Vespers of the Last Monday
The full Armistice Moon marks the bishop’s farewell soirée.
The night before his departure, he welcomes his remaining allies into his home.
One by one, they enter the foyer, shaking windblown white petals from their coats and bidding the couple a safe trip to Dagdrun.
Clergy fold their hands and bow, doctors doff their hats, lawyers offer brandies rescued from idyllic ruins downstream, courtesans shimmy from glittering overcoats.
The Minister of Aesthetics brings her finest cigars, the Surgeon General his wife’s sweetest tarts, and the Secretary of Internal Reform brings the same bottle of wine as he does every time.
As the guests seat themselves around the table, the bishop toasts the memory of the fallen, emphasizing the necessity of maintaining civility in these trying times.
The group raises their glasses, devoted to this small act of normalcy.
Across town, an ecdytoxic bomb detonates, spilling a gust of poison and a booming mimicry of the closing chords of Tasarte’s “Strangleroot Tarantella.”
When seven courses have come and gone and the Secretary deals out the first poker game of the night, the doorbell rings.
The footman expects a straggler, the University dean or some relation of the Chancellor devoted to a fashionably late arrival—instead he opens the door to reveal a disheveled young man, stinking of mud and rhizotoxins and panting like a dog.
The footman, of course, slams the door, but not before the undercity scum jams a boot against the frame.
He pushes into the house and strikes the porter with his sidearm.
The man falls back, yelp covered by a burst of laughter from the poker table.
He cowers in the corner just as the bishop enters the foyer, aglow with wine, leaving a trail of laughter behind him.
When he sees his exterminator, his smile vanishes, his wineglass slips from his hand.
“Hock,” he hisses. The young man motions him into the scullery, and the bishop, glancing over his shoulder at his ignorant guests, obeys. “What do you think you’re doing?”
In the dim candlelight, a silverfish runs over his slipper, and a gun’s muzzle presses against his silken gut.
“Is that real?” he asks. “What’s even in there? Phytothrin?”
“Lead,” Hock answers.
“Are you … my son, are you robbing me?”
“Yes.”
“Now?” He clicks his tongue. “Could it not have waited?”
“I need help. Real help. It’s urgent.”
“Yes, well, you know I want to help you in whatever way I can, but my boat is in the morning—” A curt query is shouted from the adjacent hall, and the bishop leans toward the foyer.
“It’s fine, my dears! Carry on!” When he turns back to Hock, his face burns with anger. “My son, this is highly inappropriate.”
“I need tickets.”
“Tickets. To what? Don Javunech?”
“Out of town. I need to go, now. I need money for the smuggler’s fare. At least fifty thousand.”
“What’s this about? What have you done?” The bishop’s rage fades, blood draining from his face. Without diverting his gaze, he answers another shout from the dining hall. “No, no! It’s perfectly all right!”
“You’re going to come upstairs with me,” Hock rasps. “You’re going to open your safe, and I’m going to take everything inside.”
The bishop’s face contorts, in fear, and sadness, and a little burn of arousal. “My son, if you were this desperate, you should’ve called.”
Hock jams the muzzle into the bishop’s stomach, teeth clenched, and begins to cry. “Fuck you. Upstairs. Now.”
“You’re not good at this, my boy. Put that down and go home. We’ll talk later. I have guests.”
“What is happening out here?” The bishop’s wife stumbles into the scullery. When she sees the two of them in the dusty shadows, her eyes widen. “Oh, no. No, no. This is too far. This is going much too far.”
“I didn’t invite him, dear,” the bishop says. “Look, son—”
His words falter at a sudden pounding at the door. Wood jumps under a knocking fist, then, after a moment of silence, a boot. Hock darts from the scullery and across the foyer, and the bishop follows.
“Don’t answer that,” Davide barks at the footman. “Hock—who is that? Who have you brought here?”
“Don’t let them in,” Hock wheezes, stumbling past the harpsichord and up the stairs.
“What have you done?”
“Tell them I already left. I never came. Don’t let them find me. Buy me time. I need time. Please.” He disappears down the hall.
In the dining room, the game continues without its dealer. “Think something’s burned in the kitchen?” the bishop doesn’t hear one guest ask.
“I think it’s a break-in,” says a second.
“One of his weird games, no doubt,” sighs the Secretary. “I wish he wouldn’t do that with guests around. It’s unseemly.”
Another knock rattles the door. Neither the bishop nor his footman answers, but that doesn’t matter.
A few more kicks, then a bang of a small explosive, and the oak panels split open.
