Mélusine (64 page)

"Are you all right?"

And I couldn't do it no more. I couldn't lie. "I'm in
pain
, you stupid prick!"

"What happened?"

"Fuck, it don't matter."

"What happened to your leg?"

"Nothing."

"But you…"

"It's just like this."

"You mean, all the time?"

"What the fuck do you think I mean?"

"But hasn't it gotten better?"

"No," I said. Pure defeat. It was over now.

"You should have said."

I stared at him for what felt like a month before I could find any words at all. "I don't fucking believe this. I did, and you said not to whine at the celebrants. Remember?"

"Oh. But I didn't…"

"Didn't what? Didn't mean it?"

"I didn't know."

"Well, not if you never fucking asked. Oh, it don't matter. Just leave me be."

"But where did you go?"

"I was looking for Felix, but he don't want me either. Khrysogonos?"

"What?"

"Would you please go the fuck away?"

"But you—"

I caught his wrist, probably harder than I needed to, but my control was gone. "
Go the fuck away
."

"All right," he said. I let go of him and he went. The door slammed, and I was safe, alone.

I was afraid to roll over, because of my leg, so I just lay there and pretended I didn't care about none of it until I fell asleep. I was a monster. It was what I deserved.

Felix

my grasp of spoken Troian, had come and dragged me out of the library, announcing that I needed a picnic more than I needed to ruin my eyes with those dusty old books. I left
De Doctrina
Labyrinthorum
behind gladly.

I had been spending a good deal of time with those who spoke Midlander—Ianthe herself, Diokletian, a pair of acolytes named Astyanax and Laodamia—but Ianthe felt (she told me) that the best way for my Troian to improve was for me to interact with those who spoke no Midlander at all. So when she and I and the picnic basket emerged from the Nephelion, there was a small group of celebrants waiting for us, who between them spoke maybe ten words of Midlander all told.

We had a splendid afternoon. I discovered, with the eager help of two of the young men in the party, that flirting took very little in the way of fluency. They taught me the names of every plant within sight, and I had a long, impassioned discussion with a middle-aged herbalist over an herb I called pathkeep and he called cloudbane, both of us making up for the deficiencies in my Troian with vigorous gestures. Ianthe sat and watched, laughing, and only twice took pity on us and intervened to sort things out.

As the sun was setting, we collected ourselves and our belongings and walked back to the Nephelion. The two charming young men invited me to come have a drink with them, but I didn't feel I wanted to venture beyond flirting yet, and declined.

I returned to my room to find an acolyte standing in the hall outside my door.

I had been introduced to him—I remembered that he spoke good Midlander, which felt at the moment very much like a miracle—but it took me a moment to dredge up his name. "Khrysogonos?" I said. "What can I do for you?"

His arms were folded, and there was a mulish set to his weak chin. "Why won't you see him?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why won't you see your brother?"

"And this is your business because?"

"It's killing him."

"What?"

He was red-faced and near tears, but he got it out. "You won't see him, and it's killing him."

"What—no. Wait. Come in. Sit down. Now, maybe it's just because I'm extraordinarily stupid, but I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

He sat very stiffly on the edge of one of the armchairs and said, "Don't you care about him at all?"

"What?"

"The first thing he did when he woke up was to ask if you were all right. And then he asked to see you. The celebrants had told me you couldn't see him, and I told him that, but he kept asking and asking, and I thought maybe when they healed you, it would be all right, but then Diokletian said you didn't want to see him, and I had to tell him so, and he's not eating and he's driving himself too hard, and I know he's a murderer but even so he must love you so much, and don't you
owe
it to him?"

clearly appalled by his own words before.

"I didn't know he wanted to see me," I said slowly.

"What?"

"No one told me. Diokletian asked me if I wanted to see him, and I said I wasn't ready, but he didn't tell me he—Mildmay—was asking. I assumed he knew how I was and that everything was all right."

"It's not. Truly, it's not."

I stood up; I felt nearly incandescent with anger and fear and guilt. "Then I'll come see him right now."

Mildmay

I came awake out of a nightmare—something about Ginevra and the
Morskaiakrov
, I ain't too clear on the details—and a voice said, "Are you all right? You look like Death's been using you as a boot scraper."

For a second everything stopped. I mean, absolutely dead stopped. Then my heart started banging in my chest in this stupid way, and I turned my head, and the guy sitting in the armchair by the window gave me a little wave.

"Felix? Is that you?" Up close, it was even harder to believe. I mean, I'd thought I'd known him pretty good, but I'd really only known the deep-down crazies, not who he was at all.

"Last time I checked," he said, and that at least sounded like Felix.

"Then you don't think I'm a monster?"

"I don't what?"

Kethe, my stupid mouth. "Sorry. Nothing. Just a nightmare. But why wouldn't you see me?"

"Believe it or not, I didn't know
you
wanted to see
me
. I wasn't… ready."

"Okay," I said. "I mean, I get that."

"Good." He got up. "Now, I need to go talk to some people about why it didn't occur to them to
tell
me that you wanted an audience"—and I did recognize that smile, the self-mocking one—"but then I'll come back. Promise." And his smile widened into a real one, the five-alarm smile that I remembered from his good days in Kekropia.

Everything in me—heart, lungs, stomach, powers I don't know, maybe my liver and kidneys, too—rolled over at once. He was still on my side. It was okay.

He came over by the bed, staring down at me. I could see the swollen knuckles of his fingers and the Mirador's bright tattoos, along of how just at the moment I didn't want to look him in the eye. He said, "You look like you could do with some real rest. Would you like me to ward your dreams?"

"Ward?"

