Winterlong (9 page)

“Raphael’s mother was a beautiful girl, a child really—no older than you are now—” He inclined his head to me. ‘Miramar wanted to take her in, she was so lovely; but I discouraged him, she had been among the lazars for too long. But she was a Paphian, Saint-Alaban we thought, because of her eyes; so many of them have green eyes. She had two children with her, twins—”

“Twins!” said Thomas. He was very young and had not heard all this before.

“Twins,” Doctor Foster repeated solemnly. “Raphael and his sister. We bought them both—you all know how rare twins are, and these were extraordinarily beautiful.”

“The Saint-Alabans say twins are holy,” said Small Thomas. He was thinking of the Masque of Baal and Anat performed at Saint-Alaban each Autime.

Doctor Foster snorted. “Yes, well.” He turned back to me and smiled. I dropped my eyes as the children looked at me, and pretended to pluck at a stray thread on my chasuble.

“So did she die?” urged Fancy.

“The mother? Oh, yes, of course. Probably the aardmen lad followed her to our door and were just waiting, hoping they’d get all three of them. Miramar thought I was heartless to push her back out again, but—” He shrugged. “I thought we could take a chance on the babies, they seemed free of contagion. And at first they both seemed fine. After a few months the boy—” He pointed the mouthpiece of his narghile at me. “Raphael: he started talking. But the girl never did.”

He paused, one hand dropping to pat Thomas. “She was a head-banger. Frightened the Patrons. I did all I could.”

He gestured vaguely at the shelf of physics. I silently thanked the Magdalene that he had never had to do anything for me. He shook his head. “But she wouldn’t behave. We finally sold her to the Ascendants.”

Benedick sniffled at this. More than one Patron had recently complained of his truculence in the children’s seraglio.

“Still, the boy was fine,” Doctor Foster continued, tugging Benedick’s braid reassuringly. “After his bedwarming he drew more Patrons than any of us: a true Son of the Magdalene!”

He ended suddenly and fell to staring at his pipe, his fingers still laced about Benedick’s braid. When it seemed apparent that there was no more story forthcoming, the children started to yawn and fidget. I amused myself by making cruel faces at Benedick until he looked about to cry.

From the pendulum chamber several stories above us came the faint tonging of the hour: well after the children’s bedtime. Like Sieur Maggot in a play, Miramar’s head suddenly popped around the corner of the door.

“Doctor Foster!” he scolded, clapping his hands so that the long azure cuffs of his robe swished against each other.
“Wicked
Doctor Foster. Come, children! Fancy, you know better than this! Benedick, Magnus Stoat will be joining you after breakfast tomorrow—”

Clucking and chirping like peevish sparrows they left calling goodbyes to Doctor Foster and Miramar and myself as they scurried to where the waiting elders met them in the hall and carried them upstairs to the nursery. Doctor Foster gave them a desultory farewell and nodded off in his chair. Miramar remained smiling in the doorway.

“Is your head better, cousin?” he asked me.

“Yes, uncle,” I said, suddenly nervous. I had almost forgotten the reason why I had stolen this evening at home. Now it came back to me, and my voice cracked as I said, “Miramar—I—could I speak with you?”

He nodded and motioned for me to follow him to his chambers.

A low brass table had been set with steaming glass carafe and two tumblers. I wondered uneasily if somehow he had been expecting me. Miramar knelt to pour our tea, crushing mint leaves and a cube of raw sugar into each glass.

“To your future,” he said, raising his tumbler and quickly downing its contents.

My heart sank; he knew. I flopped onto a pillow.

“Iris Bergenia told me this evening that Roland Nopcsa has offered you his bed in the Museum of Natural History.”

I bit my lip to keep from cursing, vowed to humiliate Iris publicly as soon as the opportunity arose. But to Miramar I showed a calm face.

“I was going to tell you tonight …”

He listened with studied casualness, eyeing the tea dregs that had settled at the bottom of the empty carafe. He lifted it and gently shook the damp leaves onto a saucer, then squinting tilted the plate to read them.

“What do they say?”

He smiled. “What they always say: love with a romantic stranger.” A flick of his scalloped nail dispersed the dregs into a sodden heap. I met his eyes.

“I’m going with him, uncle.”

