Facing the Twilight

by Rachel Parsons

Chapter 3, Chapter 5
appear in this issue.

Chapter 4

On the way we were joined by Brunhilde. She floated past the flower-lips, now almost fully pink in the early spring weather, and ended up by Henry. I was a little envious of this ability of hers; I had walked the dirt road often enough to wince at the very sight of rocks, even though it was Nightshade’s feet that were afoot on it and not mine.

“Why do you not just be a man and accept your death?” she asked the offworlder.

“I am just a little confused. I woke up to you and thought it was strange you were hovering over my body. Then I got scared. Does that mean I will not go to Valhalla?”

She shrugged. “Not for me to decide. Usually, the only soldiers who do not go are those who desert their comrades. Are you that kind?”

“No. In fact I was horrified when my father paid my way out of combat. I didn’t much believe in a war which was none of our business, but when your world needs you, you come, no matter what.”

This was a side I had not previously seen in Henry. The jester who clowned with his own head was perhaps a man after all.

“So it fared well with the bailiff who saved a drowned cat?” I asked this of Brunhilde, which got a shot from Ionnen, who had not stopped staring since Brunhilde had joined us. I do not know which sight perturbed the bailiff more: my unclad body or the Valkyrie’s armor-clad one. The mere sight of the floating goddess seemed to make her work brightly colored beads she had pulled from her purse.

“He is drinking ale with the gods even as we speak,” Brunhilde said happily. “Well, fare thee well. Until our next meeting.” She exited in the usual way, causing Rosalyn’s and Ionnen’s hair to blow in the wind.

Ionnen was in hysterics. “We are going to die, are we not? We are going to die. I just know it; we’re all going to die!”

“Why sayest you that?”

“Well, everyone knows that if you meet a Morrigon that means you are going to die.”

Oh, goddesses. “Ionnen, that is but a silly tale mother’s tell their children. I have met the Morrigon many times and I am still alive.”

“Valkyries give me an upset stomach,” Rosalyn said, taking her hands off Scout’s reins and clutching her midriff. “There weren’t any in New Dyved when I grew up.” She took a vial out of her bag, which contained chalk colored liquid, and chugged it.

“Oh, there are Valkyries everywhere, Rosalyn. You just were not aware of them. Ferrell had banned the practice of magic in his kingdom, and when they came for you, they often disguised themselves as physicians, undertakers or attorneys.”

One of the many things which should have been an omen to me when I had moved in with the man who had sworn to love me forever, but instead had abandoned me to the streets when I was cursed to nakedness, was his ban on things supernatural.

It is half a day’s trip from the sheriff’s barracks to the castle, and by the time we arrived the early spring’s cool temperature had me in a terrible mood. I had Rosalyn draw me a hot bath — she always makes sure there is a fire under the water jugs — and take care of me, and I spent most of the rest of the day working on my correspondence, a few stays of execution, a letter of marque and reprisal against a pirate captain, and I lost count how many bills of attainder. How many outlaws can one kingdom support? I must ask Ioseff that again sometime. The last time I broached the subject, I had my foot on his manhood, and he was distracted and did not answer me but made catlike noises instead.

So it was not until the morrow that I brought Weston to me for an audience. She sat across me at my desk. Then I told her what I wished.

“You are saying one of my people may have killed my son?”

She sat, right leg crossed over left, her black, pointed shoe dangling, with a tea cup in her hand. She preferred tea to coffee, unbelievable as that is. One of the many strange habits of the offworlders.

It was the first noon hour, and I had asked her leave to eat my lunch, and so I waited until the last wiggling antennae of the desert worm was thoroughly chewed before I answered her. No more spiders for me, since I had befriended Gurkin, their king. Besides, even though I am not quite as obsessed as Brunhilde, I do watch my feminine form, it being displayed for all and sundry.

“I do not know who killed your son, Emissary. But methinks it was one of his own kind, and there is a chance he has returned to Daearu with your congress. So I wish to interview them.”

“Unacceptable,” she said, in soft but menacing tones. “I will not subject my people to the interrogations of an absolute monarch. But what I can do for you, in the interests of interplanetary accord, is allow you to interview those who did know my son. Will that be of service to your majesty?”

“It will be a start. You have leave to go.”

She stood.

“But be aware that nothing is ‘unacceptable’ to me. And that the prosperity of your world depends on my pleasure.”

She stiffened at that, her cheeks hollowed slightly, but she gave me a curt bow, and departed. The first Terran to have an audience with me was a Mr. Robert Summers. He was a thin man with a severe brown hair style that revealed a wrinkled forehead, one brown eye and one blue one, and was wearing a masculine version of the suit that the ambassador was wearing. It was cut more for a man, and was accompanied by an accessory they call a ‘tie,’ which is like a cravat only, I have heard, more strangling.

