JBB, The Red and Gold Reserve

Jawbreak Blue
by J. Ingram

One:  September 24, 2012

To begin, let us assume that, where I am, things remain exactly as they are.

If so, then Gyra could not have been a very nice girl.

When she was seven, and her little sister got a new doll, Gyra snatched it and beat little Lucie with it.  That was about the time when they first 'stilted' our bridges.  Later, when Gyra turned seventeen, she got mad, took her father's shotgun and blasted apart the biggest crystal pieces of the heirloom chandelier.  Gyra loved the way it crashed and scattered fine-dressed people down in the politicking-room.  She adored that it made them horrified, first, but then later they were thrilled to talk about it all over town.  Better!  Daddy was never thrilled, however.  Together with news that the amended Beltway Walls weren't coming back down, it finally got Daddy to cry.  Best!

Somewhere after all this, Gyra came home for summer break and then sort of forgot to go back to college.  Her mother once called it the evilest of evilness.  But only once.  After the mistake, Momma couldn't say it again.  She went away just in time, too, before Daddy said she would have needed to get a Federal District Pass.  Because people needed one of those now, to go and see Redskins games. 

Daddy stopped letting Gyra go see the DC Demoncats even though she didn't need a fed-diss-pass for it and she always did come home smelling strong enough to trick him into believing he'd left out the whiskey.  Oh well.  There was only half of a Metro Rail left, anyways, and it was above three dollars, so Gyra eventually resigned herself to playing roller derby with her sister.  But only when little Lucie wasn't looking. 

Finally, after the derby incident, little Lucie realized it was high-time she did remember to go to college, did apply for a fed-diss-pass, then threw out all the whiskey in the house before she got on a Greyhound bus and did get her smart-butt ten stories up a bridge then out of the city.  Lucie didn't write.  She didn't even Facebook.  Stupid Facebook.  

So then, at twenty-seven, Gyra walked the rough-paved, potholed streets with Daddy's shotgun again. The old dolly (she was a rag of a head) got tied to Gyra's belt by the blonde hair nobody in their family had. 

But where can bad girls even go, at twenty-four, with no sisters to pity them, no fathers with any patience left, no husband in line, nor professions to make themselves even halfway useful?

On a drunken adventure.  But first, Dansel had to come along.

Dansel Darrons, when consulted on his availability, felt it necessary to put another cigar in his mouth instead.  "I didn't come to your birthday party last week for a reason, Gyra.  So then, of course I'm not leaving the neighborhood with crazy-old-you."

"Don't you mean that you left me alone in the house, three hours last week, for a reason?" Gyra flared.

The other men in three-piece finery laughed over brandies.  Their social club nicknamed the Red-And-Gold-Reserve was one of the best places on this side of the city to watch a Redskins game, and actually like it, lose-or-lose.  A seventeen-point lead now eclipsing the Redskins in the second half made the whole place suddenly go groaning at the big screen, and ordering a fresh round of Forget.

The Red-and-Gold-Reserve was designed after another prestigious landmark in Anacostia.  We are, as of yet, still uncertain that it shall live up to what Frederick Douglass or else the Mayan Calendar perceived about modern society. September, 2012.

"Gyra, I'm begging you, please... who here can light this?  I'm looking for convenient breaks in my speech, dammit."

The other middle-high-class men in three-piece-suits with him practiced more laughter.

"You shamed me Dansel Darrons." went Gyra, "You know how hard it's been, and then you still didn't come to my party.  This time, you owe me..."

"I can't pay you anything that I owe, of course, until I finish doing business here with my friends.  Go bounce.  Hit the street real hard, Miss Gyra."

The Maitre d' came up with a good reason to interrupt, by then.  "Madam, if you please, we can hang your shotgun in the coatroom and provide a ball gown better suited..."

Gyra screamed, cocked the thing, then shot a hole through the ceiling.  Oh, were people scandalized.  Almost worse than seeing another 58 yard field goal, missed.  Now, they wanted fresh batches of hot wings and nachos.

"Dansel Darrons, I don't like you.  In fact, I hate you--"

"Yes, and I declined that unequal offer of companionship on your birthday for just that reason, excuse me..." then he whispered, "Are you bat-shit crazy, girl?  Gyra, go home!"

"...Oh, suddenly he can't talk proper-like, as a real member of the middle-high-class that can still afford to live around here.  Or, lives in splotches around the city, having bought in during the seventies then stayed on through fluffed up or failed developments, the first three rounds of property-tax hikes, or whatever Daddy cusses about." she smiled, fake and big, like that same baby-doll once upon a time ago.  She patted the sad childhood talisman at her belt.  "Come along now, darling Dansel.  Or do I have shrink your fat head first?"

He couldn't even finish his drink.  Dansel went away at gunpoint.  And just then, of course, the local football team suffered another embarrassment.  "Oh, shut up!  You know they'll be roaring right back next Sunday--Gyra, stop fooling around and tell me what it is you really want?"

By the door, Gyra tugged the Maitre'd, who still stalked them, by his lapels.  It was a wonder drinkers and diners were more distracted by the terrible game, than a lone woman wandering up and down the tables with a shotgun, or a crumbling hole in the club's ceiling.  "Would this ball gown you offered me have been... complimentary?"

"Ah, but you aren't staying here, Miss Gyra--

"D.D. and I will have a drink at the bar then.  You know where it is, just over there... and if this free dress can be a shade of Jawbreak Blue, then you know I'll LOVE it, and my Pa'll give a whole bunch more money to this place."

"I don't think your Pa," he spat in speech, "could do enough to remedy that wound you put in the ceiling."

"Don't be so sure of yourself.  Pa was a cannoneer in the near-revolution of October 2010.  He'd just come up here--drive, even--and finish that hole as a sky-light, if he ever heard ya'll were mean to me."

When they were settled with ice-in-chippers, Dansel regained his courage.  "You are a girl, a stupid girl, do you know, Gyra?  I kissed you once and you turn it into this?"

"Sillies, I was educated at only the finest local academies and out-of-state universities.  So, I am not foolish, nor am I a statistic.  I'd never be a statistic."

"I don't know about how you imagine yourself calculated, you're more calculat-ing, I'd say.  But the rest stands.  You aren't a woman, do you see?  You, Gyra, are a mess."

It hurt her more than she expected.  "I'll put the dress on right here in front of all these people if you aren't nicer to me, Mr. Darrons.  And don't you complain at me again, either.  I'm a smart, fully-functional person.  You know very well that I invented Jawbreak Blue."

Dansel hastened to have his drink, once they poured it out for him.  He realized that ice-in-chippers was not a real drink.  Previously, when Gyra ordered it, that was no shock to him.  But, that the bartender had interpreted her goof-request as some powerful sedative-in-vodka, that had him swerve a little off the barstool.  However, Dansel swerved back, when he realized there was also no point in warning Gyra about it.

Dansel sighed.  "...Is that made-up Jawbreak color from one of your drawings?  Or, your mother's?  I admit, it does sound pretty decent.  And this is pretty good, you should go on and have some."

"I only heard the word pretty, and thank you.  Blech, this tastes jive-strange."

"Drink a little more then, swish it round your mouth a bit.  I swear, it's exactly like wine-tasting... Gyra, just because the world is shit doesn't mean you can come in here and bash up one of the better places in Anacostia."

She slipped a little too, on the bar itself.  Dansel supported Gyra's arm, helped her to stand again, then took the shot gun.  "Better?"

"Mhrm..."

The Maiter'd came back, a ruffled something folded over his arm.  Dansel got his first anxiety attack seeing that, yes, it was some odd shade of blue.

Gyra snatched it, snatched Dansel, then rushed them through the front door and into the foyer.  She tripped over her black boots several times.  Then, Gyra swifted exactly by eager finger-pointing bouncers, saying she 'was gonna pee right and there if they didn't let her into the ladies' room.'

Which left Dansel wanting to get back inside the Red-And-Gold-Reserve with his friends, banging on the frosted glass, yelling, while men with shades restrained him from re-entry.  Gyra emerged after a time, re-fastening her awful belt round the waist of something with grand skirt and stitched everywhere it should not have been with plastic stars.  They looked sharp.  Dansel was not just panicked now, heart racing, but he also began to feel sick. 

"How does it look?"

"Well, it's the District's flag...urp."

