Queen Suvani was obsessed with time. Perhaps it was the hourglass shape concealed not only in her throne's expansive seat and fanned back, but in the beautiful but gaunt face which clung to her cheekbones. Even when Suvani looked in the mirror to reassure herself that her beauty was in full bloom, she thought of unreal roses, colored black, grey, and silver; the subtle graces and dark epiphanies of the black magic books she haunted in late night studies; and, the lovely, honorable dead who shared her great name. There was not a day she did not wonder how she would look on her funeral pyre and pine to be the one to throw the last flower, then the torch.
For Queen Suvani's first edict was to set the dead free. As if she declared herself the final authority in Alsantia, taking that privilege from Death herself, she ordered her ancestors exhumed, then tossed into the fire. For commoners, burial was now forbidden, and veneration of the dead with funeral rites was punishable by death. Life was the business of the living, she decreed, and only gods—and their royal embodiments in this world—were honored with an afterlife. The growing ranks of the peasantry murmured—very quietly—that Queen Suvani envied Death her power.
When Sir Fafahite and his sons chose to test their Queen's resolve, they died defending their family mausoleums. Suvani chuckled at the irony, had them burned with their ancestors in one common pit, then ordered the ash to be turned into bone china, so that they could continue to serve her in death. Finding a taste for mingling the ashes of wrath and forgiveness, Suvani allowed Lady Fafahite the privilege of retaining her lands, and a quarter of the coin in her vaults, if she sent her youngest daughter to serve in the newly decreed office of The Queen's Tea Maid.
Queen Suvani smiled as Isola Fafahite set down the bone china tea service—a bold black tray beautified by a pattern depicting white beetles with interlocked legs and mandibles—spooned sugar and lemon into the white cup—crafted like a beetle's head, cocked to one side, and with the pincers coming together to form the handle—bowed, stepped back, and waited with eyes down and hands steepled. A mere slip of a girl, Isola had broken two of the heavy trays before the Queen leveled her most soul-curdling gaze and impressed upon her the importance of not shattering her ancestors. Since then, though Isola could not be said to thrive in captivity, she had adapted, becoming angular and lithely muscular, and her deference took a grim turn, as if she habored rebellion.
While Queen Suvani enjoyed her amusements, and could never be so boring as to release the girl to her mother, she ordered a guard to be in attendance whenever she received her tea. And to ensure her funeral pyre wasn't ahead of its time, as well as to heighten her cruel dominion of the girl, she insisted that Isola share the tea.
"You are a minute late, Isola."
"Forgive me, your majesty."
"That's the beauty of penitence, Isola. Our statues call your service perfect atonement. As pure and pearlescent as this bone china."
Like a boa constrictor devouring a long pig, Queen Suvani's cheeks stretched in the widening of her smile, the better to accomate Isola's humiliating flinch. "Carry yourself with more confidence, Isola. Not only can I not hold anything else against you or your family—unless I rewrite those galling statutes—but you're a pretty girl, if only to an unimaginative or crude cast of mind."
"Thank you, your majesty." <
"Think nothing of it--I'm only considering the best market for one of your unique appeal."
"Your majesty?"
"One slender shoot of hope in ancient writ remarks that not only is your service mine, but that you are bonded to me--which, my advisers tell me, can be construed to mean you are less a servant indentured to expiate her crime than a chattel who sold herself in exchange for royal favor. Don't fret--you'll enjoy my company for two more years, as even slaves cannot be married until they are thirteen."
Isola's hand flew to her bowed face, where the corners of her lips wiggled on wobbly cheeks and a bead of sweat trickled down her brow.
"You're overcome, Isola. I'm touched, but think nothing of it. If I take it as my responsibility to marry you to one of my sternest advisers, this is not only charity on my part, but my hope that your youthful spirit will melt an austere heart, that I might hear less philosophy, and be less harassed by the considerations of old age, like ethics and morals. After all, I'm not that much older than you, Isola. Us girls must stick together."
While the sweat had now mingled with tears, Suvani suspected they were tears of rage.
