Page 47 of Roma Queen
He could be anywhere. If he’s linked into audio and video down here, then he could literally be in another country for all I know…but I’m willing to bet serious money that he isn’t. I bare my teeth at the camera, staring down the malevolent-looking lens. “All right, asshole. Have it your way. Hang tight. I’m coming to you.”
I storm out of the eerie room, glad to be putting it behind me. Back in the tunnel, back in the empty darkness, I have to pull my cell phone out again in order to see. I’m glad to have escaped Lazlo’s macabre story…until his voice floods the tunnel up ahead. “Another five years pass. Even though her people turned their backs on her, the woman teaches the boy their ways…”
Fuck. He’s rigged speakers everywhere.
“She cherished their traditions and their beliefs, long after they abandoned her. As the weeks, and then the months, and then the years disappeared, the woman grew weak. There was never enough food, and what they had she gave to the boy. Slowly, in a city full of rich, fat people getting richer and fatter by the minute, the woman wasted away to nothing. In the end, for it was the end, for her at least, she had no other choice. She took the little boy, still capped with the thick, black hair and the pale, pale skin, to the steps of a church. It was the only place he’d be safe, she told him. When she died…”
God, I can’t fucking take this anymore. I see the speaker bolted to the wall up ahead, illuminated in the ring of light cast off by my phone. I charge, running, my boots thudding against the bare earth, and then I’m leaping, hurling myself upward and bringing the wrench swinging down on the speaker. A loud, sharp blast of feedback distorts the air as the metal box rips from the wall and goes hurtling off into the dark.
Lazlo’s voice pauses…
…but then continues further up the tunnel.
“You never were very interested in history, were you?”The words echo. Accusatory. “You were only interested in fighting and fucking, even when you were a teenager. I watched you piss all over your own culture and tradition every single day, and I knew you weren’t fit to be king.”
I head for the next speaker. “Yeah? Well, kudos to you, motherfucker. Seem to have changed your tune recently, though, huh? Why don’t you put me out of my misery, Lazlo? If you’ve always known what a bad king I’d make, why insist that I accept the crown to save Sarah now?”
Silence rattles down the tunnel.
“Yeah. That’d be too easy, wouldn’t it?” I holler into the dark. “To just spit it out and fucking tell me? I have to find you and beat it out of you first, right?”
“I wouldn’t recommend laying a finger on me if you want Kezia to live, Pasha.”
I close the gap, reaching the next speaker, and repeat my jump and swing. A bouquet of sparks bloom, orange and red, hissing as the wires rip free from the box. “You’re pathetic. If you think taking a woman I’ve never met before is going to serve as a fitting punishment for me stabbing you, then you really are insane.”
Lazlo’s voice is further away this time, almost swallowed whole by the dark. “For stabbing me? You nearlykilledme, Pasha. Let’s line the facts up nice and neat, shall we? But no. You flatter yourself. I took her because she’s guilty of her own crimes. Just like your mother. Just like your grandfather.”
“My grandfather? What thefuckdoes he have to do with any of this?” I hate that he’s managing to reel me in with this bullshit, but fuck. I have to know. This has gone on long enough. I need answers, for both myself and for Zara.
“Hewasthe king, after all, wasn’t he? When a sympathetic woman, little more than a girl herself, came before him with a child in her arms? He was the one who cast her out all those years later. Her name was Calliope, but that’s not what they called her. To the Rivin Clan, she was known as the Empress. She looked just like the depiction on the tarot card. Beautiful. Divine. Except…her hair was red, not blonde. Red as rose petals and blood.”
My feet are suddenly glued to the ground.
Wait…
What?
Red as rose petals. Red as blood.
Like a sunset. Or a nightmare.
My own words clang around the inside of my head, the answer to a struck bell. Fuck, this is all too much. The story Lazlo’s been telling medoesbelong to him…and also to the Rivin Clan? The woman who cared for him was nicknamed the Empress…after the same tarot card my grandmother predicted would be the end of us all on her death bed? And amongst all of it, Zara, with her burnished, flowing red hair, beautiful and benevolent, a mirror to the woman who saved Lazlo’s life.
How?Howis this all connected? The pieces are landing in front of me one at a time, but I’m still missing more than half the overall puzzle. I can’t make any of the individual parts fit into place. It’s maddeningly frustrating.
“Your grandfather said we would be cast out if I brought the clan bad luck. I did no such thing, but the Rivins, the proud, arrogant Rivins didn’t like the look of me, so they made us leave. I killed your grandfather for breaking his promise.”
“You’re fucking insane. My grandfather died in his sleep, an old man.”
The sound of Lazlo’s laughter echoing down the long tunnel chills me to the bone. “Did he? Who told you that? Your mother perhaps?”
My grandfather was dead and gone long before I was born. I have no memories of him to pull from; I can’t seem to recall any other member of the clan talking about Jamis’ death, either. The only person I can remember talking about Jamis, beyond the odd mention of his name in passing,ismy mother. Shedidtell me her father died peacefully in his sleep. There was no mention of suspicious circumstances, foul play, or anything even remotely concerning. Now, Lazlo’s confessing to murdering him, too?
“It doesn’t matter what my mother told me. It doesn’t matter what my grandfather did or didn’t promise. Kezia isn’t responsible for their actions.”
“Kezia broke her own promises. She’s guilty of her own crimes.”
I’m coming up on the speaker. I heft the wrench high over my head. “How the fuck can Kezia have anything to do with this? She wasn’t even born when Jamis sent you away!”
