”
“You also said we all once lived in the Reign of the Departed. This girl made the same claim.”
Delia stood up and frowned at him. “Are you accusing me of something?” she said. “If so, please get to the point.”
“Do you know anything about this girl?”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Did you help her escape the oubliette?”
Something caught in her chest, and panic threatened to climb out of her throat and sit on her shoulders, but it was too late to admit to anything now. Her mother had always said that once you started a lie, you were married to it, and if you divorced it you would end up with nothing, or worse.
Her mother hadn’t been wrong about everything.
“I not only did not,” she huffed, “I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you?” he was frowning dangerously, now. “I’m told otherwise.”
“By who?” she asked. “Vilken?”
His glower deepened.
“I am not new to power,” he said. “Or to the court. Or intrigue. You speak against him, he speaks against you—it is how things are. Each of you wishes to sway me. Do you flatter yourself to think you can control one such as I?”
“I’m not trying to control anyone,” she said. “When you ask for my opinion, I give it. That’s all.”
“You once said that the curse has robbed me of my memories,” he said. “You did claim I had a daughter. I remember that.”
“I told you—” she began.
“I know what you said,” he replied. “But this plot involving my imaginary daughter . . . It baffles me. Yet it keeps coming up.”
“A lot of things baffle me,” Delia said. “Why do you collect every girl over the age of eight and send them off with Vilken?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Then you should be able to explain them,” she said. “I think you do not have any reason at all. I think this comes from him. You are doing his bidding.”
“The Chancellor believes it is necessary to end the curse.”
“Really? Has he explained how that works? How it will end the curse? Because I see no rhyme or reason in it. Unless he doesn’t need every girl—maybe he only needs one—one particular girl. But to find her, he must search through all of the others.”
“Why?”
“Now you’re asking for a reason?” she said. “I don’t know. There is one person who knows the answers to these questions, and it is not me. Ask him.”
“He is traveling,” Kostye said.
“Wait,” Delia said. “When did he leave?”
“A short time ago.”
“Before the girl showed up? The one claiming to be your daughter?”
“No,” he said. “After.”
“I see. And who took the girl to the oubliette?”
He didn’t answer.
“I see,” she said. “You have the nerve to come here and accuse me, when the truth is as plain as an old maid?”
“I accused you of nothing,” he said.
“That is a lie,” she said. “You absolutely came here to accuse me.”
He stepped forward. It was a simple motion but had so much potential violence in it that she took an involuntary step back.
“You dare speak to me like that? Who do you think you are?”
She was frightened. She had seen him set an army on fire, break the back of a demon with horns, summon a storm that would make a hurricane slink off in shame.
But she was also furious.
“You know,” she said, “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been asked that, one way or another. Who do I think I am? And what they mean, these men—and it is always men—is who am I in terms of who they are. Am I a plaything, a girlfriend, a woman who doesn’t know her place, a girl talking out of turn? An enemy or a friend, a ring on your finger or a rope around your neck? Who do I think I am? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m Delia Fincher, and I don’t give a good goddamn who I am or aren’t to you. So just—the hell with you.”
She was preparing to walk defiantly away when he suddenly turned inside-out, his head and feet folding through his belly and coming out as wings from his back, a face full of teeth erupting from his chest as he exploded into something far larger with claws and fire and smoke. A talon wrapped roughly around her arm and another around her waist. Then the courtyard was receding below them, the castle itself shrinking with incredible speed.
She tried to scream—she may have—but if she did, she could not hear it. The roar of the wind was deafening.
Delia closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was on a roller coaster, that it was all perfectly safe, that he would not drop her to her doom.
It took her a little while to understand that they had stopped, because her inner ears kept spinning, telling her she was falling even though she could feel the stone beneath her.
She cracked open her eyes.
They were on a mountaintop, surrounded by more mountains. Valleys swamped by shadow lay below and all around. The sun was still a bloody stain on the horizon. Kostye stood before her without a stitch of clothing on. He was panting and his eyes were wild, as if he was watching a battle of some sort. Then his gaze focused on her.
