The Troupe (43 page)

“I think I know this place,” said Franny softly. “It’s changed, but… but I almost feel I’ve been here before.”

The herald led them straight to the back of the parlor, which ended in an elevated dais, and seated upon the dais steps were many
tall, thin women in elegant dresses. George knew little of women’s fashion, but he knew enough to recognize the slender, sculpted hats, silhouette dresses, and pouter-pigeon cuts and know he was seeing the very element of
haute couture
. And yet these elegant ladies sat sprawled on the floor as if they were bored children.

As the herald led them past, the ladies turned their masked faces to Silenus.

“He’s here,” whispered a voice.

“Is that… no. No, it couldn’t…”

“How could he come here? Doesn’t he know…”

“… Mistake? Maybe imagining it…”

“… Foolish thing to do, either way…”

But Silenus ignored them, his nose high in the air.

At the top of the dais was yet another ring of overstuffed lounge chairs, each occupied by a lethargic-looking woman in a stunning dress. Yet one chair, the chair at the very end, was much larger than the others, and seated there was the tallest woman yet, dressed in resplendent white. Her mask was far more beautiful than all the others, and yet its maker had painted tears flowing from the corners of the eyes. George wondered if this was disingenuous: the way the lady sat did not seem sad at all, but terribly proud.

The herald bowed low before the circle of chairs. “My lady,” he said, “I bring you Heironomo Silenus, who has requested entry into this court for a moment of your time.”

The tall woman’s masked face stayed riveted on his father. “Yes,” she said, her voice soft and muffled like all the others. “I can see that.”

There was the sound of much shuffling around them. George looked back and saw the dais was now surrounded by hundreds of men and women in elegant suits and dresses, all of whom watched them with vacant, masked eyes.

“I almost fear to ask,” said the lady, “why on Earth you should ever desire to enter my house again, Silenus.”

“And I almost fear to answer, my lady,” said Silenus. He bowed as well.

“I would think that one visit from you would be enough,” she said. “Twice is bordering on rudeness. But three times? This is wholly unprecedented.”

At that Stanley looked at Silenus, surprised, and George could tell he had not known this was Silenus’s third visit.

Silenus stood back up. “Yet how could I keep myself away? Once you have known the joys and beauties of the Founding, one can only—”

“Oh, please,” said the lady. Though her mask muffled her words, it did nothing to diminish the contempt behind them. “Spare me your flatteries. I have been their recipient far too often. I can only imagine three reasons behind your return. One, you finally feel some hint of regret for your atrocities, and have returned here for atonement. Or two, you are suicidal, and wish to expire in the most public and festive way possible.
That
would amuse me. Or three,” she said, now audibly gritting her teeth, “you
want
something of me. I would think you a fool if the third was indeed your motivation, were I not so familiar with your skulduggery.”

Silenus was quiet. “You do me wrong, my lady.”

She sat forward. “Do I?”

“In the first, you assume I have no regret for what happened,” he said. “That is unjust. I feel regret. Regrets make up the whole of my heart. Regrets for many things, for many peoples. And one of the sharpest, most painful regrets I carry is for the loss of your mother.”

The lady slowly cocked her head. Her long neck and blank face made it a queerly inhuman gesture. “I have heard so very many of your words, player. They have such a curious ability to bend and twist around the anvil of your tongue, and take on many new meanings. I do not think regret means the same to you as it does to me.”

“Ofelia,” said Silenus. “Please, do not be so bitter.”

The lady trembled a little. “I could flay you alive,” she said. “Or
feed you your own innards while you still lived. Or pluck the bones from your body and make your skin dance for my amusement. I could strike the ears and hands and feet and organs of generation from your body, and pluck out your tongue, and send you back out into the world without anything but one eye, one
single
eye, so you could see the horror you, this ruined wreck of a person, would then inspire in others. I could do all of these things, and each would be justified in the face of what you have done.”

“No,” said Silenus calmly. “They would not.”

She cocked her head further. “No?”

