Lord of the Last Heartbeat

by May Peterson

  In the next instant, a wave of the woman’s feeling washed over me, clear as a gong. It must be hers, because there was no mistaking its timbre—fear. Anxiety bordering on terror, jangling from her like a strangled cry. Yet somehow her outward appearance remained smooth. Only I, and she, realized how her heart was pounding.

  A gasp shot through me, aborting the song. I sat there, unable to look at my subject, gulping for breath. The connection did not immediately close, and the texture of her fear scraped against mine, our hearts now lurching together.

  “Mio.” Mamma’s voice was velvet. “What did you feel?”

  I swallowed. The thought of telling her, just then, felt like joining in a ritual violation, reducing her panic to an inanimate, experimental substance. So the lie came easily. “Nothing really. She’s calm; she knows it’s only an exercise. It was just a shock.”

  Mamma shifted, revealing the arch of an eyebrow. “If you are lying to me, know that there’s no need to. You’re right—this is only an exercise. But we can’t test what your magic can do if you don’t tell me what you experience.”

  Still the woman did nothing, gazing at the floor. I shook my head, trying to mirror her restraint. “Of course, Mamma.”

  Then Mamma sighed, swiped a hand through her hair, but her expression was relaxed, affectionate. “All right. We can stop for today.”

  I might have imagined it—but as the link closed, I could have sworn I detected a trace of gratitude from the woman.

  That night, after Tibario was in bed and Papa’d gone out, Mamma sat with me on the balcony, the two of us drinking cups of tea. In the quiet, I finally allowed myself to say, “I don’t think my magic likes me.”

  A smile twisted her lips, and her laughter was warm. “Your magic is you, Mio. It’s like a light in your soul. Emotion does a great deal to fuel it—but magic cares about more than your mood, or how badly you want something. It also arises from your convictions. As you grow, so does it. This is why I push you. If you bar yourself inside your heart from the belief that you can ever know another person’s mind, eventually your magic will follow suit. That power in you may even fade.”

  She set her cup down, clinking lightly on the saucer. Mamma stood, came to wrap an arm around my shoulder.

  “I know you are a tender boy, Mio.” Her whisper was something intimate, less like the word of a master and more like the comfort of a parent. “But you can achieve great good with this gift. One day, you will be able to do even more with it. Witchcraft will let you push beyond your instinctual limits. You don’t need to fear it. We have many battles ahead of us. But we can win them, as a family. You have a great role to play in that, my boy.”

  I nodded, accepted the kindness under her strictures. My magic had even revealed her heart to me before, in flashes and hints. I knew love was there. That she was on my side.

  The next day, news descended on the streets. Mamma and Papa spoke in urgent low tones, summoning allies from across the city. A procession of guests milled into the drawing room with a babble of agitation. Mamma’s silhouette dominated the glass door panes, bent as if issuing commands to the men in the room.

  Tibario distracted me with a game of chess, but the upset in the house needled at me. All I understood was that there had been an official pronouncement. Lord Benedetti, the wealthiest leader in our city, had proposed to the consulate that mages and the children of foreigners should be disallowed from running for the station of consul. It’d been supported, joining the ranks of our country’s dubious new laws. It perplexed me why any of this should bar one from office. Mamma seemed to understand, as if she’d been waiting for this.

  Dinner was a solemn, brooding affair, with Mamma staring off into the distance. That evening, we met again in her study. This time, a man entered after me, wearing a similarly stark uniform as the woman. The greatest difference seemed to be that he looked afraid. Sweat beaded on his brow as he sat.

  Mamma cleared her throat. The shadow of the drapes obscured her face. “Now. Today, we will try something different. This man has information. Something hidden, and you can find it. We are going to practice until you do.” Her eyes swung to me, her occhiorosso throbbing softly. “And there will be no stopping halfway today.”

  My heart was sinking down into my stomach. It was as if a different person were emerging from under her skin.

  The red glare was heavy on me. “You will have to learn to become harder, Mio. That is the only way forward. Whether you like it or not.”

