City of Saints and Madmen Part 24

"Did you sleep well?" she asked. "You came home so late."

"I slept. I'm sorry I was late. It was a difficult job this time."

"Profitable?" Her elbow nudged him as she turned the eggs over with the spatula.

"Not very."

"Really? Why not?"

He stiffened. Would Rebecca have realized the mansion had become a deathtrap? Would she have smelled the blood, tasted the fear? He served as her eyes, her contact with the world of images, but would he truly deprive her by not describing its horrors to her in every detail?

"Well . . . " he began. He shut his eyes. The sick gaze of the solicitor flickering over the scene of his own death washed over him. Even as he held Rebecca, he could feel a distance opening up between them.

"You don't need to shut your eyes to see," she said, pulling out of his embrace.

"How did you know?" he said, although he knew.

"I heard you close them." She smiled with grim satisfaction.

"It was just sad," he said, si ing down at the kitchen table. "Nothing horrible. Just sad. The wife had lost her husband and had to sell the estate. She had a boy with her who kept holding on to a li le suitcase."

The remnants of the solicitor floating to the ground, curling up like confe i. The boy's gaze flu ering between him and the cage.

"I felt sorry for them. They had some nice heirlooms, but most of it was already promised to Sla ery. I didn't get much. They had a nice rug from Morrow, from before the Silence. Nice detail of Morrow cavalry coming to our rescue. I would have liked to have bought it."

She carefully slid the eggs and bacon onto a plate and brought it to the table.

"Thank you," he said. She had burned the bacon. The eggs were too dry. He never complained. She needed these li le sleights of hand, these illusions of illumination. It was edible.

"Mrs. Bloodgood took me down to the MorhaimMuseum yesterday," she said. "Many of their artifacts are on open display. The textures were amazing. And the flower vendor visited, as you may have guessed."

Rebecca's father, Paul, was the curator for a small museum in Stockton. Paul liked to joke that Hoegbotton was just the temporary caretaker for items that would eventually find their way to him. Hoegbo on had always thought museums just h.o.a.rded that which should be available on the open market. Rebecca had been her father's a.s.sistant until the disease stole her sight. Now Hoegbo on sometimes took her down to the store to help him sort and catalog new acquisitions.

"I noticed the flowers," he said. "I'm glad the museum was nice."

For some reason, his hand shook as he ate his eggs. He put his fork down.

"Isn't it good?" she asked.

"It's very good," he said. "I just need water."

He got up and walked to the sink. The faucet had been put in five weeks ago, a er a two-year wait. Before, they had go en jugs of water from a well down in the valley. He watched with satisfaction as the faucet splu ered and his gla.s.s gradually filled up.

"It's a nice bird or whatever," she said from behind him.

"Bird." A vague fear shot through him. "Bird?" The gla.s.s clinked against the edge of the sink as he momentarily lost his grip on it.

"Or lizard. Or whatever it is. What is it?"

He turned, leaned against the sink. "What are you talking about?"

"That cage you brought home with you."

The vague fear crept up his spine. "There's nothing in the cage. It's empty." Was she joking?

Rebecca laughed: a pleasant, liquid sound. "That's fu ny, because your empty cage was ra ling earlier. At first, it scared me. Something was rustling around in there. I couldn't tell if it was a bird or a lizard or I would have reached through the bars and touched it."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"There's nothing in the cage."

Her face underwent a subtle change and he knew she thought he doubted her on something at which she was expert: the interpretation of sound. On a calm day, she had told him, she could hear a boy skipping stones down by the docks.

For a moment, he said nothing. He couldn't stay quiet for long. She couldn't read his face without touching it, but he suspected she knew the difference between types of silence.

He laughed. "I'm joking. It's a lizard-but it bites. So you were wise not to touch it."

Suspicion tightened her features. Then she relaxed and smiled at him. She reached out, felt for his plate with her le hand, and stole a piece of his bacon. "I knew it was a lizard!"

He longed to go into the living room where the cage stood atop the table. But he couldn't, not just yet.

"It's quiet in here," he said so ly, already expecting the reply.

