CHAPTER 6
Maris Valloris, Pangea
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 7. 09:01
When Postule finishes climbing the stairs to the bell tower that looks over the port city of Maris Valloris, he is wheezing, his face as red as the sun setting on the horizon. He’s clutching his chest with one hand and holding the ransom to his bosom with the other. The queen waits for him. She has waited for one hour and seventeen minutes and is feeling, well, cranky. And the queen hates feeling cranky.
“You’re late,” she tells the fat man.
The room is lit by a high skylight. The sun’s fading rays fall on the queen’s robes, and she is pleased with the way the watermarking accentuates the light, highlighting the fleur du lis pattern embedded in the cloth. The walls and floor of the room are bare, examples of the clean lines the architects of Maris Valloris used throughout the whole of the city. Light and concrete. CorpCom architecture. Some like it. Most just tolerate it. The queen doesn’t give a fig either way.
“Please—huff—forgive me,” Postule says between gasping breaths. “There is no elevator—huff—and there are many stairs.”
“Eleven thousand six hundred and seventy-five. One more step than the longest stairway on Earth. If you had read the placards along the way, you would know that. Of course, you would have kept me waiting even longer.” She removes a small dagger and a boiled egg from the pockets sewn into her purple velvet robes. With the tip of the blade, she peels the shell, leaving the white untouched. “Didn’t I warn you how impatient I am?”
“Yes…my queen. Please…forgive me. I have the…ransom.” He tries to bow on one knee.
Effortlessly, she skips forward and kicks his leg out from under him. He sags to his side, then rolls onto his back.
“Breathe, you imbecile.” She pulls the money from his grasp, then counts it. Carelessly, she tosses the coin aside. The loose coins scatter, making a racket that she pauses to appreciate.
She straddles the fat man and plops down on his belly.
“Oof!” he exhales.
“Oof? I’m light as a feather. You’re in such terrible shape, Postule. If your connections weren’t so useful to me, I would gut you and feed your entrails to the Dr?u. How would you like that?”
“My queen,” he groans, “I would not.”
She bites the boiled egg in half. The other half, she places on Postule’s lips. “Open up.”
He complies, and the egg falls into his mouth.
“Chew.” He does. The queen sets the razor-sharp edge of the dagger against his gullet. “Now swallow.”
“Swallow?” the fat man whines. “But the knife—”
“If you love me as your queen”—she smiles mischievously—“you’ll do as I ask without question. You do love me, don’t you?”
“My love for you is as wide and deep as the Hellenic Sea, my queen.”
Liar. “Then swallow. And don’t make a peep if you feel a little prick.”
With a look of wide-eyed panic, he swallows the egg. His Adam’s apple bobs beneath a coating of flabby skin, and the edge of the knife opens a four-centimeter cut. Postule sucks in a breath. But doesn’t cry out.
“Good boy,” she says, bouncing off him. “Now I know that I can trust your loyalty. Even if I can’t trust your judgment.”
“My queen?”
“Your task was simple. Receive the ransom. I said nothing about trying to drown the Bramimonde children. Killing your hostages is bad for business. We have a simple formula. Take the children. Collect the ransom. Let the children go unharmed. Everyone knows this, so they pay. If we deviate from the formula, that’s when doubt creeps in. Why should parents pay if their heirs are going to die anyway?”
“But, my queen, Dame Bramimonde is the one who deviated from the formula. She sent Regulators to rescue her daughter.”
“Do you think I’m so stupid?” the queen snarls. “That I wouldn’t know that? But they weren’t real Regulators, were they? They were dalit, and there were only two of them. How did a squad of shock troopers fall to two dalit?”
“They were not damned ordinary dalit! One of them crashed through the roof!”
“First, don’t dare curse in my presence again. Second, who would be stupid enough to crash through a roof when they could walk through the doors?”
“His name was Durango.”
Of course, it was Durango. It had to be him. Fate, that foul hussy, wouldn’t have it any other way. “Nevertheless, you did try to drown the hostages, so I must give you another job. Postule, my bloody friend, I think that it’s time you met the Dr?u.”
“My queen! Please!” He clasps his hands together in prayer and crawls to her on his knees.
“Stop begging. I’ll tell you when to beg. Now get up.” She hooks a finger in the corner of his mouth and draws him, thrashing and moaning, to his feet. “Oh, please, Postule, do learn to tolerate a little pain. You have a very long and difficult journey ahead, and we don’t want you dying from sheer terror along the way.”