by M. K. Hobson
Miss Jesczenka did not smile back. “So, are you going to favor me with an explanation of why you went to California dressed in men’s clothing and came back covered with intestines?”
Emily was silent. She actually rather wished she could tell Miss Jesczenka about the cockroaches. For some reason, she thought the woman might find it amusing. Or not.
“I’ll go to my room and get cleaned up,” Emily said.
“That’s a very good idea,” Miss Jesczenka said, wrinkling her nose. “Mrs. Stanton may come by later to confirm that you’re on your deathbed. I trust you will be obliging enough to look three-quarters dead?”
“I shall have no problem playing the part,” Emily said, as honestly as if she were swearing on a stack of Bibles.
Once in her room, Emily stripped off her clothes and kicked them into a stinking pile. Someone would have to burn them.
Then she ran herself a well-earned bath. One thing she could say for the Institute—the plumbing was fantastic. The suite she had been given had all the most up-to-date features, including a bathroom with a giant white porcelain tub. She ran water gushing with steam, and as it ran, she unbuckled the straps that held her prosthetic in place, briskly rubbing the red welts where the leather had cut into her flesh. She laid the carved ivory hand on a table, carefully avoiding looking at the puckered stump of her arm.
Sliding into the warm water, she released a moan of pleasure that any well-bred observer would have found positively indecent. The heat felt particularly good on her sore ankle. She explored the abused joint with her fingers. It was still swollen, but with a little rest, it would be fine in a day or two.
It took a long time to get completely clean, for the insect innards had dried to an intractably sticky crust. When she’d finally gotten every bit off her skin and out of her hair, she climbed out of the tub, pulled on fresh cotton underthings, and collapsed onto the wide white bed, feather softness and the smell of honeysuckle enfolding her.
She was snuggling deep into the sweet-smelling sheets when she felt something hard under the pillow. Reaching underneath, her fingers encountered something cool and smooth. Withdrawing it, she discovered that it was a student’s slate, the kind a small child would use to learn his alphabet. It was quite new-looking, framed in polished beech and painted with frolicking lambs. It had a little slot carved into the side that held a sharpened pencil. On the slate, in Stanton’s jagged cliff-peak handwriting, were the words:
MEET ME IN CENTRAL PARK. 4 P.M. URGENT. BRING THE SLATE.
Emily looked at the clock on the mantel. It was three o’clock.
Groaning, she threw an arm over her eyes.
She hadn’t seen Stanton at all during the past week, not even for a minute. And he did say it was urgent. This could be her one opportunity before the Investment to tell him about her visit to California and the bottle of memories Pap had given her.
She lay there, feeling the rise and fall of her own chest. If only she could sleep for a few hours first. She was supposed to be on her deathbed with bewildering fits, after all. And what if Mrs. Stanton came by to gloat? Well, Miss Jesczenka would just have to think of something. Say that death’s door had finally opened, and Emily had stepped inside for a cup of tea. The worse the fate, the better Mrs. Stanton would like it.
Emily sat up. It was a feat of miraculous willpower. She took a deep breath and swung her feet out onto the floor.
The things I do for Dreadnought Stanton, she thought once again.
She put herself into a suite of ladies’ clothing, certainly not daring to call Miss Jesczenka for help. The outfit was knife-pleat new and much fancier than anything she’d ever owned before; Emily was still trying to get used to the necessity of costuming herself for different social purposes. She’d had fewer dresses in her entire life than she was supposed to have for one season in New York, and having a different one for every quarter of the day seemed ridiculous in the extreme. Still, Emily recognized the need for conformity to fashion’s whims, and thus had invested some of the money Mirabilis had paid her on a wardrobe appropriate to decent society.
Fumbling with a long silver buttonhook, Emily got herself fastened—at least buying new clothes had meant she could get them with the buttons up the front. This allowed her to dress herself, despite the handicap presented by her missing hand. It was just too tedious to have to stand around half naked, waiting for someone to do up your buttons.
This dress was of pistachio-green silk, deeply bustled and trimmed with black Dieppe lace and jet-beaded embroidery. It had a matching reticule and sunshade. With the addition of a little veiled hat and a pair of black gloves, Emily felt like an imported doll in a shop window.