"I have many plans for you, Isola. But not today. Truskin, you will escort her sad face to the kitchens, then to the northwest embrasure."
"The northwest embrasure, your majesty?"
"Are you a soldier or an echo? Yes, Truskin. She is to gaze through the window from 11:15 to 11:30. Imagine it as a shop window, Truskin."
"At once, your majesty."
"Not so soon, Truskin. As 11:15 is twenty minutes from now, be sure to do things in the order I prescribed, but be sure to be punctual."
"11:15, your majesty."
"To 11:30, Truskin. We mustn't leave Isola standing all afternoon."
"May I ask why I am to stand? Am I being punished?" When Isola dared to look at Queen Suvani, she decided to hasten her plans, so the girl could take out her daydreams of vengeance on old Reffek, who had opposed her one too many times in council.
"If I was to punish you by standing, Isola, you would stand for fifteen days, not fifteen minutes. For young ladies to have prospects, they must be seen, and you must accustom yourself to modest displays if I am to drive up your bride price. What you do not know is I sent out scullery workers to rumor that poor, sweet Isola Fafahite takes her promenade at that time; that she pines for her dead father, weeps for her departed brothers, and in her sorrowful madness has become so deranged that she must hew to this daily regimen with clockwork precision or plunge into the abyss of despair; lastly, and the most persuasive part of the advertisement, that the melancholy girl is possessed of a poignant beauty that promises to become legendary when she becomes a woman."
When Isola's face burned, Suvani was curious of what it signified, for while the queen would be pleased to cause embarrassment, she would be ecstatic to provoke rage in such a tiny person. A ruler of a kingdom, Suvani reasoned, should know exactly how happy they were at all times. Doubt was not regal.
"Truskin, why is Isola still here? If she listens to me monologue all evening, she'll miss her window." Suvani tittered at the horrible pun, then grew quiet as Isola curtsied before turning to take her leave of the Queen. Truskin turned at the door, stamped his foot in salute, then wheeled about in his exit.
After tea, the long traffic of royal audiences continued. The first begged for water rights for his mill; his rival had built a dam upstream, partly to hog the water but mostly to discomfit the miller. While the miller's manner was entitled and rude, and Suvani appreciated the rival's amoral initiative and resource control, she could not be seen as depriving her subjects, who always moaned and griped about not enough this, not enough that. So she ordered Captain Druega to seize both millers' lands. While she never wanted a mill or a bakery, Alsantian bread must be baked.
When the door admitted Lieutenant Strelpa, Queen Suvani raised her drooping head with renewed interest. In his tow were a gigantic, willow blonde ogress as well as a rangy, hairy man and a frowsy woman, both with fangs protruding over their lips and such rude, bolting glances that Suvani knew them at once for werewolves.
Ever since Suvani learned the truth about werewolves, she marveled at the creatures; not talking animals who changed their shape, but humans, who through bestial habits, depravity, and demonic lords, had become animalistic, and the queen wanted nothing more than to rub their ears, ruffle their back fur, and, when she was sure to become bored with the yappy monsters, kick their underbellies and yank their tails.
"If you mean to report what I think, Lieutenant, you know the way to the scaffold."
"While you hate me now, you will love me in a minute's time, your majesty."
"Is the ogre going to vomit out the Gaonan heir? I do love parlor tricks."
"No..." breathed Strelpa with a nervous air he couldn't quite master, not with all his professional bearing and soldierly pride. "But we laid eyes on an Ephremian Zalgyne, your majesty."
"That's proscribed, Strelpa." Queen Suvani hummed involuntarily, as if she had just downed a tasty delicacy. "Did it sport their royal colors?"
"That it did not," said Strelpa. "But they wouldn't be so bold as to fly the green and gold in an open act of sedition, your majesty."
Suvani thought the bold Lieutenant as good as seditious, but kept this to herself, as a loyal and expendable servant could prove their value in one of many meaningful sacrifices.
"The temerity, Strelpa. When I have only nine of the forty Zalgyne I comissioned from them, they have the audacity to taunt me with flying, flagrantly flauting my law."
