Spring 1
Drifting
“If this ash fall keeps up, we won’t have the hands to clear the west fields before Spring.”
“Pa, if this ash fall keeps up, we’ll be lucky if we can clear the door!”
Dreaming
Fingers drumming on her desk, the office lady watched the breathless reports blaring from the television across the room.
“In mere moments now, our brave soldiers will establish contact with the Bilknar.”
She wished she could soar aboard that ship, nose pointed skyward, instead of pecking at nineteen transcripts on a rickety keyboard!
Tumbling
“Behold the wrath of the Sun! Our day has become as night! This is a sign from the righteous heavens! Send out the call – may blood be offered and our Lord’s wrath sated!”
A ziggurat and its harvest of slaves. Misery and torment rang with every crack of the whip, and these were the lucky ones.
Reverie but not reprieve
Lynne…why…why does it always have to hurt so much?
Mirielle? Mirielle, you can–
Why can’t I ever stop it?!
Hold to my voice, Mirielle!
An old doll waited in a quiet corner of the old manor, dressed in a summer bonnet and dress.
The keeper of the manor changed her clothes every season.
“You see, we’re not quite sure what to do with her,” explained Alice Mishkan to their red-haired newcomer. She stroked her full belly, her smile sad. “She traveled so far to find us, but we do not know the words to wake her.”
The brash angel of Comfort pursed her lips and considered the doll.
“Who knows?” Alice wondered. “Perhaps she came here to find for you.”
Thea
Where are you?
***
Mrs. Hewes (widowed) started every day with her class by listening to the announcements: an opening address by the superintendent, the day’s readings from the Catechisms, and a snippet of news suitable for adolescent minds. Her students were fifteen, on the very cusp of adulthood, and she expected them to respond to the news with the comport of adults.
Last year, these morning discussions helped the students appreciate the struggles of Ruhum in a feckless world. Two of the boys even expressed an interest in the seminary! She took a certain professional pride in the glowing recommendations that saw them both now preparing to serve God (may His Fire burn within all).
This year, staring at thirteen miscreants, the matron despaired that half would even find God, much less serve Him.
The classroom’s cheap radio hummed and popped. “Now to our final item on this first of Spring. Our good Admiral confirms that a shipment of illicit goods has been seized fourteen miles into the channel. Unfortunately, the smuggler responsible evaded justice for now. Students, please report to the constables immediately if you see a deep-tanned, black-haired woman with a scar across her left ear.”
No one in class volunteered to this duty; nor did the students even profess concern that such a scoundrel remained at large!
Mrs. Hewes tapped her ruler against her hip and fought despair. The problem, she decided, is that these children were born too young for Lumia. Too young to remember the lean years. Their heads are full of nothing but southern music!
Announcements finished with the national anthem. Immediately after, the matron cracked her ruler against the desk. Her time with this class of delinquents had taught Mrs. Hewes to leave not even the smallest pause for disruption, and she launched instantly into the litany of attendance, homework, and the day’s topic.
“Today we will begin with our Winter presentations,” she announced. “I expect that everyone has chosen suitable topics. Inappropriate remarks will be penalized. Limit yourself to fifteen minutes and leave your written report on my desk. First…Albert!”
A dour, heavy-set young man rose from his chair on command. Placing his report on the edge of the teacher’s desk, he turned to face the class and shuffled through his note cards. “Thank you, everyone. Today, I wish to speak on the matter of our capital’s history. Mel was founded…”
The boy hit all the expected notes: a nameless village thrust suddenly into prominence when the blessed Lord bestowed the Conclave in its midst; rapid economic expansion; its near-total destruction in a series of wars by the petty lords that would one day call themselves Houses…
Mrs. Hews nodded along, keeping time with her ruler. She dared hope today would be placid.
“…in the weeks after, refugees by the thousand flooded into Mel. The city could not house the hordes. The Conclave authorized the reservation of seven districts for temporary lodging.”
