PART FOUR
Jezebel’s dreams that night were wild, unstable things. She struggled to find solid footing in her subconscious, as the dreamscape kept changing from moment to moment. One moment she was a child back in Coffyn Castle, searching in the shadows of the keep for the lost members of her family, and the next she was a ball of flame, bright and powerful, filled with her own potency. The twin sister she had scarcely known appeared again and again, but at the very moment Jezebel became cognizant of her sister’s identity, the child or the woman would vanish into nothingness. Later, Jezebel was onstage at the amphitheater, weeping for her lost sibling to an audience enthralled. The emotion was so powerful that she dropped to her knees in anguish. A fellow actress brought her to her feet. When Jezebel wiped away her tears, she saw that it was Shayla Long-Eyes, staring at her with whorled blue eyes, communicating a secret message. Behind the curtain, the dragons were coming to life, but, try as she might, Jezebel couldn’t look away from Shayla. The sound of beating wings and the screams from the audience and the smell of smoke and the sense that all would soon be enveloped in flame mattered not: she was trapped in Shayla’s gaze, unable to flee, unable to wake, and she knew that soon it would be too late…
She awoke to the sound of a rapping on the door. Outside, daybreak was worming free from the clutches of night. Crossing the room, Jezebel had the distinct sensation that she had not left the world of dreams entirely behind. When she opened the door, Queen Portia was standing there. The queen was flanked by the knight with the russet beard. Behind the queen and the knight stood Shayla, tallow candle in hand, head bowed meekly toward the floor.
Jezebel felt a sudden surge of anger and embarrassment. She was dressed in a simple chemise slip, and the russet-bearded knight made no effort to hide the fact that his eyes were drinking their fill. She nearly said something cross, but a small voice in the back of her mind reminded her whose man she was addressing. She steadied herself. “Good morning, Your Highness,” she said, and gave a small curtsy.
Queen Portia didn’t reply. She simply stood there, studying Jezebel with a firm, expressionless face. The splendid silver surcoat from the day before was gone; now the queen wore stately black samite offset by a cream-colored collar and sash. Around her neck, a silver chain strained against the weight of a dazzling red ruby.
As the silence grew, so did Jezebel’s fear. She lowered her gaze and took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm her rapidly accelerating heart.
At last, the queen gathered her dress. “Step back, child,” she commanded. Jezebel gave way, and the queen entered the room. Shayla Long-Eyes and the bearded knight followed.
Once inside, Queen Portia drew herself up in all her imperious might, wearing an authoritative expression that bespoke the power of her station. The Salk Queen hadn’t come for niceties. That much was clear.
“Take off your clothes,” the queen ordered.
Jezebel blanched. “Why?”
“Because I command it.”
Jezebel’s lips parted, but instead of summoning a reason for refusal, she was struck dumb by the sudden understanding of why the queen wanted her naked. She thinks I’m a jeyedoshi. She wants to see if I have the telling mark. She glanced at the others. The knight was too busy devouring her with his hungry eyes to meet her own. Shayla, however, held Jezebel in a soft and steady gaze, imparting an unexpected strength. Jezebel drew from Shayla’s power like a plant feeding on the sun.
Jezebel faced the queen. She pulled the slip over the top of her head and let it fall to the floor, exposing her form in all its glory.
Queen Portia inspected her carefully. She swept Jezebel’s long, dark-blonde mane from the nape of Jezebel’s neck so that her eyes could climb the stepladder of Jezebel’s spine to the base of Jezebel’s skull. She roamed the shapely plains of Jezebel’s body with a meticulous thoroughness, studying first the front and then the back, making pass after pass after endless pass. A deep quiet set in, the only sound the occasional request from the queen for Jezebel to turn this way or that. For the longest time the queen looked at Jezebel without touching her. But then, when it seemed that all was nearly concluded, the queen lifted Jezebel’s arms and studied underneath; and then she did the same to Jezebel’s breasts; and then she searched ever more intimate areas of Jezebel’s body, adjusting Jezebel’s position as she saw fit.
Jezebel bore it all in silence. Behind her, the rising sun suffused the room with an orange-purple glow, bruised from its daily battle with Simstone Mountain. The amphitheater was just outside the window. Jezebel thought of the adolescents who had fought there years ago, the multitude who had died. Twins, they called them, though Jezebel knew that most of those who fought weren’t real twins; the Ontish would pair children with similar physical characteristics together, and then, after a year-long period in which the children trained and lived and ate together, the pair would fight to the death. All this was done in honor of Daeguss and Ropske, the twins the Ontish believed founded Ragar Or thousands of years ago. Daeguss’s tribe—the Onts—survived: he was ever after known as the Twin Ascendant. I had a real twin once, Jezebel thought. Her name was Lilia. She smelled of fresh straw and honeysuckle. She fell down a well and died when she was three years old. My mother flung herself down the same well in her grief.
Queen Portia finished her inspection. She turned to address Shayla. “It’s as you said. She has no telling mark.”
Jezebel floated back into her body. The wolfish knight was still leering at her. Surprising even herself, Jezebel hissed at him. Her hissing made the knight flush beneath his beard, the red bramble growing redder still.
The queen suddenly remembered the knight. “Oh, do get out, Sir Dougal,” the queen said. The knight, embarrassed, turned on his heel and left.
Jezebel faced the queen. She felt wild. She readied another hiss on her tongue, but, before she could loose it, she sensed Shayla warning her off. Jezebel assented, though her thoughts remained a blank rage.
