Winterlong (13 page)

It may be true what Doctor Foster says, that the soul has weight and matter; because in my arms now she seemed to weigh nothing at all. I wrapped her worn tunic about her poor bruised body as a shroud, and wept again to think I had no finer raiment in which to lay her to rest. I comforted myself to think she shared her bed with the dust of princes. The lid slipped back on as if it had never been removed. For a moment I stared at the sarcophagus, then leaned forward and gently kissed the cold impression of its painted mouth.

At the doorway I paused. Above me hung a scrim of tattered cloth, stirring slightly from some faint breeze More tiny pictographs stalked its borders, but in its center a small square of newer cloth had been sewed—frayed and mellowed itself from centuries of wear. I squinted to read what must have been a clumsy translation of an ancient epitaph into doggerel:

Here we lie

head to head

asleep in the dark with the dead.

I shuddered; and passed from the Hall of Dead Kings.

I
RETRACED MY STEPS
to where we had been working. Several Aides passed me as I wandered into the Great Hall. Their scornful glances made me realize how Franca’s companionship had not only seemed to make my days easier, but actually served to deflect their hatred and disdain for a little while. The thought of remaining here among them, with the terrible knowledge of Francesca so carelessly interred nearby, filled me with dread. I hastened past the Curators jostling their way to the dining halls below. For a few minutes I considered confessing everything to Roland Nopcsa, throwing myself upon his mercy—he was a Regent, after all, and surely could argue my case against those who would demand my execution.

But then I recalled his recent disappointments with me: his flash of temper at my ill-fitting clothes and my fatigue after a day slogging with Franca through the Museum basements. Others no older than myself had been cast from their Patrons like worthless rags.
Hothouse flower,
Roland had mocked me; but he wanted soft hands and scented hair awaiting him each evening. I glanced at my hands now, the nails broken and begrimed, palms filthy and blistered. To think that I had thrown away all my beauty like this, and doomed myself to die away from my own people!

“… you! Slut!”

I started, brushing my eyes as I looked up into the cold face of Franca’s Supervising Technician. I said nothing but halted.

“Tell your hoyden she’s been reassigned. You’re to report to me tonight: Nopcsa will be attending the Butterfly Ball at High Brazil this evening,” he announced with malicious glee. I stared at his pockmarked face, the jagged spur of a yellowing broken tooth in that crooked mouth, the slouch of his scrawny shoulders.

“Do you hear me?” The Technician swatted the air in front of my face, then stroked my hair. I shrugged his hand from me and began to walk on.

“Whore!” the Technician yelled. “Do you understand me?”

I turned and grabbed him by the throat with one hand.

“I didn’t hear a word you said,” I hissed, shoving him against the wall. I left him sputtering and cursing in the corridor.

My disquiet at the thought of Roland attending the ball without me faded somewhat when I found our chambers deserted; I would not have to confront him yet, after all. I drew the heavy door shut behind me and collapsed upon the bed.

For some minutes I lay there, shuddering as I tried to contain my tears. Because it was clear to me now that I would have to flee. Roland’s attendance at the High Brazilian masque without me would signal to Curators and Paphians alike that I had fallen out of favor. There was fierce rivalry between Houses, and High Brazil and Miramar had long fought over lesser prizes than the favor of the Natural Historians. There were those who would relish news of my downfall, and garnish them in the telling.

Not to mention the thought of the Technician’s leering Face, and the memory of Franca killed by my hand …

I stood quickly and paced the room, gazing up at Roland’s beloved archosaurs.

“What would you do?” I whispered, stroking ‘the long obsidian curve of the Deinocherius’s tail. And recalling Franca’s mockery of the old things here I wept, knowing that I would not see them again; knowing that whatever reply their ancient hollow eyes might have made to me, I could no longer hide among the dead.

E
YES EVERYWHERE. DR. HARROW’S
shift into those of her brother Aidan. Anna and Andrew split like an amoeba, grinning as they proffer me a feathered headband. Atop my armoire a boy laughs, his smile strangled by a belt that twists into a garrotte as he falls onto the foot of my bed. Margalis Tast’annin looms above me, his voice soft as he repeats his question, the same question day after day, echoing now through my dreams—

“How do you do it, Wendy? What is it like, what do you see when you make them die?”

I scream and lurch forward, the sheets tangling my arms as I try to stand.

And then light rent the room. A lumiere guttering within a cupped palm tossed black and golden petals upon the hooded face before me.

“Get up,” he hissed, dragging me from bed. I stumbled to my feet, dizzy from the drugs they had given me. I tried to explain that the session earlier had left me bruised and unable to dream properly. My tongue caught on my teeth and I retched, tasting my own blood.

“Quiet,” he ordered, still whispering. I felt the sharp prick of an ampule against my neck. He missed the vein and I moaned. The figure pulled me to him, covering my mouth with his palm as he drew the hood back to show his face. It was the Aide Justice.

“We’re getting out,” he said. With a quick motion like someone killing an insect, he slapped another ampule to my neck. “Your acetelthylene.”

My spine tingled with a rush of pleasure. I nodded gratefully. I had been without proper medication for days now—I was uncertain how long. My head ached from where they had shaved it to attach the electrodes and chemical lozenges they’d used for the endless experiments of the last few weeks. Only in the last few days, since Tast’annin had left, had the rounds of questioning and testing abated. I stripped off the yellow shift they’d given me and pawed through my wardrobe, tossing clothes onto the rug.

“Hurry.” Justice glanced behind him, kicking aside several scarves and a leather blouson. As I reached for my favorite blue haik he stepped forward.

