la pellegrina

The art is by the brilliant yjudaes.



Arthur brushed a little invisible dust off of the piano key. He knew the clock was just about to strike eleven, and it wasn't like Ariadne to be late for her lesson. The only sound was that of the Emperor's spaniels padding down the hall. He pressed a key absently, hearing the click of his fingernail against the ivory, the muted knelling of the hammer against the string.

The huge gilded door swung open, and Ariadne bustled in, cheeks flushed and skirts rustling.

"I’m ready for my lesson, Maestro," she said brightly.

"Ariadne, how many times do I have to tell you," he said, smiling mildly, "please call me Arthur. I don't believe in such formalities."

Ariadne rolled her eyes at that.

"Well, what do you have for me today?" he asked. "If I recall correctly, you were having some trouble with the scherzo in the Mockingbird Sonata?"

"Ah yes.” Ariadne blushed and looked down at the embroidery on her skirt. I’m afraid I haven't really been able to devote much time to that. I’ve been a bit...distracted." she said sheepishly.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yes. You see--" she strode over to the piano and took her usual place beside Arthur--"since I learned that Herr Eames was coming to town, I've been completely preoccupied with his music. It's all I can think about, and all I can play. So I'm afraid poor Molinari hasn't been getting my full attention, at all."

Arthur's ears perked up at this, and he feigned surprise. "Eames is coming to town?"

Ariadne brightened. "Oh, yes! They're performing his Concerto at the palace in March. Surely you'd heard about it?"

"Perhaps, but it slipped my mind. I am not all that familiar with Eames. Perhaps you can acquaint me?"

The girl's cheeks filled even more with color. She straightened her back and arched her fingers. From the moment the pads of her fingers touched the keys, Arthur was dumbstruck by the elegance of the melodic lines. It was as if there were no instrument producing the music, no error-prone human being filtering the glorious arcs of sound. Part of that was Ariadne's talent and the quality of the piano, which was the finest in Marchia. But most of it was Eames' music. Arthur had often marveled how, though his themes were simple, almost childlike, they slotted together with their variations so elegantly that they sounded impossibly ornate at times. The best musical minds of his time seemed to agree that Eames was the sort of genius who came along only once in one, two, perhaps even three lifetimes.

It was a lie that Arthur was not acquainted with Eames. Arthur knew quite well who Eames was. Since he was a young boy in the Marchian countryside he had heard talk of an extraordinary young talent from Albionoria, a boy his age who filled concert halls and could improvise a complex sonata off the top of his head. Arthur's mother had often come up beside Arthur when he was at the piano, kissed his head, and said, "You'll be just like that Eames boy someday."

"Are you sure that wasn't supposed to be a natural, Ariadne?" Arthur snapped to attention. Ariadne's playing stopped short.

"No, I'm only playing it the way he wrote it," she said. "He wrote that as a sharp. I must've played this one hundreds of times."

"Well, that must be a mistake on his part," said Arthur.

The note, he knew, was perfectly placed.

§

The guests were beginning to filter in. Some of them were people Arthur had not seen before, noblemen, wealthy merchants, even dignitaries in foreign garb. They wore the latest fashions, and it took much effort on his part not to gawk at the lavish brocades and buckles, at the handiwork on the canes' knobs and the lush embroidery on the womens' skirts. Arthur himself wore a simple yet well-made black coat and matching breeches. He sometimes wished he could wear clothes more daring, more of the moment, but he did not feel it was his place to stand out. Like a piano, his job was primarily about what he could do, not how he looked.

He wove slowly through the crowd, listening in on bits of conversation. This duke was reminiscing about his war days; that countess was talking about the worms in her little dog's ear. He usually liked eavesdropping on people, but certain conversations were not worth hearing for the hundredth time.

At moments such as these, Arthur was struck by a rare awareness of his own relative youth. As a teacher and court musician, he often felt decades older than his students although he was only twenty-nine.The other young people present were probably young in the way he himself was, used to hewing themselves to the molds of decrepit diplomats, hurtling towards old age years before their time.

Arthur found himself growing restless. While all of the dignitaries were drinking their wine and mingling, loudly praising the high vaulted ceiling with the buttresses meant to evoke the sun's rays and the fireplace with the mantle that looked like frozen flames, he slipped off, unnoticed, into another room.

Only slightly less ornate than the ballroom, this room held all of the food for the banquet later on. Arthur furtively plucked a meringue from a tray and slid it between his lips.

"You didn't seem like the type for mischief, but I had you all wrong."

Arthur jerked around, confused. He couldn't peg the source of the voice.

"Where are you?"

"I'm down here." The tablecloth lifted, and the young man's head poked out from under it. He was wearing a bright gold jacket embroidered with large red flowers. A few strands of his wig were out of place, and his full lips were flushed.

"Are you a child, or do you just enjoy acting like one?" Arthur asked sternly.

"Says the man who can't wait two hours for a piece of candy." The young man laughed, low and throaty. "You should share, at least."

"There's plenty up here. Come and get it yourself."

The young man crept out from under the table on his hands and knees. "Don't you know who I am? I'm used to being served."

"You're a spoiled puppy is what you are. You want me to put a biscuit right in your mouth?"

The young man bit his lip, and Arthur was transfixed by the white spot that formed around his teeth, by the redness creeping out to the edges. "That's exactly what I want."

Arthur impulsively grabbed another meringue from the platter, knelt down, and wedged it between the man's lips. "Happy now?"

"Mmmhhmmmn nnnn nnfff," the young man replied.

Arthur shook his head. "I do not understand a word you just said." Ashamed of himself for the way he was behaving, but unable not to indulge this boy, he took the biscuit from his mouth.

"I said, there are things I'd much rather have you put between my lips."