Unfortunately for discipline and order, the richest girl in class tapped her shoe against the warped floorboards of the hastily-constructed, ten-room schoolhouse and snorted. “Real temporary, Albert!”
“W-what?” Albert asked, losing his place.
“Speak out of turn again, Miss Burs, and points will be deducted,” Mrs. Hewes interrupted. “Albert, continue!”
“Yes, ma’am. Seven houses donated land at substantial personal cost. This gave rise to the system of boroughs. Now known as Firstborough, Secondborough…”
One of the students mimed a crude gesture in time with his counting, and Miss Hewes cleared her throat sharply in his direction.
“…and Sevensborough. Each established a House-deputized mayor and an aldersman council.”
Fifteen minutes and an age!
“…and with the Conclave divided on integration, the boroughs will likely remain a temporary solution for years to come. Thank you.”
Strangling a yawn, Mrs. Hewes clapped her hands. “Very good, Albert. On to questions.” Ignoring several raised hands, she asked, “Why was Lumia destroyed?”
He shuffled his cards. “Because the Keeper of the Flame fell to temptation.”
“Because we debased ourselves by handing the red robes to a harlot,” Mrs. Hewes corrected. “Suffused with the hubris of Inventors, Lumia forgot to hold the Lord of Fire as Highest of the High! Their pride grew such that they reached for even the Keeper, and so it was tragedy struck so that we might know shame for our actions!”
As she lectured, the matron swept back and forth across the room. Albert, stranded at the front, nodded along vaguely; the eight foremost students pretended to listen; and the four along the back ignored her entirely.
“Sin. Lumia was destroyed because of sin.”
“And the Stormmother,” Albert pointed out.
“God often uses fallen creatures as instruments of his judgement,” she snapped. “That will be all. Next! Mister Orland!”
In the back row, the tallest youth rose with a self-effacing sigh, raked his hair back with his fingers, and scooped up his report. “Right!”
“This is not the pitcher’s mound, young man,” Mrs. Hewes warned.
The second girl of the back row giggled. “Yeah, Conner, you’ll have to pitch a real curve to score this time!”
“Miss Hale, as your companion has been warned, I will deduct five points from your report,” Mrs. Hewes informed curtly.
“What?!” the girl squawked. “That’s–”
“Ten.”
The self-styled actress hissed between her teeth and slid down in her chair, rumpling her pleated skirt.
Mrs. Hewes ordered Orland to begin.
“Alright!” the baseball star clapped his hands at the front. “My report is on the legal system.”
The class snickered; Mister Orland already knew every Fourthborough constable by name. He clearly styled himself a shoe-in for the big league after graduation.
Mrs. Hewes thought it more likely he would be stabbed in an alley for a crude remark or press-ganged into the navy for assault. After all, the games of childhood would end with the Spring birthday.
The common birthday is Spring 45. What are the odds he makes it to Spring 50 unscathed?
The teacher privately savored a vision of Mister Orland scrubbing the deck of Ruhum’s proud, new ironclads. Or perhaps they would throw him on a rotting dinghy…
“So let’s start with the aldersman council. Five men of age convene every thirty days…”
She noted down penalty after penalty: loose manner, poor posture, disrespect for authority. He even dragged out his tepid report with a juicy description of a hanging!
“Five witnesses, their word as one! The constables grab the villain and drag him for the noose!”
Perhaps most disturbingly, he indulged in specious conjecture.
“…trawling through the library – yeah, I visited the library for this, Katherine! – I found this crazy old tome with mentions of aldersman councils as far back as the records go! Seriously, did you guys know that the five witnesses is a tradition in Waves and the Jungle both? Like what if all this jazz goes back before any of us?!”
“Mister Orland,” Mrs. Hewes snapped in exasperation. “Such pointless theorizing does nothing to illustrate the nobility of our history!”
“You told us five books, three passages each, no magazines, no newspapers,” he countered.
“Reputable books!” she spat, subtracting more points. “Consider your future, young man! Act more like a child of the Holy Flame and less like a continental savage! This goes for all of you. Comport yourself as honorable citizens of Ruhum – regardless of your parentage!”
