City of Corpses

by John C. Wright

  Her voice was louder than she meant. Both young men turned and looked at her curiously.

  Of course, the mike meant everything she said was overheard also. She smiled the prettiest smile she could muster. “No, he was not apologizing. Mr. Cobweb, I mean. He says Sorry because he cannot pronounce it. Sayori is my name.”

  Gilberec said sharply, “That is not your name.”

  Her spine was like an icicle. The young knight was about to expose her. Yumiko said quickly, “It is a stage name! What I am called here!”

  And before either one could say anything that might endanger her, she said, “May I interest the young gentlemen in anything from the bar?” She leaned forward and pointed at her bow tie. “Just speak your order into the hidden microphone. We record everything here. That way, we never get an order wrong.”

  Gil, as before, averted his eyes from her décolletage, and Matthias, as before, looked into her face. Matthias said, “Pardon me if this seems an odd question. Are you Daylight or Twilight?”

  Gil said, “She’s Twilight.” He tapped Matthias on the elbow and pointed at the collie. The dog lolled its tongue and wagged it tail.

  Matthias stepped toward her and said, “You are the lucky one, are you not, miss?”

  Yumiko did not know what that meant. “Lucky?”

  “Mr. Cobweb said you were the new girl, after he said an omen prompted him to hire the next dark-haired girl he saw, for luck. Do you remember me?”

  She shook her head.

  The young holy man took her hand in his. Yumiko was startled. His hands were large and warm and strong, not like the hands of a bookish fellow at all.

  Matthias said, “Your spirit is troubled. Sister, are you in any danger?”

  Yumiko thought quickly, disengaging her hand from Matthias. She said, “Mr. Cobweb is not angry with me for suggesting you keep your dog in our kennel. I should not have made an impertinent suggestion, but our kennel is very large and comfortable. We kennel dogs there. You should take a look at it. And you should look at the Royal Suite. You should stay the night.”

  She looked at Gil. This time, he did meet her eye.

  The words we kennel dogs there was a lie. You should take a look at it was a true statement. You should stay the night was false.

  And, of course, Licho and Boggy and whoever else might listen to the conversation her bow tie recorded had no power to hear which statements were untrue.

  Gil nodded to show he understood her message. “Your boss lied about you, you know. He did not hire you for luck…”

  Yumiko stamped on the toe of his boot with her spiked high heel before he could say more. She lied and said, “I did not know that. I never suspected such a thing! I am sure he was lying to spare my feelings. He hired me out of the kindness of his heart, when I was in need.”

  He did not wince when his toes were crushed, but he understood what she was really saying. I knew that. I suspected it from the first. He did not hire me out of the kindness of his heart.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Yes…?” Yumiko smiled.

  Gil said, “No, that time I was apologizing.” He understood that she did not want Wilcolac to know she had seen through Wilcolac’s deception. And, from the look on his face, he did not approve. Gil would not expose Yumiko’s deceit, but he thought less of her for it.

  Matthias said, “Sorry.”

  Yumiko looked at him. “Ah. You are forgiven?”

  “No, that time I was trying to get your attention,” Matthias said, “May I see a menu?”

  She said, “Certainly. Does your dog bite? May I pet him?”

  “My dog does not bite,” said Matthias, smiling to himself. “But that is not my dog. He is owned by Sir Gilberec. We call him the Swan Knight’s Dog.”

  The collie barked happily and wagged his tail.

  Gil said, “I don’t really own him. It is more like having an idiot younger brother.”

  The collie drooped and uttered a whine.

  Gil said sharply, “There is no such thing as Super Action Team Swan!”

  The dog yipped.

  Gil said, “It is a dumb name! I don’t care what Tom said!”

  Yumiko knelt, petted the dog, and made much ado over him. Matthias stepped over to the fireplace.

  When she straightened up, Matthias held the menu in front of her. He had written with the charred end of a stick. I know you. I saw you floating. He waited until he saw her eyes move over the words, and then, with a neat flip of the wrist, he threw the menu into the fireplace, where it was consumed.

