“‘The Enchanted Garden of the Poor,’” Jim answered. “It has camels and songbirds and merchants and everything!”
The woman with the feathered throat let out a trill of surprise, and then Lenore asked, “You speak Kazakh?”
“Ärïne!” Jim exclaimed gleefully. Roger didn’t know if this was good Kazakh or bad Kazakh, but Jim began to natter in Kazakh happily with Lenore while the woman sang with a songbird’s voice, and then everyone began talking and Roger felt rather lost.
The ace spokeswoman eventually tapped Roger on the arm and asked quietly, “Your friend, he says he is not an ace?”
“It’s better not to ask,” Roger whispered back. “Trust me.”
The spokeswoman nodded, watching Jim, as did Roger, until Jim, pausing to listen to some stories in Kazakh, took an energy bar out of his back pocket and took a bite.
Suddenly Jim began to jitter, then his hair began to float in the air with static. Sparks danced in his eyes like a Jacob’s ladder, then a huge surge of electricity shot out of the top of his head, leaving him with a mad-scientist coiffure and replacing the smell of stale sweat and sardines with the clean scent of ozone.
Everyone stared at him aghast, even Lenore. “ShockSnack!” Jim explained, holding up the energy bar like he was in a commercial. “It gives you a jolt of energy!” He then examined the electric blue wrapper, which, Roger noted, was stamped with the logo and likenesses of the trio from The Dead Report. “I don’t know how the FDA ever approved this.…”
“We call him Gimcrack,” Roger explained to the spokeswoman. “Jim believes in advertising.…”
Her brown eyes went wide. “I am called the Tulpar.” She fidgeted with a little bronze luckpiece. “I … can take the form of a winged horse.” She glanced up at Roger, as if used to that sounding much more impressive.
Roger chose not to mention Alec turning into a unicorn, instead conjuring a flame and turning it into a calling card. “The Amazing Ravenstone, at your service,” he said, presenting it with a flourish. She dropped the luckpiece into her pocket, but while she was reading the card, he pickpocketed her. “Parlor magic, my ace specialty.” He produced the medallion from her ear, then dropped it back into her hand and gave a wink. “Or you can call me Roger.”
The Tulpar eyed him, holding her luckpiece tight. “You may call me Inkar.…”
The others were then introduced. The teenage couple were Aiman, with the long arms, and Tazhibai, the four-armed teacup-eyed dog boy. The young woman with the gill slits was Anara, and the older woman was Aliya, the one nat in the group. But since Aliya was wife to Jyrgal, the Handsmith, who could reforge his hook and spork hands into other tools, and they were the parents of Casper, whose actual name was Nurassyl, it seemed likely Aliya was a latent like Roger. The little girl with the doll and the three arms was Sezim, a playmate of Nurassyl’s, and though it was never stated outright, Roger gathered she’d been orphaned during the war.
Roger could sympathize. He and Sam had been orphaned as well.
The man with the resident lizard and the man with the turban horn were Bulat and Timur, two elders from the same village, and the giant scaled beaver was Erzhan, the elder of Aiman and Tazhibai’s village.
“And I am Bibigul,” Lenore concluded, translating for the storyteller on whose shoulder she perched. “My name means nightingale, and that’s the bird whose voice the wild card gave me. I used to have Serik, my parrot, who could speak for me, but I lost him in our flight from Kazakhstan. It has been so long since I could communicate by any means except writing.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Please, I beg of you, let me keep your raven. I need her so.…”
“You can’t ask that,” said Erzhan, the monstrous beaver man, his accent thick and weird with his Jabberwocky buckteeth. “Can’t you feel her love? He’s her father.…”
Bibigul looked at him, then Lenore, then began to twitter to her. Lenore croaked softly in response, and Bibigul began to weep anew.
“I think I may have another way,” said Roger. “Jim and I have adjoining rooms, and it’s not like we haven’t bunked together before. Bibigul can share my room with Lenore. And when I go around the ship, she can play my assistant.”
Bibigul sang a sharp trill. “But I cannot speak!” protested Lenore.
“Not a problem,” said Roger. “Silent magician’s assistants are not only traditional, they’re currently in vogue.”
Bibigul said nothing, only gestured in wordless protest to the gray feathers at her throat.
