He lays in mud and filthy rags mixed into the soil. He has not been asleep, but he wakes when the long slip of wood presses into the ground beneath.
"Again," the man of the theatre sighs, but does not frown.
It is the fifth attempt. Artemy has been in town for three days. The plague is alive, violently.
It grows inside the corpse of the woman the town burnt. The sand pest burrowed deep in her molten corpse and salted her blood, which flowed into the earth. Cutting flesh from the dead to study feels like looking for answers in murky water. The earth has been poisoned. Dankovsky's laboratory does not bring reprieve any longer.
Dankovsky asks what could be wrong. Not with the rebirth of a plague Artemy's seen in every rotting body of the town's people. He doesn't know, but wouldn't understand. Dankovsky asks what is wrong because Artemy is looking at him, as if he has the answer. As if he remembers, and calls the other Dankovskys to help.
Artemy looks past him. He ignores the question with a shake of the head, and keeps his lips sealed shut.
Between the reality of the town and the suggestion of time, Artemy always feels his head is full of cotton.
"Better than the headaches," Mark Immortell says. "Twyre, isn't it? Taking everything for itself and making your brain swell?"
So he supposes.
"Do you think they're right? I know I'm no steppe man, but I'm no doctor, either! Who knows if the headaches come from grass?"
Everything has its reasons.
"I once wondered if science was created so we could explain what magic is and make it different," Immortell says, tracing dirt circles into the air. "What if we're just afraid of tradition?"
Artemy has been given a chair this time. He doesn't lift his head.
He wishes Dankovsky knew. He wishes they all knew. Even Clara. Even the first to die, cold and afraid and surrounded by empty hysteria, only aware they were here to die. He wishes his father knew. The more he reads, the more he wonders how little Isidor really understood. He knew how to survive, but it seems he struggled to heal.
Maybe it's just the latest cycle. Clues often pop up that something is amiss. This one is a sign because the recipes don't make sense. Variations of twyre that don't exist, or plants that don't grow until spring.
"We don't have until spring," Dankovsky insists. "A miracle if we make it to next week."
A failure. He missed something the other day. He forgot to speak to someone, or failed to answer a question. Two cycles ago, Oyun laughed as he leapt down a well for the same failures. Artemy feels his body ache and he pretends to read the paper that Dankovsky passed to him.
The next time, Dankovsky doesn't learn of Artemy's innocence. He dies on the third die, to the wicked eye doctor from the capital.
"Embarrassing," Mark tuts, in the room that does not exist. "Haven't you made love to him enough to get in his head?"
"Maybe he forgot his lines," Artemy suggests. Mark laughs and it is not entertained.
"Be quiet! Goodness, you're quite the oaf. Will you try for revenge, this time?"
"It's just a mistake," he huffs. "No surprises. Nothing confuses me, now."
"I think there's still something," Mark smiles, with a sway of his posture from side to side. "Motives, for one. Hurry to your next rehearsal. Again, Burakh."
Dankovsky remembers, once. He greets Artemy on the first day with an embrace.
"Burakh," he whispers, tense and frightened. Artemy can't hold himself back, and has him immediately.
Theres no plague — at least, not yet. There's only a desperate memory, a terror for what they have to fight. Beyond the cryptic implications of the townspeople and into real, tangible sickness. They know what will come and what they have already experienced.
Daniil runs his hands over Artemy's shoulders and gasps when he is breached. Artemy lays himself down over Daniil and pulls him in by his hips. Does he remember everything, or only their last rehearsal? Does he know how long Artemy has longed to keep him safe? He hopes he'll remember.
He is beautiful beneath him. If just for one morning, he has his Bachelor all to himself.
"Who is it all for?" Immortell croons, hand on skin. "Your town or your doctor?"
"Don't speak of him," Artemy says, on his back once more. "No matter how facetious you play."
He hates how he looks at him. The open eyes of a man who doesn't blink. Wider than time and space and the three branches of the river. Mark moves his leg to rest over Artemy's thighs. They are both bare and the theatre floor is so cold.
"It's a question. Lover or town?"
"Everything."
"You've failed to save either. It cannot be both. It cannot be either. You know what will come."
