The Throne of Bones (31 page)

Here is the greatest oddity of all: others saw them. No other victim of Frothard’s Debility is warned of an attack when bystanders sense strange sounds, sights or smells, but I have been. When I was a boy, before I learned to shun the light, people would try to brush “lint” from my little black tunic, never succeeding, and it made them most uneasy. Some recoiled from the touch.

The true warning sounded when I could not ignore the strands. They thickened, they swelled, they reddened, they pulsated—they sickened me! Gagging and shuddering, I began to see double, but in ways so weird that I feared I was dying or losing my mind. Meanwhile the rancid odor congealed, suffocated. The grave was open, and I tumbled into it.

What happened then, when the light went out? I never knew. Illness, Mother tried to teach me, is not evil, and sick people must not be condemned, but she had always seemed a finer person than I am. The afflicted disgust me, and I am not alone. My own foaming and mewling, my—Sleithreethra knows what! Whatever it is I did, whoever saw it shunned me forever after. My first seizure gripped me in the presence of my father, and I have not seen him since.

My mother, too, was present, but her love for me did not falter. She seemed, as I said, a fine person, but she could have schooled foxes in evasion. She never told me what I did that first time, as I watched them in their bed and felt myself losing control.

My illness was not an unmixed curse. Not even my Uncle Vendriel (Lord Vendriel the Implacable of Fandragord, not to be confused with those piffling Vendrards who infest our House) could get me a commission in Death’s Darlings, the traditional family regiment. My appointment as Inspector of Moats and Trenches at Crotalorn was the best he could do. He has since avoided me, living proof that his power has limits, but I never cease from blessing his name. The job was made for me.

I spoke of two defects, and the second is more embarrassing. I did not choose to throw fits, but I do choose to spy.
Choose.
..perhaps I am too hard on myself. Does a drunkard choose to drink? Yes, I suppose he does, as a thief chooses to steal, as a bad poet chooses to write, as an inveterate duelist chooses to kill: from all these spring exhilaration and a release from pain that the addict craves. Jam a pillow over my face, and I can’t help myself, I will crave breath.

Oh, they know it’s wrong, they lecture themselves, they set down rules to avoid temptation, but they always find excuses to drink, to write, to steal, to kill, to spy ... to breathe.

I have known for quite some time what naked women look like. I have memorized the details. If I could draw, I could draw you one without reference to a model. And if I forgot some aspect, I could run up to the lobby and refresh my memory with the statue of Empress Fillitrella that adorns the central fountain. Were marble not enough, I could travel to Frothirot and buy a ticket to the baths; or to Sythiphore, and stroll through the streets. But in the baths at Frothirot, they do not sell tickets to let you conceal yourself; in Sythiphore, they would laugh if you hid behind a palm-tree to watch the women promenade the beaches. I love to watch, but watching without secrecy and danger blights my love.

I seldom give readings anymore. I am sick of women who scream or faint, men who grumble, “Barbarous!” or “Obscene!,” sick of the self-righteous show they make of stamping out before I finish. And half of those who remain, of course, will approach me to ask if I really skinned my mistress to preserve her exquisite tattoos, and might they not call on me to examine the artwork? When invited to read, I usually send a slave to recite.

It would have been impolitic to send a slave to Lord Nefandiel’s palace on the Feast of the Assassination. As head of the city government, he has the power to expel me from my cozy office. It was the sort of gathering I most loathe, though, a swarming of the shallowest illiterates, whose holiday costumes and drunkenness would give them license to abuse me and my work even more than usual. Many would never have heard of me, and some would try hard to persuade me that I had written their favorite story, the tale of the Vendren Worm that my Tribe could invoke with unpredictable results in time of need: an ancient fairy tale, I believed, probably an allegory of our erratic relations with the dragon-bannered House of Fand.

After the banquet, after the dancers and clowns and sword-fighters had done their turns, the lights were lowered, and I walked to the center of the hall. No one applauded, but I was gratified by the hush that fell over the revelers, followed by a riffle of unease. My appearance, the lord had told me, was to be a surprise, his homage to the tradition of scaring people on this holiday. He had surprised them—shocked them, even. It remained for me to scare them.

