Winterlong

1. The fragments of a repeatedly shattered world

WESTERING LIGHT MADE A burnished cathedral of the trees when I finally paused in my flight through the forest. In my madness I had fled the Museum, wearing once more the brocaded tunic and ribands that marked me of the House Miramar: these and my sagittal the only arms I bore against the night. And night it would be soon; and I had lost my way.

Rumors that the Ascendants planned vengeance for a murder had alarmed the Regents enough to place sentries at each Museum. But the Technician posted by the North Gate scarcely glanced at me, so intent was she upon a volume of archaic holograms depicting the life cycles of extinct primates. In my Paphian garb I must have looked as though I was to attend the ball at High Brazil that evening. I had passed several high-ranking Curators in the Rotunda, all dressed in sober robes as they made their way to the North Gate to meet the palanquins from High Brazil that would bear them to the masque. I could have followed them, commandeered a palanquin for myself; but that would have meant answering questions, dealing, with elders from High Brazil who would not have my name among those they were to receive. And I did not want to see Roland, not yet. So I left through the South Gate. The sentry raised her head. Seeing only myself, she returned to her reading, I strode purposefully down the steps, through the broke columns facing the Narrow Forest, and to the edge of the forest itself. Here I hesitated. In the late afternoon light it was easy enough to orient myself to the northwest, where our Houses stood. In the distance the Obelisk pierced the trees’ canopy, a somber point among all that glittering greenery. If I steered to its right I would eventually come to the Tiger Creek, or perhaps even a road leading to the Hill Magdalena Ardent. I imagined that I saw the river itself sparkling through the shifting leaves. Before my nerve could break I hurried beneath the trees.

Here the late summer’s heat filtered through the leaves to drip in an almost palpable golden broth. Too late I wondered if perhaps I should have worn my Aide’s shift-stained and ugly, but woven of lighter cloth. But pride and my determination to confront Roland at the Masque and regain standing among my people had made me choose my own clothes—which quickly grew damp and weighted from the heat. My heavy braid burned against my neck. I winced and shrugged it from shoulder to shoulder, until it snagged on a bramble hedge. I tugged it loose and tucked it into my collar. Almost immediately I snared my sleeve upon the same briars. I pulled the thorns free, careful not to tear my brocade; another step and I was trapped on more. Neither were my boots fit for this sort of travel. The marshy ground soaked the felt soles until with each step I thought I sank to my ankles in muck. But I scrambled on trying to keep a spur of grief and indignation at my heel.

The late hour held little chance of my meeting anyone else, although there was much traffic among the Museums that bordered this part of the forest. For a short distance well-trodden paths wound between great oaks and with apples already burdened with fruit: west to the Historian south to the Weavers and Aviators and Botanists who trafficked with the Ascendants. To the northwest stretched a broken stone road leading to the Zoological Garden, perhaps an hour’s walk from here.

I followed this path. I hoped it would bring me to the Tiger Creek, which I could then follow to where it poured into the Rocreek not far from High Brazil. Myrtle and kudzu choked the path; slender apple and cherry saplings sprang from the ferns, heralding new wild orchards. With only a few hours of daylight remaining I walked determinedly, fending off tree limbs and straggling vines as I tried to keep the Obelisk in sight.

I went slowly, swiping at trailing vines and strands of spiderweb heavy with pollen and the striped husks of butterflies. Other trails intersected mine. These seemed to lead nowhere, and were probably known only to the lazars who traveled them on their midnight raids and forays. Certainly only lazars or the great hunting beasts—wolves and wild dogs, cat-a-mountains and eyra and the dog-faced lardmen who figured so prominently in Doctor Foster’s most gruesome stories—could slip down those strangled green tunnels.

The ground beneath my foot suddenly shuddered. A strangled shriek made me yelp and jump back, terrified. In the center of the path squatted a couvado toad, fat and round and misshapen as a rotted pumpkin. As I stared it grinned fatuously at me. Then its huge mouth gaped open and, with a gurgling belch, it turned itself inside out, exposing its pulsing heart and vivid entrails.

I covered my mouth with both hands and quickly turned away. Blindly I chose another path that seemed to veer toward the setting sun. I staggered down this, stumbling madly through honeysuckle thickets and rank orchards.

2. The light of imagination is quenched in . the darkness of a history so ancient.

THE FARTHER IN I went, the less clearly marked was the trail. Eventually I found myself in a tiny clearing where a dozen breaks in the underbrush might have been paths leading deeper into the forest. I chose one because pale blue veronica carpeted the earth there. As my feel crushed the soft blue mat of flowers their blossoms wept sweet tears. I hesitated, breathing their fragrance and recalling the name Doctor Foster had taught us for these tiny blooms: lose-all-care. They had a haunting scent, redolent of spring rain and the promise of twilight. But when I started to move again I found that I had forgotten which way I wanted to go. I turned, and sighted a patch of narcissus nodding in the bole of a dead tree. I shook my head trying to recall which path was mine. Surely I wanted to follow the sun? This way, then, where the light poured through a gap in the trees …

But a moment later I knelt among the white narcissus …

I did not wonder how they came to bloom there in early Autime, which were harbingers of spring; nor how the faintest of breezes seemed to make them whisper and sigh like frightened children, so that I crooned comforting words to them. I only knew they were the most lovely flowers I had ever seen, and I did not want to leave them.

And I might have remained there until full dark brought my doom, had not a fire ant climbed and stung my wrist. Its bite seared through my entire hand. I gasped, killing the ant with an ungrateful swat. Then rubbing my eyes I stumbled back to my feet.

Ruddy light now filtered through the leaves. I had long since lost sight of the Obelisk, and hours might have passed since I first entered the woods. My flesh crawled as I recalled Doctor Foster’s tales of the evil flowers spawned by the rains of roses: of Philantha Persia’s abduction by lazars when she went to hear daffodils laughing by the river; of Botanists lured to their deaths in the Rocreek by sighing lyacinths with the eyes of women; of almond-scented lilies whose fragrance alone brought madness and death. Such stories I had always dismissed; yet here I was now, bewitched by a patch of narcissus! I moved to brush the leaves from my hair, and as I did so saw that a slender green shoot had wrapped itself around my sagittal as I lay dreaming. I cried out and yanked the vine from my wrist, heedless of the cries of the flowers I trampled, I turned and ran.

I forced myself onward, biting my hand to keep from falling prey to the narcotic fragrance that seemed to rise at my every step. But I could not cause myself enough pain to keep fully awake. Every few minutes I would pause, and only when my head nodded against my chest would I start awake and then stumble on. The ruddy light deepened to violet. A great thrashing of wings and twittering signaled that birds were coming to roost above me. Twigs and leaves and moths fluttered about my head as they made their nests for the night. I paused to brush the leaves from my hair. When I began to walk again it was with heavy steps, as though the earth clung to my boots, reluctant to let me pass. I glanced down, then yelled in disgust.

A silvery track stretched before me. Each step I took wrought me in contact with this. My feet were sticky with some gleaming stuff. A few paces ahead humped a slug as thick and long as my arm, its pearly eyestalks waving as it oozed forward with a sound like lewd kissing. At the sight of that monstrous thing all hope left me. Blinking away ears, I floundered from the path and threw myself against a twisted apple tree, hugging it in despair. I glanced down at the sagittal, which seemed to hold my last promise of ease.

“Franca,” I choked, and turned so that my back rested against the tree’s broad bole. Then I opened my tunic and held my fist above my chest, willing the sagittal to strike But it was satiated by Franca’s death, or my desire was not strong enough to wake it. It remained a lifeless ornament and heavy, cold as bronze. I struck myself with it, bruising my ribs; yelled hoarse nonsense like one gone berserk until I woke the little golden finches and they fled the apple’s’ boughs crying peevishly. And still my sagittal slumbered. It would not strike its host.

Finally I gave up and sprawled at the foot of the apple tree to wait for death. It would come quickly enough, here I need only sleep until the flowers took me. Or lazars, or aardmen. I glared at the faithless sagittal, then drew it closer to my face. The translucent shell now gleamed like an amethyst held up to a candle flame. I could even see the silhouette of the propodium curled inside, a dark finger gloved in light. I stared at it numbly.

Moths began to hover in the twilight, drawn to the sagittal’s dim glow. They drifted before my face like falling blossoms, and it seemed that the beating of their wings somewhat cooled the heavy night air. The night-coils woke as well. The tree I leaned against rustled as the flowering vines stirred, their scent a sweet syrup. I tried to fight this new languor, which felt as if a thicker, slower blood dripped into my veins. But it was hopeless. Within minutes I was yawning, and finally rested my head upon soft ferns.

I dreamed fitfully: of Franca, her pale face framed by falcon’s eyes; of Roland panting above me, his hands enchained with light. Once I started awake to see that dozens of white moths had settled upon my chest and face. Their wings opened and shut as they fed upon the nectar that dripped from the night-coils, their tongues unfurling in black threads. I brushed them off, but they only wafted a few inches above me before lighting onto my legs again. With a sigh I fell back to the ground.

Then I must have dreamed; but a dream such as I never had before, a dream that seemed to show me the dreams of all things that had been, and died; and then all the dreams of dreams; and last of all those of Death himself dreaming of all that was to be—

Of archosaurs rising from their adamant beds to pluck planets from the void; of rivers boiling, and humming trees, and beasts that wept like men; of metal ships that ravished the sun into a thousand stars, and a flaming cathedral rising from the blackened earth; of myriad entombed figures released from their stony beds, and a demonic girl whose eyes burned in a face that mirrored my own; of dying children whose voices rang out like sweet bells, and a cadaver who spoke sagely with Death.

Of all of these; and untold others—myself and Roland and Miramar, and Fancy and Francesca and Doctor Foster, too—all of us, linked in a ronde set to the sound of hollow pipes booming as we swept across the sky.

And then I woke: to a kiss cold as Franca’s, so that I tried to will the feathery crush of bracken beneath me into an unyielding marble floor. But the ferns crackled as I groaned and stirred; and the eyes that met mine were not hers.

“Wake, Raphael,” a voice said.

I breathed in sharply, shaking the last drunken moths from me. Night had fallen. In the deep blue sky that showed through breaks in the trees I glimpsed a silver spar of moon and many stars. I stumbled to my feet, bracing myself against the apple tree as I tried to remember where I was and what dream had brought me there.

“We are waking now,” someone whispered. I rubbed the nectar from my eyes, blinking as I tried to see who spoke to me from the shadows. A flash of terror warned me of lazars; but a lazar would not know my name.

And a lazar would not be so beautiful.

“Who are you?” I stammered.

