Winterlong (3 page)

I slid across the bed to where a tiny refrigerator had been hung for my medications. I pulled it open and saw the familiar battery of vials and bottles. As a child first under Dr. Harrow’s care I had imagined them a City like that I glimpsed from the highest windows at
HEL
, saw the long cylinders and amber vials as abandoned battlements and turrets to be explored and climbed. Now I lived among those chilly buttresses, my only worship within bright cathedrals.

“Two hundred milligrams,” I said obediently, and replaced the bottle. “Thank you very very much.” As I giggled he left the room.

I took the slender filaments that had tapped in to my store of memories and braided them together, then slid the plait beneath a pillow and leaned back. A bed like a pirate ship, carved posts like riven masts spiring to the high ceiling. I had never seen a pirate ship, but once I tapped a Governor’s son who jerked off to images of yellow flags and heaving seas and wailing women. I recalled that now and untangled a single wire, placed it on my temple and masturbated until I saw the warning flare on the screen, the sanguine flash and flame across my pixilated brain. Then I went to sleep.

Faint tapping at the door woke me a short while later.

“Andrew.” I pointed to where my toe poked from a rip in a much-patched blanket. “Come in. Sit.”

He shut the door softly and slid beneath the sheets. “You’re not supposed to have visitors, you know.”

“I’m not?” I stretched and curled my other foot around his finger.

“No. Dr. Leslie was here all day. The Governors are angry. Anna said they’re taking us away.”

“Me too?”

He nodded, hugging a bolster. “All of us. Forever.” He smiled, and the twilight made his face as beautiful as Anna’s. “I saw Dr. Harrow cry after he left.”

“How did you get here?” I sat up and played with his hair: long and silky blond except where the nodes bulged and the hair had never grown back. He wore Anna’s bandeau, and I tugged it gently from his head.

“The back stairs: no one ever uses them. That way.” With his foot he pointed lazily toward a darkening corner. His voice rose plaintively. “You shared that poet with Anna. You should’ve saved her.”

I shrugged. “You weren’t there.” The bandeau fit loosely over my forehead. When I tightened it, tiny emerald feathers frosted my hands like the scales of moths. “Would Anna give me this, do you think?”

Andrew pulled himself onto his elbows and stroked my breast with one hand. “I’ll give it to you, if you share.”

“There’s not enough left to share,” I said, and pulled away. In the tiny mirror hung upon the refrigerator I caught myself in the bandeau. The stippled green feathers made my tawny hair look a deeper auburn, like the poet’s. I pulled a few dark curls through the feathers and pursed my lips. “If you give this to me …”

Already he was reaching for my hand. “Locked?” I glanced at the door.

“Shh …

Afterward I gave him one of my new pills. There hadn’t been much of Morgan left and I feared his disappointment would evoke Anna, who’d demand her bandeau back.

“Why can’t I have visitors?”

I had switched off the gaslight. Andrew sat on the windowsill, luring lacewings with a silver lighter tube. Bats chased the insects to within inches of his face, veering away as he laughed and pretended to snatch at them. “Dr. Harrow said there may be a psychic inquest. To see if you’re accountable.”

“So?” I’d done one before, when a schizoid six-year-old hanged herself on a grosgrain ribbon after therapy with me. ‘“I can’t be responsible. I’m not responsible.’” We laughed: it was the classic empath defense.

“Dr. Leslie wants to see you himself.”

I kicked the sheets to the floor and turned down the empty
BEAM
, to see the lacewings better. “How do you know all this?”

A quick
fizz
as a moth singed itself. Andrew frowned and turned down the lighter flame. “Anna told me,” he replied, and suddenly was gone.

I swore and tried to rearrange my curls so the bandeau wouldn’t show. From the windowsill Anna stared blankly at the lighter tube, then groped in her pockets until she found a hand-rolled cigarette. She glanced coolly past me to the mirror, pulling a strand of hair forward until it fell framing her cheekbone. “Who gave you that?” she asked as she blew smoke out the window.

I turned away. “You know who,” I replied petulantly. “I’m not supposed to have visitors.”

“Oh, you can keep it,” she said.

“Really?” I clapped in delight.

“I’ll just make another.” She finished her cigarette and tossed it in an amber arc out the window. “I better go down now. Which way’s out?”

