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though, instead of sea green, these small, blank squares glint a dim — yet unmistakable — shade of scarlet.

Play for time, Jean-Guy's brain tells him, meanwhile, imparting its usually good advice with uncharacteristic softness, as though, if it were to speak any louder, the chevalier might somehow overhear it. Pretend not to have recognized him. Then work your pistol free, slowly; fire a warning shot, and summon the good citizens outside

… those same ones you slipped in here to avoid, in the first place —

to aid you in his arrest.

Almost snorting aloud at the very idea, before he catches himself: as though an agent of Jean-Guy's enviable size and bulk actually need fear the feeble defences of a ci-devant fop like this one, with his frilled wrists and his neat, red-heeled shoes, their tarnished buckles dull and smeared — on the nearest side, at least — with something that almost looks like

blood?

Surely not.

And yet

"You would be Citizen Sansterre, I think," the chevalier observes, abruptly.

Name of God.

Recovering, Jean-Guy gives a stiff nod. "And you the traitor, Prendegrace."

"And that would be a pistol you reach for, under your collar."

"It would."

A punch, a kick, a cry for help, the drawing forth of some secret weapon of his own: Jean-Guy braces himself, a match-ready fuse, tensed to the point of near pain against any of the aforementioned. But the chevalier merely nods as well, undeterred in the face of Jean-Guy's honest aggression, his very passivity itself a form of arrogance, a cool and languid aristocratic challenge to the progressively more hot and bothered plebian world around him. Then leans just a bit forward, at almost the same time: a paralytic blink of virtual non-movement, so subtle as to be hardly worth noting; for all that Jean-Guy now finds himself beginning barely recognizing what he does, let alone why to match it.

Leaning in, far too slow to stop himself, to arrest this fall in mid-plunge. Leaning in, as the chevalier's red lenses dip, slipping inexorably downward to reveal a pale rim of brow, of lash, of eye socket. And leaning in yet further, to see — below that —

— first one eye, then another: pure but opaque, luridly empty. Eyes without whites (or irises, or pupils), the same blank scarlet tint — from lower lid to upper — as the spectacles that masked them.

Words in red darkness, pitched almost too low to hear; Jean-Guy must strain to catch them, leaning closer still. Places a trembling hand on the chevalier's shoulder, to steady himself, and feels them thrum up through his palm, his arm, his chest, his wildly beating heart: a secret, interior embrace, intimate as plague, squeezing him between the ribs, between the thighs. And

deeper.

Before him, the chevalier's own hand hovers, clean white palm turned patiently upward. Those long, black-rimmed nails. Those red words, tracing the myriad paths of blood. Suggesting, mildly

Then you had best give it to me, Citizen, this pistol of yours. Had you not?

Because: That would be the right thing to do, really. All things considered.

Do you not think?

Yes.

For safety. For safe-keeping.

. . . exactly that, yes.

Such sweet reason. Such deadly reasonableness.

Jean-Guy feels his mouth drop open as though to protest, but hears only the faint, wet pop of his jaw hinges relaxing in an idiot yawn; watches, helpless, as he drops the pistol — butt-first — into the chevalier's grip. Sees the chevalier seem to blink, just slightly, in return: all-red no-stare blurred by only the most momentary flicker, milky and brief as some snake's nictitating membrane.

And

"There, now," the chevalier observes, aloud. "That must suit us both so much better."

Must it — not ?

A half-formed heave, a last muffled attempt at a thrash, muscles knotted in on themselves like some mad stray cur's in the foam-flecked final stages of hydrophobia — and then, without warning, the chevalier is on him. Their mouths seal together, parted lip to bared, bone-needle teeth: blood fills Jean-Guy's throat, greasing the way as the chevalier locks fast to his fluttering tongue. His gums burn like ulcers. This is far less a kiss than a suddenly open wound, an artery slashed and left to spurt.

The pistol falls away, forgotten.