6

      Decorum. That’s what it was all about.

      Cadaverous Gant insisted on doing things the way they were supposed to be done. It may have been an old-fashioned philosophy to live by, but it was clear-cut, and he appreciated that kind of simplicity in this world — a world he increasingly disapproved of.

      When he’d been a young man, he hadn’t approved of progressives. When he’d been a professor, he hadn’t approved of the lackadaisical approach his students took to their studies. When he’d been a serial killer, he hadn’t approved of people interrupting the murders of said students.

      It was why he built his house, after all.

      A wonderful house in St Louis, built to his own design by a succession of contractors who didn’t know what the others had worked on. Piece by piece, the house had come together, a labyrinth of corridors and traps and doors that opened on to brick walls.

      The perfect lair for a serial killer.

      His father had taught him all about the proper way to do things. Here’s how to chop down a tree. Here’s how to catch and skin your dinner. Here’s how to take a beating. And, when his father was gone, it was institutions that had taken over, reinforcing this work ethic, carving him into the man he had become – a man who understood decorum and the proper way to do things.

      Which brought him to Abyssinia, the Princess of the Darklands.

      Over the past few months, ever since she had been reborn, she had been wearing a variety of flowing robes and elegant dresses, garments that worked well with her delicate features and her long silver hair. Cadaverous had watched, approvingly, as she experimented with styles and fashions, searching for herself in mirrors and in the admiring eyes of her devoted followers.

      But the dresses and robes, it seemed, had only reminded her of the centuries she had spent as nothing more than a dried-out heart in a little box, so she had abandoned them and gone for something new — a red bodysuit, tighter than necessary and more than a little garish.

      Cadaverous didn’t know where the Darklands were, but he doubted this was appropriate attire for their princess. And that was another thing that annoyed him, this lack of a straight answer. She’d been calling herself that for years, back when she’d been a voice in his head as he lay on that operating table, guiding him back from death, giving him a purpose. A focus. His mortal life had ended with that heart attack, and it had come crumbling down around him with that illegal search warrant, but he had seized the focus her voice had given him right when he’d needed it most.

      His old life was nothing. His career in academia had been a waste. Those young people he’d killed mere practice. The sharpening of a blade. The loading of a gun. Preparation for what was to come.

      The magic that had exploded within him had altered his perceptions in ways no mortal could possibly comprehend. Suddenly his life was so much bigger. He no longer needed his old house of traps and dead ends — now he could transform the interior of whatever building he owned into whatever environment he could imagine.

      His newly found magic allowed him to distort reality itself.

      If only he’d experienced it as a younger man. If only he’d grown up with magic, cultivated it, the possibilities could have been infinite. Who would he have been? he wondered. What would he have become?

      He would have stayed young. That he knew for certain. The magic would have rejuvenated him. Instead of looking like a seventy-eight-year-old man, he would have looked twenty-two. He would have stayed strong and healthy. His back wouldn’t have twisted; his shoulders wouldn’t have stooped. He’d still be tall and handsome and his body wouldn’t ache and fail him.

      The others around him were far older, but looked a third of his age. Razzia, the tuxedo-wearing Australian, as beautiful as she was insane. Nero, the arrogant whelp with the bleached hair. Destrier, the little man, fidgeting in his ill-fitting suit. They were all damaged, in their way, but the faces they showed to the world hid the worst of it behind unlined skin.

      For all his irritations, he did appreciate Abyssinia for opening his eyes to a world beyond his old one. The question that weighed heaviest on his mind, though, was why she had taken so long.

      She stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of Coldheart Prison’s control room, looking down at the tiers of open cells as the convicts – the ones who had elected to stay – huddled in small groups. Discontent had been spreading through this floating island like a slow-moving yet incurable virus. It was not an easy thing to keep hundreds of people fed on a daily basis, and it had fallen to Cadaverous to somehow deal with the problem.

      “Do you think my little army is plotting against me?” Abyssinia asked.

      “Probably,” Razzia answered.

      “They wouldn’t dare,” said Nero.

      “That’s what I would do,” said Abyssinia. “I would lead a charge and overthrow the people standing right where we’re standing. Then I’d take this flying prison and use it like a pirate ship, plundering whole cities around the world.” She sounded almost wistful.

      “We freed them,” said Nero. “They owe us. And they could have left with the others, but they chose to stay. That shows loyalty.” He looked around. “Right?”

      Destrier was too busy muttering to himself to reply, and Razzia just shrugged.

      “Cadaverous,” said Abyssinia, “you’ve been unusually quiet of late. What do you think?”

      He chose his words carefully. “I think they are unhappy.”

      “Because we have failed to feed them?”

      She didn’t mean we, of course. She meant Cadaverous.

      “That is undoubtedly part of it, yes.”

      She turned to him. “And what is the other part?”

      He could have said anything. He could have demurred. He could have made it easy on himself in a hundred different ways. Instead, he said, “When we freed them, we made promises. We promised them purpose. We promised them revenge. We promised them power. We have yet to deliver on any of these things.”

      He didn’t mean we, of course. He meant Abyssinia.

      “You think I have been distracted by the search for my son,” she said.

      Before he could respond, the door opened and Skeiri and Avatar strode in. Skeiri was a slip of a girl, dark-skinned and serious, while Avatar was muscle-bound, handsome and eager to serve. They had emerged from their cells all those months ago, and Cadaverous could see a time in the not-too-distant future when Avatar, in particular, was the one issuing the orders, much like Lethe and Smoke had done, and Cadaverous would have to obey. Again.

      They held someone between them, a man with blood dripping on to his shirt, his wrists shackled, his magic muted. Avatar and Skeiri stepped back as Abyssinia approached.

      The prisoner narrowed