[An Epic Fantasy 01.0] Skip Read online

  “You and Gregory aren’t like that.”

  “That’s because we’re meant to be together.”

  “You say that about all your boyfriends.”

  Kali frowned.

  “Gregory isn’t a boyfriend,” she said. “He’s my betrothed, and I only went out with those other boys so I could learn how to please Gregory.”

  “Yes,” Jera said. “I’m sure you hated every minute of it.”

  Kali struck her sister on the arm without aggression.

  “Don’t be so vulgar!” she said.

  “But being betrothed,” Jera said. “It’s so archaic!”

  “We’re living in the archaic era. Make the most of it. Realise how fortunate you are that you’re at the top. Marrying into a family like the Ascars only cements that position.”

  “You sound like Mother.”

  “And be thankful you get to meet him at all before the wedding. A lot of couples don’t.”

  “If I don’t have any choice over the matter, what difference does it make whether I meet him or not?” Jera said, sitting on her bed. “I want to travel, not get tied down.”

  Kali sat beside her sister.

  “Things will be all right, you’ll see,” she said.

  Jera nodded uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Look on the bright side. You’re going to be married soon. You don’t want to end up like Aunt Tessa do you? A spinster.”

  Jera picked up the map and turned it around. On the other side was a framed portrait of a handsome middle-aged woman.

  “She could have gotten married if she wanted to,” Jera said.

  “But she turned down every suitor who came calling,” Kali said. “And eventually they stopped coming. Don’t make her mistake. I’m sure she regrets her decision now.”

  “I suppose.”

  Kali squealed with excitement and clapped her hands.

  “Can you believe we’ll be married into the Ascar family?” she said.

  “Yes,” Jera said, lacking Kali’s elation. “Exciting.”

  The old grandfather clock in the corner chimed. The moment the chime finished resonating there was a BONG! as the bell in the clocktower high above the town replied to the grandfather clock’s call.

  Chime!

  BONG!

  Chime! BONG!

  “It’s two o’clock!” Kali said.

  She hitched up her skirts and ran for the door. In the doorway she stopped and turned to look back at Jera.

  “Don’t forget to get dressed!” she said, and took off down the hall.

  Jera got up off her bed, gave her map one last lingering look, and then hung it against the wall. She turned it over so only Aunt Tessa’s portrait was visible.

  She ran to the wardrobe and dug amongst her dresses. She shut her eyes and chose one at random. It was a plain purple dress that kissed the floor and had a shallow neckline. She slipped it on. She pulled back her hair and tied it. She wove in some sticks and flowers for ornamentation to make it look like she’d put in some effort. She picked up a pair of shoes and carried them in one hand.

  Jera came out of her bedroom, throwing the door shut behind her with a well-practiced swing so it didn’t slam, but gently rolled into place. She ran down the corridor.

  Chapter Three

  The butler in a black starched waistcoat carrying a silver tray with her father’s pipe, newspaper and slippers on, stepped out onto the rich red carpeted floor. Jera saw him at the last moment and skidded to a halt.

  “Sorry, Jeffrey!” she said, before taking off down another corridor.

  Jeffrey smiled and waved.

  “That’s all right, ma’am,” he said.

  “My name’s Jera, not ma’am!” she said, turning a corner.

  “Very good, ma’am,” Jeffrey said before continuing on.

  Jera sped past the knights standing to attention in their empty suits of armour down either side of the corridor. They leaned on their swords like they needed the support. Next came the coats of arms of the other distinguished major houses organized into rows along the roof.

  Jera turned right and the carpeted floor came to an end, her bare feet slapping the parquet floor, echoing off marble columns. Her ancestors’ portraits followed her down the hallway, showing little genealogical evolution in the family’s six-hundred year history.

  Puffing and panting, Jera came to a stop at a large oak door. She put her shoes down and slid her feet into them. She ran her hands over her dress, smoothing down the material and checked her hair in a dented set of armour. She took a deep breath, having still not recovered, and pushed the doors open.