As I spoke I realized this was not how I’d planned to make my announcement; but there it was. I stared at my feet.

“Mmmm.” No surprise. But a wince of regret tugged at his gentle mouth. Miramar sighed. “I could refuse you permission, you know.” But his expression showed such sorrow that I knew he would not refuse me. He never had.

“I had hoped you would stay—” he went on, cleaning his fingers on a linen napkin.

“I might come back,” I said, and was immediately ashamed. Because that proved I was afraid, had doubts; and I wanted to leave boldly. I bumped against the table and sent a tumbler rolling. With a sigh Miramar picked it up.

“I hope you do. You are …” He glanced up at the polished copper ceiling that reflected us floating in a molten sea. “The loveliest of all of us. We—wanted your daughters born here, because never have we had a child so beautiful.”

I looked away. Tears glittered in his eyes, and I knew I would cry too and change my mind if I saw him weep. “Thank you, uncle.”

“It’s no favor I’m doing you, letting you leave us.”

I stared at the arabesques in the carpet, but my voice betrayed my resentment. “You think I’m a fool to go,” I said at last.

“You’ve been sheltered and spoiled—we
all
have been,” he said gently.

“But especially Raphael.”

“Well, yes: of course.” He reached to stroke my leg. “But you understand why.” “Because I’m worth more than the rest.”

“Because you are more beautiful than any of us; because we love you. But they will not love you out there. Raphael—”

I shook his hand from me. “The Curators—” I began.

“The Curators consider us whores and fools! Do you think Roland wants you for your learning?”

“Do you think I want him for his bed?”

Miramar groaned in exasperation. “Listen to me! You could continue with Roland, use his books, and then return to teach the children here, if you like—”

“Teach whores and fools,” I snapped, then bit my tongue. Miramar’s face grew taut and he folded his hands upon the brass table.

“Your cousins,” he said softly; but I knew the glint in his eyes heralded anger. “Do you think you’re the first pretty toy to go among them to
learn?
Do you?”

As he leaned forward the table shook. The empty glasses rolled to the floor. I fumbled for a reply as I straightened the mess, but he cut me off with a brusque wave. “Do you know what happened to the others?”

I started to answer, but his voice rose above mine as he named them:

“Estevan High Brazil: raped and blinded by the Librarians. Lorelei Saint-Alaban, throttled when she fainted while entertaining Nelson Dewars’s guests at his birthday ball. Three children from Persia engaged for a Senator’s cotillion, strangled in their sleep.

“It is not safe for us to live among the Curators, Raphael. Maybe once it was; maybe before we had our own Houses and our own wealth bartered from them over the years.

“But not now; especially not now.” He paused, ran a finger along the rim of the glass carafe. “Last week I entertained an Ascendant janissary at High Brazil. He was there to receive a shipment of opium from the Botanists—” “You told me,” I said impatiently.

“I told you nothing. He was besotted with whiskey and frilite; he talked too much. They are sending a man to govern the City, an Ascendant commander—”

I smiled. “Come now, uncle—”

Miramar poured himself another glass of tea. As he sipped it he looked at me through slitted eyes. “Perhaps it won’t happen; perhaps he was lying. But the Curators are worried. If this rumor is true—if they really
do
send a Governor to intervene—at the very least it will disrupt trade within the City, and the black market with the Ascendants.”

He drank the rest of his tea as I waited. “And?” I said at last.

“The janissary I spoke with said that they intend to retake the City. There would be no place for us then, Raphael; no place at all.”

I thought on this in silence. Finally I asked, “Why would he tell you this?”

Miramar shrugged. “What am I to him? A mindless courtesan, just as I am to the Curators. Perhaps he meant to help me, to warn me to escape. But where could we go? We would have nothing without the City and without the Curators.”

“So we should hide here forever as their whores and ponces?”

Miramar pounded the floor in aggravation. “We are priests and merchants!”

“And currency!”

I thought he would dismiss me then. Instead he rocked back on his heels and, after a moment, laughed. “Oh, Raphael. I can hear myself saying the same things when I was your age.”

“Then why won’t you let me go without all this?”

“Only because I’ve never let anyone go without a warning. And because I am afraid: for you, for all of us. Roland will tire of you, Raphael. They always do.” He cut off my protests by placing his hand against my lips and with three fingers traced their curve. “And also because I love you. I had hoped you would stay to take my place as suzein one day.”

