She sat on the copper railing of her balcony. Watched her city's life fade into current events.
She scared her father with this habit. When she was a girl he had a wire net to stop her doing it.
Would look bad on the family, if his only child became an angry blotch of red on the mostly white view of the city.
Family had always been a controlling figure to her. Probably because of that net in a way, among other things.
Now they are dead, she was empress and regent. She was a pawn no longer.
Just an omeaba. A quiet voice said from within. She buried it deep again, like everything else.
She liked it there, nearly a two hundred foot drop below her feet, a well stocked cupboard-bar and an equally well stocked wardrobe.
Three knocks came through the door, she knew who it was.
"Come in." she said. Words drifting back into her open apartments, a charming place to her standards, Arron hated it. The old friend came and he looked as dower as ever.
"You'll never consider just how many problems you'd cause me. Will you?" He asked.
"No." She smiled. He leaned to the railings engraved with rhombus. "If I did though. It would be quite the image. A metaphor." She said feigning profoundness.
"Don't worry." He said grimly. "If you don't fall we may be thrown anyway."
"Arron, can you never just enjoy something? A moment to yourself? Anything?" She snapped back, exasperated. "You've been like this since we agreed on Aleister. What's wrong?" She continued only after calming herself.
"Marie. We used to kill monsters." He said. Not taking his eyes from the cityscape. "We protected people." She could only nod in return. "The council were Chimeara. Now they're just rats waiting to be stomped on. A table waiting to be cleared."
"We're not rats." Marie said intently. Some of her pride still remained if dimly.
She climbed back into the balcony and walking away from her friend. She heard him follow, then stop. He always stopped.
The balcony—more a terrace—was marble and ceramic like all else. Though Marie had begun painting plants up each copper post.
"We are wolves." He started. "Government sanctioned murderers." More anger.
She said nothing for a time.
He was impossible to reach at times like this. Painfully hypocritical and incapable of reconciling.
There had been countless times when she was too. Worse even.
"Maybe. But we're liberators also." She told him. Smiled grimly as she added. "And we built said government that sanctions us."
"Then you should see my point."
She sighed, drifted over to a Louis Cabernet just inside the room. Took two glasses and left one for Arron on the side. A brandy from the southern town of Fowey, his favourite.
Despite the garish design of her palace Marie thought she had done a good effort in stylising.
Red curtains, highlighted in brass coloured flowers. Rose wood drawers and wardrobe all centered by a huge bed made of ivory and more ceramic.
She heard Arron scoff at her statement and drift in the other direction to observe the city again.
"It used to be; insurrections, terrorism, political corruption." He said, approaching and taking the glass on his way. He smelled it and gave her a knowing smile before turning away again and leaning on the frame of the doors.
"I still have work Marie, it's noon." The old sod said.
"Your regent demands it." She said mockingly to his back. He obliged with the faintest impression of a bow and drank, coughed.
"I remember when you could drink a bottle of this stuff." She laughed.
"Ten years ago maybe." He rasped trying to recover some of his dignity. That only made her smile the more. There were so few things to smile about in the life of a ruler, she had found.
You couldn't get the brandy anymore and she mentioned that before saying.
"The war isn't going well Arron, the best we can do is hold this place together and hope."
Arron sighed, finally turning to look at her.
"I sent Torrin up there last week." He said.
"And? Reckon he will be okay." She asked, serious.
"It's not what he will do I'm worried about. I'm worried about what I see in him."
She couldn't refute that. If anything, it humoured her. "And now you know my pain, Arron Loui." he laughed at that. "See you are capable of a smile."
"And you're capable of too many." He glowered back. she just cackled and drank.
"Besides. Aleister went as expected then?" She asked, pushing her auburn hair behind her ear and falling into a large white leather chair.
Arron joined her on the one opposite, grey hair and blue eyes stark, features looking dejected in the blue sun.
"He was unfortunate. Useful." He said. "At least now that the Marlow house is under Taylor's hand you don't have to worry about that region for competition."
"Like they would have anyway." She groaned, wishing she could enjoy one quiet drink with a friend. "Can you just shut up Arron. just for a minute."
To his credit he did and without mentioning it was her who'd brought him up in the first place.
Too her, that silence felt comfortable.
He looked nice. He was wearing a suit of black tweed with a red tie. Clean shaven, hair in a comb over. Surprisingly stylish for a man like him. He looked like one of her paintings, from her younger days. When she'd had the time for real projects. She wondered if Arron still sketched.
"Finally got a decent haircut." She jibed, kicking him in the foot from where she sat.
"I got this two weeks ago." He said. Picking at it self consciously.
"just means you should visit more." She gave him yet another smile and piled all the warmth she had into it.
"Hard to get an appointment." He said, finishing his glass and going to recharge it.
"It's good to see you, Arron." She said ignoring his jibe.
"How did your meeting with Chrey go?" He changed the subject with little tact. "Still pining about those tungsten shipments, I assume." He asked while ambling back to his seat.
