“Certainly, if that’s more in line with your budget,” Senlin said.
The marquis pursed his reddened lips. “Budget! What a filthy word. You had a different figure in mind?”
“I was thinking one hundred and ninety minas.”
“At fourteen to one odds? Are you mad? That would make my pay out, um …” The marquis snapped his fingers at his footman, who extracted a small abacus from his satchel, spent a moment slapping beads back and forth, and then whispered into the marquis’s ear. “Two thousand eight hundred and fifty minas!” the marquis exclaimed.
“I was thinking of a different sort of wager, your lordship. If the Iron Bear wins tonight, you take my purse. But if he loses, I take the Iron Bear.”
For the first time since entering the club, the Marquis de Clarke was at a loss for words. He consoled himself with nursing his drink and with presenting Senlin with a carousel of expressions that ranged from suspicion, to admiration, to amusement, to disgust.
At last the marquis declared, “All right, I’ll take that bet, but we must let Joachim hold the money. I don’t want to have to chase you across the plaza when you lose.”
Senlin agreed. He surrendered his wager to the bartender, who placed the banknotes in a heavy iron lockbox, apparently reserved just for that purpose. Joachim set the box upon a shelf under the watchful eye of a marble bust who wore a feather boa about its noble neck.
The size of the wager and the marquis’s habit of drawing attention to himself made the passing of Senlin’s fortune to Joachim something of a club event. Members flocked to the bar, and when the marquis toasted his own inevitable victory and thanked the Boskop for his donation, all the club cheered and saluted and gave the servers plenty of work pouring out and mopping up drinks.
When Wil emerged from the festive scrum, Senlin was almost relieved to see him. The duke removed the more inebriated revelers with straight-armed handshakes and hellos that somehow communicated goodbye. Having cleared a space, the duke took up residence on the stool beside Senlin.
The duke looked like a man struggling to contain a secret; his cheeks were plump with a suppressed smile, and his eyes shone with light. “Hullo, Cyril! You’re wearing the same clothes you were last night! Don’t tell me you never went home? Are we corrupting you?”
“Perhaps. I just made a wager, a very large wager, which is odd. I’ve seen the accounts of enough men to know better than to gamble. The only people who gamble are the ones with either too much money or too little. My wife will be furious!”
“And how does the wife of a Boskop show her fury?”
“Well, last time I displeased her, she left my terrarium open, and all my snails crawled out. It took me weeks to find them all.”
“Monstrous!” the duke declared, obviously amused. He ordered an elaborate cocktail called a Conspicuous Melon, which required the preparation of a variety of fruit muddled with dark rum. Joachim set a cutting board and paring knife on the bar and began preparing watermelon, lime, strawberries, and mint with all the attention and care of a surgeon. “Speaking of wives,” the duke continued, “as promised, mine has had a change of heart.”
Senlin frowned as he tried to process this unexpected news. “But her refusal last night seemed rather … adamant.”
“Oh, you know how women are!” The duke swatted the air and shared a wink with Joachim, who returned it with a swiftness befitting his profession.
“Meaning what?” Senlin’s former sense of clarity about Marya began to fog over. The snap of the bartender’s knife upon the board nipped at his nerves.
“Sometimes you have to help them think a thing through. Women are very good at seeing the details of life: the seconds and minutes. They immediately perceive a crooked necktie or a drowsy footman or a cinder on the rug. But they can’t stand back and see the months and the years. They haven’t that sort of vision. They can plan a dinner perfectly well, but not a war.” The duke paused to observe Joachim tamping fruit into a tall glass. When he looked back at Senlin, he gave a playful scowl. “But why are you making that face? I thought you’d be happy! This is excellent news.”
“Yes, yes, it is. Wonderful news,” Senlin said, his expression of confusion broken by the flicker of a smile. “It’s just so surprising. How did you convince her?”
“Your concern for my wife is touching, but really, what does it matter? You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” the duke asked, and Senlin saw the change in his attitude—a darkening of his gaze and a rounding of his back, like a cat pressed into a corner.
