Hope and Red (31 page)

“What sort of disguise did you have in mind?”

“If we're going uptown, it should be a lacy disguise.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Do I have to paint myself orange?”

“They don't all do that. But many wear silly hats and big poufy dresses.”

“Wonderful,” she said without enthusiasm. “So where do we get this disguise?”

“Need you even ask?” He pressed his hand to his chest, affecting a hurt tone.

Her eyes narrowed. “You plan to steal it.”

“Naturally. Even if we did have money, it wouldn't be near enough for a whole lacy getup. Those cost more than you or I see in a year. We just have to find a lacy woman about your size.”

He began to look for a victim as they continued walking toward the bay. The street ended at the edge of a cliff. Far below, the moon glinted off the dark water. The reflection was blotted out here and there by the dark shapes of small leisure boats owned by lacies. He could faintly hear their wooden creaks as they moved with the water. Further up the coast, he caught the sound of classical music. Not earthy street musicians, but a proper twinkling lacy orchestra. He looked toward the sound and could just make out the source: a large building right on the edge of the cliff overlooking the bay.

He smiled wolfishly. “Bayview Gallery. Come on. I have a sudden desire to reconnect with my childhood.”

Bayview Gallery was the most prestigious art gallery in Silverback, which made it the most prestigious gallery in New Laven and possibly the entire empire. It was four stories of gratuitous architecture. Arches, flying buttresses, domed balconies, and rotundas, just to name the more obvious. As he and Hope approached, its massive windows glowed like giant lanterns. It would have been enough to light up the entire block on its own. But of course there were street lamps, twice as many as any other block, and guttering torches as well, just for the aesthetics.

“I don't understand why you'd want to rob someone at your own mother's show,” said Hope.

“Mom hated this place, like any proper artist in Silverback does. She said you knew your art was no longer relevant when they hung it in Bayview.”

“Even if that's true, the people inside are there because they admire your mother's art. That has to count for something.”

“Why? Because they buy and sell her work for more money than she ever saw during her life? Someone's getting rich off the passion that killed her. If that counts for something, it's a place in one of the wetter hells.”

Hope said nothing more as they approached the gallery, and Red was glad. He needed to calm down. Quiet his mind so he could do this properly. Yes, rolling a lacy at his mom's gallery show had a certain self-indulgent flourish to it. But he was still a professional.

The place was too brightly lit to sneak into, and looking like they did, they'd get turned away by the two thick-shouldered boots guarding the front door.

Fortunately, there was brisk traffic between the small larder building and the gallery, as lacy servants hauled food and drink in a continuous stream for the insatiable rich. Red and Hope worked their way around to the larder and grabbed a cask of ale between them, then fell behind a harried, silver-haired servant with a smoked ham under one arm and a cheese wheel under the other. They followed him across an open stretch of grass to the servants' entrance on the side of the gallery. The entrance led straight to the kitchen, where Hope and Red were greeted by a vast banquet of food. Meat and cheese, fish and fruit, cut into tiny pieces and artfully arranged on huge silver platters. Even though he'd already eaten, Red stared at it all hungrily.

“Red, don't,” said Hope. “You'll draw more attention.”

“More?” Red glanced around. Servants were staring at them and whispering. Of course, because everyone around them was in a servant uniform. “Right. Time to go.”

Before anyone could stop them, they took the nearest door. It led out into a long hallway with arched ceilings. The floors were white marble, the walls had gilded wallpaper, and burgundy velvet drapes hung from the windows. It was empty of people and art, but the music sounded in full swing upstairs. Red guessed most of the “art patrons” were up there right now. He hoped there were at least a few people down on this level looking at the actual art. So he could steal their clothes, of course.

He pressed forward. “Come on, the main gallery must be this way.”

