Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  The pounding resumed. The doorknob jerked violently. They listened to Mayfair scraping his own key against the keyhole, but her key, still turned in the lock, kept his from engaging the mechanism.

  A quick scan of the room revealed they were in the library. Crowded shelves spanned the walls from floorboard to molding. A round card table and four chairs sat on the medallion of a large rug. A fire smoldered in a fan-shaped hearth. Senlin, in an adrenaline fog, picked up one of the books that had fallen from the cart. He opened it. Sheaf after sheaf of blank paper passed under his thumb. It was a prop. The realization brought his emotions back into relief. He realized he was indignant. No, not indignant; he was angry. He threw the blank into the fireplace. It flared brightly, as if in self-disgust.

  “Why couldn’t we be the ones locked in the armory?” Edith asked. Her dark hair had fallen from its arrangement and lay in ribbons over her face.

  They saw the other door in the room at the same moment. It stood open.

  “We have to block it off,” Senlin said.

  “We’ll be trapped,” she said. Mayfair’s drumming on the door quickened. “I don’t want to be backed in a corner. There was a gun in there. You saw it. If it’s loaded, we’re finished.”

  “Then we must find an exit.” Senlin retrieved the fire iron he’d dropped. He couldn’t imagine wielding it, but it comforted him to have it. “You’ll have to leave your key in the lock.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, and then more loudly and toward the door she called, “Don’t break your hip, you old cuckold!”

  Her taunt had the intended effect: Mayfair redoubled his efforts. While he thundered on, they snuck from the room through the unassailed door.

  There was no time for social niceties or introductions. If they were going to escape the berserk Mayfair, it would be by their wits and vigilance. They would sort out the formalities later if they survived. For now, all that mattered was getting away. They reviewed their options as they slunk through the house.

  It couldn’t have been helped, but they soon realized they’d made a tactical error by leaving Edith’s key behind. If they’d had her key, they might’ve fled directly to her character’s bedroom, where she’d originally entered the play, and make their exit. Her chamber was on the opposite end of the staged mansion and far removed from the trophy room. With only Senlin’s key, which unlocked the exit in the kitchen, they’d have to double back through the trophy room or the dining hall that adjoined it. With only two paths, they had a fifty-fifty chance of running into Mayfair again. To better those odds, Edith suggested that they lead Mayfair as far into the house as possible, back to where the bedrooms were numerous and the halls were tangled. Once they’d drawn him away from the trophy room, they would return to the dining hall and make a break for the kitchen. If they could reach the hall of Isaacs, surely they would find help.

  Senlin suggested that they lock every door they encountered. Doing so would confuse and slow Mayfair: if every door was locked, there’d be no obvious trail to follow. Edith agreed and voiced her hope that Mayfair would keep making a racket. As long as he was drumming, they would know where he was.

  The noise receded a little when they entered a dimly lit conservatory with a harpsichord. Velvet-backed chairs encircled the gleaming instrument. More of the strange brass valves protruded from the walls here. They seemed to be in every room. Hoping to light a candle he’d found, Senlin banked the fire that had dwindled nearly to ashes. But when he applied a lit piece of kindling to the candle, he discovered it had no wick at its center. He threw the wax stake into the fresh logs, bewildered by the ruse. What possible reason could anyone have for pulling the vein out of a candle? It was absurd.

  He was about to try a second candle when the distant pounding abruptly stopped. They stood alert as startled deer for a moment, and then hurried wordlessly into the adjacent sunroom.

  The sunroom was a ghastly mockery. The walls had been painted to resemble windows that framed cauliflower clouds and an egg yolk sun. A robin, painted in mid-flight, looked more like a smashed bug on a wall than a living bird. Many of the rooms were like this: just clumsy sets. Most of the objects were shells or props. The house was a stage in every way except that where there should’ve been an audience, there was only another wall. Senlin found himself wishing for the light of eyes to drive the shadows from the set. For once, he wanted to be the center of attention.