"Perhaps they are testing your majesty's purchase," insinuated Strelpa sarcastically, hunching his shoulders and inclining his goggly eyes, which always seemed to leer every which way, no matter where was facing.
"You test my patience, Strelpa. You need not report for debriefing until your mission is completed."
When Strelpa looked glumly downcast, the ogress groaned and the werewolves yipped.
"Put a muzzle on your menagerie, Strelpa."
When the ogress smiled at Queen Suvani, her guards drew their swords. An ogre's smile is a horrific thing: teeth so huge and jaggedly sharp that they looked not like part of the ogre, but like they had grown their ogre, then broken off at the right length; moreover, despite their enormity, her gnashers meshed a monstrous but dazzling smile.
"Do you have something to say to your Queen, behemoth?"
"Surely you won't send us away without food? Not even one bite?" Surely as some willful emphasis, the ogress drooled to underscore the point. On her floor. On the floor of the royal throne room.
The Queen was frustrated, for surely this slight must be answered. Not only had the ogress debased the royal throne room, she hadn't used the royal honorific, "your majesty," an egregious offence for which many had died. The ogress acted as carefree as if she was at market, picking assorted heads for her skull salad.
While her guards could no doubt kill this rude interloper, to kill an offender in her throne room amounted to an enormous loss of face that would be rumored for months unless she murdered all who sought audience today. Aside from a historic loss of composure, her throne room would smell like dead ogre for who knows how long, possibly for longer, as Suvani's memory for scents was quite long.
When Truskin returned, and the guards did not salute him, he noticed with a start that they gripped their swords in a staredown with an ogre. "Strelpa! Bring your beast to heel!"
"Truskin," said Suvani, "don't badmouth this delightful abomination. Run back to the kitchens and summon Isola for my afternoon tea. As for dinner, tell the cook that if she underestimates the monstrous appetites of our guests, she'll be plated with capers and garlic in the ogress's honor. But first, Truskin, send away these beggars, and spread the word that I will grant no more audiences today. Make that tomorrow, as well. Sometimes I need two days to clear the stench of peasants from my nostrils."
When the room cleared, Suvani murmured to the closest guard. "Bring my Albatron. Yes, you!" Having scampered away from the sudden heat of his queen's attention, the soldier returned minutes later pushing a cart of gilded wood on which rested a circular crystal bordered by a jagged frame resembling a sunburst.
When the guard took a step toward the guards, who had fallen back in ranks behind the queen's throne, Suvani yelled savagely, "do you mean me to get up myself?"
"No, your majesty." A fearful smile cracked in his fear-whitened face as he stooped over the cart, picked up the sunburst by two of its rays, then walked, with great care, to the throne, where Queen Suvani scooted to the very edge of her seat, leaned forward, then snatched the Albatron carelessly, as if her father had not purchased the age-old mystic treasure at great cost--perhaps her twin brother and sister, who withered away in their cribs and died with ancient faces the week after the Albatron was acquired.
Although Suvani believed her enemies contrived this rumor, at times she thought their infant faces flickered in the corner of the glass, and she looked there for them now. Having assured herself of their absence, she cleared her mind to clear the glass, when the merest glimmer of her baby sister shot through her like a jolt, then fizzled into the bland sheen of the crystal. It was only after a minute of collecting her nerves, an act of regal fortitude which required that she snub everyone in attendance for longer than was plausible, that she returned to the effort of clearing her mind. When her mind was thoroughly dusted, the crystal emitted a crackling, effulgent glow that warmed the throne room.
Whenever the Albatron expanded her sight, she felt that she was good. Not only smart, beautiful, refined, and better than everyone, but good. The magical glass flattered her better than any silver-tongued sycophant, and without words or lies, but only that brilliance coating her whole being with an aura that felt like purity. She might have liked to be good all the time, if it wasn't so much work, and the rewards weren't so few and far between compared to the petty but ongoing rewards of royal spite and queenly power.
