Chapter The Ripest Fruit on the Vine #2
Mallory pinches one end of a thread and pulls. It tightens, resisting, then loosens, long and raw as a nerve. He draws it from his broken skin, grimacing, releasing a pained sigh.
“God,” Aster whispers.
Finally, the thing snaps free. He flinches, then coils it around his finger, holding it out to her.
Carefully, Aster reaches for it, drawn to the beauty of its sheen, the soft fuzz of its edges that, when it brushes against her skin, she recognizes as a thousand minuscule legs.
It is the same deep crimson as Demetrius’s handkerchief.
“Be gentle,” he smiles. “The red ones can sting.”
The dress rehearsal for The Marriage of Bertram unfolds with tentative starts and dissonant stops.
The opera, already four hours long, is prolonged by lighting difficulties, prop malfunctions, and costuming issues.
Demetrius argues with his choreographer downstage, demanding last-minute adjustments.
The choreographer pushes back, but at the Chancellor’s demand, gives in. Once again, the montage begins.
Demetrius leaps across the stage dressed in a theatrical approximation of teratopod armor, reenacting Bertram Gorslung’s rise to power, his early cultural achievements, his grand battles, his artful politicking.
As the dancer performs all the heroic deeds his real-life counterpart did not, effortlessly breaking from script when he chooses, peppering his performances with his genius, if risky, improvisations, even Sorav must admit that he does make an excellent Laurel Chancellor.
The rehearsal grinds to a halt when the pigskin dummies are brought forth for the mock beheadings.
(The real beheadings, Bertram has made abundantly clear, will take place when Sorav delivers the Extemporists to him.) The prop master struggles to set them up for Demetrius’s saber, and the dancer insists they are lopsided, not the same consistency as real flesh and therefore inadequate for practice.
Behind him, the crew wheels in the trellis for the wedding scene, the final number in which Bertram will step up to replace Demetrius and Elspeth the ballerina contracted to play her.
The moment of the last stinger, when he leans in to kiss his bride, the chute to hell will release a flock of doves, a golden cord will be cut, and a curtain will fall away to reveal his state portrait.
A farce seventeen years in the making. Maximian is glad Hock isn’t here to see it. The man has endured many tortures over the years, but nothing like this.
The rehearsal ends late, and on a sour note.
Maximian watches Demetrius retreat to the halls backstage, waits for him to undress, and notes which door he takes into the throngs on Conundrum.
He calls his car, and cuts sleekly through the crowds after him, metabolic engines emitting a soft, sweet growl.
With the advent of Rut Moon, the revelry has taken on a distinctly procreative flavor, a sea of blossoming gowns and fertility symbols.
Demetrius proves competent quarry, tracing aimless circles within the crowds, ducking through an alley here and there, the kinds of casual feints made by a man who knows he’s being followed.
Sorav catches up to him on the corner of Fourteenth and Bast. He has his driver pull in front of the crosswalk as the dancer steps into it, then opens the door in a cloud of old, bitter perfume.
Demetrius starts, then picks at his cravat. “Eir Marshal,” he says. “You frightened me.”
“Get in,” Sorav says.
“What? Now?” the young man asks. He glances to his left, down the row of streetlamps, then to his right, a wall plastered with posters of his own face.
Seeing no easy escape, he climbs inside, barely managing to close the door before the car takes off again.
“How may I serve you, Eir Marshal? Another dance?”
“Not tonight.”
“I don’t think my patron would like that, anyway. You know how jealous he can get.” He smiles as the car turns toward the Palas, compass-chimes ringing. The people part for the vehicle, at least most of them, and the driver pays no mind to those that don’t.
“I heard about your successor, Eir Marshal,” Demetrius says. “You have my heartfelt condolences.”
“I’m sure. I have a few questions for you.”
“Ask anything. I’ll be happy to answer. Of course, I was at rehearsal when it all happened, so I don’t know how helpful—”
“Where is Mallory vant Passand?”
Demetrius loses his smile. “Who?”
“You know him. You were in his class at Mongfestun. Until you defected.”
“Oh. Yes. He’s just a friend from the old days.”
“He was there the night of The Lilies, wasn’t he?”
“I honestly don’t know. I never saw him there. And it was … a chaotic night. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to him.”
Maximian sighs. The man is a far better dancer than he is an actor. “You talked to him last month. At Bean Pulp, according to my man in Crypsis.”
“Oh. I mean, really talked—” When Sorav draws his sidearm, the only part of Demetrius that shakes, and only slightly, is his voice. “I barely know him anymore. He said he was skipping town. Met a girl or something.”
“Lie carefully, Eir Prophet. Your career is at stake.” Maximian rests the gun at his knee.
“Let’s make this quick. I’m quite used to people like you and Mallory.