  They crept onward through chambers and halls. Senlin’s heart stopped whenever his key rasped inside a lock. The sound was excruciating, like sand rubbed upon glass. Even their breathing and the rustle of her voluminous skirts seemed to boom. When he came about a corner and was confronted by the raised specter of a saber, Senlin yelped and swatted at it with the fire iron.

  The empty coatrack bounced against the wall and clattered to the floor.

  Edith gritted her teeth at him in horror. He gave a helpless, apologetic shrug. What could he do? He was not equipped for this sort of intrigue. He started to explain, but she shushed him and hurried on.

  After locking the door to a short, drab hallway, they entered a bedroom that was dominated by an enormous four-post bed, canopied with amber-colored silks. The door to the left of the bed was marked with a polished “K.”

  “‘K,’ for Kerrick Mayfair. We’re in his room,” Senlin said, stoking up the coals in the green-tiled fireplace to light the room.

  Edith began wrestling with her crinoline skirts. “This is ridiculous.” She turned her back toward Senlin. “Unfasten me.”

  The request startled him. What sort of lady asked such a thing? He gawked at the nape of her neck, her caramel skin, a dark spatter of freckles. He realized that since the moment they’d been thrown together by grim circumstance, he had avoided considering who she was, or how she’d come to be here. Initially, he’d assumed she was a lady because she was playing one, and now he was critiquing her behavior because it wasn’t ladylike. It was absurd! He wasn’t a butler, after all. No, she was a person, like him, with a past and a home. For all he knew, she was lost or had lost someone, too. Perhaps somewhere at that moment a man longed for this exact intimate view of her neck. These thoughts surprised him and revived memories of Marya and the honeymoon he had spoiled.

  Frustrated by this inconvenient jumble of thoughts, Senlin blurted out, “Why?”

  “Really? Why do I want to remove ten pounds of stuffing and frills while being chased by an armed lunatic?” She watched him over her shoulder, her hand cupping her hair, dark as loam. “It took two women a half hour to get me into this thing. I can’t get out alone.”

  He glanced about nervously and suffered a pang of shame when he saw the bed.

  She sighed, “Are you a monk?”

  “No.”

  “Then undo my dress!”

  A slight creak, the briefest complaint of wood beams, interrupted them. The sound seemed to come from the hallway, though really it could have just as easily come from the ceiling or the floor beneath them. In fact, Senlin had the odd impression that the creak had originated from the corner of the room that was furthest from any door and which was empty except for the nub of a brass valve.

  The hairs stood up on his arms as they did, sometimes, in the classroom when he had his back to the students. The hairs would rise, and he would know something was amiss behind him: someone was out of their seat, or an arm was being raised to throw a paper ball, or…

  He turned twice all the way around, searching for what had raised his hair. But there was nothing, just their shadows writhing upon the wall.

  Chapter Eleven

  “If the actors are any good, or the script is, or the director, then the audience will be as quiet as a sigh. Unless, of course, the play is a comedy. Then quiet is a terrible and tormenting thing.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, III. XI

  When they came upon Edith’s bedroom, they found it dark. Senlin retreated to the previous room, lit a length of kindling and carried it back lik
e a torch. He rushed the sputtering stick to the ash-heaped grate and built up the fire from the wood pail. As he did, Edith tried the sturdy door emblazoned with an “A.” She didn’t seem surprised to find it locked. “Why did I leave my key?”

  “It couldn’t be helped. I could try to force the door.” Even as he made the offer, he thought back to the door he’d originally entered by. It had been as solid as a dyke.

  “Are you sure?” she said with a doubtful turn of her head. It was a reasonable assessment, but he still felt the need to defend himself. He was a scholar, not a brute, after all. Perhaps if there were more scholars and fewer brutes in the world, they wouldn’t be running for their lives! But he said nothing. “Because he’d certainly hear you banging away, and we’d be cornered.”

  He couldn’t argue otherwise.

  “I know where I am now,” she said. “The foyer’s this way.”

  A broad staircase with a green runner ascended to the ceiling, ending abruptly against the flat plaster where a second floor should’ve begun. The entranceway facing the bottom of the stair was painted on.

