“Didn’t really… What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m dead?”
Marius blinked. For once in his life he had absolutely no retort to make. Gerd tilted his head towards the balcony.
“So when do you think…?”
Marius snapped out of his reverie. “Some time in the last couple of months, is my guess.”
They pondered the dead woman together.
“Why, do you think?”
Marius bit his lip. “I don’t know. An overdose, maybe? Choked on a chicken bone? I’m not sure that’s the real question.”
“Then what is?”
“The real question is…” He broke away from his contemplation long enough to glance at Gerd. “Did it happen before or after she took power? And what’s happened to the mayor?”
“And which king is she talking about?”
They both turned back to the balcony. Mistress Fellipan was waiting, staring out across the crowd while the shocked murmuring died down.
“A dead woman in charge of dead stewards, creating an army of the dead.”
“Oh, no.”
Marius nodded. “I think we know what king.”
“But… why?”
“I don’t know.” The door to the gaol house was opening. Red-hooded figures stepped out and lined up along the wall. “But I think we need to find out.” He took Gerd by the sleeve and slowly stilled himself, letting the shadows close over them deeper and deeper. Gerd followed suit, until only the most determined searcher could have picked them out against the patterns of darkness across the brick. Ahead of them, Mistress Fellipan had straightened up, and was holding her hands out in front of her.
“Go now,” she cried, “Take your place amongst my troops, and fulfil my destiny!”
She closed her hands, and drew them outwards again. A hole opened up beneath the executed prisoner, wider and wider until three men could have climbed down without bumping shoulders. The broken corpse tumbled into the darkness. Marius heard it strike bottom, and winced. The holes varied wildly in depth, depending upon the corridors the dead burrowed beneath them, and the proximity of each hole to the caverns below. Marius might have preferred not to hear the impact of the body so near to the surface. For a moment he contemplated listening to it fall, and fall, without reaching bottom. On further consideration, he decided he would not.
The stewards moved forward, herding the crowd to the hole’s edge and beyond: silent, inexorable, brooking no dissent. The new recruits had none to offer. Still stunned by the manner of their deaths, bludgeoned into submission by the shock of their fellow inmate’s execution and the news of their dragooning, they allowed themselves to be herded into the hole until the yard was emptied, fifty or more souls climbing down towards their eternal servitude. In short order, only the stewards remained, their Mistress overlooking them. And Marius and Gerd, still burrowed into the corner of the yard. The hole closed over, and Fellipan’s servants went back into the gaol house in silence.
“We have to get out of here,” Marius projected.
“How?”
“I…” Marius glanced up at the balcony. “Oh, bugger.”
“Mistress Fellipan was staring down at them, her face a frozen mask.
“Oh, bugger.”
As they watched, she raised her crop and brought it down onto the railing. The crack of impact had barely stopped echoing when two enormous bloodstained stewards stepped into the yard.
“I think,” said Marius, as the stewards strode across the yard towards them, “that we are about to be very seriously fucked up.”
Gerd stepped forward.
“Stop!”
“What are you doing?”
“Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Marius hissed. “Trusting you is what got us here.”
“Trusting you is what got me killed.”
Marius paused to consider the fact. “All right,” he conceded. “This once.”
“Thank you.” Gerd raised his hand in a gesture of command. “Stop in the name of King Scorbus,” he said aloud.
Marius stared at the back of his head. “This is your plan?”
“Trusting me now.”
“I didn’t know this was going to be your plan!”
Mistress Fellipan raised a hand. The stewards stopped.
“See?” Gerd whispered. Above them, Fellipan creased her brow in thought, then crooked her finger in a “come here” motion. Gerd paced forward half a dozen steps, Marius behind him. Fellipan gazed down at them from a million miles of higher breeding.
“This,” she said lazily, “had better be spectacularly good.”
“My lady,” Gerd bowed, with all the gentlemanly grace of the swineherd he was.
“Forget the cheap flattery.” She lowered one eyebrow in a gesture of rapidly diminishing patience. “Just tell me what possible reason you could have for expecting me to do anything in our King’s name.”
“Because we know him.” Marius pushed past Gerd’s bent frame and into her full gaze.
“Oi!”
“My turn.” He slapped Gerd on the forehead without turning. “This is my area of expertise.”
Fellipan stared coolly down at him. “And you are?”
“Marius don Hellespont, lady, from the don Hellesponts of Borgho City.”
“Ah, yes.” She smirked, a tiny, cruel flicker of her lips. “I know your family.”
Marius frowned, but did not press the matter. “This rough fellow is Gerd, a breeder of pigs I seem to be permanently saddled with.”
“Fascinating.”
“For him, perhaps.” He risked a further step forward, so that he stood directly under the opening in the canvas above, illuminated by the few stars shining through the gap. “We know Scorbus, milady. We assisted his ascension to the throne.”
“First time or second?”
“Uh, most recent.”
They matched stares for long enough that Marius was able to make another mental scan for potential exit points from the yard, and confirm once again that there really weren’t any. Then the woman above slowly lowered her hand and leaned forward.
“The cathedral,” she said.
