In the moment the hatchet dropped, her eyes flew open.
It was not a clean cut. The hatchet stuck in the tibia, and Flora was not strong enough to tear it free. Blood burst up from the saphenous vein in tall ribbons that throbbed in time with their mother’s heartbeat. Fast, like a caged butterfly, then slower, and slower. The first spurt caught Flora in the eye, and she fell back on her bottom.
Their mother screamed at a terrible, ragged frequency. It was an animal noise, the kind of noise a human can only make when they see the other side of the abyss. Flora was shouting, too. “Florian! Fl-Florian, d-do something!”
He did the only thing he could. He put his hands on his mother’s face and used his power to burn the inside of her skull to ash through her eye sockets. He had never used magic so freely. It tore through him, rippling beneath his skin in sharp, cruel waves. He screwed his eyes shut, bit the inside of his cheek, dug his fingers so hard a thumb slipped into her eye socket. His mouth filled with the taste of copper. It stung like a burst pox mark, made his veins feel like they were filling up with boiled mercury: hot and vicious and deadly.
When Florian pulled back, his mother looked calm. Pristine, except for her black eyes. The stream of blood became a trickle.
She was already dead when we came to see her, Florian thought. We offered her a mercy. She didn’t go slow like Father did. She would have hated to go like that. It was important to Mother to be beautiful.
When Florian looked up, he saw that Flora’s bedclothes were all askew. The clasp of her nightgown had fallen open to reveal a black scab in the hollow where her neck dipped in to meet her collarbone. He reached out to touch it, knowing that his face told her exactly what he saw.
Finally, her bravado cracked. She threw herself into Florian’s arms and began to sob. Flora did not let anyone see her cry, disdained anything that could be construed as girlish fragility. But there was no one left to hear her but Florian. The twins, alone in a house of ghosts, held each other until the fire died and their mother’s blood congealed on the carpet.
“Florian, stay with me until the end,” she begged, rubbing her snotty nose all over his bedclothes.
He answered, “Where would I go?”
* * *
“Florian?”
No answer. Johann snapped the front door shut behind him and swept in through the foyer, searching for any sign of his master. The sitting room, the grand hall, the kitchen … Florian was in none of his usual haunts: not the bedroom nor the office nor the library. It seemed like a new locked door opened every day in Leickenbloom Manor now that mischief and dark sorcery had thawed out the long winter of its master’s depression.
“Florian! I need to talk to you!”
Johann’s voice echoed off the narrow walls, the tall ceilings; it slithered down the whole yawning length of the main hall and bounced back to him. He stopped at the edge of the very rich—and very dusty—woven rug that tracked from one end of the hall to the other. To his left was Florian’s bedroom, to his right a peeling impressionist portrait of the manor from when it was first built. For some reason, his toe hesitated when he attempted to nudge it over the line.
Florian forbade me, his bones said. Well, fuck him, his brain replied. But still, he found that he could not move. He stood like that—one heel raised, his hand on the wall, eyebrows furrowed—not feeling the seconds click by despite the clock ticking at the end of the hall. He felt something peculiar rise inside of him—something old and glassy, familiar like a song heard from behind a closed window. Johann remembered … a corpse, spit up by the tide, caught on a serrated outcropping of rock by a fold of pale, pimpled skin. It was leaking a thread of yellow bile; bloated, foaming, a slick sheen of fat … black growths bubbling up where the skin gathered. The Thing knelt beside it and examined it for minutes. Hours. Before he had a name he—
“Johann.” Florian’s voice broke the spell of memory. Johann looked up to see his master standing at the other end of the hall, hands on his hips and head tipped to one side. “How long have you been standing there?”
Johann’s eyes flickered towards the clock, read the position of the hour hand with dismay that he hoped did not show on his face. Two hours. He smirked and said out loud, “Five minutes. Didn’t you hear me hollering?”
