Elestrine

  “A successful day, I daresay,” I comment as we emerge into Rideau Hall.

  “Everyone was fed, if that’s what you mean, Excellency,” Charles mumbles. “And…” He sighs. “You did a good thing by turning Cloutier back into a human.”

  I am unable to resist myself. “And what was good about it, dear Charles?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Forgive me,” I say. “I’m trying to comprehend human morality. Why, in your opinion, was it good for me to turn a perfectly well-adjusted deer into an existentially angsty human?”

  Charles hesitates. “Well—you restored him to his…rightful…shape…I guess.”

  “So, because he was human by nature but a deer by magic, it was moral to turn him human again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah,” I nod. “So natural is identical with good.”

  “Yes. No! Not…not necessarily. Look, think of it like this: you changed him without his consent, and then you fixed it.”

  “Also without consent,” I agree. “So why was it evil the first time and good the second?”

  “Look, it’s…” He looks away. “Complicated.”

  “Actually, Charles, it all seems terribly simple: morality is whatever you say it is.”

  Charles scowls. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Not at all,” I reply. “Indeed, that is precisely the standard that I intend to adopt in practice. When it is desirable to behave morally, I shall always consult you.”

  “And…when it’s not ‘desirable’?”

  “You needn’t concern yourself with those cases. Now then,” I say, as we come upon the rather tastelessly appointed dining room. “Join me for dinner, Charles; we have each had a trying day.”

  *

  I take my seat at the head of the table and drop my glamour with a relieved exhalation. My husband’s back stiffens. “What the hell just happened to you!?”

  I am momentarily stupefied by his reaction. And then I laugh. “Oh dear, you really had no idea, did you?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s glamour, you silly man,” I say, tapping his nose with a finger that—come to think of it—must seem surprisingly bony to him.

  “You mean…” he stammers. “Your appearance…was an illusion?”

  “‘Illusion’,” I echo in amusement. “Are your clothes an illusion, Charles? It is fashion, my love! I was dressed for state business, and now I aim to relax. It is no different from you kicking off your shoes. Though, if it will set your mind at ease—”

  I raise my glamour back up again.

  “You will, of course, need to grow accustomed to my natural appearance if we are to make any success of this marriage.”

  He purses his lips. “I would like to keep our relationship strictly professional, Excellency.”

  “That should make it rather difficult to consummate.”

  Charles recoils with an angry start.

  “A joke, of course,” I soothe.

  “Not a funny one.”

  “Are you really so put off by my form, Charles? That seems rather shallow of you; especially as, if I may say so, you are hardly a peak specimen yourself—”

  “I’m put off,” he interrupts, “by the fact that you’re a murderer.”

  “Ah. That. Well, let us chalk that up to…a cultural misunderstanding. In any case, you needn’t worry. Awyrel assures me that, so long as we each maintain the pretence of consummation, our marriage will be legitimate in the eyes of the law. Why, this country doesn’t even have public beddings!”

  He looks as if he is about to make reply when my footmen emerge into the room and begin setting out my repast—a haunch of boar, a bowl of glistening red sevel berries, a pair of cakes, and a bottle of the finest nectar, all fresh from Faerie.

  My husband, predictably, sits down at the opposite end of the table and sets a ration basket in front of himself.

  “Oh, Charles,” I chide. “You cannot mean to eat that like a common peasant. Come: share my meal. I have enough to spare!”

  “With respect, Excellency,” he says, “if this is good enough for ‘common peasants’, then it’s good enough for me.”

  “You’re behaving like a child, Charles.”

  He ignores me, obstinately reaching for his wilted human vegetables. I lose my patience and revert his meal at once to the dirt and meltwater from which it was made.

  He glares at me. I point to the chair at my right-hand side. “Sit. Eat.”

  Charles is a proud man but also hungry, and so he takes his place by my side with only token hesitation. Wordlessly, he grabs a fistful of berries and makes a show of masticating them with his mouth wide open, juices dribbling into his unkempt beard. The display is so ridiculously petty that I laugh out loud.

  “Pray, don’t be so glum, Charles!” I tell him. “There’s no longer any reason for you to be so miserable!”

  “If you say so, Excellency.”

  “I do say so,” I remark. “And, while I’m pleased by your deference, surely you need no longer use my honorific.”

  “What should I call you, Excellency?” he asks with all the stiffness of a frozen tree branch.

  “My name seems the obvious choice.”

  “Alright, Princess Elestrine Berit-Ardra av-Dahuyn,” Charles replies, “I would like to discuss Parliament’s latest requests.”

  Despite myself, I laugh again. “You do have a sense of humour, Charles! I knew there was a reason why I liked you.”

  “This isn’t humour, it’s passive resistance.”