“You do have some kind of plan, right?” asked Hope as she walked beside him. She kept glancing around, looking even more uncomfortable than when he'd first taken her to Gunpowder Hall. Red wondered if she'd ever seen anything as luxurious as this place. Probably not. Just when she'd adjusted to the Circle, he'd dragged her somewhere even more alien. He had to admit, he took a certain perverse delight in that.

“Pfft, plans are for amateurs.” He kept his tone light and unconcerned.

“Actually,” she said, “I'm fairly certain they're the mark of a professional.”

They crossed into a large room where two hallways intersected. Above them hung a massive crystal chandelier. “How is it lit?” asked Hope, her eyes wide with wonder.

“Gas piped in through the walls.”

She shook her head. “Amazing.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Red scanned the other hallways and found one of them had people. Now he needed to find a woman about Hope's size wearing a hat. He wasn't sure yet how he'd get her clothes, but he'd figure that part out later. Depending on her character, anything from guile to a blunt instrument might work.

As they walked past lacies staring at his mother's paintings, he couldn't help listening in on their comments.

“So striking!”

“Ethereal, wouldn't you say?”

“Captivating! I can't turn away.”

“This one's a bit lurid, don't you think?”

It set his teeth on edge. He didn't like these lacies staring at his mother's work like they had some right or claim to it. He hurried past them, fighting to stay focused and search for a thin woman with a hat. It was dawning on him that this whole thing was a terrible mistake. He shouldn't have come anywhere near this gallery. But it was too late now.

That's when he saw the painting. He hadn't meant to. In fact, he'd been doing his best to avoid looking at any of them, knowing their memories might throw off what little calm he was still clinging to. But his eyes were drawn helplessly to one particular canvas at the end of the hall. He stumbled over to it almost against his will. He stood there and stared, his fists clenched at his sides.

“Red?” Hope appeared beside him. He was dimly aware she was looking back and forth between him and the painting. “Are you okay?”

No, he was definitely not okay. He was sinking into a maelstrom of images he hadn't called to mind in years. His mother, beautiful, with her gray eyes and curly black hair. She had a way of smirking, quietly, mischievously, that always made you think she knew something you didn't. He had tried all his life to emulate that smirk and hadn't yet truly succeeded.

He had adored her. Even later, when she couldn't stop her hands from shaking, when she couldn't even hold a brush. It was only at the end that things got hard. When her descriptions stopped making sense. She would grow frustrated and curse at him, tell him he was stupid and clumsy. He would cry, which would only make her angrier. But then his father would swoop in, his patient eyes and gentle smile soothing them both as he wrapped his long, strong arms around them, bringing them into a big family hug. Then everything would be okay again.

Until there came a time his father wasn't there to swoop in. Red knew he was out whoring to make money to buy those new paintings that nobody wanted. Red wasn't supposed to tell his mother, because it would make her sad. But without his father there to soothe them, her frustration and his hurt went unchecked until one night, after she had called him weak and talentless and the worst thing that ever happened to her, he couldn't hold it in any longer. He
wanted
her to be sad, to hurt like he did. So he told her what his father was doing. Without a word, she had lain down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Red stood there, horrified by what he'd said, so much anguished energy boiling inside him. He hadn't known what else to do with it, so he'd painted. The first and only painting that was all his own.

And that was the painting he stared at now.

“Fascinating piece, wouldn't you say?” asked a voice behind him. Older. Male. A lacy, by the sound and polish. “Her final work before she died. It was a departure for her. Different from everything that came before it. One wonders if it was a sign of things to come? If she had lived, of course. Some people theorize it was a self-portrait of sorts. Painting herself as she imagined herself to look as she lay dying.”

Red had not turned his gaze from the painting. In swirls of muted browns and grays, with small streaks of beige, his mother lay on the couch, one arm hanging off the edge, a corkscrew lock of black hair falling across her face, gaunt but peaceful. Peaceful as Red had wanted her to be. As if in painting that, it would become true.

Red's voice was thick as he said, “She didn't paint this one. I did.”

“What's this you say?” asked the man, his tone offended.

