Chapter 44 #2
Tucking my hair behind my ears, though I’m certain it is pointless, I follow Master Cairo quietly. He turns to face away from me, and I imagine jumping on his back and choking the life out of him.
We pass into the corridor.
Two doors. One is bolted.
Kong is in there…
I try to keep my voice level, but every breathy syllable betrays me. “What are you doing with my Guardian?”
Cairo opens the second door, presenting an empty concrete room but for a small table set with a purple tablecloth, white flowers in the centre, and two shiny plates, grey ribbons pluming through a hole in the silver cover.
Cairo pulls out a chair. “My queen.”
I stare at it for a moment before shuffling stiffly over as if The Crust may crack beneath my feet. Sitting like a steel doll, I swallow over a lump of nerves and anger.
I set my hands in my lap.
“I was surprised by your response to the eye movement therapy,” he says, occupying the place opposite me.
As he lays his white cloth napkin over his lap, his attention stays fixed on me.
“I was expecting you to regress, but you didn't, did you?” He lifts the lid and makes a pleased sound.
“Mm, just what I felt like. What happened in your head when I recalled that memory?”
The sounds and flickering at my birthday party were more treatments? “Am I an experiment?”
“We are all experiments. We are Xin De.” His tone is indifferent as he picks up his knife and fork and begins to cut into a strip of meat. Probably Aquilla Cat. “So…” He chews and swallows. “What happened?”
I don’t move or lift the cover over my plate. “Nothing happened. It didn't work. Now where is Kong? Where is my Guardian?”
“Liar.” He continues to cut his steak with perfect manners, chews with his mouth closed, and swallows.
“Paris didn't age regress. No queen before you has. On the contrary, Paris became rather selfish and vain. She enjoyed her treatments. Wanted more of them. Had too many, actually. Such was her demise. In the end, it was the treatment that killed her. I was too young to see her being carved, but we followed the textbook with you as usual. Each queen responds differently. Paris was perfect. Pity.”
She didn’t enjoy them.
She wanted the ECT because it takes away the pain, wipes the brain clean, removes the sense of self. I don’t believe she enjoyed being carved—I think she wanted to die.
I don’t voice my opinion.
“Rome will come for me,” I state plainly, trying desperately not to squirm at the red juices seeping from the girth of the Trade Master’s steak.
He finishes a few more bites. “Yes,” he agrees.
“He will, but I have a thousand men from the Trade-tower waiting for my instructions.” His eyes lift to mine, capturing me.
This is odd. We have never conversed, let alone over a meal.
His eyes drop to my tray. “You should eat, my queen. You’re far too skinny. I have always thought so.”
“I’m not hungry.”
His eyes blaze. “Eat!”
I gasp at his booming order.
With a shaky hand, I lift the silver lid to find steaming oatmeal and honey beneath it. I exhale hard, not sure what I was expecting. As I spoon a mouthful between my lips, I imagine Kong’s voice purring, ‘Good girl.’
Forcefully, I swallow.
Cairo smiles with success. Ugh. “I'm not afraid of Sire.” He chuckles.
“Humanity is a collection of emotions; it embraces feelings. He allowed himself to be weakened. He fell in love. He has so much to lose now. I think your brother will choose them over you, dear Tuscany. I have a proposition for you.”
I set down my spoon.
“I will let your lover live.” He slides another bloody morsel between his lips, chews, and then his throat rolls.
“If you take your place as queen. There is a procedure we can do that will eliminate some of your issues. We detach a very specific set of pathways and nerves in your frontal lobe, and you will become the marble queen The Cradle needs. Rome will not be so obsessed with protecting you because you will be perfectly at ease and unaffected.”
Kong is alive? I grab those words and hold them to my chest like Eagle Rome. “I would rather die than be your marble queen.”
“Would you rather he die?”
My eyes well up.
“See,” Cairo gloats, as I attempt to blink the rush of tears away.
“He forced you? Ha, you couldn’t convince a blind man.
Like I said, humanity equals weakness. So, this is the plan.
We will tell Sire that the people of the ruins took you.
I saved you. I was at the Trade-tower—the closest to you.