I always feel that the tale I have just written is my best, and that was so now. I was blinded by enthusiasm. It seemed ideally suited for a public reading, since no one could confuse me with the narrator, dead for two hundred years, a Fomorian Guard called Pathrach Shornhand. He tells of the Great Plague that claimed the beloved Fillitrella, and the gruesome comedy attending the disposal of her remains.

Except for her return as a walking corpse who devours infants, the tale was grounded in historical fact. I was well pleased with myself, and far into the reading, before it occurred to me that Fillitrella was indeed beloved, as none of our rulers before or since. Even the Sons of Cludd, who despise the secular nobility and have no use for women, revere her as a saint; and a reverend lord commander of that order (unless the man’s uniform was meant as a festival costume, but I doubted it) was sitting squarely and sourly in the front of my audience. The Fomorian Guards still glory in the title “Fillitrella’s Own;” and the fishbelly-white redhead lounging behind him, a man so large and muscular that he could have, after a few brisk twists, used me to clean his ears, was obviously one of those merciless shock-troopers, even if he was costumed as a butterfly.

But more to the point, a point I stuck into myself more intimately with each word I read, was that Fillitrella was a Fand, which Tribe my host ornamented. My hungry corpse was his grandmother, several times removed.

Halfway through the story, Lord Nefandiel turned even whiter than the Fomor, who had himself begun experimenting with ever-darker shades of red. No one cried “Shame!” or “Treason!” They were stunned. No one screamed, but four persons did faint, not all of them women. The reverend lord commander’s hand seemed glued to his sword, which revealed itself from the scabbard by slow but steady increments. I doubt that the plague-pit of my story could have displayed so many slack jaws and fixed stares as faced me now.

I thought of editing my work, but that was impossible. Once a story is finished, I can no more take out a word than I can take out my own liver. I considered adding an idiotic epilogue in the manner of Feshard Thooz—“But it was all a dream!”—but an artist would rather die first.

And, as my host whitened, as the barbarian reddened, as more steel gleamed in the Cluddite’s lap, it appeared that I might indeed die. I began inching backward, intending to turn and run when I had read the last word, throwing the manuscript down with the hope that they would vent some of their fury on the scroll before pursuing its author.

The last word was read, and I could not but look up to see their reactions. We were frozen, the rabbit ringed by wolves, none of us able to move in an eternal moment of suspense. Then Lord Nefandiel began to applaud, and so did they all, even the Fomor and the Cluddite.

“I never knew all that about my illustrious ancestor,” my host told me when I went to accept his congratulations. “Imagine that!”

“You don’t look at all like a Fomor,” Lady Fandrissa said. “And you seem so young to have been alive then!”

“Your friend hasn’t eaten, has he? We could have something brought out,” Lord Nefandiel said.

Yes, the Feast of the Assassination, when you scare people: and my host had just scared me more than he had during my reading.

I should have said that I have
three
defects, and the worst may be my talent for attracting supernumeraries. In any crowd like this, there will be one who cannot be accounted for, and everybody will assume that he came with me. I am a singularly single man, a haunter of the dark, an outsider, and yet I always have the sense of being followed, because I always am.

Walking home in the small hours down Potash Alley, a soiled wrinkle in the street-map that is never busy even at noon, I have many times turned to confront unlikely followers, each of them different, each with a plausible excuse for being there, but each following me, no matter what he might say.

I had never before seen the one that Lord Nefandiel indicated, a short, bald man with a demonic mask. I might have gone to demand who he was if, at that moment, a wall had not fallen on my back.

“You think like Fomor,” said the giant butterfly, who had amiably mangled my shoulder with his paw. “How you do that?”

In twenty years of unappreciated writing, this was the most astute question I had ever heard, and I addressed it seriously while Akilleus Bloodglutter nodded and growled. I have no idea if he understood me, but he seemed pleased and vowed to send me the head of the very next prisoner he took.

Meanwhile, the man with the demon mask had vanished.

Whenever I read, I look for one attentive face and ignore the others. Ignoring that mob had been impossible, but I found someone who seemed sympathetic, and I did my best to read only to her. The wonder in her wide eyes, the parting of her pink lips, the flush of excitement that tinged her cheeks like the first light of dawn on apple-blossoms, suggested a child enthralled by a bedtime story, but she was no child. Dressed, or nearly so, as a nymph, she wore a coronet of yellow flowers on her artfully disordered hair.

