Winterlong

Part Five: The Players’ Book

“TOO MUCH RED,” MISS Scarlet said at last. She pursed her long lips so that she looked even more soulful than usual. With one finger she dabbed at the inner corner of my eye, drew her finger away blotched with the rouge I had too vigorously applied so that my eyes would stand out boldly before my audience. “Just two little dots, there and there— ”

I shut my eyes as she touched me. I felt the impression of her finger setting the cool dye upon my face and knew again that strange surge inside me, a fingerling of joy that only came at times like this, as we readied ourselves for a performance. From the House Miramar’s tiny stage down the hall I heard the shuffle and laughter of those taking their seats: the suzein of the House Miramar and his guests, Botanists who had traded hemp and roses for the Miramars’ last masque. In the room where Miss Scarlet and I costumed ourselves bowers of roses bloomed in cracked bottles, showering the slanted floor with their petals. One perfect bloom peeked from within the folds of Miss Scarlet’s peignoir. She had tucked it there until she might wear it in Act Three of our play, when as the widowed Olivia she sought to court me in Viola’s disguise of young Cesario.

A discreet rap at the heavy oaken door of our chamber.

“Near time, Master Aidan,” called Mehitabel. Even after these many weeks I could still hear the bemusement in her voice. A young actor so shy he would disrobe only before a chimpanzee! “Miss Scarlet—”

“Is it a full house?” the chimpanzee asked. Her hands trembled as they fastened the last button upon the back of my long and carefully torn skirts.

“Not quite,” said Mehitabel. “But very well dressed! And the suzein has already invited you and Toby to supper afterward. I hear Miramar has a very good cook,” she added, then drummed her fingers in a farewell upon the door.

Miss Scarlet sighed. She stepped from the little stool she used to help me dress, holding up the hem of her peignoir like a demure young bride.

“Would you tend to my coiffure, Wendy?” she murmured, settling herself on the floor in front of me. I squatted behind her, careful not to let my skirts graze the floor awash in flakes of eye-paint and powder and stray hairs fallen from wigs. With one foot Miss Scarlet reached for a pillow and slid it to me. I sat upon it and began to groom her.

With a purr Miss Scarlet shook herself free of my hands and nodded. “Now for my wig,” she said, sighing luxuriously and stretching her long toes to pick up an ebony kohl wand. “Thank you, Wendy. I think I hear the overture?”

This a delicate reminder not to miss my cue. The overture itself consisted only of Gitana’s unpleasant brayings upon an archaic solar melodeon. I nodded, straightened my wig, and scratched her head in farewell, then slipped into the hallway.

“Hello, goodman divel,” a voice called from behind folds of velvet. Justice stepped forward to join me in the darkness. The heavy soft drapes fell back behind him to obscure the little proscenium.

“Hello, Justice,” I said, shrinking from the touch of his hand upon my elbow. He winced; then nodded and tossed his long hair.

“Put my braid under the cap,” he said. He handed me the Captain’s livery he wore in the first scene. I did so quickly, listening to the nervous giggles of Gitana and Mehitabel as they struggled into their boys’ tunics (they always missed their entrance) and wondering where Toby was.

“Ah, Master Aidan,” came his sonorous voice suddenly at my ear. One huge hand descended upon my shoulder like an owl roosting there. With the other he dismissed Justice, snapping his fingers and pointing to where Fabian struggled with a lightpole. “You make a fetching Viola.”

I bared my teeth, then bowed my head so that he would not see. I felt the Small Voices stirring inside me, the Boy who woke hungrily at any sign of anger or unease. My heart quickened; the blood tapped hard and fast against a node beneath my left temple.

“Thank you, sieur,” I whispered, shrugging myself deeper into the folds of Viola’s tattered scarf. From those assembled before the stage came murmurings more strident than they had been earlier. The performance was starting late. Toby straightened, his shoulders brushing a flat as he pulled taut the folds of the cape he wore as Orsino.

“Gower Miramar has asked myself and Miss Scarlet to dine afterward. If he is pleased with your performance he will no doubt request your company as well. He has a taste for young men.”

A soft threat therein. I had sworn chastity before Toby Rhymer and the others, save Miss Scarlet and Justice, who knew my secret. For I had seen that the Players were often expected to perform more than once each evening. Besides myself, only Miss Scarlet refrained from these engagements, drawing back her lip with the merest hint of a sneer as she withdrew her gloved hands from the kisses of her admirers—Paphians, mostly, and the occasional Zoologist.

“I will join him at dinner, if he wants. But not afterward,” I replied. But my heart hammered at the thought of encountering new blood that evening.

“Time, Toby!” hissed Fabian from the wings. He shoved the melodeon into Gitana’s arms as Toby strode onstage to arrange himself languidly as the lovesick Duke, raising his face to catch the dimpled light from an electrified follow-spot. Gitana plunked the melodeon’s keys desultorily, rolling her eyes so that Mehitabel collapsed giggling beside a papier-mache boxtree. Toby’s arm lolled behind Mehitabel. I watched him pinch her until she grimaced and turned her pretty blank eyes on the audience, as Justice tugged back the proscenium curtain upon Toby’s sighs.

“ ‘If music be the food of love, play on! Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die …’”

I caught the amused glances of several of the audience as Gitana’s melodeon gave a melancholy wheeze. I counted seventeen of them, mostly Paphians in gaudy drag. A small audience. Most of the Hill Magdalena Ardent was at High Brazil that evening, attending the Butterfly Ball. But Miramar hoped to impress his Botanist guests with our command performance, and so obtain more of last spring’s small harvest of saffron.

The mingled stench of the Paphians’ perfumes did not discourage the lewd ministrations of the Botanists, all women of surpassing plainness. In the center seat smiled a tall Paphian, very thin, with an ascetically beautiful face counterpointed by sumptuous robes of violet sateen aglow with azure lumens. He would be the suzein, Gower Miramar. Beside him sat a very homely Botanist in sober brown. Her hands twitched in her lap, seemingly to keep them from caressing the child seated next to her. A very small girl in a violet dress, her golden curls caught up in an elaborate coiffure braided with feathers and triangulated shards of glazed eelskin. For some reason she fascinated me. A flicker of feeling like a lizard’s tongue brushed against my heart.

Why her? I thought, trying to slow my breathing. I had not seen her face before. Yet something woke in me, some hunger or desire perhaps of the Boy eager to feed. She could not have been more than six or seven. Yet there was something in the way she tipped her head to listen to the Botanist’s smug whisper, a certain hauteur to her child’s bearing and the stiffness with which she held in her velvet lap an elaborate dorado fan. The fan seemed to twitch of itself as the Botanist’s suggestions took a more lecherous turn. In all of this I sensed a refined quality which belied the pale triangular face with its huge and innocent amber eyes. A strange excitement seized me, compounded equally of hunger, fear, and lust. I stepped into the folds of the proscenium curtains, the better to observe this strange child and allow myself to be engulfed by the emotions she roused. But just as the sharp taste flooded my mouth Toby careened into me as he made his exit and prodded me with his walking-stick.

“Now, boy!” he ordered. He pushed me from the velvet folds onto the momentarily darkened stage behind him.

The spotlight a lance through my eyes. A dazzling film of blood for an instant obscures my sight. Before me stands Justice, the Captain once again. From the audience a very soft sound, like a child starting from sleep only to plummet back into dreams. Then my own voice strained with desperation and loss as I tugged at the Captain’s sleeve:

“‘What country, friend, is this?’”

Justice’s eyes avoid mine so that I will not see his pain and desire there, even now, even alone with me upon a stage before a score of opium-besotted courtesans and their sniggering Patrons.

“’This is Illyria, lady.’”

I drew the scarf more tightly about my face as my voice rose:

“ ‘And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother he is in Elysium.

Perchance he is not drowned. What think you?’“

Justice countered:

“ ‘It is perchance that you yourself were saved.’”

I cried:

“ ‘Oh my poor brother! And ‘so perchance may he be!’”

Another sound from the audience. A single high voice called out in surprise and distress. I caught the shape of a name. So profound was the sense of loss in that sweet tone that I turned downstage and searched the rows of seats to see who was so moved.

The seat beside the lecherous Botanist was now empty. The suzein glanced about anxiously. Then I saw at the lip of the stage the little girl who had sat near him. Her coiffure bobbed as she tried to clamber onto the stage, her golden eyes fixed upon me.

“Raphael!” she cried. As she reached one hand toward me she slipped. Before she could fall she was caught by her frowning Botanist Patron, who carried her to the back of the theater, scolding her loudly.

