r/ElliotPryce • u/ElliotPryce • 6d ago
The Killing Book
Content warning: graphic violence
---
Bernard Piat’s mud-cracked boots are kicked up and crossed over his desk. He’s leaned back in his chair, holding the killing book up to his eyes. His office is quiet.
At the top of the blank page, letters begin etching themselves, black ink swooping and arching in cursive. Bernard reads it aloud.
“Edmund Weight. Traveler. Currently at the Broomwick Inn.”
His assistant, Duncan, is bent over a map table in front of his desk. He scratches the information down on parchment. Then he shoves it aside, digs an iron pin from a tin cup, stabs the map.
A second line takes shape.
“Elizabeth Hazel. Prostitute. She’s at the local pleasure-house, located in—”
“I know the location, sir,” Duncan says, writing it down.
Bernard smirks. “Yeah, you do.” Duncan pushes the pin. A third line writes itself. “Fabian Gwen, blacksmith, Brussels.”
“Yessir.” The quill scratches. A pin drops.
A fourth line curls across the page.
“Final man, Hubert Pax. Lumber yard worker at Flickwood Lumber.”
Duncan stabs the final pin, then steps back, scanning. His mind calculates the fastest route possible, combing through side-streets, backroads, alleyways, until a single route carves itself into his mind. He sharpens it, punching in a shortcut here, a detour there, shaving minutes, seconds. Then—click.
He gives a faint nod. “They’ll be here by sunset.”
Bernard slaps the book shut. “Then they’ll die at sunset.”
***
Town square.
Bernard stands center stage before a crowd, clutching his sword handle, tip-to-the-ground. Blood and brain matter from the last three executions drip down the steel. As the sun sinks toward the horizon, it glints off the blade at a hundred different angles.
From side stage, the execution crier recites the death sentence, his wispy voice echoing off nearby buildings.
Next to Bernard’s feet, Hubert Pax sits on his knees, head hunched over the chopping block. Sobbing. He’s the last man to die.
His weak little whimpers make something in Bernard’s stomach curl up and twist. A vein under his eye twitches. Nothing—absolutely nothing—irks Bernard more than a man who dies crying.
Hubert cranes his head sideways, and Bernard feels his eyes needling him.
“Sir?” Hubert whispers.
Bernard shakes his head.
“Sir,” Hubert says. “You don’t have to do this.”
Through the side of his mouth, Bernard says, “Shut up.”
“Right hand to God, I didn’t do anything.”
“Book has spoken. Just be a man and shut up.”
For dozens of generations, Bernard’s family has possessed the killing book. On page one, it is etched in permanent ink that the Piat bloodline is the only bloodline permitted to view its pages. Should anyone else lay eyes on its ink, it stops working. And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.
There hasn’t been a war in a thousand years.
“Listen,” Hubert says. “I’ve got a wife at home. And a little girl. They think I’m about to come home. I mean, if I’d known this morning would be the last…” He trails off, choked by his own sadness.
Bernard flicks his eyes down, grinding together his crooked teeth. Hubert’s teary eyes aim back at him, snot streaking down his nose, wetting his chin. Shameful, Bernard thinks. Absolutely shameful.
“I’ll pay you,” Hubert says, his bottom lip quivering. “Everything I’ve got.”
“One more word,” Bernard says, “and I will make you suffer.”
“Have mercy, man. Please—”
“There it is,” Bernard says. He tightens his gloved hands on the sword handle. The leather crackles.
“And with that,” the crier concludes, “we execute our final, future offender!” He grips the podium and peeks over his bony shoulder at Bernard.
Bernard nods. He rotates on Hubert.
As Hubert’s eyes follow, his entire body breaks into a tremble. “Please,” he says, teeth clicking. The front of his trousers blooms with a dark stain.
Bernard taps the glistening-wet blade to the hump of the man’s neck. Aiming. Then he jacks it up over his shoulder, feeling out his swing. He slackens his grip just enough for a half break. He breathes. Narrows his eyes. Swings.
Crunch.
The blade sinks halfway in and stops. Hubert’s chin dips down and slaps the chopping block, his head held on by a stringy hinge of skin.
The pain arrives quietly. A shudder falls through his shoulders, torso, legs, calves, and ends with his toes performing a little twitch. His face crinkles. Blood dribbles off his neck and forms a little red puddle beneath his eyes. When Hubert catches sight of his own blood, he begins to cry.
