The Fur Queen looked thoughtful. Then she clapped her hands lightly. All of the furs rose silently from their tables and left the hall. Only the boy and the girl remained. Babieca could dimly make them out, positioned on either side of her chair.
“Thorn and Eth shall remain, if you don’t mind. They attend me in all matters.” She folded her hands and looked at Babieca. “What you’re really asking is how it works. You want to know what the shadows mean.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. Come here. Both of you.”
Cautiously, they approached her. Thorn and Eth didn’t move but watched them closely. Babieca wondered if the others had really left, or if they were still here, perfectly invisible. The Fur Queen gestured to the basin of water.
“Tell me what you see.”
Babieca stared at her. “Is this another game?”
She said nothing. He leaned over, staring into the clear water. He could see Julia’s reflection and his own. Beneath the glow of the night-moss, they both resembled ghosts. A young face looked back at him—though not quite as young as he’d expected. He had dark hair, and brown eyes that remained slightly guarded. His beard needed a trim. He had his mother’s dark complexion, and his father’s arrogant cheekbones. The face was one that he recognized, but also a stranger. That’s who this must be. A face glimpsed in passing. Some part of him that he’d never chosen. Handsome after a fashion, charming at first, but not someone that you’d trust with your hopes and infirmities.
“Well?”
He looked up. “I see my reflection. That’s all.”
“That’s everything.” She smiled. “What is your reflection?”
“I’m no good with riddles.”
“Then you’re missing the point. What is your reflection, Babieca?”
He looked at Julia. Her expression said: This is on you.
“It’s me,” he said. “Or . . . a version of me.”
The Fur Queen rose and stood next to him. Babieca was uncomfortably aware of her presence but didn’t move.
“Our reflections are strangers,” she said. “We need a looking glass to see them, or the eyes of another. Deep down, we’re all two different people. There’s the one looking out, and the one looking in. Neither is more real than the other. But what happens”—she brushed the water with her fingers—“if I disturb the view?”
His reflection scattered into points of light. Tesserae in a mosaic. For a moment, he saw not one face, but a crowd. A gathering of shadows moving across the surface of the water, each slightly different. In their dance, he saw an exquisite tension, a war of pain and promise, order and chaos, that formed wild islands in the water. He was all of those things, some savage archipelago of contraries and desires and beautiful mistakes. But what did they add up to? Who was really looking back at him?
“Light bends when it strikes water,” the Fur Queen continued. “The earth bends when it strikes civilization, but it doesn’t break. It changes. What you see in the water isn’t simply a version of you. It’s every choice that you didn’t make. Every unspoken word. Every missed opportunity. We carry these shadows with us, and eventually, they take on a life of their own. A world of their own. And even now”—she looked around the hall, her expression somewhere between mischief and reverence—“they’re watching us, from the other side. Watching us do what they never could, while we wonder if they’re merely a dream.”
“You’re talking about the other world,” Julia said. “Beyond Anfractus.”
“They’re the same,” she replied. “Cities hemmed in by wilderness. Old territories, older spirits, captured but never conquered. Borders drawn in pen and ink, drawn in blood, which the land never agreed to. Our family trees are hopelessly entangled. Everything you do is another brick in the city of infinite alleys. Ripples on the surface of the water, spreading to the margins. Where your shadow hesitates, you will choose. What you forget, your shadow remembers. The worlds are parallel dreams. And if Latona raises her army, they’ll both be in danger.”
“How do you know all of this?” Babieca asked. “I thought that the longer you stayed in one place, the less you remembered of the other. That’s the price of being a citizen.”
“No. The real price is that you never forget.” All three of their faces were framed in the water. Babieca couldn’t help but feel as if he’d seen this woman before. He could see the outlines of someone else in her features, hear something in her voice.
“Pulcheria thinks that you can help us,” he said. “Maybe we’re pawns, and maybe she’ll crush us beneath the wheel. It doesn’t matter. All I care about is rescuing our friend.”
