SSCS 04: Installment 27 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 27 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…
Only El and Ki stayed grounded in the center of this sweet storm of sound, Ki with hand up-raised and pressing side-long against it, long, pale fingers flexing, questing for the way through. El had dropped her black bag at her feet, dark eyes locked on the djinn-lit eyes of Du as he played, then reached inside and pulled out a golden, sickle-shaped knife. As Ki’s fingers, like wind slipping past sound, found the purchase or path that they sought, El slashed upward with her knife, the magic tearing and parting in its wake.
But they were both too slow, too soft in their reflexes, too late.
Catching the wake of his own music, Du had already ridden it past them, past stone pillars and twisting stone hall, through the growing press of bodies and the crowd, to land with a dark-euphoric splash of ringing stillness in the very center of the great Assembly courtyard.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 27: 24.0128
The silence spread, and spread. And from its center, Du looked up at the balcony of Queens of Kolssidir arrayed before him, before the crowd. The promise of hungers sated and then renewed had been taken from him, but here was something worth playing with. Something fine and fragile and thinking it could hide.
Looking up at the Queens and their avatars, Du took a moment to savor it. He tasted the blush of the sky overhead, a soft white that was burning with the day toward a searing blue. Then tasted the breeze drifting over the top of the great, walled courtyard, humming too low for most gathered here to hear, but gathering up the sound and the soul, the mist and the hum, of the River unseen that yet flowed through the city all around.
Then he tasted the moment of fear that had woken with his entrance. Not the fear of the gathered crowd. They were too still yet to even know that he had come, still frozen in that moment, that magic. Nor the fear of the Queens, who stood above this Assembly and yet far from it. When had an Assembly last required their full attention? They would see him, in a moment, a savory moment that would be too late. But first there was this fear, bright, like the first sliver of the dawn. It would slip to mundanity just as quickly as the dawn if not caught now, not savored. This fear from one who was here, but thought he could hide in shadows. With his magic wakened and flowing all around, Du could taste him here.
The puppet would know. The puppet would spill all the secrets out wide. Or, if not that, would offer fine raw and rotting flesh for Du to sing new music upon.
Lifting his pan flute to his lips once more, djinn light bright in his eyes, Du wove a new sound, high and sharp and heavy, releasing the moment, but not the will all around him. His music was his tether, his whiplash and smother, to bow them all down. Down to the stones. Down to grovel before him standing at their center. A breath and a heartbeat and then. And then they all bowed, and no one in that broad courtyard was left on their feet but he. The crowd felled like wheat, but breathing.
That quickened the Queens’ attention at last, brought them out of the drone of their ceremony. Prolonged the savory of that other one’s fear. It was thick on Du’s tongue, down his throat, filling his teeth and his hunger.
A hunger wanting meat. Something to wrap ‘round. And the puppet there would be sweetest, dead and ripe. Almost, Du did not move again just to savor the anticipation of that dead flesh, those secrets. But not long. Not long; why wait? Why risk this hunger’s sating when he knew, that small, thin piece of himself that would have hung back, knew that his leash would be swift in coming for him.
And so, by the music, and this body’s strength, propelled he leapt and caught a stone railing, and though he had lingered and savored, still it had been too swift, and those who knelt and the Queens whose eyes had widened, had time only to startle, to draw a frightened breath, before the standing corpse was beneath his hand, the dead throat, sweet and cold, wrapped round, the dead sternum buckling with a satisfying crunch, in time with the music.
***
Powerful and old as the Mother of Death, yet El, and her second, Ki, were slowed by reflexes left stale, old habits forcefully forgotten, and fragile, too-new bodies that never had been present for the leveling of armies. Seeking Du, they’d not been drawn very far from the courtyard, not in minutes, but the walls slowed them, and the passersby they were no longer willing to trample.
By the time they reached the Assembly space, the crowd had been leveled, and their wild half-djinn had breached the Queens’ balcony, had reached the Salt Queen’s disguised corpse, and in his rush and his hunger, had driven the dead puppet into the far wall, cracking the stones beneath them.
There was no time left for subtlety, no chance left to pretend at being less than they were, less dangerous, less alien. They must focus only on leashing him. Otherwise the guards who had woken, too slow, to Du’s presence, would be injured in trying to stop him themselves. And all for naught.
Lifting the gold, sickle-shaped knife she still held in her child-seeming hand, El slashed at the thick press of Du’s music, swift and keen, cutting and carving it to her purpose, offering it to Ki, a ladder shining bright.
Without needing to be told, seeing all as El shaped it, Ki climbed swiftly, seeming to tread upon the air, their thin form a white blur arrowing along the shortest path, the straightest, towards Du.
The dead-Queen’s Avatar, her Emmissary and keeper of her Breath, reached out as Ki passed, as though he might stop this second, apparent foe. But the swiftest path lay in slipping around his reaching hand, in slipping under and through. And so Ki’s hand landed on Du’s neck with seconds to spare, their fingers slipping under the skin, through that old, unseen scar. Wrapping the leash tight and hauling the half-djinn forcefully back before the sweeping blade of the first guard to arrive had a chance to land upon him.