Winterlong (21 page)

Hunching against a stump, I smoothed my tunic over my knees, flicking shards of bark and dead tendrils from my leg. The sight of the robe’s tattered hem reminded me that I was scarcely attired for a masque. I touched my hair, tried to untangle the mass of knots and torn leaves. No wonder Pearl had mistaken me for lazar.

And then with a grim smile I decided that I would enter the Butterfly Ball as such. It would make it that much more difficult for me to be recognized, for who would expect the catamite Raphael Miramar to appear thus—uninvited, as well!—gaunt and unkempt, yet fair and murderous as the Gaping One himself, guarded by a laughing dog and the hidden prong of a poisonous whelk? I laughed, tearing off a narrow piece of fabric from my tunic to bind back my hair; and thought blood thoughts. I called Anku and headed for the road.

I had traveled this route before, though never by moonlight and never alone. The Hill Magdalena Ardent rose before me, broidered with a road paved white with crushed marble, the tilted remains of lamp posts strung with globes of
ignis florum.
All afternoon the elders must have been busy, releasing the swallowtails and sambur moths in whose honor the Butterfly Ball was held each Autime. Sambur moths do not feed in their adult state. They live for only one night, to breed, and it was this brief transit from chrysalis to shattered husk that we celebrated. The butterflies drifted across the road, their hind wings dragging across the broken stones and staining them with their faintly luminous pigment. But the moths flitted everywhere, drawn especially to the greenish globes. The slow retort of their wings caused their brilliant eyespots to blink drowsily, so that the night seemed to cloak a great invisible Argus.

A sambur moth with branching coral antennae fluttered so near that the hairs on the back of my hand prickled at its wings’ breath. I raised my sagittal, concentrating the pulse of my heart and its attendant furies until the shell began to gleam. I opened my palm. Drawn to the sagittal’s violet glow the moth landed there. It crept across my hand to my wrist. For a moment it stopped, feathered antennae quivering. I thought of Roland betraying me, of my rage and lust at Franca’s corpse, and felt my blood quicken.

The black spark of the sagittal’s single tooth shot out, stabbing the moth’s thorax and impaling it. Then the spine withdrew. The tiny legs stiffened against my skin, the hollow abdomen released an atom of air as a breeze stirred its frozen wings. I blew upon it, and watched it float to join the exhausted legions of its kind who crawled across the white road. Beckoning Anku, I stepped between the dying butterflies.

At the hill’s summit glittered the House High Brazil, myriad globes and candles strung about its eaves, prismatic reflections shimmering across the famed Hagioscopic Embrasures. Numerous palanquins littered the oval drive, the elders who had drawn them now dozing or playing go. Their soft voices and the click of stones moving upon the wooden boards made my head swim with nostalgia. I hesitated. Only the gentle press of Anku’s muzzle against my thigh stirred me to walk from the half-lit road into the drive.

A louder click as all the stones fell at once and a dozen pale faces turned to gaze at me. I swallowed, then tossing back my hair I touched three fingers to my lips in the Paphian’s beck. The elder nearest me regarded me shrewdly, kohl and the heightened shimmer of octine giving a faint cast of ardor to the ruins of a lovely face.

“You have traveled far to join us, cousin,” he said.

Another elder rose to greet me, a woman with faded yellow hair and a tooth missing from her quick smile. “Pass slowly among us,” she said, laughing, and stroked my arm as I entered their circle. Other hands reached for me. I tried not to shudder at their limp touch, the awareness that the sight of me candled a faint flame within their sunken faces and caused their hands to linger upon my waist.

“Not so far,” I replied. The woman gave a little gasp. Glancing back, I saw that Anku trotted a few meters behind me. “We walked from Miramar. The animal is tamed—”

“I remember Gower Miramar’s dog,” said another voice. I turned to see Delfine Persia rising to greet me with a crippled bow. “As I remember you, Raphael.”

“Delfine?” I forced myself to smile and extended my hand, letting three fingers brush her lower lip. As a child I had been Delfine’s favorite. She had been old then, perhaps thirty, but with skin still glowing and firm and soft brown eyes that followed me hungrily as I pranced about her seraglio. I had not seen her in many years. Her face had grown bloated, her dark hair streaked as with cobwebs; the gentle eyes betrayed by kohl that caked in sagging creases beneath brows plucked in two fine arches. The soft arms were now muscled from bearing palanquins and her bare shoulders showed the marks of much labor.

