Bristlewing had already made himself scarce— Hoegbo on could hear him pulling some artifact out from behind a row of old bookcases stacked high with cracked flowerpots — and the cage stood on the sideboard of his desk as if it had always been there.
Hoegbo on hung his raincoat on one of the six coat racks lined up like soldiers in the farthest corner of the offi ce. Then he took the past day’s book of inventory and purchases and walked to the door that led to the room next to the bathroom. The door was very old, wormholed, and studded with odd metal symbols that Hoegbo on had taken from an abandoned Manziist shrine.
Hoegbo on unlocked the door and went inside. The door shut silently behind him and he was alone. The light that cast its yellowing glare upon the room came from an old-fashioned squid oil lamp nailed into the room’s far wall.
Nothing, at first glance, distinguished the room from any other room. It contained a tired-looking dining table around which stood four worn chairs. To one side, plates, cups, bowls, and utensils sat atop a cabinet with a mirror that served as a backboard. The mirror was veined with a purplish fungus that had managed to infiltrate minute fractures in the glass. He had worried that the Cappan’s men might confiscate the mirror on one of their weekly inspections of his store, but they had ignored it, perhaps recognizing the age of the mirror and the way mold had itself begun to grow on the fungus.
The table held three place se ings, the faded napkins unfolded and haphazard. Across the middle of the table lay a parchment of faded words, so old that it looked as if it might disintegrate into dust at the slightest touch. A bo le of port, half-full, stood on the table next to a bare space in front of the fourth chair.
By tradition, recently-established, Hoegbo on sat there for his daily readings from the books of inventory. Bound in red leather, the books were imported from Morrow. The off-white pages were thin as tissue paper to accommodate as many sheets as possible. The two books Hoegbo on had taken with him represented the inventory for the past three months. Sixteen others, as massive and unwieldy, had been wrapped in a blanket and carefully hidden beneath the floorboards in his office. (Two separate notebooks to record unfortunate but necessary dealings with Ungdom andSla ery, suitably yellow and brown, had been tossed into an unlocked drawer of his desk.)
Yesterday had been slow — only five items sold, two of them phonograph records. He frowned when he read Bristlewing’s description of the buyers as “Short lady with walking stick. Did not give a name.” and
“Man looked sick. Took forever to make up his mind. Bought one record a er all that time.” Bristlewing did not respect the system. By contrast, a typical Hoegbo on-penned buyer entry read like an investigative report: “Miss Glissandra Beckle, 4232 East Munrale Mews, late 40s. Gray-silver hair.
Startling blue eyes. Wore an expensive green dress but cheap black shoes, scuffed. She insisted on calling me ‘Mr. Hoegbo on.’ She examined a very expensive Occidental vase and commented favorably on a bone hairpin, a pearl snu ox, and a watch once worn by a prominent Truffidian priest. However, she only bought the hairpin.”
If Bristlewing disliked the detail required by Hoegbo on for the ledgers, he disliked the room itself even more. A er carefully cataloguing its contents upon their arrival three years before, Hoegbo on had asked Bristlewing a question.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Old musty room. No air.”
“No. It’s not an old musty room with no air.”
“Fooled me,” Bristlewing had said and, scowling, le him there.
III
But Bristlewing was wrong. Bristlewing did not understand the first thing about the room. How could he?
And how could Hoegbo on explain that the room was perhaps the most important room in the world, that he o en found himself inside it even while walking around the city, at home reading to his wife, or buying fruit and eggs from the farmers’ market?
The history of the room went back to the Silence itself. His great-great-grandfather, Samuel Hoegbo on, had been the first Hoegbo on to move to Ambergris, much against the wishes of the rest of his extended family, including his twenty-year-old son, John, who stayed in Morrow.
For a man who had uprooted his wife and daughter from all that was familiar to take up residence in an unknown, sometimes cruel, city, Samuel Hoegbo on became remarkably successful, establishing three stores down by the docks. It seemed only a ma er of time before more of the Hoegbo on clan moved down to Ambergris.
However, this was not to be. One day, Samuel Hoegbo on, his wife, and his daughter disappeared, just three of the thousands of souls who vanished from Ambergris during the episode known as the Silence—
leaving behind empty buildings, empty courtyards, empty houses, and the assumption among those who grieved that the gray caps had caused the tragedy. Hoegbo on remembered one line in particular from John’s diary: “I cannot believe my father has really disappeared. It is possible he could have come to harm, but to simply disappear? Along with my mother and sister? I keep thinking that they will return one day and explain what happened to me. It is too difficult to live with, otherwise.”
Si ing in his mother’s bedroom with the diary open before him, the young Robert Hoegbo on had felt a chill across the back of his neck. What had happened to Samuel Hoegbo on? He spent many summer a ernoons in the a ic, surrounded by antiquities, speculating on the subject. He combed through old le ers Samuel had sent home before his disappearance. He visited the family archive. He wrote to relatives in other cities. His mother disapproved of such inquiries; his grandmother just smiled and said sadly, “I’ve o en wondered myself.” He could not talk to his father about it; that cold and distant figure was rarely home.
His sister also found the mystery intriguing. They would act out scenarios with the house as the backdrop. They would ask the maids questions to fill gaps in their knowledge and thus uncover the meaning of words like “gray cap” and “Cappan.” His grandmother had even given them an old sketch that showed the apartment’s living room — Samuel Hoegbo on surrounded by smiling relatives on a visit.
But for his sister it was just relief of a temporary boredom and he was soon so busy learning the family business that the mystery faded from his thoughts.
When he reached the age of majority, he decided to leave Morrow and travel to Ambergris. No Hoegbo on had set foot in Ambergris for 90 years and it was precisely for this reason that he chose the city, or so he told himself. In Morrow, under the predatory eye of Richard, he had felt as if none of his plans would ever be successful. In Ambergris, he had started out poor but independent, operating a sidewalk stall that sold fruit and broadsheets. At odd times — at an auction, looking at jewelry that reminded him of something his mother might wear; sneaking around Ungdom’s store examining all that merchandise, so much richer than what he could acquire at the time — thoughts of the Silence wormed their way into his head.
The day a er he signed the lease on his own store, Hoegbo on visited Samuel’s apartment. He had the address from some of the man’s le ers. The building lay in a warren of derelict structures that rose from the side of the valley to the east of the Merchant Quarter. It took Hoegbo on an hour to find it, the carriage ride followed by progress on foot. He knew he was close when he had to climb over a wooden fence with a sign on it that read “Off Limits By Order of the Cappan.” The sky was overcast, the sunlight weak yet bright, and he walked through the tenements feeling ethereal, dislocated. Here and there, he found walls where bones had been mixed with the mortar and he knew by these signs that such places had been turned into graveyards.
When he finally stood in front of the apartment— on the ground level of a three-story building — he wondered if he should turn around and go home. The exterior was boarded up, fire-scorched and splotched with brown-yellow fungi. Weeds had drowned the grass and other signs of a lawn. A smell like dull vinegar permeated the air. The facing rows of buildings formed a corridor of light, at the end of which a stray dog sniffed at the ground, picking up a scent. He could see its ribs even from so far away.
Somewhere, a child began to cry, the sound thin, a enuated, automatic. The sound was so unexpected, almost horrifying, that he thought it must not be a baby at all, but
