Winterlong (16 page)

Justice called to me across the room and I joined them, nudging guinea hens from my path. “Lalage, may I introduce my companion, Aidan.”

She inclined her head toward me. Then she smiled and raised three fingers to her mouth, a gesture that Justice imitated: the Paphians’ beck.

“A handsome leman, Justice,” she said, gazing at me and winking. “Especially for a. Curator—”

“I’m not his leman!” I began hotly, when Justice cut me off.

“No, he’s not my lover. We’re merely traveling together.”

“I understand.” Lalage nodded, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. Now that we stood in the center of the chamber I could see her more clearly in the hazy light. She was smaller than Justice and myself, very thin, and wearing a shift of some heavy green fabric, once no doubt very fine, now sloppily tied with a black sash and spattered with bird droppings and streaks of dust. But her hands were small and slender (if dirty), heavy with jeweled bracelets and antique rings; and her eyes were carefully painted to play up their oblique tilt and odd color: a dark and clouded blue. Her gray hair—blond once as Justice’s—was loosely braided above a pointed foxlike face. And I smelled in her sweat expensive spices—cinnamon, sandalwood, bitter rue. She bent to pick up a bedraggled guinea hen and stroked it gently.

“An interesting traveling companion, Justice.” She stared at my auburn stubble. “Someday you will have to tell me of your adventures there in the Citadel.” She tipped her head in the direction of the river, toward
HEL
. “We thought you had forsaken us for the Ascendants.”

Justice tossed back his head, avoiding her eyes. “I missed our people. But tell me, cousin: there are no guests?”

Lalage sighed, picking matted down from the guinea fowl’s breast. “Hardly ever now. Outside trade has fallen off. I was supposed to receive more frilite and morpha from the Botanists, but I haven’t seen them for nearly two weeks.”

She lowered her voice, glancing at the dim vault arching high above us. “There was trouble, Justice. A new Governor was sent here from the Citadel. The Curators were in an uproar. He came here, last week—”

Justice nodded. “In the woods—we saw two janissaries taken by the trees.”

“They were in his party. They arrived that night, I fed them, acted innocence, even gave them the last of my morpha tubes. Next morning sent them on their way.”

Her eyes glittered. I could smell her cunning like a thick musk. She tossed the guinea hen into the air and it flapped into the darkness. “The Governors will never hear from them again.”

Justice nodded, cast me an uneasy glance. “But otherwise, things are as they were? Our people?”

She shook her head and began to cross the room. “They come here seldom. They fear being this close to the edge of the City. I’ve been lonely this last week; I’ll be delighted to serve you both. Come with me.”

We followed her, Justice giving me warning looks when I angrily started to question him. Small round tables edged the far wall of the room, some of them still littered with tumblers sticky with absinthium and broken candicaine pipettes. Scrawny roosters and glossy black hens picked among the refuse. I kicked at a shattered morpha tube, the once-bright label with its grinning Man in the Moon faded to a pale blur.

“I haven’t cleaned in a while,” Lalage admitted. “It hardly seems worth it, with no Patrons …”

We followed her into a narrow passageway. Runners of pleated rubber covered the floor, brittle and curling with age. The hall was lit by elongated tubes stretching across the length of the ceiling. These were filled with murky water that sparkled pale blue and green, phosphorescent algae and diatoms that emitted a faint eerie glow. Fortunately the birds preferred the half-light of the rotunda. I inhaled with some relief the cooler air, only slightly tainted with the bittersweet smell of stale absinthium.

“If you wait here for a few minutes I’ll make the atrium ready for you.” She flashed me a brilliant smile before disappearing behind a fringed curtain.

When she was gone I turned to Justice.

“You’re a Paphian,” I said, pushing him against the wall. “You’ve stolen me to be a prostitute.”

He winced, shook his head. “No, Wendy. But I
am
a Paphian.” He drew his hand to his mouth and rested three fingers upon his lower lip: the Paphians’ beck, signifying the three sexes. “But I have no claim on you. They would have killed you, Wendy.
I
would have killed you before I’d leave you to them …”

I scented his arousal again, tinged now with the metallic edge of fear as he edged away from me. I felt a sudden rush, as though I had received a jolt of acetelthylene. Where the small nodes bulged from my temples a faint warmth spread until my hair prickled and stood on end. And suddenly I felt it, felt
Him,
that overwhelming desire and terror surging through me like raw adrenaline. I laughed.

