Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

Smiling, she accepted the compliment, her black lashes fluttering as she replied.

“Ah yes; but Aidan does have a powerful vision, a rare and marvelous gift for charming his audiences. It is evident from the claques who are turning out to see him. We have not enjoyed such a success since I first joined the troupe.” She regarded me with that stare holding within it the long shadows of barred cages and moon-tossed trees. “And they are lovely—

“ ‘ Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In Death’s dream kingdom these do not appear …’”

She quoted softly, to herself. Miramar nodded, his fingers playing with a braided tassel hanging from the wall behind him.

“I do not understand why he left,” he said at last. He stretched his hand across the table toward me, as if I might answer the question half-asked. “He was the loveliest of us all …

“You must have some understanding of that, Aidan: to command by a look alone, by looks alone—?”

“I have never sought to command,” I said. But I felt the flare of that raging Small Voice I knew betrayed my words.

Because I did seek power; and had found it upon the stage. There I might command by my eyes alone, where rapt faces turned upon me, me, ME!—not Emma Harrow or Toby Rhymer or even Miss Scarlet Pan, the Prodigy of a Prodigal Age—but myself, Wendy Wanders, the idiot savant, the reclaimed autist, the wild girl of the Human Engineering Laboratory.

“—not meant as an insult, my dear young sieur, please forgive my clumsy words—”

I snapped my head back up from where it had bowed, perilously close to striking the edge of the table I clutched with white fingers. “Forgive me,” I whispered. Miss Scarlet eyed me with alarm, but Gower Miramar continued heedlessly.

“No, it was rude of me—there is no question but that you are a different sort entirely from that poor sick child and even from my beloved Raphael. He lacks all discipline, save in the amatory arts; and he is too easily distracted, too easily seduced by dreams of power.”

He paused to pour a stream of green tea from the samovar into Miss Scarlet’s glass.

“Thank you,” she said. “But what became of the girl?”

Miramar refilled his tumbler, held it before a candle so that emerald rays sprang from the faceted glass. “One day Doctor Foster met an Ascendant woman at a masque, a Physician. He was more involved in trade with the out-lands then, Doctor Foster. She had accompanied a group of Physicians from the Citadel; they were being entertained by the Botanists. They were looking for research subjects, they had brought things to trade for them: a generator, cilia ampules, prosthetics.

“She told him of her work. I would imagine she even asked his advice. He is a very brilliant man, our Doctor Foster …

“She believed it might be possible to cure this child. At the very least she would be well cared for. She was so very beautiful, I didn’t have the heart to let her die.

“We sold her to the Ascendants.”

He stared at me for a long moment, shaking his head. “She was a lovely girl; but she banged her head and her tears bled all the time. There was nothing we could do.” And he shrugged and drank the rest of his tea.

From across the room I could feel Justice’s excitement. Miss Scarlet raised an eyebrow: she feared he would betray me. I was afraid myself that this news would prove too much for me to absorb at once. I leaned across the table to take Justice’s hand. I hoped that the suzein would not see how my own shook.

“My dear friend, this pretty story has tired you!” The words sounded so false that I expected Justice to rebuke me. Instead he only trembled as I stepped around the sleeping Botanists to sit beside him.

I glanced up at Miramar. “Can you arrange for a palanquin to return Justice and myself to the theater on Library Hill?”

Disappointment creased his face. “I had planned for all of you to spend the night, as my guests. After matins I’ve arranged for a Sapphic burletta—not the same sort of entertainment as you offer, young sieur, but we consider ourselves artists too.”

I began to protest, when I glimpsed Toby Rhymer regarding me with one eye slitted open even as he feigned sleep. Beneath the table Miss Scarlet’s foot curled about my ankle.

Beware! She mouthed the word.

I nodded, then raised Justice’s hand to my lips and kissed it. My tongue darted between his fingers to taste desire salted with a brackish haze of opium; a sluggish remnant of exhilaration from our play; and fear.

“Perhaps you are too genteel for our entertainments,” Miramar suggested, a slight downward tug to his butterfly mouth.

“I would not dream of refusing your hospitality,” I demurred. I allowed myself a look at Toby. His raptor’s eye caught my own. For a moment he held it in silent struggle before releasing my gaze and once more pretending sleep. “It is just that I fear my companion has drunk too much of your Lethian cup—”

I cast Justice a look of grave fondness. With a slight twitch he nodded, rolled his eyes, and then laid his head in my lap. Toby sniggered, though his eyes remained shut.

“Oh, we are accustomed to much worse than that!” laughed Miramar. “Many of our guests fall prey to sleep before they ever succumb to our charms!”

I let my hand linger upon Justice’s forehead, then said, “I am tired as well. Can I find my way to a room by myself?”

“I will accompany you,” Justice said quickly. I started to object but caught Miss Scarlet’s slow nod as she stared across the table.

“Of course,” I replied. As I stood, Toby made a great show of yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“So early to bed? To bed at all, Sieur Aidan?” This with a leer at Justice.

“Even Aidan and Justice must sleep,” said Miss Scarlet. “Leave them alone, Toby.” She tugged at a lock of his hair, still gray with chalk powder from our show. Toby turned a fond glance upon her. He extended one arm to enfold her to him, until she stepped from her chair to stand upon his knee.

“My dear Miss Pan,” he murmured, burying his face in her soft ruff of dark fur. “Forgive me. Miramar, perhaps we will retire to our chambers as well.”

Miramar rose and drew back a curtain to show us the way from the Pandoric Seraglio. One by one we stepped over the legs of the sleeping Botanists, Toby escorting Miss Scarlet last of all.

“They will sleep forever,” Miramar snorted as the curtain fell back to hide them. “They smoke and talk of their poppies and sleep, smoke and sleep and talk some more. They are worse than the Historians for dull talk.”

Justice stepped ahead of me to walk beside Miramar. He nodded as the suzein prattled on about recent scandals, the success of certain liaisons and the expected failure of others.

“Your favorite, Raphael Miramar,” I heard Justice ask. He cast me a backward glance. “I have been away for so long, everything is news to me—he left to join the Curators?”

Miramar sighed, beckoning us to follow him up a narrow stair to the next level of the House. “Yes. I begged him not to, his Patron is notoriously fickle. It’s rumored he has taken a new pathic as his favorite, and will support him at tonight’s judging at the Butterfly Ball. Whitlock High Brazil, a young …”

I yawned and let Toby and Miss Scarlet pass me, so that I would not have to listen to more of this endless chatter. The hallways we paced seemed endless as well. Flickering tubes of luminous diatoms did little to dispel the darkness. Near dawn by my guess; but I had seen neither window nor timepiece since our arrival.

The aura of constant twilight was heightened by the thick and intricately woven tapestries covering the walls and the many doorways we passed. One showed the bomb blast of the First Ascension, a brilliant star rising north of the City. Another had two panels. The first showed stiff-jointed men and women in white coats and robes. Some held beakers and complicated optical devices; others sat in front of screens where even smaller figures performed. A woman prodded a four-legged body stretched upon a table, a geneslave with eyes sewn shut. Other women stared earnestly at the sky, where so many dirigibles, zeppelins, gliders, helicopters, balloons, and airplanes soared that it was a miracle none collided. Behind them gleamed Museums not yet overtaken by kudzu, an unbroken Obelisk. The same backdrop was in the next panel of the diptych. Only here gaudy Paphians cavorted in front of the Museums, and coupled with the white-robed Curators on the steps of the Sorrowful Lincoln.