Fic: Before A Fall
Summary: I was not entirely satisfied with Steerpike’s character development in various places, so this would be my canon-spanning attempt to resolve that.
Characters/Pairings: Steerpike mostly, also Prunesquallor, Fuchsia, Titus; gen but for a hint of Steerpike/Fuchsia.
Word Count: ~3,000
Disclaimer: Alas, not mine.
Warnings: Nope
A/N: This is book canon but probably works fine with the miniseries if you’re thus inclined. I have tried to emulate Peake’s style, for better or worse - verdicts on this decision welcome.
*
*
A week in the bustling miasma of the Great Kitchen sufficed to have Steerpike thoroughly restless and hunting the nearby passageways for a refuge, however temporary, from Swelter and his domain of calid squalor. He had succeeded - through cunning, trickery or the childish but efficient method of hiding - in avoiding many of his prescribed tasks, but he was loath to remain in that place any longer, however wily he might prove.
He was hardly fond of the other kitchen boys - he felt a grinding hatred of every one by pure association if nothing else - but the fact that they had been in the same unfortunate position as him, in some cases for many years, did elicit an innate desire to remove them also from their unpleasant situation. On finding an easy route out he might well have encouraged them to escape with him, had he not thought it would compromise his plans; it would certainly spite the despised chef, that sickening mass of bloated corpulence that was the focus of his loathing.
He took a passage just apart from the labyrinthine wine-vaults; he had no purpose in venturing there at this time, though he filed neatly in his brain the wish to explore them at a later date. The tunnel - it was smooth-walled and barely accommodated his full height - was unbranching, and with no choices to be resolved Steerpike moved swiftly along as it twisted downwards, first to the left and then the right.
There was a vague echoing of footsteps behind him - he leapt nimbly down a short flight of twisted steps and hid himself behind a rack of wine bottles so dust-laden that they could have been empty or filled with gold for all the eye could distinguish.
Steerpike sucked ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. The heavy particles in the air scratched at his nose, as did the mingling scents of stale alcohol and general decay. He peered between the bottles, through a gap rhomboid with convex sides, and his eyes made a rapid survey of the room.
It was as smooth-walled as the adjoining passageway, with no paint or paper. It was entirely of flat, unbroken stone, as though the room he now crouched in had been carved from a pre-existing subterranean monolith. There were no windows and no doors or archways but the one he had entered by, only a boarded-up fireplace between the wine rack he was positioned behind and an identical one by the opposite wall.
There were no more footsteps to be heard. From underneath the grimy kitchen jacket Steerpike produced a small knife, the most useful implement he had managed to pilfer, and proceeded to prise at the wooden boards covering the hearth. Rotten as they were, this was not an arduous task.
To his irritation it appeared that the fireplace had been bricked up. He ignored the strangeness of both bricking and boarding up a fireplace; there were enough oddities in this place that mere redundancy barely seemed worthy of his attention. He sat down again, disgruntled. It appeared this room would be of no immediate use.
He examined his knife. The blade was narrow and very keen, for he had sharpened it that very morning. Plucking a bottle from the nearer rack and wiping the dust from its label, he worked at the cork until it gave. The sweet taste of red wine filled his mouth and his aggravation was at least partially tempered.
*
“What a fright you gave me, ha ha ha! what a jump - three feet in the air, by all that’s gravitational! You do sneak about, my boy.” With one switch-thin finger, Dr Prunesquallor prodded his glasses upwards from the tip of his nose to the bridge; they immediately slid back again, tilted downwards as his head and neck were.
Steerpike, as he caught sight of the doctor midway on the stairs, had whisked the vial of toxin he had been preparing that night into an inside pocket.
“If you will forgive me, sir, I do not sneak; I merely wish to remain as noiseless as physically possible at such an hour, to what would be, I am sure, the appreciation of both you and your dear sister, were you not naturally so oblivious to my endeavours.”
“Ha ha! is that so? And what circumstance, might I enquire, has forced you to such, ha ha, strenuous consideration?” asked Dr Prunesquallor, pushing his glasses back up, whence they fell back in continuation of their Sisyphean cycle.
“A bout of insomnia and a perilously dry throat,” replied Steerpike simply. “The same as your very self, I might presume,” he added, nodding his head to acknowledge the half-empty glass in the doctor’s hand.
