The Mirador (21 page)

This time, I choked back my laughter. It would have been as bitter as the dregs of long-abandoned tea. No, I wasn’t “over” Malkar, the same way one could never be “over” having a limb severed. “That,” I said carefully, evenly, “is neither here nor there. The point is that Malkar isn’t going to waltz in and break my mind like a twig. If I
needed
help, I would ask for it.”

Mildmay wouldn’t have said a word, just let the silence sit and fester until I admitted I was lying. Fleur eyed me uncertainly, but she didn’t honestly want to start a fight in the front room of Edgar’s tailor any more than I did. “All right,” she said and gave me a rather weak smile. “But remember you said that.”

“Yes, Fleur,” I said—and did not roll my eyes. But I moved with alacrity when Edgar called my name again.

Five young women showed up to Jean-Soleil’s audition, which was five more than I’d expected; the pool of literate women in Mélusine couldn’t be very large. Corinna was unusual, and how she’d learned to read, I had no idea. Most literate women were gentlewomen, and generally they considered actresses no better than prostitutes—certainly not a fit profession for a young woman of good breeding. Susan was the daughter of a butler.

Three of the women standing on the Empyrean’s stage, blinking nervously in the light of the lamps, were clearly of Susan’s class: dowdy, painfully neat clothing; prim gray gloves; hair ruthlessly pinned into a swollen knot at the back of the head. To my admittedly indifferent eye, the three of them were as alike as peas in a pod. One of the others was of the demi-monde, whether she’d clawed her way up to it or been forced down. Her clothes were shabby, but they’d been remade for this year’s fashions by someone who knew what they were doing. She was insipidly pretty; like Susan, she put belladonna in her eyes.

The fifth was dressed like the others, but the way she stood on the stage couldn’t have been more different. Graceful, poised, utterly, artfully unselfconscious. She reminded me strongly of Lord Shannon, and a little of Mildmay. I wondered where she was from and what her voice was like.

Jean-Soleil, dressed in his impresarial best, came down the aisle. All five women’s gazes locked on him. He stopped just in front of the fifth row of seats, where all of us were sitting, and said, pleasantly but letting his voice out to show them how it was done, “Good afternoon. Welcome to the Empyrean. We hope that one of you will prove worthy of a place in our troupe. I am Jean-Soleil Aubert. Will you step forward one at a time, starting from stage left—” He pointed at one of the drab mice to show them which side that was. “And tell us your name.” He sat down in the empty seat Drin and Jabez had left between them, folded his hands over his ample stomach, and beamed impartially at the women on the stage.

The first woman stepped forward and announced her name to be Henriette Tucker. The second, the demimondaine, wanted to be called Nuée Duskrose—she might as well have carried a sign: NOT MY REAL NAME. The third and fourth women were completely inaudible; after their third attempts, each had failed to carry to us, and Jean-Soleil dismissed them. The fifth woman, the one who didn’t match, stepped forward insouciantly, and said, “My name’s Gordeny Fisher.”

Two things were immediately apparent. One was the exquisite quality of her voice, which was warm and dark and pure as a bell and effortlessly carrying; the second was the appalling commonness of her accent.

There was a moment of silence, at once appreciative and taken-aback, and Jean-Soleil said, “Miss Fisher, you know that won’t do.”

“Yeah,” she said, unabashed. “I figured I could learn better, with somebody to teach me.”

“Mayhap,” Jean-Soleil said, his own peculiarly affected way of saying,
We’ll see about that later
. “Miss Tucker, Miss Duskrose, Miss Fisher, let us see what you can do.”

He produced pages of scripts from
Edith Pelpheria
; I was inexpressibly relieved to observe that Gordeny Fisher really was literate. Despite her accent, she read better and more naturally than either Henriette Tucker, who stumbled over words and got tripped up in the scansion and ended up tongue-tied and mortified before she’d even gotten through the scene, or Nuée Duskrose, who had mistaken
shouting
for
acting
and was all over Drin like a wet sheet. Gordeny Fisher watched Drin carefully and emulated him. She understood how to use the long, limber line of her back, and her long-fingered, graceful hands.