He dropped from a tree a few paces from me. A glimmer of light hung about him, as though the frail moonlight sought him here gladly. He smiled: a boy a little younger than myself; the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.

“Raphael,” he replied. His voice was honeyed, not yet broken, but mocking as no child’s voice should be. That, more than his unearthly beauty, frightened me. “You know me.”

For an instant my thoughts careened through all those I had loved, vainly seeking his among pillowed faces in Saint-Alaban, Persia, High Brazil, my own House. But no Paphian would crop his golden curls thus about that white forehead; no Paphian ever had skin so fine that the moonlight seemed to melt into it to glow from within eyes the color of moon lilies.

“No,” I said. “I do not know you. I would never have forgotten you.”

“Already you have forgotten me,” he said. Suddenly it seemed that his face altered. For an instant Franca’s features passed over his own: splotches of leaves and mold upon his face the quick reflection of bruises that had blurred her cheeks and breast. I gasped and stepped toward her.

But it was not Franca. Her features rippled and were gone. Instead I found myself reaching for a bloated corpse propped against the apple tree, its hollow eyes wormed with foxfire, its shattered jaw hanging limply upon a neck ulcerated by the rotted remains of a hempen rope. I cried out: and then he stood there once more, still and white and lovely in the fitful moonlight.

“I do know you,” I whispered. I shivered uncontrollably. “The Hanged Boy …”

He nodded. “That is a name,” he said after a long moment. “You may call me by another.” Smiling, he crossed his arms upon his pale hairless chest.

“Lord …” I began.

“No,” he murmured. I could almost imagine that the unblinking green eyes regarded me with pity. He stepped toward me. I was shaking now and crouched on all fours like a dog, my hands kneading the earth frantically as I tried to steady myself.

“Please go.” I shut my eyes. “Please, please go …”

“No, Raphael,” he repeated. “We are waking now …”

He reached for me with a hand that gleamed with a hard pure light, a hand white and cold as bone. His touch evoked the frigid impression of the kiss that had awakened me. And then I knew that I had not really awakened earlier; that in my seventeen years I had never been awake. Only now; because only he could wake me. I felt as though those fingers bored into my skull, probing the soft center of my brain where sleeping thoughts trembled for release. I would have cried aloud, but that cold clenched my jaws shut, gripped my neck in an unyielding vise, froze my eyes so that I stared up at him and trembled at the sight.

Because such beauty as his shrieked for worship. Those luminous green eyes, his face and body radiantly white, that exquisite form … I was stirred by desire such as I had never known, save when I had seen the lazar’s corpse so long ago, and Franca’s that afternoon. And that terrified me more than all else: because I knew that such beauty could not be evil, any more than mine could be; that such beauty would seek and find worship surely as a flower seeks sunlight and rain.

But even as his beauty roused me I saw the livid horror seething within his eyes, the corruption and utter madness of extinction that he expelled as unconsciously as I breathed air. And as I had seen within Franca’s broken face a strange and compelling beauty, I knew that from now on I would glimpse within whatever was lovely the foul thing it would become.

And then I did scream, and begged him to take back that knowledge and vision, the awful counterpoint to my soaring dream.

“No,” he whispered. His cold mouth pressed against mine. “You must learn: it is all one, Raphael. It is all one …”

At these words I fainted. When I woke he was gone.

3. The birth of yesterday

I thrashed to wakefulness, tangling my fingers in the grass. The moon had scarcely moved across the sky. From the night-coils’ tongues still dripped a slow sweet rain. For a moment I thought it might have been a nightmare brought on by those poisonous blossoms, or the ghastly white moths they fed.

Then I saw the jackal.

It crouched a few paces from me, beneath that same tree whence he had dropped a short while ago. Like a wild dog, slender, with a long muzzle and pointed ears; but with hair the color of frost, milky white except where a darker stripe crossed its back from tail to head. Escaped from the Zoologists, maybe—they bred them for hunting—although I had never seen a white jackal before.

Perhaps I had grown brash in the face of all the terrors of this accursed place. Because I was not afraid of it.

“Go on!” I yelled, shying a stone at its muzzle. The jackal darted to one side. I would have thrown myself upon it and strangled it, I was that maddened. I grabbed the overhanging limb of a tree and glared. It did not run away. It sank back upon its haunches again, head cocked to one side, regarding me with an alarmingly prescient gaze. I snatched up another stone but it slipped into the shadows to reappear in a moment—so close that I dropped my weapon and tripped in my haste to get away from it.

As I fell, something snaked about my ankle, something soft yet unyielding. I tried to scramble to my feet and collapsed, my elbows sinking into the loamy earth. When I glanced back I saw that a vine thick as my wrist had crept from the tree and encircled my ankle. It was pulling me backward, as if a hidden green winch cranked me toward the tree. Other vines disentangled themselves and looped to the earth, their pale trumpets opening and closing as if scenting something besides their own sickly fragrance. As the vines humped toward me I saw that the small and ineffectual green thorns protecting each bloom had turned bright red, as an anole’s throat blossoms when it sights a foe. They whistled softly as the vines flailed through the air. I rolled onto my back, striking at one as it whipped past my face. Like a serpent it drew back, the wind hissing through the hollow thorns. Other vines lashed about my legs. The trumpet-shaped flowers swelled and disgorged a heavy fluid onto my legs, thick as honey and with a cloying scent. Where it seeped through the fabric of my trousers I felt my legs grow numb.

The first vine tightened about my foot. I felt a prickling where another, smaller loop of vegetation attached itself. As I watched helplessly the vine lashed against my leg, until one or another of the tiny thorns pierced my skin. There was little pain, but I saw a trickle of blood seep from my boot.

That same odd fearlessness stayed with me in these moments. I dug my elbows into the soft earth and pushed myself up, watching as my own blood welled into the vines. They pulsed slightly, the pale jade flesh darkening to evergreen where they fed. The narcotic effect of the thorns kept me from pain. No doubt it dulled my senses as well. When I saw the jackal rushing to nip at my feet my first thought was to kick it away from me, and I twitched my legs uselessly. I watched in mute amazement as, snarling, it darted between the thrashing vines, tearing at them with its fangs and slipping between them like quicksilver. The thorns slid through its silvery fur like the teeth of a comb, catching nothing but air. The dog leaped and snapped a thick vine in two. The pieces fell, squirming, and I realized this was the vine that had held me fast. I yanked myself free from the myriad tendrils clinging to my tunic and rolled away. The jackal spun about and followed me through the writhing vines.

In the darkness one path shone brighter than the others, moonlit. I stumbled toward it only to find the jackal blocking my way. I turned and ducked under a tangle of ivy; the jackal was there in front of me.

“Go on!” I yelled, pulling a rotted branch from a tree and brandishing it. The animal sat back and cocked its’ head. Behind us the night-coils thrashed and hissed harmlessly, out of reach. “Damn you,” I swore.

I was almost as angry with myself as I was fearful of the animal, because hadn’t it just saved me? Jackals were wild dogs, and dogs were rumored to be friendly toward humans sometimes. Miramar had often told of how as a child he had tamed a wild dog that could do tricks. I had seen him weep to recall it. Doctor Foster verified that they had an ancient and noble history before the concatenations that had resulted in the aardmen and other geneslaves. Miramar swore that dogs could understand human speech.

But wild dogs hunted and indiscriminately fed upon humans, as did the aardmen. I slashed the air with my stick, glancing around me for signs of other predatory plants or beasts lurking in the moonlit trees. The jackal cocked its head, following me with its slanted eyes. It did not appear hungry. When I took a step forward it rose and followed, tail twitching.

“What do you want?” I stopped and faced it head-on. A small glade tufted with pale myrtle reflected the starry break in the trees above us. The jackal halted, then threw back its head and cried.

Not the barking or howling I had so often heard in the distance, but a mournful yodeling that had the varied cadence and intonation of speech. Behind us the night-coils grew still and the wind died. The jackal alone cried out, as if calling to the very stars. At that sound the hair on my arms and neck stood up. My dream rushed back upon me: the dream of the Hanged Boy, whom the Saint-Alabans call the Gaping One.

He who is also named by them the Lord of Dogs.

“What do you want of me?” I repeated, but I lowered my stick. “I am not of your people.” My voice cracked like a boy’s, and I felt foolish.

The animal remained poised, its muzzle pointed star-ward. I looked up to see what it watched there. Through the break in the leaves I saw the new moon. Many stars: the Polar Star; the hunting stars Cerberus and Sirius; uncounted others, nameless and no doubt dead to any eyes but mine. As I stared, a faint point of white tracked slowly across the sky, one of the Ascendants’ sad lights doomed to count the clouds forever. I watched until it disappeared behind the leaves. Still the beast watched the sky. I sighed, turned to go. With a low growl the jackal warned me, and I glanced up.

From the center of the sky welled a brightness, a silver rent in the firmament. It grew so large that I gasped, thinking the heavens would be torn apart to show the blinding void that hides behind the vastnesses of space. But no. It swelled until a second moon burned there, tear-shaped, sliding through the darkness and leaving a trail of fire in its wake as it streaked across the sky. Then it disappeared in a molten glare, tail glowing like a dull ember.

“Sweet Magdalene,” I breathed.

For thus had each Ascension been heralded, by new moons appearing in the heavens to flame and burst like mafic-lights. And suddenly I heard from every point of the City distant cries and clamor. From very far off came the screams of sirens, the thrumming of fougas, and faintest of all the boom of congreves being launched across the river.

I turned, stumbling against the jackal. It grabbed my trouser leg with its teeth and tugged insistently. By now I had no doubts but that I had somehow fallen into an adventure such as Doctor Foster had so often recited to us. As easily as a serpent shedding its skin I sloughed off any reservations I might have had a day earlier about following a ghostly animal through a forest where gods walked and the flowers thirsted for the blood of men.

“Where you will, Anku!” I said. That had been the name of Miramar’s tame dog. This one fairly danced upon hearing it, tossing its head back and letting forth once again that weird wailing song. Then it darted into the woods, its white flanks gleaming through the tangled brush. I followed, steeling my heart against the echo of distant sirens and airships. I ran with wild delight, daring them to hunt me who ran with Death’s dog.

4. Organic beings of a different character

THROUGH THE WOODS WE plunged. It seemed to me that days had fled since first I entered that place, but the moon had scarcely crept across the sky. It was still early evening. With Anku racing ahead of me I ran, head held low to keep him in my sight. The trees seemed to shrink from our passage. Beneath my feet mandragons puled as I crushed them in spurts of white froth. Neither these nor the cries of the betulamia, slender trees like birches that reached to embrace me, could frighten or impede me now. Somewhere ahead of us the river slumbered and the Houses of Eros guttered with golden light. Somewhere Roland embraced another pathic and coursed the first slow steps of the pavane that began each Paphian masque.

