Lord of the Last Heartbeat

by May Peterson

  He guffawed. “Little biscuit. You look like you’re about to break apart. You just asked me to kill you, and now I’m expected to turn around and go?”

  “My mother is coming. And she is much, much more frightening than my brother.”

  “Mortals aren’t frightening. By definition. You are all soft, and squishy, and juicy—”

  “She’s not. Please. I’m asking you.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Very well. But I am still watching this damned performance. I’ve earned it.”

  He unwound my cravat and extended it in his hand. The wound was gone as though it had been a trick of light. The fabric barely had a stain on it. “Thank you, Mio.” How different my name sounded in his mouth. “You might consider me something of a, ah, fan. And since I know who you are, you may as well know me.” He bowed, as if in imitation of my ruse last night. “You can call me Rhodry.”

  * * *

  The Imparviglio was all about lights. Gilded sparks caressed the evening from dawn to dusk. The building had once housed scores of winged and clawed moon-souls, interior designed to accentuate the moon at night. Perches lined the walls and balconies where great immortal birds had once rested; now they stood empty, austere as monuments.

  For me, though, it was the sounds. The strains of hundreds of hearts striking a beat, of voices and laughter and withheld cries, of hope so heavy it vibrated.

  Behind the curtain, I kept one sound to myself. Rhodry. A Malloric name, one I liked. Rhodry. I repeated it in my mind to remind me I existed, that I was this note, this person. To remind me of what he had said.

  I searched for him out in the crowd, but the shadows fused together, all voices and lack of features. The opera house teemed; no empty seat remained. They were here for me. That should have made me so happy. Everyone focused on me, the last remnant of a dead age when the opera stages would have been home to countless boys whose voices had never dropped. Today I was the only one.

  Mamma, arrayed with jewels, found me in the wing. “There you are. Tibario said you were anxious.”

  “I’m always anxious.” Which was true. I wondered if he had told her about Rhodry.

  She drew close, smoothed a stray lock behind my ear. Magnolia fragrance draped her. Emerald and carnelian, rose pearl and almond-shaped chrysoprase decked her raiment like serpent’s scales. The pièce de résistance was a garnet monocle over her occhiorosso. She wore it out respect for the Imparviglio, where all magic was to be clearly declared and guarded with periapts, but it restrained none of her powers. The stone glowed as if eager for blood.

  “Well, you look marvelous, my love.”

  My fur-lined jacket was crow’s feather black, beset with mother-of-pearl buttons. I looked in every way the sorcerer’s son, even with my own symbol of goodwill on a silk cord around my throat, a fine silver bell. It did little to lessen my sensitivity, exactly as Mamma liked it.

  She stroked my cheek as though the crimes we’d committed together meant nothing. And to her, maybe they did. She was still my mother. And just as I wished I could be someone better, I wished that I could forgive it all.

  “Come to wish me luck?” I asked.

  “You won’t need luck,” Mamma purred. “Luck and craft are two different things.”

  I had craft. I’d worked for hours, every day of my life for over a decade. After the war when so many families had lost everything, Mamma had still managed to pay for my singing master. She had always wanted a mage for a daughter. I came close; maybe being a castrato put me even closer, in her eyes. I liked to think this was her way of honoring our one connection.

  All my love came to this. I could be as dedicated as I wanted, but what mattered was how sharp a knife I made. And tonight the biggest oyster was ripe for shucking—the guest of honor at this performance was Lord Casilio Benedetti, the great Prince Elector, who had banned mages from office. Before the revolution, he had protected the mage slave trade. Today, his votes also kept families like ours disenfranchised.

  Somehow, he’d never let a secret about himself slip. At least not one Mamma could use. For this, perhaps more so than any other task, she’d honed me to be her knife that pierced the hardest shells.

  Mamma’s voice hummed over me like rain. “You don’t need to fear his lordship, either. His power will mean nothing next to yours. You will unravel him. All you need do is find the way. House Gianbellicci will be the hand that delivers the nation from bondage, and you are a finger on that hand. You must simply refuse to fear.”

