Hale, Ginn

by Wicked Gentleman (lit)

  "Are you all right?" Harper asked once they were alone.

  Belimai slowly cracked his eyes open wide enough to study his surroundings.

  "Too damn bright," Belimai said quietly.

  The marble floor gleamed, reflecting the shafts of sunlight that poured in through the windows. Though tapestries of martyred saints no longer hung from the walls, the estate house still held remnants of its early history. Gilded crosses were etched into the face of each door and over every archway. Narrow, stained glass windows infused the morning light with vivid colors. Tiny, luminous visions of angels in battle and sinners in torment shone from high up in the walls.

  Harper followed Belimai's gaze up to a furious, red-eyed angel of vengeance. The image was one of a hundred that Harper had seen day-in and out during his youth and then again during his studies at St. Bennet's. Like the images of the cross, angels had become so familiar to Harper that he hardly noticed them at all anymore.

  Belimai's pupils dilated and contracted. His lips moved fractionally, but no sound came out. Harper wondered if he was hallucinating.

  "Belimai," Harper said. "It's just a stained glass window."

  "She looks like your sister," Belimai said at last.

  Harper looked back up at the window. Belimai was right. It did look like Joan. Not the sweet, brown-eyed girl of his memories, but the furious woman she had become after Peter Roffcale's murder. The angel hung over him like an accusation.

  "Harper," Belimai whispered.

  "What?" Harper glanced back to Belimai.

  His face had gone a bloodless white. He swayed, and Harper placed an arm on his shoulder to steady him.

  "It's all right," Belimai whispered. "I'm just..." Belimai crumpled. Harper caught him and lifted him up into his arms.

  The closest bedroom was the nursery. Harper doubted that Belimai would appreciate the decor, but at the moment he wasn't likely to notice it. The walls were painted in bright childish colors and Harper's name was embroidered across the trim of the coverlet on the bed.

  As Harper lay Belimai down on the bed, he realized that Belimai had regained consciousness. He stared at the far wall.

  "My God," Belimai muttered, "are there clouds all over the walls?"

  "Yes. You should get out of these clothes." When Harper reached for Belimai's coat, Belimai flinched back from him. Then he suddenly cupped his hands over his face.

  "Are you going to be sick?" Harper felt a slight burst of panic as he glanced around for a basin of some kind.

  "No." Belimai slowly lowered his arms. "For a moment I thought I was in the Inquisition House again." Belimai scowled at the far wall, with its scattering of fluffy white clouds.

  "Where the hell am I?" Belimai demanded.

  "We're in the nursery. And you need to get undressed and lay down." Harper gently tugged off Belimai's shoes and then took his coat. "These are the only rooms that have been improved much in the last hundred years. Hopefully the pumped water and heating will make up for the blue sky and little clouds painted all over the walls and ceiling."

  "Maggots," Belimai mumbled.

  "Maggots?" Harper asked.

  "There are sticky piles of maggots eating through the walls."

  "They're not real," Harper said.

  "I know." Belimai continued staring. "It's quite a convincing hallucination though."

  Belimai seemed oddly calm. Harper wondered if it was because he was too tired to react or if Belimai was already deeply familiar with hallucinations. Harper watched him for a moment. Belimai continued to glare at the wall as if it were to blame for what he saw.

  "You know what the worst thing about them is?" Belimai didn't look at Harper when he spoke.

  "What?"

  "The fact that they're coming from my own mind." Belimai forced an unnaturally bright smile. "All those ugly little bodies are worming out of ugly little me." He continued staring forward at the wall. Harper began to worry.

  "I never realized I was so familiar with maggots," Belimai continued. "So white and pulpy. Their wet little mouths never stop chewing. They glisten."

  "Try not to think about them. You're going to have to try to sleep." Harper gently took hold of Belimai's arm and worked his shirt off him. It was damp with sweat. Harper tossed it aside. The skin of Belimai's chest was deathly pale, and the scars left by the prayer engines looked alarmingly red.

  "I don't want to close my eyes," Belimai said. "I don't want to keep seeing them inside my head."