  The man was looking at me directly, shaking. I watched him, wished I knew a way to change this.

  My tongue felt like lead as I began to sing.

  * * *

  The night after meeting Donatello, I stood before the mirror and counted to eight. The first number I’d understood, before all the lower ones. Life took place in the gaps of the arpeggio, centered always on its scale.

  I wasn’t singing an arpeggio now, but Cardiff’s “Hymn to the Four Kings.” I was probably the only person in the world who considered this a warm-up. But it had been my first song in another language, and it still had the power to calm me a little.

  I needed all the calm I could garner. The episode with Donatello had left me raw. I felt stray thoughts sinking through my skin, like I’d opened my rib cage to the rest of the world. And it served me right.

  Tibario sat by the wardrobe, sucking a honeydew. “You’re too tense.” He wiped away a drop of melon juice. “You’re always too tense. Just take it easy and eat something. I won’t have you melancholically wasting away. You’re already romantic enough for two dead poets.”

  He’d snuck chocolate croissants and melon halves into my dressing room. It reminded me of when I used to go to bed early to be up for singing lessons, and he’d squirrel waffles with jam through the dumbwaiter. As if we were the same people, still, no matter what we’d done.

  “Better make that dead opera singers.” I couldn’t ask him to leave after all this. Even if the bleed of his feelings into mine made it hard for me to stand so close to him.

  If I had to share my soft insides with someone else’s consciousness, I was glad it was my brother’s. I didn’t confuse his emotions with mine. I knew who he was, and because of that, who I was.

  He ruffled my hair. Buttery crumbs dusted my forehead and shoulders. I sighed. “I’m not expecting you and my hair to be friends. But you could try to get along better than that.”

  Tibario had an unusual masculinity I liked. Properly he was a dandy, but even his smell was warmly masculine, resin and leather and hair oil. What I liked best was how clearly my admiration was not envy. I didn’t feel like I had to be like him. I didn’t need to be masculine. I wasn’t required to embody manhood to merit his brotherly love. He was Tibario and I was Mio. I didn’t have to fit any other definitions.

  Just as we were each the parts we played. I had once believed that he had two souls that took turns in his body, one the mafioso, like Papa, and the other of my gentle, funny, handsome brother. I’d been wrong. They coexisted. He knew what I had done last night, what it meant, and how it had hurt me, and his silence about it felt like a prison wall barring us from seeing each other. We could change so little about our scripted lives that we could not even narrate them to each other.

  I put my hand on his arm and squeezed.

  “Now there’s a chocolate stain.” He winked and pinched my hand. “You’re not normally this nervous. Was that the song you’re going to sing? What language was it?”

  “It was Malloric—‘Cardiff’s Hymn.’ I’m actually going to sing Mondbär’s ‘Journey into the Underworld.’”

  He grimaced. “Cheerful. Why a Zeidich piece?”

  “I-it’s a good song.” And because I could sing Zeidich. Yes, it was vain of me to take pride in that. But I sang tonight to display my fitness for an operatic career in the Imparviglio. If being able to sing five languages wo
uld give me an edge, didn’t that make it acceptable to show off this once?

  My theory was that everyone got to have one thing. The one jewel of your life you could place all pride into without it being a sin. If you loved it and honored it with all you had, there was even something humble about that kind of pride. I would never have love, with my strange and mythical body, and I could never have children, nor would I ever likely hold power worth acknowledging. But I could sing, and it would light up all the other corners of my life. Just as I trusted Tibario, I knew that I would still love music if the entire outside world was changed; with no coercion or reward, my song belonged to me.

  Well. At least it had. I didn’t know how well trust worked when I was capable of what I’d done to Pater Donatello.

  “The song doesn’t matter. It’s you the crowd is going to love.”

  God surround you, Tibario. He really wanted me to succeed, just because I wanted it. Not a very mafioso way of thinking.

  The door shuddered, and for a moment I didn’t realize it was a knock rather than a fist slam.