Arthur's mind went dizzy. "I don't understand."

The young man reached out and touched Arthur’s cravat, running it between his middle and index fingers. Slowly, he leaned in and touched his lips to Arthur’s. Arthur could taste the residual sweetness of the crumbs, and he licked the edges of the young man’s impossibly full lips, cleaning off the rest.

“Quick learner.” The man grinned.

“How do you know what I know.” Arthur bit down on the other man’s lip, drawing a soft hiss out of him.

“Vicious little ferret. I’d love to root around in your burrow.” The man ran the tip of his nose down the side of Arthur’s face. He nipped Arthur’s cheek. “Could use a spot of color there. Want me to do the other one? Or would you rather just get to the rooting around?”

Arthur rose to his feet, tugging the young man up with him. They were standing nose to nose, and Arthur could feel the man’s hot, labored breath on his lips.

“You want me to take you right here. On this table.” The man said it breathlessly, disbelievingly, as though Arthur had actually asked him in words. And perhaps he had. As good as.

Arthur pushed the young man backwards, into the edge of the table. The man grabbed Arthur’s hips and spun him around, and Arthur hoisted himself up. He savored the feeling of the edge digging into the backs of his thighs. The man fumbled with Arthur’s trousers, cursing when the tight holes refused to release the buttons.

“It’s all right. I’ll do mine. You do yours.”

The man had little more luck with his own. He was panting, desperate. Arthur watched him in fond amusement. Finally the man slid his trousers down around his hips, so Arthur could admire his thick, blond-fuzzed thighs. Strong for a duke or a diplomat’s son, he thought. Arthur reached out and wrapped his fingers around the man’s cock. He ached to explore its ruddy, tender skin with his tongue.

“If your arse is as tight as your buttonholes, I’ll die happy right now.” The man dragged his teeth around the curve of Arthur’s ear as he helped Arthur work his pants down over his buttocks.

“Wait. Listen. Do you hear that?” The silence around them, which had until now only been broken by occasional words, fabric rustles, and hot breaths, now had another thread woven into it. It was a terse five-note piano melody that sounded as artless as a birdcall. A frantic look crept across the young man’s face, and he scrambled to button up his trousers.

“Sounds like someone’s playing Eames,” Arthur said, rising to his feet and sighing. “Are you an admirer of his?”

“Perhaps his biggest.” The young man flashed Arthur a grin over his shoulder as he pushed open the double doors with both hands.

And the music stopped.

“Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests,” the young man began, surveying the room and all of its flabbergasted inhabitants. “I am Edward Eames, and I’m sorry that I’ve already started in on the sweets.”

§

“Gentlemen. Come in,” the Chancellor said with a sweep of his arm.

Arthur stepped forward into the Emperor’s parlor. He studied the oil paintings on the wall in their frames of golden sculpted foliage, at the diamond-encrusted clock mounted above the fireplace, at the scrolled and powdered wigs of the stuffy old court musicians who were already perched like gouty frogs on their damask chairs, coughing and shuffling. He looked at everything but Eames.

He and Eames had not spoken since Chancellor Browning had introduced them formally at the gala. Eames had said only “Oh, you’re Arthur Hahnemann? I always thought you were older,” before chasing after a servant with a tray full of hors d’oeuvres and grabbing an entire stem of grapes. Arthur had hoped Eames would say something kind about his music, even if it was only about the Purgatorio, but there was nothing.

Eames strutted over to the wall, examining the paintings.

“We have fox hunts in Albionoria too,” he said. “But we mostly just put on fancy clothes and guns, pose atop our horses and get our portraits done. Then at the end of the day we throw our hands up and wonder why nothing’s gotten killed.”

Emperor Saito, seated beneath a painting of his grandfather in coronation regalia, did not look amused.

“Herr Eames, please take a seat.”

Arthur was sitting already, safely between Chancellor Browning and Choirmaster Meyerburg. He knew and liked them well enough. They were intelligent men, men of honor and virtue, and they could always muster up some mild praise for his latest works.

“Now, as I am sure you know,” the Emperor began, “the tenth anniversary of our victory against Helvetia is fast approaching. There will be a countrywide celebration, and I had hoped to mark it with a musical work written for the occasion. Herr Eames, I had thought we might offer you the opportunity to submit something for consideration.”

Arthur felt as though the breath had been punched from his lungs.

“With all due respect, Your Worship,” Arthur began, resting his lips against his fist for a moment as though to shield himself before speaking, “shouldn’t the task of writing patriotic music fall to...someone with actual patriotic feelings for the country in question?”

The music masters nodded and grunted, sounding as if they were in agreement.

“Well.” Eames was reclining in his chair, legs spread wide. “Perhaps I didn’t have the good fortune to be born the ambitious second son of a Marchian burgher, like some of us here.” He glanced blithely in Arthur’s direction. “But I am a great admirer of yours. And I do not give praise lightly. I read everything I could about the battle of Raban’s Lea, Your Worship. You knew the terrain like the back of your hand. You knew exactly where to hide those infantry lines so they’d be out of the line of fire. Brilliant.”

The officials murmured their approval.

“Duly noted, Herr Eames.” Saito said plainly.

“Your Worship,” said Arthur, shifting forward in his seat, “I could give you all sorts of facts about the Helvetian Wars. I could spend hours praising your tactics or regaling the brave men who lived and died for the glory of Marchia. But the fact is that I know the people of this country far better than he does.” He turned his head to address Eames directly. ” I have heard people, Herr Eames, say that your music is…strange, and uncomfortable to listen to, and lacks the proper reverence for tradition. Do you really want that sort of approach to a subject of such importance, Your Excellencies?”

Eames laughed incredulously. “Is that the best you can say in your favor? That your music won’t offend anyone?”

