John felt his heart hesitate in his chest, and it was all he could do not to move.
The sharp one spoke. “Is that it? Is that the Consort of Atlantis?”
She raised her head as the door slid back, mottled patterns of light crossing her face, smooth and impassive, her long coat sursurrating with the whisper of leather on silk as she took a step forward, and his hands tightened at his sides. “It may be,” she said, her eyes sliding over him calculatingly. “I will take it from his mind if he is.”
Queens had touched his mind before, seized it, pushing and tearing and prodding, sending him burning in pain before them. And yet there was no touch. Nothing. She might as well not exist.
The young queen looked at her, her eyes filled with what John thought might be admiration. “Can you truly take it from him so easily?”
“Of course,” she replied coolly but not unkindly. “It is just a matter of exerting your will.”
Her eyes flicked to his for a fraction of a second, slitted pupils wide, and then she raised her hand, feeding mouth open, lips purple in the dim light. Her voice was like a lash. “Kneel before me, puny human!”
John swayed, shook as though struggling with every fiber of his being, teeth grinding.
“Kneel!” she commanded, and his chin snapped up as though she had slapped him.
His legs crumpled and he fell to the floor before her, his forehead against the toe of her boot.
“He is the Consort of Atlantis.” Steelflower’s voice cut coldly through the silence, broken only by the harsh breathing of the human who knelt at her feet. “I will take him.”
Thorn, who stood in the place of Consort to Waterlight, shook his head and stepped forward, though it was not his place to speak when Steelflower spoke queen to queen. “We cannot allow that. If Queen Death hears that we have given such a prize to you instead…”
Steelflower turned, the leather skirts of her coat brushing over the groveling human, her eyebrows rising ominously. “And why should she hear of this?”
Thorn’s eyes dropped. “We have already sent word to her twice, though she has not responded. If she does, and we say that we have already given him to you…” He let his voice trail off.
Steelflower turned about again, her eyes this time seeking Waterlight, and her tone was not imperious. “Are you afraid of her?”
Waterlight met her gaze, golden eyes to golden, and then she nodded a fraction. “Yes,” she said simply.
Steelflower shook her head, reaching out her hand to rest upon Waterlight’s arm. “Little sister,” she said, “why should we fear her? Are we not queens together?”
“Perhaps because she has forty ships and we one,” Thorn said dryly. “Or perhaps because thousands of blades answer her call, not a dozen.”
Steelflower shot him a look, quick and angry. “Does he speak for you?” she demanded of Waterlight.
The girl swallowed, her pale throat working in the shiplight. “He stands as consort until there is another,” she said softly.
Steelflower’s fingers touched her chin, lifting her face not unkindly. “We are queens together,” she said. “And it is true that Death has ships. She has many men at her call. But perhaps she has more than her fair share. That is not the way of things, that all queens should bow to one! To each her hive, to each her blades and clevermen, to each her drones and her children in the chrysalis. It is not right that we should all bow to one, that many should serve an absent mistress. It is not right that we should slay one another instead of respect one another as sisters should.”
“You call me sister but you are of Night and I of Osprey,” Waterlight said. “We are not kin in bone and blood. How should I know that you do not betray me?”
“If I intended you harm, should I come before you like this? Without even a single blade to defend me?” Steelflower asked, and her eyes lingered over Waterlight’s face. “Besides,” she said carefully, “My mother’s Consort was a blade of Osprey, and so I may count you kin if I choose.”
“By the old ways of counting, perhaps,” Thorn said.
“I hold to the old ways,” Steelflower said, but her eyes did not leave Waterlight. “In some things. And in others we must find new ways.” Her hand reached down and seized the human’s hair, twisting his neck up to her. “I have many uses for this one. If you give him to me, I will give you my word that Death will not revenge herself upon you for it.”
“You will stand with us against Death?” Thorn said, and his voice was tinged with skepticism.
“If it is necessary,” Steelflower said sharply. “But you have said yourself that she has not responded to your messages. Perhaps she does not believe you. If she does, we will stand as allies.”
“Allies.” It was the young blade, the one they called Bronze. “Our sensors show your ship is unmanned. What allies do you bring?”
“And need I blades to fly my own ship?” Steelflower’s voice was cool. “Will boys like you show me how to do it?” A note of amusement crept into her voice, and her eyes raked him from toes to hair, as though he were very pretty indeed. “You are beautiful, but not yet wise.”
Bronze gulped, his skin darkening with his reaction, while at her feet the human made a strangled sound.
Steelflower turned to Waterlight, her voice light. “He is very pretty, this one of yours. Will you make him pallax someday?”
Waterlight tossed her hair in a fair approximation of Steelflower. “Perhaps,” she said. “If he continues to please me.”
“Very pretty,” Steelflower said as he flushed beneath her gaze. “You have good taste, sister.”
“Thank you,” Waterlight said. She looked down at the human on the floor. His form was bestial as Bronze was graceful, and yet he too seemed affected, a fine layer of moisture standing on his skin. “I am minded to give him to you, if you stand as ally with me.”
Thorn hissed, but she turned to him. “We must have allies,” she said quietly. “And this is better than all else that is before us. I should rather an elder sister than an overlady.”
“You are like to have neither,” Thorn began, but he did not finish. He would not speak so before Steelflower. It would be more than unseemly. Open disrespect of his queen would make him despised.
“Then this one will accompany me to my ship,” Steelflower said.
Bronze blinked, putting himself forward. “But is that not dangerous, my queen? He is an animal, and not a tame one. What if he should harm you?”
“This one?” Steelflower said contemptuously. “He has not it in him. His mind is open to me, and he can no more raise his hand to me than you to Queen Waterlight.” She turned the human’s face up to the light, her dark green nails biting into the skin of his face, turning it this way and that. Her eyes were on his, and she smiled a thin, cruel smile. “You are mine, are you not, human?”
“Yes,” he whispered as though it were dragged from the core of his being, his body swaying forward as though the touch of her skirts were balm.
“Then make your abject obeisance,” she said, and released him.
He bent, graceful as a blade, his head to the floor, his lips to the toe of her boot. “I yield,” he said.
Steelflower smiled. “You see?” she said to Waterlight. “He is quite tame. I have no fear that he will harm me. I hold him entirely with my mind.”
“I have never seen a human who was not hand-reared behave thus,” Waterlight said, and her eyes were shining. “You are very strong.”
“Yes,” Steelflower said simply. “We will go to my ship.”