by Emma Bull
“No.”
“Care to join me anyway?”
I looked sharply up at her.
“I find I’m reluctant to leave you behind,” she said. “I think you’d best come along.”
The bathroom was at the end of the hall, perfectly agreeable, with a tub big enough to drown in. We continued to retrace our route, left and another left. But we didn’t come out at the top of the stairs.
“Over there,” Frances said softly. She pointed down the corridor. I saw the turned walnut newel post and frowned.
At the landing, instead of turning left to the next flight, the stairs turned right. “The back stairs?” I muttered.
Now Frances was frowning.
We might eventually have reached the first floor, but we couldn’t tell. We might have passed through the basement on the way to it. The halls were graciously appointed, the stairs were ornate, the rooms we peered into and passed through sunny and innocuous and even a little bland. And at last, without ever going up a flight of stairs that I remembered, we turned a corner into a hallway with yellow walls and white woodwork and a window at the far end.
“Oh, Lord,” Frances sighed. She was pale and inclined to lean. “Shall we make book on the next scene? We open the doors to our rooms and find ourselves sleeping on the beds. We open the doors and find the pits of hell. Or someone with a sword, who kills us. Or a bag of gold.”
I stalked to the door of mine and wrenched it open. “Or the room, just as we left it.”
“Could we have been drugged, do you think?”
“I’m too tired to think. I’m going to take my damn boots off and lie down. If you want to explore, have fun. Don’t wake me ” I didn’t actually slam the door. It had a bolt, so I turned it.
The sheets, of course, smelled like lavender.
6.1: A shedding of skins
The curtains were blowing lazily at the window; the breeze was lukewarm and smelled of the garden. A shaft of light gently cooked the floorboards. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but it must have happened. There was a distinct feeling of afternoon in the air.
I sat up and swung my bare feet to the floor, and thought, There’s more changed than the hour. It might have been the light. It might have been that the filter of weariness and alarm was thinner. Or maybe Frances was right: Maybe somehow we’d been drugged, and it had worn off. But the room seemed different.
Had the wallpaper been like that, before? Hadn’t the bedspread been a little threadbare? For that matter, had there been curtains? I couldn’t remember. The room seemed less determinedly reassuring and more… exotic? Not quite. Well, I’d been awfully tired.
I put my boots back on and cleaned up a little at the dresser. When I tried the door, I felt an instant of fright. Then I remembered I’d locked it. At least nobody had been hanging curtains while I slept.
In the hall, on the floor by the door, I found my canvas pack. So the porter had come up. I dropped it in a ladderback chair that I didn’t remember, either. The corridor was quiet. I thought about trying Frances’s or Mick’s doors; then realized I didn’t know why I’d want to.
When I came out of the bathroom, the enormous gray dog was waiting in the hall. It rose to its feet and gave that articulate single wag of its tail. Then it turned and went to the junction of the next corridor, and looked back.
“Don’t tell me,” I said aloud. “The old mine caved in, and I have to come rescue little Timmy.” The dog, mercifully, did not respond. I could test matters by trying to walk back to my room, but why bother? I followed the dog.
A left turn, and a left, and I was at the top of the stairs. It was as annoying as not arriving at the top of the stairs the last time I tried it. At the bottom of the stairs I was in the beautiful front hall. The dog trotted into the ivy parlor. I thought it seemed a little smug; given the success Frances and I had had at reaching the same place by the same route, I supposed it had a right. I heard voices and clinking in the parlor: low, even voices and the noise of crockery used as its manufacturer had intended. It seemed, if not safe to go in, at least the next logical step.
Everyone looked up when I entered, including the dog. Everyone was China Black and Mr. Lyle, Frances and Mick. They were sitting on a pair of cushioned wicker couches that faced each other, one team to a couch. I had just begun to wonder which team I was on when I looked past them.
