“Trey—let me see—”
An emaciated lazar in harlequin’s breeches, his bare chest and face black with soot and red-streaked. In one hand he clutched a knife, in the other the torn hem of some feckless reveler’s costume. The aardman who guarded me stepped back. The boy stared down, coughing and shaking his head.
“Raphael,” he murmured. Then he turned and looked around, excited, and yelled, “Raphael!”
“He is gone, little master,” said one of the aardmen. “This one, this one?” It pawed at me anxiously.
The boy stared down at me, dropped to one knee, and pointed his knife at my chest. “You are the girl called Wendy Wanders? The actor disguised as Aidan Arent?”
Behind me I heard screams, the boom and crash of a gas chandelier exploding, or perhaps another of the Aviator’s explosive weapons. In the ruin that had been the Great Hall of Saint-Alaban trees still burned. I thought numbly of the yellow-clad children, of Justice and Miss Scarlet fleeing through the carnage.
“Yes,” I said at last.
The boy dropped his knife in excitement, hastily shoved it into a sheath at his side. “You are,” he said. “I can tell, you look just like him—”
“Tell me—” I took his hand, ignoring the aardmen’s growls. “My friends, the Players—a blond Saint-Alaban and a talking chimpanzee, a Zoologist girl—have you captured them? Are they alive?”
He gazed down at me, childish eyes in a shrunken face. “I don’t know. Or—yes, maybe, there were guards at the front gate said they had an animal there—”
It was all I had to hope on. I nodded and let go his hand. “What will you do with me?” I whispered.
The boy stood, shouted at a group of lazars struggling with several captives.
“You! Come here, leave them and help me—”
The lazars obeyed, their prisoners staggering for the gate and what freedom might await them outside.
“Tie her and bring her to the Cathedral,” the boy commanded. “I’ll go with you to make sure she doesn’t escape.” He flourished his knife again, but glanced apprehensively back into the Great Hall.
I did not fight when they bound me, nor when they laid me on a palanquin stolen from those left outside Saint-Alaban. As they bore me away I lifted my head to gaze back at the burning ruins, sparks and smoke leaping through the snowy darkness, the end of the oldest of the Houses of the Hill Magdalena Ardent.
There were other prisoners in the long file that made its way to Saint-Alaban’s Hill and the Engulfed Cathedral. I glimpsed them through gaps in the curtained palanquin that let in the snow and wind along with a shred of view. Paphians sobbing and sometimes falling to their knees, begging their captors for release; Curators walking silently, some still bearing their skeletal standards. The boy who had overseen my capture—Oleander, he introduced himself to me almost shyly—would occasionally stick his head through the palanquin’s drapery. He would start to speak. But fear or shyness would overcome him, and he would prod me (but gently) or brandish his knife before rejoining the horde of lazars and aardmen. When I could peer through the curtains I searched as best I could for Justice, Jane Alopex, or Miss Scarlet; listened for their voices among those weeping or cursing or laughing shrilly in the mob. But I heard and saw nothing; only once imagined Miss Scarlet’s voice wafting to me:
Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare,
We are not to despair …
But surely this must have been my own imagining.
Now even breathing exhausted me. I coughed ceaselessly, my lungs still heavy with corrosive smoke and the painfully frigid air. But at last I must have dozed, despite the jarring of the palanquin, the aardmen’s howls and groans, and the Paphians’ piteous cries.
What woke me was silence. The palanquin had stopped, though its subtle motion told me that my captors still bore it upon their hairy shoulders. I sat up, pulled back a curtained panel to peer outside.
We stood on a barren heath near the top of a tall hill. In the darkness about me Paphians and lazars stood without speaking, without moving. Only an occasional cough floated back to me on the wind. The snow had stopped. Across the starless sky swept heavy clouds, so close it appeared they might settle upon the towers and spars of the great edifice looming above us.
From the Zoological Gardens, the Cathedral had appeared to me as a single column, a dark and broken spar much like the Obelisk. But it was not. A thousand spires and turrets and broken towers stretched across the leaden sky. Light rippled across immense windows of colored glass, their patterns shattered or twisted into horrible forms by the passing centuries. Within the soaring vaults of stone grinned fantastic figures, creatures lovelier than any Paphian or more horrible than the geneslaves who bore me to their master: the eidolons of a dead god, a god resurrected by a deranged Aviator and a kidnapped whore.
I shivered. What sort of men had built such a monstrous edifice, how many had labored to bring those stones to life and lift them’ to unimaginable heights above the black and hungry earth? Did they know that centuries hence it would still stand, that sacrifices would once again be offered within its dismal nave? Even the aardmen cowered at the sight of it, and Oleander stood between them, hugging his thin arms to his chest and shaking his head as though begging to go free.
From within the tallest spire of the Cathedral came a sound. A clang as of a single bell; magnified until the frozen air splintered with its clamor. One of the great windows shone brilliantly, lit by some inner fire. For an instant a dazzling figure glowed from within the labyrinthine patterns of scalloped glass. Young man or boy, one hand raised to grasp a flaming heart, the other clasping the neck of a small white animal. The bells pealed thunderously as it stared out into the night, the Ascendants’ abandoned god trapped within the embrasure.
There was a bellow, a deafening explosion. The glowing window burst apart, white flame and smoke tearing through iron mullions and melting glass. I clapped my hands to my ears. Captives and captors alike cried out, sheltering their heads from raining debris.
More shouting; then the flames subsided to a steady flicker. The palanquin lurched forward to the Cathedral’s South Gate.
He was gone from me now, the Boy in the tree; but I knew where He had fled.
We crossed the charred earth leading to the gate. Petrified trees littered the ground, and among them the bodies of the dead, their eyes still staring upward, hands clasping at the ground. The air was loud with a humming like that of many wasps. My guardians bore me carefully among these corpses, and thence into the Cathedral.
Inside wandered the numbed guests of the Masque Winterlong, their costumes torn and dragging in the half-frozen muck that covered the floor. Many still held masks before their faces; faces that had been burned or scarred in the conflict with the lazars. A few smoky fires burned from makeshift altars of fallen stone or overturned braziers. Figures milled about them, haggard children or their shriveled elders clad in rags. They scarcely acknowledged the newcomers, only glanced as they passed among them. Occasionally a soft cry or shout of recognition would flare up, to fade into sobbing or anguished shrieks. I thought I glimpsed Fabian, a tiny figure across the Cathedral’s vast interior; but before I could cry out the aardmen laid my palanquin to rest. The boy Oleander yanked back the frayed curtains.
“Come with me,” he said. He grabbed my arm, but I struck him and sent him reeling.
“Don’t touch me,” I spat.
I stumbled from the litter. The aardmen shied away. One regarded me with calm yellow eyes, and something like pity. I rubbed my cheek where the blood had stiffened and cracked. My hand brushed my throat; I still wore the necklace of golden vines. “Where are you taking me?” I croaked.