Tanith Lee - Paradys 01 by The Book of the Damned

Author:The Book of the Damned
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:40+00:00

EMPIRES OF AZURE

Le Livre Azure

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rage would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands by the naked man

In the book of moons defend ye!

Anonymous: 17th century

In a week, or less, I shall be dead.

Having written this on his card, he handed it to me.

“Why?” I said.

“I’m under sentence of it,” he said.

“Again, why?”

“Ah. There’s the story.”

“I’m expected to listen?”

“Perhaps not. I’ve left an account, a sort of diary, and various papers. My address, you will see, is on the front of that card, with my name. Are you familiar with the Observatory Quarter?”

“Quite. What I would rather discover is your reason for approaching me in this way.”

“Dear mademoiselle, you are a stranger. So far at least, you’ve heard me out. Those that know me, mademoiselle, won’t credit a word.”

“I seem to know you better with every passing second.”

He smiled, and sat down opposite me.

The name on the card was Louis de Jenier,»and the address, as he said, on a street among the steep, stepped terraces and balconied apartments that banked the Observatory. He himself was so handsome that he remains difficult to describe. Elegantly dressed, and with a silk neck-tie, his lavish dark hair was parted on the right side, and his hands manicured. His eyes were of an extraordinary unreal saturated blue, impossible to penetrate, like those of a statue, or, more actually, a doll. Since I had never met him before, I could not tell if he were unusually pale, sickening for illness, or had gone mad. He had come directly to my table through the crowded cafe, most of which had stared, as they do in the north, especially in Paradis, at his novelty of looks and style. Now he said: ‘Mademoiselle, let me add that I know you write for the journals, albeit under a male pseudonym. Yes, I’ve found you out, and tracked you down for a purpose. I gamble on you. I think you begin to be curious.”

“Not very, monsieur. I assume someone has threatened your life, maybe after a love-affair. Why not go to the City police, if you have no influential friends who could help you.”

“No, no one can help,” he said.

When he spoke, a shadow fell, the way it does when a cloud covers the sun. It was not that he sounded fearful or even dismayed. But it was like that moment which comes, for the first time, to each of us. The moment which says “One day, incredibly, I too will die.”

And in that instant, as I stretched forward mentally towards him, we were interrupted.

Two men were forcing their way through the cafe. One called excitedly to him, “Louis! Louis!” But the other, as they reached us, said, “For God’s sake, what are you playing at now?”

He glanced at them, with the cruel contempt of a beloved and misunderstood - and so deeply angry child.

“Well, you were boring me rather.”

“Excuse us, mademoiselle,” the second man said to me, tipping his expensive hat. The other only tipped his eyelids.

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