Moreth found he liked the new dualities in his nature: he was both cultured and monstrous, manly and effeminate. His father had been only black, but Moreth could embody all the shades of gray, which seemed a far better way to live. And so he’d existed in a blissful state of contrasts for many years. Increasingly reclusive, he spent most of time at home, reading, listening to music, cultivating his senses—and emerging only to visit the Blood Pits. Once a month or so, he summoned a pleasure maiden—or two, or three—or perhaps a man. A kind master, he would allow them to spend the night in luxury, swaddled in silk sheets and glutted with venison, before sending them home with twice their pay. Of course, the extra coin was mostly to quiet any concerns they might have about the bruises and markings that were the outward signs of his curious sense of sexuality—for there could be no true pleasure without pain. In his cellar, he’d built a grand padded room that housed an assortment of instruments that looked made for torture but were softened by rubber tips. In it could also be found great harnesses of chains with fishhooks as small as children’s earrings. Often his memories of the glistening, moaning passion, the darkness on the border between desire and agony, were what oiled his rod on the many nights he slept alone. The thought of gloved fingers entering—
“Oh dear,” exclaimed Mouse, fanning herself.
“You said I should tell you everything,” replied Moreth. “You must understand my tastes if you are to understand me.”
“Naturally,” said Talwyn.
“Then there’s Beatrice,” Moreth continued. Taking a deep breath, he lay down upon his roll and looked up toward the place where the bones of the tent met. “You’ve seen her kind. I’m sure you can imagine her tastes.”
Mouse and Talwyn shared a shiver.
“We’ll speak of my wife later; there’s more for you to hear of my time in Menos,” said Moreth.
Boredom had set in for young Moreth, and he now found himself disillusioned by the creative sex and art that had once brought him such pleasure. Before he’d turned to tearing paintings and shooing naked, bloody whores from his manor, he’d tried to engage his interest through other activities. He’d taken up shooting and learned he was a deadly shot. Each week, he’d hired a swordsman to teach him the art of fencing, though he always ended up dismissing these fools once his skills had surpassed theirs. He then sought other tutors who could instruct him in the arts of war. Although he could not predict his future—no men, save the children of the House of Mysteries, could—these experiences were calculated to lead him down one road, to one destined calling: there was something in this world that he must hunt if he were ever to feel complete.
As this hidden awareness grew, he spent more time in the Blood Pits and even swam in the shark pool of Menosian politics. Politicians were easy prey, and melted like buttered toffee when they encountered his clever, educated mind that made a game of tactics and warfare. Moreth played the game to win. He caressed the necessary egos and genitals, killed whatever weaker animals stood between him and his goals, and within months had secured for himself his father’s old seat on the Council of the Wise. One day, Gloriatrix herself had summoned him to her austere, gleaming office and congratulated him on his game. She told him that she saw in him something that reminded her of herself. Then he was dismissed, but the seeds of an alliance had been sewn that day.
But alas, despite all these games, his ennui persisted: none of these hunts truly succeeded in rousing him. None of his prey was exactly right. He hadn’t found what he needed to achieve satisfaction. Perhaps no such thing existed on Geadhain, and he should settle into the sickening routines of his father. Maybe that was why Father had surrendered to his vices—he knew that life was meaningless and devoid of any real passion. As an Iron Sage and a man of fantastic wealth, there shouldn’t have been anything in life that Moreth couldn’t obtain. Except happiness: that elusive feeling that neither money nor influence could buy. So it was the hunt for happiness that at last inspired him. He would seek to acquire that which was most unattainable in life, that which his father and most Menosians failed to capture despite their outrageous power.
Would love make him happy? For a while, he tried to answer this question by laying with peasants and duchesses, as many varieties of woman as he could, but he found all Menosian women drab and power-hungry—even the ugly, even the bland. When he had reached the lowest rung on his ladder of shame, he shopped the flesh markets for a bride stolen from one of Geadhain’s other realms. Sadly, they were all too terrified and covered in shite and filth for him to give them any serious consideration. Life was not a faery tale: one couldn’t make a lady out of a toad. They were all such unformed clay, these women. They were all savage, and not in the way Moreth wished them to be—two-natured, as he was.
