The high society of New Paladia. There were dozens of liches in attendance, the death of their bodies apparent in the waxy pallor of their skin and yellowing sclera. As Helena watched, she began to suspect that some were living people who’d powdered and oiled their skin in imitation. As if it were something to aspire to.
There were two girls, clearly sisters. The younger one had sharp features and a canny look about her, while the older sister looked as if she’d been cast from the same mould but softened somehow, her edges worn down, like a statue left to weather.
The older girl wore a pale-bluish paint on her skin and seemed disinterested in the party around her. When people tried to talk to her, she’d ignore them. Sometimes she’d drift away as if caught by an invisible current, and the younger sister would immediately break off her conversation and go after her, coddling her and snatching things off passing trays and feeding her canapés as if she were a baby bird, holding her hand to keep her close.
An odd pair.
Helena caught sight of Stroud and Mandl. Mandl had clearly used vivimancy to improve her appearance. The corpse no longer bore any visible signs of rot. The blackening veins still showed through the bloodless skin, but she’d seemingly accentuated it, as if to make her appearance seem intentional.
There were several photographers with large cameras. Flashes like small explosions kept going off as they tried to capture the room.
Helena recognised the governor, Fabian Greenfinch, who’d been named head of the Guild Assembly during the “reformation.”
She searched for Ferron and found him standing towards the far side of the room. It was like spotting a panther amid a flock of exotic birds.
He was in black, as always, and it made the silvery whiteness of his hair and skin starker. Not the grey of death like the liches and their imitators; he gleamed somehow.
There was something so distinctly strange about him.
“The new year is almost here!” said a woman with a grey-painted face, spinning around. She let out a wild giggle as she held a crystal goblet overhead, the contents splashing onto her dress and the floor.
Aurelia swept back into the room. Her dress was also black, and she was ornamented all over with silver rather than her usual iron, as if trying to look more like her husband. Her bodice was detailed with scaled armour. The geometry of the pattern was embroidered in silver up her sleeves. She wore silver alchemy rings crafted to make her fingers look longer.
Yet there was a faint sense of dishevelment about her. The stain on her lips was smudged so that it softened her mouth, and her skirts had odd creases. She sauntered over to Ferron with a smug expression, reaching out to straighten his collar and draw him towards her.
Ferron stared at his wife, his expression not changing.
“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!” The room began chanting a countdown for the solstice and the new year it heralded.
As the numbers wound down, Ferron reached out and ran his thumb across his wife’s mouth.
At zero, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Aurelia’s. A camera flashed. The room exploded with cheers, and kissing, and clinking glassware.
Ferron’s lips remained pressed against Aurelia’s, but as he kissed her, he raised his eyes, and his gaze locked onto Helena’s face.
She stared back, forgetting to breathe, frozen in place.
Her stomach flipped, and her heart began pounding until her blood roared in her ears. She wanted to draw back, to disappear, but she was trapped by that cold silver.
He didn’t look away until Aurelia broke off the kiss, turning from him. His eyes immediately dropped, and a false, indulgent smile curved across his lips as he scanned the room, clapping without enthusiasm until one of the dead servants approached with a tray of drinks. He snatched up a flute and knocked back the contents as if it were a mouthwash.
Helena sat back, pressing her hands against her chest, willing her heart to stop pounding.
“And now,” a loud voice said, interrupting the hum of conversation, “some entertainment to inaugurate this new year.”
The music broke off as the musicians looked around, uncertain if they were supposed to keep playing.
Helena followed the voice and spotted a man with long sideburns curving down his jaw, as ornately dressed as the rest of the guests, entering from the far side of the room and gleefully dragging a line of people behind him. A man, woman, and three children, ranging in age, all chained together.
They were clearly not guests; their clothes were too plain, and their faces stricken with terror.
The speaker turned, facing the watching crowd as he gestured at his prisoners. “These are the last surviving relatives of one of the Eternal Flame’s noble families.”
Shock rippled through the room. Helena scrutinised the faces of the people chained together but didn’t recognise them.
“Distant relatives, I’ll admit, but very careful to try to hide this illustrious connection, weren’t you?” He turned to the captives, wagging a finger.
“Please—” It was the father who spoke. “My wife’s grandmother was a Lapse, we had no—”
The father was backhanded across the face with a jewellery-covered hand, knocking him off his feet, and he dragged the family to the ground as he fell. He lay, the side of his face pocked with wounds.
“I told you not to talk. You’re ruining my fun.” The speaker’s voice was almost singsong. “Now then, I know you’ll all want a turn, but I say we choose an order and do them one by one. Youngest first, I think. Or … last?” He looked around expectantly, as if to see what the popular vote would be.
“Durant.” Ferron’s voice was icy. “I told you no.”
Durant pivoted, buying himself a moment by running a finger along his cheeks to smooth his sideburns as he drew up and faced Ferron. The room held its breath.
“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun, and they deserve it. By law, it’s required that all citizens disclose any relation to the Eternal Flame. They didn’t. They need to be made an example of.”
“Then they’ll be formally executed,” Ferron said. “I don’t need your ideas of entertainment staining the marble.”
“Come on, it’s the perfect start to the new year, putting the last of them in the ground. Everyone wants to watch them die. Are you going to be a shit host and disappoint all your guests?”
Ferron rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
Faster than Durant could move, Ferron stepped forward and snapped the neck of the youngest prisoner. A boy of ten or twelve. The crack was audible all the way up to where Helena watched in horror.
The mother screamed, lunging forward and catching her son as Ferron let go of him. Then Ferron had his hands around her neck and snapped it, too.
The whole family was dead within a minute, bodies left sprawled across the floor, still linked by their chains.
It happened so fast, everyone in the ballroom was left standing in shock, unable to process that it was already over. Helena could scarcely believe it. It didn’t seem real that something like that could happen without warning. Five people.
Ferron hadn’t even used resonance or a weapon, just his bare hands.
He straightened, adjusting his cuffs with the flick of his wrist. “Executions are required to be clean now, Durant. His Eminence has been quite clear on that point. I hope you weren’t expecting to break the law here on my property and in front of our illustrious governor and a dozen journalists.”
Ferron patted Durant on the shoulder, his expression impassive, as if it were nothing that he’d done. He raised two fingers, signalling, and several servants hurried through the dazed crowd to drag the bodies away. Durant stood looking like a child whose toy had been stolen.
The silence was broken by hushed voices as the crowd woke from their stupor. The music began falteringly, and after some slight hesitation, the party resumed.