Chapter Deep Canyon
DEEP CANYON
Empress Larbella wavers between two lovers: Fernand, the hard-done-by porter, and General Bianco, the lovestruck tyrant. In Montresor’s novelization of the classic tale, she chooses Fernand, in Drovick’s opera, Bianco—but tonight, in the privacy of the bishop’s bedroom, she chooses both.
The gentlemen, with two tongues and four hands between them, make thorough and repeated work of her.
Afterward, while they turn to each other, she sits at the edge of the bed and opens the Rhizosphere over her lap, engrossed in the story of an itinerant poet who had recently been caught up in a BGS fumigation job.
He was captured drawing stanzas on the walls with the blood of his own injuries, prolific as the carnage around him.
“It’s the best poetry Tiliard has seen in a century,” she says, adjusting her headdress. “Living verse—it gets more complex every time you read it.”
“Lovely,” Bianco grunts in Fernand’s hand. “Yes, good.”
“We should get our own poet, darling. Sybil has one and says it’s prime to have a recitation during supper.”
“Yes.” Bianco’s eyes roll; he groans, then regains his sense. “What? No, dear. We can’t afford one. Not with your cardiopractor—”
“Cardiomancer, darling.”
“With the repairs to the plumbing, and the villa—you don’t even like poetry.”
“This poetry is good. Well, we can’t have this one. I think he’s bled out. But we should get someone. There will be more. This whole thing shows no signs of stopping.”
“Darling, you don’t like this new stuff, do you? It’s all so very … loud.”
Fernand swings his legs over the side of the bed and sheds his bellhop’s uniform.
“Would you be our poet?” Larbella caresses his arm. “You must see a lot of this, being at the forefront. It must be inspiring.”
He laughs bitterly. “You’re welcome to come with me on my next job.”
“Oh, no, really. I’d be useless.” She kisses Guy’s bare shoulder, on a ring of his debts. “Stay, dear Fernand. Sing for us. Stay the night.”
He hesitates. There’s nothing he wants more than to lie between them on their silk sheets, to nurse another glass of wine and listen to their meandering insights on religion and philosophy and art.
“Can’t,” he says. “Work in the morning.”
“Let me walk you down, then,” says the bishop. He stands and retrieves a roll of banknotes from the vanity. He tucks the bills into the pocket of his general’s pelisse before leading Guy down the hall. “Are you all right, my son?”
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t come to confession.”
Guy’s throat aches. He almost pours everything at the bishop’s feet, from work to Tyro to the explosive music pounding through his head, but he still hurts from the last time he let the truth slip. He can still hear Tyro sobbing in his ear. “I’m fine, Eir Bishop. Not enough sleep.”
“Who can blame you, with this nasty spat going on.” The bishop sighs and presses the bills into Guy’s hand. “Here. For your years of service.”
The stack of banknotes is thicker than expected. Carefully, Guy counts them. “Eir—this is—”
“A bit of a severance package. Apologies.” The bishop takes his shoulders.
“I know you rely on the extra cash each month. But it’s just with all this going on, and considering the nature of your other patron …
the Gorslungs are no friends of mine, and it’s not safe for you to sleep with the enemy on your days off. ”
“Davide—I—”
“We’ll be staying in the villa until this whole thing blows over.
I’ve got a suite on the Bastion Rose reserved on the full moon.
Don’t worry. We’ll be back.” He smiles, brushing Guy’s cheek.
“This will all be over soon. Believe me. I’m old enough to remember the last coup.
Hell, even the one before. I was just a boy, then.
Volunteered for the Anti-Reactionaries, if you can believe it.
I wasn’t a good enough orator for the actual Reactionaries.
” He squeezes Guy’s shoulder. “Stay strong, lad. The moonlight always comes around again. Maybe we’ll pick things up when this all cools off, hm? ”
“Yes, Eir Bishop,” Guy says, though he can recognize finality when he hears it.
“Good night, then. Stay safe.”
“Good night.”
He pockets his payment and steps onto the porch. The door closes, and behind its amber glass the bishop’s shadow lingers, paces, then dissolves. Years of Guy’s diligence, practice, discretion, his expertise in myriad and unique perversions, blink out with the girandoles.
He takes the long way back to the Birdcall Hotel, mostly to take a few minutes to cry.
He tells himself it’s only because he’s lost his best client, safe and dependable and rich—the kind of patron he could only dream of when he first realized that he could be paid for what others freely gave and desperately sought.
But he can’t help feeling as if he’s been backhanded, betrayed—the same as when he’d finished his training at Borisch inside lie six teratopods, the only six left in the city, big as prize hogs and rolling in a slop of Dagdrun wine and scraps of vant Wron sketches. Fine food for finer beasts.
“Ecdytoxin is made in the glands of the proboscis,” he tells the child. He climbs the ladder to the top of the tanks and hauls the boy up after him. “So be gentle when you extract it. Don’t startle them.”
He pulls open the first hatch, then the one beneath. A sweet smell rises from the tank. The kid stands beside him, pale and wide-eyed behind the glass of his respirator.
“What happens if I startle them?” he asks.
“Whatever they feel like.” Reames ushers the boy toward the hatch.
“They may sting you, eat you, break your neck and play with your corpse like a puppet.” He unrolls the rope ladder.
“I sedated them. Go for the smallest one. That one’s about to molt.
I have a feeling it’s going to become the next brood-parent. ”
The boy climbs down the ladder, glancing back up only once before dropping to the darkened floor of the tank.
His buffer resonates in the thin shaft of light, glowing a soft blue.
Around him, the darkness slithers. The teratopods click on musical feet, slowly circling their fancies, tamed by a haze of soporific fumes.