SSCS 04: Installment 14 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 14 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…
When all that could be learned had been learned, the conscript stood and walked away, breathing easily, knowing that they did not need to come to this place again. They left their talisman behind them, a scrap of button and cloth, well pressed and worn. They no longer needed it.
And as they left, El whispered to Lot the small bits that she had found, then rose and went out to find another. Lot settled herself back again, and laid out the cards. They were looking now for goods moved in secret, for goods that would ordinarily object. They were looking for port-ways kept well concealed.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 14: 22.0508
***
Below the granite labyrinth, within the half-hidden, vine-covered grotto, the Moth-Queen moved with obvious, unerring purpose back-and-forth between the petitioners (so Ki had decided to name them) that filled the space before her altar or dais, and the wall at the back of the altar, which was filled top to bottom with small, cut-stone cubbies, each holding a single scroll. Though the linen cloth was bound tight across her eyes, her hands never hesitated to reach, swift and sure, for a particular scroll—even as they watched, she brushed aside a blooming vine that had fallen across the space of the one she sought to pluck the roll of parchment from behind it. Nor did she pause to wait for the flow of the crowd to present the next petitioner to her—often, those below were hesitant in stepping forward, but she had each scroll ready to hand, and stepped lightly forward to cross to those who lagged. Then back to her wall for another.
“Soon, I’ll need you to go down as well.” Ki laid a pale hand on Du’s shoulder from their place in the gallery perched above the hidden grotto. They didn’t check for Du’s grimace or nod of agreement at this, their colorless eyes remaining locked on the proceedings below, the careful, not-entirely-random flow of the gathering, the precise movements of the blind-bound Moth-Queen upon her altar-space. Reflexively, they did not search the crowd for San as they would have, just as reflexively, twenty lifetimes ago. The chameleon who was their beloved would not stand out, even to their eyes, and they had long made peace with merely the certainty that he was there, and would return to them, when it was time.
Du shivered to hear these instructions, though. Though if pressed, he would not have said why. There was something in the people below—and, too, in the fewer who sat up in this gallery here—that was too closely attendant upon the Moth Queen and her altar. There were murmurs filling up the flower-scented air, but they did not feel like the murmurs of conversation—more like whispered prayers. Supplication. Memories and too-old thoughts had pulled Du under this evening once already. He feared falling back into them again if the pattern of ceremony playing below caught him up within the crowd, and where would he be without El here to guide him back again? Who, or what, would he fall service to then?
Ki’s hand moved, reassurance, to the nape of Du’s neck, tracing an old scar that had not marked his flesh for many, many lifetimes. Ki might not have El’s power for guidance, but as her second, and as a priest of AkunSoohn, they could bind a person if necessary, even a half-djinn like Du. They would be here to leash him if it came to that.
Du shivered again. Why, tonight, did it seem like it might come to that, when it hadn’t done for the past three lifetimes?
Then, the tenor of the air shifted, and Du sat up straighter from his slouch. It felt as though, suddenly, there was a music beneath the murmured whispers, or within the spaces the whispers left unoccupied, a low, primordial rhythm. Ki’s hand stilled on the back of his neck, though the priest of AkunSoohn did not otherwise indicate they sensed anything different, colorless eyes continuing to catalog all they saw below.
And what they saw was the Moth Queen drawing forth two scrolls this time, and now two petitioners, a man and woman, not just approaching her dais, but striding up onto it. Both were dressed in the same silver-belted, deep-green robes as the fee-taker at the gate that had led up to this garden, and the man didn’t just mount the dais, but crossed to the Queen before her right hand had finished drawing its scroll from its cubby, placed his own hand upon hers to stop it. As soon as she stilled at his touch, the man plucked the scroll from her fingers and slid it back into place, then selected another of his choosing, handing the second scroll the Moth Queen had drawn over to his companion.
Then, because they were watching for it, Ki and Du saw what happened next, even if most of the crowd saw only the blind-seeming Queen turn and sketch a benediction at the retreating backs of her two servants. A line of silver flashed between her right hand and the hand of the man now departing. A sharp, taut, momentary light, that tore at something deep in the back of Du’s mind to see it.
Ki’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, one nail pressing to draw a single pin-prick of blood. Then: “Go below. San and I will be following them. Stay with this crowd as long as you can.”