After a few minutes she clambered down again, coughing as she shook a gray cloud from her duster. At the bottom step she sat and stared at me for a long moment.
“Have you seen them?” she said at last.
Puzzled, I shook my head.
“Lazars,” she said. Elbows planted on her knees, chin resting on her grimy hands, she looked like an ugly child waiting to hear one of Doctor Foster’s stories. I started to laugh, but caught myself.
“I saw a dead one, once,” I said slowly. Her eyes narrowed. “Two years ago. Roland was with me. It was after a rain of roses—”
Franca curled her lip. “Only whores call it that.”
I shrugged and turned, pretending to examine a shell. She clicked her tongue and explained, “I mean, you never call a thing by its real name. ‘Rain of roses,’” she added derisively. “Say its real name: a viral strike.”
“Well, this one was dead,” I said. “Look, do you want to hear this or not?”
Suddenly serious, she nodded. “Yes. Please.”
I moved closer to the ladder. “She was very pale and her hair was tangled—” I recalled the night: the wind soft and sweet with apple blossom and that faint cloying scent that stains the air for an hour or two afterward. There were six or seven of us—I remember the albino Whitlock was there, from High Brazil. Roland was accompanying us back to Miramar.
Whitlock saw her first. He yelled and ran back, tripping over his gown to tumble onto the broken bricks at my feet. I ran ahead with Roland. I was fearless because I knew he wore a gun, traded from the Ascendants, in a sheath at his side.
“She’s dead,” he said shortly, staring down the narrow ravine to where the body sprawled beside a rotting stump. “Come on—”
But I couldn’t leave. I stared, fascinated: because I found her beautiful.
“She looked like she was sleeping …” I said.
“I’ve seen dead people,” Franca said thoughtfully. “Before we burn them. They look asleep, sometimes.”
“Well, I’ve only seen one.”
“We have a lot of accidents. Someone gets poisoned in the tannery or a heavy box falls on them. Or someone gets old and just dies. Doesn’t that ever happen where you live?”
“No,” I said. “None of us ever gets very old.”
“But you saw one.” Faint admiration shaded her voice. “A lazar …”
I didn’t tell her how Roland sent the others running back to the House; then came after me, pinning me to the ground where I could see her the whole time, the shadows of her cheeks, the way her eyes glittered with phosphorescence, her hair rippling so slightly where bluebottle worms seethed within the knotted ringlets. Afterward I was so weak he had to help me stand. Because I was frightened, he thought. But it wasn’t that at all …
“Huh?—No,” I said, startled. I’d only half-heard Franca’s question. “I wasn’t scared.”
And I turned to stare at the ceiling hung with plasticine leviathans; because I no longer felt like talking.
6. Articulate animals
ROLAND NEVER MENTIONED OUR argument that day. It was the beginning of Autime, and he was busy with the other Regents. Or so he said. I began to spend my days in the Hall of the Deep with Franca, who ignored me at first but gradually began to answer my questions, and sometimes even allowed me to assist her in her duties.
For a week we cleaned the models and mounted fish that hung from the Hall’s ceiling and aquamarine walls. “By the time we finish the last one, the others will be filthy again,” I complained. Overhead a pod of fiberglass whales hung by invisible wires. Aqua globes encasing electric lanterns cast dreamy waves of light upon walls and floor and the ribbed sweep of the whales’ bellies. It made me drowsy. Squatting atop a dilapidated ladder, I yawned often, batting lazily at the suspended hulls of bottlenoses and rorquals with a broom.
“You’ll fall,” Franca yelled up to me, wiping her forehead with her arm.
“Fall asleep, maybe,” I called back. “Come on up.”
She scrambled up, pausing halfway to steady herself against the wall. “You don’t like this gallery, do you?”
“Not really. There’re no people in it.”
She laughed, pushing a strand of lank blond hair from her forehead with a dirty fist. I smiled. I had grown accustomed to the Curators’ odd uneven features, to the stumbling way they all moved, their loud voices and even their smelclass="underline" sweat and formaldehyde and the cedar shavings that kept moths from eating the pelts of stuffed lemurs and jerboas. In the rough map of Franca’s face I had come to discern hidden places that, if not precisely beautiful, still fascinated me. When struck by a slanting ray of morning light her yellow eyes would blaze suddenly, alarmingly, topaz. The same light might streak her cropped head with bands of gold, and I wondered: If only she would let it grow long, was there enough sun in the world to make it flash like my little Fancy’s wild mane? And once, after a day spent beneath a bright skylight, cleaning the convoluted whorls and ridges of a case full of murex seashells and dogwinkles, a faint spray of freckles rained across her cheeks. And somehow this delighted me.
“Well, people put them here,” she said. She spat on her hand and rubbed it clean against her tunic. “Besides, what’s the use of dead things?”
“Your precious birds are dead,” I retorted. “Everything in here is dead.”
“But they weren’t always dead.” She steadied herself with one hand on the ladder. With the other she pointed to the vaulted ceiling high above us, its ancient panes of leaded glass scarcely allowing a hint of sunlight inside. “Sometimes I see real birds up there—they get in, and nest in the ceiling. But the Curators always kill them,” she said sadly. “They say they damage the Collection.”
I stared at the ceiling, recalling the bats in Roland’s chamber. “If you went outside, you’d see lots.”
“I can’t go outside. Not ‘til I’m older.” She made a face. “Too dangerous.”
“Well, someday you’ll see all the birds you want, Franca.” I leaned forward and took a strand of her short hair, wrapped it around my finger, then slowly let it fall back against her scalp. She twisted to regard me with those cool eyes.
“And someday you’ll see all your dead men, Raphael,” she replied, and burst out laughing. I laughed too as she clambered down. She stared up at me, hands on hips, her brooms and brushes stuck under one arm.
“I’m tired of this place,” she announced, tossing her tools onto the marble floor. “Let’s take a walk.”
I climbed down. The ancient ladder shuddered with relief when I finally stepped from the last rung onto the floor. “Outside?”
“Of course not. But—” She nibbled her fingernails thoughtfully. “We can visit the Egyptians,” she finally said. “They’re dead men: you’ll like them. Have you ever seen them?”
“Not really. Roland pointed out the wing once when I first came here.” I glanced down the long Hall to the shadowy archways that opened onto passages leading to other Collections. “Won’t someone come to check on us?”
Franca rolled her eyes. “Has anyone checked once since we started working together? Come on. Everyone does this.”
She tugged at my sleeve. As her fingers brushed against my wrist my heart quickened. “All right,” I said, and followed her down the hallway.
7. Some races can boast of an immemorial antiquity
WE ASCENDED TO THE Hall of Dead Kings by a circuitous route: forsaking the cool blues and greens of the Hall of Fishes for the smoke-hued walls of the Hall of Man. The corridor leading from this gallery was long and narrow and dark, lit only by the faint light that pooled from each end of the tunnel. I walked quickly and pulled my worn tunic tight about my shoulders. I knew very little about the Hall of Dead Kings. Roland had been uncomfortable even talking about it.