The wood gives way, snapping off its hinges in a puff of ecdytoxin.
By the time the captain of the Tender Guard steps into the foyer, the door is no longer a door, but a melted statuette of splinters and glassy sap.
The man is tall, solemn. A respirator and mask hang around his neck, his pauldrons are stamped with gold and the centipedal sigils of BGS.
When he steps into the mirrored light, he fixes his cold gaze on the bishop.
It is the same he wears in nearly every photograph, in the posters, in the sketches that have been selling like wildfire down on Conundrum.
“Fuck,” Davide breathes.
Corporal Flint’s eyes pass across the foyer. “Where is he?”
“Where—who?”
He sighs with a hardened calmness. “Don’t make me search this house, Eir Bishop.”
“I don’t know who…”
“Tell him,” whispers his wife, shaking. “Oh, Davide, just tell him.”
“I don’t—” The soldier’s eyes meet the bishop’s, and a lump travels down his throat. “Upstairs,” he croaks. “Right. Door at the end of the hall.”
The corporal marches past. A quartet of his underlings stands watch in the foyer, arms at the ready.
Davide stays frozen to the spot, arms around his wife, ears perked over the swell of chatter rising from the table.
Summoned by the commotion, his guests appear at the arch to the dining hall.
They eye the Tender Guardsmen, then the look on their host’s face.
Carefully, they gather their things, thank the bishop for his hospitality, and disappear.
Davide doesn’t move. Above him, the bedroom door slams. Floorboards creak. Three gunshots. Then silence.
Several minutes pass. When the corporal returns, he is alone, uniform splattered with red.
The bishop knows better than to ask if Hock is dead—instead, he only grips his tearful wife.
The soldier passes him, radiating anger.
When he hesitates, turning at the doorway, Davide is very sure he will shoot him where he stands.
“Eir Bishop,” the soldier says. “What was that man’s name?”
The bishop’s mouth hangs open, but his wife answers with a little squeak, “H … ock.”
“What was that?”
“Hock. It’s sh-short for something. We don’t know what.”
“He never told you his thumb name?”
“N … no.”
“Thank you, Vra Bishop.” The soldier, to Davide’s infinite relief, seems to soften, just a bit. “You have ten minutes to vacate this place before I fumigate. If you’re not out of the city by morning, I will kill you both.” He nods politely, lifts his carbine, then strides out the door.
Normally when Guy robs the Bishop of the Last Monday, he does so in costume, aided by a ladder the couple leaves for him at the open window.
This time, after he clears everything he can from the dressing table and the jewelry boxes, there is no ladder waiting.
This time, it will be a long and painful drop into the garden.
He doesn’t care. As long as he can limp back to Tyro, as long as he can make it to the docks, it doesn’t matter how many broken bones rattle along with him.
“Guylag.”
The voice barely slows him. Pockets heavy with jewelry, he redoubles his efforts wrestling with the window.
Unwilling to turn, hands trembling, he shoves open the glass and steps into the empty night air.
He hesitates only to gauge the height of the drop before he throws himself to the will of gravity.
Dawn’s will is stronger. A large hand grasps his arm, another his waist, and drags him back through the window. He struggles, reaching for his sidearm. When he and Dawn disentangle, he pulls it from his belt.
“Have you gone insane?” Dawn growls. “What have you done? Are you trying to destroy us?”
“Don’t touch me,” Guy starts.
“What did you do to the teratopod? To Reames?”
“What did they do to Tyro?” he growls, but Dawn doesn’t seem to hear him.
“Bertram’s got every officer in BGS out looking for you. He’s got every checkpoint blocked. He’s sweeping the docks. Orders are to shoot you on sight. You and Ty. In the feet first, then the knees. One at a time, so the other can watch.”
“Oh, God,” Guy breathes.
“You’re lucky I found you first,” Dawn says. “Don’t point that fucking thing at me. After everything I’ve done for you—put it down, Guy.”
“You sold my sister,” he rasps.
“Put that down.”
“Why? To hurt me?”
“She wanted this,” Dawn says. “This is what she needed. If you had only asked—”
“She’s hurt. She’s been stung—”
“So have we! We’re better for it.” He steps forward, anger melting to resignation. “It doesn’t matter now. You’ve thrown it away. I was going to give you both a life. I was going to give you everything you ever wanted.”
“Fuck you,” Guy says feebly.
Dawn reaches for the firearm. “Don’t run, you coward. Don’t you dare run from this. He’ll only hunt you down—”