Page 17

Chapter Seventeen

Stompings

Shacklings

Stitches

Cacklings

K ing See hastily placed me on my feet and blurred back, as if he expected a violent outburst. I could not blame him, but this was the second time madness had not kicked me into a blinded obsession.

I hummed. “My power now exceeds the power of kings, and so there is naught to fear, and so no reason for madness in obsession. I feel the same reassurance in obsession that you recently felt, sir.”

His brow cleared. “So I witness.”

There were other bodily matters that King Take had interrupted, however, and I stomped three times, unable to stop the outlet of frustration.

“ Did she just stomp?” King Take exclaimed from somewhere outside the gate.

I gritted my teeth.

See smirked. “Shall I have you against the wall, Perantiqua?”

I arched a brow. My body felt his idea held merit. My mind said a chamber was best. Which would I listen to? I could ask Take to wait. My body ached painfully for See’s touch. So painfully.

“I will not wait while you go at each other against the wall, ” snapped King Take . “ Stomp all you like. I will be listened to . ”

A waspish and petulant king indeed. I could relate to him on the petulance part. Perhaps I should wait for a chamber. Now that I had considered how perfect this interaction with See must go, I felt the wisdom of ensuring such perfection.

I peered across the courtyard and through my wall of bars. A small carriage sat beyond, driven by a minion I did not recognize. Princess Take sat beside the driver. She had led the carriage here, but then she was my marshal, and transportation of goods fell into her jurisdiction.

She climbed down and approached the gate. “I bring my husband to you… my queen.”

Goodness, of all the things she had swallowed, that had been largest of all. My queen. What did she want then? “Your husband is sick.”

She jerked. “H-how… yes. He is. He ails and grows weaker by the hour.”

“So you are here.”

“I can only think that you might save him.”

I believed that I could save kings. I believed that ancients sent the plague to issue me a deadline and to alert me to the dire need for me to conquer kings with haste. Once I had done so, then kings would be saved. “I can.”

Her lower lip wobbled. His sickness had undone her.

“But what of a king? King Take,” I called. “Do you hide in the carriage? What has a king to say of dropping to his knees before a queen?”

The carriage door was pushed open, and as King Take appeared, I did my best to conceal shock.

Black veined over visible skin, similar to how I had last seen King Bring. Worse. The king was hunched and hobbling. His boyishness had disappeared. Weary and haggard, he was a drained king and a dying king. The thick, black nails that had always curled under his feet and over his palms had snapped off at the tips, and what remained of them was a jagged and sorry sight. He wore the same outfit of black with the high collar of feathers, but tonight this seemed… an outfit. A costume—not quite him.

King Take was sick indeed. Sicker than I had anticipated.

Picket swung back the gate to admit the king.

Take hobbled across the courtyard. “A king says that sickness will never force his hand. A king says that he has already made up his mind.” He crossed his arms and pouted.

Princess Take hurried after her husband. “My king, we spoke of this?—”

He held up a hand. “I heard all you had to say at that time, my flesh. This is a matter between a queen and a king.” His annoyance faded, as did his slight pout. “A king who touched left hand to olden rock, and then awoke an age later as an immortal king who must take life forevermore. Over and over, draining the souls from human beings to leave them empty. Their happiness, their memories, their hopes and dreams, the knowledge of their childrens’ names. Their fears and pains and regrets. I drink them all and carry them thereafter, for once I take, I am doomed to keep. Their screams and horror and wide eyes press and squeeze at my mind each dusk and each dawn. My immortality has ever been a curse, and I have ever hated it, and I have ever hated myself so much so that I became what I hated to bear this curse. I turn to ruin because I deserve to feel ruin. So I believe.”

Kings and monsters carried all kinds of hurts and burdens. I was discovering my purpose at last, but there did not seem any set way to how I must grow my power other than chasing obsession. Some vice had appeared in the pursuit of my power, I granted, yet I had not done anything that I could not bear. King Take had taken lives for twelve hundred years. Ancients had forced him to, and him the most moral and just of soldiers in his human life.

“What you do is not who you are,” murmured King See from behind me.

King Take stomped his foot and shouted, “What you do is exactly who you are! Would that I had been a seeing king instead. Or a bringing king or a raising king. Even a changing king. Any of you might have worn the purpose of taking better than I.”

Did he feel towering delight when he stomped too?

“I agree,” I said, as the kings seemed likely to descend into argument. “I agree that what you do is who you are.”

King Take, already frail and sickly, appeared to crumble within. “You fathom.”

“I fathom that a king who did not care as much as you would not have respected everything he took. That king would not respect your purpose as you have respected it. You have despaired of taking, and that is why you were chosen. You resist taking and forge deals to only take those humans who might better deserve such a fate. What other king would have gone to such trouble?”