  “Rude.” Tibario sighed and went to the door. “They should know they’re bothering an artist.”

  The door opened on a sudden intrusion of daffodils.

  There he was, like a ghost that needed inviting in, with light bouncing silver innuendoes off his eyes. My strange lord of the night, clad in his dark mystique and statuesque beauty. He was wild and strange as a primal deity, filling the air with a nocturnal charge.

  And holding a bouquet of daffodils.

  I was on my feet without thinking, and it made little difference. He seemed to bring the entire concept of height with him, boring down on me. He knew. He knew what I’d done, why I’d asked him to stop me, as if I were some kind of equal victim.

  But then there were those daffodils.

  He came in like a dark cloud, bowing fractionally. “Pardon my, ah, stepping in. I realize you have an opera to prepare for. Only—”

  “You have got to be kidding. Did you think your next meal would be this easy?” Tibario snatched a knife from his belt. It gleamed murder. Over a decade since the immortal host left our country, and we still all carried silvered weapons. “The exit is this way, if you please.”

  The lord’s mouth worked in confusion once, and Tibario threw his upper body into an impaling strike.

  The lord caught the blow with his hand. Not to say he grabbed Tibario’s wrist. Rather, he caught the knife in his hand. The tip tore right through his palm.

  I was sure he’d scream. Instead he blinked, slowly, several times. Yellow flowers fell onto the carpet around him. His jaw shifted, and then, calmly, he said, “Ow.”

  There was a blur of the lord slamming the blade into the wall, Tibario reaching for his boot knife, and failing as His Lordship seized my brother’s hand and twisted it around his back. “Relax, ginger snap,” he breathed into Tibario’s ear. “I just want a word with lemon drop over there.”

  “Fuck you,” Tibario rasped.

  “Generous offer, but I’m afraid I have a full night ahead of me.” He released Tibario. Panting, my brother pulled the knife from the wall. Tendrils of steam rose from the blood.

  I stepped between them. “Brother. It’s all right. He’s—You don’t have to fight. Do you think you could fetch Mamma?”

  I’d meant to say he’s safe. But I didn’t know if he was safe. Just that he was glaring at me over his trampled flowers. I imagined the next words from his mouth. Him saying he knew what I’d done, what I did, and wanted to tell me he was sorry he’d helped me the night before. He should have just let the drunk harm me. And he wouldn’t be wrong.

  “All right,” Tibario agreed, turning to me. “But if I come back and he’s killed you, I will kill you.”

  Thankfully I didn’t have to ask him to close the door on the way out.

  I cast my eyes down in reverence. “I’m sorry about your hand.”

  “It’s my shoes that really suffer. Do you see this? I’m dripping. You cannot buy these shoes in this country.”

  I swiped off my cravat, winding it around his hand to stanch the blood. Touching him made the sympathetic pain in my own palm spike higher. Once again, I was shocked at how cold his skin felt. Then I realized how close I was—too close. I felt too much, the tune of his vibration ambiguous but smoldering with pain. If it was possible for someone’s inner world to burn and not become ash, then his whole soul must have been on fire. The contrast of slight chill and spiritual heat was transfixing. What kind of man was he, that he could contain the elements within him? A part of me ached to lean in, be encompassed by that fire and cold. Another cried out that if I did, he might transform me as surely as the moon transformed him. And I might never be the same.

  “So,” he began as I worked, “because I was not born yesterday, I knew you weren’t anybody’s servant. But I feel somehow vindicated that ginger snap is not a priest.”

  In spite of everything, I laughed. “He really is not. Does it hurt, my lord?”

  “It’s fine.” He didn’t look angry, but oddly careful. “So why don’t you tell me, lemon drop. What is it I’m supposed to stop you from? From singing?”

  His perplexing aura was still hitting me so hard, I wanted to listen to the ache, press against his wide body, and take one single moment of comfort. “I’m sorry. I was being silly. I should never have bothered you. I shouldn’t have given you that.”

