A/N: I do not own Mortal Instruments, or the names of its characters. I do however own my characters as are written in this story, and this story itself. Thank you for reading! Please enjoy.
Chapter 8
"… billowing into bedlam …"
"We have to tell Maryse." Clary's low and muted words overscored her hurried but silent padding into the dim and the deep of the passageway.
"We have to think about it," Simon hedged, casting apprehensive eyes behind them as they scurried back to their room in the queen's wing of the castle.
"No, we have to act ... now." The stubborn set of Clary's mouth left no chance for counter. Simon sighed into anxiety and fear he struggled to not let overwhelm him. But the storm he had sensed was coming, had come, and now boiled and brewed on the bleak horizon of their lives.
Jace meandered the corridor around the corner from his father's private apartments pondering on what he had heard in the minds of Clary and Simon.
... the Braegan Satyr didn't work ... the crown protected him from her attack ... survived the full blast ... a pentad of diadems ... fully-functional on all other spheres ... blocked it somehow ...
He still didn't know anything about himself. He still hadn't learned anything about his true identity. Even so there were some things he did know, some things he had learned. He knew now how his mother had come to be Queen of the House of Valentine, capital-kingdom of the island-planet Lasan. He knew now why Maryse and Valentine were barely ever seen together and why his father treated him more as a prized soldier than like a son. He knew. His mother was a spoil of The First War ... and so was he. They alone stood upon the threshold of her past and his future, left in the perilous wake of Valentine's conquest and rule.
The thought of betraying the children, and his mother to Valentine curdled in his mind. Still, he could do little else to protect any of them. All that he could do he had already done, and all that remained now was the wait. Hearing the rhythmic gait of guards upon the gloomy passageway, strong strides and soft shuffles denoting a deputation of at least four, he hastened quietly to his rooms lest he be caught in compromising circumstance. Something had collapsed on itself here, billowing into bedlam, both within and without the House. It scattered seeds of turmoil, further tattered the fraying fabric from which their world was woven. Reality as he knew it was rift apart and rending him away from all he had known, hurtling him into black.
However, and ever on guard, he cast his mind behind him, and into the ones of the advancing sentries, catching at their thoughts and learning what he could before they disappeared into the murky waters of their memories; making certain that all he could do had worked.
... damn well don't appreciate running around like a brainless bint ... alarms don't trip for nothing ... not in a place like this ... really weird ...nothing there ...
And that was all he needed to know.
It had.
Clary rounded on Simon the instant they entered their room, trapping him between the closed door and a fierce whisper.
"We have to tell her now while there is still time left! We have to do it before it is too late!"
A final, brown-eyed plead was the only response.
"Simon," came back the warning. "I'll do it with or without you. I'm not about to play a role in this silent asylum anymore now that we have the key to get out. And my gut's telling me that the silence is about to get very deafening. Choose now."
After a quiet pause, Simon dropped his eyes in defeat.
"Fine", he sighed. "We will tell Maryse the truth."
Clary stepped back, giving him an assessing eye and nod.
"Let's go."
"Children, what have you done?" Stricken with horror, Maryse sank to the floor of her chamber as her heart sank to the floor of her chest. Held at bay in her eyes, tears, terrified at thoughts of things to come, welled but did not fall. She glanced towards the door, her fear a physical, palpable presence resonant in her tremulous lips and frightened face.
Simon slipped Clary a sharp sideways glance. Clary defiantly forged ahead despite it. "Doesn't matter now Maryse. Only one thing does, and that is can you do something about it?"
The slap that echoed across the delicate planes of Clary's face startled all three residents of the room. For the first time since she had known her guardian, Clary saw Maryse's eyes harden towards her.
"How dare you put Jace in danger this way?!" came the vicious demand.
"Aunt Maryse -"
But the Queen decisively drove Simon's advancing arms away and rose to her feet. "Valentine will kill us all for this, including my son." The hushed, harsh tone hurt the children far more than the raw rejection of being slapped and shoved away.
Still with shame, they stood in silence before her, heads hung low. Maryse ran her hands through her hair as she turned from them. The moment was endless.
"Children -" The tight, thick timbre of her voice was definitively drowned by the deafening ring of a castle-wide alarm, signalling trouble's return.
Three hearts palpitated in panic. Three brows broke with dread. Three breaths shortened in dismay. The storm was upon them.
"We have to get you out of here ... now."
In the dead of night the plantation-castle still surged with Vagaroth, the King's personal army, in the aftermath of the alarm. Beneath the wooden floors of the House, Maryse stole through silence and darkness and uneven mosaic walkways canopied by porous sandstone arches with the children bundled and in tow. As she made her way through the slaves' entrance to The Port rising before her, departing through its unusually embellished and unlocked doorway with her child charges by her side, she cast her mind all around her, seeking instinctively for approaching thoughts and for thoughts concerning the commotion up above them.
The only ones she could not hear were Valentine's, and now she knew why. Trusting that her husband would be in the castle attending to whatever matter caused him to sound the second alarm, and not lurking like her down there below, she crept quietly pass an abandoned, underground garden of wild ferns and flowers, between the doorway she had just left behind and The Port up ahead. Nearing the noise of freight orbs being loaded, unloaded and launched from the harbour, Maryse entered The Port, moving towards the silent spots in her awareness and away from the sounds around her, using her psyche more than her sight to navigate her way through the cargo and crates.