I saw her again and angled through the crowd. I believe in the redemptive power of love. I had always hoped that one or more of my defects might be cured by the love of a good woman, or at least by the tolerance of an attractive one. I began to feel awkward as a boy, my head light, my extremities tingling. My store of words flounced away like a jealous mistress, and I knew that when I spoke, I would sound less urbane than Akilleus Bloodglutter, but I kept sliding toward her as if the room had tilted to abase itself at her pretty feet.

The man who faced me in her knot of admirers, the same Cluddite officer who had so intimidated me, began to shrug and grimace. Failing to read his signals, she continued: “ ... worse than I expected, a skinny, twitching gawk, as if some inept taxidermist tried to stuff a raven, then hid his mistake away in a damp cellar for years. Do you suppose the cobwebs on his clothes are part of his act, or does he sleep in a tomb?”

The Cluddite turned red as the pile of bricks he resembled, and he cleared his throat like a man choking on a fishbone, but she was oblivious to his distress. I should have fled, but even in that moment of despair I was hypnotized by the swells and planes of her mostly bared back. All colors but its rose and gold and cream had been deleted from the universe.

“That horrible son of his—have you read that vile story? Well, I’m sure his son would be much less of a monster—” here she laughed, a delicate tinkle of chimes in a torture chamber—“if he had taken more after his
mother!”

One of her companions, more direct than the Cluddite, said: “He’s standing behind you.”

She turned, and I had to admire her: eyes flashing, chin thrusting, she attacked. “Your stories are garbage, sir. If the Sons of Cludd had their way, they would be burned, and you along with them.”

Take this for proof of the brutal honesty of this memoir, that I am willing to reveal myself as a worse fool than anyone else. I said: “If the Sons of Cludd had their way, lady, they would make you cover your porcine rump in public.”

One doesn’t strike a Vendren, at least that is what Vendrens always say, parroting our motto:
Who Smites the Tyger?
Her response to that boast rang through the hall. It was such a shock that I stood and gaped, examining the pain of her slap with more curiosity about a new sensation than the outrage I should have felt, as she swirled away. I had once more become the center of attention in a silent throng.

The reverend lord commander gripped my arm. Dueling is forbidden to the Holy Soldiers, but so is attending parties like this one, and I thought he meant to lead me outside. Humiliation gave way to terror.

“’Of making many books there is no end,’” he quoted from his
Book of Cludd,
“’but there one day will be.’” Inappropriate as that quotation was, I think he meant it to comfort me. Perhaps it was the only one relating to literature that he could think of; and perhaps he felt only the concern that one feels for a marked victim. He gave my arm a comradely squeeze and walked away.

Except for a few sidelong glances and snickers, my disgrace was forgotten as the company gaily organized itself for the candlelight procession to the graveyard, where, on this night, one traditionally sees demons, posthumes and ghouls who may be questioned about the future. These would be mummers, of course, hired by Lord Nefandiel to titillate his guests. I overheard the cruel nymph plead a headache to our host, excusing herself from this romp. I hurried to bribe a servant, who told me her name, Vulnaveila Vogg, and the location of her room. Planning nothing, guided by my feet, I sped upstairs and concealed myself in her wardrobe.

The itch had mastered me, you see, the irresistible need to breathe. I wanted to pay her back for shaming me, too. She would never know I had examined her as thoroughly as I might examine a slave offered for sale while commanding one of her intimate garments to fondle me, but I would know. She might wonder, if I met her again, how I could meet her eyes and perhaps even smile into them as I savored my secret revenge. You need not tell me how sordid this seems, for my own spirit cringed from me as I crouched among her scented silks and furs.

I felt much as I had the first time, spying on my parents as they conjured up a beast with two backs: one whose hateful but fascinating existence I had never suspected, the beast with feet at either end. My first attack struck me then; and now I saw my cobwebs in the dimness of the wardrobe. O Gods! The woman I had wanted, who had reduced me to a child in front of the company, would witness my further reduction to a puling infant when she entered her room. Never mind the shame and the loss of my cozy office: for this abuse of his hospitality, Lord Nefandiel would have me racked and gutted, and my quaking remains diced.