UNMADE RELEASE DAY - COMMAND ME!
Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.
Unmade, the last of the Lynburn Legacy trilogy, is out today (Yes that IS a shameless amazon link but if you have a local indie I love you for supporting it!) and I have had the beautiful Cassandra Jean make me a poster for its release, like a movie! A movie with a darkly ( Read more... )
People used to faint and vomit when they saw some of the messes the demons made, but that was years ago. Now the demons had been around long enough, and Cynthia Davies’s rebellion had been raging long enough, that everyone was used to hideous sights.
Still, some of the staff were very new. Laura could see a boy crying. They might break down, and then the demons would be on them.
The staff for the demon dwelling were all rebels. Being forced to live with demons was the most terrible punishment anyone could come up with, and the presence of the demons was both punishment and guarantee that they could do nothing. At first the rebels had been very unmotivated, but Laura had introduced an incentive: if you lived five years in the palace, you were pardoned and allowed to leave.
Nobody had made it yet.
She surveyed the line. Another boy, a tall athletic-looking redhead, had his arm around the crying one. He wasn’t quite as new as the others, Laura thought: he’d been sent up from the kitchens. She’d asked if there were any problems with him. He’d put up quite a fight before he was taken, Laura recalled, but it had turned out that was a ploy to let his family get away-father, aunt, cousins, other people who’d been living with them in their little snakes’ nest, they’d all been in on it. After he knew they were gone, he’d quieted down.
The cooks said he was perfectly well behaved, not violent at all, only he kept asking questions. Well, putting him on duty for demons would soon cure that.
Laura pushed open the door of the throne room.
Years ago, just after they had taken the country and the palace, when Hnikarr’s eternal body had still been childish and his power not as strong, Arthur had sat in this room too. He had moved out long since.
The windows were black ice, but the marble floor blazed with reflected lightning, turned into a sheet of brilliant white.
Liannan was standing in the shadows, watching the door. It had taken the body of a famously beautiful young actress, but the body had died some time ago: Laura suspected Liannan kept it because it enjoyed people’s horrified recognition, and the horrific contrast of the still pearl-pure and beautiful aspect of most of her face, and the gray gaping wound and damaged eye where the poor young lady had clawed at herself, trying to kill herself and escape a worse end. Liannan shook lustrous long red curls from the ruin of bone and jelly, and one of the staff shuddered and moaned.
Liannan smiled. Hnikarr, up on one of the thrones carven from the marble of the wall, did not react. It black head was tipped back against the white marble, throat the same white was the marble, lightning running her fingers through the inky strands as if lightning could love it. As if anyone could love it.
The body, a demon’s first and last permanent body, had grown up shockingly beautiful. Some of the staff even lost their heads and went to bed with it willingly, at first.
Laura addressed Hnikarr without much hope. “I am showing the new staff around the palace. If you wish to be served as befits you, you might suggest to your companion that it could choose a body from the streets or the cells.”
Hnikarr often ignored them all, but for a wonder this time it turned its head from the windows and looked in her direction. Its eyes, filled edge to edge with black as if someone had emptied its eyesockets and poured ink into them until they were brimming, sent a chill through her bowels.
It never looked at anything or anyone for long, but when it looked away from Laura it looked to Liannan, blinked and one of the broad shoulders rose in a tiny shrug. Hnikarr clearly would not interfere, and was rather amused to devil her.
“Oh, you understand her,” said the tall redhaired boy, in a tone of pleasure and amazement.
Laura whirled on him. “Do not speak to them! Attracting their attention is fatal. I mean that quite literally!”
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“It cannot answer you,” Laura said, her voice tight-if Hnikarr killed them all, think of the clean-up and the fresh staff necessary! “Because it is a demon. They don’t.”
“If he can understand, he can communicate,” said the redheaded boy. “When did you first know he could understand? Was he quite young?” Clearly deeply suicidal, he addressed Hnikarr again. “Have you tried writing things down? Or sign language?” Clearly double suicidal, he looked to Liannan. “You can’t understand, can you? Not without the circles and lines drawn for communication.”
Liannan drifted over to them, looking charmed to be addressed but naturally uncomprehending. She smiled, luminous and beautiful aside from the ragged slit in her lip, showing too much teeth. Someone behind Laura started to whimper.
“Do you want to be shut up in here with them alone?” Laura snapped, at the end of her patience.
The redheaded boy looked at her. He had deep blue eyes, focus a little hazy as if he might need glasses, but they gleamed with the air of a bibliophile in a library or an archaeologist amid the ruins. He was curious, and he was something else: he looked reckless.
Laura had seen that look before, the look of someone who knew perfectly well they were going to die soon anyway and who wanted to do something before they did. She knew it spelled trouble.
“I wouldn’t mind,” he said.
“Very well,” said Laura, and turned her back, gesturing for the others to follow her.