The queen addressed Jezebel. “Thirty-one years ago, my brother came to Low Osgood the King of all Ragar Or. A jeyedoshi sent him to his death. You will understand if I take every precaution to ensure that I don’t suffer the same fate.”
Jezebel’s thoughts lurched back into being. I had a twin sister, but I am no jeyedoshi. Every member of my family died, but I am no jeyedoshi. I play the part of a jeyedoshi, but I am no jeyedoshi. I have no telling mark. I do not speak to animals. And I know no dragon that I might summon from the heavens to roast you to death. But to the queen she replied, “I understand, Your Highness.”
The queen said nothing. She seemed to realize that the currency of words had little value in the aftermath of what had occurred.
All at once the Salk monarch grew uncomfortable with Jezebel’s continued nudity. She looked away from Jezebel, and turned to Shayla. “Consider me convinced, Madam Shayla. It is clear that your play is meant to edify—and not corrupt—the realm. I hope that my…precautions…will in no way detract from the performance that I have waited so long to see.”
Shayla responded to the half-request, half-command with a gracious smile. “Of course not, Your Highness. The players will give their queen the performance of a lifetime. Of that I can assure you.”
The queen gave a little nod. “Good.” Her salted black mane shifted in the direction of Jezebel, but, before turning all the way, she caught herself, and stopped. Then, without saying another word, she exited the room.
*
Jezebel retreated to a pinewood chest on the opposite side of the room and selected her clothing for the day. With the queen gone, she felt more numb than ashamed. Shayla remained in the room while she dressed. When Jezebel was at last clothed, she turned and faced Shayla. The Long-Eyes had a question waiting on her tongue.
“Do you know the Four Prayers of the Twins?” Shayla Long-Eyes asked.
It wasn’t a question that Jezebel had expected. When Jezebel was a girl, the Twins had held sway at Coffyn Castle. Adulthood had brought Jezebel in contact with many and more who worshipped Stavus, the Struvan deity of light and air, but Jezebel’s earliest memories were of Lord Wexel Coffyn and Lady Esme Coffyn standing under an immense night sky, asking Beoliotius—the mother of the Twins—to bless them with wealth.
“I remember the prayer for wealth.”
Shayla smiled, her lips blooming like the petals of a crimson flower. She seemed to be expanding now that the queen was no longer in the room. Her voluminous hair shook free from unseen strictures, her buxom body relaxed into space, and her eyes, ever rapacious, roamed the room unchecked, preying on whatever they desired.
“You only heard the Lord and Lady Coffyn recite the prayer, am I right? Never your mother and father.”
Jezebel nodded. She knew what Shayla was referencing. Only lords and ladies were permitted to recite the prayer for wealth. If a commoner was caught reciting it, they’d be whipped.
“Do you know any of the other prayers?”
“The prayer for health.” It was the one prayer Jezebel had carried with her into adulthood, the one she knew by heart. She whispered it every now and then to the night sky, not because she believed that it would work, but because she thought that doing so couldn’t hurt.
“The prayer for health is the most common prayer. Even those who worship Stavus say it. Its overuse has made it an empty prayer, devoid of meaning. Prayers only have power when they are used sparingly.”
Jezebel could see the truth in that. She reflected on the hundreds of times she’d mouthed the prayer for health in thoughtless fear, hoping to ward off sickness. If it had any effect, it seemed more a matter of coincidence than divine intervention.
“And the last two?” Shayla asked.
Jezebel racked her brain, but nothing came to her. She wasn’t a religious person. The Twins were the gods of the gorgostrine, the gods of the peninsulas, the gods of high northern lords, the gods of long ago. She had seen a gorgostrine once, preaching by the waterfront, but no prayers had fallen from his lips. Perhaps she had once known the other two prayers, but, if so, that was the case no longer.
Jezebel shook her head.
A strange life force flooded Shayla’s face. “The prayer for death. And the prayer for vengeance.”
A deep and palpable silence entered the room like a guest of honor. Jezebel and Shayla wordlessly agreed to give the silence its say. The prayer for death. And the prayer for vengeance. The names of the two prayers hovered in the secret spaces of Jezebel’s mind like summoned ghosts. Near the spirits, a shadow memory. Jezebel’s father, standing beneath a bowl of stars, crying, dark and earnest words trembling on his lips.
Shayla stood across from Jezebel, seeing all.
This isn’t for you, Jezebel warned.
“We were both little girls once,” Shayla said, ending the quiet.
The silence again, more familiar this time. It wore a cloak of suggestion, then laughed when Jezebel guessed correctly.
“The queen came to my room first,” Shayla continued. “The same knight stripped me roughly bare, then stood to the side to see that I followed orders. The queen studied my naked body twice as long as she studied yours. And me a woman past my prime. But her words were sufficiently honeyed that I knew she was only frightened and taking precautions. She looked in my eyes at the last. She saw nothing but a peaceful ocean of blue.”
The reoccurring hush.
The queen saw what you wanted her to see, Jezebel thought.
“They say the dragonfeeder recited the prayer as she descended from the heavens to smite King Reuel. You are not a Jeyedoshi,” Shayla said. “But even a non-Jeyedoshi can recite the prayer for vengeance to great effect. Listen. I’ll teach it to you.
Whole, we shall be cleaved
And ever after strive against our whole selves
For who is the other now but an imposter
Deserving only of death
Mother Beoliotius
Daeguss, Ropske
Grant me vengeance
Against my friends, my siblings, my enemies.”
Jezebel heard the prayer only once, but it was sufficient to commit it to memory. She said the words over and over again in her mind.
She was still saying the prayer when Shayla Long-Eyes left the room.