She flung this warning directly at the last miscreant of the back row, but her words fell on deaf ears. Miss Osh slept, head buried in the crook of her elbow and blonde hair cascading off the desk.
Four bad apples – Orland, Burs, Hale, and Osh – to test her resolve for the rest of Spring. She dreamed of the day when she could hurl the quartet of them into the waiting arms of the constables!
Mister Orland coughed. “We done?”
A deafening silence in the classroom except for the snores of the blonde in back.
The matron ushered the pitcher back to his corner and clicked her lips. “Let us have a change of pace. To that end, next we will hear from the last on our list.”
David in the second row sighed in stark relief, his judgement postponed. No one hurried to rise in his place.
Then Miss Hale leaned over and nudged the blonde. “Hey!”
“What?” the girl mumbled.
“You’re up next.”
Miss Osh raised her head, cheek red and lips wet with drool, and blinked like a drunk sailor. “…why?”
Why?
Why?!
Mrs. Hewes inhaled like a bull–
–and the low, heavy siren outside the schoolhouse began to wail.
All semblance of order dissolved.
“Is it an attack?!”
“Gotta be a drill!”
“That’s not till the tenth, moron!”
The teacher surged to her feet. “Be still! It is most certainly a drill!”
Though the crackling voice on the sirens replied, “A beast is loose in Fourthborough. The following locations should shelter in place: Main street, Beach street, Yew street…”
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The students broke out into laughter.
“Free day!”
“God bless wild animals!”
“The ones in class or out?!” giggled a girl.
Mister Orland blew her a kiss.
Mrs. Hewes cracked her ruler. “Students!”
Miss Burs perked, staring out the window over the athletics field. “Is that it?!”
All thirteen students surged to the windows for a glimpse of this wild animal.
“Take your seats this instant!” the matron shouted.
Across the field, the air shimmered a moment around a furtive, grey form. A small, rotund creature like a child, it scuttled across the bleachers and dove out of sight beneath the slates.
“That’s not a beast,” Miss Osh whispered. “Somebody lost an imp!”
Mrs. Hewes shouted, “It does not matter what–”
But the four miscreants of the back row bolted for the door. She raced after, ruler high, and Miss Osh slammed the door in her face.
“Sorry!” the girl sang from the other side. “The siren’s too loud!”
“By the Lord above,” Mrs. Hewes screamed, “I will see you all expelled!”
***
Conner Orland, Katherine Burs, Lyla Hale, and Valkyrie Osh leaped down the stairs to the first floor, laughing, and waved to the younger students too timid to pass the invisible barrier of an open classroom door. A teacher noticed them and shouted, but they simply ignored him.
“She was livid as a prune!” Katherine snickered. “Oh, I thought she would break her ruler over your head, Val!”
“My head’s too thick,” the blonde sang back. She spun on her toe and offered a flourish to the envious little children. “But at least I’m free!”
Lyla snorted. “Whatever. You didn’t even write a presentation, did you?”
“Course not! You know we’d never make it to me by lunch! I’m last on the list every year.”
“Last to graduate, too!” Katherine mocked. “You’re gonna have to start over from first grade in Waves!”
“She’ll finally be tallest in her class!” Lyla agreed with a giggle.
Valkyrie, five foot tall on a good day, stuck out her tongue. “None of us are graduating if Hewes has her way.”
Conner shouldered open the door to the athletics field, admitting a burst of cold, wet air. The morning frost still glimmered on the handles, and all three girls shared a yelp.
“Ladies first,” Conner offered, holding the door.
Katherine and Lyla swished outside, letting their pleated skirts tease him with the passage.
As Valkyrie approached, Conner released his hand. “Ah, sorry! Can’t be seen holding the door for a heretic, you know.”
She darted forward, under his arm and outside before the door could shut. “Careful, Conner, or I’ll tell the other dancers about your little side hustle.”
“Which one?” he coughed. “Speaking of, how much does an imp sell for?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re the Azurite!” Lyla called back.