I pointed where Andrew had indicated, drawing her close to me to kiss her tongue as she left.

“Thank you, Anna,” I whispered to her at the door. “I think I love this bandeau.”

“I think I loved it too,” Anna nodded, and slipped away.

Dr. Harrow invited me to lunch with her in the Peach Tree Court the next afternoon. Justice appeared at my door and waited while I put on jeweled dark spectacles and a velvet biretta like Morgan Yates’s.

“Very nice, Wendy,” he said, amused. I smiled. When I wore the black glasses he was not afraid to look me in the face.

“I don’t want the others to see my bandeau. Anna will steal it back,” I explained, lifting the hat so he could see the feathered riband beneath.

He laughed, tossing his head so that his long blond braid swung between his shoulders. I thanked him as he held the door and followed him outside.

On the steps leading to the Orphic Garden I saw
HEL’s
chief neurologist, Dr. Silverthorn, with Gligor, his favorite of the empaths as I was Dr. Harrow’s. Through the heavy jet laminate of his eyeshield Gligor regarded me impassively. Beside him Dr. Silverthorn watched my approach with distaste.

“Dr. Harrow is waiting for you,” he called out. He took Gligor’s arm and steered him away from us, to the walk’s border edged with tiny yellow strawberries. As he stumbled after him Gligor crushed these carelessly, releasing their sweet perfume into the autumn air. He waved blindly in our direction, his head swinging distractedly back and forth as he tried to fix me with his shield, like a cobra seeking a rat by its body’s heat.

“Wendy!” he said. “Wendy, I heard, it’s—”

“Hush,” said Dr. Silverthorn. As Justice and I passed he leaned back into the tall hedge of box trees until their branches snapped beneath his weight. But Gligor waited on the walk for me. He plucked at my arm and drew me to him. I smelled the adrenaline reek of his sweat as he brushed his lips against my cheek, his tongue flicking across my skin.

“Anna told me,” he whispered. “I’ll come later—”

I returned his kiss, my tongue lingering over the bitter tang of envy that clung to his skin. I ignored Justice waiting, and lifted my sunglasses to grin at Gligor’s keeper.

“I will, Gligor,” I said, staring into the dark furies of Dr. Silverthorn’s eyes rather than into the ebony grid that concealed Gligor’s own. “Goodbye, Dr. Silverthorn.”

I dropped my sunglasses back onto my nose and skipped after Justice into the Orphic Garden. Servers had snaked hoses through the circle of lindens and were cleaning the mosaic stones. I peered through the hedge as we walked down the pathway, but Morgan’s blood seemed to be all gone.

Once we were in the shade of the Peach Tree Walk I removed my glasses and put them into my pocket. Justice quickly averted his eyes. The little path dipped and rounded a corner humped with dark green forsythia. Three steps farther and the path branched: right to the Glass Fountain, left to the Peach Tree Court, where Dr. Harrow waited in the Little Pagoda.

“Thank you, Justice.” Dr. Harrow rose, tilting her head toward a low table upon which lunch had been laid for two. Despite their care in placing a single hyacinth blossom in a cracked porcelain vase, the luncheon servers had not bothered to clean the Pagoda. The floor’s golden sheath of pollen was chased with tiny footprints of squirrels and rats and their droppings. Justice grimaced as he stepped to a lacquered tray to sort out my medication bottles. Then he stood, bowed to Dr. Harrow, and left.

Sunlight streamed through the bamboo frets above us as Dr. Harrow took my hand and drew me toward her.

“The new dosage. You remembered to take it?”

“Yes.” I removed my hat and dropped it, shaking my curls free. “Anna gave me this bandeau.”

“It’s lovely.” She knelt before the table and motioned for me to do the same. Her face was puffy, her eyes slitted. I wondered if she would cry for me as she had for Andrew yesterday. “Have you had breakfast?”

We ate quenelles of hake with fennel and an aspic of lamb’s blood. Dr. Harrow drank Georgian champagne and permitted me a sip—horrible, like brackish water. Afterward a remodeled greenhouse server (still encumbered with its coil of garden hose) removed our plates and brought me a chocolate wafer, which I slipped into my pocket to trade with Anna later, for news.

“You slept well,” Dr. Harrow stated. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed about Melisande’s dog.”

Dr. Harrow stroked her chin, then adjusted her pince-nez to see me better. “Not Morgan’s dog?”