At the thought I clenched my teeth. A new kind of lust stirred me: a sudden fierce need for pain and harrowing, a raging desire to wrench the veil of flesh and tendon from Roland’s face and slake this fever with his blood. About my wrist the sagittal burned with a pulsing violet light. I laughed and raised my fist so that it lit the path before me. Anku turned, his white teeth glittering.

The trees thinned to a copse pricked with flashing fireflies. Anku bounded through the tall grass. I hesitated, blinking in the brighter moonlight that spilled onto the coppice. A few yards ahead the shallow reflections of stars glimmered across the Tiger Creek. I whooped in delight and raced across the field to splash in the shallow water. Already Anku waded there, drinking and shaking his muzzle. I sloshed to where the water flowed knee-high, gazing upstream to see if I could locate the Hill Magdalena Ardent hidden behind the dense foliage. And yes, if I squinted I could just make out the more refined silhouettes of ruins and even a pale glimmering that was surely the lights of High Brazil.

At that sight my heart leaped with an overwhelming desire to see my people: Miramar and Ketura, Small Thomas and Benedick, even old Doctor Foster.

And Fancy. Most of all, little Fancy, who danced through all my dreams and alone remained a kind of light to me when I was most desperate. Even now, when about me reared the black spires of the Narrow Forest and lazars hooted in the distance, the thought of Fancy, somewhere, (missing me perhaps?) waking from her evening nap to dress for the ball calmed me as nothing else ever could. All the madness that had befallen me could be kept at bay by the knowledge that she sang and slept and danced there upon the Paphian’s hill; as if I was like the princess in the story, who could not be killed by fire or sword or swivel because her heart was hidden safely elsewhere. The bitter longing that had hurried me through the woods melted into a gentler need: for the comfort of those like me; for laughter and lovely things; above all for forgiveness for having valued wisdom above the varieties of love.

When Anku nudged me I started and nearly fell into the shallow water. I kicked him away from me. He growled plaintively, but suddenly I wanted no more of him, no more of this forest or of the Curators and the evils they had awakened in me. I was turning to wade upstream, to where I thought the Tiger ran into the river, when I saw the figures lined upon either shore watching us.

In the moonlight they might almost have been enchanted trees, betulamias or bitter alders: thin figures with spindly arms upraised, silent, their eyes black in haggard faces. Four of them upon one bank, three on the other. Most were smaller than myself. Even in the dim light I could see that they were children; but more than children.

Lazars.

Beside me Anku stood alert. I glanced down at him. The eyes that met mine were so obviously fired by some uncanny intelligence that I shivered, standing in the middle of that warm and languid river. I lifted my head and met the gaze of the lazar who seemed the eldest. A girl, flanked by two boys upon the farther bank. Her long hair burned almost white by the sun, face dark as though stained by some dye. About her shoulders hung the remains of a yellow janissary’s jacket. A carcanet of braided human hair hung around her neck. The boys beside her were very young, seven or eight years perhaps. One of them had flaming red hair, and was making faces at the group on the other bank. When I caught his eyes he giggled and hid behind the tall girl. The others were young as well, so thin and dirty I could not make out if they were boys or girls, with their rags and tattered hanks of hair tied about their waists. None of them bore a weapon, save their eyes—huge and glittering and feverish: starved.

Still, they were so young and thin, and really they were only children, after all. I smiled, and took a step forward.

In an instant they were on me. I had a sideways glimpse of the two little boys springing from the sward before I fell. One of them clung to my back, kicking and screaming as he dug his fingernails into my neck. The other wrapped his arms around my knees. Then he butted me in the groin with his head. I doubled over in pain.

And panicked. They were lazars, not children: diseased ghouls. I tried to flee, but tripped and fell into the river. I felt the first boy clambering up my back until his weight forced my head beneath the water. I tried to knock him away, but now the air was shrill with their cries. I inhaled water, choking; felt other hands swarming over me. Then another sound, a hollow roar booming through the rush of water in my ears. A shriek, abruptly cut off. The knot of squirming hands withdrew. I rolled a few yards downstream, gagging and trying to wipe the water from my eyes as I staggered to my feet.

In the river six children now stood, the water roiling about their ankles. Anku half-crouched in the shallows among them. At his feet lay the red-haired boy, blood streaming from his torn throat like a tangle of his own bright hair. Coughing, I splashed upstream. Anku lifted his head, dipped his dark muzzle into the river until it was washed clean. Then he bounded to join me.

Three of the remaining lazars grabbed the dead child by his hands and dragged him to shore. The others drew closer to the tall girl. One wept silently, thumb in her mouth. Her eyes met mine beseechingly and I felt a stab of regret, that she looked to me—the oldest one present—for comfort. I turned to face the tall girl.

“Let me go,” I called to her. Anku pressed close against my leg. “I only seek passage to High Brazil. I must attend a Masque there—”

The girl took the hands of the two beside her and for the first time spoke. “They are hungry.” The children began to cry.

I glanced at the near shore. The lazars who had dragged the dead boy there now crouched beside him. A third child fumbled at the sopping rags she wore until she withdrew something that gleamed. I averted my eyes.

“You have him now,” I said. “Let me go.”

“He is too small,” the girl replied. Her tone was surprisingly deep for one so young. She drew the two beside her closer, patting their heads in that absent manner that children have when they are imitating adults.

“Shh,” she said, glancing at the shore. “He sleeps now. Go help Tristin.”

Tristin. A Paphian name. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out at this awful thing: to think of one of my own cousins meeting such an end! And yet it happened to some of us every time there was a rain of roses. Children and older Paphians (but mostly children, because they could not run as quickly) were caught outside before they had a chance to flee. And I had never admitted to myself that the lazars hunting and dying in the streets were very likely lovers I had been paired with on the Hill Magdalena Ardent.

The oldest girl pushed away the two little ones. They splashed across the river to join the others, looking back fearfully at Anku.

“A star fell tonight,” the girl said after a moment. She scratched her chest, adjusting the torn yellow jacket until it closed about her hips. “In the Cathedral we saw fougas.” She cocked her head, listening to the dying echo of sirens.

“So did I.” I looked over my shoulder to make certain there were no others gathering there. Hugging my arms against my chest, I took a step toward the far bank. The girl regarded me with those piercing black eyes and kicked at the shallows.

“You are a lazar,” she said at last.

“No,” I said. “I am a Paphian. I go to the Hill Magdalena Ardent, to High Brazil for a Masque. Let me pass—”

“You dress like one of us,” she said, indicating my torn clothes. Anku tilted his head to watch us. The girl pointed at him with her thumb.

“That is a dog.” She said this as though expecting me to refute it.

“Of sorts. It’s a jackal.”

“We had a dog,” she said wistfully. “They ate him. I was too small so they took me. From the Zoo.”

“The Zoo,” I repeated. I glanced to the northwest, where on an unseen hill hidden by white oaks the Zoologists lived. A Curator, then. I looked back at her, the dark frets of her ribs shadowed beneath the torn jacket, her gaunt blackened face; the white scars on her arms where the rains had fallen. Thirteen years old, maybe. “What’s your name?”

“Pearl.” She moved closer to me with a slow uneven gait, as though immeasurably fatigued or sedated. I backed away. Behind her I could see the others swarming over the boy’s corpse, some of them heaping sticks and branches on the shingle beside him.

“Your skin is so white,” she said. She stretched a hand to touch my chest.

Anku growled, but the girl only glanced at him. I shrank from her touch. She shrugged and shuffled a few steps off.

“Let me pass,” I said. Anku’s eyes followed Pearl as she drew nearer. “I’ll kill you otherwise—”

She regarded my raised fist with its dimly glowing sagittal and shrugged. “I am pledged to Death already,” she said. Grinning, she bared her teeth at me. Then she tipped her head and stared at me more closely. “I think you too are promised to the Gaping One.”

She made a mocking bow, then coughed. “I will tell the Consolation of the Dead that I have seen the Gaping Lord’s chosen one playing with a white dog in the river.” Anku’s growl grew louder. He crouched as though to spring. Pearl laughed and shambled a few meters off.

“Who is the Consolation of the Dead?” I called after her.

She smiled, flashing those yellow teeth again as she shook her head. “Our master,” she said as she trudged onto the shore. “The Lord of the Engulfed Cathedral.”

She turned and waved. “The little ones are afraid of that dog,” she called. “So they will not kill you. And I am no longer hungry. I go very soon to meet the Gaping One, the Lord of Dogs. I will tell him I saw you here.”

Her laughter was bright and clear as any Paphian child’s, and she raised a hand in imitation of the Paphian’s beck. “I was a Zoologist’s favorite daughter. Now I have the plague that softens the bones until they melt into the skin like butter. Still—”

She made an awkward pirouette, stopping at the river’s edge. “I like the face of your dog.”

Laughing, she kicked water at Anku, who sprang snarling at her. But already she had stumbled back onto the shingle, where the younger children greeted her with mewling cries and pulled her into the circle of their bonfire’s glare.

5. Well-preserved fossils

ANKU AND I CROSSED the Tiger to the shore nearest the Hill Magdalena Ardent. Behind us the lazars’ shadows drowned the smaller flare of their bonfire. In a few minutes they were lost to sight.

After a short time the hill we climbed began a downward slope. I recognized in the near distance the first of our Houses, Saint-Alaban’s ornate spires and minarets rising above the black spirals of cypresses that lined its curving drive. I half-ran, half-skidded down the grassy hillside to where the rutted Old Road was still maintained by the Curators for their occasional passage through the City. I paused.

Hunching against a stump, I smoothed my tunic over my knees, flicking shards of bark and dead tendrils from my leg. The sight of the robe’s tattered hem reminded me that I was scarcely attired for a masque. I touched my hair, tried to untangle the mass of knots and torn leaves. No wonder Pearl had mistaken me for lazar.

And then with a grim smile I decided that I would enter the Butterfly Ball as such. It would make it that much more difficult for me to be recognized, for who would expect the catamite Raphael Miramar to appear thus—uninvited, as well!—gaunt and unkempt, yet fair and murderous as the Gaping One himself, guarded by a laughing dog and the hidden prong of a poisonous whelk? I laughed, tearing off a narrow piece of fabric from my tunic to bind back my hair; and thought blood thoughts. I called Anku and headed for the road.