“Doesn’t make me a witch!”
The siren continued to ring, its tone warbling as the constable turning the crank grew tired, and the quartet came to the edge of the bleachers. They peered into the shadows under the slates as the murky clouds swirled overhead, and Katherine asked the obvious question.
“How do we catch it?”
“Food,” Valkyrie supplied. “Conner, give it some jerky.”
The baseball player scowled. “All I’ve got is the good stuff!”
From a distant window, Mrs. Hewes shouted, “You four had best be inside before I find the principal or you’re done for!”
Alas, all four were momentarily deafened by that siren.
“Imps are like boys, Conner,” Valkyrie explained. “Well, if they laid eggs and ate the runts of their litter.”
Katherine gagged. “Gross!”
Lyla wrinkled her nose. “How do you know that?!”
Conner reluctantly offered Valkyrie a slice of venison from the napkin in his pocket. It stank like a dug-out.
Tossing chunks into the shadows, the Azurite dancer explained, “The Care of Creation.”
“Isn’t that heretical?” Lyla gasped.
“Not in Waves,” Katherine smirked. “Lots of stuff is legal in Waves.”
Lyla drew in a melodramatic breath. “Oh…Valkyrie…did you sell your body to learn witch secrets?!”
Conner perked, suppressing a lascivious grin.
Valkyrie flushed, fixating her gaze into the shadows. “All this talk is going to scare the imp away!”
But the trio sensed the blood in the water now.
“So that’s how junior witches pay their way,” Conner mused. In fact, he owned several magazines on this subject!
Katherine nodded. “Just like the temple. If the girl is particularly comely, she might be chosen as an offering to their god!”
Lyla blanched. “That’s horrible! Aren’t half those girls bought?”
“The temple doesn’t buy girls anymore!” Valkyrie snapped. Why did she have to defend the whole of the damned south?!
Her eyes adjusted at last, Valkyrie spied the imp. It curled into a ball in the further reach from every angle. What had the creature so spooked?
“Wasn’t the Maiden a bought girl too?” Katherine continued.
“She was!” Lyla nodded fervently. “And then the Stormmother bought her!”
That’s the junk they spout on the radio! Valkyrie thought.
“Wasn’t she just a kid?!” Conner muttered.
“Well, I heard that you can buy dancer girls already trained at eight!”
“It isn’t like that!” Valkyrie snapped, her voice cracking up into a squeak at the end. “Stop scaring the imp!”
Katherine and Lyla snickered together.
Conner shrugged at the vicious teasing of girls. “Stop wasting my jerky, Valkyrie. The siren’s gonna stop soon.”
Or the principal would march out.
“What’s the point if we can’t even make a gold for the trouble?” he muttered. He circled to the opposite end of the bleachers, squatted, and started to worm under the slates.
The imp hissed, displaying its impressive array of little teeth, but refused to budge an inch.
“It’s gonna bite you,” Katherine warned, making no move to help.
Valkyrie mulled the creature’s odd behavior. Imps could phase; why did it hunker in the physical world where Conner could grab it?
Lyla tapped at her cheek. “Maybe my uncle can fence it for us?”
“Wasn’t he Livery?” Conner asked, wiggling closer to the imp.
“Like there’s enough House work for that anymore!”
“But he’s still friends with Tura?”
According to Lyla, this was her “in” for stardom. Her uncle would introduce her to Tura, and she would mount the stage at the grand auditorium in Highbranch!
First have to get out of Ruhum, Valkyrie thought. The motion picture had been banned for moral indecency when she was in elementary.
The siren finally petered to a stop, and Mrs. Hewes slammed open the field door and stalked out.
“Incoming,” Katherine warned. “Ten seconds.”
Swearing, Conner grabbed for the imp.
The creature broke and leaped into the slates of the bleachers, aiming for the open field at top speed.
