as the seeds of a dandelion. As if the sound had torn him apart.
Outside, Hoegbo on tore off his mask, knelt, and threw up beside the fountain that guarded the path toAlbumuth Boulevard. Behind him, across a square of dark green grass, the bodies of Daffed, his daughters, his other son, smoldered gray and black. The charred smell mixed with mildew and the rain that stippled his back. His arms and legs trembled with an enervating weakness. His mouth felt hot and dry. For a long time, he sat in the same position, watching pinpricks break his reflection in the fountain.
He shivered as the water shivered.
He had never come this close before. Either they had died long before he arrived or long a er he le. The solicitor’s liquid giggle trickled through his ears, along with the so pop of the spores. He shuddered, relaxed, shuddered again.
When his assistant Alan Bristlewing questioned, as he o en did, the wisdom of taking on such hazardous work, Hoegbo on would smile and change the subject. He could not choose between two conflicting impulses: the upswelling of excitement and the desire to flee Ambergris and return to Morrow, the city of his birth. As each new episode receded into memory, his nerve returned, somehow stronger.
The boy’s arm, fused to his suitcase.
Holding on to the lichen-flecked stone lip of the pool, Hoegbo on plunged his head into the smooth water. The chill shocked him. It prickled his skin, cut through the numbness to burn the inside of his nose.
A sob escaped him, and another, and then a third that bent him over the water again. The back of his neck was suddenly cool. When he pulled away, he looked down at his reflection — and the mask he had made to hide his emotions was gone. He was himself again.
Hoegbo on stood up. Across the courtyard, the Cappan’s men had abandoned the bodies to begin the task of nailing boards across the doors and windows of the mansion. No one pulled the shades open to protest being trapped inside. No one banged on the door, begging to be let out. They had already begun their journey.
One look at his face as he staggered to safety had told the Cappan’s men everything. No doubt they would have boarded him in too, if not for the bribes and his previous record of survival.
Hoegbo on wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. The merchandise he had bought would molder in the mansion, unused and unrecorded except in his ledger of “Potential Acquisitions: Lost.” Depending on which hysteria-induced procedure the Cappan had adopted this fortnight, the mansion grounds might be cordoned off or the mansion itself might be put to the torch.
The clock struck midnight.
The cage stood beside him, slick with rain. Hoegbo on had gripped its handle so hard during his escape — from every corner, Daffed’s infernal collection of dead things staring innocently at him — that he had been branded where the skin had not been rubbed off his palm. He bore the mark of the handle: a delicate filigree of unfamiliar symbols from behind which strange eyes peered out. In the fading light, with the rain falling harder, the fungi appeared to have been washed off the cover of the cage. Perversely, this fact disappointed him. With each new encounter, he had come to expect further revelations.
Blinking away the rain, Hoegbo on let out a deep breath, stuffed his mask in a pocket, wrapped the cloth around his injured hand, and picked up the cage. It was heavier than he remembered it, and oddly balanced. It made him list to the side as he started walking up the path to the main road. He would have to hurry if he was to make the curfew imposed by the Cappan.
Ambergris at dusk, occluded and darkened by the rain that spla ered on sidewalks, ra led against rooftops, struck windows, hinted at a level of debauchery almost as unnerving to Hoegbo on as the way, whenever he stopped to switch the cage from his le to his right hand and back again, the weight never seemed the same.
The city that flourished from wholesome activity by day became its opposite by night. Orgies had been reported in abandoned churches. Grotesque and lewd water puppet shows were staged down by the docks. Weekly, the merchant quarter held midnight auctions of paintings that could only be termed obscene. The fey illustrated books of Collart and Slothian enjoyed a popularity that placed the authors but a single step below the Cappan in status. In the Religious Quarter, the hard-pressed Truffidian priests tried to wrest back authority from the conflicting prophets Peterson and Stra on, whose dueling theologies infected ever-more violent followers.