“And saving the world,” Julia added hastily. “That too.”
“They’re the same,” the Fur Queen repeated. “Latona will offer him what he’s always wanted. The power to transform things. He doesn’t want to raise an army. But fate moves as it must. He thinks that he can outsmart her. That he sees what’s coming. He doesn’t. She’ll turn everything against him.” She looked at Babieca. “Absolutely everything.”
He turned to face her. “Do you know him?”
“The oculus?” She ran a hand through her hair. “He was a stubborn child. Always trying to change the rules.” The Fur Queen smiled a secret smile. “Fearless in his arguments, but scared of storms, and loud voices. My loveliest shadow. He never forgave me for leaving. He probably never will. But I’ve always kept him in my sight.”
Julia shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand. She knows Roldan?”
Babieca looked at her again. He saw the hint of a smile that played across her features, and the way that her eyes demurred slightly, even when she was watching them. He heard the regret in her voice but also the note of unwavering confidence. For a moment, he was a small boy looking up at her, trying to solve her. Then he knew.
“She’s his mother,” he said grimly.
Julia stared at her. “But that makes no sense.”
“It’s starting to,” he murmured.
Thorn and Eth had drawn closer. Were they her children now? Babieca tried to grasp some connection between them, but they remained elusive. Maybe this strange night court was her family. A replacement for the one she’d given up.
“You understand,” the Fur Queen said, “why it was necessary. I can see it in your face. You’ve worked it out already.”
“You needed to hide him in plain sight. So that when the time came, there’d be no connection to you. No suspicion that he was also your pawn.”
“This isn’t just about him.” She smiled again. “Though he surely thinks that it is. We all have moves to make. Latona has forgotten about me, but Pulcheria hasn’t. She thinks that her sister won’t expect this. Alliances among the night gens are practically unheard of. But her thinking isn’t broad enough. She simply wants to maintain order, while Latona wants to burn down the world and start anew.”
Babieca was suddenly aware of how cold the room was. How far underground they were. Nobody would miss them if they vanished. Pulcheria had known just how expendable they were from the beginning. He was tired of being another stone. Tired of being discarded, laughed at, forgotten about.
We can still surprise the hand that moves us.
Or bite the hand that feeds us. He thought of the painting they’d seen ages ago, in the villa where they’d met Felix. Beware of dog. Roldan’s start of surprise upon seeing it, and then his own laughter. A painting couldn’t hurt you. But perhaps that was wrong.
Perhaps he was the kind of dog to be feared.
“There’s a third option,” he said. “And that’s whatever you want. Am I right?”
She nodded.
“Then tell us. But first, let’s have something to eat.”
3
There was snow in the dream, though he wanted to call it something else. Some word from a dead language that
meant more than it should. The cold seeped into his sandals. He recognized this garden, even ice-locked and silent. It was where they’d met the meretrix. He’d seen apple shavings devour themselves, and flame dancing on air. Now it was still. He held the lantern higher, and its flame made racing patterns along the white. Snow in Anfractus. It didn’t seem possible, but his feet were numb from it. Babieca looked down. He had the sudden urge to cover his own tracks. He didn’t want his pursuer to see them. But there was nothing to cover. He’d left no footprints. Just a long shadow, which grinned at him, unwilling to give any advice on the matter.
Beneath the peristyle, two figures sat at a small table, facing each other. Roldan fidgeted with the frayed hem of his tunica. It was no longer red, but black. It seemed too large for him. Felix spun a cracked mask like a wheel, glittering against the marble table. It moved in slow circles, catching the lamplight. His face was always in shadow.
“You missed summer,” Roldan observed.
“I’m always late for the important things.”
“I don’t mind the snow.” Roldan stuck out his tongue to catch a flake. “Sometimes I wish it would stop, but then I’m not so sure. Maybe it should cover everything.”