“I will see all four of you foul little heathens expelled by the end of the day!” the matron began. “I will–”
As the imp mounted the foremost slate, the bleachers rattled. A sinuous shadow rippled into view, jaws wide, and caught the little creature with a wet crunch. The imp yelped once; feline jaws flexed; and the wagon-sized panther shook his head to break the imp’s neck.
Katherine shrieked, Lyla bolted for cover, and Conner slammed his head against the bleachers. Mrs. Hewes staggered backwards, gasped “M-monster!” and fainted on the spot.
Last, Valkyrie stared up at the beast.
Saw her own face reflected in the emerald eyes.
And whispered, “Father Panther.”
No point in running from a monster capable of holding his own against the Tempest of eld.
Not that her legs worked right now anyways.
The jungle beast sniffed curiously, taking the measure of the girl.
A salient fact floated into the girl’s head. Relative to Father Panther, she was not all that much bigger than the imp.
Father Panther adjusted his bite on his prey, turned, and rippled out of sight.
Time resumed its normal flow, and everyone present remembered to breathe.
“He was…he was here the whole time…” Valkyrie wheezed to herself.
Waiting for a couple of fools to arrange his meal.
Katherine belatedly glanced at Mrs. Hewes in the mud and asked hopefully, “Is she dead?”
***
Though the tragedy of Lumia fifteen years ago rattled Ruhum to its core, the Conclave of Nobles Held in Regency Unto the True King remained the unblemished, golden apple at the center of Mel. The surrounding block, savaged by the quakes and false fires of the fallen Keeper, had been demolished and repaved with neat, red brick lanes. Six lanes met at this nexus, the Conclave like a golden island at the center of this new Conclave Square.
Which is, naturally, a hexagon.
Each section hosted a skyscraper, six towering monoliths of polished glass now home to the administrative heart of the nation. They ringed the Conclave like the guardian stones of some Plateau henge, sending sweeps of light across the square each dawn and dusk. In the foothills between each peak, a throng of cafés and memorials shared a façade of cheerful white and gold for the life-giving sun.
We get it, Valkyrie sighed. He’s the sun god. The god of the sun. The fire god who brings daylight. That god.
Today, the first of Spring, the square hosted a festival. Booths clogged the square, linked by streamers and steaming with a thousand street delicacies. Even with the sun setting and the temperature drooping towards freezing, the booth games and dancing continued.
Most prized were the stages before the Conclave steps. Here the crowds lit raging fires against the cold, and the favored songs repeated for the third time among free libations.
There were also other stages.
At the edge of the southeast entrance, Valkyrie swirled at the back of the Azure delegation. Like the other dancers, she wore the traditional aquamarine cotton skirt, its hem stitched with white flashes of foam, and a single-button blouse that left her belly bare. This offered zero protection against the breeze, and she shivered like a mouse.
“Let’s hurry this up!” she complained under her breath, eyeing the anemic crowd at this far periphery.
They eyed her right back.
She ad-libbed in the thoughts behind their familiar glances.
‘Look at her dressed like some back alley strumpet.’
‘Bad enough that they profane our traditions. Now they’re teaching it to children!’
‘Heretic dancer with blonde hair? Are they stealing farmgirls now?’
The kind ones sometimes cornered her to whisper, hoping to squeeze out a confession: that she was a foundling or a victim of kidnapping. After all, continental savages had hair dark as their souls! Blonde hair was a sign of the sun’s blessing, though one seen less often in these fallen times.
“Well, they are right on one point,” she muttered. “I am here under duress.”
The dancer to her left, a seamstress by day, glanced over. “Stand up straight, Valkyrie. Need you limber for this.”
Valkyrie flicked the woman’s elbow.
The woman ignored that. “Find your passion in the dance. Even if you can’t mend with your mother, honor the Storm.”
She rolled her eyes. You chose the Stormmother. Witnessed the Goddess and the Serpent tear Lumia to shreds.
One of a very few that survived that epicenter.
I never got asked if I chose.
“The Wavespeaker approaches,” the seamstress whispered. “Smile!”
She dutifully straightened.
Two rows of five, hands folded into their skirts, allowed the emissary of the Goddess herself to pass between them.
