Winterlong (31 page)

“He’s awake! Where’s Dr. Silverthorn?” wondered a little girl of five or six. She had painted her cheeks with rouge and eye-powder and stuck her ratty hair with feathers. She turned to face a boy taller and older than the rest, maybe thirteen. “Oleander?”

I repeated, “Where is my familiar?—the white jackal.”

The oldest boy pushed the girl out of his way. Great open sores erupted everywhere on his arms and face. The rest of him was hidden by some dead Paphian’s costume, all sequined sighs and tears. “Your dog brought us here,” he said. “But he ran away. We didn’t hurt him, I swear.” He smiled, twitching at the sleeves of his costume so that sequins rained to the floor. “I’m Oleander.”

“And I’m Bellanca,” piped the little girl as she slipped beside him. Beneath a shift of torn indigo linen her swollen stomach bulged. What remained of her blond hair fell free of its confining ribbons, wispy feathers about sunken cheeks. She smiled. Then, to my horror, she raised three fingers to her blackened mouth. “Greetings, cousin,” she lisped sweetly.

My heart sank: more Paphian children.

“I thought that was your dog,” said another child smugly. I turned to recognize one of the lazars I had met by the Rocreek, a plain boy with intelligent eyes burning in a scarred face. He would have been a Curator. “A boy took him away—”

“A boy?” I repeated stupidly.

He nodded. “Like you—” By this I could only imagine he meant another Paphian. He continued respectfully,

“He wore flowers in his hair and said you awaited us here. Are you ready to go now?”

I stared at them dully, counting five. The boy Oleander. A girl his age, her scalp smooth and bald as a stone, who opened and shut her mouth constantly, as though gasping for air. The child Bellanca and another small girl who drooled and said nothing, and the boy I had met earlier with Pearl’s troupe by the Rocreek.

“I’m Martin,” he announced shrilly, poking at his thin chest. “She’s Octavia,” pointing at the silent girl.

I said nothing, imagined killing them, either with my sagittal or my hands. But I felt no desire to kill them, or do anything to save myself; Because hadn’t I led them here, hadn’t I betrayed my people to them? How many of those at the niasque had been murdered or captured by lazars? And Ketura among them, and Fancy too perhaps—

“Wait,” I said, beckoning Martin. “I’ll go with you; but tell me, was there a woman, or a little girl, did you see a little girl—”

“Lots,” Martin said helpfully. “I saw some, they took some—”

Oleander frowned. The sequined rags made him look foolish, and the others seemed to pay him little attention, but he obviously felt that he must act the leader. “Shut up, Martin,” he ordered. He tapped a long-nosed gun tied about his waist with a leather thong. He turned to me, drawing himself up and scratching at an oozing cut on his thigh. “You are Raphael Miramar? The one they call the Gaping One?”

I hadn’t the strength to argue. “Yes.”

“Well, you’re to come with us. Tast—The Consolation of the Dead says so. Please.” His voice cracked. He coughed, glancing to see if the others had noticed. The silent drooling Octavia had wandered to the edge of the chamber and glanced down at the Great Hall. Bellanca and Martin were dabbling with the ruined cosmetics. The remaining older girl yawned, her slack mouth working as though she would say something to me, but no words came. Before I could move away she shuffled toward me, hands reaching for my hair.

“Get away!” I scrambled backward, terrified of her scabbed hands, the slack curl of her mouth. But she did not listen, only continued to gape like a dying fish as she tried to touch me. I cried out and swiped at her. A flash of violet as I struck her arm. She gazed at me curiously, her fingers brushing against my hair.

“Pretty,” she said thickly. She sank to her knees. As the other children watched she died, her face and hands erupting with crimson petals.

Oleander stared at the girl, then turned to me. “What did you do to her? To do that? The colors.” The others lifted their heads for my answer. Bellanca stuck her thumb in her mouth and gazed at me with wide eyes.

I stammered, “She was—I didn’t want her to touch me!”

“She was looking at your hair,” explained Martin. “She lost all her hair, she was just looking at your hair—”

“Shut up!” I whirled to raise my fist at them so that they could see the sagittal glowing there. “Take her—get it out of here!” I kicked at the girl’s corpse and stumbled away from it, shielding my eyes.

