Winterlong (38 page)

“Someone is at the door,” Mehitabel announced. Through the dirty panes of leaded glass I glimpsed something moving, too big to be a person. A palanquin, maybe, or a cart delivering goods in payment for past performances on the Hill Magdalena Ardent.

“Then why don’t you let them in?” Gitana said through clenched teeth. She poked Mehitabel with her bread knife so that the plump girl shrieked and bumped cozily against Justice.

“Well, all right! ‘Scuse me,” she said, winking at Justice. Gathering her skirts above her knees, she flounced down the hall. The others yawned and chatted as they finished breakfast. Toby droned on (to himself, apparently) about the virtues of performing for the lazars.

I could see Mehitabel’s eyes widening as she peeked out the window.

“Toby …” she called doubtfully. When she glanced back at the dining room I was the only one who met her gaze. “Aidan?” she asked, her hand on the doorknob as she waited for my advice. I nodded. With a flourish she flung open the door.

“Hey, girl!” a voice bellowed from outside. Mehitabel shrieked softly.
“Hey!”

“Aidan,” said Mehitabel weakly.

I went to see who was there. For an instant the morning sun dazzled me so that I could make out nothing.

“Hey, boy!” the voice yelled again at me. “I’ve come to see Toby and Scarlet Pan. They here?”

Blinking, I looked up to see a monstrous figure on the lawn, two-headed and horned with four glowering eyes. It took a moment to sort out that this was a tall young girl astride a great antlered beast, and that she was growing impatient.

“Agh!” she shouted, and swung down from her mount. A faint jingling of many little bells as it shook its great dark head. “Is everyone here an idiot? Scarlet!”

Behind me a soft voice said, “Jane?”

“Hey,
girl!”

I turned to see Miss Scarlet in the doorway, still holding her demitasse. Her expression brightened from disbelief to delight, and she shoved her cup into Mehitabel’s hand before running to throw herself into the arms of the strange girl.

“Oh, Jane!”

I stared bemused as the girl Jane caught her up and swung her into the air like a child. Miss Scarlet wrapped her wiry arms around her neck and the tall girl swung her around, laughing.

“Scarlet! D’you miss me?”

Now the others had joined us outside. Mehitabel peeked from behind Justice’s shoulder. Gitana stood finishing her tea, while beside her Toby shook his head at the commotion.

Fabian walked to the animal Jane had ridden and waved me to join him.

“It won’t hurt you,” he said. “See?” He tugged its bridle. The animal nodded complacently.

I stepped beside him. “What is it?”

“A sambar.” He reached to stroke its muzzle: a creature like a great heraldic stag, russet brown with darker chocolate markings on its legs and back and a thick stiff mane of nearly black hair growing on its throat. I brushed it tentatively with one hand. It regarded me with intelligent liquid eyes and dipped its head. I heard that soft chiming again and saw that its antlers were wrapped with fine aluminum wire and strung with myriad tiny bells. Its saddle was a simple pad of woven cloth, once vivid red and green but now worn and much patched, though bright with bells hanging from its braided trim.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Fabian murmured as he stroked the sambar’s muzzle. The animal snorted softly into his cupped palm. “They take such good care of them.”

“Who does?” I asked. I hardly listened for his reply. Instead I watched with some dismay as Miss Scarlet climbed upon Jane’s shoulders, behaving for all the world like a trained monkey and not the Prodigy of a Prodigal Age.

“The Zoologists,” said Fabian. His frosty breath mingled with the sambar’s as he looked up from warming his hands in its thick fur. “Who do you think Jane is?”

“I have no idea,” I said, and turned to go back inside.

“Aidan!” Miss Scarlet cried as I passed. “Come meet my old Keeper!”

I started to pretend I hadn’t heard her. Then, “Yes,” I replied stiffly.

“This is Aidan Arent,” said Miss Scarlet, smiling to bare her teeth. “He is my newest friend.”

Jane shrugged Miss Scarlet higher upon her shoulders and extended her hand. “Jane Alopex,” she said. Her gaze swept me appraisingly, a long cool look: as if I were an unusual specimen. I stared back at her. She was a tall girl my own age, stocky, with thick straight black hair cut short to frame round brown eyes and a ruddy freckled face. Strange for a Curator to look as though she’d ever seen the sun. Odd too to hear her brazen laughter. Her clothes suited her: a long green tunic embellished with gold braid over breeches of brilliant sky blue tucked into high black boots, so well polished despite obvious years of wear that they creaked when she moved. She held on to my hand and continued to stare at me through narrowed eyes for a long moment. With alarm I recalled my first meeting with Miss Scarlet—
“Sieur, that is a woman …”
—and wondered if these Zoologists and their charges were gifted with some kind of special sight that would enable Jane Alopex to see through my masculine attire.

