Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  In the hush, quick-thinking Carlyle managed to snatch back his tracker.

  The Chevalier arched perfect eyebrows. “Madame is expecting them?”

  “Impatiently, Chevalier.”

  How crestfallen his sigh. “Alas, dear Thisbe, such a summons one dares not ignore.” He would not leave her without at least one proper kiss as prize. He took it slowly, time enough for a succubus to have sucked the soul out of its prey if such was its aim. He smiled when done, but Thisbe smiled deeper. “Perhaps another time.”

  Nodding to his men to follow, the Chevalier strode through the door. I was wrong to say there was no touch of the feminine in the company, for, male or female, all of them moved with that artful grace we associate with ladies and dancers, and wielded their blades as gracefully as ladies do their fans. On exit, the Chevalier glared at my Servicer’s uniform with proper scorn. “You mustn’t let clients see you like that in the halls, Mycroft,” he warned.

  “I won’t, Chevalier.”

  I cannot comment on his final expression, for I am not permitted to raise my eyes to one of his rank. I bowed low as I closed the door behind him.

  “What are you doing here, Mycroft?” Thisbe asked—no, the tone was grim, more an order than a question.

  I did not look at her. “Patronage is everything here. When in trouble, invoke the highest ranking person you’re associated with.”

  “Did you follow us here? Or were you here already?”

  “I’m under orders to take you to Madame. Contemporary clothing is forbidden in the inner halls. You may wear these, since we do not have time for a fitting.” I drew from my sack two cloaks of floor-length dark red velvet, hooded, and heavy enough to muffle sound.

  “How long have you been involved with these people?” Thisbe pressed. “Mycroft, I asked you a question.”

  “You can’t have weapons when you see Madame,” I recited. “You may give them to me, I’ll return them when you leave the premises.”

  Thisbe crossed her arms. “You will answer me, Mycroft. I recommend that you answer voluntarily.” She took a menacing step forward.

  I sighed. “I noticed when Carlyle arrived in Paris. You two shouldn’t be here. This is number one on the list of places in the world you shouldn’t be.”

  “You did know about this place,” Carlyle accused.

  “Of course.” I tossed them each a cloak. “Where J.E.D.D. Mason goes I go.”

  “Jehovah Mason,” he corrected. “You knew that, too?”

  I hid my face by diving back into the sack for my own costume. “Tell me you didn’t use the transit computers to get this address.”

  Thisbe’s silence answered for her.

  “Tell them you got it from me.” I met her eyes now. “This is important, Thisbe. We don’t need the powers that be getting even more worried about the security of your bash’. If anyone asks, you drugged me and I told you this address when half-asleep. I was the weak link, not your bash’. Clear?”

  Silence consented.

  “We have to move fast,” I continued. “The Chevalier will have left one of his gentlemen outside to make sure I really do take you to Madame. Put the cloaks on.”

  Thisbe held the garment, stubborn. “Who’s Madame?”

  “The owner. Please take me seriously when I say this: I’ll die before I let you see Jehovah. He’d have the truth about Bridger out of you in two minutes. That will not happen while I live.”

  Their stares believed me.

  “Rumor of your coming already reached Madame. I am under orders to bring you, and hopefully meeting her will satisfy your…” I took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have come here, you really shouldn’t have. But the faster we move the better mood Madame will be in, and right now Madame’s good humor is the only protection you have from … consequences.”

  Thisbe donned the cloak, the velvet hiding every inch of her. “In a place like this I’d have expected masks, too, like carnival.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not of the right rank for masks. Carlyle, put your cloak on.”

  He glared.

  Thisbe glared back. “We don’t have time for your Mycroft Canner fixation right now, Carlyle! Do you want to trust Mycroft, or do you want to stay here and let them rape you?”

  If Carlyle were a man who cursed, he would have done it then. “They would’ve raped us, wouldn’t they? Your friends.”

