King Death's Manse (WIP)

In the centre of a plain filled with poppies, there stood a house. To some it seemed a massive fortress, all spiked towers and high, obsidian walls, and to others it was a cottage, with a thatched roof, smoke streaming from the chimney. The sky loomed overhead, still and quiet, unmoving, a perpetual grey. This was King Death's personal realm.1

Which, at present, was in a state of unrest.2

It had happened, not two hours ago. Eshe, one of the cleaning girls, had been going to take down the curtains in his study in order to wash them, and had found him slumped over his desk. This alone was cause enough for worry- Death had never been known to sleep. Ever. To cut a long story short, his staff had been unable to wake him.
King Death was dead.3

And his long, dark-robed cadaver was lying in state, the infinity loop of his necklace glinting silver against his jet-black skin. The permanent staff, those who had served their thousand years in Death's manse and chosen to stay, were gathered in the corner of the little chapel, talking amongst themselves, with occasional, disbelieving glances at the body.4

Cornelius, the butler, who in his life had been a prince and sorcerer both, of a civillisation whose ruins now made the basis for most of the world's major coral reefs, rubbed his glasses with his hankerchief for at least the hundredth time that morning, his eyes shining more than was entirely usual, but his expression otherwise unchanged.
Riddance, the cook, who was already drunk to the point of apathy, sat back against the pew, rocking slightly as silent tears rolled down his concave cheeks and onto his spotless chef's whites.
Spooner, the repairman, drew deeply on his cigar, and exhaled. It was like incense. "I never knew there was a chapel here."
Henrietta, the housekeeper, shook her head, her hands clasped in her lap. "Maybe there isn't. Maybe it's only here because of-" she paused, turning to stare at Death's unmoving form. She swallowed. "Because of this." Looking away, she bit her lip. Spooner reached out to touch her arm, and she grimaced, pulling away from him. "In any case, we have to do all of this properly. For [i]his[/i] sake, if no-one else's. If anyone knows what properly is?"
Cornelius nodded, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. "I know." he said, his voice little more than a whisper, a rustle of vocal chords. The other three shivered a little. None of them knew when Cornelius had come there exactly, save that he had been there longer than anyone, except perhaps King Death himself. And he rarely spoke, except on important occasions. [i]Was this something that had happened before?[/i] Henrietta wondered, looking to the old butler. [i]If anyone would know, he would.[/i]
Cornelius cleared his throat. "The temporary staff have been sent home." he breathed. "We will wait here until sunset."
There were raised eyebrows. Death's realm had no sun, no day or night.
Spooner frowned. "What then?"
Cornelius pursed his lips, looking again to the prone form of Death. "Then the funeral will happen."
The door to the chapel slid open, and sunlight oozed in, the languid yellow of a late afternoon. Henrietta knew who it was before the curly-haired figure even stepped into the room. "Eshe!"
With a small smile to the housekeeper, the waif approached the still figure of King Death. Like most of the workers in the Manse, she had been brought there by him, and chosen to work her thousand years. She did not look much older than twelve, though she had been in the household a good few years now, her hair tightly curled, her skin brown, and her eyes as black as pitch. In her hands were a bunch of poppies, those that grew in the great fields outside. Wordlessly, she walked to King Death's side, her bare feet making little noise against the marble floor. Smiling down at him, rather sadly, she took his jet-black hands in hers, and folded his unfeeling fingers around the stems of the flowers.
"Eshe." Henrietta called again. The girl looked up, and padded over to the four. "Eshe, sweetheart, come here."
Eshe climbed into the housekeeper's lap, and Henrietta hugged her hard.
Spooner looked over at them accusingly, puffing on his cigar. "She's not permanent staff."
"I chose to stay." said Eshe. Cornelius nodded tolerantly, wiping his glasses, and Spooner just frowned, letting it be. Holding the little girl close, Henrietta stared once more at the king's cold and lifeless form. She swallowed, closing her eyes. *I have outlived Death*, she thought, unhappily. Now all that was left was the waiting.5