Thus appointed, she snuck out of her room, looking back and forth down the hall to make sure Miss Jesczenka wasn’t lying in wait. She tiptoed downstairs to the Institute’s great entry hall. She’d have to get a carriage; she wasn’t going to walk to the park with her aching ankle, and certainly not in this getup. The admissions clerk in the entry hall could get her one of the Institute’s carriages discreetly; she’d quietly slipped him a double eagle a few weeks earlier on a similar occasion, and he’d shown himself more than willing to be bought.
Once it was clear that Miss Jesczenka was nowhere in the vicinity, Emily stopped skulking. Straightening her back, she came down one of the broad twin marble stairways and into the rotunda, domed in colored glass. It was designed to be maximally impressive, with thirty-foot ceilings and walls of gold-veined white marble, and everywhere, the fragrant blood-red orchids that were the Institute’s signature flower.
The entry hall was in a state of last-minute confusion, as decorators, florists, and caterers buzzed about, making arrangements for the Investment that was to be held the following night. Abandoned ladders rested against the walls, half-hung draperies of gold foil bunting hung drooping and limp. It was going to be quite a gala, Emily thought with some apprehension.
She went to the admissions desk and had a few low words with her well-bribed clerk; he nodded to her cheerfully. He hastened from behind the tall imposing admissions desk to pull out a chair for her, giving the seat an obsequious brush, though Emily had never seen a speck of dust in the Institute. He offered to fetch her some water, which she quietly declined. It was always like this, in clothes like these. Men offered her hands, arms, shoulders to lean on; they opened doors, they extinguished cigars, and always—most annoyingly—they stopped talking. Emily thought she could probably get used to being treated as if her body was a blown eggshell, but she doubted she could ever get used to being treated as if her head was as empty as one.
When all the nonsensical fiddling and showy chivalry had run its course, the carriage called, and the clerk returned to his desk, Emily noticed a group of people sitting in a cluster by the front door, chatting animatedly among themselves. They were a zealous-looking lot—a sallow young man with anarchist eyes and an overbite, an assortment of tightly wound females, and two gentlemen who seemed to be twins. They were under the command of a plump, pretty blond girl who looked once at Emily, then twice.
“Miss Emily?” The blonde’s dress was a profusion of ruffles and lace. Her brown eyes narrowed as she came over to where Emily was sitting, squinting to peer through the dark veil that Emily wore. Emily lifted it reluctantly, and the girl’s face became joyous. “Oh, it is you! How wonderful to see you up and about. I heard you were at death’s door. You missed Mrs. Stanton’s lunch!”
“Hello, Rose,” Emily said. She was far too tired for Rose’s twittering intensity at the moment.
Miss Rose Hibble was the president of the Dreadnought Stanton Admiration League, a group formed immediately after the publication of The Man Who Saved Magic, the pulp novel outlining Stanton’s astonishing adventures. The same book that Emily was not in, despite the fact that she’d played as large a role in the adventures as anyone. Even Rose herself had played a small part; Stanton had saved her life, and she’d abruptly fixed her tendency for hero worship u
pon him. In a spasm of veneration, she’d followed him to New York, and used her secretarial degree from the Nevada Women’s College to get herself a position at a downtown brokerage. She’d then proceeded to form the Admiration League, which already boasted more than two hundred members, thanks entirely to Rose’s tireless organizational efforts.
“Mr. Stanton was supposed to speak to us today,” Rose said, a note of distress in her tone. “He was going to tell us how he defeated the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste!” She raised a well-thumbed book at Emily, showing her the brilliant cover of a new pulp novel, one Emily hadn’t seen yet. On it, Stanton’s idealized form could be seen trampling victoriously over a cringing man in a black cape.
Emily smiled wearily. It had been little more than a month since their actual adventures had been completed, and Stanton had spent every moment of it safely in New York, preparing for his Investment under the guidance of Emeritus Zeno. But on pulp pages squeezed between chromolithographed covers, he’d already reclaimed three mystical artifacts of unparalleled magnificence, defended the Austrian throne against the depredations of a golem, and solved some mystery involving the recently delivered hand of a big French statue they were going to erect in New York Harbor. Emily could hardly keep up.
