by Patrick, Den
Perhaps it was just as well. Lucien didn’t consider himself an Orfano. Poor with the blade and unremarkable at many subjects, ‘singularly unspectacular’ had been Superiore Giancarlo’s latest rebuke. He could reinvent himself as Sinistro, become more than the sum of his abysmal testings and ragged reputation. As Sinistro he could rise above being ‘the boy who ran from the raven’. Lucien was tied to incompetence and insecurity; Sinistro didn’t have to be fettered by such labels.
‘I’ve got the day off,’ he replied cheerfully, having negotiated his way into his britches without loss of dignity. ‘Think I’m going to practise some forms with D’arzenta. After that Professore Virmyre said we should attend a lecture by Dottore Angelicola. They say he has a corpse to dissect.’
‘And I suppose you’re dying to see it, you grotesque child.’
‘Virmyre says it’s biology. I have to go. I think it’s disgusting actually.’ He wrinkled his nose and grimaced.
‘Mind that the dottore doesn’t dissect you. You know how he is about Orfano.’
‘It’s fine. My scalpel is bigger than his.’ Lucien drew his sword with a flourish and sketched out a few thrusts and parries. Rafaela rolled her eyes.
‘And after that?’
‘After that I’m going to help Camelia out for a bit. We’re having gnocchi tonight.’ He grinned. The prospect of spending the afternoon in the kitchen pleased him no end. Rafaela said nothing, smiling at him warmly. He continued dressing himself, tucking a knife into the top of his boot and concealing another within his jacket, recent additions to his armoury at D’arzenta’s insistence.
He was careful to leave his apartment the moment Ella did, for fear the Majordomo would appear, like the dreadful raven, as if from nowhere. He checked himself briefly in the mirror by the door, content his long black hair hid his deformity. He’d even consented to let Camelia cut off the worst of the split ends, making him look halfway respectable.
Lucien locked the door to his apartment and strode along the corridors, jogging down stairs, arriving at the junction where House Fontein connected to King’s Keep. The guards nodded to him more from duty than respect. Lucien flicked a lazy salute in a way he knew infuriated the career soldiers.
They muttered between themselves and tried to ignore him.
‘You could use a shave,’ he drawled and went on his way, knowing the guards would be flicking their fingertips from under their stubbly chins behind his back.
The centre of King’s Keep was a largely unknown quantity. Each of the four houses adjoined the central structure, linked to each other by a poorly lit corridor that ran the circumference of the keep at ground level. There was the usual stifling bureaucracy of the gate guards, who insisted on doing searches. They had nothing better to do after all. Gate duty was seen as punishment among the soldiery, given to those too lazy, too incompetent or too old to be effective. Outbreaks of corruption would occur every now and then, only to be rooted out by Giancarlo. The guards were, in truth, as decorative as gargoyles but much less useful. No one really believed that inter-house squabbles would escalate into assassination. Only the Orfano were watched closely, and Lucien tired of the suspicious gazes lingering on his every step.
The grand corridor of the King’s Keep was also the main artery into the king’s own chambers. Doors fully twelve feet high towered over passers-by, leading to the heart of Demesne. The passage itself was ribbed with buttresses supporting the outer wall. Lucien imagined being inside the hollow chest of some giant petrified snake. It was here, in this dank gloom, that Lucien saw the Majordomo.
And he was not alone.
Behind the hooded figure were three women and a man, all wearing fine clothes, tailored in the same cut, the style antiquated. All were elderly and bore traces of dusty neglect. There was a perverse formality about them, as if they were ancient quadruplets whose parents still dressed them, twee and yet sinister. All wore tar-black spectacles which reflected the lamplight. Lucien crept closer, his curiosity outweighing his desire to flee the lurching presence of the Majordomo.