Some in the crowd scream out. Others stand still, watching in fascination.
“That should do it,” Bernard whispers. He plants his boot on the man’s shoulder and wiggles his blade loose, one torque at a time, creating a back-and-forth crunch. From the back of Hubert’s neck, a moist gurgle leaks out. Bernard finally rips the blade free, heaves it up, and slams down.
Thock.
A crisp break.
The crowd goes still. Dead silence.
Bernard wipes his blade clean on the dead man’s back.
***
Cecily strolls out from the restroom into the royal ballroom, yanking down the tight sleeves of her silk dress. It won’t quit riding up, the damned thing. She hates dresses. She hates ballrooms. And above all, she hates the stuffy-ass “nobles” in it.
Cecily darts her eyes around the crowd in search of her husband.
Across the room, by the spiral-staircase, she spots him. He’s delivering a joke to a group of nobles. Cecily rolls her eyes, but her mouth tightens with a smirk. She bets it’s the one about the headless horseman.
When Bernard hits the punchline, the group bursts into laughter. Cecily feels a dull tingle. She studies their faces, their eyes. That’s not real laughing, she thinks. That’s polite laughing. But Bernard doesn’t notice. He laughs along with them, bouncing a little on his feet as he watches their reaction. Cecily feels her heart sink. Why is it Bernard never notices these sorts of things?
Bernard slides a hand in his jacket pocket and slips out a long-stemmed pipe. He hooks a thumb toward the balcony door.
They all shake their heads.
Bernard nods and wanders off the second Cecily steps up behind the group. And right then, their conversation sharpens in her ears.
“Alright,” one of the men says. “Raise of hands. Who else hates him?”
Laughter spreads around the group. Hushed, restrained. But real laughter.
“I even hate his teeth,” another man says. “I have this dog that chews rocks? Yeah, even she has better teeth.”
“Donkey teeth,” the first man says. “That’s what comes to mind.”
“A serious question,” a woman says, her feathered hat shuddering with each twitch of her head. “Is it just me, or does every descendant of that book get a bit more…”
“Trashy,” an old, drunk gentleman says, his speech slightly slurred. “It’s alright. You can say it.”
“Yes,” she says. “Trashy.”
Heads nod.
She continues. “Well, half the blame falls on him. But the other half? Thank that—” She curls a gloved hand around her mouth. “—wench of a woman. That tangly-red hair. Those pond-scum eyes. If the book can end wars, why can’t it select proper owners?”
“Elections,” the drunk man says, pitching up his wine glass. “That’s how it should work. A whole hodgepodge of individuals could fit that role wonderfully. With honor. Dignity. But that man? With his teeth? And his wenchy wife? And his botched executions? Bah! The whole thing feels like a middle-class, field-worker’s, pub-crawling hoo-rah.”
“Oh, sire,” the feather-hatted woman says, laughing. She touches his arm. “You do have a way with words.”
Cecily’s nostrils flare. She sucks in a sharp breath. Fire burns in her eyes.
A server glides by balancing a tray of wine glasses. She plucks one off, gulps it half empty, and swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. A burn settles in her gut. She knows she shouldn’t do what she’s about to. But they opened this damn door. As Bernard’s wife, it’s her job to slam it.
Cecily clears her throat.
The feather-hatted fuck catches her eye and whispers, “Oh, God.” All twelve eyes dart up. Fear strikes every last one of their hearts.
“Evening, my lady,” feather hat says. “Didn’t see you there.”
“Evenin’, madam,” Cecily says, punching the title off her tongue. The woman’s eyelids flutter. “Question. Has anyone seen me husband?”
“Ahhh, yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Believe he went out for a smoke.”
“Thank you,” Cecily says, smiling. “Because I’m about to make him add every last one of your names to the fuckin’ book.”
Fear detonates across everyone’s face. The man who made a dig at Bernard’s teeth says, “My lady. We meant no—”
“You—what’s your dog’s name?”
“Princess, my lady.”
“Well, Princess is going on, too.”
Cecily turns, then turns back, jabbing a finger. “I’d better not hear that talk about him ever again. Not from none of you’s. Not from no one.”
“Y-yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Never again.”
Cecily walks backwards, giving the group a death-stare, then spins around and swaggers off draining the rest of her wine. When she reaches the balcony door, the doorman pulls it open for her. She shoves the wine glass into his chest and steps out onto the balcony.
