Icarus Descending

6 The End of Winter

WE SPENT THAT WINTER and spring at Seven Chimneys. There was no further mention of geneslave rebellions, no soft threats of what would happen if I did not support Trevor in whatever mad scheme he had. I might have dreamed the whole thing; indeed, when a few days later I crept back down to the basement, I couldn’t find the skull with Dr. Harrow’s name on it, although the cadavers were still where they had been, glowing on their steel beds.

I did not tell my friends what I had learned. I thought the news would only terrify Miss Scarlet, and perhaps goad Jane into doing something foolish. To me Trevor Mallory turned an innocent face, as welcoming as he had been when I first saw him. The rebels he had spoken of, those “others” who might convince me of their just cause—they never appeared, though there were many nights when I woke soaked with sweat, imagining I heard the silken voices of energumens plotting in the house below.

Jane didn’t seem to notice any change in me. She was as happy as I’d ever seen her. Her days passed among the animals that lived at Seven Chimneys, small black-and-white shepherd dogs and black-faced sheep and several furtive, half-feral cats the size of newborn lambs. She and Giles made a good team. She spent her mornings with him, caring for the sheep and the evil-eyed swine who rooted furiously in their pen behind the barn. Each night she’d help him bring in wood for the recalcitrant heating system, listening patiently to his daily complaints about how poorly it heated that vast and drafty house.

“We need a whole new fireplace, there—” He’d kick at the bricks with one worn leather boot, scowling at the rain of loose mortar. “This was designed back when the winters were warmer—”

And after dumping their armloads of seasoned oak and green birch, they’d go back outside, to see to the sheep again and frown at the threatening mingy gray skies. Later, Jane might seek out Trevor, asking his advice about some herbal remedy for distemper or scabies. But she never took to Fossa.

“I can’t stand them,” she confessed to me one night after we’d shared another bottle from Trevor’s cellar. “The animals, the ones like Scarlet—they don’t upset me. But those things—”

She grimaced, took a swallow of wine. “—Those mutants —ugh.” And shuddering, she passed the bottle to me.

That was on a rare evening Jane and I spent together. The truth was, her happiness wore at me, made me bitterly aware of all I had lost. And I couldn’t bear to be with Miss Scarlet, either. At first she sought me out often, especially early in the morning when the sun set our frozen windows afire.

“Bad dreams!” she’d gasp, letting the door to my room slam behind her as she pattered across the floor. “I can’t bear it, Wendy, I wake up and the sun makes me think of flames….”

She would crawl into bed with me, her small body shivering despite its coat of fur and a shabby nightshirt. But I offered her scant comfort, only let one hand fall nearly weightlessly upon her little head. My own nightmares kept me tossing until dawn, but I would not share them with anyone.

And so we grew apart, we who had been inseparable, before the feast of the Winterlong cleaved love and friendship from us. The change was hardest on Miss Scarlet. Unaccustomed to spending months alone, without the buffer of an audience or rehearsal between herself and her demons, she grew depressed. Like myself, Miss Scarlet had been the subject of experimentation—in her case, research that had gifted a chimpanzee with human speech and emotions. But it was her great and lifelong sorrow that she was never to be truly human. And despite her grace and effort onstage, many in the City had seen her as only a freakish heteroclite, a trained monkey mouthing ancient scripts. Now, far from her paints and powders and crinolines, she languished in front of the fire in Seven Chimneys’ main room, wearing the child’s clothes Trevor had found for her. There she would sip her tea, or a mild broth made from those mushrooms called Life Away, which induce soft dreams.

“I think the Goddess has forgotten we are here,” she said to me once, her small black eyes reddened beneath drooping lids and her voice drowsy. “All of us, in the City and all across the world; else so many people that we loved would not have died.”

I said nothing. I feared what she said was true, and after a moment she turned away. Gradually it grew harder and harder for Jane or me to rouse her from these sad reveries. Only Fossa seemed able to talk to her at those times. As the weeks passed, I watched in growing dismay as the two of them would sit together on the worn brocade sofa, while Trevor’s collection of skulls grinned down at them from the mantel. Fossa’s gargoyle head would bend over Miss Scarlet’s small dark one, and the even current of their conversation would course on until broken by the chimpanzee’s sudden rapturous quoting of some new text, or Fossa’s low, urgent growl. Sometimes Trevor joined them for these discussions, easing himself onto the edge of the couch as though for a quick word and then staying for hours. I tried not to think about what all this meant, and avoided Trevor’s quietly triumphant looks when I passed through the room.

And myself? In one quick year I had gone from being incapable of feeling any independent emotions, to fairly drowning in them. Every night I forced myself to stay awake, drinking Trevor’s previous coffee, walking outside till the cold nearly killed me, dipping into a horde of candicaine pipettes I found in one of the empty guest rooms. Anything to keep from sleeping; anything to keep from dreaming of him.

But it was no use. Each snowfall made me think of Justice: those hours before a performance when we would huddle together before the little fire in Miss Scarlet’s grate, the grand entertainments we had from the Paphians in the weeks preceding the feast of Winterlong. Everything had his print upon it, as though his ashes had drifted to earth here, touching that lamp, those clothes, covering the floor so that everywhere I walked, tracks remained to remind me I was moving further and further away from him. Then when exhaustion overtook me, I would drink wine or Trevor’s raw, strong brandy until I fell asleep, shoving the pillows from my bed lest I wake with one in my arms, tearstained and bearing the mark of my kisses. And I avoided Giles, whose gentle features and gray-blond hair put me in mind of my lover’s.

Later, I wondered sometimes whether Trevor meant for it to be like that. Jane in her little world in the barn; Scarlet and I alone with our miseries. But even Trevor Mallory couldn’t change the weather: the worst winter he had seen in a lifetime (and Trevor’s lifetime was thrice any of ours).

“It’s changed,” he muttered one evening, staring out to where a brutal gale tore branches from the oaks. Wind and ice had already felled an ancient chestnut tree. “The bastards have done something to the weather again—seeded the clouds over Kalimantan, probably, or done something to choke the air with ash.” He glanced over his shoulder and started to see me there, then smoothed his features and smiled slightly. “But our time will come, Wendy; it will come soon enough.” I gave him a curt nod and quickly left the room.

While Trevor’s geneslaves never appeared, there were a few other visitors to the inn that winter. One February twilight the dull whine of a snowmobile echoed through the still air, and two black silhouettes appeared against the snow drifted along the front walk.

“Go to your rooms!”

Giles’s anxious voice interrupted me where I hunched over a monitor in the kitchen, playing the intricate game called Horlage. In the background the shortwave radio hummed to itself, a song I had heard in the City, an aria from The Gods Abandon Antony. Without a word Giles strode to the radio and switched it off.

“What is it?” Jane stood in the doorway that led outside to the barn. She shook the snow from her coat. “That lamb’s going to have twins—”

“Not now!” hissed Giles. Miss Scarlet padded into the room, frowning and looking up at him questioningly. Giles pointed silently toward the front of the house. My hand froze on the monitor’s dials.

Voices. Two men, asking loudly for a night’s lodging. I heard the nasal twanging of the server, Mazda, begin to reply, but then Trevor’s welcoming tones boomed out. Moments later we heard footsteps heading up the main hall.

“Quickly now,” breathed Giles, hurrying all three of us toward the stairs that led to the back wing of the house. “They’re Ascendant janissaries. There’s been trouble in the City.”

For an instant his gaze caught mine. “Rebels,” he whispered as he held the door for us to go upstairs. “A small armed band of aardmen attacked the Ascendant barracks and was killed—”

Miss Scarlet gasped. “The monsters!”

“Aardmen! Well, thank god for th—” Jane began, when Miss Scarlet broke in.

“How could they murder them? Venceremos! Death to the human tyrants! The Ascendant monsters will pay—like he says, our day will come! ”

Jane stopped in the dim stairwell and stared at her, open-mouthed. “ What? ”

“Not now!” said Giles, yanking Miss Scarlet after him; but not before she bared her teeth, as though at an unseen enemy.

“What the hell was that about, Scarlet?” Jane exploded when we were safely in her room and Giles had left. “ Human tyrants? Is this something Fossa’s been whispering in your ear? What’s going on?”

Miss Scarlet bowed her head. “Nothing,” she said, and inspected the hem of her dress.

“Wendy?” Jane raised her eyebrows, her face flushed, and looked at me. “Do you know anything about this?”

