The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (30 page)

Finally he placed the two remaining drakes in the great glass tank. They eyed him with inscrutable onyx eyes, then scampered away to coil about one another. The bed was comfortable, the sheets fresh, and yet he stared at the ceiling, knowing sleep would arrive unwillingly at best. The clock in the hall measured out insomnia in the
ticks
and
tocks
of hollow seconds, each pregnant with possibilities. Restless, he got out of bed to check the corners of the bedroom for spiders. He muttered, ‘Damocles,’ under his breath before settling down again. Outside, the sun finished its descent but the air remained charged and close. Lucien watched the stars come out one by one and wondered where his mother could be. He was awake a long time, not succumbing to sleep until a purple star appeared in the darkened firmament.

31

A Rhapsody of Flesh
KING’S KEEP
–
Febbraio
315

‘I told them it would take time,’ said the king in a reasonable, educated tone. His voice was a rich basso which carried across the room easily. His bulbous head was bald with a heavy brow that immersed his eyes in shadow. ‘I told them it could take hundreds of years. But for every breakthrough, I fear I forget something I discovered in an earlier age.’

Lucien remained, mesmerised by the king’s reverie despite desperately wanting to flee. He was unsure if the king was addressing him or just thinking aloud.

‘And the Domo. He thinks me unaware of the various poisonings and assassinations. He thinks I don’t know how he schemes and plots. He thinks Landfall will be his.’ The king, still a disembodied head in the darkness, a face at the edge of the lantern light, regarded the floor. A moment of pensive silence followed. ‘He wants to inherit all of my hard work, yet chooses not to help me. He is an ungrateful son. I appear to be cursed by ungrateful progeny. No matter. I can make more. I will have perfection, even though I am far from that destination myself.’

The king stepped forward into the light, still muttering to himself. All of the laboratory’s horrors paled in the presence of Demesne’s ruler. His body suspended from eight legs that sprouted from his back. Each limb began in a swollen mass of gross muscle and ended in a mottled scythe blade. Lesions and split skin glistened sickly, chitin showing underneath. His human legs had atrophied, hanging useless from his pelvis, like his sex. His arms by contrast looked strong and powerful with long-fingered hands. Thick tines emerged from his forearms, shining midnight-blue. He was naked except for a heavy chain hung around his thick neck, pregnant with veins. Keys, hanging from the chain in a profusion of black metal spikes, glinted in the light.

‘I am not all that I was once was,’ said the king mildly. ‘I can’t remember the last time I wore the outline of a common man.’

Lucien struggled to breathe.

‘What have you done?’

‘An improvement here, an improvement there. I’m afraid I rather lost track. And my legs aren’t what they used to be.’ The king indicated his withered human limbs. ‘So I made some new ones.’

‘Why spider’s legs? Why spiders at all?’

‘A good question.’ The monstrosity paused to reflect. ‘The spider knows patience, but can also create whole worlds, worlds of webs and tunnels. Strands of possibility. And there is poison of course.’

The king drew closer. Lucien struggled to guess how tall he was on those scabrous columns of chitin. Twelve feet at least.

‘No good creating if you can’t also destroy,’ said the King.

A scythe-blade limb stepped closer, followed by another and yet more.

‘I suppose I shall have to put my work to one side in order to retain my throne. How tiresome.’

Lucien was edging back now, his feet sweeping through the carpet of spiders as one foot followed the other. The floor still roiled with the endless orgy of tiny limbs, but Lucien was transfixed by the once-man in front of him.

‘Of course I shall need to have new clothes made. I can’t
be naked in public. It simply won’t do. That would be déclassé.’ The king laughed, revealing needle-sharp teeth between darkened lips. ‘I suppose I could make clothes illegal. No, no. That wouldn’t make me popular at all, especially during winter.

Lucien continued to retreat, unable to tear his eyes away from the monstrous form, nor ignore the fractured soliloquy. The lantern light shrank back from the king, the darkness swallowing up his aberrant form. Only his head was still visible, hanging in the air like a baleful moon, white and pitted.

‘And now you’ve blundered your way into my web, and I will have to eat you, my little Orfano. Such sweet, sweet meat.’

The king laughed again, the sound twisting Lucien’s guts. He struggled not to drop the lantern and sword, desperate to clap his hands over his ears.

