"Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav Praise," grated one of the blinking men from Inexplicable Arts. "Is this your doing?"
"I am as surprised as any of you," he said with complete honesty, meantime casting another glance over his shoulder to be sure that Dismé was indeed out of sight, though that in itself was a cause for worry. She had taken a door that led into the bowels of the Fortress; it was easy to lose oneself in there; and some places could be dangerous, especially a woman alone.
As though echoing his thought, Rashel cried, "It was a woman, wasn't it. I heard a woman's voice. Where is she?"
"The voice came from the artifact," said the doctor, though he was not at all sure that was true. Certainly it had come from the vicinity of the device. Dismé had been very much in that vicinity though the voice had not sounded like hers.
"But there was someone here!"
"The person left," someone said.
There was a babble among those assembled, Rashel showed signs of emerging from shock, and though she had not recognized Dismé, the doctor decided not to wait until she had a chance to replay the event in her mind. He left them jabbering behind him and achieved his apartment by the quickest route known to him. He found Dismé already there, however, in the tiny bedroom, staring alternately into the mirror and at the Book of Bertral, open upon the bed.
"What happened in there?" he asked.
She turned on him glowing eyes and a face that seemed carved of stone. "Later."
"Dismé," he cried. "I need to know. How did you find your way back up here?"
"You need to know no more than I," she said in a voice like boulders rolling together under the sea. "And I have no idea how I got here. Something knew the way, and I followed the something." She took a deep breath and said, in a slightly calmer voice. "Perhaps matters will come clearer with a little time."
The tone of her voice was so forbidding, so different from her normal intonation, that he dared not pursue the matter. Instead—assuring himself repeatedly that he was not frightened of her, that he had no reason to be afraid of her, that he had not ever, in any way harmed her—he fetched a bottle from the bedside cupboard and poured himself a drink. When she moved away from the book, he retrieved it. The illustrated Dezmai of the Drums bore a twisted line of light upon her forehead. The line had been on the page before, but it had not glowed until now. He leafed through the book, finding that other illustrations also glowed with light. Camwar of the Cask, glowing. Tamlar of the Flames. Rankivian of the Spirits. Among others. He read the concluding lines once more:
"Let him who reads pay heed..."
He turned. Reading over his shoulder was Dismé—a somewhat more familiar Dismé except for the blazing sign.
"Did you know this would happen?" she asked in an angry voice more like her own, brushing the sign on her forehead with her fingers, as though to verify it was there. She stared at him imperiously, awaiting his response.
"I didn't expect anything like this to happen," he said, flushing. "I was just throwing odd rabbits into the pot."
She turned, her long sleeve dragging across the table where the small drum lay. It fell to the floor. When she picked it up, it roared like a far-off peal of thunder, and went on roaring until she set it down. She looked at it in astonishment.
She said, "Where and when did you find that book."
He laid it down, gripped his hands together to keep them from shaking, and told her how he had found it. "... and it was wrapped in oiled canvas and stitched tight. There were tools there. I took a shovel and dug it up."
"Ah," she murmured. "So."
He gulped, drily. "I retained presence of mind enough to fill in and litter the hole. No one else knows it was there."
Her lips quirked in a smile. "If the Regime were aware of this, you wouldn't last long, Doctor."
He shrugged, saying wryly, "As you may have gathered, I have no great confidence in the Regime. I think some things are safer buried. I've spent days looking at this book, at your name in it. Dismé—Dezmai. Close, as you said..."
"Who sent you the letter you mentioned?"
He frowned again. "I don't know. I assumed it was someone who knew both you and me quite well, but it was unsigned and delivered in an unconventional way. All the mystification was intended to be intriguing, so I sent for you as soon as I knew where you were. You came, and everything ... just seemed..."
"Foreordained," she said, with stone in her voice once more. "Yes, Colonel Doctor, it seems that something certainly was."