"No it's not. It's not quiet at all. It's loud."

The le corner of his mouth curled up as he replied by rote: "What do you hear, my love?"

Her smile widened. "Well, first, there's your voice, my love-a nice, deep baritone. Then there's Hobson downstairs, playing a phonograph as low as he can to avoid disturbing the Potaks, who are at this moment in an argument about something so petty I will not give you the details, while to the side, just below them"- her eyes narrowed-"I believe the Smythes are also making bacon. Above us, old man Clox is pacing and pacing with his cane, mu ering about money. On his balcony, there's a sparrow chirping, which makes me realize now that the animal in your cage must be a lizard, because it sounds like something clicking and clucking, not chirping-unless you've got a chicken in there?"

"No, no-it's a lizard."

"What kind of lizard?"

"It's a Saphant Click-Spi ing Fire Lizard from the Southern Isles," he said. "It only ever grows in cages, which it makes itself by chewing up dirt, changing it into metal, and regurgitating it. It can only eat animals that can't see it."

She laughed in appreciation and got up and hugged him. Her scent made him forget his fear. "It's a good story, but I don't believe you. I do know this, though-you are going to be late to work."

Once on the ground floor, where he did not think it would make a difference if Rebecca heard, Hoegbo on set down the cage. The awkwardness of carrying it, uneven and swaying, down the spiral staircase had unnerved him. He was sweating under his rain coat. His breath came hard and fast. The musty quality of the lobby, the traces of tiny rust mushrooms that had spread along the floor like mouse tracks, the mo led green-orange mold on the windows in the front door, did not put him at ease.

Someone had le a worn umbrella leaning against the front door. He grabbed it and turned back to stare at the cage. Was this the moment that Ungdom and Sla ery's ill wishes caught up with him? He drove the umbrella tip between the bars. The cover gave a li le, creasing, and then regained its former shape as he withdrew the umbrella. Nothing came leaping out at him. He tried again. No response.

"Is something in there?" he asked the cage. The cage did not reply.

Umbrella held like a sword in front of him, Hoegbo on pulled the cover aside-and leapt back.

The cage was still empty. The perch swung back and forth madly from the violence with which he had pulled aside the cover. The woman had said, "The cage was always open." The boy had said, "We never had a cage." The solicitor had never offered an opinion. The swinging perch, the emptiness of the cage, depressed him. He could not say why. He drew the cover back across the cage.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind him and he whirled around, then relaxed. It was just Sarah Willis, their landlady, walking down from her second floor apartment.

"Good morning, Mrs. Willis," he said, leaning on the umbrella.

Mrs. Willis did not bother to respond until she was standing in front of him, staring up at him through her thick gla.s.ses. A flower pa ern hat covered her balding head. A matching flower dress, faded, covered her ancient body, even her presumably shoed feet.

"No pets allowed," she said.

"Pets?" Hoegbo on was momentarily bewildered. "What pets?"

Mrs. Willis nodded at the cage. "What's in there?"

"Oh, that. It's not a pet."

"No animals allowed, pets or meat." Mrs. Willis cackled and coughed at her own joke.

"It's not . . . " He realized it was useless. "I'm taking it out now. It was just there for the morning."

Mrs. Willis grunted and pushed past him.

At the door, just as she walked out into the renewed pa er of rain, apparently counting on her hat to protect her, she offered Hoegbo on the following advice: "Miss Constance? On the third floor? She'll have your head if you don't put back her umbrella."

Located on Alb.u.muth Boulevard, half-way between the docks and the residential sections that descended into a valley ever in danger of flooding, Hoegbo on's store- "Robert Hoegbo on & Sons: Quality Importers of Fine New & Used Items From Home & Abroad"-took up the first floor of a solid two-story wooden building owned by a monk in the Religious Quarter. The sign exhibited optimism; there were no sons. Not yet. The time was not right, the situation too uncertain, no matter what Rebecca might say. Someday his shop might serve as the headquarters for a merchant empire, but that wouldn't happen for several years. Always in the back of his mind, spurring him on: his brother Richard's threat to swoop down with the rest of the Hoegbo on clan to save the family name should he fail.