After a minute I heard Oleander command them, “Do it.” The smaller children scuffled for a little while, dragging their burden. The door wheezed open and shut. When they returned I stood panting in the center of the chamber, glaring at Oleander as he fingered his swivel nervously. He cleared his throat.

“You—we’re supposed to—you’re still to come with us.” He raised his eyes and smiled, looked more sober as I bared my teeth at him.

“And if I don’t?” I snarled, when from the chamber entrance rang the scholiast’s harsh voice.

“Flee, cousins. The House of High Brazil is beset by lazars. Flee, cousins. The House
—”

A crash. The scholiast fell silent. The door swung open to show a tall slender figure silhouetted against the pale light.

“Dr. Silverthorn!” Bellanca cried. She and Martin ran to greet him. Oleander bit his lip, drew the gun from his makeshift belt and pointed it at me. From across the room Octavia made a thick clucking sound and waved. Her fingers had rotted, flesh and bone, all the way to the second knuckle.

“Dr. Silverthorn,” began Oleander. He shifted the gun from one hand to the other. “It’s him. That boy. The one he told us about.”

The figure stepped into the light where I could see him for the first time. I gasped and looked away.

“I understand that the Consolation of the Dead wishes him to be returned alive, Oleander,” he said, disdain icing the words
Consolation of the Dead. A
thick voice—he had difficulty forming the words—but kindly and intelligent for all that. “Will you put that damned thing away and let me see him? And where is Angeline?”

Sheepishly Oleander tucked the gun back into his belt and stepped away. I heard the other children whispering as they surrounded the newcomer and plucked at his clothes.

“He killed her, Dr. Silverthorn. I saw it—”

“That one, the one he told us—”

How can they bear to touch him?
I thought as I tried to calm myself.

Because in that brief instant I had seen a horrible thing: a man of bones whose clothes flapped about him like gulls taking flight, with a nearly fleshless face drawn into the hideous grimace of a skull picked clean of skin and sinew.

I
STARED AT THE
floor, trying to keep my heart from racing. That awful face! I heard the scrape and rattle of his feet upon the floor, the crackle of his stiff clothes as he moved slowly among the remaining children.

“Dr. Silverthorn, can we go home now?”

“Dr. Silverthorn, did you see the party?”

“Dr. Silver—”

“Shh, children,” he hushed them. A rustle as he crossed the room. He finally stopped a few meters from me. I heard his breathing, a thick glottal sound as though he choked upon the air. Still, if the children did not fear him I could at least make a show of boldness. I turned to face him.

He stood there, a shrunken scarecrow of a man all in white, his long tunic stained with dirt and grass. White gloves covered his hands, a loose white scarf wrapped his throat. Only his face was not hidden: pink and white and gleaming as a piece of fresh meat, the veins and capillaries stretched like vines across the tendons and smooth solid bones of his skull. My eyes filled with tears.

“Ohh …” I cried. In spite of myself I was moved to pity at the mere sight of this stranger. “Why have they done this.to you?”

He shook his head very slowly, as though if he moved too quickly the tenuous strands that held him together might tear. “But don’t I know you?” he murmured as though he had not heard me. He stretched out one gloved hand to brush the tears from my cheeks. “Wendy Wanders?”

I shook my head. “No—I am Raphael Miramar.”

My tears stained the tips of his gloves. He drew his hand to his face and stared at the damp cloth, then turned his gaze back upon me. Once perhaps those brown eyes had been tender; perhaps even now they regarded me with pity or wonder. But with no flesh upon his brow, no lashes to droop across those swollen orbs he could only stare rigidly, a fine sheath of flesh flicking up and down when he blinked. “Raphael,” he said, shaking his head. “Yes, of course—the Aviator told me, the children spoke of you, they saw you by the river. …”

With a soft creak he swiveled his head to look behind him, to where the children waited. “Poor things, they are tired,” he murmured, then returned his attention to me. “But you are not Wendy?”

“No,” I said. I was torn between wanting to look away from him and wanting to stare in repelled fascination and pity. I fixed my gaze upon his hands. A clear liquid seeped from beneath the gloves and stained them as my tears had. “Who are you?”

He sighed, the sound unnaturally harsh as it hissed from his lipless mouth. “Three weeks ago I was Dr. Lawrence Silverthorn of the Human Engineering Laboratory. Three days from now I will be dead.” His clothes rustled as he shrugged and pulled from beneath his tunic a large black leather bag. He removed a narrow vial and began to rub a clear ointment on his face. “Antibiotic,” he explained, smearing it across the planes of his cheeks.