Red turned to the man, not trying to hide the tears that coursed down his cheeks. The man's distrustful scowl evaporated when he saw Red's face. He ran his hands through his thin gray hair, then pressed them to his plump lips. “Those eyes!” he whispered. “Those red eyes! You…you're the lost son, Rixidenteron.”

“Red, we should go,” said Hope quietly, her hand on his arm protectively.

“No, please don't!” The man reached his hand out to them. “I'll do anything, only let me talk to you a moment.”

Even openly weeping, his heart torn and his mind reeling, the part of Red that had kept him alive all these years recognized that tone of desperation. It was the sound of opportunity.

“Why?” Red made a show of narrowing his eyes suspiciously, as if he was afraid of this well-dressed lacy wrink. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Your mother, of course.” His hands trembled, and his brow was beaded with sweat. “My name is Thoriston Baggelworthy. Perhaps she spoke of me?”

Red shook his head.

“Well, I
knew
her long ago, when we were children. We used to play ropes and sticks, she and I. I was terribly smitten with her, of course. But she was more interested in art than courtship. When she left Hollow Falls, I was despondent. I thought I'd never get over it.” He gave a strange chuckle. “And perhaps I never did. After all, this”—he gestured around them—“is all mine.”

“What do you mean, all yours?” asked Red. He didn't like the man's possessive tone. And he didn't like that the few times he had come back to Silverback, he was inevitably sucked into the world of Rixidenteron and its memories. Probably the best thing about Paradise Circle was that nobody gave a cup of piss about famous artists.

“The collection,” said Thoriston. “Every single painting she ever made is mine. I have hunted all over New Laven and brought them together at last. I will make your mother the most famous painter in the world! You'll see!”

Red wanted to tell him that fame had never mattered to his mother. He didn't know if that was true, but he didn't like how the man acted as though he was somehow entitled to his mother and her work. The survivalist part of him cautioned against that, though. Instead he asked, “What was it you wanted to know about her?”

“Everything! I hope to write a biography of her life, you see. And it would be invaluable to my work and to her legacy if you could tell me as much as you remember about your early life with her.”

“We've got things to do, and we're in a hurry,” said Red, turning away. “Besides, it would be too painful for me to talk about it.”

“Wait, I beg you!” Thoriston wrung his hands. “I know I'm asking a lot for you to relive such troubling times. If there is any way I can repay you, name it, and if it is within my power, I will do it.”

Red pretended to consider it a moment. “We need clothes. Proper clothes, like you're wearing.”

“Clothes?” He looked utterly baffled. Like they grew on trees and were there for the taking by anyone at any time.

“For both of us,” continued Red. “And transportation across the bay to Keystown.”

Thoriston gave him a shrewd look. “Oh, I see now. You're making your way to Hollow Falls to be reunited with your mother's family, and you don't want to present yourself in these old rags.”

“You
are
sharp,” said Red smoothly. “I didn't expect you to work that out so quickly.”

“Ah, but do you know where to go once you get there?” asked Thoriston, looking very pleased with himself.

Red put on a sheepish expression. “Not exactly…”

“Then I can give you even more than you ask for! I know your grandfather's address. I can give you directions right to his door.”

Directions to his grandfather's door was the last thing he wanted. But he forced himself to smile. “That would be a great help.”

“Wonderful! Won't he be pleased to finally meet you!” Thoriston clapped his hands together in an oddly childish expression of glee.

“Undoubtedly,” Hope murmured.

“Now, let's see…” Thoriston scratched his smooth, round chin. “My wife and I are staying next door at the Hotel Sunset for the duration of the gallery exhibition period. It may be a bit loose around the waist, but I think you can fit into something of mine.” He frowned at Hope. “You might be more of a challenge, my dear. You're far too thin to wear my wife's dresses. They'd fall right off that boyish frame.”

Red felt Hope tense up. He nudged her with his elbow, and she nodded curtly. “As you say, sir.”