The Kingdoms of Evil (74 page)

Several seconds of chaos followed.

An orange streak shot away between Freetrick's legs and Bloodbyrn' hand slapped against her face. A high-pitched yowl dopplered away down the corridor.

Bloodbyrn rubbed her slashed lip, then pressed her face into her hands and spun away from Freetrick. Her shoulders shook.

True words, was she
crying?
Freetrick hauled himself off the ogre, "Bloodbyrn, what the hell just happened?"

"Nothing!" Came Bloodbyrn's voice as her shoulder's tightened. "You have scared my…sacrifice away is all! You distracted me and…the filthy beast…it scratched me. And now she is fled and I shall have to find her before she gets lost and someone…someone…" her voice broke, "hurts her." She sniffed hard and her voice grew harder. "Go, my lord! Away from here! Your presence sickens me!"

Instead, Freetrick closed the storeroom's door on them. "You weren't going to kill that cat, were you?"

"I was!" She spun back around, black hair a whirling storm. "You could not be more mistaken!"

"Hey…" Freetrick thought of Bloodbyrn's odd reaction to Wrothgrinn's reverse-engineered kittens. She had been trying to hide this from him. Whatever
this
was. "You weren't going to kill it," he said, "you were
playing
with it. Like a pet."

"No!" Bloodbyrn said, wiping her nose, "My lord, I was about to disembowel it, I swear! The foul,
cuddly
thing!" she beat her clenched fists against the billows of material around her hips. "It has no place in the capital of the Kingdoms of Evil, with the first concubine of the Ultimate Fiend."

Freetrick recognized the tone of internal dialogue spoken out loud. Bloodbyrn was yelling at
herself
.

"Bloodbyrn." Without thinking, Freetrick rounded the corner of the table and placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right. I like cats. As pets, I mean. They're nice."

"You
like
…" her face twisted up at him in disgust, and she jerked away from him. "No! Keeping pets is wrong!" she shouted at him, "A foul habit! Unseemly for a Dark Lady."

"I like cats," Freetrick repeated, "and," as he realized it was true, "I like that
you
like cats, Bloodbyrn."

Bloodbyrn looked at him. "Oh." She sniffed again, turned her face down. "Do not," she whispered to the cluttered floor "that is to say, I would be obliged if my lord were not to tell anyone of my indiscretion."

"I won't, Bloodbyrn." Freetrick leaned on the table beside her, careful not to touch the blood design.

"You must swear."

"Fine," Freetrick smiled, "I swear that I won't tell anyone you have a secret addiction to petting kitties."

"Ohhh," Bloodbyrn moaned "to hear it put to words so…"

Freetrick looked down at her, still half-convinced this was some elaborate act. More Skrea weirdness. "You're really worried about this, aren't you?"

"Of course," lace poofed out in all direction as she pulled her knees to her chest. "I must hide my addiction. At all costs I must hide it."

"Why?"

"Why!?" Bloodbyrn glared up at him. "Because cats are not…not," she sighed, and rested her forehead on her knees, "I am the very archetype of foolishness for thinking I could explain these things to
you
of all people."

Freetrick chewed his lip. Almost as surprising at this revelation about her was Freetrick's own desire to comfort his…concubine? Un-wife? Whatever. But Freetrick knew he wanted to make her laugh again. He wanted to straighten that inwardly-curled, miserable form. "Sure cats are evil, " he said.

"What?" Bloodbyrn sniffed.

"Sure they are," Freetrick repeated, thinking furiously, "what about the cruel overlord sitting on his throne, stroking a cat as he orders the hero to be torn apart by crocodiles? Huh?"

Bloodbyrn sniffed again, but raised her head from her knees, "I have never seen such a thing."

"Then you can start a new fashion." Freetrick settled down on the floor next to her. "You're basically the queen, right? You could make cats the new…uh…" he ran an eye over her ensemble, "bat wings. Accessories for the modern Dark Lady."

