Gloriana's Masque Read online

  GLORIANA’S

  MASQUE

  ELEANOR BURNS

  Copyright © Eleanor Burns 2020

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Megan Pritchard and Eleanor Burns, elements from https://www.canva.com/

  https://burnseleanor21.wordpress.com/

  For Cal

  CHAPTER ONE – THE QUEEN OF ALVENHEIM

  Ensign Kael Ashbyrn stood rigidly to attention in the presence of Her Highness, but had she been hoping that any other parts of his anatomy might follow suit, she was to be sorely disappointed. Of course, it was always possible that this private summons held no such ulterior motive – it was an unusual business to say the least – but surely she could have at least dressed for the occasion, or at least have covered her damn face, he thought, while biting his tongue.

  “You will forgive my attire, Ensign, but this is no time to stand on ceremony,” said Gloriana, with a grave dignity which only gave her an even greater air of shamelessness to Ashbyrn’s mind. We all know these Alvere have no decency, but for Thalassa’s sake … “Attire” seemed a fairly grandiose term for what little the Queen, who was seated at the foot of her late predecessor’s four-poster bed, had bothered to wear for this meeting. Her only garment worthy of the term was a tightly-fitting corslet of noctys silk, while her arms and legs were bound with spirals of ribbons of the same material. This was, in all fairness, a popular style among Alvere, and for a woman rumoured to have a hundred-odd years under her belt, Gloriana certainly had the body to do the look justice, although that too was common enough among her long-lived race. But as for the face …

  Since she normally kept it covered, details of her injuries and how she had come by them were not widely known, but Ashbyrn, having little choice but to look her in the face, found himself making educated guesses. The worst scarring, naturally enough, was along the huge gash down the left side, which he thought it a miracle she had survived. The fact that neither blood loss nor infection had killed her was certainly testimony to Alvere resilience, but that had not helped the hideous wound to heal into anything like normality. Then there was the shiny, withered tissue all around it, that spoke of severe burning. Perhaps someone had tried to cauterise the wound in a particularly ham-fisted way, thought the ensign, but it was hard to believe anyone could cause that much collateral damage unintentionally. He noticed how the scarred tissue extended over the left side of her fringe, carving an ugly bald patch out of her otherwise long, lustrous, jet-black hair. This also made her missing ear all the more visible, and since Alvere ears were by nature long, pointed, and prominent, the asymmetry was even more jarring.

  In spite of it all, the worst part, he thought, was her replacement eye: not of glass, but of some polished crystal that appeared pitch black at a distance. Even through the eyeholes of the mask she normally wore, this was not a pleasing effect, although it certainly lent her an air of menace on official occasions – always a useful trait to have around the eorls and sealords. Now up close, however, he could see that it was actually translucent, and full of cloudy, shifting reflections that although tiny, seemed eerily evocative of shapes he could not quite pin down, though he resisted the urge to stare. Rumour had it that this false eye actually gave her some limited vision, or second sight depending on which gossipy mariner was telling the story and how drunk they were. Whatever its legendary properties, it was definitely very useful for making Ashbyrn feel like bringing up his breakfast, but he held his stomach as well as his tongue. Bear with it, man. This is a test of nerve, surely. She wants to see you’re up to the mission. You can’t afford to let this one slip. Screw it up, and it’ll be a cold day in the Abysm before Lord Lycon throws you another opportunity like this.

  Unfortunately, for all Ashbyrn’s efforts, his displeasure must have been writ fairly large upon his face, or perhaps that godawful eye of hers really does give her second sight, he thought, dejectedly. At any rate, although her face lacked mobility, it had formed a clear enough expression of disappointment, and her voice confirmed it as she spoke, with a heavy note of sarcasm:

  “If it helps you to concentrate, Ensign, you may look the other way.”

