“Victoria,” admitted de Carabas.
“Not actually on my list of potential thieves. She’s a deep one,” said the Elephant, after a moment.
“I’ll not argue with that,” said the Marquis. “Also, she failed to pay me the entire amount agreed. I wound up obtaining my own lagniappe to make up the deficit.”
He reached a dark hand into the inside of his coat. His fingers found the obvious pockets, and the less obvious, and then to his surprise, the least obvious of all. He reached inside it and pulled out a magnifying glass on a chain. “It was Victoria’s,” he said. “I believe you can use it to see through solid things. Perhaps this could be considered a small payment against my debt to you …?”
The Elephant took something out of its own pocket—the Marquis could not see what it was—and squinted at it through the magnifying glass. Then the Elephant made a noise halfway between a delighted snort and a trumpet of satisfaction. “Oh fine, very fine,” it said. It pocketed both of the objects. Then it said, “I suppose that saving my life outranks stealing my diary. And while I wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t followed you down the drain, further recriminations are pointless. Consider your life your own once more.”
“I look forward to visiting you in the Castle someday,” said the Marquis.
“Don’t push your luck, mate,” said the Elephant, with an irritable swish of his trunk.
“I won’t,” said the Marquis, resisting the urge to point out that pushing his luck was the only way he had made it this far. He looked around and realized that Peregrine had slipped mysteriously and irritatingly away into the shadows, once more, without so much as a good-bye.
The Marquis hated it when people did that.
He made a small, courtly bow to the Elephant, and the Marquis’ coat, his glorious coat, caught the bow, amplified it, made it perfect, and made it the kind of bow that only the Marquis de Carabas could ever possibly make. Whoever he was.
The next Floating Market was being held in Derry and Tom’s Roof Garden. There had been no Derry and Tom’s since 1973, but time and space and London Below had their own uncomfortable agreement, and the roof garden was younger and more innocent than it is today. The folk from London Above (they were young, and in an intense discussion, and they had stacked heels and paisley tops and bell-bottom flares, the men and the women) ignored the folk from London Below entirely.
The Marquis de Carabas strode through the roof garden as if he owned the place, walking swiftly until he reached the food court. He passed a tiny woman selling curling cheese sandwiches from a wheelbarrow piled high with the things, a curry stall, a short man with a huge glass bowl of pale white blind fish and a toasting fork, until, finally, he reached the stall that was selling the Mushroom.
“Slice of the Mushroom, well grilled, please,” said the Marquis de Carabas.
The man who took his order was shorter than he was and still somewhat stouter. He had sandy, receding hair and a harried expression.
“Coming right up,” said the man. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” And then, curiously, the Marquis asked, “Do you remember me?”
“I am afraid not,” said the Mushroom man. “But I must say, that is a most beautiful coat.”
“Thank you,” said the Marquis de Carabas. He looked around. “Where is the young fellow who used to work here?”
“Ah. That is a most curious story, sir,” said the man. He did not yet smell of damp although there was a small encrustation of mushrooms on the side of his neck. “Somebody told the fair Drusilla, of the Court of the Raven, that our Vince had had designs upon her, and had—you may not credit it, but I am assured that it is so—apparently sent her a letter filled with spores with the intention of making her his bride in the Mushroom.”
The Marquis raised an eyebrow quizzically, although he found none of this surprising. He had, after all, told Drusilla himself, and had even shown her the original letter. “Did she take well to the news?”
“I do not believe that she did, sir. I do not believe that she did. She and several of her sisters were waiting for Vince, and they all caught up with us on our way to the Market. She told him they had matters to discuss, of an intimate nature. He seemed delighted by this news, and went off with her to find out what these matters were. I have been waiting for him to arrive at the Market and come and work all evening, but I no longer believe he will be coming.” Then the man said a little wistfully, “That is a very fine coat. It seems to me that I might have had one like it in a former life.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the Marquis de Carabas, satisfied with what he had heard, cutting into his grilled slice of the Mushroom, “but this particular coat is most definitely mine.”
As he made his way out of the Market, he passed a clump of people descending the stairs and he paused and nodded at a young woman of uncommon grace. She had the long orange hair and the flattened profile of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and there was a birthmark in the shape of a five-pointed star on the back of one hand. Her other hand was stroking the head of a large, rumpled owl, which glared uncomfortably out at the world with eyes that were, unusually for such a bird, of an intense, pale blue.
The Marquis nodded at her, and she glanced awkwardly at him, then she looked away in the manner of someone who was now beginning to realize that she owed the Marquis a favor.
He nodded at her amiably, and continued to descend.
Drusilla hurried after him. She looked as if she had something she wanted to say.
The Marquis de Carabas reached the foot of the stairs ahead of her. He stopped for a moment, and he thought about people, and about things, and about how hard it is to do anything for the first time. And then, clad in his fine coat, he slipped mysteriously, even irritatingly, into the shadows, without so much as a good-bye, and he was gone.
Connie Willis
Connie Willis lives with her husband in Greeley, Colorado. She first attracted attention as a writer in the late seventies with a number of stories for the now-defunct magazine Galileo, and went on to establish herself as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers of the 1980s. In 1983, she won two Nebula Awards, one for her novelette “Fire Watch,” and one for her short story “A Letter from the Clearys”; a few months later, “Fire Watch” went on to win her a Hugo Award as well. In 1989, her novella The Last of the Winnebagos won both the Nebula and the Hugo, and she won another Nebula in 1990 for her novelette “At the Rialto.” In 1993, her landmark novel Doomsday Book won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award, as did her short story “Even the Queen.” She won another Hugo in 1994 for her story “Death on the Nile,” another in 1997 for her story “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” another in 1999 for her novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, another for her novella The Winds of Marble Arch in 2000, another in 2006 for her novella Inside Job, and yet another in 2008 for her novella All Seated on the Ground—capped off in 2011 by her most recent book, the massive two-volume novel Blackout/All Clear, winning both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. In 2009 she was voted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and in 2011, she received the SFWA Grand Master Award. All of which makes her the most honored writer in the history of science fiction, and the only person ever to win two Nebulas and two Hugos in the same year. Her other books include the novels Water Witch, Light Raid, and Promised Land, all written in collaboration with Cynthia Felice, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Uncharted Territory, Remake, and Passage, and, as editor, the anthologies The New Hugo Winners, Volume III, Nebula Awards 33, and (with Sheila Williams), A Woman’s Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women. Her short fiction has been gathered in the collections Fire Watch, Impossible Things, and Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Coming up is a huge retrospective collection, The Best of Connie Willis.