“No—not exactly—”

Giles had made us leave the lights off. In the dark room the window’s rectangle of deep blue glowed eerily, cobalt glass etched with black where the branches of the oaks scraped at the glass. I pretended to stare outside, but from the corner of my eye I watched Miss Scarlet. She had changed over the last months. It wasn’t just her clothing—a child’s red jumper of plain linen that hung loosely from Miss Scarlet’s slender arms and legs, giving her the appearance of a marionette twitching where she sat on the floor. It was Miss Scarlet herself. It was as though in losing her fine clothes, her costumes and cosmetics and props, she had lost that other Scarlet—the one that never raised her voice except onstage before a spellbound audience, that read to me from her beloved theatrical biographies and yearned always for the miracle that would make her human.

But that Scarlet was gone now. Or she had found another part to play: conspirator instead of coquette, Lady Macbeth instead of Miranda.

“You should know, if you don’t already,” Miss Scarlet announced. “There’s a war going on—”

Jane rolled her eyes, her dark hair flopping into her face. “A war? There’s always a war, Scarlet! Since the day you were born, there’s been at least one Ascension and I don’t know how many battles, not to mention the Archipelago Conflict and whatever’s going on now in the City.” She shoved a stack of clothes onto the floor and sprawled on the bed, yawning.

Miss Scarlet glared. “This is different,” she said, and her voice made me shiver. Because it had changed as well. It was throatier now, more like Fossa’s with its undercurrent of fury; the sound of a dog choking back a snarl. “Those were your wars—Ascendants, the Commonwealth and Emirate and the HORUS colonies….”

“Our wars!” Jane almost yelled. I covered her mouth with one hand, with the other gestured frantically at the floor to remind her that we weren’t alone in the house. “ Our wars? ” she went on, her voice low but her brown eyes blazing. “Everyone I ever knew and loved died back in that City, Scarlet, you know that! Those were Ascendant janissaries—”

“That’s not what I meant.” Miss Scarlet’s eyes were cold, flecks of black ice in her wrinkled black face. “I meant, those were all human wars. And this is different. This is all of us—geneslaves—against the rest of you. This will be the first gene war.”

Jane stared at her, stunned. Then she turned to me.

“A gene war?” she repeated in a small voice.

Even without my old powers I could feel her sudden fear, her heart pounding like a second heart beside my own. I looked over at Miss Scarlet: her wizened face with its nimbus of dark fur, more grizzled now than it had ever been; her long yellow teeth and tiny black hands with their clever fingers. When she gazed back, her expression had changed; she was keeping something from us. The deceit gave her a feral look, as though a fine membrane had lowered over her eyes, occluding the warmth and goodwill that had always glowed there.

“Gene wars?” Jane said again, her voice rising pleadingly. “Tell me, Scarlet—please, explain to me…”

But Miss Scarlet had turned away. She crossed the room, her bare feet pattering on the wood floor, and silently pried the door open. Only as she stepped into the hall did she turn to look back at me. For an instant her eyes held mine. Amber eyes, eyes with the shape and color of leaves in them; an animal’s eyes. And suddenly I felt lost, a huge clumsy thing stumbling through the trees until I reached a place where the ground was sheared away beneath me. Miss Scarlet had leapt easily over that chasm; but I could not follow.

“Scarlet!” Jane cried. “Where are you going?”

Miss Scarlet shook her head. “Have Wendy explain it to you,” she called softly as the door closed after her. “ She understands.”

I looked at Jane. Her face was red, and she blinked back tears furiously. When I stared to say something, she pushed me away and stared out the window to where stars burned against the deepening sky.

“Jane,” I began, my hand touching her shoulder, “I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to worry—”

“Leave me alone!” She slapped my hand away. She whirled and stared at me. I could feel her gaze burning into the side of my face, where beneath my hair the scars remained. “You’re one of them too, aren’t you?” she hissed. “You think I’ve done something terrible to you, that’s why you won’t talk to me, or touch me—” Choking, she turned back to the window.

I stood, the blood pulsing behind my eyes so that a brittle aura hung above everything. I walked to the door blindly, and my hands clutched at scars that I knew would never really heal.

Late the next morning I crept to the top of the stairs, where a small round window looked down on the frozen front walk glittering in the sunlight. I stood and watched as the Ascendant janissaries made a brusque farewell to Trevor, bits of ice flying up behind their feet as they hurried to their snowmobile. In a few minutes they were gone. Only a long trail like a serpent’s showed where they had been, and the distant whine of their vehicle slicing through the still air.

The smells of coffee and cumin brought me downstairs. I met Miss Scarlet in the kitchen, where Giles was grinding spices in a mill and tossing them into an iron skillet to roast.

“Where’s Trevor?” Miss Scarlet asked. She sat on a low stool beside Fossa, who regarded me with narrowed yellow eyes before turning away.

I shrugged. “Upstairs, I guess.” I sat at the table, picking up the little monitor and pretending great interest in the game of Horlage I’d left there yesterday. Giles continued to shake spices from grinder to pan to a heavy blue-rimmed plate. I fiddled with the knobs and images of my game, and after a few minutes said casually, “Who were our guests last night?”

A long silence. Giles turned to pull a clouded Ball mason jar from a shelf and shook a fragrant mound of coriander seeds into his palm. I looked up at him, the game monitor chattering to itself in my lap. Miss Scarlet stared at Giles with poorly concealed impatience, and Fossa tipped his head sideways, like a dog waiting for a command.

“Well, all right,” Giles said crossly. He poured the coriander seeds back into the jar and wiped his hand on his trousers. “They were janissaries, Ascendants—”

“Of course,” Miss Scarlet said triumphantly.

Giles gave her a dirty look. “They came from the City of Trees—there’s been rioting there. Apparently the Paphians and Curators have thrown their lot with the aardmen and lazars, and they’ve all set themselves against the Ascendants.”

“So they are fighting!” exulted Miss Scarlet. She threw her head back with a flourish I recalled from her interpretation of Medea. “Ah, I wish I could see it!”

“You may,” croaked Fossa. He shifted where he sat hunched on the floor and grinned, his muzzle cracking open to show sharp white teeth. “But winter is a bad season for war.”

Giles frowned. “They’re all bad seasons for war.” He gave a small cry and wrapped a cloth around his hand, pulled the smoking skillet from the woodstove and dropped it into the sink. “Damn!” He glared at Miss Scarlet, who had the grace to look abashed. “You shouldn’t be rejoicing over this war, Miss Scarlet. It’s children and courtesans and scholars and plague victims against the Autocracy: now who do you think is going to win?”

The chimpanzee stared down at her gnarled hands. “Of course, you’re right,” she said softly. “I forget sometimes—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Giles sighed. He stared at the woodstove and absently pulled the dishcloth through his fingers. “Those two from last night—they think they’re going to summon help from Cassandra. But they’ll never get there.”

From the sink wafted a cloud of steam and the scent of scorched spices. He grimaced, then went on. “Trevor’s calling ahead now to warn them—those two will be cut off before they reach the mountains. I wish I knew nothing about it.”

This was the first time I had any real notion of how the rebels based in Cassandra were organized, or indeed that they were organized at all. “Was—was there any other news?” I asked tentatively.

Giles shrugged, pushed the loose hair back from his face, and shook his head. He was pale and drawn with exhaustion; he must have been up all night, talking with the soldiers or else seeing to some secret business of his own. “Some. There have been more insurrections in the HORUS colonies. And elsewhere—rioting on hydrofarms in the Archipelago, an attack on the provisional government in Vancouver.”

“It’s true, then,” breathed Miss Scarlet. Her black eyes widened as she turned to Fossa. “The Alliance really is taking control.”

“Alliance?” Jane repeated suspiciously, and glanced at me. “What Alliance?”

I looked at the game monitor in my lap. “It’s nothing,” I said.

Jane frowned and turned to Giles. “Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded. “Or are you planning to turn us over to the next band of soldiers who shows up?”

Giles flushed angrily, but before he could reply, Trevor appeared in the doorway, his face smudged with soot. “We need more wood,” he announced, wiping his forehead and leaving a black streak. “Giles and Jane, would you mind helping me?”

Giles nodded and walked. Trevor followed, and finally Jane left slowly, looking back at Miss Scarlet and me with eyes full of hurt and anger. When she was gone, I stood and began clearing plates from the table, and pumped water into the skillet still hissing in the sink.

“Not yet,” I heard Fossa say softly behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw him staring out the window, to where Jane and Trevor picked their away along a path in the snow to the woodpile. Beside him Miss Scarlet shifted on her stool, her eyes still wide and gleaming with a bright, nearly fanatical intensity. “Not till spring,” Fossa rumbled. His long tongue flicked at the spaces between his long yellow teeth. “But soon, soon: our time will come.”

I said nothing. After a few minutes I joined the others outside.