“I suppose I just don’t want to think I’ve had a hand in coercing her into something—”
The duke gripped Senlin’s forearm where it lay on the bar. Instinctively, Senlin tried to pull away, but the duke jerked him back and drew him closer still. “Some of my friends are calling me a fool for conducting business with a Boskop. They say you don’t have the backbone to see a thing through. There’s a difference, they say, between counting money and making it. But I told them—” The duke pressed his face nearer Senlin’s until they seemed to share a common breath. “‘No, no, no. Cyril is different,’ I said. ‘Cyril has real ambition. He has the vision of a magnate, of a regent, of a Pelphian. He’s not one of those stupid fops who hides behind scruples because he’s too afraid to do what has to be done, too afraid to take what he wants.’” The duke squeezed Senlin’s arm until the muscle pinched painfully upon the bone. “Well, you’ve got what you want, Cyril. Now be happy.”
The revelation came on like a guillotine: Senlin felt a sudden shock of pain, the disorientation of his severed thoughts, and the dwindling of all light and sense.
He had made a terrible mistake.
In his eagerness to defer to Marya’s wishes, in his determination to admit and account for his own faults, he had failed to see the duke for what he truly was. There had been plenty of signs that the man’s character was driven by antipathy, entitlement, and the sort of insecurity that praise alone cannot sate, an insecurity that requires the suffering of others to be assuaged. Wilhelm’s contempt for institutions of learning and educated persons; his tolerance of violence and indifference toward injustice; his habit of mocking and tormenting everyone, even his friends—were all the hallmarks of a bully.
Senlin had thought Marya rejected him to protect the life she had built for herself, but no, she had commanded him to get as far away as possible to protect him from the duke. Because she knew what Wilhelm was: He was a brute. And Senlin had let himself be charmed. His heart ached to think what the duke had done to her to change her mind.
The duke released Senlin’s arm and sat back with a contented sigh. He straightened the flower on his lapel. His charming smile bloomed again. “I have a surprise for you.”
Senlin hardly heard him, nor did he pay much mind to the voices around him as they pitched higher, nor the commotion behind him as chairs and tables were moved. He was too busy planning how he would help Marya escape. He would wait until after the State of Art had docked, then he would concoct an excuse to get Marya out to the port unaccompanied. He would tell the duke that the fresh air was good for conditioning the voice, that sunlight improved one’s range, that the birds in the sky were the best voice coaches of all, and—
The sudden thump of drums interrupted his plotting. Finger cymbals tinked and rang. A clay horn buzzed like a wasp. Senlin turned toward the music. The club members parted around a band of musicians. The men sat cross-legged on an old rug, playing their instruments with a sort of delirious fervor. Three women, voluptuous as vases, posed in the clearing. They wore simple domino masks and very little else. Gold slings cupped their breasts; split skirts framed their thighs. Their facelessness made them seem disrobed in a different, more unsettling way. With Marya so near the fore of his mind, the parading of these masked women filled Senlin with a revulsion so intense it made him cringe. He tried to swivel around on his stool again, but the duke gripped him under his arm and faced him forward. “No, no, Cyril. D
on’t look away. Here is your surprise. A burlesque in your honor!”
At some indistinguishable musical cue, the frozen women thawed and began to dance. Their skirts flicked and whipped, animated by the motion of their hips. Their arms wove through the air. The tempo quickened, spurred on by the whistles of the gazing mob. The horn player’s cheeks swelled; his eyelids looked bee-stung. The music drove the magpies from the nests, and the birds wound about in the air overhead, shedding feathers, black and white, amid squawks of alarm. The faceless dancers undulated like sails in a squall.
The music grew more frantic, and the dancers advanced upon Senlin. The duke laughed in his ear, pulling Senlin to his feet. He shoved him roughly forward. Senlin staggered a step, then halted, his throat hardening about a lump. The middle dancer, her eyes gleaming inside the holes of her mask, stared at him. Her movement slowed, as if her limbs were falling asleep, and then she stopped dancing altogether, though the other two continued to writhe.
She approached Senlin, tentatively at first, then with violent speed.
