“Thank you,” I said, drawing his gaze to me.
He frowned as he looked me over and then clucked his tongue. “What was Penny thinking?”
I touched my hair, which Penny had pinned up in a loose knot. “She didn’t do a good job?”
“She did too good a job.” He began pulling pieces of my hair free of the pins. “She’s going to end up in the zoo if she isn’t careful.”
“Hey, let me —”
Dromo pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his suit coat and dragged it across my mouth, smearing rosy lipstick over the white cotton. “If the queen asks, say you declined Penny’s help. That way she can’t be blamed if the queen thinks you’ve upstaged her.”
I pulled free of his hold and touched my now-raw lips. “I don’t want to upstage her.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.
“No,” he agreed. “You don’t.”
26
Dromo led us up the stairs and to the roof. At the top, Rafe and I opened the door and stepped out into a lush garden just as the sun dropped past the horizon. We saw Omar smoking a cigar as handlers armed with rifles took up positions along the edge of the roof at various strategic points. The center area was crowded with freestanding cages, which held the oddest creatures that I’d ever seen — a snakelike dog, a bat-faced rabbit…. Chicken bones and dry pet food lay scattered across the cement floors of the enclosures. At least I hoped they were chicken bones. I wanted to run to each cage and see what was inside. Judging by his wrinkled nose, Rafe didn’t share my curiosity.
“This is so wrong.” He flung a hand at the nearest creature. “That mongrel has got at least five animals mixed in to it.”
I peered inside the tall cage and saw what he meant. The long-necked creature had ermine fur and a body like a mini kangaroo. “They look like they belong in a dream.” I turned in a slow circle, looking into all the cages.
“So you like my menagerie?” the queen asked. She stepped out from behind a blooming shrub, dressed in a semitransparent gown of yellowing lace with a white fur cape draped over one shoulder. Her auburn hair had been put up with dried bird claws. “They are fun, aren’t they? I was in charge of infecting and breeding them even before I was queen. It’s how I caught the king’s eye. I impressed him with what I whipped up. Creatures with the softest fur, and leather in colors you wouldn’t believe.”
I murmured my amazement, while remembering the fate of the ugly offspring. On the jeep ride here, Cosmo had told us that the so-called failures were taken to the zoo and fed to the feral humans who were imprisoned there.
“You look pretty,” the queen said to me while fingering her electric blue Ferae test. “Very pretty …”
Out of her mouth, it didn’t sound like a compliment. It sounded ominous. “Um, thanks.”
“You two are going to fit in just fine.” She smiled at Rafe, but that smile tightened as her eyes moved back to me. If she’d only let us go, then she wouldn’t have to worry about the king noticing me.
She bent toward the cage beside her. Inside sat a dejected little hedgehog-monkey thing. The queen waved a celery stalk in front of the bars, and the small creature reached out a hand to take it, but the queen jerked the celery back, out of the mongrel’s reach, and laughed. “It’s getting weaker and weaker,” she said. “It hasn’t eaten in days. It’s an ugly one all right.”
I had to turn away, or my hands would have found their way around her throat. But her attention span was short — big surprise — and soon she dropped the celery and headed for the edge of the roof. “Let’s see who has arrived.”
When her back was turned, I bent to get the celery, but Rafe had had the same idea. Our fingers touched and his closed on the stalk and he tossed it into the little mongrel’s cage. Without a word about it, he strode toward the queen, while I stared after him in shock.
From the edge of the roof, we could not only see the guests arriving in their manimal-drawn rickshaws, we could also see the feral, still chained in the yard below. Eyes closed, he swung his head back and forth as if he was trying to shake loose a crick in his neck. Once the people climbed out of their rickshaws, they stopped to point and gape at him on their way into the castle. One man threw a rock at him, and the feral’s eyes snapped open. He lunged for the man, but the chain pulled him up short. The group below broke into peals of laughter.
“Almost makes me ashamed to be human,” Rafe muttered.
I glanced at him. “Almost?”
The queen waved to the stream of people arriving below. “Hurry up to the roof,” she called down and then sighed, leaning against the low wall. “Can you believe it? That’s just about everyone. All the humans left living inside the compound. Less than two hundred.”
“Were there more at one time?” I asked.
“Yes, but they either took off or got infected at some point. Oh, and a lot died trying to overthrow my husband a few years back. Idiots. They just couldn’t admit that we’re safer now than we’ve ever been.”
“Safer from what?” I asked.
She made a face as if I were too dumb to live. “Ferals. And then there’s the servants. Given half a chance, they’d have us waiting on them. The king says we need more humans if we’re to keep the manimals in their place. But not many people come to Chicago anymore.”
“Where is the king?” Rafe asked.
“Off hunting, but he’ll be back soon enough,” Omar said as he joined us.
If the king bore even half the scars that Omar did from their encounter with a feral, then I was surprised he’d ever venture outside the compound again. “Were those the king’s trophies on the spikes outside the fence?” I asked as if impressed.
“I hate those things,” the queen groaned, and then gave a dismissive wave. “But the king says the heads keep the ferals away.”
“Might also be why people don’t come to Chicago anymore,” Rafe said with a straight face.
The guests began trickling onto the roof in such elegant and elaborate clothing, they could have been attending a formal ball. Well, except for the fact that they all wore bright blue Ferae tests around their necks. But as the guests strolled closer, I saw that the fashions were from twenty years ago — pre-exodus — and that everything had a tattered, musty look. The men’s tuxedos were faded and their cuffs frayed, while the women’s gowns were discolored or disintegrating and some smelled of mildew. There had to be plenty of high-end stores in Chicago to raid, and even more closets inside the mansions, but the delicate materials weren’t holding up nearly as well as a wool sweater might.
I let my eyes wander over what was left of Chicago. Towering shapes against the darkening sky, and beyond that, the dark expanse of Lake Michigan. There was something wrong with the view, but at first, I couldn’t put a finger on what…. Right. There wasn’t a single light on in any of the buildings beyond the fence.
Rafe joined me. “Figured out how we’re getting out of here yet?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
He leaned back against the low wall and folded his arms. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“You’re trapped in the Chicago compound,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m with the girl who’s going to end the quarantine.”
“What?” I stared at him.
He cut me a sly look. “The girl in Mack’s stories always does.”
“I’m not that girl.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re better. For one thing, you’re real. And two, you fill out that dress better than a ten-year-old could.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Give yourself some credit,” he went on, “not a lot of silkies would have made it this far.”