I had traveled this route before, though never by moonlight and never alone. The Hill Magdalena Ardent rose before me, broidered with a road paved white with crushed marble, the tilted remains of lamp posts strung with globes of ignis florum. All afternoon the elders must have been busy, releasing the swallowtails and sambur moths in whose honor the Butterfly Ball was held each Autime. Sambur moths do not feed in their adult state. They live for only one night, to breed, and it was this brief transit from chrysalis to shattered husk that we celebrated. The butterflies drifted across the road, their hind wings dragging across the broken stones and staining them with their faintly luminous pigment. But the moths flitted everywhere, drawn especially to the greenish globes. The slow retort of their wings caused their brilliant eyespots to blink drowsily, so that the night seemed to cloak a great invisible Argus.

A sambur moth with branching coral antennae fluttered so near that the hairs on the back of my hand prickled at its wings’ breath. I raised my sagittal, concentrating the pulse of my heart and its attendant furies until the shell began to gleam. I opened my palm. Drawn to the sagittal’s violet glow the moth landed there. It crept across my hand to my wrist. For a moment it stopped, feathered antennae quivering. I thought of Roland betraying me, of my rage and lust at Franca’s corpse, and felt my blood quicken.

The black spark of the sagittal’s single tooth shot out, stabbing the moth’s thorax and impaling it. Then the spine withdrew. The tiny legs stiffened against my skin, the hollow abdomen released an atom of air as a breeze stirred its frozen wings. I blew upon it, and watched it float to join the exhausted legions of its kind who crawled across the white road. Beckoning Anku, I stepped between the dying butterflies.

At the hill’s summit glittered the House High Brazil, myriad globes and candles strung about its eaves, prismatic reflections shimmering across the famed Hagioscopic Embrasures. Numerous palanquins littered the oval drive, the elders who had drawn them now dozing or playing go. Their soft voices and the click of stones moving upon the wooden boards made my head swim with nostalgia. I hesitated. Only the gentle press of Anku’s muzzle against my thigh stirred me to walk from the half-lit road into the drive.

A louder click as all the stones fell at once and a dozen pale faces turned to gaze at me. I swallowed, then tossing back my hair I touched three fingers to my lips in the Paphian’s beck. The elder nearest me regarded me shrewdly, kohl and the heightened shimmer of octine giving a faint cast of ardor to the ruins of a lovely face.

“You have traveled far to join us, cousin,” he said.

Another elder rose to greet me, a woman with faded yellow hair and a tooth missing from her quick smile. “Pass slowly among us,” she said, laughing, and stroked my arm as I entered their circle. Other hands reached for me. I tried not to shudder at their limp touch, the awareness that the sight of me candled a faint flame within their sunken faces and caused their hands to linger upon my waist.

“Not so far,” I replied. The woman gave a little gasp. Glancing back, I saw that Anku trotted a few meters behind me. “We walked from Miramar. The animal is tamed—”

“I remember Gower Miramar’s dog,” said another voice. I turned to see Delfine Persia rising to greet me with a crippled bow. “As I remember you, Raphael.”

“Delfine?” I forced myself to smile and extended my hand, letting three fingers brush her lower lip. As a child I had been Delfine’s favorite. She had been old then, perhaps thirty, but with skin still glowing and firm and soft brown eyes that followed me hungrily as I pranced about her seraglio. I had not seen her in many years. Her face had grown bloated, her dark hair streaked as with cobwebs; the gentle eyes betrayed by kohl that caked in sagging creases beneath brows plucked in two fine arches. The soft arms were now muscled from bearing palanquins and her bare shoulders showed the marks of much labor.

“Sweet child, to remember my name.” She laughed. Cupping my chin, she tilted my face toward her own. “But how you’ve changed!” For an instant an expression flickered across her face, something between dismay and triumph. She touched my hair, grimacing as she tugged a dead leaf from my brow.

“An unusual costume,” remarked a man whose pocked face was not much older than my own. His eyes glinted raw malice. “Whose guest are you?”

“Roland Nopcsa’s.” I heard several of the others whispering among themselves before the elder who had first greeted me turned to speak.

“Roland Nopcsa arrived this afternoon and engaged Whitlock High Brazil for the evening. I am of High Brazil and bore them here after their matinee castigations at Illyria.” He stared at me with some sympathy. “Perhaps another will vouch for you—”

“I’ll vouch for myself, then,” I said.

The youngest elder laughed. “Not here, Miramar! Look at him—” He flicked disdainfully at my torn robe. “He’s been dismantled in favor of Whitlock. I heard Godiva Persia say so at balneal this morning.”

A murmur passed through the group. I glanced at Anku resting in the shadows. I drew myself up and turned to Delfine.

“I bring this dog to Nopcsa as a gift to win back my favor.”

Delfine laughed. “So Gower Miramar won Jellica Persia at Semhane that year with a spotted eyra!”

An effete man with the Illyrian calyx tattooed upon his palm giggled, peering into the shadows where Anku’s eyes glowed carmine. “Another albino! Whitlock will be furious—”

I laughed suddenly at the thought of Whitlock’s discomfiture (although I had been fond enough of him when we were paired at Winterlong). The elders too seemed delighted at this unexpected entertainment. I wondered how long it had been since any of them had been allowed to attend a masque as anything but servitors. Not long enough for the pocked Persian to grow accustomed to being a slave: that I gathered from the venomous looks he continued to shoot at me.

“But this is Whitlock’s House nonetheless, and not Miramar’s,” he hissed, tugging at a plait of jet-black hair that remained the single aureole of his beauty. “And look how he is dressed! Poor auspice, to mock the Gaping One on Her Hill.”

“Oh, Balfour is just jealous, Raphael,” said Delfine. She let her hand slip between my legs in the caress called carnassial, for which she had been noted in her youth. “‘Whitlock is his cousin-german. I think it’s a wonderful idea, and so original—an albino jackal! Wherever did you find it?”

“I captured it beneath the Obelisk.”

“Escaped from the Zoologists, I imagine. I never realized you were accomplished with animals, too,” said the Illyrian admiringly.

“He was a gifted child,” said Delfine with pride. As her face drew nearer to mine I could smell the sickly odor of gingko negus upon her breath.

“Do you remember me from Winterlong, Raphael?” a new voice piped. Clammy hands clutched at my shoulders.

“And me?” said another as she stroked my cheek.

“You never forgot dear Delfine, did you, my cherub?” Her rough hands scuttled across my thighs.

“Of course not,” I said. Carefully I disentangled myself. I wobbled a few paces to where Anku lay and leaned against a lamp post. I stared into a globe of glowing orchids as I tried to steady my trembling hands. I drew a deep breath.

“You are all too much of a temptation for me, friends!” I raised my head to look at them. Delfine with one arm draped about the Illyrian’s shoulder. A trio of gouty paillards ogling me from behind the Illyrian. Balfour glaring as he twisted his braid about his scarred hands. And behind them others shambling toward the light, their leering faces stripped of all beauty and warmth to betray the harsh ligaments of a lifetime of unslaked desire. I felt my knees buckle beneath me, but before I could falter Anku leaped to his feet and let forth that weird yodeling cry.

A reluctant sigh from the elders. One by one they settled back onto the drive. Delfine stooped to retrieve the scattered ovals of her game and cast me a final longing glance. Only Balfour remained standing, staring at me defiantly.

“I hope you are banished for interjacence,” he said. Low peals of laughter greeted this, and he turned and stalked into the shadows.

“Forgive our hasty departure.” I bowed. “But I must try to mend this breach between my mentor and myself—”

“Fare well, Raphael,” said Delfine, touching her lips. “Remember me at the Butterfly Ball!”

“Remember me! Remember me!” the others joined in with soft voices. The dust beneath them stirred as their fingers fluttered to mark the Paphian’s beck.

“I will,” I called back haltingly; “I will—” And with head bowed I hurried toward the marble steps of High Brazil.

6. Primitive colors

ONCE IT HAD BEEN the Antipodal Embassy. Elaborate carvings in the marble facade still displayed the writhing faces of capuchins and marmosets and uakaris. The main doorway’s lintel was the painted effigy of a serpent whose opal eyes each year were wrested from their sockets to glitter for this one evening upon the brow of the Butterfly Ball’s cacique, chosen at midnight by the masquers. But it was early yet. The fiery stones still gleamed in their sockets and the torchieres burned brightly—although the elders guarding the door were already drunk, and demanded the right to fondle each costumed reveler before granting entry. For a moment I paused in the shadows. Anku whined softly at my feet as he watched the steady passage of glittering figures, boys and girls stumbling beneath the weight of jeweled and’ feathered headdresses and flowing silken wings.

“Hush,” I whispered. I nudged him with my foot. “Well, you’re a pretty prize, at least,” I added, and stooped to ruffle his white fur. His steady growl grew louder. When the two guards had turned their attention upon the willowy figure of Aspasia Helen, I walked into the brilliant light of the torchieres.

“… seven years old, and only this big!”

One of the elders whooped as Aspasia pinched him, a flurry of glitter powdering the air. At the sound of my tread upon the steps she looked back. For an instant puzzlement clouded her. impish features. Then she squealed and nearly tripped over the sinuous drapery of a pair of wing spurs made of pale green silk.

“Raphael!”

Her arms circled my neck and I buried my face in her shoulder, feeling faint at the scent of jacaranda and the clean soft pressure of her skin beneath my mouth. I whispered foolishly, overcome at finally being here once more; and clung to her so long that I heard the guards snickering.

“Raphael,” she murmured, and pulled away from me. Peering more closely at my face, she drew back, brushing at the threads of blue and lavender mille-fleurs woven across her breasts. “Is that your costume?”

I started to reply when she gave a little squeak and clutched my arm. “And what is that?”

“A jackal,” I explained. I grabbed Anku’s ruff and pulled him against my knees. “A favor for Roland Nopcsa.”

“Is he tame?”

“Perfectly.” I patted Anku’s head reassuringly.

“He doesn’t sound very tame,” said Aspasia. She stretched out a white beribboned hand. Anku sniffed her tentatively, then licked her wrist. “Oh! Tickles—” She glanced at me sideways. “What happened to you, Raphael? We heard you’d gone among the Curators—”

“I’ve come back.” I could see a crowd from Saint-Alaban starting up the drive, the elders groaning as they set down their palanquins. “Are you going in now?”

“Well—yes,” she replied, still doubtful. “That’s such an odd costume—”

“I’ll walk with you, then.” As I took her arm I turned so that the guards could not catch more than a glimpse of my face.

“Hey,” one of them began as Anku pattered past. But already the Saint-Alabans crowded the steps behind us in a roil of jasmine and crinoline. We slipped inside unchallenged.