Florian stared at him a moment longer than was comfortable, as if he was trying to solve Johann’s equation, searching for a lie in his tone. Johann slipped his hands into his pockets and slouched casually, raising his eyebrows in a manner that invited inquiry. C’mon, dewdrop, why would I lie about something stupid like this?
Florian sighed and brushed past him. “I was in the library.”
“Really? I checked there.”
“The other library,” Florian said, untucking a very old book from beneath his elbow. “The private one. It is very well insulated. Why didn’t you come to find me?”
“I didn’t—”
Florian did not wait for his explanation. “It doesn’t matter,” he chirped. “Follow me. I’ve something to show you.”
Johann’s heart thumped and he spun on his heel to follow Florian like a dog. Things had changed between them since the night of the dinner party. Johann had never fucked someone more than once, and had certainly never fucked someone slowly or ponderously, as anything but opportunistic—and often unsatisfying—curiosity. He’d never met a person who remembered he existed five minutes after turning away from him, or who cared to learn what he was called.
Johann had always thought himself an exceptional reader of people. You can learn a lot about someone’s inner life if allowed to examine them the way their shadow does—close enough to breathe down their neck, but unnoticed, unremarked upon, invisible. But Florian watched back; he learned, adjusted, and could predict Johann’s movements and moods now. A strange thing, to be studied like a pinned moth. Acceptable only because Florian was not quite human, either, was he? Something inside him burned brighter. A curiosity, he had called himself before, in a glass jar. If only he knew how true that was. Johann could not help but look at him with eyes coated in glass—curious and shining, refracted endlessly into split images of light. Was this what it meant to know something else’s name?
They went down, down farther into the house than Johann had ever been. Florian carried a heavy set of iron keys at his belt and used three of them as they went, pausing to rattle through the artefacts with the caged patience of someone who has got almost everything they want. He led Johann down a spiral staircase of uneven stone. The crisp chill that hung in the air turned damp as they descended into the basement. The scent of metal and mold clung to the cracks in the wall.
At the bottom was an ancient cellar, carved into the bedrock beneath the mansion and surely a hundred years older than it. The pillars that supported it were hunched with age, giving the room a disarming shape that tricked the eyes when viewed from the center. A flick of Florian’s smallest finger filled the room with dancing orange light that cast ghost-shadows on the black walls.
“This is it,” Florian said as he stepped off the last stair. He’d laid out his laboratory along the walls: wooden tables filled with brass instruments that held vials of blood, samples of seal fat, and, simmering above an open flame, something viscous, black, and foul. Florian set his book down with a thump that rattled the hollow glass. Johann stepped over the remnants of a paint inscription on the ground as he passed beneath the room’s keystone. His eyes traced the edges of the drawing, trying to divine its shape. It was smudged at the center and so old that the humidity had burned the skeleton of it into the floor forever.
“As I was saying upstairs”—Johann skulked around the wide end of the room, sticking to the shadows on instinct—“we’ve got a problem.”
“Oh?” Florian hummed as he checked his equipment, paying Johann no heed at all.
“A … a Mage Hunter, is that what you call them?” Johann braced his elbow on the far end of the wooden counter and leant into it, watching Florian work. “Woma
n with a pistol, seems to know about you, if not … about you. The Ambassador’s ornamental woman; she’s been undercover this whole time.”
“Ah yes,” Florian replied. “She didn’t drink the second toast. I thought that was odd.”
Johann flattened his brow. “You knew?”
“Well, I suspected. But I passed by her near the market yesterday and she did not spare me a second glance. She’s quite good, but if she were smart I would have been her first suspect. It’s unfortunate that she attended that dinner, but if we take special care to keep out from under her nose from now on, I’ll do my best to make sure that she doesn’t think anything about me at all.”
“You could have told me,” Johann pouted.
Florian snorted. “And, pray tell, what difference would that have made?”
“I could have”—Johann pulled the tip of his thumb across his neck—“taken care of it for you.”
Florian brushed the idea off with a dismissive hand gesture. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you had killed her they would have sent a dozen more. Besides, I’m almost finished.”