"There's something else," he said, reaching into his pocket. "When I was a child, very young, my own mother gave me this little book. See here, there's a prayer for the soul of a departed one. Can you read that?" He handed it to her.
"It calls upon Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun," she said.
"And I have called on them, from time to time. Now see here," and he turned to the gray pages that followed the blue ones in the Book of Bertral. "Here are Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun. Here, evidently, they have been from the beginning. Who knew that? How did their names come to appear in a book given to me decades ago? It is a puzzle, like the puzzle of the letter I received with your name in it."
"Your letter writer may have desired my downfall, or yours," she snarled. "Did you think of that?"
"I always think of that," he said, slightly angry himself. "Among the Spared, someone always desires another's downfall. However, if we are paralyzed by that, we never do anything."
"True." She took a deep breath. "So what do you plan now?"
He murmured, "For tonight, we hide you, Dismé. So your sister won't see you or that sign on your face."
She looked at herself in the mirror once more. "It's nice to know you can be sensible on occasion." She went into the adjoining room, where she had left her own outer clothing.
He wiped his forehead, saying, "There's a cloak in there for you. We leave tomorrow at dawn, as planned."
"We can't leave without our children. We cannot travel without them." Her voice was still remote and echoing, but it sounded amused, for all its distance.
"I meant to introduce you to them early tomorrow morning but now will be better. In fact, it may be best if you don't go back to your room until much later. I didn't count on all this much disturbance. Though I doubt it, your sister might realize who she saw down there, and decide to visit you at once."
"All my things for the trip are under the bed, so the keeper wouldn't see I had packed for a trip. You have my book."
He fetched the Latimer book from his cache, then attempted his former insouciance. "We'll get your clothing after everything calms down. Let's go call upon Bobly and Bab."
"Bobly and Bab?" She came into the room, neat and ordinary, the gleaming sign upon her brow hidden by a scarf.
"They are brother and sister, which is good, since those are the roles they play. They are in their thirties, which is also good, since they have acquired circumspection and reason."
"Children of thirty? I'm not that old myself!" Her voice was now almost itself once more. "What am I to do about this?" she gestured at her forehead. "We don't want this seen, do we?"
"You've hidden it well enough, for now."
"I'll take the Nell Latimer book. Have you read it?"
"Yes. With some understanding and more confusion." He handed it to her, and she put it in the pocket of her cloak. He led her out onto the window ledge—which he noted she walked along freely, unafraid of its height—and into the narrow maintenance hall, down that to a precipitous stair leading to other narrow corridors, one of which had several cobweb festooned doors along it. The doctor knocked twice on one of these, then twice again, then once.
The door opened and a tousled head looked out from sleepy eyes. A little light-haired person, perhaps five or six years old, dressed in an child's pink nightgown, saying, "Well, Doctor, it's a bit late for it, but how nice of you to call. Come in. Don't disturb the spiders."
They stepped inside, ducking to avoid the webs, as another
little person came sleepily into the room, a male version of his sister, neither of them any larger than a small child, and each with a child's voice, face, and manner.
"Dismé, may I introduce Abobalee Finerry and her brother, Ababaidio. Otherwise known as Bobly and Bab."
"We're all packed," Bobly chirruped. "Ready to leave at the crack of dawn, if that's what you came to ask."
The doctor shook his head. "Actually, I've brought you your mama." The doctor pulled Dismé forward. "Can you give her my bed for tonight? She shouldn't be seen just now, though she'll have to pick up her things from her rooms before dawn."
Bab turned to Dismé, inquiringly. "Are you packed, Mother dear?"
Dismé blinked at the designation, smiling a little. "I packed a bundle. It's under my bed. Everything's in it including the clothes I plan to wear."
"She can't be seen," whispered Bobly to the doctor. "She's been a naughty girl?"
"No." The doctor shook his head. "She's been quite ... ah amazing, as a matter of fact, but someone wants to harass her and I'd rather she had a good night's sleep."
