8FOLD: Reign Morgana # 4, "Crash Course in Lemurian Politics"

[Amabel Holland]

After a decade of superheroics, KATE MORGAN finds herself in control
of strange and eldritch forces beyond all mortal ken -- and that
includes her own! Thus begins the


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# NUMBER 4 - "CRASH COURSE IN LEMURIAN POLITICS"#
# ------- [8F-217] ------------ [PW-61] ------- #

-------------- HOUSE MORGANA --------------------

Kate Morgan (SHIMMER), age 30. She/her.
The Queen of Cups. The ghost who never died. The darkness, reflected in light.

Pilar "Pill" Garcia, age 34. She/her.
Kate's protector. The collector. The knower. The laughter in the dark.

Melody Mapp (DARKHORSE), age 21. She/her.
Simon's lover. Kate's friend. The runner. The tower, reversed; the
pale rider, reversed.

Claire Belden (RAINSHADE), age 31. She/her.
Kate's enemy. Kate's friend. The light, reflected in darkness. The one
who borrows. The weaver of webs.

Cembalo, a kitten. She/her.
Kate's cat. The vicious teeth. The curled tail. The black in the night.

Kumari Starshell (CASCADE), age 30. She/her.
Queen of Lemuria. The storm at sea. The brave sword, the subtle knife.
Once Melody's enemy, and Claire's spy.

Terak Torvo, age 24. He/him.
King of Lemuria. The tepid pool. The prisoner. The guileless, beset by
intrigues. Once Melody's lover.

-------------------------------------------------

Kate and her protectors share a single-person cabin about the size of
her bathroom aboard the royal luxury cruiser the Blackfin. "Name
sounds familiar."

   "Terry's half-brother," says Melody. "Tried to seize the throne a
bunch of times. Ran terrorist cells, raised armies. Died last August."

   Kate pinches the bridge of her nose. "And they named a boat (or is
it technically a submarine?) after him?"

   "They did (and it's both)," says Melody. "Time for a crash course
in Lemurian politics. When the Blackfin died, his supporters (standard
issue old-money aristocrats and 'death to the surface world'
reactionaries) added their banners to the House of Starshell. They're
the bulk of Kumari's support, and they expected when she came into
power that she'd roll back the last few decades of modernization,
bring back the ol' blood and thunder."

   Kate recalls bits and pieces of this from previous conversations
with Melody. "They were just about to collapse when Terry's granddad
took the throne. Centuries of isolationism, stagnation. He opened
Lemuria up to the rest of the world."

   Melody nods. "Which these jerks hated. Blackfin promised to make
all their dreams come true, and if he had ever come within spitting
distance of power, he would have. Kumari's a lot of things, but she's
not an idiot. She's not going to deliver on those promises. So
instead, she gives them symbolic victories. Like naming the boat slash
submarine the Blackfin."

   "And that's enough to keep them happy?"

   Melody pauses. Kate knows it's not because she has to think about
it. Melody's brain, like the rest of her body, works at superspeed.
Instead, it's to impart the proceedings with some gravitas. "No. Lots
of unrest, right-wing populism, paramilitaries, whispers of a coup.
Only thing stopping it right now is the lack of a strong candidate."

   "Which is why we have to be careful," interjects Pill. "Because the
new Queen of Cups would be a hell of a candidate."

   "They know about that, here? I thought this whole thing was super
hush-hush and lost to antiquity."

   "It is," says Pill. "I'd wager a few of the older houses would
know, though. And the royal houses certainly would."

   "And that's why I didn't tell Kumari what this little trip was all
about," says Melody. "She and Terry think it's a social call. I'm not
saying she'd try to kill you, Kate, but wait okay actually that is
exactly what I'm saying."

   She wouldn't, though, Kate almost says, but then she catches
herself. That's Claire talking. One of Claire's memories, bouncing
around in Kate's skull. Kumari wasn't exactly Claire's friend; Kate's
not sure if Claire ever had a friend. But they worked closely together
to further Claire's agenda. The thing that keeps bubbling to the
surface is how absurd it is that Kate should be afraid of Kumari;
after all, it was Kumari that was terrified of Claire.

()

Kate knows they're underwater, of course. But it isn't until after the
Blackfin has docked, until she takes her first steps on Lemurian soil
and looks up to see miles of ocean pressed against its ancient dome,
that she feels a familiar knot tighten in her belly. Everything
tightens: her face, her body, everything becomes small and taut and
queasy and anxious.