“Sweet child, to remember my name.” She laughed. Cupping my chin, she tilted my face toward her own. “But how you’ve changed!” For an instant an expression flickered across her face, something between dismay and triumph. She touched my hair, grimacing as she tugged a dead leaf from my brow.

“An unusual costume,” remarked a man whose pocked face was not much older than my own. His eyes glinted raw malice. “Whose guest are you?”

“Roland Nopcsa’s.” I heard several of the others whispering among themselves before the elder who had first greeted me turned to speak.

“Roland Nopcsa arrived this afternoon and engaged Whitlock High Brazil for the evening. I am of High Brazil and bore them here after their matinee castigations at Illyria.” He stared at me with some sympathy. “Perhaps another will vouch for you—”

“I’ll vouch for myself, then,” I said.

The youngest elder laughed. “Not here, Miramar! Look at him—” He flicked disdainfully at my torn robe. “He’s been dismantled in favor of Whitlock. I heard Godiva Persia say so at balneal this morning.”

A murmur passed through the group. I glanced at Anku resting in the shadows. I drew myself up and turned to Delfine.

“I bring this dog to Nopcsa as a gift to win back my favor.”

Delfine laughed. “So Gower Miramar won Jellica Persia at Semhane that year with a spotted eyra!”

An effete man with the Illyrian calyx tattooed upon his palm giggled, peering into the shadows where Anku’s eyes glowed carmine. “Another albino! Whitlock will be furious—”

I laughed suddenly at the thought of Whitlock’s discomfiture (although I had been fond enough of him when we were paired at Winterlong). The elders too seemed delighted at this unexpected entertainment. I wondered how long it had been since any of them had been allowed to attend a masque as anything but servitors. Not long enough for the pocked Persian to grow accustomed to being a slave: that I gathered from the venomous looks he continued to shoot at me.

“But this is Whitlock’s House nonetheless, and not Miramar’s,” he hissed, tugging at a plait of jet-black hair that remained the single aureole of his beauty. “And look how he is dressed! Poor auspice, to mock the Gaping One on Her Hill.”

“Oh, Balfour is just jealous, Raphael,” said Delfine. She let her hand slip between my legs in the caress called
carnassial,
for which she had been noted in her youth. “‘Whitlock is his cousin-german.
I
think it’s a wonderful idea, and so original—an albino jackal! Wherever did you find it?”

“I captured it beneath the Obelisk.”

“Escaped from the Zoologists, I imagine. I never realized you were accomplished with animals, too,” said the Illyrian admiringly.

“He was a gifted child,” said Delfine with pride. As her face drew nearer to mine I could smell the sickly odor of gingko negus upon her breath.

“Do you remember
me
from Winterlong, Raphael?” a new voice piped. Clammy hands clutched at my shoulders.

“And me?” said another as she stroked my cheek.

“You never forgot dear Delfine, did you, my cherub?” Her rough hands scuttled across my thighs.

“Of course not,” I said. Carefully I disentangled myself. I wobbled a few paces to where Anku lay and leaned against a lamp post. I stared into a globe of glowing orchids as I tried to steady my trembling hands. I drew a deep breath.

“You are all too much of a temptation for me, friends!” I raised my head to look at them. Delfine with one arm draped about the Illyrian’s shoulder. A trio of gouty
paillards
ogling me from behind the Illyrian. Balfour glaring as he twisted his braid about his scarred hands. And behind them others shambling toward the light, their leering faces stripped of all beauty and warmth to betray the harsh ligaments of a lifetime of unslaked desire. I felt my knees buckle beneath me, but before I could falter Anku leaped to his feet and let forth that weird yodeling cry.

A reluctant sigh from the elders. One by one they settled back onto the drive. Delfine stooped to retrieve the scattered ovals of her game and cast me a final longing glance. Only Balfour remained standing, staring at me defiantly.

“I hope you are banished for interjacence,” he said. Low peals of laughter greeted this, and he turned and stalked into the shadows.

“Forgive our hasty departure.” I bowed. “But I must try to mend this breach between my mentor and myself—”

“Fare well, Raphael,” said Delfine, touching her lips. “Remember me at the Butterfly Ball!”

“Remember me! Remember me!” the others joined in with soft voices. The dust beneath them stirred as their fingers fluttered to mark the Paphian’s beck.

“I will,” I called back haltingly; “I will—” And with head bowed I hurried toward the marble steps of High Brazil.

