Queen's Shadow || Kingdom at the End of the World - Book II

[29.3] What Glitters

The bell tolled at sunset.

Ira Hale turned her head toward the sound. She remained still but for that minute movement, her back against a wall, her hands at her sides.

The sound faded. Ira drummed her fingers over a lacquered floor – once, twice. The third beat was lost under a soft voice picking up a familiar melody.

Ira rose to her feet. Her eyes passed over the bed, the desk, the bookcase by the door. There were books on the shelves, paper and ink in the desk's drawers, spare linens tucked away in an ensuite closet. Everything that ought to be had was at hand.

Ira would feel more at ease in a prison cell.

There was no lock on the door. A crescent atrium lay beyond, bare but for an arrangement of intricate partition screens. They were made of wood, carved masterfully to depict various scenes. Flowers bloomed in a verdant glade on one, beautiful maidens danced joyfully in another, while the moon kissed its reflection in a rippling river upon a third.

Each screen appeared to be a self-contained world. A closer study revealed overlapping details – shared trees and flowers, the curving shape of the river flowing from one screen to another. If one were to walk around the display, they would experience a panoramic view of the scene. The movement lent an illusion of motion to the carving, so that the maidens truly danced and the birds flit from branch to branch, following the viewer. Ira spent a lot of time circling the strange display. It was familiar and not, like an old dream.

The screens were arranged around a low divan. Taking a seat meant losing sight of the room beyond the carved scenery. Ira dared the disorientating experience only once, thereafter focusing her attention on the trap door that accompanied the seat of honor. It opened to a staircase that wound thirty floors, its steps arranged into a narrow spiral spearing toward the heavens. Ira had counted each one during her upward journey.

The Queen's Tower made for an oddly secure prison.

The song soared. Ira cocked her head, listening intently. Seven days had passed since her confinement in this strange place. She was yet to sleep or consume any kind of nourishment. The first was her own doing; the latter could be blamed on her captors, if one ignored the possibility that the daily visits from expressionless Zero soldiers were meant as an invitation of some kind. Ira refused to entertain the thought. Zero's level of danger was well beyond the acceptable threshold. There was no knowing what havoc their blood might wreak, not to mention that feeding upon such senseless creatures struck her as particularly bad taste.

The soft voice soothed Ira's uneasy heart in a manner she found most concerning. She clenched her hands so her nails gouged her palms to blood. The pain cleared her mind, disrupting the comfortable warmth of the songstress' song.

Ira hesitated at the door. Life in the Queen's Tower followed a routine and while she did not allow herself to fall complacent, deviations were nonetheless jarring and as such, easy to spot, no matter how miniscule. The songstress arrived as usual, exactly at sunset. The melody she sang was also familiar, one of a short repertoire of five or six soothing tunes.

The light tremble in her voice struck like a broken chord.

Ira opened the door. There was no light save for what little remained in heaven, seeping through a ceiling made of clear crystal. The wooden screens painted hoary shadows over the walls. A dark mass rose above them, its shape vaguely human. It peered down on the woman hidden behind the screens with a starved focus.

The darkness shifted. Its shadow fell over Ira in an instant, bringing with it an immense pressure that would have snapped Ira's shoulders and broken her legs had she been a second later in falling to her knees. Pain burst where her bones struck the stone floor.