“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.