Chapter 12 An Entirely Peaceful Meeting with Old Friends
An Entirely Peaceful Meeting with Old Friends
The instant they walked through the door Elena shoved him so hard he stumbled across what appeared to be a cozy living room and was clotheslined at the shins by a coffee table that was stacked with little clay figurines of cats. He rolled off the fake felines and landed on his stomach.
“You sniveling coward! This is where you’ve been this whole time? Masquerading as a peasant?” She hoisted him up by the back of his shirt and slammed him against a wall. Framed pictures of kittens tangled in yarn rattled at his back as she landed one, then two punches to his jaw.
“Elena, wait—”
She hurled him across the room again, where he rammed against a bookshelf. Books rained down on him, including one titled How to Win Friends and Soothe Relationships: A Peaceful Way of Conflict Resolution!
He picked it up and chucked it at her.
She snatched it out of the air and chucked it right back. He ducked right in time, but not before she had dug her claws back into him and tossed him across the room a third time, screaming, “You’re trying to run away, aren’t you?”
He went flying like a rag doll tossed into the air by a vicious dog. He rolled, hit couch legs, and dizzily clambered to his feet, stepping up onto the couch to gain the high ground. “Elena, I’d much prefer just to talk about this—”
“Why would I talk to a despicable bastard who only cares about himself?” From a shelf she plucked a glass bottle with a tiny wooden cat sculpture constructed inside, smashed it against the bookshelf—thank gods she destroyed that hideous thing, he thought in his extreme terror—and raised the jagged edge up high.
“I’m sorry about Oliver!” he stressed. “I’m sorry about your son. I didn’t know he died at Sturnhul until recently, I promise. I tried to stop her—”
“Oh, did you?” she shouted back. “I bet you gave it one pusillanimous fight and then fled like a boneless chicken!”
“Don’t you mean spineless?”
Her look was pure death. But she’d stopped approaching him as she snapped, “You created her, Morfran. You created Ravana. You plucked a naive young woman from court, taught her the ways of pettiness and cruelty, and then, when you realized the remorseless monster you woke up beside every morning was too much for even you, you tucked tail and fled.”
It was true. Once upon a time fifteen years back when Morfran was at peak arrogance (For how could he not be?
He was feared kingdom-wide and beloved by his men for his ways of beheading his enemies, and a pretty raven-haired thing was batting her eyelashes at him.) he’d flirted too recklessly with said raven-haired thing who one day appeared at a ball and shocked the court with her beauty.
With hair as black as ebony, lips as red as roses, skin as white as snow, she’d been the poster child for a princess.
She wasn’t one—she wasn’t even royalty, since her father had been a podunk cobbler from the boonies—but really, she was quite the looker, so no one cared.
Least of all Morfran, who had lied on his own résumé by saying he was a legitimate courtier.
She’d been naive. She’d been innocent. The only thing she’d ever killed at that point was a fly, and that was only because she’d accidentally rolled atop it while napping. Woodland creatures and fuzzy insects adored her.
For weeks they’d courted each other the way all puppy-lovesick saps did: scribbled bits of poetry on supper napkins, roses left on beds, gifts like fine new leather boots with attached notes that said “Wear these for me,” and secretive meetings by the garden’s fountains.
Her gifts and date night ideas were cute and all, but they were cliché and unoriginal, and so he took her for long walks on recently bloodied beaches he conquered, had all the imprisoned bards who used to sing about burbling streams sing her love songs under the threat of death should she dislike the tune, and, in what turned out to be his greatest mistake, taught her lessons in being a Dark Lord (or Dark Lady, in her case).
This included making his court enemies wet themselves beneath a guillotine, with Ravana flipping a coin to see if it’d land on heads, and if so, Morfran would allow her to do the honors.
It included teaching her the art of throwing knives, for which they used men nailed to walls as targets.
It included acid vats and waterboarding, brazen bulls and brass knuckles, and torture of the worst form.
He’d meant to impress her. He hadn’t actually expected her to pick it up with any real talent.
So when she’d picked it up with immense talent—she knew how to toss a coin in such a way that it always landed on heads, and her aim while throwing knives came naturally—he knew he had to marry her at once.
It was only in retrospect that he saw the red flags over the years.
She guillotined not just their enemies but sometimes their friends who irked her, and instead of offing their heads she offed their feet.
With the knife-throwing target practice she armored up each individual, except kept their bare feet exposed and tried aiming for each toenail.
She dipped toes in acid, punched heels with brass knuckles, waterboarded ankles (yes, that was an awkward night for all involved), and began collecting feet in jars or mounted on animal plaques.
When he walked into his study one day to find that his bull moose head had been replaced by George Haiser the Third’s hairy-toed feet, he turned to Ravana and asked,
“Dearest?” He gestured at the monstrosity. “Why?”
Her reply had been, “It’s to frighten our people into obedience, my love.
” She’d been lounging in his office chair, her legs crossed and stretched out onto his desk.
“If we take their feet, they’re at an awful standstill, you see.
And since we took control over the wheelchair industry last month, we can ensure they never mobilize against us again. ”
Morfran had been too distracted by plans to invade the south at that time to think about wheelchair armies and using footlessness as a weapon, so he’d just shrugged it off.
