Winterlong

1. Primordial Zone Of Bohemia

“RAPHAEL …”

The sigh came again. For an instant I paused with my head thrown back, the sweat on my shoulders cooling as I tried to recall who it was that moaned beneath me. Then a breeze stirred from the hidden panel left slightly ajar so that other Patrons might watch if they desired, and the chilly air wafted to me the scent of burned leaves and earth. A Botanist: Iris Bergenia, a friend of my Patron Roland Nopcsa and an exceedingly plain woman. The most memorable thing about her the ripe odor of loam clinging to the rough fingers that clutched me. I murmured some mindless endearment and slowed my movements, hoping this might hasten her climax so that I could join my House at last worship. Then, as an afterthought, I ran one hand across her scalp (her hair close-cropped like all the Curators’, and none too clean), and when her breathing came fast and shallow I tugged her hair as I whispered her name. She gasped and cried aloud. I pulled out of her and rolled aside on the bed. I moaned as in pleasure, hoping that no one was watching from the Clandestine Adytum to see my grimace of distaste give way to a grin as she continued to squeal and sigh.

“Ah, Raphael,” she murmured a little later, reaching to stroke the long russet tangle of hair spilling down my back. I yawned and stretched, mimed a perfect smile as I turned from her to pull on my tunic.

“That was lovely,” I said. I found my riband on the floor and braided my hair carelessly, tying the shining bit of brocade around the end. Then I stood. I pressed three fingers against my mouth in the Paphian’s beck and stared over her head at my reflection in the ancient ormolu mirror hanging from the far wall of the seraglio. It cast back my image: a slender gold-tipped shadow standing above Iris Bergenia’s stolid figure as she yanked heavy leather workboots back onto her feet. I repeated my comment, glancing down at her. But in pulling on her coarse dun-colored trousers and blouson she had also cloaked any hint of the desire that had kept her straining after me since we had met a week before at the Illyrians’ Sothic Masque. I made a face. Few of our Patrons had anything to say to us afterward.

Fewer still wanted to look at us and be reminded of their own ugliness of body and soul, forgotten for a few moments in the embrace of a pathic or little mopsy.

“Did you bring the tincture of opium?” I asked, tossing back my braid as I crossed the chamber to light more‘ candles.

“Why—no, I mean—” Iris stammered, her foot hitting the floor with a thud. She gazed at me abashed. “I understood from Miramar it was to be delivered later—”

“Oh,” I said, investing the syllable with all the sneering doubt I could muster. As the yellow tapers threw more light into the chamber I was rewarded with her blush. The mere thought that their association with us consisted of anything but raw commerce mortified even the most devout Patron of the Hill Magdalena Ardent. I knew that Miramar would be furious if he heard I had embarrassed Iris Bergenia by this intimation of impropriety. I also knew that there would never be any punishment for Raphael Miramar, favorite of the House Miramar and Roland Nopcsa’s pet. “Well, if Gower Miramar is expecting it …”

I stretched, wondering if the exchange for my favors might also bring us more of the cosmetic madder the Botanists had given us at the last masque. “May I escort you to your friends, Iris?”

“No.” Hastily she collected her cloak and carrying pouch, the tarnished swivel gun that I knew wasn’t loaded but which all Botanists carried anyway when they visited our Houses. “I think I remember the way out—”

I walked her to the chamber door, enjoying her discomfort as I embraced her. I shut my eyes and sighed into her ear, felt her shudder as she pulled away from me. She bared her teeth in a false smile. She did have even white teeth, as so many of the Botanists did; Miramar said it was from chewing birch twigs. For a moment a hint of warmth flared in her eyes.

“Roland was right about you,” she said. She gave me a fleeting smile.

I bowed my head, affecting modesty, and said, “I’ll tell Miramar you promised the tincture would be delivered soon.”

Her smile froze. With a shrug she turned and fled.

“Puh,” I said aloud. “That old bitch.” I walked to the bed and retrieved my rings and the aluminum bracelet Roland had given me last year when I had been chosen cacique at the Masque of Winterlong. It was a lovely bangle, taken from the Hall of Civil Servants in the Museum where Roland lived and where soon, soon! I would live as well. For several minutes I stood before the mirror, combing my long hair and braiding it again. This time I bound it with a long indigo riband, pulled the braid taut to display the titanium ear-cuffs that had been another token of Roland’s favor, ancient ornaments he had found among the ruins beneath the Obelisk. I dropped the braid, gingerly touched my cheek, wincing at how rough it felt. Most Patrons preferred the youngest children. Those of us old enough to shave were encouraged to do so each morning and evening. But Roland had confided that Iris Bergenia would prefer me unshaven, and so tonight I had forgone my toilet. Despite this the face that glowed between the shadows in the mirror’s flecked surface was no less beautiful than the painted effigies in the Hall of Dead Kings. Raphael Miramar, most sacred of the Magdalene’s Children, beloved of Paphians and of the Curator Roland Nopcsa.

Tonight I would tell Miramar I was leaving.

I smiled into the mirror, once more made the Paphian’s beck to myself. I was turning to leave when a shape shot across the room, giggling.

“Fancy!” I cried, laughing as I whirled to catch her. Candlelight struck the spurs of her shoulders, collarbone, knees; made a golden cerement of her thin white tunic. She squealed as I grabbed her and we both tumbled onto the thick carpet. For a moment I pinned her, felt those sharp thin ribs that I could have crushed like the husk of a tamarind. Then she wriggled from my arms and slid beneath the bed.

“Miramar is waiting!” she said, blowing a dust feather into my face. “Let me out.” She peered from the bed-shadows: enormous eyes in a triangular face; golden hair just long enough to be pulled into two tight braids that left her ears pitifully exposed to the autumn drafts that chilled our House.

I settled back onto my heels. “Come on out, then.”

“You’ll catch me.”

“I’ll come under there and catch you if you don’t.”

“You can’t, you’re too big—” She laughed, grasping one of the bed’s heavy carven feet and snaking behind it.

“Huh,” I said, prying her fingers loose.

With a shriek she darted from beneath the bed. I caught her before she could flee back into the Clandestine Adytum and hugged her to me, kissing her cheek and inhaling her soft scent, still milky and sweet with childhood. “How long were you there, you little snake?”

She shrugged, flushed with excitement, and straightened her shift. “Not long. An hour—”

“An hour!” I pretended to pull her braids, when from downstairs resounded the harsh strains of the sistrum heralding last worship, and Doctor Foster’s voice intoning the opening verse of “The Magdalena.”

“Come on,” she said, and we ran downstairs.

Only Miramar and Doctor Foster lay prostrate in the fane when we arrived. All of the older children and pathics had gone to a Conciliatory Masque at Saint-Alaban. Since this was Third Day, when Doctor Foster attended to Miramar’s castigations, I knew that if I remained I would have the chance to tell Miramar of my decision to join Roland at the Museum. I waited while Fancy stood on tiptoe to reach the font which held civet and attar of roses, tried not to grin at how earnestly she anointed herself before turning to let me pass. My own anointment was cursory, and I was punished for my sloppiness in spilling unguent down the front of my chasuble. Miramar ignored Fancy and myself as he chanted the long verses of “The Duties of Pleasure.” Doctor Foster sniffed and rolled his eyes as I took my place beside him, trying not to choke on the cloying scent of roses that mingled with the more bitter reek of hemp burning on the altar.

After only a few minutes I heard Fancy’s slow breathing: already sound asleep. How could Miramar and Doctor Foster stay awake through worship, night after night, despite long hours of attendance upon the Magdalene’s affairs and the samovars of sedative tea they consumed between Visits from Curators and other Paphians? I yawned and focused as I always did upon the ancient figure of the Magdalene. Swathed in smoke from the blackened brazier, the pale contours of Her face had been smoothed to an eyeless plane by the impressions of thousands of small hands over the centuries. To stay awake I counted the stars painted upon Her blue robe and wondered how many years it had been since She was made. Hundreds, perhaps. Miramar and Doctor Foster maintained that ours was the oldest of all the Magdalenes upon the Hill Magdalena Ardent. It was brought there from the ruined Shrine in the northeast part of the City, in the first years of the Second Ascension. That was before the ‘rains of roses made a wasteland of the northeast, before the aardmen and hydrapithecenes and other geneslaves drove the Curators and the first Paphians from their homes, to dwell in the Museums and Embassies as we did now. The House Saint-Alaban claimed that its Magdalene was older than ours. It had come from the Cathedral that still stood to the northwest upon Saint-Alaban’s Hill. But the Cathedral was an evil place. The very earth there was poisonous, contaminated by the rains of roses. Only lazars lived in the ruins now, though Doctor Foster said that many janissaries once stood guard over an ancient hoarde of weapons placed near Saint-Alaban’s Hill before the First Ascension.