“Something is missing,” he said. “Before the curse came. Something happened. I don’t know what. I don’t know, and it drags at me. Sometimes, I feel trapped, but I cannot see the snare.”
“You scared the hell out of me so you could tell me that?”
“I—I am sorry,” he said. “The rage, it overcomes me sometimes. I was born with it. It is part of me. The rage. It is the source of my power.”
“That’s really too bad,” Delia said.
“You know I have enemies,” he said. “Many enemies who would destroy me. I cannot be passive. If I leave them be, they will come to me, and bring my doom. So you understand, if one of my enemies is already here, near to me—”
“You’re going to drop me off of a mountain, is that it?
“No,” he said. “Look around you.”
“Yes,” she said. “I might find it beautiful under other circumstances.”
“The Kingdoms are many,” he said. “And they are wondrous. And they are ill, infected by this curse. I believe there is a reason that only the three of us have somehow escaped its grasp. You, Vilken, me. It may be that he has . . . needs that do not pertain to my goal. As you enjoy your garden and your books, the chancellor enjoys—other things that have nothing to do with me or my designs.”
“Oh my God,” Delia said. “What is he doing with those girls? What is happening to them?”
“That isn’t your concern,” he said.
“Vilken, then. Who is he to you? Why do you trust him at all?”
“I have known him for a long time,” he said. “We were young together, fought together.” He looked troubled. “He has changed, I admit. His face is familiar, but I do not always know him. Time is an anvil, Delia. We are shaped on it, we are broken on it. It may be Vilken took the girl. It may be that he wanted me to think you did it instead. I see that now. I have been lied to before, and no great harm came of it. A lie or two is acceptable. Betrayal is not. I will sort this out. If the chancellor has betrayed me, he will regret it. Very much.”
But Delia also heard what he didn’t say. That if he learned she had betrayed him, the same applied to her. Rage or not, that was part of the reason he’d brought her up here like this. To show her what he could do if he wanted. Any time.
“You said you do not care what you are to me,” he went on. “I understand your anger. I admire you, Delia. But I need to know you’re on my side.”
“That depends on whether you’re on mine,” she said. “Are you?”
He stepped closer, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Something in her belly caught fire.
Then he kissed her. It was rough; his hands clapped to the back of her head, and she felt fear that nearly matched her lust. But after a second, he grew gentler, although his breath was quick and hot.
He hadn’t answered her question, and what was now happening was certainly no answer—just because a man was on you didn’t mean he was with you, her mother always said.
But she had her desires, her needs, and answers could wait.
EIGHT
THE SILVER KINGDOM
The web shook more violently. In the dim light, Aster could make out few details of what was coming, but it was big, bigger than a school bus, and many-legged.
But she didn’t think it was a spider.
That would have been bad enough, a black widow the size of a semi, but something about its shape, the deranged kinetics of its stride—this was the nightmare some shadowy fragment had been spalled from to create spiders.
She struggled against the web’s threads, but they held her fast. Panic tried to take her senses, but she fought it down. Even if she could move, she would never escape the thing, she knew that. There had to be another way out.
How had she gotten here?
She didn’t know. She’d felt the sting in her neck—then she was here.
It was almost on her now. In the shadows, she saw faint clusters of gleaming spheres, hundreds of them, like the black caviar her father liked . . .
Several Utterances came to mind, but all seemed like bad jokes in the face of this thing.
What was it the Day Queen had said? About surviving the cost of coming here?
She understood then, or at least she thought she did. She couldn’t fight it, any more than you could fight a dream. Instead, you would wake. This place wasn’t merely her dream, it was a nightmare the universe itself was having. It took more than pinch on the arm to wake from.
She pronounced a Recondite Utterance, and vomited light. Beams shown from her eyes as the world unfolded, tearing her as it did so, shredding her bone and sinew and then pulling it all back together again.
The web disappeared. She was lying on a stone floor, the echo of a noise like thunder repeating itself in the depths of the cave. Gradually the sound faded, replaced by the burbling of the underground river
Eve sprawled on the floor nearby, struggling feebly; she looked as if she had been thrown there. Her lips were red, and a spray of red droplets covered her face like freckles.
