Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Frost Lily, Part 1

 

 

 

Frost Lily 

Part 1 


“I will not serve her.”

Flor stomped out of the room waving away the enticing aroma of roasted boar and fresh bread. The distant creak of her father rising from his chair hastened her steps.

“You’ve no choice, Flor,” he said, snatching a frosted cup of palm wine from a servant. “I will not refuse the queen’s request.”

She turned on a heel gnashing her bronze inlaid teeth.

“I want to be an avalanche warrior,” she snapped, “not some girl emptying the chamber pot of an—”

“You’ll do well not to finish that sentence. Such practice ended long before your grandfather made his family rich. So, keep that yourself or someone may inform the king.”

“You wouldn’t”

“No.” Her father drained his cup, resting it upon the table. “But even a father’s care for his daughter cannot keep all things a secret.”

Flor traced her vision beyond the archway into the dining hall. To the servants resting down and slowly portioning boar meat and bread for her father. It was obvious who her father meant. She gave him a curt nod, ascending the stairs left of the meal maker’s prep quarters. Its heat ran down her skin. Ice formed from her flesh to fight its intensity. Flor took two steps at a time until the heat was banished by the chill of her home.

The balcony to her room raised her mind from the haunting depths of the recent conversation. A light breeze danced with the pale green overhang. Flor rested her hands softly upon the balustrade, sunlight drew away the dark tint of her ice blue skin. The blisters lining her fingers hissed against the balustrade’s smooth granite. She had to keep them hidden from her parents, even the servants. Her people were far too observant as both a habit and by law. Hiding her practice sessions was harder to do than blisters on the skin of a noble’s daughter.

“I’d rather.” She peered over her shoulder, listening for movement. The wind toyed with the overhang and then it fell still. She released an at ease breath, “be gored by a boar than scrub the ass of an inbred princess.”

Her focus found itself upon the wall keeping Niev’s wealthiest from the rest of the city. Envy gnawed at the nape of her neck. Girls without her wealth possessed a legion of choices. Some even grew to become avalanche warriors of the sea. Her father’s house stood too far inland for her to hear the ocean’s voice or take in its breeze. Upon a ship was the only place her destiny couldn’t reach her.

The avalanche warriors of land held boring assignments. They protected Niev’s people but from what Flor was uncertain. Massive metal plated serpents did the difficult work, rising from the mile wide moat surrounding the city when intruders approached. Flor sighed, withdrawing to her room. She eased into a chair by the bath, slipping free her sandals. It was fortunate her father hadn’t noticed their condition. Thread bare and dust covered compared to the natural scarlet from the red boar they were harvested from. Footsteps wisped from beyond the doors to her room. Flor snatched up her sandals and thrusted toward her bed.

A knock matched their pitch as they struck the wall, dropping behind the bed’s ornate headboard. The doors eased open to reveal her mother. She traced her painted eyes about the room resting them on Flor. Blankness held the noble wife’s face in a prison of emotionlessness. She was without sign of aging despite thirty-five years considered the beginning of a nescaran’s elder years. Flor sat up straight keeping complete eye contact.

“What noise was that I heard, daughter?” her mother said. Her tone neutral. “You’re three years past your womanhood test. Making unrequired noise is for children.”

“It was bird,” said Flor. She drew back a lock of hair, pointing to the balcony. “The creature struct the wall beyond my room and fell to its death.”

Her mother tilted her head, and then strolled toward the balcony. The skirt about her waist possessed a short train, beaded with jade and sapphire owls, sifting over the fresh swept tile. After a swift inspection of the balcony, her mother faced her. A hitch of her upper lip flashed the cleaned bronze platelets inlaid upon her teeth.

“We both know only sea birds are brave enough to cross the city walls. And even then, some hungry peasant would’ve brought one down with an ice spear. Try a tad harder, daughter.”

Flor reflected upon her feet. The smooth, transparent silks of her dress curtained them.

“I meant to say—”

“Look, Flor. I spoke with your father. You put much at risk for this family by your refusal.”

She rose to match her mother’s frustration. A burning traced itself over eyes, ice remained at bay within her skin.

