Jane Alopex waved her hand. “No complaints, no complaints. A birthday masque, that’s all. To cheer him up; to cheer us all up, dark days behind us and darker ones ahead, hey Scarlet?” She gave that short barking laugh again, twisted her head to flash me a wink. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked away, uneasy.
I started to find Justice; but he was engaged in laughing conversation with Mehitabel and Gitana. So I waited while Fabian cooed to the Zoologist’s sambar, and Mehitabel and Gitana made sniggering remarks about our visitor as she haggled with Toby over the arrangements for Rufus Lynx’s command performance. A caracul pelt apiece for Toby and Miss Scarlet and myself, furs of lesser worth—coyote and raccoon—for the rest, and a vial of civet musk we could trade with the Botanists later for perfume. All of us to share in the feasting afterward, and an extra pair of snakeskins for Toby’s trouble, not to worry about missed lines or cues—
“We’ll never notice,” Jane Alopex assured him. Toby scowled.
“All right then!” exclaimed Jane, clapping her hands against her breeches. “I’ve got to get back, else they’ll think the aardmen got me.” She laughed, striding across the sward to cup her mount’s muzzle in one strong hand. “Eh then, Sallymae: you ready to go home?”
The sambar tossed its head in a jingling of silver bells. Fabian grinned. “Toby, I’ll send a pantechnicon for everyone this afternoon. Not afraid of our animals, are you?” she called out to Mehitabel, who giggled and hid her face in her sleeve. “Who’s for going back with me now? Scarlet?”
“I would be delighted,” replied Miss Scarlet, smoothing her bare head. “But I’m not even dressed yet!”
“Well, hurry up then,” said Jane impatiently. She blew into the sambar’s ear and scratched its chin.
Miss Scarlet bustled past the others, pausing to remind Gitana of the change in costume.
“You’ll be certain to bring the blue gown, not the silver one? Toby—?” She turned to pat his knee. “You don’t mind, do you? It’s been so long since I visited!”
“Of course not, Miss Scarlet.” I imagined he was still tallying up his share of the night’s proceeds. “Just don’t forget your nap.”
“Anyone else?” demanded Jane Alopex. Fabian started forward eagerly, but before he could say a word Jane turned and pointed at me. “What about you, errant? I bet you’ve never been to the Zoo.”
“Oh, yes, Aidan!” Miss Scarlet exclaimed. “Come with us—you’ll love it, the trees and all the birds singing!” She clasped her hands and fluttered her eyelids.
“I will come if Toby permits.” I looked at him questioningly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Justice and Mehitabel walk back inside, arm in arm. I turned back to Toby. He tapped a finger against his nose, then nodded.
“All right. Aidan may accompany Miss Scarlet this time. Fabian, I need you and Justice to dismantle the flats for Tempest.”
Fabian checked his disappointment and shrugged. He saluted Jane Alopex’s sambar and spun on his heel to return inside.
And so we set out, Miss Scarlet and Jane Alopex and I. Miss Scarlet rode astride the sambar, clutching the edge of its cloth saddle to steady herself. Jane Alopex and I walked alongside, myself glancing back several times to see if perhaps Justice had returned to watch me leave; he had not. This amused Jane Alopex greatly.
“Such a pretty catamite, Aidan Arent! Wasting yourself on a foolish Saint-Alaban. I could find a better boy for you at home.”
But her laughter belied this: the Zoologists loved nothing and no one so much as their animal charges. No Paphian would ever look lovelier to Jane Alopex than Miss Scarlet Pan. And nothing Miss Scarlet had ever told me of her upbringing—the long rainshot afternoons in the Infirmary watching ancient films and videos; learning human language from a captured aardman tamed for this sole purpose; her heartbreaking decision to leave the Zoologists and join Toby’s troupe—none of this prepared me for the slavish devotion Miss Scarlet showed Jane Alopex, or the condescension with which the Zoologist treated her former charge.
“Don’t tug too hard on that, Scarlet,” she scolded; and, “Sit farther up on the saddle and it won’t rock so.” And, “You know, that’s rather a bright yellow for your eyes, you should have one of those red things made like they’re wearing now.” After each admonition she turned and winked at me. But otherwise I found it quite pleasant to travel through the City with Jane Alopex at my side and Miss Scarlet chattering from atop her mount.
Light streamed through the bare limbs above the grassy avenue as we walked down Library Hill. A few rosehips still brightened the roadside, and the sun took a little of the cold edge off the morning, but the air smelled of smoke, fires burning in distant woodstoves. Soon it would be true winter. Jane tried to draw me into conversation but I was quiet, thinking of Justice walking arm in arm with Mehitabel.
“What news of the Cathedral, Jane?” Miss Scarlet asked after a time. We had reached a spot where the Deeping Avenue continued on to the Museums, but it seemed we were to turn here. Jane tugged the sambar’s bridle, leading it to the right. Through the thick mesh of dead matted kudzu ran a small track, barely high or wide enough to allow the animal easy passage. Jane laid a hand upon its steaming flank to steady it. Miss Scarlet looked concerned: not frightened but distracted, as though the scene called for a change in demeanor and she was unsure how to act. Jane reached into a deep pocket and withdrew a heavy pistol, ancient but shining where she had recently oiled it. She held it up and stared down the barrel before tucking it into her belt.
“It’s faster this way,” she explained. “Perfectly safe, really; but these days …” She shook her head. “We see strange things in our part of the City.”
“The Cathedral?” asked Miss Scarlet again.
Jane Alopex nodded. “What have you heard?”
“Only the rumor that a deranged Ascendant lives in the ruins there, and commands the lazars bring him captives for sacrifice.”
Jane chewed her lip. After a moment she slapped the sambar’s flank so that it lumbered on again, shaking its antlers free of tangled vines. Miss Scarlet lurched forward, caught herself, and dug her paws into the sambar’s mane. Then she straightened the stiff folds of her skirt and fixed Jane with a stare. The girl looked away and sighed.
“It’s true, then!” Miss Scarlet exclaimed, alarmed. “Have you seen him, Jane?”
Jane Alopex shook her head. She stepped aside to allow the sambar onto the trail, eyeing a yellow creeper whose serrated leaves twitched slightly as the stag trudged past. “No. I’ve been on duty in the Herp Lab; the anacondas are shedding, and I’m saving the skins. But some of us have seen things—
“A star, a sort of brightness in the sky like an explosion the night of the Butterfly Ball. You must have heard about it; the Paphians said it heralded the next Ascension. Isidore Myotis saw it, he was tending a live birth among the flying foxes. A nova, he said; but we’ve heard it was something else …”
Absently she pointed her pistol at a dead tree limb and fired. An explosion; the tree limb crashed to earth. The sambar snorted, rearing back in fright. Jane turned to stroke its muzzle. “Ah, there, Sallymae, I’m sorry.”
I paused to finger a charred bit of wood. Atop Sallymae Miss Scarlet rubbed her hairy chin.
“What do you think it was?” I asked.
Jane Alopex pursed her lips. “That’s rather a blunt question to ask a Curator, Sieur Aidan,” she said. She gave me the same condescending look she’d given Miss Scarlet earlier. “It seems to me that you’re rather adrift in our City, young Arent. Unfamiliar with our ways of doing things, if you know what I mean.”
I flushed, but she cut me off before I could protest. “No: if Scarlet likes you, I guess that’s good enough. Uppity actors don’t bother me, really. And I’ve heard of Aidan Arent, of course. The Paphians are quite mad about you.” Grinning, she flicked at my hair; but there was a glint of shrewd intelligence in her eyes.