destiny's queen 10

 

Chapter 10

 

“Oh, mighty Skyhorse, lord of thunder, rescue me and my maid and the sixteen virgins to be violated from an unwanted wedding,” said Tallys.

There was a rumble of thunder.

“I... surely not...” said Kissia, clinging to Tallys.

A loud crack, the smell of ozone, and a blond, bearded warrior appeared in Tallys’s bedroom.

“As you thought of others, your prayer is answered,” said Harkon. “But you will have to be kept secret and safe until we’re ready. Take my hands. Uh... did you pack?”

“No,” said Tallys.

“Oh, for goodness sake! Pack quickly, both of you, simple clothes, you don’t want to smell for a lack of changes.”

Kissia packed quickly, more hindered than helped by Tallys.

“Monthly cloths,” said Harkon.

Kissia blushed, and packed them.

“Right. Hold on,” said Harkon, and zapped them back to Sjurgi’s inner courtyard.

“Find them some rooms, and make sure nobody sees them who isn’t one of us,” said Harkon.

“But... but you’re Thea Drex!” said Tallys, trembling.

“Not any more; I’ve gone back to being Sjurgi, which is who I was born,” said Sjurgi. “Come along! I don’t think I have anyone disloyal, but your mother would pay much for your whereabouts, and we need to change your appearance quickly.”

Tallys and Kissia let themselves be led off meekly.

“I wonder if we should send them to Mesolimnos,” said Ralthur.

“No; I have the feeling we will need Tallys to see what really goes on, and to be ready to take over when we win,” said Harkon.

 

 

“Isn’t rescuing the slaves who are to be deflowered more important than changing my appearance?” demanded Tallys. Sjurgi was cutting her hair ruthlessly, and dying it. Unlike the Empress, who was a strawberry blonde, Tallys had ginger hair, not dark enough auburn to be the prized ‘blood hair,’ but distinctive for all that.

“We had already been planning on that; you and Kissia are, as you might say, an extra bargain,” said Sjurgi.

“Well, what are you going to do about them? I demand to know!” Tallys stamped her feet.

She found herself upended over Sjurgi’s lap and received two sharp rebukes where Sjurgi thought it would do most good.

“You have no need to know,” said Sjurgi. “Do not act the spoilt brat to me, miss.”

“Nobody has ever struck me, before!” gasped Tallys. “Kissia is my whipping maid!”

“And is that fair?” asked Sjurgi.

“No,” said Tallys. “I try not to get her into trouble, but I don’t understand why I shouldn’t be told. I care that they are going to be hurt over me. And that isn’t right.”

“You have the right instincts; but for now, you must live with being kept in the dark. Because you might let something slip by accident; we don’t know you, and don’t know how good you are at keeping secrets,” said Sjurgi. “And because you demanded most rudely of me.”

“But... but I am a princess!” said Tallys.

“Means nothing to me; I’m a hero of Alethos, which means I’ve earned respect, not expecting to get it merely for being squeezed out between the august thighs of your bitch of a mother,” said Sjurgi.

Tallys gaped.

“I... I have always been treated with respect,” she said.

“No, you have always been treated with circumspection because you can cause trouble for others,” said Sjurgi. “If you want to learn to be free, you will have to work your way up like everyone else. And, by the way, Kissia, do you want to resume your former name?”

“Yes,” said Kissia. “I am Vanda.”

Sjurgi frowned.

“Do you have an elder sister named Svargia? I believe she was born to the tribe of the deer, though she is also adopted to the tribe of the wild falcons.”

“Yes, I do!” said Vanda. “I am tribe of the deer.”

“Then you are as kindred to me,” said Sjurgi. “Svargia is a dear sword-sister of mine, and we stood shoulder to shoulder with her adopted kindred, Vulk and Polia to tear down the moonwolf;  Vulk has assumed his place, with shifters replacing lycoids, even as my brother has taken on the duties of the god of storms, who was slain by the wolf. You need to know this; but I ask you both not to speak of it, as we do not want the worshippers of Ombros the Skyhorse to despair at his death.”

“I... we appear to be in very exalted company,” said Tallys. “I do not know the protocols.”

“We work on the protocol of being polite to everyone except enemies,” said Sjurgi, dryly. “And to me, you rank slightly below Vanda, since she’s kin of my kin. Get used to it.”

“I...” Tallys shut her mouth with a snap, containing a burst of temper.

“Good girl,” said Sjurgi.

 

Julus Helio sent for Fadabius and Aquilix. He looked as if he had aged several years, and his clothes hung limply on him.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “The empress’s daughter, Princess Tallys, has been kidnapped, possibly by plainsmen, as her plainswoman slave has vanished with her.”