"Ah, well," said Bobly, with a thoughtful look. "We'll have to think of something. Later."
"Yes," agreed the doctor, rather wearily. "Later."
Bobly looked him up and down. "You'll need to get back into your usual haunts, won't you? We hear something weird and wonderful's happened. The place is buzzing like a hive about spectacles and marvels and all sorts of upsets! Most likely the big men will be calling meetings right and left. Wouldn't do for the Most High Colonel Doctor to be where he couldn't be found!"
"There's talk already?" the doctor exclaimed. "What weird and wonderful thing?"
"Apparitions. Angelic voices coming from the cellars, things exploding, then disappearing. Oh, my yes. Much, much talk. Music, it's said. Drummers. A whole connivance and contraption. So, you'll be wanted."
He hesitated, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes on Dismé.
She murmured, "We left connivances and contraptions in plain view in your apartment, Doctor. Items of incriminating nature that probably should be put away."
The doctor slapped his forehead with his hand, cursing at himself. The book, laid out for all and sundry to peer at. Her costume. Oh, my yes. "Later," he said, taking himself out the door. "Keep her out of sight."
"He's been up to mischief again," said Bab.
Dismé regarded the two of them, looking from face to face. "You're really twins, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Bobly, "And people of our size aren't uncommon in New Kansas, though the Regime thought we were children when they kidnapped us from our caravan. They do that, you know."
Dismé nodded "I know. My best friend was taken that way."
"Luckily, they thought us too young for rape, so we arrived here bruised but mostly unharmed. Luckily, the doctor is the one who examines youngsters, deciding if they need whatever help he can provide, including getting them across the border and back to their families."
"How does he do that?"
"Oh, he claims children are ill with some catching disease, and he sends them to a clinic on the far edge of Praise or Comador, and then he loses the record, which isn't difficult or unusual, and the children just sort of get lost. Anyhow, he knew immediately we weren't children, and he's the one who helped us disappear before we disappointed the Regime by failing to grow up. They wouldn't have kept us, you know."
"The Regime?"
"Oh, my no. We'd have been slaughtered long since like any other freak. Any abnormal thing is demon touched, you know that. Fit only for bottling, if that. But the doctor gained us a reprieve."
"He keeps you here?"
Bobly replied, "He doesn't keep us at all. He offered to return us or let us be part of his ... efforts. We took a liking to him. We approve of his efforts, so we decided to stay for the time being. He found us this safe lair, and we travel around among the towns, dressed as children, acting like children, then when we're in here, we're ourselves. Now, bed for you!"
Dismé looked about herself, aware of weariness for the first time, but seeing nowhere to lie down except the floor. Bab, however, bent down and pushed on a molding which ran along the bottom of the paneled wall. The molding, and the knee-high length of wooden skirting to which it was attached, slid inward a few inches, then upward and out of sight, disclosing a long, low, floor-level cubby hole. Inside, level with the floor, she saw the long side of a mattress with pillows and a blanket.
"Hocus-pocus," he said. "Grumfalokus. That's where the doctor sleeps when he's hiding from his mother."
"From his mother?" Dismé laughed, breathlessly. "I didn't think he had a mother?"
Bobly said, "The doctor's real mother was one Aretha Camish Comador, but he was orphaned young. This one is his step-mother, a sort of half-aunt married to the doctor's father. His step-mother's always on him about being nonconformist and maybe catching the Disease. You slip in there, lady, and have a bit of rest. Later we'll figure out how to get your things."
After a moment's consideration as to the best method of getting into the bed, she lay face down on the floor next to the opening and rolled through it onto her back, which left her supine in the center of the narrow mattress. She felt of the outer wall, finding it to be built of stone, roughly mortared. The air was fresh and rather cold, so it wasn't a coffin. She wasn't really closed in.
Bab asked her curiously. "What's that on your forehead?"