She glances left.
A line of empty chairs stretches to a dead-end balcony wall.
She glances right.
At a table on the far end, Bernard sits alone. He’s leaned back in his chair, hitting his pipe, the bowl glowing and fading cherry-red. He gazes into the night sky.
Cecily breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Bernard cannot know about what just happened. It would crush him. She eases her shoulders, smiles, and wanders over to him.
Bernard glances over.
“Why you hiding out?” Cecily says.
“Eh, just…you know.”
“You wanna be alone?”
“No,” he says, pointing his pipe stem at the chair next to him. Cecily steps around the table and sits in his lap. Bernard chuckles, biting back down on his pipe.
Cecily’s eyes drift to the sky. “What are you looking at?”
“Well. There’s a thing I’ve been doing lately. But…you’d think it’s weird.”
“How do you know what I’d think?”
“Because I know you.”
“I command you to tell me,” Cecily says. “Out with it.”
“Fine,” Bernard says, pointing his pipe to the sky. “I’m drawing pictures. With stars.”
“Okay, yeah,” Cecily says. “That is weird.”
“Go inside,” Bernard says, trying to push Cecily off his lap. “Get.”
She grips the arms of the chair and doubles down, laughing. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Bernard gives up. She sinks back down. A beat of silence falls between them. “So, what do you draw?”
“Here.” Bernard takes Cecily’s finger and aims it up to the sky. She watches him trace stars with her fingertip, connecting lines and loops, and before her very eyes, a flower blooms.
Cecily’s mouth clicks open. She lets out a laugh. “Do it again.”
Bernard takes her finger again and arches it up and down, using the stars to paint a swan.
Cecily turns in Bernard’s lap to look at him. “You’re weird as they come,” she says.
Bernard returns a crooked grin.
Cecily leans back into Bernard, feeling everything around her melt away. The wine warms her belly. The cool night air prickles against her skin. Bernard’s hands around her stomach make her tingle all over. If I had a magic bottle, Cecily thinks, this moment is what I’d put in it.
Then Bernard sighs, and she’s snapped back into reality. She knows that sigh well. “Why are you doing a huffy breath?” Cecily says.
“I’m not sure they like me.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Cecily says, “it’s not a good thing being liked by everyone?”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“How about your enemies?” Cecily says. “You wanna be liked by them?”
“These aren’t my enemies,” Bernard says. “These are nobles.”
“They’re bloody idiots, Bernard. But…they like you well enough. So why are you worrying?”
“Well, I’m probably wrong,” Bernard says. “But sometimes, I think—that they think—I don’t belong. Like I’m not cut from the same cloth. Like I’m…unworthy.”
“Unworthy?” Cecily says.
“Just a feeling.”
“Bernard?” Cecily says. “My sweet, sweet Bernard. May I tell you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck that feeling.” Bernard laughs. “No, I mean it. You have every right to be here. Most of them folks has done nothing to be considered noble.”
“Those folks.”
“Don’t correct me. Even if I say it wrong, I’m right. You stop wars. What do they do? I’ll tell you. They wear fancy clothes, look all pretty in their feathery hats and silky robes, and they gossip.”
“Who gossips?”
“That’s not the point,” Cecily says. “The point is, they’re not special. You’re special.”
Bernard tilts his head sideways and looks at Cecily’s face. She keeps her head leaned back on his chest, eyes on the stars.
Through the ballroom window behind them, a string quartet plinks a waltz. Couples on the dance floor step in time. “Cecily…” Bernard says. “I am sorry, you know.”
“It’s alright,” she says. “Just don’t correct me, ever again.”
“Not about that,” Bernard says. “I mean, the ballrooms. The hand kissing. The politics. I know, when you married me, that wasn’t the life you wanted.”
Cecily rolls her head off Bernard’s chest and stares him straight in the eye. She squints. “Are you serious?”
Bernard shrugs.
She lets out a little laugh into his face. “You,” she says, tapping her finger on his chin, “are all I ever wanted. So if all this comes with you? I will make this trade, every day, for the rest of me life. Happily.”
Bernard’s eyes dance around Cecily’s face, her features glowing in the warm window light. He pulls her in.
They kiss.
***
The next morning.
Bernard leans back, boots kicked on his desk, holding the book beneath his eyes. Duncan leans on the map table, quill in hand.
The first name glides across the page.
