By the time Jason spoke to Egyptia’s door, saying he and Medea were there, and not mentioning me, I was feeling violently nauseated and no longer really cared.
All around the dead pot-plants pointed at us with their petrified claws. The night was strange and glistening and terrible. I recalled how I’d come here last and bit my tongue, the only way I could keep any control over myself. It seemed to me that if Lord came to the door again, it would be the end.
When the door opened, no one was there but ourselves reflected in the mirrors as we trooped inside. It was also very silent, though I could smell incense and cigarines and the warm resinous scent of Egyptia’s entirely convincing pine-cone fire.
No one seemed to be in the vast salon, either, though yellow candles were burning everywhere. It looked so cozy, so beautiful, so sumptuously welcoming, my illness began inadvertently to lift. Then I almost screamed.
The fire had been put in the middle of the floor, and in one of the big shadowy chairs, three-quarters onto it, a head turned, and the flames outlined a crimson halo along dark red hair. It was Silver. It was— “If you stole anything from the hall on your way in,” said Clovis, “please replace it. This advice is for your own sakes. Egyptia, who is putting the finishing touches to her makeup this very minute, is liable to return in the person of Antektra, or—worse—in hysterics yet again. And much as I’d love to see someone murder the two of you—Good God Almighty!”
I swallowed.
“Hallo, Clovis.”
Having turned elegantly and slowly, caught sight of me and leapt to his feet, he was now transfixed, and I could see why I’d made the mistake. Clovis’s curling hair had been grown to shoulder length and lightly tinted red. To copy Silver? Mirror-Bias in reverse? The room shimmered. We’d parted in unfriendship, yet seeing him again I felt such a shock of relief I was ready to collapse on the floor.
“Jane. That is you? I mean, under that blond wig and the silver skin?”
“It isn’t a wig. It’s my natural unmolecularized color. Yes, it’s me.” I felt blazingly hot now, and unfastened the cloak and held it drooping away from me.
“My God. Let me look at you.”
He came across the room, stopped about a yard from me, gazed at me and said, “Jane, you’ve lost about thirty pounds. I always knew it. You’re really a beautiful boy, circa fifteen hundred. With breasts.”
At which I burst into uncontrollable tears.
Jason tittered, and Clovis said, “You two can go through into the servicery and dial the cellar for some wine. A dry, full-bodied red—Slaumot, if there’s any left.”
“Are we supposed to do what you tell us?” asked Medea.
“I think you are,” said Clovis. “Unless you’d like me to let your daddy know what you did last week. Again.”
“Daddy doesn’t care,” said Medea.
“There you are wrong. Daddy does care,” said Clovis. “Your daddy was talking to my daddy the other day, and both daddies agreed you would profit by instruction. Your daddy was brooding on the notion of sending both of you off on a study course similar to Davideed’s undertaking. Silt. Or something of a reminiscent color and consistency, though a rather nastier odor.”
“You’re lying,” said Jason.
“About the subject for study, possibly. Not about anything else. Don’t get the wine and prove it.”
Like a lizard, Medea slithered abruptly away through the salon. Jason, impelled by the invisible bit of string which connected them, peering back at Clovis, went after her.
My crying, to my surprise, had been tearless, and almost immediately stopped. To see the terrible twins reduced to such an unimportant role dumbfounded me.
“What on earth did they do, to give you that hold on them?” I said.
“Shoplifting and minor arson. I happen to have paid the fine before it got round to their father, who really is thinking of sending them into exile.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I felt generous. And now I can blackmail them. I shall need a new seance arrangement, post darling Austin, who, by the way, is a homicidal maniac. I’m trusting Jason will fix it, and not booby-trap the rest of the furniture at the same time, which is the price I had to pay before. And now. What about you?”
“For one thing, how did you know to come here tonight? Did you see the horrendous Ask My Brother To Dust The Peacock advertised somewhere? On a police-wanted placard, for example. Not that I’m arguing with your arrival. Egyptia has been driving herself and everyone else mad for the past three weeks. None of her fellow Thespians will talk to her anymore. I’m wondering if they’ll even consent to talk the lines to her on stage tonight. But at least her wails of ‘Oh why isn’t Jane with me?’ will be appeased.”
“Clovis.”
“Yes, Jane?”
I looked at him, at this handsome face I’d grown up seeing grow up, Clovis, the last remnant of my past. Was he my enemy? I thought so when he called me and took Silver away from me. I thought so when he blushed, and sneered at me, and I slapped his face. But not anymore. Could I trust him and would he help me? As, originally, he already had.
“Clovis, I have to leave at once.”
“If you do, Egyptia’s death may well be on your conscience. Not to mention mine.”
“I have to leave, and I need you to stop the twins from coming after me.”
“Are they likely to?”
“They hunted me down, somehow, and they’ve been following me all afternoon, and I couldn’t get rid of them. I couldn’t go home.” Not crying, I nevertheless was crying, tearlessly again, and desperately, and waving my hands at him because I knew he didn’t like to be handled and some part of me kept physically reaching out to him for support.
“Jane, obviously I’m being unforgivably obtuse. But why couldn’t you go home?”
“Clovis, don’t you know?”
“Let me see. You split with Demeta. You’re living in a hovel somewhere. Or you’re a professional damisella della nuita. Why should any of that—”