Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

by Connolly, Harry

  “Or they are the undead,” the guide continued. “No one knows, nor should they know.”

  “Yes, indeed, well, no matter, no matter,” Tunj said. “We have one last suitor to meet tonight, then we leave in the morning.”

  “Father…”

  “To your room, my pixie. You must ready yourself.”

  In a swirl of skirts and loose hairs, Perdama ascended the stairs.

  A quarter hour later, when she had changed her gown and sat before her mirror choosing a veil, she heard her father’s soft knock at her door. She turned her chair and bade him enter.

  He was clearly distressed. He glanced around the room and tugged at his collar. “Where is that maid of yours? Has something awful happened? Perhaps we should send a few guards to look for her.”

  “I suspect there is no need for guards, father. Although I believe something awful has happened, she would not think so. Don’t let it worry you; You have too much virtue in your heart to understand such base behavior.”

  “Is that the gown you’ve chosen? You must wear the aqua veil. There. Perfect. Now for a dash of aqua at the wrists, and there, at your belt. Oh dear, these silk braids are dreadfully out of style, but I suppose no one here will notice. Drape them so.”

  “Oh, father, thank you, it’s perfect.” What would that priest think if he saw her now?

  “Yes, well, you may think me less perfect after hearing what I have come to say. Darling, you must put aside all thoughts of… attachment with these priest thingies.” He wiggled his fingers in disgust.

  “Father, would you heed the fright stories of these rude locals?”

  “No, my pixie, of course not, but listen… Would you listen for a moment?”

  “Of course, Father.”

  Tunj settled himself on a maid’s stool. The wood creaked under his weight. “Even if all these fright stories, as you call them, were false, think how it would be for me to have such a creature as this priest in my home. As my son! Its great size and terrible aspect would terrify me without end! My heart flutters just to discuss it. And I can’t bear to imagine what my grandchildren would be like!”

  “But if he was virtuous, Father?”

  “Perdama, my sprite, my pixie, have I ever asked anything of you? Haven’t I granted your every request when I could?”

  Perdama leaped from her chair and kissed her father’s damp forehead. “Always. You’ve been perfect to me.”

  “Then do this one thing for me, for my weak heart. Put all thoughts of these beings from your mind. Please.”

  Perdama sighed, then slumped into her chair. “I will do as you ask, father.”

  Tunj struggled to his feet. “Thank you, precious. Let’s get ready. And don’t pin your veil too high!”

  An hour later Zim had not returned to the inn, so they rode to their last appointment without her. This was another youngest son, from a family of salt merchants. Not highborn, but neither was she, exactly. And if this didn’t work out, there would be another city, then another, on the long road to their new home.

  But this boy, Dozoig, was a surprise. He was well mannered and gracious, if a bit soft around the middle and splotchy in the face. They ate pepper soup and stuffed dormouse. When Dozoig’s father, his voice high and nervous, asked if his son didn’t find Perdama a pretty little thing, the boy defused this faux pas by agreeing calmly, without leering at her or treating her with disdain.

  “So,” Tunj finally asked, “why do you want to leave your home and live with us in the wilderness?”

  “It’s those dogs of his,” his father said. “The kennels can’t hold them all anymore.”

  “I would like to take them into the country,” Dozoig said, “to give them room to run.”

  “You like dogs?” Perdama asked.

  “They are my pride and my ecstasy. And you?”

  “I love all little animals.”

  “May I offer you a tour of my kennel?”

  His father raised a hand. “Son, I don’t…”

  “I would be delighted.” Perdama said. “My maid is indisposed; perhaps my father could chaperone?”

  Dozoig stood and bowed to them both. “I would be honored.”

  The sun was setting as they crossed the gardens. The estate was opulent, perhaps even ostentatious, but that was a vice Dozoig seemed to lack.

  They rounded a hedge and faced the kennel. It was a low, dark building that smelled of old iron and blood. A stack of cages stood on a dolly by the door. Inside each one, a rabbit cowered.