“We must confer,” Jean-Soleil said grandly to the three of them, as he’d said to me when I’d stood alone on that stage. Drin, Corinna, Jabez, Levry, and I followed him back and down, into the largest rehearsal room.

“Well?” Jean-Soleil said.

“Gordeny Fisher,” I said at once. Corinna, beside me, nodded emphatically.

“I agree,” Jabez said, and Levry seconded him as always.

We all looked at Drin. He was an actor, so he neither dropped his eyes nor fidgeted, but his expression was obstinate. “Oh I agree she’s the best of the three, but I’m not sure we want her.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Corinna said.

“Well, we don’t know anything about her, do we?” Drin said. “Even if you ask, she’ll only lie, and the saints only know what she might have done, or what might come find her.”

“She doesn’t look like a woman on the run to me,” I said.

“I’ll warn her to mind her manners,” Corinna said, angry and sarcastic both at once.

“
Gentle
persons,” Jean-Soleil said warningly, and both Corinna and Drin looked abashedly away. Jean-Soleil sighed heavily enough to disturb his mustaches and asked Drin, “Are your objections insurmountable?”

There was a pause while Drin thought it over. I had to do him the justice of recognizing that he
was
thinking, that something about Gordeny Fisher honestly upset him, even though I couldn’t imagine what it was. Finally he said, “No,” and then his face opened up in a radiant grin. “And I’d rather have her than whatsherface Duskrose any day.”

“At least you’ve got your priorities straight,” Corinna said.

“Let’s go get this over with,” Jean-Soleil said and got up.

I got down to Britomart just fine. I took a hansom part of the way, down to the south end of Havelock, just because I could. Whatever else you could say about him, Felix was never stingy, and he got a damn generous stipend as a member of the Curia.

I paid the hansom off at the Tibernine Post and walked through Gilgamesh and Britomart, trying to remember to keep my head down and not stare at the Lower City going about its business. It wasn’t easy. But I got to the Stag and Candles without anybody catching on. It didn’t open for business until sundown, but the door was unlocked, and I went in.

Byron Rosemary recognized me straight off. He was like that—a little, thin-faced, bucktoothed guy you wouldn’t look at twice—and then you find out how sharp he is and how he never has forgotten a face, and you start to think back over everything you said when you thought he wasn’t listening. It’s an awful feeling.

“You,” he said and went back to polishing his bar.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Whatcha want?” He didn’t give a shit, but I didn’t expect him to.

“Hob around?”

“Hob’s most always around here someplace. HOB!”

Hob had been a skinny little kid, around about a septad and four, when I left Keeper. Now he was nearly Felix’s height but still skinny, all elbows and knees. He recognized me, too. All of the little kids had gone in mortal terror of me, and if you think that’s a fine feeling, I’m here to tell you it ain’t.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too, Hob,” I said. “Know where to find Keeper?”

“Oh shit. Mildmay, you don’t wanna—”

“Man knows his own mind, Hob,” Byron Rosemary said. “His problem, not yours. Go on.”

“Oh
shit
,” Hob said a third time and went.

Byron Rosemary gave me a look. It said pretty clear how he didn’t care what I’d done and he didn’t have to like me, but if I was going to sit in his bar, I’d damn well better buy a drink. I’d seen him turn that look on Keeper I don’t know how many times. He didn’t like her neither.

“Bourbon and water,” I said and ponied up. It was Felix’s drink, and I felt like I could use the moral support.

Byron Rosemary poured it out without comment and went back to polishing his fucking bar. I sat and drank and tried not to think about anything.

But he kept looking at me, and finally he said, “Nice hair.”

I put my hand up. Sure enough, the scarf had slipped. I jerked it back into place. “Fuck you, too, Byron.”

He wasn’t bothered. “It natural?”

“Would it be this color if it wasn’t?”

“Huh.” And he was giving me this weird look.

“
What
, for fuck’s sake?”