Hiding in the shadow of one of the corridor’s buttresses, Lucien studied them. Each of the bespectacled strangers had a hand extended to rest on the shoulder of the person in front. The foremost rested her hand on the Majordomo’s shoulder, creating a sombre chain of seemingly sightless individuals. Each clasped a violin in their left hand, surprising since instruments were such a precious rarity in Demesne. Lucien furrowed his brow in confusion, forcing himself against the cold stone, desperately hoping to avoid detection. The Majordomo busied himself at the doors to the King’s Keep with an unusual two-pronged key. Some mechanism inside the lock churned, followed by the sound of grinding. Metal chains rattled from behind the thick wood. Lucien waited, suddenly much too warm, heart beating loud in his ears.
The doors opened inward, their ancient oak grating on the flagstones until they came to rest with a shudder. The Domo led the blind quartet into the king’s chambers, his staff tapping and rasping on the stone floor, its amber headpiece winking in the gloom. Lucien stared after them, his pulse racing, not daring to breathe. The corridor was deserted. He set off, closing the distance between his hiding place and the cavernous entrance at a flat run. The rattling of chains greeted him, loud and fast. The mechanism had been released. And then the doors swung shut, booming closed in his face. Lucien hit the wood and bounced back, his pride receiving the greater wound.
‘Fine,’ he muttered, resuming his spot next to the buttress. He glowered at the offending portal, wondering who else had been privileged to pass beneath the ancient arch. A few people passed by, eyeing him warily, but none challenged him. Being Orfano, he could generally do as he pleased.
It was impossible to gauge how long he stood there. The darkness combined with the muted music made Lucien feel as if he were outside time itself. He found himself floating, anxieties and curiosities holding him in place, becalmed on an ocean of worry.
The doors grated inward again, hinges groaning, the grease on them long dried to a black crust. The Majordomo appeared, an ashen shade, his amber-topped staff clasped in his hand as ever.
‘I had wondered if you might still be here.’ That bored flat monotone. Lucien stepped out of the shadows, slouching insolently.
‘I want to see the king,’ he said, thrusting his jaw out, trying for a pugnacious mien. His fingers trembled and sought the comfort of his blade, the worn leather of the hilt reassuring.
The Majordomo started laughing, a horrible thing. Wheezing wet exhalations filled the passage until the tall figure coughed loudly, folding at the waist. The laughing, if indeed it had been been laughing, was replaced by a dreadful hacking. The Domo held out a hand to steady himself on the wall, then regained his composure. Lucien stepped closer, his hand still clasping the hilt of his blade. The Domo reached beneath his robes. Lucien nearly drew on instinct, the urge to unleash his blade almost painful to resist. The emaciated long-fingered hand brought forth a handkerchief. Lucien sighed and stepped back, tension draining out of him. The Domo dabbed the corners of his mouth a few times.
‘Are you ill?’ Lucien felt like an idiot the moment the words took shape.
‘Old. Ill. Name me the difference.’ The Domo was more phantom-like than ever in the gloom.
‘How old are you?’
‘It becomes so difficult to count. Not more than a hundred and one by my reckoning.’
Lucien took a step back, a sneer coming to his lips. He was positive the Domo was telling the truth. He’d been mocked enough to know the distinction between sincerity and sarcasm.
‘I assume I can share this little secret with you,’ droned the Domo. ‘After all, you kept the business at the sanatorio to yourself, no?’
‘I didn’t tell a soul,’ Lucien whispered. ‘I guessed you’d kill anyone who knew about it. I can’t stop you killing me, but you don’t have to hurt anyone else on my account.’
The Domo paused to consider this for a moment. His hand dabbed the corn
ers of his mouth with the kerchief again. He nodded slowly, and an insinuation of a smile stole over his parchment-like lips.
‘Perhaps you have a sharper mind than I gave you credit for.’
‘You hurt anyone on my account and I’ll see you dead.’ Lucien’s hands were trembling freely now, equal parts fury and cold fear.
‘And possess some measure of conviction too, it would seem.’ Another ghost of a smile from the Domo, this last a definite mockery.
‘Why are you so old? Why don’t you die like other men?’ asked Lucien, sounding affronted.
‘Curious too.’ The Domo wheezed once before continuing. ‘The king. He has magics from a time long ago. A time before we washed up on these shores. He can alter people to his choosing. Make them live longer, encourage certain attributes. I may be over one hundred years old but I feel no older than fifty-five.’
