In the night, a rhythmic thunder.
Marjorie woke and went walking through the halls of the residence, encountering Persun Pollut, himself stalking nervously from place to place, pulling his long ears, twisting his beard into tails.
“What is it?” she whispered. “I’ve heard it before, but never so close as this.”
“The Hippae, they say,” he murmured in return. “In the village, that’s what they say. Often in the spring they hear this sound, many times during the lapse. It woke me, so I came up here to the big house see that all of you were all right.”
She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the shivering of his skin beneath the fabric. “We’re fine. What are they doing, the Hippae?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone knows. Dancing, they say. Sebastian says he knows where. Someone told him where, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Ah.” They stood together, looking out the tall windows across the terrace, feeling the beat of the thunder through the soles of their feet. A mystery. As all of Grass was a mystery. And she, Marjorie, was doing nothing about it.
She was still thinking of viruses, considering what a thinking virus might do, one whom God did not observe or command but merely allowed to do what it was created for.
“Ask Sebastian to come see me, will you, Persun?”
‘”Tomorrow,” he promised, “When it gets light.”
Far across the grasses, beyond the port and Commons, beyond the swamp forest, the same sound beat upon the ears of all those at Klive. The bon Damfels family was wakeful, listening. Some were more than merely wakeful.
In a long, dilapidated hallway in the far reaches of the vast structure, Stavenger bon Damfels dragged his struggling Obermum down a long, dusty hallway. One of his hands was twisted into Rowena’s hair, the other held her by the collar of her gown, half throttling her. Blood from her forehead dripped onto the floor.
“Stavenger.” She choked, clinging to his legs. “Listen to me, Stavenger.”
He seemed not to hear her, not to care whether she spoke. His eyes were red and his mouth was drawn into a lipless line. He moved like an automaton, one leg lurched forward, then the other drawn up to it, heaving at her with both hands as though he lifted a heavy sack.
“Stavenger! Oh, by all that’s holy, Stavenger! I did it for Dimity!”
Behind the struggling pair, hiding themselves around corners and behind half-open doors. Amethyste and Emeraude followed and cowered. Since they had seen Stavenger strike Rowena down in the gardens—he either not noticing his daughters behind a screening fountain of grass or not caring if they saw—they had followed him and their mother. The corridor they had come to was ancient, littered, untended and untenanted. The five-story wing that held it had not been used for at least a generation. Above them, the ceiling sagged in wide, shallow bubbles, stained with water which had leaked through the rotted thatch and permeated the three floors above. The portraits on the walls were corrupted with mold, and the stairs they had climbed were punky with rot.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Amy whispered, tears running down her face and into the corners of her mouth. She licked them away and said again, “He’s gone crazy. He doesn’t know!”
“He does,” Emmy contradicted, pointing to the light she carried. “There haven’t been any lights in this old place since before we were born, but there’s everlights all along the hall. He got them out of the garage, just like I got this one. He put them here before. He planned it.”
Amy, looking at the dim lanterns set here and there on rickety tables or hung on doorknobs, nodded unwillingly. “Why! Why is he doing this to her?”
“Shhh,” her sister cautioned, pulling them both back into the shadow. Stavenger had stopped at the end of the corridor to thrust Rowena through an open door, pulling it closed behind her and locking it. The key ground in the lock with a rusty finality. He thrust it into his pocket and then stood there, as though listening. “Rowena.” A voice like metal—harsh and hideous. No sound from beyond the door.