Chapter Four Cecilia
CHAPTER FOUR
Cecilia
Cecilia wakes from her slumber with the suddenness of prey. Lorena is standing over her.
“They have found her,” Cecilia says.
Lorena nods. “The messenger arrived moments ago.”
The boy, Lorena’s brother, stirs on the other side of the bed and looks blearily at them, the moonlight glancing through the window and off his face in a way that makes him squint unbecomingly.
His black, curled hair is messier than she’d ever allow in public.
Cecilia throws off the coverlet and slides out of bed, walking naked to her clothes, which are pooled across the floor.
“Where?” she asks, as she pulls a linen shift over her head.
“They have traced her to the Fontis veh Noyt district. They have a string of doctrini surrounding her from a distance, and they’re awaiting your orders.”
“Good.”
Cecilia attempts to shrug her silk dress on, and gets stuck in the bodice. Lorena helps to tug it over her shoulders and lace up the back. That done, Cecilia takes Florin’s breaches and pulls them on, tucking the bottom of her dress into the waist.
“What are you doing?” he protests.
“I cannot very well go hunting through the city with a train, can I?”
“But what will I wear?”
“You can stay here until I return or make your way to your own room. It is not as if the servants haven’t seen you naked before,” Cecilia says. He grimaces, his boyish face even younger than usual.
“Don’t pout at me, or I’ll cut off your lips,” she says.
As she strides from the room, Lorena mutters something to her brother.
Cecilia does not much care to know what it is – perhaps some pathetic attempt to stop him from coming to Cecilia’s bed again.
As if Lorena could hold any sway over him.
Cecilia is his drug. Even when his nubile body and heady stamina has grown tiresome and she has stopped calling for him, he will haunt her because the very thought of her haunts him.
The inexperience of boys is outweighed by the power they freely give her.
Her palace here in Perfugi is more vertical than the sprawling buildings of Elben or Capetia.
It took her some time to get used to the stairs.
Now, though, she relishes her muscles’ movement as she descends white stone steps to the lower levels.
The passages are not as cool as her chamber was: acelath is expensive, even for a dowager queen, so it is used sparingly and only in the rooms she frequents. Before long, she is sweating.
She and, behind her, Lorena, slip out into the scorched streets of Perfugi, where the network of bridges across the lava is made of the same whittled dragon horn that adorns the windows of the palaces, to keep the city’s inhabitants from burning.
The trees of Cecilia’s childhood and married life – the oaks and cedars, elms, silver birches and graceful willows – cannot survive here.
Only the hardiest and most interesting of flora thrives on this mountain: venomous vines wind through the molten lava, their many-coloured flowers perfuming the air; leafless piwis trees that seem to be made from the volcanic rock, their roots fed with fire; the rare lossova plant, whose fruit, once plucked from its flaming bed and cooled in ice, produces a juice sweeter than any strawberry.
“This is a circuitous route,” Cecilia says, as Lorena leads her left through the night markets which line Perfugi’s eastern bridges.
“It feels that way, but I swear it will be quicker,” Lorena says, ushering Cecilia around a corner.
“Ah yes. Your mother grew up on these streets, didn’t she, before she married into wealth?” Cecilia says.
Lorena stiffens momentarily at the reference to her lowborn background, then recovers. “And are you not glad that she did, now I can whisk you to your target more quickly?”
“What was she again? A trader’s daughter?”
“A fugitive, like most in this city,” Lorena says.
“I was a fugitive too, in a way,” Cecilia says. Lorena does not respond. “I was,” Cecilia says again.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Cecilia reaches out and pinches the hard little arc between shoulder and neck.
Lorena hisses, but gives no other indication of pain.
She needs to understand that simply because Cecilia moved to Perfugi with a dowager queen’s pension does not mean she is any different from the other souls who sought new lives here.
They take a quieter road east, towards the districts where those not involved in trade but not wealthy enough to live in the south, pass their lives.
A little beyond them is the Fontis veh Noyt.
It is an unusual bridge, made of the same dragon bone as the others in the city, but instead of being sculpted into gargoyles or salamanders, the bone has been dyed many colours.
Each one represents a different religion practised in Perfugi, for Fontis veh Noyt is a religious district.
The district of a thousand naves. Cecilia has never understood the need to cleave to a religion.
The gods are many; why can her worship not be also?
It is inhibiting, tiresome, small-minded.
“There,” Lorena says, pointing to a shape secreted behind a wine barrel on one side of the cobbled street. They tiptoe over to the shadow, which reveals itself to be a youth dressed in the black robes and inconspicuous sigil of the doctrini; those who seek, for a price.
“She is heading further into the district,” the youth says. He leads them to another figure, an older man this time.
“What are your orders, Your Majesty?” the doctrini leader asks. “Shall we take her now?”
“No,” Cecilia says. “Let us follow her until I am certain of her destination.”
The man opens his mouth to protest, but Lorena silences him with a minuscule shake of her head. Once he has nodded and turned away, Lorena leans towards Cecilia.
