“I’m sorry for your loss — all of your losses,” Hoegbo on said, turning to the mother and child who stood in mute acceptance of their fate. “I won’t keep you much longer.” The speech never sounded sincere, no ma er how sincerely he meant it.
The solicitor made a noise between a groan and a choke that Hoegbo on did not bother to catalog. His thoughts had returned to the merchandise — rug, clock, bookcase, phonograph, table, chairs. What price might they accept?
Hoegbo on would not have included the cage in his calculations if the boy’s stare had not kept flickering wildly toward it and back down again, gliding like Hoegbo on’s own over the remnants of a success that had become u er failure. For all the outlandish things in the room — the boy’s own mother to be counted among them — the boy most feared the cage, an object that could no more hurt him than the green suitcase that hung from his arm.
A reflexive sadness for the boy ran through Hoegbo on, even as he noted the delicacy of the silver engravings on the chair legs; definitely pre-Trillian.
He stared at the boy until the boy stared back. “Don’t you know you’re safe now?” Hoegbo on said a li le too loudly, the words muffled by the cloth over his mouth. An echo traveled up to the high ceiling, encountered the skylight, and descended at a higher pitch.
The boy said nothing. As was his right. Outside, the bodies of his father, brother, and two sisters were being burned as a precaution, the bodies too mutilated to have withstood a Viewing anyway. The boy’s fate, too, was uncertain. Sometimes survivors did not survive.
Nothing could make one safe. There had been a great spasm of buying houses without basements or with stone floors, but no one had yet proven that such a measure, or any measure, helped. The random nature of the events, combined with their infrequency, had instilled a certain fatalism in Ambergris’ inhabitants.
The solicitor had run out of patience. He stood uncomfortably close to Hoegbo on, his breath sour and thick. “Are you ready yet? You’ve had more than enough time. Should I callSla ery or Ungdom instead?”
His voice seemed more distorted than the mask could explain, as if he were in the grip of a new, perhaps deadly, emotion.
Hoegbo on took a step back from the ferocity of the solicitor’s gaze. The names of his chief rivals made a li le vein in Hoegbo on’s le eyelid pulse in and out. Especially Ungdom — towering John Ungdom, he of the wide belly, steeped in alcohol and pork lard.
“Call for them, then,” he said, looking away.
The solicitor’s gaze bored into his cheek and then the foul presence was gone. The solicitor had slumped into one of the chairs, a great smudge of a man.
“Anyway, I’m almost ready,” Hoegbo on said. The vein in his eyelid would not stop pulsing. It was true: neitherSla ery nor Ungdom would come. Because they were afraid. Because their devotion to their job was incomplete, insufficient, inadequate. Hoegbo on imagined them both taken up into the rain and torn to pieces by the wind.
“Tell me about the cage,” Hoegbo on said suddenly, surprising himself. “The cage up there”—he pointed—”is it for sale, too?”
The boy stiffened, stared at the floor.
To Hoegbo on’s surprise, the woman turned to look at him. Her eyes were black as an abyss; they did not blink and reflected nothing. He felt for a moment as if he stood balanced precariously between the son’s alarm and the mother’s regard.
“The cage was always open,” the woman said, her voice gravelly, something stuck in her throat. “We had a bird. We always let it fly around. It was a pre y bird. It flew high through the rooms. It— No one could find the bird. A er.” The terrible pressure of the word after appeared to be too much for her and she fell back into her silence.
“We’ve never had a cage,” the boy said, the dark green suitcase swaying. “We’ve never had a bird.
They le it here. They le it.”
A chill ran through Hoegbo on that was not caused by a dra. The sleepy gaze of a pig embryo floating in a jar caught his eye.Opportunity or disaster? The value of an artifact they had le behind might be considerable. The risks, however, might also be considerable. This was the third time in the last nine months that he had been called to a house visited by the gray caps. Each of the previous times, he had escaped unharmed. In fact, he had come to believe that late arrivals like himself were impervious to any side effects. Yet even he had experienced moments of discomfort, as when, at the last house, he had walked down a white hallway to the room where the merchandise awaited him and found a series of dark smudges and trails and tracks of blood. Halfway down the hallway, he had spied a dark object, shaped like a piece of dried fruit, glistening from the floor. Curious, he had leaned down to examine it, only to recoil and stand up when he realized it was a human ear.
This time, the solicitor had experienced the most unease. According to the talkative messenger who had summoned Hoegbo on, the solicitor had arrived in the early a ernoon to find the bodies and survivors.
Arms and legs had been stuck into the walls between specimen jars, arranged in intricate poses that displayed a perverse sense of humor.
The light glinted so ly off the windows. The silence became more absolute. All around, dead things watched one another, from wall to wall — a cacophony of gazes that saw everything but remembered nothing. Outside, the rain fell relentlessly.
A tingling sensation crept into Hoegbo on’s fingertips. A price had materialized in his mind, manifested itself in gli ering detail.
“Two thousand sels — for everything.”
The solicitor sighed, almost crumpled in on himself. The woman blinked rapidly, as if puzzled, and then stared at Hoegbo on with a hatred more real for being so distant. All the former protests of the solicitor, even the boy’s fear, were nothing next to that look. The red at the end of her arms had become paler, as if the white bandages had begun to heal her.
He heard himself say, “Three thousand sels. If you include the cage.” And it was true, he realized — he wanted the cage.
The solicitor, trying to mask some small personal distress now, giggled and said, “Done. But you must retrieve it yourself. I’m not feeling well.” The cloth of the man’s mask moved in and out almost imperceptibly as he breathed. A sour smell had entered the room.
On the ladder, Hoegbo on had a moment of vertigo. The world spun, then righted itself as he continued to the top. When he peered onto the windowsill, two eyes stared up at him from beside the cage.
“Manzikert!” he hissed. He recoiled, almost lost his balance as he flailed at empty air, managed to fall back against the ladder… and realized that they were just the missing marble eyes of the swan, placed there by some prankster, although it did not pay to think of who such a prankster might be. He caught his breath, tried to swallow the unease that pressed down on his shoulders, his tongue, his eyelids.
The cage stood to the right of the ladder and he was acutely conscious of having to lock his legs onto the ladder’s sides as he slowly leaned toward the cage.
Below, the solicitor and the boy were speaking, but their voices seemed dulled and distant. He hesitated.
What might be in the cage? What horrible thing far worse than a severed human ear? The odd idea struck him that he would pull the cord to reveal Thomas Daffed’s severed head. He could see the bars beneath the cloth, though, he told himself. Whatever lived inside the cage would remain inside the cage.
Now that it was his property, his acquisition, he refused to suffer the same failure of nerve asSla ery and Ungdom.
The cover of the cage, which in the dim light appeared to be sprinkled with a luminous green dust, had a drawstring and opened like a curtain. With a sharp yank on the drawstring, Hoegbo on drew aside the cover — and flinched, again nearly fell, a sensation of displaced air flowing across his face, as of something moving. He cried out. Then realized the cage was empty. He stood there for an instant, breathing heavily, staring into the cage. Nothing. It contained nothing. Relief came burrowing out of his bones, followed by disappointment. Empty. Except for some straw lining the bo om of the cage and, dangling near the back, almost as an a erthought, a perch, swaying back and forth, the movement no doubt caused by the speed with which he had drawn back the cover. A latched door extended the full three feet from the base to the top of the cage and could be slid back on special grooves. Stained green, the metal bars featured detail work as fine as he had ever seen — intricate flowers and vines with li le figures peering out of a background rich with mushrooms. He could sell it for 4,000 sels, with the right sales pitch.