  She gave me a hug. I held on tightly and told her I loved her. And I did. It was just that the love hurt.

  I stepped on stage when the pit quieted its tuning and waited until the murmurs dwindled. Sometimes it seemed impossible that people would ever hear me over the sounds of their own souls.

  I began to sing.

  The orchestra swelled, its accompaniment strangely protective around me. The voices of the reeds, brass, silver, bells, each one a hand guiding me along. The moment I could distinguish the orchestra from the ringing inside, I knew I’d be safe.

  The song itself protected me. Stage fright was a difficult beast normally, but fearsome when your performance stripped you of your skin. I could get lost, and I was already so dilated from last night. But I was in my element, and a calm filled me. A song with its own story, structure, words acted like armor. My magic was finnicky like that. It changed so much with how I felt, and relied on the symbols and tools of my imagination.

  And Zeidich was such a strong language. Portian rolled and babbled, like a river, tumbling along in circles of vowels. But Zeidich shook with stops and hisses and glides, like the paths of a legendary dark forest. It was a language of magic. In my mind, it was the tongue word-witches used to craft their spells.

  The song was about a woman who met her lover in battle. They forsook the conflict to escape together, but when the king discovered their defection, he slew the lover. He, in his death, left behind a curse which plunged the nation into unnatural cold. The heroine braved the land of the Dead both to redeem him and to lift the freezing curse. She had to contest demons made of ice, trick the toll master at the gate, and prove her love before she was victorious. Tibario and I had played the story out as children, taking turns at the role of the woman or her lover, or playing the king or the toll master. Tibario had always loved being the toll master.

  I sang each role by myself, woman and man, with ease. I felt mystical and imposing with those Zeidich consonants glittering over my fur collar. On the back of half notes and split verbs, I followed my hero down into hell, holding open the gate to bring the spring back.

  In my mind, privately, the story played out differently. It wasn’t spring I was bringing back. It was me. I found myself behind the gate, and we escaped. It was why I loved this song. I could imagine breaking free, running from it and never stopping. All of it—the mafiosi, the secrets, the gilded cage I lived in. All the waste of what I’d become.

  The story protected my boundaries, but only for a moment. They were still out there, those minds. The pitch I tuned into, growing loudest of all, was the man on the balcony. The aura of hauteur and menace almost shook me from my trance. My heroine was just a character. The target was real. Waiting to be cracked.

  I paused for breath during the bridge. Time to turn the song outward. In the vast reverse dome of the chambers, I could not find my strange lord, nor did I see Tibario. Only one pair of eyes I recognized, never leaving me. One eye dark—the other flame red.

  With my lyrical barrier down, the force of all those minds hit me at once. I wasn’t prepared; I never could be prepared. Mamma had taught me not to fight the onslaught, but rather, to absorb it. Allow that first moment of agony when I lost myself. The orchestra was still there. I came back to myself, breathing once, then twice. My body, my breath.

  Now. Rising high as if I had become mist, I opened to the presence on the
balcony.

  In the full flush of the night, with the eyes of the city upon me, it was a breathtaking effort. This man’s singular chime, dispersed among a firmament of sounds, might have eluded me forever had I not known where to look. It was different than singing for a person who stood right in front of me, or a mind that I already knew the path to. I didn’t know this man. Worse, what I knew of him had made him no more than a symbol. In the childhood-colored haze of the prerevolution world, Lord Benedetti had seemed like a king. And his family had shimmered with royal radiation in the public mind. Portia had no crown, no monarchic ruler anymore. But I felt as though I were being directed to desecrate a throne.

  In moments, I breathed in the beats of the balcony’s specific hearts, searched them for their origins. I fixed my eyes above, as if contemplating heaven, and hoped none in the audience could tell what I was doing. Yes. This pulse here—this had the thrum of a king to it.

