Miss Scarlet bowed her head. “Nothing,” she said, and inspected the hem of her dress.
“Wendy?” Jane raised her eyebrows, her face flushed, and looked at me. “Do you know anything about this?”
“No—not exactly—”
Giles had made us leave the lights off. In the dark room the window’s rectangle of deep blue glowed eerily, cobalt glass etched with black where the branches of the oaks scraped at the glass. I pretended to stare outside, but from the corner of my eye I watched Miss Scarlet. She had changed over the last months. It wasn’t just her clothing—a child’s red jumper of plain linen that hung loosely from Miss Scarlet’s slender arms and legs, giving her the appearance of a marionette twitching where she sat on the floor. It was Miss Scarlet herself. It was as though in losing her fine clothes, her costumes and cosmetics and props, she had lost that other Scarlet—the one that never raised her voice except onstage before a spellbound audience, that read to me from her beloved theatrical biographies and yearned always for the miracle that would make her human.
But that Scarlet was gone now. Or she had found another part to play: conspirator instead of coquette, Lady Macbeth instead of Miranda.
“You should know, if you don’t already,” Miss Scarlet announced. “There’s a war going on—”
Jane rolled her eyes, her dark hair flopping into her face. “A war? There’s always a war, Scarlet! Since the day you were born, there’s been at least one Ascension and I don’t know how many battles, not to mention the Archipelago Conflict and whatever’s going on now in the City.” She shoved a stack of clothes onto the floor and sprawled on the bed, yawning.
Miss Scarlet glared. “This is different,” she said, and her voice made me shiver. Because it had changed as well. It was throatier now, more like Fossa’s with its undercurrent of fury; the sound of a dog choking back a snarl. “Those were your wars—Ascendants, the Commonwealth and Emirate and the HORUS colonies….”
“Our wars!” Jane almost yelled. I covered her mouth with one hand, with the other gestured frantically at the floor to remind her that we weren’t alone in the house. “ Our wars? ” she went on, her voice low but her brown eyes blazing. “Everyone I ever knew and loved died back in that City, Scarlet, you know that! Those were Ascendant janissaries—”
“That’s not what I meant.” Miss Scarlet’s eyes were cold, flecks of black ice in her wrinkled black face. “I meant, those were all human wars. And this is different. This is all of us—geneslaves—against the rest of you. This will be the first gene war.”
Jane stared at her, stunned. Then she turned to me.
“A gene war?” she repeated in a small voice.
Even without my old powers I could feel her sudden fear, her heart pounding like a second heart beside my own. I looked over at Miss Scarlet: her wizened face with its nimbus of dark fur, more grizzled now than it had ever been; her long yellow teeth and tiny black hands with their clever fingers. When she gazed back, her expression had changed; she was keeping something from us. The deceit gave her a feral look, as though a fine membrane had lowered over her eyes, occluding the warmth and goodwill that had always glowed there.
“Gene wars?” Jane said again, her voice rising pleadingly. “Tell me, Scarlet—please, explain to me…”
But Miss Scarlet had turned away. She crossed the room, her bare feet pattering on the wood floor, and silently pried the door open. Only as she stepped into the hall did she turn to look back at me. For an instant her eyes held mine. Amber eyes, eyes with the shape and color of leaves in them; an animal’s eyes. And suddenly I felt lost, a huge clumsy thing stumbling through the trees until I reached a place where the ground was sheared away beneath me. Miss Scarlet had leapt easily over that chasm; but I could not follow.
“Scarlet!” Jane cried. “Where are you going?”
Miss Scarlet shook her head. “Have Wendy explain it to you,” she called softly as the door closed after her. “ She understands.”
I looked at Jane. Her face was red, and she blinked back tears furiously. When I stared to say something, she pushed me away and stared out the window to where stars burned against the deepening sky.
“Jane,” I began, my hand touching her shoulder, “I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to worry—”
“Leave me alone!” She slapped my hand away. She whirled and stared at me. I could feel her gaze burning into the side of my face, where beneath my hair the scars remained. “You’re one of them too, aren’t you?” she hissed. “You think I’ve done something terrible to you, that’s why you won’t talk to me, or touch me—” Choking, she turned back to the window.
I stood, the blood pulsing behind my eyes so that a brittle aura hung above everything. I walked to the door blindly, and my hands clutched at scars that I knew would never really heal.
Late the next morning I crept to the top of the stairs, where a small round window looked down on the frozen front walk glittering in the sunlight. I stood and watched as the Ascendant janissaries made a brusque farewell to Trevor, bits of ice flying up behind their feet as they hurried to their snowmobile. In a few minutes they were gone. Only a long trail like a serpent’s showed where they had been, and the distant whine of their vehicle slicing through the still air.
The smells of coffee and cumin brought me downstairs. I met Miss Scarlet in the kitchen, where Giles was grinding spices in a mill and tossing them into an iron skillet to roast.
“Where’s Trevor?” Miss Scarlet asked. She sat on a low stool beside Fossa, who regarded me with narrowed yellow eyes before turning away.
I shrugged. “Upstairs, I guess.” I sat at the table, picking up the little monitor and pretending great interest in the game of Horlage I’d left there yesterday. Giles continued to shake spices from grinder to pan to a heavy blue-rimmed plate. I fiddled with the knobs and images of my game, and after a few minutes said casually, “Who were our guests last night?”
A long silence. Giles turned to pull a clouded Ball mason jar from a shelf and shook a fragrant mound of coriander seeds into his palm. I looked up at him, the game monitor chattering to itself in my lap. Miss Scarlet stared at Giles with poorly concealed impatience, and Fossa tipped his head sideways, like a dog waiting for a command.
“Well, all right,” Giles said crossly. He poured the coriander seeds back into the jar and wiped his hand on his trousers. “They were janissaries, Ascendants—”
“Of course,” Miss Scarlet said triumphantly.
Giles gave her a dirty look. “They came from the City of Trees—there’s been rioting there. Apparently the Paphians and Curators have thrown their lot with the aardmen and lazars, and they’ve all set themselves against the Ascendants.”
“So they are fighting!” exulted Miss Scarlet. She threw her head back with a flourish I recalled from her interpretation of Medea. “Ah, I wish I could see it!”
“You may,” croaked Fossa. He shifted where he sat hunched on the floor and grinned, his muzzle cracking open to show sharp white teeth. “But winter is a bad season for war.”
Giles frowned. “They’re all bad seasons for war.” He gave a small cry and wrapped a cloth around his hand, pulled the smoking skillet from the woodstove and dropped it into the sink. “Damn!” He glared at Miss Scarlet, who had the grace to look abashed. “You shouldn’t be rejoicing over this war, Miss Scarlet. It’s children and courtesans and scholars and plague victims against the Autocracy: now who do you think is going to win?”
The chimpanzee stared down at her gnarled hands. “Of course, you’re right,” she said softly. “I forget sometimes—”