She struck him across his face before anyone could stop her, then struck him again even as two club members moved to restrain her. She ripped off her mask before the men got a firm grip upon her arms. Even as they held her, she kicked at Senlin, her bare feet catching him on the ribs.
The music stuttered, then failed, and her voice resonated in the sudden quiet: “You monster! You killed him!”
“Cyril, do you have any idea who this woman is?” the duke asked, apparently amused by the outburst.
Senlin looked at the woman. He knew her face, but it took him a moment to retrieve the memory. Then he recalled the flying cottage, the books he’d stolen, and the idealistic doctor who’d come with his daughter in search of a Tower, a beacon of civilization, that did not exist. The young woman’s name echoed up from the recesses of remembrance. Her name was Nancy.
“How do you know Mr. Pinfield?” the duke asked the irate woman.
“He’s no mister! He’s a pirate!” Nancy cried. “He’s the coward who robbed my father and broke his heart! He stole his books, his faith, his hope! You murdered him, Thomas Senlin! You killed him with despair!”
When Senlin turned to look at his host, he found him wearing a curious smile. He seemed to have just woken from the most wonderful dream.
“Ah, there you are,” the duke said.
Chapter Fourteen
Ecstasy lies in that brief silence at the end of a play, when the performance is over but the applause has not yet begun.
—Oren Robinson of the Daily Reverie
Everyone in the club seemed caught in a moment of confused uncertainty. They did not understand the significance of the name the burlesque dancer had spat like a curse, nor could they tell from the duke’s macabre smile what he thought of the revelation.
Seeing at once that this was all the head start he was going to get, Senlin bolted.
There really was only one direction open to him. The club members who’d crowded in to watch the burlesque dancers blocked the stairs and formed a sort of tunnel stretching from the bar to the balustrade, beyond which there was only open air and fluttering birds.
Snatching the paring knife from Joachim’s cutting board, Senlin ran for the rail. The masked dancers shrieked as he passed narrowly between them. The musicians dove out of his way, clutching their instruments. He stuck the knife between his teeth, dug out his handkerchief, and wrapped it around his hand as he went. When he reached the railing where he’d once contemplated ending the duke’s life—a missed opportunity he now sorely regretted—he gripped the garland of silk flowers and pulled. The garland, which was regularly lashed to the spindles with twine, came away just enough for him to get the knife under it. He clipped the festoon and, taking the loose end of the rope in his handkerchief-wrapped hand, stepped onto the flat top of the balustrade.
He turned to see the club members had closed upon him, the duke at the fore of an intimidating wall of suit coats and oiled hair. Wil looked delighted. He held out his arms, restraining the men nearest him from attempting to catch the interloper. He seemed curious to see whether Senlin really would try to leap from the balcony.
Senlin looked down at the clay of the arena floor far below. The height made his head swim, and in that moment of dizziness, he dropped the paring knife. He watched the blade flash as it tumbled end over end, landing amid a little puff of red dust.
Deciding that deliberation was the enemy of courage, he took a deep breath and stepped off the rail.
His descent was a halting, jerking one, as each bit of twine that held the garland in place snapped free. With each break, he was yanked to the side along the curvature of the balcony. Soon, he was swinging as much as falling. As the garland grew longer, and his spiraling descent quickened, he sailed farther and farther over the crowded stands, carried by centrifugal force. Then his grip failed him, and he plunged into the crowd.
Rather than suffer the injury of his fall by himself, Senlin spread the pain across a row of men, none of whom were grateful for their share of it. His landing caused an explosion of beer and oaths. He scrambled over the bowled-flat bodies of the men who’d caught him and leapt to a clear seat on the row below.
As he stepped from one open seat to another, descending the bleachers in hops and strides, the crowd about him began to pelt him with trash. He leapt into the main aisle at the base of the stands and ran for the exit tunnel. A man slung a full beer at him, dousing his hair. A hail of peanuts drummed upon his back just as he reached the shelter of the tunnel.