"Show me the Gaonan Prince." When the glass failed to resolve, and fused a face piecemeal from several different snobby faces—a snooty nose here, a puffy chin there—she clarified her order. "Show me Prince Conrad of Gaona."
A swarm of pink blossoms burdened the sagging branches of trees drooping in their own oppressive shadows, so that the pink seemed to vampirize the dark woods where Conrad was borne on a fairy litter of levitated fronds of such gigantic size that he might suffocate if the spell ended with his envelopment. As the leaves furled and flapped around him, a raccoon poked its head up to check on the patient.
Unless they stood on hind legs to show off their impressive stature, it was tricky to identify talking raccoons, as nonsentient raccoons also had hands, unlike other mundane Alsantian animals. Moreover, fairies flitted in such insect-like zig-zags that had Suvani not known better, she would have only seen a boy on floating leaves and a curiously loyal animal through a cloud of fireflies. The Queen would know this raccoon's face anywhere, however, as the two stars on its brow marked him as Jgorga, a troublesome miscreant who dared challenge her royal edicts.
As she quietly observed the glass, the food was wheeled in, followed by Isola Fafahite, who gripped another two-handed bone china tea service—this one a bold burgundy red painted with a field of violet tulips, and bearing several violet teacups cunningly crafted to resemble the tulips come to life, as well as a dark red teapot to match the tray.
Having given the tea procession a cursory glance, Suvani returned to the image in the glass, which still tracked the fairies, the raccoon, and the wafting boy, as if it was an actual eye trailing an invisible serpent, the better to slither.
She did not spare a glance for the boisterously loud visitor tramping in after Isola. While she would happily give this one the attention he merited, and so winnow him out of consideration entirely, if she did not allow her brother to come and go, or limited his noxious habits, some might perceive it a weakness stemming not from loathing, but fear. As Vemulus was born only five minutes after Suvani, and born a boy moreover, many expected the former king to prefer Vemulus to ascend the throne; when her father was assassinated, and her one-eyed uncle, who never saw eye to eyes with his brother, agreed with her father's preference for the girl, it led to general amazement. If Suvani ever allowed herself to be less than terrifying, and other than popular, she might be swung to the mob's taste for violence, overthrow, and kings.
"Where is he," Prince Vemulus snarled. "I'll bring the Gaonan dog to heel." Vemulus was a looming brickish boy with scars on his face and hands that said that he was an experienced enthusiast of swordplay, if less than a master.
"I have eyes on him, brother, but he is not here."
"In the dungeons already? Sister, that's uncommonly cold even for our most lukewarm allies."
"He's leaving Alsantia by way of the Elder Groves."
"What?"
"Your man Strelpa brought news along with his excuses, or the dungeon would indeed have new tenants tonight, although not for overlong. Isola, why am I not drinking my afternoon tea?"
"At once, your majesty. Your highness." Having bowed to Vemulus, Isola approached the Queen. The steam that coiled above the tulip teacup smelled sweet, floral, and tinged with a trace of pungency.
"This is new, Isola. What am I drinking?"
Isola knelt at the feet of the throne. "It is an Efremian brew, your majesty: zimona vivara."
"What does that mean?"
"Pardon me, your majesty, I speak little Efremian."
"What does it taste like?"
"That is the first pot brewed in this castle, your majesty."
"Then you have a singular honor, Isola. I'm very curious to know what this tastes like. Taste away."
"Your majesty, I would not think to poison you."
"While you have such a blank, pretty face, and that is no doubt true, you might poison me without thought or care. You are now among a handful of living people who have made me wait, Isola."
When Isola stepped forward to take the cup, Suvani raised the ceramic tulip towards the girl's mouth, as if offering a sip to an infant. Face burning and eyes bright, Isola leaned in and pressed her lips to the rim.
Isola stepped back and wiped her mouth. "It tastes of raspberries and honey, your majesty."
"Indeed?" said Queen Suvani. "Drink it."
"Your majesty?"
"You heard me, Isola."
When Isola drained the tea, Queen Suvani said, "you may sit, Isola. I have something to show you. Truskin, why do you not anticipate my order and bring the girl a chair?"
