Tales from Kalgachia - 26

The city of Lepidopterum, if one could call a scattering of single-story buildings and dispersed burrow entrances a city, was a pleasant place to be in Springhigh. The waters of its namesake river ran clear and shallow, filling the air with a soft gushing sound along its quieter stretches. The scent was of a thousand types of flower, most of which were artifacts of the Deep Singers lost to modern taxonomy. Its combined sweetness and pollen output made the air thick and in places hard to breathe, indeed the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare had advised against travel to the area by hayfever sufferers - even the mildly susceptible risked anaphalaxis on warm days like this.

The Agisters of the Litovine Forest were busy fulfilling their task of creating a biomic minefield in the area - there were Tee-als to the east and Tee-als to the north, with Lepidopterum connected to the Kalgachi heartland by a modest liveable corridor some fifty kilometres wide at its thickest point. It was into this corridor that nearly all inhabitants of Lepidopterum's surrounding Lieutenancy - a mixture of natives and incomers, almost all of whom were Nezeni - found themselves living, most of whom resided in the city of Lepidopterum itself.

As he was conveyed through the city in a limousine, Xantus Yastreb wondered why the place had not been billed as a tourist destination - aside from the proximity of the Tee-als and the potentially toxic air, it was a balmy paradise when compared to the bleaker majesty of the Octavian mountains. If nothing else, at least, it was visibly different from the rest of Kalgachia - which was why Xantus had chosen to visit the place.

Since the death of his first wife, Ilessa Aerit, Xantus' brethren in the Council of Perfecti, Kalgachia's supreme executive, had released him from the underground exile which they had imposed upon his initial marriage. Back then, the idea of one of the Perfecti breaking his meditative gnosis to travel the surface world for mere leisure was anathema, especially if carnal relations and procreation were involved.

It was funny how times changed.

The death of Ilessa had been little more than a polite excuse for the Perfecti, with half of its membership changed since the austere days of Kalgachia's birth, to release Xantus from his comfortable confinement and coincidentally set a precedent to permit themselves a greater experience of the surface world. The hardcore meditation necessary for Kalgachia's ultimate salvation, it was agreed, could be left to the Church monasteries and the Troglodyti - the Perfecti had a country to run, and they were unable to fully filter the sycophantic optimism of the thousand bueaucratic layers reporting to them unless they saw things with their own eyes from time to time.

The secrecy surrounding their identity, however, was to be maintained for national security reasons - hence Xantus' cover story as the Second Deputy Inspector General of Rail Transport from the Directorate of Public Works, ostensibly in Lepidopterum to survey the new railway linking Kalgachia with Kasterburg. In actual fact the railway did interest him, if only because he wanted to see if Kasterburg's rolling stock was any better than the Minarborian-era tin boxes which still chuntered around Kalgachia.

Even more interesting to him, however, was a blue-skinned Nezeni dame by the name of Beatrice Formicida, presently nestled beneath his arm which stretched across the back of the limousine's rear seat. During Xantus' childhood in a Minarborian penal colony, a consequence of his father's role in the Harvestfall Revolution, Beatrice had been a young assistant to Celestine de Taniere Gaudin, Broodmother of the Deep Singers who had taken it upon herself to personally tutor Xantus back into the Garden's grace. Although Xantus remembered Celestine well - childhood encounters with a two-metre tall queen ant had a tendency to stick in the memory - his recollection of Beatrice had almost faded completely until the death of his wife Ilessa, whereupon Beatrice had suddenly written to him in the kindest and most sympathetic terms. It transpired that she had survived the collapse of Minarboria, joined the Kalgachi migration and eventually secured the proctorship of a Parish in central Tealsburrow, in the Lieutenancy of Lithead. A meeting had duly been arranged, and Xantus now credited Beatrice's tenderness with carrying him through the grief of his wife's death. Beatrice, for her part, had been rewarded with a surprise appointment as the first Lady Lieutenant of Lepidopterum. It was in this capacity that she accompanied the apparent railway inspector through the city's leafy streets.

The business element of their trip - and there was previous little of it beyond an inspection of the city rail yard - could wait until the following day. For the present, Xantus and Beatrice had arranged a meeting with certain others.

"Hm, we got here first," said Xantus as the limousine pulled up alone to their rendezvous point, a ruined stone pier jutting out over the churning shallows of the Lepidopterum's river that presumably held up one end of a bridge in the Minarborian era. In recent times it served admirably as a scenic vewpoint, indeed on stepping out of the limousine Xantus and Beatrice found they were not alone after all - in the river below, a family of half a dozen Nezenis were bathing completely naked in the river. One of them, the apparent matriarch, waved up in greeting.

