Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“It’s faster this way,” she explained. “Perfectly safe, really; but these days …” She shook her head. “We see strange things in our part of the City.”

“The Cathedral?” asked Miss Scarlet again.

Jane Alopex nodded. “What have you heard?”

“Only the rumor that a deranged Ascendant lives in the ruins there, and commands the lazars bring him captives for sacrifice.”

Jane chewed her lip. After a moment she slapped the sambar’s flank so that it lumbered on again, shaking its antlers free of tangled vines. Miss Scarlet lurched forward, caught herself, and dug her paws into the sambar’s mane. Then she straightened the stiff folds of her skirt and fixed Jane with a stare. The girl looked away and sighed.

“It’s true, then!” Miss Scarlet exclaimed, alarmed. “Have you seen him, Jane?”

Jane Alopex shook her head. She stepped aside to allow the sambar onto the trail, eyeing a yellow creeper whose serrated leaves twitched slightly as the stag trudged past. “No. I’ve been on duty in the Herp Lab; the anacondas are shedding, and I’m saving the skins. But some of us have seen things—

“A star, a sort of brightness in the sky like an explosion the night of the Butterfly Ball. You must have heard about it; the Paphians said it heralded the next Ascension. Isidore Myotis saw it, he was tending a live birth among the flying foxes. A nova, he said; but we’ve heard it was something else …”

Absently she pointed her pistol at a dead tree limb and fired. An explosion; the tree limb crashed to earth. The sambar snorted, rearing back in fright. Jane turned to stroke its muzzle. “Ah, there, Sallymae, I’m sorry.”

I paused to finger a charred bit of wood. Atop Sallymae Miss Scarlet rubbed her hairy chin.

“What do you think it was?” I asked.

Jane Alopex pursed her lips. “That’s rather a blunt question to ask a Curator, Sieur Aidan,” she said. She gave me the same condescending look she’d given Miss Scarlet earlier. “It seems to me that you’re rather adrift in our City, young Arent. Unfamiliar with our ways of doing things, if you know what I mean.”

I flushed, but she cut me off before I could protest. “No: if Scarlet likes you, I guess that’s good enough. Uppity actors don’t bother me, really. And I’ve heard of Aidan Arent, of course. The Paphians are quite mad about you.” Grinning, she flicked at my hair; but there was a glint of shrewd intelligence in her eyes.

I followed her in silence as she led Sallymae down the path. Miss Scarlet pulled her shawl closer against the chill, then twisted to look down at me.

“Something is happening in the world,” she said at last to Jane. “I spoke of this with Aidan at our first meeting. You and the other Zoologists may think it’s nonsense, but I fear the Saint-Alabans are right: Final Ascension or not, something is coming.”

Jane squinted at the weak sunlight. “Well, you may be right, Scarlet. Last week we heard that runagates from the Citadel escaped and entered the City.”

I stopped in the middle of the trail. A small astonished sound escaped me. I looked up at Miss Scarlet. She stared back in amazement, but quickly composed herself by grabbing her mount’s mane.

“When?” she asked with breathless innocence, rocking as the sambar loped down the path. “How many?”

Jane shrugged. “Three of them, two weeks ago. Escaped research subjects, is what I was told.”

Three! And two weeks ago. Not Justice and myself, then—but who?

As Jane stared at me I realized I had muttered aloud. “Who told you?” I asked. I pretended to be having difficulty clambering over an ivy-choked log, and paused to collect my wits.

Jane frowned. “Now why would you ask me that? Why would you even want to know, unless you were an Ascendant delator?” From her expression I could tell she was measuring me up, trying to decide if it was possible that the Ascendants had chosen such a careless informer. She finally shook her head.

“No: you’re too stupid to be a spy. And too obvious—who’d trust you?”

This thought seemed to cheer her. “Well, Aidan Arent, since you’re so bold as to ask, I’ll tell you: an aardman told me. I caught them poaching in the Zoo. I let one go free, in exchange for news; nothing like aardmen for news.

“He told me that three refugees escaped from the Citadel. Fougas pursued them and one died in the strike. The other two fled into the Narrow Forest. They were tending to the corpse of the boy who died when the aardmen took them. A man and a girl. The aardmen thought he was a Scientist, the girl they said was a witch. A witch!”

She laughed a bit too heartily. “The aardmen give allegiance now to the one in the Cathedral. He has commanded them to bring to him, alive, anyone they capture in the City. They brought him the Scientist and the girl. They told me that the Scientist will certainly die from his injuries. The girl I know nothing more of, save that they took her to the Cathedral as well. The aardmen said that she scratched and fought like a wolf.”

“Anna!” I exclaimed; then bit my tongue.

Jane yelled a command to the sambar. It halted and began to graze upon the yellowing grass. Miss Scarlet took a sudden interest in the hem of her shawl.

“Scarlet,” asked Jane Alopex with measured calm. “What do you know of this?” She grabbed my arm and pulled me close to her.

“Only what you’ve told us,” the chimpanzee replied. She looked up, her face clouding. “And rumors, just rumors. What we heard from the suzein Miramar: a shooting star in the north, a runaway Paphian favorite the Saint-Alabans says is a demon incarnate. None of this other, I swear—”

“But Master Aidan seems quite disturbed by this news. Although, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t even seem like it’s news to him.”

She tightened her grip on my arm, waiting for me to explain. Her face was quite pale: I had taken her by surprise. She tapped uneasily at her pistol. I wondered if she knew something more, something worse than this. I closed my eyes, my head whirling, and tried to imagine myself somewhere far away: back in the Home Room, or in my little chamber at the theater. When I remained silent Jane snapped, “Well, say something, dammit!”

“Anna,” I said at last. “The girl’s name is Anna.”

“Or Andrew,” I added a moment later.

Miss Scarlet began to fan herself with her shawl. Jane stared at me as though I spoke an unknown tongue. Finally she said, “How do you know that?”

I said nothing more; only opened my eyes and stared at my hands. When it became clear I would admit to nothing else, she let go of me. The sambar shook its head, bells jingling gaily in the cold air. Apart from that there was silence.

“Well, Scarlet,” Jane said at last. “You’ve met up with bad company this time. ‘Actors,’ I always said; ‘she’ll get herself into trouble if she leaves us for Actors.’ And I was right: this is a bad business, Scarlet.”

She turned to me, pointing her pistol at my feet. “And you, sweetheart: either you’re mixed up in this trouble past all help; or else you’re a fool.

“The aardmen brought the Scientist and the girl to the Madman in the Cathedral.” She spat. “Paaugh! The aardmen are idiots, and the Historians cowardly fools who didn’t have the courage to kill the Aviator themselves; and now look what they’ve brought on to the City! They gave him to the aardmen, so if there was ever an investigation it would look like the aardmen had devoured him. And of course when they took him prisoner the aardmen botched it. They tortured him and castrated him—”

Miss Scarlet gasped.

“—but then he convinced them to free him. He told them he was actually an emissary of the hanged god, he told them he had been sent here to rule not by the Ascendants but by the Gaping One, the Lord of Dogs; and the aardmen would be punished horribly if they did not free him.