  She walked across the large marble floor of the entrance hall to stand beside her sister, mother and father. They stood facing the open main doors.

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  “You’re late,” her mother said without looking at her.

  She had grey at her temples and crown, but she hadn’t treated it, and instead left it to grow out. Her face ended in a pointed chin, perched on a narrow neck.

  Kali looked at Jera’s askew hairdo and rearranged the flowers before their mother turned around to see.

  “And I thought I told you to wear the blue dress?” her mother said.

  “Really?” Jera said. “I thought you said purple.”

  “No, I specifically requested you wear the blue.”

  “I can go back,” Jera said.

  “They’re about to arrive, Jera. Next time think before you act. We can’t always go back and correct our mistakes.”

  “Will you two stop squabbling?” Kali said. “I think Jera looks very nice.”

  Jera gave her sister’s hand a squeeze.

  “But she would have looked even nicer in the blue dress,” their mother grumbled.

  Jera rolled her eyes, refusing to rise to her mother’s bait.

  The staff of the house waited outside the main entrance in two long lines, each member falling away to the next with each step. The front lawn spread out on the left and right, a wide path splitting it down the middle. Blue Snap Dragons and Hurtling Ember flowers lined either side.

  The Wythnos family home was one of very few that had been designed in the traditional Time style: white marble trim with coal-black alabaster. A wrought iron fence ran around each property with a well-maintained exotic garden in every front yard. In front of the houses was one of the few paved roads in the town of Time.

  “Why is it taking them so long to get here?” Kali said, a small pinched pout forming on her lips.

  “The road from the capital is long and fraught with danger,” their father Lord Wythnos said. “They will be here.”

  He was a small man with a paunch that was beginning to be visible through his clothes. He was unfortunate in that he had inherited all three of the Wythnos family’s heredity calamities: the large bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows and pattern baldness.

  “You’d better be on your best behaviour today, Jera,” their mother said. “There’s nothing worse than getting old by yourself.”

  “Yes, there is,” Jera said. “Getting old with the wrong person.”

  “Will you two stop gibbering?” Kali said, a rare thread of anger worming its way into her tone. Her ears perked up. “Wait… I think I hear… Yes! I think they’re coming now!”

  The clatter of horseshoes on cobblestones began like raindrops on an old alley tin roof, and then the sound grew, bouncing off the other houses in the street, reverberating like the horsemen of the apocalypse themselves were drawing down upon them.

  Jera put her hands over her ears. She couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Kali was too preoccupied with the approaching coach to notice much of anything, and Lord and Lady Wythnos cowered away from the raucous sounds as if they were physical blows to their person. The waiting staff didn’t even flinch.

  The giant horses came to a stop outside the Wythnos residence. Steam issued off them like mist off a mountain. The horses snorted and plumes of
white puffed and spiralled out of their nostrils despite the balmy temperature. The horses grunted and stomped their enormous hooves on the paving stones. Jera made a mental note to check to see if the paving was cracked later. Their harnesses were black and stiff and strong, held in the grip of a man hidden beneath stained oily robes, only his gargantuan hands visible.

  The Wythnos family walked out the main entrance, the sunlight blinding after the relative darkness of the foyer, and then descended the short flight of marble stairs.

  The carriage received awed expressions from the neighbours, and scowls from fellow drivers as it dominated the road and they had to mount the kerb to negotiate around it.

  The giant driver swung his legs over the side of the red and gold carriage and landed with unexpected grace. He reached for the door handle.

  Kali had eyes only for the carriage door, and the darkness within. Her hands gripped her dress tight with white knuckles, and Jera knew if she touched her, her sister would have reacted like a coiled spring.

  “Self-control is the lady’s primary weapon,” their mother said under her breath to Kali. “Self-control.”

  Kali made a whimpering sound, her eyes fastened on the carriage ahead, unblinking.

