Page 22 of The Devils

The Magic of Deportment

The difference between a true magician and a mere sorcerer is, it needs hardly to be said, the proper apparatus.

The conjurer’s circles had been calibrated with compass and callipers, and fastened to the warped floor with silver screws cast at midnight – a flourish Balthazar had by no means expected a gangster to provide. Genuine Eritrean myrrh candles had been set at the seven stations, and Balthazar was halfway through inscribing the heavenly verses around them in Punic and ancient Greek. He was a man who had always insisted on the best of both.

His delight at being engaged in a serious arcane undertaking after so long trapped in the banal was prodigious, wielding awl and hammer, inscribing the symbols, really drilling into the details. He loved runes. Runes never disappointed, or answered back, or made constant acid comments designed to strip away the few shreds of dignity one had managed to retain.

It was hardly his own private laboratory, but considering the time he had been given to work, the circumstances he had been forced to work under, and the wretched companions he had been obliged to work around, he considered the results remarkable. These last few months had, without doubt, been the most testing of his life, but Balthazar had finally procured everything he required.

Everything required to gain entry to the illusionist’s house.

And everything required to break the Pope’s binding.

He had to force down an acrid burp at the thought. He found it helped calm his continually churning stomach if he steered his mind away from escape or revenge and focused instead on the present task. Enabling this mismatched company of horribles to burgle an unspecified object from an enchanted building, in order to render it into the hands of a leading member of the criminal fraternity occupying a stolen monastery, in order to secure passage to Troy with a view to installing an orphaned urchin with a strong air of street trash upon its throne. So much for holy missions.

He glanced towards the chosen puppet, but the so-called Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos was entirely absorbed in laboriously forming letters on some scrap paper, bottom lip wedged behind her upper teeth with concentration and an inky smudge on one lightly freckled cheek from her efforts. Brother Diaz watched this performance with the gormless grin of a parent in raptures over their own offspring doing something entirely unremarkable. Small wonder that he was utterly ignorant of what Balthazar was really up to, the man was the very epitome of incognisance. Not that his congregation were any less oblivious, what a shock they would receive when—

This time he actually regurgitated some bitter grit and had to slap his breastbone. Baron Rikard glanced up from his book with his habitual look of wry amusement, as if he was party to some joke that everyone else would only later discover. Perhaps he alone of the group had sufficient arcane expertise to guess at Balthazar’s true intentions. If so, he made no move to expose the subterfuge. Hedging his bets, no doubt. Hoping to copy Balthazar’s method when he finally did manage to break this cursed binding—

He coughed up more bile and was obliged yet again to direct his thoughts away from freedom. Princess Alexia on the throne, Troy returned to the arms of Mother Church, the elves flung back into the east in disarray, Her Holiness clapping her little hands with delight, et cetera, et cetera—

‘I’m shit at this!’ snapped Alex, crunching the paper up in her inky fist and flinging it away.

‘Nonsense, Your Highness.’ Brother Diaz dutifully crossed the room to retrieve her pitiable scrawlings and began to smooth them out. ‘You’re making marvellous progress.’

The baron gave an explosive snort. ‘Towards what? If she is to rule an Empire, she does not need to learn how to write, she needs to learn how to be . Are you not the granddaughter of one of history’s greatest Empresses? Show some pride, girl!’

Alex frowned back at him. ‘What have I got to be proud of?’

‘Find something, or invent it.’ Baron Rikard tossed his book aside and sat up. ‘For someone who made their living lying you are remarkably bad at it.’

‘Well, it wasn’t a very good living.’

‘Ha! Amusing. A quick wit is a fine start and cannot be easily taught. But you must have some grandeur, too. Some stature .’

Alexia frowned down at herself. ‘I’m short as a shit.’

‘You do not have to be tall . My wife Lucrezia was smaller than you but, sweet Saviour, she towered over any room lucky enough to receive her! Up, I will show you. Up, up, up!’

As Alex stood, looking faintly scared, Baron Rikard began to prowl around her, then to prod at her with a pointed finger.

‘In there. Out here. Up. No! God, no. You do not merely thrust your chest at the sky, believe me, you have very little there to offer. The head rises, the neck becomes long – your neck is very fine, you see, so slender, you are a swan, not a seagull, not a duck, do not quack.’ And he touched her under the jaw and pushed up. ‘Imagine you are lifted by the crown. Your head is light, not full of weighty filth, not doubts and suspicions, but only high hopes and good wishes.’ He took a strand of hair between finger and thumb and pulled her head upwards. ‘There, there, there.’

‘Ow, ow, ow!’

‘A mere fraction of the pain it has caused me to see you skulk into a room. The shoulders then come back – sweet Saint Stephen, no! You are not cracking a nut between your shoulder blades, they scoop under, there is a structure . You are not hiding , imagine you are there to display your clothes – to sell them to a discerning customer! Yes, better, strong but soft.’

‘Strong and soft?’

‘Exactly! Now, the pelvis tilts – good grief, not back – arse in , such as it is, groin up , such as it is, stomach tight . At least pretend you have a spine. You are not uncooked tripe, you are sculpted from marble! And we walk. No, we walk . No, erect, like a human rather than a beast of the fields, imagine that. No, not clomping on your heels like Vigga Ullasdottr, no, not swaggering like Baptiste, on the balls of your feet! They caress the ground with the tender touch of a lover, weightless. Yes! Your big toes follow one another in a direct line from here to your desires. Own the room! This is your ground! Yes! Here she is! Her Highness the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos has at last arrived!’

