The three young ladies-in-waiting silently cursed as they wound their way up the magick-hewn stairs. On either side of them were smooth rock fans that shielded the sun, but on this hot dry day, they were not in the mood to appreciate the care and skill that the Founders of the Great City of Guardial had wielded many centuries ago to create these traverses between the different tiers of the city.
Nor were they in the mood to contemplate why it was that those founders had chosen the bowels of the high cliffs along the Nidorian Sea as the location for their home, which lacked any sort of harbor. They did not particularly care why the men of the Second Founding (because of course it was the men who made the decision) had not abandoned this place after the Catastrophe and instead sought refuge further south, perhaps in Porrezan, with its temperate climate, amazing ports, and most importantly, a complete lack of climbing up and down stone staircases.
No, they only had one thought on their minds as they made their way up to the High Tier, where this afternoon’s destination was located: to make it back home alive. Sure, that was a little dramatic, but that is how women of this age tended to be. The title almost demanded it. Who would even want a lady-in-waiting who was not constantly scheming, preening, and status-chasing? Nobody, that’s who. But unfortunately for these three, the fortitude of their thoughts trailed too far ahead, where they were noticed by the very woman on their way to visit.
Only half of that last sentence was true, of course.
“Why does she live all the way up here?” asked Celeste as she withdrew a handkerchief to wipe the solitary bead of sweat that had formed on her forehead.
“I think,” said Rika, “it’s because her scent would not be welcome on the Grand Tier.”
They summited the last of the steps and exited the alcove into the bright warmth that blanketed the highest Tier of the City. The harsh extremes up here were why almost all of the noble families had made their home one level down.
“No,” said Ashe, who, through her mother’s line, claimed descent from the First Founding. “It’s because she likes to think herself greater than us.”
They approached with some trepidation a great manse that was carved into a nook in the cliff. Its size betrayed nothing, because although it was quite possibly the largest structure in the City, most of the inside was merely an illusion and not actually there. But the three had no reason to know that.
“Shh,” said Celeste. “We must abandon all such talk. You know what they say about …”
The blonde stepped first across the threshold arch, which was carved with intricate horned designs. Perhaps on purpose.
“. . . the demoness’s ears.”
Lady Elara of the Moon Court closed her book, a Rumination on the Ninth Summoning of Falak, and set it on the table beside her. The rear courtyard was one of her favorite reading spots, and this particular sitting area next to a fountain she had carved with her hands a forewinter ago was perhaps her most preferred. She let out a soft breath and shut down her mind-sense, as she considered it rude to eavesdrop on the thoughts of another when they were in your immediate presence. And just as the trio exited the back of the manse, Elara scrunched her face slightly and extended her shimmering red hair so that it covered most, but not all, of her horns.
“Ah, my friends,” she said. “You are late.”
The girls glanced at each other, and Elara did not need to peek into their minds to know that they would not consider themselves friends of hers, but their mothers had impressed upon them the importance of not upsetting the Demoness Spawn. Whereas in past centuries, she had chafed at the abject hatred that she inspired amongst the courts, she was at an age now where she was able to merely let it crest over her, unaffected.
“Sorry about that,” said Ashe. “It is a long climb, and we also stopped to get you this!”
The short-haired brunette held out a small perfectly wrapped package, with a distinctive bow on the top.
“Oh, thank you!” said Elara. “Treats from Gustavson’s Bakery I presume?”
Celeste and Rika grit their teeth, no doubt to suppress the laugh that would betray them, while Ashe maintained her stately composure.
“Yes, exactly,” she said. “I expect they are quite delicious.”
Elara smiled and clapped her hands in approval.
“Excellent,” she said. “My assistant will serve them for us.”
A whirring sound echoed off in the distance, only to grow louder and louder. The source soon appeared: a metallic female-shaped figure wearing a simple blue dress, whose chrome plating reflected the mid-day sun into the visitors’ eyes, causing them to squint uncontrollably. When they recovered, they again forced themselves to not betray their true reactions to the magick-powered automaton now in their midst.
