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"What's going on out here?" A door slammed open.
Jane twisted about and saw Galiagante in the doorway. He wore a silk robe hastily cinched at the waist. Behind him was a half-canopied bed. Its frame was white and its pedestals carved in the likeness of two whippets reared on their hind legs and holding the ends of a sheet in their teeth, so that the upper line of the sheet formed the top curve of the base. On the cushions was a ball of white light, elongated into a sort of cocoon. Something could be glimpsed within it, half-dissolved, writhing. A nymph.
The door closed. Galiagante strode angrily forward. His eyes were terrible, and he stood revealed as a Power. A wind rose up from the elf-lord. It battered against Jane, driving her hair back in a lashing fury. She held forward the hand of glory. Its flames fluttered, guttered, and went out.
Jane tried to back away, but the damnable candlestick held her prisoner. "Master! Save me!" She could hardly think for its noise.
"I know you." Galiagante stood frowning down at her. "The… alchemy major, are you not?" He snapped his fingers and the candlestick fell silent. The wind sank down.
With surprising delicacy, he took the knapsack from her back and rummaged through it. The bank notes he neatened into a stack and placed aside. Leaving the sack on the table, he reached into her pockets twice and removed the jewelry. Jane didn't try to resist. She was caught.
"This is an opportunity, I think." A strange little smile flickered like fire on his lips. He was looking her up and down. "But what kind?" he went on musingly. "Whatever shall I do with you?"
Involuntarily, tears welled in Jane's eyes. "Let me go," she whispered.
Galiagante had picked up the hand of glory and was studying it. He made a clucking sound with his tongue. "Don't spoil the good impression you've made so far," he said with a touch of asperity. He put down the hand and reached out to unzip Puck's leather jacket. The smell of rancid sweat came off her like a wave when he held it open. "What's this?"
He undid the top two buttons of her blouse and lifted the Ikea spoon from around her neck. "Oh, my!" His amusement was manifest. He dangled the spoon from his fingertip. "I imagine that I shall have to—"
The bedchamber door clicked open and a naked and disheveled figure appeared there. "When are you—" She stopped, and in a bewildered voice said, "Jane?"
Galiagante stiffened. Without looking, he snapped, "Wait for me in the bedchamber. Shut the door after yourself."
She obeyed.
"That was Sirin," Jane said.
"Forget about her." Galiagante's face grew distant, faintly irresolute, as if he hesitated on the verge of a decision. "Her doom is hers. Think to your own fate." Then, abruptly, he laughed. "I'm going to let you go."
"Thank you," she said humbly.
"And I'm going to make you an offer."
Jane shivered, said nothing.
"Should you survive the Teind—and by the looks of you that's a very big if—come by my office and talk to my people. I'll have employment for you. Profitable employment. Even pleasant, by some standards."
He snapped his fingers again and the candlestick released her. She backed away a step, rubbing her elbow. Her arm felt stu
Galiagante returned her knapsack, but kept the spoon. He gestured toward the elevator. "You may leave now. Not by the dumbwaiter, if you please."
Then he hoisted the candlestick and tossed it to Jane. Reflexively, she caught it. "Here. Take this. As earnest token of my sincerity."
Even before the elevator arrived, he had returned to the bedchamber. She watched the door close behind him and then she went home.
Jane sleepwalked through her classes the next day. The midwinter thaw had arrived at last, and everywhere students had forced open windows, so that cold, fresh air breezed in and chilled the thermostats, driving the radiators into steamy frenzies of effort to compensate. Small thermals fluttered papers and sent dust spi
It would have been pleasant, if she hadn't felt so disco
Even when Ratsnickle came up behind her in the line at the lunch counter in the Student Center and mimed a big, sloppy kiss she merely shrugged and turned away. She had a glimpse of his face turning nasty when she did so, and knew this ought to worry her. Nothing she could have done was more calculated to enrage him.
Still, what was she supposed to do? There came a point where it all became just more of the same.
She carried her tray to a plastic table under a potted thorn tree and sat down. A shrike was fussing about in the thorny depths, hopping from twig to twig. There were four chairs about the table. Ratsnickle took the one directly opposite hers. She looked down at her salad. "You're not welcome here, you know."
Ratsnickle plunged a fork into the greasy sausage on his plate and waved it in her face. "You're going to get sick eating all that green shit. You need to put some meat in your mouth." He bit off the end and, chewing open-mouthed, continued, "Tell you what. Why don't you join Monkey and me for a little midnight snack tonight? We'll put some meat on your bones. Get a little protein into you."
Jane put her fork down. "If you can't—"
Abruptly, Sirin slid into the chair at Jane's side. Without preamble she said, "I've got to explain to you about last night. Just so you don't get any wrong ideas."
Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail today, and she wore just a touch of white lipstick and matching eye shadow. A black turtleneck sweater. On her it looked good.
"I think I understand it well enough."
Ratsnickle cleared his throat. "It's good to see you too, Sirin," he said loudly.
"Lo, 'snickle." Her glance at him was so fleeting as to be almost nonexistent. "You don't know what it's like to have appetites that—well, maybe they're not exactly respectable. But they're mine. You can see that, can't you? They're a part of me—I can't deny them."
Embarrassed, because Ratsnickle was hanging on their every word, Jane said, "You don't have to explain to me why you like Galiagante. Different folks like different things. I can appreciate that."
"Like Galiagante!" Sirin loosed a silvery burst of astonished laughter. "Wherever did you get a notion like that? Galiagante has nothing to do with it."
"It's not the individual so much as the Idea of the domineering male," Ratsnickle volunteered. "All those pheromones we put out."
Sirin waved off his remark with a little flip of her hand. It was marvelous how Ratsnickle's barbs glanced off her. "I like the way he treats me. I like the way he makes me feel. If I could find somebody more convenient to do that for me, he'd be history. But you can bet the new guy wouldn't be any improvement on him. That kind of guy never is."
"You won't know until you've tried me. Maybe I will."
"Sirin, why are you telling me all this?" It was unimaginable to Jane being this open, telling one's secrets in front of everyone—in front of Ratsnickle!—as if it didn't matter at all what other people knew. As if they wouldn't take advantage of what they heard.
"I had a dream. About my doom." Sirin's face was drawn and tense. "I dreamed that Galiagante. That he. Oh, I can't tell you how nasty it was. It woke me up and all I could think was: Not like that. Jane, you're always so sure of yourself, so strong."