Though Steerpike exuded a suspect air in many ways, not least the ease with which he found it possible to ingratiate himself, Dr Prunesquallor could not help but admire the manner in which the youth applied his fantastic intelligence. To be sure, there were others with brains about, even Irma below her thick strata of powder, but they were rarely put to such productive use. The boy had a talent for efficiency that pleased the doctor; he was, foremost, a man of science, and had much to say for one who took such care to employ concision and discount the superfluous.
So it was that Steerpike's brief and precise answers did much to assuage his naturally unnerving character - nonetheless, Prunesquallor would check the downstairs, for his own peace of mind.
“And you have slaked this hazardous disruption?” asked the doctor.
“I have.”
“Well, then, off to bed, with you, eh? Ha ha!”
“Goodnight, sir.” Steerpike continued his quiet creeping up the stairs. He paused on the landing. As he had foreseen, Prunesquallor was investigating the lower rooms. Steerpike had no reason for anxiety regarding the state of the dispensary, for he was blessed with the capability both of memorising the original position of every medicine, receptacle and instrument and of restoring these items to said positions with speed and accuracy. Rather he was concerned at the doctor’s suspicion - but not gravely, for he planned to be far away from his employment before the month was out.
Whenever it was possible and convenient, Steerpike had made it his habit to explore the main body of the castle, for the more accurate a map of it he had assembled in his teeming brain, and the more complex a library of its characters and their interactions he could assemble, the more confidently a plan could be compiled. In the way of the most skilful chess-player, all eventualities lay envisaged before him, lines of action being slowly scored across by every development or scrap of information. He was prepared to snatch at any opportunity that had any fair probability of success, as assiduously evaluated by him through this process; and it was with with swelling surety that he felt the oncoming dawn of his ascension.
*
Though his employment with Barquentine was nearing two years now, Steerpike had made no move; after all, his plan hinged on being solely capable of taking over the old man's post, and the sheer volume of information to be retained was enough to retard his progress. It hardly taxed his brain, however.
For a long time now he had faced few challenges, few exertions mental or physical, and certainly none insuperable to him. It could almost be said that he was content, but, contentment being the enemy of ambition, Steerpike, with idiosyncratic control of emotion, would not allow it. He was, rather, at ease, such an ease as fed his aspirations. With more favourably perceived skill and cunning came a waxing desire for these selfsame attributes to be exploited, and a converse waning of that limitless patience he had always - up to the present - been in possession of.
But for now it had been achievement enough to trip up the churning, onward-marching rhythm of Gormenghast, to sever the timeless thread of duty that bound father to son and master to apprentice. For he would be Master of Ritual, and the anticipation of the power and opportunities it would afford gave him sufficient satisfaction. He continued to work his way, creeper-like, into every minute crack of the Stones.
He had in the near future only to deal with Barquentine, that disgusting but feeble curmudgeon, and then witless Fuchsia, half-entranced already for sheer want of attention. It was the latter that now occupied his thoughts, for she presented the greater obstacle, and was not merely to be cleared out of way. All in all she would require more thought and patience.
He had prepared to cross paths with her that afternoon, as she wandered outside, clueless to his hidden observation of her.
“Oh,” said Fuchsia, when he revealed himself from amongst the trees and doffed an imaginary hat to her. “It’s you again.”
Steerpike looked down at himself and patted his black-clothed chest as if mystified before setting his small dark eyes on Fuchsia once again. “Indeed, my lady, there’s no counter to that.”
To his slight surprise, she did not question his presence further. He continued.
“There is a place I think you should like to see, my lady. A place I discovered on my adventures - for I am an explorer, as you know - and came to tell you of.”
Steerpike twirled his burnished swordstick, describing multiple wide circles in the air. Conjunct with the dark folds of cloak that disguised his narrow form, the sum impression on Fuchsia’s susceptible mind was that of a ringleader, more exactly the one from the travelling circus of her storybook. She knew the characters of her favourite tales well and fondly, and understood them more than she could these people who ignored her, or treated her like a stupid child, or fussed pointlessly as her nurse always had.
“Follow me,” said Steerpike, and in her head he wore a top hat. He was no longer that high-shouldered youth who showed a bizarre interest in her - in her! - and confused her with difficult rhetoric. She knew that the figure was Steerpike, but it seemed to her now that his coldness, his sharpness, and the mechanical efficiency that both awed and repelled her had been scraped away, like leaves of paint from a smooth surface, to leave a bare palimpsest on which nothing so shocking was daubed.