Thea, as Elara had named her, was practically perfect. She could calculate the square root of nine digit numbers down to the hundredth decimal, she could recite obscure poetry only known to the most far-flung scholars, and she could also lift a small elephanate. Had she the skin of a human girl instead of the metal outer casing, she might have been crowned the queen of light and beauty at last year’s Moon Festival, instead of Ashe’s older sister. But such advances were still a decade away at least, Elara surmised.
The automaton took the package and unwrapped it with unnatural haste, plating the contents onto small dishes she had stashed in the folds of her dress, before depositing them on the wooden table nearby. Elara bade her guests to take their seats, and they nervously complied.
“Your assistant,” said Ashe, glancing up and down at the near-woman as if Thea was a very intelligent dog, “is quite impressive. I assume you had help from the Academy on that endeavor?”
“Only to borrow some of their older scrolls,” said Elara. “And I would prefer to think of her as a friend, not an ‘endeavor.’”
“Of course, of course,” said Ashe. “It’s just … there’s nothing like real companionship, I’ve found.” The woman rapped her knuckle against Thea’s thigh with a wicked look on her face, and it took all of Elara’s patience not to commit something unspeakable. Instead, she gritted her teeth against a forced smile.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Shall we dig in?”
The carefully wrapped flaky pastries looked decadent, and it was known that Gustavson had the best sense of flavor perhaps in all the City.
Each of the girls lifted their respective plate with trepidation for a moment, before setting them back down.
“You first, Elara,” said Rika.
“Yes, ummm, we snuck a few on the way up here, I’m afraid,” said Celeste.
Elara drew in a deep breath, causing the girls’ cheeks to blush slightly, and then sunk her somewhat pointed-but-not-too-pointed teeth fully into the pastry.
“Curious,” she said, between bites, before setting the “treat” back down on the plate. “But delicious nonetheless.”
Without wasting another second, Elara flicked her wrist and twisted her fingers, causing the other three pastries to go up on flames and her company to shriek hysterically.
“Now, now, ladies. Your prank was a good one,” said Elara, grabbing the remainder of her pastry. “But unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, for you, I happen to like the taste of beetle dung.”
<hr>
“They were quite rude,” said Thea, as she cleaned up the ashes that used to be plates.
“You don’t have to do that,” said Elara. “There is no one else here. The ‘maid’ pretense is not needed.”
Thea ignored her plea.
“It is no bother. Besides, it will give me practice at using my new fingers.
Elara had recently upgraded each of Thea’s limbs, and unfortunately the automaton was forced to spend several weeks basically learning how to walk again.
But Thea did not seem to have minded. She was an equal participant in each of her improvements, and in fact had contributed several herself, without any prompting. These were the most exciting developments of the whole experiment, although Elara felt guilty referring to her only friend as such.
For Lady Elara of the Moon Court had lived in Guardial for several hundred years at this point, and had utterly failed to make any personal connection since she had arrived. Part of that was her unique temporal situation. She had spent many decades as a child, and then pre-teen, and of course, as a teenager. (At some point in the last century she had written to the families of each of the maids who had somehow survived caring for her all this time.)
Such was the bounty granted to her as the spawn of a full demoness. To her the years passed like months, and now that she was fully independent, she oftentimes lost track of a decade when buried in her studies.
But due to her patrilineal line, she was only half demon, and that meant that while she had been blessed with an extraordinarily long life span, unlike her mother’s, it would eventually come to an end. Given her current appearance as a 22-year old woman, she estimated that she had a good two thousand years of life left ahead of her, although she rarely thought about such things.
Instead, her thoughts lately were focused on the life she had created all on her own in her laboratory. Such an achievement, if widely known, would have shocked the Schools of Magick throughout the Continent, which is why she and Thea kept up the appearance that the latter was merely a glorified robotic housekeeper. In truth, Elara’s experiments with creation were, deep down, selfish in nature. A desire to outrun the destiny that was being forced on her by her absentee mother many years ago, in the last letter she had received from her.
