The man outside saw her peering in again and stared, so she walked quickly past as if she were just a curious tourist and went into a coffee shop on the far side of the square, where she drank iced coffee through a straw and thought. This Shkin character must have decided to take Tom prisoner for some reason. Perhaps he thought Tom was connected with the Lost Boys. Well, that was not so big a problem. She would go and rescue him, just as Tom had come to rescue her when she had been a prisoner at Rogues’ Roost.
But how to get inside that tower? The guard at the door was already wary of her, and with all these carnival crowds about she could not just shoot her way in. Oh, poor Tom! Why had he come here alone? He should have known that he couldn’t cope on his own with people like this Nabisco Shkin.
She paid for her iced coffee and asked the waiter, “Is that Shkin’s place? The tower? It looks too small to hold many slaves.”
“It’s got hidden depths,” the waiter replied, glancing happily at the tip she put down on the table. “The cells and stuff are down below. That’s where they’re keeping all those horrible pirates.”
Hester thought again of Rogues’ Roost, and of how she had led Tom to safety through the confusion of a Lost Boy raid. Then she left the café, walking quickly, glancing down once to make sure that the gun in her belt didn’t spoil the cut of her new coat.
Chapter 26
Waiting for the moon
As the sun sank red and fat into the haze above Africa, the breeze stiffened. Brighton began to rock gently on the long, white-capped, shoreward-rolling combers. Undaunted by the heaving pavements, parades of children trooped round Ocean Boulevard with bright banners and huge moon-shaped paper lanterns, and a thousand self-styled artists held private viewings in one another’s houses.
“Keeps ’em busy, I suppose,” said Nimrod Pennyroyal, gazing down philosophically at it all from one of Cloud 9’s many observation platforms. “There are so many tenth-rate painters and performers on this city, we need a good festival every week or two to make them feel their silly lives are worthwhile.” Drifts of bubbles swirled past him, vomited into the evening sky by an art installation in Queen’s Park. The breeze brought carnival noises gusting up too: guitars and cacophoniums jangling in the streets of the historic Muesli Belt, premature fireworks banging and shrieking on the seafronts.
On the blue-green evening lawns of the Pavilion gardens, between the shadows of the cypress groves, the guests were starting to gather. All the men wore formal robes, and the women looked wonderful in ball gowns of moonlight silver and midnight blue. Paper lanterns had been strung along all the walks and between the pillars of the bandstand, where some musicians were tuning up. The Flying Ferrets had arrived, looking terribly dashing in their fleece-lined flying suits and white silk scarves, talking loudly about “archie” and “bandits” and “crates” being “ditched in the briny.” Orla Twombley, her hair lacquered into backswept wings, hung on Pennyroyal’s arm.
Drinks and snacks were being served before the dancing began, and Wren was one of the people doing the serving. She felt pretty and conspicuous in her MoonFest costume— baggy trousers and a long tunic made from some floaty, silvery fabric that she could not name—but the guests seemed not to notice her at all; they were interested only in the tray she carried. As she wove her way through the gathering crowds, hands reached out without a thank-you or a by-your-leave to snatch at her cargo of drinks and canapés.
Wren didn’t mind. She was still tired and uneasy after the events of the night before. All day there had been an odd atmosphere in the Pavilion, with militiamen coming and going and security being tightened up. The other slave girls kept coming to ask Wren if she had really seen the body, and had there been ever so much blood? To make matters worse,
Mrs. Pennyroyal smiled knowingly at Wren every time she saw her, and kept finding excuses to send her into rooms where Theo Ngoni was, or Theo into rooms where Wren was, as if she hoped someone would write an opera about them one day and there would be a part for a soprano of a certain age as Boo-Boo Pennyroyal, the thoughtful mistress who made their love possible.
Strangely, all this kindness made Wren like Boo-Boo less: It was one thing to keep slaves, but quite another to try to arrange their love affairs. She felt that the mayoress was pairing her and Theo off like a couple of prize poodles.
So she was glad to be invisible for a while, to look and listen. And everywhere she looked, she saw someone she recognized from the society pages of the Palimpsest. There were Brighton’s leading painters, Robertson Gloom and Ariane Arai. There was the gorgeous Davina Twisty, fresh from her triumph in Hearts Akimbo at the Marlborough Theatre. That man in the hat must be the sculptor Gormless, whose ridiculous artworks clogged the city’s public spaces like barbed-wire entanglements. And wasn’t that the great P. P. Bellman, author of atheistic pop-up books for the trendy toddler? Wren wondered how they would all feel if they knew that a man had been murdered, right here on Cloud 9, less than twenty-four hours ago.
She met Cynthia and asked her softly, “Is there any news?”
“News?” echoed Cynthia, as bright and brainless as sunshine.
“About poor Mr. Plovery? Have they found out who did it yet?”
“Oh!” Cynthia’s golden ringlets jiggled as she shook her head. “No. And Mrs. Pennyroyal says we ain’t to talk about it. But what’s all this I hear about you and Theo?”
“It’s nothing. Just Boo-Boo’s imagination.”
“You’re blushing, Wren! I knew you fancied him! I saw you talking to him that day at the pool, remember?”
Wren left Cynthia giggling and pressed on through the crowd, asking, “Would you care for a drink, sir? A canapé, madame?” and gathering up empty glasses and fragments of still emptier conversations.
“Just look what La Twisty is wearing!”
“You simply must meet Gloom, he’s 50 amusing!”
“Have you read Bellman’s latest? Quite brilliant! Some of the finest literature of our age is being written for the under-fives…”
Dusk deepened. Davina Twisty was persuading some friends and admirers to venture with her into Cloud 9’s insanely complicated box-hedge maze. The band played “Golden Echoes” and “The Lunar Lullaby.” Soon the moon would rise, and everyone would watch the fireworks before retiring to the Pavilion for dancing and more food. Wren, already exhausted, paused in a quiet part of the gardens near the deck plate’s edge. It felt nice to be alone at last. She looked across the sea at the armored cities and thought how melancholy they looked, crouching there upon the dunes like the temples of a vanished race.
A hand crept onto her shoulder like a gray silk spider. Turning, she looked into the expressionless face of Nabisco Shkin.
“Enjoying the view, my dear?” he asked. “I hope none of His Worship’s other guests has noticed you loafing here. The Shkin Corporation has a reputation as a purveyor of only the most hardworking slaves.”