He knelt in my presence, which startled me. “It is rare for an offworlder to show such courtesy,” I said, standing up and walking around the desk to him. I placed my foot in front of him so he could kiss it. His posture made it look like he was about to kiss something else. I had not realized how this courtesy appeared until men started doing it when I was naked. I might not have realized it at all had Rosalyn not pointed it out.

Summers rose and jerked. Henry had just waved at him.

“Henry! I heard a rumor you were still alive.”

“Does this look like I’m alive?” Henry threw his head at me; I involuntarily caught it, gave him a look of disgust, and tossed it back.

Mr. Summers pulled a small bottle from his coat pocket, opened it and popped a handful of pills into his mouth. “Anti-psychotics,” he explained, using a Terran term I was familiar with. “I had also heard that the hallucinations that plague Terrans here were in full force.” He showed me the bottle. “Want some? They taste minty.” He made crunching noises as he chewed the tablets.

“No, thank you. But the Lady Ionnen may wish a couple?” Ionnen, who had been sitting at my secretary’s desk, to the left of mine, had turned an ashen shade similar to Henry’s at his stunt. In spite of this, she shook her head.

“You have leave to sit.” He sat down to my left, next to Ionnen, at a diagonal from me and to the side of the glass sheet that binds together the two portions of my desk. I cannot even hide behind my desk. “Now, tell me of Henry Weston.”

He frowned and scrunched his face until it resembled a dried lemon, as if the process of thought itself was painful to him. He looked me in the eye, obviously trying to be sincere. One thing I will say about him, though, is that he did not stare only at my head, as some men do. When his eyes took purchase elsewhere, he did not jerk them away, as if my unadorned body could jeopardize the very process of sight itself.

“Well, he was well liked, your highness. He was a bit of a cut up, you know,” he said, echoing Henry’s mother’s words.

At that moment, Henry took off his head, put it back on his shoulders upside down, and began wagging his tongue goblin style.

I pretended to ignore him.

“I can’t think of anyone who would want him dead.”

“Was he in any triangles?” I tried to draw on my knowledge of wickedness, and I naturally turned to the most obvious of motives.

“You mean was he having an affair? No, I don’t think so. But he didn’t confess his love life to me.”

“Then was anyone jealous of him? Of his being the son of the ambassador?”

“Well, people didn’t really give that much thought. But his father was one of the wealthiest men in the northern hemisphere, as his mother’s family was in Africa. And tongues did wag when he was bought out of military service.”

“Could that have been a motive, then?”

“Hardly. Most of us who knew him were saying ‘more power to you, brother.’ Oddly, though, Henry himself didn’t see it that way.”

That fit with what he had told Brunhilde. “Ionnen, do you have anything to ask?”

Ionnen was pinning her chair against the wall, as Henry was juggling with his arms, which is a mean feat, if you think about it. “Uh, yes, your majesty?”

“Well then, ask it.”

“Ask what?” she squeaked, as Henry dropped his tongue on the ground and it slithered toward her.

“Your question.”

“I have none, your highness.”

“Then why did you say you did?”

“Did I?” she squeaked, as the tongue touched her boot and then retracted as if it had gotten what it had come for.

“Then you are dismissed,” I said, indicating Summers. “Well then, Henry, if you can stop playing with Ionnen for one minute, do you have any comments about Summers?”

Henry put his head back on right. “Well, he was wrong about one thing. I was having an affair.”

“Really, sirrah? And who else was involved?”

“It was with his fiancée, the lovely Georgina.”

I was stunned. “Well, you could have brought this up before.”

“Hey, I’m still adjusting to the fact that I’m dead and people are talking to me.”

“And wish you to do the same. Tell me of this triangle.”

“Well, it is really the same old story.”

I leaned back and shut my eyes. He sighed gustily, which made me open them back up. How does a spirit, whose lungs are not physical, sigh gustily?

“I met Georgina my first day on Daearu. It was the only thing making this place bearable.” His comments must have shown on my face, because he quickly added, “Oh, it is a beautiful place. But I have never gotten used to trees that grow to the stratosphere, plants that have clown lips and limbs that look like hanging men. And the hallucinations. Oh, I know, one of them is that the dead come back, which I guess I can’t really call a hallucination any more, but still—”

“Just get on with your story, sirrah.” He was making me testy.

“Well, she felt the same way, and we would meet any which way we could. We would ride off of the palace grounds—”

“That would be the palace in New Dyved?”

