#naducio

The action was not nearly as infuriating as it had once been- what with his brows unpainted and his face wasted and dull with fever-sweat. Even his nasal, obnoxious voice was not what it used to be- it was rough, scratchy and strained with effort. Nadia evaded his question, “Happy Birthday, Lucio,” she said, smiling faintly. He frowned. “Birthday?” he asked, uncomprehending for a few moments. Then, as though only just remembering it, he grinned, the action making him look a little more alive. “Oh yeah!” He raised his voice, then winced and coughed again. “Do not strain your voice so, dear.” Nadia said flatly.

In the same hoarse, scratchy tone, he went on, “It’s my birthday! Are they all lining up downstairs? Is everything gold-” She tuned out his ramblings, inconsequential as they were, as it dawned on her that never, in the six years they had spent wed to each other, had Lucio ever forgotten his own birthday. His excitement would be palpable at least several months in advance, and it would mount to a crescendo at the Masquerade when he descended from the staircase to the ballroom, popping open a bottle of cloudberry liqueur and spraying it carelessly onto the revelers. She had found that behavior touching and sweet in those initial, happier years. The sentiment would later be replaced by a bitterness that had come to cloud everything she felt for the man- then the excitement became distasteful to her, irritating and juvenile as everything else he does. But now, as she watched him rasp out his eagerness for a Masquerade that he would, very likely, be too weak to attend, Nadia felt another, cold-warm emotion settle upon her heart. He was going to die. What was this, this still, queer emptiness? She had imagined his passing often before, often in jest, and often in earnest. Imagined stripping these walls of their bright red drapings, taking down his portraits one by one by one, sending his weapons to the armoire, burying him and his misdeeds, and then, slowly, cleaning up Vesuvia on her own terms without his bulldozing and sabotage, sending away those dreadful, dead eyed courtiers. She had thought it through with great determination as she tinkered away in her tower, often toasted to it with a full glass of Golden Goose late into the night, often whispered it onto Asra’s sweaty skin as they lay side by side. He could not die soon enough. And yet, as she came eye to eye with that bald faced reality, contemplating that very soon that she would have to strip down these chambers and send away his dogs to the menagerie- she found herself overcome by this- this peculiar reluctance.

“Noddy, are you listening?” Lucio’s insistence snapped her out of her thoughts. “What was that, my dear?” she asked, still distant. “I said you have to wait till the sprinklers begin to send out the peacocks.” He repeated. “Indeed.” She said, turning her gaze to him. He fell silent, likely out of breath. He could not speak now for long stretches of time. At any other time, she might have considered it a blessing. But he was suffering, Nadia knew, suffering this long, drawn out agony that was his illness. Who knew he would meet his end this way, in this form, stripped of everything he was, confined to his bed, at the mercy of someone as vile as Valdemar? He reached out, put his hand on her arm. His touch was papery. She did not shake it away. “I don’t think I can go out there today,” he said quietly. She forced herself to meet his tired, tearful eyes. “It’s not fair, Noddy.”

She scoffed. Of course- a city burns and this should be his priority.  But then again, Nadia had never teetered that close to confronting her own mortality. She would have excused him for his selfishness, had he not been just as self-absorbed, just as hard headed in his better days. “Unless..” he waggled his eyebrows again. “Unless you carry me downstairs,” he smiled then, utterly shameless, even while hovering an inch over the grave.

Nadia rolled her eyes. “No.” She said firmly. “That would be quite unbecoming.” To her astonishment, he did not put up a fight. “Yeah,” he agreed, quite reasonably. “That would ruin your outfit, and we can’t have that.” Nadia held her tongue, and he fell silent again. He looked away from her, longingly, at the portrait mounted on the wall, and he sighed. It does not befit him, she decided. The genuine morosity in his countenance unsettled her. A thought crept unbidden- that she had rather preferred his unbearable whining and unreasonable, petty bickering, over this- this silence. What was it that squeezed her heart so vice tight that her very breath came fractured from her throat? The man before her was a shadow of himself, and soon, he would fade away too. He would be gone, like everything else that was slowly draining away from her, from this city. Suddenly, breathlessly, she missed her family. Why, she wondered. What was it about Lucio’s impending passing that made her want to rush to Prakra,  bury her face in Nasmira’s shoulder or against Baba’s chest and hide, hide, hide. She dispelled it with a quick, dismissive wave of her hand, as though the thought were a beetle scuttling overhead. It made her feel weak, juvenile. She wondered if she should leave. She has yet to get dressed for the Masquerade, and this unfamiliar feeling was the wrong sort of puzzling. (She could fix up ancient clocks, invent pocket watches that chimed tunes in twelve different languages, and hovering trinkets that soared towards the sky when keyed in- matters of the heart, however.)  As she was about to rise, Lucio spoke.