Once Truskin had dashed from the chamber and returned with a chair for Isola, Suvani bade him, "seat her to my left, Truskin."
"Have you ever seen me with the Albatron, Isola?"
"Yes, your majesty."
"Did you ever think to peer inside?"
"I would not dare, your majesty."
"Such obedience should be rewarded." After confirming that the Albatron still displayed the roving image of the recumbent and floating Prince Conrad, she leaned left and heaved the Albatron in Isola's lap. When Isola flinched from the flowing greenery and shadowed figures in the glass, her head rapped the back of the chair. Suvani chuckled.
"It is wondrous, your majesty."
"Oh, it is," said Suvani, "but that's not what I wanted you to see. If Prince Conrad was the eldest, it might never have been permitted due to the Gaonan rules of primogeniture. Do you know what primogeniture means, Isola?"
"Yes, your majesty."
"Inform my dim-witted guards who have the nerve to eavesdrop on our private conversation."
"It means the eldest inherits, your majesty."
"In this case, while the eldest son of Gaona's king could never marry so low, his youngest son might betroth an Alsantian beauty, and more to the point, the daughter of an old friend who saved him on the battlefield when our banners last joined in alliance."
"Your majesty," said Isola, her voice breaking, "...this is Conrad?"
"I thought you would know him by sight, Isola."
"Your majesty, we were betrothed at birth, and he was sequestered a world away a few years later. How could I know him?"
"That was my thought, Isola. If you recognized him, then you, your late father, and your honorable mother, were privy to the rebels' intelligence, and I would renegotiate my peace with Lady Fafahite. That said, never question me again, Isola."
Isola wept. "Why show him to me?"
"We just went over that, Isola. You're very forgetful. You even forgot to call me your majesty."
Isola's tears were cut off when a paroxysm of fear curled her lips and widened her eyes so much that her eyelids seemed to slide into her skull. "Forgive me, your majesty."
"There's no point, Isola; your service expiates everything. So forgetful you are. You'd forget your head if it wasn't attached." When this threat incensed Isola's weeping despite the Queen's assurances, Suvani added, "not that there's any likelihood of that. Would you forget your mother's face, though?"
"Your majesty! She is also proscribed."
"Speak not to me of proscribed, slave--while I cannot lay my hands on her, or her property, nothing prevents my inviting her to attend the gardens of my southern estate."
"Please do not!"
Isola's begging was nearly drowned in strangled, choking sobs. "My sisters need their mother!"
"If only you presented these concerns to your Queen? You know, 'your majesty?'" Suvani scowled through eyes crackling with amusement.
"Forgive me, your majesty."
"Your majesty," drawled Strelpa, "might we return to present business?"
"For a failure, you're bold, Strelpa."
"Your majesty. If we are not relieved of duty, I would as soon not lose any time."
"I regret it already, Strelpa, but you will take a Zalgyne."
"I would prefer not to, your majesty." While Strelpa bowed his head deeply in this humiliating admission, his eyes somehow continued to make abased eye contact with the Queen, as if he was half serpent or all praying mantis.
Suvani smiled. This one's head she could bite clean off if she wanted. "As my royal engineer doubles as a pilot, Strelpa, you need not discomfit yourself with thoughts of doing justice to my royal transport."
"It is not that, your majesty..."
"You fear injury to your contemptible person?" sneered Suvani. When Strelpa looked away, and all but the ogress--who was attacking a bowl of clams with gusto--cringed, she groanted theatrically. "Do you have any ambition, ogress?"
"Yes," the ogress huffed through a champing, cracking mouthful of clams, snorting shell fragments into the mane of the werewolf woman--who was so shaggy, she didn't notice.
Suvani sighed. "Your manners are unacceptable, but then, you're no man, are you, monster?"
"I'm as much a man as Strelpa," sniggered the ogress, "and wouldn't be here if I was human."
"So much for manners--but the monster is most satisfactory. You're hired, ogre."
"Strelpa hired me. In fact, my term of hire is at an end."