At the root of this immorality: the renewed presence of the gray caps, who in recent years came and went like the ebb and flow of a tide — now underground, now above ground, as if in a perpetual migration between light and dark, night and day. Always, the city reacted to their presence in unpredictable ways.
What choice did the city’s inhabitants have but to go about their business, hoping they would not be next, blind to all but their own misfortunes? It was now one hundred years since the Silence, when thousands had vanished without a trace, and people could be forgiven their loss of memory. Most people no longer thought of the Silence on a daily basis. It did not figure into the ordinary sorrows of Ambergris’
inhabitants so much as into the weekly sermons of the Truffidians or into the worries of the Cappan and his men.
As Hoegbo on walked home, street lamps appeared out of the murk, illuminating fleeting figures: a priest holding his robe up as he ran so he wouldn’t trip on the hem; two Dogghe tribesmen hunched against the closed doors of a bank, their distinctive green spiraled hats pulled down low over their weathered faces.
Of the recent Occupation, no sign remained except for painted graffi ti urging the invaders to go home.
But Hoegbo on still came upon the faintly glowing, six-foot-wide purplish circles that showed where, before the Silence, huge mushrooms had been chopped down by worried authorities.
Hoegbo on’s wife was already asleep when he walked up the seven flights of stairs and entered their apartment. She had turned off the lamps because it gave her the advantage in case of an intruder. The faint scent of lilacs and honeysuckle told him the flower vendor from the floor above them had been by to see Rebecca.
A dim half-light shone from the living room to his le as he set down the cage, took off his shoes and socks, and hung his raincoat on the coat rack. Directly ahead lay the dining room, with its mold-encrusted window, the purple sheen burning darkly as the rain fed it. He had checked the fungi guard just a week ago and found no leakage, but he made a mental note to check it again in the morning.
Hoegbo on found a towel in the hall closet and used it to dry his face, his hair, and then the outside of the cage. Again picking up the uncomfortable weight of the cage, he tiptoed into the living room, the rug beneath his feet thick but cold. A medley of dark shapes greeted him, most of them items from his store: Lamps and side tables, a couch, a long low coffee table, a book case, a grandfather clock. Beyond them lay the balcony, long lost to fungi and locked up as a result.
The fey light almost transformed the living room’s contents into the priceless artifacts he had told her they were. He had chosen them not for their value but for their texture, their smell, and for the sounds they made when moved or sat upon or opened. Li le of it appealed visually, but she delighted in what he had chosen and it meant he could store the most important merchandise at the shop, where it was more secure.
Hoegbo on set the cage down on the living room table. The palms of his hands were hot and raw from carrying it. He took off the rest of his clothes and laid them on the arm of the couch.
The light came from the bedroom, which lay to the right of the living room. He walked into the bedroom and turned to the le, the closed window above the bed reflecting back the iridescent light that came from her and her alone. Rebecca lay on her back, the sheets draped across her body, exposing the long, black, vaguely tear-shaped scar on her le thigh. He ran his gaze over it lustfully. It glistened like obsidian.
Hoegbo on walked around to the right side and eased himself into the bed. He moved up beside her and pressed himself against the darkness of the scar. An image of the woman from the mansion flashed through his mind.
Rebecca turned in her sleep and put an arm across his chest as he moved onto his back. Her hand, warm and so, was as delicate as the starfish that glided through the shallows down by the docks. It looked so small against his chest.
The light came from her open eyes, although he could tell she was asleep. It was a silvery glow awash with faint phosphorescent sparks of blue, green, and red: shivers and hiccups of splintered light, as if a half-dozen tiny lightning storms had welled up in her gaze. What rich worlds did she dream of? And, for the thousandth time: What did the light mean? He had met her on a business trip toStockton, a er the fungal infection that had resulted in the blindness, the odd light, the scar. He had never known her whole.
Who was this stranger, so pale and silent and beautiful? A joyful sorrow rose within him as he watched the light emanating from her. They had argued about having children just the day before. Every word he had thrown at