  I did not have time to argue the difference between friends and betters. “No,” was on my lips when I realized this might be my chance. I could scare them off, concoct something horrible, a thousand times beyond reality but plausible in the surreality of this place. Then maybe, maybe, they would run. “They’d have raped you every way it’s possible to rape someone,” I began, my imagination racing, “the group of them taking turns. Then they’d have tied you up and called in whores from downstairs to join in, and put you through every filthy act imaginable. But the Law only counts it as rape if you still say ‘no’ at the end. They’d make sure you couldn’t. They’d use extremes of pain and pleasure until you’d agree to anything. Experts like that, it wouldn’t take them an hour to get you to send messages to your bash’ and colleagues saying you were taking a vacation, so no one would look for you for weeks. Then they’d drag you to the kennels where the real work would begin. Even before they entered the room they were probably placing bets on who would succeed first getting you to sign yourself over and become a Blacklaw. And once you did, you’d never leave this place again. Now put on your cloak and let me save you.”

  I waited to see if my fantasy would work. Carlyle paled. He gagged. At last, he chose the cloak.

  I sighed relief. “Weapons, Thisbe?” I pressed, offering my empty sack.

  Carlyle’s eyes turned from hate-narrow to child-wide as he watched Thisbe pull from hidden places a sturdy knife, a second sturdy knife, a stun pistol, a tranquilizer pistol, and three flash grenades. “Thisbe, what—”

  “My bash’ is vital to the world order, remember? Ockham and Cardie aren’t the only ones who study self-defense.” She placed her arsenal piece by treasured piece within my sack.

  I regretted doing this in front of Carlyle, I really did. “All weapons, Thisbe.”

  Death hate reared that instant in her glare.

  “There are security scanners every ten feet in the halls, Thisbe,” I pressed. “They’ll know. I’m sorry. I’ll give them back to you, I swear by Apollo Mojave.”

  Even with that it took her three long breaths to face up to the necessity. She knelt.

  “Thisbe,” Carlyle called, “what are you—”

  “Don’t ask.”

  The clasping mechanisms exhaled long hisses as the woman removed her boots.

  Carlyle leaned closer. “Thisbe—”

  “I said don’t ask! Now get your fucking cloak on before you do anything else to get us in deeper shit!” She set her boots in my sack, gently as a mother lays down a child, then spun to vent her wrath upon the sensayer. “I don’t want another word out of you, Carlyle, you hear me? Not about Mycroft, or the costume. Mycroft is rescuing your stupid ass and you’re going to do everything Mycroft says to the letter until we’re out of here!”

  “Costume?” Carlyle repeated, but then saw what she meant.

  The sack had a costume for me, too, to cover my Servicer’s dappling: the rough grayish brown habit of a Franciscan monk. To you, one monk is probably like another, since our schools don’t teach their many founders’ distinctive madnesses. Francis was a saint among saints and a madman among madmen, who used to talk to birds, to ravage his own body with scourge and ice, to turn down pious hosts, preferring to beg his supper on the street, who refused to be in command in his order, insisting that his own followers rule him so he could practice the virtue of obedience, and who had to be sternly ordered to eat and rest, or he would have destroyed himself by overpunishing his sinful flesh. Franciscans live on charity alone, owning nothing, not their monasteries, not their plates and cups, or the shoes upon
their feet. Carlyle knew this, and watched the monkish gray-brown slide over my Servicer dappling, and shuddered.

  “Come.” I opened the door. “There’s no more time.”

  They followed me in fear-fast silence. We found not one but three of the Chevalier’s men lurking in the hall, enjoying a long bench of rose-pink satin, pocked with buttons like navels repeating along an infinite torso. This bench lined the near wall of the corridor from end to end, breaking only for the doors of labeled rooms: Salon Hogarth, Salon Caligula, Salon Rochester, Salon Salome, Salon de Pompadour. The far wall was one great window, looking down over the central hall below, where stairways, landings, and balconies descended like the terraces of Dante’s Hell, all covered with flesh. The lovemaking took place in piles, two, three, four lovers at a time throwing themselves into the vastness of skirts with the glee of kids swimming in chocolate. Men and women of both sexes paraded in the most elaborate gowns and wigs and coats and tails, or what remained of them as bodices and breeches opened to bare their ready cargo. Many were not even in the act of sex, but simply lying upon each other, dining and gossiping amid the spectacle. Waiters threaded among them, bussers, jugglers, a contortionist, and the Royal Belgian String Quartet, performing here with far more vigor than they had at Ganymede’s party. Never, reader, have you seen so many people in one place and not a single frown.