6

Henrietta had gone outside for a fag break, and much to her suprise Cornelius had deigned to follow her. She was not much akin to Spooner in her habit- his cigars were pretty much a part of him, coarse and grand as he was, a relic of the life he had once led, and a fitting smoke for King Death's laying in state. Henrietta's cigarettes were sneaky, shaky, yellow things, quick burning and partaken of only in times of great need or distress. Cornelius stared past her impassively, his breath rising in clouds in the cool evening air as Henrietta paced back and forth, smoking her little profanity.
"You reckon Riddance managed the meal alright?" she asked.
Cornelius frowned, his train of thought interrupted. Or perhaps he had simply been watching the horizon of the plain, the last of the sun as it set. He looked to Henrietta, his eyes grey and piercing.
"I'd imagine so." he said. "After all, it may be his last."
Henrietta blinked, sombred by this thought. "You mean, we might not be allowed to stay?" A life without the household seemed impossible, if they were to be allowed to live at all. She took another cigarette from the crumpled packet that lived in her coat pocket, and lit it.
Cornelius rolled his shoulders. "Who knows? It's up to whoever becomes the new Death- it'lll be their Realm, then."
Taking a drag, Henrietta nodded, itching to ask the question that had been troubling her ever since the event. "Cornelius?"
"Mhm?" he turned away from his horizon-watching, peered at her over his glasses.
"Have you seen this happen before?"
The old butler looked suprised, taken aback even. "Of course not, no. I merely have unrivalled knowledge of sorcery and the nature of the Arcane."
Henrietta smiled, and inhaled, tasting mostly yellowed paper. "You kill me, Cornelius. You know that?"
"I wasn't trying to be funny." he protested, mildly.
"Aye, I know." Henrietta tasted the last of her roll of burning paper and long-dessicated tobacco, watching the spark fade in the last of it before tossing it to the ground and putting it out with the heel of her shoe. "Neither was I."7

It had grown dark, Henrietta realised, the air now colder than ever. Turning away from the house, she felt the tall presence of Cornelius at her shoulder as she stared down the path, and was moved to squint. 8

"What're they?" What seemed at first to be fireflies, bobbing pieces of multicoloured light, proceeded towards the house. They drew nearer, and Henrietta realised that the accompanied three figures, each human enough in shape.9

The first one was glorious, a wiry, golden-skinned youth with wild yellow hair to his shoulders and sudden, powerful amethyst eyes. He wore nothing save a silver circlet across his forehead, and a large albino boa constrictor, currently draped across his shoulders, the end of its tail clasped around his thigh. His ears were strung with purple beads, and although Henrietta would not have called him beautiful to his face, there was something wicked to the curve of his lips, something shameless and magnetic to his gait.10

The second was smaller, a girl dressed in the ruins of what might once have been a very expensive dress, makeup painted on in bright, childish blotches, her hair bedraggled and filthy, and her eyes a strange, almost yellow green. She carried what seemed to be a large bunch of flowers in her arms, but it might have been a horn of mead, or perhaps a baby. She had little bells tied to her ankles and her wrists- Henrietta could hear them jangle as the girl walked.11

The third was the tallest, perhaps as tall as King Death himself, and of indefinite gender, seeming to carry around with it an intangible aura of gloom. Its hands were like long, alabaster spiders, trailing from the sleeves of the robe that it wore, but its face was perhaps the worst thing about it. Emerging from the neck of its robes was what might be described as a head, topped off with long, dark, straight hair, chinless and indeed featureless save for a single, sharp-toothed hole, which, basking-shark like, it held open. Henrietta gasped and took a step backwards when she saw it, for now grateful for Cornelius' tall grey presence.12

"They," Cornelius informed her, quietly, "Are the family."13

"Or some of them, at least." The golden one added to Cornelius' statement, drawing close. The other two figures trailed behind, the tallest standing perfectly still as the little girl scurried around, catching the fireflies in her hands, and popping them gleefully into her mouth. "We are the Insanities, the three High Princes of Falador, the Masters of Madness. I am our emissary, our spokesman." His snake tasted the air with its tongue.
"Prince Delusion." Cornelius inclined his head to Death's unbrother with what seemed to Henrietta to be the very least of politeness. Delusion did not respond in kind. "The other two I believe are the Princes Delirium and Despair."
The girl looked up at this, distracted from her firefly hunt, and the tall one did nothing.
"Charmed." said Henrietta, very quietly. She thought she saw Cornelius smile, and Delusion looked at her sharply.
"And what of this young lady, good master Cornelius? I don't believe we've been introduced."
Henrietta found herself holding her breath- those purple eyes were oddly unsettling. "Prince Delusion, Henrietta Thomas." said Cornelius, quickly. Henrietta curtseyed as best she could with her coat on. "A saner woman you will never meet."
Delusion smirked. "We'll see about that." he murred. Behind him, the girlish Prince Delirium was heard to titter loudly, strewing the ground around her with tiny bells and small pink flowers from the doll of a child that she held in her arms, and Prince Despair moved somehow closer to all of them, breathing in.
Cornelius shivered visibly. "Please." he frowned at Delusion. "This is a funeral."
Delusion shrugged, pouting a little. "As you wish. We will go inside to wait for the others." He beckoned, and the other two followed him into the house, Delirium and Despair twirling and padding respectively.
Cornelius watched after them as they disappeared through the front door and into the landing, straightening his glasses a little. "I ought to go after them." he said, finally, looking to Henrietta, who nodded.
"I'll be fine out here by myself, Cornelius." she said, an answer to his unspoken question. "Really, fine."
Cornelius did not spare a moment to bid her good health as he scurried into the house, on the tail of the three Insanities.14