A rush of scent—jasmine, ylang-ylang, carcasse d’amour; sandlewood and galingale; the heady reek of opiated cedar burning in copper braziers. We paused before a wide curving parapet overlooking the Great Hall. Aspasia detached herself from my embrace. Below us the marble floors flickered beneath seething waves of masquers in butterfly garb. Senators and Curators threaded their way cautiously through the room, holding the trailing sleeves of their sober habits above the ground. The black domino of a Persian malefeants with her whip pied the pastel train of a score of moth-winged children trying very hard to perform the steps of a salacious maxixe. High overhead the ceiling seemed to dance as well, as thousands of courting samburs wafted in the dim vault and macaws and brilliant finches chased the poor exhausted amorets above the ballroom floor.

“The Botanist Edmund Blanche has engaged me for the kursaal with Beata Helen and an Illyrian spado,” said Aspasia. She gazed at me wistfully, then dabbed at a spot on my cheek.

“If I were you I’d clean up a bit,” she added. “Really, the animal is enough, without all this—” She grimaced, waving her hands at my torn clothing. “Perhaps later, after they’ve chosen the cacique …”

She kissed me. Her small tongue traced the curve of my lower lip before she nodded and brushed her fingers against my mouth. Before I could say goodbye she disappeared among the revelers.

“Well, Anku,” I sighed. A pair of tall queans, not twins but dressed and carefully painted to resemble Gemini, unlaced their hands long enough to pass me one to each side. One laughed and showered Anku with the shattered remnants of many butterfly wings. He growled as they tripped giggling down the steps.

“Well, come on,” I said crossly, cuffing the jackal’s head. I now had to admit to myself that my plan for vengeance (such as it was) had, in theory, scarcely even taken me this far. I had imagined some sort of confrontation upon High Brazil’s outer steps, with Roland called in to arbitrate, and myself lunging at his throat to destroy him with my sagittal. That, or a reconciliation between us, which seemed so unlikely that it remained in my mind a vague impression of parted thighs and murmured endearments. To find myself suddenly back among the Paphians’ Court, invisibly armed and under the protection of a sentient beast, made me feel more foolish than otherwise. I sighed and leaned against the marble baluster.

A polyphemus moth drifted by my face. I watched it sail above the crowd, dipping and rising on eddies of laughter and music until a finch not much larger than itself shot from the shadows to spear the hapless insect. I thought of Francesca, who would never see the aviaries of the Zoologists; who would never look upon the fabled beauties of the Hill Magdalena Ardent. Closing my eyes, I tried to draw up the image of her standing beside me in the Hall of Dead Kings, invoked the brush of her hand against mine.

Then her image shivered. The frail wraith I’d conjured broke into a thousand bits, insubstantial as the butterflies brightening the air. A sudden sharp odor , as if a censure below had overturned to scorch some rich fabric. My wrist burned as though clamped by red-hot metal. The fluttering afterimage of the polyphemus moth arrayed itself into livid eyes writhing across white breasts and arms, its twitching antennae worming from a gasping mouth. I cried out; and opened my eyes to find myself clutching the balustrade as though to leap into the crowd.

“Impetuous boy,” a voice said behind me. I glanced back at a tall black man striped like a tiger swallowtail. He carried a small boy not more than six years old, a pretty child with enormous cocoa eyes and skin like watered milk. From his feverishly bright eyes I guessed it was the child’s first masque.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I murmured. I reached to stroke the wisps of brown hair that curled about his face. But as I did so the boy’s eyes grew wide with horror. The rosy cheeks ballooned and burst like an overripe love apple. I staggered back against the balustrade, splaying my hands against the haze of blood; and looked down to see my legs spattered with peony petals and dried crescents of orris.

“Moth bit!” shrieked the little boy, his face crimson with laughter. The black man laughed too, but with a sideways glance, first at my face and then at my feet, as if he too half-expected to see blood.

“Pretty thing.” He nodded at Anku. His dark black eyes met mine. “Are you all right, cousin?”

I swallowed and tried to smile. Anku growled, his tail swishing against the floor and dispersing the rosy petals. “I’m waiting for someone,” I said. I turned as though to search for a face in the glittering throng.

With a chuckle the man turned as well, his little charge battering his shoulders and casting in farewell another handful of petals.

I waited until they disappeared and gave a soft whistle to Anku. Quickly I walked toward the main stairway, trying to calm myself and staring resolutely at the floor awash in crushed blossoms and struggling moths. I was not unfamiliar with hallucinations, the dulcet visions of gospel mushrooms and the headier drowning stupors of opium tincture and hempen tea. But now I was the unwitting channeler of Death’s dreams and Death’s desires. I tightened my grip upon the banister, and then went on my way.

At the curve of the staircase three Paphians blocked the steps. An Illyrian traced the blue veins of her companion’s throat with one white hand. With the other she tugged a spent tab of frilite from her temple and tossed it away. She lifted her torpid eyes to gaze upon me, extended her hand to pluck at my tattered hem. “Look, Johannes,” she murmured. “He has come for you: Baal-Phegor, the Naked Lord …”

Before I could pass, the one she called Johannes blinked and with great effort lifted his head.

“Ah,” he mumbled; then choked and with a strangled yelp drew back, smacking his head against the banister. This stirred the third in their menage, a very thin young girl with black hair and the slanted ebony eyes of Persia. For an instant, wonder and fear stained her sharp features with a piquant flash of crimson. Then:

“It’s a costume, ” she said, annoyed. She turned to display shoulder blades incised with threads of gold from which tiny black feathers fluttered. “You idiot, Johannes.” With a petulant yawn she reached for him; but he pushed her away and continued to stare at me wide-eyed.

“A costume,” I repeated, nudging Anku to continue.

Johannes shook his head as Anku pattered down the next two steps. When I started to follow he raised both hands before his breast and crossed them at the wrists, palms opened to me. The Persian girl tittered.

“He’s a Saint-Alaban.” She giggled as I stepped over her long legs. “So superstitious!”

The Saint-Alaban turned on her and in a flurry of squeals the three resumed their sally. -‘

We wandered through the crowd, Anku and I. The rev’elers scarcely noticed me; even Anku received few surprised glances. From one dim corner of the hall a sweet sound echoed through ripples of laughter and the clamor of pipes. I followed this to a recess where water purled from a marble fountain. Drowned moths floated on its surface like blossoms. I swept the poor dead things from a brass spigot shaped like a peccary’s head. Dipping my face in the scented water, I washed away the grime, then unbound my hair and let it fall into the basin. Afterward I dried myself as best I could, leaving my hair to dry wild and tangled about my shoulders.

“Here,” I called to Anku. Filling my cupped hands with water, I bowed to let him drink greedily. “Supper next.”

A passing couple glanced at me and tittered behind their velvet dominos. I stared back at them coldly. The taller of the two (a spado, I guessed by his hairless, somewhat fleshy face and sweet childish voice) paused to gaze at me from gray eyes half-hidden in the folds of his domino.

“Ill-met, young Lord Death,” he said. He tilted his head to indicate my tattered clothes and the looped vine dangling from my neck. His partner clung limply to his arm and glanced at me sideways, a painted fantoccio draped in scarlet.

“An original conceit,” she murmured, her husky voice deepened still more by chloral. “The Saint-Alabans will forfeit their place in the masquerade rather than be judged alongside a likeness of the Hanged Boy.”

The spado nodded and stretched a hand to graze my cheek. “Will you join us in strappado, Hanged Boy?” he asked, lips parting to show a ruby placebit glimmering in a front tooth. One long pale leg slid from the folds of his domino to rub against my thigh.

I shook my head but did not move away, liking the feel of his smooth limb against mine. “I am looking for a Curator,” I said.

“Many of us will find Patrons tonight,” the woman murmured, leaning forward to gaze at her reflection in the sparkling basin. “There’s luck in threes—come with us.” She took my hand and pressed it between her legs, so that for a moment I felt only heat and the gentle sweep of velvet falling about my arm. Behind me I heard a faint growl. I looked back to see Anku watching from the fountain.

“A jealous companion,” laughed the spado. From beneath his domino he drew a long quirt of braided hide. “Come with us, Boy.” He prodded me gently with the cord. “My Patron is Constance Beech, a Botanist. She will be delighted to introduce you to her fellows. Come with us.”

From the echoing hall erupted shrill laughter and cheers. I peered vainly into the swirling shadows to see what this heralded.

“They’ve brought out the ORPHEUS ,” said the woman. “Oh, do come dance!”

“The Curator I am looking for is a Naturalist,” I said quickly, grabbing her hand and pressing it to my breast. “A Regent. Roland Nopcsa. Do you know him?”

She shook her head and turned to her companion. “A Regent. Constance might know him.” She slipped her hand back into the folds of her mantle.

The spado nodded, “I know him: he engaged me once as Inquisitor for an esclandre. Constance attended the excruciation with us.” He tapped my shoulder with his quirt. “But he has engaged Whitlock High Brazil this evening, Boy! You know that, eh?”

His cool gaze met mine. I lowered my face so that he would not see the color that flooded my cheeks. “Yes indeed,” I said. “Whitlock and I were paired at Winterlong—you remember us, perhaps?”

The spado regarded me through narrowed eyes, nodding slowly. “You had a different look, then,” he said at last. “I know you now. The favorite of the House Miramar. Raphael.” He turned and grasped his partner’s elbow. “See, cousin! This is the boy I told you of, the Miramar—”

“But he is not so young, Nataniel,” she protested, tugging at his domino. “And we’re late—we’ll miss the cacique’s judging if we don’t hurry.”

“No, you are not so young,” the spado Nataniel agreed. He raised the butt of his whip to my chin and tilted it back an inch. “Eighteen?”

“Seventeen!”

“Seventeen, then … but seventeen has bright empty eyes gazing ever forward, and already yours are full of old dreams and brooding on the past.”

I started to make a sharp reply, but the spado only raised his quirt to gently tap my lips: once, twice, thrice. His eyes were keen and bespoke Silence.

“I had a summer’s folly with Roland Nopcsa once, Boy Miramar,” he said. A glance at his companion showed her more intent upon the Great Hall than upon either of us. “He took rather more liberties with a promising young chaunter than perhaps he should. My House—Illyria, but you knew that, eh?—my House was not pleased with Nopcsa’s inspiration, although they did gain a fine soprano for chanting the “Duties of Pleasure.” A dedicated ear for fine music, Sieur Nopcsa …

“I hear he has engaged the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber this evening for a private recital with Whitlock prior to the bestowing of the cacique’s jewels.”

“Indeed,” I said, and snapped my fingers in Anku’s direction. “Where might a lover of music find the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber?”

Nataniel drew the hem of his domino away from Anku’s anxious tread and pointed across the hall. “Through the archway carven with the image of a jaguarondi seizing a great fish,” he murmured, then extended his arm to embrace his companion. “Come then, Dido! This boy will not join us, but the gynander Anstice Helen has as pretty a face and she is waiting.”