  "They'll go away, I promise." Harper stripped off the rest of Belimai's clothes. Belimai took a short, sharp breath each time Harper's hands contacted his skin. His yellow eyes searched the far wall. Harper pushed him back down into the blankets.

  "You have to sleep, Belimai," he said.

  "No. I don't," Belimai whispered, but he wasn't even looking at Harper. His eyes were wide and focused on the empty space to Harper's left.

  Belimai's eyes had been open so long that tears welled up and dribbled down the sides of his face.

  "Belimai," Harper said softly. "Close your eyes."

  "Close yours," Belimai hissed.

  "Why?" Harper asked.

  "I don't want you to see me like this." Belimai pulled his gaze away from the ceiling and stared hard at Harper. "Close your eyes."

  Harper closed his eyes.

  He heard Belimai shifting through the blankets.

  Harper cracked his eyes just enough to take in a shadowed impression of Belimai's motions. Belimai crouched on the far side of the bed. He was still for a moment, then he hunched over and vomited into a bedside washbasin. Harper closed his eyes again and gave Belimai his privacy. After a few minutes, the room seemed too quiet. Harper opened his eyes. Belimai knelt on the floor. Harper watched Belimai cram himself under the small bed and collapse.

  As Harper lifted Belimai back up onto the bed, he noticed with alarm that blots of blood colored Belimai's chest. The holy words scarring Belimai's body were bleeding. As Harper watched, a delicate line on Belimai's shoulder split and bright red beads of blood welled up. Letter after letter opened, as if a phantom blade were re-tracing each of the ophorium-packed scars that the prayer engines had laid down.

  Harper reached down to daub the blood away with his handkerchief. Belimai's eyes snapped open.

  "No!" Belimai shouted.

  Before Harper could react, Belimai punched him hard in the chest. Harper grabbed Belimai's hand and caught the other as Belimai took a swipe at his face. Instinctively Harper reached for his handcuffs. He quickly locked Belimai's hands to the headboard. It was easy to do, but Harper hated it. It felt like betrayal to restrain Belimai just as the Inquisition had trained him to do.

  Belimai fought hard against the handcuffs, screaming and kicking. He twisted and jerked until his wrists bled. Then, in absolute exhaustion, he collapsed back to the bed.

  Harper backed away and sat down on the floor. He stared up at the orange sun painted on the ceiling. When he had been a child, it had seemed magically real. The entire world had been as simplistic as that painting. Bright blue days and deep, sleepy nights had encircled his existence while his parents enfolded him in a constant sense of adoration. Harper wished he could still feel so perfectly happy.

  He didn't know when exactly he had lost his hold on that life. Small, corrosive deceptions had steadily eaten away at his innocence. He had learned that his father was actually a stepfather and that Joan was only a stepsister. He'd often lied about that, sometimes even to himself. He had answered to two different names: Foster, at chapel, and Harper, at home. He wore gloves, as his sister and stepfather did, to disguise a Prodigal nature that he did not possess. He still wore them now. Sometimes, when he had been young, he would stare down at his gloved hands and forget that he was not one of them.

  He had told lie upon lie about his family, about his beliefs and even himself. After years of it, all he could remember were the lies.

  When his stepfather had asked him why he was becoming an Inquisitor, Har
per hadn't dared to give him an honest answer. Harper had flushed with shame, knowing that what drove him was loneliness. He had burned with the desire to be with Prodigals. He had ached to caress their bodies, to kiss their hot mouths. But only an Inquisitor could consort with the sons of devils and not be suspected of heresy. He had wanted to find a Prodigal lover but not be hanged for it. He hadn't even known how to say those things. His longing had been shadowed beneath his fear and shame.

  At last he had blurted out a string of lies, claiming a desire to avenge his real father. He had ranted over his family heritage, eight generations of service to the Cross. He had sneered at his stepfather and railed against the Prodigals in Hells Below. His words had tumbled out in a red-faced rush of confused passion. At some point he had crossed the line of forgiveness. Harper could still remember the pain in his stepfather's face.

  Harper looked down at his bare hands. Clean, white priest's hands. They didn't seem like they should be his at all.

