Conquest turned his back, pushing a tree aside. Where another tree would have been uprooted, his simply moved over the earth as if it were on rails. The movement stirred cold air, and I flinched.
Rose stared up at him, then down at her hands.
“Hey, Rose,” I said, my hands in my pockets, my arms tight against my sides, trying to stay warm without being too hot at the same time. “Let me start by-”
She heaved herself out of the snow, flinging herself at me with enough force to almost knock me over. She wrapped her arms around me.
All of my fight or flight instincts were in high drive already. Being grabbed suddenly didn’t help.
I would have hit her, but swinging a punch in self defense was different from trying to hit someone who was clinging so closely to me. I would have had to deliver an underhanded punch to the gut, and… no. The fact that it took me a second to get my bearings meant I had time to resist impulses.
It wasn’t helping, though. It was a twist of a knife in an old wound, bringing back pain, shutting down my mental processing centers as every station went on alert.
She squeezed a little too hard, painfully, one arm over my shoulder, another at my side, head buried against my chest. She was also warm, her heart pounding so hard I could feel it.
She was a real, physical person, here, it seemed.
A real physical person who was digging her nails into my back.
“Fingernails,” I croaked.
She didn’t respond, even if she did relax with the fingernails. The intensity of it, coupled with the madness that surrounded us, was enough to rob us of any further communication.
“Fell,” Conquest spoke. “See Mr. Meath out, then stand guard. Nobody comes or leaves without my word.”
“I’d like to ask that you keep me updated, Lord,” the drunk said. “On him and what you do with him.”
“I can,” was the reply. “Why?”
“I have further business with him. In exchange for my continued cooperation, can I ask that he be kept within the city, for the time being?”
“You can ask,” Conquest said. He seemed to consider. “You take no actions to work against me in this endeavor.”
“Done.”
“That is all I need. I will see to it.”
Why the fuck did Jeremy Meath have business with me?
Fuck, what did it even matter?
The nameless practitioner, who now had a name, glanced at me and Rose, and then left, Jeremy Meath and the small contingent of attractive men and women following.
I wanted freedom to move, but Rose was still clinging to me, and it was doing everything a hug shouldn’t. Stirring ugly feelings of fear and unease, making me less calm, making me feel like I stood completely alone and adrift.
“Let go, Rose,” I said, quiet.
She didn’t move, holding me tight.
“Rose,” I said, under my breath.
“Hm,” Conquest made a sound. My heart nearly stopped. Had I accidentally gotten his attention?
My eyes moved to him, and I saw him looking down, pensive, but not looking down at us. He’d changed subtly, and was still changing. The line between clothing and skin was fading, the individual elements that had made up his outfit and appearance were dissolving, while retaining the bits that still let me think he fit with the idea of ‘Conquest’.
He had overlarge hands, now, plated in iron and what might have been bone, or a very pale metal, effectively gauntlets, but I could also see smaller hands, grasping, scrabbling out as if they sought to claw their way free of his coat sleeves. Or his rolls of loose skin. Or chainmail. Whatever it was that wreathed his arms, now that it was ceasing to be a coat. I could see it changing, sloughing away from an endless source, taking on a new texture and form as it layered over itself. Hot wax, melting flesh, layers of dust settling atop one another. All those things and none of them.
His flesh was stretched taut around his face and neck, pulling his mouth into a hollow, perpetual grin. Except his smile wasn’t really a smile, whatever label I might stick on it. Like the eyes had been ‘painted’, the smile was symbolic. Just looking at it put ideas in my head: the rictus grins of the defeated; the expression of a general who had just won the war, caught between the joy of victory and the dawning horror as he left the battle behind and came to terms with what he had done. Twisted into a frozen mask that he wore.
His beard and hair were longer than they had been, paler. He was half again as tall, so broad in the shoulders it was bound to be symbolic in some fashion, and his coat trailed around him like a cape, now, the tips billowing and snaking through the snow as if being moved by a wind that I couldn’t feel. His slaves were hidden by his coat in one moment, gone when the coat flapped open again in the next.
He held the rifle with its bayonet, but the weapon was sagging too, not falling apart, but drooping like the materials were at melting temperatures. When he shifted position, the sun remained behind him, as if the corners of it were anchored to his shoulders. A pale halo.
The painted eyes, at least, were gone. There was only darkness there.
Taking him in helped to divorce my brain from the invasion of my personal space, and I managed to get my thoughts on track, taking in our general circumstances.
Fuuuuuuuuuck, I thought.
His little movements were making the landscape change, and I found myself adjusting my footing, to ensure I could move if I had to. That was Rose’s cue to loosen the hug and look up at Conquest.
“Fuck,” she whispered, echoing my thought.
“The meeting didn’t go so well,” I said.
“You don’t think you’re understating it a bit?”
“I’m understating it a lot. See, the thing is-”
The Lord lowered his weapon, letting the butt-end of it hit the ground, interrupting me.
The stones and snow had moved and resettled, in the wake of the impact. He was molding our surroundings.
I glanced at the exit. No way we could just run out.
“I did not mean to disturb you. Take a moment to yourselves,” Conquest said.
“Really?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “Why?”
“Blake,” Rose said.
I could feel the fingernails again, and that was excuse enough to push her hands away and distance myself. She let me.
“Let’s not question his… generosity,” she said.
“Giving succor to the weak is a tool for control,” Conquest said. He turned, and with a sweep of his hand, he dashed away the snow from the hilltop, leaving only flat stone floor. I winced as trace amounts of the snow hit the walls and came back my way, stinging, cold, and wet. Rose ducked her head down, and I used my hand to help shield her face.
Steam and mist were rising off of us and the newly exposed floor. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold freezing the moisture in the air or the ambient heat evaporating it. At the same time, the air was dry enough that I had to try twice to clear my throat.
The hilltop was now more of a dais, a raised, flat circle of cut stone. The drop down the sides seemed more precarious now.
Conquest continued, “…Break a man utterly, and he may well adore you for the simplest things, like bread, water, and relief from torture. He will hate you too, but one can control them while the heart is swayed by love, and chain them away in darkness when it is controlled by the hatred.”
“Doesn’t it kind of defeat the point if you tell them how you’re manipulating them?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Conquest said. “Allow me to demonstrate… If you remain calm and quiet, I will allow you a moment to talk amongst yourselves. If you do not, I threaten torments that would haunt you for the remainder of your life. Which do you choose?”