So the winter passed. Mornings when I watched Jane breasting through drifts to the barn gave way to days in March when the inn seemed to float in a still gray lake, so deep was the snowmelt around us. And then slowly the earth surrendered to spring. There were crocuses and aconite in the last snowy patches behind the house, where the sun fell late in the day. Trevor disappeared into the basement for hours, finally surfacing with sacks that he hauled into the barn. Harvesting his macabre fruits. I wondered who would get them.

In the first weeks of April more Ascendant janissaries visited. When they left, the sacks went with them, carried to the tiny electrical jitney by the creaking server, Mazda, and heaped into its storage compartment until it was full. Trevor watched the vehicle jounce over the rutted road, swerving to avoid gullies left by frost heaves. He took off his enhancer and smiled, his optics sending fiery blue darts above his head. I stood at my vantage place on the landing and kneaded the suede panels of my beaded skirt. I recalled his pride in telling me of the mutations he had caused, the hallucinogenic mushrooms that caused death and madness, the truffles that induced fits of despair. Late that night I crept down to the kitchen for some chamomile tea to help me sleep, and found him crouched in front of the shortwave, whispering into its mouthpiece. Whom did he speak to—rebels in the City, in Cassandra or someplace so far away I had never heard of it, someplace in the stars? He was playing a dangerous game. Like Giles, I wished I knew nothing about it.

Giles himself had more mundane harvests. He took Jane into the woods and returned with canvas sacks full of fiddleheads. We ate them cooked with mutton fat and morels; they tasted like the earth itself, mouthfuls of it, raw and rich and green. From the marshes that lay behind Trevor’s fields came the shrill touts of peepers and the tree toads: a sound that always made my neck prickle, seeming to hold in it somewhere a promise that I knew could not be kept. And finally, on a day when there was no longer any breath of chill in the air, the wild apple trees in the meadows began to bloom.

“Well! The winter’s back is broken at last.”

Trevor stood in front of an open window downstairs, looking deeply satisfied. I’d gone with him from room to room, yanking open casements and removing glass storm windows to let the warm air come streaming in. Flurries of white and pink petals blew from the meadows and drifted across the polished wood floors. I found a ladybug in my bedroom and breathed on it until its wings opened and it flew off into the bright blue sky.

“You seem happier than you were a few months ago.”

I shrugged at Trevor’s remark, cupped my hand over my nose. Where the ladybug had rested, a very faint odor remained, an acrid smell that reminded me of Trevor’s basement. “Not really.”

Though in truth the spring had brought a sort of remission to my sorrow. I had never been with Justice in the spring, so the season became a template upon which I could place nothing but raw grief. No image of his laughing face, no touch of his hand upon my shaven skull; nothing but the grief itself. And with nothing to feed it, even grief dies eventually; and so the warmer days and clouds of apple blossom found me dreaming, as often as not, of nothing at all.

“You can’t grieve forever,” Trevor said softly. He picked up a glass transformer from a shelf, tossed it from hand to hand until he dropped it and it shattered on the floor. “Oh, dear.”

He gazed down as though surprised to see the blue-green shards there, then glanced at me. His voice was kind as he said, “Well, things happen in the spring, Wendy. Maybe something will happen to you.”

Something did. It was a shining morning a month later, in the first fat weeks of summer. We had been at Seven Chimneys for half a year. An unspoken truce had fallen between all of us; a truce easy to keep, since we had gotten into the habit of going our separate ways. Jane had left early that morning to check on the lambs in the fields. Miss Scarlet lay on the living-room couch with Fossa, listening to a historical novel about Yll Peng-Si, the tyrant of the Mongolian Nuclear Republic. I sat in the kitchen with Trevor and Giles, drinking tea and fiddling with a packet of cigarettes. Behind me, on the shelf it shared with tins of dried herbs and dusty brown bottles filled with tinctures of valerian and skullcap, the shortwave hummed soothingly. When I asked him where the transmissions were coming from, Giles only smiled.

“ ‘Far away pul-lay-sez,’ ” he sang in his reedy tenor—a bit of doggerel from that damn opera again. “ ‘Stars you only see in duh-ree-ums…’ ”

Trevor smiled indulgently and I grinned as Giles bowed with a flourish. The radio began playing something else, a choral piece by Menton Barstein that Miss Scarlet had always been fond of. I glanced into the living room to see if she was listening, but her head was beside Fossa’s as they stared into the talking book. I sighed and slid a cigarette from the pack.

“This here,” I said, pressing the ball of my thumb beneath the image of the pyramid and looking up at Trevor. “This thing—it reminds me of something I saw at HEL once….”

Without warning the song coming from the radio cut off. The shortwave crackled and fizzed; then there was an ominous, hollow silence. With a frown Trevor stood and went over to it, bending until his ear was close to the little round box. He twisted a knob with infinite care, so slowly it scarcely seemed to move, until the static resolved into a long, breathless hissing. I could make out no words, nothing but that foreboding sibilance. In his chair Giles sat up very straight and stared at his partner, his face pale. Suddenly a string of words rang out. To me it sounded as thin and breathless and meaningless as that other sound, but Trevor listened tight-lipped. After a minute he looked up sharply.

“Aviators,” he said. Abruptly the transmission ceased. There was only the gentle flapping of the curtains in the morning breeze. “Two of them, from somewhere in the southwest. They are headed for the City of Trees on an errand for the new Aviator Imperator. They’ll be here around sunset.”

Giles was silent. Finally he leaned across the table and took the package of cigarettes from my hand. For a long time he stared at it in silence: the strange cursive letters, the staring eye within its pyramid. Finally he said, “This is too dangerous, Trevor. You’ll get us all killed.”

Trevor shook his head. “But this is what we’ve been waiting for! They’ll have news from HORUS, hopefully something about the war in the Archipelago.” Only the way he ran his hands across his scalp, crushing the white stubble there as though it were dried grain, showed how excited he really was. “We’re well-armed, if anything should happen.”

Behind me I heard a soft tread on the creaking floorboards. I whirled to see Fossa silhouetted in the doorway. His ears stood up: small pointed ears, hairless, the skin so translucent that I could see the web of capillaries beneath and their delicate inner channels. Beside him stood Miss Scarlet, wearing only a plain crimson shift: the gargoyle’s goblin shadow.

“News?” Fossa asked in his groaning voice.

“Aviators,” Trevor began, when Giles slammed his hand on the table, crushing the cigarette pack. Before Trevor could say anything else, Giles stood and left the kitchen, the door slamming behind him.

“Aviators,” Miss Scarlet repeated softly. She turned to me, her eyes wide. “Wendy, Aviators!”

“I heard,” I said. I didn’t like the sound of this any more than Giles did. “Where’s Jane?”

Trevor rubbed his chin. “Upstairs, I suppose.”

“No, she’s not. I went by her room earlier—she’s not there.”

“In the barn, then,” Trevor said impatiently. “Giles and I are going to be busy, getting things ready for them. I think you should make yourselves scarce—”

“You said sunset,” I interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere now. I want to talk to Jane—”

But Jane was gone. She wasn’t in the barn, or her room, or anywhere in the house; nor was she in the fields outside, where Fossa hunted for her. I even braved the basement again, peering under those rickety tables with their foul-smelling heaps of dung and offal; all for nothing.

“We have to find her.”

It was afternoon now, and I stood on the porch with Trevor, staring out to where the sun had just started to nick the tops of the distant mountains with gold. I smelled of dung and warm grass, from crawling around in the byre and hayricks inside the barn. My voice was hoarse from calling for Jane; I could not have told anyone, perhaps not even Jane herself, how her disappearance had upset me. I remembered that first night at Seven Chimneys: Jane’s cool hands smoothing my hair, pulling Cadence Mallory’s clothes over my feverish limbs; Jane’s mouth brushing my cheek, and how I had pushed her away. And since then I had pushed her away as well, acting as cold and churlish as when we first met in the City of Trees.

But now, as the light deepened from amber to the deep fiery gold of late afternoon, I began to grow frightened. If she should be lost (but of course that was ridiculous; Jane knew her way around the woods and ruined roads of Seven Chimneys as well as she had known the maze of cages at the Zoo); if she should be found and captured by the Aviators…

“I’m checking the woods again,” I said, and turned to run back across the overgrown lawn.

“ No .” Trevor Mallory’s hand clapped down upon my shoulder. “It’s too dangerous now—they could arrive at any time. I want you and Miss Scarlet and Fossa out of sight.” For the first time since my first visit to the underground gardens of Seven Chimneys, I glimpsed that other Trevor Mallory, the one who had spoken in soft insinuating tones of murder and revolution. “The Aviators think there’s no one here except for Giles and me. Fossa they believe is our servant. I don’t want to think about what they would do to refugees from the City of Trees—you’re putting yourselves and all of us in danger.”