The far wall of the parlor held a log-swallowing fireplace, surrounded by painted tiles and complicated woodwork, surmounted by a mantelpiece with what seemed a hundred unmatched candlesticks on it, and a huge, gold-framed mirror over that. On either side, taking up the rest of the wall from side to side and floor to ceiling, fronted in leaded glass, were bookshelves. Full bookshelves.
I made the circuit around the couches without exactly seeing them and stood in front of the right-hand case. What was probably the complete works of Mark Twain, in leather. The Jungle Book. The Encyclopedia of Folklore. Treasure Island. Shakespeare, Yeats, Piercy, Eliot, Woolf. Halliburton’s Book of Marvels. Grieve’s herbal. Stephen Jay Gould and Martin Gardner. And those were the ones I recognized. Who were Gene Wolfe and Alice Walker and Kenneth Roberts and Jane Austen? Maya Angelou and John Crowley and Zora Neale Hurston? And there was another bookcase on the other side.
“I knew you’d do that,” said Mick’s voice, and I jumped. I really had forgotten there were other people in the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and yanked my eyes from the books and back to the pair of couches. “Excuse me.”
China Black’s face was uninformative, but Mr. Lyle was smiling broadly. “That’s only part of the collection,” he said. “The rest is in the library. I’ll take you there when we’ve finished tea.”
Chango — the rest. “Do you have any” — I fished in my memory for the name — “Marquez?”
“All of his, I think,” said Mr. Lyle gravely. “One of my favorites. Now, sit down and have some tea.”
I saw a wicker chair with a cushion that matched the couches on one side of the fireplace. I carried it over and set it firmly down with its back to the bookcases. Which meant the seating was now U-shaped, with me halfway between the two couches.
Mr. Lyle hadn’t meant tea; he’d meant Tea. On the low table that separated the couches was a brass samovar, a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of dark muffins the size of dandelion puff-balls, a tray of cookies with specks of something in them, and a bowl of strawberries. There were also two cups. I looked to see who else hadn’t gotten tea yet, but Mick, Frances, China Black, and Mr. Lyle were all holding theirs. Maybe the dog had decided to wait.
The tea was mint, the sandwiches were cucumber and basil, the muffins were carrot, and the specks in the cookies were caraway. Then, I didn’t think that was significant. Tasty, but not significant. Now I wonder: How much of what I ate at that meal came from the garden that held that house like a cupped hand?
“You are safe here,” China Black said, “as long as you are our guests.” She was stern and distant, the patron of some church that put mercy after judgment. Her voice was roughened a little, as if from hard use. “It seemed to me we must have safety before we could speak freely. But now I would like to know why you are here.” And she looked at Frances and Mick.
Since her attention was elsewhere, I studied her over the edge of my cup. She wore a long, sleeveless olive-green dress, and a headwrap of green and yellow. Her nose, in profile, was high-bridged, and the nearest eyebrow shone like a streak of sweat. Her eyes were almond-shaped and sleepy-looking. I didn’t think she was sleepy.
“I’d like to know why you ask,” said Frances, smiling blandly.
Trust Frances to put all this amicability to flight. She watched us over her teacup like a panther eyeing a herd of antelope.
China Black was unruffled. “Would you like my credentials?”
“It’s a start,” Frances said.
Our hostess — was she our hostess? — seemed almost pleased. “This is a city divided in power. There is A. A. Albrecht, who sits at wha
t he thinks is the heart, and tries to keep the flow of power all one way, all toward himself. He does not know, or care, perhaps, that the City is an organism, and that without its circulation, it will die. I am a houngan; I was chosen by the snake thirty years ago to serve the spirits, and the living. I and those like me try to keep the City’s lifeblood flowing in spite of Albrecht.”
“I thought if you were a woman, you were a mambo, not a houngan.”
“Once, if you were a woman, you could not be a houngan. And once, if you were a woman, you couldn’t be a soldier.” The look she gave Frances was probably meant to be quelling.