Henrietta sighed, lighting up again. It made sense, she supposed. Insanity was generally present first at an occasion, even if not everybody noticed it. Shaking ash loose from the end of her cigarette, she saw the flowers and the bells that the girl had dropped over the garden path, glittering in the light from the windows of the house. Bending down, she examined them closely, and it seemed to her, the closer she got, the more the bells looked like flowers and the flowers looked like little bells. She picked one up and put it in the buttonhole of her blouse before returning to the house.15

The hallway smelled of Riddance's cooking, and Eshe sat on one of the low tables there, her knees hugged to her chest and her eyes puffy, yet dry.
"Hun?" Henrietta called.
Eshe looked up. "Cornelius says that the guests have gone to the chapel to wait for the rest of the family, but they won't be here for a while. He said we should go to the garden and help Spooner with all of the candles."
Henrietta nodded. It sounded like make-work to her, but it was probably for Eshe's safety. And Spooner's, come to think of it.
"Alright. C'mon, sweetie." Henrietta held out her hand, and Eshe took it, walking with her to the garden. Henrietta had wondered what it would be like, to be eternally twelve, stuck in a prepubescent body for tens of millenia. She looked down at Eshe, and the girl smiled back up at her. It would be horrible. Probably.16

Walking out the back of the house, Henrietta heard Eshe draw in her breath, and very much suspected herself of doing the same. The garden- what looked to be over an acre today- was covered in candles, albeit unlit, in rows, and festooning the trees. From the small patch of points of light, Henrietta discerned where Spooner was working.17

The one-eyed man smiled to see them, handing Henrietta and Eshe each a lit taper and instructing them where to work.18

It seemed an honest thing to be doing, Henrietta considered, compared to sitting around in the chapel and staring at the coffin, at least. It had an air of doing something, a quintessential usefulness to it, the same as what they did for the house. They toiled. They worked. And only rarely did they stop to admire their handiwork.
Spooner nodded approvingly, scratching his chin. "I'd say it looked like the stars I remember." he said. "'Cept that would be a cliche." he smiled.19

The night wore on, and more people came, in ones and twos- black suited gentlemen with faces like foxes, blue skinned folk with silver eyes, and people who looked like they came from all over the world, and from all over history besides.
"Jesus..." Spooner blasphemed as he came to sit by Henrietta at the servant's table the kitchen, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "I could've sworn that guy was Jesus!"
"He's not." A tall youth pushed the kitchen door closed behind him. He was skinny, and his black jeans were worn through at the knees, his black t-shirt printed with the half centimetre tall phrase 'If you're reading this, then you're a nosy bastard.' in white across the chest. He wore his brown hair to his shoulders, and a carefully cultivated, if short, beard. He wore shades.
"You're.." Spooner blinked, his mouth falling open a little.
"My uncle had a distinct dislike of prophets, I feel," the youth shrugged, then added, "Always changing their minds."
Henrietta put down her cup of tea, looking sharply at the youth. "I know who you are," she said. "You're Juan Corrino. Son of Fate."
Juan smiled pleasantly, stepping over to the table, and ruffling Eshe's hair. "Well, who else would I be? Hey there, kid."
Henrietta tactfully abstained from mentioning Jesus, though Spooner still looked suitably embarassed. "You were looking for the anteroom?"
"I was." Juan grinned. "I take it that you can show me the way?"
Henrietta nodded, getting to her feet. "I can try. Though the house is all jumbled up right now. I think it's the guests."
"It's certainly different from how I remember it," said Juan. Henrietta wondered how long ago that had been.
"Come on, then." Henrietta gestured for him to follow. "Spooner, look after Eshe."
"Shall do." Spooner nodded to her as they left.20

The house had changed, Henrietta noticed. The halls were wider now, the floors tiled in black, windows curtained with long satin drapes. It gave the place the feel of a coffin, almost. Her shoes clicked against the floor as she walked, and Juan padded after, in his trainers.
"Mrs Thomas?" he stopped.
Henrietta turned. "Yes?"
"Be careful of Delusion. He is a dangerous one, especially when he is lucid."
Delusion. Henrietta recalled the golden one's amethyst gaze, how unsettlingly steady it had been, and the memory made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She looked to Juan, but his expression was inscrutable behind those shades.
"Look," said Juan. "I'm the son of Fate. I just know these things. Things are cloudy right now because there's a conjunction, but my sight still functions to some extent. Trust me."
Henrietta nodded, and started walking again. She wasn't entirely sure if she could. 21

Coming to the room, Henrietta pushed open the door. "They're in here," she said, and Juan followed.22

In the centre of the room was a circular table, loaded with platters of food. Around the table were nine chairs, two of which were left unnocupied. Of the other seven, the Insanities occupied three. The other four, Henrietta did not recognise.23

