The Palace of Laughter (19 page)

M
iles Wednesday, light-headed and nose-pinched, stared in disbelief at the retreating figure of the clown riding the sandbag like a Wild West cowboy. The clown spun with the sandbag, and whistled as he spun, and all at once he let go. Just like that. He curled into a ball as he fell, and hit the middle of a waiting trampoline as though he had been doing it all his life, which indeed he had. As he bounced high in the air the unicycle wobbled past with his two brothers perched on it, one on the other's shoulders. Green Nose landed on top, and the three clowns did a lap of honor around the ring.

The audience stared, glassy-eyed. They were
wiping their mouths with their sleeves, and patting their pockets as though they had forgotten something, but couldn't remember what it was. The red-faced woman had picked herself up from the ring and was brushing sawdust from her rumpled skirt. Behind her the priest hitched up his black trousers and tucked in his black shirt, and the thin man beside him straightened his tie and ran his fingers back through his floppy hair. They all seemed somehow grayer than they had been before.

Genghis was talking to Silverpoint and a clown dressed as a tramp with a downturned mouth. He pointed up at the balcony where Miles was hidden, then turned and moved out of view. The other clowns led the people out through the doors that stood at intervals around the theater. A stilt-walking clown stalked among the shuffling people with a tin megaphone. “Don't forget to collect your free gift on the way out,” he was calling in a pinched voice. The clowns were still in their bizarre outfits, but now as straightfaced as undertakers, all except for Red Nose, Yellow Nose and Green Nose. They had jumped off the unicycle and were helping to herd the audience out, but there was a skip in their step. Now and then one would steal another's hat or do a quick cartwheel, as though they couldn't help it.

The theater was almost empty now. Miles sat up and found that Little was gone. He looked up at the mouth of the tunnel. “Little?” he said. Her head poked out of the hole.

“Just hurry up, will you?” she said. He recognized his own words and smiled sheepishly as he scrambled into the tunnel mouth. Little was waiting for him inside.

“We have to find a way to speak to him,” she whispered.

“To the Great Cortado?” said Miles

“No, to Silverpoint. We have to find out what he's doing here.”

“I don't think that would be a good idea. He might just bring us to Cortado,” said Miles.

Little looked at Miles as though she had been slapped. “You don't know him!” she said. “Silverpoint could never do anything like that.”

“But you saw him. He was right in the thick of things. He can hear the Great Cortado just the same as us, and he knows what's going on.”

“It doesn't matter. If he's doing it, he must have a good reason.”

“Maybe he has,” said Miles, “but we will have to be very careful.” He could see that it had come as a shock to Little that Silverpoint was taking part in
the Great Cortado's scheme, and he didn't want to upset her any further.

“Little…,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. Miles searched for the words. He had never been very good at apologies.

“I wasn't very nice to you earlier,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Little smiled at him in the gloom. “Forget it,” she said. “There is bad music going on here. It turned your soul for a while. I could feel it too.”

“It was just music,” said Miles.

“There's no such thing as ‘just music,'” said Little. “Trust me. Now we have to find a way out of these tunnels. There are so many of them we could be lost in here forever.”

“I think we crossed over a trapdoor on our way in,” said Miles. “That must lead somewhere.”

They went back the way they had come, making the steep climb at the start of the tunnel with difficulty. There was no sound now, except for their own breathing and the shuffling of their hands and knees on the stone floor. Miles found that the way back was easier to find if he didn't think about it too hard and just went with his instinct. The tunnels twisted and turned until he began to feel as
though he had been swallowed by a giant snake. Some trick of acoustics made the sound of Little's breathing seem louder by the minute, and Miles had the uncomfortable sensation that she was getting heavier and larger at the same time. A panicky feeling was growing in his stomach. “Are you okay?” he called.

“I'm okay,” said Little, “but I think somebody's following us.”

A chuckle followed them down the dark tunnel. “She's right you know. Got it in one. Bang on the nail! The cat's on yer tails, little mouses.” It was a man's voice with a nasal sound, as though its owner had one of those nasty sore throats that make it difficult to speak.

“Go faster,” hissed Miles. Terrified as he was, he would have preferred to let Little get in front, but the tunnel was narrow, and he was afraid that they would simply get jammed.

“Faster, he says,” came the voice from behind him. It was getting closer. “Faster's no good. Better if yiz stop now and make it easier on all of us. Well, easier on me anyhow. I reckon youse two are dog meat either way.”

Miles could feel his chest tighten. He was sure that they should have reached the trapdoor by now.
“Keep with me,” he called to Little.

“I'm right here,” panted Little.

“Me too, little mouses!” chuckled the man's voice. “Right behind yiz.”