“Power is most things to most people,” said Frances. “When you talk about power in the City, do you mean money? Politics?”
“I mean energy,” China Black replied.
Frances’s expression made me think again of predators. “The ju-ju kind?” she asked with a hint of distaste.
“Not usually. Like you, he has little interest in the spirit.” China Black’s teeth flashed, just for a moment. “He wants to control electricity and fuel. If your vehicle was powered by methane, he would have it confiscated, because in the City no one may use fuel he does not profit from, and he neither makes nor taxes methane.”
While China Black and Frances eyed each other, I stole a glance at Mick. He was leaning back, legs crossed at the knee, cradling his teacup. He didn’t look relaxed. He was waiting for something, and until it came, there was no way to tell what.
China Black put her teacup down and said to Frances, “What is your name?”
“Frances Redding.”
“And you are… ?”
Frances raised her eyebrows. “Female? A Scorpio?”
“You know what I’m asking.”
“Then I’ll bet you know the answer.”
“Then it can do no harm to tell it to me.”
Frances’s jaw worked a little, as if she might be biting the inside of her lip. “I’m a Horseman,” she said.
It might not have surprised anyone in the room; still, there was a moment of silence for the enormity of the fact.
“And so are you,” China Black said, turning suddenly on Mick.
He started, looked up with a jerk. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What brought you here?”
“Impulse,” said Mick, with a shrug. “Nothing particular.”
After a moment China Black turned to Frances. “And you?”
Frances leaned forward and laced her tanned fingers together. Meeting China Black’s eyes, she said, “I came here to kill someone.”
“Ah. In the interest of the general welfare, I think I am entitled to ask who.”
“His name is Tom Worecski. He’s also a Horseman. He was the leader of the group that betrayed… that started the exchange of things that go bang.”
“That betrayed humanity?”
Frances shrugged. “It seemed, on reflection, a little melodramatic. And not quite true. I think the grudge belongs to the Western Hemisphere.”
“The world is not so large that half of it can afford to ignore what happens to the other half. I would let it stand at ‘humanity’ — but maybe I am an unforgiving old woman. And maybe you are, too.”
“Maybe. If, when I find Worecski, I decide he’s become a saint, I’ll see if I can forgive him.”
“You haven’t found him? Then why do you think he’s here?”
Frances rubbed the space between her eyebrows absently. “I’ve trailed him here. I followed the wreckage he left behind him over the years — he’s a great one for wreckage — and the little personal motifs. That’s all we had as identities, once we found that the relationship between body and soul was tenuous.
“And Tom would want a city. He’d want plenty to work with, to run roughshod over. He wouldn’t be out in the bush, or settled in some farm village.”
“What if you’re wrong, and he’s changed?”
“Then I won’t be able to find him, will I? He’ll be safe. But I don’t think he’s changed.”
China Black set her cup in front of the samovar and turned the spigot. A fresh wave of mint smell curled around the room. “And why do you trust me with all this?”
“Because I suspect it doesn’t matter. I think he knows I’m coming, and if he does, none of this is news. If he doesn’t, it still won’t matter. He won’t run; Tom always loved a fight.”
“You know him very well, then?”
Frances’s face was still. “We went to Killing People School together. It produces a wonderful camaraderie.”
“Why were you after me?” Mick asked suddenly of the opposite couch. “You followed me around that night, didn’t you?”
“Maybe we didn’t know we were following you,” China Black replied with a large and uncharacteristic grin. “Maybe we thought we were following your body.”
Mick opened his mouth; then the expression seemed to fall off his face. “Oh,” he said.
He settled back into the cushions again, as if he were satisfied. But I’d seen the line that had appeared between his brows for a moment, and the unhappy little twist of his lip. I wondered if anyone else had.
“You said we might be able to help each other,” Frances said. “Now you know what I want. What about you?”
China Black’s attention moved slowly from Mick to Frances. “I am not so sure, now. What do you know about the spirits, the loa?”