One was a woman, startlingly beautiful, with black painted lips and blood-red eyes. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, a dress of stiff black satin, and around her neck was a choker, made of long white beads strung together, and forming what seemed to be a sunburst shape at her throat. She looked over her shoulder at Juan and Henrietta as they stepped inside.24

"Brother, your *spawn* has arrived." she said.25

"Ah." the old one in the deep orange robes nodded. His skin reminded Henrietta of polished wood."And who's this he's bought with him?" He gestured to her with an ancient, gnarled hand.
"Henrietta Thomas, brother." Delusion cracked a smile. "She should eat with us."
The dark haired woman looked angry. "I understood that this was to be a family affair?" Another of the seven, a sleek looking gentleman in a silk tophat, nodded in concurrance.
Delusion gave a shrug, and appealed to Fate. "I only say that because it is customary for each of us to have a representative at a gathering like this, and since his majesty Death cannot attend...." he grinned, Fate frowned. "And there are two chairs left at this table. It would be a shame to see one go empty."
There was a pause, and the woman glared at Delusion, but at last Fate nodded. "As you will, brother. At your request, she shall. Juan, take Death's seat. Mortal, by my side."
Juan gave Henrietta a knowing smile, and she wondered if he had winked, but she could not see his eyes behind those glasses. She wondered if he had foreseen this happening as she lowered herself into the seat between Fate's and Delusion's, under close scrutiny from all in the room.
"Well," said the red-eyed woman. "This is comfortable."
No-one laughed. Delirium giggled nervously, tears rolling over her cheeks as Cornelius stepped into the room, tall and grey and imposing. He stopped when he saw Henrietta, but said nothing, turning to Fate.
"Everything is to your liking?"
Fate gave a curt nod.
"Everything...." Prince Delirium echoed, dreamily.
"It is," said Delusion. "Please leave. Now."
"Your majesties." Cornelius gave a short bow and left, Henrietta staring helplessly after him.26

The meal seemed to pass slowly, as if the tensions between the family were only put aside temporarily, old grudges held back for decorum's sake. Delusion and Juan were both talking a lot, occasionally interrupted by a loud burst of giggles from Delirium, or a haughty outburst from the dark haired woman, the Queen of the Wheel, which would invariably start an argument. The gentleman in the tophat maintained an air of cultured ennui, whilst the last of King Death's family, whose name Henrietta did not catch, sat looking pale and somehow fragile, as if made out of tissue paper. The Prince Despair stared interestedly at the food, though it might have been apathy, since Despair did not have eyes, and Henrietta didn't actually see her eat, whilst King Fate said little, and was diplomatic in what he did say, a feat which Henrietta tried hard to replicate.
But Delusion was [i]funny[/i], and all too often Henrietta found herself shaking with laughter as he held her arm, or nodding absently as she stared into those amethyst hued eyes. It didn't take too much wine for her to begin to consider him [i]handsome[/i], too. So despite Juan's warning, she did not protest that he took her arm when the room took to its feet, nor that he put an arm about her waist as the family trouped outside.
He was no longer dressed in a snake, but in robes of deep purple, those of an emperor, his simple circlet now an elaborate crown, wreathed in tiny golden serpents. The others were similarly changed, the Queen of the Wheel's starched satin becoming plates of black iron, her painted mouth now dripping blood, Prince Despair seeming taller and thinner and more empty.
The candles that they had helped Spooner put out seemed to be more now, and blood-red, like poppies, scattered across the garden, the people that had gathered there all staring at them as they made procession down the path.27

Cornelius, Spooner, Riddance and Juan all carried the coffin between them, each now dressed in black, the King's face covered. There was singing, and it was a dirge, and talking, and proclaiming, and Henrietta vaguely remembered a feeling of release, and sadness, and loss, and crying into the shoulder of Delusion's purple robes as he stroked her hair.28

* * *29

It was later, and he held her hips through the thin fabric of her dress, pressing her up against the wall as he kissed her neck, those ungodly purple eyes of his lazily half-lidded, lips laughing as she shivered.
The small, analytical part of Henrietta's brain came to, sharply, and she wondered what exactly she thought she was doing there. *Um, getting off with the Prince Delusion?*
Henrietta whimpered, and this time Delusion did laugh, an unsteady laugh, squeezing her hips slightly.
"You could be my Princess, my Queen..." he whispered. "My Empress, my Goddess, I could give you the world." He stared into her eyes, unblinking, and Henrietta swallowed, her mouth suddenly quite dry. All that she saw there, in those eyes, all of her hopes and all of her dreams. She whimpered again, and Delusion pressed closer, putting his lips to hers. Henrietta gave a small, startled cry, her eyes still wide open, not at the kiss, but at what she had seen.
"Cornelius!"30