  I really, truly should not have. I had sent Tibario for Mamma to distract him, but if she met with His Lordship it would likely mean a new victim. I may as well have painted a target on his face.

  “But you did.” He snorted gently as though he sensed and respected my instability. Retrieving one of the daffodils, he gave it to me. “I brought these for good luck tonight. But I expect luck isn’t what you want. Tell me, little one. What is it you want?”

  I stared at the flower in my hand, at how easily its stem had been bruised. What I wanted had once been to be a singer. Now all I wanted, more than anything, was to go back. To each of my victims, to shelter them and knit them back together, put their secrets back inside them. To promise them that no one would ever hurt them like that again and that they would never have to forgive me. Not if they didn’t want to.

  I wiped a tear from my cheek and turned away. “Please go, my lord.”

  I wanted to stop being me.

  His gaze burned at my back. “My dashing appearance may deceive you, but I’m rather an expert on unusual problems. Curses, ghosts, the like. I’ll guess—you’re possessed. A ghost enters you at times, making you do things against your will. You lose control of your body. You think you’re losing your mind. No? Then maybe it’s a curse—every time you think you’re about to be happy, something reaches out and knocks it away. Coincidences. Supernatural mishaps. I can take care of all this for you. Most ghosts are ready to be released from their chains, and your average curse on the living is simple to purify. Usually.” He coughed, looking to the side. “Am I on? Won’t even cost you anything.”

  He sounded so eager to be right that I couldn’t take it. And certainly Vermagna had enough of such problems, haunted as we were. The war had flushed the streets with ghosts, some of whom seemed able to possess the living. And we were no longer a country ruled by moon-souls that could easily purify their curses.

  I held his flower in both hands and forced myself to look at him. “I’m a criminal.”

  He raised a dark brow. “I’m...less of an expert on that.”

  I noticed my mental game of what’s-your-secret starting. This man could have been hiding anything, if he was immortal. Seven years an opium addict. Dead wife in the attic. Or maybe heartbreak I hadn’t the years to estimate. I couldn’t even tell how old he was—he could be a century or ten years older than me.

  I clenched my fist so hard his stab wound’s pain echoed in my hand. I would not do
it. I would not find out. This man had helped me when he had no reason to. I would accomplish this one tiny bit of good, if nothing else for the rest of my life.

  He sighed. “Unless it’s something supernatural, I doubt I’m of much use to you.”

  “There is something you could do.” It sprang, bloody and alive, into my mind. I gently took his unbound hand in mine, and looking into his eyes, placed it against my throat. The cold of his palm made me shiver. “You could stop me for good. It wouldn’t take more than a minute.”

  His pupils shrank in sudden comprehension. I swallowed, feeling his hand against my throat. He could snap me in half with barely a thought. Tibario would tell Mamma about him, and she might hunt him down, but it would mean little without me there to open the door for her. I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye. But I would have stopped it.

  “Right.” He sounded breathless. “Because the time investment was what was stopping me. I’d kill sad-eyed boys all the time if there were more hours in the day.”

  Anger welled from him, but he did not strike or push me away. I relaxed my grip. “I—I didn’t mean that.” Pain filled me again. When had it started feeling like all my experiences bled into pain?

  “Death isn’t like jumping out of a window, you know. It’s not reversible. Everything changed because of my death. It’s not an escape, or a relief. Trust me. It’s just death.”

  I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to be this monster anymore. I wished I knew how to say that, how to make Mamma understand. I clamped down on my lip, tried to keep it inside.

  His voice had fallen so low and soft I might have been dreaming it. “Listen to me. If someone is making you do something you don’t want to do, don’t blame yourself. Just...if you can, stop them.”

  I took a deep breath. All right. I could think of something. Maybe I couldn’t stop Mamma. But I could start with this.

  “My lord—” I gathered what scraps of calm I could. “You’ve been very kind to me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to repay you. So please understand the spirit in which I say that you must leave. Now.”