“Nothing. It’s just, we always figured, you and Kolkhis . . .”

“What about me and Kolkhis?”

“We always figured you were her kid brother.”

Powers and saints, I damn near drowned in that bourbon. Sat there for nearly half a minute, coughing like I’d never tasted hard liquor before. “Well, that’s a real fucking interesting notion, Byron.”

He shrugged. He still wasn’t bothered. "Y’all got that same corpse-color skin. And
we
didn’t know you dyed your hair.”

Kethe. I could even see where it made sense, but fuck me sideways, what was I doing wrong that everybody thought I was committing incest once a decad and all night during the Trials?

“Well, I ain’t. Related to her.”

“I can see that,” Byron said, dry as fucking dust, and we didn’t say nothing more to each other until Hob came back, in about as much hurry as he’d left. I figured he must have run both ways. He stood, leaning on the bar and panting for breath, goggling at me like a fish in a tank.

“Well?” I said.

“She says you come this far, so you might as well come the rest of the way.”

Of course she does, I thought. If there were strings Keeper could pull, you could bet on her making you dance. “Thanks, Hob,” I said. “I know how to find her.”

“She says . . .”

“Yeah?”

“She says I should come with you. In case of . . . trouble.”

Byron Rosemary snorted. Felix would’ve said, How kind of her, with a smile that would’ve turned Hob red up to the roots of his hair. I knocked back the last of my bourbon and followed Hob out of the Stag and Candles.

We walked through Britomart without talking to each other. He looked at me once or twice like he wanted to say something, but his nerve must’ve failed him. I don’t suppose I was looking any too friendly.

Keeper was still in that old converted warehouse near the eastern edge of Britomart. Hob led me straight to the corner fitted out as Keeper’s private apartment. The kids we met looked at him, then looked at me and faded away. I couldn’t read their faces, and I got to admit I didn’t try real hard. I was afraid of picking out whoever it was that was sleeping with her now, and I didn’t want to look him in the eye.

Hob knocked on Keeper’s door. That was one of the first five things you learned when you became one of Keeper’s thieves, that you always knocked on her door, no matter how important you thought what you had to say was and no matter how much you thought she liked you. One day, when we’d been lovers for two indictions, I’d walked in without knocking—not on purpose or nothing, I just forgot—and she belted me one hard enough to knock me flat on my ass.

Her voice came floating out, and, powers and saints, I was at my second septad again, and Keeper was the moon and stars and sun. “Is that you, Hob?”

“Yes’m,” Hob said.

“Send him in and go away.”

“Yes’m.” Hob darted a glance at me, opened the door with a shove, and bailed. I wanted to follow him, but I went inside instead.

Keeper was waiting, sitting on that chaise longue me and Sabin had busted our asses dragging out of Queensdock one hot day in the middle of Fructidor. She looked exactly the way I remembered her, tall and skinny and gorgeous, her hair as dark and smooth as the Sim. She liked to dress like a lady when she wasn’t on a job, and she was wearing a dress the same color as her eyes. And she was smiling.

“Milly-Fox,” she said. “How nice to see you again.”

"K-Keeper.” I’d meant to call her by her name—it wasn’t like I didn’t know it or anything—but I couldn’t. I wasn’t her equal, I wasn’t ever going to be her equal, and we both knew it.

She waited a moment, like she thought I was going to manage to say something more, and then said, her voice poison-sweet, “Please, sit down.”

I crossed the room to the chair she’d pointed at and sat down, clamping my hands together between my knees because they were starting to shake.

“The limp is new,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“The Mirador’s curse caught up with me,” I said.

She made a little face, like it was rude of me to remind her of that—it being her fault and all—and stood up, all in one movement like water flowing uphill. She floated across the room, the way she did, and shut the door. I heard the bolt shoot home. She came around behind my chair. I realized what she was going to do the second before she did it, and so I didn’t flinch when she touched me, dragging her fingers across my neck, tugging away the scarf. My pigtail flopped down my back like a dead vine.