  “The smell of fear drives them crazy,” Dozoig said. He turned the latch. An uproar of barking assailed their ears.

  Dozoig opened the doors, and the uproar became a frenzied wave. When he wheeled the dolly of cages inside, the barking grew even more hysterical. Tunj and Perdama took only a single timid step through the doorway.

  These were not lap dogs. These were fighting hounds, bred for pit matches. Dozoig kneeled beside their iron cells, taunting them and beating them with a switch. He called them his angels, his killers, his ecstasy while he struck. When he raised a cage and prepared to drop a rabbit into a pen, Tunj and Perdama retreated to the garden path.

  The sun was down and the air chilled when Dozoig emerged from the kennel. He seemed surprised to see them waiting, as if he’d forgotten about them entirely.

  Tunj and Perdama rode home in silence. They would leave in the morning, and in the next city it would all happen again. She thought, suddenly, of the murdered guard. How peaceful he had seemed. How far beyond the endless strife and futility.

  Perdama entered her room and threw her veil on the bed. Zim was there, weeping over Perdama’s dresser. She held one of Tunj’s vials, and by the black and red stripe around the top Perdama knew it was full of poison.

  She charged across the room and wrestled it from the girl’s hands, thwarting her half-hearted attempt to gulp it down. Perdama rammed the stopper home and dropped the potion into her pocket.

  “He lied to me!” Zim’s face was wet with tears.

  “Of course he did,” Perdama said. “He lied until he had what he wanted then he turned you out. He treated you as you deserved. Why did you think I refused to see him again? Anyone can see he’s not half the man my father is.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “Do you still defend your faithless lover?”

  “No!” Zim stood, her grief turning suddenly to rage. “Stop saying that about your father. He isn’t a great man! He isn’t any better than anyone else!”

  “Why, you ungrateful…”

  “Why do you think the Duke has sent his chemist to a distant estate?”

  “As… as a reward, for loyal service.”

  “A loyal servant sent to the other side of the world?” Zim began to sneer. “With trunks full of gold? How does the duke expand his properties toward the sea, and the port cities there?”

  “It was a death in his cousin’s house.”

  “But you’re too sheltered to know the details. Too precious to hear tales of scandal and suicide. How the Duke’s cousin threw herself from the tower after she found her husband and a young boy in her wedding bed, both killed by poison!” Zim pointed at Perdama’s pocket, at the vial hidden there.

  This was too much. With all her strength, Perdama slapped her maid across the cheek. The girl only laughed. “Ask him, if you dare. Ask him if it’s true.”

  Perdama turned and saw her father in the doorway. His face was pale. “Well, Father? Is it true?” Her voice sounded tiny in her ears.

  “My pixie…” he said, then stood mute and staring.

  “Well? Did you poison a man, and bring shame and scandal to his house?” Why didn’t he deny it? Every moment that he withheld his denial her dread grew, until she knew that something terrible was about to happen.

  “Daughter,” he said, in a tone she had never before heard from him, “the Duke… I had no choice.”

  Perdama gaped at him. She felt dead, as if a stroke of lightning had blasted the
life from her. Her father was a poisoner. The words themselves struck like thunderbolts. Poisoner. Assassin.

  She stepped toward the door, and her father raised his arms, as if she might actually embrace him.

  With Zim’s harsh laughter and her father’s pleas that someone stop her echoing through the halls, she ran out of the room and down the stairs. No one could catch her. She bolted across the courtyard and through the gates.

  Everything she held dear was gone. Her father was more than a man to her, more than a part of her family. He was a place. A haven where honesty and good will held a cruel world at bay. But now that tiny shelter had collapsed, if it had ever existed, and the vices of the world rushed at her like a storm from the ocean. Worse, she could not flee from it, because that baseness swarmed in the streets around her, in the courtyard of the inn, in the dining halls and rooms, and in everything.