The Wavespeaker stopped in front of the lines, pressing her hands to her exposed belly. She was a mouse of a woman, her brown hair tied at the nape of her neck by a seashell clasp, her lips pinched and the beginning of crow’s feet touching her eyes.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” she apologized. “The main stage is not available after all.”
Where the revelry continued in full force.
“Nor is the Sunset stage, nor the Dawn stage.”
With effort, Valkyrie managed not to glance at these secondary stages – empty except for the children that sat along the edges to rest.
“We have been granted the Crimson stage before 1540. Please watch your step; the light is beginning to fail.”
They skirted the edge of the fair, ignoring the whispers of onlookers, and arrived at an unlit stage on the northern edge of the Conclave under the stern, dark windows of the skyscraper home to church administration.
As she hopped onto the stage, Valkyrie wondered if any deacons looked down from those high windows.
On the ground, their audience consisted of six constables in a line and about three dozen scowling onlookers.
“We’re supposed to have a two-tier stage,” Valkyrie muttered from the back.
Taking the center, the Wavespeaker sighed. She turned to the girl and chided, “Valkyrie, please.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
Belle Osh, Azure-blessed emissary to the north, gathered herself for the opening song. “We will make do. Let us begin from the third motion.”
Valkyrie suppressed a smile. That was over half the performance dropped! Of course, given they were prohibited elemental serpents and a band, the first two forms were rather lackluster.
If the stalls stay up, maybe I can get some double cheese chips…
Belle opened, supported by guitar and flute, and the dancers began to sway.
Barely a minute into the routine, though, a rotten apple from the bottom of someone’s Harvest barrel smacked into the stage between two dancers. Its owner cupped his hands to his face and shouted, “Lick the Serpent’s tail in the icy hells, harlots!”
Feet firmly planted, a constables waved his club. “Clear off.”
“I hope your next stage is a pyre!” the man continued.
Sighing, the constable ambled forward, motioning folk aside with his club.
Naturally, the man ducked away.
No attempt was made to follow.
“Maybe next year we can sell them the fruit ourselves,” Valkyrie hissed under her breath. “At least then we can make a silver for our time.”
Her own part in this motion was dull. She only bothered to sing half the chorus notes; mostly she counted the fruit. Over the motion, she tallied three more rotten apples, two chewed corn cobs, and one watermelon rind.
The troupe adjusted, sweeping the muck from their path and offering whispers of warning where the panels remained slippery. Moving into the fourth motion, they spun through the annals of Winter, recounting hardships from a time lost to all but song, and yearned for warmth and safety from their foes.
Hiding atop the heights, ever fearful of what lurks below; praying to Three Stars of the ancient Oath…probably preferable to this stinking country.
The sun finished setting, and the air bit deep by the time the final motion brought Valkyrie’s only part. As the youngest and smallest dancer, she always ended up playing the first Spring fairy. Gay, bright, bursting forth with the joy of warmth and flowers and all that.
Gagging at the saccharine role, she skipped forward at her queue like a giddy five-year-old and offered a bouncing curtsy to the audience.
As she bounced, arms open, a fetid pear arced through the night and smacked her on the curve of her cheek just below her eye. Goop splashing into her eye and mouth, she toppled backwards with only a gobsmacked glimpse of her tormentor: a stern matron in a peasant dress, cloaked in her heavy cowl, and tugging it up over her bony nose as she ducked away.
Mrs. Hewes.
Then strong arms caught Valkyrie mid-tumble and whispered into her ear, “Are you alright?!”
Belle rushed forward, wiping the pulp from her daughter’s face. “Did any get in your eye?!”
Spitting, the girl wiped at her face. “I’m fine! Let’s just finish!”
The Wavespeaker’s dancers drew together. Several swirled across the stage in an impromptu skip while Valkyrie and her mother stumbled to the back to fetch a wet rag.
“Let me see.”
“It’s fine!”
Belle shook her head, hands shaking as she pressed the rag to her daughter’s cheek. “A black eye for sure. You could have been blinded! Did you see?”
