He should have known he'd lost her when their words had come pouring out of his mouth and for the first time, he had meant it. "I'm disgusting, and I'm loathsome, and"

You love me for it.

Surely that hadn't been what he had meant to say.

In the end it was no good to try to manipulate her, and he had lost her in the very moment of grasping.

He pleaded with her to listen but his words came out twisted and were not what she wanted to hear. He picked his way through the gardens but everywhere he stepped turned to mud puddles and it wasn't what he thought.

No matter how high Steerpike climbed, she remained forever out of his reach. He could acquire all the power there was to be had in Gormenghast and it wouldn't be enough. What would be enough for her? Was there nothing he could say that would turn her face towards his? It was all for her, surely she had to know that.

It hadn't been, at first. It hadn't been even when they had first met, when he had pretended to be struck by her at best dubious beauty and ingratiated himself with an eye towards her lesser. It was his way of climbing. Swift and sure as any creature on the rocks, as tenuous a grip as he had had to the clock face as it tried to drop him off the face of the castle. Now there was a symbol for the times. Gormenghast, trying to rid itself of a leech.

"You mustn't think of yourself that way."

Steerpike opened his eyes.

It was dark out, dark and cold. There were shapes moving in the darkness, silhouetted against the stars and creating a black on black shape with long hair and a ridiculous looking dress.

"I did listen, you know. I may not have wanted to, but I listened."

Steerpike pouted.

"Don't do that, either."

It was almost a mother's tone of voice, but with more fondness in it than anyone's mother had ever shown to him. More fondness than she had ever exhibited in life.

"Steerpike, you are the most insufferable young man I have ever met."

"And how many young men have you met?"

Or at least that's what he had meant to say. Water bubbled up around his ears and he forgot.

He had been the first young man, he reckoned, who had ever paid attention to her. Who had flattered her, plain and only somewhat intelligent young woman that she was. She had such fanciful dreams. And he spoke to her, and pleased her, and somehow under that she had blossomed. She would never be storybook beautiful but she had learned a poise and grace that made her turn heads in rooms, heads to which she paid no attention. She would never be a great scholar, but that was as much her family and place as it was her intellect, and when given leave to express her ideas she had so many of them.

Steerpike, QueerPike, SneerBite. She was the only one who remembered his name. Everyone mangled it, butchered the syllables into pieces out of spite or hatred or worse of all, indifference. When she said his name it was a thing worth listening to. He never called her by name, only as my Lady. She was, too. His Lady. His. When nothing else in the world was, she had been.

"From the moment I laid eyes on you."

Possibly there was more affection in that tone that he gave to it rather than she had, but it was nice to pretend. He was tired, too tired from all the effort and all the bloody years and all the clawing he had done. Reaction. Action.

From the moment she laid eyes on him?

"It took you longer to come around."

He didn't know what she meant by that, and he didn't really care to guess. Come around to her way of thinking, and he wasn't sure he wanted to believe that he had.

Perfectly willing to admit to madness. Better to admit to madness than to her brand of cleverness, which was a strange and perverse thing. It was so close to reality, closer than his own mind, that it seemed foreign to him. He hated her a little for that.

Not for being clever, of course. He had enough mad brilliance to tide them both over till Doomsday, and he wasn't the sort to be jealous of what she had if he had it in measures more than adequate. But he hated her for her perception. For being able to see into him far enough to get him to say things, do things that he never would have said or done otherwise.

"Such as taking your mask off?"

Yes. That exactly.

"Not that one."

He tried to make frozen lips move enough to snarl but couldn't quite. She knew what he had meant to say and knew what he had meant underneath that and that was exactly the kind of cleverness he hated her for. Reading the words beneath the words. He had fooled her into loving him but she had seen through him anyway and he didn't know how that happened.

Perhaps, he thought, tiredly, vainly, perhaps he could have untangled what had led him to bleed through in the middle of the disgusting floodwaters. If he had known that, perhaps he could have avoided being run through by her brat of a baby brother. He was transparent to her long before he had been transparent to anyone else. Oh, they had been suspicious, they had suspected him for a long time. But he had been able to work. They were all stupid, dumb as the bricks they clung to. He had been able to work until they had started unraveling faster than he had been able to weave and then one sharp tug.

"We all fall down."

Yes, that's it exactly. We all fall down.

Steerpike sighed, closed his eyes, and fell.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.