“Only a Saint-Alaban would want to lay claim to an image from the Engulfed Cathedral,” Miramar would say disdainfully whenever the issue was brought up. “If they are so proud of their ancestry, why don’t they return there to live?” This would anger whatever Saint-Alabans were present, but the rest of us would laugh.

Perched upon a small ridge overlooking the River Gorge, our House commanded a view of two others—Saint-Alaban and Persia. To the south sloped the Hill Magdalena Ardent, shadowing the ornate fastnesses of Illyria and crowned by High Brazil’s minarets and glowing lights. Many nights as a child I had huddled with my bedcousins in the upstairs nursery, staring out the beveled windows to watch Miramar and the older children traipse across the Bison Bridge to attend masques in those gaslit halls, or begin the longer pilgrimage to the outskirts of the Narrow Forest where the Curators dwelled. By the time I was old enough to accompany our Patrons outside, I had learned that (alas!) the House Miramar was not as wealthy as the House High Brazil (that entertained the Botanists almost exclusively, in exchange for opium and atropa belladonna); that our own Doctor Foster had been sold to the House Miramar by the hydrapithecenes who had devoured his parents, for a vial of tincture of opium and a bolt of water proof silk (to which we attributed his predilection for laudanum and costly fabrics); that the occasional Ascendant visiting our Patrons must be entertained without question; that from the Curators we might demand orchids and textiles and cosmetics in return for our rarefied lust, but never ask for learning.

Still, no Curator or Illyrian could have lavished us with as much affection and as many attempts at luxury as did Miramar. The original gold and indigo mosaic tiles glittered on our nursery walls, although there were many gaps in the intricate geometries patterned there. Our clothes were designed and woven by Curators at the Museum of Technologies, or obtained by them from Ascendant traders. In seraglios lit by dozens of electrified candles we entertained our Patrons, and slept in beds that had been imported from the Balkhash countries centuries ago. My room had a balcony overlooking the river, and my own tiny radiophone patched into the House generator. Late at night, after my last Patron had left, I would lie long awake listening to the pulsing strains of waltzes broadcast from the Museum of Technologies as I pored over the brittle pages of the volumes Roland Nopcsa had given me last Winterlong. Books with titles like The Ancient Life-History of the Earth and The Modern Changes of the Earth: Its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology, and A Short History of a Great Group of Extinct Reptiles. And one cold and windless winter’s eve I picked up an Ascendant radio signal broadcasting from somewhere in the United Provinces. For hours I listened to a faint sweet voice telling an old, old story of a man redeemed by ghosts, until the signal, ghostlike itself, faded into the dawn.

But there was no radiophone to entertain me now: only the featureless Magdalene with Her plaster hands joined, holding the beads upon which She counted the Decades. Five sets of beads; five Houses. In a whispered monotone Doctor Foster responded to Miramar’s Invocation of the Sacred Jade, the secret names of Desire. Fancy’s breathing had grown softer still, the smoky air warm and ripe with dreams.

I must have dozed myself. It seemed that the figure of the Magdalene had gathered Her robes tightly about Her thighs. As I watched She writhed as though in pain,’ a sight made more horrible because of Her eyeless face. Her gown rippled and swelled until it tore apart. Then I saw that at Her feet crouched a boy with fair curling hair and grass-green eyes, beautiful as any Paphian mite. He might have been the twin of those other images of the Magdalene, a boy as lovely as She herself, but his lips curled in a cat’s cruel smile, and his green eyes winked malice. In his hands he held the torn hem of the Magdalene’s gown, and I saw that She bled from wounds in Her hands and feet. The shining stars upon Her robe turned to tears of blood.

Then I saw that the boy was wounded too. About his neck hung a bit of cord, or perhaps a vine. It had left a red scar around his neck. But he did not seem to be suffering. Instead he smiled to see the Magdalene in pain, although She reached to him with Her white hands, to offer succor or perhaps forgiveness. I knew then it was that boy who had injured her. In a rage I sprang to hit him.

My head banged against the edge of the altar. I fell back grunting. Above me the faces of Miramar and Doctor Foster and Fancy folded together in concern.

2. Convergence of a number of separate and independent probabilities

“J UST STAY STILL AND drink your valerian,” ordered Doctor Foster. “Here, Benedick: give this to Raphael.”

“Thanks, cousin,” I said, taking the steaming mug Small Benedick held out to me. I waited until he skipped back to Doctor Foster before grimacing and drinking the awful stuff.

To my mortification, they had brought me to Doctor Foster’s infirmary. Actually the anteroom of his chambers, dignified by the term infirmary only by virtue of a warped wooden shelf sagging beneath a row of very old glass bottles. Inside of them one glimpsed homunculi swimming in the cloudy spirits, or the clenched fronds of bizarre plants, the preserved limb of a carnivorous betulamia. I had fortunately never seen these used in any treatment, indeed had never known him to treat us with anything except tincture of opium or chamomile tea (for pain or overstimulation), or sops of wine or an infusion of valerian (for everything else).

“I’m all right,” I said. I glared at Small Thomas and Benedick and the other very young children sniggering at me from the other side of the room. They sat at Doctor Foster’s feet. My forehead felt bruised where I had knocked it against the altar, and there was that familiar dull throbbing that often followed worship, from inhaling hempen smoke. Doctor Foster nodded, stroking the coiled yellow hair of Fancy in his lap.

“Yes, well, drink it anyway and try to rest. I gather you weren’t going to the Conciliatory Masque, so there’s no need to rush out of here.” He smiled, tossing back his hair (graying at the temples and starting to grow a little thin on top, despite frequent applications of lilac water and honey). He shifted so that more of the children could lean against his legs, and cleared his throat. Doctor Foster liked to talk and liked to have an audience. Too old to be engaged by Patrons, he was still too clever to meet the usual fate that elders meet, little more than slaves to their younger cousins. Instead he had parleyed his gift for storytelling, along with his (mostly imaginary) healing abilities into a position at the House Miramar that was, if not precisely honored, still eyed affectionately by Miramar and the rest of us. We older pathics had lost our appetite for his tales— stories for boys and stories for girls, he called them—preferring the real intrigues of our constant round of masques and the intricate couplings that accompanied them. Still it was soothing to lie upon the swaybacked couch beneath a catskin comforter, breathing the sweet fumes that rose from his narghile as he related old tales of the City of Trees and the tragic love stories that were the Paphians’ favorite entertainment.

“… and so the aardmen took him, and Lilith Saint-Alaban gave herself to them in exchange for his life; but the aardmen killed him anyway, and her too; and their son Small Hilliard died in a rain of roses.” Doctor Foster sighed. I started, realizing I must have drifted off again.

Not that it mattered. All his stories ended the same way: tragically, with beautiful Paphian boys and girls kidnapped by geneslaves or devoured by lazars or enslaved by Ascendants and Curators. It made life seem a somewhat more comforting prospect in comparison; except that as we got older we learned that most of the tales were true.

“Now a story for boys, ” demanded Small Thomas, pinching Fancy as he shook his curls at Doctor Foster.

Doctor Foster drew from his narghile and stared at the mosaic ceiling, as though he read there some strange history. “What story?” he said at last.

“My story!” said Small Thomas.

“Raphael’s story!” said Fancy, kicking him and hugging Doctor Foster. “Please, Doctor Foster!”

I pulled the comforter to my chin and tucked my long braid around my neck. Doctor Foster exhaled a plume of smoke and began.

“I remember the day Raphael came here. Sixteen years ago; the same day that Trahern High Brazil performed his inspired Akolasian gambade for the Curators, and as a result of their overly enthusiastic ravishments died; but it was an extraordinary thing to see all the same.” He sighed at the memory.

“Raphael’s mother was a beautiful girl, a child really—no older than you are now—” He inclined his head to me. ‘Miramar wanted to take her in, she was so lovely; but I discouraged him, she had been among the lazars for too long. But she was a Paphian, Saint-Alaban we thought, because of her eyes; so many of them have green eyes. She had two children with her, twins—”

“Twins!” said Thomas. He was very young and had not heard all this before.

“Twins,” Doctor Foster repeated solemnly. “Raphael and his sister. We bought them both—you all know how rare twins are, and these were extraordinarily beautiful.”

“The Saint-Alabans say twins are holy,” said Small Thomas. He was thinking of the Masque of Baal and Anat performed at Saint-Alaban each Autime.

Doctor Foster snorted. “Yes, well.” He turned back to me and smiled. I dropped my eyes as the children looked at me, and pretended to pluck at a stray thread on my chasuble.

“So did she die?” urged Fancy.

“The mother? Oh, yes, of course. Probably the aardmen lad followed her to our door and were just waiting, hoping they’d get all three of them. Miramar thought I was heartless to push her back out again, but—” He shrugged. “I thought we could take a chance on the babies, they seemed free of contagion. And at first they both seemed fine. After a few months the boy—” He pointed the mouthpiece of his narghile at me. “Raphael: he started talking. But the girl never did.”

