Chapter The Ripest Fruit on the Vine
THE RIPEST FRUIT ON THE VINE
The courtyard of the Sanitarium is vast, elegant, paved with arabesques of marble—it is one of Sorav’s earliest, crudest works, but he still finds a little beauty in it.
The yard is peaceful, so different from the height of the Revival, when it swarmed with the sick and changed.
Bertram was always buzzing among them, swinging his laurels around his finger, pointing out which survivors could shape art from monstrosity: which many-handed thing would grow into a stunning pianist, whose blossoming vocal folds would make a good gift for the impresario.
As the Marshal traverses the rose gardens, he spies a familiar trellis: an arc of silver from which the management of Metaldrip Defense Industries once dangled.
A canopy of trumpet vine grows there now, and under it Elspeth sits with her easel, flanked by nurses and chaperones and other patients (or Crypsis disguised as patients).
As the Marshal approaches, she keeps her gaze on the scene before her.
The panoply of beauty is offensive in its extravagance.
A hundred bouquets frame the scene around the courtyard fountain.
A gorgeous girl plays a harp on its lip, singing to a gorgeous boy at her feet, who in turn pets a gorgeous dog at his own.
The music is superb, and the light eases through the fountain’s mist onto golden strings and golden skin.
From his angle, Sorav can see Elspeth’s canvas is barely touched, and only by a dollop of yellow.
“Eir Marshal,” she says without lifting her eyes. “Please tell me you brought your thumbscrews. I could use a break.”
“I’m not here to torture you, vralen.”
“I suppose not. My fiancé wouldn’t allow it.
” She doesn’t glance at him, but he can see her eyes are sunken and dry, clearly post-treatment.
He can’t guess as to what the Surgeon General has done to her.
“They finally let me out of the dark,” she says.
“And this is what they show me. This pastoralist dogshit.”
The harper’s fingers fall still. The dog lifts a leg against the fountain.
“Give us some peace,” the Marshal tells them.
The nurses disappear, the models don their robes and retreat to a nearby gazebo to share a cigarette.
Crypsis agents back up a few paces, pretending to cough or lapse into ecdytoxic delirium.
“It’s quiet out here,” he continues. “Emptier than it used to be.”
“Well, you’re not mutilating as many civilians as you used to,” Elspeth answers.
He is struck by the thought of wrapping a glove around her neck, soft and easy, squeezing the air from her even before Crypsis can stop him.
A thought that proves he needs to reapply his mayfly perfume.
“May I sit?” he asks. When he lowers himself onto the bench beside her, she doesn’t turn. “How is your sight, vralen?”
“The Surgeon General says it’ll recover.”
“That’s good news.”
“I don’t believe that quack. Did you know she specializes in the care of domestic insects?”
“I did. She was my doctor once, too. When I was younger.”
“She says I’ll be able to finish his portrait.
If not by the wedding night, then within the year.
I just need to retrain my facets. My ommatidia.
Start with the basics, work my way up. Just enough so I can stumble across a stage.
” She shakes her head. “God. What a farce. Bert can’t just have a wedding, it has to be an opera.
It’s that kind of maximalist bullshit that gets people so sick of Revivalism.
” She flicks her brush onto the ground. “I’m sorry about Florian, by the way. ”
“Thank you, vralen.” In his mind, he tightens his grip over her trachea. “Kind of you to say.”
Finally, she turns from the canvas, dark, sunken eyes flitting up his uniform.
“Oh, Marshal,” she says. “I can see you. Part of you. Just that streak—I’ve never seen you burn so cold.
” A flash of silver crosses her pupils, like an animal’s in the night.
“They haven’t invented a pigment for that one yet. ”
“Elspeth. Where is vant Passand?”
“Oh, I can’t say, Eir Marshal.”
“Where is he?” Sorav repeats, every thread in his being pulled to snapping. “Where did he take Aster?”
“You think I saw where he dragged her off to? I can barely see this”—she gestures at the fountain—“much less what happened in that dreadful little bar. Especially not with your Guard tearing the place apart, waving truncheons and spraying nozzles. Poor Aster, her poor lungs—”
“Answer the question, vralen.”
“All we wanted was a drink—a nip before rehearsal, then your Guard—”
“Don’t be coy, Elspeth. He murdered Florian. And he left traces behind. I think you’re familiar with them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We found your wedding dress at his house. In fact, we found a lot of things at his house.”
