The Ruby Lipped Poisoner
The Prince was not one to reflect so had no fears about his future. An eternity of solitude and boredom? He hadn’t thought about that. Perhaps he welcomed solitude. Or did not understand solitude. He had never once been alone.
The garden was like all the gardens he’d ever known, beautiful, full of plants he did not really see. The temperature was pleasantly warm, the breezes cool, and there seemed to be hills and valleys to explore. Left for another day. Right now, he wanted to lie down and doze. He’d barely slept since his father had died. It was not just his own ambitions that had driven him, but the ambitions of a dozen others, including his wife.
He was already bored by the second day. He left the garden and wandered towards some vague-looking hills. The closer he got to the hills, the vaguer they looked. About half a mile into his walk, he found a stone-paved road that led to a small manor house. There was a garden here too, with large trees, small shrubs, a proliferation of small green leaves everywhere. A meticulously manicured lawn as well. And a woman. Collapsed. On the lawn, her face hidden in the grass. A beautiful hunting cat sat at her feet. The Prince slowly approached the woman, wary of the cat. The cat did not move, so he kneeled and touched the woman to see if she was alive. She was warm and breathing. Her eyes opened.
‘Are you well?’ the Prince asked.
She didn’t seem to understand him. Perhaps she was still not fully conscious.
‘Are you well?’ the Prince asked slowly. ‘Well? Do you need help? Help?’
‘I’ve exhausted myself,’ she replied.
‘What? Exhaust?’
‘Can you help me to the house?’ she asked. Her voice was weak. ‘House?’
He thought he understood. The Prince helped the woman up. She leaned on him and began to walk. He didn’t think she was up to walking, so he picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. She barely weighed anything at all.
‘There. Put me down there.’ The woman pointed to a sofa. ‘Can you pour me some juice? There. Juice.’
The Prince found a pitcher and cups. He poured her a drink.
‘Sit,’ she commanded, pointing to a chair. She drank her juice slowly. ‘Ah. Much better. Now. Who the hell are you? You. Your name.’
‘I am Prince Ciel, the son of King Iel.’
‘Exiled, I presume.’
‘And you?’
‘Kai. Kai-Amer, the Consort Duchess of Windgate.’
‘Your lips,’ Ciel said. ‘They truly are like rubies. As if they are made of a million brilliant rubies, crushed like ice.’
‘So. I’m still infamous. The Ruby Lipped Poisoner.’
‘There is not a child that does not know about you. There is a popular nursery rhyme.’
‘How exciting. Sing it.’
‘Her lips are red, poison red
Like blood, the poison in your bed.
Husband One
Husband Two
I’ll take you, Husband Three, she said.
Ruby lipped, her poison red
All her husbands dead, dead, dead.’
‘Well. That is disappointing,’ the Duchess sighed. ‘They just appropriated a nursery rhyme about Queen Un. You’d think murdering three husbands would get you your very own rhyme. So. What happened to your clothes? Do they strip you now when they exile you into a Scroll?’
The Prince was puzzled. He was wearing the customary clothes of a prince, the tight thigh-length shorts with the wraparound skirt, the thick military boots. Royal gemstones decorated both his headband and skirt.
‘You are half-naked,’ the Duchess said, pointing a finger at his naked chest. It’d been a long time since she’d seen such a well-articulated chest.
‘I wear what a prince wears. We dress to display our physical superiority. Have you never seen a member of the royal family?’
‘Unfortunately, I have. I was even briefly married to a very minor royal. Husband number three, dead, dead, dead.’ Her eyes were laughing. ‘In my time, royals wore much more clothing. Layers and layers of semi-transparent cloth. Like what I’m wearing now, only of much more luxurious fabrics. I liked it. It’s more suggestive. Very sexy. Though, I also appreciate the obvious display. Well. If you get cold I can make you a jacket, if you’d like.’
‘We do not feel the cold.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Now her voice laughed. She stretched her arms and stood up. She walked slowly around the room, her dress shimmering as if it wanted to slip to the floor. It was heavily patterned, the floor. Different colored woods, even mother of pearl. Vibrating light: lips, skin, dress, walls, floor, radiating. ‘So. Tell me. How long have I been in here? In this paradise of heavenly aromas.’
‘Over eight hundred years. They said you were dead.’
‘Dead? How interesting. They had no life reading of me at all? No life reading?’
‘None.’
‘Eight hundred years. Hell and fuckadoodle. So. What’s the latest news?’
It took them several weeks to be able to communicate well with each other; there was an 800-year gulf of language between them. The Duchess was easily amused, gently needling him for her pleasure: ‘Listening to you talk is like reading the Embalm in the original old text. Why in the world would you resurrect the genitive and instrumental cases?’
‘I? I had nothing to do with it. I am merely a prince of the realm.’
‘Not you. I mean one.’
The Prince had never studied grammar and didn’t have a clue why she was ranting so. ‘Were you not a duchess? I did not think you were a language historian.’