‘Why the coughing then?’ Lucien pressed.
‘I am ill. The king can do many things, but he is far from expert on diseases. Especially his own.’
The Domo resumed coughing, more violently this time. His staff clattered to the floor, the sound reverberating down the corridor. He reached out a withered hand for the wall, already beginning to fold in on himself. Lucien caught him as he fell, struggling under the weight. It was unnatural one so thin could weigh so much. Lucien lowered him to the ground as delicately as he could, grunting with the effort. He stood there waiting for help. None came. The shadow of an idea scuttled across Lucien’s mind, the dagger beneath his jacket sang to him. It would be the work of seconds. He thought back to the night on the sanatorio roof; the sound of the girl resisting Giancarlo still haunted him. Mere seconds, a sharp knife, and the king’s steward would never again spirit away the helpless.
A procession of troubling thoughts trampled the urge to kill: where would he conceal the corpse? Would he be a suspect in the murder? Would Giancarlo continue the abductions in the Domo’s absence? It was too much for one Orfano to take on, or so he told himself.
Lucien struggled under the weight of the man, dragging him to House Contadino past startled gate guards to a small sitting room. There was no one there of course; all the servants who rested here were at their tasks. Lucien was sweating freely as he hefted the long-limbed bulk of the Domo onto a couch. Once this had been a windowless storeroom. Dilapidated furniture had been given a new lease of life by house craftsmen. A particularly hideous candelabra dominated a scuffed sideboard. Lucien lit the candles, grateful for the warm light that infused the room. He turned, seeing the form of the Majordomo sprawled across the couch, chiding himself for not killing the bastardo. He most certainly deserved it for the part he had played outside the sanatorio that night.
Another idea slithered into his mind, unwelcome but difficult to resist. Lucien peeled back one of the Domo’s voluminous sleeves to find short spiny growths extending from his forearms, flattened backwards, running toward the elbow. Lucien forced down a surge of panic. Golia and Dino had the very same spines.
Bile soured his throat as he lifted the heavy cowl of the robe, forcing it back above the line of the Domo’s nose. He fell back with a cry, his scabbard catching a low table awkwardly. Unsure of what he had seen, he crawled across the carpet, lifting the hood once more. There were human eyes, but all were small and mismatched. Lucien counted six of them scattered across a high forehead and felt his stomach turn. The Domo’s eye sockets were just two twisted indentations. The man had a narrow face, his chin and nose pointed, skin leathery and deeply lined.
Something happened to the Domo’s chest just as Lucien was about to withdraw in revulsion. It came again, a twitching movement, like something stirring in sleep. Too great a movement to be the rising and falling of breath. And there was the smell. An unwholesome scent permeated the room, not of unwashed flesh, rather the sweet tang of rot. Three flies drifted in lazy spirals above the Domo. Lucien looked toward the door, plucking at his lip with forefinger and thumb. He knelt quickly, retrieving a knife from his boot. It was simple quick work to cut open the fabric. Starting under the Domo’s chin, Lucien split the garment to the navel, sawing through the rough weave. He dropped the knife, holding the back of his hand to his mouth. His stomach protested and he ran to the side of the room, heaving into the bucket of firewood.
For long shaking seconds he stood, bent over double, hands clutching his knees, trembling with the force of his unease. Cold sweat sprang out across his brow.
‘And now you know what I am.’
‘Hardly a surprise,’ grunted Lucien. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t realise sooner.’ The acid foulness of vomit stained the air between them.
‘You and I are much alike, Lucien.’
‘No, we’re not. We’re Orfano, and that’s where the similarities end.’
The Majordomo had recovered himself, the cowl pulled down over his many eyes, sleeves smoothed down over his forearms. He held the cut fabric of his robes together with a massive fist.
Lucien’s curiosity could brook no further silence.
‘What were you doing with that girl?’
‘Ah, the girl.’ The Domo bowed his head a moment. ‘Her mind had fled. She was a danger to herself and her family. That is why we have the sanatorio; it is for the sicknesses of the mind. The king has no jurisdiction there; he deals only in the flesh.’
‘She was suffering from madness?’
