15
Iris paced, her knuckle in between her teeth, looking at the map we had spread out, with objects marking times and places. I could tell that both Adian and Karal wanted to shake their heads and tell me I was paranoid, but didn’t. Not to pacify me or to humor me, but because they were disturbed. Mark filled in spaces I missed.
“All of this was an attack?” Iris asked, pacing like she was caged. Pacing like Adian paced earlier.
“Not like one I’ve ever been in, or heard about,” Adian said, but his voice wasn’t his normal authoritative tone.
“So,” Iris said, stopping. “First there is the rumors of the Fenrir issue? About him being in exile. That was twenty years ago, though, right?”
“Those were the first noises,” Karal agreed, “but Bryce, and myself learned about it only six, maybe five years ago. Or maybe three. I’m not sure. But there was a recent surge of that story in the taverns and public houses.”
“Which wouldn’t get corrected,” Adian added, “because the shifters don’t go to taverns or pubs, because alcohol doesn’t affect us.”
“You go,” I pointed out.
“We’re young. We go to hear the stories. To listen to the rumors. To mix and mingle. I’ll bet Fenrir hasn’t been in one for over twenty years. Come to think of it, he doesn’t look like the type who’d show up in one of them at all…young or old.”
Iris nodded. “I agree. I used to go to them, but now they are boring. Like the old saying, nothing more boring than being the only sober one in a bar.”
Iris touched the blue stones on the nearby villages. “So the story gets passed around more, only since we’re not involved in the details of the Kind, we don’t know about their council marking the forearm. No one like Fenrir mentions something like that because it’s obvious to them.”
“The rumors aren’t just spreading here though. North, south and east as well.” Karal underscored his comment by moving some of the stones to villages in the nearby realms.
“Why is that important?” I asked.
“Because of what is to come, my lady,” Mark said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it until yesterday myself. Yesterday, talking with Fenrir in the throne room.” This surprised me, somewhat. Sure, Fen knew what he was talking about, in most cases, it seemed. But the respect he was starting to get from people within my walls was just a little troubling.
Iris put her hand on a scrap of paper. “The second mistake they made was not knowing the items on our treaty with the Kind.”
Adian shook his head. “It might seem odd, that they don’t know what’s in the treaty, sure, But it’s not that uncommon. A hundred years ago it was probably talked about at every gathering, all day long. Now? If you knew nothing about the realms, it’s a good chance you would never hear about the treaty.”
“The better question is, why is it that they show up when Fenrir is in the area. Or did Fenrir show up because he knew they were in the area?” Iris drew her hands through her hair again. She was getting frustrated not being able to come to a conclusion.
“I don’t know,” I said. “One thing is clear, though. They know that realms break and it seems like their mission was to do just that. They land on the coast. They cause an issue. The plan was probably to attack the fishing village, and then bring in the large ship of zombies.”
“Right,” Iris agreed. “We would use the radio room to let the other queens know what was going on. They knew this much and so attacking the radio room was a smart move. Then there’s the contamination that would put us all in quarantine. All except Fenrir.”
“Somehow that makes sense,” Mark nodded fervently. “They have it out for him, which either means they have it out for him, or they know just how good he is. So, with you in quarantine, Myriana, who would you trust to run the show?”
“Fenrir,” I said and none of them took offense to it. He brought the matter to my attention and just about everyone in my Keep was beginning to learn just how his mind worked; just how good he was at problem solving.
“With him running the show here, and the trouble caused by Víðarr and his scroll reading, the other queens would see this as the Kind trying to take over and attack.”
Iris moved queen markers into my realm on the map. “Chaos, battle, war. Our realm is unable to defend itself without the support of the other queens. Whoever is pulling all of these strings attacks. And we’re done for. Just like that.”
I walked away from the table, feeling like Iris looked earlier. This was all so wild, so piecemeal. Snatch enough straws you’ll find a needle, right?
Turning around I asked them, “Is this insane or is it real? Why isn’t it insane?”
A deep voice at the open door answered. “Because, you saw the zombie footprints on the beach.”
Fenrir leaned his shoulder against the door frame, his eyes focused on me.
“The beach?” Iris and Mark asked the question in unison.
“All in a row. Marching like humans, not spreading out, not mindless,” Fenrir answered. His eyes were glacier blue, his pupils black, flawless. Onyx.
Not mindless. Whose mind, then?
Fenrir’s eyebrow lifted, as if he heard my thought, my question.
“That would be insane,” I said.
“Would it?” Fenrir looked up to the ceiling. “How does it go? Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth? Isn’t that the quote from the detective stories?”
“You’re serious,” I said, disbelief dripping from my words. “You really believe that someone, or something, has developed… what?...a hive mind with the zombies?”
I paced, biting my knuckle. “Seriously? That’s … that’s…”
“The wrong question, really,” he said, his voice expressing boredom, while turning so that his back was square with the door frame.
“The wrong questions? What’s the right question then?” I demanded, feeling frustrated.
