"Well, Lady Ashwing, may she writhe forever in torment, was exceptional," said Bloodbyrn, "but surely the lesser nobility have been keeping you company…no? Well then the foreign dignitaries, Sangboise or sSt'tdraschni maidens? Prisoners of war? The more humanoid ogres?"
The Hafdern, black dagger out held, coughed uncomfortably at the foot of the dais.
"Yuck! No, Bloodbyrn!"
"My lord you have been Ultimate Fiend for over a week! Do you expect me to believe you have had no liaisons at all in that time? Next you will tell me you haven't even raped any serving women."
Her lord made a sort of whiny growl in his throat. "I get my food from a three-foot goblin with one
really
big eye and one really small one. That or a swarm of little black bugs. Yes, I have been surrounded by…
terrifying
women all the time since I got here, it seems like. Frankly, I've tried to avoid them."
What sort of invertebrate was this man? Bloodbyrn gave up on courtesy. "Well, whom are we supposed to kill then?"
"How about no one?"
"Do not be deliberately obstreperous, my lord!" Bloodbyrn took a moment to control herself. "All right. In the interest of matrimonial harmony, I suppose I could offer to kill one of
your
rivals for
my
attention. Would that be acceptable? One of my previous lovers resides in this very room with us now."
Feerborg's face twitched. He scanned the room, which was unfortunately full of an unappealing array of provincial lords, her father, and the ancient and corrupted priests.
"Feerix," said Bloodbyrn. "I was referring to Prince Feerix."
"What?!" said booth Feerborg and Feerix in identical tones of horror and surprise.
Feerborg recovered his wits first, "Bloodbyrn,
Feerix
?"
"He was supposed to be the Ultimate Fiend before your existence was known, my lord."
"That was not the reason you came to me, as I recall it!" Came the inevitable reply from the audience.
Bloodbyrn sighed. Men and the bruises to their dignity. If she did not curtail this discussion, they would never accomplish anything this evening.
"What shall it be, my lord?" she asked over Feerix's rising protestations.
"She said she had never met a man she couldn't tame before me."
"Shut up, Feerix!" Bloodbyrn was surprised to hear her lord's voce as well as her own participating in that censure.
The Hafdern coughed again. He was slowly climbing the steps toward them, muttering unpleasantly to himself under his breath, his fingers clutching the mouse hung around his neck.
"My lord," repeated Bloodbyrn, "whom are we to kill?"
"My lord, dark lady?" Hafdern Teirgog stood on the next step down from the top of the dais, dagger still out held, mouse still clutched, his towering head-dress level with the top of Bloodbyrn's head. "As to the sacrifice?"
"Yes?" said both Bloodbyrn and Feerborg in tones of exasperation.
"The sacrifice, dark lady," the Hafdern said as the bones of the mouse cracked in his hand, "is you."
The priest's face twisted suddenly into a snarl of rage and terrible purpose as he flung aside the dagger and the vessel of life energy and reached for her with darkly-glowing hands. An assassination attempt. How tedious. How tiresome.
Bloodbyrn returned her mind to the subject of kittens.
As any basic tactical manual will state, it is rarely a good idea to attack a higher position from a lower one. Bloodbyrn and her now very-nearly-master stepped forward and shoved the old man backwards down the stairs.
Kittens had such soft fur.
As he fell, the Hafdern's expression changed from surprise to rage, then to insane, homicidal abandon. "He wields a spell of life-twisting!" cried Bloodbyrn in Sangboise, "do not let him touch you!"
The Blood Priest Aman stood frozen, eyes as wide as a baby cat's with surprise. The Hafdern spun in the air, a whirl of black robes, one desiccated, liver-spotted claw outstretched.
Kittens had little pink pads on the bottoms of their paws that flexed when you tickled them.
"Malevolence!" guards rushed forward to protect Feerborg, but the Hafdern only cackled as his hand slapped hard against the chest of the Sangboise priest.
There was an un-bright flash.
Her kitten would be very tidy.
The Blood Priest's cry of surprise did not even have time to turn to pain before the necromantic spell stopped his heart. Pushed by ever increasing momentum, both un-holy men fell in a tangle of red and black robes. Servants scattered, but not before Teirgog, one hand still buried in the rubies around his colleague's chest, swung about with his other hand and snatched the life from two of the Blood Priest's catamites.