“We tricked soldiers into removing the lid of the crypt.”
“The palace.”
“We escaped into the royal apartments. Then out through the window and jumped into the midden below.”
“The crown.”
“Once belonged to mad King Nandus until I rescued him from the sunken ship Mary Tulip. He was killed by a shark.” Marius felt his face turn to stone. “I liked him.”
“Well, well, well.” Fellipan smiled the first actual smile Marius had seen since she had first appeared. It didn’t suit her. Rather, it floated just above her features, as if from her face without actually being of it. Marius stared at her large, white teeth, and took pains not to shudder. “I think that perhaps you may actually be who you say you are. What providence.” She tilted her head to the side and slightly backwards: half challenge, half come-fuck-me. “Would you like to join me?”
Right at that moment, Marius would have joined with her in any number of lewd and unnatural fashions, but he settled for a short nod of the head. “Certainly.”
“Excellent.” She stood back from the railing, and swung in a smooth arc, sliding gracefully back through the door. Marius and Gerd watched her leave, but the stewards barely noticed, their eyes remaining fixed on the two of them. Marius shook his head.
“You’re not just dead,” he said to them. “You’re unconscious.”
The door into the gaol house opened. Marius gestured to his friend.
“Come on,” he said. “Her ladyship awaits.” They stepped past their silent guards and into the darkness within. “Try not to drool all over her.”
SEVEN
The House of Fellipan began life as a bordello like any other, catering to any passing traveller with a pocket full of winnings and the need for some soft and pliant company. Soon, however, the mistress o
f the house came to realise that such fellows had very simple needs, and simple needs can be satisfied by anybody willing to ignore their shame long enough to get the job done. Such a living might suit an average merchant, but Mistress Fellipan had little desire to be an average merchant, and even less tolerance for the average customer. She had ambition, and a merchant with ambition soon learns that the favour of powerful people can only be won by providing services of the highest and rarest quality. Slowly, with an exquisite eye for detail, she transformed her simple bordello into an exclusive retreat for the rich, wherein highly personal and specialised services were offered. Men of a certain quality, of a certain stratum, availed themselves of whatever peccadillo was necessary to relieve the frustrations of a life of power. No judgement was passed. Not a single perfectly-curved eyebrow was so much as raised. No condemnation was proffered, no damnation, no disgust. At least, not unless specifically requested, and then only once a fee was negotiated.
Within a year, Mistress Fellipan was the richest woman in Mish. Within three, she had purchased a seat on the City Council. Within five years, her exquisitely long fingers were cupping the balls of every man of power in the city. Whatever Mistress Fellipan wanted, she got. All she had to do was squeeze.
Furs, tapestries, mahogany furniture, slaves, exotic fruits, gold, power, decisions. The Deputy Mayorship. Control of the Central Gaol. Freedom. And the boudoir at the top of the Central Gaol’s clock tower, the highest point in the city, where she could lie across a four-poster bed large enough for half a dozen bodies to writhe in complete comfort, and stare out through any window in any direction, and know that she owned – in fact, if not in name – everything she could see.
Marius and Gerd stopped just inside the door and took in the sweep of roofs below.
“Nice view.”
“It certainly is.” Gerd stared at Mistress Fellipan stretched out on the bed. Marius sighed.
“Eyes front, soldier.”
“I am.”
“Not her front.”
Fellipan watched Gerd with a look of bored amusement.
“How old are you, young man?”
“He’s not. He’s dead.” Marius perched on a bench in front of the nearest window.
“Of course. I meant, how old were you when you died?”
Gerd stared at his feet. “Nineteen. Almost twenty.”
“And had you ever been with a woman?”
“A human woman,” Marius interjected. He couldn’t help himself. He liked Gerd, he really did, but something about his young friend’s discomfort was eternally amusing. Gerd shot him a look that would have blown holes in his chest if it could have, and then resumed contemplation of his feet.
“No,” he mumbled. “There wasn’t much… No, not really.”
Marius felt a momentary pang of guilt. If Gerd’s life had gone as scripted he’d be nearly twenty-three years old. He’d have inherited his grandmother’s hovel and her filthy sty full of pigs, had three rocky and weed-infested fields to cultivate, and been rich enough by the standards of the inbred mountain people he came from to have married some tubby distant cousin from the next village. By now they’d be well on their way to spitting out gods knew how many children, and he’d be as happy as an ignorant peasant could be, cold-washing the pig shit off his arms before he climbed into bed and wriggled in between his wife’s squishy thighs. Instead, thanks to Marius, he was a dead virgin with not a single idea about how to act in front of a woman, and no chance of learning what to do with one. He caught Mistress Fellipan’s glance, and let the guilt fall away from his face. A corner of her lip twitched, and she reached out to ring a small bell on a table next to her pillow. A steward appeared in the doorway.
“Take… What is your name again, young man?”
“Gerd.”
“Take Gerd to the House, and tell Vonyvve that he is to be accorded every method of hospitality available to her.” The steward nodded. “And B’Sone?” He looked up. “Every method, is that clear?”
He nodded again, and gestured to Gerd to follow him. Gerd looked from Fellipan to Marius in confusion.
