SSCS 04: Installment 20 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 20 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…
Then they reached down, carefully, firmly, and pulled it, burning, from the depths of their flesh and soul. And cast it away into the river’s night, already turning to ash before it hit the water.
“Well.” San was crouched beside them, arms wrapped around the bland man who no longer had any hands, holding him in order to keep him from toppling over in his shock and pain. “That certainly was a trap, wasn’t it? Now.” He looked at the man who, shaking but aware, looked back at him. “Where shall we carry your books for you?”
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 20: 23.0329
***
A hunger for gold.
A fear of rats.
The creeping conviction that human life could be bought and sold – as long as it wasn’t human.
A fear of the tide-line when the moon is set.
The pinch and the hunger.
Connections and opportunity…whispered in the darkest corners.
—
El woke suddenly, the shock of sudden awareness splashing through her small body and jerking her upright on the narrow cot, in a narrow room she and the others had last night been offered to sleep in. They mightn’t have been offered that much, except El looked a child (for now she was a child), and the Iron Queen’s Architect—for that is who it was Ki and San had met (and perhaps rescued) the night before—had plead their worthiness to his Queen and named them, the Lazarine, the only ones who might be able to help him now. El thought that his judgement was flawed, at least given the facts as he knew them; they might as easily be his enemy as his friend—but she saw no reason to point that out to him. They’d needed a place to shelter, and closer-to-hand and warm was better than many alternatives.
Today, it had been decided, they would accompany the Iron Queen and her Architect to the Assembly, though the Iron Queen had no intention of acknowledging them once they were inside, and her Architect had no intention of appearing there at all publicly. Missing hands could not be even superficially hidden, and he had agreed to come only so as to name the relevant players to them and then to leave. El hoped it would prove fruitful, but did not expect it. Both her inquiries amongst the wanderers of the Moth-Queen’s maze, and Ki and San’s encounter last night pointed to a power more likely to be found among the docks and warehouses than the Halls of Government—except that now at least two Queens’ avatars had been targeted. The Gull Queen might sponsor them into the Assembly instead if they asked it, but this way would be simpler and faster and would draw the least notice, which was most important; necromancers were very good at hiding when they were alerted with any sort of fanfare. (There was an item or more of regret tucked beside that truth, but El put that away for now; it wasn’t relevant.)
“Where were you dreaming, El?” Lot’s voice, whispered, still shivered a bit through the air between their two cots. El’s once-daughter hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but the tentacles of her hair coiled slowly in the grey-cast early-morning light, stroking the edges of her cot as though to memorize the feel of it there.
“The docks, and warehouses, and alleyways,” El answered. “Though we had no hint of it when we searched those places yesterday.”
“We didn’t know what we were looking for,” Lot replied, eyes still closed. “We didn’t know the size of it.”
“We still don’t.” El smoothed her short-shorn hair back from her face, rose from her cot, and went to the wash-basin set by the window. Cleanliness. Cleanliness was for new beginnings. Ki had already used the basin, she saw. Their cot was empty (only Du was still drowsing), and the wash-rag had been twisted into the circle-symbol they favored. Small rituals. Always appropriate when needed.
A half hour later they were all assembled in the parlor of the Iron Queen’s residence, even Du, who only played his pipes, low and faint and sweet, rather than joining them in breaking their fast.
This residence felt in many ways like the Gull Queen’s, austere. But here it was more like a place that was little used and little occupied rather than as some sign of discipline and denial. El had wondered that the Iron Queen had even been here when they’d arrived last night. It was clear that time was the thing this Queen could never bear wasting, and this residence, like those of all five Queens of this city, was in a fashionable, wrought-silver-gilded neighborhood almost certainly far from the industry and projects the woman usually oversaw – and not from a desk either, not from the way, when they’d talked to her, she’d been always a little bit in motion. Even when listening to explanations from strangers in the middle of the night.
As though to emphasize that point, the woman herself breezed through her parlor now on the way to her door. The Iron Queen didn’t bother with morning greetings, and if her speed was checked at all, it was carefully calculated to be only just slow enough to allow her Architect and the five Lazarine to catch up with her at her door and then to be immediately through it, out, into a silver, half-misted morning. Her pace thereafter down the quiet, broad avenue was fully unchecked, and El did not doubt that if they lagged more than a heartbeat, this Queen would not hesitate to abandon them outside the doors of the Assembly. She did not have time for anything else.
As like the Gull Queen, this Iron Queen’s dress was simple and practical, the quality of her wool trousers and blouse, and the iron-and-ocher piping of her waist-coat, the only present indications of her prominence. That, and the shining, long length of her hair, clubbed back efficiently, but still decadently thick and long in a way true laborers could rarely afford. Her legs were long.
Fortunately, the avenue was not. And so, very soon, they were all being directed into a high-vaulted building—a side entrance, given the murmur of crowds audible from just out of sight. Then, directed toward the public hallways, while the Iron Queen, still silent toward them, disappeared through a second, guarded door.
El stopped before they had the chance to be pushed too far into the public ways, closing her eyes and bracing herself against Lot, who had stopped with her, knowing to wait. El closed her eyes, and breathed in. Breathed in everything this small, quiet hallway could tell her about the larger, grander building, set in the heart of this City of Bridges, which itself lay, suspended and sprawling, across the breadth of a great, wide river, twenty miles from the sea.
There was a hint of it, drifting in small eddies in the air. The fear of rats and a moonless tideline. Rotted wharf stones…touched by a bright, sharp hunger.