Having succeeded in this transformation, with another whirling flourish of his swordstick Steerpike led the way. Their path meditated in a gentle loop around to the Eastern wing, beyond the Tower of Flints to the juddering extensions sandwiched in a meandering avenue of pine. They passed the ravaged library, and then, when this sandy track terminated, entered the forest, picking their way through the thick mesh of needles, swimming alongside the partially submerged masonry.
As they had progressed, Steerpike had occasionally given utterance to the more eccentric thoughts that flitted dreamlike through his whirring mind; but Fuchsia rarely provided any indication that she had even heard.
“Trees are marvellous things,” he remarked as he finally veered outwards from the verdurous haze, and made for an open archway in the neighbouring block of blanched stone that comprised this section of the wing. “We chop them down and carve them up, build with them and burn them, and they don’t give one note of complaint.”
“They get in my way sometimes,” replied Fuschia, picking at the profusion of green pins caught in the rich tangle of her hair.
Steerpike saw no gain in quibbling with her statement. He merely removed his stubby pipe from the pocket of his waistcoat and in cogitation chewed on it unlit.
The archway was the entrance to a lofty corridor, which as they proceeded tapered to the point where had they wished to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, it would have been quite impossible. As it was, Fuchsia followed him with caution, several of her bounding steps behind him, for any illusion had long since dropped and now she was trailing only her curiosity. Steerpike moved swiftly in his usual gait, that with a strong sense of the wilful.
On exiting the corridor through a wooden door carven in strong relief with roses and wildflowers, they came to a closed courtyard of sufficient size to admit the low-angled daylight that skimmed the surrounding turrets. Their shadows idled on the ground in the lazing sunlight before whetting themselves to sharpness against the white flesh of the stones.
“Do you see now, Lady Fuchsia?” Steerpike replaced his pipe into his pocket, swung about briskly on his heel and strode backwards, pale arms outstretched in gesture at the yet paler walls of the courtyard. “Do you see why I simply had to show you?”
But he might as well have spoken a foreign tongue, or undiluted nonsense; Fuchsia’s inconstant attention had, from the moment of her entrance, been wholly devoted to the square’s prodigious centrepiece.
Upon a stepped black plinth, engraved excessively with words too weathered for recognition, rose up a mass of twisted tarry strands, conspiring exquisitely to form a rearing dragon. It was a match in craftsmanship to any of the Bright Carvings. Fuchsia reached out to test the serpentine threads of the curling tail - though some section of her brain threw out the logic that they must be solid and most probably of metal, no part of her untamed perception could accept this conclusion without tangible proof. Yet before her fingers could sense anything but air, she snatched them back from the beast with its disapproving snarl. The only point of colour was its eye, she noticed, a gem of blood red set soundly in a sea of disturbed night. The other socket was unoccupied.
Once again she stretched out her arm, with lessened trepidation, and this time succeeded in smoothing her fingertips along the woven lines. Now that any semblance of real life she had felt emanate from the statue was surely a fiction, she could appreciate it for what it was, a finely-wrought piece of art; moreover, she could ascribe to the jet-black dragon her own brand of vitality. She could cast it in the plays of her fancy, constructing herself its origin and its future. What magnificent addition to her playthings! For a time she stood motionless in quiet rapture.
Steerpike, forgotten, noted her trembling and knew at once it was in joy, so complete now was his catalogue of her movements and her moods. He smiled, not at her wondering ecstasy but at his near-effortless provision of it.
In everyone is to be found on close examination a certain vein of character, a lode so rich as can be mined excessively and gainfully; it was for Steerpike to dig for such a seam in all those he met, listening, observing, and gathering details until a picture could be formed and the target located. Yet this once, mired in the sneaking self-congratulation he would have banished from his mind had he experienced any conscious inkling of it, an erroneous assumption found its genesis.
‘Fuchsia may be lonely,’ came his derivation, ‘and may be frightened by the unfamiliar, but above all things she finds a childlike pleasure in the ludicrous, that which imagination can work upon to the full - and that is overriding. She is not scared of me, nor repelled, and why should she be, when I have brought her such fascination? Whatever else may foil me, appealing to the fantastical shall regain my grace.’