"Then you're out of work. Take Strelpa's job."
"I'm no soldier."
"Strelpa, your aide-de-camp, will show you the ropes of my army."
"Your majesty!" said Strelpa.
"You object to that, Strelpa? I thought to hear your yelp before this."
"What if I don't like it?" said the ogress.
"I don't like you, ogre, and I'm still happy."
"The feeling's mutual." The ogress leered rudely around her reeking mouthful. "I'll have a stab at it."
"Strelpa, show your new boss to the Zalgyne. I want reports twice weekly."
Strelpa saluted, the werewolves staggered in an abysmal mockery of a rustic curtsy, and the ogress turned her shoulder rudely on the queen. They had covered half of the throne room's lengthy walkway when the double doors flew open with such violence that the handles rung on the walls, and a red-bearded bald man sauntered inside with such hasty, dainty steps that his suede-booted feet made only a faint patter.
Only it was neither a real beard, nor a real man, but only Etrusco, that most artificial of her servants, back from parleying with the dwarves. Not only had his garishly-painted crimson beard faded from sweat-scoured stubble streaked by scarlet trails, but he was no longer truly bald, as a profusion of blonde wisps fluttered around his bald spot.
While his inborn masculinity had asserted itself, Etrusco strutted affectedly towards the throne, occasionally swishing the hooded brass cage dangling from his right hand. Behind him trotted two uncouth barons with airs of corruption evident not only in their tipsy swagger, but in their slovenly disregard for attire more fitting their noble rank. While she forgot their names—in truth, she was never so impressed as to learn them—she believed they governed the Ghulmarquean border of the dwarven kingdom.
When they knelt at the bottom step leading to her throne—Etrusco setting the cage on the step above—Queen Suvani said, "we are delighted, Satra Etrusco. Please approach the throne."
Etrusco clapped his hands, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. "May Lord Vazhna smile upon your majesty."
"I've given your brooding demon cause to laugh."
At Etrusco's toadying titter, Suvani could not help chuckling both at and with this sycophant, who clutched the ring of the covered brass cage, then sashayed with mincing steps to her throne. He spared not a glance for Isola, who still sat demurely beside the Queen. After his florid bow, his eyes seemed to bound back into a wide-eyed and obsequious simper: "perhaps introductions are in order, your majesty."
Queen Suvani's eyes flashed at this appearance of impertinence. "I already know you too well, Etrusco."
With a flourish, the priest peeled the hood from the brass cage, revealing a petite ginger cat, whose fur went up instantly in its full body growl. "As we are such good friends, your majesty, I am pleased to introduce my freshest acquaintance, Prince Oji, Pretender to the Alsantian throne."
Despite the gentle swing of the cage, the snarling cat swayed on all fours. "Queen Suvani, you won't sit on the Noble Pelt. Our throne is not yours. Two monarchs have served Alsantia for centuries."
"One: I don't serve, I rule; two: despite my interest in arbitrary customs, I have decred myself the only rightful monarch, which makes you not only an interloper, but an imposter; three, it's beneath my dignity to talk to rodents, cat."
When Oji retorted, indignantly, "cats aren't rodents," Queen Suvani lashed out, and her teacup burst into violet and white shards as it imparted a massive lurch to the cage.
"After you've taken it to the royal menagerie, Truskin, and posted your best men, see that it's treated neither better nor worse than any other beast on my grounds."
"If I have a say, worse," sneered Prince Vemulus.
"Then it's good for the kitty that you don't have a say, Vem."
"You would mock me in front of my subjects?" snapped Vemulus, his face flushed. Startled by this exclamation, Truskin paused mid-stoop, his hand clenched on the ring of Oji's cage.
"My subjects. My throne room. Your Queen. Your majesty, although I won't hold you to that. At the very least, you're family." When Oji took advantage of Truskin's nearness and immobility to dart his paw through the bars and scrape the soldier's nose, Suvani laughed long and loud, and Vemulus laughed too, if half-heartedly and with a sour grimace on his twisted moue.