The next smallest dancer substituted as the Spring fairy for the finale, and the troupe rushed the conclusion as the constables managed not to find any culprits at all in a crowd of twenty people.
Valkyrie avoided her mother’s gaze. She’s going to raise a stink about it. It’s going to become an ‘incident’. Just leave it alone! I can tag Hewes back my own way!
“Valkyrie. Did you see.”
“…no.”
Belle scowled, her fingers shredding at her skirts. “Rest here.”
Then, rising, she took the stage and spoke the final remarks, her tone stretched tight. With no more fruit and no more cover, the crowd dispersed before she finished even those perfunctory remarks.
Finally, Belle gathered the girls before Valkyrie and announced, “We are going to the Conclave.”
“What?!”
“Th–these insults are too much to bear! I would not dishonor the Goddess in our performance, even on this blighted stage, but they slight our home!”
I was born here. I’ve spent twelve of my fifteen years here. Valkyrie glanced away, resisting the urge to poke at her throbbing cheek. This should be my home.
Didn’t feel that way most the time.
“If you ladies are done…” drawled the constable sergeant.
Scowling, Belle led them straight for the golden steps of the Conclave. With the sun down, the musicians packed their gear, the street vendors pulled down their streamers, and the people trickled away for their beds or their carousing.
Now, as the heretics mustered, the constables found their initiative! They emerged from every corner of the cooling festival and formed a barricade across the top step before the Azure contingent mounted the first.
Belle approached regardless.
As they mounted stairs, Valkyrie caught echoes of a party within the Conclave. Nobility clinked their champagne to the hum of a four-piece violin set. Livery servants flitted in and out of view, carrying more drinks and delicacies. Two yawning altar boys shook the donation tray at any noble that wandered too close.
The constables pushed to the very edge of the step, and the same constable sergeant as before demanded, “What’s the problem?”
“You were there!” Belle snapped.
Shrugging, the man surveyed the group. “Everyone’s walking. What’s the problem?”
The dancers encroached the door, the constables tightened ranks against them, and Valkyrie tuned out. She already knew how this ended anyways.
Instead, she spied on the glamorous world inside. Even as she peered, a limber noble Lady in a silver gown led two young men for a hurried conversation in the shadow of the statue of a Keeper. Teal hair tied at the nape of her neck, chin high and regal features focused like a hawk, the Lady rested a hand on her hilt as she demolished every objection from the two young men with the precision of a general upon her field.
Her hilt. Her cavalry saber, its hilt a weave of filigree like strands of hair, swirling and knotting and swirling back out, all but breathing before her eyes…
A hint of ash on the Spring’s wind, born from the west and the restless mountains even now burying Ruhum in soot, inch by inch…
She shook her head. Hells, she was tired! Even she knew that no weapons were allowed in the Conclave.
Still, teal hair and sharp gaze? That woman would be the Lady Alisandra Mishkan. Old money, august blood, and probably the most esteemed convert to the Stormmother after Lumia.
Valkyrie’s eyes followed the dip of Lady Mishkan’s silver gown. Down her shoulder blades, spine exposed to the cold. Down the supple curve to the hint of dimples at the small of her back…
The muscles of Lady Mishkan’s back danced and flexed as she shifted her weight in her heels.
Beneath her dancer’s slippers, the Conclave steps thrummed like a distant giggle.
Lady Mishkan paused; frowned; and turned, her eyes roving towards Valkyrie. From just the right angle, the Conclave lights glinted on an edge just above her head – three points to the sky and two to the ground like a crown.
Like a dream Valkyrie could almost touch if only she dared.
Then Belle laid an apologetic hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Valkyrie? I know you’re tired, but we should go.”
The constable sergeant smirked at them.
“R-right.” Valkyrie flashed a smile for her mother. “Let’s go home.”
Beyond the constables, Livery fetched another round of caviar to rot on the tables while the nobles schemed, and Valkyrie felt a plot of her own begin to ferment in the back of her mind.