“But we can’t just leave Jane,” I cried, yanking away From him. “What if they find her?—”

“Where can she be?” Miss Scarlet appeared in the doorway of the house behind us, wringing her hands. “Oh, this is my fault, I’ve been ignoring her, but she just doesn’t understand —”

“Go back inside, Miss Scarlet,” I ordered her, exasperated. “There’s nothing you can do—”

“There’s nothing you can do, either, damn it!” Trevor’s face grew flushed and he pounded the edge of the porch railing. “We’ve been waiting all winter for a chance like this, to talk to someone who has real news—”

“Wendy, please.” Giles’s gentle voice wafted out from where he towered above Miss Scarlet. “I’ll keep looking for her—it doesn’t matter if the Aviators know I’m here—and when I find her, I’ll make sure she gets upstairs safely.” His blue eyes gazed into mine beseechingly. He hated harsh words, any kind of disagreement: a true Saint-Alaban, and so much like Justice….

“All right,” I said, defeated. I leaned on the porch rail and looked out one last time, to where the ruined road wound from the inn toward the faraway mountains. Dread pinched at my heart: had she left us, really gone on by herself, to die or be lost in the wilderness? For the first time all day I felt tears welling in my eyes, but before anyone could see, I whirled and fled inside, my feet echoing loudly on the stairs.

A few minutes later Miss Scarlet and Fossa knocked on my door and let themselves in. We sat without talking, waiting, until at last another knock came and Giles entered.

“I can’t find her,” he said. Panic clenched at me; I jumped to my feet and began pacing the room.

“Are they—are the others here yet?” asked Miss Scarlet with wide, frightened eyes.

“Not yet. But I think it’s too dangerous in this part of the house. I want Fossa to stay with you—no, Fossa, I’m not going to risk having you where they can see you. There’s another room—I want you all to come with me, now. Hurry—”

We followed him down one hallway, then another, then up a flight of stairs into a part of Seven Chimneys where I had never been: a small bump-out that I had always assumed was a storage shed, but which proved to be larger than I had thought. Unused tables and armoires were shoved against walls webbed with mildew, and in the airless corridor creaky doors opened onto rooms without windows, some of them filled with more furniture, others empty of anything save festoons of cobwebs. I sneezed at the musty smell and wondered how long it had been since anyone had been back here. Years, it seemed; our feet left smudged impressions on warped planks thick with dust.

At last Giles stopped at a small door, so low and narrow, he had to stoop to pry it open. Inside I glimpsed stacks of old clothes and hangers suspended from a crooked rod. Giles ducked inside, rattling the hangers and shoving aside heaps of camphor-smelling linens. A moment later he motioned for us to come after him, and we did, Fossa and Miss Scarlet and me jostling each other in the dark crowded space until we reached a second, even tinier door that Giles held open for us.

“Welcome to the sanctuary,” he said in a low voice.

It was a long narrow room, rambling beneath the eaves of the little shed addition. Pushed against the far wall beneath a steeply sloping roof were a pair of wobbling chairs, an iron bedstead, a monitor with cracked screen, a bad reproduction of a Second Ascension metal sleeping cabinet, and a small cabinet filled with moldering books. The air smelled of cold dust and mice. There was no fireplace, and only a single tiny window overlooking the barn, so caked with filth, it let in neither light nor view. Giles cracked it open, and the heady scent of warm clover crept inside, and the sound of the little creek burbling behind the house.

“Here, now,” Giles said. He crossed back to the little doorway, nervously smoothing his hair from his forehead. He’s really frightened, I thought, and swallowed hard, thinking of Jane. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with some food. All of you just sit tight, and try not to talk very loudly—try not to talk at all, if you can. Fossa knows what to do, he’s been through this before.”

“I hope they don’t stay long,” fretted Miss Scarlet. “Do you think they’ll be here past the morning?”

In spite of his worry, Giles smiled. His face had grown worn over the years, with lines and sunspots a Paphian in the City would never have borne; but at that moment he seemed more beautiful than any number of young courtesans. “No, cousin. I don’t think so. Aviators are all business—these two have been sent out on some mission from one of the elÿon bases in the Gulf. They’ve been charged to stop everywhere within two hundred miles of the City and do a thorough search. They’ll take a look around downstairs and be gone before you know it.”

Miss Scarlet blanched at the word search. “But won’t they find us—oh, I wish Jane—”

“Hush! No, they won’t find you. Seven Chimneys is known and trusted as a favorite stopping point for members of the Autocracy. This is a mere formality, that’s all. Now be still and wait—I’ll be back soon.”

We waited. Miss Scarlet fidgeted, pulling the end of her shift through her hands over and over again, until it grew creased and stiff. Fossa leaned against the wall, his head bent to accommodate the sloping roof, and stared at the floor, his yellow eyes narrowed and thoughtful. Giles had shut the window before he left, but I cracked it open again, peering through the little slit at the barn and thinking Jane, Jane…

When the door creaked open again, we all jumped.

“Only me. No sign of them yet,” Giles said with false heartiness. “Here’s supper.”

“Jane?” Miss Scarlet asked in a quavering voice.

Giles put down a small tray, tipped his head, and sighed. “Not yet. Probably she’s still in the woods somewhere, in which case she’ll be fine.”

“As long as she stays there,” I said grimly.

Giles was silent, finally said, “Yes. As long as she stays there.” Miss Scarlet and I stared after him with sinking hearts as he crept back out again and locked us in for the night.

For Miss Scarlet and me Giles had made a compote of last year’s dried apples and the first wild strawberries, tiny fruits no bigger than a drop of blood squeezed from your fingertip. For Fossa there was lamb, cooked very rare, and a bottle of wine for us to share. We sat in a circle on the floor to eat, and again I thought of my life at the Human Engineering Laboratory, stealing food with my friends and holding impromptu parties in the middle of the night. Only now dread choked all my thoughts, as the night wind rose up outside, and the first tentative cries of whippoorwills echoed from the woods.

We drank the wine slowly, me taking rather more than my share, until finally the nearly empty bottle remained in my lap. As I ate, I perused the label curiously. It was printed on the same kind of grayish, pulpy paper that adorned the packets of cigarettes Giles doled out, with gold lettering and a colored drawing of what appeared to be some sort of darkened chamber set about with spikes of red and yellow and blue.

Iχocpυσ

Free Take of Cassandra

“Cassandra again,” I said, frowning. Miss Scarlet looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Where the cigarettes come from. That place in the mountains.” I shifted the bottle between my knees and pointed to the arcane symbol of the pyramid and the word beneath it. “What does that mean?”

Miss Scarlet squinted at it. “I don’t know. It’s ancient Greek, I think. But that—” One black skinny finger tapped the image of the pyramid and the eye. “ That I recognize. It was on currency in the United States—we used some once as a prop in Our Town. ” She pursed her lips and peered more closely at the label. “And this here, this other picture—that’s a cave.”

“A cave?” I took the bottle and squinted at it. If I looked closely, I could just make out several tiny, tiny figures within the darkened chamber. They seemed to be holding up something in their hands, staring at the spikes hanging around them.

“Yes,” said Miss Scarlet with certainty, nodding so that the dark fur rippled on her shoulders and scalp. She glanced over at Fossa. He stared back at her with slanted eyes and nodded.

“Cave,” he growled.

“I’ve seen pictures of them,” Miss Scarlet went on. “When we did that version of Macbeth. And at the Zoo there was a habitat for bats. It was supposed to be a cave. It looked somewhat like that,” she added doubtfully. But the mention of the Zoo seemed to remind her of Jane. She bowed her small dark head and said no more.

“A cave,” I repeated. I tried to imagine what Cassandra must be like—a place where people still grew and processed tobacco and grapes; a place with caves. “Trevor’s daughter lives there.”

“And others,” muttered Fossa. He stretched like a dog, his powerful knobbed paws clawing at the floor, and yawned, uncoiling a long pink tongue. “Very wise and strong—if they were here now, nothing to worry.”

I preferred not to think about those others. Miss Scarlet sighed and stood, crossing her spindly arms across her chest. “I—I think I will try to sleep,” she said softly. She looked exhausted, but slightly shamefaced: as though I might think less of her for not staying up with me to worry over Jane.

“Of course,” I said. I smiled wanly. I wanted to embrace her, hold her small warm body to mine and tell her not to worry; but I did not.