“No—nothing they might recognize.” For a moment he stared at me, then rubbed my shorn scalp with the back of his hand. He glanced at the floor and nudged something with his foot. “Those—”

I pulled on the trousers, a loose white shirt. I crammed Anna’s hummingbird bandeau in my pocket and started rummaging in the back of the wardrobe when Justice yanked me away.

“Now.
“He pulled me after him to the door. He cracked it and peered out, then tossed the spent lumiere behind us. For a moment he regarded me as I swayed beside him, trying to steady myself. Then he clicked the door shut and motioned me down the hall.

Sudden freedom made me giddy. Paneled walls ballooned in shadow. Beneath me the florid carpet snaked blue and gold in the rain-washed light. Justice took my hand and led me like a child, the two of us racing silently down the dim hallway. Abruptly he stopped and dragged me into an alcove. He drew something from his pocket. I smelled his fear and shut my eyes until the piercing desire to tap him faded.

“I’ll kill you now.” He spread his palm to show a cobalt capsule. “Or will you come with me?”

I nodded. He stared at me, after another moment replaced the capsule and turned to the door. When its old-fashioned latch gave, the door creaked inward onto a long dark stairway winding down: Andrew’s secret passage. I glanced down, half-hoping that I might see him crouched on the stairs with his cigarette lighter, luring spiders.

But no. I had seen no one for weeks, no one except for Dr. Leslie and Tast’annin and the janissary medics who slipped into my room when I was sedated. Later they would attach the siphons to my head as I slept. I began to shake and stumbled against Justice. He took my hand and squeezed it.

It was so dark that I could not even glimpse the step I stood upon. A sharp crack; I started and saw a fresh lumiere glowing in Justice’s other hand. He steadied himself against the wall and glanced at me.

“They were going to kill you,” he said. “They’ve already killed most of the others. Do you think you can walk?”

I nodded and stroked his face, his skin warm beneath its sheath of sweat. He shrank against the damp wall. I brought my hand to my lips and licked it. In his sweat I tasted blunt desire, and shivered with the sudden thrill of understanding that it was an empty he wanted, as there had been those I treated who longed to sleep with the dead. I stared at him until he looked away and shifted the lumiere to shadow his face. We descended the stairs.

As we fled downward the air grew cooler. The walls roughened from wood to rough granite and moldering brick. I smelled refrigeration; rotting orchids; the drowsy chypre of the sleeplabs. The lumiere’s faint light dwindled.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said, slowing his pace to answer me. “But I thought we might gain a little time before they track us here.” He glanced at me doubtfully. “But this is only a way out of the building. We can’t stay on the grounds—the dogs will find us for sure.”

“Where does it come out?”

“The Glass Fountain.”

“And then?”

He shrugged, shaking the lumiere in a vain effort to get a stronger light. “It’s only the old fence there—I don’t think there’s a surveillance system. They never worried about keeping you in; it was more to keep the world out. Behind the fence there’s the cemetery and the forest. They might be afraid to follow us there.” The stairway curved so sharply that for an instant I lost sight of him and heard his voice echo, “Anyway, we have no choice.”

“But where can we go?” I coughed, trying to keep up with him. “The forest—they’ll find us there—”

He waved the lumiere as though to drive off hidden enemies. “I know. But I read the applications disc for you, Wendy … ”

Below us I glimpsed a break in the darkness.

“This is it,” Justice whispered. He halted and took my hand, fumbled in his pocket for a moment. “If they catch us, I have these.” His fist opened to display five cobalt ampules threaded with jet.

I shook my head. “I don’t want them.”

He stared at me, fingering his hood.

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “They can kill me.”

“It’s not that.” He shoved the ampules back into his pocket. “It’s how—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’s in my head now. I can’t get rid of Him, Justice. She gave Him to me, Justice. Dr. Harrow.”

I could not finish. He turned to face another door that opened easily. Lantern light splintered about us as we stepped onto a patio. Justice pulled his hood tighter around his face, then tossed away the spent lumiere.

We hurried down steps that glimmered pink and yellow in the glow of sulfur lanterns. Far above us in the jutting gables and turrets of
HEL
, lights flickered and died. I heard the mewling whine of night monitors on their circuit through the upper gardens.

“Are you sure this is right?” Justice whispered. I ignored him, finding my way by scent as much as sight: tracing through the boxwood maze a thread of citrus that led us into a tiny circle of dwarf kumquats, and from there seeking out the firs that bordered the very edge of the estate.

“You said the Glass Fountain.” I pointed to where it danced and sang in the soft rain, its canopy embracing a circle of rainbow light.

“Can you see behind it? To a fence?”

I squinted through the rain, then shook my head. “We’ll have to get past the fountain.”

We slid down a small knoll and waited beneath its shadow. A sound rose behind us—the yelping of guard hounds. A moment later the wailing shriek that signaled the release of the mastiffs from their pit beneath the greenhouse. Justice grabbed my hand.

“There!” he gasped. I stumbled with him over a low stone wall. To either side stretched the high impenetrable hedge of lindens and thorntrees that bounded
HEL
. In front of us leaned a barbed-wire fence, overgrown with thorns and strangling ivy except for a few yards of rusted metal snagged with feathers and a loop of some small animal’s vertebrae. Beyond the wire stretched woods and the tilted gray humps of tombstones.

From the hill behind us a mastiff squalled. I whirled to Justice. “You said there was a way out—”

He still gazed behind us like one entranced. I shook his arm and he pointed to the ground where a strand of wire had nearly rusted away. “Under there …”

We scrabbled through a few inches of dirt until we scraped broken concrete and gravel. Justice leaned back on his heels, swearing.

I shook my head, took a deep breath, and flattened myself against the ground. A barb tore through my clothes, raking my back almost to my waist. I pushed myself forward, hands and elbows grinding against crushed cement and glass.