Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Oh?” Strangely, the prince seemed almost affronted by this. “Well, I’ll say this for him. He makes an uncommonly good cup of tea.”

“Is that so, sir?”

“I’m seeing him later, as it happens. He’s in the midst of telling me the most extraordinary story. Something about my great-great-great-grandmother. Something about a contract.”

“Good Lord, sir.”

“Good Lord, indeed, Silverman. It’s all madness, of course.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard of something like that? Any rumors of that nature?”

“There are always rumors, sir.” Silverman bowed his head. “If there’s nothing else?”

Arthur Windsor waved the fellow away and sat in silence for a while, alone with his boiled egg, his suspicion, his storm-cloud thoughts.

An hour or so later, he left his room and, brushing aside offers of assistance from various members of his household staff, walked swiftly to the old ballroom, not stopping to question his haste or wonder why he was hurrying with such rapidity to meet a man whose company, in the normal course of life, he would have found distasteful in the extreme.

Arthur arrived at the appointed time to discover his host already waiting for him, drinking tea and smirking.

Streater didn’t bother to get up when the prince walked into the room, just grunted once and slurped noisily at his cup.

“Mr. Streater?”

There was another lip-smacking sound before the sharp-featured man looked up. “Be with you in a minute, chief. Just having my brew.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“Thirsty?”

Arthur Windsor became uncharacteristically. He seemed to shrink back, withdraw into himself, a royal snail edging into his majestic shell. “What I mean to say is that I’d really like some tea.”

Streater drained his cup and set it on the table beside him. “What was that, mate?”

“I said I’d really like some tea.”

“Bad luck, chief.” Streater sounded not in the least apologetic. “Think I’ve just had the last of it.” He belched expansively.

The prince looked stricken.

“Sorry about that.”

“Are you quite sure?” Arthur said, his voice wavering under the weight of disappointment. “Might there not be a little left behind?”

Streater shrugged. “Doubt it. But I’ll check anyway.” He popped the lid off the teapot, peered inside, paused, wrinkled his nose and said: “You’re in luck, chief. There’s a few dregs after all.”

Arthur’s voice was glutted with relief. “Dregs will be fine.”

Streater poured out about half a cup and passed it to him. “Happy now?”

Arthur gulped it down in one. “Much better. Thank you, Mr. Streater.”

The blond man flashed his sharky smile. “We ought to crack on with your education. Your mum doesn’t want us to drag our heels.” Like a ringmaster about to introduce the prize of his menagerie, he clapped his hands and the room instantly grew dark. “Tea down, chief. It’s look-and-learn time.”

By now it had started to become almost predictable — the past shimmering into existence, coalescing and becoming real before the prince’s eyes. There was his great-great-great-grandmother, sat behind her desk. There was Mr. Dedlock, founder of what (according to Streater) was to become the implacable enemy of his family. And there, marching through the doors like the spearhead of some bureaucratic army, were the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman, the triumvirate who constituted the firm of Wholeworm, Quillinane and Killbreath. By their side was someone the prince had not seen before, an adolescent boy — squat featured, his face pocked with acne, his hair in hopeless clumps, his mouth twisted into a vacant leer.

“The long-dead Queen bared her teeth in welcome. “Is this the child?”

The Englishman, Mr. Wholeworm, spoke first. “It is, ma’am.”

Next, the Irishman stepped forward. “And he was exactly where Leviathan said he’d be.”

Strangely, the boy seemed unafraid, allowing himself to be herded into the presence of the monarch, his expression fixed and incurious.

Dedlock, who had until now been standing at the Queen’s right hand, moved into the light. “Why is the boy so quiet? Why does he not scream and mewl?”

The Englishman spoke up. “He has been bred from birth to act as a vessel for Leviathan.”

Impatiently, the Queen waved away the explanation. “Bring him to me.”

The boy was ushered forward.

“Gentlemen,” purred Arthur’s great-great-great-grandmother, “I think this child should kneel before his Queen.”

The Irishman placed a hand on the boy’s head and guided him down onto the floor.

“You’ve done well,” said the Queen. “Now give me his wrists.”

Quillinane nodded. Almost tenderly, he took the child’s hands and turned them palms-outward toward the monarch.

“Gentlemen, what I am about to do may cause you some distress, but I wish you to know that however my actions appear to you, they are executed for the greater glory of our empire and for the continued inviolacy of these shores. Stiffen your sinews, gather up your resolve, harden your hearts. Leviathan has warned me that there may be those amongst you who suffer from nerves or who lack the stomach for necessities. I only hope that we are man enough to stand the sight of blood.” Whilst she had been speaking, the Queen had teased out a slender knife from a hiding place in her left sleeve — a sleight of hand which had gone entirely unnoticed by all who were present, meaning that what happened next took everyone by surprise.

In two swift motions, the head of the British Empire slashed into each of the child’s wrists. Blood bubbled up.

“Come here, boy,” she said, dropping the knife, seizing the boy’s wrists and pressing down hard. “Now, bleed,” she hissed. “Bleed!”

Later, bringing to bear all the logic and common sense which had fled in the face of the horror in the ballroom, Arthur realized that pressing down so vigorously upon the boy’s wrists ought rightfully to have staunched the bleeding. It should have stopped the flow of blood, not the opposite. Certainly, it shouldn’t have sprayed out in the way that it did, not in those nightmarish geysers of iridescent crimson.

Dedlock ran toward the Queen. “This is monstrous, Your Majesty?” He tried to wrest the boy free, but against all logic, the woman’s grip proved too strong.

Wholeworm, Quillinane, and Killbreath merely looked on, swapping the occasional anxious glance between them, content on this occasion simply to observe.

“Silence!” barked the Queen. “You are all of you accomplice to this day.”

Dedlock’s face was purpling in rage. “I will not condone such butchery!”

The boy crumpled to the floor, scarlet pooling fast around him.

“What have you done” Dedlock said. “What have you become?”

The Queen seemed unmoved by his appeal, fired up as she was, supercharged by passion. “Hush,” she said, her voice trembling with fervor. “Leviathan is here.”

The boy sat up straight, a human jack-in-the-box in a spreading lake of blood. He made a noise when he moved. They all heard it — a sticky, fleshy popping sound, like the noise one hears on pulling the heads off shrimp.