The display window, protected from the rain by an awning, held a ba ered mauve couch, an opulent, gold-leaf-covered chair (nicked by Hoegbo on, along with several other treasures, during the panicked withdrawal of the Kalif's troops), a phonograph, a large red vase, an undistinguished-looking saddle, and Alan Bristlewing, his a.s.sistant.

Bristlewing knelt inside the display, carefully placing records in the stand beside the phonograph. He had already wiped the window clean of fungi that had acc.u.mulated the night before. The detritus of the cleaning lay on the sidewalk in curled up piles of red, green, and blue. A sour smell emanated from these remnants, but the rain would wash it all away in an hour or two.

When Bristlewing saw Hoegbo on, he waved and inched his wiry frame out of the window. A moment later, s.h.i.+elding his head from the rain with a newspaper, he was opening the huge lock in the iron grille of the door, his mouth set in the familiar laconic grin that itself displayed some antiques, courtesy of a sidewalk dentist. A few bu on-shaped mushrooms, a fiery red, tumbled out of the lock as the key withdrew, rolling to a stop on the wet sidewalk.

Bristlewing was a scruffy, short, animated man who smelled of cigar smoke and o en disappeared for days on end. Stories of debaucheries with prost.i.tutes and week-long fis.h.i.+ng trips down the River Moth buzzed around Bristlewing without se ling on him. Hoegbo on could not afford to hire more dependable help.

"Morning," Bristlewing said.

"Good morning," Hoegbo on replied. "Any customers last night?"

"None with any money . . . " Bristlewing's grin vanished as he saw the cage. "Oh. I see you went to another one."

Hoegbo on set the cage down in front of Bristlewing and took the ring of keys from him at the same time. "Just put it in the office. Are the inventory books up-to-date?" Hoegbo on's hand still stung from where the imprint of the handle had branded itself on his skin.

"Course they're current," Bristlewing said, turning stiffly away as he picked up his new burden.

By design, the way to Hoegbo on's office at the back of the store was blocked by a maze of items, from which rose a collective must-metal-ro ed-dusty smell that to him formed the most delicate of perfumes. This smell of antiquity validated his selections as surely as any papers of authenticity. That customers tripped and frequently lost their bearings as they navigated the arbitrary footpaths ma ered li le to Hoegbo on. The received family wisdom said that thus hemmed in the customer had no choice but to buy something from the stacks of chairs, umbrellas, watches, pens, fis.h.i.+ng rods, clothes, enameled boxes, deer racks, plaster casts of lizards, elegant mirrors of gla.s.s and copper, reading gla.s.ses, Truffidian religious icons, boards for playing dice made of oliphaunt ivory, porcelain water jugs, globes of the world, model s.h.i.+ps, old medals, sword canes, musical clocks, and other ephemera from past lives or distant places. Hoegbo on loved knowing that a customer might, in seeking out a perfectly ordinary set of dinner plates, come face-to-face with the flared nostrils and questing tongue of a Skamoo erotic mask. An overwhelming sense of the secret history of these objects could sometimes send him into a trance-like state. Thankfully, Rebecca understood this feeling, having been exposed to it from an early age.

Emerging from this mora.s.s of riches, Hoegbo on's office lay open to the rest of the store like an oasis of spa.r.s.eness. Five steps led down to its sunken carpeting-crimson with gold threads, bought from the old Threnody Larkspur Theater before it burned to the ground-and a simple rosewood desk whose only flourishes were legs carved into the shape of writhing squid. A matching chair, two work tables against the far wall, and a couch for visitors rounded out the furniture. To the le of the office s.p.a.ce stood two doors. The first led to a private bathroom, recently installed, much to Bristlewing's delight.

The desk lay beneath an organized clu er of books of inventory, a blo er, a selection of fountain pens, stationery with the H&S logo emblazoned upon it, folders full of invoices, a metal message capsule with a curled up piece of paper inside, a slice of orange mushroom in a small paper bag, a sh.e.l.l he had found while on vacation in the Southern Isles when he was six, and the new Frankwrithe & Lewden edition of The Mystery of Cinsorium by Blake Clockmoor. Daguerreotypes of Rebecca, his brother Stephen (lost to the family now, having signed up for the Kalif's cavalry on a monstrous but historically common whim) and his mother Gertrude standing on the lawn of someone else's mansion in Morrow added a personal touch.