There was cheer in his thoughts, a happy arrogance that Steerpike did not take the trouble to beat down.
*
Titus twitched and shifted from foot to foot as the day’s Ritual was imparted to him in Steerpike’s slow and ailing voice.
"Once you have drained the glass, you must untie the red ribbon from about its stem…"
Every word, weak but with perfectly-formed clarity, came in sharp contrast to the restless energy that seemed to spark from Titus even when perfectly silent. The lambent flames waltzing in the grate were mirrored yet more vivaciously in those bright, starkly violet eyes, behind which even now the seeds of insurrection were germinating, as surely in Titus' mind as they had long since in the burnt creature before him.
"...and then, with this ribbon affixed around your wrist, you must run up this first flight and down again, three times in all..."
Titus pouted, to no effect. Any lone drop of lenience Steerpike might have had for the petulant enemy before him had been retracted. He could not allow any measure of sympathy, however slight, not when everything that had appeared so stable was now precarious.
Though Steerpike’s febrile delirium had cleared, his mind had not; upon it had descended the baleful fog of failure and self-reproach. For all his planning he had underestimated that ghastly old man, even felt some strange, heavily buried touch of pity for him - but no more. His heart folded in upon itself. Any feeble measure of mercy concealed therein was hunted down and expelled. And all this quite below the level of the conscious - Steerpike only felt his resolve sharpen and his already quick mind race and almost buckle as he plotted under the weight of a myriad bandages.
In earlier days he had sometimes wished for total freedom. Though he gained much satisfaction from a well-executed scheme there had been a lingering lust to break free of his rigorously self-imposed control, to strike out and derive that instant power that would come from terrorizing those grotesques that surrounded him, haunting their nightmares and their waking hours alike. A pallid Fury with no grievance but a wanton hatred, known and feared and ingrained indelibly on the Castle's rhythmic consciousness, he would stir their paranoia with the faintest brush of his scaly wings.
The desire was all that fuelled him, and as such could not be driven out, not even by the fire that had scourged and cauterised his soul. Instead it remained, smouldering low, ready to flare up and move him when the time came - but he could not know that it would. He was immersed in the present. He would make up for this appalling misjudgement, atone for it in his own bloodless fashion, if it purge all the spirit from his loveless body.
*
Characters/Pairings: Steerpike mostly, also Prunesquallor, Fuchsia, Titus; gen but for a hint of Steerpike/Fuchsia.
Word Count: ~3,000
Disclaimer: Alas, not mine.
Warnings: Nope
A/N: This is book canon but probably works fine with the miniseries if you’re thus inclined. I have tried to emulate Peake’s style, for better or worse - verdicts on this decision welcome.
*
*
A week in the bustling miasma of the Great Kitchen sufficed to have Steerpike thoroughly restless and hunting the nearby passageways for a refuge, however temporary, from Swelter and his domain of calid squalor. He had succeeded - through cunning, trickery or the childish but efficient method of hiding - in avoiding many of his prescribed tasks, but he was loath to remain in that place any longer, however wily he might prove.
He was hardly fond of the other kitchen boys - he felt a grinding hatred of every one by pure association if nothing else - but the fact that they had been in the same unfortunate position as him, in some cases for many years, did elicit an innate desire to remove them also from their unpleasant situation. On finding an easy route out he might well have encouraged them to escape with him, had he not thought it would compromise his plans; it would certainly spite the despised chef, that sickening mass of bloated corpulence that was the focus of his loathing.
He took a passage just apart from the labyrinthine wine-vaults; he had no purpose in venturing there at this time, though he filed neatly in his brain the wish to explore them at a later date. The tunnel - it was smooth-walled and barely accommodated his full height - was unbranching, and with no choices to be resolved Steerpike moved swiftly along as it twisted downwards, first to the left and then the right.
There was a vague echoing of footsteps behind him - he leapt nimbly down a short flight of twisted steps and hid himself behind a rack of wine bottles so dust-laden that they could have been empty or filled with gold for all the eye could distinguish.
Steerpike sucked ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. The heavy particles in the air scratched at his nose, as did the mingling scents of stale alcohol and general decay. He peered between the bottles, through a gap rhomboid with convex sides, and his eyes made a rapid survey of the room.