Thunka thunka thunk
went Miles's hands and knees on the wooden boards. He was moving so fast that he was over the trapdoor before he realized it. “Stop there,” he hissed to Little as he squeezed himself around in the narrow tunnel. His fingers scrabbled around the edges of the trapdoor until they felt a smooth brass ring. He yanked at it. Nothing happened. He took a deep breath and pulled again, but the door was stuck fast with time and dirt. “Hurry,” said Little.

Miles wished the tiger could have come with them into the dark tunnels. The memory of the smooth power of the animal's muscles working effortlessly beneath him seemed to fill his tired arms with new strength, and he heaved at the trapdoor again. This time there was an unsticking sound, the trapdoor lifted, and light flooded up into the tunnel.

“Gotcha, little mousey” shouted the nasal voice. Little squealed and reached out for Miles across the open trapdoor. Half blinded by the light from below, he could just make out the battered hat and
downturned white mouth of the tramp clown behind her in the tunnel, holding on to her ankle. Miles leaned forward and grabbed Little's outstretched hand. He pulled as hard as he could. The man holding her ankles was taken by surprise. He lost his balance and fell forward through the open mouth of the trapdoor, but he did not let go of Little's ankle, and a moment later all three were out of the tunnel and tumbling through the air. Miles did not have time to see what was below them before the boy, the clown and the angel landed in a heap on the floor.

Unfortunately for the clown, it was he who landed first. Fortunately for Miles and Little, the clown was heavily padded in his tramp's outfit, and it was almost like landing on a rather lumpy sofa. The clown said, “UFFFFF,” and lay winded on the floor. Miles grabbed Little's hand again and jumped to his feet, ready to get a good head start before the clown could regain his breath. He turned to see which way offered the best chance of escape, and found himself face to face with Silverpoint.

They were in a long corridor that curved away into the distance in both directions. It was lit at intervals by gas lamps. Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the light, Miles could see
that in fact the lamps were rather dim. Silverpoint stood right in front of them. Even without the ludicrously tall chef's hat, bent sideways by the ceiling, Miles would have had no trouble guessing that this was the Storm Angel they had been searching for. He was slightly taller than Miles and, forgetting for a moment that he had lived for a millennium or more, looked just slightly older too. His face was pale, almost white, with a thin, straight nose and eyes so dark it was hard to tell if they had any color. He watched as Miles and Little picked themselves up off the floor, much as an eagle might watch rabbits far below him.

“Well done,” he said, and Miles realized he was talking not to them, but to the tramp clown, who had picked himself up and stood panting behind them.

A smile lit up Little's face. “Silverpoint!” she said. Miles gripped her arm, but she did not seem to notice.

Silverpoint looked at her coolly, with no sign of recognition. “There is no Silverpoint,” he said.

Little opened her mouth to speak, but Miles squeezed her arm tighter. The smile faded from her face, and she looked down at the floor. “You're hurting my arm,” she said quietly.

Silverpoint turned his gaze to Miles, looking him straight in the face for longer than most people feel is comfortable. Miles stared back, determined not to be the first to look away.

“Come,” said Silverpoint at last. He turned on his heel and marched down the corridor, his hat swishing against the ceiling. The tramp clown gave them both a shove from behind, but they would have followed anyway. They had, after all, come to this place to find Silverpoint (and Tangerine, of course), and besides, there seemed to be little option. As they walked, Miles looked at Little out of the corner of his eye. She was fighting back the tears.

“We'll get to the bottom of this,” he whispered.

“What does that mean?” she whispered back.

“It means…we'll find the answer,” he said.

“Oh,” said Little.

The corridor ended in a pair of elevator gates, with the darkness of the elevator shaft beyond them. Silverpoint pushed the brass button, and the cables shuddered to life with a grinding sound inside the shaft. A rectangular stack of iron weights, coated with a layer of grease and dust, slid past them slowly on its way down. The cables continued to move and the grinding grew louder, and still the elevator did not come.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Miles.

“Down,” said Silverpoint.

The tramp clown, who had been so talkative in the dark tunnel, seemed to have dried up in Silverpoint's presence. It was not hard to see why. Silverpoint, even though he looked like a boy of eleven or twelve, had the air of a person whom you would not question lightly. He folded his arms and looked at Miles again, a slight frown on his face. He no longer seemed to notice Little at all.

The ornate brass roof of the elevator came into view, and the grinding stopped as the cage drew level with the floor. They entered and Silverpoint closed the doors after them. Now that they were jammed together in a confined space it became clear that the tramp clown took his disguise very seriously, right down to the smell. Standing close behind him, Miles was reminded of the smell that used to lurk behind the big dirty steam-cleaning machines in the Pinchbucket laundry, with a hint of old fish heads and a dash of ditch water thrown in. He wondered if the clown had been a Stinker when he was younger. Little nudged him. She was pinching her nose and squinting her eyes. Miles laughed before he could stop himself, and he saw Silverpoint glance at Little in surprise before turning his face away.