“‘Aidan errant,’” she repeated with a sardonic grin. “‘The one who wanders.’ We’ve heard of you in your travels”’

My own smile froze. I glanced up at Miss Scarlet perched upon this girl’s shoulders; but my friend was laughing and waving at Fabian, heedless of my concern.

“My travels are over. I live here now,” I replied. I slipped my hand from Jane’s, shrugged in what I hoped appeared to be a careless boyish manner. “Maybe you know my partner, Justice Saint-Alaban?”

Jane Alopex threw back her head and laughed. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I know a Saint-Alaban!” she said, but without rancor. “Are you a courtesan then, young errant?”

“I am as you see me: a Player.”

A flicker of respect shot through her brown eyes. “Huh,” she muttered, and began looking around at the other Players. “Well, I’m here about the performance tonight in honor of Rufus Lynx’s birthday—our Regent,” she explained, and then tugged at one of Miss Scarlet’s still-slippered feet. “Hey, Scarlet! Did you hear that? There’s been a change: he wants that other show, the one with the magician and the shipwreck.
The Storm
—”

“The Tempest,”
Toby corrected her. He elbowed me aside and stared down at Jane, who stood her ground and grinned. “But we haven’t rehearsed that; the arrangements were for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Well, Toby.” She lifted Miss Scarlet to the ground. “What of it? The Regent says there’s enough fairy-dust in the City these days without your Players adding to it. He likes that other story better, he says. ‘This isn’t Midsummer,’ he says, ‘there’s a storm brewing and we might as well welcome it.’ So I’m to ask if you can do it, this other play,
The Thunderclap
—”

“The Tempest,”
Toby repeated, glaring and indifferent of Miss Scarlet at his side, a beaming black imp. He turned to me and demanded, “Well, Aidan? Can you do it? Ariel and Caliban?”

I shrugged. “Of course.”

He snorted. He had revised the play so that I could take both parts, Caliban and Ariel; favorite roles of mine. His own alchemist Prospero and Miss Scarlet’s tender Miranda were also sheer joy to watch. It was of the others he was thinking, the lesser parts unrehearsed.

“Humph,” he said again. He stroked Miss Scarlet’s head. She took his hand and murmured, “Now, Toby.”

Toby glanced over at the rest of his troupe, ticking them off one by one. He sighed. “Tell Rufus we’ll do it; but we’re underrehearsed. I don’t want to hear any complaints—”

Jane Alopex waved her hand. “No complaints, no complaints. A birthday masque, that’s all. To cheer him up; to cheer us all up, dark days behind us and darker ones ahead, hey Scarlet?” She gave that short barking laugh again, twisted her head to flash me a wink. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked away, uneasy.

I started to find Justice; but he was engaged in laughing conversation with Mehitabel and Gitana. So I waited while Fabian cooed to the Zoologist’s sambar, and Mehitabel and Gitana made sniggering remarks about our visitor as she haggled with Toby over the arrangements for Rufus Lynx’s command performance. A caracul pelt apiece for Toby and Miss Scarlet and myself, furs of lesser worth—coyote and raccoon—for the rest, and a vial of civet musk we could trade with the Botanists later for perfume. All of us to share in the feasting afterward, and an extra pair of snakeskins for Toby’s trouble, not to worry about missed lines or cues—

“We’ll never notice,” Jane Alopex assured him. Toby scowled.

“All right then!” exclaimed Jane, clapping her hands against her breeches. “I’ve got to get back, else they’ll think the aardmen got me.” She laughed, striding across the sward to cup her mount’s muzzle in one strong hand. “Eh then, Sallymae: you ready to go home?”

The sambar tossed its head in a jingling of silver bells. Fabian grinned. “Toby, I’ll send a pantechnicon for everyone this afternoon. Not afraid of our animals, are you?” she called out to Mehitabel, who giggled and hid her face in her sleeve. “Who’s for going back with me now? Scarlet?”

“I would be delighted,” replied Miss Scarlet, smoothing her bare head. “But I’m not even dressed yet!”

“Well, hurry up then,” said Jane impatiently. She blew into the sambar’s ear and scratched its chin.

Miss Scarlet bustled past the others, pausing to remind Gitana of the change in costume.