“I want to be an avalanche warrior of the sea,” she said. “I will serve our people and royals better if I vanquish fish thieves.”

“May the Four condemn your thirst for adventure.” Her mother hissed. “You are not some single brow ape like those women beyond the wall. Your beauty and class belong in the service of royals.”

“I would think,” Flor said, struggling to shrug off her mother’s obsession with social class. Her rudeness. “If I am so beautiful and above so many other nescarans, that servants work would be beneath me.”

Her mother grumbled, taking hold of the bed’s footboard, and digging her nails into its palm-n-oak. “It is not that way in service to the divinely blessed. Every great house of Niev must give-up their daughters should the king need them.”

It was a request from the queen that led to her father’s decision. The king seemed more a vassal in matters outside protecting the city. A puppet. Flor had only ever seen the queen and the crown princess visit the people, ask the state of city progress. She supposed it was the queen who kept tradition going.

“Why must this tradition go on, Mother?”

The question drew the noble’s wife from her perch. And once their eyes met Flor realized all her mother’s words had been a barrier to blockade her true feelings.

    “Because even if our royals broke away from it, did as they pleased like anyone of divine blood, the people would not allow it.”

Flor pressed a fist to her lips. It made little sense that nescaran’s were duty bound to treat their rulers as gods if they themselves possessed control. Perhaps the people were a check and balance the Four required of their worshippers against anyone craving too much power.

“I know you and father feel as I do, Mother. And for it my gratitude is boundless. I will accept what destiny my life has for me.”

They drew one another into an embrace, but once her hands had joined at her mother’s back, her index and center finger crossed.

***

The sun remained absent leaving flickering brass oil lamps imported from Pepnar to light her way. Her sandals clapped upon clean swept streets kept tidy by priests of Limpe. The owl goddess’s teachings pressed upon her believer’s purity of everything. Flor slowed short of an arch where painted across it the Four chased one another. Their wings outstretched and beaks aimed at the tail feathers of their sisters. She rested a hand to her chest as she panted. Her heart pounded furiously demanding she return home.

Four oil lamps away the courtyard to her father’s house met the street. Gracing its entrance to either side palm-n-oaks grew, overshadowing the bronze bars of its gate. She knew what would come of her not being present when the palanquin arrived. She knew she had placed her parents under the mercy of Queen Putma. And from what rumor whispered that mercy was as thin as wind was solid. But her father possessed a value most nobles of Niev didn’t. Flor was certain there would be a riot if the city’s lead bate-nich provider saw his end at spear point.

She raced down several short alleys, darkness hiding the reassuring light of regular streets. Flor brushed aside such unsettling thoughts for avalanche warriors feared nothing, not even the presence of failure. Ice rose and replaced her flesh, crackled over cheeks, and ignited the hazel of her eyes to a solid yellow. The wealthy half of the city possessed a strong authoritative shield against thieves and vagrants. That didn’t stop such people from placing themselves within a robbing reach of opportunity.

Scanning every inch along the main road it was absent of even the shadow of a merchant’s cart. Flor thawed, exhaling as the ice over her released its attachment to her garb. Her dress hung like a curtain, for all nescarans wore clothing two sizes larger should frosting be required.

“You have not the slightest clue of the danger you pursue.”

Flor sighed.

“I’m sure it will be far more taxing than a princess’s temper,” she said, facing her father. “It’s better to live a life of risk than to rot within one of comfort.”

“Quoting your father’s favorite uncle will not win him over, Flor.”

“His words won me,” she whispered. Flor strolled within reach of her father, tempted to grasp his shoulders, to shake sense into him. “Not every tradition must be followed, Father.”

Her father pressed thumb and forefinger to his brow, an oil lamp hung from its handle in his hand. She knew they weren’t alone. The scrap of distant sandals and a few faint flickers marked the presence of her father’s bodyguards.

“True,” he said. “I do think you are still making a grave mistake. The life of an Avalanche Warrior of the Sea isn’t what your uncle made it to be.”

Flor pressed her teeth together and shook her head.

