Chapter 6
Deejay
Two days after the attack on my realm, I leave Matt to take care of my family, while I am in peace talks at the Hub with Loretta arbitrating. As I enter the boardroom at the Hub, escorted by the Hub’s medic and Loretta’s right hand man, Haverty Ostad, I see that King Primus already in attendance. He looks like he fits into the fifty-ish age group, salt and pepper hair, cut short and swept back. He has smile lines on his sharp cheeks, around his ocean blue eyes, and thin lips set in a grim line. He’s barrel-chested, and clearly strong, tall with his legs, though I know he prefers his magnificent purple fishtail. The man has sat on the Triton throne for the better part of three hundred years, and regardless of our interaction, is known to be a fair king.
He gives me a respectful nod as I enter, and I return it because I’m a benevolent ruler, fuck you very much.
Haverty takes a stance behind Loretta along with her Mattatron as I sit in the chair designated for me across from King Primus.
“We are all here now,”
Loretta announces through her Mattatron. “The purpose of this meeting is to broker a peace agreement between the Demesne D’Aquino and the Kingdom of the Triton. Thank you, Triton King Primus, for coming to Houston, we are honored you are here, and thank you Father Deejay Aquino for accepting this invitation. Before we can hope to broker a peace accord between your two realms of rule, we will give everyone the opportunity to speak their grievances so they can be addressed and resolved. We will start with Father Deejay because he is the defender in this instance.”
I hold up a noticeably short list that I came prepared with and pass out copies to both King Primus and Loretta, then read them aloud. “One: King Primus answered my polite request for reparations after one of his citizens, a Siren, invaded my realm and attempted to murder one of my citizens with an insultingly small sum and a dismissal of my legitimate claim. Two: King Primus hired Persian Djinns to invade my realm and attack with the result that one of the assassins attacked and harmed the very same citizen of my realm that the Siren attempted to murder. That is all my grievances.”
“Thank you, Father Deejay,”
Loretta says then turns to King Primus. “Your turn.”
King Primus hands us both a sheet of paper with his grievances on it and reads it aloud to us. “One: Father Deejay accused Atlantis of deliberate infiltration of his demesne without providing proof of the misconduct of one of our citizens. Two: Father Deejay cursed his second letter to us, resulting in the embarrassment of the Triton King and our Counselor. Three: Father Deejay sent Persian Djinns to assassinate me.”
“Now we will address each grievance,”
Loretta announces. “Father Deejay, do you have proof of the Siren attack?”
I hold up a cursed object, a hand mirror that I chose for the specific curse I put on it because I thought it was funny and I knew I would need a laugh to break up this meeting’s tedium. “This mirror will show you any event you wish to see, as long as the event happened. For example, if I say, I wish to see the Triton King at breakfast this morning,”
I pause, and the mirror shows King Primus being served a whole swordfish on a platter of seaweed. “Then I can see what he had for breakfast. Would you like to test the mirror for its veracity?”
“I can see that it shows the truth,”
King Primus answers through grit teeth.
“Good because this is a cursed object, and curses can be tetchy, so let’s get this over with.”
I hand the mirror to Haverty, so he can hold it for us all to see. “I want to see the Siren attack on Matthew Donovan Blank D’Aquino from the moment the Siren targeted him until the moment of her death.”
To my surprise, the mirror shows us the Siren reading an enchanted piece of parchment in a cave that is clearly in the actual ocean because the fish swimming around her are saltwater species, not freshwater, like my stream. She finishes reading the message and sets the magically waterproofed parchment aside, pulling a heavy gold chain necklace with a large pearl in a pendant from the envelope in her other hand.
“King Primus, did you actually send the Siren into my demesne?”
I question, shocked. I didn’t expect that she targeted Matt specifically. I thought she had just found a convenient victim while wandering the waterways.
“I did not,”
he denies, solemnly. “I know of this Siren. Her name was Circella; she was a known criminal, an assassin for hire.”
“Mirror, skip to relevant events in the Siren’s life leading up to the attack on Matt Blank D’Aquino,”
I instruct the cursed object.
