The Plauge Gods
Spring had eaten away into summer, and now the night hung in tired, tattered cloths, dripping and oozing over the still, sullen city, languid in the thick heat of the new season.
It was deep night, well past the twelfth hour, and even the lanterns outside the ale shops were beginning to extinguish, one by one. The few remaining lent a certain surreal, oily light to harmonize with the songs of mosquitoes, feasting on their prey.
It took a certain amount of balance to navigate the thin, water-eaten steps between the buildings here, in the furthest back reaches of Singabi, but if one was persistent and didn’t mind getting wet, one could explore all sorts of avenues previously unreachable to the casual pedestrian.
Amaretto had been at it for an hour and a half now, clambering between old, crumbling stone buildings, avoiding piles of gray stone rubble and leaping thin rivulets of oily water, as the Ahmati began to reclaim what was hers. All the back reaches of the city were like this-barely clinging to their treacherous foundations. Singabi had existed for a thousand years, and zealots would declare her another thousand years in the making
Those with eyes in their heads could see that the city streets were dangerous on the best of days, and suicide during monsoon season. But if there was something to be said for the eighty five thousand residents of this insane, crippled, rotting city, it was that they were adaptable.
The Ahmati washed out a main thoroughfare? Re-route, and use the water for another floating carnival.
The city hall toppled right into the ocean, creating a tsunami that washed out half the residential quarter and left thousands without homes? Use the rubble to build a new town hall, significantly smaller, and more safely positioned on the flat little island that (somehow) supported the rambling, crazed city.
All those residents without homes could just as well do without. That last one had occurred during the last monsoon season, and all the lords of the city had run about, wringing their hands and bemoaning the loss of such a beautiful and ancient building.
Amaretto smiled to himself, as he patiently slapped away another feasting mosquito. Forget the homeless-that building had been old! Nothing was more precious than age, here, in a place where the sea washed its streets free of life every year.
Rotting plywood groaned under his boots as he braced himself, peering across the flooded alleyway to the next bit of refuse to provide a handhold. The orange crate creaked again, alarmingly, as he bent at the knees, and broke entirely with a spine-tingling crack as he leaped across the slimy water and landed safely on a pile of washed-up marble. Under his boots, the face of a nymph smiled blindly up at the night sky, her eyes mostly gouged out and unseeing, her lips frozen perpetually into a sweet smirk. She’d worn a golden crown at one point, no doubt the pride and decoration of a lord’s manor, until she’d been torn down and hacked apart for some mystic reason. All that was left of her now supported him-her head, some curls of marble hair, and a thin, delicate hand with all but two of the fingers broken off. Amaretto squinted, momentarily caught when the moonlight glanced off those fingers. Incredibly, the nails still had their thin sheathes of gold.
Amaretto dismissed the water-bound nymph with a shrug and looked further down the alleyway. He’d been able to walk, dry-footed, down the main thoroughfare behind him, and had hoped that the alleyway would lead somewhere similarly dry. It didn’t look like he was going to be that lucky, but at least the greenish water looked shallower over there than it did in here.
All around him, the night sang.
Beyond that alleyway lay the nearly underwater world of the Lady’s skirts.
The poorest, most desperate squalor of the city hunched here, hidden in shadows, wading through ankle-deep water no matter what time of the year. The Ahmati purred, slapping wetly against the few old stone buildings that still stood. Even the shacks here were made of salvaged bits of stone and pipe, with wood too risky to use in this near-aquatic environment. As Amaretto sloshed through the water, blindly kicking aside the bodies of drowned rats and floating bits of rubbish, he tried to gauge how much longer the skirts had above the water line. The stone buildings were almost entirely furred in green moss and mold, the smell of sweet rotting almost overwhelming.
There were people here, but they vanished when they saw him. These were not the crime-ridden streets of the poor abovetown. No, these were the poorest of the poor, where people lived one-by-one, ignoring one another and fending entirely for themselves. This was where people came to die.
Amaretto was hoping to catch one before they went.
He finally found a likely candidate some half hour later, half floating in the opaque, greenish water.
