Wickedly Wonderful(68)
Beka swallowed hard. “Uh, when you say the Queen, I don’t suppose you mean the Queen of the Merpeople.”
The messenger blinked too-large, wide-set eyes. “No, Baba Yaga. The High Queen of the Otherworld is She who requests and requires your attendance.” He placed the parchment into Beka’s outstretched palm. Which, she was happy to see, hardly shook at all.
Chewie whined deep in his throat as she unrolled the heavy paper and read the elegant scrawl of ink etched into its surface with a quill-tipped pen. The ink itself was bright red, as ominous as the summons it inscribed.
My dearest Baba Yaga,
It is Our wish that you attend Us at a meeting in the Otherworld, wherein the King of the Selkies and the Queen of the Mer will discuss their continuing difficulties and seek solutions to the same. Please come prepared to explain your lack of success so far in ameliorating this problem. We expect to be given a positive report of your progress. Or We shall be Most Unhappy.
There is also an additional issue that requires your attention and to which We shall expect an immediate solution, without fail.
Come to Tir fo Thuinn at the hour of midnight, traveling by the usual way.
Affectionately,
Queen Morena Aine Titania Argante Rhiannon
Beka looked up from the missive to ask the messenger a question, but he was already gone, his errand completed. Only the dust of his passage hung in the air like a harbinger of rapidly oncoming doom. She sighed and showed the letter to Chewie, who read it through and then said, with feeling, “Shit.”
Her sentiments exactly.
EIGHTEEN
BEKA NERVOUSLY ADJUSTED the draped neckline of her outfit, tweaking it so it lay just right. It didn’t do to look less than perfect when you went before the Queen of the Otherworld. Very big on pomp and circumstance, was the Queen. And woe betide the person who didn’t live up to her idea of proper attire. Members of the court still talked in whispers of the lady-in-waiting who had accidentally worn mismatched stockings to an afternoon tea. They said she made a lovely rosebush, always festooned with stunning flowers in two slightly different colors of peach.
Beka didn’t aspire to be a rosebush.
She checked the mirror one more time, just to be certain she wasn’t missing anything. Her skirt was made from raw silk, purchased from a woman at the Renaissance Faire who hand-dyed it in various shades of blue and green and then embroidered the hem with scenes of undersea life, so when Beka walked, the skirt swirled around her ankles and fish seemed to dart behind coral reefs and in between waving fronds of emerald seaweed.
Her top was woven of linen so fine, it flowed with the lines of her body; its pale cerulean tint was like an echo of a fading evening sky. She’d cinched the waist in with a wide leather belt adorned with snowy white pearls and purple-blue abalone and paua shell, iridescent and gleaming with subtle highlights. A matching decorative wire mesh restrained her long hair at the back of her head, and her gold dragon earrings and necklace revealed the jewels usually hidden by a simple glamour—a pearl on the mouth of one earring’s dragon, a black tourmaline in the mouth of the other, and the claws of the dragon on the necklace wrapped around a bright red ruby. These were her version of the more showy tattoos that Barbara wore, and enabled her to summon the three Riders when she needed them.
Lastly, she tucked her favorite ornamental dagger, honed to a sharpness that could almost cut you if you simply looked at it, into the sheath that hung from the leather belt. Dark blue slippers on her feet (and no stockings at all, mismatched or otherwise) meant that she was ready to go.
Physically, anyway. Psychologically was something else altogether. The Queen scared the sparkly paint right off her toenails.
“You look fine, Beka,” Chewie said from the side of the bedroom, where he’d been banished lest he accidentally get a stray clump of dog fur on her clothing. “Stop worrying. You’ll go report to Her Majesty about all the things you’ve been working on to try and track down the problem, she’ll scold you for not having solved it already, and you’ll come home. And then we’ll eat s’mores.”
“Right,” Beka said, not at all convinced things would go that smoothly. She’d rarely had to deal with the Queen herself, but she’d been with Brenna a few times when she’d been summoned to the Otherworld. It had seldom been a pleasant experience.
The Queen was incredibly beautiful, and could be quite kind, but she was as mercurial and changeable as the sea, and just as deadly when aroused to anger. After ruling the Otherworld for more years than anyone could count, her power was immense and her rule absolute.
While technically the Baba Yagas were Human, and therefore not her subjects, their unique position juxtaposed between one world and the next meant that they reported back to the Queen. And the Water of Life and Death that gave them their extended lives and increased their magical abilities was a gift from the Queen that came with the job. She might not have been their sovereign, but in a very real way, she was their boss.