24
“Look, I like waiting around aimlessly as much as the next royal,” Vawn drawls to Stewardess Inaya.
“But we’ve been standing in this throne room for nearly three hours now, and the Twin Lieges haven’t appeared.
You seem like a woman of keen insight, so tell me—are they punishing me for leaving their presence last night? ”
The Stewardess’s arched braid is higher and tighter than it was yesterday, and the black liner along her eyelids is drawn with bolder slashes. Her lips are painted a deep blood-red. It’s a marked difference that I noticed the moment we got back to the palace.
I’m not sure Vawn perceived it as notable, since he changes elements of his own style regularly.
But I notice. This woman is very precise with her appearance, as a measure of control in her chaotic environment.
She’s been assigned to govern this building, and yet the hoarding propensities of the two rulers have kept her from doing her job properly for years.
A woman like her, one who has worn her makeup and hair in precisely the same way since we arrived, does not alter her routine without reason. There’s a defiance in her aspect today that sets my nerves on edge.
“My lord and lady are still in their chamber,” she says. The same reply she’s been giving us since we returned with the carpet.
“Is the Heim Cordall still here?” I ask her.
“He is.”
“May we see him?”
“Of course, if the prince wishes.” She glances at Vawn, who nods. “Then I will fetch him for you.”
The instant she steps out of the room, I grab Vawn’s hand and drag him off the pile of objects where he’s been lounging. “Take me to the Twins’ room.”
“What? Why? It couldn’t possibly be that you’re weary from sitting in this stifling, god-awful, rat-infested, putrefied excuse for a throne room,” he mutters, stumbling over the items on the floor as he follows me.
“Something strange is going on, and the Stewardess is trying to hide it from us. You know where they sleep—take me there.”
“I will, if you’ll let me get ahead of you so I can lead.”
I press myself against the wall of belongings stacked in the corridor, and he squeezes past. But he pauses, face to face with me, and delivers a devastating smile. “Well, isn’t this cozy.”
“Bastard.” I poke him lightly in the side. “No flirting. We have investigating to do.”
“A little flirting. One small kiss.”
“Fine. A quick one, and then—”
His warm lips cut off my sentence, and his arm snakes around my waist to pull my body tightly against his. He breathes deeply during the kiss, like it’s a soothing relief just to have me close. A wave of dizzying happiness rushes through my head, trickling along my limbs and tingling in my toes.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“And I heartily reciprocate,” he whispers, with another quick kiss. “Come on, lovely. Let’s find my fiancé and my fiancée. By the fates, I’m glad I’m not going to marry those two.”
We move quickly through the palace, but we do not run.
Acting like we’re in too much of a hurry might alarm the guards.
We spot only a few of them along our route, and those we pass look weary and spiritless, standing in alcoves crammed with miscellaneous objects.
Any allegiance or fervor they once had has been lost in the crevices of the hoard or in the yawning sinkholes scattered across their country.
At last Vawn pauses before a pair of doors whose wood is surprisingly clean and well-polished. There is a guard a little way down the hall, but he’s slumped against a stack of dingy-looking pillows, snoring faintly.
Vawn reaches for one of the door handles, but I grab his arm. “Shouldn’t we knock? What if they’re doing things that siblings should never do? I would rather not see that.”
“We asked for an audience with them, and they have failed to appear,” he whispers back. “I thought you wanted to speak to them.”
“I do, but…”
“If we knock, we risk being denied admittance.”
Sighing, I nod. “Do it then.”
Vawn takes both handles and pushes the doors open. The room beyond is so cluttered that he has to shove firmly in order to gain enough space for us to get through.
“It wasn’t like this last night,” he mutters, frowning. “It was cluttered, but I could open the doors, and there was space in the center of the—fuck, what is that smell?”
“Let me go in first.” I slip one of my knives out of its sheath and step through the opening, over the mess. It looks as if someone took objects from the piles in the room and threw the items around in a mad frenzy.
I’ve caught whiffs of a similar smell in the past, but this is more concentrated and intense, confined as it is within a cluttered space and amplified by other foul odors.
It’s the stench of piss, shit, and raw meat, the sweetish foulness that comes from a human corpse that’s leaking fumes into the air.
Cautiously I approach a half-open door which seems to lead into the bedroom—although it’s difficult to tell one room from another in all the mess.
“Your Majesties?” I call. “I have the prince here to speak with you. Please step out.”