"Which is always wonderful, isn't it?  Look!  Oh, Dansel, it's like the dress mommy and me wanted together.  This is perfect for journeying.  People will know we mean business--they'll think me a queen, maybe?  Can DC have a Queen?"  She put a hand on her forehead, wandered a drowsy circle.  "If University won't let me be a student, and Daddy's afraid to let me be a rollergirl, then at the least, I should be qualified to become queen of the District of Columbia..."

Dansel looked up at the scowling bouncers.  He offered to pay them anything...

The Maitre'D returned.  "Sir, Miss?  You two have been banished from the Red-And-Gold-Reserve and all its affiliates.  It's time to get out."

"...And affiliates?  For how long?  I have get back in there, it's where my living is made!" Dansel slipped and went down on one knee.  "God, sometimes I hate living DC.  Here I am, begging you to let me watch the Redskins for the price of two limbs and on a regular basis."

"The ban is for life.  And tell the Cannoneer that we've lost our last bit of patience for his daughter until he pays his tab."

"Gyra can come back in, but I can't?  She shot a hole through the ceiling!"  Dansel threw a punch, but it never landed. 

The Red-and-Gold Reserve, Taxation without Representation Society's Last Stand Bar and Grill threw Gyra and Dansel out on their asses.

...

Next week:  The Anacostia River.

(Randitty-O-Meter:  8, Yes.  I went there.  But, back when I was little.  Not in a snap-snap-neckroll sort of way.)

---

Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant

Miraah 13, End of the Prose

Mi'Raah
by J. Ingram

Thirteen:   End of the Prose 

(Last chapter of Mi'Raah)

Mi'Raah walked in bare feet at the Jystians.  They had set him down and were stripping off his ornaments already.  She outstretched an arm, silver beads of what she was made of pooled in the webs between her fingers.  Fingernails gave wisps of white smoke, then wisps of blue, searing energy.  The air between them snapped frozen, fell away, and then she flared fingers when she was nearer, and did it again.  Now, metal lances froze and broke to crumbs, but nothing else.  Mi'Raah gave a hard look over the breathing targets before herself, calculating a third time. 

"How's that?  Is our native sun too hot, for you to take us down as well you witch!"

Hair stuck across her bare neck.  She pushed palm again.  This time, the climate of the country didn't prevent her.  Bloodied water reversing to spurt directly through pores of their skin and at the edges of their eyes, did the killing. 

"No, it was the light, your bodies' heat, together with the convection of that armor which put my numbers off.  Now that lesson's learned, I've not finished thinking through this other one!  What's the damned answer to that prose?  I saw and mourned the proof of him being mortal, but then, simply because I believed different..." And the strange immortal woman knelt again to tap chin and resume thinking, as the battle quaked around her.

...

In these fateful times, another woman with shaved-bald head found that she could also pass through the tumult and not feel so self-conscious.  Here in the Jystian Palace, people were more concerned with looting, putting down battles in the decorated hallways, or praying to a talking horse god, who, anyone faithful or no should have seen from any window, was busy at the moment chasing after pirates.

Koriandra stayed for a time, tapping fingertips along a window-ledge as she tried to understand a growing tangle of Jystian soldiers on the west brink of the city.  The white suun flared off some gold chariot fleeing.  Not far off, another pirate-fool had been stabbed through on three lances...

"Well, I hope they finally kill that lying, painted on, selfish half-twit Mi'Raah.  That's all I'm saying about it..."

The only trouble now for Koriandra, after having escaped upstairs from the dungeon riots, was finding one kindly person who might direct her as to where, in all the sea-bells, her mares could be!

She looked so ragged and gaunt that she couldn't have appeared a threat to anyone.  Though, Koriandra did have a shard of glass cramped in one of her fists.  She found the stream of marble corridors and bright day-lit rooms disorienting, after being pent-up for so long.  Where was the Grand Rampart?  Then when she reached it--what other staircase could she use to access the stables, when the Grand Rampart was covered with fighting soldiers?  At last, she thought she recognized some back service-stair, stumbled halfway down it, then raced across a desolate courtyard filled with statues of fattened horses (how cruel destiny was, to trick her eyes after everything!), toward the Royal Stable.  Koriandra grabbed her shirt in a fright, much as she had on that day some weeks ago.  No horse-sound, no stable hands mucking out or tossing bales, this time.  Bad, bad, sign.  And, the day was getting late.  Someone, anyone should have been nearby, if the animals still lived.  She ran shouting, from one opened stall to the next.

"Ina?  Kanna?" Koriandra called for the animals. "Hallowed horse shit.  Dung on my life!  I've been wasting time here dreaming about you being mine again, looking for you two... instead I could have been... running out of here, or throwing myself out of a tower window... eating when I'm so damned hungry, clearly it's all been nonsense, base instinct leading me--something else, anything other than run, hope, and stumble like this."  Nothing and no one came.  Koriandra would have welcomed the enemy at this point.  She leaned on a dirty wall, held herself, then yelled out again and sobbed wild.

What was the point?  Believe, and then bad things happen.  Suffer, and bad things keep happening anyways.  It piles up.  It hurts too much.  Koriandra squeezed the glass shard in her other hand.  She had come to the other far end of the barn, where it opened to the lonely fields against the sea-cliff.  Nothing out there, either.  Only green grass reflected against the crooked glass shard Koriandra squeezed deeper and deeper into supplicant palms. 

"Great Hunter, have mercy.  They sold my mares.  I can't even go home, when I betrayed my truest family, long ago.  And this world is crumbling down.  What will I do?  I've nothing left, and it's too painful to hope."

A voice echoed down, from the rafters.

"Daughter of the Herd.  Pledge yourself newly to me..."

Koriandra lashed around, but the stable was silent again.  No movement, anywhere.  Only the constant scent of so many lost animals.

"It is not done yet, filly.  You are like the yearling just turned out, Koriandra.  The hunter's yearling.  You are needed."

"... Odentalis?  Odeon!  You bastard, come out here--"

"No, you are mistaken.  How can you not know my voice, when I am your Fahrwandrian god?"

"But the Great Hunter doesn't..." Koriandra crept round one corner and then another.  Finally, she found a rope ladder hanging down from a hatch which opened to the hayloft overhead.  Still swinging.

"Coriander... pledge yourself to me--urp!"

In pale slashes of eveninglight going across so many stacked haybales in the narrow crawl-space, Koriandra advised a grown man to take cupped hands down from either side of his mouth.  "It's Koriandra.  And, the Great Hunter Spirit does not speak, considering... that he or she is just that--a ghost-feeling."

"Well don't stab me with that horrible, um, piece of glass.  I'm completely unarmed."

Koriandra was already crouched down, with the low ceiling.  She drew her other knee in, to sit as he did.  "I am going to guess, because you're so good at mispronouncing my name and seem to also have your... girlfriend's hair-do... that you must be that obsessive, bloodthirsty bastard who liked to send her direction on how best to torture more work and belief out of me, via gold message-bottle."

"King Arudelle of the Siren, at your service.  Yes, my soul is attached to yonder gold bottle." he pointed.

"Ho no, I'm not falling for it.  Don't bother tricking me into turning my head again."

"Damn."

"What are you doing here?  There's a war... your army is down there, fighting."

"The gold bottle, that you don't want to look at presently, was stashed up here by a dutiful servant of mine some nights ago.  Mi'Raah came down here to find Odeon, I suspect.  Good hiding place--well, I won't complain when I could have been on a ship to the Lowery Isle, in one of those nasty horse-breeding-pens.  In fact, I wonder at why Mi'Raah didn't try for that?  Oh, right, she couldn't have guessed..."

"So that's what happened." Koriandra wiped sleeve over her brow.  "It was you moving the bottle around, the whole time.  It's empty, stoppered up brain should have been my inkling, I guess."

"No, that's not exactly how it works.  I was just hoping to make you cry about breeding-pens and the Lowery Isles, but that didn't trick you either.  Double damn."

"Oh, I should gut you right now, King Arudelle, for being so simple!  Come on, if you won't say anything useful, then you're going to buy me something useful.  I'm taking you hostage."

"I just died--let's not do that again.  Here's another idea.  How about I give you the mares, because I was laying here in a daze, listening, when they packed them off, so I know where they were taken... and you pledge loyalty to the Pirate King forever and ever and fast, so that I can start making plans to take over Fahrwandur."