“No.” Melisande had been a girl my own age with a history of tormenting and sexually molesting animals. “A small white dog. Like this.” I pushed my nose until it squashed against my face.

Dr. Harrow smiled ruefully. “Well, good, because
I
dreamed about Morgan’s dog.” She shook her head when I started to question her. “Not really; a manner of speaking. I mean I didn’t get much sleep.” She sighed and tilted her flute so that it refracted golden diamonds. “I made a very terrible error of judgment with Morgan Yates. I shouldn’t have let you do it—”

“I knew what would happen.”

Dr. Harrow looked at her glass, then at me. “Yes. Well, a number of people are wondering about that, Wendy.”

“She would not look away from the window.”

“No. They’re wondering how you know when the therapy will succeed and when it won’t. They’re wondering whether you are effecting your failures as well as your cures.”

“I’m not responsible. I can’t be—”

She placed the champagne flute on the lacquer table and took my hand. She squeezed it so tightly that I knew she wanted it to hurt. “That is what’s the matter, Wendy. If you are responsible—if empaths
can
be responsible—you can be executed for murder. We can all be held accountable for your failures. And if not …” She leaned back without releasing my hand, so that I had to edge nearer to her across the table. “If not, the Governors want you for themselves.”

I flounced back against the floor, “Andrew told me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not you personally. Not necessarily. Anna, yes: they created Anna, they’ll claim her first. But the others—”

She traced a wave in the air, ended it with finger pointing at me. “Things are changing again in the world outside, Wendy. You are too sheltered here, all of you children; which is my fault, but I thought …”

Her voice drifted into a sigh, and I noticed that her fingers were trembling as she let go of my hand. “It doesn’t matter anymore what I thought,” she said. She stared up at me, her eyes glittering with such desperation that I yearned to taste it, know what it was that could terrify a woman like Dr. Harrow.

She took a deep breath and said, “There is a rumor that
NASNA
plans to strike against the Balkhash Commonwealth. They will never succeed.
NASNA
and the present Governors will be overthrown, and the Commonwealth will do to us what they did to Brazil and the Asian diarchy: more mutagens and viral strikes and burnings, until only the land remains for them to claim.”

I yawned. It had been decades since the last Ascension. The Commonwealth was on the other side of the world. To myself and the other empties at
HEL
it was nothing more than pink and crimson blotches on a map, separated from us by a blue sea that would take weeks and weeks to navigate. I reached for my glass and sipped, grimacing again at the taste. When I raised my eyes Dr. Harrow was staring at me, unbelieving.

“Does this mean nothing to you, Wendy?”

I shrugged. “What?
NASNA
? The Commonwealth? What
should
it mean to me?”

“It means that
NASNA
needs new weapons. It means further intervention in our research, and misapplication of the results of the Harrow Effect. They’ll treat you like laboratory animals, like geneslaves …

“Don’t you understand, Wendy? If they can trace what
you
do, find the bioprint and synthesize it …”Her finger touched the end of my nose, pressed it until I giggled. “There’ll be nothing left of you except what will fit in a vial.”

She tapped her finger on the table edge. The westering light fell golden upon my head, and I shook my hair back, smiling at its warmth. From a peach tree outside the Little Pagoda came a mockingbird’s sweet treble. Dr. Harrow remained silent, listening.

After a few minutes she said, “Odolf Leslie was here yesterday. They are sending a new Governor—”

I looked up at that. “Here? To
HEL
?”

“No.” She smiled wryly at my disappointment. “To the City. The Governors wish to monitor it more closely: the black market has grown too successful, and the Governors have professed a sudden interest in the Archives.

“Or so
NASNA
says; my sources say otherwise. There were stockpiles of weapons there once, within the City; weapons and secret things, things lost in the Long Night.”

I must have appeared dubious. Dr. Harrow gave a small laugh, a bitter rasping sound. “Did you think you knew everything about this place, Wendy? I assure you: you children know nothing,
nothing
of the world, even of the world across the river. That was a great city once, greater than any city standing now; and there are still things hidden there, things of great knowledge and power that the poor fools who live there now cannot begin to comprehend.

“But the Governors have decided it is time to look again at the City of Trees. I think they are searching for the engines that brought the Long Night; else why would they be sending an Aviator to govern the City?”