From offstage came Toby’s bellowed whisper, “Justice!” I glanced back to Justice, who was also staring after the protesting child.

I coughed. Justice turned to me and faltered:

“ ‘True madam, and to comfort you with chance …’”

The scene wound on until the Captain led me offstage to disguise me as young Cesario. I shrugged off Justice’s hand and hurried to where Miss Scarlet waited with my costume change.

“The Paphians are taken with you,” she whispered, helping me step from skirts to trousers as she teetered in Olivia’s high-buttoned boots. But a shred of uncertainty wafted through her voice. She twitched her nose worriedly. Over the reek of white lead powder and rouge I caught the fulsome smell of her unease.

“What is it?” I grabbed her arm and felt through layers of crinoline the hair and muscle strung like rope. “What happened to that child? Did you recognize her?”

“No,” said Miss Scarlet; then, “I don’t know, Wendy.” I stooped so that she could remove my wig and tousle my short hair so that it resembled a boy’s. “They seem to sense something. Miramar—”

“The suzein?”

She nodded. “He didn’t take his eyes off you.”

“I will not traffic with Paphians,” I said. But Miss Scarlet shook her head, indicating silence as she glanced behind me to where the other actors fussed with their costumes.

“That may be so; but you draw them to yourself all the same, dear friend.” She sighed, fastening the last lace upon my jacket. “Be quick now, or you’ll miss the cue.”

I strode out beside Gitana, herself still attired as a manservant (her downy mustache helped). I paused upstage to allow the audience a moment to note the effectiveness of my masculine attire. That delighted gasp of amused recognition I was accustomed to by now; but then I heard a sharper intake of breath from several in the audience. Suddenly I felt my knees shake, knew the vertiginous approach that meant I was flashing onto something else, someone else, and who was it this time?

Emma Aidan Melisande?

Morgan Justice Scarlet Pan … ?‘

Or Him, the heavy thing I bore like a dart lodged immovably inside my head, leeching all those others into Himself until He might devour me as well? I began to shake, caught Gitana’s alarmed stare, and realized that for the first time I had dried up. Behind me Toby had already made his entrance.

“ ‘On your attendance, my lord, here!’” I stammered as Gitana scampered offstage. Toby smiled. He cuffed me with grim playfulness as he walked upstage, nearly knocking me to the floor.

“ ‘Stand you awhile aloof, Cesario,’” he commanded.

I caught my breath and balance, made a low bow and let the blood rush to my head. Then I straightened to continue with the scene. As we bantered, the Voices inside my head crept back into their secret places, small creatures with patient claws. A pulse of adrenaline. I spun on my heel to exit and dared a direct glance at the audience, aimed my sight at the center row where the suzein sat—

Bolt upright, staring at me with utter amazement. As I stepped offstage I heard his voice from the front of the house, repeating softly but insistently a name:

Raphael.

“You are his very likeness.”

The tumbler the suzein handed me glittered green with sweetmint tea. We were gathered in the Pandoric Seraglio of the House Miramar. A number of television monitors were set about the chamber, hundreds of years old and recently acquired from the Historians. Through their cracked glass flickered candlelight, and in some of them little figures had been set, dolls and small automatons, robotic hands encrusted with rings and armillas, dried nosegays of roses and lilies-of-the valley. I could smell the opiated fumes rising from the narghile in Toby’s hand. Beside the suzein three leaden-eyed Botanists sprawled upon pillows. Seated near me were Miss Scarlet (refusing like myself all refreshment save plain tea and a plate of sweet loquats), Justice, and Toby Rhymer.

“Master Aidan is an almost supernaturally talented young man,” said Miss Scarlet, drawing back her long upper Lip to show yellow teeth. She inclined her head to Gower Miramar, plucking a loquat from the platter and offering it to the suzein.

“Thank you, Miss Scarlet,” replied Miramar. When he moved, the azure lumens on his robes blinked to detail the constellation known as The Capitol. Behind him our shadows fluttered upon the seraglio’s tapestried walls, were trapped within the gold-shot eyes of the ancient monitors. A small room, oddly shaped so that the soft and richly hued cloths fluttering from the ceiling made it seem we were embarked upon some strange vessel. Miramar crumbled a leaf of sweet-smelling herb before his face and inhaled before continuing.

“Ah, Miss Scarlet! Aidan’s talent I have no doubt of—a lovely performance, sieur,” he said, turning to me. “I have always respected Toby’s craft, his attention to the details of an ancient art. Among other things, encouraging young men to play the feminine roles originally written for them.”

Miss Scarlet sniffed. I had to keep from smiling at the remarkable conceit of a girl disguised as a boy disguised as a girl traveling incognito upon the stage!

“But you know I am not Raphael Miramar,” I said again. Across from me a young Botanist snored. “You are certain of that.”

“I am,” said Miramar; but he looked disturbed. His glance lingered again upon my throat, where earlier his long fingers had sought a birthmark that was not there. “Your learning proves you grew up among the Librarians after your parents’ death—” (This was the story Justice and I had created to explain my erudition, if not my beauty.) “But you are certain you have no surviving family? No sister?”

I laughed, dread uncoiling inside me like an asp. “No, sieur! No sister—

“ I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too— ”

And I am certain I have no brother.”

Miramar sighed. “Well, it is very strange then. The favorite of our House left here two months back: Raphael, whom you so closely resemble that I thought you must be that other child I sold to the Ascendants many years ago …”

My fingers tightened upon my tumbler. It was as if some great and terrible vista was opening before me; as though a mountain that for my entire life had reared above my home had suddenly one day begun to tremble and fall into ruin.

A brother, I thought. From beneath the layers of scarred brain tissue that buried my past something stirred, thrashed as in wakefulness and then fell back into the abyss.

A brother; a twin brother. Emma and Aidan Harrow, and now myself: another twin. Another girl torn from her brother …

No wonder I had been Emma’s pet. No wonder it had not been difficult to pattern me with the intricate spires and helices of her tortured consciousness; no wonder I had driven her to madness and suicide, when through me she could not reclaim the boy she had loved and lost but never escaped from.

It can’t be true, I thought; but inside me a Small Voice (Dr. Harrow’s perhaps; but I could not be sure) said: It is so.

Abruptly I remembered where I was and drew myself up to gaze at Justice across the table from me. He blinked, once, twice, and gazed at me with wonder.

Say nothing! I tried to command him with my eyes. But already he spoke, phrasing a question with stunned slowness.

“You sold her to the Ascendants?”

“Yes,” said Miramar. Next to him Toby Rhymer tapped a generous stream of brown powder from a small vial into his tea. Miss Scarlet sat very straight beside him on two pillows, her black eyes fixed upon mine. “There were two children—”

Miramar hesitated. Toby quaffed his drink and belched loudly, then with eyes closed leaned back against the tapestried wall. The Botanists slept on, their snores stirring the fragrant air with a faint tepid odor of earth and fish emulsion. Only Justice and Miss Scarlet and myself waited for the suzein to continue. He glanced at each of us in turn, seeming to measure one against the other.

“Well,” he said at last. His gaze settled upon me. “It was some time ago— years ago, oh—!” He turned his palms upward in a helpless gesture. “We are no good at these things, keeping track! Doctor Foster would know; but he is at nocturne castigations. But there were two children, a boy and a girl. Twins. I took them in, because they were very beautiful. The mother I left to the lazars. She was scarred from childbirth. And she was mad, she talked of visions, of seeing the Magdalene and—Oh, it was such a long time ago, I can’t remember it all.

“The little girl was mad as well. At least Doctor Foster thought so. She couldn’t talk, not to be understood. Just nonsense with her brother. Raphael Miramar, my dearest child.” He sighed and stared at me.

“Even your eyes are much like his,” he said after a moment. He beckoned me closer. “And not just the color: those same wild gray eyes. Even as a child Raphael had wild eyes, always looking into corners and finding the oddest things …

With a dismissive gesture he flicked his fingers. He turned to Miss Scarlet and added graciously, “But your eyes as well are profound, and a lovely shade of brown.”

Smiling, she accepted the compliment, her black lashes fluttering as she replied.

“Ah yes; but Aidan does have a powerful vision, a rare and marvelous gift for charming his audiences. It is evident from the claques who are turning out to see him. We have not enjoyed such a success since I first joined the troupe.” She regarded me with that stare holding within it the long shadows of barred cages and moon-tossed trees. “And they are lovely—

“ ‘Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In Death’s dream kingdom these do not appear …’”

She quoted softly, to herself. Miramar nodded, his fingers playing with a braided tassel hanging from the wall behind him.