  “For all its doors, this house is full of dead ends,” Senlin said.

  “The dining hall is through there. We’re almost to the kitchen,” she said, picking up her heavy skirts with dramatized effort. “If he’s out there, and I get caught because of these stupid skirts, I’m holding you responsible.” She gave a fleeting, nervous smile then glanced anxiously at the poker dangling from Senlin’s hand. “I wish we had a sword.”

  “I’ve never picked up a sword in my life.” Senlin said.

  Seeming disarmed by his candor, she smiled again. “Me neither.” She saw that the fire iron trembled in his hand, and her smile waned. “I remember there were things on the walls that looked like shields. Is that right?” Senlin nodded. “I say we pull one down, and if it comes to it, we’ll use it as a ram. The two of us together should be able to run over one old drunk.”

  “What if they’re fakes?”

  “The sword was real enough,” she replied. He wondered why that was. Why have dummy candles and blank books but sharpened swords? He wished the stern attendant who’d dressed him had warned him of such things; better yet, he wished the attendant would dash in with his pistol out and put an end to the whole terrible ordeal.

  He unlocked the door to the dining hall with Edith’s skirts bunched against him. She craned over his shoulder, peering through the expanding crack. He half expected to see the barrel-chested Mayfair sitting at the head of the dining table, theatrical as a king. But the only life in the room was the fire, snapping inside the deep flagstone hearth.

  The shields on the wall were enameled with bright crests. They appeared real enough. Senlin took down a nearby kite shield, faced with a blue cross. It was all he could to hold the thick iron plate in front of them. He would sooner die than complain about its weight.

  “Alright, quietly now…” she said, her knees bumping against the backs of his legs.

  The hall seemed to telescope before him. The kitchen door receded as they began to move toward it, hunkered low behind the shield. Six doors led off from the dining hall. It was impossible to guess what direction Mayfair might attack from. Or he could just as easily be passed out on the floor. Senlin wasn’t even certain that all the doors were real. The hair on his arms bristled. Not knowing which way to point their backs, he swung the shield back and forth.

  They passed the study where Pining had been murdered. The door stood ajar, not enough for them to see into the room, but enough to allow a crack of light to shine into the dining hall. Senlin turned the shield toward the glowing seam, terrified that the light might flicker, fall into shadow, and then explode as Mayfair burst from the room. The image was so vivid that it felt like a premonition, but of course he did not believe in such things…

  The squeak of old hinges interrupted his thoughts. Senlin squinted at the study door and was confused to find that the crack had not grown at all.

  “The kitchen!” Edith screamed, and Senlin spun around.

  Mayfair filled the doorway to the kitchen. He seemed as startled as them. A ham hung under one bulky arm. In his free hand, he gripped the musket.

  “What is instinct?” Senlin stood rigid as a totem pole at the fore of the classroom. “Instinct is an inherited response to a particular circumstance.” His gaze drifted over the rows of tired but attentive children. “The osprey instinctively knows how to build a nest. The mackerel instinctively swims in a school. Bears hibernate, rabbits dig warrens, and the tree frog sings. They do not know why they do these things, but all of these behaviors benefit the creature, and help it to survive.”

  He strode quickly down an aisle between desks and snatched a folded slip of paper from the fingers of a startled boy. He ripped the note into a palm-full of confetti as he returned to the head of the class. The action hardly disturbed his lecture. “Instinct can be roughly divided into two urges: the urge to survive and the urge to reproduce. In humans, the conscious mind is aware of these urges. We built a society to manage our instincts. In fact, society so thoroughly mitigates our instincts, it is easy to forget that we have them at all.”

  He turned to the blackboard and began jotting a frenzied list. “We have customs, manners, governance, the constabulary, traditions, education, fashion, commerce, creative invention, sports, and on and on. All of these expressions of our society work to the same goal of suppressing and managing our instinctual response.” The blackboard rattled and rocked on its feet, shaken by Senlin’s emphatic jots. “Instinct is the fuel that fires the engine of civilization. Generations have labored to build and perfect the engine. Each of you, I hope, will spend your life working to preserve it. Because without it, we would be dangerous beasts.”