Dismé felt for her scarf, which had come loose in the rolling about. "I have no idea. It came ... today."
"Does it hurt?"
She thought about it for a moment. "It tingles. Not as bad as when your leg goes to sleep, but rather like that."
Bab bent to look into her face. "Now I'll lower the board. You latch it from your side. The latch is there by your left hand, and that way you're safe. It's counter-weighted, so you can raise it with a fingertip if you want to get out."
The board slid closed, leaving her in darkness. She fumbled for the latch and pressed it home. For a few moments, she heard muffled conversation from outside, then silence. There were blankets folded along the wall, and she pulled them over her, snuggling into the warmth. She was weary enough now to let go of the self she had been holding like a screen between Dismé and the recent happening. The person inside her was no longer herself. Something wonderful and dreadful had happened. Roarer? she suggested. Is that you?
Don't worry about it.
But I'm all strange, changed.
Not at all. I've visited here before, from time to time. You've heard my drums, roaring.
And what am I to do?
Just go on being. All will take care of itself.
Go on being what?
Why don't you start by getting some rest?
Which, after only a few more dazed and wondering moments, she did.
Above her in the Fortress, Rashel was climbing the stairs to the corridor where Dismé lived, furious at what had happened and eager to take it out on someone. She approached the keeper's cubby and demanded to be taken to Dismé's room.
"She's not there," said the keeper, one Livia Squin, second cousin to a minor Turnaway who'd provided her with the job.
"I didn't ask if she were there, I asked to be taken there," said Rashel in her most infuriating voice.
The keeper was given to irascibility at the best of times, which this was not. "Not allowed to," she said. "Not unless she asked me to, and she didn't."
"I, Madam, am here on Regime business. Dismé Deshôll is my sister."
"I don't know that, do I?"
"My identity card, Madam." Rashel handed it over.
"This doesn't tell me you're her sister." The keeper stared at her, eyes bugged out, teeth stubbornly clenched.
Rashel gave her a long, measuring look. "It's very strange. I don't know you at all, and yet I think ... I think I detect signs of the Disease in you. Being unnecessarily obstructive is one of the symptoms. I know, because my husband had the Disease. I knew
when he started getting obstructive that he must have it, and what do you know? He did! It must be that demons have gotten to you somehow. I'm meeting with the chiefs of Happiness and Enlightenment tomorrow. I think I'll mention it to them..."
The keeper pushed her key across the counter, saying furiously, "She's in room 415, down the hall to the end. Bring back the key when you've unlocked the door."
"Of course," said Rashel. "When I've left a note."
She stalked down the hall, hard heels falling noisily, fingers making an irritating clatter with the key. Once inside she looked about to be sure she was in the right room. Oh, yes. There were books she recognized, and a few items of clothing. They couldn't be paying her much if all she had were these few old rags that she'd had in Faience. A shelf of knick-knacks, a drawer of snacks including a half bottle of cider, tightly corked. From her pocket she took a vial half-filled with a grayish powder. A moment's search turned up a corkscrew. She opened the bottle and emptied the contents of the vial into it, meantime chanting an incantation in which the ingredients of the potion figured along with long sleeping and horrid wakening. She set the bottle on the chest, the cork slightly loosened, to make it easier to remove.
She crowed to herself, quite audibly: "She'll drink that tonight or tomorrow. I'll stay in Hold until I can find her body and claim it. She won't really be dead. Not if Hetman Gone's recipe's a good one."
She started to leave the room, then remembered her reason for being there, the note. She found a bit of paper and jotted a few words: "Sorry to have missed you, see you tomorrow, your sister, Rashel."
General Gowl had fallen into a drunken sleep on the sofa in the penthouse, following an afternoon's dalliance with a new and excitingly unwilling servant girl. He was awakened by a terrible voice calling his name. Groaning, he forced himself to sit up, then to rise and stand awkwardly in the middle of the room, hearing the summons. Where was the girl? Who had wakened him?