Bootheels thunder down stairs from weakly sunstruck balustrades of glass above past the yellow and grey of underlayment atop joists and beams the color of old coffee into the softly shadows of that long and slender open porch beneath, and the screams, the relentlessly raw, full-throated screams from the far end, frantic pulsing bleats shoved out between desperate yelping breaths hauled in enough to draw another ragged howl of anguish, rage, of pain and terror, harrowing despair, wordless, shapeless, formless, ceaseless, echoing over the vertiginous drop beyond, the screen of trees quite dark against a whitely grey haze of sky. Luys leaps the last few steps at the bottom to crouching lope the length of the porch, the table gleaming endlessly to one side, the wall to the other opening on a widely solid bannister, the needled trees beyond, rattling thunder become a scuffing scrape as he skids to a halt at the far end, reaches for the squalling squealing screaming tangle of blankets in the slant of sunlight there, “My lord!” from the stairs behind, the Viscount Agravante descending with only a whit more deliberation, a dash less alacrity, “my lord Mason, do not!”
A fold of blanket loosening as he seizes it, drooping from a pinkly enormous white-crowned burden, and the screams it seems had been muffled until now, as that burden tips up, that nose, those crinkled eyes, those cracked lips yawling spreading wide to make room for a piercing scream so much louder than any that had come before, and wincing, grimacing Luys yanks at the blankets, tugging them free, digging for something, a shoulder, an arm to grip, but there’s nothing, nothing but blankets and that enormous rolling shrieking head that he catches in his hands, pressing palm to cheek as that scream is swallowed by a sobbing breath, air desperately sucked into nowhere at all, and another, another, quick yelps as percussive as hiccups as Luys struggles to hold the twisting yanking slowing twitching gentling breaths that come more easily now, and the screaming’s stopped. “My lord Pinabel?” says Luys, perplexed.
Tiny eyes blink open to focus, darkly, on him. “Candy floss,” mutters the other, swiveling savagely to clamp that mouth about the heel of Luys’s hand.
Gurgling, blanching, Luys rears up, slapping the floor with his free hand, but even as those pink cheeks hollow, those tiny eyes bulge, the butt end of a polished wooden haft is pressed to the temple of that head, crumpling white hair against pink skin, pressing, “Stop,” says Agravante, shifting the butt to pinch a crimple of earlobe, press. “Let go.”
Spitting, growling, the other does, that somehow guttural snarl grinding itself into a word, words, “How, long, how long,” as Luys sits heavily back, “must I wait patiently, as you catch me out, again and again, and again! How long must I wait, to avenge my iquor that you have spilled upon the stones!”
Luys falls back, weight propped on the one hand, the other held up before a bewildered scowl, the heel of it marred, a purpled black arc that stipples the skin, seeping into the flesh. The bit of leather tied about the wrist. He opens his mouth, but can’t seem to find a word. “Hold, there, Joaquin,” calls Agravante, somewhere above, “let no one other any further down the stairs but the Anvil, call for the Anvil, let him through,” he’s stooping to busy himself with gathering up the blankets, “I was shot,” the other’s sputtering, “somebody shot me, how did a goddamn gun,” and Luys hunches over his lap, cradling that darkening, puffening hand, his bewilderment eaten away by a growing consternation, “oh,” he manages to vocalize, “I,” and “my,” as the other’s strained and fraying monologue, “goddamn bullet, goddamn hole,” dissolves in hacking coughs that culminate in an extended heaving syncopato, “oh,” the other, groaning, “oh, oh that’s not right. That’s not right at all.”
“My lords,” a new voice somewhere above, taken aback, and “Good sir Anvil,” Agravante, smoothly stood back up, “take charge of the Mason, and with Joaquin take him away through the main room and up the stairs, as discreetly as you might. I’ll see to the Count and join you, presently.”
“My lord,” says Pyrocles, concerned. Agravante murmurs reassurances, even as the swaddled other spits and snivels and moans, but Luys, Luys is focused on the feather that’s drifted across the floor to settle softly by his knee. Long, and long, a foot or more, thick quill no less substantial for being translucently pale, the sudden puff of bright white down, the neatly layered vanes an innocuous, a deceptively plain and simple grey that within its color somehow iridescently contains so very many fleeting others. A hand is on his shoulder, a suggestion he might stand, why not, he does, with some little effort. A step’s proposed, he takes it, and another, along the table, out of the sunlight, away from the babbling, and the feather, that gleaming feather, but his hand, his hand’s still there before him, in his hand.