Truskin wiped the tiny streaks of blood on his nose, and bowed stiffly toward Prince Vemulus, then floridly and deeply toward Queen Suvani. Turning on his heel, he marched to the double doors, paused at the threshold, and spun for another bow, before stepping into the hall, where his exaggerated stomp boomed loudly, caused more smirking to bat between the royal siblings, and gave all in the audience chamber reason to doubt Truskin's sincerity.
"Where do you pick these maggoty mushrooms, sister? Hollow, faces with as much character as trash lids, and full of garbage, every one." The Prince's contemptuous gaze swiveled from face to face, some fawning and some fearful, before lingering on the ogress in astonishment, then resting on Isola the mild interest with which a cruel boy might regard a fly prior to peeling away its wings.
"How quickly you taught the thankless beast to lick your hand."
"She's nearly a housepet." Queen Suvani pinked in pride at the compliment. "If she had not given me a poisoning scare, I might have called for pillows at the foot of my bed."
"Poison? This one?" Vemulus strode to Isola, then bent his face to a half inch away, so that no matter how she strove to avert her gaze, her vision was obscured by the sweaty, disdainful gargoyle. Queen Suvani may have felt her first twinge of honest pity, for even ensconced in her throne a yard away, her brother's skulking, malodorous breath might have made a horse faint, and Isola was so close that she was no doubt hooded in the rasping breath.
"Inspect her from further away, if you please. Respect her like a Vendelgrot." As the famous sculptor had died midway through the redesign of Queen Suvani's throne room, the front half of the pillars, and their friezes placing Suvani in every mythical, historical, and myth-historical event, were heavenly, like javelins cast down from the gods, while inferior hands had turned their back halves into grotesques and given Suvani gorgon eyes, as wide as teacups. Suvani was understandably sensitive about this gawking image, which repeated on pillar backs a dozen times on either side, but though she dearly wanted them redone, the royal architect insisted a third redo would cause the untimely collapse of the pillars, the throne room, and the royal palace.
"A Vendelgrot? Sister, should I not respect her more than these death's heads that drudge installed in my future throne room."
At the hushed murmur, Queen Suvani reined in her smile, for though she enjoyed bantering with her brother, and privately did not care how many lines he crossed, she must answer this with a threat they, and even he, might believe. "I could have your hand for the discourtesy and your eyes for the treason, brother," she said as sweetly as she could.
"Sister! Am I not next in line for the throne? I meant only that." He refilled his wine glass and turned to the crowd. "Long live Queen Suvani!" Although the acoustics of her throne room magnified their half-hearted cheer to sound like they were three times their number, the Queen was not entirely satisfied.
"Your loyalty is touching, Vemulus." She leveled a dark stare, which he flagrantly flouted with an eye-roll and a toss of his hair. "I can think of no one better to lead my armies tomorrow."
"I'm busy tomorrow. Send for me next week." Only the ogress chuckled at Vemulus's brassy temerity.
"You are only flippant because you think I am in jest, Vem."
"Are you not?" asked Vemulus, the trace of an astonished gape on his face.
"My sweet Prince, I am deadly serious." Laying her most dominating glare upon him, Suvani raised her hands to the arms of her throne, then stood in anticipation of her next pronouncement. "As Efremia flies Zalgynes in flagrant defiance of my edict, Vem, we will teach them their master. As our father brought Efremia into the Alsantian empire, I will not call it war, but even past battlefields grow weeds that must be quashed."
"Weeds?" snarled Vemulus. "Am I a gardener or your general?"
"Since you go in my name, bespeak as much power as you like."
"You're saying I can do as I please. You may come to regret that, Suvani."
"Vemulus, how can I value my kingdom if I know not the value of my own brother? As I expect you'll do exactly what's in your nature, the Efremians will come to regret it, but not I."
"May I not overstep your regard, my Queen."
"I will try to love you less, dear brother, lest I provide an obstacle and the cause of your tresspass."
Vemulus sneered. "I will regift your love to the Ephremians."
