Winterlong (23 page)

Abruptly her gaze fixed upon me. Other faces began turning to me, laughing that the game had reached this end. Between my feet Anku stirred, growling. He stared at the figure above us as she raised the red lily, then tugged her mask free of its braids and ribbons to reveal her face: dead white, pitted with blackened holes whence crept writhing threads of spiders. I stepped back, my eyes still riveted to her. Her hands had been chalked to hide the bloody grooves where she had prised free the lid of the sarcophagus. White powder flaked from the raw bruises on her arms. Ghostly moths lit upon her thighs with slowly beating wings. As I stared, she touched three fingers to her lips. Then with a grin she kissed each of the lily’s garnet blades and laughing tossed it from the pensive brow of the
ORPHEUS
: a poisonous shaft tumbling through the air, cleaving the tremulous wings of moths and grazing a half-dozen eager fingertips before it began to tumble toward its mark.

“To me, Raphael!”

A shriek as I staggered against the Botanist hugging my side. Something white and snarling whipped past me, tore at her sleeve so that a net of blood trammeled the falling blossom. In mid-air Anku seized the crimson lily, shearing the bright petals so that they swirled and shriveled into tattered shards. Red mist obscured my vision, clouded the faces of those fighting to restrain me as I tried to flee that horrible giggling figure with her bleeding legs splayed about a winking face.

The crowd suddenly gave way. I stumbled to a marble bench, clutched my head and wept.

“Raphael!”

I forced myself to look back. Atop the
ECHO ORPHEUS
the woman stood, shielding her eyes from the smoke as she scanned the hall, calling my name over and over as though her heart would break.

Not Francesca.

Ketura.

“No,” I whispered. Behind us, Paphians and Curators danced and sang as if there had been no rent in the shimmering fabric of their carnival marquee. Only the forlorn figure clinging to the
ORPHEUS
sought the ghost of Raphael Miramar at the Butterfly Ball.

“There is little time,” a voice said behind me. I started and glanced at Anku, terrified that this would begin my final plunge into madness, to hear my jackal familiar speak. But Anku stood alert, his tail switching as he stared at something behind me. I whirled to see a slight figure shadowed by another column. He was naked save for a wreath of ivy about his neck and a mask of leaves behind which his green eyes glowed.

“Your sister has awakened,” he said, and stepped into the light. Anku leaped toward him, to collapse whimpering at his feet. The Boy stooped to stroke the jackal’s throat.

“My sister is dead,” I stammered.

“She was asleep,” he said, and with a last flourish to Anku stood facing me. “As I was. As were you.”

“What do you want with me?” I whispered. Behind us the ball continued unabated.

“To bring the Final Ascension,” he said, laughing as though he had answered a simple riddle.

“But I am no Ascendant!” I pressed myself against the marble pillar as if its solid embrace might steady me. “I am a Paphian, a courtesan—we are whores and children!”

He made a swift cutting motion with his hand.

“Desire is my child; and cold Science,” he said. As he spoke his fingers moved in and out, in and out, as though choking an invisible enemy. “But her frigid heart will melt and your fever will rage to shake the stones from their buildings, Raphael Miramar.”

“I do not want such power,” I said, trembling.

“Power?” he repeated. “You have no power.”

“Then leave me in peace!” I cried. “I want nothing of your Ascension!”

At this foolish temper Anku stood whining. I lashed out at him, my foot grazing one silvery flank. The jackal only blinked and settled back onto his haunches, head cocked to regard me reproachfully.

“Ah, see, Anku,” said the Boy, raising his leg so that he stood on one foot like a dancer. “We are as flies to this wanton boy: he would kill us for his sport.” Then he laughed, and I looked away, frightened.

“Raphael!”

I turned to see Ketura scrambling from the
ORPHEUS
. A flash of shame burned me as her gaze held mine: neither blaming nor accusing, only asking how I could have betrayed our friendship by fleeing her. Then she dipped from sight and I ducked behind the column once more. A few meters away the Boy stood with his back to me. He faced a high archway which held as though fixed in pale amber the image of a jaguarondi, its teeth piercing a young inia. Beneath this frieze Anku lay with his muzzle resting upon his paws, watching his master.

Sudden resolution emboldened me. Glancing back to make certain I was not seen, I walked to the Boy, grabbed his shoulder, and wrenched him toward me as I demanded, “Come with me, then!”

