Chapter Thirteen Cecilia
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cecilia
Not even Cecilia’s threats can prepare a ship speedily. It takes weeks for her new stewardess – a pinprick of a woman given by an amorous Perfugian noble, tight bodice and tight mouth – to commission a crew willing to work for Cecilia.
“I am told that there was an incident on your last voyage,” she says, curtseying deeply on the alabaster floor of Cecilia’s receiving chamber.
Her ashen hair is wound in tight braids around her head.
The fashion is not for hoods in Perfugi, not since so many women were lost to fainting when the city was first established.
From her throne, Cecilia eyes a curl that has escaped its plait.
She wonders what sound the woman would make were she to pull it out at the root.
“That was twelve years ago; surely they cannot still remember,” Cecilia says.
“Your Majesty is memorable.”
Cecilia herself can barely recall the voyage that brought her from Capetia, where she had briefly been a young queen to a dying king, to Perfugi.
She had recently buried her royal husband, but had refused to wear the expected mourning weeds.
Black does not suit her complexion. Could that have been why?
She dimly recalls an altercation. One of the sailors had looked at her in a way she did not like.
Did she skewer his eyes and then stab the men who came to his aid?
Yes, it seems more likely that this was the offence.
How tiresome.
“Offer them more money,” Cecilia tells the woman. She refuses to learn her name: she will not be taking her to Elben, so their acquaintance will be brief.
“I will do my best,” the woman says, rising but not meeting Cecilia’s eyes. Good. Lorena was far too free with her looks. As she leaves, Cecilia says, “Fetch the boy.”
Florin is not so attractive now that Lorena is gone, for half the fun lay in watching his sister’s reaction to her bedding him. But he still has the virulence and stamina of youth, and his guilt poses a challenge.
She sews as she waits, lounging in her throne, the hem of her silk dress pulled up over her knees for coolness.
Her receiving chamber is an airy space made entirely of ancient dragon bone and marble.
When she came to Perfugi, a new, wealthy widow, she could not find a palace worthy of her ancestry, but the Gallool dragons that had once lived upon and within the mountain and whose bones alone could provide shelter from the heat of the lava had long since been hunted to extinction.
She had Lorena pay the poorer families of the Fisilis quarter, high upon the mountain’s slopes, for their old houses’ walls and roofs.
They could hardly refuse. The Fisilis district is the poorest and oldest of the Perfugian neighbourhoods, built more as a refuge, using the lava as the Elbenese might use water in a moat for protection against attackers.
They scrape a living scooping molten rock and harvesting the fire weeds that grow there.
With the money Lorena paid them, they could leave Perfugi, if they wished, or find a nicer home in a better district.
Cecilia liked to remind Lorena that she could have simply had them killed and their homes ransacked for materials at less expense.
She could be merciful. She could even be charitable.
So her receiving chamber was built to her design.
A show of opulence and wealth the like of which was not seen elsewhere in the city.
Where other nobles and royals masked the walls where they could not afford dragon bone with diamonds or gold, she had no such spaces.
All was bone, and all of it was on display.
The boy takes longer than is acceptable. When he arrives, there is none of the flamboyant worship that she enjoys. No eager display of his hardness.
“You summoned me?” he says, hovering just inside the door.
“Why are you so far away?”
There’s a hesitation before he approaches. How dare he act as though he is doing her a favour?
“Crawl,” she says.
He gets to his hands and knees. That gives her some satisfaction, except that he is still too slow, and …
“Are you weeping?” she says, leaning forward.
He mutters something.
“I am your queen,” she says. “Speak properly.”
“I farewelled her this morning,” he says between sobs.
“Who?”
“My sister.”
Cecilia does not like the sharp sensation that goes through her chest at the mention of Lorena.
She had been informed that her farewell ceremony was today, but she did not see the point in attending.
The Perfugians are so maudlin. There are so many events around death.
There is the burial, usually performed on the day of passing, before the body starts to bloat in the heat.
Then there is a sacrifice to the mountain, where the family gives thanks for keeping their relative safe while they lived.
That is followed by a lengthy series of pronouncements at different points in the city, where tales of the dead’s life are told by seasoned storytellers and attended by friends and family.
And, finally, the farewell ceremony, where dried meat and iced wine are consumed around the grave and the stone is fitted and planted with seeds so that flowers and fragrant grasses cover it as the years pass.
Cecilia has never liked passing those cemeteries of coloured hillocks.
When a person is gone, they are gone. Why should she honour them when they were weak enough to die?
“It has been a moon or more. Your grief is over,” she says. He flinches from his position on the bone floor, as though she has kicked him.
“I’m trying to help,” she says, and she really might kick him soon.
Such instructions always helped her to get past her girlish emotions when she was younger.
You’re not upset any more, her kingly father would say.
What use are tears to royals? Or More’s gentler: Do you think you are being hysterical, princess?
Over time, she learned that they were right. These are weak emotions, and she does not suffer them.
“She was my sister,” Florin says, looking up at her. His eyes are bloodshot and he wears an ugly sneer.
“And she was my best friend, but I have not been pathetic about it for days and days. I was the one who had to make the decision to sacrifice her. It was very hard for me. If anyone has the right to be upset it is me, not you.”
The boy has the nerve to laugh. Cecilia rises, drawing herself to her full height. She was always tall for her age, lauded across the continent as a princess worthy of a divinely blessed family.
“Come here,” she says.
Miserably, the boy crawls towards her.
“You are a worm,” she says.
He hesitates, then drops to his belly and pulls himself forwards. She will punish him for that pause. She has the perfect needle for the task. When he reaches the lowest of the steps up to her throne, he stops, awaiting her instructions on how to proceed.
“Say you are sorry,” she says.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty.”
“Tell me you love me.”
His lip quivers, but he holds back the tears. Good. “I do love you,” he says.
The sight of him like that, as though she is a goddess and he is worshipping her, makes her wet.
This is how it’s going to be once she returns to Elben and claims a palace (why is it taking so long to procure a crew?
Oh, her jaw clenches just thinking about it all over again).
She will have no need of needles: she will have divine power to wield in sharp points of pain.
She sits back on her throne and spreads her legs.
The boy knows what to do. She takes hold of his hair, moving his head to the points that offer most pleasure.
This is why she keeps him despite Lorena’s death.
She was his first, his only lover, and she has trained him to please her body alone.
This is how it should be: just as she was mentored in the way of lovemaking before she sailed for Capetia to be married.
“No one else will ever give you what I give you,” she says on the whisper of a moan.
His fingers dig into her thighs in reply. “Harder,” she says. She wants him to leave bruises. Love notes, like the ones she leaves on his skin.
He gasps for air. She is about to pull him into her again – he should be able to hold his breath for longer by now – when she realises: the worm is crying once more.
“I’m sorry,” he says. She puts her foot on his face and pushes him away. Down to the floor, her foot on his cheek. He is weeping openly, the tears wetting the soft fabric of her slipper. How much force would it take to crush the worm? If she put her full weight on it, would the skull give way?
“I love you. I’m sorry,” he sobs.
The urge passes. She pushes him off the dais with the same foot.
“I am tired. You may go,” she says.
If he tries to grovel, she will choke him. He doesn’t. Head down, he leaves drops of salted water on the floor as he crawls backwards out of the chamber. Once out of her sight, she hears him rise and run, footsteps echoing in the bone hallways. Running, running away.
She will reel him back in. It will not take much. When she brings him to Elben, he will know no one and have nothing but her. His goddess. Damnation, where is her ship?