His voice was low but free of any wheedling tone. I met his eyes and saw there only affection and desire.

I shook my head, taking his hand firmly in my own. “I want to go, uncle.”

He stared at me a long time, those golden eyes blank and inscrutable as the Magdalene’s smooth face. “I wonder sometimes if your sister got all the brains. At least she knew enough to keep silent.”

His voice was bitter; but I knew it was finished. Miramar sighed and inclined his head as if praying. When he raised it he was smiling, and with a sardonic bow he stood and pulled me to my feet.

“If I may have the honor,” he murmured. He drew back the heavy indigo drapes that curtained off his bedchamber from the rest of the suite. “A farewell to my favorite nephew.”

“Thank you, uncle,” I said, and tears stung my eyes as we embraced for the last time.

“Y
OU WON’T LIKE IT
Outside,” Ketura whispered to me much later. She had returned from the Saint-Alaban’s Masque, and the two of us lay together in her bedroom. “When I stayed with Flora Pyracantha last year they beat me while I slept, until I left.” She licked her lower lip as if tasting old blood.

I yawned. “That’s stupid. Didn’t they know you’re good for better things?” I stroked her breast, but she pushed me away, sitting up and pulling the quilt tight about her bare shoulders.

“Dammit! You should listen to me, Raphael, before going with Roland. They’re so different …”

“How?” I yanked away my half of the quilt and slid beneath it. “How are they different?”

Ketura snorted in exasperation, grabbed a long plait of my hair, and tugged me so that I faced my reflection in the mirror. “How do you think?”

I shrugged. “Their hair is short?”

“Don’t be a fool.” She pulled my hair, hard, and I kicked her away.

“Roland has hair.
Everywhere.”
I laughed and hid my face in the pillow.

“He’s still young. When they get older—” She gathered her long red curls and pulled them from her face so that her white cheeks and temples gleamed in the candlelight. “Like this. They’re bald. They’re
ugly,
all of them.” She shuddered. “I never knew how ugly they were …”

“So close your eyes and think of me. That’s what I do.” I shut my eyes and reached for her, grinning.

“Idiot!” She pushed me away and I sat up, surprised at her vehemence. “You should learn to fight, catamite, before you think about leaving …”

I grabbed her then, wrenched the comforter away, and bit her shoulder until her mocking voice softened and her hands fumbled to loosen my hair from its long braid.

“Why fight when we can do this?” I murmured.

Ketura sighed and turned away.

“You just don’t understand, do you, Raphael? The Curators don’t think like that. They don’t want us around, really; they just want to use us, and then leave us. Flora used me, and then she grew tired of me, and finally she hated me for being young and beautiful, and there all the time to remind her of it. They all hated me. And these were tribades, Botanists! The other Curators are worse …”

I traced the whorls of her breast and kissed her. “Roland has always been kind to me, Ketura.”

“Because you’re still young. Because he never gets enough of you. Flora was like that, too: before I left here.” She shook her head and glanced out the window. “I have to meet Adolph Drake soon,” she said, and flashed me a rueful smile. “Well, you’ve never needed to have any sense before, Raphael, so I don’t suppose I can give you any now. But—” She slipped from my arms and crossed the room to her armoire. “I
can
give you this.”

A six-pointed anthemion embellished the wardrobe. She pressed one of its wooden blades and a tiny drawer spat open. For a minute or two she poked through its contents, broken candicaine straws and prophylactic feathers, a handful of old ribbons and the broken keyboard from an ancient computer; then she carefully drew up a small object wrapped in desiccated paper. “I want you to have it.”

The paper crumbled as she unwrapped and then handed to me a sort of open-ended bracelet. Drab gray with faint lavender stripes, its smooth surface etched with a network of tiny whorls. It seemed to me a crude and ugly ornament, and I shot her a puzzled glance. She returned the look impassively as I examined the bracelet, hoping to find some brilliant or cantrap concealed within its somber coil. Finally I shrugged and started to put it onto my hand.

“No. Let me show you;” She took the bracelet from me and carefully eased it over her own wrist. She raised her face to meet mine. “Now. I want you to hurt me.”