Babieca took a small step back. He could feel the cold in his limbs for the first time. The lantern was broken and burning against the snow. He flexed his fingers, wondering what it would feel like to freeze. Maybe it would be like slipping into a bath, or letting your body surrender to perpetual night. It was no longer the cold that he feared.
“Whom do you serve?”
“That’s like drawing lines on water.”
Babieca grabbed his wrist. “I need to know.”
Roldan looked at him for a moment but said nothing. Babieca relaxed his grip. Roldan touched his hand lightly.
“You’re cold.”
“That’s how I know that I’m still alive.”
“I think you’ve got that backward.” Roldan cupped his hands, blowing on them. His breath was surprisingly warm. “You’d better go inside soon.”
“Tell me first.”
“Whom do I serve?” He considered it for a moment. “Ivory and ash.”
Babieca thought he meant the lares of fire. “You’d truly raise an army of spirits for Latona?”
“I’m just the shepherd. Or spirit-herd. I’m not certain about the terminology.”
“What does she really want?”
“To watch all the worlds burn.”
Carl awoke in his bed, alone. His mouth tingled. For a moment, all he could do was stare at the ceiling. The blinds made abstract patterns against the stucco. He almost thought that he could see a face, the way you did sometimes when you stared into the knotted surface of a tree. Some uncanny correspondence. But it was nothing. He slowly attained a sitting position. The transition from yesterday had left him feeling slightly hungover. Real magic shouldn’t do that, but maybe the park had always been something else. He rubbed his burning eyes. It was unusual to dream about Babieca. Or perhaps just unusual to remember. Even now, the details were melting as his mind roused itself. There was no sense holding on.
Ivory and ash.
It sounded like something from one of the Anglo-Saxon poems that Andrew studied. Carl had tried to read one, something about a wolf, but it was too enigmatic. He couldn’t figure out who was speaking, or why. So he’d just mumbled that the imagery was creative, and Andrew had seemed satisfied by the response. He’d probably only been half-listening. Carl found history more comforting than literature. You could piece together a broken comb, reconstruct a shattered fortress. You could follow threads back to another time, whose trappings still survived, even if they were buried within a matrix of earth. Once, he’d held a Byzantine earring in his hand, surprised by the weight of it. The amber still gleamed. Centuries ago, it had formed part of a noblewoman’s glittering network. People had seen it, winking from a cloud of incense. But poems were different animals.
Andrew had been revised somehow. The person that he remembered was that broken comb, that fortress whose bones waited in rainwater. Once, he’d forgotten who he was, and they’d lied to him easily, cleanly. Now it was his turn. His wounded arm pushed the wheel. All they could do was brace for impact.
Carl stumbled into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. The stranger mugged for him, brushing the hair from his eyes. He stuck his tongue out, but the reflection merely looked unimpressed.
He had met Andrew’s mother. The woman who’d been sending her son postcards since he was six. The settling silence in every conversation between Andrew and his father. They were very much alike. Both would float away in the middle of a sentence. At first it was imperceptible, but then Carl would realize that father and son were contemplating the full moon. There was nothing left, then, but to fix himself another drink and enjoy the space between them.
Carl surveyed the ruins of his apartment. Why couldn’t he just clean it, like a normal person? He should want to clean it. Living in your own pile of academic detritus wasn’t exactly hygienic. A discarded article had lain in the corner for two weeks now and was collecting a sheen of dust. He knew it was there, yet he felt no desire to pick it up. He was a lazy dragon, building his hoard from interlibrary loans, old bus passes, and clothes that no longer fit because he’d been living on coffee and the occasional cigarette. This was a dorm room, he decided, not an adult’s parlor. And maybe that was his problem. Some part of him had peaked when he was still an undergraduate. Everything beyond that was just a thick layer of paint on an unsupportable canvas. He’d gone to university to learn something about himself, and what he’d learned was that he had no survival instinct.