‘Language historian? You really are a bit of rough!’ She laughed and laughed. It was a joyous laugh and he was delighted that he was the cause of it. He wanted to make her laugh again and again. How strange, he thought. He’d never wanted to go out of his way to please anyone before. He was a prince of the realm. He was the one who should be pleased. And here he was, wanting so desperately to please the Ruby Lipped Poisoner. What was she doing to him?
And he to her?
Time was meaningless in Paradise. She remembered what eight hundred years once meant to her. History. Eight hundred years ago people did this and that and not this or that. They wore odd, revealing clothes and flew in the air in large crafts to go on things like vacations and holidays. Eight hundred years ago they thought we’d all have android bodies and live in harmony, ease, contentment. It was charming, the past. Crude but charming.
She’d never gotten along with people, and eight hundred years of solitary confinement had not improved her social skills. He seemed a little dimwitted. She tried to explain to him that this was her world, that she had created this world, that she was creating this world. The house, the gardens surrounding it, the furniture, clothes, food, drinks — they were all her creations. She was the god in this paradise.
‘I made this house,’ she said to him over and over again. He never seemed to understand. She gave up and ignored him. He was a restless type and wandered here and there. She didn’t know where he slept. Sometimes she didn’t see him for days. So she ignored him and continued with the renovation of the east wing. This renovation was what she had been in the middle of when the Prince had suddenly appeared like a bad memory.
She was too busy reconstructing an outer wall to notice Ciel was back. He watched, astonished. So this is what she’d meant. She was literally creating a wall. Out of thin air. Her hands molding, air contracting, forming, becoming.
‘How?’ he asked.
She smiled. He may be dimwitted, but there was no denying that he was extremely attractive and well built. ‘I manipulate the zanghin.’
‘What?’
‘The zanghin. This world, this reality, what we’re in right now. All powered by zanghin. I manipulate the zanghin to create almost anything that I wish.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know the technical hows and whys. I just know I can do it. It took me a very long time to learn how. I’m still learning. I suppose Bee would have known. Bee, the Younger. I wish he was still alive. There are so many questions I long to ask him. He would have been astonished to find out that zanghin can be manipulated from inside the Scroll. And without code or script. Have I become zanghin? Is that why? I’ve been in the Scroll for so long. Maybe I am zanghin. Maybe that’s why the Scroll couldn’t detect any life forms.’
She seemed weary.
‘Are you well?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Just tired. Making things out of zanghin can be exhausting.’
‘Is that why you were ill? When I first found you?’
‘Yes. I got so caught up in the renovation, I forgot to eat or drink. I passed out from exhaustion.’
‘Come. Let us go inside.’
‘It’s alright. You don’t need to carry me. Just give me your arm to lean on. There.’
He gave her wine to drink, and this revived her.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Were you friends with Bee, the Younger?’
‘Yes. We became friends. He constructed The Garden with me in mind. I was initially in another Scroll, one that was failing. He was working on this one, a vastly improved technology. In the early days, the zanghin could corrupt. That was what was happening with my original Scroll. Bee asked me for my input, what kind of world I’d like to live in. Once I was in here, we’d exchange letters. He’d ask me questions and I’d answer them. About the quality of the world, how it was developing. If the scents were developing. In his father’s Scrolls, there were no scents. They couldn’t figure out how to program the scents in. We corresponded for years. I was like one of his research assistants. He’d give me little experiments to do. Teach me about the zanghin. And then he died. Zanghin poisoning. Strange how the zanghin kills some people but preserves the lives of others. I still write him letters. I liked him better than any other person I’ve ever known. We could discuss anything. I suppose we were soul mates.’
They continued their conversation through dinner, well into the night.
‘You know, the first three Scrolls had no night. The day/night cycle took years to develop.’
‘Why is it that you never age?’
‘There is no time here.’
‘But there is night and a new day.’
‘Those are artificial cycles. False time. You will not age. Your hair and nails will not grow. You think time, but there is no time. Also, fascinatingly, in this Scroll, you cannot hurt yourself. If you fall out of a tree you will not break any bones. You can’t cut yourself, not even with your own fingernails. If that happens, if you begin to injure yourself, that means the Scroll has been corrupted and we will probably die unless we can escape the Scroll. But, well, Father Time waits for us outside the Scroll, and who is Father Time but also The Grim Reaper. He was obsessed with stopping time. Bee had great dreams. Utopian dreams. He wanted every one of us to live in a Scroll. Become immortal. Heaven at last.’
‘Do you think this is heaven?’
‘No.’
‘No one would think this is heaven. The Scrolls are no longer used. They deteriorate and we are all glad. We think of them as medieval tortures. Along with all the metal tech and those things called factories.’
‘Then how are you here?’
‘My brother. The King. He has an obsession with antiquity. Stinking motors, machines that war. Listening to him speak for hours on the history of androids can drive one insane.’
‘Your brother’s an otaku?’