"WHAT?!  What in the whole known-world makes you think I'd ever aid you in destroying my homeland like you did this one?  First, the High Horse Priest sneaks and has me do it, leading the Jystian Phillies on a win, five-to-one over the Vestial Virgins... which was the beginning of the end let me tell you... but now some other immortal madman wants me to finish the job?  By asking, right to my face, for help betraying my country, you think this offer's bound to go better?  Were you really paying any attention to Mi'Raah's letters?"

"Bad time to clear this up, but it's important to know I'm not immortal, really.  Hold on--were those actual names, of the elite armies used to fight ceremonial wars in Fahrwandur?"

"That's what happens when people squeeze gold out of a foreign kingdom.  Cultural appropriation, what else?  It's all a game to them.  Come on, we going back down there, where I can grab a pitchfork or something and threaten you better."

Arudelle kept trying to explain to Koriandra about his death.  She kept wanting him to 'shut up his hail-call', whatever that meant.  Koriandra snarled more and more hunter nonsense at him, as she prodded onward with a pitchfork.  Arudelle was to walk backwards so that she could have a good aim at his innards and possess full control over his direction through the hay-strewn stables. 

"No one else, not even Mi'Raah is coming out here.  That's the ruthless genius of it, I'm trying to tell you--Arrrr matey."

"Now that just sounds like a lonesome hen.  Make a left."

"I'm going to trip and fall, damn you, woman!  Listen to me.  I was stabbed by lancers, but I also tied my soul to the gold bottle long ago.  I told her to stash it in here on the night she got free from prison to find Odeon with... that Syramon-something.  Of course, Mi'Raah has no idea why I wanted it up there--"

"Another left.  If you've gotta fall at all, Arudelle, then just don't come forwards onto the pitchfork, alright?"

"Fine.  Well, it was the cause of--you just directed me to step in horse shit."

"Heh.  A right, this time."

Arudelle took one final, patient breath as he paced backwards round another corner.  "I told Mi'Raah's sisters, before we even began the journey to Jyst, that if they did anything against us while we were away, that I would find out through that magical, indestructible bottle and have Mi'Raah killed by my entire army."

"But you need her for your conquest.  Not even Mi'Raah's kin can be that stupid."

"That's my point... Mi'Raah's sisters pledged whatever they would to my face, but then, of course, behind my back, they enchanted the bottle, essentially tying it down to a thread of Mi'Raah's immortal soul.  A bribed temple-servant told me--or was it a threatened or maimed temple-servant?  I can't recall... Anyways, they hoped it would be a way to ensure their eldest sister could never get lost in the sea of whatever's after this life.  Her spirit and her body could always be recalled, that way, as long as that bottle managed to survive.  I'm sure they must have tied themselves to it as well, to prevent--"

"Another left.  Though, I was tempted to let you fall into that water trough.  You're so full of it, Arudelle-the-whatever-you-are.  How do you even know Mi'Raah's sisters did all these things?  You actually see them do it?  Do you even understand immortal powers?"

"Seeing to believe isn't necessary, when you let the ladies hug each other and then walk off into a private room for an hour and a half to say 'goodbye.'  I know they did it, the bottle was the only thing going between them, the only way to know what was going on, so they used it.  On my end, I went off with Mi'Raah on my own for about an hour before we got on the ship--"

"I do not need the details of this.  Keep going straight."

"...To get married.  So then, my soul is tied to hers, and that of her sisters, all with the golden bottle.  Wasn't that smart of me?  Well, there's the downside of my original wife Euginnia being tangled in there as well, somewhere... but a sacrament like marriage is an outer expression of an inner spiritual transformation.  Some witches make hoodoo dolls and stick pins in them--which do work, by the way.  No matter how valuable that land is, no King really wants to have the Wild Tribesmen as subjects, ever.  And, some other holy people put rings on the fingers of lovers to bind them in matrimony.  Same thing."

Koriandra only stared.

"You'd have to kill all of us, at once, and the bottle too, in order to murder any of us.  Now, do you see?  I've expanded my life by many proportions and spread it out across the sea itself!  No one is going to get rid of Arudelle, unless he wants to be got rid of."

"Or, unless Koriandra wants to get rid of him.  Now that she understands it."

Arudelle shut his mouth, which was nice, until he thought fast, "Well, I told you all this for a good reason, but you won't listen to me.  Besides, you're never getting across the sea to my kingdom anyways."

"Wanna bet?  I survived a dungeon riot, escaped,s and came this far just for a pair of stupid, bow-legged horses.  It's not much to cross the sea, to murder several people I can't stand--who RUINED MY LIFE FOR NO APPARENT REASON!"

Arudelle grabbed the pitchfork then, and pulled hard.  He was able to yank it away from Koriandra with the jolt of weight changing between them so fast.

She darted away from him swiping at her, rolled through hay, then reached for a shovel.

"Dammit, Coriander, I'm asking you to marry me!"

Koriandra really screamed then.  As loud as her throat and skull could stand to be rattled.  "I don't like men!  I don't like your damned sea religion!  I don't like crazy people with silver hair craving to destroy the world even if they are clever or charming.  I tried it, but I didn't like it, do you hear me?  And for the last time, that is NOT even my name!"

"I promise, I won't shave my head this time.  In hindsight, this silver stuff did frighten Mi'Raah a great deal... more than I meant for it to."

She jabbed, but Arudelle lashed up with both strong arms, to parry.  "Well you can't fight me forever.  My pride is only matched by my strength, and my wit, though I may be mortal.  Everything I touch becomes a weapon.  That is why Mi'Raah nor her sisters were able to stop me.  I am one of those rare men who comes along, every century--the dazzling hero--whom fate favors.  Some will deny it to their last blasted day, but mortals can do the same things immortals can, and I'm the proof.  I've got into the blindspots of two of them so far, and earned unthinkable victories on that theory.  The Wild Tribes fell, Jyst has fallen.  I want Fahrwandur too, and so that must be next.  Koriandra, you can have a little faith in what I want to do and choose your life, or I can order my army to finish you off, once they get here.  And, they are coming.  An entire hysterical palace agrees."

Koriandra took a very good swipe at Arudelle's silver-covered head.  She was no longer sure whether she was trying to kill him, or murder his speech.  "If only I had my bow and my arrows!  I've once shot a mewing rogue-bison's tongue clear out of his petulant mouth during the mating season.  Only after, did I take my shot at its heart."

They two realized that more people were fighting nearby, and struggled to face it, even while dueling one another.  It was not clear whether the war was coming to them way out here, or if looters were rivaling with one another.  A shout for 'loyal Jystians to part', and then the rapport of a horse's hooves galloping underneath the sacred livery arch confirmed it.

Oily black Odeon came running in, riderless.  The look of that red armor was still something, but it was worse when they saw how King Baeltheon's foot was caught in the stirrup.  Odeon had somehow allowed the man himself to become a dragging dead corpse.  The talking horse whinnied, "That dumb, fat liar.  Get this dead-weight off of me!  Every single Jystian King, I swear... descended from generations of capable cavalrymen, my equine ass!  Where's help?  I called for a stablehand, I said!"

Some soldiers peeled off from fighting and tried to do some honor to King Baeltheon's ruined body, or get water and feed for the King's horse.

Arudelle stepped forward and stabbed one man and his water-bucket without another thought.  Koriandra was forced to strike at the others as well, before they might make the decision that she was with Arudelle, or else a malcontent escaped from the dungeon.  Well, she was honestly one of those, but no use taking chances.  She whacked shovel and two men went down, with banged skulls.  Arudelle finished off the last.

Odeon turned his back end, to face the far wall.  "How?  One of you was dead and the other should have been sentenced." Odeon clapped yellow teeth together.

"Watch out, Odentalis, he's going to ask you to marry him." Koriandra scowled.  Arudelle glinted her way.

The immortal stallion tossed head again, and another time, warning them not to come closer.  "Want to see how good my impression of the late King is?" But when the talking horse tried it, the royal call for help was a garbled half-spoke whinnying.  "And then, he's also dead, isn't he?  So nobody would have believed it."

"Arudelle's the real voice-thrower here, anyways.  I almost converted to a second strange horse-hunter-something-religion, I didn't know what in three sea-bells it was..."

"I want the two of you to shut up and listen." Arudelle defended his strange way of doing things. "The Kingdom of Jyst is all but taken.  This is going to become a part of my empire.  I only need a proper sword to seal the effort.  Decide now, whether you are going to side with me and prove your loyalty when it's needed, or if you just need help being thrown clear out of my way, with the chaff."