“I hope he’s recovered from the grievous wound the Dark Sorcerer delivered him! Is he feeling well? The Investment is tomorrow, and he’s got to be at his best!” Rose’s face was taut with worry. “We brought him a card.”
“I’m going to see him now,” Emily said. She squeezed Rose’s hand—a strengthening gesture. While Emily was frequently astonished at Rose’s credulity, and was sometimes just slightly jealous at the way the girl’s brown eyes lit up when she spoke of Stanton, she was genuinely fond of her. “I’m sure he’ll pull through.”
“Please give him our best,” Rose said. “And would you give him this?” She proffered a large card in an envelope that was printed with brilliantly colored flowers and addressed in a careful, intricate script.
Emily tucked it into her bag, next to the slate with the leaping lambs. “I’ll make sure he gets it,” she said.
“Oh, thank you!” Rose said, clenching her hands together. “Thank you!”
The afternoon air was sticky and dead calm, and even the thin green silk Emily wore seemed too warm. Little rivulets of sweat trickled down the sides of her forehead as the carriage carried her along a twisting cobblestone path through the park. She found herself missing San Francisco’s milder clime. A fresh breeze off the ocean offset a lot of Aberrancies in her book.
Stanton’s note had directed her to meet him in Central Park, but had failed to specify exactly where. So she went to the place that was her favorite—the park’s wild northernmost reaches. It was an easy distance from the Institute’s opulent, expansive (and somewhat incongruous) headquarters on Eighty-fifth. Emily had heard it said with some pride that the Institute owned all of the Nineties from the park to the Hudson. Emily supposed that was quite grand, in its way. But given that most of the valuable property in New York City lay below Twenty-third Street, and the Nineties pretty much consisted of squatters’ shacks, small farmholdings, and wide dirt roads that turned into mud slogs whenever it rained, Emily didn’t quite see what there was to get so excited about.
Because of its remote location, the Institute also maintained an imposing facade downtown, on Lexington Avenue near Gramercy Park, but it was not large enough to house all the Institute’s students and activities, so it was little more than an extravagantly splendid shell with a few offices and a Haälbeck door connecting it to the mansion uptown. Emily had found that it was most convenient to travel from the wild reaches uptown to downtown by Haälbeck—as did many others. While primarily an establishment of magical learning, the Mirabilis Institute also had quite a profitable sideline in interurban travel. Mirabilis had cornered the market on Haälbeck timber many years ago, and since only small amounts—hardly more than a sliver—were needed for travel over such short distances, the Institute had built doors all over the city. For a dollar, businessmen could flash downtown, uptown, and across in a thread-stretched twinkling. Certainly much more convenient than clopping through crowded streets in a cab, or riding on one of the clattering streetcars.
The Institute’s carriage let Emily out near the big stretch of water called Harlem Meer. The area surrounding it was rugged, less daintily landscaped than the park’s groomed southern reaches. Beyond the Harlem Meer, farms and muddy roads stretched to the northwest. It was like being home; there were jutting outcroppings of gray mica-flecked stone and the good clean smell of trees and grass and water. Downtown always smelled like sewage to her, even though Stanton insisted he couldn’t smell it and she must be imagining things. But it did smell; it smelled like things all crowded together and moving too fast.
But here it was quiet, fragrant with good living soil. And there weren’t as many people, though she still found herself amidst knots of strollers out enjoying the warm summer afternoon, beautiful children in short white dresses, and nurses pushing prams. Even New York’s most deserted places bustled, Emily had found, and she was certain she’d never get used to it.
At that moment, Emily was surprised to hear the sound of a lamb baaing. As if that were not surprising enough, the baaing was coming out of her bag. Exploring further, she discovered that the baaing was, more precisely, coming from the slate. She drew it out curiously.
LOOK IN FRONT OF YOU, the writing in Stanton’s angular hand now read.
She looked up, seeing nothing but a swarming mass of pigeons. But then there were hands on her shoulders, and the brush of very warm lips against the bare place on the back of her neck. She shivered pleasantly.
