The Last Page (34 page)

Sickened and dizzy and strangely elated or depressed, the spectators were ushered out with a definite feeling that they had gotten their money’s worth.

From the darkened court, lit mainly by the tube of ebbing fluid, the four witches parted without a word. They vanished into alleys and over bridges, becoming part of Isca’s degenerate underbelly, heading off to spread word of their exodus.

Back inside, one of the fifteen-year-old boys began sponging up the rest of the show.

Three miles through the urban sprawl of South Fell and Thief Town sat the Murkbell Opera House.

Only half a mile from Ghoul Court, the opera house stood among the canals of Murkbell with a kind of gray and sinister splendor. Romantics could approach the opera by boat, poled along the avenues.

There were sections of Murkbell that still stood in rarefied grandeur (the opera house being one of them) and many historians and antique collectors lived in crumbling opulence along the borough’s southern stretch.

As the largest borough in Isca, Murkbell had room for diversity. From the black confusion of Vog Foundry—which seemed to crawl out of Growl Mort like something hideous and half-dead—the industrial loll of noxious factories and warehouses full of coal gave way to tenements near the wasteyard in Brindle Fen.

South and west, the numberless network of canals were cleaner, dragging discarded newspapers and empty bottles along their bottoms rather than the sediments of heavy industry. Except for Bragget Canal, which came out of Ghoul Court, the waters were lucid and gleaming and reflected the ostentatious houses of the very eccentric and the very rich.

Like many of the other buildings, the Murkbell Opera House had been built when Isca was young. It rested on enormous stone piers that supported it like a dollhouse on a pair of unseen sawhorses, allowing it to straddle forgotten sewers and vaults that now served to collect most of the city’s rainfall.

The capacity of the vaults was sufficient that Isca’s sewers had never needed extensive redesign. They sucked floods down an ineluctable network of straws like a fat girl at a soda fountain and pushed them through
turbines toward the bay where powerful geysers of odious water gushed into the sea.

The same night the witches met at the surgery, after the curtain came down on
Er Krue Alteirz
and the hundreds of candles in the chandelier had been extinguished, the manager walked the halls of his opera.

Reddish-orange light fixtures cast tangerine glows across walls the color of exotic olives. Russet shadows depended from blackened boxes in the theater walls; frescoes filled plaster ovals across the baroque ceiling.

The masked ladies who sold concessions had gone home. The huge brass beehive with its gauges and pipettes serving flavored soda and whipped coffee had been cleaned out and rolled into a brooding corner. The stage lights were dim. The actors had vanished, scurrying off to various parties held in historical penthouses and rooftop pubs that glimmered across Murkbell’s cruel skyline.

Mr. Naylor, the opera manager, walked his empty establishment with keen pink eyes. Like cheap glassy buttons, they seemed as unreal as they were ugly.

He blinked them constantly, wetting them many times a minute as he searched the opera for a dawdling janitor or any other kind of trespasser. He moved with his hands perched awkwardly on his hips, smacking his mouth as though he needed a drink. His tongue was pasty and sticky with spit. His pink eyes were fiendishly sharp.

He stopped to check his pocket watch. It was after midnight. One-something. He didn’t bother to tell the exact minutes.

He descended a black stairwell without light and walked stiffly across the ornate carpet of the ground floor. When he seemed satisfied that everything was secure he stopped and stood in the foyer for a long time, listening to the quiet.

Finally he turned and stalked down an obscure corridor that led beneath the stairs. It was filled with buckets and mops and push brooms and bottles of wax. Mr. Naylor unlocked a short door, barely four feet tall, at the back of the passageway. Like a grasshopper folding its legs in impossible compression he climbed into the cramped space, forcing his body down between his legs and bending his neck in such a way that it looked like he had been murdered and stuffed inside. His hand reached out and pressed a square button on the wall then quickly withdrew like a tentacle, afraid of being severed.

The button clicked and a dull banging motor that filled the space with the smell of burnt grease slowly unwound the service elevator on its frayed and shaky cable, sinking Mr. Naylor into questionable depths.

He was quite uncomfortable, the descent excruciatingly slow. He smacked his mouth and waited patiently as the elevator trembled slightly and the banging motor strained.

There was no light. His pink eyes couldn’t see a thing.

When the ride finally ended he pushed open a crude hatch, much different than its walnut-paneled twin far above, and stepped into a dark space, grasshopper legs unfolding.

He stood in an immense barrel vault similar to the secret meat rail Caliph had ridden with Mr. Vhortghast. This, however, was better lit with candles and phosphorescent fungus and odd lights that seemed to issue from below the waterline.

Mr. Naylor walked along a cement platform, having picked up a candle box to light his way. He descended some steps into the water and sloshed toward an island of rounded brick that raised its slippery hump above the lake of sewage, shoes instantly ruined.

“Cut that light you muck!” said a voice from the island. It was a hideous garbled voice, barely capable of human articulation. Mr. Naylor tossed the candle box into the lake as if it had been crumpled wax paper from one of the sandwich shops on Freshet Way. It sank almost immediately. The light went out.

A vague stink issued from the darkness at the top of the domed island. Much different from sewage. It stank like rotting salmon—a stench that gripped Mr. Naylor with fear. Perhaps one of
them
had come. One of the
flawless
!

“Lift your shirt, muckety,” said the same ruthless voice. Mr. Naylor obeyed. His pink eyes were getting used to the gloom. He could make out dark shapes crouched around the slick crown of the island, buttery with fungal growths. He hunkered down to join them after eyes better than his had found the tattoo above his navel.

Another shape started burping. Hot, reeking blasts erupted noisily into the already close air.

Several eructations followed, resonant and deep. Soon the island was moaning with them, guttural and melancholy sounding. They were like the sounds of strange frogs, sad and pitched. Changeable. Now like something gasping through a reed. Now like great volumes of slow wind yawning through the sewers.

Mr. Naylor knew the sounds traveled for miles. He had overheard a man at the opera telling another man about his singing toilet. How he had felt the reverberations in his ass and leapt up, the
Herald
and his smoke still in hand, looking fearfully into the water as though something might
reach out and grab him. “It sang,” he said. “Like a drafty window, sort of, but I’m telling you: my toilet sang.”

Mr. Naylor pictured the man after several ineffective flushes, watching the bowl continue to vibrate, holding his breath and straining to hear the very faint and secret sounds of the Iscan Council of the W
llin Droul.

Mr. Naylor was not participating as much as the others. His weak body could not produce the sounds that the other Council members could. Thankfully, none of the flawless were here tonight. He did not relish the chance of being randomly eaten.

Mr. Naylor did not participate but he did pay close attention. They were telling a story he had already heard about one of the flawless that had walked lines to the Porch of S
th in search of the book. One of the flawless had been beaten back because the book’s owner had made a pact with
The Hidden
.

“She has it! She has it!” bellowed one of the black shapes. Its language was not spoken in anything resembling human form, but Mr. Naylor understood.

“How can you be sure?” moaned another.

“I told you, word has come from Y
loch. They verified the story.”

“Yes, but we’ve heard nothing from them for decades and now they want us to storm Isca Castle? How do they know she’s coming here? How do they know anything at all?”

“Those in
lung know. If those in
lung find out we are loath help—”

“We are not loath to help.” The amount of phlegm in the voice made it seem like the speaker would choke. “I do not even want to talk about such a thing. We will help. We must help. We have sat useless for centuries and now when word comes, we try to pretend that we know better? Even these brainless mucks are smart enough to listen and obey.”