“I do not understand why he left,” he said at last. He stretched his hand across the table toward me, as if I might answer the question half-asked. “He was the loveliest of us all …

“You must have some understanding of that, Aidan: to command by a look alone, by looks alone—?”

“I have never sought to command,” I said. But I felt the flare of that raging Small Voice I knew betrayed my words.

Because I did seek power; and had found it upon the stage. There I might command by my eyes alone, where rapt faces turned upon me, me, ME!—not Emma Harrow or Toby Rhymer or even Miss Scarlet Pan, the Prodigy of a Prodigal Age—but myself, Wendy Wanders, the idiot savant, the reclaimed autist, the wild girl of the Human Engineering Laboratory.

“—not meant as an insult, my dear young sieur, please forgive my clumsy words—”

I snapped my head back up from where it had bowed, perilously close to striking the edge of the table I clutched with white fingers. “Forgive me,” I whispered. Miss Scarlet eyed me with alarm, but Gower Miramar continued heedlessly.

“No, it was rude of me—there is no question but that you are a different sort entirely from that poor sick child and even from my beloved Raphael. He lacks all discipline, save in the amatory arts; and he is too easily distracted, too easily seduced by dreams of power.”

He paused to pour a stream of green tea from the samovar into Miss Scarlet’s glass.

“Thank you,” she said. “But what became of the girl?”

Miramar refilled his tumbler, held it before a candle so that emerald rays sprang from the faceted glass. “One day Doctor Foster met an Ascendant woman at a masque, a Physician. He was more involved in trade with the out-lands then, Doctor Foster. She had accompanied a group of Physicians from the Citadel; they were being entertained by the Botanists. They were looking for research subjects, they had brought things to trade for them: a generator, cilia ampules, prosthetics.

“She told him of her work. I would imagine she even asked his advice. He is a very brilliant man, our Doctor Foster …

“She believed it might be possible to cure this child. At the very least she would be well cared for. She was so very beautiful, I didn’t have the heart to let her die.

“We sold her to the Ascendants.”

He stared at me for a long moment, shaking his head. “She was a lovely girl; but she banged her head and her tears bled all the time. There was nothing we could do.” And he shrugged and drank the rest of his tea.

From across the room I could feel Justice’s excitement. Miss Scarlet raised an eyebrow: she feared he would betray me. I was afraid myself that this news would prove too much for me to absorb at once. I leaned across the table to take Justice’s hand. I hoped that the suzein would not see how my own shook.

“My dear friend, this pretty story has tired you!” The words sounded so false that I expected Justice to rebuke me. Instead he only trembled as I stepped around the sleeping Botanists to sit beside him.

I glanced up at Miramar. “Can you arrange for a palanquin to return Justice and myself to the theater on Library Hill?”

Disappointment creased his face. “I had planned for all of you to spend the night, as my guests. After matins I’ve arranged for a Sapphic burletta—not the same sort of entertainment as you offer, young sieur, but we consider ourselves artists too.”

I began to protest, when I glimpsed Toby Rhymer regarding me with one eye slitted open even as he feigned sleep. Beneath the table Miss Scarlet’s foot curled about my ankle.

Beware! She mouthed the word.

I nodded, then raised Justice’s hand to my lips and kissed it. My tongue darted between his fingers to taste desire salted with a brackish haze of opium; a sluggish remnant of exhilaration from our play; and fear.

“Perhaps you are too genteel for our entertainments,” Miramar suggested, a slight downward tug to his butterfly mouth.

“I would not dream of refusing your hospitality,” I demurred. I allowed myself a look at Toby. His raptor’s eye caught my own. For a moment he held it in silent struggle before releasing my gaze and once more pretending sleep. “It is just that I fear my companion has drunk too much of your Lethian cup—”

I cast Justice a look of grave fondness. With a slight twitch he nodded, rolled his eyes, and then laid his head in my lap. Toby sniggered, though his eyes remained shut.

“Oh, we are accustomed to much worse than that!” laughed Miramar. “Many of our guests fall prey to sleep before they ever succumb to our charms!”

I let my hand linger upon Justice’s forehead, then said, “I am tired as well. Can I find my way to a room by myself?”

“I will accompany you,” Justice said quickly. I started to object but caught Miss Scarlet’s slow nod as she stared across the table.

“Of course,” I replied. As I stood, Toby made a great show of yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“So early to bed? To bed at all, Sieur Aidan?” This with a leer at Justice.

“Even Aidan and Justice must sleep,” said Miss Scarlet. “Leave them alone, Toby.” She tugged at a lock of his hair, still gray with chalk powder from our show. Toby turned a fond glance upon her. He extended one arm to enfold her to him, until she stepped from her chair to stand upon his knee.

“My dear Miss Pan,” he murmured, burying his face in her soft ruff of dark fur. “Forgive me. Miramar, perhaps we will retire to our chambers as well.”

Miramar rose and drew back a curtain to show us the way from the Pandoric Seraglio. One by one we stepped over the legs of the sleeping Botanists, Toby escorting Miss Scarlet last of all.

“They will sleep forever,” Miramar snorted as the curtain fell back to hide them. “They smoke and talk of their poppies and sleep, smoke and sleep and talk some more. They are worse than the Historians for dull talk.”

Justice stepped ahead of me to walk beside Miramar. He nodded as the suzein prattled on about recent scandals, the success of certain liaisons and the expected failure of others.

“Your favorite, Raphael Miramar,” I heard Justice ask. He cast me a backward glance. “I have been away for so long, everything is news to me—he left to join the Curators?”

Miramar sighed, beckoning us to follow him up a narrow stair to the next level of the House. “Yes. I begged him not to, his Patron is notoriously fickle. It’s rumored he has taken a new pathic as his favorite, and will support him at tonight’s judging at the Butterfly Ball. Whitlock High Brazil, a young …”

I yawned and let Toby and Miss Scarlet pass me, so that I would not have to listen to more of this endless chatter. The hallways we paced seemed endless as well. Flickering tubes of luminous diatoms did little to dispel the darkness. Near dawn by my guess; but I had seen neither window nor timepiece since our arrival.

The aura of constant twilight was heightened by the thick and intricately woven tapestries covering the walls and the many doorways we passed. One showed the bomb blast of the First Ascension, a brilliant star rising north of the City. Another had two panels. The first showed stiff-jointed men and women in white coats and robes. Some held beakers and complicated optical devices; others sat in front of screens where even smaller figures performed. A woman prodded a four-legged body stretched upon a table, a geneslave with eyes sewn shut. Other women stared earnestly at the sky, where so many dirigibles, zeppelins, gliders, helicopters, balloons, and airplanes soared that it was a miracle none collided. Behind them gleamed Museums not yet overtaken by kudzu, an unbroken Obelisk. The same backdrop was in the next panel of the diptych. Only here gaudy Paphians cavorted in front of the Museums, and coupled with the white-robed Curators on the steps of the Sorrowful Lincoln.

As I went down the hall other tapestries showed similar scenes. In many of them the Paphians’ Magdalene figured: diverting flames from the five Houses; keeping aardmen at bay so that a group of children could safely cross the river; healing lazars so that they jumped and ran once more. Over and over again the same blue-clad woman, eyes closed because she is asleep, waiting for the hour when the Gaping One will wake her to do battle. She was usually shown alone, but one tapestry had her upon a stage with a figure much like herself, the two of them grappling or embracing while myriad Paphians and Curators watched their masque. Beneath the figures tiny words were stitched into the cloth: Puissant Baal is dead.

For some reason these made me think of the small girl in our audience that evening. Her face pale, wistful to the point of yearning. I thought of her calling out to me; of Miramar too naming me Raphael; of a brother, my brother, somewhere in this City, and did he dream of me as Emma Harrow had dreamed of Aidan? I was seized with the overpowering desire to know more of him, but I could not risk betraying myself to the others in our company.

Without thinking, I quickened my footsteps.

“Excuse me,” murmured Miss Scarlet. I had trodden upon the trailing hem of her taffeta gown, so caught up in my thoughts that I did not notice the others had paused in the hallway.

“Sieur Aidan and Justice may have this room,” Miramar announced. With a flourish he swept back a fringe of indigo cloth to display a narrow door inlaid with rare titanium discs and metal gears. “You will be shielded from the sistrum sounding first worship, and there are no windows to let the sun in.”

As Justice began a lengthy paean of thanks I interrupted him.