The two of them bowed to me, Nataniel kissing his three fingers and reaching to brush Anku’s muzzle as he passed.

“Fare well, Miramar,” he called softly. “Tell Nopcsa that Nataniel Illyria taught you a song to sing him: ‘Toujours Jeune.’” They disappeared into the shadows.

7. Somewhat dubious affinities

I PAUSED, WONDERING IF I should go now to confront Roland, then glanced after the spado and his partner.

At the far end of the hall a great press of dancers had gathered. In their center reared the luminous pilasters and glass pipes of High Brazil’s great electrocalliope ORPHEUS . High above the throng glowed its metal cabinet. Bright figures—dancers in dark glasses, women wearing silver headbands, autovehicles spinning on metal wheels—flickered beneath the elaborately lettered scroll still gleaming with bright blue and yellow metallic paint:

THE ECHO MUSICAL MACHINE COMPANY OF NORTHERN AMERICA

Beneath the scroll was a winking face, twice man-size, chipped silver headband upon its wooden brow, lips pursed to blow into a pair of great glass pipes. A frieze of tipsy letters spelled out ECHO ORPHEUS beneath the figure’s chin.

Another wave of cheering swept the room. Rubbing my eyes, I glanced down to see Anku crouched between my legs, staring moodily at a tiger swallowtail. When I looked up again I saw that someone had lifted a woman in white domino and black mask above the crowd. To rollicking cheers she clambered up the side of the calliope, clinging for support to bas-relief leaves and the backs of fantastically carven vehicles, until she swung her legs over the gaudy face of Orpheus and raised her arms triumphantly. Amid shrieks of laughter she pelted those below with flowers.

The electrocalliope bellowed so that my ears ached. I wondered how the woman could bear it. Still I found myself moving closer to the front of the crowd, staring at her. Anku slunk beside me. When he occasionally brushed against my leg I could feel him shuddering from the noise and smoke, and I let my fingers droop to touch him reassuringly.

We reached the edge of the melee. Behind us revelers cavorted in the ceaseless spray of smoke and flowers. Before us was the expanse of peach marble adrift in petals and quivering wings, surmounted by the ORPHEUS . A rowdy crowd of boys from Persia and my own House—with a pang I recognized Small Benedick and Small Thomas—had clambered onto the balcony abutting the machine. They waved their arms as if conducting the calliope. I stared enraptured at the metal mouth releasing puffs of hempen-scented steam that rose to sear clouds of moths. Only Anku remained unmoved, imploring me with soft urgent cries to move on.

The carnival anthem rolled to a finish. A rush of steam and cheers; then the first piping notes of “The Saint-Alaban’s Song.” Drunken voices began chanting. Beside me a tall Illyrian sank to her knees beside a Botanist. At their feet a girl with Saint-Alaban’s red ribbons braided through her hair plucked absently at their robes as she sang:

“O Saint-Alaban

We now must say goodbye

We’ve lost our hearts and lovers and must go—

we don’t know why …”

I pushed away Anku, tired of his insistent whining. I applauded with the rest as the boys from Miramar tossed a crown of lilies at the girl atop the ORPHEUS . To a volley of cheers she plucked a single scarlet blossom from the wreath of flowers. Setting the crown .firmly upon her head, she straightened. Then, surveying the crowd below, she searched for a deserving recipient among us. Laughing with the others, I waved and urged her To me! to me!, trying to catch her eye.

Abruptly her gaze fixed upon me. Other faces began turning to me, laughing that the game had reached this end. Between my feet Anku stirred, growling. He stared at the figure above us as she raised the red lily, then tugged her mask free of its braids and ribbons to reveal her face: dead white, pitted with blackened holes whence crept writhing threads of spiders. I stepped back, my eyes still riveted to her. Her hands had been chalked to hide the bloody grooves where she had prised free the lid of the sarcophagus. White powder flaked from the raw bruises on her arms. Ghostly moths lit upon her thighs with slowly beating wings. As I stared, she touched three fingers to her lips. Then with a grin she kissed each of the lily’s garnet blades and laughing tossed it from the pensive brow of the ORPHEUS : a poisonous shaft tumbling through the air, cleaving the tremulous wings of moths and grazing a half-dozen eager fingertips before it began to tumble toward its mark.

“To me, Raphael!”

A shriek as I staggered against the Botanist hugging my side. Something white and snarling whipped past me, tore at her sleeve so that a net of blood trammeled the falling blossom. In mid-air Anku seized the crimson lily, shearing the bright petals so that they swirled and shriveled into tattered shards. Red mist obscured my vision, clouded the faces of those fighting to restrain me as I tried to flee that horrible giggling figure with her bleeding legs splayed about a winking face.

The crowd suddenly gave way. I stumbled to a marble bench, clutched my head and wept.

“Raphael!”

I forced myself to look back. Atop the ECHO ORPHEUS the woman stood, shielding her eyes from the smoke as she scanned the hall, calling my name over and over as though her heart would break.

Not Francesca.

Ketura.

“No,” I whispered. Behind us, Paphians and Curators danced and sang as if there had been no rent in the shimmering fabric of their carnival marquee. Only the forlorn figure clinging to the ORPHEUS sought the ghost of Raphael Miramar at the Butterfly Ball.

“There is little time,” a voice said behind me. I started and glanced at Anku, terrified that this would begin my final plunge into madness, to hear my jackal familiar speak. But Anku stood alert, his tail switching as he stared at something behind me. I whirled to see a slight figure shadowed by another column. He was naked save for a wreath of ivy about his neck and a mask of leaves behind which his green eyes glowed.

“Your sister has awakened,” he said, and stepped into the light. Anku leaped toward him, to collapse whimpering at his feet. The Boy stooped to stroke the jackal’s throat.

“My sister is dead,” I stammered.

“She was asleep,” he said, and with a last flourish to Anku stood facing me. “As I was. As were you.”

“What do you want with me?” I whispered. Behind us the ball continued unabated.

“To bring the Final Ascension,” he said, laughing as though he had answered a simple riddle.

“But I am no Ascendant!” I pressed myself against the marble pillar as if its solid embrace might steady me. “I am a Paphian, a courtesan—we are whores and children!”

He made a swift cutting motion with his hand.

“Desire is my child; and cold Science,” he said. As he spoke his fingers moved in and out, in and out, as though choking an invisible enemy. “But her frigid heart will melt and your fever will rage to shake the stones from their buildings, Raphael Miramar.”

“I do not want such power,” I said, trembling.

“Power?” he repeated. “You have no power.”

“Then leave me in peace!” I cried. “I want nothing of your Ascension!”

At this foolish temper Anku stood whining. I lashed out at him, my foot grazing one silvery flank. The jackal only blinked and settled back onto his haunches, head cocked to regard me reproachfully.

“Ah, see, Anku,” said the Boy, raising his leg so that he stood on one foot like a dancer. “We are as flies to this wanton boy: he would kill us for his sport.” Then he laughed, and I looked away, frightened.

“Raphael!”

I turned to see Ketura scrambling from the ORPHEUS . A flash of shame burned me as her gaze held mine: neither blaming nor accusing, only asking how I could have betrayed our friendship by fleeing her. Then she dipped from sight and I ducked behind the column once more. A few meters away the Boy stood with his back to me. He faced a high archway which held as though fixed in pale amber the image of a jaguarondi, its teeth piercing a young inia. Beneath this frieze Anku lay with his muzzle resting upon his paws, watching his master.

Sudden resolution emboldened me. Glancing back to make certain I was not seen, I walked to the Boy, grabbed his shoulder, and wrenched him toward me as I demanded, “Come with me, then!”

“Where, cousin?” an indolent voice replied agreeably. He turned to me, slanted green eyes widening beneath a broad white brow and a feathered cap that hid his hair.

It was not he.

“Forgive me,” I stammered, dropping my hand. “I mistook you for another.”

Before he could respond I fled beneath the arch, Anku darting to follow me. My heart pounded so that I feared I might stop breathing, so painful was that ceaseless hammering inside my chest. But after a few steps the air felt clearer, flensed of smoke and scent and sound. I breathed deeply, until I felt as though a ponderous weight had been lifted from within my lungs, and looked around to see that I had entered one of the branching hallways that snaked through the first level of High Brazil. There was a low murmur as of many voices, but I could see no one. Tiny electrified candles glimmered from brackets set behind translucent petals of jadeite and peridot. These cast pale green shadows upon the alabaster floor and walls, a marine glow that soothed me yet made me feel more alert, as though the beryl light revealed shapes and designs normally hidden from sight. Cool draughts flowed from unseen air shafts. To either side were many narrow doorways. Each was surmounted by a scholiast in the likeness of a gynander with brightly colored phallus in place of a tongue, and breasts whose nipples were ocular sensors that rotated as they focused upon me. We passed doors of scented wood inlaid with plasma crystals and heated copper coils exhaling the narcotic haze of veronal. Doors of prismatic glass cast back not my face but the holographic images of other Paphians, their fingers tracing the outlines of painted lips and eyes and genitals as over and over they beckoned unseen guests. There were doors of interlocking metal gears that snapped and spun ceaselessly, allowing only glimpses into the twilit seraglios beyond, where sultry figures swayed. As I approached each room its scholiast would click and whir, the gaudy phallus unfurl as the automaton turned to fix me with its hollow eyes and pipe in a pure breathy voice:

“Welcome cousin. This is the Chamber of Equivocal Purity.”

“Welcome sisters. Inside sleeps the Ensiform Concilia-trix: rouse her to battle with your embrace.”

“Welcome cousins. The Adytum Intrigant is engaged for the Spados’ Private Bath.”

“Welcome cousins. Step carefully into the First Elevation of the Entresol of Unctuous Sighs.”

Anku ignored this prattling, pausing only to sniff at the postern whose scholiast murmured, “Welcome cousins. Circe High Brazil awaits within to change women into swans, men into swine.” Faint grunts and moans of pleasure seeped from beneath a door scaled with the hides of many pangolins. The freshly flayed pelt of a young lamb hung from the doorjamb, blood slicking the marble beneath it. Anku leaped to tug at this. I cuffed him and hissed for him to follow. He did so with a disapproving growl, slinking at my heels.

“Welcome errant brothers. Join us in the Chamber of Lashes and Gentle Lapidation.”

“Welcome rhapsodists. Retire to the couches of the Anodyne Cubicle.”

“Welcome cousin. The Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber is engaged for Dolorous Palpation.”