“If it’s true,” he said, patiently, “what is the next step? And if it is all a paranoid delusion, and you didn’t just slip past the jaws of death, what would you do differently? You had zombies in window planters around your Keep. You had over a hundred on your shore. Your Keep was invaded, your men and advisors incapacitated. Those are hard facts. They happened. There is a blacksmith by the window, whose story adds a whole different dimension to this, but would you do anything different if his story is separate and unconnected?”
Karal cleared his throat. “If it’s raiders, mutated bears or zombies, we still do the same thing. Fortify, train, increase communication, prepare, and scout for information.”
Both of them made sense.
I flopped into a padded chair and looked out the window. Gnawing my lip, the name for what I felt didn’t appear in my mind. Looking back to the doorway, I found Fenrir not there. Straightening, and searching the room, I discovered he had left. “Where in the hell did he go?”
From the expressions around the room, none of them knew. “What the fuck!”
I said a lot of things at that point. A rant is all it was. From the expressions of the others, no one understood a thing I yelled for several minutes. Mark vanished during the tirade. No one else was smart enough to escape. When I stopped, I felt foolish. What was happening to me? I didn’t rant! I didn’t stomp my feet like a spoiled child! My mother would have slapped me to the floor if she was here right now.
In that moment, clarity hit me, so sharp it cut. I was terrified. And I had every reason to be terrified. If only half of the things we discussed were as they appeared, it meant someone out there was focused on our destruction. They weren’t raging raiders, or mindless zombies. They weren’t riding horses and charging walls. They were patient, intelligent, and ruthless.
The blood left my face and neck. My eyes felt as wide as plates.
Then Mark came back in the room. “My lady,” he said, and placed three books on the table before me. “He told me you would want these, and he would be back soon.”
The Art of War.
The Five Rings.
The Mongol Queens.
Looking at the book spines, I said softly, “Gather our Charge Knights, and our Guard Captains. Bring them here in three hours. See if we have any copies of these books. If we do, pass them out. I want a fresh inventory of our arms by morning. Víðarr, you better head home.”
He turned from the window and gave me a look that spoke the words before they left his lips. “I’m staying. You’ll need blacksmiths. I pay my debts.”
After letting that settle, I nodded. “Mark, introduce him to the head blacksmiths, they’ll know how best to use him.”
After they left the room, the others turned to face me. “I think we’re in serious trouble. Trouble we’ve not known. Trouble I don’t believe anyone thought would come. We are ill equipped to handle this. We need new thinking. New actions. Each of you, find a place to sit, think. Meditate. I’m going to do the same. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”
“Should I find Fenrir for you?” Adian asked.
“No, leave him be.”
After I said this, I saw the doubt behind each of their eyes. “Don’t look like that. It’s true we are in uncharted areas, but we are also in an area we must tread carefully.” It was just Iris, Adian, and Karal in the room with me now. I motioned for Adian to close the door.
Once it was secured and I had their attention, I said, “I wish it was set as a common law, whether vague or strict, it would be better than what we have now. Instead we have a fear that has festered into a taboo.”
“Common law says that the queen to be - the heir to the throne - should be raised with her protectors. By tradition this has meant that the protectors are childhood mates and friends,” Iris quoted.
I nodded. Cleared my throat. “We grow up together. We’re family.”
“Outside influences are sometimes a necessity,” Karal challenged. “If we need his help, we need his help. It’s as simple as that.”
“Others might not see it that way. The taboo that has been allowed to fester, is that the queen should not share her love with an older shifter.”
Karal shook his head, the corners of his mouth turned up into something that looked very close to disgust. “This isn’t about love,” he grunted.
“If he’s by my side, that’s exactly what it would look like. And that’s exactly what it might lead to. Outside of that, an older shifter should not be seen as the leader, or the one on the throne, or heir to the throne. They are too powerful. And, while they may be great leaders for the Kind, they are rarely good for the Kin.”
This time, both Iris and Karal nodded in agreement. It’s all about perspective, you see. When things look a certain way, many won’t stop to investigate. They simply jump to conclusions. We were barely handling things as it were now. We certainly didn’t need more chaos thrown into the mix.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I continued. “My respect for Fenrir is massive, but I have to agree with this tradition. And I believe I have sufficient experience with Fenrir to give an informed opinion. He is by far more educated and adaptive than any of the Kind I have met, and that includes you three. He’s lived under more dire circumstances…seen more…done more. Still, this changes nothing, since he is nowhere near as adaptive as humans - and I’m sure he would tell you the same. We have no map against this threat. We are going to be challenged in areas we cannot predict. By the goddess I want to throw myself into Fenrir’s arms, and ask him to lead me, save me, save us all. We can’t. Not now, not ever. We also cannot lose to this threat. Understood?”
Each of them agreed, thought it was Adian who spoke first. “How do we adapt to what we can’t know?”
I walked behind my chair and placed my hands on the back, staring at the floor. “I don’t know, lover. The first lesson of war I was taught, was to know your enemy…”
I wanted to say I had ideas, that there were ways, that I knew of strategies. But I could not. The stakes were too high to lie, or bolster, or bullshit.