Gears of the City (17 page)

Arjun climbed a drainpipe round the back, by what appeared to be the servants’ quarters. There was a heap of stinking refuse there, days or weeks old; Brace-Bel’s household was wasteful and ill-kept. He entered through an open second-story window.

H
e found himself in a cold room containing two mirrors, two claustrophobically small claw-footed bathtubs, and a scatter of clothing on the damp, moldy floorboards.

The room confirmed his guess: these were servants’ quarters. For one thing, Brace-Bel surely bathed in more style; for another, the man who’d made that garden would not leave his windows unlocked. So Brace-Bel’s servants were unreliable, then. That might be worth knowing.

Outside was a corridor, uncarpeted, unadorned, lit by a single candle on a side table. On the white walls was a thin spatter of something that might have been blood.

The corridor ran in two directions, into and away from the heart of the house. Arjun headed toward the music.

T
he servants’ quarters had their own staircase, an iron spiral leading down into shadow and up into light. As Arjun came close he heard it clatter under the weight of running feet; by the time he turned the corner there was no one there.

The corridor at the top of the stairs was empty, too.

The music was louder now, sounding through the door at the end of the hall. At this distance it was clear that it was not well played. An amateurish quartet sawed away in and out of pitch. Someone hit a drum at seemingly random intervals—possibly the
same individual who clashed the cymbals as and when the mood took him.

Arjun pushed open the door and blinked in the light. Something blue in feathers rushed past him, shoes clacking. His eyes landed on a dark and wide-eyed face that he realized was his own, in a mirror. There was a smell of cigarettes and makeup, paint and sweat. A young woman sat on a low stool polishing her boots; she looked up and asked him, “Are you new?”

I
said, are you new?”

“Maybe he’s mute.”

“Or deaf. The boss doesn’t have anyone deaf yet.”

“You’re supposed to call him Master.”

“Yeah? You’re supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I don’t point
out your
shortcomings.”

“Fuck you. So,
are
you new?”

“What are you, stupid? He
broke
in. Like old Basso.”

The room appeared to be a dressing room; an antechamber, full of mirrors and costumes, to the room beyond in which the music played.

Four women looked Arjun up and down. Two sat on stools. A third leaned against the window, smoking. A fourth stood in front of a mirror, attaching gaudy rings to her ears and nose; “He
broke
in,” she repeated.

They were wary but not frightened, Arjun thought. They seemed curious to see what he’d do.

“I told you I heard an explosion earlier.”

“Is he an anarchist? He doesn’t have a mask.”

“Ask him yourself.”

On further inspection they were not all women. Two of them were young men dressed and made up as women, and one of the actual women wore a fake red beard, which she pulled aside in order to smoke. All of them, in fact, were in quite improbable costumes. In addition to the ridiculous beard, the smoking woman wore what appeared to be a parody of armor: clanking parts of metal and chain, spiked and dented, that left most of her flesh exposed and anyway were made thinly out of tin and would crumple at the first touch. One of the young men wore a long dress stylized with flames and
coruscating golden thread, and his eyes were somehow tinted red. The other wore black furs and his white boots were like bulls’ hooves.

The fourth woman, who wore the rings—who was now attaching further baubles to a gold chain that swung between her ears and her lip—appeared to be being devoured by a jewelry-shop locust swarm. Emeralds contested passionately with rubies over the prize of her flesh. Most of her back was bare, though little studs and bars and glittering things pierced her, marking rail-track lines down her spine. She was bruised by purple cane-strokes, by sore burn-marks, by the marks of needles …

“Are you Brace-Bel’s prisoners?” Arjun asked. “I came here to free Ivy Low, but …”

“Hah!” The woman’s jewels clanked as she laughed. She moved to the far door; she opened it a crack and the clumsy music tumbled into the room.
“Just
like Basso. Why’s it always Ivy? What’s that bitch got that I haven’t?”

“I found a path through the garden,” Arjun said. “Help me find Ivy and we can all escape.”

“That’s sweet.”

The armored woman finished her cigarette and attached her fake beard. Her arm rattled as she opened the door.

