Mercadian Masques

Chapter 14

Keys turned. A pair of doors opened. A visitor was coming to the cell of Gerrard, Tahngarth, and Karn.

"Is anybody home?" came a shrill shout through the final door. "Is any criminals wishing ta see a great magnanimity such as yours truly, eh?"

Standing at the opposite window, Gerrard shouted over his shoulder, "Go away, Squee." To Karn, he whispered, "The little maggot's gone completely over to the Kyren."

Karn shook his head and replied, "No, he's served on Weatherlight a long time. He's not smart, but he's loyal. What he needs is a good talking to. He might even be useful to us right now. He can go anywhere in the city, he can get into any room, he can probably find out more than the rest of us put together."

Gerrard sighed. "All right, all right. I'll talk to him, if you want."

"Does anybody stuck in there gots the smarts ta know they gotta see Squee, seeing as he's Master Squee?"

"Come in, Squee," Gerrard said with a sigh, not bothering to turn around.

The final door opened, and guards allowed the goblin into the room.

Those who had known Squee only as Weatherlight's cabin boy would have been astonished at the change Mercadia had wrought in him. He stood taller, clad in rich silks. A band of gold was bound about his head, though its impressive effect was unfortunately ruined by its tendency to slip down over one eye. The ends of his robes were fur trimmed, though they, too, had suffered from Squee's insatiable curiosity and his tendency to follow tasty insects into inaccessible places. Even now, he was chewing on something, and the tiny wisp of a jointed leg protruded from one corner of his mouth.

"Squee don't gotta visit you in here, you know?" he said as the guard locked the door behind him.

Gerrard turned, regarding the goblin calmly. "Squee, I think it's high time you and I had a talk."

"Suits Squee. Whatcha wanna talk 'bout?" The little goblin seated himself in one of the chairs and propped his feet on the table. He toyed with a shiny bauble on his finger-a Kyren ring that showed his special status in the city.

Gerrard ambled over to Squee and stood looking down at him. "You've done pretty well for yourself since we've come to this place, haven't you?"

The goblin gave a final chew of his morsel before swallowing. "Squee's happy. People like Squee! Dat's good. Squee likes dat. Get some respect."

"Ah! Is that what you want, Squee? You want respect?"

The goblin nodded, but something in Gerrard's expression was troubling him, and his eyes, though never the brightest, narrowed suspiciously as the Benalian drew closer. "Yeah. Respect. Dat's what Squee's got here."

"Let me tell you what you've got here." Gerrard's arm came around in a blow that knocked the goblin's feet from the table and sent him sprawling on the ground beside the overturned chair. "You've got nothing! Nothing! Do you hear that?"

Squee rose, shaking, and started to back away toward the door.

"Don't you think you're going anywhere, mister! Stand at attention!"

Some dim memory penetrated the goblin's consciousness, and he drew up in a rough parody of a salute. Gerrard paced in front of him and stopped, his face lowered only inches from the goblin's.

"Now you listen to me, and don't speak until I give you permission. You're a cabin boy! Understand that? You're a cabin boy and nothing else! I don't care how goblins are treated in this city. You are a member of the crew of my ship, and you're subject to my command! You'll take your orders from me. When I say move, you'll move. When I say jump, you'll say how high, and that's final! Understand?"

Squee gave a strangled answer.

"What was that?" growled Gerrard.

Squee looked down, eyes rimmed in red. "Okey-dokey, Gerrard. Maybe Squee forgot all dat. Maybe Squee forgot you was in charge since you… since you turned so mean."

"Mean?" Gerrard said, his temper flaring. He raised his hand to strike.

Squee cringed back.

Someone grabbed Gerrard's arm and kept it from falling. "He's right, Gerrard," Tahngarth said, his voice a low rumble. "You've turned mean."

Gerrard spun on the minotaur and tried to break free, but Tahngarth's grip was too powerful. "So you want another fight?" Balling his free hand in a fist, Gerrard hurled a roundhouse toward Tahngarth's jaw.

Another hand grasped Gerrard's fist-this time a hand of silver. The pacifist Karn clutched Gerrard's arm implacably. "They're both right, Gerrard. Listen to them."

Gerrard stared at his three crew members, his three friends. He struggled a moment more but glimpsed his red-faced reflection in Karn's silvery chest. His eyes glowed like stoked embers. His brows were twisted demonically in the contours of the metal. His gritted teeth formed an ugly grimace.

Dropping his head, Gerrard gave an exhausted laugh. "I'm sorry. It's just being cooped up like this-not being able to fight our enemies, not knowing what's become of Hanna and the others…"

"All that's bad," Tahngarth said, "but it's none of that. It's Takara and her wine."

Gerrard lifted his eyes. "You don't mean she poisoned it?"

"No," Tahngarth said. "Not the wine. She's poisoning your thoughts. She's turning you into a monster, making you eat yourself away from the inside out. She made you mean, and if you keep listening to her, she'll destroy you."