One day, feeling hopeless, he bought a dark-haired, full-busted woman and brought her home. Something about her intrigued him: although she was a savage, she didn’t quiver or show overt signs of indecency. However, once clean and put in a dress, she behaved like a developmentally challenged adult. She clanged her cutlery awkwardly on his cherished silverware before picking up her quail, tearing it apart, and stuffing pieces of it into her mouth. The sound of her uncultivated chewing nearly drove him to fetch his pistol and end this cruel charade. Instead, he brought her to his crimson-leather room.
Even there, she was an awful disappointment: she refused to cry out, to whimper, to tease him with her suffering. Neither whips nor hooks nor thrashings from a chain drew from her anything more than the occasional grunt. At one point, as he sweated with frustration and paused to catch his breath, the chained slave gazed at him with eyes wide and full of pity. “You poor, sad, broken man,” her expression seemed to say. Angry both at himself and at this defiant and saintly woman, Moreth flew into a rage and beat her. After his state of murderous intoxication had passed, he found she lived, but barely. The woman’s face, body, and undergarments were all red. She reminded him of mad Ingray from the opera. Somehow, she still managed not to cry out. She would not be broken. Moreth fell and wept, for he realized he’d become his father.
He carried the shattered slave upstairs. He screamed for his servants and ordered them to fetch a fleshcrafter who could make this woman beautiful once more, and then to feed her, clothe her, and hire the finest tutors to educate her. I am not my father, he declared to himself. After she had been healed, she would work at his estate. If she were placed elsewhere, perhaps back with the slavemongers in the meat market, her fate would be worse than what he had almost visited upon her. She would live and serve and remind him each day how close his soul had flitted to the darkness.
Mouse leaned in, trembling and enraptured. “What happened to her? The woman?”
“Her name was Elsa,” replied Moreth. “I named her after my mother. In order to be a free citizen of Menos, one must first be a citizen of Central Geadhain. Through a series of fortunate circumstances, which I’ll discuss in due time, she inherited the Brennoch surname, which belongs to an old lineage of the West. Otherwise, Elsa would have had no family name. None of the people from Pandemonia hold surnames—as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Talwyn.”
“She was a native of this land?” exclaimed Talwyn.
“Indeed,” replied Moreth. “Here, each person is known only by one word that reflects the passion of their soul. I’d say her word was mercy. She reminded me not to become a wanton monster like my father. She knew what I had done to her, and yet she treated me with politeness, even respect after a time. I did not understand forgiveness and compassion until she showed them to me. She learned our customs, our language, and lived and worked as a servant on my estate for all her years, until she and her husband—my valet—passed. Her daughter, a dark and comely lass, continued her mother’s work, and I arranged for her brother to join the Iron military.”
“Wait. However did she cross Geadhain to end up in a Menosian slave market in the first place?” asked Talwyn.
“Meat market,” corrected Moreth. “She h
ad been one of a hundred savages caught trying to sail up the Feordhan—Kings only know where they were headed, likely somewhere in the Northlands. Elsa never spoke of the journey, refused to speak of it, in fact. Naturally, our spies in Riverton informed us of the strange vessel long before it escaped the Feordhan and penetrated the Northlands. The Ironguard caught the longboat near Blackmore, then burned it and flew the slaves straight to the Iron City.”
“Ghastly how we treat people in this supposed age of enlightenment.” Talwyn sighed.
“It wasn’t exactly this age,” snapped Moreth. “Although not much has changed over the past few decades, I’ll admit. I tried to move the rusted wheel of progress in Menos. I signed Gloriatrix’s Charter for Freedom. I ensured that a man could win his freedom, and a title of citizenship, from conquering the Blood Pits. After my attack on Elsa—I have never struck a woman since then—I returned to the meat markets, hoping to find more of the exiles with whom she’d traveled. I felt…” He got the word out only after much effort. “Merciful.”