"It keeps the nightmares off. At least for a while."

"Here. Lie back down."

He straightened the covers, like it really mattered to him that I was comfortable. "Here," he said. Light as a butterfly, his fingertips traced a pattern across my forehead, and a thick blanket of sleep rolled over me. I didn't even hear him leave.

I knew Mildmay never smiled, but the way the darkness had left his face was almost as good. It made me feel that perhaps whatever had happened to him here was not irrecuperable, that I had not woken up to the situation too late.

I had to stop outside his door, brace myself on my forearms against the wall, and count my breaths for a long time. My black rages were seductive, but I knew they would not help. Not now.

He had not let me see how scared he was; it was only the lifting of tension that had shown me it was there to begin with. And he had asked me if I thought he was a monster. From that question, I could begin to guess at the reason I had heard nothing of his condition, and I did not like my guesses. I had not wanted to see him, in my vanity and pride, but I had made that decision assuming that he was being kept informed.

And I had paid for it. It had flashed through my mind hideously when I first looked at him that I was looking at the very ghost I hadn't thought I could face, the ghost of myself in my madness—a thought that was as unsettling as it was unfair. I remembered thinking, only this morning, that my cowardice hurt no one but myself. That idea had been proved wrong with a vengeance, and I knew that whatever Mildmay had suffered, I was to blame for it.

But I did not carry that blame alone. I pushed myself off the wall, let myself through the locked door again—Malkar had loved lock spells, and I knew scores of them—and went looking for Diokletian. I had asked after my brother, and he hadn't told me what I should have known.

Peripherally, I noticed people scattering out of my way as I searched, but I truly did not care. I found Diokletian in his room, making notes on one of his cases in the hospice.

"Diokletian," I said.

"Perhaps this isn't the case in Marathat," he said, "but in Troia most people knock…" And then he turned all the way around and saw my face. "Blessed Tetrarchs! What's wrong?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" His bewilderment seemed real.

"That my brother wanted to talk to me."

If anything, he seemed more baffled. "I didn't think you'd care."

"Didn't think I'd
care
? What kind of monster do you take me for?" Mildmay's word: I deserved it more than he did.

"Monster? After what he did to you?"

I stared at him for a long moment before I said, carefully, "What, exactly, did he do to me?"

"Never mind that. What are you accusing him of?"

"You were so frightened."

"Frightened?"

"When you came here. You were terrified of us, of everyone with red hair. And the bruises. He beat you, Felix. I think he must have been beating you regularly for weeks, if not months. And the Tetrarchs only know what else he might have done. You were in his power, as helpless as a kitten, and—"

"Stop that," I said, in a flat, hard voice that didn't sound like mine. I remembered being frightened. But I also remembered, blackly, who I had been frightened of: a man who had been dead for over fifteen years.

"You don't have to defend him any longer," Diokletian said gently. "It's all right. We're your friends here—"

"I said, stop that! I don't know how this stupid idea got into your head, but it isn't true. He didn't hurt me. He didn't beat me. And why didn't you
ask
him?"

"He would only have lied. He
did
lie."

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. "No," I said, levelly, calmly. "He didn't."

"You don't see him clearly," Diokletian said, with a sad forbearance that made me want to throttle him. "It does you great credit. But truly, do you think a common hired murderer deserves this kind of loyalty?"

"Why not, from a prostitute?"

His breath hitched in as if I'd hit him.

"You didn't know that, did you? You didn't know what I was before I became a wizard. I am afraid that if we're drawing up sides, I'm down in the gutter. With him. Good night."

I favored him with a stiff little bow and walked out.

Shortly after dawn, I went back to Mildmay's room. He was awake, frowning at the ceiling as if it held the answer to something that was puzzling him.

"Good morning," I said.

" 'Morning." He didn't look at me or even move.

I came over to the bed. "How are you?"

"Better, I guess."

"Don't get too enthusiastic. You might sprain something."

"It don't matter."

"
What
doesn't matter?"

"Wait." I sat down on the bed, being careful not to sit on his legs. "What? What's this crippled business?"

"They didn't tell you that, neither." He didn't believe me. What was worse was that it sounded like he didn't care. The moment of warmth between us was over; he had had too long to think, too many weeks with no one to talk to.

"No, they didn't tell me. So you'll have to."

"You don't remember."

"I don't remember much of the past year of my life. That's what being crazy does." I stopped, reined in my tongue. "No, I don't remember. Cough it up."

"D'you remember there being a curse on me?"

I had a sudden flash, frighteningly vivid, of his aura, green and black, looped and twined with black and crimson brambles. "Yes. I remember."

"D'you remember the
Morskaiakrov
?"

The ship. "Neither well nor fondly, but yes."

"It sank," he said, and gave me a flat green look. "You remember that?"

"Yes." Patience, I told myself. Patience. He'd earned that from me, if nothing else.

"When I was dragging your sorry ass to land," and his eyes were bright with tears. Rage, I realized after a second. Despite the flat voice and expressionless face, he was furious. Furious with me, probably. "I went into convulsions. D'you want to see what happened to my leg?"

"Do you think I should?"

He sat up then, fast as a cat. For a second, I thought he was going to strangle me, but he stopped himself. He shut his eyes for a moment and then said, "Yeah. Maybe you ought."

He leaned over the side of the bed and brought up a cane, a big, ugly thing that would have worked well to beat back savage beasts. He stood up, and my throat tightened as I saw how hard it was for him. He paused, as if this was something he had to steel himself to do, then limped slowly across to the chair by the window. He sat down. "And I ain't putting on the dog, neither," he said, as if I'd voiced a protest.