“Suzein Miramar,” I began, stroking my fingers across my open palm to signify I was interested in obtaining a doxy for the night. Behind me Justice choked audibly. Toby Rhymer snorted and loomed past me with a broad wink, on his way to a familiar chamber for the rest of the night. From beneath her lacy mantilla Miss Scarlet cast me a piercing glance as she minced behind him.

“Do not sleep too late, Aidan,” was all she said in a low voice. They disappeared down the hall.

“Ah!” Gower Miramar exclaimed, nodding polite goodbyes before turning to me with a radiant smile. His interest now lay with myself alone, although he beamed at Justice glowering at my side. “Sieur Aidan, you at least do not disappoint me! I pride myself on the luster of our House’s reputation—with all respect to you, Saint-Alaban, may your House never gray. But from Master Aidan’s demeanor I guessed he is unaccustomed to our ways. I would relish the opportunity to share with you both the ministrations of Lais—”

He pressed three fingers to his mouth, with his tongue traced the outline of one finger. I shook my head; I had been misunderstood.

“You are too generous, Suzein. But my own taste is rather more—” I struggled for the right word, looked helplessly to Justice. He regarded me for a long moment before coming to my aid.

“Aidan is shy,” he said. He leaned against the wall and toyed with a velvet cord that hung there. I looked at my feet, trying to appear awkward: not too difficult under the circumstances. Fortunately Miramar had the grace to regard me with something like sympathy rather than affront at my unintentioned insult.

“He is—inexperienced with women?” suggested Miramar. Justice flicked me a look. I nodded at Justice; he nodded at Miramar; and Miramar nodded to himself.

“He might perhaps like a young boy?” The suzein raised one finely plucked eyebrow to Justice, the experienced merchant steering a recalcitrant customer to the appropriate wares. Again Justice glanced at me; I shook my head. We played out the same guise of innocence, Justice fingering the velvet tassel, Miramar pretending thoughtfulness as he touched the blinking lumens upon his sleeve and changed their pattern from that of The Capitol to The Veil, myself trying not to demand that the suzein produce Raphael’s elfin friend upon the spot.

“Ah. Maybe a young girl?” said Miramar with a sudden show of insight. He extended his hand as if admiring the new light pattern upon his sleeve. “A very young girl, perhaps?”

I nodded, looking directly at Miramar and so breaking the chain of pretense that bound us. “Yes,” I said. “The ones who accompanied you this evening: they are available?”

“They are all abed,” Miramar said thoughtfully. “No, wait—Arethusa has been engaged by two Senators for dousing—”

“Is she the fair one?”

“No—that would be Fancy.” Miramar’s glance suddenly grew sharper. “Fancy … Did you know she was the special intimate of Raphael Miramar?”

“I couldn’t help but hear her interrupt my performance,” I said. “But so what? You said yourself he was the loveliest of all of you. If I so resemble Raphael Miramar, then certainly I may request an intrigant deserving of my absent brother.”

I grinned; but it seemed that I had been too bold. For a long moment Miramar regarded me shrewdly.

“You are not what you seem,” he said at last. A flash of anger in his dark eyes. “Do you know who you travel with, Saint-Alaban?”

Justice stood up straight, sleep’s last softness gone from him now. “I do.”

“Who is he?” Miramar’s eyes narrowed. That dim fragrant hallway seemed suddenly to have shrunk into another place, a closed inquisitory chamber like that where I had spent so many hours in my last days at HEL . I took a step nearer to Justice.

“Who is he, Saint-Alaban?” repeated Miramar. “A rebel? An Ascendant delator?”

“He is not a spy,” said Justice. “I told you, he is what you see: my friend, a Librarian now traveling with Toby Rhymer’s troupe. Miss Scarlet can vouch for him.”

From the belled cuff of his robe Miramar withdrew a sheaf of anaphylactic lozenges. He peeled one from the rest and applied it to his temple without offering one to either of us. “I only want to know who I am doing business with,” he said. “Fancy Miramar is a particular favorite of Constance Beech the Botanist.”

And worth her weight in opium because of that, I thought. I drummed my fingers against my lip, facetiously imitating the Paphian’s beck, and waited for Justice to reply. His blue eyes sparked angrily for an instant. He let his breath out slowly, then laughed.

“You drive a hard bargain, Miramar! All this for one little mopsy? A pretty girl, but really! Come on, Aidan—” He made as though to pull me after him into our chamber.

Miramar sniffed, then smiled. A flush crept from the edges of his scalp. The lozenge was beginning to have its effect.

“Ah, well, forgive me! Doctor Foster will no doubt examine me and suggest I join the elders after this Winterlong: I am growing old and suspicious.

“But we hear frightening tales these days. Some weeks ago a drunken janissary told me of an Ascendant coming to govern the City. Since then we’ve heard that a band of Ascendants was attacked near the river; that another group was captured by the Curators and killed. They were searching for someone, prisoners escaped from the Citadel. And there is talk of lazars gathering in the Cathedral under a leader. They have grown bold these last few weeks. A group attacked Mustapha Illyria’s birthday party and bore off three boys. And last week we entertained Zoologists who told me of aardmen trying to lure children from the Zoo, and betulamia devouring a Botanist near the Gardens.”

“I’ve heard none of this,” said Justice. “I told you, I have been gone … but surely this doesn’t bear on our plans for the evening?”

Miramar sighed. “No, no. It’s foolish to worry about all this; leave that to the Curators. Good sense is bad business, after all! It’s just I’ve had no word of Raphael for so long, and I worry.” He made the Paphian’s beck and bowed, turned a smiling face to us once more.

“So your bashful friend will engage Fancy Miramar for the rest of the evening?”

There followed several minutes of bargaining in low voices. The two Paphians spoke as much with their hands as their tongues as I waited. After another minute or two they kissed. It was done.

“She will be here?” I asked as Justice stepped beside me. A few feet away Miramar stood smiling. The lumens on his robe blinked faster and faster as they responded to the lozenge’s quickening of his blood.

“Well, yes. Wendy, he—” Justice stared at my feet. “He won’t take payment.”

“Well, good. We have nothing to trade.” I tugged at the door handle.

“No—I mean, he’ll only take one payment. He wants a kiss; he wants you to kiss him.”

I began to argue but he cut me short.

“Because you resemble Raphael—well, don’t do it then, Wendy.” I sniffed as he put his hand anxiously on my shoulder: jealous! “We can go to bed, it’s late—”

“I want to see the girl.”

I turned to Miramar. “Well, Miramar, you demand small payment for the special intimate of Raphael Miramar and Constance Beech.” I tilted my face to his.

He kissed me so violently that I recoiled, twisting so that his hands would not feel my breasts. The lozenge’s acrid taste lingered on my tongue. I shut my eyes and tried not to respond to his desire, its memory of a face so much like mine that I felt queasy, as though I tasted my own blood. I clutched at Miramar’s sleeve. His laughter rang out, flecking the air with that bitter smell.

“He is an innocent!” he said, eyes flashing delightedly. “How gratifying to see that I can make you dizzy with a kiss, Sieur Aidan! No, he is not Raphael Miramar,” he said to Justice. “Kisses like a Curator, doesn’t he?”

Justice smiled wryly. I untangled myself from Miramar’s embrace and stepped away, noting that Miramar’s lumens now glowed a brilliant violet, pulsing like a warning beacon.

“I will wake Fancy,” he said as he turned on his heel.

Once inside our chamber I set to warming the room’s single diatom lantern with my hands. Its cool light flared to a brighter blue to show us our sleeping chamber: a long narrow room overhung with more tapestries. Justice stood by the door staring at me, waiting for an explanation. I met his gaze, felt a surge of desire stirred by his anger. I turned away from him.

“I should have taken my own chamber,” I said, staring at the bed that stood at the room’s center: wide and sumptuously pillowed, canopied with drapes of viridian velvet. I felt uneasy, as though on the edge of a seizure, and empty, the way I had felt after the janissaries siphoned me.

“This is dangerous, Wendy,” Justice said, drawing closer. “This girl: she’ll know you’re not Raphael Miramar.”

“I don’t want her to believe that I’m Raphael Miramar,” I said. “I want to tap her.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not? I won’t hurt her: just a moment, just long enough to learn more about him—”

“You already heard what Miramar said. There was a girl, they sold her to the Ascendants—”

“ I was that girl!” Suddenly I felt more frightened than I had since I first saw the Boy; but also enraged, as though everything since that moment had been a betrayal. I grabbed him in a fury. “Sold like a fucking animal by a whore! Sold to the Ascendants so that I could be patterned with some monster, so that I could be melted down for this!”

