The Apocalypse Script (37 page)

The most noticeable change was
that the old reception desk at the far end of the hall had been
transformed into an elevated platform. Thick planks of polished
mahogany now extended from the edge of what had been the counter,
where guests had once stopped to sign in and retrieve their keys,
to the back wall, where the room keys had once been stored in
cubbyholes. A gigantic scarlet tapestry hung on the wall above the
platform, the angry face of a Lamassu at its center. Wooden steps,
wide enough for four people walking abreast, led from the platform
to the floor below.

“
A stage fit for a queen,” said
someone behind her.

Fiela turned and saw the gaunt
face of the elderly Duke of the Ordunas, known to his peers as
Hobuk, looking down at her. A tall man, even by Nisirtu standards,
he was dressed in a tuxedo with a white carnation in one pocket.
His thinning hair was slicked back by something shiny that smelled
like gasoline. A glass of champagne was trapped in his spidery
fingers.

“
I would not know, your Grace, as
I have never been invited to any court.”

The man swung his glass side to
side and shook his head. “Young Fiela, you need not call me
‘your Grace,’
”
he said chidingly, as if embarrassed that she
would do so. “A new day is upon us and like most of the Nisirtu
around you, I have grave concerns regarding what it holds for me.
Shall I be a duke in this new world? The Seven would have me think
so, but I doubt it. Without an adequate supply of Ardoon and
fetches, what shall I be, really?”

“
You shall still be a duke of the
Nisirtu,” protested Fiela.

The man raised his thin eyebrows.
“In name, at least.” He saluted her with his glass. “You, on the
other hand? Your uncle has planned your future very well. A
position as serretu to a man who most here think shall be a king.
Of course, the man is Ardoon-”

“
Was
Ardoon,”
Fiela said sharply.

“
Indeed. Please forgive me.” The
man reassessed what he was about to say. “Yes, a dapper man, your
husband. In fact, I suspect that somewhere in his family line there
was a Nisirtu who illicitly improved the gene pool. I have heard he
is wickedly smart.”

“
He is,” confirmed the Peth,
wondering whether Ben had Nisirtu blood in his veins. Perhaps that
is why he was so unlike the other slaves? She found herself
intrigued by the possibility.

“
And yet,” continued Hobuk, “he is
new to our ways. You must be careful to guide him if he becomes
king. He will need your help.”

The girl shrugged. “My sister will
advise him.”

“
Ah, yes,” said
the Nisirtu, looking troubled, “but you are the
only
serretu at the
moment, and you will always be the
senior
serretu. There may come a
time when…well, challenging days are ahead. Should you find that at
some point you are in need of counsel, I would be happy to provide
it.”

Fiela shrugged. “Okay.”

The man was nonplussed. “I mean
only that, well, your sister does have enemies. Far more than you.
That said, I personally wish her a long and prosperous
reign.”

“
As do I,” the Peth replied,
tiring of the conversation and beginning to move away.

“
Of course,” the
duke said quickly, “I dare say that you are not without your own
enemies. I’m sure you are aware that Lilitu’s more fanatical
supporters might - and this is preposterous, I admit - but they
might seek to have you
removed.
”

That caught the girl’s attention.
“Me? You mean that they would have me killed? Why should they do
that? I am but serretu.”

The nobleman waxed apologetic. “I
do not mean to distress you, Fiela, but you must face facts.
Lilitu’s legal status was better understood by the Seven than by
even Lilitu until Barnum explained things to her. Were your husband
to divorce her, she and her children would be marked. It is unfair
but the law is the law. Thus, you would become queen and your
children the only heirs to the throne. Not Lilitu’s.”

“
So?”

“
This legal
predicament means that Lilitu is quite beholden to Ben. She cannot
reign without him. Thus, it is impossible that she would ever,
well, dispense with him, as has happened in the past. You are in a
far different - some would say ‘more opportune’ - situation. Were -
the heavens forbid it - anything to happen to Benzira, and he
passed on to the underworld, you would be queen, since Lilian has
no
survivor
rights.
”

“
I guess…”

“
Yes, and thus, those who do not
know you, nor your honorable ways, could unjustly conclude that you
have nothing to lose and everything to gain by your husband’s
untimely demise. Lilitu’s more fanatical supporters might have this
opinion, for example. For them, you are a complication. They need
Benzira alive yet they think you will ultimately kill him. That
makes you a woman to be watched. For them, it would be far better
if the king had no serretu.”

Fiela’s face turned crimson. “I
shall protect my husband with my life.”

“
Oh, yes!” exclaimed the man, “You
are Peth-Allati.”

“
I love him!” blurted the girl,
indignant.

This dumbfounded the duke but he
recovered like a pro. “And I have heard that he loves you very
much, also.”

Fiela gazed at him with suspicion.
“From whom have you heard this?”

The Duke of the Ordunas replied,
“It is widely acknowledged. There are no secrets among the Nisirtu,
Fiela. It is known that he loves you, just,” he ventured, “as it is
known he does not love Lilitu. Oh, he is fond of her, yes, but
love? No. Can you see why her supporters would resent you for that
and scheme against you?”

Fiela could. “Why are you telling
me this?”

The duke looked from one side of
the room to the other before leaning down and saying, “Because,
Fiela, there are many here who would prefer that
you
be queen. You are a
hero of the war against the Maqtu. You are respected and feared.
Lilitu…well, she does have an unfortunate reputation. She is
feared, certainly, but is that enough?”