“You missed my mother’s lunch,” came the voice of the man to whom the warm lips belonged. Pleasure became annoyance with startling rapidity. Emily spun and stomped a foot.
“If people don’t quit saying that to me, I’m going to—” Stanton grinned and leaned forward to stop her threat with a kiss—an action that had to be averted at the last minute as a group of loudly conversing German tourists came strolling past. He put his hands behind his back, looking sidelong at the Germans.
“Was your mother furious?”
“She’ll get over it,” Stanton said. “Perhaps not in this lifetime, but I happen to believe in reincarnation, so there’s still hope.” From somewhere inside his coat he produced another student slate, the exact match of the one she’d found under her pillow.
“Have you called me here to do sums?” she asked. “I hate math.”
“All right, we’ll stick to geography,” Stanton said, wiping his slate with his sleeve and scribbling something new on it. Emily’s slate baaed. She looked at it. Now it read: WHERE WERE YOU, ANYWAY?
Emily laughed with delight.
“Turn around,” she said. She steadied the slate against his back with her ivory hand and rubbed out the letters with her good hand. She wrote shakily, for it was her writing hand Caul had taken: CALIFORNIA.
Stanton’s slate baaed. After a moment’s pause, he looked at her over his shoulder.
“Instead of going to my mother’s lunch, you went to California?”
“I wanted to see Pap.” Emily tucked the slate pencil into its slot. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stanton, really I am. I didn’t mean to miss it. Things … happened.”
“Oh, well. Things happened. How nice to have that cleared up.” He lifted an eyebrow. “And by the way, why do you persist in calling me Mr. Stanton? Don’t you think that’s a bit formal? It hardly matters while we’re engaged, but after we’re married, it just won’t do.”
He was right, of course; running around calling him Mr. Stanton after their wedding would make her sound like his sixth Mormon wife. But try as she might, she could not make Stanton’s given name sound at all right. It sounded ludicrous coming out of her mouth.
“Dreadnought,” she said experimentally. “Dreadnought,” she tried again, more lightly. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. You�
�ll have to change it.”
“What on earth is wrong with my name?”
“You have to admit, it’s one fly-killing cannon of a name,” Emily said. “Can you imagine what it will be like after we’re married? Dreadnought, please pass the toast … Dreadnought, please close the window … Dreadnought, shall we paint the walls yellow?”
“What an appealing vision of married life,” Stanton said drily. “One hopes it will include more intriguing things than toast passing and window closing.”
“One hopes,” Emily agreed. “Didn’t you have a nickname when you were younger?”
“The Senator always called me ‘boy.’ ” Stanton’s tone was contemplative. “Mother, on the other hand, would call me ‘Not,’ as in the adverb used to express negation or prohibition. Or, I suppose, as in ‘zero.’ Neither interpretation appeals to me very much.”
“How about ‘knot,’ as in something difficult to untangle?” Emily thought suddenly of the discussion she’d had with Pap.
“I hardly think I’m that complex,” Stanton said.
Emily bit her lip. “All right, then what’s your middle name?”
Stanton paused, then drew himself up. He took on a look of steely resolve. “I won’t tell you.”
She drew back, blinking surprise at his unexpected vehemence. “But it can hardly be worse than—”
He took her chin in his hand, kissed her quickly to stop her talking, then pulled back before the Germans could see.
“Never mind. Call me whatever you like. ‘Dear’ will do nicely.”
Emily did not much like to be kissed to be shut up, but she did like to be kissed. It sweetened her disposition enough that she decided to refrain from pestering him for his middle name. For the time being, anyway. She filed the pester away for implementation at some convenient future date.
She regarded his long spare frame and gaunt face. He seemed thinner, if such a thing were possible. He was burned—a degenerative blight that made it impossible for him to keep weight on no matter how much he ate. Ten years to live, Emily had once been told. Stanton himself had stalwartly refused her the dubious comfort of thinking that it might be longer. Ten years. And with the hard work of running the Institute facing him, it might be even less. Fear flickered through Emily’s chest, but she damped it down ruthlessly. They had today. Today, his dark green eyes glittered, and today he was alive. Today—and however many todays came after it—was all they would have.
