March of the Third Autotomic Brigade #2
She snorts. “You can’t go as Larbella, Mal. You’ll upstage the bride.”
“Then I’ll go as General Bianco. Dress in beetle-shell armor and carry two sabers with me.”
“Wait, what?”
“Both hands at once—you know. ‘To prove I might be as dexterous as I am sinister.’”
“That’s—Mal, that’s the Poet-King. And it wasn’t blades, it was his fingers—‘To prove to a lady I might be’—you know what, never mind.
” She glances up at him. Unbidden, Elspeth’s face comes to her mind, the curl of a satisfied smile buried in towels—but it is eclipsed by Mallory’s, by the smoky scent of his breath, his sweat, his dangerous twinge of heat.
Aster takes in a breath of him, clear and sharp, and feels gloriously precarious, like she is hovering at the stump’s splintered precipice.
“Maybe it’s better if I show you,” she whispers.
“Maybe it is.”
She takes his hand, tugging at the fingers of his glove.
Slowly, the silk slides down his arm, revealing linear and speckled scars, then the faded ink band of BGS.
She strokes his tattoo, then guides his hand down her front, down the length of silk, parting the alabaster beads of her skirt.
She leans up, opens her mouth over his, and for the first time she is unafraid to share her breath, unconcerned that her lover will choke on her toxin, that his tongue will find not hers, but a sickly, ciliated third.
He turns, leans over her, pushing until her back rests against the curled arm of the chaise.
His lips move from hers, down her jaw, her throat, her collarbone.
He pulls aside her slip, navigating her layers of silk.
His touch is gentle, devoid of urgency, soft and curious as antennae.
When he slips inside her, it feels almost accidental.
“They teach you this in Mongfestun, too?” she whispers.
“This I learned on my own.”
“Use … your thumb,” she breathes. She moves against him, heat streaking down to her feet.
Her toes curl, and she closes her eyes, imagining a slick layer of ink between them.
As the pressure of his touch builds and relents, she sees him pressing his thumb against her like a contract, pledging himself to her, indebted and helpless, bound for life by nothing but a transient touch of a finger.
It’s a novel fantasy, but compelling—justice for all the lies he’s told her, and for all the truths he hasn’t.
“What have you done to me?” she sighs. “What is that embroidery?”
“Is this an interrogation, Vost?” he mutters, curling his fingers. She can’t answer—she gasps and buries her head into his breast, into the silk weave of his gown. When her throat tightens, she is not afraid; when her breath catches, it is not by toxin but only a small moan.
“Why can I breathe—” she gulps in his scents, the wisps of tobacco and nightshade, the cherry liqueur on his breath, the earthy smell of his sweat, the slight sourness of her own.
Beneath the hundred smells, there is something deeper, something moving under his skin, just at the edge of her senses. “Oh, God. What are you?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes … no…” She grasps at the ruffles of his dress, pawing at his back, bunching his hair in her fist. She clings to him as a madman might cling to a fleeting illusion, certain of both his solidity and his transience.
Desperately, she breathes in every facet of him, all the disembodied little lies, the exterminator, the prisoner, the gentleman-soldier, the impoverished heir, the glamorous empress.
“Shit, Mal. I could make a perfume of you—”
“Your contract, vralen,” he whispers.
“Fuck my—” she gasps. He renews his rhythm, devoting his hands, then his tongue, to his task, and Aster loses her grip on coherence. “I’ll—you have to tell me—tell me who you—”
Her mouth can’t finish, because the rest of her does.
A streak of heat crawls up her stomach, and she grips the back of the chaise.
She shuts her eyes, legs shaking, and dissolves.
Several times, she attempts to regather herself, to impose her limits again, but Mallory is relentless.
She only manages to corporealize well after he sits up, looking her over as a pleased craftsman might his work.
“I think I’ll need my handkerchief back,” he says.
“You need it?” she sighs, sated but somehow deflated. Her heart patters back to a steady rhythm, and she coalesces, returning inch by tingling inch to the husk of her body. “There’s not much of it left,” she admits. “It’s … come undone.”
“Good.” He wipes his mouth. “You’ve put it to use, then.”
“What is that stuff, Mal?” she asks. “What did you sew into it?”
He leans over her, kisses one eyebrow, then the other. “Myself, vralen.”
“You’re being cryptic, country boy,” she sighs, but even she can’t tell if it’s with exasperation or satisfaction.
“It’s not great pillow talk,” he says. “Maybe over breakfast.”