The scholiast’s phallic tongue retracted into its mouth with a click. To each side of the automaton rose slender windows of glass: glowing purple, deep scarlet, jonquil yellow. Archaic figures were depicted within the panes. For several minutes I studied these curious representations of men and women, shining vehicles, and slender aviettes. Anku sat at my feet as I pondered how to enter the chamber.

From inside came a sudden soft explosion of laughter; then muffled voices.

“Roland,” I whispered. Memory of the day’s terrors faded. I felt honed to a spike of raw feeling, suddenly knowing exactly where I was, and why; and what I hunted. When I moved my hand a spidery glint of violet crept from beneath my fingers. Anku whined.

“I would enter the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber,” I announced to the scholiast. I gazed up at it fearlessly.

The ocular sensors extruded. Squinting, I could see the array of lenses inside the metal nipples circle and reverse as they sought to focus upon me, the pinpoint of light that revealed the periscopic aperture within the mechanism. The phallic tongue unfolded, flecking the air with metallic dust.

“The chamber has been engaged for private excruciations, ” the hollow voice intoned.

“I am an expected guest of the Curator Roland Nopcsa and Whitlock High Brazil.” I glanced at Anku. The scholiast’s sensors shifted to regard him. The voices inside the chamber grew louder, as though arguing, then silent. “This animal is a gift for Roland Nopcsa.”

Loud whirring from the scholiast. The cool air pouring from the air vents made me shiver, so I moved from the wall. The sensors followed me.

“Whitlock High Brazil and Roland Nopcsa have requested no assistance for the evening’s excruciations. The chamber may not be engaged.”

“I do not wish to engage the chamber!” I said. “I bring a gift for Roland Nop—”

“The chamber may not be engaged.”

“But this—”

The scholiast’s jeweled navel suddenly dilated. I shut up and backed across the hall and to one side, kicking at Anku to alert him. From the scholiast shot a needle that sprayed the air with a fine mist. Anku whined. I covered my mouth with my sleeve to avoid breathing the sedative essence.

The needle retracted. The painted breasts swiveled. The phallus furled back into the cold steel mouth. Before the sensors could focus upon me again I slammed against the door. It swung inward as easily as the postern to my room at the House Miramar. I felt Anku’s soft fur against my legs as he slipped beside me and the door shut behind us.

8. The traces of the existence of a body

“MAGDALENE,” SOMEONE WHISPERED. THE sound was magnified in the bell of a vast chamber that seemed to encompass all of High Brazil. I stood surrounded by shafts of violently tinted light: orange, violet, turquoise, burgundy columns rising to explode against a ceiling of brilliant stained glass. The far end of the chamber appeared to open above the Great Hall, where masquers reeled and shouted in eerie silence, heedless of us watching from the seraglio above. I gathered that this chamber was located directly behind the wall of prismatic glass that overlooked the east end of the Great Hall. I shut my eyes to blot out the sense of vertiginous space in a room that I knew could not possibly be this huge. When I looked up again it was into the face of Roland Nopcsa regarding me with muzzy brown eyes.

“Raphael?” he said thickly. “‘Sat you?” He pawed at the air. I stepped backward, lost my balance, and fell onto a pallet heaped with satin coverlets and the remnants of a feathered costume.

“Raphael!” exclaimed the voice I’d first heard upon entering. “Magdalene save me, I’m glad you’re here! He’s a madman.” From the tangle of bolsters and sheets a figure half-rose to greet me. Slender, with skin so translucent it shimmered with the pulse of blood in his veins, blue-green and violet. The marks of bruising kisses lingered upon his shoulders and throat.

“Oh, Whitlock!” Ignoring Roland, I crawled to where, Whitlock hugged a pillow to his frail chest. “What happened to you?”

He dropped the pillow and wrapped his arms around me, cool and insubstantial as a wraith’s. He blinked often as he spoke, those weak lovely eyes always seeming to focus on someone else, slightly to my left.

“He’s shattered my poor splendid wings,” he said, laughing. Dabs of silver arched across each cheekbone where bijoux tears had been artfully wrung. I kissed him, recalling our pairing at Winterlong: my auburn locks braided with his shining hair. He looked no less lovely now for his bruises and disarray, only achingly fragile.

“S’ dog?” rumbled Roland, staggering as he waved his arms toward Anku. “S’ dog, Whitlock.”

Anku had trotted to the far end of the chamber where the floor seemed to open onto the Great Hall below. Glitter and dying moths beat the air relentlessly, always just inches out of reach of the jackal’s quicksilver jaws. The figure of Anku himself blurred as he leaped close to the edge of the room, then grew sharper and clearer as he fell back to the floor.

“Obfuscating oriels,” Whitlock explained. “I hate them, they give me vertigo. But he likes to think that all of them ”—he indicated the silent crowd beneath us—“are watching.”

“Raphael,” Roland repeated. He plopped onto a pile of cushions, splaying one heavy thigh across a crimson comforter. “How’d you get in?”

“Oh, I sent for him, Roland,” said Whitlock, kicking a pillow so that it sailed and landed with a thump against Roland’s leg. “We make such a striking couple. I finally had to dose his wine,” he added aside to me. Ruby flashed to ivory as he rolled his eyes. “I never had your constitution, Raphael. Curators exhaust me. What’s it like living with them?”

“Awful,” I said. “I’ve left.”

“Good for you.” He smiled and kissed my cheek. Dear Whitlock! “You know, Lemuel paired me with Aspasia Persia for The Glorious—she’s lovely, reminded me of Ketura from your House, that red hair and those legs!—and I kept thinking of last Winterlong when …”

He chattered on, while beside him I sat nearly stupefied with—

What?

Relief? Indecision? Fear?

All of these; and a twisted desire for Roland, who now stood staring down at the masque. His hands rested against some invisible barrier at the room’s edge, and he mumbled to himself while Anku lay watchfully a few feet away. And I felt desire for the sweet and faithless Whitlock beside me, giggling as he recounted his own exploits at recent castigations, punctuating each anecdote with quick childish kisses and toying with the cosmetic cylinders and ribbons and gleaming candicaine straws strewn on the floor about him.

“… and, Raphael, tonight Iontha High Brazil said she heard congreves launched across the river, and Gamaliel and Swan Illyria saw lazars gathering near the Tiger!” He paused, and plucked a cherry from a silver serving platter.

“Lazars,” I repeated. I took a deep breath. “I saw lazars—”

“You, cousin!”

“Yes—by the Tiger.” I continued to stare at Roland. I wondered whether he was too drunk to identify me later if I simply left now; or if I should confront him with my dismissal.

“But you were alone! How did you escape?” Whitlock grabbed my hand.

“Oh—” I stammered, quickly but gently moving my hand from his grasp. When I glanced down I saw the sagittal gleaming very faintly. I slipped that hand into the folds of my tunic, with the other pointed toward the far end of the room where Anku lay. “The jackal—”

“But lazars—!”

I turned and laid a finger to his lips.

“Whitlock,” I said. “When did Roland first engage you?”

“Nopcsa? Months and months ago. Right after you went to the Museum.” He gazed up at me, cabochon eyes glinting with surprise. Then he clapped both hands to his small mouth and glanced from myself to Roland and back again.

“Raphael! I’m so sorry—I had no idea—you didn’t know!” There was the faintest note of glee in his apology.

“No, I did not, ” I said. Suddenly all of my anger and hurt and spite flooded me again. I glared at my former Patron, naked save for a loose undershift of white cambric now stained with wine, peering at Whitlock and myself. “I am not accustomed to such treatment.”

“Ah, Raphael.” A twinge of malice quivered in Whitlock’s smile. He tipped his head toward Roland, then reached for an atomizing tube. There was a soft hiss staining the air with sandalwood. “You are too proud, you know … All of us are accustomed to ‘such treatment’—only Raphael Miramar ever thought he was above it. To dare live among the Curators! Didn’t you know he would hate you for it?”

I winced. I recalled Ketura’s warning, Franca’s callous wonder that I had ever imagined the Curators would accept me as anything but a common whore.

“I wanted to learn from him—” I began, when Roland suddenly, called out.

“Whitlock! They’re gathering the suzeins for the judging—” His expression clouded as he saw me standing above Whitlock. “Miramar,” he said.

He no longer sounded drunk. He strode across the room to his paramour. “Who let him in?”

Whitlock flinched, then tossed back his white hair pettishly. “Raphael and I were paired a—”

“Who let him in, you pasty slut?” Nopcsa kicked at the pile of blankets.

Whitlock stumbled to his feet, wrapping a sheet around his thin shoulders. “Best go, Raphael,” he said, and stooped to gather his costume. “I don’t know who let him in, Roland. Perhaps the scholiast was tampered with.”

“Who let you in?” demanded Roland. “How did you know we were here? How did you get here?”

“I crossed the Narrow Forest,” I replied. “I’ve brought you a gift, Roland. Anku!”

Like smoke seeping up through the floorboards the jackal materialized at my side. Whitlock eyed him nervously, tugging on his robe as he shifted from one foot to the other. I could feel Anku quivering as he stared at the Curator.

“An albino jackal,” Roland said, stroking his chin and eyeing Anku. Suddenly he began to laugh. “Miramar, I always thought you were too clever for a whore!” He stooped and snapped his fingers at the jackal. Anku’s ears flattened against his skull but he did not move.

“A peace offering,” I suggested.

“An albino?” said Whitlock, somewhat plaintively. I shrugged. My head had begun pounding again. About my wrist I felt a steady pulse of heat come and go, come and go, in rhythm with the rush of blood through my veins.

“As pretty a consort as ever you’ve had, Roland,” I said. I hoped my excitement and fear would not betray me. But I felt a little ashamed as well, and dared an apologetic glance at Whitlock. He was regarding me curiously. I saw his glance slide from my face to my arm and then fix upon my wrist. I gripped the glowing bracelet with my other hand. At my feet a wan pool of violet reflected from the sagittal. And to my horror the gaze Whitlock cast back upon me mirrored my own. His blinking eyes darted between fear and wonder as he looked from the sagittal to my face and back again, shaking his head in disbelief.

He knows what it is!

For an instant I held his gaze, thinking Do not betray me! as I stood there calmly, and even Anku’s breath stilled as he waited with me.

Then—

“Well, Roland,” Whitlock announced with that same lazy note of petulance, as though he were only half-awake and none too pleased about it. With calculated slowness he bent to pick up a crown of azure and yellow macaw quills. “I must go to the judging—”

“Take me,” I said to Roland. I turned to confront him, almost near enough now for us to embrace. “Leave him and be my escort.”