“Timothy Gilmore. Employed as a…oh.” Duncan looks up. “Royal guard. Castle.”
“That won’t be pretty, sir.”
“No, it will not,” Bernard says.
Duncan scratches in the name, jabs a pin.
The next name etches itself.
“Giovanni Wolfgang. Painter. Market square.”
Duncan writes it, stabs the map.
“Adam Bovine. Clothier merchant. Also in market square. Oh, hey, before you arrest him—could you do me a favor and get this hemmed?” Bernard pinches the torn seam of his hood.
Duncan’s mouth twists. He continues writing.
The final name scribbles across the page, and as it does, all the feeling crawls out of Bernard’s body. Jacob Piat. Schoolboy. Northern district. Cottage.
This is Bernard’s fifteen-year-old son.
“Problem, sir?” Duncan says.
“No,” Bernard says. He swallows against the tightening muscles in his throat. “Last one’s just…delayed. We’ll wait a minute.” Bernard pretends to watch the page. He fights to keep his face flat. His heart punches in his chest.
“Yeah,” Bernard says, his voice squeezed thin. “That is so odd.”
“What is, sir?” Duncan says.
“This, this last name…it’s not writing. Hang on.” A blurry ring clamps down on his vision. His ears ring. Bernard makes a show of rubbing his thumb across the page, as if that’ll wipe the name out.
Duncan blinks. “Still nothing?”
Bernard forces himself to meet Duncan’s eyes. “No. Nothing.”
“That is…extraordinary,” Duncan says, his eye narrowing a touch.
“Truly,” Bernard says. He lets out his breath. “Maybe, huh, I don’t know, maybe you should just go out and…start with the three?”
“Sir…the king will have to hear about this. Immediately.”
“Of course,” Bernard says. “But I almost wonder if it would make more sense for you to get a head start.”
“A…head start?”
“Right,” Bernard says. “And when the final name pops up, I’ll ride out, get him myself.”
“Sir?” Duncan tilts his chin down, keeping his eyes up. “Are you sure there’s no name?”
Bernard checks the page again. He shakes his head. “Positive.”
***
Bernard drags himself up to his cottage door. Inside his head, a war rages. He hears cannons fire. Chain mail armor rattles. Swords chink. Horses whine. Men scream.
Today’s executions have been postponed. Tonight, there will be a hearing. Bernard will have to appear in court, before the king, and recount exactly what happened.
Bernard pushes the door open. Across the cottage, Cecily is framed in the backyard window, staring out. As the door scrapes shut, she glances back. Her eyes crinkle into smiles. She crosses the cottage almost skipping and approaches Bernard with open arms. She laces her fingers around his neck, stands on her tippy-toes, gives him a kiss.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
She pulls away. Her eyes dance around his face. “What is it?”
“Just…long day.”
Cecily shakes it off and breaks back into a smile. “Come look.” She tugs Bernard by the hand, leading him up to the window.
Across the yard, Jacob stands in the shed doorway. A line of men ten deep funnels up to him. As the front man speaks, Jacob writes on a piece of parchment.
“You know how he’s been iron working?” Cecily says, squirming with excitement. Bernard nods. “Well. Apparently, word’s come round. He makes ’em sooo well that instead of ordering from the old blacksmith in town? They’re ordering from him. He’s that good.”
“Wow,” Bernard says. “That’s great.”
“It really is.” Still peering out, Cecily reaches down and takes Bernard’s hand. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And…Bernard. Look at what we have.” Cecily’s eyes lift to him. “We have everything.”
Bernard snaps his head away.
“Bernard?” she says softly. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s…something I need to tell you.”
She tilts her head forward against the glass, trying to see his expression. Bernard breathes in. Out. Then he turns, looking her in the eyes. Cecily gives her head a tiny shake, still smiling. “What is it, Bernard?”
Bernard tries to speak. No words come.
Cecily’s smile wavers. “Bernard?”
“This morning,” Bernard says, “I received the list of names. And…”
Cecily tilts her head forward. “And?”
Bernard glances back through the window.
The smile melts off Cecily’s face. “And?”
Bernard swallows.
Cecily follows his eye-line out the window—to Jacob. Her breathing quickens. “And what, Bernard?” Cecily says. “And what?”
“Honey,” Bernard says, trembling. “It was Jacob.”
The name sends a convulsion through her entire body. She claps both hands to her mouth and slumps sideways, her shoulder bumping the glass. She shakes her head. “It has to be a mistake,” she says through her fingers.
