City of Saints and Madmen

hesitated, but then his conversation with Raffe came back to him, followed by the irritating image of Shriek’s face as she said, “Interesting.”

He sighed, trembled, and began to walk between two of the buildings, uncomfortable in the shadow of their height, under the blank or cracked windows whose dust-covered panes were somehow predatory.

His cane clacked against rocks, a plaintive sound in that place.

Eventually, he emerged from the alleyway onto a larger street, strewn with rubbish. A few babarusa pigs, all grunts and curved tusks, fought with anemic-looking mushroom dwellers for the offal. The light had faded to a deep blue colder in its way than the temperature. The distant calls to prayer from the Religious Quarter sounded like the cries of men drowning fifty feet underwater.

By the guttering light of a public lamp,Lake made out the name of the street — Salamander — but could not locate it on his map. For a long time, the darkness broken by irregularly-posted lamps, he walked alone, examining signs, finding none of the streets on his map. He kept himself from thinking lost! by trying to decide how best the surrounding shad ows could be captured on canvas.

Gradually, he realized that the darkness, which at least had been broken by the lamps, had taken on a hazy quality through which he could see nothing at all. Fog, come off the River Moth. He cursed his luck.

First, the stars went out, occluded by the weight of the shadows and by the dull, creeping rage of the fog.

It was an angry fog, a sneering fog that ate its way through the sky, through the spaces between things, and it obscured the night. It smelled of the river: of silt and brackish water, of fish and mangroves. It rolled throughLake as if he did not exist. And because of this, the fog madeLake ethereal, for he could no longer see his arms or legs, could feel nothing but the cloying moisture of the fog as it clung to and settled over him. He was a ghost. He was free. There could be no reality to this fog-ridden world. There could be no reality to him while in it.

Lost and lost again, turning in the whiteness, not sure if he had walked forward or retraced his steps. The freedom he had felt turned to fear — fear of the unknown, fear that he might be late. So when he became aware of a dimly bobbing light ahead, he began to fast walk toward it, heedless of obstacles that might make him turn an ankle or fall on his face.

A block later, he came upon the source of the light: the tall, green-hooded, green-robed figure of an insect catcher, his great, circular slab of glass attached to a round, buoy-shaped lantern that swung below it. As with most insect catchers, who are products of famine, this one was thin, with bony but strong arms. The glass was so large that the man had to hold onto it with both gloved hands, while grasshoppers, moths, beetles, and ant queens smacked up against it, trying to get to the light.

The glass functioned like a sticky lens inserted into a circular brass frame; when filled with insects, the lens would be removed and placed in a bag. The insect catcher would then insert a new lens and repeat the process. Once home, the new catch would be carefully plucked off the lens, then boiled or baked and salted, after which the insects would hang from his belt on strings for sale the next day. Many timesLake had spent his evening tying insects into strings, using a special knot taught to him by his father.

Steeped in such memories and in the fog, his first thought was that this man was his father. Why couldn’t it be his father? They would be ghosts together, sailing through the night.

His first words to the insect catcher were tentative, respectful of his own past.

“Excuse me? Excuse me, sir?”

The man turned with a slow grace to peer down at this latest catch. The folds of the insect catcher’s robes covered his face, but for a jutting nose like a scythe.

“Yes?” The man had a deep, sonorous voice.

“Do you know which way toArchmont Lane? My map is no help at all.”

The insect catcher raised one bony finger and pointed upward.

Lakelooked up. There, above the insect catcher’s light, was a sign forArchmont Lane.Lake stood onArchmont Lane.

“Oh,” he said. “Thank you.”

But the insect catcher had already shambled on into the fog, little more than a shadow under a lantern that had already begun to fade…

From there, it was relatively easy to find45 Archmont Lane — unlike the other entrances to left and right, it suffered few signs of disrepair and a lamp blazed above the doorway. The numerals “4” and “5” were rendered in glossy gold, the door painted maroon, the steps swept clean, the door knocker a twin to the seal on the envelope — all permeated by a sudsy smell.

Reassured by such cleanliness, Raffe’s advice still whispering in his ear,Lake raised the doorknocker and lowered it — once, twice, thrice.

The door opened a crack, light flooded out, andLake caught sight of a wild, staring eye, rimmed with crusted red. It was an animal’s eye, the reflection in its black pupil his own distorted face.Lake took a quick step back.

The voice, when it came, sounded unreal, falsified: “What do you want?”

Lakeheld up the invitation. “I have this.”

A blink of the horrible eye. “What does it say?”

“An invitation to a—”

“Quick! Put on your mask!” hissed the voice.

“My mask?”

“Your mask for the masquerade!”

“Oh! Yes. Sorry. Just a moment.”

Lakepulled the rubber frog mask out of his pocket and put it over his head. It felt like slick jelly. He did not want it next to his skin. As he adjusted the mask so he could see out of the eyeholes that jutted from the frog’s nostrils, the door opened, revealing a splendid foyer and the outstretched arm of the man with the false voice. The man himself stood to one side and Lake, his vision restricted to what he could see directly in front of him, had to make do with the beckoning white-gloved hand and a whispered, “Enter now!” He walked forward. The man slammed the door behind him and locked it.

Ahead, through glass paneled doors,Lake saw a staircase of burnished rosewood and, at the foot of the stairs, a globe of the world upon a polished mahogany table with lion paws for feet. Candles guttered in their slots, the wavery light somehow religious. On the left he glimpsed tightly stacked bookcases hemmed in by generous tables, while to the right the house opened up onto a sitting room, flanked by portraits. Black drop clothes covered the name plate and face of each portrait: a line of necks and shoulders greeted him from down the hall. The smell of soap had faded, replaced by a faint trace of rot, of mildew.

Lake turned toward the front door and the person who had opened it — a butler, he presumed — only to find himself confronted by a man with a stork head. The red-ringed eyes, the cruel beak, the dull white of the feathered face, merged with a startlingly pale neck atop a gaunt body clothed in a black-and-white suit.

“I see that you are dressed already,”Lake managed, although badly shaken. “And, unfortunately, as the natural predator of the frog. Ha ha. Perhaps, though, you can now tell me why I’ve been summoned here, Mister…?”

The joke failed miserably. The attempt to discover the man’s name failed with it. The Stork stared at him as if he came from a foreign, barbaric land. The Stork said, “Your jacket and your cane.”

Lakedisliked relinquishing his cane, which had driven off more than one potential assailant in its day, but handed both it and his jacket to the Stork. After placing them in a closet, the Stork said, “Follow me,”

and led Lake past the stairs, past the library, and into a study with a decorative fireplace, several upholstered chairs, a handful of glossy black wooden tables and, adorning the walls, eight paintings by masters of the last century: hunting scenes, city scapes, still lifes — all genuine and all completely banal.

The Stork beckonedLake to a couch farthest from the door. The couch was bounded by a magnificent, if unwieldy, rectangular box of a table that extended some six feet down the width of the room. It had deco rative handles, but no drawers.

AsLake sat, making certain not to bang his gimp leg against the table, he said, “Who owns this house?”

to the Stork’s retreating back.

The Stork spun around, put a finger to its beak, and said, “Don’t speak! Don’t speak!”

Lakenodded in a gesture of apology. The master of the house obviously valued his privacy.

The Stork stared atLake a moment longer, as if afraid he might say something more, then turned on his