The Watchtower

thought. Madame La Pieuvre shoved me behind her and, with one more warning finger to her lips, turned to face the door. A man appeared on the landing holding a torch at and above the steps leading back down to the water. I saw Madame La Pieuvre unfastening the clasp of her cloak, and then, in less time than it took the cloak to fall to the floor, she surged forward, all eight arms writhing in the air. The man turned at the breeze her movement must have caused and I had time to see the look of horror on his face before she was upon him. One suckered hand wrapped over his mouth and nose, stifling his scream, while the others wrapped around him, keeping him from falling. It looked as if she were gently rocking him to sleep, only I could see his face turning dark in the reflected light of Madame La Pieuvre’s bioluminescence, his eyes bulging, then rolling back and freezing in death. She lowered him gently to the ground and then turned around.
    I barely recognized the refined woman I knew. Her face was puffed and mottled, her arms had grown suckers that pulsed like open mouths hungry for more prey … which had just appeared in the doorway. The second torturer stood gaping at this creature that was beyond any fictive nightmares he might have dreamed up to frighten his comrade. A small sound came out of him—like air escaping from a punctured tire—and then she was upon him. This time there was no gentle squeezing to death. Madame La Pieuvre tore him limb from limb, tossing pieces of him into the air. When she was done, she shoved the remains down the steps into the water.
    “There,” she said, wiping blood from her mouth. “Let the crocodiles he was laughing about feast on his remains.”
    I would have asked her then if those crocodiles really existed, but she had already swept past me into the torture room. She went from body to body, tenderly touching each one with the suckered fingers she’d only recently used to tear a man apart. “Some of these poor souls have been dead for several days and”—she knelt at the ground and sniffed at the rank stone floor—“blood has been spilled before that. How long have they been collecting blood and why ?”
    “For Marduk. They must have needed it to make him strong enough.”
    “Marduk’s never needed any help getting his own blood. Dee and Ruggieri must have some reason to collect this much blood. Something special they have planned.”
    I shivered at the thought of any plan that required such wholesale bloodletting—a shivering that wouldn’t stop as I followed Madame La Pieuvre further, keeping within the circle of her glow in case we ran into any of those crocodiles. We went through passages lined with bones and skulls piled high above our heads and curio cabinets full of strange instruments and stuffed exotic animals.
    “Catherine was quite the collector,” Madame La Pieuvre remarked when she saw me staring at a stuffed aardvark. “And an amateur sorcerer. She dabbled in the black arts and poisoning, collecting whatever she thought might come in useful to protect her children and further her own dynastic ambitions … and yet when she died, she had outlived eight of her ten children, and of the two survivors, Henri the third died seven months after her, leaving only her daughter Margot, whom she had disowned during her life. A sad life. I’m not surprised that Dee and Ruggieri have chosen her abandoned palace for their evil purposes.”
    She shook her head sadly and then continued on, leaving me staring at the cabinet full of strange instruments. They reminded me of something, but I couldn’t recall what. Only when Madame La Pieuvre’s glow had faded and I couldn’t see the instruments in the case anymore did I hurry to catch up with her.
    She had come to a stop at the end of a hallway. She held an arm out to keep me back … and I saw why. Hers wasn’t the only source of light anymore. A glow was coming from around the corner. She motioned for me to stay put and then cautiously crept around the corner. After another moment she waved for me to follow her.
    The scene in this room was not as blatantly horrific as the one in the dungeon. It was even peaceful. The room was hung with rich tapestries and lit by banks of candles. A body was laid out on a raised dais like a corpse laid out for viewing at a funeral, except that above the head of the “corpse” was suspended a leather bladder connected to the body by a long, supple reed. Walking closer, I