now?”
“We go to your Kesparate, and we send out a search party to look for Huzzah’s folks. Then we go up”—he nodded towards the palace—“and get a closer look at Quai-soir. I’ve got some questions to ask her. Whoever she is,”
The wind veered as the trio retraced their steps, the relatively clear ocean breeze giving sudden way to a blister-ingly hot assault off the desert. The citizens were well prepared for such climatic changes, and at the first hint of a shift in the wind, scenes of almost mechanical, and therefore comical, efficiency were to be seen high and low. Washing and potted plants were gathered from window-sills; ragemy and cats gave up their sun traps and headed inside; awnings were rolled up and windows shuttered. In a matter of minutes the street was emptied.
“I’ve been in these damn storms,” the mystif said. “I don’t think we want to be walking about in one.”
Gentle told it not to fret, and hoisting Huzzah onto his shoulders, he set the pace as the storm scourged the streets. They’d asked for fresh directions a few minutes before the wind veered, and the shopkeeper who’d supplied them had known his geography. The directions were good even if walking conditions were not. The wind smelt like flatulence and carried a blinding freight of sand, along with ferocious heat. But they at least had the freedom of the streets. The only individuals they glimpsed were either felonious, crazy, or homeless, into all three of which categories they themselves fell.
They reached the Viaticum without error or incident, and from there the mystif knew its way. Two hours or more after they’d left the siege at the harbor they reached the Eurhetemec Kesparate, The storm was showing signs of fatigue, as were they, but Pie’s voice fairly sang when it announced, “This is it. This is the place where I was born.”
The Kesparate in front of them was walled, but the gates were open, swinging in the wind.
“Lead on,” Gentle said, setting Huzzah down.
The mystif pushed the gate wide and led the way into streets the wind was unveiling before them as it fell, dropping sand underfoot. The streets rose towards the palace, as did almost every street in Yzordderrex, but the dwellings built upon it were very different from those elsewhere in the city. They stood discreet from one another, tall and burnished, each possessed of a single window that ran from above the door to the eaves, where the structure branched into four overhanging roofs, lending the buildings, when side by side, the look of a stand of petrified trees. In the street in front of the houses were the real thing: trees whose branches still swayed in the dying gusts like kelp in a tidal pool, their boughs so supple and their tight white blossoms so hardy the storm had done them no harm.
It wasn’t until he caught the tremulous look on Pie’s face that Gentle realized what a burden of feeling the mystif bore, stepping back into its birthplace after the passage of so many years. Having such a short memory, he’d never carried such luggage himself. There were no cherished recollections of childhood rites, no Christmas scenes or lullabies. His grasp of what Pie might be feeling had to be an intellectual construct and fell—he was sure—well shy of the real thing.
“My parents’ home,” the mystif said, “used to be between the chianculi”—it pointed off to its right, where the last remnants of sand-laden gusts still shrouded the distance—“and the hospice.” It pointed to its left, a white-walled building.
“So somewhere near,” Gentle said.
“I think so,” Pie said, clearly pained by the tricks memory was playing.
“Why don’t we ask somebody?” Huzzah suggested.
Pie acted upon the suggestion instantly, walking over to the nearest house and rapping on the door. There was no reply. It moved next door and tried again. This house was also vacated. Sensing Pie’s unease, Gentle took Huzzah to join the mystif on the third step. The response was the same here, a silence made more palpable by the drop in the wind.
“There’s nobody here,” Pie said, remarking, Gentle knew, not simply on the empty houses but on the whole