She would teach it to use a box of sand, just like the one at the Ladies' Academy.
Sangboises slashed their wrists and produced blood veils, but not all could work the charm before the pale servants of the Death Priest sprang forth, censors and jewel-encrusted scull-goblets clattering on the flagstones, hands reaching out to touch and kill.
She would feed her kitten scraps from her own meals.
By the time the Sangboise had brought up their veils and grouped themselves together, the Death Priest and his minions had slain three Sangboise and four sSt'tdrakhiini. The rest of the worthless fear-mongers had of course gone invisible, but her people would have been fools to trust them in any case.
The kitten would play with bits of string, or small intestine, or whatever was handy, and it would bat at them with its little paws.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by King Feerborg's demands to know what was going on, as if he could not see treason as well as she, before Bloodbyrn's father spoke.
"That was most ill-done, Teirgog." DeMacabre walked forward, blood veil suspended in front of him to block any curses the Hafdern might throw. "Foolish indeed, for now we must kill you, my friend. Then we shall launch an inquisition into the Dark Synod, and root out your sympathizers, and replace them with our own. Now it only remains to determine whether you acted alone in your attempt to assassinate my daughter, or if you take your orders from Tinesmurk. "Although," he chuckled, "if it was Tinesmurk who directed that little fiasco, I must admit I overestimated her skill as a tactician. Ah yes, and now you must tell me what you find so amusing." For the Hafdern Teirgog had begun to laugh, a dry harsh cackle like stones cracking in a fire.
And oh, how she would laugh when the kitten licked her toes with its tiny pink tongue. There, in the safety of her inmost sanctum, Bloodbyrn would allow herself to giggle.
The old man went on cackling, his dark, glittering eyes fixed on her father, his spotted, trembling hands knotted around the, by now, extremely dead mouse strung around his neck, squeezing, popping the tiny bones. Bloodbyrn realized the danger even as the Deathless one opened his mouth to speak.
Her kitten would be white, and very fluffy. She had seen just the one in Wrothgrinn's laboratory.
"You think you have won." And the un-priest lifted his ancient, twisted claw of a hand, and snapped his fingers.
"Father!" Bloodbyrn shouted, but the corpses on the ground had already leapt up. All the time the priest had laughed and drawn her father's attention, he had been working the rest of his necromancy, re-animating the bodies of the slain, arranging their limbs under them, readying them to spring.
Her lord trembled beside her, and she saw the black nimbus of necromancer's mist form over his head. "Stop that!" She said, carefully hitting him where her strike would not damage any blood diagrams drawn on his skin, "you cannot use necromancy on zombies."
A hiss of consternation drew her attention. During Bloodbyrn's moment of distraction, the zombies had rushed her father. Their blood dead in their veins, there was nothing for the blood-magic to work upon. Bloodbyrn saw two of the clumsy revenants tear through her father's veil before she was forced to focus on her own attacker. It was Kgadnar, a sSt'tdrakhiin under-baron in his mantel of wolf-pelt and vulture-feathers, his dead eyes rolled up to whites, his dead hands reaching for her throat as he ascended the dais. No doubt the traitors planned to use the zombie to hold Bloodbyrn immobile while Hafdern Teirgog or one of his minions could touch her and thereby enlist her into their undead army.
Every night, the kitten would curl up at her feet and purr while she slept.
Calm under pressure is the trait that distinguishes an effective person. Bloodbyrn did not hesitate. She swept her blood veil around, condensing from a thin sheet into a dense wedge, driving it with all the force she could muster into the face of the zombie, now level with her own.
The body of the ex-under-baron wheezed a death-rattle as its head rocked backward. The neck cracked with the force of the blow, but the body only halted for a moment in its forward progress. Almost immediately, the rest of the corpse shuddered and the arms snatched at her.
This was not a fortunate turn of events, indicating as it did that this zombie was under the direct control of a necromancer, and would not stop until she had physically dismembered it.
She stepped back one step, onto the top of the dais. That gave her time to give some serious consideration to names for her new kitten.
Bloodbyrn felt her heel slide off the highest step.
Lady Marmalade? No.
