In the massive, lonely bed, Diryish’s
breath echoed against the stone columns, even and deep. The hive on the balcony
wafted warmed air into the Imperial bedchamber with their wings, a soothing
murmur like the buzz of the whole city, sleeping. The heavy spring curtains
stirred in that breeze and the Emperor, disturbed in his dreams, rolled himself
tighter into his silken quilts.
In the Loggia Propolissimus, on
the other side, one level below the Sunrise Loggia, Nadian took up the
dismantled bits of affinity mandery and disconnected them. A program buried in
his bloodcells shut down its un-natural shunt and the drain on his energy
ceased.
He drew a deep breath, feeling
the weight of before un-noticed pressure release. For a long moment he just sat
and panted, leaning his forehead down on his newly cleansed worktable,
wondering why the mandery took so much effort. At least he wouldn’t have every
female creature even close to Mariush following him about any longer. He’d been
starting to wonder about the sex of the flies that haunted him the last few
hours before he could escape to his workshop and take the EnLightened thing
apart.
Nadian wasn’t used to failing
quite so badly and so consistently. His rise to power had been steady and directly resulting from his mandery. The only thing he’d not managed was to kill the old Emperor himself. Yet. But not from lack
of trying.
He managed to drag his head up off the stone table, put a single
drop from a specific bottle on his tongue. The honey liquor he spooned into a
hotpot of water boiling over a blue alcohol flame. He dropped the spiced tea leaves
into the brew and drank the resulting cup down as if it were bitter gall. It
gave him enough energy to try again.
He pulled a piece of paper across
the desk and began to sketch a mechanism upon it, in the shape of a mal-spider.
The finger-long, toxic fangs he drew out in loving lines of black against the white
page. The venomous fur stood in spikes and the scorpion-like stinger shone
diamond deadly. But the picture he drew was clearly not living. It had joints
and wheels inside the pulsing, soft belly. Satisfied, he drew a needle out of
his drawer, passed it through flame and alcohol before piercing the soft flesh
inside his bottom lip where no one would ever see.
The droplets of blood he caught
in a clean inkwell, dipped his pen and, sitting down, began tracing his ugly
epitome of poisonous, crawling death all over again, glistening red, clotting
fast.
**
In the Emperor’s bedchamber a
jewelled black pearl pendant inside the open jewel case, carelessly left open
by the Emperor's attendants cracked into three pieces. The central ovoid slid
up and clicked into place as if it were a head suspended between the two
layered black slivers of fangs.
Emerald chips from a ring flowed like water
onto the forming creature, an eyecluster on the head. A necklace unlinked
itself, the gold unfolding, melding together into long, thin, nimble legs, each
tipped with a diamond claw.
The legs reached up to unscrew
the bulb of a perfume bottle, threading themselves through it, raising it up
off the dressing table as a headless abdomen, front legs groping blindly for
the head before it clicked into place.
Spikes of crystals from a lamp
fringe unwound themselves and clattered into place as the stinger, floating
particles of glass settling in a glittering fuzz all over the new shape.
All gifts, over the years, from
courtiers to the Emperor. Not all from Nadian. Not even all from the Basserus
clan, never a whole piece of jewellery, the protections on the Emperor would
have destroyed them as he’d picked them up, much less laid them against his
vulnerable flesh.
In the bed, the Emperor, in the
middle of a dream, muttered and rolled over, flung one arm wide, his head
tipped back. The soft spot pulsed just
above the armour of his ribs, open to a mal-spider made of gems and gold.
On the dressing table, the spider
rose to its diamond-tipped legs and with a soft, glittering sound the stinger
flashed out and dipped itself into the open perfume bottle. It’s now pulsing abdomen had once forced the
scent out in delicate droplets misting the skin’s barrier. The diamond end
flashed again into the heart of a flower in a bouquet on the dressing table,
the two liquids mingling into an innocently clear fluid on the tip.
**
“Lovely spiderling.” Nadian said
softly, running his tongue gingerly over the lacerated tissue inside his lip.
He needed only a drop more to command the work and send it jumping from table
top to chair to floor, clattering lightly as rice grains on the stone floor.
He wished he could see the actual
strike, the gemmed spider climbing up the silken curtains onto the bed, seeking
out the heartbeat, the heat of the sleeping body. The lightning strike into an
ear or neck under the ear, or corner of the eye. And the Empire would no longer
belong to that stiffening old corpse that refused to give up and let itself be
buried, but to him.
Nadian was sure of it. No one had
the power he did. If the vizier thought to challenge him, he’d be dead a
heartbeat later, since the military men would not obey. General d’Molfe was in
place to take over should there be enough chaos when the old man was found dead
in the morning, smelling of nothing but the flowers in his room and his own
perfume... and death, of course... no one would see such a tiny puncture wound.
He actually winced this final
time, drew the last drop of blood, and began outlining the command word he’d
written on the mal-spider’s body. “Go. Kill the old man. Open that door for me,
beautiful little spider.”
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