Where the Centipede Nests

When Isolde's hands finally stilled, he hastily lowered his eyes. In the same instant, her gaze came up to meet his directly. The hint of green that had flickered there a moment ago was gone; in its place were the same black, fathomless eyes as always, carving him apart piece by piece and swallowing him whole. There was no telling what lay inside them. He wanted, almost, to dig in and sift through everything they held.

"That's done, then."

"What on earth is in this salve?"

"A salve befitting your wounds."

Isolde closed the tin, wiped her hands on her apron, and stared at him as though asking what exactly he meant by the question. He raised his bandaged hands for her to see and asked again.

"Do you know how my hands came to be this way?"

Then Isolde said, without much interest, "I couldn't tell you the reason with any certainty, but I'd guess it was some sort of insect. Quite a few people react badly to them. Perhaps something passed over your hands while you slept. A centipede, say."

"A centipede?"

A chill crawled down Kasvren's spine. He despised centipedes. As a child, he hadn't merely disliked them — he'd been so terrified of them he would burst into tears. To imagine that dreadful creature slithering somewhere about his room now was like being doused in ice water.

"You mean they actually get inside the house?"

The corner of Isolde's mouth curled upward, as though something amused her.

"This isn't some hotel with maids on call. Rad Dat spreads the药剂 regularly, so they hardly ever make it into the mansion itself — but the back of the estate is nothing but forest, so the occasional one slips in. They have so many legs, after all. Wouldn't you say they can go wherever they please?"

And then Isolde did something Kasvren never could have anticipated. She laughed — a short, bright kik of a laugh.

"Your face is quite a sight. Don't be too frightened. Centipedes aren't active this season, and even if it had been one, it couldn't very well have crossed your palms only. More likely you touched the wrong patch of grass, something of the sort. With the salve applied, it'll settle down soon enough."

Having said all she meant to say — having, apparently, no further use for him — Isolde turned away from Kasvren and went back through the doorway, locking each bolt in turn. Clack, clack, clack... The sound of the locks went on and on without end, until it nearly made him dizzy.

He was turning away with a hand pressed to his forehead when the sight of Rad Dat standing at the mouth of the kitchen made his heart plummet all over again. It was, truly, enough to curdle his temper.

"There are only two people in this house, and yet it feels as though there were a hundred."

At Kasvren's grumble, Rad Dat blinked at him through the wrinkles of his eyes. The old man was every bit as taciturn as Isolde, and expecting an answer from him was a fool's errand. And yet, just before Kasvren could slip outside, Rad Dat's voice came, unexpected as rain from a clear sky.

"Dravenmoor has always been such a place."

Kasvren turned his head, meaning to ask what on earth that was supposed to mean — but then he saw the old butler feeding split kindling, piece by piece, into the stove's firebox, and the words died in his throat.

"Has always been such a place, you say."

"Indeed."

Having finished with the kindling, Rad Dat brushed the stray thorns from his fingertips and looked at Kasvren with an expression that asked whether he needed anything. His eyes were not black as Isolde's were, but they carried the weathered insight peculiar to an old man who had aged long and quietly. Something in that gaze seemed to ask of Kasvren: — who is the unwelcome guest upsetting the order of things?

"...Then if it has always been such a place, I suppose I shall have to adapt."

"If anything displeases you, I will convey it to Lady Isolde."

"No. That won't be necessary."

Kasvren turned away carrying the hollow feeling of a man routed from the field — then made a small noise of recollection and looked back at Rad Dat.

"Do centipedes truly come inside, all the way to one's room?"

Rad Dat gazed downward, lost in thought for a moment, then spoke.

"A centipede builds its nest only once it has found somewhere to uncoil its venom."

"What did you say?"

"If Young Master Kasvren has no intention of becoming a nest, then no such thing will happen."

"Look here, what in the world is that supposed to—"

But before he could finish, Rad Dat had already turned away to attend to some other task. It was infuriating — but then, this place had always been as it was. Those who could not seep in were simply cast back out. Wedged between an order that had held for generations, the only thing Kasvren could do now was wait for his body and his mind to adjust. He had absolutely no intention of becoming a nest for a centipede to coil itself around. He would not leave the venom that wandered that vast green forest to spread its poison blue through him and consume him whole.