“What your mother did, she did of her own accord,” said Silenus. “I made a proposition, and she agreed to it. What happened when we attempted to complete it was tragic, but it was not the intent of our agreement. She was well aware of the risks. And when she was gone, my bargain still needed to be fulfilled. I have done nothing wrong. Indeed, to harm me would be the unjustified act.”

“She agreed to your bargain, because… because…” But whatever the cause, the lady could not bring herself to speak of it. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “What is it you want?”

“Merely to present a gift,” said Silenus, and he reached into his satchel and produced the whisky they’d gotten from Finn MacCog’s grave.

The liquor still retained its glow. It was easily the most beautiful thing in this dark, cavernous room. All of the ladies nearby sat up, and a gasp ran through the crowd at the base of the dais.

“Is that…” said one of the ladies-in-waiting.

“It is the water of life,” said Silenus. “I have violated many sanctities to procure this for you, my lady. I wish it to be a gift of my goodwill, and inspire the same in you.”

Every porcelain face was fixed on the bottle. The troupe glanced around uncomfortably, except for Silenus, who looked only at the lady.

Then he dropped the bottle back into his satchel, concealing its
glow. The host all sighed in dismay. “But, if you hold no goodwill for me, then I can see that such a gesture would be futile,” he said. “In which case my companions and I will leave, and give you peace.” He bowed again, and turned to depart.

“Wait,” said the lady.

He stopped, and slowly turned back.

“There are only three known bottles of
uisce beatha
left in the world,” said the lady quietly. “How did you… Where did you…”

George noted this was not the same total his father had quoted earlier. He could tell this surprised and irked Silenus, but regardless Silenus said, “It doesn’t matter where I got it. The only thing that matters is how distressing it is to hear my gift could be turned down in such a fashion.”

“I… would not refuse such a gift. It would be… rude.” George could tell she was thinking very quickly. “What would you wish in exchange?”

“What would I wish for?” Silenus asked. He appeared offended by the question. “For your free friendship. But, if you are unwilling to give that, I would accept a promise.”

“A promise?”

“Yes. If, say, you promised that you would never wish me harm as a reprisal for what happened to your mother, that would please me very much.”

All the fairies in the court turned their gaze from Silenus’s satchel to the lady. She thought for several minutes longer, but her eventual answer did not surprise George: “Fine,” she said.

“Of course, I do also need your aid in one further issue,” said Silenus. “It is very small, a triviality, I promise you. I would be much more willing to part with this worthy gift if I could depend on your help in that matter.”

“Damn you,” said the lady. “If you didn’t have that bottle…”

“If I didn’t,” said Silenus. “But I do. It is a very slight task, nothing of importance. Would you willingly help me?”

She sighed. “All right. I can see that you have bested me. I would, willingly.”

“Excellent,” said Silenus. He approached, knelt before her, and held the bottle out, head bowed. The lady took it, the glow rendering her white figure positively radiant, and she gazed at it lovingly. She held the bottle close and smelled its cork and shivered.

“It’s not been tasted in revelry since the first days,” she said softly. “When my mother’s court was strong and all the world was young and beautiful, we drank this once a year on the solstice, and watched the setting sun. She held my hand, as if I were a little girl.” She stowed the bottle away within the folds of her white dress. “But those are gone days, now.” She turned back to Silenus. “Would you be so crude as to jump into planning for your little task now?”

“Well… I suppose I don’t have to,” he said. “It was my intention for my performers and me to now give you the one other truly valuable gift we possess—”

“Entertainment,” said the lady flatly. “Yes, I’ve heard it all before. Please skip the theatrics. You practically breathe them out with every word.” She stood up. She was a marvelously tall creature, and as she moved over to them George was reminded of a tall pine, decked with snow. She looked down on George and Colette. “But who are these two darling angels you have at your side? I’ve not seen them before.”

“Them?” said Silenus. “They are assistants, performers. No one of note.”

“No one of note?” said the lady. “They seem so young, so fresh. The years lie so lightly upon the both of them. I can smell it. How did an old fiend like you get your hands on them?”

“They came freely,” Silenus said.

