SSCS 04: Installment 34 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 34 of this year’s SSCS (the final installment!). 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…
And yet this new guard walked in from outside. And spoke to her comrades about how they should bind and hold this new prisoner. And shifted her stance. And shifted it again, not looking down. Yet when she shifted a third time, such that her boot brushed against the necromancer’s yet-outstretched hand, she looked down upon him with great urgency, and great clarity, and spoke one word: “Yes.”
She fell then, the unremarked guard, toppling, so that for a moment the ones she had been speaking to thought she was merely bending down.
But then they were the ones to fall next, to be much more brutally cut down. The first guard’s lifeforce freely given had shattered the binding laid upon the necromancer, and in an instant he was no longer prone upon the stones, but lunging forward to snatch more life, more power for himself, ripping it away this time, quick as a heartbeat, twice as bloody, and three times as powerful. And that done, he was lunging for the Queens next. For the Queens and for the instrument that held thrall over all the other guard present, that was right now being carefully stitched back into the Huntress’s breast.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 34: 24.0619
But El reached him first, lifted up one slender hand as he tried to lunge past her and gently grazed his cheek.
And so, the necromancer Emissary was dead himself when he fell upon the tableau of the re-binding, just a corpse that had suddenly gotten in the way. All was shouting and chaos for many minutes as everyone moved too slowly in reaction, then moved to haul the body out of the way, to check the health of the Gull Queen and her Avatar who’d been crashed down upon, to whirl around frantically for other threats to fight back. El had already returned to her stitching, the two under her care both rendered unconscious by the tumult, but still alive, still waiting for her to finish.
(Later, and in private, she would leech herself of the blood running through her veins now contaminated with stolen life, let it drain from her, spool out of her, as much and as long as this small body she lived in now could manage. But for now she must not let even a flicker of that new-burning power show, must not let it sneak past the boundary of her skin, to touch the Huntress or the Queen—they would lap it up greedily, unknowing of the source, and then burning ever afterward to taste it more.)
Quiet and chaos, but at last the work was done, and the four Lazarine rose to stand together, facing the Moth Queen and her two charges, and all the bristling fear of the assembled guard who could compose themselves within the confines of the corridor. At some point the two remaining Queens had been called—Iron Queen whose Architect was not yet healed, and Haven Queen who, with her Cipher, had seemed to escape the necromancer’s plots unscathed. They stood now at the Moth Queen’s back, letting the oldest of them speak for them all.
“She will heal from this ordeal,” El answered them first, “be able to grasp hold of her magic again. But she might never be able to bind another.” She spoke as a physician to her patient’s guardian, but only for the Gull Queen directly. These binding magics that had left the Huntress still living though her heart had been removed were too strange and subtle to be sure how that one—Huntress Enna—would fare. But as Last Seekers they had promised only to return the Heart before she died, not to heal her.
The Moth Queen nodded. “It will give her time enough to train her replacement, or at least to make one ready.” She smiled sardonically, one corner of her eerily flawless mouth lifting more in weariness than amusement. “Likely she will not want to step away soon. The Dowager Salt Queen had thought her daughter ready, after all. We had all thought Emmissary Ferrik, whom she had sponsored so long, trained so closely, would be sufficient prop to Magana’s remaining inexperience.”
El returned no answer to this. To judge by the youth of the months-dead Salt Queen, Magana, this City of Bridges, these Queens, must have been harboring a fledgling necromancer for many, many years before the mother ever left the throne. Either they knew that already, or they did not, would not.
Instead Ki spoke next. “We will return at dawn to Gull Queen’s Residence to collect our payment owed, and then we will be gone. Look you to your own to recover your remaining Tools. And be wary of traps. Your necromancer nearly triumphed tonight because of his own foresightedness. Think what else he might have done whilst your Hands were in his possession.” Ki looked to the Iron Queen, then turned their gaze, more pointed, to Haven Queen next—her Cipher was not right now by her side. “Or with help or council from others unwary, or sympathetic to his cause.”
The Moth Queen’s tired smile curled tighter still, but she did not answer this directly. Instead she asked, “And what of his other ally, the one your San told me had turned to adversary and subdued him? Will you tell me nothing more except that you bargained it into betrayal?” As a seeker-out of secrets, the Moth Queen knew the power of what she now asked, just as they knew she, of all the city’s Queens, would not begrudge them holding their own secrets tight.
Still, San spoke up with half an answer that most would have considered well full. “There was not time enough for me to determine the true nature of the Chiton Horde, as it called itself, except to know that it also valued the gathering of secrets—what it called ‘wisdoms’. And within the bargaining, it shared some of its wisdoms with me:
“One: It met your Emmissary somewhere far away on his travels. Two: It holds the power to operate many more (and living) hosts, or shards, than Necromancer Ferrik could control of the dead—an ability he undoubtedly coveted. And three: It was collaborating with him in order to gather new shard-hosts for itself (rounded up, I understand, from the sort of people who wouldn’t be missed) and to assist his experiments in the farming of more and more and more of your binding threads, which were then destined for whomever he deemed truly disposable, and therefore useful as his puppets.” In fact, the Trawerlers had been beyond the status of outsiders in this city, had been more deep-river scavengers and strangers. Even the Moth Queen’s people had been happy enough to seek out profit when they’d heard a group of those folk had come to their end, down in the drifting river deep.
The Moth Queen’s eyes narrowed. She’d heard from Iron Queen about the dead Trawerler who had ambushed her Architect. But before she could answer, demand more, San continued, “The Horde does not want your binding magics—it does not need them, and it prefers to hide and nest in the shadows. I can show you the nest it brought me to if you wish, but I suspect it will have left this city well before we do.”
A pause, and then the Moth Queen nodded, gracious and serene as was necessary. “We will send an agent to go with you now,” she said, careful acceptance. “And then we will meet you once more tomorrow, at dawn.”
***
At dawn the next day, they met the Moth Queen and an entourage of her agents just outside the doors to Gull Queen’s residence. The early-morning light cast the austere structure into dull, dark shadow, while the bridges arcing away just across the square glimmered and glinted in their wrought-silver curlicues. Gulls cried overhead, and the morning breeze blew gently inland and up-River from the sea.
“And where do you go next?” asked the Moth Queen, expecting no answer to this question. “You have lost one of your own, as we have.”
Ki, who was accepting their payment, merely shook their pale head. And both El and San were already turned resolutely away. Hand-in-hand they could drift into the crowd and be swiftly lost as nothing more than a father and his daughter heading to their labors.
Only Du returned the Moth Queen’s look directly, and what she saw there was something very deep, and very black. She had thought him perhaps a kindred to her too long years, but now she had to hold herself very still to keep from shuddering, had to wish herself glad that she was not right now wearing her Sight. Their comrade had been lured away, after all, not murdered—of course they intended to recover her. But now she sensed, deep in the hollows of her bones, that it was better to guess no more than that, that it was better not even to guess what these Breathbound Lazarine might consider a ‘recovery’. Because as the youngest of them had looked at her just now, and then away, he’d looked alien as the night. Alien, and wrapped in a tight-reined sorrow that was almost…hungry.