Floor after floor slid up past them, and sometimes coils of thick steel cable looped up outside the elevator like snakes seeking the higher branches of a tree, and still the elevator continued its descent.

Little stood on her toes and whispered in Miles's ear, “Is this what you meant by getting to the bottom of this?”

“Not exactly,” said Miles.

Down and down they went, and still the tramp clown shuffled and stank, and Silverpoint's dark eyes stared at something distant that only he could see.

M
iles Wednesday, underfed, underground and undeterred, sat beside his four-hundred-year-old friend on a wooden bench, deep beneath the Palace of Laughter. The room they were in had once been a dressing room of some sort. There were faded blue stars painted on the crumbling ceiling. On the wall opposite him was a cracked and fly-spotted mirror, surrounded by singed light sockets. All but three of the sockets were empty, and of the three remaining bulbs only one worked. The room had a sad, abandoned feel.

“You'll get food and water later,” Silverpoint had said as he showed them into their makeshift cell.

“What will happen to us?” said Miles.

“Nothing at all, little mouses,” said the tramp clown, finding his tongue again. “You'll just get front-row seats to a nice show. Maybe you'll even get popcorn!” He sniggered and wiped his nose on his sleeve as he left the room. Silverpoint said nothing. Without another glance at his captives he locked the door, leaving them with the silence and the dim yellow light from the lone bulb.

They sat on the bench, listening to the fading footsteps of the tramp clown (only now did Miles notice that Silverpoint's feet made no sound). Little stared at the painted stars on the ceiling.

“Why would people make a box underground, then paint the sky on it?” she asked. Looking away from the fading stars, she reached into her pocket and carefully took out the flower that she had picked beside the stream while the tiger was fishing for trout. It was still as bright and fresh as the moment it was picked, despite all it must have been through in the pocket of her jacket. She twirled the stem in her hands and looked thoughtfully into the heart of the flower. “I thought when we found Silverpoint everything would be okay,” she said.

Miles could think of nothing to say at that moment that would make their situation seem
brighter. “We'll just have to see what happens next,” he said. It did not sound like much of a plan. He began emptying his pockets onto the bench. This is what he found:

• The end of a piece of sausage, soaked in slimy moat water
  
• A brass lighter
  
• A ticket to the Palace of Laughter, which seemed unharmed by its soaking
  
• An empty bottle of Dr. Tau-Tau's Restorative Tonic
  
• The long coil of rope that he had cut from around Little's waist when they reached his barrel
  
• No Tangerine
  

It was not much of an escape kit. He had given away his pocketknife, and had long since lost the heavy bunch of keys he had stolen from the Great Cortado's wagon. He pulled out an old hairpin that was wedged behind a corner of the mirror, and went to the door to see if he could pick the lock. A brass plate had been screwed over the keyhole on the inside, and without his pocketknife he had no way to try and loosen the screws. Under its flaking
pink paint the wooden door was solid.

Little was looking at the bottle that he had fished from the stream. “What do the words say?” she asked. Miles read the label aloud, and Little shook her head sadly.

“This is not good,” she said. “Laughter is a strand of the One Song. It's one of the strongest and brightest, but it lives in harmony with the others. If you tear it out and put it in a bottle, it becomes something else.”

She put the bottle down and stared up again at the bogus sky. “That can't be the real Silverpoint.” She turned to look at Miles. “Silverpoint is a longfeather. He commands the clouds and drives the wind before him. How could he become a clownmaster's lackey?”

“I don't know,” said Miles. He searched for something he could say that would offer a glimmer of hope. “Perhaps he just couldn't show that he knew you in front of the other clown.”

Little shook her head. “You were right, in the tunnel. He doesn't even know me.”

Miles sat down beside her on the bench. There was nothing they could do, locked in a room far underground. He searched for something to distract her. “Tell me more about what it's like where you come from,” he said.

Little closed her eyes again, and leaned back against the wall. “I don't have the words to tell it,” she said. “But I'll try.”

Miles began to clean the mixture of dirt and moat slime from under his fingernails with the hairpin. This is probably not the politest thing you can do when someone is about to tell you about a world of harsh beauty that is almost beyond your imagination, but Miles had never had much training in manners at Pinchbucket House. Little, at any rate, did not seem to mind. As Miles scraped and flicked, she spoke of her home in the sky.

“I come from a place called the Realm,” she began. “It's a place that is never still. Our palaces and halls rise and fall, they grow and move and melt away with the turning of the Earth and with the flow of the wind. You could think of them as ships, but even ships don't join together and break apart as they sail.”

“You're talking about clouds!” said Miles. “Are your palaces clouds?”

“That's how they appear to you,” said Little.

“If I could go up inside a cloud in a hot-air balloon, would I see more people like you?”

Little shook her head. “You would see nothing but gray mist and half-light.”

“Why wouldn't I see them, if they're there?”

