The Monster of Elendhaven Read online

  “But not you.” Johann refused to take a seat. Instead, he smoothed down the tails of his duster and loomed over Florian’s shoulder.

  Florian tipped his head back and looked Johann in the eyes. Wordlessly, he raised his left arm and began to unbutton his sleeves. He folded the cuff of his jacket to the elbow, then started on the shirt. Beneath the white fabric his skin was powdery and marred with dark rivers of bruise. The black wound traced the path of Florian’s veins, his flesh cracking and scabbed around its borders. Johann whistled and grabbed Florian’s arm, running a thumb over the inside of his wrist. He could feel the texture even through his glove: coarse and mottled like fresh charcoal. Florian smiled, thin and tight.

  “The difference is that I can survive a few burns.”

  “So is it an inborn talent?” Johann wondered. “Could your family always do this shit, or what?”

  Florian bent his arm free from Johann’s grasp. He was tense at the question and began fiddling with his rings. “We … n-not for a long time, we haven’t. It has been some many years since it was commonplace, is what I mean. I was the first … in a while.”

  Practice of the Old Magic was punishable by death, and for good reason. Magic had nearly destroyed the world. It was over a hundred years since the Mittenwelt had purged the ancient bloodlines of magical aptitude. It survived in the dark corners of the continent, but sorcerers in the modern era were errant throwbacks, mistakes of birth. One had passed through Elendhaven just four years back. Johann had been lucky enough to see the aftermath of his work: a city watchman turned inside out, his guts steaming in the crisp winter air and his bones arranged like a pyre, all stumbled together, clasped skyward like a prayer. Johann had sensed something thrumming in the air that day, like the dissonance that lingers after hitting a piano key. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could feel the magic filling up the room. Florian stank of it. It jittered out from every nerve in his body. Not for a long time, he said. Aberrant. Johann heard it properly: Florian Leickenbloom did not think himself a creature made by mortal intent. He was like Johann, one of the Black Moon’s monsters.

  Johann leant his elbows on the back of the couch. His gaze followed Florian as he stood. “So,” he purred. “In that case … what’s wrong with me, Doc?”

  Florian pulled a heavy text from the bookshelf and sneezed, haloed momentarily by a cloud of dust. He dropped the book unceremoniously on the tea table in front of them and let it thump open to a complicated mathematical diagram. The diagram overlaid an image of the globe, but Johann could not make sense of the equations surrounding it.

  “Do not call me Doc,” Florian said, light toned. “I’m an accountant.”

  Johann grinned. “Right. So what’s the prognosis, sweetheart?”

  “If I knew the ‘prognosis,’ I would not have brought you to my home.” Florian bit his delicate lip, bounced his fingers across the page absentmindedly. “Magic is the energy we create by living and dying. It flows through us on its journey to somewhere else. Someone like me can crack open the cycle and shape that energy into new potential. You—” He sighed. “You’re a hiccup, or a flinch. Something that tripped and fell off the carriage, which continues on as if it’s forgotten you. You’re a living thing that somehow fails to generate or absorb the world’s energy.”

  “Could we avoid framing it in terms of failure?” Johann put his chin in his palm. “It makes me feel so … inadequate.”

  Florian stared at him for a long moment, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Johann,” he asked quietly, “what is it, exactly, that you want?”

  Johann blinked back, expression rictus. Herr Leickenbloom was looking at him with those liquor-pale eyes. At him, not through him.

  Florian asked again, “What is it that I have that you want?”

  “You know what you are,” Johann answered: automatically, instinctually. “I … want to know what I am.”

  “Your interest is merely philosophical then? Most men, if they woke up and found themselves incapable of dying, would do terrible things with that power.”

  “Who says I haven’t done terrible things with it?”

  Florian laughed. “Oh yes, my apologies to the petty cutthroat in a ragged coat. What lofty ambitions! Is that really all you want?”

  Johann opened his mouth and found that it was empty. He turned the question over in his head a few times and then said, “Once I climbed the tallest tower I could find. You know, that Geltic Cathedral in the middle of town? I got right up to the top of the steeple and I jumped, just to see what would happen when I hit the ground.” He flattened his palm against the arm of the couch and made a squelching noise to demonstrate. “What I found is that I was still hoping for a longer fall.”