   She hates this. Hates being "the child of abuse", hates "the time
mom tried to drown me in the tub", hates that that's her story, that
in some ways it feels like it will always be her story. That she will
always have that knot in her belly, that she will be defined by it.
That she will always be that sad person that bad things happen to:
erased from existence, brought back (thanks Melody), kidnapped and
impersonated ("thanks" Claire), gifted some great big mystical destiny
nonsense she never asked for.

   That said great big mystical destiny nonsense involves the seaside
throne is at the very least evidence that the universe has a sense of
humor, if a dark one; only a sadist would give someone who's afraid of
water an underwater throne.

   But are you afraid of water?, asks the Claire in the back of her
brain, or are you afraid of drowning? Because it seems to me that
being afraid of drowning is quite reasonable. I'd be more concerned if
you weren't afraid of drowning.

   Not afraid of drowning, Kate catches herself thinking in response.
Afraid of being drowned.

   A distinction without a difference, at least as far as our lungs
are concerned.

   (Our lungs?) But to Kate it makes all the difference in the world.
"Drowning" she isn't scared of, at least not more than she's scared of
anything else that can result in her death. That's setting aside the
fact that she's not particularly afraid of dying; it's something she
and Claire have always had in common. Both of them hope that when the
time comes, they'll choose it quietly, and with dignity. (Both of them
will be correct.)

   But "being drowned" implies someone else doing it to her, the way
her mother tried to. Of hating her, the way her mother did. She's not
afraid of dying, but of being killed? Yeah, that terrifies her.

   Unsurprisingly, Claire is unsympathetic, remarking that it sounds
like something Kate needs to work on in therapy.

   "You okay?" Pill asks. "You just seem a little, I dunno, off."

   Melody glances at Kate, asking with her eyes if Kate has filled
Pill in on the whole boring trauma baggage. Kate answers Melody with a
glance of her own (no), then tells Pill that she's just a little
tired. "But hey, it's been worse. I've only been up for, what, twenty
hours straight? Pfft. That's nothing. Stayed up for two years once."

()

As they leave the port, they're met by a six-member squad of the Red
Shields who have volunteered to escort them into the city proper.

   "Volunteered?" Kate whispers to Melody as they climb aboard the hoverwagon.

   The younger woman rolls her eyes. Not wanting the Shields to
overhear them, she responds in an alien language that the two of them
learned a few years back on a space adventure. Kate in turn holds
Pill's hand, and by that gentle touch casts a simple spell that allows
her to understand it. "Red Shields were palace guards way back when,
but the kind of palace guards that got real stabby with the royal
person when the crown didn't cater to their every whim. Terry's
granddad abolished them. Kumari brought them back as another sop to
the conservatives. She was smart enough to keep them out of the
palace."

   "So, what do they do?"

   "Officially? Nothing. Mostly they just march around being vaguely ominous."

   "That sounds very stable."

   "Doesn't it, though? But they'll also pull stunts like this,
'volunteering' to escort very important peeps such as ourselves. Their
way of showing Kumari that they don't answer to her."

   "But she lets them do it?"

   Melody nods. "Because what they want is for her to call them on it.
Gives them a grievance for the old families to rally around. Then they
can push for legitimate power. That's what the Red Shields want. Not
to cut off Kumari's head, but merely to be a knife at her throat. And
they'll get it when Kumari blinks."

   "If she blinks," says Pill in the alien language. (Her accent is terrible.)

   "When," says Melody bluntly. "She blinked before, when she brought
them back in the first place."

()

As they move deeper into the metropolis, the streets become more
densely packed, and the people doing the packing get progressively
louder and more unruly. Kate spots an effigy of Terry being gleefully
hacked to death by hook-bladed Lemurian swords and coral-topped
flails. In a particularly gruesome touch, the dummy's stuffing has
been dyed red.

   The hoverwagon moves closer, and Kate can see that from each of the
dummy's fingertips is a string, and at the end of the strings a
marionette.

   "Let me guess," says Kate to Melody, "Terry is to blame for
everything, and is manipulating his new bride, and that's why she
hasn't kept all her impossible promises."

   "Something like that," says Melody. She forces a little smile.
"Terry as a puppet master is ridiculous. That man's the only one I
know who could lose an argument with himself."

   "Not the only one. You've said that before," says Kate. "About Simon."