  “They can’t see us,” I reassured as I led. “This hallway is the middle level, for clients of more importance. That down there is the Hall of Venus, though the Chevalier’s men call it the Flesh Pit. It’s the lower clients’ level. It’s all legal, carefully monitored and hygienic, guests and employees subject to strict health inspection and all that, and our doctors claim a weekly visit does as much for mind and body as a sensayer. It’s invitation only, word of mouth, but we get all sorts here. Of course, no one of any real consequence stays down in the Flesh Pit level for long.” I glanced back. “Are you familiar with the Eighteenth-Century author Voltaire?”

  “Not really,” Thisbe answered, drowning Carlyle’s ‘yes.’

  “They were the Patriarch of the Enlightenment,” I explained, “so influential they not only dominated literature but could virtually force the hand of royalty, the law, even the Church a bit. Voltaire was also a Deist, which means they believed that all religions are different understandings of the same universal God, Who made the world but doesn’t really care what name or names He’s called by.”

  “Mycroft,” Thisbe interrupted, “why are you telling me this now?”

  I did not have time to pause. “Late in life Voltaire built a small church on their estate. They put an inscription over the entrance, Deo Erexit Voltaire: built for God by Voltaire. After so many churches built to saints, they said, it was about time someone built one to God. In a sense it’s the high temple of Deism, strange as it sounds to say that a religion which combines most all religions could have a high temple.”

  We had reached the center of the house, where the wall of doors and couches opened on our left to a grand staircase leading up to a level as far above ours as ours was above the Flesh Pit. A purple carpet led up beneath trickling chandeliers to a double door at the top, framed by a marble arch and the inscription: DEO EREXIT SADE.

  We did not have time for shock and silence. “Immediately to our left,” I whispered, “is a small door leading to a secret stairway which will take you to the street. To our right is a very heavy candelabrum. If you club me over the head and run, you should make it out before anyone can follow.”

  Thisbe stepped closer to me, and I prayed the blow would come. “The Marquis de Sade was from the Eighteenth Century too, weren’t they?”

  “You’ll also need this,” I continued, letting them see a small envelope in my hand. “It’s a more powerful memory eraser than the one you use at home, Thisbe, very safe, no side effects, blanks seventy minutes thereabouts. You can’t just go now, with what you’ve seen, but if you both take this in the car on your way away from here then all this will never have happened. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  I waited, counting my breaths and hoping I could count on Thisbe to do just the right amount of damage. I waited. Surely she would strike. Carlyle would not, of course. The sensayer had crossed Jehovah’s threshold; Carlyle, like Voltaire, will not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Thisbe, though … the threat of the Marquis might scare off even such a creature as Thisbe. I waited.

  “I thought you said we didn’t have time to dawdle, Mycroft,” she said at last, her voice soft. “Which way to Madame and her answers?”

  I did not have the heart to look at them. “This way.” I led them to a landing halfway up the stairs toward the inscription, then turned to a secondary stairwell on the right. A dainty flight of steps took us to a door paneled with pastoral scenes of courting gentry, and a vestibule beyond, with cherubs flirting in a painted sky. “I don’t intend to leave your sides at any time, but just in case I can’t avoid it, a few survival rules. Never allow yourself to be taken to a room where there is not at least one fully clothed woman, by which I mean someone dressed in female clothes, regardless of anatomy; the men here have to behave themselves when there are women present. Second, avoid residents wearing black. It is Dominic’s privilege to allow them to wear black, so the more black they wear the more Dominic likes them, which is usually a danger signal.”

  “You forgot ‘never turn off your tracker,’” Thisbe added, doubtless shooting a glare at the Cousin, though I did not look to see.

  I shook my head, the habit’s fabric rough against my neck. “They’re masters of this. They’d get you to take it off. If they tried they could even get you, Thisbe, to take it off.” I looked to Carlyle. I know when to surrender. “I was lying before about that stuff I said the Chevalier’s men would do to you. I was trying to scare you away. This place isn’t like that. The Chevalier wouldn’t have harmed you, he would never break his word to Sister Heloïse. And you’re right that they couldn’t rape and kidnap people without getting caught. They wouldn’t, either, it’s uncivilized. You’re standing in a bubble of the Eighteenth Century now; they pride themselves on being more civilized than the Twenty-Fifth.”