"You would be correct." She replied, venom curdling her voice. "Old sod wins one in three skirmishes and blames lack of shipments for his failure. From what I hear they just raise the ground to nothing anyway." She was far too angry and she knew it. She reserved herself, breathed.
"Can you blame him? With the reports that have come in recently." Arron asked. Again she couldn't say anything. She too had seen photos of the chimeara.
"Apparently the hoard brings more each time. The chimeara, that is." He said.
"I gathered." She mumbled, cynicism leaching in.
"And we're running out of tungsten." she bit off sharply, as if the words offended her. "Half the mines dried up a decade ago and the others are on their way." She was almost yelling in a mock teacher's voice by the end of it. The hours she had spent earlier that day being lectured on logistics by high commandant Chrey. So generous he was to explain every single fucking minutiae for her simple mind.
"I'm sorry." she said after a while, pressing fingers to the bridge of her nose. Arron had made no attempt to coax her into speaking. He knew her better than that. "I'm just tired of hearing of the fucking war."
"As am I." He said almost tenderly. He always sounded so tired to her. Like an old man if he didn't look so boyish in the light. She still wondered that he was over forty, regardless of his frowns.
It was then when a bell on her desk began to ring and one of the telecoms began printing, slowly, steadily.
At the same time Aaron's portable one began to buzz. It was one of only five artifacts gifted by their god, recently that is.
She rose from her perch and paced over trying to feign soberness.
Her telecom device was a wooden box with a roll of paper inside. That was about as much as Marie knew about it.
"Speak of the bastard. Torrin just checked in."
"Broom's town. He's moving quickly." she heard Arron mumble reading through glasses he'd pulled from a pocket on his breast.
"Are you sure not telling the military about him was a good idea?" She asked. Rejoining him in her chair, crossing her legs and flattening her black Sabina jumpsuit. Anxiety apparent in her face. "Went is already at our throats and he will use a Chrey's pride if he can."
Arron took longer than usual to reply, his face became more grave with each moment.
"The council already thinks we have too much reach in the capital. What would they think if we started meddling in military affairs openly?"
"What's his cover?" She asked, trying to give herself time to think of an answer to that.
"An officer." He said plainly. "He will pick up the uniform before he crosses the river."
"The guard captains being at one another's throats gives us time to organise." Marie said, carrying on the last thought. "Malcolm won't make a move on us while the outer guard looks for any excuse to absorb them."
"He is ambitious." Arron smiled, clearly finding more humour in that than her. She could tell he had some respect for the inner guard captain. He would never show that outside her room though.
"Ambition is dangerous." He continued. "Just look at what we did." He said, gesturing with her hands, spilling his drink clumsily. At some point in the conversation they had poured again.
"And what of Gaias." She asked. "He's been chirping about the old ways since the beginning."
"That's another worry I don't want to think about now." He said, death in his voice.
"Arron. Are you alright?" She asked. He said nothing but threw back the drink. Answer enough.
"The fire." He said after pouring another and sitting for several minutes. "I've been seeing it when I sleep. Him I mean" It was when he said that Marie realised. His eyes were close to black, red rimmed.
She leaned in. "You could stay on the couch if you'd like?"
This seemed to discomfort him, she thought it was endearing. She also found it infuriating. The man was forty odd, when would he grow a pair.
"People saw me come in." He said finally.
"And they will see you on the couch when they come to spy later." She said, "You might feel more comfortable around someone."
It had been her brother who died that night. Though, Arron had always held onto things till they became blights, like ashes in his mouth. She never forgot the loss either but like jadus's all things had their cycle. Even if that cycle was death.
He didn't answer, she didn't press. They sat in silence as Jadus, the blue sun met the mountains and the sky began to bleed purple and green, then black. The sound of the city roaring as the upper market became a makeshift festival ground and bars welcomed their patrons with warmth and joy. The light failed just short of Marie's little aviary.
"Alright." He said to her astonishment.
He didn't sleep though, neither did she. They burned through bottles and talked of their few good days; the night of her coronation, their escape into the city disguised as merchants, the night they 'borrowed' a river boat sailing it up the canals of the lower city before the ghetto had been erected, crashing said boat it into a jetty. They were younger then.
The fact she was empress was probably the only thing that prevented her arrest that night. She missed flippancy.
The night dragged on and eventually the life below died too. jadus's began to rise on the city and planes beyond, cycle continuing. Eventually Arron passed out in his chair, empty bottle in his lap, drooling on himself. She watched him for a while, fondness filling her mood again. She rarely saw him like this anymore. She wondered how this man had held her government from silently usurping her. He had always been her guardian. He held everything together and she held him in return. At least she wished he'd let her.
She would be lying if she said she didn't resent that. That her court would only bend out of fear for her right hand man instead of her.
She eventually went to bed and left Arron with a blanket over him. She needed some sleep, it was six hours till midday and she had another day of miserable politicking to get to. Such is the order of the Conclave.
We won't become invisible. She told herself in her head as she drifted to sleep.
—-