  Gil said, “The offer to stay overnight was generous. While Mr. Cobweb said we could keep my dog in the room, I’d like to look at the kennels.”

  Matthias looked at him in surprise. He, after all, had not heard which of Yumiko’s statements were true and which were not. But he said, “Yes, that is a fine idea.”

  Just at that moment, the door opened. Boggy Cobweb, thin and gray haired and hard faced, dressed in a throat-to-ankle dun garb as stark and severe as what Matthias was wearing, stepped into the room with a clatter of heels. She spoke in a crisp voice. “Sorry! You are on stage in ten. Hop to it.”

  Yumiko said, “But I was to escort the young gentlemen. Mr. Cobweb himself said so.”

  “No backtalk, and no worries! I will see to them. Go about your business.” She turned to the two youths, her face wrinkling oddly as she forced it into a smile. “Gentlemen, I am Boginki Cobweb, the concierge here, den mother, roustabout, and I do a mean juggling act. Now what do you need? Meals? Drinks? The revue is rather nice. We are doing an Easter theme, with the girls dressed as bunnies…”

  Yumiko, inwardly seething at the lost opportunity, her mind suddenly bright with all the things she wanted to say or ask, swayed gracefully out the door, using the approved hip-pendulating footsteps of the Cobbler Girl Walk.

  She did not dare risk getting fired, after all.

  7. Three Afterthoughts

  It was not until she was out in the corridor and halfway down the stairs that an idea struck her with the force of a thunderbolt.

  Tom. Tomorrow Moth. The boy who flew to the moon. That was the name. He was the one. It had to be him. The inventor’s apprentice. Who else but an inventor could have made all her gear and weapons?

  Once the thought was in her mind, doubt was not possible.

  Her fiancée. The love she had lost.

  Almost, she turned around and raced back to Gil and Matthias to beg them to take her with them when they left. They could tell her all about him! They must know!

  Three thoughts stopped her. First, it was clear that Gil did not know her by face or voice. She was not as sure what Matthias knew. But neither boy had reason to trust her or to speak to her.

  Second, by infiltrating here, her chance of finding Tom might be better than theirs. The young knight seemed hampered by all sorts of silly rules and scruples. Yumiko had no objection to tearing down any place as need be. If only she could! But she was not a big, strong lad with a flaming sword and a huge red horse. He could throw a ravening wolf monster as large as a pony with one hand, but she could not.

  Never had she felt so small and frail. She told herself that hers were the arts of frailty. Foxes did not fight hounds, but outwitted them.

  She rushed into the backstage dressing room. All were bawling and bustling about. The smell of sweat and stage makeup was everywhere, and everything was a bewildering confusion of mirrors, naked lightbulbs, sequined dance costumes, and feathered headdresses. Yumiko grabbed a costume and wormed into line for Leshenka, the wardrobe mistress, to make last-minute adjustments to it. Her mind was calm and clear as a deep pond.

  Because her third thought comforted her. She was no longer wearing both earrings.

  She had slipped a tracer under the buckle of the collie’s dog collar, where no one was likely to find it. It was number zero-four.

  Chapter Five: Nocturnal Venture

  1. Ignis Fattus

  Yumiko noticed that the str
and of hair she routinely left in the hinge of her locker was undisturbed. The next day it was also, and the day after, which was a Sunday. She assumed Licho, or whoever was pawing through her things, was by now satisfied that she was no threat.

  That afternoon, when she walked the dogs, Yumiko belted about her waist the same red sash she had made it her habit to wear. After, she stopped in the lady’s locker room on the third floor, visited the last stall on the left, and waited until no one else was in the room. She climbed the wall and lifted the ceiling tile behind which her trove had been stashed. Her groping fingers closed on the fabric. A tremor of relief swept her. It was but a moment’s work to take the red, store-bought sash from about her waist and swap it with the red, mermaid-magic sash holding all her gear.

  She had been wearing her store-bought red sash whenever she was off duty or walking to or from the health club. Everyone had seen it on her. When in uniform, she hung the sash in her locker with her other clothes. At night it was folded in the locked suitcase in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed she shared with two other girls.

