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.”