Someone had messaged him using an online hookup app. It had the sort of one-word name that suggested enigma, but rarely delivered. Carl’s profile was called Justinian_88, after the Byzantine emperor who’d ruled alongside his wife, Theodora, a former courtesan. She’d danced in pantomime plays as a girl, scarcely realizing that on the eve of the Nika Revolt, she would tell her husband: “Bury me in purple before I flee from this place.” What had surprised him the most was that the simple Justinian was taken, which made him think that some doppelganger in Istanbul was logged on simultaneously. Perhaps they’d meet some night. This message was from Electric_Cub. It said: wanna pm? in the area, willing to host.
He deleted the message. Another popped up, and he deleted that one. The terminal encounters had become exhausting.
Carl loaded his profile and deleted all of the wry, leading answers. He replaced them with what he thought were honest responses:
What are you looking for?
Something challenging, like an open flame, or a pack of wolves.
What do you do in your spare time?
Mostly jerking off and converting footnotes to endnotes.
What can’t you live without?
You. Just kidding. Coffee, Muppets, my mother’s albóndigas.
What is your idea of a perfect date?
I get stoned and play old cartridge games all day. Shining Force, Wonder Boy in Monsterland, that whole oeuvre. My mom calls, and I listen to her read Borges. Then she listens to me eat pancakes. I stand by the fountain at Wascana Park and watch as the sunlight touches the gargoyles. I take a sweaty nap. I read about Greek fire on a patio. I pet my senses until I’ve dulled them. I decide to forgive myself for everything. I take a cold shower and drip-dry on the couch, watching the episode of Mad Men where Peggy stands on tiptoe to peek through Don Draper’s office window. I eat a stack of saltine crackers with Nutella spread. I remember the wild heat of boyhood, the games and the dogs and the endless running. I remember when desire first took me, shaking my branches. I remember the first and the last and devouring the beautiful middle. Then I hear the buzzer.
How do you identify?
I take what I can get.
Are you looking for a long-term rela
tionship?
Are you? Sweet algorithm, what are you looking for? What are you into? Where can I find you without your punctuation? If I wear the right color handkerchief, will you shock me in the park for everyone to see? Or are you more of a theater buff?
Submit.
Carl knew what he had to do. It wasn’t a quest that would end well, but he had no choice. Knowledge changed everything. It was the closest thing to power that they had, and so they would use it. He would use it. On this side of the park, he couldn’t sing, but he was perfectly willing to dance.
He pulled on an old pair of jeans with a staple in them. Most of his shirts were dirty, because he kept spending his Laundromat change on Popsicles. All he could find was an Indigo Jones T-shirt with a tear in the shoulder. As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he could hear music coming from the sex shop below. Love Selection liked to play the Baroque masters, as a sort of unexpected move to throw their customers off-guard. He could see their cherry-red awning from his patio, bright beneath the cloudless sky. He walked past the entrance, reading a sign that politely announced a BOGO offer on fetish DVDs.
He followed Broad Street downtown, past the shimmering glass banks and the store that sold nothing but yoga pants. It seemed like an odd extravagance for a prairie city, but it was doing mad business. The furniture store was on the edge of downtown—an edge that struck you with unexpected speed. The buildings gave way to dusty parking lots, where signs pointed the way to a giant casino. He thought about continuing down Osler Street, to the little park where they’d smoked and watched the gophers. It would be nice to sit there again, watching the wild grass slowly deconstructing everything.
Instead, he crossed the parking lot and stepped into the air-conditioned furniture store. The contrast was shocking and raised gooseflesh on his arms. It took a moment to adjust to the fluorescent glow, which outlined small battalions of upholstered chairs and improbable bunk beds. A few customers milled about, sampling the merchandise. One couple looked embarrassed as they tested out a queen-sized bed. They left hand prints in the memory foam and bounced chastely to assess the springs. The unspoken question hung in the air: Can we fuck on this? But that wasn’t included with the customer survey.
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