‘I wouldn’t really eat you, of course. I’m not a monster.’ This weirdly indignant. ‘The very idea of it is repugnant to me. I’m not Saturn.’

Lucien’s retreat had led him to the alcove where the musicians mouldered. His elbow jerked into a corpse. The violin hit the floor before the body did, a discordant
twang
flaring briefly before being swallowed by a clatter of bones. Lucien stared down, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Fine black twine held the bones together, emerging from joints and the top of the skull. The twine extended over the back of the chair, where it was tied to a wooden cross with neat knots.

‘You made a marionette from a corpse,’ he whispered.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’

‘You made a marionette from a corpse.’ His voice was louder now. Lucien looked up at the king, who had edged closer, his arachnid forelegs visible at the edge of the lantern’s nimbus.

The monstrosity clasped his hands together in a display of delight. ‘Aren’t they fantastic?’ His eyes glittered. ‘Would you like to play with one?’

‘That’s all we are to you – marionettes. Toys. Amusements.’ The last word curdled on the air between them, and even the silence couldn’t swallow Lucien’s seething disdain.

‘Well, I
am
the king, you insolent boy.’

Lucien felt the hot rush of his anger, the quickening of his blood. Adrenaline flooded his senses, harsh in the back of his throat.

‘I’m not your boy.’

The blade passed through an arachnid foreleg just above a knuckle. There was a sickening crack of chitin, and the deed was done before Lucien had decided how to follow up his initial strike. The king reared up on his four hind legs, a dismal shout escaping his purpled lips. The severed limb crashed to the floor wetly.

Lucien dodged to his left as the other foreleg was thrust forward, spear-like. A member of the long-dead quartet was shattered into a jumble of bones, the chair beneath him smashed into driftwood. Lucien struck again, but the blade did no more than leave a deep groove in rancid chitin. A grunt, and the monster backed up, allowing Lucien to escape the alcove.

Reduced to one foreleg, the king lunged forward, stabbing out a series of attacks. Lucien parried two, dodged the next, then ducked under another before retreating. It was impossible to determine how the next attack would come, or the angle the king would strike from. Lucien swiped at the stabbing leg, blade failing to bite into the armoured limb. Unrelenting, the king continued his assault, six limbs propelling him forward, the seventh continuing to thrust at the Orfano. The severed stump gouted clear blood, leaving a trail of blue gore across the chamber.

Lucien laboured to keep the light up. Bearing a knife or shield in his right hand was one thing, but the unfamiliar weight of the lantern was slowing him, taking him off balance. He eyed the dripping stump, hoping the king would bleed out and crash to the flagstones in a confusion of limbs. Small chance of that.

‘I think it’s time I took a more visible role in the ruling of Demesne,’ said the king. ‘I’ll start by executing the current crop of Orfani. That should make my point quite neatly.’

Lucien parried a blow. The sword shook in his hand. He wondered if Dino and Anea were safe. He wondered if anyone could be safe again.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to deadhead the roses.’

Distracted by the king’s ravings, Lucien almost failed to see the swipe directed at his head. He dropped to his knees, rolling forward, finding himself underneath the king’s suspended body. His grip on both the lantern and the sword faltered but he clung to them fearfully. The light sputtered, flickering back to brightness a second later. Lucien thrust up, but his blade skidded from hard chitin plates beneath the human skin. He swore and rolled again, emerging behind his opponent. The king stamped at the floor furiously. One steely pointed leg crashed down between Lucien’s boots; another narrowly missed his hip. The Orfano floundered a moment, off balance, then lost his footing. The sword skittered away across the floor from nerveless fingers – he’d smashed his elbow.

‘And the Domo will have to go too. He’s outlived his usefulness, wouldn’t you say? Time for retirement.’

A strange falsetto sound floated down to Lucien. He realised the king was giggling, the sound of a mind snapped. Somehow he managed to keep the lantern aloft. The spiders clambered over his supine form in seconds, threatening to engulf him. The king continued stamping down with his chitin legs, forcing Lucien away from Virmyre’s sword.

‘After all I’ve done for you,’ bellowed the king. ‘All the education, all the resources, the bloodlines, the research!’