“Finished with what? Your special project?”
Florian gestured for Johann to come closer. Johann obeyed, hovering over his shoulder like a gargoyle. “See this blood?” Florian pointed to one of the vials at the center of his collection. It was darker than the other samples, almost black. The surface of the blood had grown a thick membrane of clot the texture of a scab.
“That’s not how it normally ages.”
Florian tapped the vial and the blood jumped. “Blood need not die when it leaves the body. In the right hands, it can survive to tell you many things.” He glanced at Johann and flashed a brilliant, mischievous grin. “Herr Ambassador’s delegation was meant to head back to Mittengelt this week, but I’ve heard that he’s holed up in his rooms and has not seen or spoken to any of his aides in nearly three days.”
“And this … is his blood.”
“Mmm. His blood, riddled with plague but still alive. I’m still several steps from where I wish to be.” He opened his dusty old book and thumbed through the pages. “My grandmother once told me that there were traces of magical theory hidden in our family heirlooms.”
“The same grandmother who bashed her son’s head against the garden wall?” Johann wondered with a drawl. He went to touch one of the vials, but Florian slapped his hand away.
“She’d gone senile in her old age. Either she called me Flora or she called me by her own son’s name, but she never recognized the magic in me. And so she told me many useful things. I think … hm, I think I’ve identified the cipher, but I’m missing all the keys.” Florian leant forward, a knuckle on his chin, to examine the blackened blood. “I need you to do a favour for me,” he said.
Johann slithered up behind him and wound his arms around his waist. He nudged his nose beneath the soft curtain of Florian’s hair and found the pulse at his neck.
“Ask me nicely,” he whispered. Florian jerked back his elbow to throw Johann off, but it was a weak gesture, perfunctory. All a part of the song and dance.
“I was asking nicely,” Florian bit out, going still beneath Johann’s hands. Johann dug his fingers in deep and spun Florian around, pinning him against the edge of the table, one palm set to either side of his rib cage. The vials rattled violently.
“Nicer, then.” Johann dipped down to kiss him, relishing the way Florian still trembled a little—entirely unbidden—when they were close.
Florian turned his mouth away. “D-don’t,” he stuttered, “d-don’t. Th-the glass will break—”
“Well, that’s entirely in your hands, isn’t it, sugarsnap?” Johann purred, brushing back Florian’s hair. “Nothing gets broken if you don’t struggle.”
The words sat between them for a few moments. Florian met his eyes steadily, a defiant set to his jaw that didn’t reach the rest of his face. He didn’t pull away when Johann tried to kiss him this time—he opened his mouth under it. Johann bit into him, devoured him. Florian hooked a hand around his neck and fumbled the other one into his pocket as Johann slipped his long fingers beneath one knee and hiked him up onto the worktable.
“I told you … to mind the … the glass—” Florian hissed between kisses.
Johann slammed his hand down beside his thigh, pushed the ancient book aside to make room. “That’s your responsibility,” Johann reminded him.
Florian yanked something from his pocket as he got kissed again and scrabbled his hand against Johann’s chest. “Take this—”
Johann pulled back, but not far enough to cool the breath between them. He snapped the object from Florian’s hand and looked at it. A slip of paper—perfumed, dyed, no seal—with an address on it. “What do you want me to do with it?”
Florian smiled slyly and tossed his head, just enough to show an inch of pale skin above the frill of his collar. “I want you to fetch me back Grandmother’s silverware.”
* * *
When Flora died, he dragged her down the hall. Down the stairwell, down two whole flights into the front foyer. The air in the house was thick and foul. It took Florian an hour to hack one of the windows open with the bloodstained hatchet.
It was harder work to pull Flora’s corpse through the garden. An early frost had turned all the grass and nettles hard and sharp. They caught on her dress and filled her tangled hair with brambles. The moon made her skin look transparent, as if she were already a ghost. Only her weight in his arms was corporeal.
