Kell's Legend

such a sudden, indescribable terror, but she did. Her eyes grew wide. Palpitations riddled her clockwork breast. Her hands clenched together, and fear tasted like bad oil in her mouth.
    “What are you saying?” she said.
    Sa stood, and placed her fluid clockwork machine on the bench. She walked around its outskirts, hand trailing a sparkle of clockwork slivers, gold dust, blood-oil. She stood before Anukis, looking up into the pretty woman’s beaten face, deformed now by the removal of vachine fangs. She stood on tip-toe and kissed Anukis, her tongue slipping into her mouth, fangs ejecting and biting Anukis’s lower lip, a vampire bite, a tasting, a savouring, a gentle taking of blood…
    Sa stood down. Anukis’s blood sat on her lips, in her fangs, and their eyes were connected and Anukis, finally, understood. Her hate fell, crushed. Her anger was crumpled like a paper ball. Her sense of revenge lay, stabbed and bleeding, dying, dead.
    “You will help us find Kradek-ka. You will help us repair the Blood Refineries.”
    Anukis nodded, weakly. “Yes,” she said.
    “There are some things far worse than death,” Sa said. Then turned to Vashell. “Show her the Canker-Pits on your way out. Only then will she truly understand the limits of her…future potential. And the extremes of her father’s twisted genius.”
    “Yes, Watchmaker.” Vashell bowed, and dragged Anukis on her leash.
    Alloria, Queen of Falanor, sat in the Autumn Palace looking out over the staggered flower fields. Colours blazed, and the trees were filled with angry orange and russet browns, the bright fire of summer’s betrayal by autumn and a final fiery challenge to the approaching winter.
    She sighed, and walked along a low wall, pulling her silk shawl a little tighter about her shoulders as her eyes swept the riot of colours stretching out, and down, in a huge two-league drop from the Autumn Palace to the floodfields beyond. Distantly, she could see workers tending the fields; and to the left, woodsmen cleared a section of forest using ox to drag log-laden carts back to the palace in readiness for the harsh snows which always troubled this part of the country.
    “There you are!”
    Mary ran along the neatly paved walkway and gave a low curtsy to her queen. Alloria grinned, and the two women embraced, the young woman—Alloria’s hand-maiden for the past year—nuzzling the older woman and drinking in her rich perfume, and the more subtle, underlying scent of soap-scrubbed skin and expensive moisturiser.
    Mary pulled back, and gazed at the Queen of Falanor. Thirty years old, tall, elegant, athletic, with a shock mane of black hair like a rich waterfall, now tied back tightly, but wild and untamed when allowed to run free without a savage and vigorous brushing. Her skin was flawless, and very pale; beautiful in its sculpture as well as translucency. Her eyes were green, and sparkled green fire when she laughed. WhenAlloria moved, it was with the natural grace of nobility, of birth, of breeding, and yet her character flowed with kindness, a lack of arrogance, and a generosity which ennobled her to the Falanor population. She was not just a queen, but a champion of the poor. She was not just queen by birth or marriage, but by popular consent; she was a woman of the people.
    “You are cold,” said Mary. “Let me bring you a thicker shawl.”
    “No, Mary, I am fine.”
    Mary gazed out over the splendour of fire ranged before them. It was getting late, the sun sinking low, and most of the workers were finalising their work and walking in groups along pathways through distant crops. “The winter is coming,” she said, and gave an almost exaggerated shudder.
    “I forgot,” smiled Alloria, touching Mary’s shoulder. “You hate the ice.”
    “Yes. It reminds me too much of childhood.”
    “Never fear. In a week Leanoric will have finished his training, and the volunteer regiments will be standing down for winter leave; he will meet us back at Iopia Palace and there will be a great feast. Fires and fireworks will burn and sparkle for a week; then, then you will feel warm, my Mary.”
    Mary nodded, still very close to Alloria. “I will never be as warm as when I am with you, my queen,” she said, voice little more than a whisper.
    Alloria smiled, and placed a finger on Mary’s lips. “Shh, little one. This is not the place for such conversation. Come, walk with me back to my chambers;I’ve had a wonderful blue frall-silk dress