“Careful,” says someone, Agravante, holding an axehandle, or is it a blanket, but no, he’s back there, in the sunlight with the other, it’s Pyrocles so very large and puzzled, blue jacket stretched by those broad shoulders, glint of pewter beads at the ends of his mustaches, “take his arm,” but someone’s already holding his arm, and yet a rough brown hand takes hold of his elbow, gently, but still he winces, swollen fingers curling even at that distant touch. He looks up from his hand to the man stood beside him on the stairs, squat and powerfully built, slick hair tied back with a red scarf, strap of a holster snugly crossing the front of his two-tone shirt, slight smile so gently solicitous under such dark eyes, and Luys, blinking, crumples in a faint.
•
A hand clamps his shoulder, crumpling the leather, “Hey!” he shouts, turning with it as he’s getting to his feet, “the fuck,” and “you fucking,” arms flapping, catching his balance, shuffle-slap of rubber on cardboard, crackle of gravel, “fuck!” and the man who’s grabbed him lets go, a step back, “You,” he’s saying, “you, what are you, who are you looking for? What did you say?” and the woman crouched on the flattened box looks away from them both, huddled in her once-white sweatshirt, mumbling something under her breath. “Who are you looking for?” says the taller man again, black jeans and a tight T-shirt that says I Fix Things in antique letters, It’s What I Do.
“Man,” snarls Sweetloaf, resettling his brown bomber jacket, “you do not just grab a guy like that, I mean, fuck!” His pompadour a-flop, the brass-rimmed goggles perched on his forehead. “I mean, shit, manners, you know? I mean, Jesus,” but at that he catches himself, blinks away, “fuck,” he’s muttering, “fuck, fuck.”
“I’m sorry,” says the taller man, “but this is important. You were saying something, you were describing someone, someone you’re looking for?”
“Ā gōng zǎi bo zhǔ xián,” chants the crouching woman then, her mumbling bubbling to the surface with an edge of hilarity, “ā gōng! Ā gōng!”
“There’s this kid,” says Sweetloaf, cautiously, still scowling. “Not too tall, not too short,” a hand, lifted to wobble right about there, “dark hair, lots of buttons on the jacket, jean jacket, young, I guess, I don’t know,” a shrug, “name’s Jack.”
The taller man seizes his shoulders, “No,” he’s not quite shouting, “no, it was somebody else, who else, who else are you looking for?” but he stops, suddenly, panting, wild eyes staring not at his hands or Sweetloaf’s face but letting go nonetheless, stepping once more back. “Ā gōng zǎi bo zhǔ xián, ā mā zǐ bo zhǔ jǐng,” sings the woman, rocking back and forth. Sweetloaf steps into the space the taller man’s ceded, “You are not doing that again. Are we absofuckinglutely clear, on that?”
“I’m sorry,” the taller man’s saying, “I’m sorry, please,” wiping his hands on the front of his shirt, “please.”
“A woman,” says Sweetloaf, warily. “Short. Lived out by the airport with all these fucking cats. Wore, like,” lifting his hands to his face, his eyes, below those propped-up goggles, “super-dark fucking glasses all the time.”
“May,” says the taller man.
“Her name’s,” Sweetloaf’s saying, “yeah, how’d you fucking know?”
“How do you know my mother?”
“Whoa,” says Sweetloaf, “whoa whoa whoa,” but the taller man isn’t reaching for him, and he lowers his hands, “I don’t, man. I never even fucking met her.”
“Èr gè xiāng!” chirp the woman, popping suddenly to her feet. “I know about the cats. I heard about the cats.”
The taller man, suddenly solicitous, “What did you hear, about my mother?”
“I need a dollar,” says the woman, “I need five dollars, twenty. Twenty dollars.”
“What do you know,” says the taller man, leaning over her, her sagging sweatshirt, her drooping hospital pants, a dingy white spotted with blue, her black hair all a-kilter. “What have you heard, about my mother?”
