Wrong Side of the Coffin: A WIPpersnappers Anthology

In the Eye of the Beholder (Part 2/2)

(Continued from Part 1...)

Coming here had been a mistake.

"Why, Kyrvalla," Lady Harlow said, "how frightfully strange this must be for you."

Harlow's coterie of minor nobles giggled.

It had been decades since the Baroness last dined at Prince Thalathar's palace, as a little girl at her mother's side. She'd forgotten his banquet hall. Forgotten the mirrored walls that expanded the already vast space and transformed its multitudinous diners into a legion large enough to conquer kingdoms.

Some of Harlow's minions added their own quips.

"Do remind me to pass you the port, Kyrvalla. I fear I may forget, since it looks for all the world as though there's no one beside me."

"How do you clean your teeth?"

"If one can't see one's face, can one be certain one has a face at all? I believe a great philosopher said that..."

Terrible jokes and ensuing laughter niggled away at the Baroness, and only increased with each course. They'd noticed it many balls and banquets ago. Noticed how she bristled whenever she passed a mirror or some other thing that should've reflected her. And so they gnawed away like jackals.

After dessert, guests dispersed to drawing rooms, to the lawns where bards played, or to semi-secret trysts amid the trees and bushes. Baroness Kyrvalla wandered through the palace. Wandered till even her ears couldn't make out their voices, their jibes, their chuckles and cackles.

A memory fluttered into her brain. Her mother had taken her this way on that long-ago night, to a balcony that jutted out at the rear of the palace. Lavish gardens and orchards sprawled for miles from the palace's facade, and revellers sauntered among them. But there, at the back, a river rushed beneath, and Kyrvalla's mother had held her up so she could peer over the edge, down at the moonlit water.

She closed her eyes, let the memory sharpen, and padded through the palace. Ah! That doorway. It was just through—

"Kyrvalla!"

Damn it! The Baroness stepped through the archway, out into the moonlight. Lady Harlow leaned against the balcony railing, waved a bottle, and grinned at her.

"They sent me out here to sober up."

"With a bottle of wine?"

"Oh, this?" She drank its last drop, then tossed the bottle over her shoulder. It splashed below. "Just a tipple to ease me into it."

Baroness Kyrvalla snorted, turned away. She'd find another balcony and—

"They say you're the most beautiful woman in the kingdom."

"They're correct."

"Such a shame. All that beauty, and everyone can look upon it but you. It's like that bard. You know, the famous one. The one who was deaf and couldn't hear his own music. Or was it a blind painter? One or the other."

Harlow laughed.

"Poor Baroness! Though perhaps Prince Thalathar will take you to bed. He has a mirrored ceiling in his love room, and the girls do say he always prefers to see himself in it, not them. With you, that's all he'd see. Pumping away at empty air. Fitting, no? Empty Kyrvalla. Empty head, empty mir—"

The world flashed crimson and the Baroness lunged, lunged and grabbed her. Harlow cried out. The Baroness bit into the side of her neck and the shriek stopped.

Blood! Glorious, glorious blood with its copper tang and all the layers of richness beneath, flavoured by the ocean of wine in Harlow's veins. She'd sampled her maids before. Found it no better than animal blood, and thus stuck to whatever her groundskeepers supplied from the local game. But this... Harlow weakened in her grasp, slumped, but the Baroness held her up. And she drank deep. Deeper than she had with the maids, for now it was all or nothing, and she chose all. All!