Bloodbyrn shook her head by violently, and Freetrick struggled to soothe her. "No, no, it would work. Listen. The cat… um… shows your contempt for humanity. I mean," Freetrick spread his hands out before them, framing a picture against the candle-lit evil bric-a-brac. "Here you are, ordering the hero to be boiled in acid, and all the time you're being nice to this animal." He tried to recall his film analysis courses. "It would throw your villainy into higher contrast, see?"

Bloodbyrn was silent a moment, thinking. Then she looked back at her lace-covered knees. "I hadn't thought my persona needed another prop. I mean…" she stretched back and her hands described circles up her black corset. She was indicating her entire wardrobe, Freetrick, was sure, although now he mostly noticed the two skulls of this particular part of it.

Bloodbyrn was looking at him again. Freetrick flinched. Strike it, had he been staring? "Well," said Freetrick, "maybe the cat can replace your…um…that is, your current…"

"Sexual violence? No, my lord," Bloodbyrn's eyes narrowed over her familiar edged smile, "I would be a poor student of tactics indeed to discard such a tool. But perhaps…" her expression became speculative, "perhaps a cat, a familiar, if you will, could be a useful prop for establishing my persona after all." She was silent a moment, then shook her head. "No! I cannot trust myself to think clearly about this matter." She glared at him. "Indeed, here I sit taking advice from
you
."

"Thanks, Bloodbyrn."

Candle-light glinted off her piercings as his un-wife cocked an eyebrow. "You must admit, my lord, that you lack completely the malevolent instincts of a Skrean."

"Yeah," said Freetrick, "and I'm actually kind of proud of that."

"No, my lord!" She slapped a many-ringed hand on her knee and glared at him."Perverse instincts must be
quashed!
Must be
hidden.
We are the Kingdoms of Evil
!" Her eyes suddenly blazed, "and such things as kindness and softness have no place here!"

"Clearly they do," said Freetrick putting a hand over hers. "Bloodbyrn, we're in charge here. We can do…" Bloodbyrn's eyes had gone suddenly glassy. "What?"

"Your…your hand, Feerborg."

Freetrick jerked his hand back. His body clenched, ready for another skull-vibrating slap, but it didn't come. Instead, Bloodbyrn reached over, and took his hand back.

She looked at him, darted a glance at the candle in its diagram on the table, then looked back at him a new strength in her eyes.

"I like it," she whispered, "Blood help me, but I enjoy the…the tenderness of it. Feerborg, my lord, please do not take it away."

They had been sitting on the floor of the store-room for what must have been half an hour, but Freetrick found he had no desire to get up. The warm, soft girl cuddled into his shoulder, he found, more than made up for a cold, hard floor pressing up against his ass.

"Indeed, my lord," Bloodbyrn said, "we must all strive to live according to the precepts of the First God. 'All your virtues we shall oppose.' Some, a few, truly possess the instincts for evil, and enjoy causing pain and chaos." She looked up at him. "My lord remembers Dark Princess Ashwing's rumors about your Half Brother Dark Prince Feerix. However, as for the rest of us…" She sighed, pressing her head back into the angle between his arm and chest, "We must perform." Bloodbyrn's eyes stared into the gloom of the storeroom. "We perform from the day we enter dark society, every moment of every day, until either villainy and wickedness become second-nature, or we are lucky enough to be driven mad and the persona becomes reality."

That certainly explained a lot about DeMacabre, but Freetrick didn't think their relationship was advanced enough for him to say so.

"My mother provides an edifying illustration," said Bloodbyrn.

Or maybe not. Out loud, Freetrick encouraged, "Your mother?" Part of him still expected all of this to be some elaborate mind-game. Another part wanted the sad girl in his arms to smile at him. The rest of him…well it would be useful to know more about a potential enemy, wouldn't it? Two out of three votes carried the motion. "Tell me about her."

"She was an average Sangboise noble, I suppose," Bloodbyrn stared into the cluttered darkness past Freetrick's shoulder, "from a good family, well-educated, adept at accounting, seduction, the womanly martial arts…only she loved my father."

