Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“Thank you, Justice.” Dr. Harrow rose, tilting her head toward a low table upon which lunch had been laid for two. Despite their care in placing a single hyacinth blossom in a cracked porcelain vase, the luncheon servers had not bothered to clean the Pagoda. The floor’s golden sheath of pollen was chased with tiny footprints of squirrels and rats and their droppings. Justice grimaced as he stepped to a lacquered tray to sort out my medication bottles. Then he stood, bowed to Dr. Harrow, and left.

Sunlight streamed through the bamboo frets above us as Dr. Harrow took my hand and drew me toward her.

“The new dosage. You remembered to take it?”

“Yes.” I removed my hat and dropped it, shaking my curls free. “Anna gave me this bandeau.”

“It’s lovely.” She knelt before the table and motioned for me to do the same. Her face was puffy, her eyes slitted. I wondered if she would cry for me as she had for Andrew yesterday. “Have you had breakfast?”

We ate quenelles of hake with fennel and an aspic of lamb’s blood. Dr. Harrow drank Georgian champagne and permitted me a sip—horrible, like brackish water. Afterward a remodeled greenhouse server (still encumbered with its coil of garden hose) removed our plates and brought me a chocolate wafer, which I slipped into my pocket to trade with Anna later, for news.

“You slept well,” Dr. Harrow stated. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed about Melisande’s dog.”

Dr. Harrow stroked her chin, then adjusted her pince-nez to see me better. “Not Morgan’s dog?”

“No.” Melisande had been a girl my own age with a history of tormenting and sexually molesting animals. “A small white dog. Like this.” I pushed my nose until it squashed against my face.

Dr. Harrow smiled ruefully. “Well, good, because I dreamed about Morgan’s dog.” She shook her head when I started to question her. “Not really; a manner of speaking. I mean I didn’t get much sleep.” She sighed and tilted her flute so that it refracted golden diamonds. “I made a very terrible error of judgment with Morgan Yates. I shouldn’t have let you do it—”

“I knew what would happen.”

Dr. Harrow looked at her glass, then at me. “Yes. Well, a number of people are wondering about that, Wendy.”

“She would not look away from the window.”

“No. They’re wondering how you know when the therapy will succeed and when it won’t. They’re wondering whether you are effecting your failures as well as your cures.”

“I’m not responsible. I can’t be—”

She placed the champagne flute on the lacquer table and took my hand. She squeezed it so tightly that I knew she wanted it to hurt. “That is what’s the matter, Wendy. If you are responsible—if empaths can be responsible—you can be executed for murder. We can all be held accountable for your failures. And if not …” She leaned back without releasing my hand, so that I had to edge nearer to her across the table. “If not, the Governors want you for themselves.”

I flounced back against the floor, “Andrew told me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not you personally. Not necessarily. Anna, yes: they created Anna, they’ll claim her first. But the others—”

She traced a wave in the air, ended it with finger pointing at me. “Things are changing again in the world outside, Wendy. You are too sheltered here, all of you children; which is my fault, but I thought …”

Her voice drifted into a sigh, and I noticed that her fingers were trembling as she let go of my hand. “It doesn’t matter anymore what I thought,” she said. She stared up at me, her eyes glittering with such desperation that I yearned to taste it, know what it was that could terrify a woman like Dr. Harrow.

She took a deep breath and said, “There is a rumor that NASNA plans to strike against the Balkhash Commonwealth. They will never succeed. NASNA and the present Governors will be overthrown, and the Commonwealth will do to us what they did to Brazil and the Asian diarchy: more mutagens and viral strikes and burnings, until only the land remains for them to claim.”

I yawned. It had been decades since the last Ascension. The Commonwealth was on the other side of the world. To myself and the other empties at HEL it was nothing more than pink and crimson blotches on a map, separated from us by a blue sea that would take weeks and weeks to navigate. I reached for my glass and sipped, grimacing again at the taste. When I raised my eyes Dr. Harrow was staring at me, unbelieving.

“Does this mean nothing to you, Wendy?”

I shrugged. “What? NASNA ? The Commonwealth? What should it mean to me?”

“It means that NASNA needs new weapons. It means further intervention in our research, and misapplication of the results of the Harrow Effect. They’ll treat you like laboratory animals, like geneslaves …

“Don’t you understand, Wendy? If they can trace what you do, find the bioprint and synthesize it …”Her finger touched the end of my nose, pressed it until I giggled. “There’ll be nothing left of you except what will fit in a vial.”

She tapped her finger on the table edge. The westering light fell golden upon my head, and I shook my hair back, smiling at its warmth. From a peach tree outside the Little Pagoda came a mockingbird’s sweet treble. Dr. Harrow remained silent, listening.

After a few minutes she said, “Odolf Leslie was here yesterday. They are sending a new Governor—”

I looked up at that. “Here? To HEL ?”

“No.” She smiled wryly at my disappointment. “To the City. The Governors wish to monitor it more closely: the black market has grown too successful, and the Governors have professed a sudden interest in the Archives.

“Or so NASNA says; my sources say otherwise. There were stockpiles of weapons there once, within the City; weapons and secret things, things lost in the Long Night.”

I must have appeared dubious. Dr. Harrow gave a small laugh, a bitter rasping sound. “Did you think you knew everything about this place, Wendy? I assure you: you children know nothing, nothing of the world, even of the world across the river. That was a great city once, greater than any city standing now; and there are still things hidden there, things of great knowledge and power that the poor fools who live there now cannot begin to comprehend.

“But the Governors have decided it is time to look again at the City of Trees. I think they are searching for the engines that brought the Long Night; else why would they be sending an Aviator to govern the City?”

“An Aviator?” I repeated; but Dr. Harrow seemed not to have heard me.

“A hero of the Archipelago Conflict. Margalis Tast’annin: a brilliant man from the NASNA Academy. We knew him there, Aidan and I. He is to assume control of the City, set up a janissary outpost.”

I thought of what Justice had told me, of the people who lived in the Museums and the ruins of the ancient Embassies. “What about the people there now?”

Dr. Harrow tilted her head back and shut her eyes as the afternoon sun touched her face. “I suppose they will be killed if they resist, or enslaved. Although Margalis Tast’annin doesn’t seem the type to take prisoners.

“He arrived yesterday with Dr. Leslie, Wendy. Dr. Leslie told him about you, about Melisande and Morgan Yates and the others. He wants you for— observation. He wants this—”

She pressed both hands to her forehead and then waved them toward the sky, the unpruned fruit-laden trees, and the rank sloping lawns of Linden Glory. “All this, Wendy. They will have me declared incompetent and our research a disaster, and then they’ll move in. They’ve been looking for an excuse; the Wendy suicides will do nicely.”