Dinner at Deviant's Palace Read Online Free PDF Page B

finally sighted the high west wall of Ellay, only its top trim of crenelations was still lit by the low red sun. The summer-shrunken river beyond the city was invisible in the darkness, and fear of hooters and hemogoblins made him ignore his headache and cover the last couple of miles at a run.
    That had been the first night he’d ever spent out of his father’s house, and, after a couple of hours of unhappy wandering through the streets, he’d spent it in a corner of a shed in Dogtown. He hadn’t been the only vagrant to seek shelter there, and he was awakened several times by the abrupt awareness of, and then the weary effort of refusing, the affectionate attentions of one or another of his shed-mates. One young man, offended at having been rebuffed, had asked Gregorio if he’d care to leave the city right at that minute by the Dogtown gate. Rivas had politely refused… and been very glad of his refusal when he learned, years later, that there was no such gate, and that the phrase “leave by the Dogtown gate” meant to disappear, figuratively or literally, into one of Dogtown’s ubiquitous, feculent trash trenches.
    The next morning, stunned by hunger and exhaustion, he’d set out walking, and in the South Gate area by Sandoval Street he’d met the group of the zealots popularly known as Jaybirds… the wonderfully concerned, shoulder-patting, sympathetically smiling Jaybirds.
    Steve was right, he thought uneasily when he stepped back up onto the stage and surveyed the crowd—quite a few people have left. How long was I in that room talking to Barrows? It’d probably be an error to ask, admit I don’t know. Goddamn whiskey. No more beer or anything for you tonight, man!
    He started to signal for “Everybody Wants to Smoke My Comoy,” and then remembered that he’d already used it and signaled instead for “Drinking Alone.”
    Fandango sighed audibly as he started the song. Oh, look on the bright side, Tommy, Rivas thought—the next main attraction performer they get in here will probably want to do nothing but Scrap and Bugwalk.

Chapter Two
    S OMEHOW THE CLEAR BLUE sky visible through the unglassed windows only made the interior of the Toothtalker’s room look shabbier. The Toothtalker herself, it occurred to Rivas, looked like just one more piece of faintly morbid antique trash to avoid tripping over. The thought made him smile in spite of his headache. Yes, he thought, among all these pictures and specimen jars and rotted books and bits of incomprehensible old-time machinery, she looks like a desiccated old mummy. The lower jaw, perhaps due to some error in taxidermie technique, had gradually pulled away from the face as the unwholesome memento dried out, finally leaving the effigy frozen forever in a stressful but inaudible scream.
    A mummy which, he added as once again she treated her guests to some of the eerie low gargling she was so good at, has become inhabited by baritone mice. In spite of being irritable and grainy-eyed from a nearly sleepless night, Rivas had to strangle a chuckle. The effort made his headache worse.
    He glanced at the chair beside him and saw that Irwin Barrows was sitting hunched forward, anxiously watching the motionless, gargling old woman. Rivas was surprised—he had thought that Barrows’s insistence that they consult a Toothtalker before Rivas embarked on the redemption was nothing more than a formality, a traditional gesture like letting a wagon “warm up” for a few minutes on cold mornings before flicking the reins and getting started… but the old financier was obviously as credulous as the stupidest scavenger who ever shambled up these tower stairs to hear the judgment of the spirit world on which beyond-the-wall districts were particularly favored or imperiled by the configurations of the stars.
    Rivas felt almost betrayed to realize it. Come on , he thought, you’re one of the wealthiest men in Ellay, surely you can see through this nonsense if I can.
    He