“I’m allowed to have acquaintances, aren’t I? Vant Passand offered to help me with my eyesight. Give me a little beauty to practice on. I barely know the man—”
“I am speaking to you first, vralen, for Aster’s sake. I know you care for her, or you pretend to.”
“Marshal—”
“She adores you. She always has. If you had any ounce of love for her, any pity, even, you’d tell me where she went. If I can’t find her, I can’t keep her safe.”
“Marshal, if I knew, I’d tell you. Believe me.”
“I don’t.” He pauses to look over her canvas once again. “You’re strong, vralen. And clever. And talented. These are the virtues Aster loves in you. But good sense is also a virtue.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s not one of mine. The Sanitarium didn’t instill any virtues in me it couldn’t exploit.”
He sighs. “That’s all right, vralen. You’re only the first on my list. There are others in vant Passand’s circle.
Demetrius Prophet, foremost.” Elspeth shrugs, but can’t hide the blood draining from her face.
“You know, your husband will be upset if you force me to break Prophet’s knees.
And people tend to die when he’s upset.”
“Tend to die?” she says. “Who tends to kill them, Marshal?”
This time, Maximian does reach out. It’s all he can do to redirect his hand from her windpipe to her nape. “Listen, vralen. I’m going to smoke him out one way or another. You get to decide how much of this city burns while I do it.”
She only offers a false, frightened little smile. “Please, Marshal. You’re an exterminator. Why would I prove myself a rat?”
“Suit yourself, vralen.” He stands. “But one last word of advice.”
“Yes, Eir Marshal?”
“Give up. You’ve played your hand. Now play your part. Bertram will treat you well. He really, truly loves your art.”
Elspeth looks back over her canvas, at the tiny smear of her new painting. “You know,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to play the hound. You’d make a good betrayer. Drop your little Bianco act and go for the Caspian.”
“I’m afraid I’m bound by contract.” He hesitates. “And I don’t know who Caspian is.”
“Really? You’ve never seen Sins of Our Patrons?”
“No.”
“It’s Aufhocker’s best. You really should see it.”
“Maybe. When this is all over.” As he turns to eye her, he can’t tell if the burning in his chest is contempt, or pity. “I wish you a speedy recovery, Elspeth. I’ll see you at rehearsal.”
“There’s an old line,” Mallory says, leaning over the edge of the pitcher plant.
“From some Vrenecker platitude, I think. My brother sang it sometimes. ‘Is it worse to bite the hand that feeds you, or kiss the hand that beats you?’” He stretches in the steam and reaches for his bag.
“I had always thought that it was a choice. That my brother fell toward the latter, and me, I was the former. Through and through. An ungrateful, moody little biter. Will you hold my mirror while I shave?”
“Sure,” Aster replies.
He opens his kit on a nearby leaf and removes his razor, his soaps, his brush.
“It wasn’t until I signed on with BGS that I realized there is no choice.
It’s always the same hand, doing both.” He lathers his soap.
“Gorslung’s. And the Marshal’s. And Dr. Reames’s—especially his.
God, Reames was an incredible man. If the Chancellor was the architect of the Revival, and the Marshal his mason, then Reames was the fire that made the bricks.
Bright, brilliant, always going and going and going—well, that was the cocaine, mostly. ”
Aster chuckles. She holds up the mirror as he brushes soap across his face. “I know of him,” she says. “Whyck made us read his ‘Dream Treatise’ in the Sanitarium.”
“Oh yes. That manuscript of his. He’d recite it constantly.
” Mallory pauses, sliding the razor across his upper lip.
“When I signed on, I worked directly under him. It was my first contract. My brother had worked so hard to keep me out of this whole thing, and there I go, right into the thick of it. Right into Reames’s playground.
” He quiets for a bit, working his chin and jaw.
“I couldn’t read, could barely add, but there I was, at the forefront of bioalchemy.
I had a hand in all of it.” He splashes his face, satisfied with the result, though Aster can’t make out if he’s shaved anything at all.
“Or, two very small hands, as was needed.”
Despite the heat, a shiver runs up her spine. “You were an ecdytoxin extractor,” she says.
“I still am, in a way.” He folds his razor and sets it aside. “Watch.” He wipes a hand on a nearby petal, then picks at the bandage on his head. As the damp gauze peels away, Aster takes in a breath.
The gash Florian has left in his brow is scabbed and patched, though not with blood. It looks as if someone has stitched it shut already, but the threads emerging from the wound are kinked, haphazard, loose-ended. And, Aster realizes as they wriggle in the steam, living.