Page 2 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

“Until next week,” I declared. “My pawns have arrived for our dusk ritual.”

The Raises chose not to hear me and continued on in their lamenting despair. They had attempted to ignore me last week too.

I glanced at the walls. “Mother, if you please.”

The Raises heardthat.

Too late was their scramble for the door, however. Mother yawned them away through the stone floor of my throne room, and Princess Raise’s shriek cut off as though snipped in two with scissors.

Problem solved.

I imagined that Mother might deposit them out in the courtyard, but I could not say so with certainty.

“Thank you, Mother.” I winked, and the chiaroscuro tapestries hanging on every which wall rattled in her reply.

Perhaps I could allow myself one dusk minute of peace before allowing pawns to enter. I took a deep breath and held it. My throne room was exquisitely simple in design with a copper throne set atop a low platform, and able to be accessed by three shallow steps on all sides. Hellebores sprawled and climbed to soften the regal stateliness of the throne, but otherwise, cold stone extended to the many corners of the chamber. I was lucky enough that darkness and shadow had made its home in the chilling chamber with the accentuating help of flickering candlelight from their holders in the floor-standing candelabras. I supposed that the carved details in the ceilings and doorways lessened the coldness somewhat, but all in all, my throne room was a place for ancient happenings, whether ponderings or orders. I did so love when the look of a place or person reflected its purpose.

Oof—I released my held breath.

“Enter, dear pawns,” I called.

The double doors creaked open in obedience to my call. Perhaps Mother operated the queendom for me, or perhaps the queendomwasme. I had not deciphered this. But framed in the open doors was a skeleton of pawns—so I had recently learned pawns were collectively termed.

The skeleton was made up of groups of three, and while the fifteen pawns stood together, they also lurked very obviously in their trios. Twelve hundred years had seen them pitted against each other, and until me, there had never been a question that each trio would obey the separate and colliding orders of their various kings.

“Good evening, my queen,” said Deliver, bowing grandly in a way that displayed the lovely hairlessness of his gray and waxy head. The rest of his body was the same—all that I could see of it.

Though my three stairway pawns were not identical, his brothers shared the gray, waxy, and hairless appearance of Deliver. Seal was shorter than the others, who were shorter than most of the other pawns present, and Sign had a third arm out of his back. Those differences aside, they were brother monsters indeed.

“Good evening to you all,” I replied. “Sign, I am glad to see the rips either side of your mouth have healed.”

He used all three of his hands to feel the area. “Thank you, my queen. My stress is under control. For a while there…”

The stairway pawn of King Raise did not need to finish, for only two weeks had passed since a queen secured four bridal gifts that then granted her power over princesses. Not the same as her power over pawns, of course. Pawns were filled with my will, and their role in my queendom did not require any understanding of my actions and thoughts.

Princesses were another matter.

“For a while there,” I repeated, then roamed my gaze over the others.

My werebeasts liked to sulk through dusk. I had demanded that they sleep each day in my queendom as tithe for their choice between obeying my orders or their kings’. They could sulk about the tithe just as long as they upheld theotherpart of our agreement.

I checked them for signs of injury from their king, and though a great deal of mange covered their beastly forms, I could not detect any new physical wounds.

Of inner wounds, they were a pulpy mess.

I inhaled very quietly against an influx of rage, then forced myself to move on.

Beside the werebeasts slimed my bringing pawns. Their placement beside each other was uncoincidental. Though their kings sat on opposite sides of the world’s fate, one ruining and one saving,bothof their kings would like to see me crawling and begging and without power. I had made a great deal of kingly enemies of late, and the subconscious way one set of pawns stood next to another set spoke of this.

“Vassal, that noise is monstrous,” I told the taking pawn. “I applaud your symphony.”

My most sheepish pawn ducked his head, and paused in the act of scratching his spear over the stones. “I am honored, my queen. The sound makes me feel every bone in my face, you see.”

I nodded. “That was how I felt.”

His brothers seemed annoyed that they had already discontinued their own scratching to slot their spears into the sheaths over their backs. The fanged monsters of King Take were fierce indeed with their weapons of choice—whether fang or spear. I had seen them in action, eyes blackened and lips drawn back to naught.

There only remained my seeing pawns to greet. I had known them longest of all pawns, as they were the princes that I knew first in monsterdom. They had been my friends, and then the monsters I least wished to see. Though I would never voice such a thing aloud, especially to Toil, Hex, and Sigil who tended toward jealousy. There was an extra fondness and warmth for my seeing pawns due to my fondness and warmth of their liege.

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