QUEEN OF RUIN
The Imperial Ballroom dazzled.
Every white marble pillar lining the walls held sparkling crystal sconces lit with gaslights under flame shaped glass as false candles. Gold leaf and plated silver vines crawled up ebony trees, sprouting red marble flowers and jade leaves with diamond dew drops. Tiger eye figs and agate dates hung from dark branches. Jeweled fruits dangled as small chandeliers scattering light in colored arrays on the floor. The jeweled canopy gathered at the base of the domed ceiling where porcelain doves with outstretched wings nestled.
The ceiling itself was painted with the Vision of Mercy gracing St. Iskra by the ocean. Pale blue waves capped in enamel swept against marbled cliffs. The saint was barefoot and badly proportioned, twisted and contorted as she reached up for her blessing. The artist's rendition of the two-faced goddess was cruel. Mercy looked down at Iskra with a sneer on its bronze face and Justice stared coldly at the people on the ballroom floor below.
She exhaled a shallow breath. She remembered falling. She remembered grass and mud and...mages.
This was a dream then. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift, searching for that spot of light in the darkness. She reached and reached, until she could feel the world turn underneath her and tasted the blood on her tongue.
Oh.
She was dying, she realized.
She swallowed the taste of copper and iron as she opened her eyes. The curving designs on the rosewood baldachin over her throne beckoned her gaze. If she were but ten centimeters taller, as tall as the queen before her, it would have shielded her from the Vision of Justice's stare.
A grim, little smile played on her face. The queen before her died sitting here, beneath the goddess' judgment. This ballroom had been unused for decades, until a new queen had been married and crowned. Until her.
It was just as she remembered it. The last time the ballroom at the Summer Palace had seen use was...the Imperial Crown Prince's nameday. Edmund had turned thirteen, she recalled. The spring before…
She could choke on the irony.
The orchestra was playing a tune from a composer she hated. All his refrains sounded similar, with an overuse of wind instruments, misplaced percussion and melodramatic themes. The kind of drivel one could expect from a drunkard that gambled his fortune away, and plied gold from the Crown by sharing the same war stories over and over again. He was a childhood friend of the Emperor, and the Emperor always took care of his friends.
She made the mistake of letting her eyes drift to her right at the thought, towards the ironwood and gold throne with the swooping sculpture of the Imperial Eagle perched on the back.
His Grand Imperial Majesty, Eadred the Merciful of Rutenia glanced back at her.
"I like his compositions, Renia." he said with exaggerated indignation before he held out a hand. "Dance with me?"
His amber eyes highlights by crow's feet were playful, with that lopsided puppy smile that belonged on a younger man's face. His gold hair had long since turned silver at his temples. He, like his father and his father's father, was dressed in white, gold and imperial blue with his many medals of office decorating his chest. A red parade sash lined with gold bisected his chest from his right shoulder to his left hip and laugh lines etched his face.
The hand he held out to her was trembling in its white glove and she knew that meant he abstained from his medication that morning. It made him feel sick, he would say. But he would take it, if she asked. If she insisted, he would take any pills she gave him.
It did not hurt to see him like this.
However, there was a vague sense of nostalgia for simpler times. The glimmering ballroom around the dancing crowd of richly dressed nobility was a tempting image of how everything used to be. Before the war.
Before everything.
She could indulge in the dream, just this once. The empty smile she wore for her husband slipped onto her face as she took his hand. She let him pull her up from the throne and glanced over her shoulder.
Edmund was doing a poor job of hiding his boredom, slumped as he was in his seat to her left. A smart grey jacket and fur cap rakishly tilted on his blond mop. Once he realized she was looking, his eyebrows shot up questioningly.
She motioned with her eyes down below to the floor where a legion of noble daughters loitered.
The blood drained from the boy's face. She raised an eyebrow. He shook his head frantically. Her husband chuckled, having caught the byplay.
"Let the boy be this time."
"You always say that," she murmured as she took the first steps.
You win, she thought with resigned bitter fury. In the end, he was his father's son, after all.