“Gentlemen, please.” Browning raised his hand. “I think it best if we allow the music to speak for itself.”

§

Let the music speak for itself. Arthur laughed to himself, shuffling the papers around on his music stand as though that would rearrange the notes into brilliance. He’d do fine for himself so long as anything but the music spoke.

He opened the cabinet under his desk and lifted out one of his many heavy notebooks. He often rifled through its pages to calm himself, even when his eyes couldn’t focus on the contents. It was full of notes on melodies: his dissections of hundreds upon hundreds of melodic lines, trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that made them good.

He had identified a few basic principles, but then when he tried to replicate them, he could never identify what made the exact difference between their sublimity and his own wooden lumbering from note to note.

He dipped his quill in the inkwell and began to write.

Once there was a man who met a sorcerer who taught him the secret of stealing souls, he scrawled on his desk ledger. There was no charm, no talent that could not be his. Soon he unlearned the word envy. He left his enemies mindless, bereft of wit and art. He became legion. At last he knew the sound of a heart at rest.

Sighing, he let the quill fall and walked over to the piano. He had no time for frivolities. He had a concerto to write.

Every time he sat down at the piano he had the same fond hope: that this would be the time the notes found each other of their own accord. That he would just stagger into a motif, simple and fecund like a cluster of berries in a clearing, full of sweetness and the urge to perpetuate more energy, more enormity, more life. Maybe this is the right note, he thought as he touched F sharp. It resounded with a dull clunk.

That isn’t right, he thought.

A thud resonated from inside the piano, and for a moment he feared the instrument was about to collapse. He leaned into it cautiously, and heard frenzied movement, what sounded like claws scraping against the strings.

He raised the lid slowly. When enough light had entered through the crack, he saw two moist circles floating in the darkness. He raised the lid more and the thing in the piano squeaked at him.

It was a ferret.

And it was wearing a jacket.

Arthur swooped in and grabbed the creature before it could bolt. The thing squealed and thrust its little limbs out stiffly, and Arthur pressed it to his chest so it couldn’t wriggle free. He looked down. The jacket it was wearing was black brocade, an almost perfect replica of the one he most favored. He was sure that anyone who saw him stalking down the palace halls furiously, holding a ferret dressed like himself, would surely snicker, and he was right. The maids he saw hid their laughter behind their hands, but that didn’t lessen their sharp edges.

“Eames.”

He kicked the door open, not caring who the sound might wake.

Eames was lying in bed, a pipe between his fingers, and music strewn across the sheets; at least he was alone, thank God. Or so Arthur hoped. He’d heard rumors about Eames’ sexual appetites—he’d certainly borne witness to them. Eames shrugged the quilt from his bare chest and looked at Arthur from beneath heavy eyelids. He pressed the pipe to his lips and took another long drag before he even spoke.

“Ah. I see you’ve met Arthur the Second.”

Arthur thrust the ferret down onto Eames’ bed.

“What an absurd and juvenile prank. You actually had a maid waste her time on making a jacket for a ferret?”

“Oh, no, I sewed it myself.” He blew a long rivulet of smoke in Arthur’s direction. “It’s a hobby of mine. The rhythm helps me compose.”

“Well. You should be very proud of yourself.” The ferret scurried up towards Eames, who picked it up by the scruff of its neck, then released it. It nosed at the edge of the quilt.

“Did you scream?” Eames asked.

Arthur looked at him through narrowed eyes. “No. I did not scream.”

“Too bad. I always wanted to make you scream.”

“If you’re trying to ruffle my feathers, Herr Eames,” Arthur said, smiling tightly, “you are wasting your time.”

Eames reclined on his pile of pillows and pushed his blanket down. “You don’t want to get in?”

Arthur looked at Eames. Pebbled waves of candlelight flickered across the other man’s skin. His body looked warm, strong, capable of keeping secrets. Was Eames really inviting him to slide between his sheets, to be overwhelmed by his smell and his heat and his closeness? It was tempting. But the thought of fucking someone with no respect for him whatsoever made his flesh crawl.

Arthur turned on his heel. “Absolutely not.”

He heard claws scrabbling on fabric as he walked to the door.

§

Arthur’s throat was parched, but he didn’t want to trouble Cobb for a drink.

Cobb’s parlor always made Arthur want to find an excuse to leave as soon as possible. There was dust inches thick on the rickety old tables and shelves. The drapes let in not even the thinnest seam of light. Arthur glanced above the mantel, and when his eyes met the large, haunted gray eyes of a woman in a dark and mold-dappled portrait, he looked away quickly to avoid the vertigo creeping up his spine.

Since Cobb’s wife had died, nearly two years earlier, the man’s life had fallen into ruin. He had lost nearly all of his household staff except for Ariadne, the governess for his two children. And it was Arthur who paid for her upkeep, and gave her music lessons free of charge. He was fond of the girl, who was opinionated and charming and had a real gift for the piano; he also felt he owed it to Cobb to ensure he had at least someone to look after him and his household.

As he and Cobb sat together, caught up in an awkward silence broken by an occasional sneeze, he could hear Ariadne practicing on the out-of-tune spinet upstairs. She was playing Eames’ Piano Sonata No. 35 again. Even on the small, sad-sounding piano, the piece was revelatory. Arthur thanked God that he had talent enough, at least, to hear the subtly repeated palindromic phrases, the complex layering of the rhythms in a style influenced by old Albionorian madrigals, the sly musical jokes.

