Nameless

She retched, milk-curds and blackcurrant jam splattering on the bright clean steps, and her heart was going to explode. She could feel it tightening before it shredded into useless scraps, her entire chest full of clawed wriggling dread.

The doors flowed outward, and the hounds poured free. They were almost silent, only the occasional yip as they bolted down the stairs and surrounded Cami’s swaying and Tor’s poker-stiff frame. They didn’t press close, and she struggled to stay upright.

Just at the threshold, the man in the tan trench coat stood. Only now he was in leather, different tones of brown matching his wooden skin. The Huntsman’s face was wooden too, blue eyes afire with a different light than the pale diseased glow. That light dimmed as he gazed down, and behind him, like a pale moon rising, was a shadow of white.

“My runaway children,” the White Queen murmured. Dulcet honey, her voice scraped like the smoke and made the bad place in Cami’s head shudder and squeeze down on itself. “Home at last. How I’ve missed you.”

A dog snarled and jumped. Cami let out a miserable vomit-scented little cry and took the next three stairs in a rush. Tor began to climb, and the reek of spoiled honey and rotting fruit was quickly swept under a pall of spiced, numbing smoke. The inside of Cami’s head began to feel very strange—too big, an empty ballroom with nobody to take her hand or start the scratchy ancient Victrola.

The dogs drove her through the door, and as she passed the wooden man he twitched. Not much, but the Queen laughed.

“One happy little family,” she purred, and one broad, soft white hand touched his shoulder for a moment. “Greet your father, little Nameless. After all, he gave his heart for you.”

The warm draft was from tall greasy-white candles with oddly pallid flames, serried ranks of them on either side of the high-ceilinged hall. Blue gouts of incense rose from powdery dishes, veiling the ceiling. The Biel’y—tall spare men and women with blank eyes holding only her reflection, there were no children—wore gray robes, and each throat held a silver gleam. The medallions were eager, avid little eyes too, and Cami, her mouth full of sourness, stumbled miserably up the center of the aisle in the White Queen’s wake.

She was so tall, the Queen. Her parchment hair was piled high and elaborate, ringlets bobbing and bone pins with dangling colorless crystals thrust artfully through. The other women were shaven-headed, the men short- haired, and their feet were bare while the Queen swayed on lacquered sandals with funny wooden blocks on the soles that went tic tic tic against the stone floor. She wore white velvet and silk, but the hems dragged on the dusty floor, little motheaten bits showing.

At the far end, there was a low wide padded bench on a dais, under a great fountaining fall of crystallized glowing fungus. It pulsed and glittered, this colony of light, and its glow bleached the Queen still further.

Cami stopped dead at the bottom step of the dais. Her arms and legs shook, the tremors spilling through her in waves, her bandaged knees and hand throbbing. Every hair on her body was trying to stand up.

Imagining that pale slimness with a baby was . . . Cami’s stomach cramped again. Heaving nausea passed through her and away, an earthquake in numb flesh.

The Queen turned, sank down on the bench, and Cami realized it was her throne. A sigh went through the assembled Biel’y. More were coming, their robes shushing and their bare feet padding.

She knew that sound. The black bulge inside her brain swelled a little more. The faint tang of acridity under the incense’s spice coated the back of her throat, and that was familiar too.

“My newest Okhotnik may approach,” the Queen murmured, and a rustle went through the assembled. The candleflames bowed.

Tor staggered mechanically up the three dais steps. Cami’s hands itched to help, but she was nailed in place. His black hair, still slicked back under a mask of crud, gleamed wetly, and the rags of his T-shirt flapped.

She still could not look at the Queen’s face. Her eyes simply refused. Instead, she stared at the hands, lying folded in the velvet and silk of her lap. The soft fingers, the dimpled knuckles—but there was something wrong.

There were marks on those hands. They had always been plump and soft and young before. Now there were pronounced veins, and shadows of age spots. And a tremor that had never been there before.

“Good boy.” The Queen’s chuckle was soft, but so cold. “You brought My Nameless back to Me. I had my doubts, young one. But you will make Me a fine husband. I will not need another.”

A cracking sound. Cami flinched, whirling. The dogs had crept up the aisle, red tongues lolling and their coats washed pale by the weird directionless light. The wooden man stood in the aisle, slump-shouldered and stiff; another rending cracking noise echoed and he listed to the side. His blue eyes were closed, and a rivulet of splintering crawled through him, crunching and creaking, tiny pieces falling from his face and grinding themselves into dust. The leather of his clothes sagged obscenely, sawdust pouring from sleeves and legs, and collapsed inward.

The memory of Papa’s slow crumbling folded through her brain, slid away.

“Such a strong heart he had, and given so thoroughly.” The Queen sighed, and the Biel’y sighed too, a susurrus passing through candleflames like wind through wheat. “Now, My Nameless. Come here.”

She’s talking to me. Dread choked Cami. Little black spots danced in front of her. The dogs crept closer, on their bellies. One whined, a high nervous sound.

Silence stretched, thin and quivering. The candles hissed, and even the crystalline mass over the throne was making a sound—a felt-in-the-teeth ringing, like a wineglass stroked with a wet finger just before its singing shivers it into pieces.

Until one word broke it. “N-no.” Cami dug her heels into the stone floor. The Queen’s will wrapped around her, pulling her toward the steps, but the sourness in Cami’s throat and the sudden pain from her bandaged left fist, its knuckles throbbing with the feel of glass splintering underneath them, both refused the urge to obey.

I’m here. You can have me instead of Tor. But I’m going to make you work for it.

The silence returned, but changed now. This was the quiet of utter shock.

Cloth moved. The sandals tip-tapped. A draft of clove and numb smoke, the taste of fruit edging into decay, brushed Cami’s hair. The Queen loomed over her, and the shudders went away.

The terror was so huge it could not shake her. Or she had become so small the whole world was aquiver, and she could not tell. The only thing left was to tip her head back and back, her gaze traveling up silk and velvet grown dingy, pinprick holes in its splendor, the subtle silver trimming tarnishing.

The Queen’s ravaged face bent down, a grinning moon. Wrinkles spread from the corners of her eyes, no matter how immobile she kept her expression. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, but they were not Marya’s laugh- lines, or even Gran’s marks of dignity. They clawed at the Queen’s face, and her eyes glared through the cracking paper mask of her skin with utter madness.

Her blue, blue eyes.

The slap rocketed against Cami’s face. Her head snapped aside, her neck giving a flare of red agony. She spilled backward onto cold stone, elbows smacking hard, her left hand crying out and her ass immediately numb. On her side now, all her breath gone, curling protectively around herself. But she wasn’t tiny enough to curl up like a pillbug anymore. The Queen’s wooden sandal caught her just under the ribs, and the black spots became huge blossoming flowers as she struggled to get a breath in.

“Bitch!” the White Queen screamed. “You bitch! You little bitch! YOU MADE ME OLD!”

A merciful blankness descended. The real part of her curled up tightly inside her skull, watching while everything outside rocked back and forth, jerking under the force of the blows. It went on forever, and when it stopped, the gray-robed Biel’y slid forward and the handcuffs clicked, and it was as if she had never left at all.