She shut the door once they were all out, and continued showing them the way around the palace, and telling them their duties. When she retraced their steps and approached the door to the throne room again, she was disturbed that there were no screams.
She opened the door. The redheaded boy was standing in front of the throne, not kneeling: his hand on one of the marble arms so he could lean in and talk. Laura could not hear what he was saying, or tell anything from Hnikarr’s blank beautiful lightning-washed face.
Neither of the demons had killed him, so Laura gestured for him to fall back in. None of the staff were allowed to idle for long. Life was short.
“What did you say to it?” Laura asked as they turned away from the throne room doors, her voice abrupt.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, in the kind, civilized voice of someone being devastatingly rude, “but it’s none of your business.”
*
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If Liannan was, Liannan was not there to gloat today. The atmosphere in the demon dwelling was even more oppressive than usual, a storm muttering dark threats in through the tall windows, and her group were not promising: two old women and one child among them. When Laura opened the door to the throne room, shadows came sliding over the floor to greet them like hungry snakes, and the sweet-faced old lady burst into tears.
“Emily, hush,” whispered the other: the women seemed to be friends, and that was good advice. Laura might feed Emily to Liannan if she kept up this racket.
In the dark echoing throne room full of writhing shadows, Hnikarr was sitting on his white throne, and Liannan was not there.
The redheaded boy was there instead, standing behind the throne. In the cold marble tomb, in the darkness-streaked hush, he was talking. Hnikarr’s head was turned to him, listening.
Laura found herself relieved when the boy cut himself off, as if remembering to be afraid. He looked in her direction, and then behind her. Then he moved away from the throne, came walking through the shadow toward them, and took weeping Emily’s hands in his.
“Emily, did she say?” he asked, smiling at the older woman. He had a sweet smile, used deliberately: Laura was an expert in all kinds of power. The smile matched his voice. Laura could see why, perhaps, even Hnikarr wanted to listen to that voice. “Don’t cry.”
Laura looked toward Hnikarr. Hnikarr was looking at the boy. Unease rose in Laura’s throat, obstructing her ability to breathe. The demon was paying attention.
“I’m Alan,” said the boy. “And there is nothing in this world to be afraid of.” He cast a look over his shoulder at the demon, almost amused. “Nothing in two worlds,” he amended, and grinned.
Emily stopped crying, possibly from amazement. Laura could not blame her. She did not like surprises. Best to put this boy down as soon as possible.
She glanced back to Hnikarr, who was still watching the boy. She did not like what she saw at all: it was expressing something. There was no sign on the cold face, of course, but there was something about the line of his body that suggested strain. He jerked his head, and the meaning was plain: All right. Come back here.
On the other hand, Laura thought, she had enough to deal with without risking Hnikarr throwing a tantrum. It had done that once, when Olivia was eliminated: oh well, nobody had really liked St Paul and the Millennium Bridge and the Tate Modern and several other priceless historic monuments anyway. Laura might leave the matter, for now. It wasn’t as if being the object of a demon’s interest was healthy in the long term, and she was busy.
There was so much to be done. You would not have thought it would be so difficult to recruit magicians to the winning side, to power undreamed of, but they had lost two young men who had defected to the rebellion. They only had one new recruit this year, a boy called James, and he’d had to be blackmailed into it with threats against his mother and his sister. He was still impossible to manage, even though he had amazing potential.
Laura was not looking forward to when young James found out that his sister-an obnoxious madam if ever there was one-had escaped.
There had to be a solution. They had to stretch their net wider, catch their fellow magicians even younger. There would be a time when they could all stop struggling. After all, they had won. The world was in the palm of their hands. Everything should be easy, now, power opening every door. Everything should be magnificent.
Above Laura’s head as she left the palace, she heard a howl: the sound of the wind changing.
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AND ALTERNATE UNIVERSE LAURA AND ALAN AND HNIKARR AND EVERYBODY. This is so cool. Brilliant to see what changed--such as, oh, the shape of power and governments and the world--and what didn't--people, and personalities, and Alan's compassion and Jamie's love for his family and Mae's fierceness. I love the banality of Laura's evil, and how we see the sea-change that her arrogance blinds her to, because she can't even recognize the influence of something like kindness...
Wonderfully done!
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SIN AS REBEL LEADER. MY DREAMS COME TRUE.
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I know, bit weird of me to start off with an AU, no? But such are the ways of my people. ;) I am so glad you enjoyed despite my weirdness!
The two magicians who joined the revolution were Seb and Gerald, in my head--AUs have to end up better for some. ;) (Daniel too, of course!) Though obviously... bad stuff happened to... England's royal family... which I regret...
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I'm waiting for "Unmade", which was ordered, but has not yet arrived.
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...there might be something wrong with me, that I love this terribly sad and twisted world so much. Oh well.
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