“I heard,” she says, “about the cats. I heard she lives, with cats. Up by the airport, but you gotta fly to San Francisco first, Ess Eff Oh. Ess Eff Oh.”
“But,” says the taller man, May’s son, “how do you know her?” as he stuffs a hand in a pocket, “have you seen her? is she here?” even as Sweetloaf’s shaking his head, “Nah, man, she doesn’t know a fucking thing, I already asked her,” reaching to slap that proffering hand, “she’s fucking scamming you,” but May’s son persists, with a sidelong look at Sweetloaf, handing the woman a folded bill she reverently takes. “A gōng,” she mutters, “a mā,” sinking back to her crouch on the cardboard.
“You shouldn’t oughtoa done that,” Sweetloaf’s saying, but May’s son stalks off, away out from under the bridges above into the sunlight. Sweetloaf hastens after, away from the woman, the cardboard, the draped and suspended blue tarps, the bedraggled, mud-rumpled tents, the catawampish stacks of rough-hewn wooden pallets, the drifts and ramparts of garbage and junk, plastic jugs and discarded clothing, shreds of cardboard and trampled paper, an abandoned cooler, a massive truck hub turned on its side, a sheet of raffled plywood set atop it, a makeshift table waiting for lunch, or a game of cards. May’s son has stepped off the narrow paved track that stretches off through grass and scrub to either side, copses of trees there and along there, and up ahead another little knot of tents and trash and taut blue tarps in the shade. “Rovers and ramblers,” says Sweetloaf, “tinkers and vagabonds, you can’t do a one a them any fucking favors,” but May’s son lifts a hand, shaking his head, “Where do you get off, asking about my mother like you are?”
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“Hey, it’s okay,” says Sweetloaf, “it’s all fucking okay, all right? My, ah, my boss, your mother did her a solid, let her stay a couple a fucking weeks, you know? Fed her cats, and shit, until the fucking cops showed up and fucked everything up, and we’ve been out here just about every day since, hitting up every fucking hobo jungle and vagrant camp we can find, checking with the jefes, looking for her, and Jack, and, and,” snapping his fingers, “whatsisname, okay? Because she’s fucking worried, my boss, okay? About your mother. Okay?”
May’s son looks away, back toward those highway bridges, busy with traffic oddly silent. “They’re telling me,” he says, “the RV is abandoned. The cops. They’re telling me because it’s abandoned they have to test it for hazardous chemicals, because abandoned RVs get used as meth labs. I’m telling them this is ridiculous because this is my mother and she has never had anything to do with meth but it doesn’t matter because it’s abandoned and this is what they have to do. They’re telling me it’s probably going to cost thirty thousand dollars at a minimum. They’re telling me I have to pay for it because even though it’s abandoned my mother was living there which makes it her responsibility, which makes it mine. They’re telling me the owner of the property can sue me for the cost to have it tested and removed if I don’t.” He aims a kick at a tummock of grass. “I never should’ve gone to them for help.”
“Well,” says Sweetloaf, after a moment, “sympathies, for whatever fucking troubles, man, but I’ll tell you what I could maybe – ”
“Mike,” says May’s son. “Mike Holmdahl.” He offers a hand. Sweetloaf cocks a brow, draws back, “Yeah?” he says, “What I maybe could do, see, me and my boss? We parked up by the fucking electrical thingy-whatsit, up at a Hundred and Second, and she went east, and I went fucking west, so I can tell you that from there,” pointing up, along the length of paved trail, “to here,” pointing back, toward the overpass, “it’s no fucking dice. But. But!” spreading his hands, “the two of us, we make our way back up the Springwater, catch up with her before she fucking makes it all the way to fucking Beggars Tick, and the three of us, we compare notes, where the fuck we’ve all been, what the fuck we’ve learned, coordinate our future fucking plans,” lowering his hands, shake of his head, “to find,” he says, “your fucking mother.”
“Hey,” says Mike, May’s son, but without heat.
“Okay?” says Sweetloaf.
“Okay,” says Mike, after a moment.
“Okay.” With a jerk, Sweetloaf starts away up the paved track, looking back with a gesture, come on, let’s go.