Fossa, however, did. He followed her to the small narrow bed and crouched beside it, watching as she climbed in and not lying down until she was safely settled. Then he sighed noisily, muttered something I could not hear, and sank down, resting his heavy head on his hands. In a few minutes his snores nearly drowned out Miss Scarlet’s even breathing.

I finished the wine and stood, walked somewhat shakily to the little window, and pressed my face against its narrow opening. Outside, above the barn, the darkening sky had a pale greenish cast, the same color that the new leaves had been a few weeks earlier. But now the trees had burgeoned into full growth. I could just glimpse the edge of the meadow where they stirred fitfully in the night breeze, and if I crooked my neck back, I could see the first stars pricking at the velvety sky. From the marshes came the ringing of frogs. I felt a sudden pressure in my chest, as though a hand had seized my heart and squeezed it.

Emma Harrow came to me then. Dr. Harrow, who had been my protector and torturer at HEL, the woman who by forcing me to relive her own occult memories had somehow imprinted them upon me. It was on a night like this that her twin brother had first seen that figure that had haunted me for so many months, the shining figure of the Boy in the Tree, the Boy whose name is Death. I rested my head against the windowsill, heedless of whatever prying eyes might be scanning for us.

There was no Boy there within me now. A terrible loneliness came over me: first Justice and now Jane…I had been so cold to her lately, so caught up in my own misery. At the thought of her, tears filled my eyes and I swore angrily beneath my breath.

So this is what it was like to be “truly human,” as Miss Scarlet had so often warned me. I thought of Justice; but while the image of his face, his long hair and blue eyes, made my heart clench again, for the first time I did not feel grief clawing at me; only a sad, soft ache. It was the memory of Jane’s face that made me desperate with love and helplessness; the thought of Jane coming to harm that made me want to rush downstairs and confront whatever was there, Aviators or no. From the tiny wedge of open window a breeze crept inside, smelling of wild roses and grass. The keening of the frogs grew higher, sweeter, clearer as the wind brushed my face. On the sill beside me a ladybird landed and began to crawl determinedly toward my chin.

“Fly away home,” I whispered. It raised its lacquered wings and disappeared into the night.

I thought of the stars then, of the men and women who were rumored to walk there: the Aviators, the Ascendants’ ruthless guardians. Were they all like Margalis Tast’annin, madmen and -women? Would they really kill Jane if they found her? Had they already, and were they downstairs even now, laughing and talking with Trevor and Giles? I sighed and turned from the window.

The narrow dark chamber was quiet now, with that air of awakening excitement that fills a room that has finally been opened up to summer. In her bed Miss Scarlet breathed softly, while at her feet Fossa whined in his sleep. In the middle of the floor our plates and the empty wine bottle were piled like the remains of an encampment hastily abandoned. I felt wide awake and wished there was more wine. It came to me suddenly that I must be drunk. I was accustomed to drinking, but not to getting drunk—a holdover from my days at HEL, where my medication and peculiar mind chemistry had made it difficult for me to absorb alcohol.

But I felt different now. I felt reckless, and powerful, and angry: how dare Giles and Trevor and Miss Scarlet abandon Jane like this? At least I wouldn’t do so—and before I knew what I was doing, I had stumbled to the door.

It had been locked from the inside: of course, to keep anyone from finding the slaves or refugees hidden there. I opened the rusty hasp and stepped into the outer closet, trying to keep from falling over the linens heaped on the floor. The sagging rod with its load of coats and cloaks blocked my way. I pushed them away, rough wool and leather brushing my face and the smell of bay leaves and cedar making me want to sneeze. But then I was through. With heart pounding I stood in the darkness with my hand on that other door, the one that opened onto the corridor; and then I crept outside.

In the hallway all was still and dim. There were no electrified lights here, not even any of the small gas lanterns that illuminated some of the less-used corridors in other parts of the inn. Beneath my feet the bare wide boards groaned alarmingly. I took a deep breath and hurried down the passage. When I reached the stairway, I crept down with one hand on the brick wall, feeling the crumbling mortar give way under my fingernails. It smelled cool and damp here, as though it shared the air with the basement. At the bottom of the steps I stopped, listening for voices.

Very faintly I could hear them: Trevor’s drawling laugh and Giles’s nervous, somewhat hesitant tone. And others, a man and a woman. For a moment my heart raced—Jane!

But it wasn’t Jane. This woman had a chilly, careful voice, and a way of phrasing that reminded me of someone. It was a moment before I realized that who it reminded me of was Margalis Tast’annin.

I couldn’t make out their speech, only the unfamiliar pattern of strained conversation, as though they spoke in a language I did not understand. I took a few more steps down the passage, to where the brickwork gave way to old soft wood. Beneath my fingertips it felt damp, a moldering touch like coarse fur. Then my hand snagged against an old square-headed nail. A tiny dart of pain jarred me from my drunken reverie.

Of a sudden I realized how overwhelmingly stupid this was—dangerous, perhaps fatal. If there were Aviators here, they might even now be preparing to search the house. With even the most cursory glance down this corridor they’d see me, leaning against the wall for balance and glaring blearily into the dimness. Although of course Trevor and Giles had assured me the Aviators would never find our hiding place…

But what if they are betraying us?

A jolt of adrenaline raced through me. Through my mind flashed images of myself strapped helpless to a gurney at HEL; fleeing the flames at Winterlong; captured and bound and thrown before the Mad Aviator…

No! my mind shouted; never again!

And at that moment I felt it, like a faint current surging through me from spine to fingertips, a flame that leapt within my brain. A rage, a power that cut through fear and doubt and drunkenness, until I wanted to throw my head back and shout, with joy and terror—

I could do it all again. If I had to, I could find them all, Giles and Trevor and the others, seek them out and with a touch, a kiss—a look, even—drive them to madness and suicide, as I had done before. I could kill them; and this time there was nothing there to cloud my mind, no ghostly image of the Boy in the Tree, no fleeting revenant of Aidan Harrow to spur me on only to mock me and send me spinning back into my own madness. I felt calm, as calm as I had ever felt in my life; and suddenly I knew what to do.

I took a few more steps, until I reached a spot where the crumbling wooden wall gave way once more to brick, and my feet knocked against broken bricks and heaps of crumbled mortar. Through the wall the voices sounded more clearly. I caught a word here and here, but not enough to put together a conversation. I knew where I was now: in a secondary passage that ran directly behind the main living room. I ran my hand over the rough surface of the wall beside me. Even though I could not see it, I knew what it looked like. It looked like the brick from the fireplace, the pit-fired clay grown brittle and the color of faded deerskin, the mortar filling the chinks nearly black with age.

All winter Giles had complained of that fireplace—how the bricks needed replacing because the mortar was rotten, and as a result the chimney didn’t draw well. In places, the masonry had crumbled until the once-massive edifice was only one brick thick. On the coldest winter nights Giles had stood glaring at the flames, imagining their heat roaring out through hundreds of tiny cracks and holes.

That was why I could hear them so well. And, if I was lucky, soon I would be able to see them, too.

It took me a few minutes to find a spot where the mortar had left gaps in the wall. The smell of mildew nearly made me sneeze, and once I almost tripped over a tall stack of bricks reclaimed from the cellar, put there by Giles in vain hopes of repairing the masonry some day. But by listening and feeling, I finally located the chimney. I patted it triumphantly, then leaned against the wall opposite and slitted my eyes, trying to gauge where the chinks were in the masonry.

After a few minutes I found them. Pinpricks of light, as though a few grains of glowing sand had been cast upon the brickwork. One hole was nearly large enough to poke a pencil through. I attacked that one, with my fingernails set to scraping away the rotten mortar, trying to make no sound. On the floor I found a nail twisted and caked with rust. After a few minutes I was able to gouge a little tunnel through the mortar, large enough for me to peer into the next room.

At first I could see nothing more than bright blurs. Then gradually my eye picked out the back of Trevor’s chair, with Trevor in it leaning forward as though listening closely. Beyond him on the far side of the room facing me, two figures perched on the divan—uneasily, it seemed to me, as though at any moment they might take flight. One was a woman. She had blond hair cut short around a thin, leonine face. One side of her forehead was gone, replaced with a plasteel plate that conformed to the shape of her skull. On the floor beside her booted feet was the helmeted enhancer that usually covered her face, and the stiff plasteel curves of her body armor. Her hands rested on her knees. She held a long black tube, some kind of protonic weapon—so much for Trevor’s insistence that this visit was a mere formality. Her fingers gripped its barrel tightly while she scanned the room suspiciously. I drew back for an instant, my heart racing, certain that she had seen me.