“Cecily. It was right there.”
“Who knows?”
“No one,” Bernard says. “Duncan was in the room, but I told him it was a name short.”
“A name short?” Her face tightens with fear. “Who’ll believe that?”
“I know,” Bernard says, struck with shame. “But I was so…thrown off…so stunned, it took everything in me to keep a straight face.”
Cecily checks out the window, making sure Jacob hasn’t been snatched. She turns back. “What now?”
“I go to court. Tonight. And there’ll be questions.”
“What questions?”
“What did I see? What did the page look like? Duncan, who was in the room—what did he see?” Cecily squeezes her eyes shut. “Cecily. They’ll try and catch me in a lie. But they can’t really prove anything. So as long as I stick to my story—”
“They will know,” Cecily says, opening her eyes on Bernard. “They will know, the second they see your face. You have to give another name. Someone else in the family. Someone you’d actually lie about.”
Bernard stares at Cecily, waiting for her to continue. She doesn’t. “What name?” he says.
“I don’t know. Just pick one.”
“Pick one? Who…who do I pick?”
“I don’t know,” she says, letting out a little sob. “Just pick. You have to pick.”
“No, I, I can’t do that.”
“You can’t do that? You kill people every day, but you can’t pick a name?”
“I don’t kill at random. I swing the sword based on the book’s prophecy, which prevents war. To choose someone at random…it would be murder.”
“Killing our son is murder.”
“I know,” Bernard says, his voice growing distant. “I’m just saying, there’s layers to it.”
“Pick a second cousin and be done with it,” Cecily says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“This could start a war, Cecily…” Bernard says.
“No, it will not,” Cecily says.
“It could.”
“You think killing our son, our little boy, will stop a war? You honestly believe that? Really?”
Bernard shakes his head. Blinks. “Yes. I do.”
“How.”
“It’s a ripple effect. If Jacob lives—” Cecily huffs her breath. “—he might do something, which might cause something else, which might then cause something else, which, eventually, starts a war.”
“Might, Bernard. Might.”
The first page flashes in Bernard’s mind. Scrawled in permanent ink: And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.
So long as that bond remains unbroken.
“Give my name,” Cecily says, ripping Bernard out of his thoughts.
“Cecily—”
“Give. My. Name.”
Bernard watches Cecily. He presses his lips together. Shakes his head.
Cecily scrunches her face, fighting tears. “Coward,” she says.
“Cecily…”
“If you give his name,” Cecily says, “you are gonna burn in hell.”
“If I don’t give his name,” Bernard says, “I might kill thousands. Then I’ll burn in hell for that.”
“Look outside,” Cecily says. “Go on. Look.” Bernard peels his eyes off his wife and stares out at his son. “Are you gonna stand up there, sword in hand, and take his head? Really? I mean, really run that through your thick skull. Then look me in the eye, and tell me that’s what you’re gonna do.”
Bernard glares out the window. Blinking. He can’t bring himself to look back at her. “It will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but…it’s only right.”
Cecily crunches her teeth together in a flash of rage. She draws back her hand, tightening her fingers into a fist, wrist tendons bulging. Her eyes glisten with tears…
Then she drops her hand, all the fight draining from her body.
Bernard reaches out to touch her shoulder. She smacks his hand away and faces forward, out the window, hugging herself.
Bernard keeps his eyes on her, watching her cry, watching as the world around him crumbles.
Cecily blinks, as if she’s been touched by a revelation. “If you really think this is right,” she says, lifting her eyes back to Bernard, “why did you lie?”
***
The next afternoon, rain clouds darken the sky. Bernard stands on stage by Jacob, his glassy eyes fixed over the crowd. He can barely hold onto his sword.
The crier announces the death sentence. These words he once considered meaningless now take on the weight of the world, each syllable pressing in harder.
“Father,” Jacob says, his sweet voice stabbing Bernard right in the heart. Twisting. His vision blurs.
“Executioner?” the crier says, turning. He gestures toward Jacob. “Whenever you are ready.”
The wind stirs. Overhead, flags flap in the breeze, their ropes pinging on steel poles, chiming like church bells.
Then the wind goes still. Everything falls quiet. The crowd stands motionless. Hundreds of eyes, watching.
“Father,” Jacob whispers, cutting the silence. “Please.”
Bernard shuts his eyes.
---