   Melody shrugs. "Guess I have a type. Can you imagine Simon as some
kind of Svengali or Rasputin?"

   Kate scoffs.

   "Exactly." Melody sours. "The whole thing would be funny, but." She
gestures at the crowd unspooling the dummy's entrails.

   This small gesture of Melody's went unnoticed by the ravenous mob,
and Kate's party continued on their way, unseen and unmolested,
presumably to an audience with the Lemurian Queen and her King.

   Except that thousands of miles away, the chronomancer Pam Bierce
wound back time, and when it started up again, a Lemurian who didn't
turn their head the first around, did, spotting "the wretched King's
secret paramour, that harlot of the surface, that spy" and so on and
so forth. Kate's hard-won magical talents make her sensitive to these
shifts in time, and so is able to hold the fleeting future-memory of
her party passing by unseen even as it never happens, even as the
thoughts of the crowd turn from its mock mutilation of the effigy to
potentially more gratifying targets.

   Of course, none of the three women are defenseless. Melody on her
own could make short work of the crowd, leaving them bruised and
unconscious in the blink of an eye.

   The captain of their escort holds up a hand. (His English is
stilted, the pronunciation garbled, but hey, it's better than Kate's
Lemurian.) "No. You will make things worse. It must be us." He points
his electro-lance toward the dome above them, and in Lemurian commands
four of his men to form on him. They rush forward to meet the crowd,
leaving one of their number to guard the hoverwagon and its
passengers. The captain calls her Bassina.

   "He's right," says Kate, touching Melody's arm. "If this whole
situation is a powder keg waiting for a spark, then the King's old
flame roughing up his subjects?"

   "Gonna be a match."

   "Flamethrower, more like."

   The Red Shields are good at what they do. Given Melody's
description, Kate was expecting more bluster than competence,
expecting self-aggrandizement without the chops to back it up. But the
captain's a solid tactician, and his team is well-drilled. They limit
the movements of the crowd, correctly parse who poses a serious threat
and who doesn't, and in the case of the former use minimal force to
neutralize it. The bulk of the crowd falls back, content to watch and
loiter ominously.

   What's left are the diehards, and even they aren't eager to go
toe-to-toe with the Red Shields. But Kate's been in enough scraps to
recognize a delaying action when she sees one. They're not trying to
beat the Shields; they're just trying to buy some time. But for what?
For who?

   She gets her answer soon enough, as a couple dozen well-armed
weekend warriors in black scale armor march onto the street. The
column splits into three unequal parts: a thin line joins the
remaining civilians in the center, while two sturdier wings swing
around the flanks.

   Melody stands up, ready to run to the rescue.

   "The Red Shields will hold," says Bassina. (Her English is smoother
than her commander's.)

   Apparently resigned to the fact that her only function on this
adventure is to provide exposition, the speedster explains to Kate and
Pill that these are the Sons of the Blackfin, essentially a sort of
fascist street gang given the deniable veneer of queasy
quasi-legitimacy by some of their conservative backers.

   Bassina's right, though; her comrades break the thin center while
keeping both wings at bay, preventing their envelopment. The fight has
turned decisively in the Red Shields' favor, and it's just a matter of
bashing the last few heads together.

   A trio of the Blackfins decide between themselves that Bassina will
be an easier target, and so while their fellows are engaged with hers,
make a beeline for the hoverwagon.

   Bassina shoots a quick warning glance at Melody, then glares at the
oncoming attackers. "I will hold."

   She's delicate and lithe, more dancer than soldier. The others held
their lances close to their body, the better for the rough and tumble
of shock combat. But Bassina holds hers apart, extending it like part
of her arm, letting the tip drag along the cobblestones.

   As the enemy closes in, there is a flick of her wrist, and the
hook-end of her lance snags a stone, crashing it into one man's skull
with a sickening crack. In the same motion, her lance sweeps another
blackfin about the ankles, sending him tumbling. Without pause, she
raises her shield to meet the heavy sword of the third with such force
that she pushes him back. He is the biggest of the three, and clearly
furious to have been pushed away by such a slender slip of a girl.

   As the tumbler climbs back to his feet, he tells the big man that
their compatriot is dead. If Bassina feels remorse, she doesn't show
it. Instead, she thumps her lance against the ground; now it surges
with electricity.