Things change.
Eva Yan is alive on the eighth day. She brushes her hair over her shoulder and doesn't look at Artemy when he walks into her parlour. Immediately, he hurries up the stairs. Is this their first break of the cycle?
Artemy looks around between the divider of the bedroom and Dankovsky's laboratory. Eva looks mournfully past Artemy.
"He left a letter," she tells him. "He isn't here anymore."
Artemy knows where the body is before he opens the letter. The executioners are gathering his broken corpse at the foot of the Cathedral by the time Artemy makes it into town. Variations. Maybe he'll be told about an experiment for the plot, later. Are the Kains failing to dazzle him?
Eva knows nothing about Dankovsky's notes. Clara tells him there is too much blood for her hands to make it to the other side. The plague swallows them. Artemy's just glad Dankovsky died on his own terms.
It happens a second time. But on this eighth day, Artemy runs into town and catches him before he can ascend.
"Bachelor."
"Your town is empty, Haruspex. More have died tonight than any other day. There's nothing to wait for."
Artemy looks up into the fog. The lights of the Polyhedron. His chest aches for what he must do.
"Let us both discover what there is, Dankovsky."
The structure is full of dreams and future lives. It is wide and does not want their bodies inside. Khan does not survive the night and Artemy knows a utopian choice will not work when he wakes to a dead child and Dankovsky's determined vigor.
"No," Mark sighs, shifting his crossed legs. "That goes off script. You're playing outside your role."
"I couldn't watch him give his life a second time," Artemy confesses. "Eva persevered, but Daniil..."
"You're not a new-world thinker, Burakh. You cannot force yourself to subscribe to the dreamers. He must always be your almost-enemy."
"No," he insists, but the play begins again.
"I love you," Daniil says on the tenth day of the who-knows attempt.
Artemy strokes the skin between his shoulder blades. They are bare and their bodies are hot from sickness. His own flesh flares an ugly red, but Daniil is heavy like forgotten dead weight on top of him.
He knows what has gotten into Dankovsky's blood. It's festering in his body like a swarm of eels. He has been bedridden all day, and Artemy is going to lose him again.
"Are you tired?" Artemy asks instead, quiet and low and forgetting what he confesses. He doesn't know how much Daniil might remember. Maybe he says he loves him because he now remembers that Artemy has waited for him every try. Maybe he loves him because his fever has made him delirious. Maybe he loves him because he is dying and Artemy isn't leaving him alone.
"There's no time for me to rest," Daniil attests, but his movements to try and lift his body up are weak and fragile. Artemy doesn't flinch to stop him before he collapses farther down his side, more bed than chest. "Let me go work."
"No. You must rest."
"If you love me, you'll let me work."
"Please," Artemy begs, "Please, Danulya. I need you to rest."
"Nothing... nothing will be left if we cannot work." Daniil tries move again, but only rests his ear over Artemy's heart. His hair is unclean from days of sickness and work. "Nothing will be left for your town."
"What about your Polyhedron? Your dreamers?"
"If they succeed, I won't see it." Daniil wraps his arms tighter around him. "And if you stay, you won't be able to stop it. Let me go, or let me rot."
Artemy lays him back against his sickbed, and kisses him deep. He can feel a physical sickness pass through, fetid and awful and lifting off Daniil's organs deep inside him. His open mouth brings a vile taste of fate.
"I'll die with you," Artemy whispers, "And see you another time."
Daniil raises his hands into Artemy's hair, and watches him with half-dead eyes. "I'll wait for you."
"I'll find you in town," Artemy warns. "I'll kill you. Strangle your throat until your eyes pop."
"You're a murderer to them already." Mark's body is in his personal space. It's the spot Daniil always stands in when he's sizing up his Haruspex when there's no one around.. "You'd really kill another innocent man?"
"You're not innocent."
"The man in town who shares my face knows only a fraction of what I know. He will not understand your rage. He will die and your reputation will be in absolute tatters, Burakh."
Artemy watches him approach. He lays a hand over his chest, and pushes him back into a chair that appears. Mark moved his cane away and lowers himself into Artemy's lap.