“She may be seeking sanctuary. It would be difficult even for you to extract her once a church has taken her under its protection.”
“Difficult but not impossible. This way I gather information that she may not give up if we capture her. It is worth the risk.”
They follow the doctrini as they creep up the street, their hand signals their only method of communication.
Cecilia and Lorena move with them. It is some time before Cecilia spots the woman.
She wears a hood, despite the heat, and although her gown is of a lighter fabric than the heavy wools and velvets of Elben, the cut still seems old-fashioned compared to Perfugian clothes.
She appears to be travelling alone. Her gait is ephemeral.
Cecilia cannot decide if it stems from fear, grace or caution.
From time to time, Seymour pauses, listening, and the group following her stills.
The streets here are quieter than in the trading district, but Perfugi is never entirely silent at night, for it is the only time when the temperature is bearable.
This makes it easier for Cecilia and the doctrini to track Seymour, for they can blend in with the watchmen, the midwives, the vagabonds and knackers.
They follow her past the Sanctuary of Cernunnos, where a statue of the horned god of Cecilia’s youth eyes her with contempt.
They go deeper, beyond the most common religions practised in Perfugi.
It is, after all, a city of fugitives – what began as a group of homeless Lotharians fleeing religious persecution ended as a haven for all, irrespective of beliefs.
The occasional skirmish has never marred the core tenets of the city and its motto: composiru an flira, liberu anas – forged in flame, we are free.
Seymour stops, finally, at a door in one of the narrower streets of the district.
A rudimentary symbol is painted upon the varnished wood – six orbs arrayed in a circle.
There: an answer. Cecilia nods to the doctrini leader, and he raises his fist in signal – Cecilia is ready.
She does not want Seymour to enter that house.
As Seymour knocks upon the door, a dozen shapes seem to fall from the sky, landing in a neat horseshoe.
One of them pulls her arms behind her back, while another covers her mouth to stop her from screaming.
Through it all, she makes no move to escape.
Cecilia thinks she hears someone speak, though Seymour’s mouth does not move.
Hen-flesh rises along Cecilia’s arms despite the heat from the mountain and its rivers of lava.
She is forgetting something. It is enough to make her remain in her hiding place when the doctrini leader and Lorena step out of the shadows and into the woman’s line of sight.
Lorena signals the doctrini covering Seymour’s mouth to step aside and pushes the prisoner’s hood back, revealing a tall woman of around Cecilia’s age. Her skin is the colour of the Quistoans or the Avahucs, and her blank expression suggests either stupidity or veiled intelligence.
“Queen Seymour, I presume,” Lorena says. What is Cecilia forgetting? She wracks her memory for the words of More’s letter.
She had escaped Elben by ship. Her and her servant and …
“There was a panther,” she whispers. Before she can warn anyone, Seymour utters a single word – “Haltrasc” – and a shape of death leaps from the shadows.
Cecilia may have been told of this creature but she could never have imagined it in action.
The panther springs from doctrini to doctrini, ripping out a throat here, slashing a neck there with steel-tipped claws.
It is so beautiful that Cecilia almost forgets what she must do.
The doctrinis’ screams echo through the street, the wet sounds of their dying an undercurrent.
No one comes to help – people tend to mind their own business if it means the difference between life and death.
Cecilia advances at a crouch from barrel to barrel.
One by one the doctrini fall, their knives no match for the beast. Cecilia cannot take her eyes from the spectacle, even when lifeblood sprays across her face like a lover’s slap.
At last, the panther turns to Lorena. Cecilia steps from the shadows and rests her knife just beneath Queen Seymour’s ribcage, hard enough for her to feel its blade.
“Haltrasc,” Seymour says again, and the panther stills.
The master of the doctrini steps behind the beast, rope wound around his hands.
They must make an interesting tableau: two women frozen with the blade between them; the third woman trembling on the ground beneath a panther’s bared teeth, and the only man there awaiting his orders from a safe distance.
“We appear to be at an impasse,” Seymour says, the tremor in her voice belying her otherwise calm demeanour.
“My people outnumber yours,” Cecilia says.
“Less than they did a moment ago.”
Cecilia smiles despite herself.
“Call your beast off and come with me now and I will not slit your throat,” she says.
“I have a better bargain,” Seymour says. “Allow me and Haltrasc to go and we will leave Perfugi and not return, nor will he kill your servants.”
“He may take my companion’s life, but he will not escape those ropes,” Cecilia says, indicating the doctrini.
“Very well. Allow us to go and he will not kill your companion.”
“Your Majesty?” Lorena says, her voice lighter than usual, her face softer than it has been in many years. It reminds Cecilia of the way Lorena used to treat her, before she took Cecilia’s mercy for granted. She has been growing above her station.
“I shall miss you,” Cecilia tells her.
Lorena’s face barely has time to crumple before the panther lowers his muzzle and, with a single bite, rips out her throat.