Breathing heavily, Gerrard looked to his old friend Karn, who only nodded quietly. He stared down next at Squee.

The goblin said, "Let's both straighten up, eh?"

Gerrard smiled and nodded. "Eh." In a final act of violence, his leg lashed out. It struck none of his comrades, but instead a wine bottle that sat on the floor nearby. Glass shattered and wine spattered across the stones. "I'm drinking Takara's wine no longer."

Nodding their approval, Tahngarth and Karn released Gerrard.

Squee smiled and bent down to fetch something from the red mess. The mouth of the wine bottle had broken cleanly away, leaving a smooth ring of green glass. Squee poked the cork out from its center. "Squee like this ring." He slipped the Kyren ring from his finger, letting it fall carelessly to the floor, and reverently slid the green glass over his finger. "Squee wear this ring from now on."

"My father and I demand a private audience with the chief magistrate and his Kyren servants!" Takara shouted imperiously. Her voice filled the vast chamber, echoing among columns and through the rotunda above. Guards and nobles shrank back from the angry woman and the shivering blind man at her side. "Drive out the courtiers! Bar the doors! Pull the curtains!"

On his throne, the magistrate swallowed in dread. The action rippled bags of fat hanging from his chin. "Isn't your father receiving adequate care?"

"He will receive adequate care by the time I'm finished here!" She dragged a sword from her waist. "Now clear the chambers!"

In a move of uncommon athleticism, the magistrate clapped his hands twice. "You heard her. Out! All of you! Quickly. Guards, wait outside. Kyren, bar the doors!"

There was pandemonium in the next moments. Courtiers who had spent whole weeks lying about scampered as guards jabbed tridents at them. They gathered what they could- grapes and wine, cheese and games-and scuttled out into the glaring sun. More than a few wondered why this new giant killer should receive such special attention, but they knew better than to ask.

With a resonant boom, the main doors closed. The room darkened. A pair of goblins lifted a stout bar into its brackets over the doors. The courtiers and guards were gone. Even the gentle breezes that spent their days coiling among banners and veils died away to nothing.

"Better," Takara said, sheathing her sword.

With the departure of his court, the facade of command that veiled the magistrate unraveled. He trembled visibly, his neck shuddering in fearful anticipation. "H-How might I aassure your f-father his d-due?"

Takara smiled wickedly and walked slowly around the blind man, gazing at his pathetic figure. "You needn't trouble yourself. I'll make sure he receives his due." Coming up behind her father, she shoved him. Her boot lashed out, catching Starke in the back of the knee. He crumpled to the floor.

"Takara!" he gasped piteously, clutching his bruised leg and kneeling. "Please, Takara. What are you doing?"

She continued to circle her father, staring hatefully at him. "I preach to Gerrard about his betrayals, but I should be preaching to you. You're the one who betrayed Vuel into the hands of Phyrexia, and Sisay and the rest of the crew too."

Starke's trembling fingers clutched at the bandage around his eyes. He was a broken man, sobbing into a stubbly beard. "I betrayed them for you, Takara. I betrayed them to get you back."

"And now, the traitor himself is betrayed," she said with relish. As she walked about him, a vulture circling a doomed man, she slowly drew a dagger from her belt. "I'm the one who blinded you, Starke, or didn't you know?"

His lips trembled, and he shook his head. "No! Madness! You didn't blind me. Volrath blinded me."

"You betrayed everyone to win back your daughter," Takara said, though her voice was changing, deepening. "And you thought you had won her back, but betrayal is a wager that wins only its own returns."

"Volrath!" hissed Starke in terror.

It was his last utterance. Behind him, Takara grabbed Starke's forehead with one hand and drew her knife in a long, slow, deep line over his throat. It was almost a decapitating wound, so deep was her hatred. There came a wet, red moment, and then the blind man slumped to his face on the mosaic floor. His lifeblood made a bright sunburst around him, what seemed a gleaming and fitting adornment in that patterned place.

Takara stepped back, but she was no longer Takara. Her red hair compressed into a gray mantle of skin, and bone, and brain. It curled up from knife-edged brows, back around pointed ears, and down to fuse along a tapered jaw. Small black horns jutted from the ridge of these folds, and a tail of flesh draped from the back of the knobby skull. Where once there had been fiery eyes, now were white, inhuman orbs. A masculine face replaced the feminine one. The muscled body of a man replaced the wiry litheness of the woman. Clothes became plates of gray armor across a tortured green-black skin. At last, the body matched the voice… matched the seething hate.

Volrath. The shapeshifting lord of Rath-and Mercadia.

Snickering gleefully, Kyren emerged from behind the throne of the magistrate.

The fat man quivered there, staring in dread at the corpse of Starke and the pool of his blood-but not for long. Kyren hands laid hold of the magistrate, set after set, and claws sunk in. Struggling, the crew of goblins hauled hard. With a rubbery motion, the magistrate slipped from his seat and spilled messily to the floor. His finery ended in a pile, and his corpulence lolled out grotesquely beneath the fabric. His hands and face slapped the floor in the pool of blood. Powder makeup was painted in red. Gibbering in dread and tears, the magistrate lifted his head.