The metallic plunkings erased the surroundings for a moment. The piece was a lilting seduction, or an argument, two voices speaking to each other, each with a rhythm echoing that of spoken words. The treble clef mocked and distorted the left hand’s phrases. The left hand responded with soft menace, saying less but becoming bolder. The parts combined into a barn swallow’s dance of great depths and heights, the roles becoming increasingly indistinct in a clatter of feathery strikes.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” Arthur said at long last, turning his cane in his hands. The music had stopped, and he could hear a child’s fist hitting the black keys. “But the Emperor has commissioned patriotic works from myself and Herr Eames. They are to be performed next month at the Royal Hall. And I need my principal violinist.”

Cobb stared blankly through him. Even in the guttering oil-lamp light Arthur could see his eyes were rimmed with red. His hand shook as he reached for a sticky decanter with only millimeters of whiskey left in it. He decided against opening it, and rested his hand in his lap once again.

“It’s kind of you to ask, Arthur, but I told you. I don’t play anymore.”

Arthur sighed. “Why don’t you leave the city? Sometimes new surroundings can help us leave the past behind.” They’d had this conversation before.

“You always have the answer to every problem, don’t you.” Cobb fixed him with an incisive glare. Every so often Arthur caught a glimpse of the man’s old passion and ferocity, but it was always short-lived.

“I only know from experience. When I left the village—“

“No offense, Arthur, but your troubled childhood is hardly the same as what I’ve been through. What I’ve done. I could have done something to save her, Arthur. And I didn’t. It would have been so simple.”

Arthur rubbed his sweaty palm vigorously against his knee, trying not to let Cobb see his discomfort at the mention of his wife.

“Playing again would be good for you.” Arthur pleaded.

“No. I told you. No more. It’s hard enough hearing Ariadne playing all the time upstairs. But it keeps her happy, and the children like it.”

The music had resumed. Now Ariadne was playing Eames’s Nocturne in A Minor, and Cobb got a faraway look in his eyes. Arthur could even have sworn he saw his mouth perk up into a semblance of a smile.

“It isn’t only Ariadne and the children who like this, is it,” Arthur asked softly. “Genius does have a way of slipping in through the cracks.”

“Like a god in the form of a golden rain,” Cobb murmured.

Arthur paused. He knew he would regret what he was about to ask, and he wasn’t sure he could even deliver what he was about to offer. But it would be worth it, if it meant that there was a chance that Cobb’s sublime musicianship could elevate his material.

“What if I told you, Cobb,” Arthur began, doing his best to affect an authoritative tone, “What if I told you that there was a chance that if you played my concerto, you might also be able to play for Eames?”

Slowly, a new life seemed to uncoil its tendrils through Cobb’s body. He sat up straighter in his chair and leaned towards Arthur.

“I told you, I don’t play anymore,” he said. But there was far less conviction behind his words.

Arthur lifted his hat from where it was hanging on the arm of the chair and placed it on his head. He nodded to Cobb, rising from his seat. “I’ll see what I can do.”

§

Late that night, Arthur knocked on Eames’ door. He could hear multiple voices from inside. Excellent, he thought ruefully. Upon what manner of entertainment am I about to walk in? He pressed his ear to the door and could hear several men and a woman, laughing loudly, probably drunk. A shame for someone of his talent to act like such a good-for-nothing.

He knocked again and was about to give up and turn around when the door opened a crack.

“Yes, Herr Hahnemann?” Eames asked saucily. His wig—a bright red one--was askew, and Arthur could smell alcohol on his breath. A patch of chest hair peeked out from his billowy open shirt collar, and Arthur steeled himself not to look at it.

“I’m here to ask a favor of you, Herr Eames,” he began.

“Please.” Eames opened the door wider. “Come inside.”

To Arthur’s shock, Ariadne was sitting there, on the floor, simple cotton skirts spread around her. She was eating bonbons from a small dish perched on a tuffet, looking entirely too familiar with the environs for Arthur’s taste. Of course she’s become Eames’s lover, he thought. I should have seen the signs all along. She’s obsessed with him. Can she even be faulted for it? Next to her was Yusuf, a man he knew to be a gifted baritone singer but with whom he was not otherwise acquainted.

“Yusuf, Ariadne, this is my dear friend Herr Arthur Hahnemann.” He clapped Arthur on the back and pushed him towards his friends.

“We’ve met,” Ariadne said, around a mouthful of chocolate. “He’s my music teacher.”

“Ariadne,” Arthur said, a note of disapproval creeping in, “is this really—appropriate—company, for a young lady of your manners and breeding?”

“Don’t worry, Arthur,” she said gaily. “I’m accounted for. My fiancé is here to make sure I don’t do anything untoward.” Arthur looked away, certain she was gazing at Eames with open affection.

“Ariadne hasn’t told you?” Yusuf cut in. “We’re to be married.” He looked back at them and saw that her hand was lain on his, and that they looked at each other with intimate mischief. Arthur breathed a sigh of relief that he hoped was not audible.

Eames was standing by his liquor cabinet with bottles in his hands. “We were just about to play a game, Arthur. Would you like to join us?”

“No thank you, Herr Eames,” he said, trying to sound as gracious as possible. “I must be getting back to my work so that I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour.”

Eames chortled. “I prefer sleeping at unreasonable hours myself,” he said. “The daytime is full of such boring people.”

Arthur wondered if that comment was directed at himself, but tried to brush it aside.

“Do you truly not enjoy games, Arthur?” Eames asked, reclining in a large, plush yellow chair and propping his stockinged feet on an ottoman.

“I usually find them to be a waste of valuable time.” Arthur hoped that his posture would signal how uncomfortable he was, how boring he was, so that Eames and his guests would dismiss him and get on with their revelry.

“Surely you enjoy stories, though,” Eames replied. He poured himself a tumbler full of wine, but set it down on the black marble table at his side rather than sipping it.

“He does!” Ariadne burst in. “I heard him tell the children the most wonderful story once. What was that, Arthur? The one about the cat soldier? I really do wish you’d come visit more often, so you can tell more stories.”

