Four Dead Queens Read online

  I shivered. He saved that tone of voice for certain people. Only two people, in fact.

  His henchmen.

  Slipping back into the water, I held a finger to my lips so the messenger would stay silent.

  “I don’t see them,” came a low voice, the sound of footsteps on ice.

  We were in deep shit now.

  “What is it?” the messenger whispered.

  I clamped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late.

  “I hear them,” the voice said. “They’re in the water below us.”

  “I don’t care about him,” Mackiel said. “Get her. Now!”

  A dark figure spiraled into the water, while heavy boots clomped overhead on the dock.

  “Move!” I pushed the messenger away from the dock toward the shore. “Move!”

  I swam as fast as I could, hoping the messenger would follow suit.

  I made the mistake of glancing back. The messenger was behind me, as was one of Mackiel’s henchmen. He was bald with two black eyes, all pupil, increasing his vision beyond the normal limits. His skin was yellowed and scaly and smelled worse than a half-rotted fish. He moved toward us like a ghostly sea creature.

  “Swim faster,” I shouted back to the messenger.

  Mackiel laughed from somewhere above us. He wouldn’t dare come close to the dock’s edge and had sent in his henchmen to do the dirty work, as usual.

  Something grabbed at my ankle. I shrieked.

  “Don’t know why you’re always so jumpy around the henchmen,” Mackiel said. “They’re such charming fellows. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He laughed again.

  If only that were true. They might’ve been nice men once, but under Mackiel’s supervision, they’d morphed into something truly ugly. Or was it the other way around, and Mackiel was the true ghoul?

  One of the henchmen pinned my legs together and pushed me into the side of a dock post. His black eyes reflected my terrified expression.

  “Let go!” I cried.

  “Give her ’ere,” said a gruff voice.

  I screamed as the first henchman pushed me upward.

  “Don’ worry, Kewawee,” the second henchman slurred; the right side of his face had been eaten away. “We won’ hurt you.” He leaned over, revealing yellowed bone where half the muscle and skin had fallen from his left arm.

  Before his bony fingers could clasp onto my shoulder, something leapt out of the water and smacked him aside.

  The messenger!

  He shoved the destabilizer against the henchman. There was a loud zap, and the remaining veins in the henchman’s arm sparked blue, then black. The henchman’s eyes rolled, and he tilted backward onto the Jetée, his body stiff as the corpse he smelled like. The messenger disappeared beneath the ocean’s surface.

  I’d thought the henchman was dead, until I heard him groan. The spineless Eonist should’ve used the destabilizer’s highest setting.

  “What’s happening?” Mackiel asked. His voice sounded far away. He wouldn’t risk seeing for himself.

  The other henchman narrowed his black eyes at the water, attempting to see into the dark depths. I’d never seen the henchmen fear anything, or anyone. I squirmed in his arms, but he still wouldn’t release me.

  “Tell me!” Mackiel roared.

  I bit down on the henchman’s yellow hand. He let out howl like wounded animal.

  Another zap.

  The henchman jerked in the water, and my skin tingled from the close contact. His arms stiffened by his sides, releasing me.

  “Come on,” the messenger said, appearing beside me, the destabilizer in his hand.

  He didn’t need to tell me twice.

  When we reached the shore, I pulled myself onto the sand and coughed up water. Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the stars winking down at me as if tonight were some kind of joke. I hoped it amused the dead queens watching from above.

  The messenger loomed over me, blocking the stars. Water glistened on his defined cheeks and full lips, his black hair twisted like seaweed around his face. His eyes were milky pearls in the low light. While I felt like a half-drowned sewer rat, he looked like what Torian seafarers called a lure, a mythical creature who seduced men and women from their boats and into the waves, never to be seen again. My father used to call my mother and me earthly lures, persuading him to live a life on land. I wished we had succeeded.

  “Are you all right?” the messenger asked.

  I rolled onto my side, then tentatively stood. “I think so.” I patted myself down. “Yep, all here.”