I pointed at my head, screaming as my entire body shook. I was on the verge of a seizure. When Justice tried to restrain me I struck him, sending him reeling.

“Where is that boy?” I shouted. “Raphael Miramar—what kind of a brain does he have, the suzein’s favorite, why wasn’t he sold?”

Justice stared, terrified. I fell to my knees, my voice strangling as I brought my head back and then smashed it against the floor.

“No, Wendy!”

I heard him cry out, but only dimly. Already it calmed me, that warm wave of enkephalins rushing through my mind in response to the pain I could not feel. I struck my head again, and again, until finally I lay exhausted, my cheek resting against the floor as I breathed heavily. From the other side of the room I heard Justice weeping.

Minutes passed. I heard another, softer sound. I glanced up to see Justice standing by the open door, turning to look from me back to a small figure silhouetted against the hall’s dusky glow.

“Fancy,” I said thickly. I thought she might be frightened, to see me crouched upon the floor like this; but it was obvious she had seen many stranger things in her few, years. Still blinking with sleep, she smiled up at Justice, then peered into our chamber. She had yet to recognize me.

“Thank you,” Justice called after some figure retreating down the hall. He was careful to shield the doorway so that no one might see inside.

“Miramar said I have been engaged by a gentleman. You are he?” The girl stood on tiptoe, arms outstretched so that he might lift her. Justice stared down awkwardly, then with a sigh closed the door and shook his head.

“No. This—you have been engaged by another gentleman. Aidan Arent, a Player. There.” He gestured to where I lay upon the floor.

Still smiling, Fancy turned, taking a few steps to follow the shadow of his arm upon the carpet. When she saw me she stopped.

“Raphael!”

I braced myself, holding one hand out to keep her from me.

“No, Fancy,” I said, struggling to my feet. But already she hugged my legs. I could feel her entire small body vibrating with excitement. “Aidan, my name is Aidan. You saw me earlier this evening—”

“Raphael,” she repeated. Her face pressed against my thigh. Her eyes were shut tight against my denial. “I miss you.”

“No, Fancy,” I began, then sighed. I felt calmer now. “Come sit here,” I said more gently. I settled back upon the floor. Fancy clambered into my lap, still not meeting my eyes. From across the room Justice watched us impassively.

“I am not Raphael Miramar,” I began again. I took her chin in my hand and forced her to look at me. “See? I’m not.”

“You look just like him.” She reached to touch my hair. His would have been long, braided in a heavy russet chain. I nodded as she stroked the small raised node upon my temple.

“But I’m not him.”

“You’re not him.” Her voice no longer held much doubt. She squirmed in my lap, her little hands stroking my thigh. I thought suddenly that she might discern my disguise—she was, after all, a prostitute—and shifted until I had her perched upon my knees. She raised her hand to trace the line of my chin. “Are you his twin?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” A child; what matter what she knew or thought of me, really? “I’m a Player, I travel through the City with Toby Rhymer’s troupe. You saw us tonight.”

“You were that lady—” She frowned, stuck a finger in her mouth.

“That’s right: Viola. I was in disguise. I pretended to be a lady in the play. Do you pretend things, Fancy?”

She nodded solemnly. “All the time. Miramar teaches us to pretend lots of things.” She tilted her head and smiled across the room at Justice, then lifted her face to mine as for a kiss. I turned away, then looked down at her hand upon my knee. A small scab on her wrist, like a star.

“Did you cut yourself?” I asked.

She nodded. “With Constance. She set the pinion too tight.”

I raised her hand to my lips so that I could kiss the broken skin. “Fancy, I want you to pretend something for me, something about your friend Raphael. Can you think of him, remember doing something with him?”

“Pretend for you? Like a game?” Her eyes widened. “I will do whatever you wish, sieur.”

I looked at Justice. He was pale, squatting by the door on a large pillow, but he returned my gaze unblinkingly. I turned back to Fancy.

“I want you to think of Raphael.” I bowed my head and whispered the words, lifting a coil of her golden hair to display one tiny ear. “Don’t pretend I’m him, just think of him. Of something that really happened.”

“Like when he was cacique at Winterlong last year? That really happened. I should think of that?”

Against my cheek her warm breath. Her long hair sweet with some floral soap, that sweet warm childhood smell still perfuming her skin. It made me dizzy, to imagine that he had sat with her like this, the small trembly weight against his thighs, her hands caressing his cheeks … .

“Yes.” I grabbed one of her hands and held it tightly, squeezing my eyes shut as I emptied my mind to tap her. Perhaps Justice was right; perhaps it was too dangerous, not for this child (I cared little for her, a mere courtesan), but for myself.

But I would know, I had to know something of him—

Because since I had heard Miramar’s tale earlier it was as though I had discovered myself to be a changeling, the goblin barter of some malevolent agent. And in learning this I suddenly felt I had lost everything I knew of Wendy Wanders; and only he might somehow make me whole again, Raphael Miramar, my beautiful brother—

“Does he look like me?” I asked in a low voice.

“We-ell.” She closed one eye to scrutinize my face. “His hair is longer, and he has a strawberry mark, there. And Raphael smiles more. His eyes don’t cross like yours.” She grazed my forehead with a finger. “It’s not all bruised there, either.”

“Show me,” I whispered, drawing her face to mine. “Think of him, don’t think of anything else. Kiss me.”

Her mouth was so tiny that I had to hold her chin steady so that I could find it, probe gently with my tongue; and how clumsy I felt before her quiet obedient response. I recalled Miramar’s cutting aside to Justice:

“He kisses like a Curator … he is not Raphael Miramar. …”

Think of Melisande, I told myself to keep from trembling. A girl, she’s just another little girl, a whore besides …

Sleep a soft fur upon her tongue. Her milk teeth small and sharp as a kitten’s. I shivered as she bit my lower lip, drew back murmuring No so that she would not break the skin.

“I’m thinking of Raphael,” she said.

“Good girl. Now shhh …”

I covered her mouth with one hand. With the other I took her wrist, brought it to my mouth. She giggled as I licked the rough skin, then frowned when I bit very gently where Constance’s pinion had left its own cold kiss.

“Ow.”

I moved my hand to cover her eyes. I didn’t want to alarm her, didn’t want panic to overwhelm the subtler impressions I sought. From the star upon her wrist blood welled.

“Raphael, remember Raphael,” I said. I bowed to lick the blood from her hand, rubbing her arm so that it would come faster. “Raphael.”

There was barely enough for me to taste, but it was sweet, nothing of salt or sweat or tears in her smooth skin. I moaned and squeezed harder on her wrist, until she cried out, arms flailing.

It is enough.

Winterlong …

There are the candles, twelve of them shimmering upon a high stone shelf, high high above me. Jada passes me the silver tray blued with negus flame and I try to snatch a snapdragon, wrens’ hearts burning crisp and red on their bed of green holly. Blue flame licks my fingers, I cry out and lick them and Jada makes a mean face, I hate her. Miramar is watching me from his big chair, he laughs so hard his gums show and he looks ugly.

—Here, Fancy, don’t cry!

He grabs Jada’s wrist, plucks a snapdragon from the tray, and tosses it in his palm ‘til it cools and then he pops it in my mouth. I like the burnt ones best. Where is Raphael? My dress itches, it scratches my stomach. Quistana Illyria picked it out. I hate her. Constance gave her an electrified eel lamp and seventeen grams of tristain for Winterlong but she kissed me when Miramar wasn’t there and I told Raphael before he left. Constance keeps smiling at me and now Quistana is mad and Jada and her are both sitting on Constance’s lap but she keeps smiling at me. Where is he?

Knock knock knock. Benedick and Small Thomas yell.

—Here is the Mayor!

They run to the door. Benedick knocks over the big thing with all the presents on it and Ketura picks them up, she looks so sad since she got back. The one wrapped in blue silver with the featherbells is mine from Raphael. It’s a mirror made of faĕ’ro eggs. I peeked.

—The Mayor, the Old Gray Mayor! yells Benedick. He goes to pull the door open but Neville Warnick grabs him.

—Ho ho ho little boy, I wouldn’t do that!

Benedick starts to cry because Neville is taking him to the Lustrous Chamber and he’ll miss the guise. I want to cry too because Raphael isn’t here yet. Small Thomas opens the door instead.

They are all there, the mummers in disguise for the Winterlong masque. Doctor Foster has on a big hat but I know it’s him. One of the Curators pretends to be afraid of him but Miramar tells him Shush, Listen.