“I don’t want to argue my point again. The sun will rise soon and with it my last chance to enlist before Plunemar phases into the west. I will have to wait one hundred and twenty days and—”

“And in those days,” he continued for her. “you will forget about placing yourself at risk. You will…” He pressed a hand to his nose, withdrawing emotion she’d never seen. “You will be safe.”

Her father bent in his high held posture, pressing both hands upon his knees. Shuffling grew loud and close, but he held up a hand halting the guards. Flor understood why her parents wanted her in the palace. It wasn’t the danger or training they feared she would face. It was losing their only child.

“I’m sorry.” Flor brought her father close, rattling the beads of his shoulder necklace. “I was wrapped in my wants. I never stopped to consider what they were doing to both of you.”

The noble in her arms returned her embrace. Distant and deep horns sounded from beyond the city’s walls signaling the departure of ships for fishing. Sunrise was close at hand. Flor raised his chin to meet his eyes. Tears were frozen upon his cheeks like gems, catching hints of the lamp’s light.

“I will not go.”

Her father withdrew from her arms, raised the lamp, and a guard approached to take it.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t what you want, and neither is it what I want.”

 Flor drew back a step as her father’s bodyguards filed into formation. They wore bronze whale bone breastplates and lumaos that hung down to their ankles. Each had their hair bound back tight, pinned with a golden frigagator claw, topped by her family’s sigil.

“Go daughter.”

“But” she stammered, “what about you and mother?”

“Do not question me. Its unbecoming of an Avalanche Warrior of the Sea to question her superiors.”

She dashed forward to hug him, but he waved a hand and pointed.

“Go.” He flashed a grin. “And break tradition.

***

The moon was gone from the south making its way to Nema’s west. It had been named Plunemar centuries before her birth when the Nemamoons dance the world into existence. Flor reached the harbor just short of the sun, breaking the horizon’s seal. Men and women standing a head taller than herself lined up to a table. An old man absent of hair sat at it with a stack of scrolls resting beside him. She removed her attention from the layered wrinkles of the Recruiter’s face to the vast legions of the king’s longships. They crowded the harbor for what seemed like miles, connected by docks formed of white granite.

Each ship was constructed of palm-n-oak possessing no sails. Six portholes to each of their sides held two function and neither for viewing the sea. Within the ships center rose level upon level like a step pyramid cabins ringed by railing of bronze whale bone. Flor hoped to receive a position at one of the icicle launchers. They were mounted at the corners of each cabin level. She had only to form a short ice spear, nock it to the launcher’s cord and pull the trigger.

“Next.”

Flor returned her attention to the table ahead. She molded her face until it contained no emotion to hide her excitement. Five nescarans like herself wanting adventure, to serve the king upon the seas separated her from a new life. A life possessing no chamber pots, memorization royal attire, or onslaught from a princess’s rage should she be offended.

“Next.”

She followed those who readied to enlist with slight confusion. The marvel of being on one of the ships had held her attention too long. Nescarans were being rejected for service. Two were well on their way back to the city. The few who had been accepted traversed the docks. They vanished within ships they were assigned, clutching a scroll in their fist. The stack of scrolls was down to three. It appeared joining the Avalanche Warriors of the Sea wasn’t as simple as signing your name. It wasn’t just a matter of offering yourself to a service greater than most.

Two scrolls remained.

“You,” said the Recruiter at his table. “Girl. Don’t think for a moment you’ll pass the test. Our king doesn’t need highborn girls with ambition and no skill. Go home.”

Flor pressed her chin to her chest, drumming her toes upon the leather of her sandals. She had rushed it. All of it. The dress she wore was of too fine a silks. And despite the blisters upon her hands her outward complexion possessed too soft of features.

“Are you deaf? If so,” He pointed toward the city, making a walk motion with two fingers, “that is a sign for you to make your way back to your perfumes and luxuries.”

“I will,” she hesitated, chewing her lip. “I will prove I am worthy to serve.”

The nescarans around her chuckled at her timidness. She bawled her fists and met the man’s eyes as he rose. He snatched up a scroll and strolled until his height made her feel like a child. The man could pass for a support column if he were made of stone. A scar ran down the center of his brow, halting at his nose.