Behind it was a ballroom. The floor was a dark polished wood; the walls were invisible in the darkness. There was a suggestion of heavy curtains. The room was huge and only darkly lit, by sparks of electric light and reflected glitter from the jewels and sequins and masks of the dancers who swept and circled that troubling space.

“Our cue,” said the armored woman. “The boss’ll go crazy if we miss it, mister whoever-you-are. Ladies and gents; after you.” And the jeweled woman and the flaming man and the bull filed out into the ballroom and joined the dance. The door closed behind them, leaving Arjun in the dressing room, not quite alone; his reflection, dark and puzzled, watched him from a half-dozen mirrors.

Arjun and his reflections shrugged and opened the door.

A
woman in a costume that appeared to be made largely out of leaves drifted toward him, performing elaborate waving gestures
with her bare arms. She was counting under her breath and appeared to be having trouble remembering her steps. She looked bored and tired. When she found Arjun blocking her path she stopped dead and swore.

“Shit. Am I out of line or are you? Wait, who
are
you?”

Arjun put a finger to his lips, and stepped around her. A young and surprisingly fat man came past, circling counterclockwise, dressed in something that appeared to be a kind of clock, as if open wounds had exposed his organs and they’d turned out, to his murderer’s surprise, to be glittering clockwork. The fat man ignored Arjun, his attention fixed on his feet, and on a structure of gears and wires and brass that was coming unstitched from his shirt, and had to be held in place with his free left hand (the right hand brandished a kind of tuning fork). And behind him, in the center of the room, Arjun saw Ivy.

There was no question about it. She had both Ruth’s and Marta’s features; Ruth’s beauty and strangeness, and Marta’s solidity and seriousness. She was taller than either of her sisters. She seemed both younger and older than them. There was something cold about her face, and something haughty; but then, she could hardly not appear haughty, while she was at the center ofthat elaborate dance, orbited subserviently by some ten or twenty dancers.

She stepped sideways out of the heart of the dance and her place was taken by a young woman in filthy rags.

It was only as an afterthought that Arjun noticed what Ivy was wearing. White feathers clung tightly to her and white wings hung weightlessly from her arms, stark and brilliant against her dark hair and eyes.

Arjun approached her and was about to speak when a door in the room’s far wall opened, and a new figure pushed through the room’s red curtains.

It was a man, perhaps in his forties, and fat—pendulously so— and sweaty, and acne covered, and naked. His hair was wild, as if recently removed from the constraints of a wig. His pale flesh was bruised, like the jeweled woman’s had been. A short and stiff penis bobbed like the bill of a heron. In his hand he held a long three-tailed whip.

The newcomer came running through the room, hooting and
scattering the dancers. His eyes were wide and black and mad; they nearly
revolved.
He snorted. He blundered into the heart of the dance and flailed at the young woman in rags with his whip.

The other dancers withdrew silently into the room’s shadowy corners.

The ragged woman shrieked under his blows. She was hardly more than a child. He crowed and struck again.

Arjun caught the man’s whip-hand on the backswing, by the fleshy wrist. He yanked it backward, seizing the whip and throwing it aside, sending the man sprawling in his ugly nakedness on the polished floor.

The girl pulled her torn rags closer around herself and sniffed, but stayed in her place.

The naked man drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive, and fixed Arjun with a glittering mad eye, which somehow was. He seemed entirely unembarrassed at his own nudity. “Did I not give the most express instructions,” he barked. “Did I not make plain my one inviolable command in this place where nothing is inviolable save this one, this
one
Goddammit command: do not under any circumstances interrupt me at the moment of… Now wait, sir; you are not one of mine, are you?”

“Mr. Brace-Bel, I assume? Keep your distance, please.”

Brace-Bel stepped eagerly toward Arjun, and Arjun stepped back, cursing himself as he did so for what it cost him in control of the situation; but Brace-Bel was wildly intoxicated and there was no hope of intimidating him.

“Has our summoning succeeded? What part of the city are you from? What doors did you open? What message have you brought me? What have we unlocked, spirit? Who or what have we
finally finally
angered? Speak, ghost!”

“I’m here for Ivy Low, Mr. Brace-Bel.”

“What?”

“Will you release her?”

“Certainly not! She’s
mine.”

“What on earth are you doing here, Mr. Brace-Bel?”

