"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never never forget!"
"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it." -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Death's bizarre proposal occupied so much of Kilan's thoughts that he forgot entirely about the accusation she'd made against his fiancée until the day came for him to finally meet the Duchess.

Duchess Yse of Odgeiros was, he supposed, an attractive woman. Her blonde hair, a rare sight in the Carann Empire, was brushed until it shone, and she was impeccably dressed. She was polite, and talked enough to fill the frequent awkward gaps in the conversation when Kilan was unsure of what to say. The only problem was, she seemed to be too eager to make herself pleasant. He couldn't put his finger on what it was about her, but there was something that set alarm bells ringing. Without meaning to, his thoughts returned to Death's visit and the words, "The Duchess of Odgeiros is involved in smuggling."

It didn't matter even if she was, he tried to assure himself. They weren't marrying for love, and as long as she didn't drag him into anything illegal he could turn a blind eye to crimes she might possibly be committing.

The wedding date was set and preparations were well underway when disaster struck. In later years, Kilan would look back and try to think of something, anything he could have done differently. He could have not rehearsed his vows in what he thought was the privacy of his own room, he supposed, but even then Death might have found a way to throw a spanner in the works. What Death wanted, Death got. He learnt that to the cost of himself and a good many other people.

It began when, idiot that he was, he decided to rehearse his vows before going to bed. Marin had regaled him at dinnertime with stories of relatives who made hilarious, strange or just plain embarrassing mistakes during their wedding ceremonies. Kilan had left the dinner table with an unshakable conviction that he would not be another Great-great-great-Grandmother Nyènroy, who had forgotten her soon-to-be husband's name and referred to him as "what's-his-name" in front of all the guests, or another Great-Uncle Raoch, who had forgotten his vows in the middle of the ceremony and had to ask the priest to stop while the best man wrote out what he was supposed to say.

Feeling rather foolish, Kilan stood in front of his bedroom mirror and began to recite his vows. He got through most of them without incident. The trouble came when he reached the final lines.

"I, Grand Duke Kilan raunSærnor, ursoArásy chlang-il-Amendath-ag-Caranilnav tar Zjurkyu--" He couldn't help grimacing at his nightmarish surname, and made a mental note to be sure not to do that during the actual ceremony, "--hereby take you to be my lawfully wedded wife. Do you agree?"

"I do," said a voice at his ear.

Afterwards, Kilan would never admit how loudly he screamed.

"You!"

"Me," Death agreed. "I'm glad you changed your mind. I thought you would, but it's so hard to be sure with mortals."

"Changed my mind?" Kilan repeated blankly. "What are you talking about? Changed my mind about what?"

"Our marriage." Death looked as baffled as Kilan felt.

"Wha--?" Kilan stared at her, replaying those two words over and over in an attempt to make sense of them. "I haven't changed my mind on that. I can't marry you even if I wanted to. I've promised to marry Yse."

Death's eyebrows shot up. A wide and maliciously amused grin split her face in two. "Oh dear. What a pity, then, that you've just married me."

"That isn't funny," Kilan grumbled. "Have you nothing better to do than show up in my room to play a joke on me?"

"Oh, I think it's funny." Death's grin, if possible, grew even wider. "But it's no joke. You asked me to be your wife, and I agreed. That means we are married."

"Asked you? When did I..." Realisation dawned. "No, you're completely wrong! I was rehearsing my vows, not proposing to you. We aren't married."

"The intent behind the words doesn't matter," Death said, lounging back in a chair beside the fireplace as if she owned the place. Kilan refused to think that maybe she did. "The words themselves are all that matter. You said you took me to be your lawfully wedded wife and asked if I agreed. I said I did. Therefore, we are married."

"No, we aren't."

"Yes, we are."