Fate wasn’t merciful, though. None of Elsa’s kin remained after the nightly frenzy of body hawking—none save for one man, that is. He was obviously violent, and his kennel had been shoved to the back of the stage. Moreth was certain that the brown tiger of a man had been present the day before. However, the captive projected a strange calm that made him seem both inconspicuous and threatening. Wandering closer, peering past the feet of the slavemongers and the other slaves, Moreth watched the man gaze from whip holder to master as if he were counting bodies in his mind. If the bars were to suddenly vanish, Moreth knew the man would kill every master and guard present as fast as a spirit of lightning. He’d feel no remorse; he’d do it because he understood he must kill or be killed. This was the kind of man who fought in Moreth’s pits. And yet, there was something different about him.
Moreth shouted, “The man in the back—I’ll take him. How many crowns?”
“Are you sure?” asked the slavemonger, strutting over and whipping the cage; the man inside didn’t flinch. “He killed eight of my men using only chains. Although I suppose you might want him for that kind of thing, your lordship.”
Eight men, thought Moreth. He now desired the caged monster more than ever.
Once the two were back at the estate, Moreth had the man hosed down in the gardens before bringing him inside; he had felt it wise to purchase the cage as well. Then the next order of business had been to feed the stringy man, and meat was tossed into the cage. Moreth didn’t provide cutlery for the fellow, knowing that any sharp—or blunt—implement might be used as a weapon. Moreth had never seen a man so feral, a man with an animal for a spirit. He watched as the savage ripped apart and devoured his serving of raw steak. Moreth had wanted to see whether he would be willing to eat it. Moreth studied the man’s glory. Remove the wind-burned tan, the lines and scars and unidentifiable markings—from claws?—on his short, lean body and he’d likely be a handsome man. Devouring his meat seemed to be a struggle for him, and at one point he coughed up a wad of mucous and meat too big and fatty to be swallowed. It was then that Moreth realized he had no tongue.
Like a voyeur at a freak show, Moreth pulled up a chair and sat in his lavish salon watching the naked man nibble at and gag down raw meat. He couldn’t look away: the man was too captivating. Even when the slave walked to the side of his cage after finishing his meal and then pissed on Moreth’s exquisite Sorsettan rug, Moreth couldn’t summon the urge to reprimand him. Instead, he sat, surrounded by the reek of urine, which grew as the piss was warmed by the rare glow of sunshine coming in through the curtains, and continued his watch. Soon, the man squatted, reached into his anus, and pulled out a treasure—it glittered slightly. A contraband necklace. The man unraveled it, held it for a moment, staring at it, then placed it around his neck.
Afterward, the man glared at Moreth. “Just try and take my treasure,” he seemed to say. The man wasn’t afraid of him, wasn’t even concerned that he was caged. He looked comfortable. A dark thought, a dangerous thought, manifested itself in Moreth’s mind: he wondered what the leather man would do if he were to let him out.
Evening hunted through the sky, killing and eating Menos’s scarce light; the purple haze would likely block out the sun for the rest of the year. So in darkness, Moreth sat, waiting, watching his pet. Or did he have the relationship backward? Perhaps he was the captive of this quiet, strange creature that prowled the iron floor of his cage. Every motion of the beast had a meaning; his head twitched when he heard a sound from elsewhere in the manor, or perhaps even from the grounds of the estate beyond. Moreth couldn’t leave the side of this creature; he was himself in a cage little different from the iron one before him. Moreth realized that the leather man had touched forces beyond those he knew, and his interest continued to grow.
During the night, his valet came and told him that the woman he’d beaten nearly to death had been mended and was now resting.
“Go and stay with her until she wakes,” he said to the lanky, gaunt, and striking fellow—a bit like a stork in gentlemen’s clothing—whose name was Boris.
“I shall. Will you be needing supper?”
“No.”
Boris pointed to the cage. “Will he?”
The leather man sensed his captors were discussing him, and he rattled his empty bowl across the bars of his cage.