“Where, cousin?” an indolent voice replied agreeably. He turned to me, slanted green eyes widening beneath a broad white brow and a feathered cap that hid his hair.

It was not he.

“Forgive me,” I stammered, dropping my hand. “I mistook you for another.”

Before he could respond I fled beneath the arch, Anku darting to follow me. My heart pounded so that I feared I might stop breathing, so painful was that ceaseless hammering inside my chest. But after a few steps the air felt clearer, flensed of smoke and scent and sound. I breathed deeply, until I felt as though a ponderous weight had been lifted from within my lungs, and looked around to see that I had entered one of the branching hallways that snaked through the first level of High Brazil. There was a low murmur as of many voices, but I could see no one. Tiny electrified candles glimmered from brackets set behind translucent petals of jadeite and peridot. These cast pale green shadows upon the alabaster floor and walls, a marine glow that soothed me yet made me feel more alert, as though the beryl light revealed shapes and designs normally hidden from sight. Cool draughts flowed from unseen air shafts. To either side were many narrow doorways. Each was surmounted by a scholiast in the likeness of a gynander with brightly colored phallus in place of a tongue, and breasts whose nipples were ocular sensors that rotated as they focused upon me. We passed doors of scented wood inlaid with plasma crystals and heated copper coils exhaling the narcotic haze of veronal. Doors of prismatic glass cast back not my face but the holographic images of other Paphians, their fingers tracing the outlines of painted lips and eyes and genitals as over and over they beckoned unseen guests. There were doors of interlocking metal gears that snapped and spun ceaselessly, allowing only glimpses into the twilit seraglios beyond, where sultry figures swayed. As I approached each room its scholiast would click and whir, the gaudy phallus unfurl as the automaton turned to fix me with its hollow eyes and pipe in a pure breathy voice:

“Welcome cousin. This is the Chamber of Equivocal Purity.”

“Welcome sisters. Inside sleeps the Ensiform Concilia-trix: rouse her to battle with your embrace.”

“Welcome cousins. The Adytum Intrigant is engaged for the Spados’ Private Bath.”

“Welcome cousins. Step carefully into the First Elevation of the Entresol of Unctuous Sighs.”

Anku ignored this prattling, pausing only to sniff at the postern whose scholiast murmured,
“Welcome cousins. Circe High Brazil awaits within to change women into swans, men into swine.”
Faint grunts and moans of pleasure seeped from beneath a door scaled with the hides of many pangolins. The freshly flayed pelt of a young lamb hung from the doorjamb, blood slicking the marble beneath it. Anku leaped to tug at this. I cuffed him and hissed for him to follow. He did so with a disapproving growl, slinking at my heels.

“Welcome errant brothers. Join us in the Chamber of Lashes and Gentle Lapidation.”

“Welcome rhapsodists. Retire to the couches of the Anodyne Cubicle.”

“Welcome cousin. The Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber is engaged for Dolorous Palpation.”

The scholiast’s phallic tongue retracted into its mouth with a click. To each side of the automaton rose slender windows of glass: glowing purple, deep scarlet, jonquil yellow. Archaic figures were depicted within the panes. For several minutes I studied these curious representations of men and women, shining vehicles, and slender aviettes. Anku sat at my feet as I pondered how to enter the chamber.

From inside came a sudden soft explosion of laughter; then muffled voices.

“Roland,” I whispered. Memory of the day’s terrors faded. I felt honed to a spike of raw feeling, suddenly knowing exactly where I was, and why; and what I hunted. When I moved my hand a spidery glint of violet crept from beneath my fingers. Anku whined.

“I would enter the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber,” I announced to the scholiast. I gazed up at it fearlessly.

The ocular sensors extruded. Squinting, I could see the array of lenses inside the metal nipples circle and reverse as they sought to focus upon me, the pinpoint of light that revealed the periscopic aperture within the mechanism. The phallic tongue unfolded, flecking the air with metallic dust.

“The chamber has been engaged for private excruciations,
” the hollow voice intoned.

“I am an expected guest of the Curator Roland Nopcsa and Whitlock High Brazil.” I glanced at Anku. The scholiast’s sensors shifted to regard him. The voices inside the chamber grew louder, as though arguing, then silent. “This animal is a gift for Roland Nopcsa.”