—Who in this House will let the Winter in?

That is Galatea Saint-Alaban dressed as the Old Gray Mayor. She wears a black tuxedo and a horse’s head from the Zoologists. Mandala Persia showed me once where they keep the bones.

—Who will let me in?

—Not I, Miramar says very loud.

—Who will let the Winter in? That is Doctor Foster, he makes the Dead Boy in the masque better after he dies.

—Not me! Not me!

I yell too, I am laughing too even with Jada and Quistana, it is not such a bad dress. Malva Persia is dressed just like Aspasia Persia, when he walks in everybody laughs. He looks so funny! He lifts his dress and he has bells on, the Mayor pretends to bite him and he screams just like her.

—Who will let the Winter in, who will let the Winter in?

But nobody does. Old Nick comes, he was behind Malva. He kisses Ketura and gives her a golden hat but he gives me a peacock mask and throws comfits in the air.

—Send her on, send her on, we won’t keep the Winter here! everyone yells to Winter the Old Gray Mayor.

—Take her to Persia, take her to Illyria, take her to Saint-Alaban!

—Take her to the lazars! says Small Thomas, Take her to the la —

Constance Beech kisses him so he will shut up.

— I will be back! screams the Mayor. The bones clack and she takes off her top hat and paper snow comes out and her teeth snap clack-clack-clack. I know she is Galatea Saint-Alaban but it is scary anyway. I wish Raphael was here, I wish so hard I close my eyes. I open them, here he is.

—Fancy!

He smells so good, like opium and silver powder.

—They made me cacique! I can’t stay, Whitlock is paired with me, Miramar is late too and why are the masquers still here?

He grabs me and throws me in the air, I sit on his shoulders and pull his hair and everyone is looking at me because I am his favorite and he is everyone’s favorite, Raphael, they say Raphael! The Mayor goes snap and bites at his hair, he yells because his costume is getting messed.

—They’re waiting for you for Winterlong! he says. Hurry up! I have to go back —

No one hears him, they are singing now. Doctor Foster takes the Mayor by a white rope and hits her, not hard. They hurry because they have to go to Illyria and Persia and Saint-Alaban last of all for the Masque of Winterlong. Everyone starts singing.

We will walk, we will wander

Farther on and over yonder

Not a song not a word nothing more is spoken

Hang the boy and raise the girl ‘til Winterlong is broken.

—Don’t go, Raphael.

— I can’t stay, Whitlock is waiting! Hurry, Miramar!

— I want to come!

—You’re too little.

Constance Beech frowns at me.

— I want to come, I want to come!

—Let her! Raphael smiles, he takes me in his arms and swings me around and kisses me, his hair falls in my face and I see his eyes looking at me, gray eyes shading to green and he shakes his flaming hair and it falls in my face and it is him, Raphael Miramar, I can see him now and it is me, I am seeing my brother —

I scream, thrash, and tear at wires that are not there.

“Go!” Justice is shouting. Something falls from my hands, another voice cries out, but it is too late, he is gone—

A door slams. Later it slammed again.

“She’s gone. I had their Doctor give her something. Maybe she won’t remember.” Justice’s face was dark with anger. “How could you be so careless? Didn’t you hear Miramar? The Ascendants are looking for someone, they may still be searching for you. If they hear of this—”

“You told me they think I’m dead. Leave me alone.” I stumbled toward the bed. Before I reached it he was there behind me, pulling me to him as I tried to push him away.

“Then why not me, Wendy? Why her and not me?” His voice cracked as he sought to caress me.

“Justice, don’t—” I rolled away from him.

I shut my eyes and tried desperately to retain that image of a face so like my own. A hundred tree-strung candles cast golden light upon his hair as he turned from me, from the child Fancy, the smell of him like jasmine and opium, burning wax and balsam, his pale gray skin, his eyes—

“Yes, Wendy!” Justice murmured in my ear, mistaking my silence for compliance. I pushed him away, his lips leaving mine with a sigh.

Too late. Already the metallic taste flooded my mouth and my heart pounded, as it had each time he had approached me thus backstage. Then it had always been furtive, a stolen embrace with blood bartered in exchange; his swollen mouth in no need of rouge because I bled it each ‘evening, but slowly so that I could taste his own desire and climax as he moved against me.

But it infuriated me now, when I had for a moment glimpsed my brother’s heart and past. I punched him in the ribs.

“Leave me,” I yelled. “Go away!”

Justice gasped. Clutching at his stomach he sat up, tears glittering in his eyes. “Why?” His voice tripped into a fit of coughing. “Why, Wendy? Why won’t you let me? I understand—”

“You don’t understand, or else you’d leave me.” I kicked aside a pillow so that I could slide beneath the blankets. “Emma and Morgan and that other woman are dead, Justice. It killed them, I killed them—”

“But you slept with other empties at HEL ,” he protested, yanking back the coverlets. “They didn’t die. And you just took that girl—”

“She knew something,” I said. “About me; about my brother. I care nothing for her, nothing at all. And you understand nothing, Justice, or you’d be afraid even to touch me.”

He knotted the blankets, avoiding my eyes. I felt a sudden pang, pity mingling with my anger. “Don’t you see, Justice? It kills them sometimes—what I see, what I am—and I … I don’t want to hurt you.”

Still he refused to look at me. I waited, then said, “Why am I so important to you? You could have anyone in this House, in this whole forsaken City. Why do you want me?”

He pushed the blanket from him and looked up, his hair falling into his eyes. “Because you are beautiful. Because they hurt you at HEL . Because I love you.”

I thought of how he had saved me; of him standing over me in the Home Room, watching silently through the night while I tossed in the bed with the Ascendants’ machines hooked into my brain. And I thought of tapping Fancy, her joy as she greeted Raphael; her delight when she first saw me and thought I was he. Raphael Miramar, beloved of the House Miramar.

And who loved Wendy Wanders? Who even knew who I was, except for Justice and Miss Scarlet?

But I couldn’t risk returning their love; could only imagine it, really, for I had nothing of my own to give. Only nightmares and despair and suicide.

I laughed harshly. “Love? Your people are whores. You want to use me, just as Dr. Harrow did—you’re no better than any of them!” But I knew my words were not true.

Pain and yearning so distorted Justice’s face that I looked away.

“Oh, Wendy …” He took a deep breath, shook his head before going on. “It’s not just that you are beautiful—”

“But you are beautiful, Justice. All of your people are beautiful! Any of them would welcome you as a lover.”

In the soft light his eyes burned a vivid sapphire blue. Angular face rounded just enough to keep its lines from gauntness, smooth brow raked with that golden hair above slanted deep-set eyes. I had seen how other Paphians gazed upon him with presumptive pride, as if in his even features each recognized his own. But to me they all seemed too much alike; only something in Justice’s face marked him, lines left by his time at HEL , the relative hardship of our life with the Players.

“Beauty is too common among your people for it to move me,” I said at last.

He sighed and wrapped a blanket around his knees. “There is a saying we have: ‘Empty vessels are the loveliest.’ That is why we love children, innocents, anything that is young and new, before the world changes it and it begins to die. Maybe that is why I love you.”

“But I am no innocent, Justice. And I think I am Death itself sometimes.”

He reached to stroke my hair where it had grown back to cover the nodes and scars upon my temples. “You are not Death, Wendy.” He drew me closer to him. “But even if you were …”

I shut my eyes and let him touch me, felt an odd dizziness that frightened me. I opened my eyes and took his chin in my hand, brought his face close to mine, kissed him until I drew blood once more from his broken lip. He cried out and drew back, but not soon enough.

Giggling, I fell upon the bed, exhilarated by the taste of his dismay, those few drops burning like some hot liquor upon my tongue.

“Oh, it’s lovely, lovely!”

A blurred glimpse of his face, Justice shaking his head, his mouth moving though I cannot hear the words. And then it comes …

Strands of blood and saliva entwine within my mouth. Fire flares back to my temples so that the blood dances beneath my skin. I shut my eyes tightly, the better to see what sings there so bright and clear—

Eyes, eyes, eyes dancing, green as the highest branch upon the tree, eyes so clear that they show no pupil, nothing but the reflection of what He sees before me, Justice’s white face dancing now too as he tries to hold me and suddenly I am clawing at him, grunting deep in my throat as my nails tear his face and —

With a cry Justice rolled across the bed, and I wailed to lose my dream. I scratched at my own face, dragged my fingers across my cheeks until I felt something warm, jammed my fingers into my mouth and gagged: because it was my own blood I tasted, the shining strands snarling into clotted chemicals. On the other side of the bed Justice wept.