He paused, one hand dropping to pat Thomas. “She was a head-banger. Frightened the Patrons. I did all I could.”

He gestured vaguely at the shelf of physics. I silently thanked the Magdalene that he had never had to do anything for me. He shook his head. “But she wouldn’t behave. We finally sold her to the Ascendants.”

Benedick sniffled at this. More than one Patron had recently complained of his truculence in the children’s seraglio.

“Still, the boy was fine,” Doctor Foster continued, tugging Benedick’s braid reassuringly. “After his bedwarming he drew more Patrons than any of us: a true Son of the Magdalene!”

He ended suddenly and fell to staring at his pipe, his fingers still laced about Benedick’s braid. When it seemed apparent that there was no more story forthcoming, the children started to yawn and fidget. I amused myself by making cruel faces at Benedick until he looked about to cry.

From the pendulum chamber several stories above us came the faint tonging of the hour: well after the children’s bedtime. Like Sieur Maggot in a play, Miramar’s head suddenly popped around the corner of the door.

“Doctor Foster!” he scolded, clapping his hands so that the long azure cuffs of his robe swished against each other. “Wicked Doctor Foster. Come, children! Fancy, you know better than this! Benedick, Magnus Stoat will be joining you after breakfast tomorrow—”

Clucking and chirping like peevish sparrows they left calling goodbyes to Doctor Foster and Miramar and myself as they scurried to where the waiting elders met them in the hall and carried them upstairs to the nursery. Doctor Foster gave them a desultory farewell and nodded off in his chair. Miramar remained smiling in the doorway.

“Is your head better, cousin?” he asked me.

“Yes, uncle,” I said, suddenly nervous. I had almost forgotten the reason why I had stolen this evening at home. Now it came back to me, and my voice cracked as I said, “Miramar—I—could I speak with you?”

He nodded and motioned for me to follow him to his chambers.

A low brass table had been set with steaming glass carafe and two tumblers. I wondered uneasily if somehow he had been expecting me. Miramar knelt to pour our tea, crushing mint leaves and a cube of raw sugar into each glass.

“To your future,” he said, raising his tumbler and quickly downing its contents.

My heart sank; he knew. I flopped onto a pillow.

“Iris Bergenia told me this evening that Roland Nopcsa has offered you his bed in the Museum of Natural History.”

I bit my lip to keep from cursing, vowed to humiliate Iris publicly as soon as the opportunity arose. But to Miramar I showed a calm face.

“I was going to tell you tonight …”

He listened with studied casualness, eyeing the tea dregs that had settled at the bottom of the empty carafe. He lifted it and gently shook the damp leaves onto a saucer, then squinting tilted the plate to read them.

“What do they say?”

He smiled. “What they always say: love with a romantic stranger.” A flick of his scalloped nail dispersed the dregs into a sodden heap. I met his eyes.

“I’m going with him, uncle.”

As I spoke I realized this was not how I’d planned to make my announcement; but there it was. I stared at my feet.

“Mmmm.” No surprise. But a wince of regret tugged at his gentle mouth. Miramar sighed. “I could refuse you permission, you know.” But his expression showed such sorrow that I knew he would not refuse me. He never had.

“I had hoped you would stay—” he went on, cleaning his fingers on a linen napkin.

“I might come back,” I said, and was immediately ashamed. Because that proved I was afraid, had doubts; and I wanted to leave boldly. I bumped against the table and sent a tumbler rolling. With a sigh Miramar picked it up.

“I hope you do. You are …” He glanced up at the polished copper ceiling that reflected us floating in a molten sea. “The loveliest of all of us. We—wanted your daughters born here, because never have we had a child so beautiful.”

I looked away. Tears glittered in his eyes, and I knew I would cry too and change my mind if I saw him weep. “Thank you, uncle.”

“It’s no favor I’m doing you, letting you leave us.”

I stared at the arabesques in the carpet, but my voice betrayed my resentment. “You think I’m a fool to go,” I said at last.

“You’ve been sheltered and spoiled—we all have been,” he said gently.

“But especially Raphael.”

“Well, yes: of course.” He reached to stroke my leg. “But you understand why.” “Because I’m worth more than the rest.”

“Because you are more beautiful than any of us; because we love you. But they will not love you out there. Raphael—”

I shook his hand from me. “The Curators—” I began.

“The Curators consider us whores and fools! Do you think Roland wants you for your learning?”

“Do you think I want him for his bed?”

Miramar groaned in exasperation. “Listen to me! You could continue with Roland, use his books, and then return to teach the children here, if you like—”

“Teach whores and fools,” I snapped, then bit my tongue. Miramar’s face grew taut and he folded his hands upon the brass table.

“Your cousins,” he said softly; but I knew the glint in his eyes heralded anger. “Do you think you’re the first pretty toy to go among them to learn? Do you?”

As he leaned forward the table shook. The empty glasses rolled to the floor. I fumbled for a reply as I straightened the mess, but he cut me off with a brusque wave. “Do you know what happened to the others?”

I started to answer, but his voice rose above mine as he named them:

“Estevan High Brazil: raped and blinded by the Librarians. Lorelei Saint-Alaban, throttled when she fainted while entertaining Nelson Dewars’s guests at his birthday ball. Three children from Persia engaged for a Senator’s cotillion, strangled in their sleep.

“It is not safe for us to live among the Curators, Raphael. Maybe once it was; maybe before we had our own Houses and our own wealth bartered from them over the years.

“But not now; especially not now.” He paused, ran a finger along the rim of the glass carafe. “Last week I entertained an Ascendant janissary at High Brazil. He was there to receive a shipment of opium from the Botanists—” “You told me,” I said impatiently.

“I told you nothing. He was besotted with whiskey and frilite; he talked too much. They are sending a man to govern the City, an Ascendant commander—”

I smiled. “Come now, uncle—”

Miramar poured himself another glass of tea. As he sipped it he looked at me through slitted eyes. “Perhaps it won’t happen; perhaps he was lying. But the Curators are worried. If this rumor is true—if they really do send a Governor to intervene—at the very least it will disrupt trade within the City, and the black market with the Ascendants.”

He drank the rest of his tea as I waited. “And?” I said at last.

“The janissary I spoke with said that they intend to retake the City. There would be no place for us then, Raphael; no place at all.”

I thought on this in silence. Finally I asked, “Why would he tell you this?”

Miramar shrugged. “What am I to him? A mindless courtesan, just as I am to the Curators. Perhaps he meant to help me, to warn me to escape. But where could we go? We would have nothing without the City and without the Curators.”

“So we should hide here forever as their whores and ponces?”

Miramar pounded the floor in aggravation. “We are priests and merchants!”

“And currency!”

I thought he would dismiss me then. Instead he rocked back on his heels and, after a moment, laughed. “Oh, Raphael. I can hear myself saying the same things when I was your age.”

“Then why won’t you let me go without all this?”

“Only because I’ve never let anyone go without a warning. And because I am afraid: for you, for all of us. Roland will tire of you, Raphael. They always do.” He cut off my protests by placing his hand against my lips and with three fingers traced their curve. “And also because I love you. I had hoped you would stay to take my place as suzein one day.”

His voice was low but free of any wheedling tone. I met his eyes and saw there only affection and desire.

I shook my head, taking his hand firmly in my own. “I want to go, uncle.”

He stared at me a long time, those golden eyes blank and inscrutable as the Magdalene’s smooth face. “I wonder sometimes if your sister got all the brains. At least she knew enough to keep silent.”

His voice was bitter; but I knew it was finished. Miramar sighed and inclined his head as if praying. When he raised it he was smiling, and with a sardonic bow he stood and pulled me to my feet.

“If I may have the honor,” he murmured. He drew back the heavy indigo drapes that curtained off his bedchamber from the rest of the suite. “A farewell to my favorite nephew.”

“Thank you, uncle,” I said, and tears stung my eyes as we embraced for the last time.

3. Introduction of new life forms

“Y OU WON’T LIKE IT Outside,” Ketura whispered to me much later. She had returned from the Saint-Alaban’s Masque, and the two of us lay together in her bedroom. “When I stayed with Flora Pyracantha last year they beat me while I slept, until I left.” She licked her lower lip as if tasting old blood.

I yawned. “That’s stupid. Didn’t they know you’re good for better things?” I stroked her breast, but she pushed me away, sitting up and pulling the quilt tight about her bare shoulders.

“Dammit! You should listen to me, Raphael, before going with Roland. They’re so different …”

“How?” I yanked away my half of the quilt and slid beneath it. “How are they different?”

Ketura snorted in exasperation, grabbed a long plait of my hair, and tugged me so that I faced my reflection in the mirror. “How do you think?”