“We heard that Wendy was alive,” he said absently, as though once more taking up a long story. “A trader from the City said he had seen her performing with a wretched group of actors. We thought we might escape as she did, we thought we might find help here …”

He glanced up at me and laughed silently, mirthlessly. I hugged myself to keep from shaking at the sight; but I would not look away. “They kept some of them alive for a month while they tried to synthesize the bioprints,” he went on, clumsily replacing the cap on the vial of ointment. “After that they killed them. Their heads in vats while they pried their brains out. I hid Gligor and Anna in my room. At the end they ran out of anesthesia. All of your empath friends, Wendy, except for Anna and Gligor. All of them dead; all the children.”

His teeth clicked as he shook his head to indicate the lazars. “You were right to run away with that Aide. But you are not Wendy?” he asked again, confused. He glanced around the chamber. “Where is Angeline?”

“Dead, she’s dead, Dr. Silverthorn,” Bellanca cried. “He killed her. Can we go home?”

He started at the sound of her voice, then nodded. “Of course. Yes, of course, Bellanca. But lie down first, rest for a few minutes. All of you, rest.” He turned to me. “You did kill them, then: the albino boy and that other man. How?”

He stared as though he perceived me through a thick wall of glass. I held up my fist. The sagittal’s fierce radiance had faded to a faint lilac, almost gray. “This,” I said. “A sagittal. I did not mean to.” I bowed my head.

Dr. Silverthorn nodded. “A sagittal. I have seen them. They were prototype geneslaves developed during the Second Ascension, for—” His jaws moved as he turned his face toward mine, teeth bared in a horrible leer. “But you already know what they are for.”

He continued to stare at me for a long time. Finally he dipped his head to pore through the contents of his bag. I glimpsed the soft white globe of the top of his skull, blue-veined and shining dully. “Ah—here, boy.”

I moved to avoid the hand he reached toward me. He only stared with those cloudy eyes, continuing to stretch out a gloved palm holding a small round patch of blue cloth. “I am not contagious,” he said softly. “None of us are—but nobody here knows that, do they? They pick you off like little flies and you let them die, you let yourselves die. You ignorant fools.” There was no malice in his voice, not even a hint of it. All feeling might have been stripped from him as well as flesh and nerve.

“Here: this is a mild stimulant, it will make it easier for you to come with us.” I shuddered as he touched my neck but this time did not move away. He pressed the patch beneath my ear and drew back. “Now: look through this and find a vial with clear yellow capsules in it and give me one. Please.”

He handed me the bag and waited while I fumbled through its contents, strange bottles and instruments like swivels and flares, oddments similar to those I had seen Doctor Foster employ, but new and gleaming as though they had never been used. I found the bottle he wanted and handed him a single capsule.

“Thank you,” he said, swallowing it with difficulty. “It’s hard for me to get those out with the gloves. And I can’t use the others now: no skin left for them to adhere to. Soon not even these …”

After a moment or two his eyes seemed to glitter more brightly, and he flapped his hands. “Well! But I’ll feel better now.” He dropped the bottle into his bag and patted it closed. “Are you ready to come with us?”

My head had begun pounding, but not unpleasantly. I paused.

My tunic hung from me like a tattered standard. The sagittal was a cool weight about my wrist. Perhaps I might fight my way free of here. Perhaps I was strong enough to run, hide within the endless chambers of High Brazil, and after a day flee to the House Miramar. But then I recalled Whitlock’s face when the lazar Pearl had greeted me as Baal. Remembered the malicious eyes of the elder Balfour, and how the Saint-Alaban had cried aloud in fear when he saw me at the Butterfly Ball, and how even Ketura’s face had twisted in terror when she met my eyes.

There would be no going back for me now. The Hanged Boy had marked me as His own, and it was as it had always been in Doctor Foster’s tales. The old miser must go with the ghosts; the magicians must search for the beggar king; the metal boy find his human father in the belly of the mosasaur.

I would follow the Gaping One’s children to find Him again. Then I might be free.

I got my boots and pulled them on. Then I stared at Dr. Silverthorn defiantly.

“Where am I going?”

He grinned, baring his teeth. I heard his jaw snap as he replied, “Where we are all going: to die a horrible death.”