It was as smooth-walled as the adjoining passageway, with no paint or paper. It was entirely of flat, unbroken stone, as though the room he now crouched in had been carved from a pre-existing subterranean monolith. There were no windows and no doors or archways but the one he had entered by, only a boarded-up fireplace between the wine rack he was positioned behind and an identical one by the opposite wall.
There were no more footsteps to be heard. From underneath the grimy kitchen jacket Steerpike produced a small knife, the most useful implement he had managed to pilfer, and proceeded to prise at the wooden boards covering the hearth. Rotten as they were, this was not an arduous task.
To his irritation it appeared that the fireplace had been bricked up. He ignored the strangeness of both bricking and boarding up a fireplace; there were enough oddities in this place that mere redundancy barely seemed worthy of his attention. He sat down again, disgruntled. It appeared this room would be of no immediate use.
He examined his knife. The blade was narrow and very keen, for he had sharpened it that very morning. Plucking a bottle from the nearer rack and wiping the dust from its label, he worked at the cork until it gave. The sweet taste of red wine filled his mouth and his aggravation was at least partially tempered.
*
“What a fright you gave me, ha ha ha! what a jump - three feet in the air, by all that’s gravitational! You do sneak about, my boy.” With one switch-thin finger, Dr Prunesquallor prodded his glasses upwards from the tip of his nose to the bridge; they immediately slid back again, tilted downwards as his head and neck were.
Steerpike, as he caught sight of the doctor midway on the stairs, had whisked the vial of toxin he had been preparing that night into an inside pocket.
“If you will forgive me, sir, I do not sneak; I merely wish to remain as noiseless as physically possible at such an hour, to what would be, I am sure, the appreciation of both you and your dear sister, were you not naturally so oblivious to my endeavours.”
“Ha ha! is that so? And what circumstance, might I enquire, has forced you to such, ha ha, strenuous consideration?” asked Dr Prunesquallor, pushing his glasses back up, whence they fell back in continuation of their Sisyphean cycle.
“A bout of insomnia and a perilously dry throat,” replied Steerpike simply. “The same as your very self, I might presume,” he added, nodding his head to acknowledge the half-empty glass in the doctor’s hand.
Though Steerpike exuded a suspect air in many ways, not least the ease with which he found it possible to ingratiate himself, Dr Prunesquallor could not help but admire the manner in which the youth applied his fantastic intelligence. To be sure, there were others with brains about, even Irma below her thick strata of powder, but they were rarely put to such productive use. The boy had a talent for efficiency that pleased the doctor; he was, foremost, a man of science, and had much to say for one who took such care to employ concision and discount the superfluous.
So it was that Steerpike's brief and precise answers did much to assuage his naturally unnerving character - nonetheless, Prunesquallor would check the downstairs, for his own peace of mind.
“And you have slaked this hazardous disruption?” asked the doctor.
“I have.”
“Well, then, off to bed, with you, eh? Ha ha!”
“Goodnight, sir.” Steerpike continued his quiet creeping up the stairs. He paused on the landing. As he had foreseen, Prunesquallor was investigating the lower rooms. Steerpike had no reason for anxiety regarding the state of the dispensary, for he was blessed with the capability both of memorising the original position of every medicine, receptacle and instrument and of restoring these items to said positions with speed and accuracy. Rather he was concerned at the doctor’s suspicion - but not gravely, for he planned to be far away from his employment before the month was out.
Whenever it was possible and convenient, Steerpike had made it his habit to explore the main body of the castle, for the more accurate a map of it he had assembled in his teeming brain, and the more complex a library of its characters and their interactions he could assemble, the more confidently a plan could be compiled. In the way of the most skilful chess-player, all eventualities lay envisaged before him, lines of action being slowly scored across by every development or scrap of information. He was prepared to snatch at any opportunity that had any fair probability of success, as assiduously evaluated by him through this process; and it was with with swelling surety that he felt the oncoming dawn of his ascension.
*
Though his employment with Barquentine was nearing two years now, Steerpike had made no move; after all, his plan hinged on being solely capable of taking over the old man's post, and the sheer volume of information to be retained was enough to retard his progress. It hardly taxed his brain, however.
For a long time now he had faced few challenges, few exertions mental or physical, and certainly none insuperable to him. It could almost be said that he was content, but, contentment being the enemy of ambition, Steerpike, with idiosyncratic control of emotion, would not allow it. He was, rather, at ease, such an ease as fed his aspirations. With more favourably perceived skill and cunning came a waxing desire for these selfsame attributes to be exploited, and a converse waning of that limitless patience he had always - up to the present - been in possession of.