Koriandra still wasn't sure if whether liked the false High Horse Priest Odentalis, or if his horse-god form was better, or not.  But she looked to Odeon in this moment, when Arudelle's wild gaze was always so unsettling.

The large black horse lashed tail once and ceased all fighting back.  "You are going to kill me, an immortal horse, with a pitchfork?  Well that's easy, go on and end me then."

The fighting outside got louder.  Jystian soldiers fled inside the stable and, into the open livery where they were, but Pirates came fast on their heels.  Arudelle began shouting orders as soon as he saw his men, and the tide turned just as quickly for Odeon.  Koriandra stopped laughing.

Arudelle was given the armor off someone else's back, and dressed with sword and shield.  "...that really it, Koriandra?  After all our discussion, dumb gawking is your answer?  You know, I almost got kill't on the battle field, believing that I saw you, believing in your capacity to serve the next invasion.  But that proposal was not worth the risk, two times now.  Go on, men, take that one.  Your first prize of the night.  Tie up the horse, though, he's needed for breeding."

"Breeding?  Is that what this was for?  Mi'Raah said but I thought she was being simple and self-righteous as usual--Is that really all!"

Odeon's fool remarks were cut off when Koriandra dropped her shovel and raised naked wrist for them to see.  She pressed the shard of broken glass to it.  "I swear I will!"  She screamed.  "I've no reason not to.  Do you think that's how I want to end, Arudelle, with nasty pirate-men clambering all over me?  After what I already did with Prince Bonnis, after everything, I'd hate it." her voice broke.  "I'm not going to die like some swine, the way I lived."

Odeon warned, "Rider Koriandra, you are a soldier until the last.  Fight with me.  Do not lose your nerve."

"It's not my nerve that I've lost.  A mortal person can only take so much.  My shoulders, this heart, my very soul is overburdened!  Arudelle, if I'm just a stupid woman to you in the end, warm chattel not worth a thing, then at least let me run from here.  I beg you, let me live as the slime on sea-rock.  I wouldn't hurt a soul, I promise.  I just want peace."

"Yet, you wouldn't join me and live according to my cause.  So, you aren't so desperate, and, no, we don't know what you're capable of."

"You're like the devil himself.  Hearing your voice and seeing you work is like burning alive!  Again, I beg you to see your own arrogance.  Who would want that?"

Arudelle urged, and his men advanced anyways.  Strategically, it made no difference to him.  Koriandra flared open fingers of that one desperate, shaking hand, then sliced down through her own wrist.

She eased into the hay, watching it bleed.  "If she cannot be saved, unless she is first redeemed, and belief may be belief, but suffering will always be suffering, if mortals are equal to immortals, in all the evil and good they choose to do..." slipping smile, "Then what's the point of wondering?  When all I've ever done, is to believe, there is nothing more I can do."

Mi'Raah was announced over the dying woman's speech.  The pirates saluted, or didn't know to, and parted ranks.  Mi'Raah had drips of water all over her robes and flecks of white ice in her hair.  A sheet of it slipped down over her gold breastplate, more evidence of how she'd survived the battle.

"Kori!  What have you done?"

Arudelle sniped, "I happen to be alive here, as well."

Koriandra said, "There's no point, to life."

"This had better not be about those horses, again!"

"My horses are gone, because Arudelle's always been a liar.  Nor do I want to see you," she looked away.  "You and Odentalis, broke everything... and then some people really believed... Arudelle would be a good king.  Pfft!" Mi'Raah sat beside Koriandra, patted her cheek.  "...Mrm?"

"Listen to me, Koriandra.  I realized something today.  I can choose my life.  No, I can choose to live.  I can believe in order that the suffering be made less.  When there is nothing but fear around me, then what will I do?  Fear to even love?  If life is fear... then I should love anyways.  I should rejoice in the face of destruction.  I should heal, without being told.  I should rise, whether events desire for me to, or not."

She took frightened breath and went on, "Because, most often, they will not.  But, if I desire, if I believe, then I will have nothing to do with that.  Small or strong, immortal or brief, I can choose to be free.  I can free myself.  By caring about my life.  Whether or not life cares about me, that is not good enough to worry about." 

"I will live, and will others to live with me.  Sweet bald thing, I've learned... if mortals are equal to immortals, in all the evil and good they choose to do... Then I have the power to redeem myself, and the choice to save others, too.  Through my love.  Precisely, because I choose to believe."

Koriandra shut her eyes.  "That's pretty.  Maybe."

"If I believe, then there's a better chance I'll work, to set things right.  One has to see first, one has to want first, before one can make a good reach.  Please, consider it.  Forcing someone to exist when they don't want to, and for the reasons they don't want to... I don't know which is worse.  But if you care at all, if you want to try Koriandra, then please tell me so, right now!  I've killed enough.  I want you to live, but I won't have you dead on your feet, either.  I won't do that to you, anymore.  Maybe the others haven't learned their lessons but--argh, I'm so vain, even now.  Dammit, let me help you when I've finally figured it all out.  I was the cause of this, for ever choosing to aid or marry that lunatic.  And now it's my mess to clean up.  Oh, by all that is, Kori, forgive me..." Mi'Raah cried and held her.

Odeon lowered his long neck.  Arudelle said nothing.  He even turned his back.  "I want soldiers posted in the east and western wings of the castle.   As for the throne room..."

A breeze came, the sun set.  Koriandra squeezed Mi'Raah's hand.  "...Are you sure... bottle or no... you can't kill him?"

"Not until he gets old, dear.  Then, life kills him."

...

Mi'Raah's Virtue sailed east, this time.  The coast of Fahrwandur was longer than that of Jyst, but as an island, the sun was still able to touch either end of it.  Where the light kissed, the crests of mountains seemed to catch fire, or the tree-canopy glowed warm, like a jewel.

One sailor up near the prow stood in elegant profile.  The pirates were all dressed better these days, for having plundered the most monstrous kingdom in the Known Seas.  There was no longer such thing as a Jystian pirate, who could sail west and plunder a foreign coastline so well, that he needn't bother hold any fear for his proper king, or the fury of the robbed princes being held hostage.  Jystian piracy had been dismantled and put back together again.  Their home was bitten back, and hard, by the most savage of land-loving dogs there ever was.

The Sirenian drummer, decorated like any prince, began his music.

Arudelle came from the cabin, having kicked the door open.  The pirate-crew roared savage.  He bowed to them at the waist, then gestured for the captives to emerge.

Mi'Raah marched out, sneered, and twisted, to show how her wrists were bound behind her back.  Same silver robe.  Same silver hair--it had to be.  But, Arudelle's dye-job never was necessary.  He was back to muddy, fly-away tresses, as agreed.  Odeon came last, wearing a long, soiled blanket swathed about his shoulders.  He preferred to travel as a person, not a horse.  Though, it meant he was pudgy and worse than irritating again, without the sharp warhorse countenance to balance it.

"I wish you wouldn't use a stable blanket--"

"I'm the guest of honor, the breeder, I get to eat and wear whatever I please, Arudelle.  This happens to be my favorite thing in the entire world besides molichaff and females, by the way.  Anyways, don't we all have a higher purpose today?"

Arudelle pointed to the plank and drew his sword.  Mi'Raah tossed head, cussed him, the crowd whistled and jeered until she knelt at its edge.

"I have been counseled, along the long journey, mateys, that there is a far better way to abuse the vast rabble of mortality--excuse me, 'improve' is the word I'm looking for.  Long ago, some fine folks, like yourselves, decided to burn and pillage the land I was due to inherit.  And then, after some drunken diversion--I will admit that now..." and he did so, to raucous laughter, "I eventually pulled myself together and began to fight, to get the Siren back.  Others may disagree, but I still believe that fighting is a part of life.  Why?  Because life is hard.  Yes, we are going to suffer.  The dog is going to bite us, and especially if it is a Jystian dog, or a Trystian dog and its damned sunken navy," more cheering, "and now a Fahrwandrian dog--did I say that right?  Haha!  I'm not a nice man, and I'm not a fair man, and I'm not even promising you that I'm a sane man!  But, what I do offer you, loyal pirates, thieves, devils, you man-whores and friends of mine, is that this man, right here, is certainly a good damned weapon if mortals ever bore themselves one and I intend to prevent what happened in my Siren from happening anywhere else, ever again.  Perhaps it is a selfish effort, this conquest.  But, I won't have Jyst rising back up while I'm out here, nor Tryst.  So all the Known Seas are going to have to change their ways.  If they can't learn to pay homage and devote themselves to a new order, where talking horse gods and great words, not deeds, get their run of the place, well then, it's time to start over again." he bowed his head.  "And so, this time, I force Mi'Raah off the plank in memory of a good... what do you call her?  She never really helped us you know."

