struggling at the back of my mind, and it told me that I was in grave danger.
“But I fear you have already seen too much.” She leaned closer. I could feel no breath upon my neck. Then, through a roaring in my head, an idea came to me.
“Wait,” I said. “Indeed, I have seen too much. I watched you there, searching the graves.” This time, it was I who reached for her hand. “Searching, clawing, ruining your hands as you try to wake them. It does not always work, does it? They do not always return.”
After a moment, she shook her head.
“Would it not be easier, if you had certain knowledge of when they awoke?”
Her head moved in the fraction of a nod.
“And thus I have a proposal for you,” I whispered. I held my breath.
In the dim light, her eyes glittered with a tiny crimson flame.
“I am listening,” she said.
*
Occasionally, when my gaze falls upon the rise of Highgate Hill above the city, and I think of the scarlet flags that flutter within those walls, I wonder if I have behaved quite like a gentleman. I fear I have not. But a poet is, as I have said, beyond the common morality, and as my brother is so fond of reminding me, a business deal is a business deal, no matter with whom—or what—one transacts it.
In the Frozen City
Chris Roberson
I did it. I was responsible. Whatever blame or praise is due for what happens to the city, it falls on me.
I made the city, as surely as if I had laid every stone with my own bare hands. Not that I ever worked, not truly. When the construction of the city was begun, when I was just cresting my fortieth year, my hands had never once worn the calluses of an honest day’s work. But I paid for the city; without me, it never would have happened.
I was born to money, a platinum spoon in my mouth, and after years of dallying in the best schools wealth could buy, I saw it as my duty to expand my family’s immense holdings even further. Acquisitions, leverage buy-outs, takeovers-- “ethics” was a word I barely knew, and never used. Mine was greed for its own sake. Mine the ever-growing hoard of treasures, left to collect dust in an unmarked account overseas.
We buried my father on my thirty-eighth birthday, leaving me the last scion of our ancient line. I watched as his body was consigned to the flames in the crematorium, dutiful mourners at my side. I felt nothing, not sorrow, not anguish, my eyes dry and clear. I imagined the flesh peeling back, the bones beneath blackening slowly into ash in the heat, and still I felt nothing. When the flames had done their job, and we transported the urn to the cold marble of the family crypt, I stood before the serried ranks of my forbearers, all now gone. All had left behind wealth and accumulated power, passed from generation to generation, never lessening, all for the greater glory of the family. And all of it, now, on my shoulders, and in my hands. And still I felt nothing.
That evening, drunk on unimaginably expensive brandy, eyes stinging from the smoke of dozens of cigars each worth a laborer’s full paycheck, I sat alone in my grand study, surveying my life. A creeping realization came that not all the tears misting my eyes were caused by the smoke. I looked on my works that night, on what I had made of my life, and I wept.
What have I made, I asked myself. What do I leave behind me?
My only answer was an empty house, filled with treasure, empty of people. No friends. No wife. No family.
That night I dreamt of flames licking my heels, consigning me to ash and oblivion, forgotten, unloved and unmourned. Then I dreamt a legacy. I dreamt a city.
*
The next day I suspended all projects in which my corporation was engaged, hired an army of architects, scientists, sociologists, and artists, and began my work.
The city was my dream, my goal, my obsession. It would be my repayment for all that my family had taken over the long generations, a final recompense to balance the scales. When I died, my passing would
“But I fear you have already seen too much.” She leaned closer. I could feel no breath upon my neck. Then, through a roaring in my head, an idea came to me.
“Wait,” I said. “Indeed, I have seen too much. I watched you there, searching the graves.” This time, it was I who reached for her hand. “Searching, clawing, ruining your hands as you try to wake them. It does not always work, does it? They do not always return.”
After a moment, she shook her head.
“Would it not be easier, if you had certain knowledge of when they awoke?”
Her head moved in the fraction of a nod.
“And thus I have a proposal for you,” I whispered. I held my breath.
In the dim light, her eyes glittered with a tiny crimson flame.
“I am listening,” she said.
*
Occasionally, when my gaze falls upon the rise of Highgate Hill above the city, and I think of the scarlet flags that flutter within those walls, I wonder if I have behaved quite like a gentleman. I fear I have not. But a poet is, as I have said, beyond the common morality, and as my brother is so fond of reminding me, a business deal is a business deal, no matter with whom—or what—one transacts it.
In the Frozen City
Chris Roberson
I did it. I was responsible. Whatever blame or praise is due for what happens to the city, it falls on me.
I made the city, as surely as if I had laid every stone with my own bare hands. Not that I ever worked, not truly. When the construction of the city was begun, when I was just cresting my fortieth year, my hands had never once worn the calluses of an honest day’s work. But I paid for the city; without me, it never would have happened.
I was born to money, a platinum spoon in my mouth, and after years of dallying in the best schools wealth could buy, I saw it as my duty to expand my family’s immense holdings even further. Acquisitions, leverage buy-outs, takeovers-- “ethics” was a word I barely knew, and never used. Mine was greed for its own sake. Mine the ever-growing hoard of treasures, left to collect dust in an unmarked account overseas.
We buried my father on my thirty-eighth birthday, leaving me the last scion of our ancient line. I watched as his body was consigned to the flames in the crematorium, dutiful mourners at my side. I felt nothing, not sorrow, not anguish, my eyes dry and clear. I imagined the flesh peeling back, the bones beneath blackening slowly into ash in the heat, and still I felt nothing. When the flames had done their job, and we transported the urn to the cold marble of the family crypt, I stood before the serried ranks of my forbearers, all now gone. All had left behind wealth and accumulated power, passed from generation to generation, never lessening, all for the greater glory of the family. And all of it, now, on my shoulders, and in my hands. And still I felt nothing.
That evening, drunk on unimaginably expensive brandy, eyes stinging from the smoke of dozens of cigars each worth a laborer’s full paycheck, I sat alone in my grand study, surveying my life. A creeping realization came that not all the tears misting my eyes were caused by the smoke. I looked on my works that night, on what I had made of my life, and I wept.
What have I made, I asked myself. What do I leave behind me?
My only answer was an empty house, filled with treasure, empty of people. No friends. No wife. No family.
That night I dreamt of flames licking my heels, consigning me to ash and oblivion, forgotten, unloved and unmourned. Then I dreamt a legacy. I dreamt a city.
*
The next day I suspended all projects in which my corporation was engaged, hired an army of architects, scientists, sociologists, and artists, and began my work.
The city was my dream, my goal, my obsession. It would be my repayment for all that my family had taken over the long generations, a final recompense to balance the scales. When I died, my passing would
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