But even an Aviator can’t see through brick walls; at least not without an enhancer. I took a deep breath and once more pressed my eye to the peephole. The other Aviator was a stocky, grizzled man, also with a gun lying across his knees. Like his partner he wore a heavy jacket and trousers of red leather trimmed with black, clothing much worn and stained—the uniform of the NASNA Aviators. His head was cocked as with great interest, as he listened to someone I couldn’t see. Giles, I assumed. I turned my head so that my ear rested against the cold mortar and listened.

It was disorienting, not being able to watch and listen at the same time. Their voices were muffled, and Giles in particular spoke so softly that sometimes I couldn’t hear him at all; but eventually I was able to put together most of what they were saying.

“…trouble in the west.” That was the woman speaking. Her cool, precise diction made each word seem to hang in the air before melting away. “Trouble everywhere these days.”

“We hadn’t heard.” Trevor’s drawl was exaggerated to a complaining whine. “It’s been a bad winter here—no visitors except yourselves and a few janissaries from the City.”

The next words rang out so loudly that I jumped, as though they had been spoken directly to me.

“Araboth has fallen. There were almost no survivors, and the Orsinas and all their advisers were killed.”

I heard Giles exclaim, and Trevor turned so that I could glimpse his face: taut, as though containing some terrible grief—or joy.

How can they not notice? I thought. God, he hates them!

But they didn’t notice; or if they did, they had their own reasons for ignoring it.

Trevor asked a question, and the woman Aviator said something else I couldn’t understand. I placed my eye back at the peephole. She and her companion had lowered their heads and were speaking confidingly to Trevor, still clutching their weapons. Through a doorway hobbled the servant, Mazda. It bent to pick up a small tray of glasses and a decanter, then left. I changed position again so I could listen.

“No, I am not mistaken: Captain Patrocles and I received our orders from him at Cisneros.” It was impossible to tell if the woman’s icy tone held rage or pride. “He has been made Imperator. It would take more than a tsunami to destroy Tast’annin.”

Tast’annin?

I clutched at the wall, the mortar crumbling between my fingers. My head reeled; I felt as though a huge mouth gaped at me in the darkness, waiting to swallow me if I moved.

“I thought he was dead!” exclaimed Giles.

For the first time the Aviator named Patrocles spoke. “He was.” His next words were incomprehensible. I finally made out, “…regeneration in Araboth. His investiture was held before the City fell. Colonel Aselma was there.”

Colonel Aselma broke in angrily. “It is an insult to us! He is a rasa, a walking corpse. How was it that he escaped when the domes collapsed at Araboth, unless he abandoned his post as Imperator? It was a madness of the Autocracy, to have him regenerated—he betrayed us in the City. He will betray us again.”

“I don’t think so,” Captain Patrocles said. “He is a brilliant man—”

“A rasa,” spat Colonel Aselma.

“A brilliant leader,” Patrocles went on coolly. “And what ever he is, he has never been a fool. He has his reasons for sending us on this mission….”

His voice trailed off, and I pressed myself even closer to the wall, struggling in vain to make out Trevor’s next words. But the Aviators’ news had so incited everyone that for a few minutes I could hear nothing clearly, just snatches of phrases—“always mad,” “HORUS colonies,” words that sounded like “enemy network.” When I pressed my eye to the hole again, I saw that Trevor had jumped from his chair and was pacing the room, clutching something in one hand and staring at it with furious intensity—a ’file foto, I finally realized. Once he stopped and raised his enhancer, so that the foto seemed aflame with blue light. Whatever the foto showed, it disturbed him greatly. After another minute he turned and shoved it into Giles’s hand. I went back to listening.

“…set up a search for her,” said Patrocles. Giles interrupted him with a question that I couldn’t understand, and the Aviator continued, “Absolutely. It was his last command before he left Cisneros.”

“He’s gone to HORUS,” the woman’s voice rang out. “To Quirinus, I believe. But he will find no one there, no one but energumens—he will be assassinated within the week,” she ended triumphantly.

“All the more reason to carry out his orders,” Captain Patrocles said in a voice like silk. “I’m afraid that’s not a very good image we’ve shown you, but it’s the best we could find—the records library at HEL was in a shambles. We were fortunate to find anything at all.”

At the word HEL I began to tremble uncontrollably. I drew away from the wall, nausea and a mounting fear clawing at me, then gazed out once more. Even from where I crouched, I could see that Giles had gone white. I thought the Aviators must be blind not to see his obvious terror as he handed the foto back to Colonel Aselma. I turned to listen again and heard him say, “We’ve seen no one who looks like this.”

“Look again,” urged Colonel Aselma. “It’s not a very good image.”

“Oh, I would remember—” Giles’s voice was stubbornly insistent, but also desperate. “You heard Trevor—it’s been a bad winter, no visitors—”

“Now, Giles,” Trevor said calmly. “They realize that. They’re just following Commander Tast’annin’s orders.”

“ Imperator Tast’annin,” said Captain Patrocles. “He says she is the last of the original group they had developed at the Human Engineering Laboratory. With proper intervention she can be of great use to us.”

“ If she is still alive,” Colonel Aselma said with disdain. “With that janissary rabble keeping order in the City, we’ll be lucky to find anything at all.”

“Oh, he’ll find her,” said Captain Patrocles. “By now the entire NASNA corps has received that ’file image, and there’s a bounty on her. She’ll be lucky if some overzealous janissary doesn’t blow her brains out—”

“They’d better not,” Colonel Aselma said darkly. “Her brain is the only part of her the Imperator cares about.”

I drew back from the wall and crouched in the darkness. My shaking hands clutched at my knees.

Tast’annin was alive. Jane’s bullet must not have killed him, or else the Ascendants had found some means to preserve his life—that single word regenerated rang in my ears like a warning tocsin.

He was alive, and he was looking for someone.

He was looking for me.

My breath came in such deep bursts, I was afraid the Aviators would hear me through the crumbling bricks. Light headed with fear, I tried to stand, nearly fell, and caught myself against the wall. They would hear me if I wasn’t careful; but all I could think of was that monstrous figure in the Cathedral—sacrificing children, using my twin, Raphael, as my own bloody image to lure the hapless Paphians to their deaths.

But I had seen Tast’annin die, slumped against the great pit he had dug on Saint Alaban’s Hill.

I stood panting, trying to calm myself so I wouldn’t go careening through the passage and bring the Aviators down on me like a pair of hounds. The fearlessness and strength I had felt just a few minutes ago was gone. Suddenly it seemed that all my actions of the past year had been insanely transparent. I felt as though there had been someone watching me all along, tracking me and just waiting for this moment to seize me. Those months when I had thought I was safe here at Seven Chimneys, safe in the City of Trees: all madness, an illusion brought on by my need to feel myself free and whole for the first time in my life. The Ascendants had for a little time forgotten me, that was all; as they had forgotten the City of Trees. But their attention had been brought back, first by Tast’annin’s defection; now by his command to search for me.

“ Oh, he’ll find her…. ”

He would too; and this time he wouldn’t lose me.

I remembered Trevor Mallory in the cellar—“ I would have done it differently — no scars, nothing to show that you had ever been touched…. ”—and heard Dr. Harrow’s voice just before she died, warning me of the Ascendants’ plans for the empaths she had nurtured at HEL—

“ And you, Wendy. And Anna, and all the others. Like the geneslaves: toys. Weapons— you especially …”

She had been right. Nothing—not even death, it seemed—would keep the Ascendants from controlling their creations. I had been a fool to think otherwise. They had engineered me as a weapon, my mind altered through chemicals and surgery until they could turn it to their own purposes. But they would not give up a weapon so easily—especially now, when they were threatened by this rebel Alliance. They would reclaim me as they had reclaimed Tast’annin. If he was still alive—if he was again alive—he must be an even more maleficent creature than he was before. Somehow they had brought him back into their game; somehow they would do the same with me.

I shuddered. I had been mad to put my trust in Giles and Trevor. Their attempt to hide us suddenly seemed as pathetic as Fossa’s efforts at speech. Those two Aviators would find and capture me as though I were a bewildered feral dog, then give me over to the new team of researchers at HEL and never think of me again. If I tried to fight them, my fate would be Tast’annin’s, killed and regenerated as an Ascendant tool, with no mind or will of my own.

And what then of Jane and Miss Scarlet?

“No,” I whispered. Abruptly I turned and ran down the hallway, stumbling in the darkness and shuddering with fear. When I reached the door, I fled through it, keeping my head down as I ran. It wasn’t until too late that I realized where I was.

“Wendy!”