  “Ah.” I nod, cutting a slice of meat for myself. “And your supposition is that if you treat me rudely enough, my people will pull up stakes and go home.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “It’s worth a try,” he says. “Now, can we discuss Parliament’s demands?”

  “Yes, yes,” I say with a wave of my hand. “I’ve already perused Mrs. Hiscox’s list, and I must admit that I find it thoroughly disappointing.”

  “You’re…disappointed that everyone still wants heat and electricity?”

  “I am disappointed,” I reply, “by how backwards-looking the document is! I mean…Spirits of Land and Sea, Charles, but simply imagine finding yourself in a world newly reborn to magic and immediately thinking ‘oh, how I wish that my clothes-washing machine still worked’! It is the very mark of a stale intellect, so mired in mediocrity it has become incapable of appreciating grandeur!”

  “Maybe people would be able to appreciate ‘grandeur’ better if they weren’t freezing to death,” Charles retorts.

  “Oh, they’re hardly at risk of freezing. Anyone whose brain is not thoroughly ossified ought to be able to figure out how to warm themselves.”

  “Or you could just turn the power back on.”

  “And how do you propose I do that, Charles?”

  My husband stares at me incredulously. “Same way you turned it off, Excellency.”

  Now it is my turn to be incredulous. Does he really think…?

  But of course he does. When I think of it, it’s a perfectly natural inference to make.

  “Do…you suppose that I caused the Shift?”

  “Well, not you personally, obviously,” Charles defers. “But—your mother. The other Fairy leaders who’ve claimed territory here.”

  I smile and shake my head. “Charles, the crowned heads of Faerie once fought a two-thousand-year war because a servant misplaced the Princess of Tomboso’s favourite nose-ring. Do you really suppose that they could attain the organization necessary to systematically remake another world?”

  “Well…if not them, who?” Charles demands. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe it’s some kind of coincidence that you invaded less than a month after the Shift—”

  “Well, of course it’s not coincidence,” I laugh. “The door was open and we went through! But we certainly weren’t the ones who opened it.”

  “Then who did?”

  I shrug. “Well, I can hardly say for certain; it’s not my world. Though if I had to guess…”

  “Yes?”

  I fix him with a stare. “You did.”

  “What?”

  “Well, not you personally of course,” I amend. “All of you. Humanity in its billions. That entire sorrowful race of yours, crying out for deliverance—”

  “Deliverance!” my husband scoffs. “Oh yes, God. Deliver us from freedom and food security, amen!”

  “Deliver you from emptiness, my love,” I intone. “And from a world so tightly corseted in…fibre optics and electricity grids and the trajectories of your satellites that you had squeezed the soul right out of it. And out of yourselves besides.”

  Charles looks at me skeptically. “I think my soul is doing just fine—”

  “A piece of it is missing,” I interrupt. “Did you know that? It’s…really quite noticeable, actually. I suspect you can feel its absence, even if you’re not consciously aware of it.”

  He crosses his arms. “What does that even mean?”

  “I imagine it manifests as a sort of…disappointment. Does that sound right? An irrational disappointment with reality itself for not being what you think it should be. Water isn’t wet enough, green isn’t green enough, and you can never hold the stars in the palm of your hand. I sometimes think it’s the sole motivating factor behind all human culture. Oh, you try to bung your poor souls up by acquiring things; you turn to gods when those fail. But what you really need…is mystery.”

  “…Does it have to be a murder mystery, or would a good burglary do the trick?”

  “Nothing so vulgar as a mystery that can be solved, my love! But mystery for its own sake. Something that can surprise you, reward you, terrify you. The promise of the empty parts of the map: here, anything can happen.”

  Charles shifts about in his seat. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe—”

  “But, of course, you filled your maps, didn’t you?” I interrupt. “You cut down the murky forests and befouled the wine-dark sea and tamed the wild night with your electricity. You went to war against mystery itself, and you won.

  “But even in winning, you lost. Novelty and surprise were banished. Reality became governed by laws sterner than those of any tyrant. Towards the end, even the future—one of stagnation and decline on a dying world—came to seem certain. And your poor, starving souls—weak in magic, but united in desperation—did the only thing they could. They rebelled. They changed the world. They made your secret wish come true.

  “And we,” I smile, “were on hand to help you.”

  Charles gawps at me where he sits; then, he emits a single explosive squawk: “HAH!”

  “You disbelieve my tale.”

  “It is ridiculous!” he exclaims.

  “And yet, my every premise is true,” I reply. “Can you honestly say that anyone you knew was truly happy in the old world?”

  “Oh, and they’ll be happy now that they’re starving, eh? Now that they’re being colonized? I bet freezing to death has them absolutely jumping for joy!”