  “I see.” Florian steepled his fingers. “That is the best you could think to do with your amazing gift?”

  Johann shrugged. “Yeah, well, what the hell would you do with it that’s so much better?”

  It took Florian a while to respond. He turned his face away from Johann, towards the darkness of the hallway. A slice of orange morning light cut through the gap in the curtains and bisected the shadows of his profile, turned him into obscure shapes against the cracked wallpaper.

  He said, “What else but put all the cheques in balance.”

  — III —

  THE SORCERER

  They cleared the Leickenbloom kitchen out over the course of an afternoon. They needed the knives, the sink, the polished wooden countertops. Florian did not cook for himself and so those counters were stacked with boxes and junk up to the cupboards.

  Florian was quiet the entire time, but Johann kept a careful mental inventory of the items he was handed: three stacks of books with cover illustrations of horses and castles, a musty bin of plaid frocks and skirts (child sized), four boxes with the letters FLORA scrawled on them, and a covered painting with a cloth nailed firmly to the frame. That night he slept on a couch two feet too short for his legs. He merrily dangled one ankle over the edge, kicking at the air. He had never slept surrounded by such opulence and it irritated him that Florian was not using it terribly well.

  He dreamt about all the things he would do if he owned a house with twenty-six rooms. He kept friends for longer than a night. He smiled at people he did not intend to stab between the ribs. So many possibilities; he could run a bar, open a hostel, host an orgy every full moon. His most vivid dream was that he hadn’t moved from the couch at all. In the dream, Florian covered him with a pale blue sheet and he lay beneath it, muzzled and quiet in the sorcerer’s hand until his bones became a part of the house.

  They began their experiments with an oyster knife. “Cut,” Florian ordered, peering at Johann from over the top of a leather-bound notebook. He was left-handed, Johann noted, and the heel of his palm was already stained with ink early in the morning.

  “Cut where?”

  “Anywhere. Show me what you showed me yesterday.”

  Johann held the tiny blade up for appraisal. “You want me to slit a throat with this thing? Seriously?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, I could do it. I’ve done it before. Not to myself, but it’s a thing that can be done.”

  Florian pinched the bridge of his nose. “Cut your arm.”

  Johann did. It healed cleanly, the skin knitting so quickly that it almost caught the trailing blade. Florian clutched his book to his chest and watched in naked fascination.

  “I don’t know what you were expecting,” Johann said. “We’ve been over this already.”

  Florian looked up at him, eager eyes alight with hunger. “Johann, let me find you a longer fall.”

  * * *

  Florian took him to an abandoned textile factory along the seawall: hollowed out from fire and surrounded by a mile of silence.

  “This whole district is dead,” Florian tsked, waving his hands. He was dressed in a purple floral print and fur, his tiny hands disappeared into a pair of velvet mittens. “No one manufactures clothes out of Ele
ndhaven anymore, not even to evade the new child labour laws down past Sandherst.”

  The factory was built into a cradle of stone, as if the cliff were a great hand holding it in place. Johann teetered over the edge of the roof and watched the waves smash against the black rock. The sea battered the cliff like a rabid animal, frothing salt spittle around dark stone teeth. It was going to split him open, chew him up. It was going to devastate his body so completely that it probably wouldn’t even hurt until he was almost healed. His mouth was watering, and he licked his lips in anticipation.

  “Well?” Florian sounded impatient. Johann looked him over, all pale and shivering inside his winter frock. He was tapping his foot off-time with his breathing. “Are you going to jump?” he asked. “Or shall I have to push you?”

  Johann spent the afternoon throwing himself into the ocean, dashing himself against the rocks like a shipwreck. Florian huddled on the shore and took notes. Johann tried to imagine what they said as a way to amuse himself on the long climb back up the service ladder. First Trial. Left arm only broken in three places, disappointing. Second Trial. Skull fractures heal faster and more efficiently than a cracked thighbone. Fascinating. I have seen the inside of Johann’s stomach. His guts are the colour of rhubarb custard.

