King of Swords

J bruise. It smarted and he caught his breath as memories of the pain echoed back through his body. Sam had given him an ice pack for it at the shop, but it hadn't helped much.

'Did he take the seeds?'

'No. I've put them in the kitchen.' Luckily for him Sam had ordered plenty of extra calabar beans. Failure to bring them back would have provoked the ShitFit to end all ShitFits, because it would have meant they couldn't go through with tomorrow night's ceremony.

She put her nose close to the bruise and breathed in deep and long through flared nostrils. Eyes closed, she held her breath and tilted back her head and rocked it gently from side to side, moving her mouth like she was tasting what she'd inhaled. Then her face turned sour and she opened her eyes and breathed out.

'This cop drinks,' she said. 'He will be a problem to us.

A big problem.'

'How?' he asked.

'I don't know yet,' she said. 'Now get in the bath.'

She'd washed him every evening at 6 p.m. sharp since the day of his father's murder. He knew it was way wrong, that it shouldn't be happening at his age, but who was he to stop her, to protest or even complain? He'd tried to, in his late teens, but she'd said that because she was his mother she had a right to wash him, even when they were both old. For most of his life he'd gone along with whatever she'd said and done, whatever she'd asked of him without question, not because he'd wanted to but because it was the easiest way. The alternative didn't bear contemplating. A long long time ago he'd tried his hand at rebellion and the consequences had been disproportionately severe.

The water was cooking him, as always, but he was used to it now. Just like he was used to the hard scrubbing brush she cleaned him with. Years ago, when she'd first bought the brush, the bristles had been fairly soft, but two decades

of calcified soap had turned them into mini stalagmites which tore hairline strips out of his skin, especially around the bonier parts of his body. His back and chest were covered with a latticework of fine interwoven pale scars, which, when they caught the light, made his upper body seem enveloped in a wet gossamer web, like he was a spider's prey.

She soaped the brush with Dettol soap and scrubbed his neck, shoulders, arms and upper back first. Then he stood up and she handed him the soap so he could wash his cock, balls and ass with his hands, the only concession to self-administered hygiene she'd permitted him in the past ten years, after allowing him to wash his face and brush his teeth. They didn't talk at all. The bathroom filled with the sound of the bristles' shallow scrapings on his skin, almost the noise of a saw inching through a plank of wood, accompanied by her two lockets, the shhhh-iput of the lockets clapping together under her blouse, keeping time with her motions and the swing of her heavy pendulous breasts. The bristles dislodged scabs from still tender healing skin and bit deep into old wounds. He stared hard at the aquarium, disassociating his mind from the sparks of pain flying through his nerves. He concentrated on a group of half a dozen oranda goldfish swimming in the middle of the tank.

They were graceful fish, like amphibian roosters with their feathery dorsal fins and bushy tails, and traffic-signal-red heads and the metallic orangey-blue of their bodies. He watched them move in single file, equidistant one from the other, simple and perfect. And then, as he stood up, he noticed a flutter at the end of the line as the last oranda collided with the one in front. That goldfish dropped down an inch allowing the last one to take its place in the chain. It hovered without moving for a moment, seemingly confused, before swimming upwards and rejoining the line. It never recovered its pace. It perpetually lagged behind, only follow ing the group in quick spurts, where it would catch up and briefly regain formation before dropping out. When Carmine looked harder at the oranda he thought he noticed an off-coloured patch on its side, a small dull grey mark close to its dorsal fin. But it was gone before he could see for sure.

She washed his feet and legs last, and then he stepped out of the water and onto the floor. Later he'd have to empty the tub, clean and disinfect it and then dry it before carrying it downstairs to the basement where he lived.

After washing him, his mother dried him vigorously top to toe with a white towel, except for the parts he'd washed himself, which he did once she'd finished with him.

'The ceremony's for tonight,' she said.

'But it's Friday.“

'It's happening after midnight.'

iAfter midnight. . .' Carmine knew that meant it would be a sacrifice as opposed to a simple execution — which meant this would be a Saturday Night Barons Club and he'd have to attend in full dress. 'Who is it?' But he knew before she told him.