I left with a few men to ensure a discreet recovery mission.
I struck a deal with the Common in exchange for you.
That is what happened here. You will have your final treatment, and your Guardian will remain in service as long as he is quiet.
Understand?” Cutting another sliver from his steak, he says, “The king is terrifying to the Common, but there is something more important in the process of control than fear. It's worship. Strong men and women die for their land, but even the weak ones die for their Gods. I want my marble queen, Tuscany. The Cradle’s version of a God. She is necessary to the Trade.”
To control…
For power.
Cairo hums and muses while he slowly finishes his cat steak, and I make myself swallow more sweet oatmeal.
For strength.
Warm oatmeal drips down my throat, becoming heavier than gravity as it settles into my stomach.
I lose track of the time…
Eating has always made me fatigued, but when I have to grip the table to stop from sliding from my chair, I find a hazy realisation. “You… Y-you have medicated me.”
“Yes, my queen.” His voice carries a hint of laughter, as if he's savouring his own cleverness, the corners of his mouth curling up into a self-assured grin. “Just a small La Mu concoction that I like to call The Marble Stare. Unfortunately, it will wear off soon. We experiment all the time with our synthesised chemicals and herbs. Take the tranquilizer shot into your Guardian’s shin at the Lower-tower; that was one of mine. It was how I knew the correct dosage needed to sedate him. I couldn’t take any chances here.
He’s a large Xin De man—I discovered that a much higher dose was needed to render him inactive, but not unconscious.
The Common couldn’t have captured him had he put up a fight, could they?
I needed him mentally sedated but able to take a bit of his weight. ”
No. “No.”
Cairo rises to his feet and glides around the table, holding his hand out for me to take. “Come with me. Let’s see your precious Guardian.”
My senses are dampened. Slowly, I turn my head to stare at his hand—it shudders into two hands, ten fingers, in my vision. I reach out and take it, and then—
Shudder.
We are in the corridor.
I don’t remember walking…
Another shudder.
We are in the first room, where Kong is strapped to a steel counter, his arms pinned out wide like he’s flying.
I step forward once.
Curiously, I want to go to him, but I feel adult Tuscany disappearing—dissolving—and little Tuscany can’t move her legs. They have always been too small.
A slow fountain of thick crimson leaves a wound in Kong’s side. I think it is from the bullet, its steady red flow hypnotic.
I want to meet his gaze, but he would have to lift his head to see me at the door. He doesn’t, but he’s conscious.
Kong… How do I feel about him? I try to shake the haze but can’t… can’t recall… I try to feel something—anything—but nothing comes. Sensation is elusive.
Master Cairo’s presence is at my back. “This is how you will feel when we perform the surgery. You will be completely at peace with everything you see.”
A man in some kind of plastic uniform approaches my Guardian’s side with a strange cuff that he slides on Kong’s arm, strapping it above his elbow. It looks tight, bunching Kong’s tattooed flesh above the strip.
“Agree to the plan. Agree to the treatment, my queen. All you need to do is sign the command on an official document.” Cairo’s voice seems to resound directly in my head, a part of my own mind.
“Or what?”
That was my voice.
I can’t look away when the man retrieves a shiny serrated implement. Without a moment of hesitation, he presses the jagged blade below Kong’s elbow and starts to slice into the flesh.
Kong roars in pain.
His body pulses upward, violent and feral, but the restraints prevent him from lifting more than a few millimetres from the metal bench.
Even though I can’t move or speak, barely aware of my limbs, inside me I feel every drag of that saw back and forth.
Back and forth.
Feel its teeth scraping my heart, chewing on my reality, digging in to find my weaknesses until I am no longer present.
Kong fights.
Oh, does he fight!
As the incision deepens, the man in plastic clothing masterfully cuts through muscles and blood vessels, somehow seeing his path through the spray of blood.
So much blood.
My head sways on my neck, and words bounce inside my brain. “Agree.” Cairo’s voice is close. “Or we will take him apart.”
“I agree.”
My voice.
Kong’s forearm flops to the concrete floor, and I follow it down, collapsing into a heap of listless limbs and flesh.