Chapter 25 #2
“I have already had my share of grace today, Your Eminence.” The lie tasted sweet compared to the bitter curd of his title upon my tongue.
“I think it unwise to further crater our supply and run the risk of more succumbing.” I bowed my helm, the movement eliciting a throb in my temple, as if my very blood protested the act of deference.
“Hmm.” His blotched lips thinned. “Perhaps that is wise, given our current… predicament. I may have to ration the grace whilst we seek a solution as it stands. It is finite, after all, and I refuse to squander the relics.” His voice rose slightly as he made the promise, the words gritted through white teeth and reddened gums. “How much grace does your spirit demand of late?”
The lie came easily. “An offer and a half, Your Eminence.”
“Father, Lycandor. You may call me father. We are alone.” Though his words spoke of familiarity, his smile was a warning. He rarely offered showings of joy, and when he did, it usually meant someone had faltered.
“Father, then.” I almost choked on it.
“Yes, Father.” He placed the dish on an elegant brass side table and stood.
I examined him, careful not to linger too long on the dish, though it begged me to indulge, to prowl over and bury my face in its promise.
Height-wise, we were similar, but he had grown boulderous beneath his robes, his muscles thick and pronounced, though he did little but haunt the catacombs, preferring the dark to the light.
“Remind me, Lycandor. According to the Book of Dendralis, what is the duty of a child towards their father?”
“Obedience, respect, and…recompense.” I knew every syllable inked into that wretched book, back to front, inside and out. Their rot lingered on my tongue, so potent I almost gagged.
“Yes, yes…very good. Respect, you certainly excel at.” His nose angled to the space of floor between us, the stretch of rug where our shadows met. “Come closer still, Lycandor. I will look upon your face.”
I could scent his curiosity now, warring with the grace, keen and strong.
I stepped forward, controlling my breath and slowing my movements, doing all I could to appear benign as we stood boot to boot.
“Allow me.” His hands shot to the sides of my helm, wrenching it free in one sharp swipe.
I tried not to wince as he hurled it to our side, the bulk of it colliding with a relic.
Its target dropped with a dull thud alongside the helm’s clatter.
I did all I could to ignore it and keep my eyes centred, for I had no desire to look upon the walls, though they beckoned, “Look. Look. Look. Look at us.”
His upper lip twitched with some unknown emotion before settling into another smile, this one all teeth.
“Oh, Lycandor. So very, very handsome.” His hand gripped my jaw, angling my face closer to his, our noses almost touching.
“It is as if an artist chipped my youthful likeness into your features, as though you were sculpted in devotion to me. A testament to what and who I once was.” My stomach roiled as he caressed my cheeks with soft fingers, each stroke more tender than the last. I would have preferred violence to whatever this was.
“What a tragedy the world outside this templum will never see your face, nor may you ever take a wife to kiss these lips.” His thumbs grazed them, parting them slightly.
I clenched my teeth and held my breath, wrestling the instinct to rip his hands away and snap his neck—not that it could break.
Just when my control threatened to fracture beyond repair, his hand slid to my temples, the pads of his fingers digging into my flesh with unnecessary force.
“Other than your eyes, you show little sign of succumbing.” He turned my head from side to side, inspecting me as he did his relics. “How very curious. Nary a single stain. I do believe there’s nay a druid in the templum free of at least one patch of red.”
I was grateful his blessing was not of my ilk, unable to scent a lie.
“My face remains clear, but it has begun elsewhere,” I divulged, begging the powers that be that he would not check.
“Elsewhere?”
“My upper thighs, Your Em—Father. Towards my groin and my hips.”
His mouth downturned as he tutted. “How very unfortunate. If it spreads to certain areas, you will not even be able to make use of the sisters. Though I hear your visits are already notoriously infrequent. Has it begun to affect you as such?”
His curiosity sharpened into something brighter, cutting through the sting of the grace… intrigue, perhaps.
“A little, but I have had more pressing matters to handle of late.” The tips of my fingers ghosted the hilt of my sword. His hand pressed harder before he finally released me.
“Ah, yes. The crusiax sacrapeditions, and now, the riddle of the grey laurel with her corrupted, foul blood.” The urge to make for the thermae wracked through me, so potent it trembled my knees.
I ground my boots once more into the rug, anchoring myself.
Unaware, my father turned back to the chaise, limping as he went.
With a mote of satisfaction, I noted the succumbing must have spread to his knees.
“The destruction of our Blood Tree is no small matter,” he continued.
“Incinerated like a ream of cotton in flame.”
Licking the tip of his finger with a blood-red tongue, he snuffed out a taper, plunging us further into darkness.
“Yes, that,” I confirmed. His sudden eagerness fizzed in my nose like bubbles, but beneath it all skulked the distinct chalk of desperation, neutralising its brightness.