“I was the wrong toy for you to steal, Justice,” I whispered. I brought my face close to his, until his shallow breathing warmed me. I brushed my tongue against his cheeks, tasted his bitter pleasure. Then I bit his mouth, until I felt my teeth meet through his soft skin.

With a cry he kicked me away, but not before I kissed him to draw a sharp draught of blood. I reeled backward, dizzy at the intensity of his desire, and drew my hand to my face to wipe the blood from my chin. I started to lick my fingers; but he grabbed me.

“I did not steal you! I
saved
you—”

But his words echoed meaninglessly as I gave myself up to a sudden shuddering ecstasy. I struck at him only to trip and fall. Pain blurred into an image dredged from the last fevered drop of blood upon my tongue:

My own face, blank and calm upon its soiled pillow. A golden-haired figure stands silently above me, watching for hours as I dreamed …

“Wendy—
”

I blinked to see him standing there still, the pale blue light tinting his cheekbones and his luminous eyes. But he no longer wore
HEL
’s yellow robes, and his golden hair now hung loose and tangled from our flight. I shook my head, tried to stand. Justice glanced behind him before pulling me into a sitting position.

“You fainted.” He rubbed his mouth ruefully where a dark welt marred his lower lip. “You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

I stared at the phosphorescent ceiling. My head ached, and the giddy pangs of desire were gone. I felt only an indifferent regret for having hurt the boy who’d saved me.

“I’m not safe company for you, Justice,” I said at last. “I’ll harm you, whether I want to or not.”

He edged closer to me, eyeing the doorway where Lalage had disappeared. “I saw your scan on the monitor that afternoon.” He spoke softly, his blue eyes intent upon me. “You thought you were entering a fugue state.”

“I was wrong.”

“But something did happen; that’s why you came to me for the scan. You killed them, didn’t you?”

I felt a pressure building inside my chest. “I didn’t kill them,” I whispered. “I told you that—I told them all that.”

“But somehow you drove them to suicide: Morgan Yates, Emma Harrow, the sleep researcher. All those children. Why?
How?”

I leaned forward and gripped my knees. Inside my head a vision was forming, distinct from the dimly lit room around us. I bit my lip, feeling sick at the taste of my own blood; thought of tapping Justice again, to somehow draw him into the scintillating landscape that was beginning to loom behind my eyes. Black mountains, an endless plain shot with dead white light. In the air in front of me something else began to form. A spectral figure crouched as if preparing to spring.

I snatched my hand from Justice and pounded my fist against the wall behind me, hard enough to make me gasp with pain. The brilliant interior horizon shivered. The ghostly silhouette disappeared. I sat in a narrow corridor flickering with blue light, staring wildly at a fair young man.

I gritted my teeth, waited for the throbbing in my knuckles to subside.

“Justice,” I began. “Dr. Harrow engaged in therapy with me. Did you know that?”

Pupils retracting in gold-flecked eyes: no.

“She—Something went wrong. A long time ago …

“She and her twin brother played at—at witchcraft. They invoked something, and—it came. Something strong and dangerous. It killed her brother; it drove him mad, and he hanged himself. But she had this—hypostate—dormant inside of her all that time. When she did my neural implants fourteen years ago, I think the engrams were stronger than anyone ever knew. She patterned me without really knowing it was there, that memory, without
me
knowing. And nothing happened until I was the same age she was when they woke it, and then it—it manifested itself.”

“And that’s what you think killed Dr. Harrow?” He tilted his head in disbelief. “What of the others?”

“It just waited until I tapped anyone susceptible to it. It latched on to them: Morgan, Melisande …”

“A poet and a sick child, a dreaming woman,” Justice said slowly. “And Dr. Harrow …” He laced his fingers with mine. “But what is it?”

“I don’t know. A hypostate. Some terribly destructive impulse …” He stared at me, thoughtful. “Twins, and—well, something. Like Baal and Anat.”

“What?” I shook my head impatiently.

“A story, a masque of ours, about twins. At Saint-Alaban. Baal wakes Death, but his sister Anat saves him. It’s a story of the Magdalene, really. A fable.”

I snorted, and he glared at me.

