“Won’t you sit?” I asked, pointing first to a chair and then to my pallet.
“No, thank you.” His voice a harsh whistling sound grating against bare bones as it sought to escape him. The white robes stirred as his breath leaked from lungs and throat. “It is too painful for me to sit now. It has penetrated my marrow. Better to pace and let the virus move with me, exhaust it so that it may sleep later and give me peace.” His breath erupted into hiccuping gasps, and he dropped his black bag on the floor between us. “If you will Raphael …”
I found the vial and handed him a restorative. A very few yellow capsules remained. I averted my eyes from the spectacle of this cadaver attempting to gulp the pill waited several minutes until his breathing slowed and I heard the clicking of his feet upon the floor. “Thank you,”’ he rasped.
I turned back to him. “Do I have an audience with the Consolation of the Dead?” I asked bitterly. “Or have you come to tell me that Death himself awaits me even now?”’
“He will not kill you, Raphael. At least not yet. And yes: you are to meet with him this morning.”
Guttering candlelight flared in his eyesockets. For an instant shadows fleshed the solemn curves of his skull so that I had a glimpse of what he had been a month earlier: a young man, slender, with quick fey motions and eyes that were deep-set rather than sunk into gaunt hollows. When he stepped closer to the glowing altar the vision was gone; I continued my conversation with a spectre clad in pale cerements.
“I have come to bring you to him, and because I am lonely and curious—you see, I am still a man!—I would know more of you before I die; and I want to warn you.”
I nodded and settled myself on a chair, leaving him to pace as he spoke. Occasionally he paused to pass trembling fingers across his face, as though to reassure himself that something still remained there of his corporeal being.
“You said you knew of your sister? The empath Wendy Wanders?”
“No,” I said. “Only that I had a sister; Doctor Foster and Gower Miramar told me that. It was no secret to us. I assumed she was dead.”
“She is not. She lives; at least she lived to escape from the Human Engineering Laboratory two months ago, assisted by a Medical Aide named Justice Saint- Alaban. A Paphian: do you know him?”
I pried a splinter from the bottom of my chair and began to clean my fingernails with it. I believed he spoke nonsense. Yet his words disturbed me if only because they reminded me of Doctor Foster’s tales, the stories he had told us at Semhane and The Glorious and Winterlong, where among the lashing tails of aardmen and the Gray Mayor’s crimson eyes flitted this other shape, small and wailing and with blood threading from her temples: my nameless twin sold to the Ascendants. “My House does not often consort with Saint-Alabans. They are heretics. I am not surprised one served the Ascendants.”
“Well, he did: served us rather well until he ran away with our prized madcap.” A hooting gasp that might have been laughter as he reached the altar and stopped to stare at its offerings.
“A thieving Saint-Alaban. Well, that doesn’t surprise me either,” I said. But it was curious, to think of a Saint-Alaban among the Ascendants; to think of any Paphian among the Ascendants. I wished I had questioned Ketura more carefully about her meetings with them during her time outside. “But they must be dead by now—”
“I told you: they are not.” Click of his bony feet upon the floor as he began to pace again. He paused to lean against one of the ancient chairs. “Have you heard of a troupe of actors in this City?”
“Many Paphians perform. I acted in masques all the time.” I winced as the splinter dug too deeply beneath my thumb, flicked away the mite of wood, and glanced up at my visitor. “Our great festivals are masques—”
He tapped his foot impatiently. “No. These were traveling Players, they lived in the ruins of a theatrical library and performed ancient plays. They had among them a trained monkey that could speak—”
I nodded and sat back hard in my chair, excited by the sudden memory of bright and archaic costumes, a beast that recited poetry like a courtesan.
“Toby Rhymer! Yes, of course I know them. Toby Rhymer and the talking troglodyte, Miss Scarlet Pan. I wept once when she performed: oh, it was lovely!” I hesitated. “There was a boy from Persia who joined them, Fabian—”
The folds of the skeleton’s gown flapped as he interrupted me, shaking his gloved hand. “Your sister is with them! I am certain of it.”
I frowned. “How could she have found them? Surely she and the Saint-Alaban would have died, alone in the City—lazars would have caught them, or the rain of roses, or—” I did not want to admit to this learned Ascendant that I feared the aardmen, so I gestured in the smoky air. He shook his head, candlelight pricking the roiling wet shadows of his eyes so that they glittered shrewdly.’
“They did not die. I do not know if Wendy Wanders can die: although many patients she touched at HEL did. Perhaps her Paphian savior is dead now too: my guess would be that he is.” He sucked in his breath and laughed hoarsely. “But she is alive: I know it.
“After her escape we began to hear stories, hearsay about a boy in the City, an actor commanding audiences and calling himself Aidan Arent.” He paused, waiting for me to show some recognition.
“You must forgive me,” I said. “My last few months were spent among the Naturalists, who have little use for Players—or Paphians either,” I added bitterly. “That name means nothing to me.”
“He is described as being seventeen years of age, with tawny hair once close-cropped but now growing longer, gray eyes, a surpassingly beautiful face and voice. He possesses a supernatural ability to charm and terrify his audiences. And despite the fact that he usually takes the feminine roles in performance, a number of Paphians in his audiences have remarked upon his startling resemblance to a favored catamite now feared dead, one Raphael Miramar.
“Knowing Wendy, and having seen you, I can attest that this at least is true: you are her mirror image.”
I sat in silence, oddly disinterested. It was as though he spoke of someone besides myself. And of course he did speak of someone other than me; although perhaps it was that this Player, Aidan Arent, sounded more believable than did Raphael Miramar. I shook my head but said nothing.
Behind Dr. Silverthorn the candles burned more and more brightly. The tallow melted into smoking pools upon the altar. Rivulets of flame ran down its marble facade as the burning fat dripped to the floor. In front of this flickering display Dr. Silverthorn glowed like a taper himself, the brilliant light glowing through his robes so that the bones beneath showed stark black, and I could see inside his chest a small dark shape like a fist clenching and unclenching. When he spoke again his voice rang loudly, though it still rasped like a saw through his throat.
“Some of those who have seen Aidan Arent perform have said he is the Gaping One.”
I stared back at him, shaking my head. “That’s impossible.”
He grinned, carmine light dancing from his teeth. “Why? Because you are the Gaping One?”
“Of course not!” I said, but he went on as though he hadn’t heard me.
“The Mad Aviator thinks you are. That’s why he’s brought you here.”
I stood, bewilderment and anger vying inside me, and stalked to the gate. In the distance I could see the little candles in their banks of dusty glass holders. The wavering shadows made it look as though figures darted back and forth in the murky light; but I heard nothing there. “Why are you insulting me?” I demanded hoarsely. “Isn’t it enough that you brought me to this crypt—”
“If Tast’annin hadn’t ordered the children to capture you, you would be dead now.”