  The door opened, and a series of steps slithered down and kissed the ground. A narrow roll of red carpet flopped out over the steps like a tongue lolling out of a cat’s mouth. A figure emerged from the darkness within, but before his golden locks were even fully out of the carriage, Kali’s resolve broke and she was running down the garden path.

  “Kali! No!” her mother shouted. “Show some decorum, please!”

  Kali didn’t even look back. Her feet kicked up the gravel from the path that wound its way through the lawn, and toward the man at the other end, who had a beaming smile on his wide face. He removed his blue top hat and opened his arms.

  In every way Kali was feminine, Gregory Ascar was masculine. He had a big broad chest and wide shoulders, narrow waist and misty deep-set eyes. They conveyed a great sense of mystery and the unknown.

  “So much for decorum,” their mother grumbled as she, Lord Wythnos and Jera walked down the garden path at a more sedate pace than Kali had set. “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.”

  Out the corner of her eye, Jera saw a grimace cross her father’s face, but as soon as it was there, it was gone. Perhaps it was never there at all, but a trick of the light.

  Gregory met Kali at the foot of the carriage steps, scooped her up in his arms and swirled her around in the air. She squealed with joy. Gregory set her feet down on the lawn with a big smile on his face. Kali stumbled, the circling having left her disorientated. She put out her hand and steadied herself on Gregory’s large forearm. He put his arm around her and led her down the garden path.

  Gregory wore a smart-fitting blue suit with the Police enforcement emblem over the breast pocket. He carried a Mameluke sword at his hip. A gold royal crown decorated the epaulette on both shoulders. He removed his top hat and performed a deep bow.

  Jera and her mother curtsied. Kali kept hold of Gregory’s arm.

  “I thought you boys always wore white,” Lord Wythnos said, shaking Gregory’s hand.

  “Only the scroats, sir,” Gregory said with a smile. He turned his grey concrete eyes on Jera. “You look more beautiful every time I see you, Jera.” Then he turned to Lady Wythnos. “More like your mother every day.”

  Their mother blushed and fanned herself.

  “Please, Mr Ascar,” she said, “save your flattery for my daughter.”

  “I have plenty more for your daughter, Ma’am. Never fear.”

  There was movement in the giant Ascar carriage. A second figure emerged from the dark innards. The man descended the carriage steps and approached the assembled. Gregory slapped him on the back.

  “This is my brother, Richard,” he said. “I believe you haven’t seen him in quite some time.”

  He was darker-featured than Gregory, with a crow’s nest haircut, roguish in a devil-may-care kind of way. He wore a white uniform in an identical cut to his brother, but it had blue cuffs and insignia. Richard’s epaulettes were polished silver, denoting his deputy ranking. He had the Ascar’s trademark mysterious eyes that were tucked away beneath a short ridge of jutting brow. He held his hands behind his back and looked at them one by one as if appraising them.

  When his eyes flickered to Jera, she felt like she’d been struck by ice. A tingling sensation that began in her fingers and toes and travelled the length of her body. And then he smiled a smile that creased the corners of his eyes and mouth in a pleasing way, and the ice melted.

  “It’s a pleasure and an honour to meet you all,” he said with a low bow.

  “And you likewise, I’m sure,” Lord Wythnos said, shaking hands with the young gentleman.

  Richard bent down to kiss Jera on the hand.

  “Jera,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you again after so many years. Gregory wouldn’t shut up about you on the way here. I see my brother’s descriptions of your beauty were not exaggerations.”

  Jera’s response caught in her throat. She stood there, slack-jawed and stupid.

  “Uh…” she said.

  “Jera? Speechless?” Kali said, chuckling. “That’s a first.”

  Their mother’s eyes passed between Richard and Jera and a smile creased her lips.

  “Shall we proceed inside?” she said. “We have lunch prepared.”

  As the others turned toward the house, Richard raised his elbow. Jera hesitated, and then put her hand on it and allowed him to lead her inside.