I shrugged. “Their hair is short?”

“Don’t be a fool.” She pulled my hair, hard, and I kicked her away.

“Roland has hair. Everywhere.” I laughed and hid my face in the pillow.

“He’s still young. When they get older—” She gathered her long red curls and pulled them from her face so that her white cheeks and temples gleamed in the candlelight. “Like this. They’re bald. They’re ugly, all of them.” She shuddered. “I never knew how ugly they were …”

“So close your eyes and think of me. That’s what I do.” I shut my eyes and reached for her, grinning.

“Idiot!” She pushed me away and I sat up, surprised at her vehemence. “You should learn to fight, catamite, before you think about leaving …”

I grabbed her then, wrenched the comforter away, and bit her shoulder until her mocking voice softened and her hands fumbled to loosen my hair from its long braid.

“Why fight when we can do this?” I murmured.

Ketura sighed and turned away.

“You just don’t understand, do you, Raphael? The Curators don’t think like that. They don’t want us around, really; they just want to use us, and then leave us. Flora used me, and then she grew tired of me, and finally she hated me for being young and beautiful, and there all the time to remind her of it. They all hated me. And these were tribades, Botanists! The other Curators are worse …”

I traced the whorls of her breast and kissed her. “Roland has always been kind to me, Ketura.”

“Because you’re still young. Because he never gets enough of you. Flora was like that, too: before I left here.” She shook her head and glanced out the window. “I have to meet Adolph Drake soon,” she said, and flashed me a rueful smile. “Well, you’ve never needed to have any sense before, Raphael, so I don’t suppose I can give you any now. But—” She slipped from my arms and crossed the room to her armoire. “I can give you this.”

A six-pointed anthemion embellished the wardrobe. She pressed one of its wooden blades and a tiny drawer spat open. For a minute or two she poked through its contents, broken candicaine straws and prophylactic feathers, a handful of old ribbons and the broken keyboard from an ancient computer; then she carefully drew up a small object wrapped in desiccated paper. “I want you to have it.”

The paper crumbled as she unwrapped and then handed to me a sort of open-ended bracelet. Drab gray with faint lavender stripes, its smooth surface etched with a network of tiny whorls. It seemed to me a crude and ugly ornament, and I shot her a puzzled glance. She returned the look impassively as I examined the bracelet, hoping to find some brilliant or cantrap concealed within its somber coil. Finally I shrugged and started to put it onto my hand.

“No. Let me show you;” She took the bracelet from me and carefully eased it over her own wrist. She raised her face to meet mine. “Now. I want you to hurt me.”

I laughed. “You sound like Iris Bergenia!”

“I mean it—do something to cause me pain.”

Uneasily I shifted on the bed. “You never used to want that with me, cousin.”

“I don’t now, either, really. But I’m trying to show you something. Now go on—” She tossed back her mane of fiery hair and glared at me, then pointed to the knout draped over her wardrobe. “Use that if you like.”

I took the lash—a pretty whip of light braided doeskin that her Patron Flora Pyracantha gave her at Semhane one year—and raised it, smiling ruefully. When I struck Ketura she gasped: the blow was harsher than she had anticipated. I dropped the knout and rushed to comfort her.

“No!” She pushed me away and raised her clenched hand. “Watch—”

On her wrist the stony bracelet glowed very faintly, the lavender stripes deepening to violet against the luminous shell. One end of the gray loop was open, with a small rounded lip. As I stared it grew brighter still, until— zzzkkk shining black spine shot out from one of the dark whorls. At its tip a cobalt droplet gleamed like a gem’s tear. I breathed in sharply and moved to touch it.

“No: watch.” Ketura drew back, still holding her fist rigidly in front of her. As I stared the spine slowly retracted. I turned to her, marveling.

“What the hell is that?”

Ketura regarded me through narrowed eyes. Then she carefully slipped the bracelet from her wrist and handed it to me. “Now you should be very grateful to me for giving you this.”

“I don’t even know what it is.” I held it prudently in my palm, waited for her to snake it about my wrist. It grew warmer, as though adjusting to my body temperature. I touched the gray surface tentatively.

“It’s a sagittal: an engineered mollusk. Very poisonous, very rare. It was made during the Second Ascension.”

“That’s its shell?”

She nodded. “It lives inside, curled around like a—like a slug.”

“It’s poisonous?”

“Yes. If I’d struck you with it I’d have killed you.”

“Who gave it to you?” ‘

“A boy I met at the Botanical Gardens during the Masque of Poppies.”

I raised my eyebrows. “A Botanist gave you this?”

Ketura shook her head. “No. He wasn’t a Botanist. I don’t know what he was, really. He was beautiful, but he wasn’t a Paphian. Flora told me afterward that she had never seen him before; no one seems to have known who he was, or who invited him to the masque.

“I didn’t even entertain him; only talked with him in one of greenhouses for a little while. He gave me that—” She pointed at the sagittal, gray and cold about my wrist. “He said that it might serve me for a little while, and if I tired of it to give it to a friend.” She shook her head at the memory. “Not really the sort of gift we usually exchange, is it?”

I held up my arm and stared at it. “No, not really,” I admitted. “It’s ugly.”

Ketura nodded. “I know. I’m sorry; but it seemed like—well, it seemed like it might be useful for you, where you’re going.”

I looked at her coldly. “It’s a weapon.”

She nodded.

“How does it work?”

She leaned back against the wardrobe, flicking the hair from her eyes. “It feeds off the dead skin on your wrist. And it responds to changes in your body indicating fear or aggression. That’s when it sticks its spine out—”

“You knew all that?” I glanced at her admiringly.

She flushed. “No. The boy told me. He explained so that I’d know how and when to use it.”

I waited for her to continue, but instead she stood and paced back to her armoire. She rifled a drawer, finally chose a jet-black sheath trimmed with striped cat, and shrugged into it, smoothing the fur until it gleamed. I turned the sagittal this way and that, careful not to touch its anterior lip. After a few minutes Ketura said, “You could stay here and get rich, Raphael. There’s no reason for you to leave.”

I crossed my arms, keeping the sagittal away from my chest. “You left.”

“I wanted to study under the Botanists,” she said. “And I’m older than the rest of you. In a year they’ll have me in the kitchen, or carrying slops, or—” She shook her head, tight-lipped. “But you—why should you leave? Miramar wants you to stay,” she said bitterly.

“As the next suzein.”

“You should be flattered.” A bone pin sprang from her chignon. I retrieved it and handed it back to her. For a long moment she let her fingers rest against mine, and I felt her fingertips, callused from wielding the knout for her Patrons, the rough skin that never would have been allowed within another House. Then she took the pin and turned away. “I would never have left if Miramar had tried to stop me. But he didn’t. He thinks I’m already too old.”

I watched her chalk her face and drop two pearls of octine into each eye before she turned to me once more. “Raphael, you just don’t know—”

I stood and stalked to the window. “And you think you know it all now, just because you’re so old.”

“That’s not it!” Beneath the Chinese lead her cheeks reddened. “It’s dangerous for us out there. Even among the Botanists—all they want from us now is hurt and humiliation. They hear news of the outlands, rumors of the next Ascension, and they hope they can somehow profit from it. They fear that the world has grown beyond their knowledge, but they know that we are still beautiful! So they hate us, and fear us. Beauty and youth and pleasure are no longer enough. They want pain and death; they no longer want to share the City with us. Haven’t you noticed it among your Patrons?”

I shook my head. “No. My Patrons expect something other than pain from me.”

She sighed. “I suppose so. Only the sweetest sugarplums for Raphael Miramar.” Her tone grew harsh, but the gaze she turned on me was soft. “I’m just afraid for you, Raphael; for all of us. What if we are betrayed by the Curators?”

I began to pull on my clothes. “That’s why I’m going to stay with Roland. To learn; and maybe someday come back here and share it with the rest of you.”

Ketura turned to regard her face in the mirror. One at a time she drummed three fingers against her lower lip, then bared her teeth in a snarl. “They don’t want us to learn—”

“Oh, shut up. I hear the same damned lies you do.” I grabbed my chasuble, glaring at my own reflection as I dressed. “Doctor Foster boring me to tears with his damned stories for boys and girls! All to frighten us from ever leaving here—” I tied my hair loosely and stormed past her without a word.

But at the door I hesitated, glancing at the gray band on my wrist. “Ketura …”

She shook her head, smiling as she turned from the mirror to meet me. “I’m sorry. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Roland Nopcsa really is different.” And she kissed me, then drew back and brushed three fingers against my lip.

“Be careful with that,” she warned, nodding at the sagittal and cupping her hand a scant inch from the dark curve of the shell’s edge. “It protects its host; but the venom is always fatal when it strikes.”

She paused, then said, “But you know—”

She stood in the doorway, pulling the domino from her sheath and draping its dark folds over her face.