Arthur pressed his fingers to his temple. “That’s very flattering, Ariadne, but I’m not in the mood right now.”

“Oh come on, Arthur!” She sprang to her feet and grasped his hands, and dragged him to an empty chair. “Sit down and play with us. Show Herr Eames what you can do.”

I’m dreadfully tired of embarrassing myself in front of Herr Eames, he thought wearily.

“Excellent to have you with us, Arthur,” Eames said. The usual dark, rolling consonants of his Albionorian accent were even more pronounced because he’d been drinking, and he sounded like a schoolboy who’d only begun learning High Marchian. Arthur snuck glimpses of Eames’ lips as they worked around the rough contour of Arthur’s native language. He held his lips more open than a native Marchian, barely touched them together on a bilabial fricative, as though he were teasing the sounds, making the sounds beg to come through him.

“So a game, hmm?” Arthur asked as Ariadne nudged the plate of chocolates in his direction.

“But Arthur, they’re delicious!” she protested. “They’re a Rieslandish delicacy. They’re called Venus’s Nipples. Because of the shape, you know.”

He waved it away. Eames clucked at him, but the truth was that Arthur was a bit ashamed to eat something with “nipple” in the name in front of Eames. “What are the rules of this game?”

“Well,” started Yusuf, “one person starts out telling a story. And if you pause for longer than five seconds, you have to take a drink. And if you get stuck and can’t continue, or if you pause for longer than twenty seconds, you forfeit and the next person has to pick up the next part of the story. And the story ends—“

“And if you interrupt, you have to put money in a pile on the table,” Ariadne interrupted.

“Thank you, Ariadne, he said, fondness creasing the corners of his eyes. “The other players have to decide when the story ends. If the story ends to their satisfaction, they put ten florins in the pile. If one person decides that the story is not ended, then the turn goes to the next person, and the person who told the bad ending has to put ten florins in the pot as well. The person who completes the story gets the money.”

Arthur sighed. “Fine, I’ll play. Who’s starting?”

“I will,” offered Ariadne. She thought for a moment, then began. “A long time ago, in a kingdom called Volaria, there was a man—

“Oh, I forgot to mention that if you forfeit you have to remove an article of clothing,” said Yusuf. Arthur’s eyes widened.

“Yusuf! One florin!” Ariadne demanded. He plunked his coin down on a scarf in the middle of the floor.

“Oh no.” Arthur made to rise from his chair. “I am not playing this game. None of you should be playing this game either. You are above this kind of behavior, all of you.”

“Sit down,” Eames said, exasperated. “Don’t you want to hear how the story ends?”

“You all have to pay a florin now,” Ariadne said brightly. Arthur sat back down and reached in his pocket for a coin.

“As I was saying. A long time ago, in a place called Volaria,”

“Kingdom,” giggled Eames. “It was a kingdom.”

“Eames!” she shouted. He tossed a florin towards the pile.

“In a kingdom called Volaria, in a small town, there was a man who could make people immortal by filling them with his seed.” Arthur felt his cheeks redden. “He learned this one day when a girl he’d been fucking fell off a horse and the injury was so bad it should have snapped her neck in half. But she just got up and brushed off her skirts and walked away. And a few weeks later, another girl he’d fucked got a terrible fever and the doctors said she only had a few days to live. But then the fever subsided and she was fine, ready to help her husband with the farmwork and care for her children and everything. Word began to spread of his power, and people came from far and wide to partake of his immortality-granting seed. He started to accept money for it. But then one day—“ Ariadne paused, chewing on a hangnail. Eames looked at his watch.

“Twenty seconds! Ariadne, an item of your clothing?” Eames commanded. She untied the scarf from her neck and released it from her fingers, and it fluttered towards the center of the room. She looked towards Yusuf.

“One day, the man with the immortal seed….” Yusuf took a drink, laughing as he wiped his mouth. “One day the man with the immortal seed,” he tried to breathe to contain his laughter, but he only got more and more breathless with it.

“You have five seconds left or it passes to me,” Eames said sternly. “Four…three…two…and…that’ll be your shirt, sir.” Yusuf untucked his shirt and tossed it onto Ariadne’s scarf.

“Well.” Eames began. “The man with the immortal cum was sad, because he went to a witch doctor and asked him if he’d ever heard of such a thing as cum making people immortal. And the doctor said yes, but the bad news was that it didn’t work on the person who…shit…what is that word?” Eames took a swig of wine. Apparently, when he’d been drinking, Eames lost his grasp of foreign languages. Ten seconds passed, then fifteen, while Eames was wracking his brain trying to recall the words for what he wanted to say next. At last he just sighed and pulled at the hem of his shirt. Then, instead, he released it and yanked the wig off of his head.

It was the first time Arthur had seen Eames without a wig--even when he’d been lying in bed he’d had a curly black wig on. His light brown hair was cropped short, and it stood up in messy spikes.

“Allright, Arthur,” he said, sloshing a big sip of wine in his mouth so that Arthur could see some of the dark red fluid creeping at the corner of his lips, “let’s see what you’ve got.”

Arthur took a deep breath and began the story again. “It didn’t work on the person who…ejaculated it. Or so this witch doctor said. So the man was terribly sad, and he fell into a deep despair at the unfairness of life. How is it, he thought, that I can grant others immortality, yet I cannot have it for myself? And then one—one day, he got word that one of the women he had…been with…”

“Oh, Arthur, just say fucked,” Eames said. He’d already begun fishing for a coin before he started speaking.