  “Their stomachs may be empty,” I tell him, “but their souls will be full.”

  “Oh yeah? And they might be cold and miserable now, but they’re actually secretly happy on a level that can’t be measured or described in anything but the vaguest and most meaningless of terms?”

  “Yes.”

  He scoffs again. “Listen; what you’re describing…that feeling of emptiness? Of disappointment? Yeah, okay, that was real. But if you expect me to believe that it wasn’t because of, you know…” He fumbles for words. “The atomization of individuals under capitalism, or the emotionally deadening effects of consumerism, or even, God help me, the decline of traditional values—”

  “Your words no longer have meaning, Charles; I do hope you realize that.”

  “Well, my point is,” he snaps, “our civilization may have had ninety-nine problems but people being spiritually unfulfilled because too many streetlamps prevented them from believing in the boogeyman wasn’t one!”

  “And yet you are unfulfilled,” I note. “I can feel it in your soul. And I think you can too.”

  “If I’m miserable, it’s because you forced me to marry you.”

  “Oh, you were miserable long before that,” I dismiss. “But tell me: do you recall how it felt when Awyrel taught you to make apples?”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Did it feel right?”

  “What?”

  “Did it make you ecstatic, Charles, to have those creative energies pass through you? Did it satisfy you in a way that you didn’t even know you were unsatisfied?”

  I lean in toward him. “Did it, in some ineffable way—on a level that ‘can’t be measured or described in anything but the vaguest and most meaningless of terms’—make you happy?”

  Charles holds my gaze for several seconds, saying nothing. Then his eyes dart away from mine, telling me everything I need to know.

  Poor pitiful creatures, I think. The entire race of them.

  I smile and ease back into my chair. “I think,” I say, busying myself with my meal, “that your education should continue. Talent should never be wasted, my love, and it falls to you to set a good example.”

  “A good example for what?” he asks darkly.

  “Civic virtue, of course. The present situation is unsustainable; your people cannot rely upon handouts and children spinning apples forever. You must lead them to self-sufficiency!”

  “And you’re going to allow that?” Charles asks. “Let your conquered subjects learn magic?”

  “I see no reason why I should not; magic is, indeed, very useful to know.”

  Charles looks like he’s about to say something but apparently changes his mind.

  “Oh, dear me,” I realize with a laugh. “You are thinking of rebellion, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he blurts too quickly.

  “Well, you needn’t worry on that score; rebellion will not be a concern.”

  “You sound awfully confident of that.”

  “Yes.”

  He looks askance at me. I regard him beatifically.

  Charles sighs. “Your Excellency, as your Prime Minister, I have a right to know what your plans for this country are.”

  “‘Elestrine’,” I correct. “Go on. Say it.”

  “And…will you tell me your plan”—he hesitates for just a second—“Elestrine?”

  I smile broadly. “Not at this juncture. But it was lovely to hear you say my name.”

  Charles tenses and rises to his feet. “One day…” he begins, pointing at me.

  “Yes?”

  He doesn’t seem to have the words to conclude his pronouncement, so instead he storms out of the room.

  *

  Awyrel joins me some time later.

  “Ah, there you are,” I say as she curtsies. “If you’re still reticent over that apple business, you should know that I bear you no grudge, and I’ve missed you terribly.”

  “It’s not that, Excellency,” she demurs. “Rather, I have…reservations concerning the penance you have assigned to me.”

  “By all means, lay them out.”

  “Well…” she says reluctantly, “begging your pardon, Excellency, but it seems that what you have asked might—by a human, of course—be considered…evil.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, Excellency,” she replies. “And I had understood that you were going to try to govern by a higher moral standard—”

  “Well, I am certainly trying,” I reply. “But this, I’m afraid, is unavoidable. Can you imagine what would happen if that woman turned up alive? I simply cannot take chances, not with the stakes being what they are.”

  “But would not an equal disaster befall you if Mr. Oakes were to find out?”

  “Then it simply falls to you to ensure that he does not,” I say, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I trust you with this. And you are, indeed, the only one I can trust. This cannot be official business, do you understand?”

  Awyrel looks away. “Yes, Excellency.”

  “Wonderful,” I say, embracing her. “And you know where she’ll be?”

  “…I have some idea.”

  “Then take Igrox and make haste! The sooner we can put this business behind us, the better.”

  “Yes, Excellency,” Awyrel says. She curtsies again and takes her leave.

  Poor girl, I think, watching her retreating form. This will be her first kill, and I do feel sorry for her—and even for Charles, though he need never know about it.

  But unfortunately, being “legally dead” has very little currency when one is factually alive, and I cannot risk the latter coming to light. Therefore, Meaghan Oakes must die.