“Oh shut up.” Brace-Bel sagged. His wheeling eyes went dim and tired. “You’re only another thief. Or worse, some Know-Nothing or policeman or busybody. Gods damn you as they surely
have me. No matter how far I go there are always busybodies. Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Is this some kind of ritual? It seems familiar, somehow.”

“Mind your business. Mr. Basso, please!”

Arjun had not fully noticed, among the dancers—but not dancing, only watching and waiting—a large man in a grey wool suit and flat cap, who now appeared holding a silvered and crystal-handled stick.

Arjun picked up the whip again, and held it ready.

“No, Mr. Basso,” Brace-Bel said. “I’ll thrash this dog myself. If you please!”

Basso threw the stick to Brace-Bel, who caught it neatly. There was a new intensity in his eyes as he advanced on Arjun. He held the stick by its foot, thrusting the shining crystal forward; then, laughing, “This is only a man! I’ll need no trickery tonight!” he reversed his grip and lunged with the silver-shod foot of his weapon.

Arjun knocked the stick aside with the whip’s long handle, and stepped back. Brace-Bel lunged again.

Some of the dancers, released from their duties, lit cigarettes as they watched this new show.

Brace-Bel advanced on surprisingly nimble legs, full of febrile energy. He lunged the cane’s silver foot at Arjun’s face; he swung it sideways at Arjun’s legs. Arjun parried and fell back.

It was an inelegant and unpredictable combat. Brace-Bel was clearly well trained with his weapon, and for all his fat he was quick and surefooted; but whatever drugs he’d ingested before the ritual were taking their toll on him. He executed skilled maneuvers at a point somewhere well to Arjun’s left. He giggled and nearly tripped. After a flurry of deadly lunges and feints he sighed, stepped back, and began trying to wipe his cane clean with his sweaty hands, having apparently forgotten Arjun’s presence, until a blow to the head with the whip’s handle reminded him that the job was still unfinished, and he charged again. Another effect of the drug was an indifference to pain; or perhaps, to judge from the bruises and welts on his naked body, he’d long since made a friend of pain.

And Arjun found his own capabilities … erratic. It seemed that at some point in the past, in his forgotten wanderings, he’d learned how to fence—and the whip’s long handle was a passable weapon—
but the memories were inaccessible to his thinking mind. So sometimes, by
instinct
, he’d parry and deftly riposte, striking Brace-Bel’s soft belly and winding him, or rattling the teeth in his globular head, and at those moments it seemed Arjun was rather the better fighter; but the next second he had no idea what he was doing, and could only retreat clumsily. Not knowing his own abilities, he couldn’t plan; he could only defend from moment to moment. He feinted without thinking; then, having thought, he couldn’t remember how to follow the motion through and left himself open. Brace-Bel, scratching his balls thoughtfully, said, “Aha!” and lunged only a moment too late. Later Arjun dropped his weapon, and was only saved by the fact that Brace-Bel’s attention was focused on the glitter of reflected electric light in the crystal on the end of his cane …

Basso stepped in and punched Arjun smartly in the nose. Sparks exploded in his brain and his nose started to bleed. The dancers sighed or shouted or clapped. Arjun fell back. Basso withdrew discreetly and let Brace-Bel take his place; the naked fat man pressed himself up against Arjun, holding him against the wall with the cane at his throat. Arjun looked around, trapped, panicked, and his eyes met Ivy’s, where she sat on the edge of the bandstand recently vacated by Brace-Bel’s musicians. Her look of cold unsympathetic curiosity—
out of that face so much like Ruth’s
—chilled him. The fight went out of him.

Brace-Bel pressed his face up against Arjun’s and glared into his eyes. His breath was rank and greasy.

“Tell your masters, Know-Nothing, I won’t be trifled with! By the Gods I’ll send you back to them in such a state! Pain is the great teacher, Know-Nothing, and I’ll
teach.
By the Gods! … wait a moment; don’t I know you?”

Arjun wheezed: “Not … not a Know- … Noth …”

Brace-Bel relaxed the cane. “I
do
know you!”

“You are … ah … very familiar, Mr. Brace-Bel. But … I have had …
trouble
with my memory. “

“Aren’t you that little dark fellow who worked for old Holbach?”