The plan to dry out the books in the library had been shelved thanks to his sudden injury. With neither Isolde nor Rad Dat anywhere in sight, Kasvren was taking a leisurely look through the first-floor library when a question occurred to him: what, exactly, sat at the very top of this mansion? He realized then that he had never been anywhere beyond the room Isolde had assigned him, the dining hall on the ground floor, and the library — and the curiosity proved impossible to resist.

He began by surveying the corridor of the second floor, where he lodged. Apart from the odd short passage or balcony branching off between rooms, there was another room of altogether different scale beside his own at the right-hand end, and one after another down the hall. He had crossed two balconies and come to a stop before one of the neighboring doors when a peculiar, sharply pungent scent suddenly wormed its way into his nose. He felt certain he had smelled it somewhere before. Some memory tickled at the edge of his mind, rising and sinking, almost within reach...

Click.

Only at the sound of the metal did Kasvren realize he had been turning the door handle without thinking. Yet there was no resistance. Astonishingly, the door was unlocked. His body, long accustomed to rejection in a house where every place seemed locked and barred, shivered briefly at the surprise. And all the things he had made himself forget came swimming back up to the surface of his mind.

— That girl killed every last person in that house. The youngest daughter.

— It's a mansion where a murderer lives.

— I heard she butchered her own kin, burned the bodies, and danced around the fire...

Here, at last, was a door opened into that chilling secret. Finally. Of course, the room might be empty, offering him nothing but disappointment and dust. But even so — even that would do. Kasvren wanted to know what secret it was that wound around this mansion like a great serpent. Whether that beautiful, delicate woman — Isolde Drasken, who seemed as though she might dissolve into the night wind at any moment — truly was the monster the townsfolk strung up on their gallows of gossip, or whether she was not.

"...My God."

The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, a sound escaped him — part wonder, part horror, wholly involuntary. The room was not empty at all. Dust lay thick in every corner and the whole place was in disarray, but there were unmistakably traces of someone having lived here. A long, long time ago.

Once upon a time.

— Johan! Bren! Come here, come look. I brought something.

It was the day Tobras came to visit. Yes — now he remembered! Tobras's jacket had bulged strangely at the front. He'd been hiding something under it, no question. They had snickered and pestered him, crowding together in the mansion's shadow. And then...

— Prepare to be amazed.

The moment Kasvren saw what Tobras, eyes shining, drew from inside his jacket, his own eyes went round as saucers. Johan's reaction was rather more blunt.

— What is that? It's disgusting.

— Disgusting! Do you have any idea how hard this was to get? It's a perfectly dissected goldfish specimen. Well, Bren? Isn't it fascinating?

— I suppose... it is, a little. So that's what the inside of a goldfish looks like.

— That's what I said! But that's not what makes it interesting. Isn't it astonishing how all these tiny organs move together like some perfectly assembled machine? And when you think about it, humans are no different. No living thing is! So here's my point — with parts fine enough and a skilled enough craftsman, couldn't you build a man out of machinery?

Johan, his face already gone bored, flopped down into the grass as if to say don't talk nonsense. Tobras, wound up as a clock, carried on chattering to himself whether anyone listened or not. Kasvren turned the idea of a mechanical man over in his mind for a while, but he could not affirm it the way Tobras had. How could a human body, wrought by God's harmonious hand, be imitated by cold screws and cogwheels? There would be no blood in that body — by what power, then, would they make the heart beat?

Kasvren surfaced from the reverie, and at last the pungent smell he'd caught at the door announced itself for what it was.

Formalin. It was the very smell of that glass jar Tobras had brought with him all those years ago.

He eased the door shut behind him and stepped further into the room. Careful where he set his feet so as not to crush the broken glass underfoot, he gingerly lifted a picture frame that had fallen face-down to the floor. The molding at one corner sheared away in a smooth slide, and something thin came clattering down in a small cascade.