Odeon, as a man, was more irate than ever.  "Call her, Rider Koriandra.  That'll do just fine... you half-shod, half-wit yearling."

"This run, will be in honor of our Rider Koriandra, and the molichaff which Odeon will not be eating today.  If she had not schemed as well as she did, then we would not be here, in the correct spirit of restitution."

"Retribution."

"Yes, that."

The drumroll began again.  Seagulls cried above.  Arudelle might have prayed, for the first time in his life.

Until the ship's greatest weapon was escorted into their midst and it became clear that some people would never have to feel beholden to deities in this life, if they didn't like.  Sheer belief could do more than that.  Its sentiment gifted the willpower to do great good.

Koriandra smiled at the guards flanking her, and reached arms into the furred coat they offered.  "The corrupt chief has agreed to see me.  That is when I am going to stab him.  Here, the gold bottle confirms it."

Arudelle took the yellow message bottle and read for himself.  "This is better than we expected."

Koriandra nodded.  A woven leather headdress prevented the sun's oily reflection off her clear brow now.  "He's a snake.  A snake who hoped I'd sleep with a Prince of another kingdom wanting a coup, so that if it failed, then I could be trusted to lose my temper and kill Bonnis, quiet even my country's involvement.  But my chief, he schemed wrong.  I go in peace, but then I leave his tent in the shreds he deserves for selling so many of us out."

"Don't forget to reclaim the ancestral battlegrounds, dear." Mi'Raah called, from where she still knelt at the edge of the walking-plank. 

"You're so good, I might love you too, you know, Kori.  My offer still stands."

Koriandra slapped Arudelle, in short order.

A breath of panic.  The whole ship was doing it.  Arudelle snarled.  "Interesting.  My pride was hurt... but it wasn't broken... when you hit like a girl."

The jolly crew reacted to the opening.  Koriandra buckled and laughed unexpectedly.  "That's good enough for now, I think.  Alright, let's go." Her escort walked over near to Mi'Raah, where they were lowering a small boat into the sea.

"Arudelle?  Mightn't I ask..."

"Mightn't?"

Mi'Raah ignored him, when she was already so flushed with embarrassment.  "When she gets to arrive in a boat, why do I have to walk the plank, still?  It makes no sense."

"Well, you aren't going to be a High Priestess this time.  Koriandra is a prophet, who is going to summon you from conjured flame.  There are the spark-rocks with her things."

"People aren't going to fall for the same trick twice, Arudelle."

"We will govern them with sea-ritual and tithing, we're not going to call it worship.  You still have miracles to work, don't worry."

"It sounds like religion to me."  Koriandra shrugged, "But it's better than rape and pillage all up and down the coast." 

Pot-bellied Odeon had got a carrot from somewhere and was munching it.  With the rank ragged blanket he did manage to look animal after all.  "Better?  Best would be staying home and not bothering other people about what they believe or don't.  There's so much more to life."

Arudelle snatched the carrot away.  "Snacks?  Not for my horse--you have a proscribed diet, thank you very much."

The drumroll raised, Mi'Raah's death-look at Arudelle grew, Koriandra leaned from her row-boat and whispered, "As soon as we find a way to break the bottle... don't worry."

"Trust me, I'm on pins and needles and the edge of a very plank, waiting for the day.  I'm glad you decided to join us, Kori.  Arudelle is not easily beat.  The worst of us have no choice but to use him back.  I won't give him the pleasure but I'm truly horrified that he was so motivated to keep torturing me, Arudelle lived through even a thrice-stabbing--"

"Where I'm from, we call that a creeper."

"...Mortals are equal to immortals, indeed!  I'll be paying for my sins against so many people I crossed while letting that one run wild over my life.  Poor Syramon.  Poor world.  If only I had known the way of things, in time..."

The two women were getting far away now.  One near the blue waves, the other kneeling on a wooden plank, with back arched against a clear sky.

"But once he's elder and done so much damage to the world, won't it be too late for you to repent?" Koriandra called.  Those settling the boat onto the water for her stopped and stared.

"You didn't believe his speech?  I really think the Pirate King's heart has changed.  I'll be able to keep a better eye on Arudelle and this world he says he wants to conquer--but I believe he wants it tamed, for higher reasons than before."

"Well mortal life is damned if it truly hasn't, or you can't."

Mi'Raah braced herself against the next drumroll.  Her thoughts were hurtling to one last place.  "Sometimes, even if in an impossible situation, like having ever caught that terrible fiend's eye, the most impactful thing a person can do, I believe, is to live on... And, Arudelle--when I know you are listening, I swear I will outlive you!"

Final timber-pangs, and release!

Mi'Raah screamed and fell into the clamoring waves.  Koriandra's boat rowed gently to shore.  Arudelle's temper was relieved by the sea as his silver-headed woman-slave began to work and the water calmed.

"Fizzle, fizzle, pill.  Foam glass water again, when I'm so glad to drink.  Truly, through you, my soul feels less ill."

Odeon was the only one to make a pitiful clapping at his master's poetry.  But, somehow, it was kind enough.

-The End-

About Mi'Raah:  This two-month long novella about a silly silver-headed woman and her spiritual crises is derived from one of my unpublished novel manuscripts.  The larger work, of which Mi'Raah is not a lead part, involves several more odd talking creatures, a cataclysmic love triangle spanning The Seas, Arudelle's many reincarnated descendants and a whole other continent of dark-skinned characters with more outrageous problems than even dealing with the Black Armada. 

It's a cross-cultural fantasy-style soap opera with no point except to amuse and frustrate so many against an a-typical colonization scenario.  That said, profuse thanks for hanging in there and reading.

Next Week:  Jaw-Break Blue.  Plant-alones, some other time.

12, Last Vortextual Process

Mi'Raah

By J. Ingram

Twelve:  Last Vortextual Process

Part One, of the conclusion

The Trystian Channel was a long stretch of treacherous shoals.  To prevent trade ships rending their hulls or choking the passage, two sandbars on either side of the blue stretch had been built up with white stone to create one bright aisle connecting both isles of Jyst and Tryst.  The crystalline shallows also gifted both kingdoms a view of eachother’s best monuments.  The Trystians welcomed holiday merchants towing light-ferried boats and travelers wading up to their ankles with a gargantuan statue of goddess Opiphia.  She opened one palm to the sun overhead, as if carrying it.  Opiphia was a powerful fertility deity, The One Whom Through All Good Things Must Pass, and so this was an ancient monument to the opposite of whatever we might know--to silly dreamers, rather than a memory of sacrifice, and also to multiplicity and bilateral successes, rather than any singular patriotism when Opiphia was worshipped all through the Known Seas.   Because of its natural shoals and a powerful current successful at putting exploration off for millenia, the sister-isle of Tryst was both the portal to Jyst, and also Jyst's one portal to all those lesser islands far beyond.  And this was politically true for Tryst’s placement as well.  Other than the Jystians themselves, no one served the High Horse God better than its sister Tryst, regardless of season or trepidation.  She had always been there. 

On the Jystian side, a black statue of the horse god Odeon also captured the ages-old role of the twin kingdom.  The obsidian horse stood with muscular conformation in profile, a thick neck straight out and nostrils flared in stone.  Odeon snuffed the female immortal far on the other side of the channel as if she were in heat, like he owned her.  And nobody had ever moved the goddess-statue, built up a screen, started a war, or anything else to oppose Jyst's opinion of the rest of the world, at its heel.

Not until this very day.

Merchants and pilgrims once skilled at finding threads of silt on which to stroll easily through the channel, were now wading shin-deep in blackened water raised by blasted joints of white rock and gore.  Bright blue light-ferries were upturned, smashed or stolen to be filled with the belongings of shouting emigrants.  Women with babies tied across their backs swatted arms to fight over what their families needed.   Men had their swords or knives drawn constantly.  No child raced ahead to buy saltwater candies from vendors today.  Boys and girls tugged on the ragged garments of their parents and ducked heads every time a cannon on one side or the other of them made skulls, air, sea, and sandy earth below, shake with doomsday vehemence. 