  A tempting offer, he thought, but stiffened his resolve. Ambition was a key survival skill for younger sons of lesser houses of the Brythenedd nobility. With the eorldom going to his eldest brother, and what money to spare having already bought a dreki and a captaincy for the second eldest, it fell completely to Ashbyrn to make something of his naval career. In those circumstances, the favour of the Third Sealord was not to be taken lightly, and it was definitely worth the price of putting up with Her Highness’s nasty little tests. But what if the wretched hag actually wants you to do more than just look at her? I suppose if I keep my eyes below her neck and imagine she’s one of dad’s maidservants … and keep thinking of promotion.

  “I’m fine, Your Highness,” he declared, in a voice as stiff and awkward as his posture. “Ready and eager,” he added, and instantly regretted it, lest she interpret that in a non-military fashion. Her only immediate response was to raise her remaining eyebrow in an inscrutable way, but after a few moments she lifted herself from the antique wooden chair and walked over to him. Her steps, and the movements of her half-naked body, were as measured and graceful as those of her own court dancers, although without the fanciful costumes and masks they typically wore. Fucking ironic, when you think about it. The sinuous body language made the contrast between her form and face even worse than before, not to mention that her face was now mere centimetres away from his own, the crystal eye close enough for him to make out the patterns within it more clearly, and to regret the effort. Although they were mostly mere clouds and wisps, there were glimpses of shapes and faces that were hard to mistake for mere illusions, distorted though they were. Suddenly, the drunken gossip did not seem remotely far-fetched. He stared in mixed fascination and revulsion, until he chanced to glimpse the good side of Her Highness’s face and saw that she was frowning in grave displeasure. He quickly snapped back to attention and cast his eyes slightly upwards, where the yellowing plasterwork of the high ceiling offered a safer view while hopefully not appearing too discourteous. With a brief, frustrated sigh, Gloriana returned to her chair, and gave him some short but welcome respite as she took some documents from a concealed drawer in its arm, hidden among the ornate carvings. She studied these as she addressed him, which was just fine by Ashbyrn, as it ended the whole unfortunate eye-contact issue.

  “Tell me, Ensign,” she commenced. “I don’t know how much Lord Lycon has confided in you, but from what you know, what do you think of this operation? I want your opinion as an officer. I hear you are willing … and able. Are you also committed? I am doing this for your people as well as mine, you know.”

  As long as I get promoted, my people can bugger themselves with a pyronade for all I care, and yours too. Does the woman understand nothing? While there was no shortage of nations who could give the Brythons a run for their money on cruelty, there were few who could best them on the subject of despising idealism, real or false. Having long depended on piracy and marauding to sustain not only their economy but their population, visionaries and dreamers were little respected among them, and suffered lifetimes of ridicule, although more often than not mercifully short ones. Honesty and pragmatism were respected, although it paid to be flexible with the former, especially in aristocratic circles, which was why Ashbyrn kept his cynical thoughts to himself and answered diplomatically:

  “I think I understand, Your Highness. His Lordship did confide in me,” he added, with pride. “Our victory here, he believes, was too easy. It only whet the other sealords’ appetites, and they see the southerners as much riper targets for plunder. Now, they don’t seem hal
f as fearsome to them as they did before, having sent neither ships nor troops to defend their allies here.”

  “‘Allies?’” scoffed Gloriana, with venom. “Call a slave a slave, Ensign. You think that just because the Lucinians installed that fawning little puppet of an Alvere princeling here, that Alvenheim was a free nation? Him and his thugs were willing mercenaries of the Republic, set up here only to impose its will on the true Alvere people, as the Republic has always done. Yet for all their crimes, I can hardly condemn the Lucinians for leaving those lackeys to their fate rather than wasting their resources defending such scum. My only regret is that so-called Prince Rowan did not live a little longer to taste the full justice that was due to him.”