“Are you certain it was a kidnapping?” asked Harkon.

“Well, what else can it be, Aquilix?” asked Julus.

“I heard the bridegroom is supposed to be Ogeron Cass,” rumbled Harkon.

“Yes, what of it? He’s a general, thirty years old, good looking, excellent family,” said Julus.

“Don’t you think that a very young girl might find thirty to be old?” said Harkon. “And she’s bound to think he’s older than he is, since he’s her mother’s lover.  I find that sort of relationship rather disturbing as a suitor for a young girl.”

Julus paled.

“Surely she cannot have run away?” he gasped. “Where would she go?”

Harkon shook his head, sadly. “I doubt a tenderly reared princess would get very far, unless she had help from without. There are always predators at night. Young girls are favoured prey of bloodsuckers, who are welcome in our city as worshippers of the goddess’s daughter. I’ve pulled a few out of the river in my time. By that time, their original rank is no longer obvious, once they’ve been exsanguinated into husks. The... damage... where the bloodsuckers sate their lust as well is usually extensive.”

“Oh, goddess!” said Julus, paling. “But... but maybe she has been kidnapped? Isn’t it possible?”

“It is,” said Ralthur. “And we will certainly keep our noses to the ground. I fear we’ve been concentrating our finest efforts on uncovering dissidents. So, does she have any distinguishing mark, lest the sad fact arise of finding her body?”

“Divert  all your efforts to finding Princess Tallys,” said Julus. “As far as I know there is no distinguishing mark... a princess cannot have a blemish. She has distinctive rust-coloured hair.  Just... find her. And make sure she is alive.”

“You do not wish people to know she is missing, but suppose it were to be released that she celebrates her wedding in true Trickster fashion by hiding in plain sight, and a reward of five thousand moons is offered if she is correctly identified, and brought to a royal guard post?” suggested Harkon. Julus looked horrified for a moment, and then cunning.

“You know, that’s actually quite brilliant,” he said. “Go and see to it.”

“As you command,” said Harkon, bowing. They left; and exchanged a savage grin.

The royal guard was about to get sightings of the royal runaway in random places that would keep them running about like headless chickens, freeing Harkon and Ralthur to operate wherever they pleased. And all kinds of imposters would be presented; and if they suffered for it, well, the wages of greed were never pretty.

“Mind, if I was Julus, I’d hang on to any imposters,” said Ralthur. “Once they fail to find her, they will want a bride on the wedding day, or lose a massive amount of face. And she only has to bear a superficial  likeness, for how many people have seen her close up or for long?”

“Good point,” said Harkon.

 

oOoOo

 

“And supposing someone sees me and reports me?” asked Tallys, in a panic.

“That’s why you are learning to move and walk like a boy so it never occurs to anyone,” said Sjurgi.  “Learn well, and you will be fine.”

 

oOoOo

 

Deathday could not come soon enough for the conspirators.

Naturally, they went to worship with their bodyguard; that their worship was not sincerely directed at Thanus would not be noticed in a congregation whose worship was mostly for the reason of getting on in their military career. As a group of heroes, they were able to act as their own temple, and almost openly worship Alethos. Harkon stood hard on Dróg’s foot when the trógling had to fight a fit of the giggles. He swiftly got it under control; he was used to schooling emotions.

And Harkon, Ralthur, and Sjurgi slipped out as the godplane was opened for the celebrants to enter and experience their god, slipping down into the subterranean parts of the temple which Harkon had once had to learn about from Kaz.

One of the trógling team was waiting, impatiently, to usher them into the sewers, through a neat hole.

“If you take too long, I’ll close it up, my lord,” he said.

“Yes, obviously,” said Harkon. “Good man. Alethos be with you.”

They followed the sewers to the basement of the temple to Selen, where another trógling grinned savagely.

“Let them have it,” he said. 

“We will,” said Harkon.

First things must be accomplished first, and the holding cells of the girls rounded up for deflowering must be discovered. Sjurgi knew where holding cells might be found; for penitents of the faith, usually, as well as political prisoners. It was a surprise to find four older girls held in separate cells.

“Don’t make a noise, we’re here to rescue you,” said Sjurgi. “Why are you being held separately?”

“Because we older ones planned to spoil the ceremony by deflowering everyone as gently as possible,” said one of the girls. “It wouldn’t stop them hurting us but at least it would be inauspicious.”

“Heh, you have a future ahead of you as a rebel,” said Sjurgi. “Come on, quickly, and help with the little ones. We have some Thorns to kill.”