Roger smiled and equally silently conjured a long gray scarf for her to wrap around her neck and then a hand mirror for her to admire her new look.
The only complication was that Roger had not had a magician’s assistant in years, not since Portia, and the outfit she’d abandoned in Vegas he’d long since disposed of. But thankfully Roger was enough of a fop and clotheshorse himself to be able to cobble together something. Outfitting Bibigul with his gray top hat with the feathered cockade, gray morning coat, a silk cravat, a bird whistle for misdirection, and a black Battenberg lace parasol with the handle accessorized with a Bad Badtz-Maru sulky penguin key chain coin purse to imply that she was Japanese instead of Kazakh, she made a character halfway between gothic Lolita Harpo Marx and Papagena from The Magic Flute: the Beautiful Bibi, ready to assist the Amazing Ravenstone in his feats of legerdemain.
The first feat the next morning was getting her an employee badge. The head clerk’s key and a couple minutes alone with the badge machine would usually be enough, but Ms. Potts would be in all day except for her lunch break, and while Mickey Lee, the mud clerk, always snuck out for a cigarette break somewhere during that period, timing could get dicey. Plus Ms. Potts scrutinized everything, including badge blanks. She was a middle-aged black woman who always dressed to the nines, but her lower lip stuck out in a permanent pout of disapproval, and there were few things her sharp eyes missed. So Roger made a point of avoiding them.
Instead, Roger sought out Caitlyn Beaumont, the cruise director, at her favorite place on the boiler deck, and led with an apology. “I am so sorry, Miss Beaumont,” he groveled. “It won’t happen again. The Jokertown Boys pride ourselves on our professionalism and—”
“Think nothing of it,” she pronounced magnanimously with a southern lilt. “I remember when my Muffin got out. Almost missed a pageant finding her.” Caitlyn did not mention whether Muffin was a cat or a dog, but recounted the double entendre with obvious relish. “Glad to see you found Lenore.”
“Find the Lady!” Lenore replied from Bibigul’s shoulder.
Caitlyn dimpled. She was young and beautiful and knew it. Today, her latest party dress, apricot chiffon set off with pearls, fit her well, almost too well, which was, Roger suspected, the point. “That said, since you boys weren’t able to make it back for your second set, I had to cover. Happy to help—putting out fires is my job—and I was able to get a good karaoke night going. But people were still disappointed. So I told them that if they came to tonight’s karaoke, there might be a surprise performance.”
“Not a problem,” Roger agreed promptly.
“Good,” said Caitlyn, “because I heard it was a good show. So much that some folk were concerned Johnny might lose his soul because he skipped out on the Devil.”
“You’d like me to come in on the second half of the karaoke number.”
“Exactly.” Caitlyn dimpled again, then looked past Roger. “And who might this be?”
“Ah, yes,” Roger continued, “Miss Beaumont, may I have the pleasure of introducing my sometime assistant, the Beautiful Bibi.” Roger smiled his most devilishly charming smile. “As you can see, Lenore is quite taken with her, and that was the reason for last night’s emergency. Bibi had been feeling poorly so had been resting in my room since New Orleans, and Lenore took off to find her.”
“Since Naw’lins?” Caitlin stared in disbelief. “You poor thing! You feeling better now?”
Bibigul stared back, clutching the parasol i
n alarm, and waved in protest with one hand, covering her mouth.
“You’re gonna hurl?”
“No,” Roger explained quickly, “she’s a mime.”
“Oh!” said Caitlyn in realization. “I’d been…” She left the thought unfinished, but Roger didn’t have to be a real mind reader to know what she’d been thinking. Their first meeting, Caitlyn’s pupils had visibly dilated when he’d first revealed his horns, but she was too well-mannered and well trained to betray anything beyond that. “Your assistant, you said?”
“Yes,” said Roger, “and if you check our contract, you’ll see that assistants, like former members, are welcome to perform with us and stay in our accommodations.”
Caitlyn unclasped her matching seed-pearl clutch and took out her phone. After a bit of review, she remarked, “Ah yes, I see it. But at no additional charge.”
“For either,” Roger added. “A service for a service.”
“I see.” The cruise director zoomed in on the fine print. “Interesting clause.”
“Contracts are a specialty of mine.” Roger grinned, tipping his hat and flashing his horns.