  "Master William?" A soft female voice intruded into Harper's thoughts. Mrs. Kately smiled at him from the doorway. She was a plain woman, but her warm smiles lent her beauty.

  "Giles said you brought a friend." She stepped into the room. "I was wondering which rooms you wanted aired—" She stopped the moment she caught sight of Belimai.

  "He's very sick," Harper said. "Delirious."

  Mrs. Kately closed the door behind her and then walked closer to where Belimai lay unconscious and shackled to the headboard. She frowned, but in that slight, controlled manner that was common among household servants.

  "Should I send for a physician?" Mrs. Kately asked at last.

  "No. He should recover on his own if we just let him rest and keep him fed."

  "I see." Mrs. Kately continued to gaze at Belimai. Her placid, professional expression smoothed over any private feelings she might have had. Harper watched her, knowing that Belimai's freedom depended on her complicity.

  He was always surprised at how much younger she was than he expected her to be. She had been pregnant and twice Harper's age when she first came to work at the estate house. At the time, she had struck Harper as a very old woman. She had been an adult and he, a child. The divide between the two had seemed infinite. Now the difference of ten years seemed like nothing.

  Mrs. Kately looked at the ruined heap of clothes Harper had tossed aside.

  "He's going to need something to wear," Mrs. Kately said.

  "Yes," Harper agreed.

  "He resembles the previous Mr. Harper, doesn't he?" she said suddenly.

  "Yes." Harper knew there was no way of hiding Belimai's Prodigal blood from her, not at this point. Many people who had lived all their lives in the country had no idea of what a Prodigal looked like, but Mrs. Kately had lived in the capital when she was a girl. She had only moved out to the countryside once she discovered that she was with child and without husband.

  Harper's stepfather had hired her and insisted that she be ad-dressed as "Mrs.," just as any decent woman would have been. In return Mrs. Kately had kept silent about Harper's stepfather and Joan. Harper hoped that she would be willing to keep Belimai's secret as well.

  Mrs. Kately nodded slowly to herself and then looked back at Harper.

  "He should probably stay here in the nursery until he's better. The other rooms can be drafty. I'll have the cook make soup for him. Hopefully he'll be able to keep that down." Again that minute, a frown twitched at the corners of her mouth. "We're going to have to look after him ourselves until he can be counted on not to give himself away."

  "I'll take care of him," Harper told her.

  "You'll need to sleep sometime." Mrs. Kately said it simply, not as if she were arguing with him, but rather commenting on the matter to herself. "I'll see if I can find some clothes for him, and you're going to need something to sit on other than the floor." She looked pointedly at where Harper sat on the floor.

  Harper stood, suddenly realizing how foolish he must have looked. He hadn't hunched despondently on the floor since he had been a child. Standing, he was much taller than Mrs. Kately. She had to crane her head back a little to meet his gaze.

  "I'll bring something up to eat as soon as the cook has it ready." Mrs. Kately started for the door.

  "Thank you, for everything," Harper said.

  Mrs. Kately looked back and suddenly gave him a full smile.

  "It's good to have you back home, Master William," she said.

  "It's good to be back," Harper replied, and for the first time in years, he realized that he wasn't lying.

  Chapter Six

  Handcuffs

  Belimai slept often, and he dreamed of horrible things. Harper watched as, time after time, Belimai jerked awake, choking on a scream. On the fifth day Belimai's cries burst into a demonic roar. His voice tore through the air, exploding outward like thunder. Two windows shattered, and Harper dropped to the floor to avoid the rending force.

  When Harper stood again, Belimai lay on his side, his arms still stretched out and cuffed to the headboard. He opened his eyes and slowly tried to pull his arms down to his sides. He frowned at the handcuffs and then glanced at Harper.

  "What did you do to my hands?" Belimai asked as he again tried to bring his arms down.

  "Handcuffs," Harper said.

  "I had no idea you were in the mood for romance." Belimai's voice was weak but far calmer than it had been in days.

  Belimai looked around the room as if he had just arrived there. He frowned at the clusters of white clouds, which burst out like rashes across the blue walls. The big gold sun painted over the ceiling received the same disturbed scowl.