“Well, if you’re carrying this thing inside you, why hasn’t it affected
you?
Why aren’t
you
dead? Why didn’t it kill the other empaths when you tapped them?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because of what we are: maybe we have nothing for it to feed on. But it drove her to despair. The last—what I felt of her—” I licked my lips at the memory.

Justice flinched and rubbed his mouth gingerly. “So it’s a parate emergent personality,” he said. “Like Andrew—”

“No!” I insisted. “Andrew is
part
of Anna. They induced him when she was little. She was afraid of the dark,” I called wistfully. “But this is
not mine.”

“How do you know? All of the multiple personalities at
HEL
considered themselves independent.”

“I am
not
an MP!” I lashed at him. He grabbed my hand, but at that moment we heard the curtains being drawn behind us.

“Ah. Pardon me, cousins.” Lalage smiled. I drew away from Justice and stood up too quickly. I felt dizzy again. Justice grabbed my elbow and nodded to Lalage.

“He’s tired,” he explained, glancing at me with concern. “We’ve come a long way …”

Lalage held the curtains so that we could pass into another narrow hallway. “Curators tire easily. Don’t they?” she added sympathetically.

She had changed clothes. Now she wore a loose crimson tunic, no less soiled than the other; but it was harder to see the stains on this one’s darker fabric. And she had braided her hair into tight coils about her ears. I thought curious that she would bother to change clothes for two itinerants, until I also noted that she invariably directed her questions to me. Even when Justice answered, her eyes never left my face.

“What is the news of the City?” he asked as we followed her through a twisting hallway. Baskets and heavy sacks lined the walls, Lalages wealth. It smelled overpowering of cumin and coriander and cinnamon.

“It will be a harsh winter this year. The lazars grow bolder every day. The Ascendants I entertained last week boasted of war with the Balkhash Commonwealth.”

I would hear more of this, but Justice interrupted. “But what of our Houses, Lalage? What news there?”

“Oh, such scandals! Salamanda Illyria deflowered her son two nights before his debut to Rufus Lynx, the Regent of Zoologists. Cliantha Persia stole a beautiful child from the Librarians, and in retaliation they took Tarleton Persia. Raphael Miramar left his House to live among the Natural Historians. The House Miramar is losing Patrons without him; but already they say that Roland Nopcsa will dismiss Raphael for that albino boy from High Brazil—

I yawned, and she laughed. “I forget that the Curators have no patience with our gossip. Come, Aidan—here is something to interest you.”

The hallway ended in a barred gate. Lalage held the door open and we stepped out onto an open patio. Or so I thought at first. When I glanced up I saw that a glass room soared many feet above us. In its airy reaches flitted numerous butterflies and tiny bright shapes, glowing in the sunset light.

“Hummingbirds!” I ran to where a thicket of beetlebrush grew from a chipped porcelain bowl. Amid the scarlet flowers a dozen hummingbirds darted, flashes emerald and blue vying with butterflies for nectar.

“I’m roasting a capon for you, cousins, and there are peaches and field salad, and the first plum wine of the year,” Lalage announced grandly. She gestured toward flat metal chassis salvaged from some vehicle, now set upon stones as a table. “I’ll join you shortly.” She touched her fingers to her mouth and left.

We sank onto the grass in front of the table. About me fruit trees heavy with plums roared with golden bees longer than my middle finger. They lit upon our table to sip at the overripe windfalls splattered on its metal surface I laughed and licked the back of my hand, watched a drone land there and feed lazily upon my damp skin.

After some minutes Lalage returned. Behind her rolled a very old rusted house server, squeaking and squealing like an ill-behaved child.

“Stop here,” commanded Lalage, clapping her hands.

“Yes mistress yes mistress yes,” piped the server, bumping against me. It set steaming platters and chipped plates upon the makeshift table. Lalage rearranged three un-matched glasses and gave it a kick.

“Welcome mistress mistress mistress,” it lisped, grinding over a tree root as it rolled off. Lalage smiled after it, then sat on the grass between us.

“My pleasure to share my food with you,” she said, bowing her head. Justice bowed his in turn, nudging me until I lid the same.

The food was very good, surprisingly so. I complimented her, and Lalage beamed. While we had always eaten the best at H
EL
, it had been my understanding that our bounty was due only to the good graces and munificence of our Ascendant supervisors. But surely the Ascendants did not provide Lalage with cardamom and kef and absinthium?