"No piped water supply yet, as you can see," said Beatrice to Xantus, waving back at the bathers and watching them slosh water over their shimmering iridescent bodies. "Oh do stop ogling the young lady, dear. You know she has nothing that I don't."

"Mmm? Oh..." muttered Xantus, shifting his gaze to the rather less agreeable sight of an elderly male. "My eyes have to be somewhere."

"They'll be on me tonight, darling," said Beatrice in the tuneful purr which Xantus found irresistably magnetic. "I can assure you of that."

Xantus was about to go weak at the knees again when a sudden WHOM from behind caused both he and Beatrice to jump. Roaring to a halt alongside their limousine, rather too fast for Xantus' liking, was an open-topped LandFara Leopard sports car in bright red. If the distinctive appearance of the car was not enough, the tresses of cropped red hair on the driver instantly identified her as Rubina Yastreb, Xantus' daughter. In the passenger seat was one Roy Stone, adopted son of the King of Shirerithian Goldshire who had been sent to Kalgachia for his own safety some years previously. To Xantus' surprise the man had made a greater effort to tidy himself up than usual; there were no tears in his suit and his hair looked positively passable from certain angles. A shame nothing could be done about the permanent gawping facial expression, thought Xantus as the newcomers hopped out of their car. A gentle -donk- announced the contact of Roy's open door with the side of Xantus' limousine.

"Paintwork!" squeaked Rubina, halting her stride toward Xantus and scuttling back to Roy's side of the car.

"Whoop... sorry," said Roy, forcing a sheepish smile.

"It's fine," said Rubina quietly, studying the door for a scratch and failing to find one. She smiled, kissed Roy's irregularly-stubbled cheek and led him by the hand to Xantus and Beatrice.

"Beans!" said Xantus with a smile, shaking Roy's hand while his daughter hugged him. "Glad you could join us, Roy," he added.

"No worries boss," said Roy. The man would never be a stickler for deference and protocol, something which Xantus quietly admired.

"You haven't met Beatrice yet, have you?" said Xantus, nodding at Beatrice. "She's Lady Lieutenant in these parts... among other things."

"Oh yeah I remember," said Roy. "She's your-" he stopped himself repeating what Rubina had told him. "I'm familiar with her role," he said instead, "but I've not had the honour..." he indicated the stately and shapely figure of Beatrice, resplendent beneath a towering beehive of green hair and clad in a frilly dress of the Lyssansine rococo style which had long since passed out of fashion but, to the mind of its wearer, would creep back into vogue any day now. At any rate, she wore such dated rags surprisingly well for a woman of her age.

"So you must by young Roy Stone!" said Beatrice, leaning in and planting a shamelessly wet kiss on both of Roy's cheeks. "I'm told you've been keeping dear little Beans in good company these last few years?"

"Well... she puts up with me," said Roy with a shrug and another stupid smile.

"You must be older than I thought!" chuckled Beatrice. "Only a Minarborian has that kind of humility."

"I did some time in Lywall about five minutes before the Shrub disappeared," said Roy, "So I guess you're technically right."

"Oh but I thought you were from Goldshire?"

"That's where I went afterwards. The King adopted me. He's nice like that."

Beatrice turned to Xantus. "Goldie dear, you do surround yourself with the most interesting people."

Rubina stood back from the conversation, quietly seething. In her raging yellow eyes, only her dead mother ever had the right to call Xantus 'Goldie'. In fact Rubina despised most things about this dainty old tart from the back end of Lithead who had taken advantage of her grieving father and wriggled into his life like a pestilent caterpillar. The worst thing about Beatrice was her unassilable grace and common kindness, even toward Rubina herself. The woman had nothing for Rubina to attack at all, besides the temerity to attempt replacing her dear departed mother - the final insult was being positively beautiful for a woman of her decently-progressing age. At times Rubina feared that the memory of her mother, a plain woman of austere Ketherist dress who had reserved the fullest flower of beauty for her inner self, would be eradicated from Xantus' mind by the painted doll he now called his companion. Even now Rubina struggled to expunge her fantasies of bayonetting the woman through the throat, something which Xantus had guessed given his daughter's record of past behaviour - he never allowed Rubina and Beatrice to be alone together.

And she nearly slurped Roy's cheeks off too, throught Rubina. Greedy bitch.