"No," said Bloodbyrn, as if Freetrick had disagreed, "I truly believe she loved him, and he loved her in his turn." She sighed. "Oh, they hid it well enough. I remember we would make a game of battling before company. This was all before I was old enough to leave the Sarcophagus, our chateau in Macabre."

Freetrick tried to imagine that childhood. To have a family, but not be able to publicly enjoy the fact? It sounded diabolical, a mockery of everything he had wished for. And yet Bloodbyrn's expression showed that her childhood had not been a bad one. "And then?"

"Then I went to school," Bloodbyrn said, "and while I was away…well…the details would only confuse you, my lord. Suffice to say, my father had his political enemies. They called down the dark priests down upon my household to enforce the Covenant. To make seeming into being, you understand."

"Sweet true words." Freetrick imagined the knock on the door, the husband and wife holding each other as the agents of the Covenant descended on them. Had they drawn their blood and tried to fight? Or had they simply submitted to the law, and stepped away from each other?

"They went on under the eye of judgment, you would say, on probation, for nearly a year," Bloodbyrn's voice intruded into Freetrick's dark fantasy, "but then, clearly they could not any longer maintain the enforced charade." The candlelight washed the color from Bloodbyrn's eyes, so they appeared nearly gray. "I know what happened next only from gossip and hints from my father. It is said…the public story puts it that my mother went mad—took on the role of dominatrix so completely that she ignored my father's cries of safe word. He was forced to battle for his life, and he won."

Freetrick nodded. That story would certainly resonate with the Dark Nobility. Hell, Freetrick still half-believed Bloodbyrn would do exactly the same thing to him.

"My father once told me that public story was untrue, however." She looked back down. "For a while I believed she might have escaped. Perhaps to !Quatl, or across the River Moat to Chyshia. Now I think it more likely she simply committed suicide in despair. Whatever the case, whether the death was carried out by her own hand, or my father when she attacked him before witnesses, her intent was no doubt the same." Bloodbyrn stopped speaking.

Freetrick had no idea what to say. How could he respond to a story like that? All of the standard phrases—
it'll be all right, I'm sorry, I know how you feel
—were so weak they would be insulting. And the first response that had occurred to him,
I will tear the Covenant down for you
, seemed a skosh melodramatic. The only thing Freetrick could think of to do was put his arms around Bloodbyrn and hold her against him. What with his armor and her corsetry, the motion was less tender than Freetrick would have liked, but she sighed and laid her head back against his chest. For a moment, anyway.

Then her body stiffened and she looked up at him in consternation and fear, "No! This is impossible, Feerborg!"

"What is?"

"This!" Bloodbyrn pushed away from him. "Even in secret. We cannot live a double life, my lord. Not forever. And especially not as Ultimate Fiend and his First Concubine."

"But we
are
the Ultimate Fiend and his First Concubine," said Freetrick. "What if we
change
things, Bloodbyrn?"

"Tempest take the bloody Rationalists and their bloody democracy! My lord, you know nothing," she snarled. "Feerborg, they will not allow us to 'change things' as you so idiomatically put it. The Dark Nobility are trained from infancy to scheme and intrigue, to rule by terror. What they do not want to occur
will not
."

"'The ruler does not rule without the permission of the ruled,'" quoted Freetrick. "I know this stuff, Bloodbyrn."

"Then put your knowledge to use, my lord," said Bloodbyrn. "You cannot even continue your current reforms. My father and his faction will manipulate you until you…" she paused, then went on, more slowly, "do exactly as he would have it. And the other factions will simply assassinate you."

Oh strike me out with a three foot eraser.

Freetrick could only stare at her as his plans fractured and reformed. Should he tell Bloodbyrn about the monsters? Trusting the Dark Nobility with his reforms would be idiotic. On the other hand, trying to force through his half-planned reforms single-handed would be suicidal.

What would Bloodbyrn say when he told her about his plans? What would she think of him?