“Fine, then. One of the women he had fucked had died. And it was a small town, so word travelled fast. And one day, the man came home from a day in the fields to find all of the men and women he had fucked standing in front of his house, wielding knives and pitchforks. Wild-eyed, calling him a charlatan. He threw up his hands and invited them to kill him, wanting to face death like a man. And Someone rushed at him and stabbed him through the stomach with a pitchfork. But what happened next shocked everyone. Because no blood came out of the wound. It was as though nothing had penetrated him at all. He looked down, calmly, and said, ‘I suppose immortality is just not for everyone.’” Arthur took a brief pause and surveyed the fire-lit faces around him. They were rapt. He sipped his wine, more for courage than for anything else. “The people began to talk among themselves, and there were rumblings that the effects of the immortality potion were cumulative. The ones who’d cheated death, they found, were the ones who’d fucked the man most. But the man thought back to those people, and realized, to his horror, that those people were also slowly going insane. He tried to warn them that the more they partook of his immortality, uh, serum, the more they would go insane. But they didn’t listen, and they tied him up…”

Arthur talked on, telling them how the man had escaped his bonds by convincing the crazed people that he needed to be alone to get an erection, how they allowed him to go into his bedroom and how he escaped through the window, and how he evaded his pursuers for years. How he fell in love with a young girl but wouldn’t fuck her, and how one day the crazed pack of immortals caught up with her and told her why he wouldn’t make love to her. How she became obsessed with the idea of invulnerability, and betrayed him to his tormentors, only to decide at the last minute to throw herself in front of him. How they killed her and he surrendered to them, having nothing left to live for.

After he paused to signal he was done, spreading his hands across his lap and inhaling after feeling like he hadn’t breathed for years, both Yusuf and Ariadne threw coins into the pile.

“Well done!” said Yusuf. Ariadne clapped. Only Eames had not yet thrown a coin into the pile. Arthur watched him anxiously. His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. Yet again he thinks I’m worthless, Arthur thought with despair. Of course.

Then a wide smile spread across Eames’ face. He stood up and dropped a coin into the pile; he wrapped the whole bundle up in Ariadne’s scarf and placed it, heavy and solid, onto Arthur’s lap.

“A fine story, dear sir,” he said, settling back in his chair. “Autobiographical?” Arthur glared at him.

“Leave him alone, Eames,” Yusuf chided. “Are you just jealous that for once you didn’t win something?”

“Shall we play again?” chirped Ariadne.

Arthur rose in one swift movement. “I’ll be leaving now. It was a pleasure.” He tipped his hat slightly, and made the barest of bows, and walked briskly out of the room, not caring that the door slammed behind him.

§

Arthur gripped the reins of his sorrel mare as he trotted up next to the Emperor. It was a dazzlingly clear spring day. The Emperor usually preferred to tour the palace grounds when the sky was overcast, so that the vivid colors and general good humor in the air didn’t distract him from any flaws. Today the sky was cloudless ultramarine, no fog or drizzle pulled a heavy visor over the eyes, and the flowers in the terraced gardens were lush and open, every petal sharply outlined, every leaf shining and keen. A couple of ladies were playing croquet on the lawn, and Arthur watched them, admiring the pastel-colored spring dresses as airy as meringues.

“You wanted to speak with me privately, Your Worship?”

“I did.” Saito pulled his horse to a stop as they overlooked the vast oblong reflecting pond at the center of the palace lawn. Chancellor Browning and his aides were already riding around the edges of it, and a servant bent down to stick something in the water, presumably to test its quality. “I wanted to congratulate you in person.”

“For what, Your Worship?”

Saito granted him a rare smile. “Because I have chosen your concerto to be performed at the anniversary celebration next month.”

Arthur was dumbfounded. Their concertos had been performed in the Royal Hall the previous week, before an audience of the Emperor, his family, his staff, and and members of the Royal College of Music. Cobb had at last agreed to play the violin, and his solo did, for a moment, make Arthur believe that his concerto was worthy of the Emperor. But then, from the very first phrase of Eames’s concerto, a shimmering chromatic run which shattered into a two-note call that would haunt and torment the rest of the piece like a golden horsefly, his illusions dropped away.

Saito was already beginning to trot ahead of him, and he urged his horse forward into the shady orchard. “But—Your Worship—“

“Isn’t that what you’ve been working for your whole life, Arthur?” Saito asked, ducking as they passed under a branch laden with hard green apples. “Why ask questions? You were the superior composer.”

I was not the superior composer, he thought. But it was not for him to question the Emperor. Perhaps he had truly liked it better, Arthur mused, smiling to himself.

§

He barely saw Eames over the next week. At first he wondered if Eames had left the palace. After all, he had no real reason to stay there; his run of initial performances and galas was long since passed, and if the Emperor no longer had work for him, he was most certainly overstaying his welcome.

One day, while roaming the palace halls as he tended to do when bored or uninspired, he heard a throaty, slow laugh that could only be Eames’. It was coming from one of the palace’s music rooms, and as he approached he heard the voice of the Emperor’s thirteen-year-old daughter, laughing gaily. He peered through the crack in the door. The Princess Naomi sat at the piano bench, with Eames next to her, explaining that the sonata contained some sort of secret message about pee. Naomi laughed behind her hands and kept looking nervously behind her, awaiting the approval or disapproval of—her father. The Emperor was there, watching a routine piano lesson. He did not seem overly concerned that his daughter was so excited about a urine joke.

Arthur grimaced. The Emperor had never sat in on any of Arthur’s lessons with Naomi. And Naomi had been his student. Arthur’s. That was one of the jobs of a court composer. Wasn’t it? No one had even told him. He had seen Naomi just yesterday, and she had been a quiet, sharp-eyed girl, smiling politely at his jokes. But never laughing. Never excited to be in front of a piano, fingers practically itching to leap onto the keys.