Instinctively, Aster slapped her hand to her neck, which still stung. It felt wet, and when she looked, she saw her hand was covered in blood. She felt very weak.
“What did you do to me?” she said.
“It’s hard,” Eve said. “It took all of my strength to send you there. It was only fair to take some back.” As she said this, Eve climbed slowly to her feet.
What was she, some sort of vampire? But Aster kept remembering the thing in the web. Not a vampire, something weirder, and worse. The Day Queen had been warning her, she saw that now.
“It’s okay,” Eve said.
But Aster saw the hunger in her eyes, in the way her hands yearned toward her.
“It really isn’t,” Aster said. She fought to her feet, tried to sprint to the river, but she was so weak she stumbled and fell after a few steps. The water was only about twenty feet away, but even that seemed too far. She struggled back to her feet.
“No,” Eve shouted. “Don’t. You won’t survive.”
Maybe not, but Aster knew she wouldn’t survive if she stayed. Whatever Eve’s original intentions, she now had a hunger that would not be satisfied with a few drops of blood. At least in the river, Aster had a chance. She took a breath and ran. She heard Eve coming close behind.
Aster knew what she had to do, and she did it. She was much deeper in the Kingdoms now and needed no fetish to accomplish it.
Eza azmi lassas.
She jumped, and the cold, black water took her in. She exploded; then came back together, but not the same.
She had transformed once before, with the aid of a feather from her father’s things. She had become a raven, and she had very nearly remained one; if it hadn’t been for Billy, she probably would have.
Now she was one with the swift water; she heard sound in her bones and smelled with her skin and saw nothing at all. The river fell, and fell further, and even her skill at swimming was no match for it. All she could do was thrash her fins, and hope she wasn’t smashed to death on the way down.
There came a moment of terrific speed and pressure and absolute confusion, then, at last a blush of light filtering down through the grey-silver surface above her. She flicked her tail, trying to find a quieter place where the water wasn’t moving so quickly, where she could take time to feed.
No, a stubborn thing persisted in her. Not to feed.
She imagined leaping from the water but knew deep down only death lay in that. As much as she knew she should, it seemed strange, impossible, suicidal to leave the life-giving stream. How much easier it would be to stay in the river, or to have remained in oubliette?
No. She recalled herself.
Then she was struggling toward the surface, her lungs aching, the water already numbing her fingers and toes.
Her strength was nearly spent when she pulled up onto the mossy bank. In the distance, her father’s fortress was shadow against a coral sky. She had assumed the underground river was a branch of the one that cascaded in a waterfall down the front of the castle, and that it would eventually rejoin the river she had seen flowing seaward. If she had been wrong—if it had emptied into some deep, sterile aquifer—she would probably have remained a fish long enough to die of starvation.
But she hadn’t been wrong.
She sat on the bank, shivering.
Find the orbs? She needed at least one to find the others. And vague visions aside, there was only one she knew the location of—the one her father had.
Which meant going back into the castle. This time she couldn’t simply walk in—that hadn’t worked out so well. No, this was going to require a little thought.
Veronica had been right. It had been a mistake coming here before going after Errol. Whatever Errol was up to, he would almost certainly have helped her. And she would still have Veronica, too. Now she was alone.
And cold. And naked. Probably, she thought, the first order of business ought to be to find some clothes.
Quick’s eyes widened when he answered the door, but he almost instantly averted them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You were kind to me before. I didn’t—”
“Come in, fast,” he said. “Oak, bring a blanket. And keep your eyes shut.”
“You’re being peculiar,” she heard Oak say.
But a moment later, she was safely wrapped in a rough woolen blanket.
Sharp came through the entry door behind her to join them.
“Where’s Copper?” she asked.
“Scratch got her,” Sharp said.
“Her?”
“Yeah. We cut her hair and dressed her like a boy. Worked for a while, didn’ it?” He sounded like he was working at being cheerful, but he looked miserable.
“Wait,” Quick said. “You got away, didn’ you? Or were you never caught?”
“I got away,” she said.
“Can you tell us where the girls are?” Quick asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was never with the other girls.”
