Page 10

Chapter Ten

How delightful

the poetry

of balance

and symmetry.

W hoosh—click. My floating gait held an agitation that I did not wish Bring to fathom. This would be a pesky meeting in growing grains with a pesky bringing king. He was an imbecile, surely.

Though, my mood colored my thoughts of him too. The first lesson in war with See had ended in him gazing upon my naked form as the candlelight died. He had viewed my nakedness before, but I had not witnessed his face during those exchanges.

The intensity of his expression had rattled me. Enough that I had demanded he leave. He had left without any convincing.

For he, too, had glimpsed something to fear on my face.

We would devour each other. That is what I saw on his face. Half the time—perhaps more than half—I wished for such a devouring fate. To end that way… what uncertain ecstasy in heart’s peril.

Now my mind was awhirl with See, and he had no doubt planned to put me in such a state for the meeting with Bring. I lusted painfully for a chalky king with too much sight and connection in my affairs.

He would be my doom.

I took a breath and held it, then— oof— exhaled in a rush.

“My queen,” sniffled Unguis, who prowled behind me. “Do the grains affect your breathing too?”

Huckery scoffed. “She is undone after a lesson with King See, nothing more.”

Huckery was somewhat of a prince among pawns indeed. “I am that, and so I would find calm before a meeting with another king, who will grow agitated if he senses my agitation due to King See.”

Loup said kindly, “Worry not about your agitation, Your Majesty. He will smell the truth.”

I groaned inwardly. The reassurance he had intended did not eventuate. Though Loup had just called me “Your Majesty,” and I could not recollect him doing so before. “Thank you, Loup.”

They padded after me as I strode toward Bring’s kingdom. I had not arranged to meet the king halfway, but of course we would.

In the next thoroughfare between towering apartment buildings, I spotted the king sitting on a bench and staring at the growing millet.

“Wait here, please.”

“Have you considered—” started Huckery.

I glanced back. “It is likely that I have, Huckery, in that I am a queen.”

He stopped talking.

“Do you trust in my connections?” I asked him.

The werebeast regarded me. “More every dusk. I met you as a mere monster and now you are a queen who holds her own against kings.”

Warmth bloomed in my chest. Such praise from Huckery was praise indeed. I nodded at him, then left the werebeasts to approach a king.

This king still wished me for princess, and I sensed that no matter his fury, I could reverse the damage done by agreeing to princessdom—in the same way any woman might sense such a thing. But I had greatly angered him. And he had greatly angered me with this farce where I had apparently given him my word to join in union. He knew this was untrue, as did I.

Except truth did not really matter when others only had to be convinced of the lie.

“King Bring,” I said. “How do you fare?”

The bringing king of crimson skin wore his black long coat. His low-brimmed hat shadowed his face. I had never seen him wear a hat. And for the first time since knowing him, the king also wore a tunic that covered his second mouth.

There was a… hunch in his posture that screamed of a lessening of kingliness.

“I fare as well as ever,” he replied, not looking up, nor managing to hide a wheeziness in his voice.

I sat on the other end of the bench and gazed out at the knee-high millet. “Sir, as I said in my letter, there is much we must speak of.”

“There is only one matter to speak of,” he wheezed. “The matter of union where you agree to uphold your word to a king, or I force you to do so.”

He was sick. That much was clear. His sickness was what had stressed his princes to crispiness. This was why King See celebrated control of his claiming behavior lately, and why he had little fear of me meeting another king. “Sir, are you well?”

“I am well,” he snapped. “Do you fare well, reeking of lust as you do? You have spent another night with King See, though you are mine. You are untrue! Another strike against you.”

His annoyance jiggled his hat, but I should not laugh.

If he wished to speak of a woman untrue, then I might recommend he point his finger toward a damp orchestra filling my queendom. Though Princess Bring owed her ex-king nothing, in my queenly opinion.

His hat jiggled again, and I inhaled sharply at the glimpse of that he wished to keep hidden. King See had seen this without the need to physically look at King Bring, of course.

Black lines extended through Bring’s face. Not just one side, as they had, but both sides. His was an entire face of curse, not of both curse and charm.

My lips curved as I gazed upon millet once more. “That is poetic.”

“ What is poetic?” he asked, still furious.

That the curse he had intended to kill his princess with was now eating away at him. “I assume that the curse has affected you this way because Princess Bring did not drink her portion?”

The air crackled with his rage. I imagined his thatched kingdom was rattling and leaping.

“You are sick, King Bring. Tell me what ails you.”