In children, the blisters formed mostly on the chest and stomach. They rarely climbed past the collarbone. Flora’s neck was swollen black and blue, but her face was unmarred. She looked like she was sleeping. Florian had kissed her cold lips, just to see if she would wake up, like a maiden in a Mittengelt fairy tale. Of course he knew it would not work. The middle kingdoms had forgotten the old ways. It would take a northern fairy tale to bring Flora back to him.
Because he loved her, he did as she had asked and took her corpse to the sea. He stuffed the body in a wheelbarrow and covered it with the blanket she slept with every night. She was heavy, as heavy as he was, so the trip to the docks was hard going. It was a quiet night; all the sailors and dock men were hiding in their tin-roof shacks with the blinds drawn shut to protect their families against the Wizard Baron’s plague. Florian and Flora could have been the only two people left in the entire world. Maybe he had willed everyone else out of existence.
Before he tipped the barrow over, he knelt down to whisper in her ear, “I told you, Flora. We’ll both live forever.”
He watched the waves lap over her white face until the tide carried her out. It gulped her down, swallowed her whole. It was not the first time he’d watched a body disappear like that.
* * *
The monster of Elendhaven’s nights waited until the streets were as black as oil before he slinked into the alley behind Ansley’s rented town house. It was easy to climb the slick wall, digging his knife into the crumbling mortar and his fingers into the nicks in the bricks themselves. He hung off the top ledge of the sill and ran a long, thin needle through the seam where the window closed, lifting the lock from the outside. When he pulled open the frosted glass, a wave of stale air hit him in the face, and he recoiled in shock—it stank like a latrine on a summer afternoon.
He plugged his nose theatrically as he stepped in through the window, although there was no one to watch him. Well, wasn’t that how it had been most of his life? Spinning a myth around himself even though no one was ever watching? It felt good in a perverse way to know that he had someone waiting at home who would be impressed by his impeccable performance. Who would pat his head and tell him that he did good. Like a dog, heh. Johann licked the last of Florian’s taste out of his mouth and kicked open the door to Ansley’s drawing room.
The suite was all gold-flecked floral patterns and low-burning kerosene lamps. Purple drapes with puffy chiffon stuffed between the layers. Silkfur-thread carpeting and ancient oak furnitu
re plundered from the abandoned mansions of ruined nobles long since moved to Mittengelt. The center table had feet carved to look like the hooves of the boars that once roamed the mountainside. A fossil from a different age. Johann wondered if it had once resided in Leickenbloom Manor as well. Fitting that there was detritus of Florian’s family scattered in every corner of the city, like bone and blood when a head is blown open by pistol fire.
Johann waltzed the circumference of the room, tapping all the paintings, just because he could. Florian had said that Ansley likely kept his family’s heirlooms tucked away in the cellar, but Johann found what he was looking for sitting pretty on a mantelpiece: a set of hand-wrought silver dinnerware. Each piece was stamped with the same seal Florian wore on his left hand. Johann picked a plate up and tipped it towards the light. The mural carved into it depicted the mouth of the harbour as a gate and, above it, the sun. He noticed that it was dented near the top, so he set his thumb in the depression and made a gouging motion. It gave way beneath his finger. A high yield of silver, nearly pure.
He hummed to himself as he swept the dinnerware into his satchel. Quick work, and easy, too, but on his way back to the window something stalled him in his tracks: a tow of curiosity as strong as the tide at daybreak. Why did Ansley’s impeccably decorated house stink worse than a beached seal? He remembered something Herr Charpentier had said the day they met: You’d think he’d have the decency to share since you’re putting them up. The Ambassador was here, laid up with Florian’s pernicious little germs.
Johann wanted to see it. No, he needed to see it, see what Florian Leickenbloom had accomplished with his blood. It would take only a moment, and surely Florian would be incensed were he to leave without investigation of the entire state of affairs. Why else would Florian have sent him here? For something as petty as a set of dinnerware?
The Monster of Elendhaven Page 7