The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(7)

“Monsieur le Comte,” she said graciously, nodding him to a damask chair in her salon. The air was scented with candle wax and flesh—flesh of a far better quality than that on offer in the court. Even so, Madame had come from that court and kept her connections there alive; she made no bones about that. She didn’t blink at his clothes, but her nostrils flared at him, as though she picked up the scent of the dives and alleys he had come from.

“Good evening, Madame,” he said, smiling at her, and lifted the burlap bag. “I brought a small present for Leopold. If he’s awake?”

“Awake and cranky,” she said, eyeing the bag with interest. “He’s just shed his skin—you don’t want to make any sudden moves.”

Leopold was a remarkably handsome—and remarkably large—python; an albino, quite rare. Opinion of his origins was divided; half of Madame Fabienne’s clientele held that she had been given the snake by a noble client—some said the late King himself—whom she had cured of impotence. Others said the snake had once been a noble client, who had refused to pay her for services rendered. Rakoczy had his own opinions on that one, but he liked Leopold, who was ordinarily tame as a cat and would sometimes come when called—as long as you had something he regarded as food in your hand when you called.

“Leopold! Monsieur le Comte has brought you a treat!” Fabienne reached across to an enormous wicker cage and flicked the door opened, withdrawing her hand with sufficient speed as to indicate just what she meant by “cranky.”

Almost at once, a huge yellow head poked out into the light. Snakes had transparent eyelids, but Rakoczy could swear the python blinked irritably, swaying up a coil of its monstrous body for a moment before plunging out of the cage and swarming across the floor with amazing rapidity for such a big creature, tongue flicking in and out like a seamstress’s needle.

He made straight for Rakoczy, jaws yawning as he came, and Rakoczy snatched up the bag just before Leopold tried to engulf it—or Rakoczy—whole. He jerked aside, hastily seized a rat, and threw it. Leopold flung a coil of his body on top of the rat with a thud that rattled Madame’s spoon in her teabowl, and before the company could blink, he had whipped the rat into a half-hitch knot of coil.

“Hungry as well as ill-tempered, I see,” Rakoczy remarked, trying for nonchalance. In fact, the hairs were prickling over his neck and arms. Normally, Leopold took his time about feeding, and the violence of the python’s appetite at such close quarters had shaken him.

Fabienne was laughing, almost silently, her tiny sloping shoulders quivering beneath the green Chinese silk tunic she wore.

“I thought for an instant he’d have you,” she remarked at last, wiping her eyes. “If he had, I shouldn’t have had to feed him for a month!”

Rakoczy bared his teeth in an expression that might have been taken for a smile.

“We cannot let Leopold go hungry,” he said. “I wish to make a special arrangement for Madeleine—it should keep the worm up to his yellow arse in rats for some time.”

Fabienne put down her handkerchief and regarded him with interest.

“Leopold has two cocks, but I can’t say I’ve ever noticed an arse. Twenty écus a day. Plus two extra if she needs clothes.”

He waved an easy hand, dismissing this.

“I had in mind something longer.” He explained what he had in mind and had the satisfaction of seeing Fabienne’s face go quite blank with stupefaction. It didn’t stay that way more than a few moments; by the time he had finished, she was already laying out her initial demands.

When they finally came to agreement, they had drunk half a bottle of decent wine, and Leopold had swallowed the rat. It made a small bulge in the muscular tube of the snake’s body but hadn’t slowed him appreciably; the coils slithered restlessly over the painted canvas floorcloth, glowing like gold, and Rakoczy saw the patterns of his skin like trapped clouds beneath the scales.

“He is beautiful, no?” Fabienne saw his admiration and basked a little in it. “Did I ever tell you where I got him?”

“Yes, more than once. And more than one story, too.” She looked startled, and he compressed his lips. He’d been patronizing her establishment for no more than a few weeks, this time. He’d known her fifteen years before—though only a couple of months, that time. He hadn’t given his name then, and a madam saw so many men that there was little chance of her recalling him. On the other hand, he also thought it unlikely that she troubled to recall to whom she’d told which story, and this seemed to be the case, for she lifted one shoulder in a surprisingly graceful shrug and laughed.

“Yes, but this one is true.”

“Oh, well, then.” He smiled and, reaching into the bag, tossed Leopold another rat. The snake moved more slowly this time and didn’t bother to constrict its motionless prey, merely unhinging its jaw and engulfing it in a single-minded way.

“He is an old friend, Leopold,” she said, gazing affectionately at the snake. “I brought him with me from the West Indies, many years ago. He is a Mystère, you know.”

“I didn’t, no.” Rakoczy drank more wine; he had sat long enough that he was beginning to feel almost sober again. “And what is that?” He was interested—not so much in the snake but in Fabienne’s mention of the West Indies. He’d forgotten that she claimed to have come from there, many years ago, long before he’d known her the first time.