With a great splash, Amaretto went down on one knee, ignoring the wetness for the moment, having given up on the dream of remaining somewhat dry. Luck hadn’t entirely deserted him-mid-thigh boots were in fashion this season for men and women alike, mostly likely as a coping mechanism for the impossible weather. His clothes were probably going to be salvageable, even after this.
She was facedown, but when he rolled her over he could tell she hadn’t been that way long. Her face was waxy, but hadn’t taken on the sickly, bluish tinge of the freshly drowned. Her hair fanned out around her, tangling in the debris of the lowest of the low-broken orange crates, strings of coiled, rusty wire, too warped to be anything more than the foot trap to the casual passerby. Her hair had probably once been her best feature-a soft, autumnal brown, now dyed a slick blackish brown from soot and water.
Her eyes were open-pale, milky blue, like a kitten-but they stared past Amaretto’s shoulder and up into the murky, dark sky. When he pressed his fingers to her throat, there was no answering beat.
Amaretto started to sit back on his heels, then corrected himself with a hiss of disgust, the edge of his jacket trailing in the slimy, shallow water. Shifting in discomfort, he poked hesitantly at the body. He’d hoped for a live one to question, but he’d been down here for a while, and had only seen two or three people, all scampering rouges that fled when he came into view. They may as well have been stray cats.
So he was left with a dead one, and little time.
The woman’s body had floated a bit downstream, the Ahmati carrying it farther and farther into the devouring ocean. It had gotten stuck partway down the street, if you could call it a street, trapped between half a barrel and the leg of a long-abandoned merchant tent. The awning, once a bright red and white, now hung in pathetic cream and brown scraps. But behind that ramshackle tent was one of the few stone buildings, and all stone buildings in Singabi were lit on all four corners, to ward off spirits from approaching on the wind. Down here, the lanterns were paper and the light wasn’t reliable.
Amaretto patiently towed the corpse closer, tugging it between the tent’s legs and partially up the rotted steps of the unnamed building. Aquatic mosses squished under his boots; when he put a hand out, to steady himself against the wall, fur met his fingers, and the soft scuttle of thousands of tiny insects, living in their tiny green world.
The girl hadn’t drowned. She hadn’t been strangled, or knifed, or hit on the head so hard her brain rattled about. A slightly more thorough examination revealed no swellings under her arms or bodice, and her pale limbs were all limp and pliant. She’d died recently, then, and the water hadn’t given the body enough time to stiffen.
No visibly unusual insect bites, but it was hard to live here and not be devoured nightly be mosquitoes. Her teeth were bad, but one had to expect that if one was living down here, with only orange crates for company.
In short, the woman, young too, had no visible complaints, other than that she was dead.
“Well, hell.” Amaretto said to the night around him, to the benefit of the moss and the softly lapping water. “Here’s another one.”
He beat the sun home, but only by the slimmest of margins. To the east, the sky was already a smear of orange and pink; the Ahmati a blinding glitter. Free at last from the muck and disrepair of deeptown, the residential district was quiet save for the lapping of water and the soft knocking of a pleasure flat, loose from it’s moorings. Around him, the buildings once again rose in cool, whitewashed elegance from their green welter; the moss and lichen carefully scraped clean every other day.
As he tied off his flat, a dog barked sleepily in the distance, too hot and tired to get up to investigate. Amaretto didn’t blame it. The sun was just cresting the horizon, and the day already promised to be sticky and miserable.
His boots squished slightly as he walked up the steps. The maid had already been out with the first of the day’s three mopping of the front steps.
The handle squeaked a bit as he pressed down, the lion’s head bowing stiffly, the golden paint flaking onto his hand.
Inside the house, the world was cool, dark and still. The sound, when the door clicked shut, seemed almost an intrusion in this cold, isolated world.
Thick drapes shielded the windows overlooking the thoroughfare, drawn protectively to shield the house from the scorching morning sun. Before him, the staircase swept upwards, unoccupied by the ancient footman.