The looks were suffocating. She could hear the swell of conversation as more people turned to observe, to see the royal couple descend to the ballroom floor. This was his moment, the Emperor sharing acknowledging nods with dukes and barons, a shallow bow for their wives or daughters and a warm smile.
The attention made her skin crawl.
Haran Bariv, wealthy merchant lord who always laughed at her husband's jokes and dressed down to affect humility. Tax dodger who hid his wealth in numerous enterprises. The back taxes alone could have —
She took a shallow breath and forced herself to extend her hand for his lips to ghost over. She did not have to force the smile.
He died screaming as a soul bound to a rotting sack of meat given to the dogs, long after she had wrung every hidden cache, every black market connection and every bloody secret from his corpse.
Her husband would have insisted on a trial. Edmund would have insisted on a trial. They would have trusted the courts and at worst, ensure a clean, honorable death.
She was not them.
Loyalists and traitors alike vied for the Emperor's attention, halting their progress to the floor as the man indulged each and every one.
"You are too kind," she said softly as soon as the latest petitioner stepped away, satisfied with the compromises the Emperor always made.
"One cannot be too kind," Eadred answered stiffly. He must have heard a note he didn't like in her voice. He patted the arm she had around his condescendingly. "Cooperation, trust, honor. These are tools civilization must make use of to grow and remain standing. What is a society without these? Pointless anarchy."
"Society is structured through monopoly of force," she countered. She remembered this conversation. "Kind laws are worthless laws."
"The law is toothless if people do not trust its judgment is fair and works for the good of all."
You poor boy, she thought as she took in the mulish set to Eadred's jaw. She should have told him, perhaps. The full and unedited details of every whisper in the dark. Instead of photos with wounded veteran knights, she should have brought him to a small village outside these glittering golden walls and shown him exactly how many friends he had outside the capital.
Perhaps, she should have, but she did not and he died a stubborn fool. He trusted and compromised to the grave, but he had his honor to the very last. To allow him that was a peculiar kind of grace.
A mercy.
"I'll not be cruel, Renia," Eadred said with finality.
"Of course not," she agreed easily. "Cruelty is counterproductive. It is not only unnecessary, but creates more problems than it could ever solve."
He raised his eyebrows skeptically, as if he couldn't believe what she said or couldn't believe that she was the one saying it.
The real Eadred would never have responded like that. He would have laughed as if she had said something especially witty and then agree wholeheartedly. The way he always did when she said something he thought technically correct, but was bothered by the delivery and lacked the words to explain why.
Was this not her dying dream? Instead of envisioning the man as she knew him to be, perhaps her subconscious had altered him.
Sometimes she thought he had known a little. Knew enough. Enough to know these were not hypotheticals or thought exercises, enough to suspect. Eadred had adored her and that made him blind.
Sometimes, she thought he knew.
"To invite the liar to lie to you, the cheater to cheat you, the murderer to kill you is not kindness." He had done all three. She lowered her voice. "And to defend yourself is not cruel."
He lowered his in turn and with the uncommon flash of insight asked, "Who am I to defend myself against?"
The look he was giving her was so soft, she felt vaguely offended. "I did not stop one rebellion for you to lose your fool head to another."
"You sound like Maxwell," Eadred accused.
"My uncle is a wise man." She smiled at this even as something inside her withered. She had tried.
Eadred huffed. "Enough of this talk, I wish for my queen to dance with me."
She accepted the change of subject. "You will, of course, forgive me for breaking your toes again."
He coughed and cleared his throat with a rumble. "If we can avoid a repeat, that would be much appreciated."
She smiled her empty smile for the host on the ballroom floor looking in their direction and pretended she couldn't hear the snide, prickling remarks about the bastard woman who dared marry a king.
Once, she would have tormented herself over the slights to her petty pride. She hadn't been that girl in a very long time.
"You will do fine," her husband soothed, reaching for her other hand as he took the starting position.
"Do not patronize me, Eadred. I know what I am not capable of." And what she never bothered learning. "What song is it?"
