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Chapter Four

Does beauty exist in emptiness?

Then, what of eeriness?

I reread the letter.

I have received no reply from a queen who believes herself above me.

And so.

A tribunal summons shall follow.

I lament the ending of anything amicable between us, but an “us” there shall still be.

Such is saving. Such are the matters of kings. You gave your word to be mine, and a word uttered to a king is binding.

Words and Action Mighty,

King Bring

“Yet he once told me that saving was in the summation,” I mused to the hellebores stroking my feet.

“You speak of the fool King Bring,” said Princess Change as she joined me in the rooftop garden.

I had pondered where to meet a monster of ruin who numbly tended to the haunted forest of her wretched king. Change, studiously numb to all, ironically spent her days pushing life into a kingdom. Of course she took care to uphold an unnatural look to the place, but that only spoke of her care. Far easier to grow a wild forest.

Princess Change had capacity to love, and I had not witnessed that in her king.

So here we would meet, in a garden. All the better to undo her.

I glanced up from my favorite bench seat and tried not to shudder at the scars that were so deep that her face appeared melted in parts—her eyelids stretched tight, and her nose had peeled back. There was no purpose in such a sight, for if there was monstrous purpose in her scars and mange, then I would feel joy upon viewing her. I felt revolt. “Good evening, Princess Change. Please sit while I pen a letter.”

She sat on the second bench that Mother had pushed up for the occasion. As a writing desk appeared before my bench, I took out paper, quill, inkpot and wax seal.

And I watched the princess with part of my mind.

As I started to scratch out a reply, I saw her eyes drift to the black hellebores stroking my feet, next to the blood-red roses behind me with thorns like daggers.

King Bring,

I apologize for the tardiness of my letter. New queendom occupies much of my time, and I confess that I had to meditate deeply on the matter of union with you.

Will you meet me for a walk amongst the growing grains, as we once did? There is that which we must speak of.

Queen Perantiqua

I should not drag him along so, but a tribunal did not suit me yet. Unfortunately for King Bring, I knew his rhyme and reason. This letter would give me one week, during which time he would convince himself that I intended to accept his princess proposal. I could not, as a queen, but that impossibility was lost on such a king.

“Toil, Hex, Sigil,” I called.

They blinked into the garden, and I stuck my letter to Toil. “Please deliver this.”

I made sure to look nervous and a little demure. They would no doubt repeat such things to encourage their liege with his plots and plans.

“At once, my queen,” Toil said grandly.

They bowed and departed.

And as that had happened, a princess had lost much of her numbness, and currently inspected a sprawling groundcover with heart-shaped leaves with great interest.

I would not look at her, then she might waste less of her time on appearances. “Thank you for waiting.”

“I am here for one week. I care not how that is spent.”

I arched a brow. “Not even in saving?”

“’Tis to be expected.” A haunting returned to her voice. “Will you reveal the reason for my visit today?”

“No, Princess. I will not do that.”

“So be it.”

I peered out across my queendom, past the wall of bars to where my sixth must be tucked up in their thatched homes. Picket was out there with brick and mortar, and he had to stretch his rope quite tall nowanights to add height to the wall that was twice the height of my tallest seeing princes.

How tall would he make it? I should not like to lose the moonlight. “You are patient,” I murmured to her. “And I have observed this of your king. Then again, I have seen your beautiful, haunted forest. The monster who tends to that must possess undying patience.”

She glanced at me. “My forest is not beautiful. It is woeful.”

“I have seen it, and I saw its unnatural uniformity, and I felt its eerie design. These are beautiful qualities.”

“I would expect this comment from a saving queen.”

I hummed. “Is that what I am?”

“That is what you have shown.”

“I cannot be certain what my purpose is. Ancients have not revealed so much.”

The princess’s focus drifted out to the garden behind me, and I let mine wander back to my queendom. My sixth was expanding by the dusk. Thatched homes pushed out two blocks in each direction now, and the borders of the five kingdoms that surrounded my queendom were obviously pushed back. I was growing more equal in power to kings by the night.

I said to her, “You feel that which is unnatural and eerie is wrong, I gather.”

“As should we all. Humans know this for a truth. In that, they are wiser than most monsters.”

“Yet even humans crave these, or crave understanding of these things that they feel but cannot explain—in their celebrations and festivals and in their question about The End.” When her expression numbed more than usual, I explained, “The dawn of the new age.”

“That is because beastliness exists in them all. Some tame this beastliness better than others, but it exists in all of them.”

How intriguing. “And in us.”

“In us, too, and in greater and horrendous quantities. We are the painting of what is needed. The ancient-signed signal of wrongness and the need for purge.”

Purge. “A cleaning of the world. Yet your king does not clean. He draws forth beastliness from humans when he could lessen it.”

“When a system no longer works, the system must be broken,” she recited. “Only then can it be rebuilt.”

I agreed with that in a sense. “I had understood that King Change wished to end the world. You say that he wishes to purge it.”

“To eradicate life, yes. To eradicate beastliness. I long for the relief.”

“And of your haunted forest? What would become of that?”

Her lips trembled in somewhat of a smile before she drained the feeling away. “That would remain, and it would not need to be ugly and wrong any longer. Slowly shrubs and vines and canopy would fill the gaps. My trees would fall down in their hundreds of years, and all uniformity would be gone.”

“But the eeriness of emptiness would remain,” I mused.

She blanched, then resumed vacantness. “Emptiness of monsters would never be eerie.”

