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"You're a brute." Monkey pouted. Then, in a wheedling tone she said, "But, honeypie, nobody likes to be ordered around all the time."
"In a threesome, of course," Ratsnickle said thoughtfully, "things are different. It can go either way, but most commonly you end up with two people on top. To maintain balance, whoever winds up on the bottom has to accept twice the dominance. She has to learn to grovel. To crawl. She has to be made to cherish her own humiliation."
Monkey looked quickly at Jane. Her eyes were hard and bright, like jet buttons, and her nostrils flared. Then she shook her head and turned away. "That's perverse."
"Oh yes," Ratsnickle agreed. "But then, so many things are."
Jane stared hard into the candle sconce. Watching the flame vanish and reappear in the thick red glass. Like a moth struggling to escape. "You said you had something to tell me."
Shining and tall and fair and straight
As the Pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—
"Ah? So I did. You left in such a flurry of strange events—" Ratsnickle drew an envelope from an inside coat pocket, placed it on the table by his mug. Jane reached for the envelope and he drew it back. "Strange events, strange indeed. You left so abruptly you didn't even bother to say good-bye to your old friends. After all we meant to each other. It roused my curiosity. I decided to do a little poking around."
Sharply, Monkey said, "You went out together?"
"No."
"It was nothing—a folly of youth." Ratsnickle waved a hand airily. "I convinced Strawwe to put in an inquiry to the Office of the Child Catcher." He tapped the envelope meaningfully. "Aren't you curious what they said?"
Herself the Gate wherby love can
Enter the temple…
The poet's voice was high, nasal, and hesitant, a bouquet of unpleasant qualities.
"Do we have to listen to this crap? No, I'm not curious. What business is it of mine?"
"What indeed?" Ratsnickle returned the envelope to his pocket and abruptly changed the subject. "I hope you enjoyed tonight, Monkey, my sweet. Strolling about the City, window-shopping, our pleasant conversations."
She hugged him. "You know I did, Rattikins."
"If you could have only one item of all those we looked at tonight, what would it be?"
"Oh, the faun gloves. Without question, the gloves."
Ratsnickle turned to Jane. "You heard the lady." He snapped his fingers, as if she had perforce to obey.
Too horrified to sort and order her indignation, Jane cried, "But they wouldn't even let me through the door. La jettatura is right out of my league. It's too swank."
"We have faith in you." Ratsnickle stood, and Monkey after him. He closed a proprietorial hand over her behind to steer her away. "Our little Maggie is capable of a lot more than she thinks she is." Over his shoulder he mouthed a kiss at her.
As the two swept out, a smattering of applause rose from the floor. The poet was done reading. He stepped down from the stage, and was replaced by another as like to him as two cigarettes in a pack. The replacement cleared his throat into the microphone and began:
Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
Instead of dithering over whether or not la jettatura was beyond her talents, Jane should have challenged Ratsnickle directly. She should have told him she would never steal for him again. Should have said there was nothing in his envelope that could possibly affect her academic standing. That she wasn't afraid of him, not any more.
There were so many things she should have said.
The booksellers in Old Regents Hall served all the City. But since most of Senauden was taken up by the University, many specialized in secondhand texts, works of obscure scholarship, and other books of special interest to students.
The bookstalls were two and three stories high, but so narrow within that two customers could not slide by one another without discomfort. Long ago, plumbing had been retrofitted into the space below the indigo-and-gold-star vaulted ceiling. Steam hissed gently, unrelentingly, from the joints of one set of pipes and water condensed on the undersides of another. A steady drizzle fell onto the green roofs of the stalls and the tiled street between.
"Why are you so anxious to get an orchid book? Can't you think of a name without?" Sirin took an umbrella from the rack by the west door and shook it open. Jane took another.
"Maybe. It's kind of tough, though. It's such a personal thing, you know? I'd hate to decide too quickly and get stuck with something like Lady Fatima." Umbrellas up, Jane and Sirin linked arms. The passage between the stalls was thick with pedestrians.
"Je
"Too flowery. That's almost as bad as what Eleanor named hers."
"What? Tell me."
"Bossy."
"Oh, vile! 'Tis the name of a cow! Do you know the bwca down the hall from you? She swears she's decided on Siege Perilous."
"That's a good name."
"And yet not one likely to draw in much traffic." Sirin giggled. "Raven says she's thinking of naming hers the Ineluctable Cavern of Despair."
"She's just sulking over being dumped for a blood-may. You've heard what Nant named hers?"
"What?"
"Trouble." They were both laughing now. "What about you?"
"The Meat-grinder."
"Oh, don't! Really?"
"No, of course not. I named her Courage. Wasn't that a—"
"Quick!" Jane seized her friend's arm and swung her into the nearest bookstall. Gilt lettering over the door proclaimed it to be INGLESOOT'S. "In here!"
Astonished, Sirin craned and gaped out into the passage. "Jane! Whatever can be the—" Puck Aleshire strode by the doorway, grim of face and bareheaded to the rain, looking neither to the right nor left. The bobbing umbrellas swallowed him up. Sirin made an exasperated noise. "Oh, Puck. This thing between you and him is getting out of hand."
Jane's heart skipped. "What thing? What has he been saying about me?"
"He doesn't say anything about you, and do you know why? Because you ignore him, you avoid him, you won't have anything to do with him. He can't want what he doesn't know exists."
Jane began poking through a tray of remaindered dream books, crosswords collections, and herbals. "He has the stench of death about him. You can tell at a glance that he's not going to survive the Teind."
"That only makes him the more delightful. It ought to pander to everything that's depraved in you." An angry light danced in Sirin's eyes. "Come on, Jane, it's perfect. You can do anything you want with him and he's not going to come sniffing around to remind you of it next semester. Any normal girl would kill for that kind of opportunity."
"Well, I've been through all that before, thank you. Never again."
Sirin stamped her foot. "Church bells and holy water! You're just fucking impossible. I don't know why I put up with you."
"But I—"
"Forget it! See if I ever—ever!—try to do any more favors for you."
White with fury, Sirin slammed out of the shop. She disappeared into the swirling currents of the crowd.
Jane was stu
She sighed, turned to the shelves, and put her hand on exactly what she was looking for. It was a slim volume bound in tooled leather and titled The Name of the Orchid. Jane flipped through it. There were a dozen hand-colored plates and a dictionary of several hundred names defined, derived, and argued by merit and deficiency. To hold it was to desire it.
She looked up and down the stall. It was empty. She peered upward. The shelves seemed to dwindle and recede toward infinity. A long, slender ladder stretched beyond the hanging electric lights, into faraway realms where the endless ranks of books were lost in obscurity. "Hello?" she called. "Is anybody up there? Master—" What was the name out front? "—Inglesoot?"