“You know,” says Mike, as he starts up after, “Driving out here, that guy Lake was on the radio? You heard about him? Anyway, he was saying that right now, today, this whole, the Sweetwater Corridor, it’s currently – ”
“Springwater,” says Sweetloaf.
“Springwater, the Springwater, it’s the largest homeless camp in the entire country, right now. Isn’t that, amazing? All these, people?”
“And did you bring enough folding fiat for every single fucking one of them? You gotta stop doing that, man. Ain’t a fucking one a those bums worth a fucking shinplaster. You know, you want to know what the worst part of this fucking hopeless search is? It’s the fucking smell. These fucking losers can’t even be bothered to take a fucking bath.”
“Hey,” says Mike, “buddy,” with some little concern. “They can’t take baths because they don’t have houses. That’s why they’re here.”
Sweetloaf rounds on him, “I sleep,” he snarls, “on a fucking threshold, more nights than not. I never had a goddamn bed, excuse me, your fucking pardon, but I wake up every fucking morning and I take the time to look like this,” drawing his hands, an exaggerated gesture, up and down himself, dungarees, bomber jacket, pompadour, goggles, “so fuck them if they fucking can’t be bothered,” stalking away on up along the path.
•
She crouches over a white wooden box of a frame easily as long as she is tall, if she were to stand to her full height, but only half that in width, and the walls of it less than a foot high. Her white hair’s tied back in a ruthlessly glossy queue, her shoulders bunch and shift within a loose white tank as she wrestles with a great but flimsy sheet of pressboard, unfolding it along the scores pressed there and there down the length of it. That frame has been assembled half in the blue and white kitchen, half in the hall beyond, under the little yellow lights strung along the ceiling, and she awkwardly stretches past the jamb, leaned out over the pressboard to adjust its fit to the corners just out of reach, muttering an imprecation as she does.
“You know, you could have that done for you,” says Ysabel, stood behind her, one hand on the knob of the door to the apartment.
Marfisa lets go of the pressboard, pushing herself a-twist back out of the hallway to sit on her heels by the frame. “To have it done, majesty,” she says, “I’d need someone to do it, and he,” a desultory gesture, off that way, “is all I have.”
Ysabel follows the gesture, looking back over her shoulder down the three short steps into the room beyond, filled with bankers boxes brown and white stacked stacked three or four high in rows before the couches, around the coffee table where Inchwick’s hunched over his work, the tweezers, the mucilage, the scraps of paper and photographs, studiously paying them no mind at all.
“So,” says Ysabel, turning back to Marfisa, “what is that you’re building for yourself.”
Marfisa, a hammer in her hand, cups her other hand to catch the tiny nails she lets fall from her lips. “Bookshelves,” she says, pointing that cupped fist toward the flat packs stacked within the kitchen, five of them all of a length, BILLY, each says, in bold sans-serif on their narrow sides.
“You do love your books,” says Ysabel. “I’d no idea you had so many.”
“Abby Tinker does. And when she comes to live here, I must have these shelves ready for them.”
“These were purchased on the Chatelaine’s account?”
“With Anna’s assistance.” Opening her fist to let the tiny nails rattle down to the pressboard sheet. “She showed me how to have them delivered directly here,” pinching one up, leaning back through the doorway, “they arrived yesterday, while I was,” tap tap tap, she drives it home, securing the sheet to the frame. “Out,” she says. Tap tap tap. “The mechanism, for assembling the frame,” rapping a white wooden wall with a knuckle, “turned out to be quite clever. Almost a shame it’s now down to hammer and tacks.” Tap tap tap.
Ysabel folds her arms about herself. Her white coat soft and loose, open over a briefly golden halter, and her trousers loosely soft and white. “This must be the last thing purchased with her cards,” she says, quietly.
Marfisa stiffens at that, sits up, the hammer set aside. “You’ve come here,” she says, “your royal self, to deny me once more what you’ve freely given.”
“We,” says Ysabel, “deny, nothing. Gloria has broken with the bank, and I,” a deep breath, looking up, those artful tangles slipping from her shoulders, “came, myself, to tell you so.”
“The bank is yours,” says Marfisa, curtly. “Break with them, and unbreak the account.”
“The bank has never been ours.”
“Your majesty is Queen.”