Odeon either stretched neck to lash teeth and snatch them back like errant yearlings on the south end, or goddess Opiphia waved in to have them run by her and faster, while the muscles in her other arm shuddered at each cannon-quake.  She could have dropped the north-sun at any moment.   Every turn in the gunfight between ships made Opiphia's wild hair rock wicked and frazzle worse and so embarrassingly--mortal--for her above those glistening marble shoulders. 

A gilded red ship ached as it leaned around at her side, breaking needle-bow against her hip, cracked the stone.  The crew was desperate to maneuver away from enemy fire.  This was the royal Jystian pleasure barge begging mercy a final time, turning so hard and taking water fast on her port side through a black wound.  A proud white Trystian Navy ship appeared next, moving fast from directly behind Opiphia's one crumbling hip.  It dropped full sails and turned armored side to face the threat and aid its little red kin.  Across the channel, Mi'Raah's Virtue was forced to move and fix aim again, but Egg of the Goddess was hungry to take advantage of the pause, and the crew yelled back and forth in anticipation of one of its cannons bursting fire-sparked smoke suddenly over the heads of terrified refugees.  Stone Opiphia shook hardest, pursed lips, stretched arm higher and must have held on with her toes.  It was a dead-hit at King Arudelle's jewel ship, but suddenly the blue water itself began to raise, as if on an angry wave, and lifted Mi'Raah's Virtue free of the goddess' screaming-hot defense.  That cannonball rolled, pitched, but passed directly beneath its target in the final moment, through the very arch of the wave's crest.  Mi'Raah's Virtue, a black ship roaring laughter as it coasted easily down from the brink of impossible, fired three neat peals back.  One to smash through the mast of the red royal barge, another to pierce the hull of this white Egg of the Goddess with every advantage from that terrible height, and the explosion dismembereds Opiphia herself.  She lost grip of the sun, bent over, and burst her perfect face, first into the shoals. 

Shards of stone careened in every direction.  So many blue boats upturned.  People pulling animals and ferrying livelihoods out to the safety of Tryst, cried and fought one another to return to Jyst again.  Towers of Jystian lower cities were already burning, and from here it was also possible to see the remainder of the Black Armada swarmed on the other shores.  Cannons were going so hard in tandem as to suggest their masters had no souls whatever.  The sea walls were being obliterated.  Deep within, penned-up horses of the wealthy could be heard whinnying screams that certain death would finally come. Out here, all the horses of the poor or unlucky were already in the water without the Trystian Channel and its bright stone aisles.  Swollen, drowned bellies with bloodied stick legs laid flat out, to bob and wash ashore. 

Syramon was with Thom by then.  They held each other in the crash and rage of Mi'Raah's Virtue in black-wood and its ivory rival.  The crimson ship which carried the remainder of the Jystian royal family was going down in flames and doomed screaming.  Practically scuttled.  More ships done in Trystian white were coming in from the East, all with silvery metal-lined hulls to cut up the rock shoals.

"We should keep going..." Syramon found he couldn’t even hear his own voice.  Or had he not dared speak hope aloud at all?

Thom was shaken enough already.  A beautiful young man who smiled too much.  Even now, when he slipped down to his knees and had to be yanked back up by the scruff of his neck, water slipped round the edges of clenched teeth. 

"Come on."  Said Syramon, "I didn't scheme so hard to get you all to myself, for us to lose now."

"You robbed from Bonnis, once." Thom coughed, and didn't finish as well as he hoped, "... cradle-robber."

They braced themselves, when three women ferrying their children together on a cracked blue barge turned wild bloodshot eyes on them.  Syramon and his lover were standing on top of an old rock, and people were constantly surprised to find their belongings tethered on it.  Thom immediately bent down to reach and help undo so many ropes caught beneath the overhang, but Syramon yelled and prevented him.  One of the children had scrambled down from the raft, seemingly out of nowhere, to put a dinner knife between this stranger and his mother.

"People are no better than animals now, Thom."

Syramon drew his sword and made it clear they were not easy prey, not here, not ever.  The mothers were eager to sort it out and move on with their babes.  The women soon made it to Jystian shore behind the two men with the rest of the hollering, harried, desperate sea-soaked masses.   

"I still think, Thom, that Jyst is safest.  King Arudelle wants this place razed, and so we have to get over there."

Thom sat down.  Smiled hard, laughed, cried.  "There is no horse god.  There is no fertility goddess with womb round enough to keep us all--Arudelle himself had them blast it apart!"

"No, you don't understand... Mi'Raah is good.  She knows we're going there, and so they're not really attacking Tryst.  The statue was in the way of their navy.  Its the ships they want."

"Ahaha... I love you.  I knew that I loved you for a reason.  So adorably stupid.  And trusting.  I thank you for coming back for me.  So, we‘re spending this last day together..."

"No, you're the one--"

"I'm still bleeding, Syra!  Let's go dig a hole and wait this out.  Let's tan our skins and join the Beach People!  Standing here, while wanting to be over there, we’re like talking corpses.  Let’s do anything else but trust some vain, silver-headed witch of a woman to keep our souls safe!  King Baeltheon was right to throw Mi’Raah in prison.  In fact, he should have made her worse off than us slaves."

"If she'd not changed our lives, we would have been on that smoldering red boat, out there.  Do you see it?  Wine at noon in the Trystian High District, remember?  Thom?  Thom, stay on for that!"

Thom shook his head and turned up his smiling gaze, to grant Syramon a kiss.  It lingered in the face of people tearing one another apart, and felt final.  Then a blast nearby, and their satchel blew apart.  Putrid water rolled over that spot then came crashing back.  Syramon was able to lift himself from the water and clamber back on.  But Thom?  He called wild for him.  So many other people were there too, crying, fighting, swimming, drowning.

Then came the yawn of water raising up.  Syramon saw aquamarine foam whorling and standing as if it always had legs beneath its blue skirt.  He cleared water from his eyes and recognized black death herself, Mi'Raah's Virtue riding that very wave.  Her masthead was a woman he also knew, silver hair painted on and flowing down on either side of the hull.  The ship's bow parted her hair, even as she was used to wearing it.

"Blow it up.  I know that you can reach it from here."  Syramon heard when the thing was leaning dangerously over his own head, and there was nowhere he could go and not be beneath it.  Was this Arudelle, himself, speaking?

"The Trystian Navy has engaged us, as you desired.  My King, it is enough."

"Don't the gods punish hubris?  Baeltheon wouldn't send out the women and children from the city, it's his loss." Arudelle seized her jaw.  Syramon could see the split in her lip.  Nothing, compared to Thom's stab-wound.  "Who do you love more, Mi'Raah?  Me?  The comfort of a real, warm, breathing man, or the stinking unwashed masses?"

"There are innocents--some are my friends, as well as with the Beach People, you know that."

"Innocents?  Who is innocent here, not you.  Is lying and scheming what a person does, with their friends?  You're mad and then some, to think you've been above all this, for all this bloodied time!  You're as vile as me, you made yourself that way--stop simpering!  There isn't a choice to make here, you condemned yourself long ago.  So go on, indulge!"

Mi'Raah raised hands over her head.  Syramon flattened against his rock, feeling as slimy and pathetic as a bug, on the verge of being crushed.  Had a smile flickered there, at the edge of her lip?  On the cheek Arudelle kissed?  The boat raised higher on its column of water, they were harder to see.  But two delicate fists definitely raised overhead to cover the white sun.  Mi’Raah could have been mocking all the empty promises of stone Opiphia herself.

It was necessary for Mi'Raah to gaze down, as she worked her conjuring.  And so, she did see Syramon, as the ship continued to ascend.  His life did pass before her eyes.

That she would trade one love for another all this time, think herself better. Syramon breathed, "But I believed you..."  Then the weight and proof of ten thousand chill needles speared through Syramon, and washed away all survivors on that wailing, grimy beach. 

In that final explosion of water, Odeon's black statue broke at the legs and the remainder of the Jystian sea-wall blew apart.  Then, the roiling column of water twisted, to face Mi’Raah’s Virtue and its cannons toward the remainder of the Trystian navy.  These were white specks.

...

That night, while the real pirates of the Black Armada relieved their hungry, lusty, and greedy passions all over Jyst's southern-end, all the while ringing bells and bidding any repentant converts to Mi'Raah and her Sea-worship to show their faith by presenting free silver, the Palace on the northernmost reach of the island could only wait, arm itself and watch.  The remainder of Arudelle's crew went down to the beach for a final redemptive act.