My stomach stopped heaving. The shrieking in ‘my mind stilled. I raised my head to see Justice crouched on the corner of the bed.

“Why won’t you let me?” he cried. “I could make you happy!”

I held my head in my hands, pressing my thumbs beside my eyes to stop the pain raging there. As he reached for me I spat at him, pointing to a thread of blood trailing from my lip.

“That makes me happy,” I snarled.

But as I spoke I reeled back as though I had been struck. My sight dimmed as something black and huge and cold loomed in front of me. I began to shake uncontrollably and choking reached for Justice.

“No—stop Him—”

But it is too late.

“Baal is dead,” a Small Voice wails. “I have killed my brother: puissant Baal is dead.”

My hands fall back helplessly; Justice’s face ripples as though reflected in dark and quickly moving water. A cloud across the surface. From the depths rises another face, leaden-hued, soft and pallid as a salamander. As He turns to smile at me the skin droops from his cheeks. From His neck floats a rope — no, a vine — but then it too falls away, its flaccid curve tracing the outline of His mouth. His smile widens to show white broken teeth, swollen tongue, the waxen tendril of a feeding maggot.

Another Voice whispers, “No. Baal is risen; his sister Anat we take now —

“With sword we cleave her,

With fire we burn her,

In the field we doth sow her.

Birds eat her remains,

Consuming her remains,

Devouring her remains.

Puissant Baal died;

And behold, he is alive.

And lo, Anat we take now.”

His grin is hideous. I scream, try to escape those livid eyes but He is there reaching for me. His hand beckons me and all He has to do is touch me and I will lose all this, this room and earth and the warmth of air and blood, He will take me as He took them, all of them, and I feel Him, He is inside me the blink of His eyes His mouth opening to rend me my beautiful brother in the dark—

His eyes close, his mouth snaps shut, his lips furl into new green leaves spilling from a tree where stranger fruit grows. Another boy, yellow hair plaited about a leather belt, smiling, smiling as he always does seeing me in the mirror: Emma, Aidan, Raphael, my brother, we three there …

The face that rears to gaze upon me with hollow eyes rimmed with bone is not his: not Aidan’s or the laughing Boy’s. I scream because as the belt slips from the neck it leaves no scar, no burning flesh, but instead skin soft and s mooth as Justice’s had been beneath my nails. The swollen eyes that stare from the corpse are my own.

“Wendy. Wake.”

Dr. Harrow’s voice rings clear and strong enough to pull me from a profound stupor. Beside me Justice stirs, then moaning turns to hug a pillow. I sit up, keeping my eyes shut so that the vision is not disturbed.

I know she is not really here, not in the Paphians’ chamber where I have finally collapsed. She is a Small Voice now, but it is Emma Harrow I hear and not my own thoughts.

“Dr. Harrow,” I whisper. My hands tremble as I pull the coverlets to my breast. I can still taste the bitter residue of my brain’s own bile. “Dr. Harrow—please help me. I have entered a fugue state. Please—”

She laughs. A starburst of pale yellow light as the threads of her consciousness leap neural chasms.

“You live in a fugue state now, Wendy.” Her voice fires along my locus ceruleus so that I begin to sweat in fear. The neural threads twist and spiral into a brilliant trail. Her sour laughter plunges into the utter darkness of regret.

“Too soon, too soon,” she sighs. “And now swallowed into the void Poor Wendy wanders alone now …”

“No!” I try to follow the faint spark of her consciousness as it soars and plummets through endless canyons. “Don’t leave me! Help me, Dr. Harrow—”

“Help you?” In my mouth a faint sweetness as of old apples. “You killed me, Wendy —”

“Not me!” The sweetness roils into norepinephrine’s cloying honey. She leaps into flame, white and blinding. I start to cry out, to press my face into a pillow so that I will not see the room and wake to lose her again. “The Boy, Dr. Harrow—who is that Boy?”

“Ahhh

Two Voices now, two bright flecks in my spinning firmament.

“My brother— ”

“My sister— ”

Faint as first light the Boy’s bleak consciousness touches the rim of my temporal lobe. I groan in disappointment and terror. Already I can feel Dr. Harrow’s retreat into my corpus callosum, those gray mountains.

But Dr. Harrow lingers a moment longer. Axons whip and slash against the Boy’s first firings. I derive a numb solace from her presence, unclench my fingers from the pillow and draw a deep breath. Something had stirred her to wake me; something she would warn me of. A moment longer and she will be gone and only the Boy will remain to torment me.

“Dr. Harrow—”

A sigh echoes through the gray chasm. “Wendy,” it breathes. “Oh Wendy it is cold, He is so cold …”

I shiver at her anguish, but another urgency forces me on. “A brother, Dr. Harrow. Do I have a brother?”

Her consciousness wavers. A pulse of noradrenaline. Emerald novas burst to send her spinning into the shadows. A last cry soars through my mind’s abyss and I shout in pain as a blocked pathway erupts into crimson flame.

“There is a Boy, “she cries at last. “Our brother — Baal —”

My head pounds from the effort of trying to hold her another moment. Who is Baal? my mind shrieks. Aidan? Raphael?

Her consciousness a crimson streak as she spirals into the void—

“He is our brother, the dying god — we woke Him and now there is no peace until He is slain —

“ ‘But oh, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t

A brother’s murder!’

“Find him, Wendy— ”

She is gone. I am alone with Him, the One she woke, the One who slumbers within my tangle of dendrites and neurons and axons: the One who uses me as a flail to reap His harvest, His tribute of souls. The God in the Tree, Dionysus

Dendrites. The Gaping Lord. My hands pummel the bedcovers as He strives with me. My fingers curl helplessly, then flex and open as the blood pumps into them.

I feel Him, the cold and iron pressure of His limbs within mine, my blood streaked with the raw fluids He has released within my brain. A roaring as of some vast beast freed from its prison. A cry that I know is Justice’s as he wakes, as I claw and scream and tear at the sheets.

“No, Wendy!”

I do not see Justice as I fight Him, try to keep Him from seizing Justice like an animal, until finally I fall back onto the bed, grunting as I rip the comforter into shreds.

“Find him, Wendy!”

Her last words echoing as above me Justice hovers, in his hands some heavy object that smashes against my forehead. I hear a howl of frustrated rage, and plunge into unconsciousness.

Somehow Justice and Miss Scarlet engaged palanquins to bear us back to the theater. Justice pleaded I was ill. I recall only Gower Miramar leaning over me in our small chamber, and a fleeting impression of sunrise striking the minarets of the House Miramar as the elders carried us off.

I slept fitfully through that entire day and night, waking often from terrible nightmares. Like shades flickering in a cinematoscope the faces of Justice and Miss Scarlet would reveal themselves to me, first one and then the other as momentarily I awakened, struggling to lift my head before collapsing back upon my pillow.

When finally I did wake it was late morning. Sunlight bloomed upon the peeling wallpaper of my tiny room. I turned to see Miss Scarlet sitting primly upon a child’s rocking chair she had dragged from the prop room, her lips moving as she read silently from Mrs. Fiske’s Memoirs.

“Miss Scarlet,” I whispered. When I touched my forehead I felt a bump there as big as Miss Scarlet’s fist, and recalled Justice’s face as he struck me in the Miramars’ chamber. I tried to raise myself, and knocked against a half-full pitcher of water on the nightstand. Miss Scarlet caught this before it could fall. She put it back upright, carefully reserved the place in her book with a tattered strand of velvet ribbing. With a sigh she set the volume upon the nightstand.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Awful.” I flinched as she brushed the hair from my forehead. She nodded, poured me a glass of water, and waited until I drank it before saying anything more.

“You could have killed that child. You could have killed yourself,” she said at last. I shut my eyes and started to turn from her. “No!—listen to me, Wendy!”

I opened one eye, then shrugged. With a groan I pulled myself up to stare back at her angry face. “I’m listening,” I said.

“Perhaps you do not care about putting yourself in danger; but you have no right to endanger our lives as well. That child was hysterical. Justice was hysterical. He thought he’d killed you. He had to lie to the suzein about what happened, else Miramar might have taken action against us all because you harmed the child.

“That was ill-conceived, Wendy. You heard Miramar: Ascendants have crossed the river. They might be looking for you. A strange, cold young man resembling a Paphian favorite, driving a Paphian child to the edge of madness—this may sound too much like a runaway empath who caused the suicide of the Ascendants’ most renowned researcher.”

“They think I’m dead,” I protested weakly.