The millet flattened away from his fury. “Naught ails me. I am well, and we meet to discuss union and nothing more!”

That was not quite the matter at hand. King Bring was sick from a curse meant to kill an immortal, and we were not really here to discuss the union at all—not in the way he wished. “Will you die then?”

His breaths were labored and audible. “I will not die. Not when everything is as it should be. Not when you are mine.”

Ah, bother and drat. He had pegged his dying hopes on me. I highly doubted that union with me would counter a curse, and even if it did, then my occasional intrigue for King Bring’s body had wholly evaporated amid his wheezes and ailment. Such was the superficial nature of infatuation.

King Bring drew a glass vial from his long coat. A charm trapped in corked vial that glittered with moonlight. “The antidote.” King Bring hacked a cough. “You will drink it at our union night, and I shall sample the last drops. Then all will be well.”

King Bring now viewed our union as a matter of life and death, and that was rather more than his previous deep belief of our saving fate. Now King Bring could not let up because he believed that would result in his death.

He would push for a tribunal, and most kings would jump at the chance to tug me here and there in a ploy for power. King See would struggle with madness again, certainly. I did not wish for such annoyance from kings. “I fathom that you have two choices, sir. I will not join with you in union. That is not what we are for. That is what your magnificent princess that you already had and lost was for. But I do not like to see any monster suffer, and though we have disagreed in recent times, there might be a time where we agree, if we can find a compromise in this. Create a charm, sir, that I might consume as your friend to save you. Once my mother has checked the authenticity and safety of the charm, then I will do this for you without hesitation. Or you can enter into a lengthy tribunal that you may not survive to hear the verdict of. Which would you prefer?”

The game was up. He tilted his head to look at me. There was a yellowness to his eyes, and a soul weariness that no immortal should ail from. Black lines must cover him from crimson head to toothed feet.

“No, young queen,” he said on a sigh. “That will not do for me. I choose tribunal.”

Then that was that.

I tuned into my obsession that had been politely—and very unexpectedly—waiting during this conversation with a king. Part of me had feared becoming rabid upon the sight of King Bring, but no such thing. This obsession must behave differently from one of princesses.

But here was a chance… here was an opportunity. A weakened king, a wheezing king, and one self-poisoned.

He might soon die, but I would not waste time. Not if I were humble and driven to success.

A savage snarl ripped from me, and I heard the layers of it whine as they shoved at each other to leave my throat first. My clawed hand shot for the king’s throat.

Quite simply—my hand was stopped.

King Bring’s yellowed eyes widened, and if not for the back of the bench, he might have toppled heels over head.

I considered my clawed hand that hovered in the air between us. I could pull my hand back, but a wall existed before it that I could not shove through. “Did you stop me?”

He wheezed the shocked truth, “ No… did you?”

“Yes,” I answered, though he would not believe that once his brain restarted. “But I shall not bother myself to stop again if you proceed with the tribunal. Ponder your new weakness and my new strength, sir. Be reminded that a queen fights her battles and is not content to only move a step here and there. ’Tis a mistake to continue in this tribunal.”

“You are nothing more than a monster who turns on everyone around her,” he hissed. “On princes, on princess, and on a king.”

On all kings, which I very much hoped he did not connect because I had somewhat revealed my metaphorical and physical hand this night.

Except I had not stopped myself, and he had not. But something had. Or someone, maybe many of them. Ancients or my ancestral mothers? I should have trusted in the polite slumber of obsession while in Bring’s company. Clearly I was not meant to attack him tonight.

I was not meant to conquer him… yet? I could not have supposed a better time than when he wheezed.

“Good evening,” I said to King Bring, cutting off his angry accusations.

I left him shouting and hacking in coughs to rejoin my werebeasts.

I strode ahead of them.

“You attacked a king,” Huckery rumbled.

He might take this news to his king. “I thought to threaten him. King Bring understood my message.”

The pawn was very cunning and saw much, so I could not say if he believed me.

I wrenched to a halt as a group of humans darted between shadows ahead of me. They lit gasoline soaked material and threw their bottle cocktails into the bottom floor of an apartment building.

The humans of King Change made scarce after, the beastly acts committed had satisfied their agonized souls. I walked on after extinguishing the flames in the building with a gust of dust.

Goodness, Vitale was in a great mess. I hardly recognized the city that had been my home in humanity and monsterdom. One did miss a lot when they walked from dusk to dawn instead of the opposite. I did not like to see the city this way, for I had been a human too recently not to imagine what horror and terror many innocent people were feeling as they cowered here and there.