“But what?” I urged.

“They’re almost beautiful when they die,” she said, and walked down the hall to meet her Patron.

4. A break in the historical record

“O UR PREDECESSORS HERE BELIEVED in a slow process of evolution. We know that new life forms emerge suddenly—we see it in the Narrow Forest, and through the work the Zoologists have done with the aardmen and other geneslaves.”

“Like that?” I pointed at the glossy model of an infant proteceratops nosing its way from an elongated leathery egg.

Roland took a long pull from his beer and nodded. “Exactly. Except that we can choose the form of our history, and presumably the proteceratops did not have that luxury.”

Above us the skeleton of quetzalcoatlus northropi hummed faintly, as a draft from the ventilation pipes stirred its hollow bones. I leaned forward to blow upon the blue-gray cube of pressed herbs burning in the little brass tray Fancy had given me as a going-away gift, watched the smoke coil about the arching claws and rakishly outthrust pelvis of the looming Deinocherius that guarded Roland’s bed. As Regent of the Natural Historians, Roland chose his own quarters in the Museum: the Hall of Archosaurs, where we retired each evening to talk and smoke and drink and make love. Miramar was right: my education was not foremost among Roland’s concerns.

But it was my oldest dream. To learn the true history of the old world, to memorize the alphabet embedded within the layers of calcareous rock, and so discern in the new damp mud and broken asphalt outside my window the whorls and patterns that would shape the future. And I believed that Roland knew these things, because he was descended from those who had been set here to guard the City’s knowledge after the First Ascension.

“What luxuries did the archosaurs have, Roland?” I asked, burrowing deeper into the heap of wool rugs covering the bed.

“Oh, the usual,” he replied. “Time. A variety of comestibles. Warm sunny days and cool yet pleasant nights: bring a sweater when visiting the Mesozoic.” A small potent explosion of laughter rocked the bed as he guffawed, throttling a bolster between his huge hands. “Oh, they had a wonderful life, the archosaurians. Huge and hungry and cruel, lumbering and gentle-eyed. Their footprints remain, and we little mice creep from the trees to drink from the impressions of their toes, and make our homes among their bones.”

He gulped the rest of his beer, leaned over the cask beside his bed, and refilled the bottle. “Ah, Raphael. Why would you leave your warm House upon the hill to live here? It’s so fucking cold.” Those heavy hands around my waist, now, pulling me close so that I could smell his sweat, sweetly sour from the Botanists’ bitter lager.

“I came to keep you warm,” I said obediently, nuzzling his chest. Roland was shorter than I, but massive: barrel-chested, thighs like tree stumps, hands so big and clumsy-looking it was a marvel to watch him assemble the delicate pinnules of shattered crinoids, until the fossilized sea lilies bloomed again within his brown palms.

“But orchids die in the cold,” he said mockingly. “Miramar would never forgive me if his prize blossom withered here.”

“No chance,” I replied. Roland laughed more loudly and pulled me closer.

“I feel a chill,” he said, forcing my head down, and for a while we turned to other matters.

In the night I woke. For six years Roland had been my Patron. I knew this vast chamber as well as I knew my room at the House Miramar. But in the weeks since coming here to live I had slept uneasily, waking often in the cool darkness to start at the sight of the vast silent behemoths that reared overhead. I stared at them now, wondering how their bones came to line these halls and clutter the vast storerooms of the Museum, whereas the remains of the men who had been here mere centuries before us were lost forever.

“You see how we choose which histories to recall?” Roland had remarked once, hefting a mannequin. “Please note that only Aides and Technicians sleep in the Hall of Man,” he added scornfully.

The Aide helping us move the exhibit glared when I laughed at Roland’s comment. She said, “We work our way up to the best Halls. We earn our beds.”

Blushing, I shut up. Even Roland was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Raphael earned his place in the House he came from, Franca.”

“It’s not the same,” she snapped. She was two or three years younger than I. Her hair had recently been shorn to’ indicate her promotion from Docent to Aide. She stared contemptuously at my long beribboned braid as we hauled the heavy steel desk back into storage. “They should know their rights here.”

“Raphael has been my student since he was a child. Allow the Regents their privileges and passions, Franca.” And he winked at her. I looked away quickly, my face burning from the complicitous smile they had shared for that instant.

But now beside me Roland lay dreaming. His heavy arm pinned me to the bed as he snored. I sighed and stared at the ceiling, where bats darted between the Deinocherius skeleton and the hollow-eyed trachodons. In the darkest corners of the gallery rats scuffled, nosing fruitlessly through the ancient bones stacked there. I watched the bats’ ceaseless waltz, until once more I fell restlessly asleep with their bloodless song echoing in my dreams.

5. The dark labyrinth of the ages

E ACH DAWN WE WOKE to the screech of the Regent’s trumpet echoing through the Rotunda. Its clamor aroused Aides and Technicians and Regent alike from the galleries where they slept: the Aides and Technicians to begin their round of chores and maintenance, Roland to join his fellow Regents in their incessant discussion of useless research papers mined from the Museums’ Libraries. Although lately other things seemed to occupy their meetings. Roland returned to the Hall of Archosaurs later in the evening, and often was in no mood for me. I tried not to think of Miramar’s warning, of the rumors that even a Paphian catamite heard within the Museum of Natural History these last few weeks: that the Curators had taken a stand against the Ascendants. There had been a murder, or murders; would there now be retribution?

“I thought you were going to ban that damned horn,” I said, rolling away from Roland to cover my head with a bolster.

“Tradition is stronger even than Regents,” Roland replied. The trumpet bleated ‘fitfully for another moment. In the stillness that followed I heard the hum of voices and footsteps and doors creaking throughout the galleries, the muted click and burr of the Museum’s generator tumbling to life in the basement. Roland sighed. “But I love to hear them all wake: to think that once the City stirred so each day …”

I yawned and shook back my tangled hair. “Too early! No wonder they fell to the Ascendants without a fight.”

Roland shot me a disgruntled glance. “What are you going to do today?” he asked, tossing me a robe.

I dressed, wincing at the rough linen. My own clothes were reserved for masques and the rare occasion when I might meet with other Paphians. “The Devonian.” I tipped my head toward an adjoining gallery. “You’ll be in the Library?”

Roland nodded. “The Regent of Aviators questioned my defense of quetzalcoaltus as the model for the Langley Aerodrome Number Three.”

“My idea,” I said hotly, but Roland cut me off.

“There’s nothing I can do, Raphael! I let you in the Library when I can—”

“Once since I’ve been here!”

“It’s not my decision—we have to abide by the rules the Board of Regents sets.”

I turned to the mirror I’d leaned beneath the allosaurus. It showed a leaner and angrier face than the mirrors at Miramar had ever thrown back at me. I tossed back my hair and glanced down to see my sagittal showing from beneath the cuff of my robe. Its shell glowed faint lilac; I pulled the sleeve to cover my wrist. Roland had noticed it before during an argument, when the gray carapace had begun to gleam warningly. I knew how foolish, and dangerous, it was for me to continue wearing it. But Ketura’s words stayed with me. It was the only weapon I had if we were betrayed.

Behind me stood Roland, his robe hanging open as he slapped a roll of papers against his palm. “Why are you fighting me, Raphael?”

I knelt in front of the mirror, sliding open a lacquered cosmetics box (Miramar’s parting gift) and drawing out my kohl wand. “Because I want to learn! Because I’m tired of being treated like a child—”

“There’s nothing I can do about that, Raphael.” He reached for my hand, tried to slide the kohl wand from between my fingers. “But maybe there is something you can do for me. …”

I pulled away from him. His surprise flared into rage as I stormed from the Hall.

“Raphael!” he shouted, but before he could follow me I had fled down one corridor, and then another, and another still; until I found myself walking through the immense jaws of an insular shark that served as entry into the Hall of the Deep.

My anger had faded somewhat by now. I almost regretted leaving Roland in a fury. Certainly the thought of confronting him later sobered me: he had a ferocious temper. But I calmed myself by wandering through the Hall, glancing at exotic seashells and sponges and reading aloud the ancient placards that decorated each case.

I had just turned the corner of a great display of dorados and slimefish when I nearly tripped over a stack of empty buckets. Glancing up, I saw that I had walked into an Aide’s work area—the same Aide Francesca I had met some time earlier in the Hall of Man.

“Good morning, Franca.” I bowed, sweeping the floor with my braid.

“Fran ces ca,” she hissed, her arms feathered with brushes and long-handled brooms. Small and lithe, with a boy’s flat chest and long legs, she reminded me of my little Fancy, moving too fast for her clumsy feet. But Fancy’s mild blue eyes never would slant and darken with fury as this girl’s did; and Fancy would die rather than crop her yellow hair.

“Excuse me: Francesca.”

