go dead…
“And now,” whispered the man in black, “you are almost through.”
And then he had sawed halfway through his thumb until there was only the barest bit of bone resisting him, and with a wet crunch the blade bit through and his thumb was off, lying there detached on the table, the severed joint pouring dark blood onto the wood. The blood pooled around his wrist and his fingers and dripped onto the floor around his feet, and all he could do was helplessly watch, staring at the raw, dark-red wound where his thumb used to be.
He shrieked in pain, in horror, in misery. And then the man spoke again.
“Where should the blade travel next, Armand?” said the man in black cheerily. “Perhaps an eye? Your ear? Your nose? Or should I have you part your organs of generation from your crotch, and feast upon them as you once did that pie?”
“No!” cried Moretti. “Please! I…I don’t understand…”
“Understand what?”
“Understand why you’re doing this to me…”
“Really?” he said. “I thought that would have been quite obvious. I am doing this, Armand, because I want you to know what it’s like for someone to know you. And though you’re not a particularly unique specimen in this city…Well. I don’t see why you should go unpunished.”
Moretti shut his eyes and wept.
“This is what it is, Armand,” whispered the voice of the man in black. “To be a slave. To be owned. To be a thing. Do you wish it to stop?”
“Yes!” screamed Moretti.
“Then you know what you must do. Sign the paper. Give me the Mountain. Give it to me now, Armand, and I will grant you a reprieve from this fate—for a moment, at least.”
Moretti opened his eyes and stared at the negotiations parchment before him. He knew that if he signed this he would likely be murdered for it. A hypatus was allowed tremendous purchasing powers, with little direct supervision, but even a founderkin—someone related to the founding family—would probably get their throat slit over something like this.
“If I do this,” said Moretti, “I’ll die.”
“You know,” said the man in black, “I had thought as much…”
“Then—why not make me do it?” he said. “You could just compel me, just like…” He shut his eyes as his severed thumb squirted blood down his hand again. “Just like this…”
“Oh, no, no, no,” the man in black said gently. “That wouldn’t do at all. It’s so much better when you learn yourself, isn’t it?”
“Learn what?” said Moretti, choking back tears.
“Learn what your city has forgotten,” he said. “What men of power have forgotten time and time again, throughout history—that there is always, always something mightier.”
* * *
—
Afterward, when it was done, young Alfredo Participazio walked through the streets of the Michiel enclave next to the man in black, who strolled along with an air of cheerful curiosity.
“My, my,” he said, studying the glass towers and shimmering halls and its many carnival banners rippling in the breeze. “Such a lovely place. Such a lovely, lovely place.”
Participazio wasn’t sure why he, a first-level clerk, had been ripped out of his bed in the middle of the night on Founder Dandolo’s orders. He wasn’t sure why Founder Dandolo had ordered him to put together the paperwork for this bizarre purchase, and escort this very strange man into the Michiel enclave. And he especially wasn’t sure how the purchase had gone through—or, even more, why it had been done at all.
Or why there had been all that screaming.
“Such wonderful colors,” said the man in black as he watched a wall shimmer and change as the wind flowed through the streets. “Do you come here often, boy?”
“Ah…no, sir. I don’t.”
“Hmm. Maybe you should.”
“Sir…may I ask something?”
The man in black shrugged.
“What was the purpose of our visit here today?”
He considered the question. “Have you heard, pray tell, of Hantiochia, boy?”
“Ah…no, sir.”