  She ran through the starlit streets, hearing the clop of hooves as Tunj gathered men to collect her. Her every muscle was rigid with fear and disgust. Laughing figures emerged from the shadows to grasp at her. Greasy hands tore the lace of her gown, or smeared her with gutter filth. Someone clutched her hair, but she tore free. A beggar swung at her and scratched her arm… or had she been cut with a knife?

  She didn’t know or care. Any pain she felt was dwarfed by the emptiness inside. Her world was gone, her faith lost. She ran downward, through streets more narrow, steep and twisting with every corner. Hadn’t the priests carried their dead downward to the heart of the city? Wasn’t that where people went when their lives had ended?

  She stumbled into the square at the heart of the city. A great purple-black mausoleum squatted there, ringed by cedar trees that had seemed to have been dying for centuries. Perdama ran across the open square, toward one of the yawning, unguarded portals. This was where she’d find an end to deceit and avarice.

  A priest emerged, huge and powerful, and held up one hand, bidding her come no closer. She didn’t need to look at the hem of his robe; this was the same figure. Wasn’t he showing her kindness? Wasn’t he warning her that she endangered herself by approaching the lair of the dead?

  She drew the striped vial from her pocket, unstopped it and gulped it down. A wave of dizziness engulfed her and thunder filled her ears. No, not thunder, hoof beats. Her father and his men had found her, and rode into the square even now.

  She lurched toward the priest. It lowered its arm. It knows, she thought, and she smiled. It understands. It grants me haven.

  She stumbled, but it caught her and lifted her in its arms, carrying her as no one had done since she was a child. It turned, walking toward the temple, and through her fading vision, Perdama saw flitting shadows that would not come near. Perhaps they were people she had once known.

  The stars turned to water, and the priest’s funereal robe swirled with bright yellow, like flower petals in a whirlpool. My mark has taken, she thought. My goodness has added to its own, and it has given me its care. Even if it will last but a moment, I am safe in its arms.

  Tunj, struggling with his terrified horse, watched the priest carry his daughter into the temple. He was close enough to hear her last breath, and he thought it sounded like a sigh.

  Preservation

  What’s this? A second, secret Twenty Palaces short story in the collection?

  Well, technically, yes this is a Twenty Palaces short, but Ray and Annalise appear in it only indirectly. What’s more, I wrote it long, long ago when I was still working out the magic system and tone of the series. As you can see, the books went in a very different direction from what’s here.

  So I would consider this a proto-Twenty Palaces story, outside the true canon, which might be an interesting glance at the way writers (meaning me) flail about a bit before the tone and style can be truly nailed down.

  –– –- ––

  “Use your hands now.” I pointed to a spot at the bottom of the hole. Ann couldn’t see our prize through the dirt, but I could.

  She knelt and scooped at the soil with trembling fingers. She was no longer capable of vigorous work, but that’s what brought her here. Within seconds of careful scraping, she uncovered a shriveled face.

  I expected her to sigh with relief, but instead she grunted with fear. “I found—”

  The face opened its eyes. Ann gasped and drew back, despite herself. She had chosen this, but at the final moment she shrank from our prize.

  The vampire’s gaze fell on her and he exploded out of the dirt. He bit into Ann’s throat like a starving animal.

  Would I have saved her if she had changed her mind at the last minute and reached out to me for help? I’ll never know. She did not reach to me. She had accepted death as I will never do.

  As he drank, the vampire’s flesh filled out and turned pink. Eventually, he released her, letting her fall into the bottom of the hole. Then he staggered and covered his face with his hands.

  “What have I done?” he said, his voice rough. “Lord Jesus, what have I done?”

  “Starved yourself,” I answered, “until your hunger was all you had left.”

  The vampire sprang from the grave. He bared his long teeth at me. “You did this to her—”

  I turned up the brim of my hat. He glanced at the tiny sigil drawn there and collapsed onto the grass. I knew he could not hurt me in a fight—I doubted he could even pierce my flesh with his fangs—but that didn’t mean I wanted a physical confrontation. The man was covered in mud.