“Don’t worry, Noddy,” he said, turning to look at her with an uncharacteristically soft smile. “It’s going to be over soon.” For you. She wanted to cry. For you, and we would be left living, and alone. Alone. What was it about the thought of not having him that made her feel as though she would be alone? He was overcome by another fit of coughing, and she patted his arm lightly, waiting for it to pass. “I don’t like you seeing me this way.” He said, when he was done. “But you won’t have to, not for long.” Nadia raised her eyebrows. He must feel the end settling, then. She thought of family again.

When she had accepted Lucio’s proposal, and woken up the following morning with a terrible hangover and not an ounce of regret, Nafizah had deigned to cast him a curious gaze. In her peculiar, grating self-possession, she pronounced her vague impression of Nadia’s fiancé. “He is beautiful, I don’t doubt, Nadia.” She ran a hand through her long pink tresses thoughtfully. “There is passion, and yet-“ She frowned. “Something so incomplete, that unsettles me. He is young however, younger than you, and completion is after all, a distant dream to the best of us.”

“’Fizah!” Natiqa piped, laughing. “Is that your way of calling him young and hot? No wonder you’re still single.”

Nafizah paid her no mind, as the Crown Princess rarely paid anything any mind- Nadia, the least of all. “I would assume he struggles with the ending of things, and solitude.”

Nadia had shrugged it off- she only remembered the look in his eyes and the wine flush on his cheeks when he held her hand and spoke with a sincerity that felt like a punch to the gut. “You’re smart, Your Highness, and you’re not like the rest of them, and I don’t know how to rule a city, but I think you’ll be the best Countess the world has ever seen.”

Faith. Faith in her. Faith in her independence. When she leaned in to kiss him at the Temple District Square as the wedding harps chimed loud, for a brief, short-lived, glorious moment, Nadia knew the taste of freedom.

What would Nafizah say now? What would Nasmira do? Would Nazali tell her to not resign herself to a man’s passing lest sheer resignation hastened it? Would they stay by his side to ease his pain? Would they tell her what she was feeling, and what to make of it? “Dearest,” would Navra ask, “do you want to know at all?”

Abruptly, she asked her husband, “Are you quite certain that I should not send for anyone else, Lucio?” Now that he seemed to have accepted his impending death, she deemed it fit to repeat the question. “Family, friends, anyone?” There was Sybilla, she knew, who was tight lipped about their shared history. “I knew him by another name,” she had said, “We grew up together, but a lot of it isn’t story to tell.” and nothing more. Perhaps she should have asked Sybilla before she had left. “No,” Lucio answered, just as he did the first time she had asked him. “There’s only Lillie, and she’ll come back soon.” His hand slipped into hers, and he laced their fingers together. “When I get better, and when the plague is over, I’m leaving.”

Nadia stared at him. He must be delirious again. “Will you now, my dear?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, still resolutely looking into her eyes. “You were born to rule, I- I’m not. I’ll leave Vesuvia, I told Lillie we’ll go together.” He gave her a shaky, dreamy smile. Nadia was alarmed. His hand was white-hot in hers, his face flushed and his eyes unfocused. “Lucio, shall I call for Doctor Devorak?”

“Huh?” he shook his head, and ignored her. “Noddy, I just need to stay alive until- till Lillie gets back. Everything’s gonna be fine, you’ll see.” His voice crept up an octave. Nadia reached for the summoning bell by the bed.  “Noddy,” why, he looked as though he would cry. Nadia gave his hand a squeeze, and gave the bell a ring. A chamberlain popped his befeathered head. “Doctor Devorak, please.” She snapped at him. His eyes wide as saucers, he darted away. She gripped his hand with both of hers. Is this what you do for a dying man? Do you hold his hand? Do you stamp out the strange urge to weep?  Do you feel Death wrapping their ice cold arms around you and stay, as though they were an old friend? He coughed again, and cried out with so much pain that Nadia winced.

“I just have to stay till Lillie gets here. It’ll be over soon.” He told her, his voice frantic, almost pleading. Nadia felt quite ill. “Alright, Lucio, calm yourself.”

Winded, he struggled for a few breaths, and then he could draw one in, and another. Still breathing harshly, he said, “You can repurpose my wing, and release my menagerie. Don’t take down the paintings though, just switch places. I’ll take my dogs, and I’ll leave.” Even in delirium, his eyes were bright and admiring, as they so often were towards her when they weren’t head to head, even after he was no longer the man whom she married. “You’ll do a great job, Noddy, you’re smart and you know how to handle these courtier types.” His face twisted in distaste, and she could not suppress a small laugh. “We had a good run, didn’t we, Countess?”