Frowning, Amaretto ignored the wet footprints he was tracking over the parquet and slowly began to climb the steps.
The house was thick with the smell of baking bread, so not all was lost. But the servant’s utter absence did not bode well.
Upstairs, the real world intruded again. Someone had thought to open these curtains and let the sunshine in with ferocious intensity. Fresh flowers had been brought in, and the glass doors were open to the hot, intense air.
To his left, there were voices.
Amaretto put it off for a while, standing and staring out over the balcony, across the neighbor’s rooftop garden and at the glowing, rising sun. The heat was intense, but there was certain freshness to the air that was appealing in this dark, stale house. He felt himself breathe a soft sigh of relief, even though there wasn’t anything to be dreading, of course.
Then he turned and walked over to the shut door and opened it.
“Amaretto!”
Stale, sick air rushed out to meet him.
He stood in the doorway, ignoring the cry and staring at the tableaux before him.
Her velvet curtains hadn’t been opened for her; the room was almost overpoweringly dark. Candles ranged along one wall, lighting the scene with morbid intensity. One could almost forget that it was full day outside, between the black curtains and the funerary candles that trapped spirits in their smoke.
Here was the butler he had been looking for; the older man stood to one side, wringing his hands, a disapproving uncle. But there were others here too, strangers, ranging around the canopied bed. They hovered over the occupant, nondescript in their black robes, but horribly recognizable in their hooked, leering masks.
As Amaretto entered, all three looked up at him, the candlelight glowing off the bronze bird masks.
“I said I was going to be gone for the night,” Amaretto remarked to the room at large. “There was no need to call in the reserves.”
The butler flinched as the pointed remark struck home. Never a brave man, Amaretto could see him visibly working up the courage to reply. Even one of the hawk-men peered over his shoulder to stare at the little, fusty old man in dusty old velvet.
“If you please sir, you were gone and she took a turn for the worse and I didn’t know what to do…I thought it would be best if I called them in, it’s their jobs, and it’s been sanctioned by the church, I swear it!”
The last words rang through the air with a certain amount of foreboding. It was, over all, Amaretto decided to himself, really the stuff of cheap drama. The lighting, or lack thereof, the masks, the secrecy. The wringing hands and the promises of forgiveness for some unnamed sin. There was an old man to play the disapproving uncle, the bird-men for the soldiers, and the woman on the bed to play the fainting heroine.
But she wasn’t fainting.
Dispensing a smile on the poor man who would shortly be looking for a new position, Amaretto kindly said, “Don’t trouble yourself, you’re dismissed.”
“Of course…I didn’t unlock the door, I’m sorry…” the butler was worried to distraction, so Amaretto patiently reiterated.
“You’re dismissed.”
The old man blinked, then understanding sunk in. Amaretto didn’t wait for him to arrive at the only possible conclusion, the conclusion that would take him from this room and preferably to the bottom of a canal somewhere in the deepwater districts.
Instead, Amaretto swept down upon the bird-men around her bed.
“If you please, gentlemen, I do not think your services will be required further. I apologize for the incontinence; apparently my orders were not comprehended as well as I thought they would be.” He carefully constructed his best company smile, a dazzling effort that had paid off well in the past.
He didn’t dare look at the bed.
There was a rustle among the bird-men, a general glancing and muttering, indistinguishable behind the smooth, impersonal polished masks. They drew together, crows huddling on a laundry line. Even their hands were hidden, cloaked in thin, well-made black gloves. The heat was probably unendurable. Such a shame.
Amaretto kept his smile in place, hands folded, the dismissal obvious. They had invaded his home, and were honor-bound to obey his rules, especially in such a personal place as this. But still, they hesitated, fractious and bullying one another with looks if not words.
Finally, the smallest one stepped forward with a great to-do of velveteen robes.
“Sir,” he began in the harsh, lisping tone that echoed so well in those metal masks. “We have a sole job for this city, and we have been summoned to this bedside. There is nothing more for anyone to do but let us commence with the ceremony.”