“Or they think they did,” she said. She knelt down before them and laid a hand on either shoulder. She was heavily perfumed, but no scent could mask the smell of decay that billowed up from her dress. This close George could see hints of skin behind the mask, and
they were gray and scarred and in some places a vivid, glistening red. “Here, my darlings. Would you like to see my house with me? I think it should hold many wonders to creatures as young as you. It would be a kindness to me if you came.”

George and Colette glanced at one another and looked to Silenus. George could tell that to refuse such an offer would be rude by the standards of the court, and his father was trying to figure a way out of it. But he gave up, and nodded slightly.

“Sure,” said George. Then he quickly added, “My lady.”

“Excellent,” she said. She stood up and extended a hand to each of them. With another nervous glance, they each took one. Through her gloves her fingers felt very thin and very, very hard, as if they were made of stone. “You may speak to my seneschal concerning our agreement,” she said to his father. A smaller fairy dressed in a gray sack coat and checked trousers stepped forward. “He will figure out how it should be best fulfilled. Then you may prepare for your performance, if you wish.”

Hand in hand, she began to lead George and Colette down the dais. Two of her ladies-in-waiting followed while Silenus, Stanley, and Franny looked helplessly on. George saw his father open his mouth to speak, but he reconsidered, and stayed silent.

The rest of the lady’s house was just as unsettling as the parlor. It seemed to be nothing but dark hallways and shadowed eaves, and you always had the feeling that there were figures moving in the corner of your vision. And that sound of fluttering wings never left George. It was as if the dark eaves were filled with rooks that were constantly flailing to stay on their perches.

Ofelia was eager to show them her collections of artwork, and it was soon apparent that the hall of paintings was but a fraction of her horde: they saw rooms filled with ornate suits of armor, sculptures from even before the Classical age, and paintings of all kinds. Every once in a while there was a mirror, and George saw his father was right: mirrors here did not reflect the onlooker, but instead showed endless gray halls. The lady seemed slightly embarrassed by these, and hurried to draw their attention elsewhere. Yet there were a curious number of gaps in her collection, and eventually Colette asked about them.

“Oh, sometimes we get bored of certain pieces,” Ofelia said. “In which case we simply burn them, and throw the ashes out.”

“Burn them?” said George, shocked. “Why not just give them away?”

“Give them away?” said the lady. “Why, I could never bear to see them in another’s possession. No, no. I’d much rather have them burned.”

But what the lady was mostly interested in was George and Colette themselves. She marveled at their youth (“I had forgotten that seventeen could even be an age!”) and asked them all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Had they ever bitten someone in the throes of ecstasy, hard enough to draw blood? Had they ever killed a lover? Had they ever taken love by force, and if so, how? When the answers to these questions were all negative, she shook her head, amazed. “Such young little things,” she said. “So young.”

They continued forward through her endless halls and rooms. George and Colette both grew bored and hungry, but the lady and her entourage never seemed to tire. Yet as they walked down one old, creaking hallway George caught a whiff of something very appealing. The scent made him think of roasted meats with honey marinades and rosemary. He lagged behind and tracked the scent to an open door on the side of the hall, and slowly pushed it open.

Inside was a long, thin feasting table, with hundreds of place settings. Yet the feast appeared to have happened hours ago, and had yet to be cleaned up: filthy bowls and tankards and many, many platters covered the surface of the table. But it was the bones that George noticed the most. They lay in heaps on the platters, some retaining their skeletal forms, others mere drumsticks and ribs. And some were very curious bones, with very large, three-toed feet, and others (could they be skulls?) featuring many long horns.

“Ah!” said a voice over his ear. “I see they still haven’t taken care of the dinner.”

He jumped and saw Ofelia standing over him, looking into the room. Colette and the ladies-in-waiting stood beyond.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” he said. “I… I didn’t meant to pry. It just smelled so…”

“Don’t apologize, my dear,” she said. “You can’t be blamed. Our
feasts are the most alluring sort in the world. A sniff of their many aromas is enough to drive any man mad. After all, we use only the most sumptuous preparations, and only the rarest of ingredients.”