Quicker, he was getting quicker, enough that he was considering a stop watch to count out the seconds. As it was he knew his songs well enough to use them to mark the time, and they were telling him that he was shaving seconds off his record. How proud his brother would be. Klavier hummed with the guitar of his song and started to pull the gloves from his hands.
He thought, while the latex clung dry to his fingers: consistency. Every one of them with gold leaf hair, tundra eyes, thin wire frames and flashing lenses. Long and beautiful, skin poured thin and smooth, they were all like that. Klavier hand-picked them, and it wasn't hard from the sorts of crowds that he drew. Consistency in the words they named him, things like 'magnificent,' 'fantastic,' things like 'poetic,' things like 'visceral,' and he wrote down each one like they had written touches to his skin. (Feather-light, first, then firm and desperate like their last touches on this earth. Fitting.) Consistent in how they all stared at him like betrayal and hate and self-blame spun together.
Klavier knew that consistency like that had been against the rules, because he had been warned time and time again not to fall into that trap. Find you that way, he'd been told. Which was, with a bitter taste of satisfaction, some of why he did it that way.
The gloves folded like dead things on the desk and Klavier thumbed his notebook open. A page crowded with adjectives like a cloud of gnats. His handwriting was tight and clean, just a shade more extravagant than his brother's and how proud his brother would be, again. He needed a pen.
Behind him, a cough that turned wet. Never mind his record. Klavier found the pen, slid it into the meeting-place of pages in his notebook.
He liked the way they all matched, a consistent smear of almost-brothers. Every one a mirror image matching closer and closer. Practice, he thought, practice for the real thing, for putting deep marks into the real pale skin and coaxing out real red blood. Maybe sliding it down over the real spotless jacket to watch the cringe under his eyes and around his mouth. And trace the wrinkles to remember forever.
Cough again. Klavier let the guitar play alone and turned.
"You, all along?" Kristoph managed through the blood sticking to his lips. "It was you."
Klavier grinned into the stain spreading over Kristoph's breast pocket. The glistening curve of the wound fluttered when Kristoph breathed, and it shone more than any of those practice runs.
"Not all of them," he said, song still in his voice. "You should know better, brother! The first few were the work of my dearly departed father, may he rest in peace."
"He was," said Kristoph, and then spat blood from his chattering teeth. "He was not your father, Klavier, he was a cold-blooded murderer —"
"He was an assassin with a brilliant mind, but we'll agree to disagree, I think," Klavier said with a wave of his hand. He wondered if Kristoph noticed the polish on his nails. "No matter, anyway, now that he's gone, ja? How convenient that he managed to teach me all he knew before he went —"
"You killed him, too —"
"He was rather old, you know, heart was probably going —"
"Klavier, what has he done to you —"
"He has done nothing!" Klavier only caught the rumble of his shout after the fact, and he pulled it back in with a calming breath. Kristoph choked and coughed around a surely punctured lung. "Kristoph, you know me better than anyone. If I do something, I do it well; if I do something well, I make a living out of it. Ja? I always have. Herr de Killer simply tapped into a hidden talent of mine. I have so many of those, you know." He caught his own grin in the mirror. Blood splatter on his lip. He licked it away.
"Your talent is not hired murder, Klavier," Kristoph said. His voice was tapering into a strained whisper.
Klavier watched the blood coming out of the hole in Kristoph's chest and tracked how it made a jagged curve. He placed notes on the ends of the droplets and it played a melody like Kristoph's shattered sobs.
"You're right as usual, brother," Klavier said, turning back to the notebook he'd abandoned. "No one's hired me at all."
Klavier was a brilliant musician. Reviews claimed the lyrics of his new single to be things like 'magnificent,' 'fantastic,' things like 'poetic,' things like 'visceral.' Oh, Klavier liked to say, I have to give the credit to my fans, lovely people.