“You’ll be certain to bring the blue gown, not the silver one? Toby—?” She turned to pat his knee. “You don’t mind, do you? It’s been so long since I visited!”

“Of course not, Miss Scarlet.” I imagined he was still tallying up his share of the night’s proceeds. “Just don’t forget your nap.”

“Anyone else?” demanded Jane Alopex. Fabian started forward eagerly, but before he could say a word Jane turned and pointed at me. “What about you, errant? I bet you’ve never been to the Zoo.”

“Oh, yes, Aidan!” Miss Scarlet exclaimed. “Come with us—you’ll love it, the trees and all the birds singing!” She clasped her hands and fluttered her eyelids.

“I will come if Toby permits.” I looked at him questioningly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Justice and Mehitabel walk back inside, arm in arm. I turned back to Toby. He tapped a finger against his nose, then nodded.

“All right. Aidan may accompany Miss Scarlet this time. Fabian, I need you and Justice to dismantle the flats for
Tempest.”

Fabian checked his disappointment and shrugged. He saluted Jane Alopex’s sambar and spun on his heel to return inside.

And so we set out, Miss Scarlet and Jane Alopex and I. Miss Scarlet rode astride the sambar, clutching the edge of its cloth saddle to steady herself. Jane Alopex and I walked alongside, myself glancing back several times to see if perhaps Justice had returned to watch me leave; he had not. This amused Jane Alopex greatly.

“Such a pretty catamite, Aidan Arent! Wasting yourself on a foolish Saint-Alaban. I could find a better boy for you at home.”

But her laughter belied this: the Zoologists loved nothing and no one so much as their animal charges. No Paphian would ever look lovelier to Jane Alopex than Miss Scarlet Pan. And nothing Miss Scarlet had ever told me of her upbringing—the long rainshot afternoons in the Infirmary watching ancient films and videos; learning human language from a captured aardman tamed for this sole purpose; her heartbreaking decision to leave the Zoologists and join Toby’s troupe—none of this prepared me for the slavish devotion Miss Scarlet showed Jane Alopex, or the condescension with which the Zoologist treated her former charge.

“Don’t tug too hard on that, Scarlet,” she scolded; and, “Sit farther up on the saddle and it won’t rock so.” And, “You know, that’s rather a bright yellow for your eyes, you should have one of those red things made like they’re wearing now.” After each admonition she turned and winked at me. But otherwise I found it quite pleasant to travel through the City with Jane Alopex at my side and Miss Scarlet chattering from atop her mount.

Light streamed through the bare limbs above the grassy avenue as we walked down Library Hill. A few rosehips still brightened the roadside, and the sun took a little of the cold edge off the morning, but the air smelled of smoke, fires burning in distant woodstoves. Soon it would be true winter. Jane tried to draw me into conversation but I was quiet, thinking of Justice walking arm in arm with Mehitabel.

“What news of the Cathedral, Jane?” Miss Scarlet asked after a time. We had reached a spot where the Deeping Avenue continued on to the Museums, but it seemed we were to turn here. Jane tugged the sambar’s bridle, leading it to the right. Through the thick mesh of dead matted kudzu ran a small track, barely high or wide enough to allow the animal easy passage. Jane laid a hand upon its steaming flank to steady it. Miss Scarlet looked concerned: not frightened but distracted, as though the scene called for a change in demeanor and she was unsure how to act. Jane reached into a deep pocket and withdrew a heavy pistol, ancient but shining where she had recently oiled it. She held it up and stared down the barrel before tucking it into her belt.

“It’s faster this way,” she explained. “Perfectly safe, really; but these days …” She shook her head. “We see strange things in our part of the City.”

“The Cathedral?” asked Miss Scarlet again.

Jane Alopex nodded. “What have you heard?”

“Only the rumor that a deranged Ascendant lives in the ruins there, and commands the lazars bring him captives for sacrifice.”

Jane chewed her lip. After a moment she slapped the sambar’s flank so that it lumbered on again, shaking its antlers free of tangled vines. Miss Scarlet lurched forward, caught herself, and dug her paws into the sambar’s mane. Then she straightened the stiff folds of her skirt and fixed Jane with a stare. The girl looked away and sighed.

“It’s true, then!” Miss Scarlet exclaimed, alarmed. “Have you seen him, Jane?”

Jane Alopex shook her head. She stepped aside to allow the sambar onto the trail, eyeing a yellow creeper whose serrated leaves twitched slightly as the stag trudged past. “No. I’ve been on duty in the Herp Lab; the anacondas are shedding, and I’m saving the skins. But some of us have seen things—