  The substitution was made. She now carried inside a mermaid pouch her suit and mask and all the tools and weapons of the sidekick of Winged Vengeance, not to mention one of the Thirteen Treasures of Lyonesse. That afternoon, as she strolled through Central Park, with Krisky and Plaksy ahead of her, and with Svarog the handyman trailing after, Yumiko fully expected a hard hand to clamp on her shoulder from behind, followed by an unsatisfying torture session (where no one would be likely to believe she had no memory), followed by saving money on her funeral bill and the kennel master’s dog food bill.

  But the hand never fell.

  Elfine had now been missing fifteen days.

  That night, the review performed two extra encores, and the celebration was extra wild. Yumiko was grateful for Licho the bouncer that evening, for a particularly lecherous drunk, a portly red-haired and buck-toothed man with enormous side whiskers and a moustache like a walrus, had goosed her.

  Because she had a tray in her hand, she did not rear-kick the bewhiskered man in the shin, spin, knuckle-punch his esophagus, and follow through with a palm-strike to the nose. Instead, she hissed into her bow tie and was gratified to see Licho appear immediately and take the fellow by the elbow.

  In the dim, indoor light, Licho wearing sunglasses looked ominous, and the customer did not protest when he was taken off to one side of the bar for a friendly free drink.

  It was a riotous night, and curfew was an hour late. The girls were exhausted. The opportunity was here.

  After the breathing of her nine roommates became even and deep, Yumiko inched from the bed she shared with Xana and Anjana. The coverlet never rustled. In an awkward position, one hand and one foot on the floor, Yumiko moved her weight off the bed by infinitesimal fractions of motion over a period of minutes so that no recoil of the bedsprings would disturb the other two sleepers.

  After a nine-and-a-half minute eternity, it was done. She lay on the floor beside the bed, mouth wide, panting silently. Not for the first time, Yumiko was sorry she had lost her memory. She was willing to believe that this had been the greatest test to which her trained skill of stealth had ever been put. But without her memory, how could she know for sure?

  She rolled under the bed, and from this position squirmed around in utter silence to face the cedar chest where her suitcase was kept. In the crack between the lower edge of the footboard and the upper edge of the cedar chest, she could see a narrow, child’s-eye view of the dorm.

  The other girls were breathing deeply, not stirring, not tossing. Even Nariphon, the sweet-faced Hindu, was sleeping peacefully, untroubled by the nightmares which so often made her twitch and mutter at night. Joan the Wad was snoring. Yumiko took that as a good omen. The only light came from the windows, which were covered with blinds. The neon lights from the street outside painted harsh horizontal streaks on the ceiling.

  Only one window had its blinds open. This was a high and small octagonal window near the roof. Joan’s hollow pumpkin stood on the sill, facing the window pane, staring out at the street. Its face had been carved into triangular eyes and a jaggedly grinning mouth. There was a candle burning inside, which cast dancing triangular reflections of orange light on the little window it faced. The candle never seemed to burn smoothly, but always jumped and flickered so that the eyes and teeth seemed forever to be winking and gnawing. Yumiko had been told this ungainly carved gourd was called a Jack-o’-Lantern.

  Yumiko silently pulled the cedar chest under the bed. There was barely enough room to open the lid. In she reached, undid the combination lock on her suitcase, and found the sash by touch. This she silently and slowly drew out and did about her waist. Then, carefully, slowly, she relocked the suitcase, closed the lid, and inched the cedar chest back to its position.

  When she looked through the crack between the chest lid and the footboard, in the darkness of the room, she saw that the Jack-o’-Lantern was now facing her. It had silently turned around. Its orange triangular eyes were now staring in toward the room. The jagged semicircle of its mouth grinned, and the guttering candle within made the grin seem to twitch and jerk.

  A spasm of cold crawled through her bones. Her hands and feet felt chilled. She had to clench her teeth to prevent them from chattering. For a moment, she was lost in fear. This immobile, silent, smiling face carved into an orange vegetable frightened her more than anything she remembered.