Caitlyn didn’t react, displaying the admirable poise of a pageant princess. “Anything else I might do for you, Mr. Washburn?”
“Perhaps a name badge for Bibi?”
“Will she be with us long?” Caitlyn asked, glancing to her. Bibi appeared to be attempting to portray that she was trapped in an invisible box. Mummenschanz she was not.
“A while,” Roger said noncommittally.
“I see,” said Caitlyn. “How did she get aboard without one?”
Roger raised one eyebrow and stroked his goatee. “Truly, Miss Beaumont?”
She laughed, a practiced laugh, but a charming one all the same. Roger could respect that. “Touché. Say no more. A magician has his secrets.” She gave him and Bibigul a wink. “I’m just impressed that you got her by Ms. Potts.” She paused then, musing. “And I see now why you came to me. But fine, I’ll get Bibi her badge. Bibi like short for Bibiana, right?”
Bibigul nodded, and Caitlyn smiled and saluted with her purse before marching downstairs in her impressively high heels, the princess off to beard the dragon in her den.
After the cruise director left, Bibigul let out a soft trill, and Lenore asked Roger, “Can we go back to the room now?”
“Of course.” Roger realized Bibigul felt overwhelmed, so offered her a solicitous arm for the short promenade back to his stateroom, now hers.
He shut the door, and she sang a nightingale’s sigh of relief, Lenore translating, “I am sorry. I was almost as frightened as when I first saw the spirit of Captain Leathers.”
Roger paused. “You saw the ghost?”
Bibigul nodded, trilling, and Lenore said, “Yes, but he is very kind. He welcomed us.” Another whistle. “Would you like to meet him?”
Roger was rarely at a loss for words, but this was one of those times. He nodded.
Bibigul smiled, then looked about the room. She picked up one of Roger’s assorted magician’s wands, then went to the radiator and began to tap a tempo on the valve.
Tap tap-tap tap-tap. Tap! Tap! After the first sequence, Roger thought he was mistaken, trying to parse the message as prisoners’ tap code: B, F, and then something unfinished on the first line of the classic Polybius square. But after Bibigul repeated the sequence, he heard it clearly. After the third time, there was no denial: shave and a haircut, two bits.
Bibigul sang a nightingale’s song welcoming nightfall, a beautiful but eerie melody, and Lenore cried, “Captain Wilbur? Steam Wilbur, are you here?”
The radiator valve suddenly sprang a leak, then, in the escaping steam, Roger saw a form taking shape, a face like the one in the ghost tour brochure: a man in his late twenties dressed like a steamboat captain from the Gilded Age.
“Welcome to the Natchez,” the ghost said. “Thank you for helping the refugees.”
“You’re welcome,” said Roger, tipping his hat and revealing his horns. “It was the least I could do for fellow jokers.”
“Will you help me?”
When you styled yourself a devil, it became force of habit to avoid promises and open-ended bargains. “I can try,” Roger allowed. “Tell me what you need.”
“I’ll be in contact,” Steam Wilbur said. “Boilers cooling. Can’t stay much—”
A banging sounded from the radiator, a clanking of pipes down the line, and the steam stopped, Wilbur fading from view.
Roger was left in his room, now Bibigul’s room, with his raven on her shoulder. Roger also realized he hadn’t had anything since dinner the night before, and Bibigul had had even less. “Would you like lunch? We can order room service.”
Bibigul trilled in delight. “Room service?” Lenore asked. “Yes, please. We’ve had very little to eat except sardines and crackers.”
Roger got the menu. Bibigul looked overwhelmed at the choices.
“Chef has a daily special. That’s what I usually order.”
Bibigul warbled. “Then I shall, too,” said Lenore.
Roger called the order in, but when he turned back, Bibigul was crying, her sobs the liquid trill of the nightingale. “I’m sorry,” croaked Lenore. “You are so kind. You do not know how hard it has been. I lost my whole village, my father, everyone I knew. And once I lost Serik, I could not tell anyone.…”
Roger conjured a handkerchief on reflex. “My brother, Sam, and I lost our parents when we were kids. Virus.”
“You are like Sezim,” Lenore declared as Bibigul sang, dabbing at her tears. “I worry about her. She is such an innocent child.”
“Sam and I were around that age, so yeah.”
