Page 33 of Grave Flowers
Another platform had a ring encircled in lacelike iron. Two shirtless men rounded each other, jabbing out with their bare fists. Men and women screamed at them to gouge out their opponent’s eyes and tear off their ears. Bets, written in ink on scraps of paper, were pinned to aboard, and an hourglass emptied of sand held money to be won and lost.
Just across the way on a parallel platform, a half-naked woman lay on a canopied bed of satin sheets as a man bent over her. He drove a picture underneath her skin with a needle. Blood rolled down her sides and into the sheets, where it soaked into the folds of glistening fabric. It reminded me of the teardrops on Yorick’s face. Disconcertingly, right across from that one was a platform set with petite round tables covered in porcelain plates and teacups featuring different floral and pastoral designs. People dressed in frilly clothes drank from the teacups and ate tiny sandwiches and even tinier cakes.
I looked at the levels, trying to see which platform I needed. Subterranean sounds—drips of water against stone, croaks of frogs and crickets, and groaning echoes from deep within the cavern’s belly—disorientated me. Light streamed in from a glass ceiling, as though this area were a captured specimen meant to be examined under a lens, all of humanity’s enticements and excitements prepared for some giant eye to come and stare within.
Clutching the rail for support, I peered over the side. My stomach twisted at the severity of the drop. I forced myself to steady, for once grateful for my dance training. Finally, I found what I was looking for: a stall flashing with so much silver, it was nearly blinding. The sign read SILVERLININGS: PURESILVER, 100% CUSAN. It was hardly reassuring, consideringCrusanwas misspelled, but it was exactly where I needed to go. Underneath it was Crus’s motto,we fight.Thetwas faded.
Carefully, I stepped down. The stairs swayed and trembled. I gripped the rail, not daring to let go. Suddenly, one of the fighting men took an extra-hard blow and stumbled back. His weight flipped him over the rail. The crowd split between screaming in delight and shouting in rage as he plummeted into the abyss. My stomach plummeted with him. The abyss was so deep that he simply disappeared. I never heard his body strike bottom.
By the time I reached the silver platform, I was panting with fear. The silver sellist inspected me. She was an older, bony woman with wispy receding hair. Her frame was so frail that she might have elicited compassion if it weren’t for the macabre way her wares had melted into her. Every tooth was silver—but corrupted. The gums surrounding them were horrifyingly bright red and oozed clear liquid. Stitches of silver formed tracks across the thin skin of her cheeks and the backs of her hands. Festering wounds surrounded every stitch. When her eyes focused on me, it took all my will to stop myself from recoiling. Liquid silver had been injected into her eyeballs. It filled the whites and infringed on the blue pupils.
“Why, hello.” Her voice rang like a silver bell, and it was hard to tell if her chirpy Crusan accent was fake or not. She smiled broadly, making her thin lips disappear, leaving only the mouthful of inflamed gums and tarnished silver gleaming at me. “I have all the best silver from Crus. What do you want? A soup tureen? Brazening silver? Some jewelry perhaps? Jewelry, it must be! I have anything you might want!” An apothecary cabinet lay on its back, every opening stuffed full. She bent over it, diving her hands into the hodgepodge of chains, medallions, tiaras, rings, and earrings hanging from the cabinet like entrails. Several stray silver teeth were mixed in as well. She withdrew two large handfuls and held them out to me.
“Actually,” I said, “I need only a coin. A coin from Crus.”
“Only one coin?” Disappointed, she lowered her fistfuls of jewelry.
“Yes.”
With a loud jingle, she returned the jewelry. She studied me. Then her face lit up.
“I have just the one!” she cried, seamlessly switching tactics to oversell me a counterfeit coin. She scurried over to a rolltop desk and flung up the top. Silver items spewed out. Rummaging through the desk, she opened and closed tiny drawers and pulled out hidden compartments, muttering to herself. She plucked something up and turned with greatflourish. “You’re in luck. It’s remarkable I still have it. Finest Crusan silver, as pure as can be, blessed by the Son.” She held a rusty coin between her fingertips. The beds of her fingernails, I noticed, had also been injected with liquid silver. I reached for it, but she closed her hand around it. “No, no. Payment, please, payment.”
“How much?” I asked.
The delicate muscles in her face jerked, making the silver stitches dance. She considered me carefully. I knew she matched her prices to her customers, and I was wearing a fine silk dress from the palace.
“Five hundred coins.” She threw out the extravagant number with the careless abandon of someone casting a fishing line at the moon.
“Twenty coins,” I countered. Even that was ridiculous, considering the rusty coin I was buying was worthless.
“Done!”
I counted out the payment while her eyes bulged in excitement. Hastily, she thrust the coin into my hand and turned away, as though I might change my mind. I examined the coin. It was worse than I’d thought. There wasn’t a hint of real silver in it. It was almost black with rust. Orange and green specks pebbled its surface. The edges were unfinished, and its shape was warped. No shop in any of the kingdoms would accept it.
It was perfect.
Quickly, I slipped the coin into my pocket with the book and started to climb the stairs. The severe height made my stomach turn. I went slowly, keeping my eyes fixed on the next step and holding my breath. Despite my fear of heights, I was triumphant. I’d gotten just what I had come for.
Suddenly, I ran into someone. My breath exhaled from me in a single gust. Stale wine. Pipe smoke. Cologne. The scents of a previous night spent merrymaking in a way most unbecoming of a prince struck my nose before my mind processed what was happening.
I loved the smell.
I knew I was in trouble.
IMMORTALITIES
Grave Flower Experiment Four
Appearance
Very lovely grave flowers, truly elegant and ethereal. Their petals look like butterflies’ wings and are translucent, made from gossamer stretched across an intricate scaffold of membranes. I am most interested in these because I do not wish to die. My wife says I have lots of hubris to wish such a thing. I don’t think so. I think Radix would benefit if I were the eternal king. If this works out, I’ll kill my son so I might be the eternal king without anyone challenging me. Maybe it’s a good thing we haven’t had any other sons! I would’ve had to off them too.
Behavior without invocation
They make a soft, whispery noise that makes you wish to suspend all of time so you might hear them. For a grave flower based on immortality, theycertainly are fascinated by death. Whenever the starvelings kill a creature, they lean to it and make chittering, biting sounds as though reprimanding them.
Complications