  He ran behind the shield. It seemed lighter now. Adrenaline fizzed in his blood as he charged at Mayfair. The brute stood like a steer frozen by the light of an approaching train. He seemed older and more vulnerable than he had before. Senlin saw and absorbed this information, though it made no impression on him. It stirred no shred of mercy. He wasn’t thinking; he had transcended all thought.

  And it felt good. He’d never felt such wild abandon in his life. He sensed Edith rushing along behind him, her own instincts tuned to his as they barreled down the dining hall. They were going to catch Mayfair flatfooted. They were going to survive.

  Then Mayfair dropped the ham, drew the barrel of the musket level, and fired.

  He sat at the bottom of a well. There was a point of light far above him. At the bottom of the well a piercing note rang in his ears. It reminded him vaguely of a finger playing a wineglass.

  His limbs felt as if they had been replaced with wet rope. He was confused, but strangely unafraid. Slowly, he began to rise from the bottom of the well, his useless limbs slapping at the sides of the dark. The light grew. He emerged on the floor of the dining hall.

  He stared at the side of his pale hand that lay by his face.

  He rolled onto his ribs and felt each one as a distinct band of pain. The shield, dog-eared at one corner, lay nearby. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard moaning and the clatter of wood. Toppled chairs splayed on the floor. Through the bramble of chair legs, he watched retreating boots. Another chair crashed to the floor.

  It was Mayfair striding alongside the table, his hip to the edge in a manner Senlin found confusing. The brute kicked chairs from his path as he went, musket still in hand. The sight of the gun fanned the fog from Senlin’s mind. He realized that Edith was no longer at his side. He had to get up.

  Gripping the table edge, he pulled himself upright. He grabbed his head to keep it from exploding. Mayfair’s shot had struck the shield and driven it back into the side of his skull. He feared he might black out again. Then he saw her sliding down the burnished tabletop. Mayfair dragged her down the table by her skirts. Mayfair’s back was to Senlin when he paused to paw drunkenly at the whalebone ribs of her bodice and the shelf of vulnerable flesh. Edith appeared
half conscious. She groaned and rolled her head, her hair unraveling as Mayfair began dragging her again.

  Senlin found the poker lying amidst the toppled chairs. He raised it high over his head, and charged at Mayfair’s back, running on the edges of his boots. Edith emerged from semi-consciousness a split second before he arrived, and began kicking through the piles of her skirts. Mayfair had time to cock his fist over her before Senlin brought the poker down, striking him in the muscled notch between neck and shoulder.

  Mayfair collapsed, bowling through the last chairs as he fell. Senlin lost his grip on the poker, and it flew clattering end over end across the floor. He didn’t try to retrieve it. He tugged at Edith’s gown even as she scrambled to the table’s edge and onto her feet. She bounced against his chest, her legs still weak from the blow. A ribbon of blood ran down her forehead and over one eye. Senlin saw the gash at her hairline. Though it bled profusely, it didn’t seem dangerously deep.

  They hobbled toward the kitchen door, their four legs crossing and knocking, clumsy as a calf. They managed the two steps down into the kitchen, still aromatic and quaint, though the sham had lost its appeal. The letter “I” beamed from the door panel before them. Senlin felt the return of his rational mind, and the first thought to emerge from the dark of his instinct was as clear as it was heartbreaking: Marya will never know if I die. If I die, she’ll think I abandoned her.

  They were nearly free. Despite the quaking of his hand, Senlin fit his key into the lock on the first jab. They heavy door swung back and they tumbled between worlds.

  A score of black-coated butlers gawked with uncomprehending shock at the hyperventilating couple. Senlin and Edith’s appearance was gruesome. Blood painted one side of her face and spattered her hoopskirts. Gory smudges stained Senlin’s starched bib. Eyes shining with the clear polish of fear, they loped down the hall together as if they were running a three-legged race, her arm thrown over his shoulder and neck.