“Speak,” the lord ordered, once Dragomir had stopped screaming. His voice was shrill with power. “Declare your sentence.”
Arabella stumbled forward, unable to see. She knew she was somewhere high - she could feel the wind through her robe - but she had no idea exactly where. Her hands explored in front of her, seeking any sort of purchase.
She found it. A tiny squeal filled the air as her hand tugged on a pencil-thin tail, and she slipped on something wide and flat, eliciting another, more recognizable yelp. Arabella pulled back, fell to her knees, and begged forgiveness of whomever she’d slighted. She felt genuinely sorry.
Her lord was not swayed. Shifting his axe to one side - she could hear the scrape of its metal haft on the cold ivory of the tower - he pulled Arabella to her feet. A hot, gentle puff of breath warmed her face, but she felt chilled. She wanted to pull away, but decorum - no, fear, she knew it was fear - prevented her from doing any such thing.
“No more stupidity,” her lord commanded. “SPEAK THE END, HAG.”
Righting herself, Arabella waited for her lord to release her robe. When he did, she straightened, gathered as much bravery as she could muster, and looked back to her days as a diplomat. She knew they were, more or less, now over. Everything was over. This was an execution for the entire world, not just these three souls who had made her laugh, if only a little, for the last few hours.
“We are gathered here today - “ she began…
… and got no further than that. Her lord’s arm lashed out, knocking the blind woman to the ground again. He followed up with a vicious kick to her side. Arabella cried out, clutching her ribs, knowing that he’d collapsed at least one of them.
“THIS IS NOT A FUCKING MARRIAGE!” her lord declared. ‘Marriage’ came out as a trumpeting blare. “YOU ARE USELESS! GRAYSON NEVER SHOULD’VE BOTHERED WITH YOU! I WILL DO THIS MYSELF!”
Another kick sent Arabella sliding into a wall. She grunted loudly, the jolt running down her spine enough to kick the air out of her. She had only half an ear for her lord’s speech as he began to speak of treason, of age-old grudges, of death, of life after death, of revenge. Oddly, almost inexplicably, he even began to say something about elephants.
“THEY LOCKED ME AWAY FOR ALL THE CENTURIES OF THE UNIVERSE!” he cried, slamming his axe into the ground hard enough to crack the stone. “THEY WILL BE PUNISHED! YOU WILL BE PUNISHED! MAKE ME A GUARD? MY FATHER WAS A DAMNED SHERIFF! I DEMAND MORE… MORE FUCKING RESPECT! I’LL SHOW YOU THE QUALITY OF MY FUCKING AFTERLIFE, YOU SONS OF BITCHES!”
Trying to block him out, Arabella thought about her grandchildren. She’d thought of them constantly in the last week. They were the only force of positivity still left to her, and they helped quell some of the pain.
The ground began to shake beneath Arabella as her lord’s manic words rumbled across the countryside. His topics of conversation hopped from one subject to another with amazing rapidity. He reminded Arabella of the worst kind of statesmen, and she’d met plenty of them while working as a politician for the Imperium. Soon, though, she knew that he would get even worse than that, judging by the peculiar slur of his whining.
My gods, she thought, the image of her grandchildren driven away by her lord’s petulant rambling. He is unbearable. I wish he would throw himself from the bloody tower. I’m sure we’re at enough of a height that even this putz would die.
The ground rumbled again. Arabella fought to get to her feet, running her hands across the wall she’d hit. It pained her body to stand, but she forced herself anyway, unwilling to spend what may possibly be her last moments on her haunches. She knew this marauding freak would not allow her to leave this place alive, knew that he and the other lord intended everyone to die. That had been clear for several days, now.
Arabella was so preoccupied by thoughts of her impending demise that she failed to notice two things about the situation. One, now largely inconsequential, was that she could now fling mental insults at her ‘lord’ without fear of reprisal. The same was true of the entirety of the Imperium army fighting below. And two, she didn’t realize that her hand had grasped a handle, a knob forged out of the loveliest diamond. By the time she did realize this second fact, she’d already opened the door.
Of course there’s a door, she reasoned, peculiarly certain of her logic as she took another tumble while the door lurched open. Of course. Because he used to be a guard in a castle. Castles have lots of doors. That makes a strange sense, doesn’t it? Yes, I think it does.
Someone caught Arabella before she hit the ground a third time.
“Thank you, it was locked from the other side,” a gruff but eloquent voice whispered. “Is there a platypus out here, by any chance?”
No comments:
Post a Comment