SSCS 04: Installment 11 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 11 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
(And the character list is here.)
Previously…
“Who shall we accost, then?” Lot asked, while appearing to stare musingly across the elaborately built space. “Will pauper or prince give us better answers?” And indeed, the gathering seemed strongly a mix of all types, at least as could be made out in the green-lit gloaming.
“Someone who will not speak of our questions to the Moth Queen, I should think,” El answered. “If collaboration would have been fruitful, the Gull Queen would have sought the aid of her sister-Queen already. So, who here looks like they’re holding a grudge?”
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 11: 22.0304
“Secret grudge-holders are better gleaned out by your eyes than mine,” Lot replied. “If you’re going to be picky, I’ll go and find us a luring place, and wait for you there.” She held out a hand, imperiously, for El’s bag of potions, and the girl (who was not at all young) handed it meekly over, performed a curtsy in the manner of others they’d observed, and turned to disappear into the crowd and granite labyrinth.
Lot turned decisively as well, selecting a set of stairs leading down. It was strangely difficult, in the green light, to mark and track specific individuals, but Lot had had centuries of practice, and so had marked certain flows and eddies in the apparent milling of the gathering that hinted at well-trodden ways. Now, she followed one such until she reached a certain turning most others ignored, but which brought her, never-the-less, to an alcove easily visible to the rest of the garden. If someone else ordinarily claimed this place, they had not yet arrived. When they did, Lot would certainly like to speak with them as well.
The alcove was equipped with a granite bench cut as a hard-edged shelf into the face of the labyrinth wall, and Lot seated herself upon it, tucking El’s bag out of sight behind her skirts, and drawing from her own pockets a deck of hand-painted cards.
***
Elsewhere and out of sight of the main maze, the other three Lazarine had found an entirely different gathering, one very close to hidden from the main ‘garden’ above, although there had been no guards or gate-keepers to bar their coming. Here, Ki had also settled themselves upon a granite shelf seat, with Du now lolling indolently at their feet. But this seat was perched within a small gallery that overlooked a grotto cleverly concealed around the back-side of and beneath the hilltop and its labyrinth ‘garden’.
Though concealed wasn’t the right word. Their steps had brought them to this place almost inevitably when they had chosen to follow, not the crowd, but rather the natural sweeping perimeter path of the hilltop labyrinth itself. That path had made nearly a complete circle of the entire granite and wrought-silver arena before breaking in two. One way, extending the subtle, decorative mosaic paving they’d been following already, had opened to the inward side, jogging over slightly and otherwise maintaining the courtyard sweep they had initially stepped into when entering the Moth Queen’s Garden court. The second way had lain directly forward of the continued perimeter circle, but as a sharply descending set of plain granite stairs cut into a narrow opening only two shoulders wide—so plain, it appeared as perhaps merely a servant’s entrance. Yet Ki had sensed that the symmetry of its placement meant that it was something more. Unhesitating, they’d followed this second way, down, and then along a small tunneled corridor, which continued the curve of the same circle above, before letting out onto this sparsely populated gallery overlooking the grotto below, the whole space still of cut granite, yet also much greener than the ‘garden’ offered above.
Many further paths and stairways led down into the grotto, which was filled with many more people than this overlooking gallery, although something in the aspect of both groups was subtly different than the broad assortment of folk who’d mingled and searched, perhaps plotted, in the open silver-and-granite labyrinth above. To Du, feigning laziness and leisure, the difference was almost a taste in the air, but he’d had yet to place it. Perhaps San would discover it, having been sent below—San whose face could shift so subtly he was always easily forgot.
That strange taste in the air wasn’t the flowers, although there were an abundance, twining over all surfaces in both the gallery and the grotto, over the same blocks of white granite which seemed to make up everything else in this place, but down here, somehow, let to grow wild. Night-blooming vines, the flowers were each multi-hued so that delicate white outer petals were accentuated by darker inner, with black or perhaps deep purple stamens. They did fill the air with a faint perfume, but it was peppery and light, and somehow separate from the rest of the atmosphere of the night.
Below was…perhaps a ceremony, perhaps something else, but either way it seemed they had found the Moth Queen. Like the Gull Queen, she was not as expected. Though she moved about unerringly upon her raised alter-space, a fine linen bandage was wrapped across her eyes—blind.