I knew of an eerie place, a place barren but for a semblance of my queendom and the twelve mothers stitched around it in silent vigil. “Emptiness of monsters is a chilling and trembling fate. Was your king like this in life?”

I made sure to infuse power into my voice. This princess would not give over information easily, but she could not deny me now.

“No,” she blurted, then gasped. Numb again. “He was their general. Their victorious leader. Their moral mentor in human war.”

My, immortality had quite undone kings. “King Change drifted far from himself. From general to ruining adversary. From leader to traitor. From champion of rightness to king of destruction.”

“You seek to understand my king,” she said at last.

“I hold great interest in the why of his ruining urge. I see nothing but magnificence in monsters. How could he see the opposite and so certainly as to be driven to destroy all creatures?”

I had not pushed my power into the question, but she answered anyway, “You forget that his magic is beastly in nature. He feels everyone’s propensity for vice. Like the others, he clung to his human ideals for a time after setting hand to olden rock. My king believed that he had been granted the power to eradicate all the qualities that pushed humans to war and violence and vice.”

“Weariness of failure broke him.”

She scowled. “No such thing. My king is as steadfast as the ages.”

I believed her. “I have observed this unfaltering quality that you speak of. He does not appear to adjust his ideals of ruining based on his desires in any given moment, unlike King Bring.”

The princess blinked a few times. “’Tis not many who can see past the direction of his purpose to remark so. My king is unfaltering indeed.”

In the dealing of hateful acts. Therein lay our difference. That was why I would choose King Bring over King Change any day. “The other princesses have told me you were first to join with a king.”

She regained her wariness. “My king knew I was for him. Once we figured out the smaller details of our union, then there was no need to wait. And greater power rewarded his efforts. My king is a general of all kings. A risk-taker and pioneer of purpose. Where others take a nibble, he takes a bite, and none might ever know the true layers and scope of his plans.”

Her breath was ragged by the end, and she gulped in air, perhaps in some small shock over what she had revealed.

Princess Change already fathomed the hold I had. So there was no point in hiding it, especially when that part of my obsession was out for all to see and mostly done. I pulsed my power. “What were the smaller details of your union to King Change?”

She fell to the cobblestones, palms slapping on the stone. “That I be a mistress of ruin forevermore. He had already suspected the truth of his direction in immortality, though he had not revealed such to other kings yet.”

“Princess Raise spoke of how drastically you altered after union.” The rest came to me. “Because this was part of your union, you are powerful in the matter of ruining.”

Now that was something sinister.

Others were married to their king’s purpose, but they did not always agree with the saving or ruining direction of that purpose. They could not have worked against their king’s purpose until I came along anyway, but King Change had done something unique from others when he placed the clause of purpose direction into their union agreement.

“He shows great forethought,” I murmured. “And your union granted him greater power, and so he felt emboldened to break the saving pact with his brother kings and strike out on his own.”

The princess sat in a silence that was simmering and not despondent. I had almost decided to enjoy drawing her into feeling whenever I could, and yet she did not have any say in ruining, as I had assumed. Any feelings felt she would punish herself for.

Again and again, the nature of a union told me much of a king.

I sensed from her simmering that this meeting was at an end. “You are dismissed, Princess Change. I will see you here tomorrow at the same hour.”

“After you speak kindly to yourself in the mirror,” she replied.

Words spoken in anger. Though I should not do so often, I did like the displays of emotion from her. “After that, yes. I never allow anything to interfere in that.”

The princess left, and not long after, the squelching blinks of another princess met my ears.

“Good evening, Princess Bring.” I looked at her, and took care not to react to her outfit. She had cut her cloak in two and wound the top half around her second blob, and the bottom half in a skirt.

She curtsied. “Queen Perantiqua. The deepest of dusks to you.”

“That outfit is very becoming of your blobs.”

Wet squelch, and a delightful silence after.

I smiled. “Do you come to play at lady’s maid?”

“Just that, my queen. Aside from your meeting with Princess Change, you have received another letter of negotiation from King Take, and I took the liberty of scheduling an appointment for your first lesson of war with King See with ample time after to ensure he cannot… slip from his responsibilities.”

“Thank you,” I said in some surprise.

“My queen, I also bring you news of the skulking and sneaking behavior of Princess Change. She inspects the corners and crevices of your queendom.”

I considered that. “What does she seek? Information or object?”

“I cannot say, my queen. But I have alerted all pawns but your werebeasts, and also alerted Princess Raise. I expected that you would wish to know.”

That King Change would request snooping of her was no shock. But did she seek something specific? That could tell me much. “I will ask Mother to track her also. Inform pawns and my steward not to venture too close in their spying of her. I would see what she is about.”

“As you say, my queen. Then there only remains a summons from your mother.”

I glanced around the garden. “A summons?”

“A summons, Your Majesty, in the form of a glittering hellebore raised above all other covering your mother’s grave. There is a beckoning importance to it, and I wondered if she might like a word in death.”

I rose and walked to the balustrade to peer down from the third level to the courtyard. And to think this was once a hotel. The idea amused me in immortality.

A hellebore did indeed glisten above all others covering Mother’s grave. “You wondered true, dear lady’s maid. I shall attend her.”

“I will alert all pawns to return,” she quipped. “I expect the haze of protection shall appear, and it would bode better to have all monsters of your queendom trapped within.”

This monster had found a mine in herself untapped. “Such gems and rubies in you. More and more of them. I thank you for your attention to such administrative matters of a queen.”

Silence again.

Yes, I would delight time and again in this monster. “Send word. I travel through the grave very soon.”