I gasped, looked up to see Jane silhouetted in a doorway. Her hair was disheveled and her face sunburned. Over her shoulder two hares hung from a loop of leather cord, their legs tied with vines; her pistol was shoved through her belt. Behind her an open door let in the cool night breeze and the sound of the wind. I was in the front hall. I’d come the wrong way.

“Jane, no— ”

She grinned and let the door slam shut behind her, a sound that echoed through the house like a gunshot. “What is it, Wendy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I whirled frantically, heading for the steps that led upstairs; but it was too late.

“ Who’s that? ”

The voice of Colonel Aselma rang down the corridor, along with the sound of heavy boots. Behind her I could hear Trevor protesting, “The wind, just the wind—” and Giles adding, “It’s only Jane!”

“Wendy?” Jane turned to me, her eyes wide. “What’s happened? Who’s here—”

“You said there were no other guests—” Captain Patrocles’s angry voice boomed down the corridor. A moment later he strode into the foyer, his weapon dangling from one hand. And saw me.

“ It’s her!— ”

In an instant his gun was trained on me, but before he could fire, Colonel Aselma had shoved him aside.

“ No! He wants her alive!”

She lunged and I dropped to the floor, rolling until I slammed into the wall. Colonel Aselma was right behind me, reaching for me with one hand while with the other she wrestled something from her belt.

“ You! ”

I glimpsed Trevor and Giles frozen in the entryway, Patrocles shouting as he swung his weapon between them and Jane. Then I felt Colonel Aselma’s fingers closing about my ankle.

“No—” I choked, kicking at her. She swore and I kicked again, harder this time and aiming for her face. I felt the plate covering her forehead crack beneath my blow, and struck again at the other side of her head. Shouting with pain, she dropped back, her hand sliding from me. I staggered to my feet and bolted for the stairs. Behind me I heard Trevor yelling desperately.

“Wendy—for Christ’s sake don’t, wait—Jane, no ! ”

There was an explosive retort, followed by a scream; then another thunderous roar. For a moment I was blinded. A roiling ball of heat and flame rushed through the room, as though the floor had suddenly opened onto an inferno, and then was gone. I was thrown against the wall with such force that for a moment everything seemed to be frozen around me. Motes of golden light hung in the still air. Jane pointed at the doorway into the hall, her face absolutely devoid of any expression. Colonel Aselma knelt with her hand poised above the gun at her hip. Then like an echo of that first explosion there was another, smaller boom, followed by an echoing retort. A pane of glass in one of the foyer windows shattered, and suddenly everything began to move again. I started to race up the steps, then heard a cry that pierced me like a shaft of ice. I stopped and looked back down.

On the floor a figure—no, two figures—sprawled side to side. The first was Captain Patrocles. He lay upon his chest, arms outflung as though desperately grasping for something. The barrel of his weapon protruded from beneath him, its smooth surface blue-white with heat and sending up a single gray plume of smoke. His eyes were wide; two of his bottom teeth were gone, and most of his jaw. He was quite obviously dead.

Beside him Trevor Mallory was stretched out on his back. One arm crossed his breast so that his hand rested upon his heart. The other was extended across the floor, palm upward, the fingers delicately curled as though they held something precious. He was unmoving. Beside him lay his enhancer, its edges slightly crumpled. A perfect star-shaped hole had been blasted through his forehead.

“You bitch. ” A voice cried out, so charged with hatred and rage that I instinctively ducked, looking around for Colonel Aselma.

But the voice wasn’t hers. It was Jane’s. She stood in the middle of the foyer, her face twisted from weeping as she aimed her pistol to where Colonel Aselma stood a few feet from the two corpses.

“You killed him, you—” Jane sobbed, and in the silence I could hear the barrel of her ancient gun turn over. Behind her Giles crouched, dazed.

“Don’t be a fool,” hissed Colonel Aselma. “You can’t possibly win, you know, just put the gun down and come with me—” But her expression belied her words: her eyes were wide, her mouth set in a tight line as she fumbled at her belt.

“Goody-bye,” choked Jane, holding her gun so tightly that the muscles in her hands were knotted red and white. Then, closing her eyes, she fired.

The retort sent Jane reeling backward. Colonel Aselma’s body crumpled; she took one staggering step and toppled beside her partner. I cried out and ran down the steps, nearly falling as I raced toward Jane. Only when I had my arms around her did I look back at Colonel Aselma. A ragged hole blackened her chest; I recalled the body armor lying on the floor of the living room.

“I thought it was—I thought it was him,” Jane gasped. “Tast’annin—I just saw the uniform and I thought, I thought—”

She shook with sobs, and I hugged her tightly. But as I held her, I looked over her shoulder to see where Giles knelt upon the floor, cradling Trevor’s head in his lap.

“Wake up,” he crooned. “Darling, wake up now, wake up….” And then he began to scream.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, pulling away from her. “Trevor…”

Before I could go to him, I heard a clicking sound. I started, thinking in my panic that Colonel Aselma had somehow not taken a fatal strike. But she was still quite dead. Only, in her hand I noticed a tiny object, pen-shaped, emitting a series of clicks and staticky hisses. A moment later a faint, high-pitched whine came through the broken window from outside.

Giles looked up, his face contorted with weeping. “Her Gryphon,” he choked. Jane and I raced out onto the porch.

In the tangled garden where Giles grew yarrow and brambly yellow roses, one of the Aviators’ biotic aircraft crouched in the summer darkness. Its narrow nose pointed skyward, and as we watched, its wings fully extended even as its solex panels folded in upon themselves, like the soft gleaming folds of a bat’s wings. More clicks and hissing blasted from it as a smooth translucent hood emerged and covered its cockpit. The keening of its power supply grew louder and louder until it was a steady roar. Before we reached the porch steps, it was airborne, springing into the air with the ease and lethal grace of a jaguarundi or lynx. Within seconds it was high above the house. I could see its sensors on their long filaments whipping through the air, some of them with glowing green and yellow eyes staring balefully down at us.

“It’s taking a reading.” I started to back toward the door, but Jane grabbed me and shook her head. “It’s too late,” she said dully. “It will already have signaled that we’re here.”

The Gryphon made a final swipe above us, its steel-blue wings slicing through the tops of the white oaks and sending down a confetti of torn leaves. Then it was gone, and the cold wake of its passing raked our cheeks like talons.

We went back inside. I was too numb to register anything except that my recklessness had killed Trevor and betrayed us to NASNA. Jane helped Giles carry Trevor’s body into their room. I followed, silent, and stayed there even when Jane left. I watched as Giles washed his lover’s face and brow, touching gently the pale scar tissue where his eyes had been and kissing the place where the Aviator’s weapon had left that incongruously small wound, like a bloody kiss.

“Giles,” I said after a long time had passed. “Giles, I’m—

“Hush,” he said. His eyes were red, but he had stopped crying. “He was prepared for this, Wendy. He has—he made plans, in case of…” He gasped and lifted his face, his eyes squeezed shut tight. “I’m just—God! it’s just horrible, that’s all. But I know we’ll be together again soon.”

I shook my head, shocked. “Giles! No, you can’t—”

He looked up at me, brushing back the loose hair that had fallen around his shoulders. I saw then that his soft beauty had bled away, as quickly and easily as though it had been merely painted upon his face. What remained was only grief and the outlines of a love so powerful, it looked like rage.

“Wendy.” His voice was still gentle but commanding. “I think you should leave us alone for a little while. There are—there’s something I need to do, and you won’t—I just need to be alone.”

Nodding, I stumbled from the room, wiping tears from my face. I was anguished by my callousness in following him there, by the drunken rage and foolishness that had destroyed my friends. And suddenly I remembered Miss Scarlet, sleeping upstairs with Fossa.

“Jane!” I ran down the hall and into the kitchen. Jane stood at the sink in a shroud of steam, wringing out a pink rag.

“They’re gone,” she said. She turned to me, and I saw where a tag of blood still smeared her cheek.

“Gone?” I repeated shrilly. I was still thinking of Miss Scarlet.

Jane nodded once, biting her lip. “Yes. I—I gave them to the pigs.” She started to laugh, stopped abruptly and wiped her eyes. “Oh, god. It’s all my fault, I never—”

“ Stop. ” I took her in my arms again, smoothing her damp hair. “It’s—if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. They were looking for me, Jane. They have orders from Tast’annin to find me and bring me to him.”

Jane pulled back. “But he’s dead,” she said, and touched the pistol at her waist. “He’s dead, Wendy, you know that—”

“He’s not. He’s alive—they’ve done something, I don’t know what—regenerated him, found his corpse and—and I don’t know….” I started to shake and drew away from her. “Miss Scarlet. She doesn’t know yet—”

Jane went even paler than she had been. “Are you sure? Is she safe, are they still—?”

