Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

The girls were getting restless by the time Lollypop parked the wagon in a garagelike structure with a roof high enough to let the mast in, and Rivas was trying to hear their voices, for he was sure he'd recognize Uri's, even after thirteen years. During the long afternoon he'd considered and reluctantly dismissed the idea of asking to see the captives, even on the pretext of suffering a sudden fit of lust; a genuine Blood dealer would know better than to ask, and suspicion seemed easily kindled in his two traveling companions. The voices fell to muttering when the wagon stopped, though, so Rivas hopped down and looked around the big echoing chamber.

Square sunken areas with truncated metal pillars in them seemed to confirm his guess that this had once been some sort of garage, but there were indications too that it had seen other uses not quite as long ago. Several cots and stretchers, their fabric spiderweb-frail after all the desiccating years, were tumbled in the corners, and when Rivas crouched down on the littered floor, hoping to find a weapon, he picked up a tiny squat bottle with a rubber diaphragm instead of a lid. The diaphragm broke to dry bits when he touched it, and whatever fluid the bottle had once contained was long gone.

The unoiled-axle cries of homeward-bound parrots were ringing in the sky faintly—though very loud when, every now and then, a half dozen of the busily flapping green and orange birds would pass over the street in front of the garage—and the shadows were lengthening and the light outside was turning apricot when Nigel scuffed away with a roll of twine and a bag full of old jewelry and aluminum cans to set up some intruder alarms.

«Do you generally sleep in the wagon?» Rivas asked Lollypop.

«Yeah,» said the old man as he tossed some cloth bags to the pavement and then jumped down from the driver's bench. «The girls inside the cabin, Nigel and me on deck.» He sat down and opened the bags and began pulling out heavy waxed-paper packages. «Hope you like pork,» he said. «Oh,» he added, looking up, «and hitchhikers sleep off the wagon.»

«Makes sense,» said Rivas, who'd hoped for that answer. «I think while there's still some light I'll check for snakes and scorpions.»

«Probably a good idea,» the old man allowed.

Rivas wandered deeper into the building, looking around again for something that could serve as a reliable weapon. The inland detour had been a bit of luck for him, but he knew this was about as far east as his companions would be going—from here they'd begin to bear back west, toward the bay and away from Irvine. He'd have to find out tonight if Uri was in the wagon, for if she wasn't, he'd have to get moving south.

Against one wall an ancient engine block and an equally ancient bed frame seemed to have formed the seed of a particularly convoluted litter pile, and he walked over to it and noisily wrenched some things away: an old chair, a teevee box, the hood of a car, a refrigerator shell so rust-eaten that he could spin it away one-handed . . . .

He was exposing a sign stencil-painted on the bricks of the wall—he could already see the word "AVAILABLE"—so he pulled over a set of metal shelves, making a hellish clatter and sending a million little glass rectangles tinkling out across the concrete floor. He could read the sign now.

CD GUARANTEED SAFE FOOD

AVAILABLE HERE

There was still chalk dust in the pits in the brick surfaces over the stenciled line, but the only legible notation in that spot seemed to be the last applied, and it was scratched in as if with the point of a knife:

nevermore

Rivas looked over his shoulder at Lollypop, who had gathered wood for a fire and was laying pieces of pork out onto a metal grate. The old graffitist spoke too soon, he thought.

At last he found something that looked possible—it was a whippy length of flat aluminum with a heavy, rusted bolt at one end, and he slipped it up his sleeve so that the bolt was nestled in his armpit and the end of the strip was just concealed by his cuff. And, just as carefully, he was rehearsing in his head a word he didn't know the meaning of, but which he had heard many times: sevatividam, pronounced gutterally with the tongue against the edges of the teeth on the t and d .

«I guess there's nothing gonna bite me,» he said, ambling back toward the wagon in the wide doorway. He noticed that his hands were visibly shaking, so he added, «You guys got any liquor?»

«Sure, a fifth of Currency up under the driver's bench,» said Lollypop. «A cup, too. Don't take more'n one cupful.»

Rivas opened his mouth to voice the response that had become automatic with him over the years, but then he just nodded. «Okay.» He climbed up to the bench, and as he reached under it for the bottle and cup he risked whispering, « Uri ?» hoarsely at the floor. There was no reply, and he filled the cup, re-corked and replaced the bottle, and then managed to climb back down without spilling a drop or banging his thumb.

The old man had got the fire going and Rivas sat down on the concrete floor near it and with some trepidation took his first sip of Currency Barrows since the night thirteen years ago when he'd done his imitation of a barking dog.

He was a little disappointed that it didn't bring back any memories. It was just a mouthful of hard liquor, a bit perfumy and biting, without the clean grain taste of whiskey. Oh well, he told himself; better than gin. He relaxed and, having given up on feeling dramatic about it, set about enjoying it simply for its alcohol content.

«How is it?» Lollypop enquired.

«Root of all evil,» said Rivas with a satisfied smile. Wouldn't Mojo be surprised, he thought, to see me knocking this stuff back.

And what, he forced himself to wonder, is Mojo doing right at this moment, do you suppose? Drawing infrequent beers and making frequent apologies for the absence of the legendary Venetian pelicanist? Or hopping and sweating to fill the drink orders of the huge crowd attracted by some new performer? No, Steve couldn't have got someone else yet.

Rivas rolled another sip of the brandy around on his tongue—he was beginning to get used to it—and wondered if he'd ever stand on the stage at Spink's again. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the place—the high ceilinged room with the bar on the far side and the doors to the left, the lamps, the tables, the strings of dusty paper dolls way

up there higher even than the chandeliers . . . . He wished

now that he'd taken the time to really look at those strings of little figures holding hands and touching toes. He'd always been curious about them, even before he'd learned that they were the last work of some genius sculptor—Noah Almondine, Rivas seemed to remember his name was– who lost his mind and killed himself in the last year of the Sixth Ace. Rivas had never been able to keep straight the names of all the genius painters and poets and doctors and engineers—and even politicians, for the Sixth Ace was supposed to have been the best Ellay had had since Sandoval himself—who crowded into prominence when Rivas was about seventeen, and then all wound up leaving by the Dogtown gate at about the same time the Sixth Ace was assassinated. Though there weren't ever any musicians in that crowd, Rivas thought, and thanks be to Jaybush for the lack of competition.

All too soon the distant rattling and clanging was replaced by the scuff of Nigel's returning footsteps. Rivas put down the cup and got up into a crouch, his heart pounding, and frowned dubiously at the pork to explain the move.

Nigel walked into view from around the corner.

«How long have you guys been carrying this pork around?» Rivas asked, trying not to talk too fast or too shrilly. «It looks a little old to me, yes man, little bit old. Don't need, what, worms, do we, hey? Why, I knew a guy ate some old pork one time, and listen, worms woulda been a blessing to him; he'd 'a' begged you for 'em, compared to what he got. He came down with—»