“Don’t call me anything, whore.” A smudge of a mouth twisted in a face broad and flat as a plate. Years ago I’d given up looking for any shaft of beauty in the Curators’ faces. But, because I was homesick and lonely, I watched her hungrily as she turned her attention to cleaning a case full of blowfish. Graceless as a puppy; skin blotched and broken where she’d scrubbed it with the harsh soap they made of lye and tallow. Long narrow eyes the color of wax. Octine might brighten them, and kohl darken those invisible lashes. But nothing for her slab cheeks, except perhaps to daub hollows there with powder.

“Stop staring, whore.” She moved up a step on the ladder to reach a gaudy blue marlin. Like everything belonging to the Curators, the ladder was ancient. I swore that the only thing holding it together was Franca’s spite.

“Don’t talk to me,” she warned, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes. “Give me that brush.”

I handed her the brush and crouched to watch her. “Why do you cut your hair like that?”

“I thought you studied under Nopcsa for six years.”

I shrugged. “I studied Paleontology.”

Without looking at me she replied, “Because only whores wear their hair long.”

“Whores and sometimes lazars,” I corrected her. She shot me a surprised look, then quickly turned back to the marlin.

“Fit company.” But after a few minutes she asked, “Why do you wear those ribbons?”

. I pulled my braid forward, staring at it with mock perplexity. “These ribbons?” I said, stroking the colored tendrils plaited into my hair.

She nodded. For a moment she could have been a Paphian child at worship, earnest and still.

“This one”—fingering a bit of green and gold brocade—“for my House. And this one from my favorite Patron.” Thin worn strips of ugly red plaid, clumsily stitched together.

“Roland gave you that?” asked Franca. She rubbed her shorn scalp, then turned to blow dust from the marlin’s painted scales. I flicked my braid back petulantly. I wished she could have seen me at Illyria’s last masque, when it had taken me an hour to plait thirty-four ribbons into my hair, and the Magdalene disappeared beneath the flowers tossed by my admirers. I sighed and followed her as she moved her ladder to the next glass exhibit case.

After a few minutes she clambered down again, coughing as she shook a gray cloud from her duster. At the bottom step she sat and stared at me for a long moment.

“Have you seen them?” she said at last.

Puzzled, I shook my head.

“Lazars,” she said. Elbows planted on her knees, chin resting on her grimy hands, she looked like an ugly child waiting to hear one of Doctor Foster’s stories. I started to laugh, but caught myself.

“I saw a dead one, once,” I said slowly. Her eyes narrowed. “Two years ago. Roland was with me. It was after a rain of roses—”

Franca curled her lip. “Only whores call it that.”

I shrugged and turned, pretending to examine a shell. She clicked her tongue and explained, “I mean, you never call a thing by its real name. ‘Rain of roses,’” she added derisively. “Say its real name: a viral strike.”

“Well, this one was dead,” I said. “Look, do you want to hear this or not?”

Suddenly serious, she nodded. “Yes. Please.”

I moved closer to the ladder. “She was very pale and her hair was tangled—” I recalled the night: the wind soft and sweet with apple blossom and that faint cloying scent that stains the air for an hour or two afterward. There were six or seven of us—I remember the albino Whitlock was there, from High Brazil. Roland was accompanying us back to Miramar.

Whitlock saw her first. He yelled and ran back, tripping over his gown to tumble onto the broken bricks at my feet. I ran ahead with Roland. I was fearless because I knew he wore a gun, traded from the Ascendants, in a sheath at his side.

“She’s dead,” he said shortly, staring down the narrow ravine to where the body sprawled beside a rotting stump. “Come on—”

But I couldn’t leave. I stared, fascinated: because I found her beautiful.

“She looked like she was sleeping …” I said.

“I’ve seen dead people,” Franca said thoughtfully. “Before we burn them. They look asleep, sometimes.”

“Well, I’ve only seen one.”

“We have a lot of accidents. Someone gets poisoned in the tannery or a heavy box falls on them. Or someone gets old and just dies. Doesn’t that ever happen where you live?”

“No,” I said. “None of us ever gets very old.”

“But you saw one.” Faint admiration shaded her voice. “A lazar …”

I didn’t tell her how Roland sent the others running back to the House; then came after me, pinning me to the ground where I could see her the whole time, the shadows of her cheeks, the way her eyes glittered with phosphorescence, her hair rippling so slightly where bluebottle worms seethed within the knotted ringlets. Afterward I was so weak he had to help me stand. Because I was frightened, he thought. But it wasn’t that at all …

“Huh?—No,” I said, startled. I’d only half-heard Franca’s question. “I wasn’t scared.”

And I turned to stare at the ceiling hung with plasticine leviathans; because I no longer felt like talking.

6. Articulate animals

ROLAND NEVER MENTIONED OUR argument that day. It was the beginning of Autime, and he was busy with the other Regents. Or so he said. I began to spend my days in the Hall of the Deep with Franca, who ignored me at first but gradually began to answer my questions, and sometimes even allowed me to assist her in her duties.

For a week we cleaned the models and mounted fish that hung from the Hall’s ceiling and aquamarine walls. “By the time we finish the last one, the others will be filthy again,” I complained. Overhead a pod of fiberglass whales hung by invisible wires. Aqua globes encasing electric lanterns cast dreamy waves of light upon walls and floor and the ribbed sweep of the whales’ bellies. It made me drowsy. Squatting atop a dilapidated ladder, I yawned often, batting lazily at the suspended hulls of bottlenoses and rorquals with a broom.

“You’ll fall,” Franca yelled up to me, wiping her forehead with her arm.

“Fall asleep, maybe,” I called back. “Come on up.”

She scrambled up, pausing halfway to steady herself against the wall. “You don’t like this gallery, do you?”

“Not really. There’re no people in it.”

She laughed, pushing a strand of lank blond hair from her forehead with a dirty fist. I smiled. I had grown accustomed to the Curators’ odd uneven features, to the stumbling way they all moved, their loud voices and even their smell: sweat and formaldehyde and the cedar shavings that kept moths from eating the pelts of stuffed lemurs and jerboas. In the rough map of Franca’s face I had come to discern hidden places that, if not precisely beautiful, still fascinated me. When struck by a slanting ray of morning light her yellow eyes would blaze suddenly, alarmingly, topaz. The same light might streak her cropped head with bands of gold, and I wondered: If only she would let it grow long, was there enough sun in the world to make it flash like my little Fancy’s wild mane? And once, after a day spent beneath a bright skylight, cleaning the convoluted whorls and ridges of a case full of murex seashells and dogwinkles, a faint spray of freckles rained across her cheeks. And somehow this delighted me.

“Well, people put them here,” she said. She spat on her hand and rubbed it clean against her tunic. “Besides, what’s the use of dead things?”

“Your precious birds are dead,” I retorted. “Everything in here is dead.”

“But they weren’t always dead.” She steadied herself with one hand on the ladder. With the other she pointed to the vaulted ceiling high above us, its ancient panes of leaded glass scarcely allowing a hint of sunlight inside. “Sometimes I see real birds up there—they get in, and nest in the ceiling. But the Curators always kill them,” she said sadly. “They say they damage the Collection.”

I stared at the ceiling, recalling the bats in Roland’s chamber. “If you went outside, you’d see lots.”

“I can’t go outside. Not ‘til I’m older.” She made a face. “Too dangerous.”

“Well, someday you’ll see all the birds you want, Franca.” I leaned forward and took a strand of her short hair, wrapped it around my finger, then slowly let it fall back against her scalp. She twisted to regard me with those cool eyes.

“And someday you’ll see all your dead men, Raphael,” she replied, and burst out laughing. I laughed too as she clambered down. She stared up at me, hands on hips, her brooms and brushes stuck under one arm.

“I’m tired of this place,” she announced, tossing her tools onto the marble floor. “Let’s take a walk.”

I climbed down. The ancient ladder shuddered with relief when I finally stepped from the last rung onto the floor. “Outside?”

“Of course not. But—” She nibbled her fingernails thoughtfully. “We can visit the Egyptians,” she finally said. “They’re dead men: you’ll like them. Have you ever seen them?”

“Not really. Roland pointed out the wing once when I first came here.” I glanced down the long Hall to the shadowy archways that opened onto passages leading to other Collections. “Won’t someone come to check on us?”

Franca rolled her eyes. “Has anyone checked once since we started working together? Come on. Everyone does this.”

She tugged at my sleeve. As her fingers brushed against my wrist my heart quickened. “All right,” I said, and followed her down the hallway.

7. Some races can boast of an immemorial antiquity

WE ASCENDED TO THE Hall of Dead Kings by a circuitous route: forsaking the cool blues and greens of the Hall of Fishes for the smoke-hued walls of the Hall of Man. The corridor leading from this gallery was long and narrow and dark, lit only by the faint light that pooled from each end of the tunnel. I walked quickly and pulled my worn tunic tight about my shoulders. I knew very little about the Hall of Dead Kings. Roland had been uncomfortable even talking about it.