When Mi'Raah walked into the cave with Commodore Arudelle the Conqueror, she was greeted with bells and the children ran to her.  Arudelle looked over the tired men, and pulled Mi'Raah's hand into his grasp.  His personal crew of tamed-pirates began to pass out bread, fish and wine.

"What do you expect, Arudelle?  They've been waiting three days for us, and when you finally did arrive with that divine black-flag of wrath raised high up in the crow's nest, it was heedless destruction brought onto their doorstep.  Exactly what the skull and crossbones has always promised no matter how you dress it up in silver hair, sweet words, and prophecy."

"But still, I'm playing the savior.  You're my High Priestess.  We told them to stay in the caves and be safe from it until I properly arrived.  Even if they did have a scout watching, they would have seen you raise sea waves to make our ships like winged raptors against the royal navies of two kingdoms.  The sea wall all round the island was finally obliterated, here in the south, by the dragon fury of our swift cannons.  All those high-class people who oppressed them are living under a salty flood now, heh, in Davey Jones's own locker!  Why are they so low and hungry-looking, then?  Are they ungrateful?  You didn't do as good a job of converting them to my cause, maybe."

Mi'Raah put her other free hand on a hip and glared.

"What in three-infernos does that look mean?"

"It means you've been around pirates for too long Arudelle.  Because, clearly, there is a difference between pirates and the nobility of mortals.  Death is death.  It's awful to look at, no matter what side you're on."

"And there's bound to be another great difference between immortals and mortals, if you really do believe you can keep defying me like this, in public." was his harsh whisper back.

"Fine then.  The pecking order goes, Immortals first, then mortals, animals and fish, then monsters and the slimy nightmare-demons of a guilty conscience, and lastly of all, pirates."

"As for Kings?  What dare you say about your King Arudelle?"

"Now you’re no longer a pirate?  Fine then.  When Kings can force people to believe...  Oh, well someone like you is lower than all of that.  My hands are only bloodied because you forced them into the wound."

Arudelle half-laughed and licked tongue against his molars.  "There is something I've never told you before, about your own self.  Mi'Raah, your conceit also suits to grip the vice I've put round your neck.  Immortals are just as prone to tragedy, wrongdoing, desperation--and therefore, faith, as mortals are.  No, listen to me closely.  Someday you will see it, how I never gambled to lose you in the first place.  When you fervently believe your hands will always be clean, then of course I can get you to do whatever I want.  Immortals can do great, good things, even sweep away their own evil works, correct?  That is what you see.  But I am the rider, I am the one guiding this thing, free of blinders.  Woman, you are just as cruel as you are compassionate.  Yes, certainly, you have guilt too.  I've been working it on both ends.  I'll be glad when you finally let out all that hot air, dear, and meet me on my level--and yes, it is a rank shared with pirates, slithering liars, and the adulterers.  None of us is better than any of us.  Suffering will always be suffering.  Penetrable, sharp." She looked away, and he yanked her closer, by the arm. "Don't you dare disagree.  I am getting completely irritated with you these days.  Suffering cannot be escaped, only dealt with.  We both chose to be predators, doling out what we can‘t take.  I saw the old man on that rock you were making eyes at before the final blast.  How could I have ever missed it?  Some friend of yours?  Somebody you needed to romance behind my back?  Well you were glad to murder him in cold blood."

She shut her eyes.  "You are the biggest idiot of this age, Arudelle, if you think so little of it.  Of course that hurts me--"

"I need you, Mi'Raah.  Accept that we are alike and meant to be together in this last way.  Terrible things are going to happen.  You will help me, you can't shirk from it.  You've done it before anyways.  I know you remember.  To the Wild Tribes, back on my island.  And to my own men.  Trying to convince us that you were a goddess so that we'd be blindsighted while you took aim.   But one of us, just one precious mortal man could see what you really are."

"You are just using my guilt against me."

"I do not have to, when this is a fact--she cannot be saved who can never be redeemed.  You killed and you lied and you stole and you liked it, as much as I ever have.  Now, I am the one in control of that monstrous fury, all finely woman-shaped.  So, do as I have said, and deal with these..."  That would be Arudelle's whispered point, for now, when he could not be seen striking her.  And they’d gone on long enough.  He then announced, "Children of the Sea!  You have done well, and proven your faith.  Look how pleased and free your goddess is."

Mi'Raah brought forth a little smile for their exhausted adulations, but it departed just as quickly.

"And the High Priestess also has a final message for you, before we battle the evil King Baeltheon himself tomorrow."

Mi'Raah said, "As High Priestess, my virtue can never come into question.  The touch of any mortal would lessen my profound appearance as someone above and intangible." here, she threw off Arudelle's hand.  "Now then, as for the morning and what it will bring to those who believe..."

It was a lyrical translation of Arudelle's battle plan.  They were to engage any resistance--most likely from their heretic neighbors--in the streets, before sunrise.  Arudelle's pirates would help arm them, but the truest believers, the native footsoldiers would swell the ranks.  Before the coming of Mi'Raah, any Jystian could have mounted up at a moment's notice on his horse to form a natural cavalry against them.  But, that had all been dismantled.

Arudelle interrupted, smiling, "And now, I give especial thanks to the faithful, for seeing to the animals being drowned."

"Were they?  Arudelle, That's hideous!  What kind of toothy ingrate predator would indulge such savage cruelty--"

"From where you were, you didn't notice that it wasn't all human or carcass-blood in the water?  Some scientist.  Heh.  High Priestess scientist, let's finish up, please."

Mi'Raah pressed palms to her hairline, took one breath and then another.  Hard to look over them now, these happy followers now turned into butchers.  And they had come to this, having been raised to think of their horses as children of the black stallion god.

She told them next, that Baeltheon would most likely put up the most resistance at the palace itself.  His army would bolster what was left of the sea-wall and make it as best a fortress they could, until reinforcements from the other kingdoms came.  "But no soul here should hold any fear, that King Baeltheon will be helped by accomplices from across the sea.  The sister kingdom of Tryst has had its navy defeated today on the shoals, a very sword-arm of theirs ripped off then carterized as fast, as if by steam." she'd lost them,  "...And that was in Arudelle’s plan as well.  So the remainder of the islands in the Known Seas will stay far and away.  Baeltheon will fail tomorrow, or starve."

They bowed and prayed to her.  Mi'Raah turned to go, and found that Arudelle had already left.  A small relief passed over her, that it seemed he had never been there in the first place.  And, if they really were her own people, she might bring them into a circle now and conspire against all this red-foam crashing down...

Until Arudelle yelled her name, and the lead between them tightened fast.  Mi'Raah took one final sniff at the Beach Dancers in their plight, then moved on.

...

The peytral is a horse's breastplate.  That of the black stallion god was broad and windswept, ignited with the red power of the Flesh Forge.  The Flesh Forge was that sacred pact between man and the power of what a horse could do, its heat, its fast, its way of being loud, angry and ferocious but sure, envied of all the other animals for being loved most by man and crafted by him. 

This morning, gsirls threw leis of blooms torn up from their gardens, praised the Odeon-thing for its beauty.  And when boys grew up to catch women one day, then of course their horses were bred for beauty too and the feminine violently responded.  As for the Holy Riders, they kept backs erect turned heads swiftly from the innocents screaming in the crowd, to face bleak sunrise in a clotted file.  Capes billowed and flushed over the backs of so many pure-bred.  Militial shouts were made, calling and recalling like lonely birds coming back home hungry.  Screams that King Baeltheon's life be blessed, that the angry soul of Prince Bonnis even rise, to serve him in battle, that the god Odeon do what he had made himself for, and crush the skulls of pirates beneath black thundering hooves.

Champron was also edged in something like a dragon's horns.  Black iron ridges burnished and stylized so well by artisans that wherever the helmet crested, it glowed like real coal.  Horses around him breathed, shook out their necks when they felt the courage of the crowd give way to hysteria.  As the army descended south beyond Jyr Equus and those temples to pass over high ground by the first set of flooded districts, the multitude was more impoverished.  Odeon's criniere stayed an arch, like the knight-piece ever in the nightmares of the victim and the penitent, dragged into Baeltheon’s palace to beg mercy. 