He oughtn’t have. For the want of a foot, Elena’s son was dead, and now Morfran was about to be maimed by a pirate captain in her living room full of cat paraphernalia.
“I ought to expose you,” Elena said, bringing him out of his thoughts, which he was relieved about, as his thoughts had veered towards doom and regret.
“I don’t care if you helped them this one time.
You’re doing it for a selfish end. I’d make their lifetime if I told them their vile ruler was within fingers’ reach. ”
He was still standing on the couch. “But that won’t bring Oliver back,” he said, and when she raised her broken bottle at the mention of her son’s name, he went on. “And it won’t get you the revenge you want since it was Ravana who—”
Elena interrupted with a harsh laugh. “You’re here!
I don’t know how, but I’d bet everything you’ve been dragged into this unwillingly, and there’s something keeping you from fleeing like a rodent in the light.
” She flipped the bottle up into the air, catching it back on the nose.
“I can get my vengeance on you. If I can’t get to her, I’ll happily take the one who created the beast.”
He didn’t like the mad glint in her gaze.
But she was between him and the door, so he couldn’t run.
He’d have to talk his way out of this, and Elena had a notoriously bad temper.
He sighed, stressing, “Yes, I created her. Yes, I married her. And yes, she grew too much for me to handle so I bailed like a boneless or spineless chicken or what have you. But I know her. I know her mind, and I know her tactics, and I can help these rebels—which could include you, if you’d be willing—take her down. ”
Her face was twisted into a hideous scowl. He continued, using his next words to shock her and make her think so she’d at least lower the bottle.
“Declare you’re fighting on the side of the rebels.
Openly. Formally. News is going to spread about Ferndock to every corner of the kingdom.
If they hear that you—the Pirate Lady of Lake Dumast—have joined the fight against me and Ravana, rebels from all over will come out of the woodwork to fight.
I know they will, too, because I’ve been fighting for twenty years trying to keep them cowering and afraid, and a lot of that had to do with you being on my side. ”
The bottle was ever so slowly lowering. Her eyes were narrowing now, deeply suspicious. “Why would you do this? You’d be destroying everything you’ve worked for. You’d be wrecking your reputation. Your legacy.”
He dropped his shoulders with a puff of a sigh and then stepped off the couch so they were on equal footing.
“Frankly, Elena, I don’t care anymore. Well—I still do care about it a little, but being a Dark Lord is boring.
I’ve been doing it for twenty years! I’m ready to pick up new hobbies.
I’ve started making jam and taking lute lessons, and I had a farm until my men invaded, but I enjoyed all of that before I had to run!
I even met someone. Her name is Benjamin. ”
“Her? Benjamin?” She raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were still married to Ravana.”
“I held the marriage officiant’s feet to the fire until he signed off on a unilateral divorce contract, so technically Ravana’s my ex.
” He waved his hand in dismissal. “And Beni is a goat, anyways, but she’s my pet goat.
And we’re going to raise her two kids and name them and live on a farm again, and this next one won’t be littered with limbless torsos! ”
Elena opened her mouth as if she had questions. Then she shut it, obviously thinking better of it. “So you fled Ravana’s side, changed your name, and grew a beard. And now everyone here thinks you’re some heroic outlaw?”
“Please don’t ever call me a hero in any grammatical form again. Besides, it’s not at all like that. They think I’m a general of Lord Morfran’s who abandoned post, and they’re holding Beni hostage so I’ll do what they want.”
She looked somewhat humored at that, before her face darkened once more. “You’re going to ditch them the moment there’s an opening.”
“No, I’m not.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not?”
He totally was. “Didn’t I just tell you I want to live alone with my goats, on a farm somewhere, peacefully? How can I do that if my ex-wife is using my ex-soldiers to ravage the land? How can I have peace of mind if Ravana is actively searching for me?”
She frowned. Her silence was a good thing. He went on.
“Besides, you brought me in here to speak to me privately because you can’t expose me. We both know that ‘Bernard the Necromancer’ has already shaken Ravana’s men, and Brim and his men need me to maintain that persona to propel this rebellion forward.”
“Gods.” She finally lowered the bottle, setting it atop the coffee table and rolling her eyes. “You’ve become even more unbearably pompous than before.”
He couldn’t help but grin the tiniest bit at that. When Elena rolled her eyes, it meant she no longer saw you as a threat, but as a joke. He could live with that. “But am I unbearably pompous and right, or unbearably pompous and wrong?”
She crossed her living room and began picking up knocked-over books. “If you were wrong, I’d have taken my cutlass and filleted you like a fish already.”
He perked up. He wasn’t going to die tonight, at least not by the pirate woman. And it seemed she would go along with his deception. Which was good. With her committed alliance with the rebels, the kingdom would be in so much chaos he could slip away without too much fuss.
“It’ll be just like old times,” he tried.
“Morf, it’ll never be like old times. For one, you weren’t wearing hose back then. You do know you can wear breeches? You look like a ninny.”
He looked down at his pants and nodded in agreement.
“A new change in attire? I can do that.” He then gestured around her living room at the many pictures and statues and pillows full of cat faces.
“While we’re on the topic of turning new leaves, might I suggest you get rid of all this nightmarish—”
“Insult my decor tastes and you die.”
Morfran wisely chose to stay silent.