An official building, then; dark, unlikely to be occupied at this hour. Perhaps it was a library, or a meeting hall. Was it open? Locked? Alarmed?
By now, her description was abroad. There would be someone waiting in her hotel room. Her ship would be guarded. (She hoped no one was so stupid as to try to break into it. The ship’s intelligence frowned on such mischief.) They would be expanding the search, block by block.
They had been fools to send only four men to arrest her. She could not count on them remaining fools. If they had woken Pulawayo by now—likely—he would tell them she had left his home an hour earlier, and that she was wearing her Hound’s uniform, as they had expected. This would confuse them for a time. Were they chasing the right person, or another redhead tourista coincidentally in the same neighborhood?
Either way, they would want to find her.
She found a back door to the building, where she could work unobserved in the dark. Her night vision was very good, at one with her enhanced smell and hearing. She studied the walls, saw no wires, no receptors. She paid particular attention to the mortared crevices between the great stone blocks. If she were to insert a monitor into the walls, there would be a good location…
Nothing.
Remembering the vestibule at the STC tower, she leaped to no conclusion, remained crouched there, pawed a little at the door, snuffled. It was hinged to open inward. A lever latch. She pressed it down.
No alarms. This far from the tourist areas, the ’Cockers did not fear unauthorized entries. Among themselves, custom was a stronger bar than locks and alarms. Those who found trespass unimaginable would find it hard to imagine trespassers. Briefly, she wondered what it might be like to live in a society that did not bar its doors.
Her implant returned the datum that buildings of this style were called remonstratoria, or Halls of Remonstration. They were thought to be either law courts or temples, but no off-worlder had ever been inside one, and what rites were performed within remained a mystery.
Wonderful. She could add sacrilege to her list of offenses.
The door swung noiselessly inward, revealing a darkened corridor. She stepped through, closing the door softly, and found herself in a rough basement. She squatted there, panting from her run, and sniffed. A harsh chemical odor stung her nostrils. It might mask the odor of a human being—a custodian or night watchman.
But listening, she heard nothing save the creaking and settling of the building itself. This was an old building. She could smell the age in the dank stone, in the seasoned wood. The years had soaked into them and settled there.
Old buildings are sacred in societies ruled by custom.
Sacred because it was old or old because it was sacred, it made no difference. But how could she enter such a building and not explore? Hounds are, by their nature, always sniffing around.
She picked out a flight of old wooden steps twisting up a narrow stairwell. The runners had rounded dips in their centers, worn by countless feet over countless years. She thought the building might pre-date the Reconnection, when some of the Diaspora worlds had recovered the ability to slide between the stars.
Stairs are meant for climbing; and so, she did.
She paused again on the main floor to sniff and listen. The chemical scents were stronger here, but the silences remained as profound. Light glimmered through shutter slats covering the windows. A tree must have stood between the window and the streetlamp because the light flickered irregularly as the branches outside wavered in the fitful night breeze.
She made out row after row of racks reaching nearly to the ceiling and arranged in rigid precision from the front of the room to its back. The severity of the geometry was at one with the architecture of the building—and very unlike the free-flowing, unwalled improvisations of modern ’Cockers.
A library, she thought, or possibly an art gallery.
Drawing nearer, she discerned solid objects mounted to the walls. Sculpture, perhaps? If so, sculpture of little variety. Equally spaced in rigid rows, each seemed roughly the same size as all the others. Well, sonnets were all the same “size,” yet each could be an exquisitely different work of art—for the greatest art, Die Bolders believed, lay in “achievement within restrictions,” just as accomplishment in sport required hurdles and nets and balk lines.
Brief bursts of dim light alternated with closeted darkness as the leaves fluttered in front of the window. Bridget ban stepped into an aisle to get a better look at one of the sculptures.
And came face-to-face with a wide-eyed, grim-lipped elf with wild, frizzy hair. It required all her Hound’s training to stifle the cry that climbed up her throat.
Discovered! There had been a watchman, after all.
But the elf said nothing. The eyes did not blink. The mouth did not part. A disembodied voice spoke through sewn-still lips. “I am Billy Kisilwando. I killed my partner in a drunken fit…”
And the horror of discovery gave way to the discovery of horror.
It was a head, carefully preserved by the taxidermist’s art, eyes replaced by glass, lips stitched closed, mounted to a wall bracket. Beneath was a plaque bearing a name, an offense, and a date. Evidently, if someone stood for a time before a particular head, an intelligence would play that person’s last words.
When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days grace to set his affairs in order and to meditate, which he did. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s manu. Then they cut off his head, preserved it, and mounted it in the Hall of Remonstration, where it is admired by all who pass through the Nolapatady District on their journeys. And forever after he repeated his confession to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom: not that a man be given the grace to contemplate his end; but that he feels bound to honor its expiration.
Bridget ban contemplated the head of Billy Kisilwando, and passed judgment.
“Now, that’s different,” she said aloud.
She wandered fascinated through the hall, and found aisle after aisle of stuffed and mounted heads. The panels near the street entrance were newer; those near the back or in side chambers were older, more severe in their lines, with classical moldboards and trim. The older plaques bore dates in the former “Peacock’s Era.” The newer plaques bore Gaelactic dates, but with the Year of the Peacock noted parenthetically underneath.
There were fewer elves in the back rooms, and in one especially dusty room, the only heads were identifiably men and women. These older displays were crowded closer together, and the heads were tattered and moth-eaten. As the displays grew more recent, the heads converged toward the androgynous average.
On the newer walls, brightly painted in the exuberant pastels of modern Peacock, were mounted among the elves the heads of others: pale, flat-faced Jugurthans; golden women from Valency; thin-featured Alabastrines with skin like night; even a Cynthian warrior’s head, dripping with jewels, cruel arrogance, and barbaric splendor—and hard must have been the severing of that neck. The off-worlder faces all bore a look of immense surprise; as if they could not credit what was being done to them; all except the Cynthian, who managed somehow to sneer even in death. Curious, she waited until it spoke its confession.