The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [14]
In the boat were a boy and a girl. A kholic and a hemo. The boy was the abandoned twin from the refuse station at Hot Gate, and the girl was his lover. After coitus in her room, they had dressed without speaking, a mood of solemnity following them from the tousled bed (he came; she did not). Leaving the room on Hanover Street, which the girl shared with three others, the couple walked to the centrum, paces apart. Nowy Solum was getting dark by then and the streets were nearly deserted.
Climbing into Jesthe by one of the tunnels in the stone foundation—which the girl had recalled so clearly from her childhood, and described in painstaking detail, with nostalgia a lump in her windpipe—was as simple to do as it once had been, yet upon entering, they both found themselves cramped and dirty and uncomfortable. Were these tunnels, wondered the girl, forcing herself forward, the tunnels of her memory? She tried to understand the difference between the tunnels of the past and the tunnels of the present but only managed to become saddened, having contemplated instead such things as time and life and her dwindling youth.
Though she had never been among the children to reach the endocarp in bygone days, nor see the fabled riches of Jesthe’s interior (let alone return with a piece of salted meat or other treasure), accessing the interior of the palace now, with this kholic boyfriend in tow, was not especially difficult. Surprisingly easy, in fact. Certainly a journey without the myth and wonder of a child’s perspective. She imagined the tunnels growing.
They emerged in dim, dusty hallways, empty chambers, dark cupboards. Peeked out, then withdrew. Cobwebs strung their faces. Creaks and footfalls echoed. After several wrong turns, and climbing a crude stone staircase, they ended up in a crawlspace, just beyond what could only be the bedchambers of the chatelaine herself. Through a dense grille, they saw the huge room, the canopied mattress, all illuminated by a pair of lanterns and a dying fire.
The chatelaine was there.
She was not alone.
Side by side the couple stood, cramped behind the false panel, for a long while. They watched, speechless, stricken, until at last the guests left and the chatelaine lay still on that infamous mattress, naked, face down and snoring.
What they witnessed was a series of drunken and depraved acts, at times involving as many as three men in masks, and two women. Bizarre apparatuses—the uses of which neither would have ever guessed had they not seen them employed with their own eyes—scattered the floor, like casualties.
The girl entered the bedchambers, emerging from behind a thick curtain, and crept through the dark, feeling rather foolish, nauseated by the smells, getting increasingly uncomfortable with agreeing to participate in this folly. There had been times, she knew, in the history of Nowy Solum, when a thousand guards would have raised their spears at her intrusion. Now, nothing of the sort occurred. The room was desolate and cold. The pale chatelaine lay like a bruise against the bedsheets.
After motioning several times to the kholic boy, who did not venture forth, the girl found the chatelaine’s pets, caged individually, a dozen of them, in a mirrored alcove on the far side of the bedchamber. One pet looked like a cherub, and this was the only creature she could bring herself to touch.
From his hiding place, the kholic continued to watch. His limbs had frozen and his stomach burned with acid. He was horrified by his own fear.
When the girl pulled the groggy cherub from its cage—reflected dimly in the huge mirror against the far wall in the light of a torch burning low in its sconce—the creature came awake with a start.
Whispered and desperate assurances—for the chatelaine stirred on her bed!—caused the cherub, thankfully, to drift off again.
The girl came back, holding the creature to her shoulder. The feathers of its