O
NCE IT HAD BEEN
the Antipodal Embassy. Elaborate carvings in the marble facade still displayed the writhing faces of capuchins and marmosets and uakaris. The main doorway’s lintel was the painted effigy of a serpent whose opal eyes each year were wrested from their sockets to glitter for this one evening upon the brow of the Butterfly Ball’s cacique, chosen at midnight by the masquers. But it was early yet. The fiery stones still gleamed in their sockets and the torchieres burned brightly—although the elders guarding the door were already drunk, and demanded the right to fondle each costumed reveler before granting entry. For a moment I paused in the shadows. Anku whined softly at my feet as he watched the steady passage of glittering figures, boys and girls stumbling beneath the weight of jeweled and’ feathered headdresses and flowing silken wings.

“Hush,” I whispered. I nudged him with my foot. “Well, you’re a pretty prize, at least,” I added, and stooped to ruffle his white fur. His steady growl grew louder. When the two guards had turned their attention upon the willowy figure of Aspasia Helen, I walked into the brilliant light of the torchieres.

“… seven years old, and only
this
big!”

One of the elders whooped as Aspasia pinched him, a flurry of glitter powdering the air. At the sound of my tread upon the steps she looked back. For an instant puzzlement clouded her. impish features. Then she squealed and nearly tripped over the sinuous drapery of a pair of wing spurs made of pale green silk.

“Raphael!”

Her arms circled my neck and I buried my face in her shoulder, feeling faint at the scent of jacaranda and the clean soft pressure of her skin beneath my mouth. I whispered foolishly, overcome at finally being here once more; and clung to her so long that I heard the guards snickering.

“Raphael,” she murmured, and pulled away from me. Peering more closely at my face, she drew back, brushing at the threads of blue and lavender
mille-fleurs
woven across her breasts. “Is that your
costume?”

I started to reply when she gave a little squeak and clutched my arm. “And what is
that?”

“A jackal,” I explained. I grabbed Anku’s ruff and pulled him against my knees. “A favor for Roland Nopcsa.”

“Is he tame?”

“Perfectly.” I patted Anku’s head reassuringly.

“He doesn’t sound very tame,” said Aspasia. She stretched out a white beribboned hand. Anku sniffed her tentatively, then licked her wrist. “Oh! Tickles—” She glanced at me sideways. “What happened to you, Raphael? We heard you’d gone among the Curators—”

“I’ve come back.” I could see a crowd from Saint-Alaban starting up the drive, the elders groaning as they set down their palanquins. “Are you going in now?”

“Well—yes,” she replied, still doubtful. “That’s
such
an odd costume—”

“I’ll walk with you, then.” As I took her arm I turned so that the guards could not catch more than a glimpse of my face.

“Hey,” one of them began as Anku pattered past. But already the Saint-Alabans crowded the steps behind us in a roil of jasmine and crinoline. We slipped inside unchallenged.

A rush of scent—jasmine, ylang-ylang,
carcasse d’amour;
sandlewood and galingale; the heady reek of opiated cedar burning in copper braziers. We paused before a wide curving parapet overlooking the Great Hall. Aspasia detached herself from my embrace. Below us the marble floors flickered beneath seething waves of masquers in butterfly garb. Senators and Curators threaded their way cautiously through the room, holding the trailing sleeves of their sober habits above the ground. The black domino of a Persian malefeants with her whip pied the pastel train of a score of moth-winged children trying very hard to perform the steps of a salacious maxixe. High overhead the ceiling seemed to dance as well, as thousands of courting samburs wafted in the dim vault and macaws and brilliant finches chased the poor exhausted amorets above the ballroom floor.

“The Botanist Edmund Blanche has engaged me for the kursaal with Beata Helen and an Illyrian spado,” said Aspasia. She gazed at me wistfully, then dabbed at a spot on my cheek.

“If I were you I’d clean up a bit,” she added. “Really, the animal is enough, without all this—” She grimaced, waving her hands at my torn clothing. “Perhaps later, after they’ve chosen the cacique …”

She kissed me. Her small tongue traced the curve of my lower lip before she nodded and brushed her fingers against my mouth. Before I could say goodbye she disappeared among the revelers.

“Well, Anku,” I sighed. A pair of tall queans, not twins but dressed and carefully painted to resemble Gemini, unlaced their hands long enough to pass me one to each side. One laughed and showered Anku with the shattered remnants of many butterfly wings. He growled as they tripped giggling down the steps.