“I hope they die hard,” said the girl. “They’ve been describing what they intended.”

“They’ll die as hard as we can make it,” said Sjurgi, who was planning on making her fatal wounds land low down.

It would stand as well for the so-called lovers she had had to take to escape the circus.

Nobody was looking for intruders; and the girls, some of them sobbing in fear, were hastily escorted to the trógling at the way out.

“I’ll close up, and come back for you,” he said.

Harkon nodded.

Now they headed for the basement temple of Aima, which housed the ‘Thorns’ and other members of the blood cult. Even in the deliberately ecumenical Selenite empire, bloodsuckers were not liked, and so their temple was hidden within the body of the overarching temple to Selen.  And it being Deathday, they were at their own worship.

The Alethosi fell on them. They all considered the worship of undead to be a blasphemous travesty of the gift of death. The celebrants died where they stood, some of them scarcely realising what had happened, and Harkon, shedding thunderbolts involuntarily, advanced on Aima, whose presence was partly in the temple with the opened godplane.

The goddess fled rapidly back to the lunarsphere, but not before Harkon managed to throw a thunderbolt at her retreating presence.

“Take that, you bitch,” he said.

“And now she will report to her mother, and they’ll know Aquilix has gone rogue,” worried Sjurgi.

“She didn’t see Aquilix,” said Ralthur. “She saw Ombros, somehow healed of what damage her brother did; and she is afraid.”

“That’s the way I like it,” grunted Harkon. “We need to deal with these damned bodies, and the bound spirit here and torch the place so they can’t be made into nekrosti.”

“I handled the priest,” said Ralthur. “My first bloodsucker.”

“I doubt it’ll be your last,” said Harkon. Magical fire consumed the bodies, and the three heroes shredded the guardian spirit to make reconsecrating the temple harder.

“That will do for today,” said Harkon, leading them back to where the laconic trógling had returned, after delivering the rescued girls to a safe house.

And then they returned to the temple of Thanus, and the trógling shut up the tunnels and slipped away; and Fadabius, Aquilix, and Thea might leave the temple openly, without anyone being any the wiser to their excursion.

The news broke in panic before it could be suppressed, of course.

Fadabius and Aquilix went to see Julus Helio.

“I have heard that the princess fled to a lover who is a plainsman, who invoked the wildstorm Skyhorse to spoil the ceremony so that no wedding could take place,” said Harkon, who had left it to Vanda to come up with a tale to explain all, which meant that he could truthfully say that he had heard this.

There might be a backlash on plainsmen; but identifying which clan to blame was not going to be easy, and indiscriminate punitive action would only stir up the rebellious plainsmen more.

More patrols were sent out to look for the princess; which would also offend the plainsmen.

Harkon felt he could live with that.

 

Days passed, and the ‘joke’ being played by the princess was declared to be over; and a princess of sorts was presented to wave to the crowd. The hair was more or less the right colour.

And the guard rounded up young girls from the poor of the city to be the sacrificial virgins. Rumour that the Thorns were dead had spread; and that they were to be replaced by exemplary guards. It might be amusing to note how many guards were deliberately slovenly to get out of it, but it was also worrying.

“This time, I take the temple down,” said Harkon. “And we need to spread the word that girls who are not slaves were taken; I suspect most good burghers of the city could care less about slaves, but once it’s hinted that next will be the artisans, and then the sub-patricians....”

“Rumours to be spread in the market place need good middle class women, shopping,” said Sjurgi.

“We must have some women who aren’t babes able to assume that guise,” said Harkon. “If not, we can collect a few.”

“And some young girls who are well dressed, whispering to their fellows,” suggested Vanda.

The campaign of whispers was started; and this time, Harkon, Ralthur, and Sjurgi went directly to the temple of Selen to remove the frightened girls who had been picked, Sjurgi taking them back whilst Harkon and Ralthur moved purposefully through the temple, killing any glyph-rank they encountered, and culminating with Harkon bursting up through the roof, dragging a whirlwind behind him, and showering lightning bolts, until the main buildings of the temple to Selen was destroyed.

Meanwhile, their cultivated agitators were  busy leading a popular uprising. Those royal guard who hated the idea of becoming thorns, even if they had never protested the custom before, joined with the populace.

Harkon placed Tallys into the hands of Sardio SubDoxus. He could reveal her as a new leader when it seemed auspicious.

“Our work here is done, I think,” he said.

“We can always ferment unrest in other cities another time,” agreed Ralthur.

They left, with Firri, Vanda and any others who wanted to go with them. The latest tranche of girls had been restored to their families, so that left only a few younger slaves not old enough to be part of the freedom fighters yet.