She sighed and felt herself calm down at the sight of Roy, who was now chatting about his recently-acquired job at the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia. Sweet, sweet Roy. How she loved him more than ever, the daft old heap of a man. In the end, Xantus had agreed to revoke the old order of Rubina's mother that the couple never be left alone together - but with a condition. He was worried about Rubina being impregnated with a child of mixed genetics that was risky to carry to full term. Xantus' own actions in this regard, following up Rubina's lucky conception with that of her little brother Falcifer, had ultimately killed her mother through complications of Falcifer's birth and Xantus had never forgiven himself. For all the vulgar talk of impregnation and the implication of her recklessness, Rubina had hissed her curses at Xantus and tried to convince him that Roy was not, in fact, a crazed sex pest determined to kill her. But Xantus had remained firm in his position - to be allowed alone with Roy, Rubina must be subjected to a thorough examination by the country's top gynaecologists to determine whether she carried her mother's malformed womb. Ultimately Rubina relented - beneath her quiet exterior swelled a raging sexual curiosity of her own, much as she never spoke of it. For the sake of that as much as anything, she underwent the pain and indignity of the stirrup chair and obtained by way of reward a medical certificate proving that her womb was, in fact, free of the overbred incompatibilities which had ended the life of her mother.

Alas, when she had duly dragged a reluctant Roy beneath the bedsheets there had been difficulties. He was, to her surprise, rather better endowed than she had expected - not the end of the world, she had resolved in the trembling excitement of those first few moments, but at that point the man's malformed prostate had made its presence known and he suffered the first of many interruptions in his tumescence, making the act's pursuit to any kind of completion all but impossible. Rubina had managed to conceal her frustration with overtures of sympathy which, although well-intended, had caused her partner to shrivel like a deflated balloon and made the delivery of due justice to her painstakingly-prepared womanhood a more distant goal than ever. Since that night she had schooled him in bringing about her own satisfaction with alternative methods but it was an incomplete substitute for the fulfilment of her original fantasies, and out of helpless love for his intermittently flaccid countenance she vainly persisted in her efforts to 'conjure' him to full function during their evenings together.

Such was the state of her love life - all the while, to her eternal disgust, her father was wearing out his bedsprings with some green-haired whore from Tealsburrow and had the blithe effrontery to assume that Rubina was enjoying the same quality of action with Roy. The injustice was palpable - it took a few hours' aggressive driving through the mountains, or else some intensive low-level flying, to expunge it from her mind. And still her father wondered why she hated Beatrice with every fibre of her being - he could never be told the saucy details, of course. For Roy's sake.

"So how's the old man these days?"

Rubina's hatred had momentarily subsided long enough to admit the conversation back into her ears. Xantus was talking to Roy.

"Eh, he's fine I think," said Roy. "Got a letter from him just last week. He's been having trouble with the Kaiser's advisory council."

"Tell him to watch his back out there."

"With all due respect, I think he knows by now."

"Most likely, or else he'd be long gone. But a reminder never hurts."

"I'll give him your regards."

"Please do... and my invitation to Kalgachia. I know you want to see him, but we can't risk letting you out of the country since that reptilian stepmother of yours put a bounty on your head."

"But the Steward revoked the edict and sacked her."

Xantus snorted. "As if that changes anything."

There was a period of silence as the four looked down on the bathers below, who were now towelling themselves dry on the riverbank.

Rubina stepped to her father's side. "Falcifer's fine, by the way," she said with tuneful sarcasm. "Thanks for asking."

"Mm?" said Xantus. "Oh... well if he wasn't, I figured you'd say."

"You're his father. You shouldn't have to wait for me to bring it up."

"Well now that you have... where is he today?"

"Ogny's looking after him."

"Will he be alright? In the hands of a deafblind Froyalaner, I mean. No offence to dear little Ogny, but..."

"Ah, so now you're worried," said Rubina, shaking her head. Her father had all the time in the world to get himself stuck up old Beatrice but not a minute to spare in accepting the existence of the young son who, through no fault of his own, had killed Xantus' wife by his very birth.

Xantus, sensing his daughter's silent rage, sighed and looked into her eyes. "Beans," he said. "I'm proud of what you're doing for Falcifer, you know. You should hear them speak of you in Council. They consider you a hero in your mother's image."

The revelation was surprising to Rubina and the flattery momentarily silenced her, but it was irrelevant to her point. "But what about you?" she said quietly.

"I think your mother would be proud to see you now."

Rubina pouted. There was that, at least. The father she knew was still in there somewhere.

"Say, guys!" chirped Roy suddenly. His unexpected outburst was courtesy of Beatrice's hand, which had crept across and begun to caress his back as they looked down on the river. "It's a nice day and this town looks interesting. What say we take a walk around? I saw the sign for a Deep Singer Petting Zoo on the way in here. You get your money back if you dare to touch the giant ants. Madam Beatrice here looks like she has the courage. Most likely she's brave enough to pet anything."

"W-well..." stuttered Beatrice, her sky-blue face undergoing a subtle change in hue. "I don't know if I..."

"Sounds like a plan," said Xantus, slapping Roy's back and beckoning the others up the road. "Let's do it."