  The candle suddenly stopped flickering. Now, for the first time, the candle flame inside the hollow head was burning straight and clear. What it meant, she could not say. When a passing car outside threw bright slits of light sweeping across one side of the ceiling and then the other, the shifting shadows in the room made the one motionless shadow in the room obvious by contrast. It was as tall as a tall man, but thin. It did not move.

  Then, the car headlamps were gone, and the shadows fell back into their previous angles. The shapeless shape was no longer clear. Perhaps it was standing before the dark and open rectangle of the bathroom door. Or it could have been a black dress Krisky had made such a fuss about hanging on a hanger from the pole lamp, positioning it just so in front of the air vent.

  Yumiko fished the Ring of Mists out of her sash, put it on her finger, and twisted it to the white setting to ward off ghosts. The feeling of cold, the sense of dread, ebbed.

  She quietly emerged from beneath the bed, passed over to the door, and stepped into the corridor. There were no motion and no change either in the Jack-o’-Lantern or in the shadow she now believed had been hidden previously in it. She eased the door shut behind her.

  The halls were dark at night, but there were tiny butter-yellow lamps burning above the doors to the stairwell at either end of each corridor. It was enough for her to see by. The creaking silence and small noises that haunt even modern buildings at night were in the air. She stood on the red carpet. Facing her was a tall mirror. In the reflection, the white ring gleamed on her finger that Wilcolac Cobweb, the Supreme Council of Anarchists, and the vicious Lucien Cobweb, not to mention various werewolves, owl women, and perhaps the two boys from the Last Crusade, all desperately hunted and sought.

  Twisting the ring to make it invisible to human eyes would not make it invisible in the mirror, but it would make her visible to the ghost. She stepped over to the mirror and tried to put a fingernail between the back of the mirror and the wall. She could not. Either the mirror was bolted to the wall, or else it was a one-way glass, a polarized window with a chamber beyond, just as Iele the Romanian said.

  Yumiko rummaged in the slit opening of her sash. It bemused her to see two feet of her arm vanish into a nine-inch-wide satin-thin slip of red fabric. Out she drew her opera gloves from her supersuit.

  Her long gloves worn over it would hide the ring from human eyes, but make it impossible to twist or untwist the collet of the ring. The sash with her weapons and gear would go around her waist. Otherwise, she would traipse around in her night
ie and hope that any guard who saw her would assume she was on her way to an assignation, perhaps with a customer in one of the hotel rooms on the upper floors. This might be reported, but it would not be unusual. Because if any human saw the Fox-masked girl sidekick of Winged Vengeance skulking in her black camo catsuit, well, that would be rather hard to explain.

  Yumiko noticed that her image in the mirror was looking at her skeptically. “What would your master say if he saw you sneaking about in a transparent nightgown, with your pale skin clearly visible against dark backgrounds?”

  “He cursed me and told me to die.”

  “Well, what would your fiancée say?”

  “You think he asked me to marry him? Why would I think that?” Her cheeks grew warm, and she saw her reflection blushing.

  “Because I think it was serious. I remember the emotion even if I cannot picture a face. What would he say?”

  “He would not like it! But what if the clue to find him is here somewhere? Or to find my mother’s killer? Or whatever my mission was? Not to mention Elfine. Who may be dead by now.” Yumiko tugged defiantly on the sash, drawing it snugly about her slender waist so that the fabric formed many fine pleats against her curves. “I will use the weapons nature gave me.”

  “You are sure?”

  “No. But I am not giving up. I have forgotten my cause, but I am loyal to it. I have forgotten my love, but I will not betray him!”

  Yumiko gave a brisk nod of approval to the image in the mirror, who returned this salute simultaneously.

  She placed the earbuds into her ears and listened for the telltale beeping.

  2. Nightcap

  The signals from the tracers put on Whelan and Phelan were still coming loud and clear from here inside the building.

  Down toward the kitchen, in her gloves and nightgown she walked. She ran into one of the watchdogs in the corridor. It was a husky named Batterfang. But Yumiko had taken the trouble to feed the doggy treats to Batterfang, and to pet and befriend him, so now she merely knelt and scratched his ears, and he did not bark.