  “What in the queens’ names were those things?” he asked.

  “Mackiel’s henchmen.” I shuddered. “They’re from your quadrant. That’s the ugly side of trying to create a perfect world.”

  He grunted. “Eonia is hardly a perfect world.”

  Coming from his perfectly shaped lips, I found that hard to swallow.

  “Eonist scientists were trying to create a replacement for HIDRA,” I said. “They thought if they could cure death, then it wouldn’t matter when all doses of HIDRA ran out. To test their serum, they destroyed certain parts of the henchmen, hoping they could revive the cells.” I shuddered thinking of their ruined bodies. “It didn’t work.”

  His eyes brightened. “You know about HIDRA?”

  “Of course I do. Everyone does.” That wasn’t true. I knew about HIDRA because of Mackiel and my father, but I wasn’t willing to talk about that.

  “But what are the henchmen doing here?” he asked. “In Toria?”

  “Mackiel knows the wall guards between Eonia and Toria, or rather, he knows all the guards’ secrets and blackmails them into providing information about Eonist technologies that might be worth stealing.” Extortion is another form of trade, he liked to say. “He forces the guards to let desperate Eonists cross illegally into Toria to become part of his employ. And there was no one more desperate than the henchmen.”

  Unfortunately, the henchmen hadn’t realized that in deserting Eonia, they had merely stepped from one nightmare into another. Mackiel now controlled their every move. And while he provided lodgings, the henchmen weren’t paid for their “protective services.” Being alive in Toria, or mostly alive, was the only payment they’d get. The alternative was death.

  “They do his dirty work and frighten the pants off of anyone who has the unfortunate pleasure of meeting them,” I said.

  “That’s really sad.”

  I huffed a laugh. “Sad? Did you not see them? They’re disgusting!”

  “Yes, I saw them.” A shadow cast over his face. “But surely they were men once.”

  “Yes, but not anymore.” They’d wanted to improve their standing in Eonist society by volunteering for genetic testing; now they weren’t even allowed out of the auction house in the daytime, in case they were seen by Torian authorities. Before the henchmen had fled Eonia, the scientists had planned to exterminate their failed experiments. If Mackiel was found harboring Eonist fugitives, it would be the end of his business. He had power in Toria, but not that much.

  The messenger nodded. “I assume you want this back,” he said after a moment. He handed me my lock pick.

  “Thanks.” I reattached it to my dipper bracelet, although a part of me wanted to throw it into the sea. I’d known something was increasingly off with Mackiel, but I’d never thought he’d turn on me.

  I shoved my icy hands into my pockets. It was a little warmer, though still soggy in there. “And thanks for helping me.”

  “I wasn’t about to let you drown.” The way he said it was as though he wished he could have. He was still angry with me.

  He began peeling off his Torian clothes to reveal his dermasuit. And while I shivered in my wet undergarments, the snug material of his suit already looked dry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wringing water
from my hair. “Mackiel told me to steal from you.” I shrugged. “So I did. It’s nothing personal.”

  “Nothing personal?” he muttered. “Because of you, and Mackiel”—his voice hardened on the name—“I’ve lost my commission and—” His hand stilled near his ear. “No,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” I glanced behind me, expecting to see the henchmen approaching from the water like half-drowned ghouls.

  “My comm line.” He ran his finger around his ear. “I must have lost it in the water.”

  “Shame.”

  “You don’t understand.” He looked at the sea as though he’d find it floating out there. “I need to check in with my boss. I need to tell him I failed.”

  I held up a finger. “From my experience, bosses don’t deal well with failure. He’s better off not knowing.”

  “I need to tell him something or I’ll lose my job.”

  “I think that ship has sailed.”

  His nose twitched. “This isn’t a joke. This is my life. What are we going to do?”

  “We?” I stomped my feet; water seeped from my boots. “We do nothing.”