Because suddenly, more than anything—more than vengeance, more than surcease from pain and exhaustion, more even than I longed for his love and desire for me to return—I simply wanted everything to be as it had been. I wanted to enter the Great Hall with Roland and lower my eyes as he guffawed at the sight we made together, as he had done at so many masques and balls. I wanted to have Gower Miramar as my lover and confidante and suzein once more, and Fancy my beloved cousin beside me, and Ketura with her explosive laugh and temper to match …

“I won’t leave again, I promise,” I pleaded. My hand had fallen upon Anku’s head. My fingers kneaded his fur as I raised my eyes to Roland’s. “Just let me go with you now.”

He stared at me for a long time. Like a moth that alights upon one fair blossom and then forsakes it for another, desire for me lingered upon Roland’s dark face; and then was gone forever.

“You’re too clever for yourself, Raphael,” he said at last. Disdainfully he kicked at Anku, missing the jackal but sending a small tide of silks washing across the floor. “Some whore’s trick to curry favor with your people! A white dog—”

Anku growled and slipped to the other side of the room.

Roland glanced at Whitlock lining his eyes with kohl and smiled. “I have a prettier pet than that already, Miramar. Hurry up, Whitlock.” And without another glance at me he turned and began to pull on his tunic and Regent’s sash of red and black.

I watched him, stunned that he had rejected me—really rejected me!—so easily, without so much as an argument over my hair or torn clothes, without even acknowledging that I had braved the perils of the Narrow Forest to come here, and risked humiliation by my own people in order to break into this garish seraglio and offer myself to him.

“Roland …” I began.

He paused at the far wall and tugged at one of a dozen multicolored ropes of braided velvet that looped from the ceiling. A clear sweet chime. Then a tiny door opened in the wall. A brazen face blinked verdigrised eyelids. Its speaking mechanism ground resolutely, as though it had been unused for many months.

“Speak cousin,” it finally pronounced in the same chilly tones the scholiasts affected.

“Bid the elders come and remove an uninvited guest from the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber. Inform Lemuel High Brazil that the catamite Raphael Miramar has committed a crime of interjacence.”

“As you wish,” the brass head replied. The tiny door snapped shut.

“Roland!” Whitlock gasped. The kohl wand snapped shut in a flurry of black powder. “That’s banishment —you can’t!— ”

Roland snarled and slashed at the air with his hand. “Do you want to go with him?” He turned, grabbing blindly at the dangling ropes. Chimes pealed and tinkled. From a dozen alcoves soft voices rang from brazen throats. “Summon Lemuel High Brazil!”

“No!” Whitlock cried, cowering on the floor. A tremor of pity for him cut through my own fear and indecision. Before I could say anything he shrieked, pointing.

“Raphael!”

I turned, too late to avoid Roland’s arm swinging to smash against my throat. I fell to my knees, gagging as I tried to catch my breath. But Roland grabbed my shoulders and yanked me back up, his crimson face swimming before mine.

“Whores and lazars! You all feed off us—” His hands gripped me so that I cried aloud, and he laughed. “Not so strong and well fed as you were, eh, Miramar? You won’t last long once you’re banished.”

And he tore at my tunic, pushed me to the floor, and with one hand tight about my throat twisted to turn me onto my stomach as I struggled. Roland cursed and smacked me with the side of his hand. My head reeled. For a moment I lay once more beneath the apple tree in the Narrow Forest, the figure grunting above me not Roland but the Hanged Boy, hands like a rope tightening about my throat, pain ripping through me and a voice braying such triumph and utter desolation that I screamed …

“Raphael!”

This is what awaits you this and nothing more and it does not end no not now no not ever no come to me come to me —

“Raphael, please!”

And there above me crouched neither Roland nor the Gaping One but Whitlock, Anku panting at his side. From Roland’s neck a broken ampule protruded.

“— dead, Raphael, I killed him, sweet Magdalene, oh save me he’s dead!”

I tried to speak but my bruised throat could not form the question. The clamor in my ears softened, the roaring broke into discrete notes that I gradually realized were words, the voices of scholiasts pronouncing the same message over and over again:

“We summon the suzein of the House High Brazil.”

“Raphael Miramar has committed a crime of interjacence.”

“We summon the suzein of the House High Brazil …”

The muted cadence of the masque below faltered and then stilled. With a clang the brazen voices of the scholiasts announced my name one last time and fell silent.

“Whitlock,” I began.

“Shh!”

His fear bled into taut concentration. I raised myself to lean upon one elbow, reaching for Anku. Behind the jackal I glimpsed Roland’s bulk, a maroon coverlet tossed across him so that only his hand could be seen. Within that ominous silence this alone seemed right: that Roland should lie there dead, and that I should sit a few feet away and be glad of it. I felt my shoulders heave beneath the weight of some kind of vicious glee and turned to Whitlock as if he might explain to me this sudden violent humor.

But he was not looking at me. Nor did he stare at the man he had killed protecting me. Head cocked to one side, he gazed at the ceiling, pale ruby eyes blinking as though he strove to read our names there among the velvet ropes and spiderwebs. And now Anku mirrored Whitlock’s posture, sitting on his haunches and. staring upward, ears pricked.

“What—” I demanded, hearing nothing at first; ‘then bit off the end of my sentence. From far within the labyrinth of High Brazil a bell began to toll.

“That is the tocsin,” said Whitlock very slowly, as though somehow it might not really be the tocsin until he had pronounced the word.

I nodded, dazed. By some extraordinary effort I got to my feet. “The tocsin,” I said.

Whitlock turned to face me. “High Brazil is beset by lazars,” he said, and stumbled to the windows overlooking the Great Hall.

Now I could hear it clearly: three long repeated notes, deep and dreadful, a sound I had grown up fearing from Doctor Foster’s tales. The tocsin sounded once a year to announce the Masque of Winterlong and so allow us all to hear its hollow song, and afterward begin our games of go-bang and snapdragon.

But this was not Winterlong. This was the Butterfly Ball, and the warning tocsin sounded now when we should be hearing the laughter of the judges pronouncing the masque’s cacique.

“That’s impossible,” I protested. But in my head rang other words: / have gone mad; I am dreaming. Whitlock fumbled with a curtain at the wall’s edge until his fingers found a switch. A soft click. The obfuscating oriels shimmered. The chamber grew dim.

“Look,” my friend whispered. “It has begun …”

I stepped around Roland’s corpse to join Whitlock. As we stared down I saw upon the entrance balcony a grinning line of emaciated children, one beside the other, hands linked as though for some harrowing antic. They had torn the ropes of flowers from the balustrades and hung them about their necks in imitation of the Paphians. Some of them wore the remnants of actual costumes. I recognized Aspasia Persia’s beaded cobwebs now adorning the matted curls of a boy with fiery eyes and livid face.

“They must have taken her outside,” said Whitlock. “We will be eaten alive.” He pointed at the ORPHEUS , its glass pipes now silent. The masquers ringed tightly the calliope’s gleaming bulk, as if it might shelter them from the murderous children.

Upon the parapets more and more lazars gathered, and at the top of each stairway, and within the embrasures, their skeletal arms and legs outstretched like mayflies impaled upon the varicolored glass. But they moved in utter silence, as though waiting for a signal to begin their play.

Suddenly I heard a piercing cry. From the crowd huddled about the ORPHEUS darted a willowy harlequin, his costume billowing behind him as he ran toward the main steps.

None of the lazars pursued him. He cleared the top step. It seemed he might escape, go free to summon aid, when a bowstring twanged. The figure halted, jerked back and forth like a teetotum. Then he toppled and rolled down the steps, a scarlet streamer unraveling behind him upon each white stair.

A moment more of silence. Then from the main balcony rang a strong familiar voice.

“Greetings, cousins!”

Whitlock started as I turned and began to look among the spectral children ranged across the House, until I saw her.

The yellow janissary’s jacket slipped from her thin shoulders as she balanced atop the balustrade on one foot. A grinning child at each side waited to catch her if she fell. She raised her arms, crowing with delight at the terrified revelers huddling below. Laughing she cried, “The bad fairies have come to the ball!”

She turned to face our side of the Great Hall, her eyes probing the blank faces of the Masquers. Then she stiffened, and slowly raised her head to where Whitlock and I stood in the Hagioscopic Embrasure. Her eyes fixed upon mine. With a swagger she tossed back her tangled hair. The janissary’s jacket slid back a little more upon her narrow shoulders as she cried for all to hear.

“Ill-met by moonlight, Young Lord Baal! Many thanks for the invitation! My master bids you come now as his guest to the Cathedral. But I go to meet your lord: he waits for me below. Look for me in the gray lands among the gaping ones—”

Then she leaped, spinning so that her wasted smile flashed one last time from within that tangle of white hair. On the floor below masquers scattered, giving voice to the first wails of horror and despair as the girl struck the marble and, like a child turning in her sleep, tossed one broken arm across her smiling face and lay still.

“Baal …” whispered Whitlock. His eyes showed fear, but he did not pull away from me. “She named you Baal? How did she know you, Raphael?”

I shook my head. “The river,” I said. “They think I am the one the Saint-Alabans call Baal or the Hanged Boy—”

A wave of sound overtook the Great Hall. Shouts and wails and bleating cries mingled with the gleeful yelps and laughter of the lazars as they watched the hapless revelers try to flee. Several of the children who had stood beside Pearl now turned their eyes upon the embrasure where Whitlock and I stood. I could see them talking excitedly and pointing to us.

“The Hanged Boy,” Whitlock repeated, licking his lips. He nodded slowly, his ruby eyes filling with tears even as he smiled. “Ah, Raphael—it has come, then.”

“What?” I cried. “What has come?”

“Like the Saint-Alabans always told us. The Final Ascension, the coming of the Hanged Boy—”

“I am not the Hanged Boy! I’m Raphael Miramar—you’ve known me your whole life!”

Smiling, he leaned to kiss me gently upon one cheek. “Ah yes. Well. I know, dear heart.” He gestured toward the far balcony. “But they see us, there—they will come for you, and kill me.

“I don’t want them to kill me, Raphael. …”

He drew my hand to his face, pressed the sagittal against his neck as he raised his mouth to kiss me. “Take me, Raphael,” he murmured. “Let me die now, with you, and take some memory of beauty with me.”

I tried to push him away, but he only smiled and crushed me closer to him. “They’re right, you know,” he whispered between kisses as we sank to the floor. “You were the most beautiful of us all, Raphael. Let me die now with you …”

Without wanting to I tangled my fingers in his silver hair and kissed him, groaning. A shimmer where my sagittal cast a violet nimbus about his lovely face. Then he drew my hand close until the bracelet rested against his throat and he arched against it.

A sound soft as night falling; the clouded blur of the spine darting into Whitlock’s skin. He shuddered. For an instant his eyes fixed upon me, soft and ardent.

“Remember me at Winterlong,” he sighed; and was dead.