Bristlewing had already made himself scarce- Hoegbo on could hear him pulling some artifact out from behind a row of old bookcases stacked high with cracked flowerpots-and the cage stood on the sideboard of his desk as if it had always been there.

Hoegbo on hung his raincoat on one of the six coat racks lined up like soldiers in the farthest corner of the offi ce. Then he took the past day's book of inventory and purchases and walked to the door that led to the room next to the bathroom. The door was very old, wormholed, and studded with odd metal symbols that Hoegbo on had taken from an abandoned Manziist shrine.

Hoegbo on unlocked the door and went inside. The door shut silently behind him and he was alone. The light that cast its yellowing glare upon the room came from an old-fas.h.i.+oned squid oil lamp nailed into the room's far wall.

Nothing, at first glance, distinguished the room from any other room. It contained a tired-looking dining table around which stood four worn chairs. To one side, plates, cups, bowls, and utensils sat atop a cabinet with a mirror that served as a backboard. The mirror was veined with a purplish fungus that had managed to infiltrate minute fractures in the gla.s.s. He had worried that the Cappan's men might confiscate the mirror on one of their weekly inspections of his store, but they had ignored it, perhaps recognizing the age of the mirror and the way mold had itself begun to grow on the fungus.

The table held three place se ings, the faded napkins unfolded and haphazard. Across the middle of the table lay a parchment of faded words, so old that it looked as if it might disintegrate into dust at the slightest touch. A bo le of port, half-full, stood on the table next to a bare s.p.a.ce in front of the fourth chair.

By tradition, recently-established, Hoegbo on sat there for his daily readings from the books of inventory. Bound in red leather, the books were imported from Morrow. The off-white pages were thin as tissue paper to accommodate as many sheets as possible. The two books Hoegbo on had taken with him represented the inventory for the past three months. Sixteen others, as ma.s.sive and unwieldy, had been wrapped in a blanket and carefully hidden beneath the floorboards in his office. (Two separate notebooks to record unfortunate but necessary dealings with Ungdom and Sla ery, suitably yellow and brown, had been tossed into an unlocked drawer of his desk.) Yesterday had been slow-only five items sold, two of them phonograph records. He frowned when he read Bristlewing's description of the buyers as "Short lady with walking stick. Did not give a name." and "Man looked sick. Took forever to make up his mind. Bought one record a er all that time." Bristlewing did not respect the system. By contrast, a typical Hoegbo on-penned buyer entry read like an investigative report: "Miss Glissandra Beckle, 4232 East Munrale Mews, late 40s. Gray-silver hair. Startling blue eyes. Wore an expensive green dress but cheap black shoes, scuffed. She insisted on calling me 'Mr. Hoegbo on.' She examined a very expensive Occidental vase and commented favorably on a bone hairpin, a pearl snu ox, and a watch once worn by a prominent Truffidian priest. However, she only bought the hairpin."

If Bristlewing disliked the detail required by Hoegbo on for the ledgers, he disliked the room itself even more. A er carefully cataloguing its contents upon their arrival three years before, Hoegbo on had asked Bristlewing a question.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Old musty room. No air."

"No. It's not an old musty room with no air."

"Fooled me," Bristlewing had said and, scowling, le him there.

3.

But Bristlewing was wrong. Bristlewing did not understand the first thing about the room. How could he? And how could Hoegbo on explain that the room was perhaps the most important room in the world, that he o en found himself inside it even while walking around the city, at home reading to his wife, or buying fruit and eggs from the farmers' market?

The history of the room went back to the Silence itself. His great-great-grandfather, Samuel Hoegbo on, had been the first Hoegbo on to move to Ambergris, much against the wishes of the rest of his extended family, including his twenty-year-old son, John, who stayed in Morrow.