“Go on, boy.” Marius nodded at the door. “Make sure you keep your liquid intake up.”
Gerd frowned, and followed the steward. Fellipan laughed, a disturbingly girlish sound for someone dressed as she was.
“A virgin,” she tittered. “Poor Vonyvve won’t know where to start.”
“He’s a good boy,” Marius said, settling himself back on the lounge. “He’ll probably fall in love with her. And with you, for making it happen.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “A professional risk.”
“More like a professional skill,” Marius countered. “No offence.”
“None taken.” She nestled back on a mound of pillows and regarded Marius like a well-fed panther. “I’m proud of my business acumen.”
Marius turned to stare across the expanse of Mish. “And you’ve used it well, I see. Question is, to what end?”
“What other end is there? Power. Control. To be in charge of my own destiny.”
Marius thought back to his little cottage, and Keth. She had used almost the same words to defend the little sanctuary she had carved out for herself, despite a lifetime of dancing in the grubbiest taverns in Scorby. “No,” he said. “It’s more than that.” He glanced up, and rested his gaze upon the long gloves on Fellipan’s arms. “I think you’re already very much in charge of your own destiny, Madame. I think you’ve taken it very firmly by the throat, and put a collar there.” He pointed at the glove on her right hand. “I’m willing to bet you have your destiny on a very short leash.”
She laughed again, and with deliberate burlesque charm stripped the glove from her arm, then extended it for him to see more clearly. Marius saw, just where he expected to see it, a clean, three-inch cut along the inside of her wrist.
“Clever boy,” she said, amusement clear in her voice.
“So, again. To what end?”
She rose from the bed with feline grace and stalked across the room, slipping down onto the bench next to him with only the merest rustle of her skirt. Together, they looked across the city to the land outside the walls.
“How many people in Mish, do you think?” she asked.
Marius kept his eyes firmly on the vista. “Two thousand, perhaps, a town this size. Maybe three.”
“Such a small place. So far away.”
“I’ve known smaller.”
She shrugged. “Have you known easier? More pathetic?” Her voice hardened, and just for a moment Marius fancied he heard the woman behind the conqueror. “Every step I’ve taken in the last five years I’ve done so without a moment’s opposition. There’s not a man in this city I can’t control with a tickle of the crop or a purse of my lips. I want to be great, Marius. Is that a bad thing for a woman to want?”
“No.”
“I have a brain, and ambition, and I know how to make things work, how to make people work.” She turned towards him, and he saw the hurt and sense of powerlessness she carried. “Would it be so bad,” she asked, “for a woman with brains to ascend as far as she could?”
“No.” The room was closing in on Marius, growing hotter, and smaller. Fellipan’s eyes were growing, taking up more of his vision, drawing him in against his will. He tried to breathe, and couldn’t, and then struggled to remember why he couldn’t.
“I just want…” Her voice caught. “The world is so big, Marius, and so badly run. I just want to make it run better.” They were so close now, so very close. Her lips were barely an inch from his. “I just want to make things the way they should be. I want…”
And then she was upon him, and he was responding, and her hair was in his hands, and her fingers were tearing the shirt from his chest, and for the longest while there was nothing else in the world worth thinking about.
EIGHT
The best thing about the human body is the almost innumerable ways in which it can be bent, positione
d, and folded around itself. More than anything else, it is a superb piece of athletic engineering. There were monks in the mountains, so Marius had been told, who spent their entire lives honing their bodies to a point of pure elasticity, training each and every muscle until it could bend and stretch and twist to its fullest capacity, giving the monks a flexibility and physical capacity beyond the understanding of ordinary mortals.
Marius was pretty sure he knew exactly how they felt. It had taken the better part of a day, but there wasn’t a single inch of his body that hadn’t been enlarged, flexed, bent, bound, pinched, bitten, licked, pummelled, soothed, pounded, and otherwise pleasured within an inch of his… well, life, if he’d had one. He lay somewhere in the middle of the bed, his sense of direction utterly askew, aware only of the tingling of his flesh and the cold, white body perfectly intertwined with his. There were fingers in all sorts of places he’d never imagined fingers could fit so well, and he possessed not the slightest inclination to move them, or, if he were perfectly honest with himself, anything else. There would be repercussions, he knew: bruising, hopefully, and an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame at his betrayal of Keth’s loyalty. But right now, for this moment, he just wanted to relax in the glow of the most extensive internal and external exercise he’d ever given himself. Parts of this night were going to pop up in his memory for eternity. Even his eyelashes felt tender.
“You want me to take you to Scorbus, don’t you?” His tongue and lips felt like they belonged to someone else. They’d grown used to completely different movements. It took all his will to get them to work in the proper order. Speech sounded wrong. He felt Fellipan stiffen momentarily – which, given the position they were in, wasn’t at all bad – then relax as she responded.
“Do you think that makes me bad?”
“No.” He shifted slightly. Things rubbed against other things. “That makes you bad. The rest of it… just business, right?”
Fellipan turned her head towards him and matched his gaze. She flexed her fingers, and he gasped. “Does that feel like business?” she asked innocently.
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