"Fifth Movement of a Lark in Spr —"
She was already groaning.
"Would it help if I kept time?" He asked gently.
"No."
He planted a jaunty kiss on her brow, raising their hands. "And one!"
The dance whirled past her in an array of silks, laces, gleaming buttons, jeweled pins and bold colors. The carved window panes whisked by, the stained-glass patterns seemed to blur as she lost track of the details in a vain attempt to remember what foot went where. She made mistakes. She knew she did. Knew it as soon as she moved with the familiar cringe of her stomach and heat in her throat as the Vision of Justice judged her from above.
Eadred never faltered. He compensated almost flawlessly, leaving her fingers a little too squeezed as he fought for balance. Were this truth and not fiction, she suspected he would have had marks on his palms from the ruby in her right palm tomorrow morning, but when it ended he was smiling and she was staring at his miraculously pristine boots.
He lifted her unadorned hand and gently kissed her knuckles. "Thank you for the dance, Valeriya."
The bottom of her stomach dropped out.
Renia averted her eyes to memorize the image of her son in his spring jacket and fur cap, slouching in his seat a step below his father's throne.
True Names weren't for humans.
Only demons.
"Have you come to collect, Руин?"
The music died. The guests disappeared. A thick layer of dust settled on the floor, the window carvings and on the white cloth draped over unused furniture shoved into the corners. Ugly pits marked the walls were chisels in greedy hands had scrabbled at the gold and gems. Shattered glass glittered on the floor alongside scorch marks made from thrown bottles bursting with flaming alcohol.
The dais holding the thrones stood lonely atop the stairs, the crimson upholstery grey with dust. Edmund's seat was covered with a featureless tarp. The stained glass doors smashed open by desperate dignitaries and common staff alike led to the hanging balcony perched over the edge of seaside heights as a fashionable, lethal dead end.
She swallowed the painful lump in her throat as her nose tickled. Yes, this was...accurate. Their son's thirteenth nameday was the last Eadred lived to see.
The demon wearing her late husband's face dropped her hands and she shivered as her palms met cold, stale air. Her Arcanum had vanished along with the guests. Gone was the gold chain sleeve studded with dark rubies. The asymmetric sleeves of her ball gown did nothing to his the exposed scarring on her right arm.
The written terms of her contract.
Ink and paper could burn and degrade. Words were wind. Stone could break and crumble. Blood and flesh, however, demons valued that.
"Not yet, sorceress." It's breath stunk of a corpse. "Not yet."
Her arms came up to wrap around her as she bit back the cry. She could have wept from the relief. She blinked rapidly to make sure she didn't.
Eadred's false body trailed a finger down the scars.
"You lost twenty-six," the demon observed. Amber eyes that father and son shared harsh and cold.
"I absolved one of its obligations because it was an imbecile." Her voice did not waver. That was good. "It pursued an independent interest despite warning. I am not responsible for death by stupidity."
Technically, she was, but by the terms of the agreement, it was not a punishable offense.
She had been very thorough.
It cocked Eadred's head to the side in a sudden, alien motion. "And the other twenty-five, sorceress."
Her mouth opened and for a terrifying moment, nothing came out. "I - I do not know."
She flinched back when it hissed. It was a whisper of air that slid across her neck, and a reverberating undertone that shook the walls.
"There was a girl, a mage."
Pink hair, pink eyes.
"Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière." The name rolled off her tongue. It triggered recollections. Halkgekinia. Tristain. Images, sounds, feelings, with the abstract reality common to dreaming.
In a blur of movement, the demon snatched up her left hand. She recoiled, eyes already squeezing shut as she braced herself for the pain. When it did not come, she opened them again to see Eadred's eyes boring into the back of her hand as if the unmarked skin offended him.
She enshrined the moment into memory. It did nothing without a reason. Twenty-six lost. Did the girl banish them? Kill them? Could they even be killed?
Can she kill you, Руин?
"Louise," it murmured. After a long moment, she was released.
"Where am I, Руин?"