He leaned back and grinned thinly.
“Do you not understand why you are so respected? You fought for
your cause while others, including many of the people around you at
this very moment, cowered. Do you not know what they call you, the
citizens of the Seven?”

“
The bitch?” she said, thinking of
Moros.

“
Ha! No, my dear.”

“
The edimmu?”

The man managed a half-smile. An
edimmu was, to the Nisirtu and their ancestors, the vengeful ghost
of a person who was not properly buried. Some called Fiela that
because no matter how often she was killed, she kept coming back to
haunt her enemies. The more superstitious among his kind believed
the title to be more than a nickname.

“
A few,” he said
agreeably, “but what I meant to say is that some, even now, call
you
Annasa
.”

The duke winked at her and walked
away, disappearing into a throng of laughing men and women near the
hall’s entrance. As Fiela surveyed the room, she noticed for the
first time that many of the guests were watching her
surreptitiously. Some moved to avoid her glance while others stared
back with indifferent expressions. She found herself wondering whom
among them wished her dead and who wished her to be
queen.

This, she realized, was Lilian’s
world, not hers, and certainly not Ben’s, yet she dared not repeat
to Lilian any of what the duke had told her. She would have to be
careful about what she said and with whom she associated from this
day forward, and she must warn her husband that, already, the
daggers were being sharpened.

If she could find him.

Her new sense of foreboding
notwithstanding, the Peth found herself in surprisingly high
spirits.
“
It is
known that he loves you,
”
the duke had said, and
“
It is widely
acknowledged.
”
That the other Nisirtu knew Ben loved her made it more
important than ever that she find her husband and make things
right. She would explain to him what had happened this
morning.

He was an intellectual, she
reminded herself. He would not be appalled by her condition;
of
the change
.
She imagined that when she finally found him and told him the truth
that he would just nod patiently and smile and say something like,
‘That’s interesting,’ and then he might ask a few questions or
offer some scientific explanation of why the change occurred. He
would laugh at her hesitance to be honest with him and then he
would forgive her and maybe he would want to kiss her
again.

Maybe he would tell her that he loved her.

Shock troops from the 4th and 10th
Peth-Allati ascended the mountain in eight non-descript
recreational vehicles that were dispatched from Denver at
twenty-minute intervals. Each RV carried a squad of men and women
who were dressed not as soldiers, but eco-tourists, some wearing
denim shorts and others cargo pants, some tee-shirts and others
sweat shirts. Some wore ball caps or bandanas. Most wore high-end
hiking boots and all carried oversized backpacks. It was in their
backpacks they the Peth carried their combat armor, assault gear
and weaponry, some of it disassembled.

The RV’s discharged their
occupants into a small gravel lot located at the foot of a state
nature trail. The trail was seven miles in length, climbing up
through the dense forest to a small waterfall before circling back
and descending to an exit point twenty yards from where it began.
The Peth made use of only the first three miles of the trail before
diverging from it and moving through a long gully that would
eventually take them to the hills overlooking the old Steepleguard
Hotel.

A script had been issued closing
the trail to tourists due to “unsafe conditions” caused by the
heavy rains that had begun the evening before and continued even
now. Colonel Rudger, Lord Moros’s senior guard and the Peth
responsible for leading the contingent to Steepleguard, was of the
opinion that the Nisirtu had inadvertently done the Ardoon a favor.
While conditions were not exactly unsafe, they were definitely not
suited for admiring nature’s wonders. The dirt trail shown on his
maps had morphed into a rushing stream with banks so muddy that his
boots were sucked six inches into the earth with each ponderous
step. The ceaseless downpour and pockets of mist limited visibility
to twenty feet.

It had taken the century of Peth
most of afternoon to reach their staging point, a clearing a
quarter mile from the wooded ridge at the perimeter of
Steepleguard. Rudger checked his watch when they arrived and saw
that it was 1645 hours. The reception was still more than two hours
away. He moved forward with a scout to survey the grounds below and
saw the giant building that he had become so familiar with through
photographs, satellite images, and drawings. Parked near the
entrance were dozens of vehicles and semi-trailers around which
buzzed a seemingly endless throng of Ardoon workers.

Worker bees,
Rudger thought contemptuously,
bringing pollen to the queen inside the hive.

He summoned his platoon leaders to
his side to allow them the opportunity to lay eyes on their target
and then sent them back to brief their squad leaders. When they
were gone he pulled out his phone and texted “96” to Lords Moros
and Nizrok, notifying them that he and his troops were in position
and ready to attack when the signal was given.

Then, he waited.

“
Fiela,” said Lilian, “I cannot
find our husband. It is two hours until the reception. Have you
seen him?”

“
No,” the girl
replied.
Not since I humiliated
him
. “He went looking for him this morning
and I have not been able to find him since, nor uncle. They must be
together
somewhere
.”

Lilian bit her lip and met the
girl’s eyes. “You will not find your uncle.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Scriptus Ridley has left
Steepleguard.”

This shocked the girl, who said
nothing for a moment. Then, “Why?”

“
He said his mission was done here
and that he had another to accomplish elsewhere.”

“
When will he return?”

The woman ran her fingers gently
through the girl’s red locks. “I spoke to him only briefly. He was
quite hurried but said he would try to return as soon as possible
and asked that I extend his love to you.”

Fiela’s glossy eyes shifted to some imaginary object
behind Lilian. “Did he say what task he had to accomplish?”

Lilian could see the Peth’s
sadness. “No, but Sister, do not concern yourself. He is far older
and wiser than you or I. Whatever he is doing, it is in our best
interest. He would not leave, otherwise.”