Loud whirring from the scholiast. The cool air pouring from the air vents made me shiver, so I moved from the wall. The sensors followed me.

“Whitlock High Brazil and Roland Nopcsa have requested no assistance for the evening’s excruciations. The chamber may not be engaged.”

“I do not wish to engage the chamber!” I said. “I bring a gift for Roland Nop—”

“The chamber may not be engaged.”

“But this—”

The scholiast’s jeweled navel suddenly dilated. I shut up and backed across the hall and to one side, kicking at Anku to alert him. From the scholiast shot a needle that sprayed the air with a fine mist. Anku whined. I covered my mouth with my sleeve to avoid breathing the sedative essence.

The needle retracted. The painted breasts swiveled. The phallus furled back into the cold steel mouth. Before the sensors could focus upon me again I slammed against the door. It swung inward as easily as the postern to my room at the House Miramar. I felt Anku’s soft fur against my legs as he slipped beside me and the door shut behind us.

“M
AGDALENE,” SOMEONE WHISPERED. THE
sound was magnified in the bell of a vast chamber that seemed to encompass all of High Brazil. I stood surrounded by shafts of violently tinted light: orange, violet, turquoise, burgundy columns rising to explode against a ceiling of brilliant stained glass. The far end of the chamber appeared to open above the Great Hall, where masquers reeled and shouted in eerie silence, heedless of us watching from the seraglio above. I gathered that this chamber was located directly behind the wall of prismatic glass that overlooked the east end of the Great Hall. I shut my eyes to blot out the sense of vertiginous space in a room that I knew could not possibly be this huge. When I looked up again it was into the face of Roland Nopcsa regarding me with muzzy brown eyes.

“Raphael?” he said thickly. “‘Sat you?” He pawed at the air. I stepped backward, lost my balance, and fell onto a pallet heaped with satin coverlets and the remnants of a feathered costume.

“Raphael!” exclaimed the voice I’d first heard upon entering. “Magdalene save me, I’m glad you’re here! He’s a madman.” From the tangle of bolsters and sheets a figure half-rose to greet me. Slender, with skin so translucent it shimmered with the pulse of blood in his veins, blue-green and violet. The marks of bruising kisses lingered upon his shoulders and throat.

“Oh, Whitlock!” Ignoring Roland, I crawled to where, Whitlock hugged a pillow to his frail chest. “What happened to you?”

He dropped the pillow and wrapped his arms around me, cool and insubstantial as a wraith’s. He blinked often as he spoke, those weak lovely eyes always seeming to focus on someone else, slightly to my left.

“He’s shattered my poor splendid wings,” he said, laughing. Dabs of silver arched across each cheekbone where bijoux tears had been artfully wrung. I kissed him, recalling our pairing at Winterlong: my auburn locks braided with his shining hair. He looked no less lovely now for his bruises and disarray, only achingly fragile.

“S’ dog?” rumbled Roland, staggering as he waved his arms toward Anku. “S’ dog, Whitlock.”

Anku had trotted to the far end of the chamber where the floor seemed to open onto the Great Hall below. Glitter and dying moths beat the air relentlessly, always just inches out of reach of the jackal’s quicksilver jaws. The figure of Anku himself blurred as he leaped close to the edge of the room, then grew sharper and clearer as he fell back to the floor.

“Obfuscating oriels,” Whitlock explained. “I
hate
them, they give me vertigo. But
he
likes to think that all of
them
”—he indicated the silent crowd beneath us—“are
watching.”

“Raphael,” Roland repeated. He plopped onto a pile of cushions, splaying one heavy thigh across a crimson comforter. “How’d you get in?”

“Oh,
I
sent for him, Roland,” said Whitlock, kicking a pillow so that it sailed and landed with a thump against Roland’s leg. “We make such a striking couple. I finally had to dose his wine,” he added aside to me. Ruby flashed to ivory as he rolled his eyes. “I never had your constitution, Raphael. Curators
exhaust
me. What’s it like
living
with them?”

“Awful,” I said. “I’ve left.”

“Good for you.” He smiled and kissed my cheek. Dear Whitlock! “You know, Lemuel paired me with Aspasia Persia for The Glorious—she’s lovely, reminded me of Ketura from your House, that red hair and those legs!—and I kept thinking of last Winterlong when …”

He chattered on, while beside him I sat nearly stupefied with—