Volrath strode slowly through the sanguine pool. His armored feet dripped with each step. Lifting one of those gory boots, he set it gently on the magistrate's head, forcing it down into the blood.

With a contented breath, Volrath said, "It is good to be rid of masks once in a while. It is good, occasionally, for outward things to plainly reflect the things that lie within."

The chief of the Kyren gestured placatingly toward the empty chair of the magistrate. "Does Master Volrath's plan proceed well?"

Treading across the magistrate's head, Volrath slowly ascended the throne. He sat, easing himself into the chair. "Yes. My blood-brother Gerrard is half destroyed. His ship is in my grasp. His friends travel to retrieve the artifact that will repair it. Already, my agents have framed them for the theft of the device. Once it is in my hands, my people will repair the ship, and I will kill Gerrard and fly Weatherlight and the Legacy back to Rath." He smiled with vicious savor. "Yes. Master Volrath's plans proceed well."

"What would the Glorious Master have us do with the body of the blind man?" asked the lead Kyren obsequiously as he arrayed cushions about the master.

Volrath stared dispassionately at the corpse. He heaved a sigh. "Starke was the weightiest part of the mask I wear. Having to coddle him… having to walk slowly beside the old bastard… especially knowing he was the man who lured me into Phyrexia. I could not stand him." He made a dismissive gesture. "He'll have to be conveyed to the infirmary and discovered there, his throat slit by some hateful healer. Someone will have to be charged with the crime and killed for it, of course, and Takara will need to seem distraught- more repellent playacting. But it will all be worth it. Soon, Gerrard will be destroyed, and his Legacy will be mine."

Volrath's eyes glowed with a cold light beneath his brows. He turned his attention on the lead Kyren. "And what of your progress, Lord Griid? Last week you reported rebel uprisings in both the lower and upper markets. Have you rounded up the culprits? Have you put them to death?"

Griid recoiled from the pillows, and his head bowed.

"Has Master Volrath heard the rumors of the giant killers?" Eyelids drooped angrily across Volrath's eyes, and his lips curled. "Don't hide your ineptitude behind tales of the rabble."

"Is it not remarkable how a fiction can rally the people? How the Ramosans have used lies to foment rebellion? Is it not astonishing how their leader Lahaime lays hold of vulgar minds?"

"Astonishing," Volrath echoed, his hand lunging like a cobra and gripping the Kyren's bowed head. "Isn't it astonishing how I have laid hold of your vulgar mind? Now, tell me what you are driving at-and tell me without any of your damned questions!"

Griid went to his knees. His eyes clamped shut against the pain. His brow pressed the edge of Volrath's throne. "The giant killers-Gerrard and Sisay and their friends-have rallied the people. They have become popular heroes. Hope has replaced fear. Folk who once were unquestioningly loyal are I now harboring and aiding revolutionaries."

"Dispel these stories then," Volrath said, tightening his grip. "Forgive, Master, but how can we dispel them while Gerrard and Sisay yet live? While you yet are Takara among them?"

Volrath hissed. "When Weatherlight is repaired, Gerrard and the whole crew will be killed. That will end these stories." "Perhaps not," Griid replied miserably, his voice muffled by the edge of the chair. "The giant killer stories have banded the people together, have catalyzed the Ramosans. Lahaime leads them. While he lives, the revolution lives."

"We will find him, then, and kill him," Volrath replied. "You can kill Lahaime, but you cannot kill the Uniter." "The Uniter!" growled Volrath. In fury, his hand clenched, fingers piercing the Kyren's skull as if it were a ripe melon.

Griid convulsed, impaled on the man's clawlike hands. He slumped against the throne, and his riddled head gushed down his leg.

Volrath stood, abstracted. His fingers slid languidly from the mush that had been Griid's head.

He walked. Gore dripped from his claws. It fell with a quiet pattering sound on the floor, on the prostrate magistrate, on the puddle of Starke's own lifeblood. "I should have anticipated this. Weatherlight is an oracle wherever it goes. I should have seen that Lahaime and his Ramosans would be whipped into a frenzy by it." He strode calmly over the body of Starke. "Everyone is after my prize. I shall simply have to rebuild it more quickly and defend it more… viciously." He neared the barred doors.

Kyren scurried to haul away the bodies, to mop up the blood, to cover the chief magistrate's bloodstained face and hands with powder.

Meanwhile Volrath himself transformed armor to clothes, black muscle to pink flesh, gray skull to red hair. In midstride, the master of Rath and Mercadia had once again become Takara.

She placed one hand beneath the stout bar on the door and with a single gesture, hurled it up from its brackets. The bar rattled loudly across the tiled floor. Takara hauled the doors open, spilling nobles and guards who had been listening there. As they fell to the ground in seeming obeisance, Takara strode through their midst, out into the deepening night of fomenting rebellion.

"Defend my prize more viciously…"