She waved the pistol furiously above her head. It went off and a shower of bark rained onto us.
“Yes, of course, I understand,” I said hastily. I looked up at Miss Scarlet, hoping that she might come forth with some revelation, some word that would gainsay all that Jane Alopex had told us. But she only shook her head, as though she had perceived this a long time coming. Jane too stared at me, her eyes glittering.
“If he finds the ancient arsenal he will destroy us all,” she said at last. “It is as the Saint-Alabans and lazars are saying, it has come at last. The Final Ascension.” She slipped the pistol back into her pocket and turned to her mount.
I watched as she stroked its dark flank. Atop it sat Miss Scarlet, chewing on the fringe of her shawl. I thought of Justice and the others back in the theater. Tiny figures they seemed to me now, brightly colored and moving with jerky slowness, as though some great hand tugged and twitched at invisible strings. Words roared in my head, the Small Voices gathering force like some shrill whirlwind:
I can’t be responsible, I’m not responsible …
Find him, Wendy!
Something has happened, something is happening in the City—
And over them all a soft chanting, a child’s voice repeating again and again:
hang the boy and raise the girl
‘til Winterlong is broken —
The roaring grew louder, became the voice of something huge and black, something pressing against my temples until I thought the blood would burst from there.
Then suddenly there was silence, utter silence.
And it came: the terrifying pulsing in my head that signaled the beginning of a seizure. I sank to my knees; clutched at my head as the air swam before me in motes of gray and black and I thrashed against the earth, trying to smash Him, rend Him, push Him back, His white hands reaching for me and eyes glowing like flowers, like stars, like great suns exploding above the City’s ruined spires—
“Scarlet! Stop him! What is it?!”
Other voices shouting but I could not stop, could not turn, He is there and He is too strong for me, I feel Him within me and the rage burns through my eyes, He has come at last, o come to me, come to me—
“Aidan!”
A flash of crimson light; then nothing.
Gradually I heard voices again, and wind. It was the wind that told me I was not hallucinating. I blinked and sat up groggily, groping to feel the bump where I had knocked myself unconscious. Jane and Miss Scarlet squatted a few feet away, staring at me with drawn faces. Behind them the sambar munched upon some purple thistles.
“Aidan!” Jane exclaimed. “What happened? Are you all right?”
I rubbed my forehead, grimacing. “I think so,” I said. Miss Scarlet twittered in relief and ran to my side.
“Oh, poor Wendy,” she cried, her words tumbling back to the Zoologist before I could stop her. “She’s been so overworked, Jane, Toby won’t listen when I—”
“She?” Jane Alopex stood, dead leaves falling from where they’d stuck to her breeches. “She?”
Miss Scarlet gasped and covered her mouth with her paws, then drew up her skirts to hide her face.
Jane stared at me in amazement. Before I could move she jumped beside me, grabbed my shirt, and tore it open. I recovered myself in time to slap her and yank my shirt closed; but not before she had seen beneath it. She collapsed back onto her haunches and cursed so loudly that the sambar started, looking over its shoulder with mild questioning eyes.
“Sweet mother of us all! It’s you they’re after.”
“Don’t hurt her, Jane,” begged Miss Scarlet, running to Jane and throwing herself upon her. “Please, please—”
Jane didn’t move, only continued to look at me in astonishment. I stood a few feet off with my hands clenched at my sides.
“She couldn’t hurt me!” I sneered. To prove it I shut my eyes, drawing up those last images once more, the Boy ghastly white and laughing, that rush of ecstatic pleasure and terror as He turns to me—
“No, Jane!”
Abruptly I was knocked down again. I grunted, opening my eyes to see Jane straddling my chest, holding her pistol like a bludgeon. I hissed in disappointment: had she broken my concentration, or was I losing control of the thread that bound me to Him, subject now only to His whims and desires and not my own?
“Tell me your name,” Jane ordered. She nudged my cheek with the butt of her pistol. “Your real name.”
I twisted to see Miss Scarlet plucking at Jane’s sleeve. She gazed at me. Then, suddenly defeated, she fell back and clasped her paws.
I turned back to Jane and recited, “I am Wendy Wanders, Subject 117, neurologically augmented empath specializing in emotive engram therapy.” As I spat the last word I shoved Jane from my chest and sat up. We glared at each other across the grass.
“Oh, stop, please, ” Miss Scarlet pleaded. She knelt beside Jane, a small pathetic creature in crinoline and lace. Jane let out her breath in a long frustrated sigh, then stuck her pistol back into her pocket.
“All right. But tell me—”
We did. Or rather, Miss Scarlet did, embellishing my tale so that even I held my breath at certain points, and wondered had it really all been so dramatic—the horrifying tenure at HEL , followed by dangerous flight and pursuit and finally success with Toby Rhymer’s Players, not forgetting my bosom friendship with that acclaimed thespian Miss Scarlet Pan?
Jane listened dubiously.
“Well,” she said at last, when with paws joined Miss Scarlet had beseeched her to help and not betray me. “This is all a little hard to swallow, isn’t it?”
At Miss Scarlet’s offended expression she quickly added, “But very nicely told, Scarlet, very nice! But—well, suppose she is the one they’re searching for.”
She indicated me with a nod. I had for the moment become stock character in Miss Scarlet’s picaresque and not a participant in this discussion. “How am I to know that? And what is she going to do? If this Aviator is drawing the lazars and aardmen in to a search for you—”
She turned to me again. “Aidan Arent is too well known now in the City. Even if I don’t breathe a word—and I won’t—once a secret’s out it’s out, if you know what I mean. Someone else is bound to discover you, and then …” She circled her throat with her hand and made a choking sound.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. The sambar snorted, munching grass. Pale sunlight laced through the trees. A cricket sawed in the thickets, waking to the scant warmth. Miss Scarlet stared with sorrowful eyes into the forest, and I brooded on the Ascendant in the Cathedral who had vowed to find me, and cursed the labyrinth of chance and careless science that had brought me here.
Finally Jane said, “What exactly is it you do, Wendy?”
A cunning thought came to me: a means to escape. I looked up at her and asked, “Do you want me to show you?”
“Wendy!” Miss Scarlet said; but Jane had already nodded.
“Come here,” I said, drawing her to me. She lifted her face to mine. I pushed the hair back from her eyes, stared into them for a long moment. Still a little suspicious of me (rightly so, Jane!) but bold and unafraid. Then I kissed her. She pulled back, embarrassed, but I held her chin and brought her mouth to mine, my tongue probing between her lips until she sighed and closed her eyes. I waited until I felt her breathing quicken, then nipped softly at her lip, once and again, until blood mingled with the sweet salt in her mouth.
Bewilderment; a fiery burst of amazement and I behold her confused spectrum of desire and fear, liquid rolling eyes and a rich odor of the stable. Jane’s consciousness surprisingly powerful, a heated core burning through me so that I groan with pleasure, fall back as it flows over me, the warmth of sun and thick matted fur beneath her fingertips, undiminished awe as she watches a cinnabar fox being born, the damp scrawny mess of a hatching finch, a viper’s demon face breaking through a leathery shell with its egg tooth—