   The big man plants his feet down, holding his sword in both hands,
and then gives a curt nod to the other blackfin, who starts to circle
around. As the big man lifts his sword above his head, Kate knows what
they're up to. He'll bring the sword down in a heavy hammer-blow, not
trying to actually hit her, but forcing Bassina to meet it with her
shield; while she's doing that, the smaller man will strike with his
rapier.

   Kate's never held a shield (the ability to go intangible has its
benefits) or wielded a lance, but she and her colleagues have
encountered this sort of tactic before, and she knows how to counter
it: shift your defense to the smaller threat. This spoils the feint,
and in that moment of surprise, if you're good enough, you can strike
against the larger one. The big man would even be an ideal target in
this regard, because in hoisting his sword high above his head in both
hands, his belly is wide open.

   Part of her wants to share this with the young knight, but Kate
also knows that, one, that might tip off the attackers if they too
understand English, and two, there's a good chance this will draw
Bassina's attention away from the men trying to slice her in half like
a melon.

   But Bassina is at least as smart as Kate, if not smarter, and with
a casual grace she turns counter-clockwise, deflecting the rapier with
her shield and, eyes locked on the smaller man, she impales the bigger
one without even looking at him.

   "She's good," Kate blurts quietly. "I like her."

   As Bassina kicks the big man's body off her lance, and as the
smaller man throws up his hands in surrender, Claire whispers at the
back of Kate's brain: If you like her, then choose her.

   Choose her? For what?

   You know what. (And in that moment, something in Kate's brain,
something that's neither Kate nor Claire, does know.) Choose her now
if you want to save them both.

   The surrendering man is lowering his hands now. In a moment, with
an unexpected quickness and fluidity, he'll retrieve and then toss a
handful of small but potent spiral-shell grenades. Bassina's shield
will dull the blast of some of them, but not all. Melody will have
rushed in to intervene. She'll be too late to save Bassina, but soon
enough to be chewed up in the blast herself. Kate can see what happens
in the next few seconds with incredible clarity. Not as something she
fears, but almost as a sort of memory.

   As the grenades fling out, Kate holds out her hand and whispers. "I
choose you, my Knight of Cups."

   A flash of white. Traces of Kate's green, and Bassina's red. When
it fades, the man and the grenades are gone. Not dead. She knows he's
not dead; it's something worse than death, and somehow more permanent.

   What remains is Bassina, her armor transformed, red coral with
accents of Kate's green. Her helmet bears a winged plume. The hooked
lance in her left hand no longer pulses with electricity but shimmers
with light that is not light. The shield in her right is now a
chalice.

   Everyone (the blackfins, the Red Shields, the crowd) looks upon her
in amazement. On her and on Kate.

   "Nice threads," whispers Pill.

   Kate looks down. Her green costume has becoming flowing and
diaphanous. "Robes."

   "Crown's a little ostentatious," adds Pill, tapping at the circlet
that's appeared about Kate's head.

   An older man in the crowd, the kind that reeks of money, shouts
excitedly in Lemurian. Kate's about to ask Melody for a translation,
but finds that she understands the language intuitively, the way she
knows how to breathe or swallow.

   "This is the Queen of Cups! The true queen! She has returned to
take her throne!"

   Most of the crowd have no idea what he's on about, which makes
sense; as Pill explained earlier, that lore  is likely limited to a
handful of the oldest families. Or it was, at any rate.

   "Life to the true queen! Death to the false queen, and her puppeteer!"

   This proves to be something the crowd can get behind, and the
massive throng, including both the blackfins and the Red Shields,
approach Kate's hoverwagon with marked interest.

   "Life to the true queen! Death to the false queen!"

   Kate turns to Melody. "So, I may have accidentally started a revolution."

   "I noticed."

   "I'm going to decline."

   "They're not going to listen."

   "I know," says Kate. "I'll try my best. Right now, someone needs to
warn the palace, explain the situation to Kumari. Quickly."

   "Quickly is kind of my whole thing." Melody kisses Kate on the
cheek. Then, she's gone.

   Bassina looks to Kate, then at her own armor and accoutrements,
then at Kate again, questions in her violet eyes.

   Kate's only answer is a hapless shrug, as if to say, I'm just as
confused as you are.

   Bassina drops to a knee, lowering her head. "Whatever comes, my
lady. I will hold."

   "I know you will," says Kate, pretending to be quiet and assured.
In truth, she's terrified herself. Terrified of herself. "It's why I
chose you."


COPYRIGHT 2023 AMABEL HOLLAND