The chimpanzee trembled with indignation. “Being dead doesn’t excuse it! You could have killed her—”

“I don’t care,” I said, exhausted. I pressed my palms against my eyes. “Please let me sleep—”

“Dammit, Wendy!”

In her excitement she had climbed onto the seat of the little rocker. It swayed precariously as she swung her arms to punctuate her sentences, bits of the decayed fabric of her dressing gown pocking the air with flecks of oriental green and black, “You have to care!” she exclaimed, one long arm plucking at my bedcovers. “You must care, about everything; else how will you become a Great Artist? How will you become Truly Human?”

I groaned. “I don’t want to become anything right now. Right now I’d like to sleep, or maybe eat. Where is Justice?”

She blinked painfully, as if she had been slapped. “Not care?” she repeated, as if she had not heard me. “Not care?”

I rolled my eyes and turned onto my side. I could hear her breathing deeply (“from the diaphragm,” she would say) as she sought to calm herself. I pretended to be asleep, although I knew this would not fool Miss Scarlet, who declared she could smell sleep, and daydreams when one should be preparing for one’s entrance.

But perhaps she decided it would be better to wait for this imperfect vessel to knit itself back together before attempting to fill it again. The bedstand shook as she brushed against it, retrieving her book. Then I heard the soft rustle of a page being turned. She cleared her throat.

“‘Great acting, of course, is a thing of the spirit; in its best estate a conveyance of certain abstract spiritual qualities, with the person of the actor as medium. It is with this medium our science deals, with its slow, patient perfection as an instrument. The eternal and immeasurable accident of the theater which you call genius, that is a matter of The Soul’”

The muted kiss of her volume’s brittle pages as they met each other once again. “Goodbye, Wendy,” said Miss Scarlet. The door clicked shut behind her.

The house was dark that evening. Fabian visited me briefly. He told me that while we had been performing for Miramar and his guests, the House High Brazil had been beset by lazars. Many were dead or taken prisoner, Paphians and Curators alike, and there was talk of gruesome things, children beheaded by other children in the darkness, the living corpse the Saint-Alabans named the Gaping One seen frolicking with a jackal familiar at the ball; captives led to be human offerings to Him at the Engulfed Cathedral. The City was in mourning.

After he left I lay long abed, half-expecting to be visited again by Miss Scarlet, or Justice, or even Toby himself. At the very least by Citana or Mehitabel. But no one came. A distant clock clanged somewhere within the theater. Still I waited; still no one came. It seemed I was being ignored, or left to recover in solitude. Finally I decided to go out.

I met no one in the halls, though from far off I could hear the swish and clatter and shouted expletives that accompanied fencing practice in the gymnasium. A reassuring sound, whispering that normal life was going on somewhere despite the massacre, despite my madness. I went through the Grand Hall, passing quickly down the center of the ancient carpet with its worn arabesques. As I hurried I passed rotting cabinets holding portfolios so ancient that the very meanings of the words they contained had changed over the intervening centuries. It was with some relief that I reached the massive oaken doors that led outside.

Shadows stretched across the wide sward in front of the theater, to wither and die before reaching the boundaries of the Library facing it. A score of skittish sheep belonging to the Librarians grazed upon the theater lawn. Occasionally Toby called them into service as decorative additions to certain pastoral plays in our repertory. For the most part they just wandered aimlessly across the grass. I nodded at the young Librarian perched across the way upon the ruins of a marble pillar. A re-engineered swivelgun rested in his lap as protection against lazars or aardmen. I exchanged a melancholy greeting with him and headed for the Deeping Avenue.

Already the sun had dipped behind the Library’s copper dome. As I crossed the common I heard the rush of hawks settling for the night, and the moans of owls as they made a few half-hearted forays into the twilight. An undeniable glamor hung over this place, the Library grounds a disordered but still lovely tangle of rosebushes and cherry trees given just enough attention to keep them from utter abandon, while magnolias and white oaks lofted high above them. From here I looked down the long sweep of the Deeping Avenue to where the Narrow Forest overtook it. I could just make out the blackened finger of the Obelisk rising from the trees. Behind it the sun glinted upon the distant river. In places I saw where the Deeping Avenue was still kept clear. There were little orchards of apple and cherry trees, and pasture compounds where the Curators grazed sheep. White blocks like salt spilled upon a smooth green table were wooden beehives splitting beneath their load of honey. I saw the tulip poplar allee leading to where the Regents’ few and splendid horses lived in the circular Horn Building, and the red turrets of the High Regent’s Castle, still proud and tall despite its broken towers and shattered windows.

But for the most part the view down Library Hill was of trees massed between the ruins of once-elegant marble buildings, and the crumbling bulk of vast gray edifices that had never been lovely. Only in decay had they finally achieved a sort of truce with sky and rain beneath their heavy kudzu beards.

I sighed, and stopped to climb a ragged pine tree whose branches spoked out to form a comfortable vantage point. It was October, what the Paphians called Autime, but the air still smelled sweet and warm. Only the browning leaves of the oaks seemed like fall, that and a faintly chill northern breeze that stirred the evergreen boughs.

I braced myself against the pine’s bole and stood, the breeze ruffling my hair. Its touch made me think of cold granite, stony earth; a pale face half-hidden by new green leaves. But I shook this melancholy from me and turned to face due west, to the river, and felt the last bit of sun slide down my cheeks.

Since I had entered it nearly two months ago it never failed to stir me, to see it thus. The City of Trees, the Senators’ abandoned capital, the forgotten City by the River. To go out upon the stage gave me great joy; but it was joy shot through with despair and feverish longing, as I felt myself buffeted by the waves of desire that my audiences tossed back upon me. I felt no triumph in my performances, as did Toby; took no ordinary pleasure as did Gitana and Fabian and the rest, with the surety of an evening spent in lovemaking afterward. And I could not be like Miss Scarlet and treat the theater as a temple, or a laboratory. She found acting a form of alchemy, a crucible in which to purify the raw lusts and loves and everyday fevers of humankind and then, having cooled them in the detachment of rehearsal, fortify herself onstage with this elixir of human memory.

No. The joy of the theater was for me the joy of longing, of yearning for that humanity which I could simulate but would never truly possess or understand. I did not yet understand that it is longing and loss, as much as anything else, that makes one truly human.

But to look like this upon the City of Trees was to understand something of men and women, of how they had lived once long ago, when the avenues were roads that stretched white and smooth and as yet unmarred by trees, and the Obelisk stood whole, and Senators ruled from atop Library Hill. It made me feel empty, somehow, and alone. But emptiness and solitude eased my heart like nothing else, they were so rare to me.

And so for a few minutes I felt as though the City belonged only to myself. That it was my secret, somehow, and my creation. As the Small Voices were mine; as were the memories of Emma and Aidan and the poet Morgan Yates and the courtesan Fancy Miramar. Small voices; random neural firings; stolen memories. But they were mine now, as I imagined this City was mine, to savor and horde and protect against the One who would steal them from me, the One who sought to drive me to despair and death as He had those others. I shook my head, then raised my fist to the dusky sky and laughed.

“You will not have me!” I cried aloud. But only the wind called back.

I thought then of an ancient poem Miss Scarlet recited sometimes when we traveled across the City to perform. She would gaze upon the ruins of Library Hill, its glory now dust and rubble beneath the greenery, and say, “The Ascendants may have abandoned the City, but the gods have not, and we have not. We hold her still, Wendy, people like you and me. We wait for the day when the Magdalene will wake again, and walk here as the lazars say the Gaping One does now. While we can still believe in Her and hope, the City is ours. They will never wrest Her from us again, not with inferno or rain or fear. ‘We are not to despair; we are not to despair.’”

Then she would recite, and afterward we would both be silent. Because it was the very ordinariness of this vision that we loved—

The dream of small lives no longer led. Of a light left burning upon a well-swept porch, and small machines clattering along the dusty avenues. The smells of scorched coffee and cheap wine hanging above a sordid little cafe. The thrum of trains moving beneath ancient avenues now enthralled by starving children and the relentless usurping trees.

I leaned back against the pine trunk. As the first star blinked in the pure and empty sky I recited softly.

“‘ … Even now, in this night

Among the ruins of the Post-Vergilian City

Where our past is a chaos of graves and the barbed-wire stretches ahead

Into our future till it is lost to sight,

Our grief is not Greek:

As we bury our dead

We know without knowing there is reason for what we bear,

That our hurt is not a desertion, that we are to pity

Neither ourselves nor our city;

Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare,

We are not to despair.’”