“Did you follow us here? Or were you here already?”
“I’m under orders to take you to Madame. Contemporary clothing is forbidden in the inner halls. You may wear these, since we do not have time for a fitting.” I drew from my sack two cloaks of floor-length dark red velvet, hooded, and heavy enough to muffle sound.
“How long have you been involved with these people?” Thisbe pressed. “Mycroft, I asked you a question.”
“You can’t have weapons when you see Madame,” I recited. “You may give them to me, I’ll return them when you leave the premises.”
Thisbe crossed her arms. “You will answer me, Mycroft. I recommend that you answer voluntarily.” She took a menacing step forward.
I sighed. “I noticed when Carlyle arrived in Paris. You two shouldn’t be here. This is number one on the list of places in the world you shouldn’t be.”
“You did know about this place,” Carlyle accused.
“Of course.” I tossed them each a cloak. “Where J.E.D.D. Mason goes I go.”
“Jehovah Mason,” he corrected. “You knew that, too?”
I hid my face by diving back into the sack for my own costume. “Tell me you didn’t use the transit computers to get this address.”
Thisbe’s silence answered for her.
“Tell them you got it from me.” I met her eyes now. “This is important, Thisbe. We don’t need the powers that be getting even more worried about the security of your bash’. If anyone asks, you drugged me and I told you this address when half-asleep. I was the weak link, not your bash’. Clear?”
Silence consented.
“We have to move fast,” I continued. “The Chevalier will have left one of his gentlemen outside to make sure I really do take you to Madame. Put the cloaks on.”
Thisbe held the garment, stubborn. “Who’s Madame?”
“The owner. Please take me seriously when I say this: I’ll die before I let you see Jehovah. He’d have the truth about Bridger out of you in two minutes. That will not happen while I live.”
Their stares believed me.
“Rumor of your coming already reached Madame. I am under orders to bring you, and hopefully meeting her will satisfy your…” I took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have come here, you really shouldn’t have. But the faster we move the better mood Madame will be in, and right now Madame’s good humor is the only protection you have from … consequences.”
Thisbe donned the cloak, the velvet hiding every inch of her. “In a place like this I’d have expected masks, too, like carnival.”
I shook my head. “You’re not of the right rank for masks. Carlyle, put your cloak on.”
He glared.
Thisbe glared back. “We don’t have time for your Mycroft Canner fixation right now, Carlyle! Do you want to trust Mycroft, or do you want to stay here and let them rape you?”
If Carlyle were a man who cursed, he would have done it then. “They would’ve raped us, wouldn’t they? Your friends.”
I did not have time to argue the difference between friends and betters. “No,” was on my lips when I realized this might be my chance. I could scare them off, concoct something horrible, a thousand times beyond reality but plausible in the surreality of this place. Then maybe, maybe, they would run. “They’d have raped you every way it’s possible to rape someone,” I began, my imagination racing, “the group of them taking turns. Then they’d have tied you up and called in whores from downstairs to join in, and put you through every filthy act imaginable. But the Law only counts it as rape if you still say ‘no’ at the end. They’d make sure you couldn’t. They’d use extremes of pain and pleasure until you’d agree to anything. Experts like that, it wouldn’t take them an hour to get you to send messages to your bash’ and colleagues saying you were taking a vacation, so no one would look for you for weeks. Then they’d drag you to the kennels where the real work would begin. Even before they entered the room they were probably placing bets on who would succeed first getting you to sign yourself over and become a Blacklaw. And once you did, you’d never leave this place again. Now put on your cloak and let me save you.”
I waited to see if my fantasy would work. Carlyle paled. He gagged. At last, he chose the cloak.
I sighed relief. “Weapons, Thisbe?” I pressed, offering my empty sack.
Carlyle’s eyes turned from hate-narrow to child-wide as he watched Thisbe pull from hidden places a sturdy knife, a second sturdy knife, a stun pistol, a tranquilizer pistol, and three flash grenades. “Thisbe, what—”
“My bash’ is vital to the world order, remember? Ockham and Cardie aren’t the only ones who study self-defense.” She placed her arsenal piece by treasured piece within my sack.
I regretted doing this in front of Carlyle, I really did. “All weapons, Thisbe.”
Death hate reared that instant in her glare.
“There are security scanners every ten feet in the halls, Thisbe,” I pressed. “They’ll know. I’m sorry. I’ll give them back to you, I swear by Apollo Mojave.”
Even with that it took her three long breaths to face up to the necessity. She knelt.
“Thisbe,” Carlyle called, “what are you—”
“Don’t ask.”
The clasping mechanisms exhaled long hisses as the woman removed her boots.
Carlyle leaned closer. “Thisbe—”
“I said don’t ask! Now get your fucking cloak on before you do anything else to get us in deeper shit!” She set her boots in my sack, gently as a mother lays down a child, then spun to vent her wrath upon the sensayer. “I don’t want another word out of you, Carlyle, you hear me? Not about Mycroft, or the costume. Mycroft is rescuing your stupid ass and you’re going to do everything Mycroft says to the letter until we’re out of here!”
“Costume?” Carlyle repeated, but then saw what she meant.
The sack had a costume for me, too, to cover my Servicer’s dappling: the rough grayish brown habit of a Franciscan monk. To you, one monk is probably like another, since our schools don’t teach their many founders’ distinctive madnesses. Francis was a saint among saints and a madman among madmen, who used to talk to birds, to ravage his own body with scourge and ice, to turn down pious hosts, preferring to beg his supper on the street, who refused to be in command in his order, insisting that his own followers rule him so he could practice the virtue of obedience, and who had to be sternly ordered to eat and rest, or he would have destroyed himself by overpunishing his sinful flesh. Franciscans live on charity alone, owning nothing, not their monasteries, not their plates and cups, or the shoes upon their feet. Carlyle knew this, and watched the monkish gray-brown slide over my Servicer dappling, and shuddered.
“Come.” I opened the door. “There’s no more time.”
They followed me in fear-fast silence. We found not one but three of the Chevalier’s men lurking in the hall, enjoying a long bench of rose-pink satin, pocked with buttons like navels repeating along an infinite torso. This bench lined the near wall of the corridor from end to end, breaking only for the doors of labeled rooms: Salon Hogarth, Salon Caligula, Salon Rochester, Salon Salome, Salon de Pompadour. The far wall was one great window, looking down over the central hall below, where stairways, landings, and balconies descended like the terraces of Dante’s Hell, all covered with flesh. The lovemaking took place in piles, two, three, four lovers at a time throwing themselves into the vastness of skirts with the glee of kids swimming in chocolate. Men and women of both sexes paraded in the most elaborate gowns and wigs and coats and tails, or what remained of them as bodices and breeches opened to bare their ready cargo. Many were not even in the act of sex, but simply lying upon each other, dining and gossiping amid the spectacle. Waiters threaded among them, bussers, jugglers, a contortionist, and the Royal Belgian String Quartet, performing here with far more vigor than they had at Ganymede’s party. Never, reader, have you seen so many people in one place and not a single frown.