The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [96]
“Already, chamberlain? I thought you might be busy sneaking around, conspiring, setting up your camp. You haven’t rapped on these doors for many years! What do you want?”
For the longest time, the chamberlain said nothing. His left eye twitched. Finally he cleared his throat, coughed into his fist.
“The fecund,” he said, “has escaped.”
Blood drained from the chatelaine’s face. She felt this happen, the blood falling. Both doors, and the Great Hall beyond them, even Erricus himself, all seemed to recede until the chatelaine was standing at the far end of an impossibly long warren. There was a ringing in her ears.
“With a rider atop,” continued the chamberlain. “A young girl, it would seem. They have gone to the river.”
Octavia. The chatelaine knew with certainty that the girl on the monster’s back had been the kholic. Even before this news, awareness of the doomed relationship had been circling her, but the chatelaine had done her best to suppress it, to fight it off: now the truth struck her, mocking the vain hopes she had recently tried to nurture. By letting the kholic into her life, and into Jesthe, she had brought about humiliation, catastrophe.
On shaky legs, she made her way to the alcove. She saw the empty cage and greeted her anxious pets with her own choked cry of dismay: sure enough, the keyhooks now clawed nothing but air. She remembered telling the kholic that the missing key had been the key to her heart! She remembered her giddy state of mind, the wonderful love she had felt. But the affair, the chats, the sex, these had been a ruse. Octavia had stared at her, with no discernable expression, most likely planning her deceit the entire time.
When the chatelaine turned back, Erricus had entered the room, his robe sweeping the floor, his fingers pressed tight together. He drifted over the straw carpeting.
“I didn’t say you could come in.” Blood pounded in the chatelaine’s head, threatening to make her black out.
“We are searching the River Crane, where the creature was last seen, but there is no sign of them. This event, chatelaine, falling on the day that you granted us lost powers is, well, prophetic. Gods have made themselves known again. Your fecund is no longer in her pen. Do you have any idea who might have done such a thing? Released the fecund?”
“I do not appreciate your questions, nor the tone in which you ask them.”
“There is more trouble. Factions, chatelaine, are marching. There are great disturbances. Trouble at the ostracon, I believe, and elsewhere, at spots throughout the city. Beatings. Change has been accompanied by upheaval and civic unrest. Even my own men . . .” He shook his head. “You are aware of the sightings?”
“Of course,” she snapped. “I know all about that. But gods and goddesses are your problem, chamberlain. Not for the likes of me, who disbelieve.”
“There is violence in our streets.”
“Can’t you control the city? That’s your job.”
Erricus said, “Anu, god of the skies, has been seen in the vicinity of South Gate. The benevolent sisters, Kingu and Aspu, have flown over. They are the underworld, and the goddess of anger. There can be no more disbelief. Disbelief has brought us to this point.”
She stood very straight. “You must be happy. You and your palatinate. I extend my congratulations. Now leave, please. Leave me alone.”
Yet he did not go.
“Chatelaine,” he said, “to be honest, the palatinate and I had been prepared for a much less—”
From the window came the low rumbling whoomp of an explosion; concussive waves shook the walls of Jesthe.
Path awoke. He stared up at a dim ceiling. Several small flames burned nearby, but he could not see them. He