Little leaned forward and put her chin in her hands. “Remember the water we saw on the road, walking out of Larde?”

“You mean the mirage?” said Miles.

“We saw water,” said Little firmly, “but when we reached it, we saw nothing. It's the same thing with the cloud palaces. Some things are only seen when they want to be.”

Miles thought about this for a minute. He could see no point in discussing the nature of mirages again with Little. Besides, he had another question, one that had been lurking at the back of his mind for some time. He was almost reluctant to raise the subject, but the question would not go away.

“Little,” he said, “who was that…person who followed us in the city?”

“I don't know, exactly,” said Little quietly.

“Was it the same person who we saw in the circus field?” asked Miles.

“Yes,” said Little. “I mean no.” She sighed. “It's hard to explain.”

Miles tried a different tack. “Why did I feel so tired when we saw him?” he asked.

Little looked about her, as though someone else might be listening in the tiny, bare room.

“What you saw,” she said, “was a Sleep Angel.”

“A Sleep Angel?” echoed Miles. “Is that bad?”

Little nodded. “Most people will meet a Sleep Angel only once, and that's a meeting you shouldn't be in a hurry to keep. It's a Sleep Angel who will carry your last breath from you and release it on the wind.”

Miles was silent. The room seemed strangely still. He pulled his jacket around him, although the air was stuffy and warm.

“Why was he following us?” asked Miles. He was not sure he wanted to know.

“I don't know why,” said Little. “I shouldn't even speak of this—it's not allowed. I'm in enough trouble already.” Their meeting with Silverpoint seemed to have washed away her confidence. She looked small and frightened again, as he had first seen her in the locked trailer. “He must be looking for Silverpoint.”

“Why did we run from him, then? Maybe he could have helped us.”

Little looked at him as though he were crazy.

“Sleep Angels are the highest caste there is. At least the highest I know of. Sleep Angels look after Life and Death. They don't normally make up search parties.” She stared unseeingly at the floor between her feet. “If he's looking for Silverpoint, something is wrong.”

“Maybe he's a friend,” said Miles.

Little laughed. In the tiny room the shine seemed to have gone from her laughter, and somehow it just made Miles feel sad.

“Friendship is an idea that lives down here,” she said. “Where I come from there is duty and loyalty. I suppose loyalty is a friendship of sorts, but everyone knows their place in the Realm. It's not a Sleep Angel's place to concern himself with someone from a lower caste.”

Miles thought about this for a moment. “Are there many castes of Angels?” he asked.

“Of course! There are Wind Angels, Whitefire Angels, and many others.” She seemed glad to leave the topic of the Sleep Angel.

“Whitefire Angels?” said Miles. “What do they do?”

“They draw a map of the One Song on the dome of the night. The map grows and changes as each Song Angel's part is sung. Without it, the Song Angels would lose their way, and the One Song would eventually come undone and all life would be scattered to the darkness. The stars are the crossing points of the Whitefire Map, where the strands of the One Song join each other.”

“But the stars are billions of miles away,” said Miles. “You couldn't reach them in a hundred lifetimes!”

Little smiled. “The stars are a living map on the dome of the night. I know this because I have helped to sing them into place for as long as I can remember.”

Miles's head was beginning to swim. He was not sure whether it was from hunger or the strange notions that Little was releasing in the dimness of the small room.

“I got all my schooling from Lady Partridge,” he said. “She has books full of the knowledge of men who have studied these things for centuries. Clouds are made of water vapor. The stars are suns like ours, so far away that their light is millions of years old when it reaches us. Are you telling me all these things are wrong?”

“No,” said Little. She twirled the flower she had taken from her pocket, then held it out for Miles to take a closer look. The petals were yellow at the center, merging to a deep scarlet at their pointed tips.

“Look at this,” she said. “What would you call it?”

“I don't know the name of it,” said Miles. “It's a yellow flower with red tips.”

“Isn't it a red flower with a yellow center?” asked Little.

“I suppose so. You could call it either.”

“Then just because something is one thing doesn't mean it can't be another,” said Little.

Miles thought about this for a while. It was hard to get his head around it all. He closed his eyes, which made things a little easier. Fat galleons of cloud began to sail through the blue night of his mind's eye. He could see stars winking between them, some closer than the clouds, some farther away. The picture gave him a feeling that everything was working as it should be in the universe, like a well-made clock with many parts. It made him smile.

He dozed fitfully on the hard bench. How long he slept he could not tell, but he was almost sorry when his dreams were interrupted by the muffled jingle of keys outside the door of their makeshift cell.

His stomach, however, was not a bit sorry. As far as he could tell, it was early morning by now, which made it nearly twenty-four hours since they had eaten. “I hope this is food,” he said to Little.

A key turned in the lock with a soft click, and before he had time to wonder who might be outside, the door began to swing open.