Nadia inhaled sharply, and then she looked away. No. They had a terrible run- a broken, desolate, tawdry history of failed communication and apathy, of irreconcilable differences and resentment, of his heartlessness and incompetence and her attempts at papering over those ever widening cracks. The fire still raged, and the ash had not since cleared from the sky. Everything had fallen apart under them. How tragic it was, how pathetically ironic, that he should be the only person remaining with faith in her. It took Nadia every drop of her painstakingly cultivated, carefully trained restraint to not just- scream of frustration, then and there.

We had a good run, didn’t we, Countess?

He was dying.

She remembered how he had watched her with that same admiring fondness as she stumbled through a basic, hasty speech at the commissioning of  a residential project at the Heart District. “You were amazing, Noddy!” he’d exclaimed, thumping her on the back with his golden arm, looking as though he would explode from the excitement. “I know  I’m good with words, but you’re almost as good with words, everyone loved it, you’re the best Countess ever!”

Another time, after another dreary, unproductive diplomatic tiff, he had grabbed an Atapran emissary by the collar of his robes, gauntlet inches away from ripping a gash on their face, already to the detriment of undoing years of mutual political allyship, and shattered the wine glass in their unfortunate hands. “Talk to Noddy like that one more time, and I’ll have you hung, alright?”

His confidence in her had never wavered. How horribly, how utterly she has failed if she has failed even by his standards.

He struggles with solitude, and the end of things. Who, in this tired world, didn’t?

And then she knew what to name that vice around her heart.

Grief. This is what had led her here today, then.

Soon, his eyes would shut for the last time, and she would never see his admiration for her, his blind, foolhardy optimism and adoration reflected in them. He would never again growl at anyone who spoke to her with impudence (despite her distaste for unnecessary heroics), never bid his dogs to hush if she were sleeping. He would never again drunk-stumble along with his accomplices at the Masquerade asking them gleefully- “Haven’t met my Countess, have you? She’s the best.”

His pride in her and her accomplishments had once, for a brief and far more hopeful time, been a warm, sharp blaze, spurring her onward, urging her to outdo herself. And yet, as Nafizah had said, it was incomplete. It had fallen apart as quick as a candle snuffed out with a heavy hand, mired in his deviance and underhandedness, and his obstinate, pointless, selfish cruelty. Everything unfinished, as Nafizah had said, everything undone- terms unmet, a partnership broken into dust. Nothing to be fixed here anymore, only to be moved away, only to be cleaned up and disposed off. A corpse of potential. Everything they could have been together has come to nothing. Perhaps grief is the yearning for another day.

Unbidden, she felt a memory rise like vapour.

A long, sleepless night, the faint sound of someone absolutely massacring a waltz on the ballroom piano, and Nadia had followed the cacophony, fully prepared to demand an explanation from the offender. Tracking her quarry, she found a terribly nervous chamberlain plucking at the keys with trembling hands, and then the sound of boisterous laughter. Lucio was in the middle of the ballroom with his dogs. He had both of Mercedes’ paws in his hands, and he was swaying gracelessly, attempting to twirl the hound, and only cackling when he fell short. “We’ll make a ballroom star of you, old girl.” His grin was boyish and charming, a glimpse of the man he had been when he had asked her, begged her, to marry him.

We had a good run, didn’t we, Countess?

We could have. How I wish we did. And here we are, you and I, out of time.

Hastily, Nadia pinched the bridge of her nose. This was no time for tears. She opened her mouth to speak, and was interrupted by the door opening. It was not Julian Devorak who rushed in, but Asra, already dressed for the Masquerade, his gown swirling behind him in a storm of many colours. “Ilya isn’t-“ He paused beside her, his fingers clenching around his fox-mask, lips pulled into a questioning frown. “Nadi?”

“He is quite ill, Asra.” She said briskly. As if on cue, Lucio started to strain for breath again, scrabbling at his throat, mumbling again in that strange language. “Oh, alright,” Slowly, gingerly, he made over to Lucio’s side. Nadia rose. “I shall have to get dressed, it is already quite late.”

“I’ll be here,” Asra assured her. “Go.”

As she turned to leave, she heard Lucio call out to her.  

“Noddy,” he asked, panting, the ghost of a smile in his still impudent voice. “Where’s my birthday kiss?”

Without sparing it a single thought, a sudden wave of emotion made her sweep back to his side, nearly knocking the unsuspecting magician out of the way as she dove down to press her lips against Lucio’s. He reciprocated, as though surprised by her enthusiasm, tangling his arm in her hair, bringing her closer. She could feel his ribs as she pressed against him, could feel the slow pulse in his throat. If she ran her hands down his arm and back she knew she could feel the ridges and dents of old battle scars, testaments to the burning, blistering, desperate resilience that had brought him thus far only to have him squandered so, only to have him die so young, to have him succumb to this. She could feel how his fevered body strained to hold her, as though for the first time, as though for the last time.

(When had Lucio not clung to her, to everyone with this desperation, as though everyone within his reach would vanish if he loosened his grip?)