“We’ll see about that, girl,” the recruiter said, holding the scroll up by its end. “I bet your frost form is smoother than a priest’s shaven ass.”

Laughter reverberated from behind as Flor grounded her teeth. The bastard was right. Even with her training her frost form was still too smooth. Training alone meant no one to challenge her, to give sharpness to the ice of her being.

  “What test must I pass?” she snapped. “I will prove I’m no delicate frost lily.”

The Recruiter folded his arms. Those behind and ahead of her backed away. She hadn’t noticed it before but upon his hip, resting heavily against his rough spun lumua, a sack hung at his belt. He reached into it and drew out a plump, squeaking and squirming mouse.

“Kill it.” the Recruiter said, stroking the mouse’s brow with his thumb.

“What?”

“Are you not willing to take life? Our greatest enemy upon the sea are fish thieves. You know what they do to nescaran women. You know what they do to our men before robbing them of their catch.”

Flor found herself confused and the Recruiter sensed it.

“You found no trouble in freezing a boar from within. If you can earn your womanhood, then earn the right to become an Avalanche Warrior of the Sea. Your lucky this isn’t the old days, otherwise you’d be killing your first man about now.”

He thrusted his hand at her. The mouse clung to his finger sniffing the air. Its beady eyes drew her attention away from those around her, away from the dream she held close for so long. Flor bunched the folds of her dress between her fingers. It felt more justified to kill those wishing harm on her people. She was only twelve when the golden moon was wiped from her brow and the boar carried from her sight. Flor blew out a low breath bracing at the chill running over her eyes. Her dress grew tight against her person. The contours of her arms and length of her fingers crystallized. And soon all that remained flesh and blood was her togue, dry from the task before her.

“We have training to begin, girl,” said the Recruiter. “Most thought this test a waste of time, but you will see,” the mouse narrowed its gaze and snarled. Its tail’s pinkish flesh grew stiff, turning to ice. Its body followed suit until its eyes flared an unnatural red, “the mouse in my grip isn’t what you’d call normal.”

Shadows grew in height around her trailed by the clap of sandals. Sea breeze relaxed her for a moment before she found the recruits about her had formed a crescent moon. It was as if they thought she were in a fight against a rival. As if her and the mouse were the school victim and instigator squaring off. Flor shook her head of imagination and focused.

An immediate clawing chill raked at her body, burrowing deep and rattling the sureness of her footing. Flor brushed away her surprise feeling her throat constrict. She narrowed her eyes and regained focus, the burning glow in her eyes intensifying. The mouse within the Recruiter’s grasp dug its tiny claws into his flesh. He seethed. Spittle leapt from his lips as those in the crowd gasped from blood running over the man’s fingers.

Flor dug deep within herself and planted both feet against a bubbling coughing fit. The mouse’s power over cold clawed at her lungs. She raised a fist at it drawing whispers from amongst her fellow nescarans. The physical action parted the mouse’s lips summoning mist over its teeth. The Recruiter unfurled his hand until it was flat like a plateau. He watched as Flor and the others did as the mouse stumbled and teetered.

A screech leapt from the mouse. It rose upon its hind legs as its own frost form cracked. Black ice replaced its own, but unlike that of a nescaran rutoe, the creature took on a velvet hue. And all at once it fell from the Recruiters hand, shattering upon the ground.

***

The scroll was crisp and thick within her hand. Flor hadn’t noticed upon approach to receive it, but each scroll possessed several pages. She held it tight, deciding not to peer back to the recruits. They would wait. A wait she was lucky enough to overcome. Plunemar’s return to the south marked another chance for them. I was truly fortunate, she thought. Flor clenched her teeth, rolling her shoulders to distract herself from what the mouse had done. I will have expect the unnatural. Even from the mouse.

She found her assigned ship after some time. The ship towered high enough and stretched long enough to eclipse the sun. The sun’s rays outlined it reaching to neighboring ships and leaving the one before her dark and intimidating. Her sandals found purchase upon the gangplank. Loud brief plops followed the serpentine shadows of ropes untied from the ship.