  Chapter Four

  The chandeliers reflected in the polished mahogany table. It was made to seat twenty, but the chairs had been arranged according to tradition, with Lord Wythnos at the head of the table, Lady Wythnos on his left, and Gregory and Kali on his right, and Richard and Jera beside Lady Wythnos.

  Richard and Gregory held the chairs for the ladies before taking their own seats. A serving man came around with wine to fill their cups, while fresh bread still steaming from the oven and boiled quail eggs were set in the middle of the table. Silver platters were deposited before each diner. It was a simple, but well-curated meal of salad, roasted potatoes, steak, and homemade coleslaw.

  “This looks wonderful,” Gregory said, turning to Lord and Lady Wythnos in turn. “Thank you for your kind hospitality.”

  “Thank you for taking the effort to travel all the way to see us,” Lord Wythnos said, projecting his voice to be heard.

  There was a moment of silence as everyone began to eat.

  “Can someone please pass the salt?” Lord Wythnos said from his end of the table.

  A footman came over from his position at the wall, took the salt cellar and gave it to the lord with a nod of his head. The Lord Merchant sprinkled the salt on his meal. Once he was finished, the footman put the salt cellar back in the middle of the table and then returned to his post beside the wall.

  “How was the journey down?” Lord Wythnos said.

  “Not too bad what with the facilities we have on board,” Gregory said. “I managed to do some work and send some messages out.”

  “I suppose a man such as yourself must always have a contingent of messengers in tow,” Lady Wythnos said.

  “Yes,” Gregory said, “but hopefully we will soon be able to replace them with new technology. This is all very hush-hush at the moment but our family is currently investing in technology that will allow us to transmit our voices over hundreds of miles with the use of wires.”

  “Extraordinary,” Lord Wythnos said. “Is it even possible? I thought such things were only possible by… unnatural means.”

  Gregory chuckled.

  “Sometimes it seems like witchcraft, I grant you,” he said. “But I am assured it is all possible with simple fundamental science.”

  “Marvellous.”

  The footmen cleared the plates and replaced them with moist slices of chocolate cake.

  �
�Perhaps some of this technology might make certain parts of the world less dangerous,” Lady Wythnos said, cutting into her cake.

  “It’s possible,” Richard said. “Anywhere where man has not yet fully conquered is a dangerous place. The jungle, the desert, the ice caps, Dreary Mountain and Drunkard’s Ocean. These are places where nature still presides and we are merely visitors.”

  “But that’s also what makes them so exciting,” Jera said. “To step foot in the cradle of nature, where perhaps no one else has ever ventured before.”

  Richard smiled at Jera’s obvious passion.

  “I had no idea you were so adventurous,” he said.

  “There is a great deal you have yet to learn about me,” Jera said.

  Richard’s eyes glimmered.

  “I look forward to it,” he said.

  Jera blushed and concentrated on her vegetables.

  “Not to mention the natives in certain parts of the world,” Gregory said. “Some have no intention of sharing our technology and rather prefer to fight us over it. They exist solely to be and do not want to advance.”

  “Heathens,” Lord Wythnos said with a grunt.

  “We ran into a spot of bother on the way here with some natives,” Gregory said. “Of course, their blowpipes and homemade bows and arrows weren’t much use against our defences, and they soon scattered off when we returned fire.”

  Gregory shrugged.

  “We must make allowances for them,” he said. “If they wish to remain in the Dark Ages, then so be it. We are about to enter a great period in our evolution: the industrial era. Gentlemen and businesses are already stockpiling coal and oil for the factories they’re building.

  “There will be a population explosion and the people will require supplies to live. Only an efficient factory-processing system will be able to cater to such requirements. Mark my words, the future is an exciting place to be.”

  Gregory reached over and took Kali’s hand.

  “Which is why unions like our two families coming together are so important,” he said. “With our father’s Ascar production facilities and your Wythnos shipping lines, we will form the largest and most powerful family in the whole kingdom.”