  Like the silence of a palace’s hall, the pulse frightened me, as if I should not be able to behold it. When I’d been younger, I’d feared people would feel me eavesdropping. As that fear decayed under experience, it decomposed into guilt.

  But it wasn’t guilt I felt now. Mamma had poised me here to strike down her greatest rival. She and our shadowed house represented everything Portia was desperate to scrub away in the bay sand, everything the house of the crown stood against. Benedetti had an old grudge against Gianbellicci, after Mamma had crossed Lord Benedetti for his exploitation of the city’s witches. Magic had been our greatest boon during the revolution, and Mamma’s command of the witches’ loyalty had furnished that boon. That only her criminal enterprise had kept us from remaining in poverty after the war was both insult and injury. To her, we should be among the nation’s new rulers, not dealers in forbidden witchcraft.

  The sudden, eager weight of this task became too much. This was no mere family rival. The task was its own symbol, spelling out the heart of the corrupt government Mamma fought, the poisonous spells slung in this feud of fair versus foul.

  I was abruptly desperate not to see what secrets this man may hold. What kind of evils would trouble the heart of a lord that would revive slavery if he could. Yet Mamma had to know.

  Mamma had to know it all. The centuries were all onion petals, every lie a mark on a map. I could scarcely imagine what she would create, wielding such influence. A whole kingdom of secrets, of ravaging, redness, and ruin.

  It should never have become like this. I shouldn’t cringe on hearing my mother’s voice. How had I let this happen?

  We were reaching the climax of the song. A whole operatic performance could be made of this, but the original piece was agonizingly short, so precise it could cut. Horns and strings became the stairs back up from the underworld. The journey was coming to a close. I could sink into this song and find the pearl. Mamma nodded from the audience, a bob of red light. As if to say do it now.

  Mamma’s powers also operated on feelings, beliefs, the stuff of the mind. The secrets she used were bits of shame or fear, things caught inside their holders that warped them. Mamma controlled people with secrets because the secrets already controlled them. Whatever would ensnare Benedetti must be terrible. Yet in a note, I could pluck it from the depths.

  I had mere seconds. Abandon the hero, run back into hell. That was my mission. And I didn’t want to do it. Not just because it was wrong, but because I wanted my journey back. Joining the opera guild. Making the family proud.

  The final verse began. Or should have begun. But when my cue came, I couldn’t. No more.

  Lord Rhodry had been right. I had to make it stop.

  I closed my eyes and let silence fall. The orchestra proceeded until the conductor noticed I was no longer singing, and softly, the pit fell quiet. The undercurrent of the audience blared, with confusion, uncertainty. I couldn’t distinguish their actual murmurs from thoughts.

  I felt the dagger of Mamma’s glare, cutting a line through the air.

  Full of noise, I turned and began to walk off the stage.

  I’m sorry, Mamma.

  I didn’t know how she’d react. She could abandon me. She could turn the family against me for stopping her.

  Or she could stop me.

  I didn’t reach the backstage. Halfway across the floor, I felt her stand, the steam and light of her power stretching like a cloud over the audience. In the time it took me to take my next step, she reached across the distance. The freezing grip of the occhiorosso clenched around my mind.

  My vision went red. It was as though someone had knocked the soul out of me, turned my body into a panic dream I had to watch but couldn’t affect. An aide rushed to my side, but I was paralyzed. Redness made everything sting.

  Mio. She was in me, a crash of wine and outrage. Mio. Listen to me. Turn around. Finish what you started.

  She had never, in my memory, used her power on me before. Betrayal and terror illuminated me, twisted all my sensations toward pain. I wanted to fight her, refuse. But I couldn’t. Was this how it’d felt? What I had unleashed on others all these years?

  I felt my body turn stiffly around. Her power dragged me like a marionette toward the edge of the stage. The conductor stared, wide eyed. The aides were near shouting, calling for the backstage crew. I lumbered on, blank, empty. Members of the audience stood, shuffled around in worry. I wondered at their shock, until I realized. They could all see. Some of them even understood. My left eye was glowing red.