That afternoon, when he knew the Emperor and Chancellor would be meeting, he pressed his ear to the door of the Emperor’s meeting room, hoping to hear some explanation of Eames’ continued presence in the palace. The familiar voices of Saito and Browning were indeed mingling once again in spirited debate.

“…but Your Worship, I do not think it prudent for you to allow such an influence on your daughter,” Browning complained.

“Naomi is my daughter,” said Saito, “and I want her to have the best musical education possible.” Arthur dug his nails into his fist at this.

“Besides,” Saito continued, “I already took your advice on one matter concerning Herr Eames. You were wise to suggest that it would present a bad example to the nation if we were to laud a patriotic work by a man who is a known gambler, a man who has been caught on multiple occasions drinking and whoring. I am still convinced that Herr Eames’ work was vastly superior, but—“

“I’m sorry to disturb Your Eminences,” Arthur interrupted, swinging the door open. The two men looked at him in surprise and mild annoyance, Browning slowly lowering the teacup from his lips. “I—I seem to have lost my—key—in here yesterday during the meeting with the choirmaster, and I was not aware there was a meeting going on.”

“By all means,” Browning said.

Arthur made a show of bending over and examining the ground carefully for his phantom key. He lifted tablecloths and peered around the legs of chairs. “I’m sure it was in here somewhere. This is the last place I know I had it.”

Browning muttered something that sounded like bloody artists, but Arthur chose not to hear it.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, plucking a piece of lint from the floor and shoving it into his pocket lightning fast. “And—if I may—while I have the attention of Your Eminences,”

“Go on, Arthur,” Saito said.

“I have to say that—perhaps you ought to give Herr Eames’s work another consideration.” Arthur fought to squeeze the painful words out of his throat. “I am well aware, Your Worship, that you said you preferred mine, but please, if you value my talent, then you must also value my taste. And I am firmly convinced—“ he cleared his throat—“I am firmly convinced that Herr Eames wrote the better concerto. By far.”

“You have a reputation as a young man of virtue and restraint,” Browning said, looking Arthur up and down. “And you have had some contact with Herr Eames. Tell me. What do you think of his…morals?”

His morals, Arthur thought. Playing childish pranks, drinking, gambling, whoring, encouraging young engaged ladies to remove their clothes in groups of men, brazenly inviting colleagues of equal or greater standing into bed with him.

“I have seen no reason to question Herr Eames’s morals whatsoever,” he said, and silently sent up a prayer asking God to forgive him for lying.

§

“Arthur!” Eames dashed up to him and threw his arms around his neck. Arthur made a slightly exaggerated choking sound.

“What is this for, Eames?” he asked wanly.

“Chancellor Browning said you put in a good word on my behalf,” he said, continuing to clap Arthur on the back. “You are such a dear.”

“There’s no need for sweet nothings,” Arthur said crisply, turning away from Eames to watch the musicians setting up onstage. There was Cobb, in the first violinist’s chair, looking like he’d actually eaten in the recent past. His clothes didn’t hang quite so drably off his shoulders, and as he turned the pegs and slid the bow across each string, listening in for the proper tuning, there was a tinge of contentment, if not excitement. There was something in him right now that was not submerged in some leaden, vengeful past.

“I’m glad you were able to be gracious,” Eames continued. “I think an orchestral work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Helvetian War ought to be imaginative, don’t you? After all, you know, Saito didn’t win the Battle of Raban Lea by playing it safe.”

“Actually, Eames, that’s exactly how the Battle of Raban Lea was won,” he retorted.

“Well, sometimes restraint is imaginative, isn’t it? Tradition can be awfully bombastic.”

“Yes. Of course. I know your dislike of bombast quite well, seeing as you used exactly that word to describe my concerto in front of the entire Royal College.” Just then the Chancellor waved Arthur over, and Eames strode up to take his place in front of the orchestra.

Arthur was immensely proud that he hadn't slapped Eames across the face. He'd always hated to make a scene.

§

Arthur glanced around him nervously. He was always afraid of being seen when he climbed this particular staircase, but his worry seemed to be ill-founded. Most of the men who came up this way would be unwilling to expose anyone else as they would unquestionably damn themselves in the process.

He knocked on the thin door and it rattled. It was barely worth having a door like that. All the doors and walls on this hallway were thin, and he could hear a polyphony of moans and grunts and smacks merging together.

The door opened.

He’d forgotten how beautiful the young man who opened it was. Robert did not greet him by name, as he usually did; he did not lean in to slyly kiss the corner of Arthur’s mouth. His pale blue eyes regarded Arthur coldly, and he merely stepped aside tartly to let him in. He looked at Arthur as if he were a stranger, the way he had the first time Arthur, tantalized, had followed Robert up to his room and let Robert suck his cock for fifteen florins.

“Why are you back here?” Arthur asked him. “I pay for a nice room for you. Aren’t you freezing?”

“Easier to find work here,” Robert answered casually. “And no one bothers me.”

“Why do you need to find work?”

Robert shrugged. “Boredom. Habit. I meet interesting people sometimes.”

Arthur threw his head back, exasperated.

“It’s not like you ever come to see me anymore anyway, Arthur. When was the last time you even bothered to come play a game of chess?”

Arthur looked guiltily down at his shining shoes against the grimy floor. There were roaches crawling in through the cracks in the gray wall plaster, and Arthur wondered how he ever tolerated even kneeling on that mattress, hammered thin by hundreds of filthy, sweaty bodies. A chill wind made the window shiver.

“I’ve been busy. The Emperor has been commissioning a lot of work from me, and I’m taking on more and more students. I’m exhausted at night.”

“You could come and sleep. You know, you could do practically everything there that you do at the palace.”

Arthur reached out to touch Robert’s cheek. He noticed that there was a long scrape along the cheekbone. “I’m sorry, love—“

“Don’t call me that.”