Thus far, he seemed to be fleeing more quickly than the news of his discovery. So when the guards in the tunnel accosted him for running so recklessly through the turnstiles and upsetting the queue of incoming men, Senlin pulled his soggy lapel at them, showing them the Coterie pin, and they let him go at once.
When he broke from the tunnel into the airy lobby, he was dismayed to find it now stuffed to the walls. He tried to make a path for himself, but not even the flaunting of his pin could clear a way. He turned when he heard shouts and saw the duke leading a gang of club members down the stairs. Senlin ducked behind a column, hoping he’d not been spotted.
He pulled the Sphinx’s recorder from his pocket and peeled off the tobacco leaf with trembling fingers. He switched the device on and spoke into it in a rush. “I’ve been discovered. I’m probably done for. It doesn’t matter. You have to get Marya out of here. Don’t be fooled by the duke. He is not what he seems. Tell Marya I love her. Tell her I’m sorry I failed her once again.”
He turned the moth’s head, and the brass thorax sprouted legs. Its wings, painted the same blue as the Pelphian sky, unfolded and beat the air with tentative, rousing strokes. Senlin lifted the messenger, even as the shouts of his pursuers drew near.
The moth lifted from his palm, bounding upward, unsteadily at first, then finding its stroke. Senlin observed it rise as hands clamped his arms, his neck, his shoulders, pulling him downward. He resisted the weight, the inevitable descent, watching the moth’s flight.
A streak of black swooped down and snatched the moth from the air.
Senlin watched the magpie return to its nest with the Sphinx’s messenger pinched in its beak. The bird tore the painted wings free and dropped the brass body into its nest, where it clinked and rolled down a little trove of buttons and trinkets.
Senlin shouted in despair. The force of many hands drove him to his knees. He tried to fight back, tried to worm his way free. Someone drew a sack over his head.
In the dark, he heard Wilhelm say, “The ether! Douse him. Douse him!”
A single thought resonated in Senlin’s head: Wilhelm would blame her for this. He drew a hard breath and yelled through the sackcloth, “She wanted nothing to do with me! She laughed at me! She rejected—”
An arm pinched his neck like a nutcracker, pulling his head back as a knee dug into his spine. The cloth about his nose and mouth took on a tingling, piercing scent. The fumes made
the gloom inside the hood bubble with light. The light filled his head, flowed out to his limbs, and down to his fingertips, erasing all sensation as it spread. Pupil-black stars swam into view, spreading across a whitewashed cosmos. The swimming constellations grew larger and nearer, strangling out the light. The closer the black stars came, the farther away everything seemed, until he could see nothing beyond the empty, gawking dark.
His senses returned one at a time and gradually, like guests arriving to a party. And like a nervous host, Senlin discovered his anxiety did nothing to quicken their arrival.
His hearing returned first. He distinguished a man’s voice, though he had difficulty following his speech, then the wet splash of something dripping onto stone and the patter of distant footfalls. The feeling in his hands came back. At first, he thought all strength had been sapped from them, but then he perceived the cold edge of the irons and realized his wrists were shackled together. When he could see again, he found the Colosseum had vanished. He lay on his shoulder upon a bare flagstone floor. A puddle reflected the orange glow of a lantern, which seemed the only light in the room. The bricks in the walls were rounded with age and the flow of water. Everything was damp. The smell reminded him of the odor of a well: the cold scent of mosses and minerals.
At last, Senlin recognized the voice as Wilhelm’s, and when he sat up—awkwardly, painfully—he saw the duke pacing between two soldiers, both of whom had their swords drawn. The duke held a pistol in one hand and a lantern in the other. He swung the lamp about, dramatizing a speech Senlin had not heard the start of: “… the baying hounds, and the fevered chase, when the grass and trees whip me as hard as I crop my horse. Then a stillness comes over my very soul and my hands are as steady as stone, and my eyes are clear as spring water, and the flash of the muzzle is like a sunrise. And it’s always the same: Before the beast submits, it first must buck and kick at death. It makes no difference, of course. Deer, bison, wildebeest, elk, I have bled them all, skinned them, gutted them. Transforming a beast into a trophy is not so different.”
The Hod King Page 14