Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

Rivas closed his eyes and inhaled the fumes of the lost whiskey. «Oh, yes sir.»

«Good, because I'm going to set up a special treat for you. Most people only get to take it once a day at the very most, but we're going to let you have it twice today, isn't that great? I think you'll be able to talk to me more . . . frankly, afterward. How does that sound?» Before Rivas could answer, the shepherd added, «Oh, and we'll have you sitting down, so you won't fall and hurt yourself this time.»

Rivas widened his eyes. «I'd love it,» he said. Then he whispered, «But won't everybody else be jealous ?»

«Naw. It'll be our little secret. Follow me.»

He led Rivas across the dirt to a door in the stadium wall, and through it and down a dim corridor to a room with a bolt on the outside of the door. «Sorry there's no window or lamp,» he told Rivas, «but you've got the Lord Jaybush watching over you now, so there's no need to be scared of the dark. There's a chair in there—find your way to it and sit down.»

Rivas hesitated. Once again, he thought, I could knife him and run. Easier now than before. But, once again, that would blow my cover.

Do I really want Urania back this much?

«Yes,» he sighed, and stepped into the room. The door was instantly slammed shut behind him, the buffet of air pressure letting him know that the room was indeed win-dowless, and very small, too. A tool storage room once, probably. A moment later he heard the bolt clank solidly home.

After a bit of cautious shambling and groping, his split thumb collided agonizingly with the promised chair, and he sat down. Okay, he told himself, let's get one thing straight, there's no way you're going to take that damned sacrament again. Don't even consider worrying about that. I'll kill the jaybush if I have to . . . but maybe I can whistle him out, and then sprawl on the floor, so that when he regains consciousness he'll think he already gave it to me.

He pursed his lips and in a simultaneously hesitant and hasty gunning rhythm, whistled the first six notes of Peter and the Wolf- —the bright adventurous tune sounding constricted and out of place in these surroundings—and then, satisfied, he sat back to wait.

He remembered how he had come to discover this special property of music, and of Peter and the Wolf in particular.

In the hills north of the Seal Beach Desolate the Jaybird band he was with had followed a column of smoke until they found, broken up and still burning and scattered across one of the little dry riverbeds, the remains of a Santa Anan merchant caravan. The raiders, whoever they'd been– probably the self-styled modern hooters, who had to ride weirdly customized bicycles instead of the fabled motorcycles ridden by their historical namesakes but did still carry the dreaded hooter swords, painstakingly slotted to produce a loud hooting when whirled in the air at high speed—had taken everything of particular value, but the Jaybirds had lots of time and would be content with meager pickings. They rooted and scrabbled patiently among the blood-spattered wreckage, and came away with a modest haul of metal pieces and wire . . . but Rivas came across a pelican, miraculously unbroken.

And so for a few minutes the nineteen-year-old Rivas forgot the ruin around him and treated the sprawled corpses to a few of the old melodies he'd learned from his father; and the calculatedly uneven rhythms that he eventually evolved into gunning startled the carrion birds overhead and made them circle a little higher.

The other members of his band somehow didn't guess that he'd owned and played one before, and assumed that his modest proficiency was a miracle. Rivas had let them think it, and that evening when they'd returned to the nest he had set about writing new, pious lyrics to accompany the handful of tunes he knew how to play.

A month or so later a circuit-riding jaybush had passed through to administer the communion, and Rivas had self-lessly offered to forego the joy of receiving the sacrament in order that the event might be graced with music. The jaybush had had no particular objection, and proceeded with the ceremony while Rivas sawed and plucked his way through Blue Moon, Can't Always Get What You Want, and other traditional favorites—and he played them at a fairly traditional, tempo—but something happened when he wearied of that sort of thing and began to do an emphatically gunned rendition of Peter and the Wolf.

At the first bouncing notes the jaybush had paused, and as the tune continued the man's eyes had unfocused and his outstretched hand had fallen limp to his side. Rivas had of course noticed it, though he didn't suspect that his music was the cause, and glancing around he saw that all the far-gones had ceased their usual speaking-in-tongues background rumble and were also inert. The jaybush snapped out of it and resumed working his way down the line as soon as the tune came to an end, and the far-gones started up their eerily synchronized jabbering again, and young Rivas thoughtfully put his instrument away for the evening.

In the next couple of weeks he'd managed to prove to himself that that tune, when rendered at a gunning tempo, did reduce the very deteriorated communicants from near to total unconsciousness, and when the next circuit-riding jaybush passed through, Rivas found an opportunity to verify the effect with him, too.

From then on it had been his secret last-ditch defense against the sacrament, and in later years, after his stay in Venice and his eventual return to Ellay, it became the trade secret that made him the best redeemer in the business.

But, he reminded himself worriedly as he sat now in the lightless little room, now they're down on music. Is that just for the sake of deprivation, or are they onto my trick?

After a long time in the dark he heard footsteps in the corridor and saw a wavering line of yellow light appear and brighten under the door, and then the bolt rattled and snapped back and the door was pulled open. The jaybush stood in the doorway with a flaring torch in his left hand, looking like some Old Testament prophet with his robe and wild white beard, and for a few seconds he just stood there– presumably staring at Rivas, though his face was in shadow down to his prominent cheekbones and it was hard to be sure. Rivas took the opportunity to glance around the room. Some stringy webs in the corners implied big spiders, but his chair was the only piece of furniture.

«A great privilege is yours,» the jaybush grated.

«Yes, sir,» said Rivas, trying to sound eager. «I mean, father. Or whatever. I'm just glad you all think I'm worthy of it.»

The white-robed figure stepped into the room and, reaching out to the left, fitted the butt of the torch into an old can that had been nailed to the wall. Now the long right arm lifted, with the pointer finger extended like the stinger of some oversized insect.

Rivas puckered his lips and began whistling Peter and the Wolf.

The arm remained up, the feet kept moving and the finger stayed pointing at him.

He whistled a few more notes, more shrilly, and then kicked the chair over backward and rolled to his feet behind it, not even caring if he roused some spiders.

Another robed figure came into view behind the jaybush and laid a restraining hand on the old man's shoulder. The jaybush stepped back, turned and left the room. Rivas heard his steps receding away up the corridor as the by now familiar shepherd entered the room, smiling and holding a pistol trained at Rivas's stomach.

Though frightened, Rivas was a little surprised that the man would use so awkward and unreliable a weapon– antique pistols refitted to shoot spring-propelled poison darts were a trendy item among the high society ladies in the city, but the darts frequently got fouled up in the barrel and at the best of times had nearly no range nor accuracy. Rivas tensed, and calculated how he would jump.