Thea quickly swept up the remaining ash and retreated into the manse, leaving Elara alone once more. There were still several hours left of daylight, enough to finish reading the book, for whatever reason, the afternoon tea had left a sour taste in her mouth. She harbored no illusion that the entirety of the Guardial nobility loathed her with a burning passion, ever since she had made her home there. But they well knew the price to be paid if word made its way up to the Ayre, as they had paid it dearly before. And so she and the nobles and their children, and their children’s children, had played their game of minimal tolerance over and over again. It was all quite exhausting.
Before Elara could pick up her book again, Thea re-emerged from the house with great haste, carrying a small wrapped package.
“This just arrived,” said Thea.
“Oh,” said Elara. “More pastries then? Perhaps the real flavors?”
“No,” said Thea. “I found it in the fire pit.”
“Oh.”
The fire pit in the kitchen was where Elara cooked her more creative evening meals, including a wide variety of meat that most people in Guardial would never consider eating. It also served another purpose, however.
Elara unwrapped this second package of the day to find something worse than the dung-filled pastries.
It looked like one of the lighting orbs that Elara had developed 30 years ago and that now provided odor-free lighting in the basement lab. Except that this orb was red and instead of a socket that fit into a lamp, this had a connector that only fit one place.
“Interesting,” said Thea. “How do you suppose your mother knows how to create a module compatible with my logic interface?”
“An excellent question,” said Elara. “One I would rather not know the answer to.”
“That may be true,” said Thea. “But if you were to smash this against the wall as your furrowed brow is indicating you would like to do, the next missive would only be more uncomfortable.”
Elara stared at Thea, slightly surprised at her intuition. She had come a long way since the day Elara had activated the life runes, a complicated undertaking to say the least. As she had watched her creation grow and evolve, Elara couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride in what she created. No, who she had created. She hoped it would be enough for her mother.
“Fine. You’ve convinced me. Let’s get this over with.”
Thea nodded, before pulling up her dress to reveal her smooth, metal torso. She pressed inward where her stomach would be, and the seams of a small door appeared before sliding out and then downward to reveal a panel of switches, knobs, and, most importantly for this exercise, an input port.
The module fit precisely, like Elara had made it herself, and it gave off a satisfying click just before the glass end lit up in a fiery red. Elara looked up at her friend’s face to see Thea’s eyes now sporting that same color, and a moment later, the automaton’s expression changed completely.
“Hello, daughter,” said a voice that was not Thea’s. It made Elara’s skin prickle in a way that most things could not. “I hope you are well. Thank you for devising this new method of communication. I think it will serve us perfectly. I have missed seeing you at the Truce Lodge and I am going to rectify that.”
The Truce Lodge was a small cabin that sat at the border of what remained of the Great Cities’ territory and the northern reaches that Elara’s mother had seized long ago. Each year, representatives from each side were to meet and discuss any issues that had arisen. Elara had gone for many years, hoping to speak to her mother, but she could not remember the last time that the Demoness of the North had attended the annual session.
“In a fortnight, I will be paying you a visit at your manse. I know what you are thinking. ‘Such a visit is prohibited by the Accords! The Great Cities will call their banners if they find out!’ Which is why they won’t be finding out. On this you will have to trust me. Why it is that I must see you in person will have to wait until I arrive. But please start the preparations for my stay now. You know how demanding my needs are. Don’t worry, I will only be there for a few days. I have other business further south that I must take care of personally before I return to the North. Until then, child, may the blood of your enemies flow quickly.”
The red glass shattered as the message ended, and Elara quickly removed the module from Thea, whose eyes thankfully returned to normal in a few seconds.
“Are you alright?” Elara asked.
“I believe so,” said Thea. “But I cannot say the same for you. Your complexion looks paler than the new moon.”
Elara stared at herself in the mirror that hung over the breakfast nook, and confirmed for herself what she already felt inside her.
“That’s my mother for you,” she said. “She knows just what to say to make me feel like a tiny bug.”
“I am sorry,” said Thea. “For as much as I consider you my mother, know that you do not make me feel that way.”
“Thank you, Thea,” said Elara. “I appreciate it. Unfortunately all plans for a relaxing evening are out the window. We must begin preparing the south wing immediately for my mother’s arrival. Grab your cloak. It’s going to be a cold night in the swamp.”