  Notes clawed their way out of my throat, sounding almost like screams as she strained to manipulate my voice. Magic still washed through me, turning the hum of my throat into a screech at the violation.

  Mamma, please. Don’t do this. I’ll be good. I’m sorry. Don’t hurt me. But blood-thick crimson drowned me. If she felt my thoughts, she ignored them. She had finally taken my voice for herself.

  But it wouldn’t work for her. Her power pushed out my voice like vomit. It came out as a warble. My magic stayed where I was, inside the pain. She controlled my actions, yet the part of me that thought and felt was not enslaved.

  It’s too late for this, Mio. The texture of her mind was hard-lined and burning. Her rage flared like bee stings. Benedetti needs to be taken down. Listen to your mother. Only you can do this. You must.

  Mamma. If my body had still been mine, I would have keened. Mamma. I love you. Stop. But she wouldn’t stop. I felt her anger turn desperate. We’d been so close. The years after the war had been a swath of degradation, poverty and powerlessness as the country fell apart. She couldn’t find the pieces to reassemble without me.

  You would be nothing without me. I gave you everything. Beneath her thoughts, her heart wailed, I need you.

  The musicians were scattering from the stage, and men from the audience were raising the alarm. On the balcony, the lord’s party began to stir.

  Mio! Do it now! Had it been her physical hand holding me, she might have strangled me to death.

  Mamma gathered her force, levered all of her strength into a single command: SING!

  Everything deafened me. I didn’t have any answers.

  Except one. Meek. But clear.

  No.

  Somewhere inside myself, an instant of silence crystallized. The silence I craved, the only way I could stop being the monster. The silence was not something she could burn. It was not something she could take. I dove in and gave everything to it. I would rather fall silent than sing this way again.

  I would not destroy another person like this. I would not crush their hearts so I could be safe. If I was to be the last victim, so be it. Because there would not be any more.

  No more victims. Not one!

  Silence washed over me, deep and impossibly clean. It filled me like her redness, and for a moment, silence and crimson crashed against one another. But the silence was stronger. The scarlet of the occhiorosso, the pain, the tension, all
fell quiet. The silver tinkle of my magic stopped.

  I fell to the stage on my knees, muscles suddenly mine again. The sobs rising in my throat made no sound. Her control was gone; I felt her try again, and again, but the silence was impenetrable. When I lifted my shaking head, she shone in the chaos. Eye blazing red, blank with amazement. Across the distance, we only stared. And I could not feel her thoughts.

  Aides were circling around me. I gaped at them, tried to explain. But nothing came out.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Mio!” Mamma called from the crowd. Onlookers would have thought that she was crying for her son, concerned. Only she and I knew the battle that had taken place.

  Straining to my feet, I pushed back the hands of the aides and the crew, all asking what was wrong. I couldn’t think.

  I ran.

  Chapter Four

  RHODRY

  This was my reward for trying to be a fucking hero.

  Naturally, ginger snap’s sword was silver edged. I hadn’t thought anyone still wore swords in this day and age, but apparently Portian mafiosi did. He had it raised to my throat, with a look on his face like he expected me to crumble in fear at any moment.

  Mortals were adorable.

  Two fellows clamored behind him, wearing scabbards and holsters. Practical—but irritating—combination.

  “Look, when you said we should take this outside—” I waved at the Imparviglio’s back alley “—did you realize it was about to rain? Because my hair will pay hell for this.” By the gray of the uneven Vermagna skyline, replete with gold and ghost-lights, it was about to start pissing down.

  He sneered. “You must think I’m simple. You were hunting prey just now. Logic’s not hard to follow. When money’s not a concern, sex is. When sex isn’t a concern, death is. What is a concern to people who don’t die?”

  I dropped my smoke, disgusted. “All right. You’ve got me. It was the daffodils. I shouldn’t have put death traps in them. Damn my murderous impulses!” I threw up my hands.