The Sea Peoples(73)
Wilde’s cold voice took on a teasing note: “NB: Has embezzled sums amounting to $30,000 since March 20, 1919, excellent family, and secured present position through uncle’s influence. Father, President of Seaforth Bank.”
Hildred Castaigne looked at the man on the floor with the same disinterested distaste that he had shown the cockroaches.
“Get up, Vance,” Wilde said with a purring, threatening gentleness.
Vance rose, his bloodshot eyes on Wilde, his long face doughy and expressionless, save for a thin trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth that he mopped at absently with the sleeve of his jacket.
“He will do as we suggest now,” observed Wilde. “I shall read him the history of the Imperial Dynasty.”
Hildred stood nodding approval. “Has he become half-witted?” he said. “His eyes are very blank.”
“It is of no consequence. Half his wits will suffice for the work we have for him.”
The Boisean was growing agitated as Wilde read; John tried to grasp the cause as Wilde’s voice came to him in fragments:
“Dynasty in Carcosa . . . the lakes from which power flows through Hastur . . . Aldebaran . . . the mystery of the Hyades . . . Cassilda and Camilla . . . what swims many-armed through the cloudy depths of Demhe . . . Lake of Hali . . .”
At that the other presence, the Boisean, writhed in anguish.
Wilde’s voice went on, merciless: “The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. And the dynasty descends to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and the Phantom of Truth, to Aldones—”
Then he tossed aside his manuscript and notes. “Then came the Last King, to scourge clean the filth of—”
Castaigne wasn’t listening now; the story was graven in his mind in any case. Instead he watched as Wilde threw up his head, his long arms stretched out in a magnificent gesture of pride and power.
Oh, St. Michael protect me! John thought; he knew he was a reasonably brave man, but even in this disembodied state he felt raw terror. His eyes, they’re glowing now. They’re green and they’re glowing.
At last Wilde finished, and pointing to Hildred cried: “The cousin of the King!”
Castaigne’s head was up too. “I am alone worthy of the Imperial Crown of America. My cousin Louis is weak, and he has not received the Yellow Sign nor bowed in worship before Uoht or pledged himself to the King. He must go into exile and remain without an heir, or he must die! Above all, he must not marry Constance Hawberk, for she is the daughter of the Marquis of Avonshire and that would bring England into the question.”
“Yes . . . yes, I understand,” Vance said; a little blood mixed with the spittle on his chin, from his bitten tongue. “Command me!”
Castaigne took up another bound list, and fanned it open to display the long list of names.
“Each of these men has received the Yellow Sign, which no living human being dares disregard. The city, the state, the whole land, are ready to rise and tremble before the Pallid Mask! The time has come! The people shall know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa!”
Vance leaned on the table, his head buried in his hands, sobbing dryly. Wilde drew a rough sketch on the margin of yesterday’s Herald with a bit of lead pencil. Hildred recognized it as a plan of Hawberk’s rooms. Then he wrote in his neat hand on a blank sheet of paper.
“This is an accredited warrant of death, from the Eternal Emperor’s own hand,” Wilde said solemnly, and brought out sealing-wax and seal.
Castaigne signed it with a shaking hand; John saw the scrawl as it appeared, but it took an instant for him to read the Latin because the man who wrote had his attention fixed elsewhere:
Hildred-Rex.
“My first writ of execution,” he said.
“But not the last,” Wilde said. “As Your Majesty said, a new broom sweeps clean.”
He clambered down from his high chair to the floor and unlocking the cabinet, took a long square box from the first shelf. A new knife lay in the tissue paper inside and Hildred picked it up, noticing the glyphs graven into the watermarked steel; one was the Yellow Sign, but the others were unfamiliar and writhed at the edges of his attention. He handed it to Vance, who jerked as if struck with a massive spark as his fingers touched the unpleasantly greasy-looking hilt of carved raw bone; then he handed him the death-writ and the plan of Hawberk’s apartment.
“You may go,” Wilde said, and Vance shambled out, lurching like a derelict from the Bowery.
The knife gleamed in his hand, but it was curiously hard to see, as if it misdirected the eye.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
Deor jerked upright from where he had been leaning against the wall that separated them from Wilde’s chambers.
“What?” Thora said.
Pip and Toa waited wordless; Deor looked shaken, his narrow clever face staring and beaded with more sweat than the cool spring night could account for.
“Something has been unsheathed,” he said. “A weapon, malignant as Tyrfing. Quickly! We must stop it. The time of testing approaches.”
Pip ghosted to the door and looked out through a narrow crack, holding a hand out with fingers spread to check the others until she’d made sure of the way; they didn’t have any lights on inside, so the opening would be darkness within darkness, and her eyes perceived the dimly lit hallway as bright. A tall horse-faced man was shambling out of Wilde’s rooms.