“They built the pyramids and the great Obelisk by the Narrow Forest,” he said as we passed the Hall late one evening, returning from an Illyrian masque held in the West Wing. “We believe they built the Phantom Fighters for the First Ascension as well. The Aviation Regent disagrees.” And he had paused at the entry to the Egyptian Wing, staring broodingly at a crumbling tapestry of ivory-colored fiber.

Now I wondered how Franca had disappeared so quickly down the dim hallway, and hurried after her. I shivered a little at the thought of doing something I knew would anger Roland. Lately he had seemed more and more distant from me. More than once he’d snapped about my broken fingernails and callused hands—

“I can find as good as that in our own creche,” he’d said, pushing me away. “And can’t you get your slutty friends to send you some new clothes?”

I flushed at the memory and pounded the wall with my fist, swearing beneath my breath. Before me the light grew brighter. On the wall I recognized the same tapestry Roland had pointed out, angular figures with the heads of dogs and birds drawn on frayed and moldering cloth. I squinted, trying to make out Franca’s silhouette against the bright square of light that glowed a few yards ahead. Finally I reached the crumbling wooden entrance. I passed through this and beneath a second lintel formed of huge blocks of carven stone, and into a room ablaze with sunlight.

I blinked, wondering where Franca was. Then:

“Yaah!” A figure darted from the shadows and grabbed me by the shoulders. I swore and backed away to see Franca laughing breathlessly. “Scared you—”

Grabbing her wrist, I pulled her toward me, until she writhed giggling against my chest. She tried to pull away. I tightened my grip.

“Oww—stop, Raphael, it was a joke!”

I did not let her go. For a moment I breathed in the scent of her hair, tangled with dust and smelling of harsh soap and sweat. That and the warmth of her beside me in the sudden sunlight made me dizzy. Abruptly I released her.

“Very funny.” I straightened my tunic. “Are these your Egyptians?”

She nodded, trying to catch her breath. “Ye-es,” she gasped, and bit her lip. She smoothed out her tunic, like a child running late into first worship. At the sight of me staring she quickly looked away. “Those are the Egyptians.”

I turned to see the Hall of the Dead Kings.

8. “The riddle of the painful earth …”

THERE WERE SCORES OF them, the ancient men, in rows stretching on into the far dark corners of the echoing gallery. Even Franca was silenced by the place. “You’ve been here before?” I whispered. She did not reply, only nodded as she paced from one catafalque to another. I followed her, still blinking a little at the brilliant light that streamed from the arched glass vault overhead. The floor beneath us was black marble, and shot back a pantherish light at the ceiling’s spangled glass. The coffins themselves glowed golden and azure and scarlet, their patina of dust giving them a sheen as though draped in velvet. Throughout the vast room were raised huge statues, like sentinels guarding their sleeping lords, and great blocks of sand-colored stone etched with flat figures of animals and men. A heaviness in my chest made me realize I was holding my breath. I inhaled, and smelled sandalwood and rotting cloth.

How many aeons had they waited before coming here to sleep in silent rows beneath glittering columns of dust and sun? The very air was heated with their dreams. Before the first catafalque I stopped, placed my palm upon the smooth wooden plane of its face, feeling the dust of centuries seep into my pores so that when I turned my hand upward I half-expected to see imprinted there its enigmatic smile and onyx eyes. But there was nothing: only faint gray whorls and feathers of dirt, and a beetle’s shattered wing carapace. I recalled a phrase from one of Roland’s books, referring to the disinterment of the first archosaurs: “The riddle of the painful earth …”

I left the first effigy. Behind it, ranks of mummy cases and catafalques seemed to march endlessly. Only the uneven seams where the silvered glass had shifted gave the lie to this vision of infinity, and showed me where a vast mirror covered the far wall of the chamber. Franca drifted down the aisles, her reflection a white shadow slipping between the stone faces.

As if in a dream I wandered from one coffin to the next. Kings, queens, regents; royal embalmers and charioteers. Glass cases held the desiccated corpses of cats, their shriveled limbs bound with twine and stained brown cloth. Ibises wrapped until they resembled misshapen cruets were stacked in hollowed stone vessels. And everywhere those blank fixed eyes, gazing from catafalques and funerary urns, torques and golden breastplates and the gilded skulls of jackals.

“Who were they?” I asked, and started when Franca answered me from only a few feet away.

“They were the first ones here,” she said softly. “The Pilgrims. They came over the ocean in airships, fleeing the Old World where they were persecuted. They built the great monuments in the City in memory of their homeland. The Sorrowful Lincoln, the Obelisk, the Library of Conquest.”

I frowned. “Are you sure?” I asked, absently scraping a brittle label from a glass case. “I thought they were built by someone else, by Ascendants …”

She shook her head firmly. “No. After the Thirty Wars in the East, the Egyptians came to the City; after their desert was bombed. They all died here in the Long Night, during the Contagions. That’s why they’re in the Museum—”

I snatched my hand from the glass. “They all died from the Contagion?”

“No. They killed themselves rather than submit to the Ascendants. And their priests hid them in these boxes and brought them to the original Curators. Before we came, before the Second Ascension. We have protected them ever since.” She smiled at me, a child seeking approval for a lesson well learned.

“Then why is no one allowed here?” I traced a golden tear upon a wooden case. “If you’re protecting them, why are there no guards?”

She shrugged. “Why are there no guards for your precious Magdalene?” I paused and bit my lip. “Because no one would harm the Magdalene,” I said at last.

Franca leaned on a stone mummy case, chin resting on her hands. “Not even the gaping ones?” she said slyly.

I sniffed and made a face. “The Gaping One,” I corrected her. “I thought you knew nothing about us?” I flicked at her cheek and she grinned.

“I saw it in a play last winter. At Saint-Alaban. About a boy and a girl, twins—”

“Huh. Saint-Alabans: the Masque of Baal and Anat.”

“That’s right!” She brightened and waited expectantly. “Do you know it?”

I shook my head. “Superstitious nonsense, taught them by the Historians. You Curators think we’re such children! Only the Saint-Alabans believe in any of that, really. Most of us just do those things out of—out of habit, I suppose,” I ended. “The way you keep these damn galleries open and the cases clean and the exhibits in order. For who!”

Franca shrugged, then burst out laughing. “For the Egyptians! We’re waiting for the Egyptians!” And giggling she ran down the aisle; pausing to make a clumsy curtsey to the great cracked mirror.

9. A sudden and awful convulsion of nature

I WATCHED HER, GRINNING . I seldom saw any of the Curators laugh among themselves, although we Paphians shared our own delight at the world’s foolishness as well as our joy in the flesh with our sober Patrons. Laughter did not make Franca any less ugly; but the sight and sound of it were rare enough to arouse me.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll wake them?” I asked, slipping down the aisle to stand behind her.

“Not me!” She swung around to face me, bumping against a heavy pedestal. I caught her elbow as she steadied herself.

“Is it true what they say?” she demanded. I let my hand rest on her elbow and, when she did not pull away, stroked her arm.

“What’s that?” I asked softly.

She tilted her head. For an instant the sunlight made a bright halo of her tousled hair. “That you’ve had a thousand lovers.”

“At least.” I let my fingers drift to the small of her back. She stared at me suspiciously. When I did not smile she nodded.

“They said your master wanted you to be the next ruler of your House.” I shrugged modestly. “Why would you come here, where you’ll never be welcome?”

I looked up, surprised at her bluntness. “I did not know I would never be welcome,” I said bitterly. “I—I had hoped to learn great things here, and someday share my knowledge with my people …”

She shook her head. “But we would never share our secrets with a whore,” she said. There was no malice in her voice. “You have nothing to give us in return.”

“Nothing?” I drew her close to me. “Your people take everything we value—our youth and our beauty and our love—and disdain it!” She grew pale and tried to draw away from me, but I took her chin in my hand and twisted her face toward me to kiss her. Her lips were chapped, her mouth tasting of that morning’s apples and oatmeal. When I released her she did not move away. “What’s all your learning worth to a girl who’s never kissed a man?” I said more gently, and reached to take her hands.

Flushing, she tossed her head, looked away only to meet her face in the mirror and quickly turned back to me. “I—well, now I have,” she said, staring at her feet.

“Not really,” I murmured, and this time she moved against me and her hands roamed awkwardly down my back.

I slipped off her tunic and found a sweet young boy’s body beneath, long-legged and starred with moles, only with small round breasts and the slightest swell of hips and stomach. I went slowly, so as not to frighten her. I kissed her and was surprised at her innocent response, surprised and excited, too. Occasionally I glanced aside at our reflections, watching her unravel my braid so that my hair fell about us in auburn waves. And my own response excited me, that I could be so aroused by a Curator …

I held her more tightly, started to remove my trousers. She tried to pull away then. “No—what are you doing?” she said.