  You could have tried leaving him more of his skin … thought Ashbyrn, not that he really cared. Squeamishness was not a valuable trait within the Navy, although everyone from the sealords to the lowliest deck-thralls had been surprised by the ease with which Her Highness could gravitate from great benevolence to cold-blooded butchery. Had she been a man, they might even have been impressed by it. Impressed or not, the ensign knew better than to try her patience, and since she was now looking at him with an air of expectation, he continued:

  “Just as you say … but be that as it may, the southerners can’t ignore us forever. That’s all very well with over three hundred kilometres of sea between us, but not with us camped right on their borders like this. If they should counter-attack …”

  “Indeed. It may go ill for us,” replied Gloriana, not entirely doing justice to Ashbyrn’s mental assessment, which was they’ll probably hang us all from the yardarms with our own intestines. Inexperienced though he was, the ensign was no fool. Her Highness’s new weapons had proven effective – devastatingly so – but much of this had been due to the weakness of the Alvere militia, poorly-armed and ill-motivated as they were. Even the sight of an ordinary fleet of drekkar would have been enough to make them wet themselves and flee, never mind drekkar descending from the clouds, and not for them to know that us luckless bastards who were actually manning the things weren’t so far from pissing our own drawers.

  Ashbyrn himself had enjoyed the dubious privilege of sailing into the battle aboard a lofdreki, where his sole comfort had been knowing that even the captain was as nervous and sick as he was. Every shake and buffet of the infernal thing felt wrong, from the moment its left its ‘dock’ – if one could really call a field kilometres inland by that name – to the moment it touched down in the main square of Kadar Ydril – still named Rowanagrad at that point in time, although any name at all seemed too grand for the ruins to which it had been reduced. Oh, yes, not forgetting the pyronades … They had their drawbacks: the charge time between shots was actually longer than it took a well-trained crew to load a normal cannon, the noise was so deafening that the whole crew had to plug their ears and communicate in signs, and the heat below decks was so intense it was reputed that some crews had flown into battle naked. On the other hand, they melted rock and reduced ground troops to ashes, and you couldn’t really argue with those kind of results.

  You could, however, argue with numbers, and they were not necessarily encouraging. Terrifying weapons though they were, only fifty lofdrekkar had been built, and that number was now down to forty-eight: one had suffered an unknown fault during the crossing and had gone down over the Sea of Storms, where it turned out to be even less buoyant on water than in air. Another, during the final assault, had suffered a cannon-shot which probably caused little enough damage itself, but had panicked a gun crew into misfiring one of their pyronades, to judge from the smouldering charcoal and molten metal that remained. What was left was still the deadliest force Brythenedd had ever fielded, but against the Republic that was not saying much. The southerners had a navy almost equal in size to that of the Brythons’ regular fleets, and far surpassing them in armour and weaponry, as well as a vast professional army with artillery and explosives which, if not the equal of pyronades, were far more plentiful. Not to mention there were well-equipped citizen militias in every ward, to say nothing of the rightly-dreaded delators, who would sooner torture their own mothers to death than tolerate the existence of any threat to Lucinian power. They would not be scared by a few bangs and flashes, even from pyronades.

  Ashbyrn was not alone in wondering why they were still here. Most of the men had dared to hope that they would assist Gloriana and her rebel friends with their liberation of Alvenheim – a fair enough price for these new weapons – then they would raid the coastal towns, make some small but satisfying incursions into Lucinia, gather up all of the loot and slaves that man, beast, and lofdreki could carry, and be well on their way home before the southerners even knew what had hit them. Holding territory and fostering alliances were new and unappealing concepts to the Brython mentality, but Lord Lycon had been adamant that this was the only way. In showing such a strong hand, the Brythons had already raised the stakes, and the old days of casual raiding were over. That would certainly come as a blow to many young officers, now wondering how in the Abysm they were to win fortune and glory by passively guarding and re-fortifying the same ruins they had only just demolished. I’d sympathise, only I seem to be the fortunate exception, if this mission is everything he claimed it to be. That idea whet Ashbyrn’s own appetite for glory, and it made him bold enough to press the subject a little:

  “The southerners are powerful, it’s true, but if you were able to make more weapons, Your Highness … Since you couldn’t find the materials you needed here, you need men you can rely upon to make the expedition. His Lordship tells me–”

