A man sprawled amongst cushions on a sagging bed beneath a canopy of cloth-of-gold. Magon capered forward and jumped onto the bed, raising a cloud of dust from the yellowed linen sheets, and laid his head next to the man’s bare feet, gazing up with unqualified adoration, for all the world like a faithful puppy gazing at its master.
Without doubt, the man on the bed was Lupe, the king of the Palace within the Palace. He was a big man; he was an old man. Skin hung in mottled flaps from his arms. His face was scored deeply with lines and wrinkles. He wore a long brocade dress so stiff with dirt that it was impossible to tell what color it might once have been; an elaborate headdress of gold wire woven in a tall cone and studded with bits of colored glass was planted on top of tangled gray hair that fell to his broad shoulders. His feet were bare and his toenails were painted red; the nails of his big, strong hands, like those of certain mendicants, had been allowed to grow around each other in long corkscrews. His lips had been stained with cochineal and his eyes were made up like the wings of a blue butterfly. His pupils were capped with frost, and from the way he held his head Yama knew he was blind. He did not look absurd in his costume, but wore it with a grave, sacerdotal majesty.
Lupe turned his face toward Yama and Eliphas, and said in a soft, hoarse voice, “Come closer, dominie.”
Eliphas said, “What is this place?”
Lupe raised his head and turned it from side to side, as if sniffing the air. “Who is this stranger, Magon?”
“A companion of the one foretold, Lupe.”
“Then he is welcome,” the old man said. “As are you, dominie. Welcome and twice welcome. It is my honor to welcome you. I had thought that I would die before you came, and it is with all my heart that I convey the treasure house of my sentiments, which have been stored up for so long against this wonderful day.”
“It seems that I am expected,” Yama said.
“You are the one who is foretold,” Lupe said. His blind eyes were turned toward Yama’s face. “Please, dominie. Please sit at our table! All that we have is yours!” Three beautiful girls, arrayed in layers of splendid silks that left only their arms and faces bare, stepped through a curtain. Their delicate oval faces were painted white; their full lips were stained black. They carried trays of sweetmeats and candied fruits arranged on plantain leaves or in tiny bowls of translucent porcelain. Their eyes shone with excitement and they giggled as they fussed about Yama, seating him in a nest of dusty cushions and setting the food before him. One sat Eliphas beside Yama; the other two helped Lupe from the bed, sat him on a low stool, and settled the full skirt of his dress around him.
Yama took a bowl of tea from one of the girls and, after a hesitation, Eliphas followed suit. Another girl raised a bowl to Lupe’s lips; the old man’s fingernails were so long that he could not possibly feed himself. The three men slurped companionably, and Lupe belched gravely.
While one of the girls fed Lupe with chopsticks, Yama picked at diced squares of candied yam. He had not eaten since the meal in the Strangers’ Lodge of the Department of Apothecaries and Chirurgeons, but he was too excited and nervous to have much of an appetite.
At last, he said to Lupe. “You know of me, master. Where does that knowledge come from?”
“Please, dominie, I am not your master! I am Lupe, no more than Lupe and no less, and completely at your service. All my people are at your service. All this was foretold and we have made many songs and poems and dances in your honor. Not all our dances are lewd or comic. Those are for our public, but we have our own dances. Once I could dance them, but now, alas, I can only remember them.” Lupe tapped his wrinkled brow with his knuckles. “All our history is there, in the dances, and so are you.”
Eliphas said to Yama, “Ask him how we can destroy the hell-hound, brother. Ask him to show us the way back to the roof of the Palace, so I can help you find what you seek.”
Lupe cocked his head, and said, “Anything you wish, dominie. Anything within our powers. We are yours to command.”
Yama said, “How is it that you know me?”
He did not feel afraid here—he realized that this was the first time since he had left his home in Aeolis that he did not feel some measure of fear. But he could not stay long. The gates of the Department of Vaticination would open to petitioners at noon; the assassin would be sharpening his covert blade or preparing his vial of odorless poison. But this was an opportunity that might not come again, and he was intensely eager to discover all that Lupe knew—or believed he knew—about him.
Lupe did not answer Yama’s question at once. Instead, he motioned to his attendants. One of the girls squatted beside him and refilled his tea bowl; another held it to his lips. When the old man had drained his tea, he wiped his red-stained lips on the back of his hand and said, “We have always served, dominie. We were put into the world to serve and to bring pleasure. Thus, while our bloodline is of the lowest order, the nature of our service calls upon the highest arts. For while we might be counted as beggars who dance, make mock or make love for a paltry slew of coinage, our reward is not in the money but in the pleasure our performances bring to our clients. We are a simple people. We do not need money, except to buy cloth and beads and metal wire for our costumes. Your friend looks among the trinkets stored here, and wonders perhaps that I can claim to be poor, yet live with all these riches heaped about me.” (Eliphas held up a mildewed leather cap embroidered with silver wire, and made a face.) “But these riches are all gifts from grateful clients,” Lupe said. “We have saved them out of sentiment, not avarice. We are a simple people, and yet, dominie, we have survived longer than any other bloodline. We are too simple to know how to change, perhaps, but we do remember. It is our other virtue. We remember your people, dominie. We remember how great and good they were. We remember how we feared and adored them. They have been gone a long time, but we have always remembered them.”
Yama leaned forward, his entire attention on Lupe’s grave, blind face.
He said, “And are my people still in the world?”
“They are not in the Palace, dominie, and so we have always believed that they are no longer of the world. How could it be otherwise? For they were the Builders, and this is their place. It was here that they commanded the world, in their day. If they are not here, then surely they live nowhere else.”
“Perhaps this is no longer their day. Perhaps they are dwindled.”
Lupe shook his head. “Ah, dominie, how you tease me! You know I cannot speak of that. We know the Palace. We know something of Ys. The world is another place entirely.”
“Then they are not in Ys,” Yama said. He had guessed it, but this was still hard to bear. “Do you believe that they might return?”
Lupe said, “An anchorite came to me seventeen years ago and told me that one day you would seek help from my people. And here you are. So you might say that your people have returned.”
Seventeen years ago Yama had been found afloat on the river, a baby lying on the breast of a dead woman in a white boat. For a moment, Yama was so excited that he could not speak. He touched the coin which hung inside his shirt. An anchorite had given it to him in Aeolis, at the beginning of his adventures. Derev had said that the man was of his bloodline.
At last, he said, “What did he look like? Was he scarred about the face, and dumb?”
“He had a gentle, hoarse voice. As for what he looked like, I could not tell you, dominie. I was blind then as now, and he came to me when I was alone. It was deepest night, and those of my people not working were asleep. He told me that one day, near the end of the world, a Builder would come to Ys, and that he would need our help. He told me where you would come from, and when. My people have been watching the docks for a hundred days now. I thought that you would not come, but here you are.”