Flor gasped. Two avalanche warriors grabbed her by the arms and squeezed them. Her grip upon the scroll loosened as she yanked and twisted to be free. She freed an arm and swung with all her strength. Flor winced and withdrew her fist, its knuckles split from the bronze whale bone armor of who she had struck. Blood welled upon them before both arm was captive once again.

The men dragged her down the gangplank and threw her to the dock. Flor gaped, shutting her eyes. Granite against flesh felt far worse on purpose. Her body hurt even more than the jarring thoughts of what could have gone wrong. The test had been passed. The mouse was dead and the scroll, still within her grasp, should have signaled the start of her training. Flor rolled upon her back, wind toyed with her dress. The warriors touched down upon the dock, reaching, and grabbing her by the arms once again.

“What is this?” she demanded. “I have done nothing wrong.”

One warrior peered down at her over the collar of his breastplate. His expression unsettled only by her continued struggle. “The Avalanche Warriors of the Sea have no interest in starting from basics with you.”

“That… That makes no sense. Everyone I saw today possessed no training like me. What sets me apart from them?”

The Recruiter joined them from between two smaller ships than the rest. These possessed no defenses and were lined by rows of benches. Chains hung over the benches through evenly spaced holes. A stench of a rutoe’s leaving wafted form them, jarring a gag from her lips.

“You were chosen by the queen herself to serve the Crowned Princess Yatzil,” the Recruiter said. “Stop your struggling! The queen won’t have an unruly servant.”

Flor gulped at the swift swish and press of blades to her throat. The chill of her frost form tingled just below the surface of her skin. She didn’t wish to give in, to surrender her dreams, but she wasn’t ready to take on three rutoe.

“Good.” The Recruiter pivoted and waved the warriors on. “You’ll be sent to the Limpe’s temple to be cleansed. And then your life of service will begin.”

“How did you learn who I am?”

The Recruiter peered over his massive shoulder. Those who held her arms in a vice and pressed blades to her flesh stopped.

“You already know.”

“How could I?”

Her eyes grew wide, ice formed over her skin and as her eyes narrowed her anger ignited them. The blades at her throat fell away as both warriors fought to stay afoot. Flor slammed her fists together and concentrated. Coughing fits broke out beside her as a sliver of ice formed within her grasp. The Recruiter did the same but when his flesh changed it was as if he were a living, breathing berg of ice.

“Oh, look! You might be worth training after all.”

Flor used her peripherals. The warriors were dead. Snow drifted from the sky dotting the smooth contours of their armor. A force knocked her off balance, parting her fists and shattering the spear she had tried to create. Her back slammed against the granite, shearing ice from arms. Flor fought to regain her breath, to assert herself. A shadow consumed her before Flor could find her footing.

The Recruiter wrapped his arms about her and pressed, twisting like the muscled coils of a diamond fang. She focused upon freezing him from within but something interfered. She gnashed her teeth and tried again. The air grew heavy with snow erasing the gray blemishes created by cracks in the granite.

She released the vice she placed her teeth in. Niev’s city walls climbed ever up and up, swiftly replacing the expanse of the harbor. Flor craned her neck to find her captor focused on a set of wide stair. At there very top a triangular entrance led into the city.

“Why can I not freeze you from within?” she demanded. “Who told you who I was?”

The Recruiter rested her upon the ground, both hands remained a crushing weight upon her shoulders.

“Walk,” he said, nudging her. “I guess no one taught you a tested frost form protects against such things. As for your other concerns there’s no need for me to answer them.”

He was right. And even asking them felt foolish, but in her confusion, certainty felt as vital as air to her lungs. She moved faster to match his pace. Wall sconces flickered and his from the entrance as they entered a short, plain hall. Beyond the light greeting them at the other end a palanquin sat. Its wood possessed a sheen lined upon the armrests with frost lilies in bud form.

High upon the shoulders of men wrapped at the waist in pale green lamaus, the sun haloed a man. Flor’s lips parted. Her breath fled with tears that burned worse than flame to the flesh.     

“You. But why?”

“Because” her father said, “I will not have you sour our family legacy. You will abide by tradition and fulfill your responsibilities to our queen.”    


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