  “What would they have done to me, then?” he asked after a pause.

  “They would’ve kept bullying you a bit, then one would have played protector, stepping in to your rescue. Most Cousins love that. Your rescuer would have taken you aside and been the most tender and charismatic person you’d ever met, playing on your fear and gratitude while the others placed bets on whether or not you’d consent. My money, if I had any, says you would have consented, but if you refused they’d just have sent you packing with a tender warning to be good from now on, and curiosity would have had you back here within the day.”

  “I wouldn’t have consented,” he insisted predictably. “I’m not that stupid”—the universal euphemism for ‘I’m not that easy’—“and even if I were, I don’t like boys.”

  I shook my head. “That’s no impediment to them. Madame raised gentlemen of both sexes.”

  “What would they have done with me?” Thisbe cut in. There was no fear in her voice, just collegial curiosity, as when a Western fencing master steps into an Eastern dōjō and detachedly admires a kindred art too different to be called competitor.

  “Once they determined you were a person of some influence, they would have treated you very well, and done all in their power to tempt you into joining. You might like the club, actually, though it does tend to spoil your appetite for any other kind of sex.” I knocked twice on the inner door, painted with garlands almost moist enough to seem real. “It’s Mycroft, Madame. I’ve brought the guests.”

  “Just a moment!”

  In those last breaths I wondered if they would change their minds now, if wise, cold Thisbe would seize a vase from the pietra dura sideboard and strike and run at last. I stood just in front of her to make it easy. It was probably impossible for them make it out from he
re, but hope is always ready to stifle reason, even in me.

  Only Carlyle spoke. “Mycroft, you didn’t answer before when I asked if you knew J.E.D.D. Mason’s full name.”

  “Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet M-Mason.” I always stumble somewhere in that name, as if part of me fears what would happen if I recited the full, unbroken invocation.

  “Come in!”

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH

  Madame D’Arouet

  “Come in.”

  I know the trick to opening that door without it squeaking; many do. False windows on the four walls of the chamber showed the seasons: spring blossoms, summer peaches drowning in emerald leaves, harvest wheat and grapes, ice-dusted evergreens, all painted, with painted birds and animals playing in the fields. There were painted children, too, life-sized so they seemed to stand with the viewer in the room, leaning out through the false windows, trying to catch birds, pluck fruit, sporting as seasons demanded, snowballs in winter, flirting in spring. The furnishings were delicate to the point of fragility: gilded candelabra fine as twining vines, couches on slender legs which curved like swans’ necks, tables with dainty seats ready for card players, and a harpsichord, petite like the runt of a litter of pianos. Did you expect a throne room, reader? Never. Madame is no queen but a hostess, and rules none but the guests in her salon.

  “Madame, allow me to present Mademoiselle Thisbe Saneer of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’, and the Reverend Doctor Carlyle Foster, a Fellow of the Sensayers’ Conclave and protégé of Her Holiness Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili.”

  Madame curtseyed her greeting, no simple gesture but a grand process as the heights of her wig, its white peaks crowned with ruffles and dyed feathers, dipped and rose like the crags around Olympus nodding their respect to passing gods. Her gown today was midnight blue, open in the front over an inner gown of rosy salmon laced with gold, with a wide framework underneath which made the skirts swell to more than thrice the lady’s width, as if she waded in her own private ocean. She wore gems on her fingers, her wrists, at her throat, not distracting but serving her body as gems should, their glitter luring one to notice the curve of an arm or the slope of a tender breast. The face that stared back at the new arrivals was a painting, the precise, stylized ideal which stares from every flattering portrait that ever graced a palace wall in the age when men’s portraits showed distinct features and character, but ladies were homogenized into one doll-perfect face. It really was all paint, the heavy makeup of the period whose whites and rouges did not let a hint of skin peek through. Her age? She seems more a time-stopped goddess than a woman whom the count of years could touch, and sometimes I wish our anti-aging drugs were less powerful, so one might see what greater transformations maturity had planned for such a beauty. It is not polite to discuss a lady’s age, so I shall say only that, were all the Seven leaders of our world assembled in one room, Madame the Eighth, only Headmaster Faust would recall more of history than she.