“Some nefarious blood magic is at work.” He stroked his shroud as one might stroke their hair, fiddling with the chain. “As I have proclaimed before, Lycandor, I demand to know what she is and how she came to be. What heretical group she belongs to, and what secrets lie in her tainted blood.”
His hand dropped to clench at his side, his frame growing rigid as bloodstone.
“You have three moons to solve this mystery before I am forced to unleash the ritual of old, lest our grace dwindle too low. Without it…” His voice rose, body tremoring with a rare glimpse of the mania I knew to lurk under the mask of his veil.
“Without it, the Dendralis fall. All of us, good as ash on the wind.”
“What about the rel—”
“They will not have my relics!” he boomed, boot stomping the rug like a crusiax’s drum.
I swallowed, my saliva tinged with the scent of grace. I did it again, and again, until my throat constricted, refusing to take down another.
“Meanwhile,” he said, voice steadier but unmistakably frayed at its edges, “I am sending a legion of crusiax to the Other Lands, tasked with retrieving a replacement. Once your investigation concludes and the laurel is dealt with, you will join them. That is…” Reclining and reaching for the plate of powdered grace, he paused for another scoop, his cadence now level.
“If you are successful.” He snorted the grace, letting his neck hang limp for a moment before his wits returned to him.
A large part of me mourned that delicious feeling, the incomparable aftermath of grace.
“You will be successful, won’t you, Lycandor?”
I put my tongue away. “Yes, Your Eminence.” The time for father had passed.
“Good.” From beneath his thigh, he pulled forth a book, deep brown leather embossed with gold: The Book of Dendralis.
He tapped its cover. “Obedience and recompense. I have gifted you power, wealth, eternity. Do not forget, your purpose is to help me carve the flesh of this world into what it is destined to be. Should you fail…”
From a wooden bowl to his left, he selected an orange, his fingers wiggling over the mounds as he deliberated.
He plucked the largest of the bunch, flaying its peel.
“I will strip your skin from your flesh like dead bark from a tree, bathe each muscle in vinegar and sear them with tar. I will flay your lips, my son. Slice your nose from your face, but I will leave your eyes.” He pierced the exposed fruit with the pads of his fingers, juice running in rivulets down onto his wrist. “Those eyes we both share, those eyes your mother hated, I will let you keep so you may watch as I take more from you. As I take everything, for it is mine to demand.” Separating the remaining segments with considered care, he bared his teeth, his smile now but a ghost.
“So no more kindnesses. No more separate baths. She is a threat, not a pet, and if you are so deprived of womanly comforts that you wish to appease the first thing with a cunt you’ve had in your chamber for a decade, then you visit the sisters, like all druids do,” he growled, Falstaff’s poison having infected his ear already.
“Your kindness has always been a weakness, Lycandor. I thought we had cleansed you of it. Truly.” He shook his head, chains jangling, lifting the last orange slice to his mouth.
“It was no kindness, Your Eminence. I only wished to prevent her from conversing with another surviving male laurel. I have suspicions they are in allegiance.” A truth to mask a lie, a necessary sacrifice.
“Oh. Oh.” He sat straighter, his juice-covered fingers drumming atop his knee.
“An ally? Then uncover it. Discover all mysteries. This is just another you must unravel. Do not force my hand, but if I think you are failing me, I will not hesitate to enlist Falstaff to the cause, sycophant as he is. It would be a mistake to squander the mercies I grant you.” He bit into another orange, ripping off a chunk of its peel like an apple, parts of it dangling from his mouth.
I dipped my head, itching to reach for my veil, my helm, their damnable weight still better than feeling this exposed, this naked, before him. “By your leave then, Your Eminence.”
He lingered in silence, the citrusy sweetness of amusement complimenting the orange.
“Of course. You will have busy days, and busier nights. Best you rest.”
I moved to retrieve my helm.
“And Lycandor… Return my relic to her shelf. I wish to admire her face.”
I hesitated, hand hovering above one of my helm’s iron spikes to eye the relic at its side.
She lay downturned, the back of her bloodstone-encased head etched into a braid, hewn at the neck.
I turned her over, and the walls of the catacombs pressed down with excruciating demand as her eyes met mine.
“Look at us,” they screamed. “Look upon us.” The woman was a laurel, no more than thirty winters.
Her small mouth was stretched into a smile, pupils blown wide, her eyes glazed with unshed tears.
I lifted my gaze to the rest of them. Lined to the ceiling on all four walls, rows upon rows of severed bloodstone relics peered down at us, their expressions frozen in their last moments of agony.
Women, men, children… Fuck. I let my lids flutter close, if only for a breath.
So many children. He coveted the babes most, rare as they were.
Most were crying, though a few stared blankly, their little faces dissociated from the incomparable burn of a plague.
“Lycandor?”
I returned her to her slot in the wall, then left, the eyes burning into the back of my neck with only slightly less intensity than the grace that stalked me, far beyond the reach of the catacombs.
I had failed them all. Every last one.
The seamstress and I had work to do.