It smiled toothily, Eadred's face splitting open in a seam of blackened necrotic gums with fish hook blood stained teeth.
"You already know, sorceress." It whispered. "The name of this country, the name of this continent is known to you."
"Where am I, Руин?"
"Far aware from your petty kingdom, but still in my reach."
She took a breath, and with her left hand felt along the lines carved into her right arm. She took a risk. "Руин, где я?"
It slapped her.
White hot pain raked across her face with cruel, barbed talons. She watched Eadred's hand come away with bloody strips and her left eye speared on a nail. She reflexively paralyzed her own vocal chords, so that it would not hear her scream. She turned her head, to hide the smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.
A mundane answer, an easy answer, and she would have gambled for nothing. She would have wasted it.
"You grow bold, sorceress."
Yes, she thought. Twenty-six demons you bound to me are lost. For once, the weakness is not mine.
She could feel cold air on the inside of her left nostril, stinging. Blood dripped down the side of her face as it howled in agony. She was half blind, an ice pick of pain echoing from the back of a vacant eye socket into the rest of her skull.
Tolerable.
Fairly mild, as far as warnings go.
Demons played tricks, yes. They cajoled, they wheeled, they squirmed through every loophole, every crack, every ounce of leniency, but in the end, a bargain well made was one well kept.
That did not make them safe.
"Perhaps," she gritted out after relaxing the paralysis on her throat. "I believe it is the fifth clause."
"Protesting a little pain?" It cajoled with Eadred's voice. The Emperor loomed over her. His shadow engulfed hers, the giant. She had always hated it when he did that. A useless, childish reaction she never grew out of.
"We have a contract. Three times the question, three answers."
It reached for her and she fought the flinch as it gently turned her around and stepped closer. Eadred's chest met her back. It slid a claw along her neck, brushing back her dark hair and leaving behind an icy sting.
"You want to play?" It asked her with her husband's voice.
The pain was a searing throb. Her vision halved and covered with moving shadows and bright spots of light. She felt light headed and at the same time more grounded than she had ever been. She needed that third answer. She cared not what it was, only what it chose not to say.
What was this place that could strip a sorceress of her demons?
"Yes, let's play."
"You do not wish to know how to return?" It breathed hot in her ear.
A cold ache blossomed in her chest. Blood on her tongue. What awaited her, were she to return? To the rebellion calling for her death, to spineless sycophants, to venomed snakes hiding poison behind smiles.
To her son, and a goblet of wine.
"Answer or forfeit," she snapped.
"I will have my question now," it declared instead.
She scoffed openly and nearly regretted it when her torn eye socket pulled. "When you have yet to answer yours?"
"Question for question, answer for answer." It fell back on Eadred's rough baritone. She wished it would stop. She wished it would use its own voice, take its own form. An idle wish. Руин borrowed shapes like a vain noblewoman changed clothes. It never imitated an unknown person, never someone she was unfamiliar with.
She gestured with her right hand. "Ask your question then."
"Eadred Ferand Ruten the Merciful," it began. Renia's stomach had already started twisting. "Did you consider sacrificing your ambition for him?"
"I sacrifice my ambitions for no one."
That was one.
It was a dangerous question.
It repeated the question.
"He had little I wanted I could not take, and little to offer that I wanted. My kingdom in exchange for a weak king is a poor bargain."
That was two.
The third repetition.
Renia faltered. She could not repeat an answer, not even by rewording it. She could insinuate, deflect, misdirect, obfuscate and more, but in the end, she must answer the question.
Had she considered?
"I did, once."
A moment of uncertainty. That was all it was. An idle mind wondering what ifs as time marched on to the steady rhythm of rain on the windows and the struggling gasps of a dying king.
"Where am I, Руин?"
The demon stepped forward with Eadred's white gloved hands reaching out. It fastidiously cleared her forehead of her hair, the way Eadred used to before it bent as if to plant a kiss on her forehead.
She closed her eyes. The kiss never landed.
"Lost, sorceress," it whispered. She opened her eyes to an empty abyss. She was waking up. A wrenching, tearing pain speared through her chest. She - she could not breathe!