Something rustles in the bedroom. Not a rat. This is much larger.
“Liege Remin?” I move closer to the doorway. “Liege Roxalin?”
Another scuffle, and then the sound of small objects avalanching from a pile. I slide through the aperture into the room.
The smell intensifies so dramatically that my eyes water. Liege Remin lies face-down on the bed amid rivers of his own blood, vomit, and shit. His face is pressed against the mattress, his eyes blank. Judging by the state of his back, someone gouged a knife into his body a few dozen times.
“Stay back,” I hiss to Vawn. Then I raise my voice while I scan the darkened corners of the room. “Liege Roxalin?”
She creeps out of the gloom, her eyes huge and her soiled nightdress clinging to her body. “Is that Vawn behind you?” Her lips are puffy and split, as if she was struck in the mouth, but her voice is as light and childish as ever.
“Yes,” I say calmly. “But before you see him, I need to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I want to speak with Vawn.”
“Not until I’m sure you aren’t a danger to him.”
“A danger?” Her voice shrills. “Why would I be a danger to my future husband?”
“It’s all right, Syth.” Vawn speaks from behind me. “Hello, Roxalin.”
“Vawn, you came back.” She smiles at him. “I’m so sorry for the state of things in here. My treasures can be a nuisance at times, tumbling this way and that.”
“Of course, of course. Tell me, Roxi, have you spoken with Stewardess Inaya today?” Vawn manages not to gag, but I can hear the urge to do so in his voice. He won’t last long in here.
“I spoke to her a little.” Roxalin straightens, her frail hands smoothing her filthy nightgown. “I told her we weren’t ready to hold court yet. Remin isn’t himself.”
“I can see that.”
“He wasn’t himself last night either. After you left, he was simply awful. And then he—” Her eyes go blank for a moment, and her mouth falls open, but no sound emerges.
“Roxalin?” I urge. “What happened to your brother?”
“He went to sleep, and then his back sprouted these long tentacles, all black and bristling, like thorny vines,” she recounts in a dreamy tone.
“And each vine had a face full of teeth on the end. Like the monsters you told us about, the ones in the Red Mountains. I had to dig them out of his back, one at a time. He’ll be all right now.
He just needs a little rest.” She smiles again, wider. “I’ll lie here with him for a bit.”
“Syth,” says Vawn hoarsely.
“Go,” I reply. “I’ve got this.”
He dashes out of the room, stumbling over several things as he crosses the parlor. I hear him retching distantly—probably in the hall.
At the sound, Roxalin seems to forget she was headed to the bed to lie down. She turns back to me, looking dazed. “Why did Vawn leave?”
A better woman might play along, might coddle her fragile mind and give her time to accept the truth when she’s ready.
But I cannot forget how her ancestors hunted the moharganth, wrecked their ecosystem, and then demanded that another kingdom save their surviving people, at the cost of my prince’s body and soul.
She might not be solely responsible for the state of this country or her own state of mind, but she has made no attempt to remedy any of it. Instead she surrounded herself with playthings and sank into the cesspool of her perverted connection to her abusive brother.
I blame him more. But I blame her too.
“Vawn left because the stink of your brother’s corpse is too awful,” I say bluntly. “You must have been in some sort of drug-induced nightmare, because you killed him.”
“No.” Her eyes fill with tears and her voice trembles. “No, I saved him.”
“He’s dead, Roxalin. Look at his corpse. Look at the mess you made of him—of everything.” I gesture to the body and to the room. “You can accept what you did, get out of this prison you’ve made for yourself, and start over clean—or you can deny it all, and what’s left of your mind will shatter.”
Her features turn rigid, and a vein pulses in her temple. “How dare you speak to me like this? I’ll have your head, you impertinent little shit. Do you think I don’t know who lured our Vawn away last night?”
“He’s not yours.” The smile I give her is cruel, triumphant. It’s my laugh in the face of everyone who thought I was lesser or unworthy—even myself. “The prince is mine.”
I know, even as I speak those words, that they will drive her mad. I know that I am goading her into attacking me. And I care as little as if I bore glyphs of apathy on every nail I possess.
I antagonize her on purpose, and it works.
She snatches something from amid the mess—probably the object she used on her brother—and with a furious shriek, she leaps at me.
I welcome her with my knife.
Liege Roxalin chokes, hanging over my shoulder, my blade buried in her gut. Whatever she was holding drops from her fingers with a muffled thump into the clutter.