For a man who had uprooted his wife and daughter from all that was familiar to take up residence in an unknown, sometimes cruel, city, Samuel Hoegbo on became remarkably successful, establis.h.i.+ng three stores down by the docks. It seemed only a ma er of time before more of the Hoegbo on clan moved down to Ambergris.

However, this was not to be. One day, Samuel Hoegbo on, his wife, and his daughter disappeared, just three of the thousands of souls who vanished from Ambergris during the episode known as the Silence- leaving behind empty buildings, empty courtyards, empty houses, and the a.s.sumption among those who grieved that the gray caps had caused the tragedy. Hoegbo on remembered one line in particular from John's diary: "I cannot believe my father has really disappeared. It is possible he could have come to harm, but to simply disappear? Along with my mother and sister? I keep thinking that they will return one day and explain what happened to me. It is too difficult to live with, otherwise."

Si ing in his mother's bedroom with the diary open before him, the young Robert Hoegbo on had felt a chill across the back of his neck. What had happened to Samuel Hoegbo on? He spent many summer a ernoons in the a ic, surrounded by antiquities, speculating on the subject. He combed through old le ers Samuel had sent home before his disappearance. He visited the family archive. He wrote to relatives in other cities. His mother disapproved of such inquiries; his grandmother just smiled and said sadly, "I've o en wondered myself." He could not talk to his father about it; that cold and distant figure was rarely home.

His sister also found the mystery intriguing. They would act out scenarios with the house as the backdrop. They would ask the maids questions to fill gaps in their knowledge and thus uncover the meaning of words like "gray cap" and "Cappan." His grandmother had even given them an old sketch that showed the apartment's living room-Samuel Hoegbo on surrounded by smiling relatives on a visit. But for his sister it was just relief of a temporary boredom and he was soon so busy learning the family business that the mystery faded from his thoughts.

When he reached the age of majority, he decided to leave Morrow and travel to Ambergris. No Hoegbo on had set foot in Ambergris for 90 years and it was precisely for this reason that he chose the city, or so he told himself. In Morrow, under the predatory eye of Richard, he had felt as if none of his plans would ever be successful. In Ambergris, he had started out poor but independent, operating a sidewalk stall that sold fruit and broadsheets. At odd times-at an auction, looking at jewelry that reminded him of something his mother might wear; sneaking around Ungdom's store examining all that merchandise, so much richer than what he could acquire at the time-thoughts of the Silence wormed their way into his head.

The day a er he signed the lease on his own store, Hoegbo on visited Samuel's apartment. He had the address from some of the man's le ers. The building lay in a warren of derelict structures that rose from the side of the valley to the east of the Merchant Quarter. It took Hoegbo on an hour to find it, the carriage ride followed by progress on foot. He knew he was close when he had to climb over a wooden fence with a sign on it that read "Off Limits By Order of the Cappan." The sky was overcast, the sunlight weak yet bright, and he walked through the tenements feeling ethereal, dislocated. Here and there, he found walls where bones had been mixed with the mortar and he knew by these signs that such places had been turned into graveyards.

When he finally stood in front of the apartment- on the ground level of a three-story building-he wondered if he should turn around and go home. The exterior was boarded up, fire-scorched and splotched with brown-yellow fungi. Weeds had drowned the gra.s.s and other signs of a lawn. A smell like dull vinegar permeated the air. The facing rows of buildings formed a corridor of light, at the end of which a stray dog sniffed at the ground, picking up a scent. He could see its ribs even from so far away. Somewhere, a child began to cry, the sound thin, a enuated, automatic. The sound was so unexpected, almost horrifying, that he thought it must not be a baby at all, but something mimicking a baby, hoping to lure him closer.

A er a few more moments, he reached a decision and took a crowbar from his pack. Half an hour later, he had unpried the boards and the door stood revealed, a pale "X" running across the dark wood. He realized he was breathing in shallow gasps, antic.i.p.ation laced with fear. No one could help him if he opened the door and needed help, but he still wanted whatever was inside the apartment. It could be anything, even the end of his life, and yet the adrenalin rushed through him.

Hoegbo on pulled the door open and stepped inside, crowbar held like a weapon.