  “But you ingested the chips,” he said. “And saw the memories.”

  The less I thought about the chips and those images, the better. I didn’t have time to dwell on what I’d seen. I began walking up the shore to the nearest road; I had to keep moving or I’d freeze to death.

  The messenger caught up to me with a few quick strides. “You ingested the chips to ensure your boss wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Or you,” I reminded him. “Now we’re even. I saved you and then you saved me. A fair trade, I’d say. I assumed you’d prefer to be alive tomorrow than dead today.” I scrubbed my hands over my eyes; salt scratched at my skin. I still couldn’t quite believe Mackiel planned to kill me. I’d always known he was dangerous, but I thought our friendship protected me from the increasing darkness within him. After I’d ingested the chips, there was nothing playful in the way he looked at me. His ravenous expression would haunt me for days. “Mackiel would never make a deal that doesn’t result in a win for him. I had no choice but to ingest them.”

  “Where are you going?” the messenger asked.

  “Away from here.” Although I wasn’t sure where yet. “Away from Mackiel.”

  “You can’t leave me.”

  I smirked. “If I had a quartier for every time a boy said that to me—”

  He grabbed my arm, then quickly dropped it, realizing he was touching my undergarments. “I need those chips. It’s the only way to save my job.”

  “And I need a warm bath and some Ludist candy,” I said, and kept walking.

  His brows furrowed slightly. “Don’t you care about anything?”

  That was funny, coming from an Eonist. “Yes, I care about staying alive.”

  “What memories did the chips contain? What did you see?” He looked at me as though he wanted to pull the thoughts from my mind.

  “You don’t want to know.” I really didn’t want to talk about it. Ingesting the chips all at once had muddled the story, but I’d seen enough to know I didn’t want to meet the intended recipient. There’d been enough horror for tonight.

  “But Mackiel was your friend.” The messenger hovered beside me, like flies on a warm carcass. “Wasn’t he?”

  “Friends? Enemies?” I shrugged. “Who can tell the difference?” Apparently not me.

  “What did he mean when he said you can’t go home?”

  I stumbled in the sand. The messenger caught my elbow.

  “Nothing.” I righted myself and shrugged him off. “I rented one of Mackiel’s lodgings, that’s all.”

  “Where will you go now?”

  I threw my hands up. “Enough with the questions!”

  The messenger stayed quiet for a moment before saying, “Torians trade in deals, correct? Your entire economy is based off what you can get in return.”

  That wasn’t exactly how I’d have described Toria. It sounded cynical and selfish. “Why?”

  “I want to propose something—”

  “You can propose to me all you like. I’ll never say yes.” I flashed him a grin.

  “I’m serious.” And he did appear serious, his strong jaw more set than before.

  I jerked my chin at him. “Go on. Propose away.”

  “You need a place to hide from Mackiel. And I need those memories.”

  I groaned. “I told you, they’re gone now. Do try to catch up.”

  “I know that,” he said quickly. “But they’re not gone completely.”

  I slowed, turning to him. “What do you mean?”

  He tapped his temple. “They’re in there, in your mind.” Wasn’t that the unfortunate truth. “Which means if you were to relive them, I could rerecord them onto new chips. I could try to deliver them, again. I could save my job.”

  “Relive them?” I didn’t want to do that.

  “You close your eyes, think of the time and place of a particular memory and a recorder pulls the images from your mind. It’s how we record memories onto chips in the first place.”

  “Will it make me forget what I saw?”

  “No.” He sounded sad, as though there was something he wished to forget.

  “I don’t want you messing around up here.” I gestured to my head. “It’s my second-best asset, if you know what I mean.” I winked at him.

  He ignored me, or perhaps he thought I had a facial twitch. “What choice do you have?” He nodded to my sodden undergarments. “You need clothes and a warm place to stay. I have both.”

  I looked him up and down. “I doubt we’re the same size.”

  He didn’t laugh. “Do you want to freeze out here and wait for Mackiel to find you, or do you want to stay alive?”