Lucien had just regained his feet when the king’s remaining foreleg slapped him across the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He fell to his knees.

‘After all the training, all the advantages at your disposal.’

Another leg thrust down, missing Lucien’s thigh by scant inches.

‘I’m very disappointed in you, Lucien di Fontein,’ said the king, then burst into a gale of hysterical laughter.

Lucien staggered to his feet and fell back several feet before opening the small door on the side of the lantern. He hefted the light, then threw it at the chandelier with a desperate grunt. The king followed the arc of the fluttering light as it sailed through the darkness, up over the lip of the great circle of glass. The lantern crashed into the gilded wooden frame, settling on the upper side of the gaudy construction. Oil spilled from it before catching fire. The king swore in the old tongue.

Suddenly the chamber was flooded with light. Every shard and blade of glass reflected and diffused the flames. Lucien blinked into the fierce glare. The smell of scorched wood and rope filled the air. Lucien forced himself to keep his eyes open, struggling to take in the true horror of the king. The monstrosity of his madness was laid bare: every twisted limb, every cruel lesion and tear in his rotting flesh, each crude spine jutting from his forearms. The king was a rhapsody of abused meat. Muscles that had no business being tied together strained against their impossible biology. Skin had putrefied and fallen away. It was the work of a mind trapped in flesh and wanting to reinvent itself. To escape itself. It was the work of a mind that had manifested the true depths of its depravity.

The spiders on the floor scattered to the darkness, leaving Lucien alone with the ruler of Demesne. The king held up his hands to his face, screeching. He staggered to the bed, sinking his fingers into fetid covers, pulling them up over his head like a cowl. The still-sitting musicians stared out from behind their spectacles in silent judgement. The king flailed and swore under the sheets, still holding one arm up to his eyes, a seethe of writhing limbs. In his agony he mounted the bed, trying to take some measure of comfort from it despite the blinding light raining from above. Lucien circled the thrashing king to retrieve Virmyre’s blade, unsure of how to press his advantage. If he didn’t strike now he might not survive a second engagement, and yet the king’s torso had proved all but impregnable. Lucien despaired, but hefted the sword and prepared to charge. It was then the chandelier ripped free of the roof and plummeted onto the bed below.

There was a split second of wet chopping as glass sank into flesh before the chandelier exploded across the floor. A moment of silence followed, then a terrible wheezing emanated from the ruin on the bed. Shuddering breath dragged into punctured lungs. The smell of singeing flesh drifted on the air. Lucien advanced, stepping onto the bed, avoiding the small tongues of flame that licked and seared at the king. The bedding was afire; he wouldn’t have long.

‘The keys,’ he grated from clenched teeth.

‘
Vai al diavolo!
’ The king rocked violently, but the wooden frame of the chandelier held him fast. He struggled harder. A glass blade sank deep into an exposed joint. The king howled.

‘Give me the keys,’ said Lucien. The tongues of fire were congregating now, not licking but consuming the bed. It was a matter of seconds before the ruin of the king and the chandelier became a conflagration.

‘You were always the weakest,’ spat the king, eyes full of hate, ‘the most pitiful, the most guileless. We should have killed you at—’

‘Fuck you then.’

The impact of the strike shuddered up the length of Lucien’s arm, causing new agony in the old wound. The king’s head spun off the thick stump of his neck, rolling away across the chamber floor, a look of anguish frozen on the pitted features. Lucien scooped the chain from the corpse, ignoring the blue gore jetting from the jugular. The remaining seven limbs twitched in dreadful spasms, then slumped and sprawled across the huge bed. Lucien vaulted over the rising fire, taking a few seconds to beat out an insistent flame on his sleeve. He wrapped the chain of precious keys around his right wrist and stumbled away. The flames rose, a bonfire of the grotesque, forcing him to retreat further. Heat intensified, filling the room with the terrible stench of charred flesh. Lucien took a moment to wonder if there would be anything left after the fire had done its work, or if anyone would believe him when he tried to explain what he had seen. His thoughts turned to Rafaela. He turned away from the cremation, seeing the flames dancing on the dark lenses of the violinists.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, flipping them a salute and disappearing into the gloom of the king’s library. He ran past the books and out into the curving corridor beyond with a single word on his lips.

Rafaela.