But for now it had been achievement enough to trip up the churning, onward-marching rhythm of Gormenghast, to sever the timeless thread of duty that bound father to son and master to apprentice. For he would be Master of Ritual, and the anticipation of the power and opportunities it would afford gave him sufficient satisfaction. He continued to work his way, creeper-like, into every minute crack of the Stones.
He had in the near future only to deal with Barquentine, that disgusting but feeble curmudgeon, and then witless Fuchsia, half-entranced already for sheer want of attention. It was the latter that now occupied his thoughts, for she presented the greater obstacle, and was not merely to be cleared out of way. All in all she would require more thought and patience.
He had prepared to cross paths with her that afternoon, as she wandered outside, clueless to his hidden observation of her.
“Oh,” said Fuchsia, when he revealed himself from amongst the trees and doffed an imaginary hat to her. “It’s you again.”
Steerpike looked down at himself and patted his black-clothed chest as if mystified before setting his small dark eyes on Fuchsia once again. “Indeed, my lady, there’s no counter to that.”
To his slight surprise, she did not question his presence further. He continued.
“There is a place I think you should like to see, my lady. A place I discovered on my adventures - for I am an explorer, as you know - and came to tell you of.”
Steerpike twirled his burnished swordstick, describing multiple wide circles in the air. Conjunct with the dark folds of cloak that disguised his narrow form, the sum impression on Fuchsia’s susceptible mind was that of a ringleader, more exactly the one from the travelling circus of her storybook. She knew the characters of her favourite tales well and fondly, and understood them more than she could these people who ignored her, or treated her like a stupid child, or fussed pointlessly as her nurse always had.
“Follow me,” said Steerpike, and in her head he wore a top hat. He was no longer that high-shouldered youth who showed a bizarre interest in her - in her! - and confused her with difficult rhetoric. She knew that the figure was Steerpike, but it seemed to her now that his coldness, his sharpness, and the mechanical efficiency that both awed and repelled her had been scraped away, like leaves of paint from a smooth surface, to leave a bare palimpsest on which nothing so shocking was daubed.
Having succeeded in this transformation, with another whirling flourish of his swordstick Steerpike led the way. Their path meditated in a gentle loop around to the Eastern wing, beyond the Tower of Flints to the juddering extensions sandwiched in a meandering avenue of pine. They passed the ravaged library, and then, when this sandy track terminated, entered the forest, picking their way through the thick mesh of needles, swimming alongside the partially submerged masonry.
As they had progressed, Steerpike had occasionally given utterance to the more eccentric thoughts that flitted dreamlike through his whirring mind; but Fuchsia rarely provided any indication that she had even heard.
“Trees are marvellous things,” he remarked as he finally veered outwards from the verdurous haze, and made for an open archway in the neighbouring block of blanched stone that comprised this section of the wing. “We chop them down and carve them up, build with them and burn them, and they don’t give one note of complaint.”
“They get in my way sometimes,” replied Fuschia, picking at the profusion of green pins caught in the rich tangle of her hair.
Steerpike saw no gain in quibbling with her statement. He merely removed his stubby pipe from the pocket of his waistcoat and in cogitation chewed on it unlit.
The archway was the entrance to a lofty corridor, which as they proceeded tapered to the point where had they wished to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, it would have been quite impossible. As it was, Fuchsia followed him with caution, several of her bounding steps behind him, for any illusion had long since dropped and now she was trailing only her curiosity. Steerpike moved swiftly in his usual gait, that with a strong sense of the wilful.
On exiting the corridor through a wooden door carven in strong relief with roses and wildflowers, they came to a closed courtyard of sufficient size to admit the low-angled daylight that skimmed the surrounding turrets. Their shadows idled on the ground in the lazing sunlight before whetting themselves to sharpness against the white flesh of the stones.
“Do you see now, Lady Fuchsia?” Steerpike replaced his pipe into his pocket, swung about briskly on his heel and strode backwards, pale arms outstretched in gesture at the yet paler walls of the courtyard. “Do you see why I simply had to show you?”
But he might as well have spoken a foreign tongue, or undiluted nonsense; Fuchsia’s inconstant attention had, from the moment of her entrance, been wholly devoted to the square’s prodigious centrepiece.