We ran upstairs, our footsteps echoing through the empty halls. The night wind blew through an open window, and gray light spattered the floor. Near the end of the corridor the door to the linen closet hung open.

“Scarlet! Scarlet, are you there?” I shouted. Jane followed me as I ducked inside, flinging clothes out of my way. “Scarlet!”

The room was empty. The plates and wine bottle and remnants of food were as I’d last seen them. The bed covers where Miss Scarlet had been sleeping were tossed onto the floor.

“Fossa!” Jane yelled. “Scarlet! Where are you?”

I shook my head and turned to the door, stunned. “They’re gone.”

Jane looked at me, her face a tortured mask. “The window,” she gasped, and pushed me aside as she went back into the corridor. “That goddamned open window.” I ran after her down the hallway.

“That’s it,” she cried, leaning out the window. “They’re gone—she must have gotten on his back and they jumped out—see, there?”

I looked where she pointed, to a patch of soft earth that was broken up, as though someone had rolled in it. Jane continued to stare at the ground. “I drove her to this,” she said softly. “Because I never treated her the same way I treated you, or anyone else. I never should have gone off alone—and now this, now this—”

I grabbed my aching head, wishing I could rip it off and silence the roaring in my ears. I breathed deeply, the way Dr. Harrow taught me, and after a moment felt calmer. I drew my hands from my face and looked at my friend.

“Jane, it’s all done now,” I said carefully, my voice hoarse. “I should never have left that room, but I did. And maybe you shouldn’t have gone out alone—but it’s done now. They’re gone. And Trevor—”

I shut my eyes, trying to will away the anguish pounding inside me. “And they’re all gone, is all,” I finished.

Jane nodded miserably and pulled herself from the window. “Those Aviators,” she said, and a bitter edge crept into her voice. “Tell me, what happened?”

We drew together, like survivors of a rain of roses, and walked down the hall. I told her all I knew, ending with my shock at finding myself in the front hallway just as she entered. When I finished, we had reached the kitchen. Jane pulled away from me, shaking her head, and for several minutes leaned with her hands pressed tightly against the edge of a table. Finally she sighed and straightened, and ran her hands through her unruly shock of hair.

“I guess we better find Giles,” she said.

I felt exhausted, so tired that all I wanted to do was sink to the floor and huddle there like a sick child. But I nodded and let her take my hand. Slowly we walked to his room. Through the open windows came the creak of crickets and the wind in the leaves: sounds that now seemed to have no other reference than to this heartache and fear. I glanced outside, half-expecting to see naught but darkness, the long shadow of our grief; but there were the trees tossing gently, there the stars in their midsummer guise, and a faint glow of moonlight in the east.

We found Giles in his rooms sitting on the bed with his back to us. Trevor’s body was gone. Jane looked aside at me, her eyes wide and mouth posed to ask a question, but I shook my head.

“Giles,” I called softly. “It’s Wendy and Jane.”

He turned. He had bound his hair back into a neat braid and changed his clothes—a long deep-blue tunic, not the mourning red I might have expected a Paphian to wear, but then he had not lived among his own people for many years. He looked quite calm, his mouth a little strained and eyes bloodshot; but his expression was peaceful, his voice steady as he spoke to us.

“You should not blame yourselves,” he said. He beckoned us to sit beside him on the bed, and I saw how his hands trembled, and felt how cold they were as they patted my own. “Neither of us knew that they were searching for you, Wendy, else we would have made other plans for you and Jane and Miss Scarlet—”

“They’re gone,” Jane broke in. She glanced nervously about the room, as though afraid of seeing Trevor’s corpse propped in a corner. “Scarlet and Fossa. They jumped out the window—the tracks seemed to go into the woods.”

Giles shut his eyes and ran a hand lightly over his face. “Ah, no,” he murmured; then said, “But no, I’m not surprised, not really.”

His voice shook slightly as he looked away, staring at the dark rectangle of a window set in the far wall. “Fossa hates the NASNA Aviators. He was enslaved by them for many years in Araboth before he escaped. Well, then.” He sighed and turned back to us. “We won’t have to worry about them, at least.”

“What do you mean, not worry?” Jane cried, aghast. “We should be out there now, looking for them!”

Giles shook his head adamantly. “ No. Fossa knows what he’s doing—they’ve probably set out for Cassandra. He knows the way, and even on foot they’ll probably get there before you do.”

“What are you talking about?” I stared at him as though he were mad. But Giles only sat calmly, stroking the worn cotton quilt with its pattern of interlocking circles. Double Wedding Ring, Trevor had called it; a gift from his daughter. A small brown stain had spread across one panel, and Giles’s fingers paused there as he answered.

“You can’t stay here. By tomorrow there will be more Aviators—sooner, if they come directly from the City of Trees.”

I blanched, and he went on quickly. “But I don’t think they will. From what those two told us, there is only a janissary force in the City now. The Aviators pulled out to attend to an insurrection in Vancouver, and the soldiers who remain have their hands full trying to keep down the rebels. As for the rest of us—we’ll all have to take sides now. It seems your talk of the genewars has actually come to pass,” he ended softly. His blue eyes stared mistily at the bed, and I knew he was speaking to Trevor and not to us. But then he seemed to recall where he was. He sighed again and stood, pacing to the wall where an old monitor hung crookedly from a pair of hooks. He straightened it, then clicked it on. The screen stayed blank, but the room filled with low music, gongs and chanting. A gamelan orchestra. I wondered again where the transmissions came from.

“Cassandra,” Giles said, as though he knew my thought. “I have already notified Cadence. They should have left by now—if the weather holds, if they don’t run into Aviators on the way, they should be here late tomorrow morning to take both of you back with them.”

“Cassandra? But what good will that do? And what about you?” Jane scowled, staring out the window to where the forest waited. “And Scarlet? What about them?”

“I told you, I believe they have already left for Cassandra. That was the plan, if ever anything happened—”

“So you’ve been expecting this?” Jane fairly shouted. “Some nice little toss-up with NASNA, and Fossa and Scarlet take to the woods?”

“Trevor had an escape planned long before we ever heard of you,” Giles said smoothly. A note of sorrow crept into his voice. “But you’re right, he did expect it—I think he hoped for it, in a way….”

“But not dying,” I cried. I thought of how intent Trevor had always been, how much like a man with some great work still ahead of him. “Surely he didn’t want that?”

Giles smiled, an odd, twisted smile. “I don’t think he cared—I know he wasn’t afraid of dying, not the way I am—but then, things are different for Trevor. He’s lived so long, and he had—well, he made plans, you know. I don’t think this really took him by surprise, in the end. And I know I’ll be with him again, but it’s just so…”

His voice trailed off, and he slumped over, weeping silently. Jane looked at me, her eyebrows raised, then glanced worriedly around the room—for weapons, I realized. She thought as I did: that Giles meant to kill himself.

“Well, we can’t leave you,” she said at last. “You’ll be—well, it’s just not a good idea, your being here alone. That’s all,” she ended awkwardly.

Giles drew a deep, gasping breath and looked up at her. “Oh, I won’t be alone, ” he said. His hand crept to the dark penumbra of blood on the quilt. “I’ve got him. ”

My flesh crawled at his tone. I had heard it before—that same note lodged somewhere between madness and exultation—first when I had watched the poet Morgan Yates kill herself at HEL, and then later when Dr. Harrow confronted me before her own suicide, and finally at the Engulfed Cathedral with Tast’annin. Suddenly I felt sick and weak, thinking of all those other deaths that I had caused. There was a roaring in my ears, as though some wind whirled inside my brain, a raging gale that might extinguish me; and at the corner of my eyes I saw small bursts of light, blinding white and yellow: the warning signs of a seizure. I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and waited until the roaring dimmed, and the blinding flashes cooled to dull throbbing blues and greens. Finally I let my breath out in a long sigh.

“I have to sleep,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, I have to go—” I turned and stumbled for the door. After a moment I heard Jane follow me.

Before we stepped into the hallway, I stopped and looked back at Giles. He had stopped crying, though his face still looked wet and raw. He gazed at the monitor on the wall as though its screen held some beloved image.

“We will wait, then,” I said. “Till tomorrow, at least. For them to come from Cassandra.”

Beside me Jane made an angry hissing sound, but she only said, “I guess we don’t have much choice.”

“Oh no,” said Giles. Slowly he turned to look at us, his luminous blue eyes as brilliant and cold as Trevor’s optics. In his slender hand he held the Aviator’s gun. “You don’t understand, my friends—

“You no longer have any choice at all.”