"Marvelous," I said. "Something besides performance art and gilded insults. "
He chuckled. He went on undaunted, the voice black syrup again pouring thickly and slowly:
"I can tell you that Silas and the vast majority of the Secret People were gunned down on the day that the Drug Merchants came. Torwan and several other females were kept for a while. But they cried all the time. Torwan tried to get away in a boat, and they caught her on the pier and stabbed her to death. I saw that. Of the men, only Elath and Hiram and I were kept. Then Elath killed one of the Drug Merchants and they shot him, and Hiram disappeared. And I think I saw Isaac once, but I'm not sure. I think they're all dead. Except for Miravelle and Lorkyn. "
"What about Mother and Father?" I asked.
Oberon shrugged.
"Handsome Blood Thief, I must confess I hold out no hope. They were dying from the poison when the Drug Merchants landed here. Father told us to hide. Miravelle took care of them. Miravelle slept with them. We'd long ago put a stop to the poisoning but the damage was done. And no one could stop Silas
and his rebellion. Right before Silas made his fatal mistake, Miravelle and Mother apparently had an opportunity to blind Silas with a screwdriver, but Miravelle, precious little thing, just couldn't bring herself to do it, sob, and Silas got free of Mother and knocked her unconscious. Oh, so tragic. I know now that I should have killed Silas first time I ever laid eyes on him. Father should have killed Silas as soon as Silas started threatening the Secret People. Lorkyn could have done it. She was the coldest female ever birthed on this island. A beast, I tell you. Alas! Who would have ever dreamed that Silas would rise up and try to take on the outside world. "
I shook my head. "Cut to the connection between the rebellion of Silas and the coming of these drug people?"
He shrugged. One of his great spidery hands smoothed his hair and firmed the red bandanna.
"Silas started the war against them," he said. "He spied upon their work on a small nearb
y island. Don't ask me where. I never went there. But Silas plotted against them. He took a gang of the most aggressive and warlike of the tribe to their island, and went in smiling and saying kind things, and slowly and systematically murdered the whole gang. He took their drugs and their weapons.
"Silas said the reign of Father had to end. Father was ancient, pure Taltos, unfit for the modern world. Silas said we had Mayfair genes, human cleverness, human dreaming. "
I stood beside Mona as she cried silently.
"The tribe celebrated, snorted the cocaine and shot off the guns. They smoked marijuana and went absolutely crazy. They killed two of us-Evan and Ruth-by accident. Can you imagine how stupid? Nobody had ever seen a dead Taltos before. It was ghastly. Silas had them ceremoniously dumped in the sea. Flowers flung into the water! Ludicrous. Silas began to shoot those whom he suspected of disloyalty!" He gave a deep disgusted laugh.
"Lorkyn made a speech. She said that going to the drug island had been a typical Taltos blunder. The drug people belonged to a great cartel. Their cohorts would come to get us. We had to take Father and Mother and get onto the yacht and leave the island. We could do it. Silas tried to kill her, but the others stopped him. Now that was a revelation. But Lorkyn has a way with her. No one was prepared to see her go down. "
He shrugged, rolled his eyes, pushed the gun more firmly into the belt of his beautiful brown leather jeans.
"The drug people came," he said, swaying languidly as he went on. "By nightfall they were here. Silas and his allies ran at them, shooting off the guns they'd stolen. Rat tat tat! Can you picture it? They didn't even shoot from under cover. " He sneered. "The Drug Merchants shot every Taltos in sight. They kicked open doors all over the villa. Quite an unforgettable experience, waiting for them to kick open one's door.
"It was the complete end of the Secret People. Those of us who were kept for a while? We were the quiet ones. The ones who didn't rush into battle.
"They didn't find me till the third day. I was simply lying in my room, upstairs in the villa. In they walked. They made a servant of me. They taught me to mix Caipirinhas out of cacha?a and lime juice for Carlos. I knew the computer very well. I did the bookkeeping, spread sheets, payroll, all of that too. Then Lucia fell passionately in love with me. How could she not? She's well past the age where a male Taltos can make her bleed to death-.
"-That's what we males do to human women, you know, unless they're past their menarche. Lucia showered me with attention. She did this room all in white for me. She went to Miami Beach to have her inviting little privy chamber surgically tightened till it felt like the sheath of a twelve-year-old. She did that for me. Very nice. Of course I've never been with a human twelve-year-old. She was a delicious lover. "
"Hmmm," I said. "You don't mind her lying there with a pool of blood for a face?"
"Not particularly. You said every human on the island was going to die. Didn't you mean it?"
He sat down in his desk chair. He turned, poured himself another glass of milk from the pitcher and drank it down.
He fell to studying the three of us again, Quinn and I standing and Mona on the edge of the white chair, knees up, her face beating with the blood, and her tearfilled eyes so unutterably sad they were indescribable.
"Is that computer connected to the outside world?" Mona asked. Her voice was feeble, but she was still holding back the tears.
"Of course not," he said sardonically. "What kind of idiot do you think I am? If it had been, I would have gotten help. I would have tried to reach Rowan Mayfair at Mayfair Medical in New Orleans. "
We were all of us silently shocked.
"How did you know about Rowan?" asked Mona. She wiped at her eyes. The black feathers of her dress brushed her cheeks.
"Father told all of us-if ever we found ourselves in grave trouble, we were to contact Rowan Mayfair at Mayfair Medical in New Orleans. I think that was two years after I was born. Father was already being poisoned by Silas but he didn't know it. He only knew he was getting weaker. He thought he was dying of old age. He had been to see his lawyers in New York. Very secret. No names. No numbers. That was
Father's way. Morrigan was seldom if ever awake. Father knew things were going on behind his back. Morrigan woke up one time and accused Father of being in love with Rowan Mayfair. "