“I beg your pardon,” Amaretto retorted curtly. “Your services are not yet provided. I will ring for you when I desire your presence in my house. Until then, get out.”
The little bird man lisped something inaudible, and then said, very gently, “I believe we’re needed here, sir.”
Something in his tone was a warning. The other two seemed to shudder together, as Amaretto slowly looked away from the bird-men and down at the silk coverlet of the bed-cream with constellations embroidered in blue and silver silk.
There was something unquestionably eerie in just how still she was, a porcelain doll laid out, waiting to be played with. Her hair was black, finely curled in heavy loops, once decorated with a scattering of pearls and diamonds. She loved the effect, the stars in the night sky. She strove to emulate the moon itself, her skin a cool, untouchable white, chill even in the height of midsummer. Cool and distant. Her lips were curved into the graceful, sweet smile that had charmed lord and land alike. Once, she had dressed in pale blues, and deep, jet-black, dramatic, matching the night she loved so well. Her eyes had been a glassy black, as thick and sumptuous as her curling hair, but they were closed now, their color nearly distinguishable beneath the thin veneer of her lids, marble white. She may as well have been a statue, just lying there in her bed, hands folded sweetly over her breast.
He looked down at her for a long, long moment, at her still, unmoving figure, and all he could think about was the woman he had fished out of the gutter earlier this night, the kitten blue eyes and how pale she had looked.
As pale as Venetia was now.
Distantly, the butler was making some soothing noise-apparently he’d forgotten he was dismissed. Amaretto was going to have to remind him some day, but for now he just let the old man talk. He’d loved Venetia as a child, adored her, doted on her every whim.
They all had.
The bird-men were hovering, but they didn’t speak and they didn’t leave, so Amaretto ignored them. He made himself stand there and stare at her. He made himself wonder how long it had been since she had drawn a breath. Had she been breathing when he left, earlier that evening, worn out from her temper and her fractious behavior? He couldn’t quite recall when Venetia had fallen asleep. He could just recall the distinct feeling of relief that this beautiful creature was silent again, and the peace had returned to the rambling stone tomb.
Amaretto looked at her until his eyes blurred, and he had to look away.
Above on of the bed, between the smooth drape of the red velvet canopy and the wood bedpost, hung her mask. It was her favorite mask, covered in pheasant feathers and dripping in pearls. The wicked lips were painted gold, chipping and a bit cracked from where she had dropped it once, crushing it with a heel, casually. She’d thrown a fit when she saw the rupture and demanded it fixed. It had taken three masquemakers to convince her that the damage was beyond their skill. After that, she had hung it upon the wall as if it were a painting or a tapestry, declaring she would not be pleased until she had one to match it. But no pheasant grew feathers that suited her, and no pearl was quite milky enough to grace this perfect mask of hers.
He was going to have to take it down, and there would be a certain amount of satisfaction to be found in throwing it into the Ahmati and watching it sink under the murky green waters.
Someone spoke behind him, but he ignored them-what were they doing here anyway? There was nothing to be done with a dead body but to burn it-and crossed the room in two quick strides, reaching over Venetia’s still corpse and tearing that mask off the wall. It smiled up at him from his gloves, the lips twisting and insolent, a perfect mask of her face. Carefully, he pressed a finger to the crack, and watched, with detached interest, as the plaster creaked, the crack widening…
“Sir?”
It was a bird-man that broke his concentration. So Amaretto smiled at him, turning, holding the mask. “Yes?”
The birds looked at each other, their inscrutable golden faces gleaming in the candles. Why were the candles still burning? Why hadn’t he blown them all out and thrown open the drapes, like he had longed to do for so long? Out with the shadows and the gloom and the drama she insisted surround her in her convalescence. She had demanded whispers, comfort, sugars, gentle touches. She claimed the sun had hurt her, had hurt her skin terribly and had forbidden any room in the house to have their drapes opened each morning. He’d put his foot down at that.
“Sir?”
“What?”
“We would like to take the body with us.”
Diverted, Amaretto glanced up from his mask, running his fingers over the feathers in one last examination. He looked from one inscrutable, grave face, to the shocked and horrified expression on his butler’s face.