‘Huh.’ Balthazar paused in his work to look over. The girl did indeed appear to be undergoing a dramatic transformation. ‘What is this magic?’

‘The magic of deportment !’ sang Baron Rikard, with a twirl of his fingers. ‘How does it feel?’

‘Like torture,’ croaked Alex, prancing across the room with the expression of someone being tortured.

‘Good! It’s working.’

‘Can it stop?’

‘The moment you stop being a princess.’

‘Er …’

‘Oh, you are a princess all the time? Then you must hold yourself like a princess all the time. You must eat, sleep, and defecate with imperial dignity. It becomes instinct. Then people cannot but catch an intoxicating whiff of royalty whenever you approach, rather than …’ and the vampire wrinkled his nose, ‘your accustomed air of the gutter.’

‘This can’t be natural.’

‘Only because you, a thoroughbred racehorse, have been kept in a sack for seventeen years. We must make it natural, and we must therefore attend to this self-pitying wreckage above the neck.’ Baron Rikard patted her cheeks firmly enough to make a faint slapping sound. ‘So! We smile. No, we smile . Not a skull’s rictus, you are not graded on acreage of teeth. Less with the mouth, more with the eyes . Not comedy, my dear, not pratfalls, but the happy end to a drama. Earnest and emotional. It has all turned out exactly as you hoped. Whoever you are with is the very person you most desired to see!’ The vampire pranced, and smiled, as if surrounded by beloved well-wishers, and Alex pranced, and smiled, matching him step for step. ‘The world is a box of treats and you are humbled to be asked to pick one. Oh, which shall it be? Everything looks so fine! Yes! Very good, with the lashes. Her Highness, so dignified but so accessible. Her Highness, such humility, such grace, all Twelve Virtues in one! Charm them! Delight them! Steal their hearts!’

‘Brother Diaz,’ said Alex, a hand to her chest, her face all quiet concern. ‘I am so glad that you could accompany me to Troy, and truly grateful for your instruction in penmanship.’ Balthazar was almost as surprised as the monk. Even her voice was changed: higher, cleaner, clearer.

‘Marvellous!’ The baron clapped his hands, eyes twinkling. ‘I almost believe you myself! If only I had been so quick a study as you I would never—’

The door of the apartment clattered open and Jakob of Thorn blundered through backwards, dragging something wrapped in sackcloth. Marangon, with a sheen of sweat across his brow, had the other end. The foot end, one might have said, because Balthazar knew a shrouded corpse when he saw one. Few people better.

‘Jakob of Thorn!’ sang Alex, clasping her hands and fluttering her lashes. ‘The hero of the Rolling Bear, to whom I owe my life. I could not be more glad to see you returned!’

Jakob dumped the body and straightened, kneading his back. ‘What?’

Now Vigga blundered in, manhandling a second corpse-shaped bundle with an unhappy Baptiste at the foot end.

‘And Vigga Ullasdottr!’ The princess pranced over to her. ‘What a wonderful vest. Is that new? Is that silk?’

‘Fuck, no.’ Vigga looked from her stained vest to Alex, baffled. ‘Are you drunk? Is she drunk?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ murmured Baron Rikard. He had already slumped back on his threadbare couch, focused on his book with his usual lazy disinterest.

Princess Alexia looked somewhat crestfallen, but Balthazar had greater concerns, already squatting eagerly beside one of the shrouded bundles and beginning to unwrap it. ‘The Visentin twins, I presume?’ He pulled the sacking away to reveal the face. A rather noble visage, in his opinion, with a prominent nose.

‘Ugh,’ muttered Alex, stepping back with one hand over her mouth. ‘That reeks.’

Balthazar ignored her. A necromancer cannot afford to be put off by a mild fragrance of putrefaction, after all. The skin had the expected greenish-blue tinge and some marbling of early decay, but the flesh beneath appeared sound.

‘Excellent!’ he murmured, beginning to unwrap the sister, who had a sizeable wart on her cheek but if anything was in even better condition than her sibling. ‘You have outdone yourself, Marangon.’

Marangon was unmoved. As if he had been congratulated on procuring a bag of plums. If the man ever tired of organised crime, he really would make an exemplary necromancer’s assistant. Baptiste was less phlegmatic. She looked thoroughly disgusted by the whole business, which represented a considerable reward in itself.

‘Whatever you’re about here,’ she said, backing away, ‘you can leave me out of it.’

‘I am entirely happy to leave you out of all my dealings going forward.’ Balthazar was fully occupied gripping the male twin’s neck, feeling out the position of the vertebrae with his thumbs. ‘Could you assist me, Jakob? I have a sense these will not be your first decapitations.’

The old knight frowned slightly more than usual. ‘You want their heads off?’

‘Unless you plan to lug a whole corpse around a cursed house with you?’

There was a silence.

‘I was feeling like a fuck,’ mused Vigga, rubbing absently at her crotch with one hand. ‘But this has killed the mood.’