"No, we-- What are we, toddlers? I will not get into this argument with you! We aren't married. That's final. Now go away."

~~~~

Kilan tried to forget the entire conversation. He would not let Death's delusions deprive him of a good night's sleep! But it was no use. After tossing and turning for five hours, and when the first light of sunrise was beginning to stain the horizon reddish-purple, he had to admit he would get no sleep tonight.

He got up, changed out of his pyjamas, and opened his window. His room was on the second storey of the mansion's East Wing, facing out towards the lake and the horizon beyond them. Beneath his window, running along the side of the house, was a cobblestone pathway. A line of hemac[1] trees grew on the outside of it. The branches of one of them reached far enough over the path for Kilan to jump onto it from his window and from there drop down onto the path. When he was a child he had often used this way of avoiding his tutors and governesses. It had become more difficult now he was older, but he could still manage it.

Once on the pathway, he paused for a moment to decide what to do now. The cold early morning air made him shiver and wish he had brought a coat.

Without consciously meaning to, he wandered in the direction of the statue garden. He didn't realise where he was going until he looked up and found himself in front of the statue of the woman and the wolf. He stopped and stared at it. From where he was standing almost directly beneath it, the wolf's teeth appeared to be fastened around the woman's throat, and its body hid her spear from his sight. It looked from here as if the wolf had won, he realised with a shiver.

Kilan firmly refused to consider the possibility that might have any significance to his own life. It was just a statue, for gods' sake. It meant nothing.

He climbed the steps and passed the statue of Empress Sorőwe. The sight of it brought back memories of that dreadful day eleven years ago. He was standing almost where Varan had landed, he thought. That thought made him shudder and walk on quickly.

Thinking of Varan inevitably led his thoughts back to Death, and so to his current predicament.

Either Death was lying, or she was telling the truth. If she was lying, she was behaving like a spoilt brat determined to get what she wanted. If she was telling the truth...

If she was telling the truth, he was doomed. Melodramatic though such a statement seemed even in his head, he couldn't think of a more accurate way to describe it. If she was telling the truth, he would have to break off his engagement for -- as far as anyone knew -- no apparent reason. That would set tongues wagging from here to Gankolzasqes[2]. If he broke off his engagement, his parents would demand to know why. What was he to tell them? "Sorry, I can't marry the Duchess because I've accidentally married Death"?

A treacherous part of his mind whispered that it wouldn't be so terrible to be married to Death. He suppressed that thought with extreme prejudice.

Kilan wandered through the mansion's grounds without noticing where he was. It was only when he almost walked off an embankment and into Lake Näcqay that he became aware of his surroundings. He scrambled back hurriedly to keep himself from falling. Once safely back on the path, he took stock of where he was and suddenly realised how much danger he had been in.

There were some parts of the lake where -- whether due to landslides or a quirk of geography -- the bottom abruptly dropped almost straight down, creating extremely deep underwater "pits" with strong currents. For some reason, these were especially common near the shore, where one would expect the water to be shallow. To fall into one of those pits without anyone near to help would be deadly.

Some morbid part of his mind wondered what would have happened if he hadn't pulled back in time. Would he have been able to pull himself up onto the bank before the current carried him under? What would Death have had to say if she had to collect his soul so soon after their supposed wedding? What would he have said to her?

Kilan got up and continued along the path beside the lake. He took care to stay as far away from the edge as he could.

The sun had fully appeared over the hills at the far side of the lake, the birds had begun to sing, and from the mansion there had begun to be a clatter of doors being unlocked before Kilan came to any sort of decision on what to do in this predicament.

Curiously enough, it was only when he found himself in the statue garden again that he had an idea.

"Empress Sorőwe!" he exclaimed aloud, frightening off a pair of ximu[3] birds that had been twittering in a tree overhead.

Empress Sorőwe had been noted for the legal reforms she had ordered. She, if anyone, could tell him if he really was married to Death.

There was only one problem. Sorőwe had been dead for almost five hundred years. To speak to her, he would have to get Death to take him to the Land of the Dead.

Well, nothing else for it. He wanted this fine mess Death had gotten him into sorted out once and for all.

"Death!" he called, hoping none of his family -- or worse, the servants -- were around to hear him. "Death, I need your help!"

No answer. The statue garden remained empty except for him and the statues of various relatives.

"Death?"

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught a glimpse of black feathers vanishing behind the statue of Great-great-grandfather Korram. He turned, but there was no sign of anyone.

"Are you sulking?"

There wasn't even the ghost of a whisper on the wind.

Kilan scowled. "Fine, throw your tantrum! Act like a child all you want to! See if I care!"

~~~~

Death was not sulking. She was merely... brooding. That was a much better word, she thought. Far more dignified.

She could not explain, even to herself, why it was so important to her that Kilan admitted he loved her. She didn't know if she loved him. She didn't think she did. And even if she did, what did it matter? He was just one mortal in an entire universe.

The fiasco of their "wedding" had mostly be a misunderstanding. Mortals, especially teenage mortals, were changeable as weather vanes. She had thought it odd that Kilan would be proposing to what he thought was an empty room, but had chalked it up to the often incomprehensible behaviour that came as naturally as breathing to mortals.

Look what that had got her. A husband who insisted they weren't married and who was probably still planning to marry some other woman. The hypocrisy of being offended that Kilan would consider marrying someone else while being married to her, when she herself had multiple husbands, escaped her.

Unfortunately for her, it did not escape Ranoryin.

"I thought we had a deal." The former Empress's voice was as sweet as darkwort[4], and just as deadly.

"We do," Death said warily. "And I have not broken it. Our deal was that I would not lay a finger on him without his consent, nor do anything to hurt him. I have done neither."

"You also promised to do nothing I would not agree with." ...Oh. Well, damn. "So, I have begun organising rehearsals of the opera The Warlord's Kidnapped Bride." Death stared at Ranoryin in what could only be described as mortal terror. Ranoryin smiled gleefully. "Unless you want us to perform a trashy, sappy romance story in your throne room, you will put this right. Now."

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] hemac = A tree very similar to an elm tree.

[2] Gankolzasqes = The province of the Carann Empire furthest away from the capital, thus used idiomatically to refer to any distant, out-of-the-way place.

[3] ximu = Pheasant-like birds with purple plumage.

[4] darkwort = A highly poisonous plant with a sugary flavour.