“Why on earth would you want a body?” He demanded at last. “It’s a body. You can’t do much with it besides burn it. If it isn’t rotting by this time tomorrow, it’ll be a miracle from the gods. Are you studying miracles, gentlemen?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Do you require the body for something, so that you’d deny me the pleasure of putting her to the fire myself?”
When one of the birds answered, his voice was faintly shocked. Ah, human emotion. What a lovely thing it was.
“You see, sir, we don’t know what she died from, and we would like…”
“She died of spite,” Amaretto shrugged. “She ran out of demands, couldn’t think of anything else, and died of shock. Her poor old heart stopped beating. It was such a small, miserable little black thing, it never stood a chance.”
The little one was back, rallying the others. When he spoke, his voice was firm, unshakable. He was young, but perhaps not as young as Amaretto had credited him with in the first place.
“We’re under orders, sir, to take in any body we run across that has died under suspicious circumstances.”
“Be careful, sir. You have invaded my house and I’m being tolerant. Don’t push it with accusations of murder.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” Another hastened to assure him. “Your lovely, ah, wife here has most certainly perished from an illness, but you see, it’s quite a fascinating illness, because we don’t quite know what it is. No visible marks, no swelling, no unusual stings or bites. She simply appears to have died.”
“After a disagreeably long convalescence,” Amaretto agreed. Heartened, the bird-man continued.
“So, you see, it would be quite pleasing for us to merely examine her more closely, in our own laboratories.”
The words hung in the thick, mid-morning air, waiting to be taken or confirmed. Amaretto let them hang there for a while, growing longer and more award in the stuffy, sickly room. The smoke from the candles was suddenly sickening, unbearable. They stuttered, as a thin breeze slipped under the thick curtains, dashing hopefully across the marble tiled floor.
The mask smiled at him.
The butler had slipped away, perhaps to leave, perhaps to cry over his lost little girl, no matter what Venetia had been in the end.
A monster.
The mask was cracking, the plaster splitting in long, painful cracks. The pheasant feathers were beginning to shred, slowly, straining under the force and the tie of their glue. Pears slid along their looped strings, puddling against his glove to slip free, dangling as the strings began to tear.
The birds were there, but Amaretto didn’t look at them, or Venetia, or the mask.
“Sir…”
They were humans, nothing more. Amaretto owed them nothing. They should not even be in his home, yet here they were, brazen, demanding Venetia’s body to be dismantled in pieces, studied and inked, labeled with parchments and soaked in salt and water until it shriveled up. Perhaps it would live in boxes after that, to show others, clumsy orphans consigned to the bird men, what livers or hearts or brains looked like. Passed around and explored and touched and…
When the mask broke, the sound startled even him.
All three of the birds twitched, staring, high-strung from the tension coating the air. One of them was saying something, but Amaretto was just looking down in his hands, at the two pieces of a plaster mask.
“Get out.”
They paused, so he lifted his head and yelled, “Get out!”
They must have left, because he was standing here, alone, as a thick puddle of sunlight seeped under her curtains, staining his still-damp boots with yellow warmth.
Plaster coated his fingers, bits of feather and tiny, tiny pearls nestled in the bend of his fingers.
When he brushed the debris off, it clattered to the floor with a great crash, the large pieces shattering all over again into thousands of tiny and tinier fragments, dusting over the pale, glassy blue tiles that had so matched her eyes.
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I dont have a lot to say about this. I like it, and I don't. Which is to say that I like the idea behind it and I like the first bit, but I don't like the extra part on the end. I feel like I dropped the ball and it became too generic. In short, I don't like it, but it isn't a total loss. I kinda think I might scrap this bit, but I do want to write about the Floating Carnival, so I dont think the world is getting scrapped yet. Particuarly since the Plauge Gods havn't been revealed yet either, and there's....a whole world that this story utterly does not convey. THis is why I dont like my writing >.> I feel like I'm running into a brick wall, trying to explain what's in my head.
-Irene V