Boys angry that the Revival took everything they thought they deserved.
I’ve put down dozens of you strays.” He pauses as the car slows, then rolls through the opening Palas gates.
“You little debutants. Always think you can outmaneuver the masters.” The car whines to a halt.
“Well. Get out. I’m not blowing a hole in my chassis if I can help it. ”
Demetrius obeys, breathing the same way na?ve soldiers do when stifling the instinct to flee. Either too frightened or too prudent to run, he can only accept the Marshal’s invitation to the Palas’s gardens.
“Eir Sorav,” the dancer starts. “I know you’re a decent man. You’re a good man.”
“Please, Demetrius. You’ll only drag this out.” The Marshal ushers him through the grand gates of the Palas, into the courtyards of rhododendrons and roses. “I’ve had a long day, as I’m sure you have. It would be ideal if we get this over with quickly.”
“Then should it not wait until tomorrow?” Demetrius asks.
Sorav slows between a pair of golden gazebos, gesturing at the tulips with his firearm. “You know what to do.”
Demetrius stares at the flower beds, then lifts a hand to loosen his cravat. “Eir Marshal—”
“Go on.” The man obeys, stepping among the tulips. The wind rustles. Thousands of petals open in anticipation of a meal. “Good. Now, where is vant Passand?”
Demetrius begins to shake. “I don’t know.”
“Which leg do you suppose I should start with, Eir Prophet?”
“I’m serious—I don’t know. We move around. Just in case one of us ends up—” He smiles bitterly, gesturing to the hungry blossoms around him. “Takes an age to find each other. Annoying, really.”
“Of course,” Maximian sighs. “Well, give me your best guess.”
“I couldn’t—”
“Overcity?” he asks, shifting his aim from Demetrius’s head to his heart. “Mid?” Then, between his legs. “Or under?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know.” Demetrius takes a breath, then closes his eyes. “Midcity. Maybe.” Eyes still shut, he manages to push out a laugh. “Anything but under.”
Maximian watches the young man tremble. He knows he should just shoot the roach and be done with it, but he can’t help turning over another question in his head.
Demetrius speaks before he can. “God,” he breathes. “You must be sick of it.”
“Sick of what, Eir Prophet?”
“All this dreck.” He opens his eyes. “I saw your face at rehearsal. You know trash when you see it. Doesn’t it disgust you? Gorslung’s obscenity of theater?”
“I never cared much for theater to begin with.”
“The bastard can’t tell art from sewage,” Demetrius continues. “I’m going to get rid of all of it. Revivalism is dead. You know it. You’re tired of it. You hate Aufhocker more than anyone.”
“You mistake me. I love him. Dearly.” If only you knew the things I did for him. He lifts the gun again. “I just don’t care for his works. So—somewhere in the midcity, you think?”
“I mean it, Eir Marshal. I’ll be the steward Tiliard needs.”
“Answer me.”
“Truly, think of how much better—”
Sorav fires. The bullet rips through Demetrius’s right knee, and he falls, eyes wide, mouth agape. The report is swallowed by the rustle of the garden.
“I asked you a question,” Maximian says.
The dancer releases an inarticulate scream.
“Demetrius.”
“You can’t do it,” he moans. “You can’t take us all out.
You think we haven’t infested this place?
You’ve seen how much Tiliard wants me—even without me, it’ll keep going.
You saw how they loved me.” As Sorav raises his sidearm again, Demetrius expels a bitter laugh.
“Even Aufhocker loved me. He did, didn’t he? ”
Sorav pauses. “He said you were better than most.”
“Good.” Desperately, cravat loosened, Demetrius pushes to his uninjured knee. “Because that was a gift from Mallory as much as it was from you.”
A shiver runs up Maximian’s spine, a memory pushing through the mayfly.
“Who is Aufhocker to him?” he dares to ask, though he already knows.
He has known for longer than he’d like to admit, in his gut, if not his head.
As Demetrius struggles upward, unfurling his cravat, Sorav can see the bloody threads unspooling from his hand, a guideline leading Mallory all the way to Olaf’s dank cell.
He is the Revenant. He can recognize one of his own.
“You didn’t know?” Demetrius laughs. “Even now, you didn’t know. You looked him in the eye and couldn’t see it.”
“See what,” Sorav whispers.
“Aufhocker is his brother.”
The Marshal goes numb. Briefly, the world disappears behind a veil.
The gun jumps in his hand, once, then again, then again, and he doesn’t notice.
Horror, relief, sorrow, amusement—every feeling floods him at once, opposites vying so violently for primacy that they cancel, static, in his heart.
A name sits on his tongue, unsaid, then half said, then whispered aloud for the first time in many years. Laughter follows, empty and cold.
He’s barely even aware he’s killed the dancer until the night gardeners appear with their hoses.