Instinct forms a despondent I should go on Aster’s tongue.
A sliver of dawn bleeds through the glassy window.
She knows there is still time; she could still make her way to the Sanitarium, apologize for her tardiness, submit to the treatments, prolong her life, protect her body, save her work.
She should excuse herself, march back to the Marshal and tell him everything she knows and even more she suspects.
“Don’t let me go back,” she mutters instead. She pulls Mallory on top of her. It’s a snug fit on the chaise, but he is warm, and her limbs are heavy. “Keep me here. Hold me hostage. There’s a stipulation in my contract that excuses absenteeism, if it’s a kidnapping.”
“Does it excuse the kidnapper too, Vost?”
She tightens her grip. “I can’t go back.”
“Dee’s got a place,” he says, smoothing back her hair. “In the midcity. You can stay there.” He says nothing more; no questions, no demand for reciprocation. He lays his head against her, basking in her heat, the soft breast under his cheek.
“Oh, God, Mal,” she says quietly. “Why did you have to get wrapped up in the Chancellor’s business?” Her breath burns with each word, and she fights back tears. “You can’t win. Whatever BGS did to you, to your family, forget it. Let it go. You can’t touch the Chancellor. Much less the Marshal.”
“I’m not here for them,” he says.
“Who are you here for, Mal?”
“Aufhocker.”
Aster’s brow furrows, her eyes open. Surprise quells her upswell of tears. “Come again?”
He lifts his head, glancing at her the same way Elspeth does when Aster walks into one of her verbal snares. His knee parts hers, his hand runs up her stocking. “If you insist.”
Guy bolts upright and struggles to free himself from the sheets. A sharp, chemical smell fills his nose, and he rolls to the floor, covering his mouth. His bunkmate is already stumbling through the smoky apartment.
He gropes for his sister, trying to piece reality together from the groggy fragments of the Secretary’s opera box.
He drags Tyro out of bed, cursing whoever has left a stove on, or failed to blow out their reading candles, or played too loosely with phlogiston in the workshops.
He divvies blame across half the workforce before he makes it to the door, shoving it open to reveal a billow of gray smoke.
Dawn tosses him a helmet, which he immediately pulls over Tyro’s head. He kneels before her, and with burning eyes and shaking fingers, positions the respirator over her face. As he secures the straps around her too-small jaw, her thin neck, he coughs out a desperate “Breathe—can you breathe?”
She nods beneath the glassy mask, and Guy shoves her out the door. Alarms shriek as they stumble onto the gangway, into the gritty wind. Before he can survey the barracks for the glow of flames, a helmet thumps over his head. With uncanny calmness, Dawn secures the mask, leaving his own face bare.
“Go,” he rasps.
Guy readies a protest, but his will shrinks under his bunkmate’s. He stumbles after Tyro while hirelings spill onto the walkways, some wearing masks, some covering their mouths with tattered sleeves. Their blackened silhouettes shriek through columns of smoke, monstrous and fleeting.
Bodies flow from the passageways of Borisch-Gorslung, vaulting between knobby walls and sagging gangplanks.
A bottleneck forms beyond the plaza, where the crowd tries to cross the bridge, making for the main boulevard of Joyous Healing.
Guy pushes Tyro toward them, but a strong hand grips his shoulder.
A crack rings through the air. Guy flinches, ducks, and pulls Tyro close, stomach twisting. When he raises his eyes, glancing to the bridge ahead, he knows it is about to collapse, and he will watch a hundred helpless bodies tumble down to the Catoptric.
Only one silhouette falls. It staggers from the others, hovering over the handrail before pitching into the void.
A collective shout runs through the swarm, followed by another crack.
The crowd unravels at its middle; half pushes forward, the other half retreats to the smoking barracks.
Those in between waver, and in their confused hesitation become easy fodder for what Guy realizes are bullets.
A third shot, then a fourth. Smoke billows, bodies fall.
The swarm splits again, and Dawn drags them back toward the plaza.
He steers them into a maze of passageways, past the phone booth and the clinic, gliding between cover and exposure and cover again.
Silent, too calm, breath caged behind a reddened grimace, he drags them across the gathering platform, shoving aside scattering employees and nearly kicking down the door to Three’s workshop.
She is already masked, with carbine in hand. Fans roar above her head, clearing the room just enough for Guy to make out her expectant frown. It’s evident she considers them some kind of late.
“Trying to kill yourself?” she barks, throwing Dawn an extra helmet.