Covering the horse god's back was his sweating King of Jyst afraid to look away from the immortal animal's sharpened spade ears that never flitted in all the cacophony.  King Baeltheon's bended knees rode the swell of Odeon's flanchard on both sides of his flank.  Tied off, clipped tail swept easy and straight, like the bow of a ship backing out from shore into the cruel, unknown beyond of a sea-voyage.  Croupiere was flanged in red horns and shards like burning shark's teeth.  When Odeon kicked hindlegs--and he would be breaking bones, exactly according to legend--it was as if the monster had two heads.  There, was the wisened spear, leading.  Here, was the maw of the animal, so many red tongues coiled and two black fangs ready to lash, puncture and take you.

The Holy Riders and the royal army finished their march to the fortress wall.  Echelons of gray, sunbleached castle towers rose behind them.  Every tiny flag they had, was flying today.  King Baeltheon cleared throat, and lowered rattling lance.  His animal, Odeon, did not blink.  It would cause the horse to miss precious moments of destruction, and so the stallion was crafted so that he did not have to.

Ahead of them was a field pocked by ruins of the kingdom.  Odeon snorted and tossed his head-in-horns once.  He and the mounts of the Holy Riders were the last living horses of the god-made breed.  Across the first row of ruined houses, Arudelle was sure to be on a white stallion done in silver Sirenian wings.  A frightening jester's mask was his helmet.  The ruddy cheeks blushed in painful caricature of what comedy really was.  He was able to fit an eyepatch over one of the wet, glass eyeballs in his crown.  Big flat painted teeth shaded silver eyebrows.

Mi'Raah was not beside Arudelle.  She was far down the line, in bright chariot with driver, and a cluster of guard.  Pirate King Arudelle the Conqueror might have loved laughter as he did faith and its ability to dismantle and intimidate, but he wasn‘t beholden to it.  He was no true romantic.  Arudelle intended to win this, and kept his sorceress away from himself, where she could be best protected while fighting.  Next, this mad foreign Pirate King opened his mouth to speech for a long dramatic while.  Odeon lifted tail and shat through the whole thing.

Jystian soldiers screamed and laughed.  Arudelle grit real, tiny teeth.  He gave up the performance and cussed his charge.  Whatever raggedy animals belonging to the Beach People charged up the hill with him, frightened over upturned rocks and at the enemy.  Odeon whinnied and all his children reared up with him, flashing golden hooves in time.  Then earth-break as they brought back down at once, to gallop directly into it.

Who fights harder?  The ones who truly believe, or the ones who don't belong?  This was the test.  Arudelle had detached himself.  He wielded and slit blade with a cold eye to see whether the throats of those who loved a living, breathing horse god tore faster.  He wondered if the prayers he knew they were uttering, but could not allow himself to feel, would actually mend the bone?  Odeon was only a horse, he decided, but suffering would always be suffering. 

The horses on his side weren't any good, but that was what Arudelle wanted, for the ragged Jystians and the rapscallions from his fleet to break that first charge, and safely let his real fighters in.  As he took in the scene and shouted direction, Arudelle eventually saw a woman-rider in red enemy armor.  Now, if this was the very bald-headed one... an outcast and a believer... how would she die?  What a deft killer she was.  The moment Arudelle got his curiosity quelled, was the same instant his white stallion decided to break free of fighting and draw near her mare.

"Dumb, damned animal..."

Arudelle was forced to clash swords.  She was a Holy Rider, he saw, and then he guessed their unique skills just as quickly.  Her horse, the fragrant mare, was doing most of the work, pushing the rider hard through her lunges, making up for the power she didn't have over the enemy.  No bridle was used.  Her mouth opened to make gentle commands as she kept the war-mare's pace.  Arudelle found himself smiling.  What fun play, to see the superiority of the god-breed, up close.  When he was done admiring it, Arudelle stood in the saddle, raised both hands on sword, and came down across the back of her neck as she passed alongside him through another failed joust.  Her armor took the best of it.  "And you somehow survived even that, as well as my Mi’Raah and the prisons.  You would be Rider Koriandra?"

She lay there, dazed.  Her horse attempted to stand over her, and whatever was terribly wrong with the Sirenian horse breed that Arudelle longed to correct, motivated his own white mount to try and raise up over the mare, right on the battlefield.

"Damn, you again, animal!"

It was enough for her to regain her senses.  The woman gasped for air, and threw off her dented helmet.  She had a set of earrings, and lots of ebon hair.  This was not their inside woman after all, whatever that might mean to Mi'Raah and himself now.

The woman rider tried to re-mount when, without her horse, there was no advantage.  Arudelle struggled to get in close--but not that very close as his idiot stallion wanted.  She forced her mare around, and sent mighty clash of sword up to unseat Arudelle.  He brought down a hard parry that, this time, forced her in the midst of getting back on the horse, and to her knees.  He could not swing and hit again, for his crazed horse.  Arudelle’s chill unconcern turned to heat, the real hurt of all he was lacking and why Jyst and its better steeds were needed so badly.  Fool to come over here across the battlefield, from a place of reckless temptation to get the woman, or was it because of her?  Fool to cross the Sea, to leave his home and his real wife.  Fool to have believed in getting strong enough, to murder belief.  Being a badder king than pirates, even.  Striking their hornets' nest at its heart after living under their greedy regime, daring to even take their ships and cross those waters, go into Jyst herself, into the stronger, better empire, and destroy her.  You'll lose your life over one damned woman!

Arudelle yelled, wrestled his stallion's neck back as far as he dared--wanting to break it with all his might--and with a vision of his own burning city and, yes, forgotten Euginnia now before his eyes... Together, he and his horse trampled the woman warrior.  Her bereft mare, determined to guard the rider's body even past instinct and to the last, was forced over the edge of the ruined sea wall, and off the cliff.

Arudelle sweated and breathed, then moved his horse back round late to have three more mounted Jystians suddenly coming down on him, with lances raised.  The impact was enough to force the silver-headed man from his saddle and rend through his plate armor, thrice.

They raised Arudelle up on three poles, thus.  Stabbed in clear air, lifted above his stupid-bred white stallion. 

The pirate in plumed helmet driving Mi'Raah's fancy war-machine yelled out and drove hard to meet the scene.  He squeezed her wrist, when she failed to stir, begged some saving action.  But Mi’Raah could only hear the ripped-wild whinnying of the black horse god raise up above the noise of fighting.  It pierced worst.  It was laughter.

"Mi'Raah..." Arudelle smiled and said, as he lost control of himself and twisted, "You know, that I cannot die."

Could he not?  Or, did he dare her to try and help it?  Mi'Raah stepped down from the chariot, as a fourth Jystian ran in and began to hack at the legs of Arudelle's white steed.  She looked into Arudelle’s eyes and knew that he was dead.  She saw the bow of his head finally, the charm of his sneer give out.  The bloodied hands released their fists.  The soldiers relaxed their hold and began to bring him down.  His corpse waved like a flag in diminishing wind.

She startled backward, believing him alive, even now.  Mi'Raah cupped a hand over her mouth, turned from the sight of gored Arudelle and fell to her knees, shocked beyond time and place.  Perhaps also, beyond reason?  A final vortextual process coming on... No, impossible.  He was gone just now, but she believed him living and that was enough to effect her.  And then also, that he would never tell her again that it was her fault, that she had no choice.  Not because he was so powerful, when he could have always just died.  But it was because Arudelle always held the leash and she would just sit and sit and wear the collar... Or, what if he was right, and she was only now seeing?  If that were only always the way then--No, worse.  More terrible than that... The enslavement was but a kernel, and here was the proof of so many things being different.  Life was not a chaos, or some riddle.  It had always been mathematical.

"If she cannot be saved,
unless she is first redeemed,
And belief may be belief
But suffering will always be suffering,
If mortals are equal to immortals,
In all the evil and good they choose to do..."

Mi'Raah did see the Jystian soldiers now encroaching upon her as well.   She felt less terrified, for her life, than never reaching what that answer might be.  She was aware, somewhere beyond herself, that her dazzling chariot had gone, long ago.  But the problem of belief itself was finally presented and clearly.  And its proof so near, the answer just here, that great big secret almost resolved.  Ahead was the keyhole.  In her hand, was that key.  If a is equal to b and b equal to c... then?

What was the damned answer?  How does the prose end? 

...

Part Two, the final (I swear, it will be the last) chapter, to be posted this week.

Randitty-O-Meter: 8,  It rhymes (sometimes)!