The view in the mirror skips to the Siren swimming upstream until the view focuses on Matt standing on the bridge where I found him. She starts singing, a breath-takingly beautiful song that reaches out to Matt and enthralls him slowly. Then the events of the night unfold exactly as I remember them, except I’m looking at it from the third person, and it’s odd to see myself acting out the memories that I have. The expression on my face starts out terrified and morphs to anger, then the mirror returns to its reflective state as soon as the earth swallows the Siren.
I take the mirror from Haverty, unwilling to allow a cursed object like this to leave my ownership, and put it in the messenger bag I brought with me.
“As you can see, without knowing that the Siren was in fact a paid assassin, my initial letter to King Primus and the reparations I requested were well within my right to request,”
I say, although knowing that the woman was both a wanted criminal and a hired assassin changes things. “Knowing that the woman was a wanted criminal and the Triton King knew of her previous crimes and did not stop her, I would like to submit the King’s failure to arrest a wanted criminal under the list of my grievances should he want to continue pursuing his grievances against me.”
King Primus sighs, holding up a hand to stay whatever Loretta would have replied to me. “Maledict, it is clear at this juncture that The Kingdom of the Triton is at fault for the Siren. We both know that I have no previous quarrel with you and I had nothing to do with that criminal’s activities. I may have overreacted by sending the Djinns to deliver my payment, but you literally cursed me, and we shall not speak of what the curse entailed. You turned the Djinns back on me and I was forced to kill the very mercenaries I hired. I believe that is fair compensation for that matter, but clearly I am outmatched by the Maledict. What can I do to create not just a peace treaty with the Demesne D’Aquino, but also an ally agreement? The Kingdom of the Triton would like nothing more than to count the Maledict among our permanent allies.”
Huh. This is turning out better than I hoped. “Find out who hired the Siren and submit that information to me with a peace treaty and ally agreement to sign. I will put my seal on both and count the Kingdom of the Triton, Atlantis, and the Triton King among my friends and allies.”
“Pull your mirror out and ask it for the view of the letter writer,”
he suggests.
I hesitate for a moment because cursed objects are tetchy but decide in favor of his plan. I pull the mirror back out and hand it to Haverty again. He holds it so that we can all see as I ask it for another view. “Mirror, show us the writing of the letter that hired the Siren Circella to kill Matthew Donovan Blank D’Aquino.”
The reflective surface shimmers for a moment and then we get a short glimpse of a man with long dark hair sitting at a generically modern desk before the mirror explodes outward, causing us all to duck the shards flying toward us. The Mattatron and Haverty grab Loretta out of the path of shards faster than the shards can fly. Except that I know Mattatrons can move so fast they can appear to move backward in time, I would think they knew the mirror was going to explode.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this outcome. Glass isn’t exactly a sturdy material for curses. And there’s a reason that very few cursed mirrors survive very long—glass is just too fragile for long-term handling. And it’s not like the curse I put on the mirror was exact or delicate. I only needed it as proof of my claims—
“Ah fuck. I know what I did wrong. I cursed it to be able to recount true events to prove who between our realms was at fault for the death of the Siren. Once that proof was accepted, the curse would have worked itself out. When I saw the person in the mirror was clearly not King Primus, the curse was finished. Fuck. I apologize. Anyone hurt?”
King Primus waves me off and Loretta shakes her head as her Mattatron speaks for those three. “We’re fine. Did anyone recognize the person that flashed across the mirror?”
I shake my head. We really did not get a good enough look at him before the mirror shattered.
King Primus shakes his head. “The only thing I saw was that it may have been an Elf or a Fae. I might have seen the tips of pointed ears, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure. I’ll try to find the letter written to her, but we haven’t found her lair before now. I don’t know that we will be able to find it with her dead. If your condition for the friendship between our realms is the name of the person who hired the Siren, we may be doomed.”
“I will consider your best effort as good as a name,”
I assure him.
He holds out his hand to me and I shake it, a gentlemen’s agreement passing between us in that shake. Now to figure out who on earth could possibly want Matt dead, and how they knew he was in my care. He hasn’t been here long enough for the non-human community to have noticed him...I think.