The zombie had only one step left to ascend, and then she would lose the advantage her placement afforded her. There would be time only for one more counter-attack. Bloodbyrn called her blood again, gathered it into a flat disk, and passed that disk between the edge of the uppermost level of the dais, and the foot of the rising meat-puppet.
Countess Fuzzy von Wuzzy? No, best keep it simple.
Bloodbyrn lunged, placed her hands against the zombie's center of gravity, planted her feet, and shoved.
Princess Fluff? Yes. Perfect.
With her blood rendering the steps under its feet ice-slick, the force of her muscles overbalanced the corpse. It clattered down the steps of the dais as Bloodbyrn tipped backward. Then a swipe from the vulture-like claws of…whom?---the Hafdern Teirgog!--- caught in her hair and tugged. The old man must have climbed up behind her while his zombie had kept her distracted. Scalp burning, Bloodbyrn stumbled backward into the treacherous un-priest's vile clutches---
No! Into the curve of a strong, warm arm. Power surged in the air as curving lines of blood met and mingled on skin. Bloodbyrn felt herself caught, lifted, and spun around. Before she could think or react, she faced the black, determined eyes of Feerborg. He smiled opened his mouth to say something and Bloodbyrn saw what her lord was holding in his other hand. The Hafdern's ceremonial black dagger!
Congratulating herself on her fast thinking, Bloodbyrn closed her hand around his and spun around.
And there on the edge of the dais, as if fixed in place by the God of Blood himself, still stood the Hafdern, screaming, black-limned hands extended.
It was a simple matter to plant her feet, swing her unresisting lord's arm about, and drive the obsidian blade into the old man's chest. It was most satisfactorily symbolic.
The sound of the Hafdern's demented cackling had been so invasive, it was only when it cut off that Bloodbyrn noticed the sound at all. Now the so-called deathless priest wheezed as she and her lord pressed the knife into him, and out of the corner of her eyes, Bloodbyrn registered the zombies slumping to the ground as their controller's consciousness flickered.
"Say it," she said, voice pitched low, but full of the tones of command that are the birthright of any person of the Sangboise royal line.
The eyes of the Hafdern stared at her, their focus fading into the mists of death.
"Say it," Bloodbyrn pressed down on the handle, eliciting a gasp from both her lord and the dying old man. "There is no reason you should not."
Before king Feerborg could interrupt, however, Teirgog's ancient, wicked eyes rolled toward her, and the cracked lips parted in a froth of bloody spit. "I pronounce…" his breath whistled. Fortunately, Bloodbyrn had evidently punctured a lung.
The Hafdern's hands twitched, rose, "I pronounce you…one in evil. Con…congratulations…You have joined…joined the legions of the un-wed."
At last! Bloodbyrn let out a little huff of triumphant air, and released the dagger. A moment's work with her blood-magic smeared the diagrams of Engenderation back into place on her and her lord's skin. Not that her own designs needed much repair, aside from where her lord had grasped her. Years of grueling practice had given Bloodbyrn an exquisite sense of the precise placement of her limbs at any given time, resulting in a preternatural ability to preserve haberdashery, coiffure, and other aspects of personal attire in even the most strenuous of circumstances.
Now all that remained was the Engenderation, and damn her if she would allow any more delays.
"Minions!" Bloodbyrn shrieked in her most piercing voice. It was another useful skill taught at the Academy; Mistress Boulome had been able to rupture eardrums from a distance of twenty paces. "The Rite is complete, the sacrifice has been made, we are un-wed! Now lower the bed if you value your miserable lives, for the Nuptials commence!"
At her side, king Feerborg raised himself unsteadily to his feet. His head was crowned in the necromancer's mantel of black fog, and his eyes flashed with lightning. "Bloodbyrn, what is…?"
This was not the time for her lord to be asking questions, or for that matter talking at all. Bloodbyrn seized him by the wrist and pulled him up onto the bed as it came rocking back down from the ceiling.
"Get on the bed, my lord," she said, "it is time to consummate the marriage."
"What—?" But Bloodbyrn did not give her lord any opportunity to protest. Before the bed's legs had touched the stone top of the dais, she placed her fingers very carefully on the areas of un-diagrammed skin on his chest and pushed him through the curtains and onto the cushions.