The Most Esteemed Surgeon scoffed. “Surely you cannot mean that. He is not some idolatrous serf. His teeth are holy instruments.His eyes stared deep into the blue lagoon. His lungs inhaled the Dogaressa’s perfume. His heart beat with love for his true home across the sea. His bones are the apparatus of God. And his blood sings the divine song.”
“Sang,” the prince said flatly. “And all that may be true, but it does not exempt him from Drepane’s customs. For nearly a century, he lived on this island. That is cause to wonder what, truly, is the nature of home.”
“You tread close to heresy.” The Most Esteemed Surgeon puffed out his chest. “Nicephorus will not live to be an old man. That much we all know. Is this the sort of king you wish to be?”
“I will be no king at all if I do not abide by the laws of my own ancestor’s invention.”
“Careful,” the Most Esteemed Surgeon warned. “Berengar was a conqueror. He was not a god.”
“Yet he created the laws of this land. He built a castle where there was nothing but dirt and stone. Perhaps this is cause to wonder what, truly, is the nature of a god.”
The lightness of the prince’s tone belied the ferocious blasphemy of his words.
“Stop,” the Most Esteemed Surgeon said. He shook himself all over, as though he were a damp dog. “I shall hear no more of this.”
“Very well. But you will perform the desecration nonetheless. It is my decree as prince.”
The Most Esteemed Surgeon drew a breath. At his back, the darkness shuddered and bloomed, threatening to engulf him. The light filtering in from the corridor now seemed dubious, unfaithful. It would only take Liuprand stepping away and letting the door close behind him to plunge them all into irrepressible blackness. This prince who looked in all respects an ethereal child of Seraph yet, with every word, strove to make himself an apostate.
Was it the princess, that Mistress of Teeth? Had she seduced him into this heathen conduct?The true lover believes only that which he thinks will please his beloved.The Most Esteemed Surgeon shuddered. Perhapshe, too, had been too ensorcelled by her beauty; perhaps her comely face hid her poisonous heart. Perhaps their marriage was no more than the union between a dead tree and the rot that consumes it. Perhaps there could not ever be true love between a Seraphine and a native of Drepane.
“Your earthly decree.” The Most Esteemed Surgeon spoke slowly, so that every syllable fell from his mouth like a hard fat raindrop. “It spits in the face of God.”
“Then let God try to prevent me,” Liuprand said.
And then he was gone. He did not leave them all in darkness; the Most Esteemed Surgeon almost wished that he had, for it would have made it easier to loathe the prince—this arrogant, impious prince, who might yet be the ruin of his line. Rather, he propped the door open so that light still drained into the seething black chapel, but it seemed diminished now, a watery light, closer to gray than to gold, as if the prince had taken some of the luminance with him.
The Most Esteemed Surgeon stood with great stillness for a moment, half bathed in the prince’s discarded light. A thin bile pervaded his stomach and then rose up to his throat, so that when he spoke, each word was touched with poison—renewed as he was in his revulsion for these islanders. And yet—he sounded more weary than hateful in the end.
“Take the body to the pit,” he said, nodding toward Truss. Then, tipping his chin at Mordaunt, he said, “And let me not lay eyes on this girl again.”
XXIII
Truss and Mordaunt
The Most Esteemed Surgeon turned on his heel and marched out of the chapel, mumbling irately, white robes flapping like the wings of a flustered seagull. Truss stood and watched for a moment, grieving his master’s turned back. He also grieved for himself the ugly task that awaited. Because he had been in his master’s favor for so long, he had been exempt from performing desecrations; his own hands had remained unsullied, his fingernails clean, his palms uncallused, his back unbent. He did not trust his own dexterity or his own strength. Perhaps with a clumsy stroke of a scalpel, he would let the inheritance of the House of Blood spill out into the dirt. Perhaps his knees would buckle beneath the weight of a trunk full of bones, and they would all clatter to the ground.
He was not, however, concerned about the blasphemy of these actions. Truss had been born on the deck of a ship bound for Drepane, a liminal space that had formed a creature who was neither believer nor apostate. His relationship with God was akin to his relationship with his neighbor’s cat: He would pet it, if it came asking, but he did not care whether it lived or died.
“Trade with me,” Truss said. “I’ll take the girl, and you take the body.”
Mordaunt was his elder. He styled his hair with oils imported from Seraph even though no one ever saw it from under his leech’s hood. Truss had never observed him praying, but occasionally, in moments of great emotion, he heard him murmur, “Dear God.”
“No.” Mordaunt, yet another exiled son of Seraph, shook his head. “Master will know if we swap. He won’t like it.”
“He won’t know. He has gone to stew. Come, you are more charismatic with the dead than I am.”
Throughout all of this, Ninian had not ceased looking thoroughly horrified. Now she dropped her gaze to the floor, white-knuckled hands fisting her skirts, and whispered, “I do not mean to be any trouble to you.”
Truss ignored her. To Mordaunt, he said, “I will play you for it.”
“Play? Play what?”
From the pocket of his robe, Truss removed a trachy. One side had gone green and soft with rust; the other still showed the Dogaressa in profile, though it was an old relief, or perhaps merely an idealistic one, as she was bereft of her second and third chins. He traced the coin’s jagged edges with the pad of his thumb.
“You are a worm,” Mordaunt said, sniffing.
“Here. I will let you have the Dogaressa’s face. That is the lucky side.”