Upon a stepped black plinth, engraved excessively with words too weathered for recognition, rose up a mass of twisted tarry strands, conspiring exquisitely to form a rearing dragon. It was a match in craftsmanship to any of the Bright Carvings. Fuchsia reached out to test the serpentine threads of the curling tail - though some section of her brain threw out the logic that they must be solid and most probably of metal, no part of her untamed perception could accept this conclusion without tangible proof. Yet before her fingers could sense anything but air, she snatched them back from the beast with its disapproving snarl. The only point of colour was its eye, she noticed, a gem of blood red set soundly in a sea of disturbed night. The other socket was unoccupied.
Once again she stretched out her arm, with lessened trepidation, and this time succeeded in smoothing her fingertips along the woven lines. Now that any semblance of real life she had felt emanate from the statue was surely a fiction, she could appreciate it for what it was, a finely-wrought piece of art; moreover, she could ascribe to the jet-black dragon her own brand of vitality. She could cast it in the plays of her fancy, constructing herself its origin and its future. What magnificent addition to her playthings! For a time she stood motionless in quiet rapture.
Steerpike, forgotten, noted her trembling and knew at once it was in joy, so complete now was his catalogue of her movements and her moods. He smiled, not at her wondering ecstasy but at his near-effortless provision of it.
In everyone is to be found on close examination a certain vein of character, a lode so rich as can be mined excessively and gainfully; it was for Steerpike to dig for such a seam in all those he met, listening, observing, and gathering details until a picture could be formed and the target located. Yet this once, mired in the sneaking self-congratulation he would have banished from his mind had he experienced any conscious inkling of it, an erroneous assumption found its genesis.
‘Fuchsia may be lonely,’ came his derivation, ‘and may be frightened by the unfamiliar, but above all things she finds a childlike pleasure in the ludicrous, that which imagination can work upon to the full - and that is overriding. She is not scared of me, nor repelled, and why should she be, when I have brought her such fascination? Whatever else may foil me, appealing to the fantastical shall regain my grace.’
There was cheer in his thoughts, a happy arrogance that Steerpike did not take the trouble to beat down.
*
Titus twitched and shifted from foot to foot as the day’s Ritual was imparted to him in Steerpike’s slow and ailing voice.
"Once you have drained the glass, you must untie the red ribbon from about its stem…"
Every word, weak but with perfectly-formed clarity, came in sharp contrast to the restless energy that seemed to spark from Titus even when perfectly silent. The lambent flames waltzing in the grate were mirrored yet more vivaciously in those bright, starkly violet eyes, behind which even now the seeds of insurrection were germinating, as surely in Titus' mind as they had long since in the burnt creature before him.
"...and then, with this ribbon affixed around your wrist, you must run up this first flight and down again, three times in all..."
Titus pouted, to no effect. Any lone drop of lenience Steerpike might have had for the petulant enemy before him had been retracted. He could not allow any measure of sympathy, however slight, not when everything that had appeared so stable was now precarious.
Though Steerpike’s febrile delirium had cleared, his mind had not; upon it had descended the baleful fog of failure and self-reproach. For all his planning he had underestimated that ghastly old man, even felt some strange, heavily buried touch of pity for him - but no more. His heart folded in upon itself. Any feeble measure of mercy concealed therein was hunted down and expelled. And all this quite below the level of the conscious - Steerpike only felt his resolve sharpen and his already quick mind race and almost buckle as he plotted under the weight of a myriad bandages.
In earlier days he had sometimes wished for total freedom. Though he gained much satisfaction from a well-executed scheme there had been a lingering lust to break free of his rigorously self-imposed control, to strike out and derive that instant power that would come from terrorizing those grotesques that surrounded him, haunting their nightmares and their waking hours alike. A pallid Fury with no grievance but a wanton hatred, known and feared and ingrained indelibly on the Castle's rhythmic consciousness, he would stir their paranoia with the faintest brush of his scaly wings.
The desire was all that fuelled him, and as such could not be driven out, not even by the fire that had scourged and cauterised his soul. Instead it remained, smouldering low, ready to flare up and move him when the time came - but he could not know that it would. He was immersed in the present. He would make up for this appalling misjudgement, atone for it in his own bloodless fashion, if it purge all the spirit from his loveless body.
*