“‘ … Even now, in this night
Among the ruins of the Post-Vergilian City
Where our past is a chaos of graves and the barbed-wire stretches ahead
Into our future till it is lost to sight,
Our grief is not Greek:
As we bury our dead
We know without knowing there is reason for what we bear,
That our hurt is not a desertion, that we are to pity
Neither ourselves nor our city;
Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare,
We are not to despair.’”
Part Six: The Skeleton Transcendent
1. Catastrophes of different kinds
L AZARS WOKE ME FROM a black and dreamless sleep in the Hagioscopic Embrasure.
“It is him,” said a child’s voice. So vast was the void that had swallowed me I could not for some moments discern their figures moving about the room, although my eyes were open and gray dawn slanted from slits in the varicolored ceiling.
“Yes,” another voice lisped. “He killed Peter in the river last night. I saw him.”
“We must take him,” the first voice said, but doubtfully.
“Yes,” the other agreed, and fell into thoughtful silence.
They did not kill me, though I lay for many minutes waiting to feel their small knives in my throat, their teeth. I heard them stirring about the room, kicking at oddments that rolled across the floor, and imagined what broken toys they played with: Whitlock’s cosmetics, candicaine pipettes, a flask of absinthium emptied of its green liquor. I groped at my side for Whitlock’s body, felt nothing there. I whispered Anku’s name: nothing.
The voices sounded very young. Finally I could stand it no more. I sat up, blinking.
At the edge of the obfuscating oriels several figures squatted. One swept the floor with a cosmetic brush, drawing something in the powders and ointments spilled there. The others watched her with no great interest. Their voices were soft, curiously inert, as though nothing remained in the world to amuse or frighten them.
Surely not this empty chamber. Nopcsa’s corpse was gone, and Whitlock’s. Of Anku I saw nothing.
“Where is my familiar?” I asked.
Every head turned to stare. Then they raced to my side, giggling and shoving at one another. They gathered in a circle around me, grinning: all of them filthy, with stained hands and hair clotted with blood and dirt. They smelled of rotting meat.
“He’s awake! Where’s Dr. Silverthorn?” wondered a little girl of five or six. She had painted her cheeks with rouge and eye-powder and stuck her ratty hair with feathers. She turned to face a boy taller and older than the rest, maybe thirteen. “Oleander?”
I repeated, “Where is my familiar?—the white jackal.”
The oldest boy pushed the girl out of his way. Great open sores erupted everywhere on his arms and face. The rest of him was hidden by some dead Paphian’s costume, all sequined sighs and tears. “Your dog brought us here,” he said. “But he ran away. We didn’t hurt him, I swear.” He smiled, twitching at the sleeves of his costume so that sequins rained to the floor. “I’m Oleander.”
“And I’m Bellanca,” piped the little girl as she slipped beside him. Beneath a shift of torn indigo linen her swollen stomach bulged. What remained of her blond hair fell free of its confining ribbons, wispy feathers about sunken cheeks. She smiled. Then, to my horror, she raised three fingers to her blackened mouth. “Greetings, cousin,” she lisped sweetly.
My heart sank: more Paphian children.
“I thought that was your dog,” said another child smugly. I turned to recognize one of the lazars I had met by the Rocreek, a plain boy with intelligent eyes burning in a scarred face. He would have been a Curator. “A boy took him away—”
“A boy?” I repeated stupidly.
He nodded. “Like you—” By this I could only imagine he meant another Paphian. He continued respectfully,
“He wore flowers in his hair and said you awaited us here. Are you ready to go now?”
I stared at them dully, counting five. The boy Oleander. A girl his age, her scalp smooth and bald as a stone, who opened and shut her mouth constantly, as though gasping for air. The child Bellanca and another small girl who drooled and said nothing, and the boy I had met earlier with Pearl’s troupe by the Rocreek.
“I’m Martin,” he announced shrilly, poking at his thin chest. “She’s Octavia,” pointing at the silent girl.
I said nothing, imagined killing them, either with my sagittal or my hands. But I felt no desire to kill them, or do anything to save myself; Because hadn’t I led them here, hadn’t I betrayed my people to them? How many of those at the niasque had been murdered or captured by lazars? And Ketura among them, and Fancy too perhaps—
“Wait,” I said, beckoning Martin. “I’ll go with you; but tell me, was there a woman, or a little girl, did you see a little girl—”
“Lots,” Martin said helpfully. “I saw some, they took some—”
Oleander frowned. The sequined rags made him look foolish, and the others seemed to pay him little attention, but he obviously felt that he must act the leader. “Shut up, Martin,” he ordered. He tapped a long-nosed gun tied about his waist with a leather thong. He turned to me, drawing himself up and scratching at an oozing cut on his thigh. “You are Raphael Miramar? The one they call the Gaping One?”
I hadn’t the strength to argue. “Yes.”
“Well, you’re to come with us. Tast—The Consolation of the Dead says so. Please.” His voice cracked. He coughed, glancing to see if the others had noticed. The silent drooling Octavia had wandered to the edge of the chamber and glanced down at the Great Hall. Bellanca and Martin were dabbling with the ruined cosmetics. The remaining older girl yawned, her slack mouth working as though she would say something to me, but no words came. Before I could move away she shuffled toward me, hands reaching for my hair.
“Get away!” I scrambled backward, terrified of her scabbed hands, the slack curl of her mouth. But she did not listen, only continued to gape like a dying fish as she tried to touch me. I cried out and swiped at her. A flash of violet as I struck her arm. She gazed at me curiously, her fingers brushing against my hair.
“Pretty,” she said thickly. She sank to her knees. As the other children watched she died, her face and hands erupting with crimson petals.
Oleander stared at the girl, then turned to me. “What did you do to her? To do that? The colors.” The others lifted their heads for my answer. Bellanca stuck her thumb in her mouth and gazed at me with wide eyes.
I stammered, “She was—I didn’t want her to touch me!”
“She was looking at your hair,” explained Martin. “She lost all her hair, she was just looking at your hair—”
“Shut up!” I whirled to raise my fist at them so that they could see the sagittal glowing there. “Take her—get it out of here!” I kicked at the girl’s corpse and stumbled away from it, shielding my eyes.
After a minute I heard Oleander command them, “Do it.” The smaller children scuffled for a little while, dragging their burden. The door wheezed open and shut. When they returned I stood panting in the center of the chamber, glaring at Oleander as he fingered his swivel nervously. He cleared his throat.
“You—we’re supposed to—you’re still to come with us.” He raised his eyes and smiled, looked more sober as I bared my teeth at him.
“And if I don’t?” I snarled, when from the chamber entrance rang the scholiast’s harsh voice.
“Flee, cousins. The House of High Brazil is beset by lazars. Flee, cousins. The House —”