After experimenting with the bookcase to learn how it opened and closed and how the latch might be opened from the back side, Mouche lit a candle and went through the dusty, webbed opening. He briefly considered asking Tyle or Fentrys to go with him, but they were at fencing practice, and Mouche did not want to wait.
He shut and latched the door behind him and began exploring, finding no single route that led from his suite to somewhere else. Instead he was in a maze of passageways that branched opening onto narrow catwalks that crossed open space to small, dark balconies from which, ascending or descending by ladders, one came upon narrow adits leading to crawlways that went hither and thither in all directions through the ancient fabric of House Genevois. Everywhere along the route were small access panels into rooms of House Genevois, and doors that would have opened had they not been closed from the back by long rods that thrust into the surrounding woodwork. There were also a great many peepholes that looked out into the corridors and suites. When Mouche applied his eyes to some of the holes, he saw his fellow students. When he peered through others, he realized he was peering through the painted eyes of those quite terrible pictures in the halls.
Throughout his rather lengthy exploration, he kept moving toward the sound of the music, arriving finally at one end of a level and uniform passageway stretching in a straight line for some considerable distance and pierced with tiny glazed openings along both sides. Since the passage was scarcely wider than his shoulders, he could look through the openings by merely turning his head. To his left he saw the moonlit roofs of the buildings north of House Genevois; to his right, the open space of the large courtyard. When he stood on tiptoe and craned his neck to peer downward, he could see the torch-lit dock and a firewood wagon being unloaded.
The corridor continued straight on, eastward past the courtyard, over the roofs of the lower buildings and along yet another open space to end finally in a cul-de-sac with two leaded windows of colored glass, one to his right, one straight ahead. Putting his eyes to a missing segment at the corridor’s end, Mouche gained a view of the muddy river, dully gleaming in moonlight, like hammered copper. The window to the right was unbroken and so dirty he could see nothing at all through it, though it was ajar just enough to admit both the sound and the smell that had enticed him.
No one had ever warned Mouche not to do what he was doing. No one had considered for a moment that he or any other student might fall into it by accident. While some parts of the maze were too low and narrow for most persons to traverse, other parts had been built by long ago mankind, but then closed off and forgotten. The straight stretch of cobwebby corridor where Mouche found himself was actually inside the north wall of House Genevois, a wall that began at the street and ran eastward to the riverside.
On inspecting the windows, Mouche saw that the slightly open one to his right was not merely ornamental, though the hinges and the latch were so corroded from long exposure to the weather that they might as well have been. After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to force it farther open. The hinges were on the left, and when Mouche leaned his full weight against it, it cracked open with a scream of alarm followed by utter silence.
Mouche held his breath and waited until the rhythmic sounds of voice and instrument resumed. He then used the music to cover the sound as he forced the reluctant casement a fingerwidth at a time, opening it enough that he could lean out and look below.
He stared down from the northeast corner of an earthen courtyard enclosed on the north and east by walls, on the south and west by brightly painted dwellings, their colors and designs revealed by the leaping flames on a central hearth. Around the fire were dancers. Not people dancers. Far too slender for people, and too graceful. For a long moment, it did not occur to Mouche who the dancers were, and then the heaps of brown, shapeless garments lying near the firepit wakened him with both a thrill of recognition and a shiver of dread. What he was doing was improper. What he was doing was forbidden. He should not be here watching, for the dancers were invisible people, people who did not exist.