  When he finally asked, Florian gave his pen a studious flourish and smiled with a measure of sincerity. “Equations,” he said. “Measurements: distance of the fall, the rate of your regeneration.”

  Johann didn’t much care for equations. Mathematics was an area of study that he had never succeeded in teaching himself. “That’s some ripe tedium,” he muttered, and plopped himself down to look over Florian’s shoulder. “What does that accomplish?”

  He felt Florian bristle beneath his chin. “I’m a student of economics,” he explained, tone defensive. “Tracking patterns and behaviour through comparative equations. I am taking the mathematical shape of you.”

  “Yeah, well, if that’s all you wanted, you just had to ask, honeydew. You don’t need to add three plus six to get me out of my clothes.”

  Florian hummed and ignored him in favour of his sums. As revenge, Johann shook himself dry like a dog, spraying Florian and his notes with specks of foamy seawater. Florian shrieked and leapt to his feet. “You—” His finger shook where he angled it at Johann in accusatory offense. “Y-you!”

  “Me?” Johann snickered, barely able to contain himself.

  What Johann learned about Florian Leickenbloom didn’t need an equation. It took just this—a few well-placed words, a lack of tact—to discover that he lost his breath when he giggled, covering his mouth politely like the girls from the convent school. Johann jounced to his feet and offered Florian a hand.

  “You’re awful,” Florian hissed out between chuckles. “You’re a vile creature.”

  “Herr Leickenbloom, please.” Johann smiled easily. “Don’t underestimate me. I’m more than vile; I’m an honest-to-god monster.”

  * * *

  Florian did not forget Johann’s business proposition. “If it’s unwise for me to go out alone,” he said, with a shrewd, feline smile, “I suppose that from now on I shall have to take you with me.” He trussed Johann up in cobalt and silver and brought him about on his daily chores.

  If Johann was, as he liked to think of himself, the monster of Elendhaven’s night, Florian was the monster of its mornings and afternoons. Everyone knew Florian’s face and name. The factory owners tripped over themselves in the streets to greet him. Herr Leickenbloom, they called him, perfectly formal, precisely deferential.

  The day after the cliff they met with the Sudengelt Ambassador and three companions outside the bakery. The Ambassador bowed and kissed Florian’s family ring.

  “Herr Leickenbloom, gutenmorn,” he huffed, breath misting between his plump lips. He ceased genuflecting and slipped a deft hand around the hip of the woman accompanying him. “Might I introduce you to my ward, Eleanor? It’s her first trip north.”

  Florian flushed politely and took Eleanor’s hand. “Gutenmorn, madame,” he said shyly. She bowed, hiding her face behind a curtain of black curls.

  “Eleanor, if you’ve been told there are no proper gentlemen in Elendhaven, your informant has never met Florian Leickenbloom.” The man who spoke was lean and freckled, with carrot-red hair, a shade not often seen in the northern states. He was chewing on a black cigar beneath the curtain of his moustache.

  “There is no need to puff me up in front of company, Ansley,” Florian demurred. “I’m sure Eleanor has been treated with hospitality as lovely as our weather.”

  The third man—blond, long nosed, and dressed ostentatiously in white—chuckled. Eleanor’s dark eyes went wide and she looked quite earnest when she said, “The weather is lovely. I’ve never seen such remarkable skies.”

  Florian released her hand. “The North paints the sunrise in colours undreamt in Mittengelt and Sudengelt.”

  “Truly. I could, however, do with a touch more daylight.”

  “Then you must visit us in the summer, Lady Eleanor. At the equinox, the sun hardly sets for longer than it takes to prepare a pot of tea.”

  “Ah yes, I’d heard so.…” Eleanor adjusted one of her gloves and shivered. “But the winters…”

  “Are long and dark,” Florian affirmed. “But it is those long nights that make a northern summer so sweet.”

  “Florian is a true native of the Black Moon,” the Ambassador explained. “His family has been here since the founding of Elendhaven.”

  “Yes,” Ansley mused, stroking his beard. “You might even call Herr Leickenbloom a local fixture. One of our very finest landmarks.”