  “Too much, perhaps,” she interrupted, severely, “or perhaps not enough. Weapons are not everything, Ensign. I need allies even more, and time to raise them: time to inspire the Alvere who are toiling in Lucinian communes and factories, being beaten and spat upon by delators in reform camps, or selling their bodies in the dockyard slums of Lyssagrad and Cullensport. But yes, if I could arm them all, I would do so. I had high hopes for discoveries in this place, but so many of my people’s ancient treasures have been sold and looted away over the years of subjugation. However, my research indicates that everything we need is to be found in New Arkady, in the region of the Obsidian Coast. I have mapped and documented your mission itinerary in detail,” she declared, handing him the bundle of papers she had been examining. “A squad of men will be under your command. We cannot send more than that, I regret. Great discretion is needed, both here and there.”

  “A squad will be fine.” More glory for the few … Just one thing, though. “With respect, though, I’d like Cædmon to be one of them.” Master-Mariner Cædmon was as seasoned an old seahorse as any in the fleet and, to Ashbyrn’s mind, he was the one crewmember of that lofdreki who had completely kept his head during the battle, probably saving the rest of their arses in the process. If there was one man the ensign definitely wanted at his side in the thick of it, he was the one.

  “Lord Lycon recommended him too, so I will leave that arrangement to him,” answered Gloriana. “You leave tonight, at full dark. A lofdreki would have been faster, but Lycon believes it would be too easily missed and would be likely to be spotted, so unfortunately you’ll have to go by sea,” she announced, to his heartfelt relief. “A knarr has been prepared and loaded for your expedition. Its mooring is at a secret location, of course, but you’ll find it in the itinerary. Serve me well in this matter, Ensign, and you will not find me ungrateful,” she added, rising from her chair again and approaching him with the same contrived, seductive elegance that had set his teeth on edge before, and reliably did so again. “Indeed, I would look to raise my loyal subjects … shall we say, my particular favourites, to the very highest of positions,” she hinted, delicately laying a hand on his shoulder. Even through the coarse grey wool and chainmail epaulette, the touch made his skin crawl. “A throne can be a lonely place, and I am not averse to sharing power, at least not with the brave and the true. Think on it.”

  Proba
bly the best match I’ll ever make, worse luck, he thought, ironically, although with a depressing ring of truth. The opinion of most of the Brython eorls and officers was that the so-called ‘Queen’ of Alvenheim was no more than a jumped-up renegade from a long-decayed race, whatever useful technical or magical skills she had to offer them, so that was a scathing assessment of Ashbyrn’s own prospects. Still, if her plan was successful, she might come to eclipse them all in time, and have ambitious noblemen across the breadth of the continent fighting for her hand, and screw the face. During the discussion, Ashbyrn’s eyes had naturally drifted back to the level of Gloriana’s, and with his attention on the conversation he had ceased to pay attention to her mutilations. While they was all too much in his mind now, at least that went to show that one could learn to overlook them. And you know, if I just try to imagine they aren’t there at all and fill in the gap with something like the good side, she’d actually be quite a looker.

  He gave it a go, but that sinister crystal eye thwarted his efforts, drawing his gaze again. It seemed almost to taunt him with warped images that called to mind his brothers, to whom high status was handed on a plate; his father, who had allowed their house to fall on such hard times that his own son was forced to risk his neck for every meagre advancement; his senior officers, who had made his cadetship a misery with their disdain and condescension; Lord Lycon and Gloriana herself, who were now using his misfortunes to manipulate him into throwing his life on the line yet again … and then, as it dawned upon him that he was afraid, it seemed only to be his own reflection after all, but staring back at him with a mocking, twisted smile. Disgusted, he immediately turned his face away, although with no sense of just how insultingly contemptuous a gesture this appeared. It was not lost upon Her Highness, however, who pulled back her lingering hand. It quickly paid a return visit across his face, with a surprisingly powerful and cruelly stinging slap that brought his face back into eye contact with hers.