“Robert, I told you from the beginning that I couldn’t give you everything you wanted. And you understood that perfectly.”

Robert sighed. “It doesn’t mean I can’t be a bit angry that yet another of my hopes has failed to come true.”

At that moment Arthur wished fervently that he could simply love Robert the way Robert, for reasons unknown, seemed to love him. They could live together most of the time; he could look after Robert, make sure he was fed and clothed and warm, and he could allow Robert to look after him, with caresses and reassurances, ensuring that he remembered to eat and sleep.

“Let’s go back to your room, shall we? It’ll be hard for us to take a bath together here.”

Robert looked him squarely in the eye. “That isn’t why you’re here, though, is it.”

Arthur turned away from his gaze. “No. It’s not.” He was so tempted to turn away now. It was unfair to ask Robert what he was about to ask of him. But, he reminded himself, Robert had continued to seek out clients while they were sleeping together regularly. Said he didn’t want to be Arthur’s kept boy. This was no different.

“Robert,” he began, “I have a favor to ask of you.”'

§

The hunting shack was one of Arthur’s favorite places on the palace grounds. He often came out to think or write, and, like everything about the palace and its grounds, he knew its every crack and crevice.

There was a faint light pouring out between the boards as Arthur snuck up to it, treading lightly, careful not to snap any dry branches with his weight. He’d gotten good at walking soundlessly.

Everything seemed to have gone according to plan. Robert, in the clothing of a young gentleman, had approached Eames on his way to his rehearsal. Eames, like most people, had been unable to resist Robert’s beauty. Robert had suggested the shack as a place to meet; had told Eames that his father used to work for the Emperor and that he’d been shown it as a child.

It was only a five-minute walk to the palace from here. And it would all be so simple. All Arthur had to do was alert the palace guards that he’d seen trespassers in the forest; they would see the light in the hunting shack and catch Eames and Robert naked together. Arthur knelt in the dirt, brushing aside all care for his clothing, and put his eye up to the crack. What he saw surprised him.

Neither Eames nor Robert was naked or even seemed to be doing anything of a sexual nature. Robert was standing with his hands against the wall as Eames leaned over him, but he didn’t seem to be pushing into him. The thinness of the crack blurred the view, but he was certain he could see Eames’s hand dragging something thin behind it. It looked like a needle and thread. Eames was sewing something, a dark jacket, onto Robert.

“Almost there now,” he heard Eames say. Robert said nothing in return.

Arthur watched as Eames’s deft fingers knotted up the stitch and broke the thread with his teeth. He knew he had planned to alert the guards, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Eames did not turn Robert around. He ran his hands over the young man’s taut back and shoulders and pressed up tight against him. They were roughly the same height. Their hips lined up beautifully. Eames’s hands crept around to Robert’s front, and Arthur watched his shoulders tense as he struggled to undo the buttons. When Robert’s trousers had slid down around his knees, Eames lifted the hem of the long jacket to reveal Robert’s firm, pale, lightly freckled arse. His hand disappeared, and Arthur imagined that Eames was coating it with oil to allow it easier entrance into Robert’s tight hole

Eames’s fingers moved to tease open Robert’s buttocks, and he slowly sunk his fingers into his hole. Arthur was stung by a moment of nostalgia, thinking of fucking Robert, of being fucked by him, but that passed and all he could think of was Eames, wishing he was the one bearing Eames’ weight on his back, the one feeling Eames’ slippery soft lips and sharp teeth against the side of his neck. Arthur’s hand moved to cup his cock, hard inside his trousers. He squeezed himself and swallowed his groan.

“You like that, you little slut?” Eames jerked his spread fingers into Robert rhythmically. Arthur couldn’t see Robert’s reaction. “Oh, yes, I’ll just bet you do. You’re always walking around in those long black jackets like you’re better than everyone else, like you’re above fucking and drinking and games, but I know how badly you’re just dying to get fucked in the arse.” Eames removed his fingers and balanced himself, one hand on the wall, the other on his cock.

He’s talking about me, Arthur thought in horror. He’s imagining he’s fucking me. Putting me in my place.

Arthur’s cock didn’t feel humiliated. It was still just painfully hard. And the clenching heat in his gut wanted nothing more than to watch Eames’ cock as it drove into Robert. But from this angle Eames’ backside was obscuring the view.

Arthur snuck around to the north wall of the cabin, where there was another, wider crack. Peeping through this one was riskier. If someone alert happened to glance over, they’d be able to see the gleam of a human eye. But Arthur couldn’t help himself. He pressed his eye to the hole. Eames was slapping his cock lightly against Robert’s hole, then swiping it from the small of his back to his perineum. “Oh, your little pucker is so tight,” Eames panted. “Good thing you keep it clenched like that all the time. Oh, fuck.”

Robert’s face was blank. Suddenly it occurred to Arthur that Robert had to know exactly who Eames was imagining he was. Remorse surged through him. But it was too late. He reached down his pants and fingered his naked cock until he came, hot and thick. It tangled in the hair between his legs and ran down his thighs just as Eames pushed himself into Robert at last.

Not caring how many twigs he snapped or who heard, Arthur dashed through the forest, away from the lighted cabin. Brambles slashed at his wrists. The full, creamy moon shed a revealing light on the grounds; once Arthur was out of the woods he was fully visible to anyone who peered out a window or happened to be walking the lawn at the same time. He ran until he came to the edge of the reflecting pool. Nauseated, he knelt on the cool stones and rested his elbows on the granite edge. He scooped water hungrily onto his face, letting it drip into his collar. His cuffs were wet. When Arthur was a child he could think of no worse feeling than wet cuffs. As he slouched back towards the palace, his sopping wet cuffs were the least of his worries.



Part Two