I had been told not to waste time, in more elegant phrase. Did that apply to the matter of humans? I had rather assumed that finding my fullness in queendom would resolve the problems of humans, whose affairs were a direct reflection of strife between rulers.

Assumption. There was an arrogance in that.

I put out other fires that I came across, and Unguis whined louder with each act. No doubt this saving would place them in a spot of bother with their liege. “ You did not save, Unguis. I did.”

He did not stop, and knowing King Change’s cruel methods, I could not be surprised at his fear. But the werebeast was commanded to protect himself in such matters, and so he would need to. I could not linger too long in concern of fighting his battles because I had to figure out why my clawed hand was stopped.

I must return to the chant—and the original poem of kings. There were crossovers between them that I was yet to explore.

Up and out weaves golden fate feeling ancient in gifted wisdom. That part of the chant was clear. It referred to my feelings that I was ancient, but warned me that I had not reached fullness and must not rest.

Five powers grasp all icy demise, free from her olden prison. Now that obsession was more defined, I believed this part must refer to my need to conquer kings—to place them in my prison. If I did not, then they would assure my icy demise, or the world’s. This part also suggested that the olden rock might play a part later on. The chant described “her” prison as olden . I did not have a prison yet, but Mother provided for me in death, so no doubt a prison would appear as I started to conquer kings. As to the olden nature of it… maybe a more ancient queen would connect that part.

If throne is seat, union is seam, skulls are skin, shackles are stitches. This part frustrated me, and confirmed the missing fullness of my ancient connection. The section spoke of a reduction, much as grape might become raisin. Kings’ thrones became mere seats, which could refer to them paying homage to me. Then the rest was lost as yet, though I could assume that seam, skin, and stitch referred to my uniquities.

Seam.

The word tickled at me. For there was a mention of seams in the original poem of kings.

One touch did earn one thousand years slumber,

Time for ancients to warp, break, and build.

Five powers to grasp the world’s fraying seams,

And if golden fate deems fit, to mend.

My brow cleared at the unexpected find. “Golden fate. Up and out weaves golden fate feeling ancient in gifted wisdom… And if golden fate deems fit, to mend.”

I was golden fate. That had to be right. The phrase was mentioned in both verses. Seams was too. Grasp the world’s fraying seams. “Union is seam,” I muttered. “Well, they are certainly frayed.”

Golden fates and seams were important, so my instincts warned, but I could gain no more clarity in them today.

And none of that connection explained why my attack on King Bring was halted.

“Werebeast pawns,” I said heavily. “Speak to me of the time when princes met kings.” I already knew how princesses came to them, but princes had met their kings before that.

They were quiet in the wake of my question.

Loup asked, “Your Majesty, what did you wish to know?”

“How came princes to know their king and to look for him at all?”

Unguis said, “We were filled with ancient purpose. Princes were birthed after one hundred years in the womb, and we each made our way to our king after. We found our kings and were happy to be in the company of other monsters. Then came the understanding of how princes would be needed to keep a king to his purpose. The surge of power was a shock at first, but the pattern of this soon became clear. That is all that happened. We are the simplest of monsters, you see.”

“And therein rests some of your exquisiteness. A diamond might appear simple too.”

The compliment was met with whines and a scoff from Huckery.

“Did all princes arrive to their kings so easily?” I asked next.

Huckery grunted. “King See’s were most delayed. His came after our king’s.”

There was a stirring in me. “And what king earned his princes before King Change?”

“King Raise,” Loup said after a moment. “I believe.”

“Yes,” agreed Unguis. “I recall because King Take was making fun of him so.”

“And King Bring believed himself so high and mighty for being first to gain princes,” growled Huckery.

Bring. Take. Raise. Change. See.

The order of kings kept arising in the same patterns.

And in the original poem of kings:

Bring. Take. Raise. Change. See.

Three princes, each, shall come to thee.

Monsters to guide kings to thrones,

To keep real monsters chained with blood and bone.

But I had tried to conquer Bring. Whatever the order of kings referred to, that order was irrelevant to my obsession. Or the manner in which I had attempted to conquer was incorrect.

This felt more likely in hindsight.

“Your mind is burdened after our words,” Huckery murmured as the towering tops of the brick walls of my queendom came into view.

“Yes, Huckery. But fear not. My mind is almost always burdened with one figuring or another.”

“I do not fear. That is not what a pawn needs to do,” he answered.

“I am envious and happy for you, werebeast pawn. It seems a great while might pass before I might be fated to lighter days.”

A great while indeed for a queen.