The Mosaic

Chapter 2

Alessandro could see he had wrestled down the doubt when his jaw set in a determined line. He was not as comfortable as he acted. Then Giacinto's fingers brushed over his cheek in a slow motion. It looked almost like a caress, thin fingers ghosting over long cold skin. He wasn't even wearing a single ring... what kind of noble was he?

Alvino's face was strangely peaceful, turned sideways as if he had rested it upon a pillow in a quick slumber instead of the marble that had broken his body. It was a disturbing contrast to the twisted limbs and shattered torso that resembled more of an unholy monster's wretchedness than a man. Only the unblinking eye ruined the calm expression. It was out of place, a hard, cold little marble that had been forced into his eye socket, so empty, so dead, so wrong, so human, but so soulless.

Giacinto gripped the artist's chin to turn his head. He had to tug twice. A stiff resistance thwarted his movement. The corpse's muscles had already locked up when Alessandro had arrived.

Rigor mortis. Something about the Latin terms, cool and exact, no emotions connected to them, never failed to calm Alessandro. They distanced him, raised him onto another plane of objectivity. He needed to be just like those terms. To the point. Untouched. Exact.

Giacinto still forced the head to turn, exposing the horror of the other half of his face. The body's twisted brokenness was nothing compared to what stared up at them now.

Alessandro had seen death. Had seen all his masks, the dark and the bloody, the eerie and the tragic, the hauntingly clean and the barbarically messy. Yet this ... his stomach constricted abruptly, forcing bile up his throat. He swallowed it down and squared his shoulders.

The skull had smashed against the pitiless marble with so much force it had broken the bone. Cracked open, it revealed mockingly white bone splitters, ripped open flesh and a beautiful painting of blood on the canvas of greyish skin. Death's brushstrokes had painted delicate swirls and bold splatters over a cheek and temple, from where the streaks had wound themselves like little snakes into the grey of his hair and down onto the floor. A strange pattern now tainted the tiles. Bloody snakes winding themselves over the ground, intertwining, running apart again, weaving around random drops that the shattered skull had thrown around when it had hit the floor.

Giacinto's shoulders tensed, but the fingers closed around the artist's chin didn't shake when he leant closer to inspect the dead artist's face. There was a bloody teardrop caught in Alvino's lashes. He lowered the head gently back onto the ground.

Alvino was smiling, the peacefulness of death brushed over his features. He looked almost like a statue, with the waxy complexion of the dead. Alessandro found himself staring, captivated by the way long grey curls spread out languidly on the red halo around his head.

A fallen angel.

Giacinto's fist clenched for a split second, but Alessandro's eyes caught it nonetheless. Hesitant fingers reached out for a drop of blood, creating an ugly smear on the white marble when he touched it. Raising his fingertip back to eye level, Giacinto contempated the half dried, viscous blood. The thin smears on the skin of the artist had dried to a flakey rust brown, but the thicker puddles still held a wet gleam.

"He hasn't been dead for very long," Giacinto concluded, rising again to meet the expressionless eyes of the silent commissar. His voice was slightly rougher than it had been before. He wiped the bloody fingertip on his trousers, not paying the movement much thought.

That was his first mistake. He really should have.

Alessandro's hand hovered in the air, holding out a silken hankerchief — the pristine white looked arrogantly out of place among all the blood — before slowly pocketing it again. His eyes never left Giacinto, unaware of the Alessandro's thoughtful expression.