Frances visibly squashed her frustration. “I’ve heard of them.”
“They are not gods, though they’re like them; and they are not ghosts, though they’re like that, too. The European churches prayed to gods that rarely spoke, and then only to a few. The spirits speak all the time, and we don’t pray to them any more than you would pray to your grandmother. We live with them. They are part of our family.”
“’Our’?” Frances said.
“If you asked, you would find most people of the City — of the streets — know them. The loa, the saints, the spirits, the ancestors. There are many names, but you would find the principles similar, and the way they shape the world. The people in the towers don’t think about the spirits. They don’t know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They only want to count to two. Ah!” China Black snorted and shook her head. “I have been a teacher so long that I fall into it, so!”
She drained her teacup and stood, and began to walk slowly up and down the room. “You don’t believe. You are like the people in the towers; it is your past they live in, not seeing that it hurts us all. But these things don’t wait for you to believe in them. Chango, the young warrior with the sword, came among us while we danced. He said that from his quarter, the south, one of his own would come, limping. Oya Iansa, Lightning Woman, came and said that change would arrive from the west, but would not know its own nature. And Eshu drank white rum and smoked a black cigar, and laughed until the tears poured down, as he told us to duck when the marassa met, and joined the dossou-dossa, and the three of them, like a three-pointed throwing star, broke all the windows in the tall buildings in town. Tell me,” China Black said, turning back to the couches, “do you see anything of yourselves in that?”
Mick leaned forward to set his cup down; the angle and a sudden sweep of little braids hid his face from me. He didn’t answer. Frances said, “Since I didn’t understand much of it, no, not really.”
“The marassa are twins,” I said. “Real-world ones, and spirit-world ones; you have to figure out which by context, I guess. Their hoodoo is unity and polarization, innocence and malice both at once. They share one soul. The dossou-dossa is the child born after twins. Actually, it’s dossou or dossa, depending on what sex the kid is. And in the spirit world, it’s the neuter principle, the third point on the hoodoo triangle that connects the male and female points.” I looked at Frances and thought, Don’t say a thing.
She might have unders
tood, or not; her face didn’t change. “My, that was encyclopedic. Do you believe? I’m forgiven because of my great age, it seems, but what about you?”
After a moment I shook my head. It seemed rude to deny the operating system of our — hostess? Who owned this house, anyway? — in her own parlor. I was annoyed at Frances for making me do it. “Knowing it is a survival skill. She’s right. If you mention any of those names on the street, the people you’re talking to might tell you they use a different name, but that’s the most denial you’ll get.”
Frances pressed her lips together — to keep from smiling? “This must be a hard town for atheists.”
China Black said, “But I told you, they aren’t gods. You don’t believe,” she added, and looking up, I found she was now talking to me. “But you have sworn by Chango, haven’t you?”
“Me?” I shrugged. “It’s swearing, not invocation. You pick up habits from your neighbors.”
“If you were hoodoo, maybe you would swear by somebody else. Chango is not the master of your head. That’s Legba’s symbol around your neck, you know.”
My hand went to my throat before I thought about it. Sherrea’s pendant was lying outside my shirt. “No, I didn’t know.”
China Black nodded. “It is always in Legba’s veves: the figure for androgyny and metamorphosis. It is why Legba and all his cousin spirits keep the gates and the crossroads. Do you like practical jokes? Legba is a trickster.”
She seemed to want a response, but I couldn’t think of one. The gates I worked had to do with semiconductor technology, and in the last few days I’d discovered I had a positive distaste for change. As for practical jokes, it could be suggested that I was one. I certainly wasn’t going to take up the matter of androgyny with her.
“So your information was that three people — or maybe four — would appear, join forces, and raise whatever passes for hell in this pantheon,” said Frances thoughtfully. “You think we might be them. Pigs might get pilot’s licenses, too, but I don’t think so.”
China Black didn’t seem insulted. “How so?”