Searching the minds milling about for images of Chloséian freight orbs, she followed trains-of-thoughts and streams-of-consciousness to what she searched for and sought. There it was; a freight orb casually half-packed with cargo crates on its way to the planet Chloséi. She snapped it up from the mind, stupefied with disinterest, of a wandering workerman, who wasn't even thinking about it at the time but in whose indolent musings the image drifted nonetheless. It was in the centre of the line-up, towards the rear of the room. There was space in the back of it. If fortune was with her she would be able to plot a course and find the way to it through the stock and the staff - she didn't like to think of them as slaves. If fortune was with her she would be able to spirit the children off sphere without the worker who packed the orb checking the cargo one last time before he sealed the hatch. If fortune was with her they would not get caught this night.
The children, scared by the trials of the last half hour, still managed to keep their whimpers silenced and trail Maryse's watchful dance through danger as she stowed them away. Clary could not look Simon in the eye and witness the accusation therein. Simon could not look Clary in the eye without recalling the part he played in the iniquity that took place. They could not look at Maryse. They could only make do with matching her movement through the shades and shadows of the lofty building, following her footfalls with their own, and wondering with unease what would happen to them next and if they truly could flee from Valentine's tyrannical rule.
There it was. Somehow they survived the treacherous trek across the crate-filled open block and found themselves successfully and safely before the freight orb in which the children would fly. Releasing the hatch, breathes catching on the soft hissing sound of hydraulic cylinders redistributing pressure and resistance as it opened, Maryse lifted Clary into the back of the orb, tucking her into the farthest corner, before she turned to do the same with Simon.
Two tiny little children, shame-stricken and fear-filled, looked in helpless, horrified longing upon the stoic face of female sovereignty. The Queen Maryse returned their gaze, scared for them all as seconds slipped into a moment that could never be forgotten, and children that would never return.
Simon watched as Maryse lifted her hand to tenderly touch Clary's bruised cheek, where the memory of a slap remained, more painful than the strike itself, before dropping a delicate kiss on his own crumpled brow.
"I'm sorry-" Maryse's voice broke the same moment she heard the boisterous demand "Who you is?!", the same moment she felt a heavy, ham-fisted hand wrench her around by the shoulder so hard the hood of her cloak fell backwards as she was turned.
"M'queen?" Deep bellow fell to dumb silence. Maryse looked him square in the mind, at thoughts pustular as the pox of his scalp, and lecherous. There were fits and flashes of them before Valentine, of her before him on her knees, of her before him for just one night, royal recompense fitting for treasons and traitors well-foiled.
Maryse recoiled in revulsion, severing the sight. She knew what needed to be done, knew she could do it, for she had done it before, but knew too how much easier it was with a mind that wasn't already alert and aware. She just hoped she could make it stick. Casting her will upon the waves of the workerman's desires, she desiccated them one by one with vile, vicious impressions of Valentine's abrupt retort to an unwarranted arrest of his royal counterpart.
Playing with his fear of simply not knowing why she was there, she held his eyes as she drove with deliberation the measured directive into his disoriented and bewildered psyche:
FORGET
Then Maryse watched vigilant and unflinching as every thought, awareness and perception he had ever had - from birth to that moment - faded from his mind with grim and morbid finality.
She swiftly spun back to the children.
"I have to leave you now, before another unfortunate soul passes by," she said, her tone hushed and hurried as she planted a quick peck on Clary's cheek. "I love you both greatly. By the will of the Elanai may you reach Chloséi safely. By the will of the Elanai may we find each other again in this life."
With these words and one last lingering look she resealed the hatch and was gone, whirling into the shadow of nearby crates, making her way back through The Port, to a life of fear and secrets and lies, a life from which they were now suddenly, unexpectedly free.
But not before Clary caught sight of the skulking silhouette of a young boy, a young boy with a princely carriage she could never mistake and would never forget, a young boy disappearing into the darkness at a distance behind his queen-mother; unknown to her, unknown to them all. He must have seen, must have known everything.
Jace! Clary hissed, loathing boundless and unrestrained rupturing in her chest. Of course he told the King where they had been, what he must have heard them say. She knew she had smelled something foul in that passageway. She knew he had never quite cared for her and Simon; but to imperil the safety of his own mother, and after all they had risked to set them free. What have you done?
The taste of betrayal, angry and sullen upon her tongue, she vowed there and then to hate him for the rest of her life. Beside her Simon watched with forbidding fascination the vacuous visage of the workerman, who remained as Maryse had left him, his expressions garbled and slurred … his eyes empty … his mind emptier.
A/N: This has been an 8-chapter excerpt from the first book of my much-anticipated, soon-to-be-published high fantasy space opera trilogy Nescada: Kindler of Flames. I will continue the story of these three characters in another Mortal Instruments fanfiction, in which they will be older and dealing with different conflicts, including what has happened here in the past and each other, thus rendering this fiction a flashback to what is now happening presently in the book I'm writing. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review! Journey to the series' face book fan page at PagonaOrb and follow me on twitter at PagonaOrb for all your Nescadian updates and insights! Share it and invite your comrades to board the Pagona Orb and find out who is the Kindler of Flames and Keeper of Worlds. Thanks again, and I truly hope you've enjoyed my story, House of Valentine, excerpt from Nescada: Kindler of Flames ^_^