“It’s done,” snaps Ysabel. “Out of ignorance, or,” a brief shiver, she tightens her grip about herself, “love,” she says, “it matters little enough. It’s done, and not to be undone, not even by my majesty.”
“So,” says Marfisa, folding her legs tailor-fashion, propping her hands on her knees. “There’s to be no more,” and a sidelong look at those flat packs, “things. That’s disappointing. I’m starting to think that these won’t be enough.”
“I imagine the Shrieve has plenty of shelves in his jackdaw-nest. If you were to – ”
“Why is it your majesty is here?”
Ysabel’s mien of gentle concern is troubled, then, by a hint of frown. “To make, certain, that you’d know.”
“A dozen dozen others might’ve served that certainty – why, then, should it have fallen to your majesty, to bring this news to me?” Sat there, by the half-built shelf laid prone, under those little yellow lights, her expression inscrutably patient, as Ysabel looks up, away, hands folding one about the other.
“It’s been six weeks,” she says, finally, “since I last spoke with my brother.”
“He’s gone,” says Marfisa, bluntly.
“He’s been gone before. And when he was,” still looking off, away, “I’d speak to him, when I was otherwise alone.” The soggy light out the window over the sink, weakly grey but bright enough to fill the room, to softly silhouette her, all in white and glimmering gold. “Sometimes, he would speak back. Sometimes, I’d almost see him, a shadow, in the corner of my eye, a reflection, in a windowpane, I,” she says, “the shortest night? When you and I first, kissed? I told him, after, and he laughed, and asked what had taken us so long.”
Marfisa, intent on the hammer turning about in her hands, the head of it set on the floorboards, tink.
“But since that early morning when I looked into his eyes and saw he was no longer there,” says Ysabel, “nothing. Not a word. Not a glimpse. And I cannot even bring myself to,” a weighty sigh. “He’s gone.”
“You will not find him here.”
Ysabel with a shake of her head says, “That’s not why I came.” And then, a step closer to Marfisa, away from the door, “Last week, you came to me, to tell me something, but turned and left me there, before you did. I’d not have another five weeks pass between us, without a word.”
Marfisa, still sat there upon the floor, shrugs. “Whatever I meant to say was said.”
“Marfisa,” Ysabel kneels then, reaching out, but not to take her hand, “whatever else has happened, we were friends. Before that kiss, and after, after everything – ”
“There is no after,” snarls Marfisa, suddenly forceful, suddenly bitter, and Ysabel recoils, and Marfisa, blanching to see it, lets go the clattering hammer to reach out, to seize, but not her hand, “Lady,” she says, hoarsely, “I still love you.”
Her hands, gripping Ysabel’s arms, her upper arms, crumpling that soft white coat. “I never,” says Marfisa, “stopped. Loving. You.”
Ysabel, starkly upright, lips parted, blinking, once, twice.
“When you, when we, kissed, in that room, in Goodfellow’s house, you took, my heart,” and Marfisa lets go the one arm, withdrawing her hand a fist to her breast. “Try as I might, I cannot take it back.”
Ysabel, stiffly drawn back, blinking, once again.
“When I refused your oil,” says Marfisa, “your salt, your bread, I still,” a shuddering shake, “loved you. When I, set out. To leave the city. I,” but she shakes her head, lets go her other hand, sits back, folding her arms, tucking her chin, looking down, away. “When the owr turned to ash?” she says, “and all your spells, were broken?” Ysabel leans back at that, weight braced on one propped arm. “I woke up that next morning, still, in love, with you. I,” says Marfisa, “will always,” arms still folded, head tipped low, eyes closed away, “love you, my lady. Until the last of the stars falls away from out our sight, until the end of all the days to come, I will love you.” Lifting up her head then, those fathomlessly dark eyes meeting Ysabel’s dulled green. “But I do not think,” she says, “that I will ever be able to like you.”
Tink of the hammer, taken in hand. Rattle of tacks scooped up from the pressboard. Leaning back into the hall, over the overturned frame, she sets to hammering them home, one after another, tap tap tap. Ysabel pulls herself to her feet. Takes a step back, and another. Looks about, the sink, the window, the light, the room beyond, the boxes stacked, and Inchwick, assiduous about his work. The door to the apartment, still ajar. She opens it enough to step through, and closes it, quietly, after.