Renia woke, drowning in blood and water.
Her lungs burned. Her mind spun and tittered with a volatile panic of - air! She needed air! More water was forced into her mouth. It splashed around her teeth and tongue and reached down her throat. She gagged and felt something in her throat ease, before she coughed, sputtering, feeling her eyes and sinus cavities sting with water. Then her stomach flipped.
Someone grabbed her by the back of her neck and pulled her, bending her head before she vomited.
Whatever came up, it tasted vile and felt worse with small chunks of something that squirmed.
Her skin crawled as she spat it out. Feeling movement on her tongue triggered gag reflexes causing her to vomit again, and again until she had squeezed her stomach into a small, aching ball and rubbed her throat raw.
Panting, she opened her eyes and saw into the bucket as pale, callused hands moved to take it away.
Remains of her dinner. Blood. And what looked like black mold, swollen and thick as it writhed around in the pail.
Her eyes drifted shut as she struggled to control her breathing.
Edmund.
That boy better pray she did not return too soon.
Fingers felt the side of her neck. There was sound. People moving around on a stone floor, some of them with what sounded like fabrics and others with pails of water. Low, methodical droning of instructions and soft acknowledgments.
"Ha! Resilient, very good! See Colbert?"
"Inform the headmaster that his guest has awoken, please."
"The sheets must be changed regularly, do not forget! She must have fresh water, temperature checked regularly for fever, be quiet, be quick and by the Founder, mind your manners!"
"I have never heard of mold that - "
"Careful with the sample. Easy."
She moved the fingers of her right hand. Small, slight movements, testing. A rough blanket was underneath her fingertips. Her right arm was missing the familiar, cold weight of her Arcanum just as her head lacked the weight of her crown. Ninety-nine rubies missing.
She could hear Edmund.
"You would have removed my Arcanum, buried it in a vault after you had it melted down."
She closed her eyes and willed the panic to subside. She settled back into the rough, misshapen pillows. Her lungs expanded and contracted painfully. A burning that spoke of a certain kind of drowning, when the lungs filled with phlegm and fluid. She coughed a wet hacking cough that had another bucket shoved under her nose. She obligingly spat into it and raised her right hand to rub at her chest. Coarse material grated against her fingertips.
Underneath, she could feel the slightly raised scar and the large ruby over her heart.
She laid down again, eyes closed. Someone had changed her clothes. They would have seen it.
Mages, she remembered.
Not a single one Awake.
She moved her index finger and a weight fluttered to settle on her shoulder. A sorceress with no demons was no sorceress at all.
Show me the room, she ordered.
A moving image bloomed behind her eyelids.
A bland room with stone fixtures and crude wood furnishings. Frames of beds were stacked against the wall beside a small stack of the mattresses in a haphazard way that spoke of haste. Cloudy yellow sunlight streamed in through tall windows. A matronly woman spoke to two younger girls dressed in black and white as they folded sheets between them. Her 'doctor' shuffled by her bed with a face that was dominated by a grey beard and left eye monocle. A wand was in his hand, trailing a stream of water.
Behind him were the other two other mages. A woman with blond hair manipulated water with a wand, encasing a bucket in a globe of water with a look of absent concentration. Her lip was slightly curled and nose wrinkled, as if she caught of whiff of something pungent. Black specks, mold, floated up from the bucket through the surrounding water. The spores gathered at the surface, where a funnel deposited them into a vial the second mage held. A man, balding, glasses with a staff and flame licking over the hand that held the vial. She remembered him.
Now, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. The weight on her shoulder shifted. It coiled, tensing. She liked this one. Clever, but obedient. Mostly. Find her.
The weight flitted down her side, crawled over her legs. She could feel it, vaguely at the back of her mind, as it paused at the end of the bed, waiting for the perfect moment to slip to the floor and wind its way to the door. She felt it taste the air currents. The mage with fire and the staff. He had been near the girl recently. It darted to the door and —
Despite her best efforts, sleep stole her attention away.