“I would say yes,” said Moreth. “Meat for him—tenderize or stew it a bit—and a bottle of wine for me.”
Boris glanced around, looking for tipped tables or other signs of a burglary. “From where did he get that jewelry? It looks precious.”
“Better if you don’t know. I wouldn’t suggest trying to take it from him.”
As if aware of a possible threat to his treasure, the naked man suddenly tested the bars of his cage: he dropped his bowl and shook the metal cube, nearly managing to tip over its hundreds of pounds of iron. Moreth didn’t doubt that with a little more effort, he could have done just that, but such shows of rebellion wouldn’t amount to much.
“On second thought, two or three of bottles would be a grand idea,” shouted Moreth just as his valet was leaving the room.
After the ruckus, the leather man once again began making the rounds of his prison. Wine and meat were brought for their respective recipients, who quickly consumed them. Two bottles soon lay empty on the floor, and Moreth’s head was fuzzy with warmth. Perhaps it was his liquored bravado that made him stumble up and offer the neck of the next bottle to the slave. A drink to celebrate his queerness and charm, thought the master. Moreth was not a complete fool, and he brought the bottle only so far. The leather man’s eyes glimmered. Too late Moreth realized the danger. In a mere speck, the slave had shot his skinny arms through the narrow bars, grabbed the bottle, shattered it, grabbed Moreth by his collar, and wrenched him up against the hard iron cage. Shards of glass pressed into the softness of Moreth’s throat, and he suspected he was about to die.
Predator and prey gazed into each other’s eyes. The river of Moreth’s life coursed through his memory: sparkling parties, wealth, murders, sex, and the waning, never satisfying thrill of power. For some reason, he remembered the image of his fat father entwined on a bed of writhing whores; his mother and he had walked in on them when he was barely ten years old. It was one of his earliest childhood memories. Moreth had thought he would feel more when facing his own end—more fear, more regret—but he felt nothing.
Do it, he willed the man. End this empty life of mine. I have squandered my wealth, my advantages, the gifts of Fate. I’ve found nothing in life that can satisfy me.
The leather man dropped his glass weapon and released him. Whatever he’d seen in Moreth might not be worth his pity, yet it wasn’t worth killing over either. Moreth stumbled away but found he couldn’t leave the room, couldn’t hide himself from the stare of the man who now watched all his movements. Still hunting him, even from his cage.
Suddenly, they heard a shriek from upstairs—
the slave girl screaming bloody terror as she awoke to the agony of her reconstructed body. Moreth remembered the torments that had followed even his most minor fleshcrafting surgeries, and the spectacular wailings of his father during the constant transplants during his final years. When he glanced back at the slave, the man nodded—a gesture of understanding, of respect, though not of fellowship. Was it possible the man had let him live because of what he’d done for this woman? But how could he have known of her, or of Moreth’s actions? Could he understand Ghaedic? Did the leather man know of the brutal beating Moreth had given her beforehand? What had this brush with death a moment past been? A primitive, violent leniency for having spared the woman? Certainly Moreth had been spared. Behind the decision of this primal judge was a meaning he needed to find.
Just then, Moreth’s story was interrupted when Temupka entered the tent to bring them the evening stew. They noticed with some amazement that his tale had stolen most of the day. They stretched, used the toilet, and ate pensively, saying nothing until the pot was empty. A draught of anxiety and suspense had kept all of them awake, although they had already pushed themselves beyond the limits of exhaustion. After their break, Mouse urged him to continue. “What then? It seems you passed whatever pissing contest that was.”
“Not a pissing contest,” replied Moreth. “I was given a pardon. And then an opportunity to prove myself worthy of further challenges. He changed me, set me free. He freed me of my guilt, my whingeing, my spoiled aristocratic narcissism, my fear of death. For if you look straight into the Pale Lady’s grinning skull and do not shite yourself, you know you are made of the strongest flint. I felt that I, in turn, should set my liberator free. However, there are rules in Menos—rules that must be respected and honored—especially by an Iron Sage. Still, I was determined…”
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 54