“Yes. Oh, Jesus. I just realized something.”

This sounded fruitful. “What?”

“You’re the Princess Rhiannon. No, I mean you’re the woman who was Ferrell’s fiancée. The one he tossed out because she refused to wear clothes. The one whose kingdom fought Ferrell and deposed him over that. It was your abandonment by Ferrell which caused the civil war that we fought in. Sorry. I’m just now putting things together. Okay, okay. I know. Just get on with it.

“Well, Georgina and I one day just stopped seeing each other. I really wasn’t in love with her, and she was in love with Robert. The sex was great, but how often can you dress up in a bunny suit?”

“I would scarcely know,” I said, slightly shocked. Terran sexual mores perturb me more than slightly, and I have seen them all as a harlot. “But what if Robert had found out about the affair?”

Henry was emphatic. “No, we were careful. Besides how would that explain my ending up on a battlefield? No, I’m sure I must have sneaked out to fight in spite of my exemption.”

“And ended up murdered?”

“What if I was killed in the war?”

“Brunhilde says not. Beheading is something you do not do to an honorable enemy. And my men fought honorably, sirrah.”

“I know they did. That is why they were slaughtered.”

I closed my eyes again. Abandoned by King Ferrell of New Dyved, I had thought I had no choice but to be a harlot. When I found that the men of New Fairy would fight as knights to avenge my honor, I knew the offworlders would side with Ferrell against them. Offworlders, who, as you know, kill without honor or mercy. Whose idea of a fair fight was one where they could slaughter thousands with the push of a button.

It had been part of my strategy. Send my men to be slaughtered, making us look weak to the enemy, bringing the offworlders to the height of folly. When they had had their fill of slaughtering all the noble knights and peasants and freeholders, that was when I had made the slain rise up. It threatened the balance between the living and the dead, and I do not wish to repeat it, but it had to be done.

The dead have an advantage over the living in any battle, as death has to life. Death is unstoppable, and when it comes for you, you have but little choice but to return to the heavens from whence you came. They called it hallucinations, and the Terrans have never acknowledged that they were chased off the world by their own murdered coming back at them.

But I did not wish to be reminded of these horrors. I changed the subject back to where it belonged. “Is Georgina here?”

“I’m sure she is,” Henry replied. “Ambassadors let their wards bring their families with them.”

“Then she is the next on my list of interviews.”

Georgina Summers came in accompanied by her husband. He was adamant, when I told him to leave.

“I know all about her affair with Henry. And I wish to be here. She will be truthful, won’t you, honey?”

Georgina was a short woman with shoulder-length dark hair, who wore a plaid skirt, and a blue blouse. Unlike her husband, whose right eye was brown and whose left eye was blue, her right eye was blue and her left eye was brown.

Georgina looked humbly at her husband and nodded. Then she started blubbering. “It was the only time I cheated on Robert. And well, it’s because I felt so lonely. He was always with the General, doing this for the General, doing that for the General. I swear, sometimes I thought he was sleeping with the General.”

“Georgina!” Robert said in shocked terms. “You know I would never do that.”

She looked at him tearfully. “But we have had counseling and are both very happy now.” She nodded as if she almost meant it.

“And Robert simply forgave you, did not go into any manly rage, nor swore revenge on the man who cuckolded him?”

“Well, I’m not sure what ‘cuckolded’ means; he was angry, but he’s over it. Aren’t you, dear?” She said this in a tone I have used on Ioseff, the ‘do you wish to be in my bed tonight or not?’ tone.

“Yes, I am over it. And besides, Robert and I were friends. I wouldn’t kill him because of that. And I surely wouldn’t kill him by severing his head, then take him out to an encampment to be found. I was in command central all during the war, mostly fetching coffee for the General. To my shame, I never saw action until the day the hallucinations swept through our base camp and we headed back to Earth.”

The day the offworlders’ murdered had caught up with them. The Day of the Liberation.

“And you, Georgina, what would you be doing at this time?”

“I don’t know what time you are talking about, but I was on Earth during the whole war. Robert insisted I leave when hostilities broke out. If you want to know who had a motive to kill Henry, ask the ambassador herself.”

“Georgina!” her husband exclaimed.

“Well, it is true. She had the best motive of them all.”

“And what, prithee, was that?” I asked.

“She was Henry’s mother, but her husband was not the father. And Henry threatened to reveal that once he found it out. It would have ruined her career, as the Secretary General believes in family values.”

This was intelligence indeed. I waved my dismissal. Ordered Ionnen to go and fetch the ambassador.

Proceed to Chapter 5...