When her brother stormed out—without waiting on her leave, or even turning his head in a backwards glance—Suvani dismissed Isola first, then the others, save two guards for an escort, one of whom pushed the Albatron's cart. Having scooted the cart under the casement window, he too his position flanking her bedroom door.
Since Suvani was not a tall woman, and the Albatron was a unwieldy, cumbersome artifact, one handle scraped along the floor as she dragged it one-handed to her bed, and when it snagged in bunched-up carpet, she jerked it into both hands, flung herself backwards with a flumph into her comforter and pillows, then raised the Albatron overhead to peer into its opaque glass.
"Father said you're a window to the future, too." The magic mirror only misted in answer.
Suvani had never requested a glimpse of the future, for she feared the uncertainty of her reign for all her pomp and bravado. She feared to see herself flung from the tower, put to the sword or the torch, forced to drink poison, or polished off in the gorier or nastier ways that unpopular kings and queens had died. Being hated was a lark, but she must never let herself become less than popular. And if she already was unpopular, she must never know, or the beasts, both human and animal, would pounce upon her terror.
Things had changed.
She had their petty kitty-cat prince, Oji.
The jumped-up talking beasts insisted that their king governed a nation of animals, not borders, and that the Alsantian map was nonsense, for the dotted lines designating old Alsantia, Efremia, Ghulmarque, Daiko, and Gaona existed nowhere in reality, and could be crossed by a foot or paw of any size. Suvani knew this idealism was hokum, that the animals were simply rebelling against the cold, hard facts of power—that they flouted not only borders, walls, and roads, but her laws and decrees. Even if the animals thought human existence was meaningless, now that she had their prince, she would bring them in line.
She smiled smugly as she gloated about the scrawny ginger in her grasp. "Give me a peek, Alabtron."
The vision exploded with such illumination that her watering eyes blinked, and the heat brought sweat to her cheeks and forehead; as it unfolded on the glass, she cried out, lost her grip on a glassy handle, then screeched even louder as the Albatron rapped her skull. In her flinch, it struck not her eye and nose, but her throbbing ear, a lessened impact that also spared the glass, so that the unscratched surface glared back, as if taunting her to test its invulnerability.
"Your majesty!" Hearing Suvani's plaintive cries, the guards opened her doors, expecting to put themselves between their queen and an assassin, and suffered only hurled pillows, then a sloshing ewer, for their pains.
She seethed at the Albatron, which now lay inert and opaque on the rumpled mattress. At first, the vision was a heartening sight. Her pennants flew over Efremia, and Vemulus swaggered through their capitol with a cruel smile. When the focus changed to Alsantia, she was likewise enheartened by the Alsantian flags flying over the battlements, until, like a bird of prey, the Albatron's eye swooped through the palace window, to see herself seated on the throne, her hands on her knees in a regal pose.
Regal or deathlike? Her breath caught. A statue sat on the Alsantian throne, its stone cut to resemble Suvani as she was in life. Was this a joke? Could the Albatron joke at its seer's expense? Or was this a symbol, a shared dream crafted by the Albatron to school her in its secret meaning? If it showed her true future, who would enthrone an effigy but a scornful conqueror?
In her uncertainty, it galled her to realize only one thing was certain. The Albatron was no longer trustworthy. Having once discarded a wineglass for a subtle flaw, she had only one recourse for the artifact, if its wisdom was now treachery, at worst, or caprice, at best. Picking up the ancient relic, Suvani hurled it through the casement window.
While the mirror's flickering tumble built up terrific anticipation for its obliteration, to Suvani's chagrin, it landed in the shrubs, to all appearances intact.
She screeched until the door was cracked by the guard she had just shouted into the hallway. It creaked open to show first the white tip of his nose, then eyes shrunk from fear, as if she had scratched away the courage and laid bare the timidity of the cringing hero. "Get it!" she yelled.
"What is your pleasure, your majesty?"
"The Albatron, fool! It's in the bushes! And tell no one what you do!"
Although her mousy guard crept downstairs and back to be hollered into an even hollower mouse, then slunk downstairs and back again, the Albatron was gone.