  “I can survive on my own.” Although I wasn’t sure that was true. I’d always had Mackiel to lean on. And, before that, my parents.

  “But do you want to?” he asked. His face was pensive, his thick brows low over his eyes. Of course an Eonist would offer assistance; unity and civility was their quadrant’s focus. Still, the idea of a warm place to stay while I considered my next move wasn’t such a terrible idea.

  “Fine. I’ll relive the memories.”

  But he sensed my reluctance and asked, “They’re that bad?”

  In that moment, I envied him not knowing what I’d seen. While the Torian queen had hung a heavy cloud over the future of the Jetée—and thus my livelihood—it didn’t mean I wanted her dead. Even though I’d seen the memory of the four queens being killed—from the killer’s perspective, no less—I still couldn’t accept the truth. All of Quadara’s queens had been murdered.

  “Worse,” I said. “They’re deadly.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Stessa

  Queen of Ludia

  Rule three: To allow for a thriving culture of art, literature and music, Ludia must not be weighed down by the humdrum concerns of everyday life.

  Late in the evening of Iris’s murder, the advisors chose one of the sparser meeting rooms for the Eonist inspector to conduct his enquiries. Now was not the time to convene in a room dripping with golden chandeliers, be encircled by gilded portraits of smiling queens or sit beneath a canopy of murals depicting the varied Quadarian landscape. Murder was a serious business, therefore sixteen-year-old Stessa had worn her most serious outfit—a fitted white silk pantsuit and a simple beaded necklace that wove into her hair and crown—simple for a Ludist. Still, the room was bathed in a warm glow, the glass ceiling allowing a view to the dome above.

  Inspector Garvin sat on one side of a large polished wooden table while the sister queens sat opposite, their advisors in the wings. Stessa was unsure if anyone had ever chosen to use this small and boring room before.

  She fiddled with her necklace, earning a look f
rom Corra beside her. She knew what Corra thought, what all Eonists thought of her quadrant. Ludists were naïve, frivolous and shallow. But they didn’t understand. Ludists knew the world was often cruel, that sadness often outweighed happiness and darkness could be a mere step away. But instead of wallowing in this knowledge, Ludists embraced all that was beautiful, light and pleasurable in the world.

  And Corra hadn’t seen how Stessa’s hands shook as she dressed for the meeting. She hadn’t seen how the news of Iris’s murder had shattered Stessa’s rosy view of the world. Stessa had never known real hardship and darkness. She lived in a world of laughter and light and she would hold tight to her traditions to get through this trying time.

  The inspector placed a clip around his ear and positioned a translucent disc toward his mouth. “I’ve examined the body of Queen Iris,” he said into the recording device. But Stessa didn’t want to hear about how Iris had died, how her killer had sliced her throat so she’d bled out almost instantly. Instead, she studied the inspector.

  He appeared middle aged, which surprised her. Corra had said he was widely renowned, solving all of his one thousand cases to date, and so Stessa had imagined an old man. Two deep furrows hung over his piercing black eyes, eyes Stessa was sure would miss nothing, had missed nothing throughout his career. His black hair had a peppering of gray at his temples, making him appear more authoritative. And intimidating.

  Stessa’s fingers itched for her black eyeliner. Something so unsightly could be easily fixed with a little dye. Although, she supposed, it did match nicely with his gray dermasuit.

  While Stessa couldn’t deny the inspector was attractive—in that older man way—there was something off about his features the longer she looked at him. His ears were a tad too large, his nose a little too prominent—due to genetic tweaking, no doubt.

  Worst of all, and the reason Stessa refused to shake the man’s hand when introduced, was the extra bone in each finger. His hands were spiderlike, the additional length tapering off to a point, no fingernails in sight.

  Eonists were obsessed with perfecting humanity through genetic mutations. Most genetic tweaking happened in the womb for specific vocations, as per the inspector.