  "You're in the nursery," Harper explained as Belimai squinted at a huge red toy chest across the room.

  "Were you trying to share the horror of your childhood?" Belimai asked.

  Harper was pleased to hear cynicism ring through Belimai's voice. For days Belimai had only hissed garbled curses and strings of disconnected words. His voice had been an animal's, able to convey nothing more than his pain. Now for the first time, Belimai's intellect seemed to have returned.

  "The nursery's farthest from the servant's quarters, and it's the best-insulated part of the house. I thought it would be wisest if we kept things as quiet as possible," Harper said.

  Belimai nodded slowly and then sniffed at the air. He frowned. "Something stinks." He sniffed again and then glanced down at his own blood-caked body and the stained sheets that hung across him. "It's me, isn't it?"

  "Give me a few minutes. I'll get some clean bedding and a basin of warm water." Harper stepped back from the bedside. "And my hands?" Belimai rattled the handcuffs. "I'll get the keys." Harper had the keys in his pocket, but he wasn't sure how long Belimai's coherence would last. "It may take me a little while to get everything. Just rest and relax."

  Belimai nodded, though Harper noticed that he continued to shift his hands against the cuffs. He pulled and squeezed his palms back and forth, attempting to work his way out of them. Harper gathered clean linens as well as a basin of warm water and a sponge.

  When he returned, he found Belimai passed out again with one arm free and dangling off the bed. Harper pulled a chair up to the bedside and began sponging Belimai clean. Belimai opened his eyes blearily.

  "I keep dreaming that I'm back in the Inquisition House. They want Sariel's name. I hate being in that place."

  Harper sponged the sweat from Belimai's face and then washed his throat and shoulders.

  "If you feel up to it tomorrow, I'll show you around the grounds. Try dreaming about that instead."

  "Thank you, Harper." Belimai was almost unconscious when the words slipped out. "I don't usually thank you, but I should."

  "You're welcome," Harper replied. Belimai fell back asleep. Harper rolled Belimai over a few inches and pulled the soiled sheets from under his body.

  Years ago when he had been at college, Edward had shown him how to change sheets from under a sleeping man. Harper had spent a few weeks
after that stealing the sheets from under his fellow seminary students. He had gotten rather good at it. He had even managed to steal the linens from under a visiting abbot once.

  Harper shoved the bloodied bedding out into the hall. Mrs. Kately could decide if they were worth washing or if she just wanted to burn them. Harper dropped back down in the chair at Belimai's bed-side. Absently he wondered how he would replace the shattered windows. They could wait until later; for the moment he enjoyed the light breeze that drifted into the room. It was the first time in well over a week that Harper hadn't been preoccupied with some immediate emergency.

  He wondered what he and Belimai would do tomorrow. An excitement began to build in him. They were free to do whatever they pleased. These lands were his, and Belimai was finally well enough to enjoy them with him. He wondered what part of the estate Belimai would like best.

  Harper smiled to himself. Perhaps this time he would stay long enough to actually have those torch-holders refitted.

  "Daydreaming?" A woman's voice suddenly broke through his thoughts.

  Harper leapt to his feet and spun to see his sister sitting just inside the frame of the open window. Her cropped hair drooped in dirty strands around her face. Dust coated her jacket and pants. She smiled with hesitant slowness, as if she were cautiously trespassing on ground that used to be hers.

  Harper also smiled, but he didn't rush forward and sweep her up in a hug as he once would have. She seemed out of place in-doors, like some mythic child raised by beasts in the wilderness. The black nails that she used to spend hours clipping and bleaching now jutted from her finger tips like talons. Her red eyes roamed restlessly from Harper's face to his hands, and then to the gun holster hanging below his left arm.

  "It's been a while," Harper said. "How have you been?"

  "Can't complain. You?"

  "Busy." Harper frowned at the awkwardness of their exchange. They sounded like distant acquaintances at a wake. "Have you been getting enough food? You look thinner."

  "I've been just fine, Will. Mica's been teaching me to tell fortunes. I've been making a good living. The people at Good Commons have been watching out for me."