The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,93
I rushed back to his workroom, and there I discovered my friend stretched upon the floor, on his back, his glasses knocked askew and the eyes behind them open wide and staring sightlessly at whatever horror it is that doomed men see. In his hand was clutched the foul mechanism, glowing cherry red and pulsing like some loathsome organ. Even as I watched, the glow faded, and the thing returned to its former pale appearance – but no paler now than the man who held it, drained of every last drop of blood and stone cold dead.’
Quare could not repress a shudder.
‘I was not eager to touch the thing. Nor did I have the chance to do so. Before I could act, a half-dozen of my fellow servants burst into the workroom – men, I saw at once, loyal to Sir Thaddeus. There was nothing I could do against so many, not without revealing myself, and so I stood aside as they gathered the notes that Magnus had been writing upon his desk and, with a callousness that injured my heart to see, wrested the timepiece from my poor friend’s fingers – which, strangely, were already locked in rigor, though I do not believe he had expired more than ten minutes before my entry. Nonetheless, such was the case, and to free the timepiece from his frozen grasp the servant had first to break those supple fingers, which, as you well know, sir, were as beautiful and well-made as the rest of him was stunted and grotesque – the hands of an angel affixed to the body of a gargoyle. I felt as if I were witnessing a desecration, and I confess I had to look away, though I do not believe I shall ever be able to forget the sounds of his bones snapping like twigs. But forgive me – I did not mean to cause you distress!’
And indeed, Quare had found Longinus’s account of Master Magnus’s end distressing, but not entirely for the reasons the other assumed. Now he too stood, leaning over the table to demand of Longinus: ‘Did you say two-thirty?’
‘Yes. Why? Is there something significant about that time?’
Quare sighed, shoulders drooping. ‘You could say that. It was approximately the time of my death.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘There is a particular detail of my brief acquaintance with Mr Aylesford that I withheld from Sir Thaddeus, for reasons that will become obvious. Following the brawl at the Pig and Rooster, Aylesford and I took refuge at the lodgings of one of the barmaids. I was all but insensible – I realize now that I had been drugged; indeed, I believe that the assassin slipped something into all of our drinks that night, to facilitate his cowardly butchery, but for some reason the drug was slower to act on me than on my unfortunate fellows. My last memory of the night is staggering through empty streets, supported by Aylesford and Clara. When I awoke the next morning, Aylesford was gone, and Clara reported having woken during the night to find Aylesford and myself engaged in an act of sodomy – though in fact, what she witnessed was a crime far worse. Murder. For as I discovered shortly thereafter, I had been stabbed in the back – a wound angled towards the heart, sir, and deep enough to have reached it. Yet there was little blood, no pain to speak of, and, obviously, no death. You may imagine the look of shock on Aylesford’s face when I surprised him later at my lodgings! Because I could not account in any rational way for having survived such a wound, I looked to the irrational, and fixed upon my experiences with the hunter earlier that day, when the device had drunk my blood; it seemed to me that the two events must be related. Somehow, though I could not guess by what means, the watch had saved me – had restored me to life, or, rather, taken away my death. I do not know the exact moment that Aylesford slipped his knife into my heart, but it was early in the morning by Clara’s testimony. Surely the fact of Master Magnus’s death at approximately the same time can be no coincidence – not with that infernal watch involved. Just as, earlier, it had taken the lives of all those cats, so, too, or so I must believe, it transferred my death to Master Magnus, and, perhaps, his life to me.’ Quare slumped