  Neither Ansley, nor the Ambassador, nor Eleanor, nor the long-nosed man in white took notice of Johann, so he—skulking behind Florian like his sharp-toothed, long-boned shadow—focused on the shape and slant of Florian’s shoulders. On the way he held himself when speaking courteously. It was a submissive silhouette, the same prey-animal contour that had tricked Johann when they first met. Florian flowed in and out of it effortlessly, a physical architecture far more elaborate than Johann’s own.

  “His ward,” Ansley sneered when the Ambassador led Eleanor away. “What a way to describe a kept woman.”

  Florian—where no one but Johann could see—displayed a subtle disgust: one nostril flared, and a cheek sucked in where he was biting it shut. Herr Long-Nose added, in a melodic accent, “You’d think he’d have the decency to share since you’re putting them up.”

  “Ansley,” Florian cut in, tone clipped and amiable. “What has you meeting with foreigners so early in the day?”

  Ansley tapped ash from his cigar. He was a broad man, not as tall as Johann, but he dwarfed Florian, who might have been mistaken for a woman from behind. “Have you met Herr Charpentier?” Long-Nose tipped his hat. “He’s looking to expand the railroads.”

  “Yes.” Charpentier took Florian’s offered hand and shook it. “Elendhaven still uses a narrow gauge. We would have the rails broadened so that freight wagons may come and go.”

  “You will not be the first one who’s tried that,” Florian said.

  “Ah—but I will be the last, monsieur. You can be sure of that.” Charpentier’s eyes glittered when he laughed.

  Florian did not laugh back. He clasped Charpentier’s hand tight.

  “Are you certain? Elendhaven is built on ancient rock so solid that trees cannot find root. Digging through rock is slow work, wet and cold. We are prone to industrial accidents. One week here beneath the shroud of winter and you will reconsider.”

  Something dark passed over Charpentier’s face. In Florian’s expression, Johann saw a scattering of embers. A ghost of a smile. A man who knew exactly what he was—

  —and then Ansley slapped him on the back. Florian’s response was to buck forward two steps and start coughing. Charpentier tugged his hand free. Looking a little lost, he rubbed it where Florian had touched him.

  “Don’t mind Florian, Herr Charpentie
r,” Ansley crowed. “He’s an incurable pessimist. But if there’s one thing he enjoys, it’s an elegantly balanced budget. Once we have him run the numbers, you’ll earn his support.”

  “Oh, doubtlessly,” Florian replied, still fluttering away beneath his veil of false fragility. Johann watched him wave the men off, expression placid and pleasant until they turned the corner. “You see that?” he scoffed once he and Johann were alone. “I am nearly thirty years old and they treat me as if I am still a child. A fragile bauble.”

  “Aren’t you?” Johann sidled up to him and tapped him on the head. Florian hardly came up to his shoulders.

  “I am as he said.” Florian tucked his hands into the folds of his elbows. “An Elendhaven landmark. A public spectacle of mourning. My childhood tragedy has turned me glacial in the eyes of others. I am trapped in ice, a curiosity in a glass jar.”

  Johann folded the words cautiously and tucked them away. Tragedy, glass jars. Wouldn’t do well to push too hard too soon, or he might shatter.

  They strolled through the city square, passing beneath the statue of Hallandrette, God-Queen of the northern ocean. She was wreathed in seaweed and barnacles, her skeletal hands held aloft as if she were clawing her way towards the surface. Johann didn’t know any of the stories behind the statue, but he always found it strange that the Queen of the Sea should be carved to look as if she were drowning.

  Florian dug in his pocket and flicked a gold coin into her fountain. It was sucked beneath the oily surface and lost forever to the dark water. “Ansley means to re-open the silver mines,” he muttered. To himself, but Johann leapt to fill the gap anyway.

  “Why’s that a bad thing?”

  Florian sighed. “Ansley’s parents were Sandherst born. He thinks himself a man of Elendhaven, but he knows nothing about us.”

  It was not an answer to Johann’s question, but it was all he offered. Good enough for now, Johann thought. He sat himself on the edge of the fountain and grabbed Florian by the fingers.