me, or—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? How can I be sure who you belong to?”
“I belong to myself.”
He shook his head, his gaze going from her face up to the painting of Joshua Godolphin that hung above the bed.
“How can you know that?” he said. “How can you be certain that what you feel for me comes from your heart?”
“What does it matter where it comes from? It’s there. Look at me.”
He refused her demand, his eyes still fixed on the Mad Lord.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“But his legacy—”
“Fuck his legacy!” she said, and suddenly got to her feet, taking hold of the portrait by its heavy, gilded frame and wrenching it from the wall.
Oscar rose to protest, but her vehemence carried the day. The picture came from its hooks with a single pull, and she summarily pitched it across the room. Then she dropped back onto the bed in front of Oscar.
“He’s dead and gone,” she said. “He can’t judge us. He can’t control us. Whatever it is we feel for each other—and I don’t pretend to know what it is—it’s ours.” She put her hands to his face, her fingers woven with his beard. “Let go of the fears,” she said. “Take hold of me instead.”
He put his arms around her.
“You’re going to take me to Yzordderrex, Oscar. Not in a week’s time, not in a few days: tomorrow. I want to go tomorrow. Or else”—her hands dropped from his face— “let me go now. Out of here. Out of your life. I won’t be your prisoner, Oscar. Maybe his mistresses put up with that, but I won’t. I’ll kill myself before I’ll let you lock me up again.”
She said all of this dry-eyed. Simple sentiments, simply put. He took hold of her hands and raised them to his cheeks again, as if inviting her to possess him. His face was full of tiny creases she’d not seen before, and they were wet with tears.
“We’ll go,” he said.
Rooms, lounges, and chapel were a state unto themselves, and he’d long ago sworn to her he would never violate them. She’d decorated the rooms with any lush or luxurious item that pleased her eclectic eye. It was an aesthetic he himself had favored, before his present melancholia. He’d filled the bedrooms now nested by carrion birds with immaculate copies of baroque and rococo furniture, had commissioned the walls to be mirrored like Versailles, and had the toilets gilded. But he’d long since lost his taste for such extravagances, and now the very sight of Quaisoir’s rooms nauseated him so much that if he hadn’t been driven by need he’d have retreated, appalled by their opulence.
He called his wife’s name as he went. First through the lounges, strewn with the leavings of a dozen meals; all were empty. Then into the state room, which was appointed even more grandly than the lounges, but also empty. Finally, to the bedroom. At its threshold, he heard the slap of feet on the marble floor, and Quaisoir’s servant Concupis-centia paddled into view. She was naked, as always, her back a field of multicolored extremities each as agile as an ape’s tail, her forelimbs withered and boneless things, bred to such vestigial condition over generations. Her large green eyes seeped constantly, the feathery fans to either side of her face dipping to brush the moisture from her rouged cheeks.
“Where’s Quaisoir?” he demanded. She drew a coquettish fan of her tails over her lower face and giggled behind them like a geisha. The Autarch had slept with her once, in a kreauchee fugue, and the creature never let him by without a show of flirtation.
“Not now, for Christ’s sake,” he said, disgusted at the display. “I want my wife! Where is she?”
Concupiscentia shook her head, retreating from his raised voice and fist. He pushed past her into the bedroom. If there was any tiny wad of kreauchee to be had, it would be here, in her boudoir, where she lazed away so many days, listening to Concupiscentia sing hymns and lullabies. The chamber smelled like a harbor bordello, a dozen sickly perfumes draping the air like the veils that hung around the bed.