Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“So your bashful friend will engage Fancy Miramar for the rest of the evening?”

There followed several minutes of bargaining in low voices. The two Paphians spoke as much with their hands as their tongues as I waited. After another minute or two they kissed. It was done.

“She will be here?” I asked as Justice stepped beside me. A few feet away Miramar stood smiling. The lumens on his robe blinked faster and faster as they responded to the lozenge’s quickening of his blood.

“Well, yes. Wendy, he—” Justice stared at my feet. “He won’t take payment.”

“Well, good. We have nothing to trade.” I tugged at the door handle.

“No—I mean, he’ll only take one payment. He wants a kiss; he wants you to kiss him.”

I began to argue but he cut me short.

“Because you resemble Raphael—well, don’t do it then, Wendy.” I sniffed as he put his hand anxiously on my shoulder: jealous! “We can go to bed, it’s late—”

“I want to see the girl.”

I turned to Miramar. “Well, Miramar, you demand small payment for the special intimate of Raphael Miramar and Constance Beech.” I tilted my face to his.

He kissed me so violently that I recoiled, twisting so that his hands would not feel my breasts. The lozenge’s acrid taste lingered on my tongue. I shut my eyes and tried not to respond to his desire, its memory of a face so much like mine that I felt queasy, as though I tasted my own blood. I clutched at Miramar’s sleeve. His laughter rang out, flecking the air with that bitter smell.

“He is an innocent!” he said, eyes flashing delightedly. “How gratifying to see that I can make you dizzy with a kiss, Sieur Aidan! No, he is not Raphael Miramar,” he said to Justice. “Kisses like a Curator, doesn’t he?”

Justice smiled wryly. I untangled myself from Miramar’s embrace and stepped away, noting that Miramar’s lumens now glowed a brilliant violet, pulsing like a warning beacon.

“I will wake Fancy,” he said as he turned on his heel.

Once inside our chamber I set to warming the room’s single diatom lantern with my hands. Its cool light flared to a brighter blue to show us our sleeping chamber: a long narrow room overhung with more tapestries. Justice stood by the door staring at me, waiting for an explanation. I met his gaze, felt a surge of desire stirred by his anger. I turned away from him.

“I should have taken my own chamber,” I said, staring at the bed that stood at the room’s center: wide and sumptuously pillowed, canopied with drapes of viridian velvet. I felt uneasy, as though on the edge of a seizure, and empty, the way I had felt after the janissaries siphoned me.

“This is dangerous, Wendy,” Justice said, drawing closer. “This girl: she’ll know you’re not Raphael Miramar.”

“I don’t want her to believe that I’m Raphael Miramar,” I said. “I want to tap her.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not? I won’t hurt her: just a moment, just long enough to learn more about him—”

“You already heard what Miramar said. There was a girl, they sold her to the Ascendants—”

“ I was that girl!” Suddenly I felt more frightened than I had since I first saw the Boy; but also enraged, as though everything since that moment had been a betrayal. I grabbed him in a fury. “Sold like a fucking animal by a whore! Sold to the Ascendants so that I could be patterned with some monster, so that I could be melted down for this!”

I pointed at my head, screaming as my entire body shook. I was on the verge of a seizure. When Justice tried to restrain me I struck him, sending him reeling.

“ Where is that boy?” I shouted. “Raphael Miramar—what kind of a brain does he have, the suzein’s favorite, why wasn’t he sold?”

Justice stared, terrified. I fell to my knees, my voice strangling as I brought my head back and then smashed it against the floor.

“No, Wendy!”

I heard him cry out, but only dimly. Already it calmed me, that warm wave of enkephalins rushing through my mind in response to the pain I could not feel. I struck my head again, and again, until finally I lay exhausted, my cheek resting against the floor as I breathed heavily. From the other side of the room I heard Justice weeping.

Minutes passed. I heard another, softer sound. I glanced up to see Justice standing by the open door, turning to look from me back to a small figure silhouetted against the hall’s dusky glow.

“Fancy,” I said thickly. I thought she might be frightened, to see me crouched upon the floor like this; but it was obvious she had seen many stranger things in her few, years. Still blinking with sleep, she smiled up at Justice, then peered into our chamber. She had yet to recognize me.

“Thank you,” Justice called after some figure retreating down the hall. He was careful to shield the doorway so that no one might see inside.

“Miramar said I have been engaged by a gentleman. You are he?” The girl stood on tiptoe, arms outstretched so that he might lift her. Justice stared down awkwardly, then with a sigh closed the door and shook his head.

“No. This—you have been engaged by another gentleman. Aidan Arent, a Player. There.” He gestured to where I lay upon the floor.

Still smiling, Fancy turned, taking a few steps to follow the shadow of his arm upon the carpet. When she saw me she stopped.

“Raphael!”

I braced myself, holding one hand out to keep her from me.

“No, Fancy,” I said, struggling to my feet. But already she hugged my legs. I could feel her entire small body vibrating with excitement. “Aidan, my name is Aidan. You saw me earlier this evening—”

“Raphael,” she repeated. Her face pressed against my thigh. Her eyes were shut tight against my denial. “I miss you.”

“No, Fancy,” I began, then sighed. I felt calmer now. “Come sit here,” I said more gently. I settled back upon the floor. Fancy clambered into my lap, still not meeting my eyes. From across the room Justice watched us impassively.

“I am not Raphael Miramar,” I began again. I took her chin in my hand and forced her to look at me. “See? I’m not.”

“You look just like him.” She reached to touch my hair. His would have been long, braided in a heavy russet chain. I nodded as she stroked the small raised node upon my temple.

“But I’m not him.”

“You’re not him.” Her voice no longer held much doubt. She squirmed in my lap, her little hands stroking my thigh. I thought suddenly that she might discern my disguise—she was, after all, a prostitute—and shifted until I had her perched upon my knees. She raised her hand to trace the line of my chin. “Are you his twin?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” A child; what matter what she knew or thought of me, really? “I’m a Player, I travel through the City with Toby Rhymer’s troupe. You saw us tonight.”

“You were that lady—” She frowned, stuck a finger in her mouth.

“That’s right: Viola. I was in disguise. I pretended to be a lady in the play. Do you pretend things, Fancy?”

She nodded solemnly. “All the time. Miramar teaches us to pretend lots of things.” She tilted her head and smiled across the room at Justice, then lifted her face to mine as for a kiss. I turned away, then looked down at her hand upon my knee. A small scab on her wrist, like a star.

“Did you cut yourself?” I asked.

She nodded. “With Constance. She set the pinion too tight.”

I raised her hand to my lips so that I could kiss the broken skin. “Fancy, I want you to pretend something for me, something about your friend Raphael. Can you think of him, remember doing something with him?”