  He lay on the grass and wept. “I have killed again.”

  “She was very sick, if that’s any consolation. She chose to free and feed you rather than die in slow, terrible agony. You should respect her choice.” The creature was not consoled. “Now it’s time for you to choose: will you bring her back?”

  The vampire would not look up at me. He only shook his head.

  Fair enough. Ann knew this was a possibility. I reached into my jacket and removed a pin. It was large, like a heavy nail, and I had affixed a yellow streamer to the back. On the streamer, I had drawn a sigil, similar to the one on my hat.

  I threw the pin into Ann’s body. She burst into flames.

  The vampire had not moved. The spell I used to subdue him must have been stronger than I thought, or he was weaker. Either way, dawn was coming. There was no choice; I picked him up and carried him to my car, lamenting that I had not thought to wear an anorak or something equally practical and unfashionable.

  “Do you see these digging machines?” I pointed to the construction equipment along the road. “In the morning, one of them would have uncovered you.”

  “I would have preferred that, sir.”

  “Ah, but the sun would have had quite a reaction to your blood-starved flesh. The resulting fire would have killed the driver, I’ll bet, and possibly others, too.”

  “So we slew that woman to save other men’s lives.” His sarcasm ended the conversation.

  The drive home was uneventful. The vampire, whose name was Thomas Cale, was not amazed by my car, nor was he offended by the plastic drop sheet I draped over the passenger seat. He sat beside me, sulking, for the entire ride.

  I decided to take a slight detour and we drove I-5 through downtown Seattle. Thomas gaped at the skyline, finally startled by the modern world. We discussed the number of people now living by the Sound, and what he could remember about how long he had been in the earth.

  Judging by his clothes and the rusted sidearm he wore, I guessed he had buried himself shortly before the turn of the 20th Century. Thomas could not or would not confirm this. He claimed his memories were jumbled, perhaps because he had not fed enough. We would take care of that soon.

  My house was far from the general population on the other side of the city, and the sun had almost risen when we pulled into my garage. Monica was waiting for us.

  “Nathan, I was afraid you wouldn’t make it.”

  “I’m sorry to worry you, love.” I kissed her. Her skin smelled like rose petals. I could have
held her for hours. “Have you seen anything suspicious today?”

  She shook her head. Using my sight, I looked up into the master bedroom. I could see the shadowy figure lying in the bed. It still clung to life, however perverse that form of life might be. There was still time.

  Thomas climbed from the car. Monica smiled, picked up a bowl from a shelf and approached him. “Welcome to our home.”

  Thomas recoiled from her. “Ma’am, please, don’t—”

  I stepped between them. I did not want Monica getting close to this vampire. “No one died to produce this.” I held out the bowl of warmed blood. “It will ease your hunger and your urge to kill.”

  Thomas took the bowl hesitantly then gulped down the contents. When he finished, his eyes were gleaming. “How…?”

  “Hospitals have perfected the storage of blood donations. We can feed you without loss of life now that you are conscious enough to drink from a bowl.”

  When Thomas had cleaned up and and changed into modern clothes, we sat down to a meal. A blood-rare steak lay on my plate, while Monica’s was bare of any meat. Thomas selected a sampling of foods, delighting in each. He would draw no sustenance from them, I knew, but he still had a sense of taste. We also provided him with a tea pot filled with warmed blood.

  “How is the food?” Monica asked.

  “Amazing, ma’am. I’ve never had anything like it in all my days. What are these, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Preserved lemons. May I ask you a question? Why did you bury yourself?”

  “The killing, ma’am. I could not eat without harming folk, and I’ve never been a killer. How did you become sorcerers?”

  Monica laughed. “I don’t know any magic. Nathan has promised to teach me someday, but I’m just an everyday woman.”

  “Not everyday,” I said. “I have lived a long time—longer than you, Thomas—and I have never met another like you. You are rare and precious, like a jewel.”

  Monica squeezed my hand, then turned back to our guest. “How did you become a vampire?”