“Just wait,” I urged her, and tried to pull her to the floor. She pushed at me, then struggled to get away. “No, Raphael—stop, I’m afraid here—”

“What?” I shook my head in disbelief. Then I remembered Iris Bergenia, playing at fighting me in our chamber. I grabbed Franca’s hair and yanked her to the floor beside me. “I’ll teach you what you need to know about the Paphians,” I whispered, holding her beneath me.

“No!” She kicked at me and I fell back, then turned and grabbed her before she could run away. Panting, I held her, furious and scarcely able to keep hold of her, I was trembling so from excitement and rage. She stared at me wild-eyed, not angry but terrified. I desired her more than I had ever wanted anyone.

“Now,” I whispered. As I pulled her face to mine she kicked at me again. Without thinking I struck her, saw a flash of violet at her neck. She shuddered, and I was stung by sudden remorse. Her mouth opened.

“Raphael,” she said thickly. As I stared her eyes widened. The pupils bloated suddenly, then contracted to specks like poppyseeds.

“Franca,” I said, alarmed. Her head lolled onto her shoulder. As I started to draw my hand back I felt a small tug at my wrist. I glanced down.

Against the taut skin of her neck my sagittal clung like a leech. I yanked my hand away and raised my fist, incredulous. For an instant I glimpsed the ebony spine retracting, felt the tiny shift of weight as the propodium curled back into its shell. I dropped my arm.

“Franca,” I repeated, raising my voice. “Franca. Wake up.”

Her mouth tightened. Saliva pearled on her lower lip and began to trace a silvery snail’s path down her chin. Where the sagittal had clung a small purplish star radiated upon her flesh as capillaries burst and feathers of blood unfurled beneath the skin. From a vein that only moments before had pulsed visibly a violet thread unraveled, a corrosive needle’s flourish to her heart. Heedless of whatever poison raced through her, I rested my cheek against her lips.

She was dead. As if dreaming, I let her corpse slip back to the floor and knelt beside it. “Franca,” I whispered over and over, staring wildly about the vast gallery, the silent figures and glowing catafalques now washed in amber light. “Franca …”

In the next few minutes her entire body began to flower with faint mauve petals. From neck to chest the tracery crept, her breasts blushing as from unseen kisses, her hands turning dusky blue as blood pooled in her fingertips. Rosy blossoms stained her thighs as though raining from the vault above us. Through my mind raced a song, nonsense we sang as children, the lazars’ song:

Bain the rain of roses

peonies and posies

Ashes, ashes

Now fall down …

Already the skull shone beneath her skin. I crooned her name, thinking How beautiful she is now, thinking how angry she would have been at this final betrayal of her flesh to loveliness, the septic garden that bloomed about her bones. Then I ravished her.

Quickly, because already her flesh stiffened about me, and her breasts tasted cold and faintly sweet. As my groans subsided I let her slip from my arms. Her head thudded against the floor. I staggered backward, wondering too late if the poison had now entered me as well. I grabbed a pedestal behind me and clung to it, weeping, embracing the cold stone until I could steady myself and turn to her again.

The canker had burst in her eyes. To my numb face she now returned a pansied stare. I kicked her tunic over her. face and stumbled to my feet, choking, even as I knew that I wanted her again, felt my heart tumbling at the sight of that stark white figure lying among all those calm and golden sleepers. But I forced myself to look away, to cast my gaze instead upon the wild figure that stared back from the ancient mirror: auburn hair disheveled, my face blotched with tears and dust. I almost laughed to see myself thus: the pride of the House Miramar weeping above the corpse of a scullion!

And then, echoing from the distant Main Hall came the praying notes of the call to the first dinner shift. Franca and I were on the third shift; but soon they would be missing us at supper. I turned back to her poor corpse, as if it might rise and give me solace. I bumped against a small catafalque atop a broken marble pillar, jarring its lid so that I had to catch it before it fell. And so jarred my own mind to wakefulness.

A full-size sarcophagus stood upright next to the broken column. I prized it open a crack, enough to glimpse inside the bound figure of its ancient king. I shoved the lid back and hurried to another. Its lid was sealed fast, as was the next one, and the next. But there were hundreds of cases here, and surely some of them had been robbed or disturbed over the aeons …

In a dark alcove I found it. No doubt it had once held the remains of some princeling: the lid showed a gilded face surmounted with enormous lapis eyes and a strangely calm mouth, slightly pursed as if dreaming fair dreams. Tentatively I rapped upon the lid. It returned a faint hollow sound. In a moment I had flung it open, to find only the yellow dust of its decayed wrappings and the curled remains of antlions and silverfish.

All about the inside of the sarcophagus were inscribed odd characters. I hesitated, gripped by a sudden cold fear of the coffin itself. But then I thought of how she loved birds, and here were painted birds to fly a soul to peace surely: eagles and gyrfalcons and ibises, kites and watchful owls. I blew the dust from the case, then stood to get Francesca.

It may be true what Doctor Foster says, that the soul has weight and matter; because in my arms now she seemed to weigh nothing at all. I wrapped her worn tunic about her poor bruised body as a shroud, and wept again to think I had no finer raiment in which to lay her to rest. I comforted myself to think she shared her bed with the dust of princes. The lid slipped back on as if it had never been removed. For a moment I stared at the sarcophagus, then leaned forward and gently kissed the cold impression of its painted mouth.

At the doorway I paused. Above me hung a scrim of tattered cloth, stirring slightly from some faint breeze More tiny pictographs stalked its borders, but in its center a small square of newer cloth had been sewed—frayed and mellowed itself from centuries of wear. I squinted to read what must have been a clumsy translation of an ancient epitaph into doggerel:

Here we lie

head to head

asleep in the dark with the dead.

I shuddered; and passed from the Hall of Dead Kings.

10. An interminable vista is opened out for the future

I RETRACED MY STEPS to where we had been working. Several Aides passed me as I wandered into the Great Hall. Their scornful glances made me realize how Franca’s companionship had not only seemed to make my days easier, but actually served to deflect their hatred and disdain for a little while. The thought of remaining here among them, with the terrible knowledge of Francesca so carelessly interred nearby, filled me with dread. I hastened past the Curators jostling their way to the dining halls below. For a few minutes I considered confessing everything to Roland Nopcsa, throwing myself upon his mercy—he was a Regent, after all, and surely could argue my case against those who would demand my execution.

But then I recalled his recent disappointments with me: his flash of temper at my ill-fitting clothes and my fatigue after a day slogging with Franca through the Museum basements. Others no older than myself had been cast from their Patrons like worthless rags. Hothouse flower, Roland had mocked me; but he wanted soft hands and scented hair awaiting him each evening. I glanced at my hands now, the nails broken and begrimed, palms filthy and blistered. To think that I had thrown away all my beauty like this, and doomed myself to die away from my own people!

“… you! Slut!”

I started, brushing my eyes as I looked up into the cold face of Franca’s Supervising Technician. I said nothing but halted.

“Tell your hoyden she’s been reassigned. You’re to report to me tonight: Nopcsa will be attending the Butterfly Ball at High Brazil this evening,” he announced with malicious glee. I stared at his pockmarked face, the jagged spur of a yellowing broken tooth in that crooked mouth, the slouch of his scrawny shoulders.

“Do you hear me?” The Technician swatted the air in front of my face, then stroked my hair. I shrugged his hand from me and began to walk on.

“Whore!” the Technician yelled. “Do you understand me?”

I turned and grabbed him by the throat with one hand.

“I didn’t hear a word you said,” I hissed, shoving him against the wall. I left him sputtering and cursing in the corridor.

My disquiet at the thought of Roland attending the ball without me faded somewhat when I found our chambers deserted; I would not have to confront him yet, after all. I drew the heavy door shut behind me and collapsed upon the bed.

For some minutes I lay there, shuddering as I tried to contain my tears. Because it was clear to me now that I would have to flee. Roland’s attendance at the High Brazilian masque without me would signal to Curators and Paphians alike that I had fallen out of favor. There was fierce rivalry between Houses, and High Brazil and Miramar had long fought over lesser prizes than the favor of the Natural Historians. There were those who would relish news of my downfall, and garnish them in the telling.

Not to mention the thought of the Technician’s leering Face, and the memory of Franca killed by my hand …

I stood quickly and paced the room, gazing up at Roland’s beloved archosaurs.

“What would you do?” I whispered, stroking ‘the long obsidian curve of the Deinocherius’s tail. And recalling Franca’s mockery of the old things here I wept, knowing that I would not see them again; knowing that whatever reply their ancient hollow eyes might have made to me, I could no longer hide among the dead.