Certainly not a king set to ruin, nor a king who loved his princess more than anything else. Certainly not a seeing or bringing king, who might have refused to take until ancients used princes to break them.

I said with absolute certainty, “You were chosen by ancients because no other king could uphold your purpose.”

Princess Take’s magnificent eyes shone with her gratitude. “This is what I tell him, my queen.”

She meant the “my queen” this time.

I nodded. “Your princess is the most ancient of princesses and should be listened to. She could be far more to you than mere flesh, King Take.”

“I cannot let myself have her in other ways,” he answered. “I cannot let myself have such happiness while doing what I do.”

There was the crux of the matter, and the solution was simple. “Why have you come, King Take? It cannot just be to stomp and pout and sulk.”

“A petulant queen makes fun of a petulant king,” he said silkily.

I glared. “I am new to petulance, but I shall not be so for long.”

“As I thought for five hundred years. Accept your stompings, young queen, for petulance is rather fun if you rid yourself of conventional standards.”

I tilted my head. “Goodness. Good sir, I have been ensnared in a small trapping of convention, ’tis so. A revelation of stompings. Thank you kindly, King Take.”

He winced his way through a small bow.

I did my best to return to the topic at hand, though ancient thoughts of petulance wished to tug me again. On the wind, I asked, “Why have you come?”

Take’s yellowed eyes widened as my voice permeated through the very air. “Because I have many minions, Queen Perantiqua. They tell me of how you led King Change through the city, him your prisoner. They speak of how you tucked a key away, as if to quickly conceal them from other eyes. They speak of how King Raise rushed you to a hellebore grave, and then of how he walked to join King Change in your conservatory, even shackling himself.” King Take straightened and removed his top hat to reveal a mostly bald head, though the hair circling the base of his head was very long.

He said, “Your new obsession is to conquer kings.”

His princess gasped, but Take grabbed her hand to stop her from stepping between us. The king extended his other hand in front of him, and there was an enormous distant crash and rumble.

A key appeared in his black-nailed hand, and the key was white—tinged with pink, of course. A slight hint of green moss spoke of the stagnant water in his moat too. “I do not wish to rule. If another king can admit it, then so can I.”

I shook my head. “You do wish to rule, King Take.”

“You assume to know me better than I know myself?”

I smiled. “I understand you. Of all kings, I began to understand you soonest, if you must know. Your ego greatly enjoys ruling, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. King Take, you do not like that you are responsible for choosing whom to take. That is all.”

He did not agree. He did not need to, and this was not an easy thing to agree with aloud before his princess and another king, whom he had tormented for centuries.

King Take’s hand shook, and the key with it. “The taking. It will stop. I will never need to take again.”

“Your taking will never stop, dear king.”

His gaze hardened, and I blurred to take the key as Take prepared to banish them back to his kingdom.

I snatched the key away, and snarled, “ Mine. ”

The king dropped to his knees on the cobblestones, howling his inner pain to the moon.

I hissed, “You will always take, and you do not get to choose death by plague as an alternative. The future of monsters and all beings depends on you living. Live in torment if you must, and live in happiness if you dare, but know that you are no longer responsible for who lives and who dies. That choice resides with me.”

“You will order me here and there to take? To the evil and to the innocent. What honor is there is that?”

Princess Take hushed, “You will cope much better this way, my king.”

“Whatever honor you assign it, sir. I deliver the orders, and you must merely carry them out. There is separation for you and separation for me. I might deny any taking, because I did not carry out the deed. You might deny any taking because you did not choose your victim. Any number of very horrible acts have been committed with that arrangement in mind.”

I did not feel great about such a thing, but what else could be done when a king’s ancient-given purpose was to take? We had to make good with it somehow.

He hung his head, and I turned from the conquered king, who I understood in completeness. I rolled his key between my fingers and released a slow exhale.

Four keys. Looked like I would return through the grave from whence I just came. At least a king did not need to race me there this time.

I lifted my gaze and found myself perused by a very serious King See.

There was a moment, a mere second, when I chanced to glimpse his true sentiment before he masked it.

Fear.

What I saw in his gaze was fear. Fear of me? Or fear of what he must do? I should dig deeper to discover the answer. The answer might be crucial. I should. Might. Shoulds and mights .

Yet fear of the answer filled me. I could not.

“King See,” I said. “Could you kindly help King Take up to his position in my conservatory?” I glanced back. “Princess Take, you might visit him there whenever you wish.”

“He can never leave?” she said fretfully.

I lifted a shoulder. “I do not know the confines of kings yet, just that shackles have appeared for kings. Monsterdom is in a period of change and upheaval. Some patience, my marshal, if you please.”

She took a breath. “Of course, my queen.”

The Takes helped one another to the stairs to start their ascent.

I turned to follow but could not help looking again at See. I was relieved to see his fear wiped clean away. Hidden and buried.

From me.