‘Otaku?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘When did tech become so disgusting to us?’ she wondered. ‘At one time, it was our savior. We would become invincible, immortal. But it couldn’t stop disease or war or hunger. It was just another manifestation of greed. Narcissism. Did you know that the Hanging Scrolls is a pun of sorts? A sick pun. Originally, the Scrolls replaced the death sentence for the Omiai class. Instead of being hanged you were hung inside a Scroll.’
‘Did you never try to escape?’ Ciel asked.
‘To where? The Garden is preferable to anything outside it. For me. The only thing missing is Bee.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your husbands?’
‘No.’
‘Is it true? That you killed all three?’
‘Yes.’
‘With poison?’
‘No. The first I pushed. He was old and physically weak. I saw him standing at the top of the main staircase. It was impulse. I saw him and this rage, this rage — I pushed him. He fell three flights. The staircase was Acassian marble. The ground floor too. Cracked his skull. Broke most of his bones. It took him eight, nine hours to die. He was in agony. I enjoyed watching him die. We all did. He was a sadist.’
‘We?’
‘We. The servants. Me. His dogs. We all hated him. The world was more than willing to believe it was an accident. The world was content. I would not have remarried but my grandmother forced me to marry the Duke. The Duke, I poisoned. My first poisoning. I was ordered to kill him. I didn’t want him dead. He was my idea of a most perfect husband. He ignored me whenever he could. Let me do what I liked as long as I behaved myself in public and kept out of his way. We did look divine together. He was a most perfect specimen of manhood. Like a sculpture of a god come to life, his skin shimmering white opal. The Omiai gene engineering was perfected in him. Of course he was obnoxiously vain. That was the main reason he agreed to marry me. That we looked so perfect together. Appearances were everything for him. He had to outdo everyone. All our anniversaries were celebrated with extravagance. And the presents he gave me delightful. If the Duke of Eastgate gave his wife a small pleasure boat for her birthday, I got a manor by the sea. If the Duke of Seagate gave his wife a triple-strand necklace of goose-egg pearls for their wedding anniversary, I got five strands. One year, he gave me my own regiment. A small one, of only women soldiers. He thought he was invincible. And he was, as far as wealth and military power was concerned. At the time, Windgate was the most important portal. A breach there and the kingdom was doomed. I gave him a gentle concoction. Slipped into his spiced wine. He always liked to drink hot spiced wine before bed. He simply never woke again. Twice widowed. People thought I was unfortunate. The marriages were the misfortune, not the widowhoods.’
‘You said you were ordered. By whom?’
‘The King. Not directly, of course. His stewards came to me. We made a bargain. I kill the Duke and I would keep half his estate. I would also be free to marry who I liked. I could even remain unmarried. And I remained unmarried for a long time. Those were happy years.’
‘You also poisoned your third husband. And his lover?’
Kai-Amer sighed. She looked directly into Ciel’s eyes. ‘Yes. Both. The poison I created for the two of them was epically ironic and fun. I gave them both the poison, but you see, the poison would not work until the moment his penis entered her vagina. It was my most brilliant work. I became quite fascinated with poisons after the Duke’s death. Researched and collected all the ancient texts, the newest scientific research. I became a master of poison. I loved him. My third and last husband. I promised myself that I would never marry again but I married him. He seduced me for my money and position. Convinced me that he loved me. Convinced me that I loved him. He liked me but he never loved me. I wouldn’t have killed him if he hadn’t betrayed me so. To make someone love you — well. When you love someone else. He researched me the way I researched poisons. Even then, they couldn’t prove that it was me who had poisoned him. I was much too clever. But they didn’t want proof. They just wanted to put me away so I couldn’t blab about the Duke’s murder. If only the Duke had been more clever, hidden his ambitions instead of flaunting it right in the King’s face. Would have saved me a great deal of bother. You see now why I prefer my Garden, why I never want to leave this Scroll. I suppose you’re a direct descendent of King Qui. Yes. I can see it in your face. I suppose I should have poisoned him instead.’ She laughed, delighted at the thought. ‘I know just the poison.’
Ciel laughed too. Because Kai-Amer excited him. She had this way of making all her criminal actions appealing, of winning his sympathy entirely. He even thought that it would not be so bad dying at her hands. He was sure she liked him enough to create a most intoxicating poison. A bespoke poison just for him.
She read his thoughts. He was an easy person to read. Probably why he’d lost the throne to his brother, the psychopath otaku. She leaned back in her chair, tilted her head and said, ‘Would you like to share my bed tonight?’
‘Yes,’ the Prince agreed.
‘I suppose it’s like riding a bike. Well, then. Come along.’
In her bedroom, she undressed, graceful like a Royal Court dancer. She had him stand still as she slowly circled around him, her eyes lingering on the muscles of his shoulders. She raised her hand, touched his chest with a finger, and then quickly drew back as if she’d touched fire. ‘I — I’m sorry. It’s — it’s been a long time. A long time since I’ve touched anyone.’
She was shaking. He wrapped his large hands around her face. When she was calm enough to look into his eyes, he kissed her.
They’d entered their period of ‘thous’ and ‘thees’.
Excerpt from the novella The Ruby Lipped Poisoner, available as a paperback and ebook.