"What are you trying to do?" Artemy asks. "I don't love you."
"I don't need you to. You only need to show me the heat of your lines." Mark drags his palm over Artemy's chest. "Pretend I'm your doctor."
"You're nothing like him."
"What do I have to do to make you forget? Must I beg like him?" Artemy seizes him by his legs and draws him open by his thighs. Mark's smile is electric. "There. Just like that. Just like your Bachelor."
"Don't compare yourself," Artemy snarls, "You're a chore, not a want."
"I am the only thing in this town that is real," Mark says, arms now tight around Artemy's shoulders. "I am everything you see. I am everything you face. I know what forces everything you must do. I am the hand to guide your fate."
"Are the townsfolk nearly right? Can there be a male shabnak-adyr?"
"More then that, Haruspex." Mark pulls himself into the wide shoulders and furious hands of Artemy, who braces himself to rut their bodies together. "More than you will ever understand."
"Where do you go when you die?" Clara asks one time when they're walking past a road blocked by plague warning figures.
"The theatre, where an irritating man scolds you," Artemy replies.
Clara covers her mouth with her sleeve. "That sounds like a personal problem. I think we get nibbled up into small pieces."
"By who?"
"Hard to say. Future's too muddy. Not enough second-sight." Clara looks up at him. "You're almost thirty?"
"And you're being troublesome."
"Bet it's going to be longer than that, won't it?"
Artemy looks away from her while Clara kicks a dirty glass bottle in the direction of the first road of the Spine. She doesn't make sense. He can parse only fragments. But it's all he needs.
They will die tomorrow. It is not yet the twelfth day. He has Daniil over his desk. Papers scatter and fall to the floor, where the mud of their boots destroy them.
It doesn't matter. This was another failure. Fate wanted him to fail. There is nothing but memories and the minion of the train ride. His wounds from the nearly-knives are already aching.
He collapses into Daniil and holds him down with his weight. They kiss like they already know what will come. Daniil holds on to his shoulders and Artemy bites his neck like they'll find a truth inside the other.
"Oynon," Daniil says, as an echo, "Do you know where we're going?"
Artemy doesn't lift his head. Daniil's coat is off. Artemy feels the shape of Daniil's body finally show under his hands and he can feel the heat pool in his cock. He surges against Daniil, who keens, higher.
"We'll die in this room," Daniil says.
"Don't say that," Artemy begs, shuddering when Daniil tightens his legs and forces his own cock to press against Artemy's.
"Aren't you tired?" Daniil asks. Artemy looks at him, and beneath Daniil's hair, he stares past Artemy, into his own ceiling. "There isn't much left."
"Cycles can be broken."
"Depends all on the forces to break them."
Artemy grabs Daniil and turns him around. He slams his hips into the desk and pushes down between his shoulders, making Daniil hiss and snarl. He fucks him like they know they're out of time, like he knows it will be several days before come dawn, and he will not be in Daniil's arms but on a cold train cart with death as his passenger, like he knows he'll meet him again and there will be no familiar smile, no enlightened curiosity, no small talk over candlelight, no Daniil Dankovsky who welcomes Artemy into his arms and bed sooner than any other. They will begin again and there will be nothing.
"Break me," Daniil gasps.
Artemy gives it hard, desperate, and fast. Daniil takes it, and as he breathes and gasps and writhes, when Artemy grabs his hair to pull him up, it feels more coarse. Artemy doesn't look, and shuts his eyes.
"What do you want from me?" Artemy asks, after a gruesome death, alone and without the warmth of his Bachelor. Danko died earlier in the night. "I am just an actor, by your word."
"You're right." Mark moves against him. Artemy's hands support under his knees and shoulders, and Mark coils his hands into Artemy's hair from his strange swaddle. "I don't even share your destiny. The man in the town, that is. He's quite against your theories and logic. He prefers dreams."
"Then why do you bring me to your domain?"
"I enjoy watching you dally with your Bachelor and I have decided that I want you to myself."
"Voyeur."
"Quite the word you know there." Mark pushes his mouth against Artemy's throat. It's not a kiss. "Fate has its own whims, Burakh. I enjoying what you give me, at the very least."