‘Yes. It is an unfortunate side effect of this island. The damp settles on weak lungs while the winters unsettle the mind.’
‘So, so you weren’t ab—’ Lucien paused. Remembering the harsh texture of the gargoyles beside him. How Giancarlo had cuffed the girl into submission. The rope burns on her slender wrists.
‘Abducting her? No.’ Another grim smile from beneath the cowl. ‘But there are many in Landfall and Demesne who are ashamed of madness.’ The Domo sat forward, pressing his fingertips together. His fingernails were ragged and chewed. ‘They fear the diseases of the mind are contagious. This is not the case. People fear things they do not understand. This is why we take people at night.’
Lucien said nothing, not sure what he was hearing. The Domo fetched up the knife from the dusty floorboards, then stood, towering over Lucien. He offered the hilt toward the boy.
‘There is no need to be afraid, Lucien. I am sorry if you have been worried by this thing.’
Lucien took the knife, not returning it to the sheath in his boot. He turned the blade over in his hands, looking at the inscrutable darkness beneath the cowl of the Domo.
‘And if I succumb to madness?’
‘Then I’m afraid you’ll go to the sanatorio too, although I find that outcome unlikely. Both your spirit and your mind are too strong, Lucien.’
The steward turned his back and passed through the doorway, leaving Lucien wondering how much truth, if any, he’d just been told.
11
The Macabre Machine
THE CEMETRY
– Febbraio 315
Lucien awoke on the cold floor of the mausoleum, just a dozen feet away from the final resting place of Stephano, sixth and longest-reigning Duke of Prospero. A flag lay atop the sarcophagus, a neatly folded triangle of purple and black. The house had flourished under Stephano’s guidance: craftsmanship had reached new levels of wonder, old methods refined, the prosaic now meticulous. Goods and artefacts commanded prices impossible to imagine just a decade ago. While Stephano was most certainly a buffoon in the public realm, he was a canny operator in his office. Few who left that room could claim the better part of any bargain struck. There was little House Prospero had not been able to achieve when combined with his wife’s hungry ambition. The duchess had brought a battery of schemes and plans to the wedding bed, not discounting a wealth of rumour and scandal. Never overburdened with chastity, it was told Salvaza counted Duke Emilio Contadino among her conquests, which made her marriage to Stephano all the more intriguing. Jealous members of other houses would sneer the word mercantile behind their hands, a pejorat
ive for the newly rich. House Fontein had been forced to strike up an alliance in order to retain some standing. Contadino on the other hand had been relegated to a house of farmers and dullards. Some whispered that Lord Contadino’s reduction in influence had been a vengeful scheme long harboured by Salvaza Prospero. One did not bed her without some cost or consequence, it would seem. Lucien tried to imagine what it would be like to marry into that empire of commerce, being wed to Stephania. Small chance of that now he was outcast. His goal was not one of attaining status, but simply surviving. Beyond that he simply wished to see Rafaela one more time.
An unkindness of ravens heckled outside the mausoleum, their voices carrying over the windless skies. Lucien shivered and felt ridiculous. The graveyard was barely twenty minutes’ ride from Demesne. The complete darkness of the countryside had made escape impossible. He’d ventured beyond Demesne’s environs just a handful of times, and always by daylight. The poor visibility, combined with a lack of destination, had delivered him here. The sepulchre was a welcome refuge, shielding him from the night and the questing gazes of House Fontein.
He pined for hot water and soap, for plush towels and freshly baked bread. A curse escaped his lips as he pushed himself to his feet. His bruises grumbled, making themselves known across his back, writhing pain on his ribs. His shoulder had resumed its familiar dull ache. The rain, so prevalent these days, was absent, leaving a sombre but unthreatening grey sky. The sun itself was no more than a wan white disc at the edge of the world. He’d need to leave now if he were to escape the search parties sent by Giancarlo.
Head bowed, he approached the vast sarcophagus of Duke Stephano, laying one hand on the chilly stone. He thought about the night of La Festa.
You’ll take care of her, my boy? Tell me you’ll take care of her? the duke had all but begged, drunk and farcical in a powdered wig.