“I always wanted children,” Lenore confessed, “but my card turned at my engagement feast. I loved singing and I had a beautiful voice—like a nightingale, everyone said—and then…” Bibigul wiped at her tears. “Now here I am, a joker and an old maid of thirty.”
Roger grinned. “Thirty-three here, but who’s counting?”
Bibigul laughed and so did Lenore, the chuckling of a nightingale mixing with the raven’s chortle.
A knock sounded at the door and Roger got it. “Chef’s special t’day’s shrimp creole.” Jack the barman was outside. “Creole’s not as good as Cajun, a’ course, but still, pretty good,” he said, moving the trays to the table. “An’ I know you didn’t order it, but Chef sent some of his special bread puddin’ as lagniappe. So treat yourself.” He gave a toothy smile. “Thanks for helpin’ out. Gonna need t’get some better padlocks and ask folk to keep it down.”
“I wouldn’t have noticed if Lenore hadn’t flown off. It’s hot down by the boiler room.”
“That it is, young man, that it is.” He glanced at Bibigul’s ensemble of gothic frippery and smiled. “Looks like you should be buskin’ at Congo Square.”
“That was the general idea,” Roger admitted.
“Treat her right, y’ hear?” Jack told him as he left. “This one’s a lady.”
“I will,” Roger promised, one of his few promises. Bibigul gave him a curious look, and Roger grinned. “My reputation precedes me.” He gestured to the walls, the assorted Jokertown Boys tour posters and album covers, photos of their shows with thousands of screaming fangirls. The pictures were all at least ten years old, of course, but even faded laurels could get you laid.
Bibigul trilled in wonder. “The Jokertown Boys?” asked Lenore, mystified.
“Our band,” Roger explained. “Famous, once. Now it’s just me and Jim.”
Bibigul sang three querulous notes. “Your friend…” said Lenore, “he is…”
“Yeah,” said Roger. “That.” The fact was, he didn’t exactly know what would happen to Jim without him. The boys had always looked after Jim, but everyone else had splintered off with their own lives, leaving Roger with his best friend.
Jim had been there at the orphanage when he and Sam got there. He’d been there before all the other boys, too, and eve
n then it had been clear that Jim was an ace, but with his mind twisted with his inability to realize it. Unlike the other boys, Jim had not been orphaned, but abandoned. A child who lived in a world where breakfast cereal mascots would show up in your kitchen unless you were careful to only stock generic granola was more than most nats could deal with. To say nothing of the monster under the bed. It took Sam forging a Monster-Be-Gone GUARANTEED! label and sticking it on a pack of firecrackers Roger got from Chinatown before Jim or any of them could sleep sound at night.
Jim kept hoping his parents would come back, never realizing they wouldn’t, or understanding why they’d left him, since so far as he knew, he was just a normal little boy. The breakfast cereal mascots agreed. “Jim’s like Sezim.”
Roger offered a chair to Bibigul, unsure of Kazakh customs and manners. She accepted. Then he removed the cover from her dish, revealing a beautifully plated mound of rice with a medley of shellfish and vegetables. She viewed this with familiarity and delight, then glanced at the knife and fork with somewhat less of both.
“Allow me.” Roger covered them with one hand. Rare earth magnets sewn into the palm of his glove picked up the steel flatware but did not affect the cheap but prettily lacquered chopsticks he’d palmed and laid down beside them. “Better?” He moved his hand away.
Bibigul smiled with delight and picked up the chopsticks. Then, hesitantly at first, she tried the shrimp creole. She began to eat ravenously. Lenore wanted to do the same, so Roger slipped her a dead mouse, getting her to go to his glove and then to her perch.
Roger uncovered his own tray and handed Bibigul his bowl as well. “Eat,” Roger insisted. “You’ve been starving, and I’ve been trying to stick to salads anyway.” The side salad was coleslaw, which was not exactly dietetic but would work for his main meal. “Jim’s the only one miracle diets work for.”
Bibigul laughed a nightingale’s joyful trill, which was echoed by Lenore’s raven chortle.
Roger ate his coleslaw, but stole back one shrimp when offered. Bibigul ate both bread puddings, washing them down with sweet tea. She laughed the nightingale’s laugh, crying again, but happy this time, then twittered a scrap of song. “I don’t suppose you have a dombra?” Lenore translated.