The Mirador (40 page)

“Honestly,” Felix said when Mr. Demabrien was out of earshot, “I could get better manners out of a hatrack than I can out of you. Will this chair suit your lordship?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

He swanned off to charm Fleur or Lunette or Andromachy into dancing with him. I sat down and put my head in my hands.

Mehitabel

Perhaps an hour and a half into the dancing, Felix approached me, swept a low, magnificent bow, and said, “Will you dance with me, Madame Parr?”

“I don’t know. What’s your ulterior motive?”

He laughed. “I want to talk with you. Come on, Tabby, I miss your shining wit.”

“My susceptibility to flattery, you mean,” I said, and he laughed again. I realized that he wasn’t drunk, as I’d initially suspected, simply ebullient. “All right. You win.”

Felix was a surprisingly good dancer, as long as you never made the critical error of complimenting him on it. After a moment, I asked, “So how do you come to be on such good terms with Ivo Polydorius’s light of love?” That was the question occupying at least half the people in the Hall of the Chimeras; speculation was rampant.

“Don’t bother with tact, do you?”

“It’d be wasted on you, sunshine. Come on, spill.”

“We were boys together,” he said negligently.

Considering what very little I knew of Felix Harrowgate’s childhood, that raised more questions than it answered. But he clearly wasn’t going to tell me, and in any event I’d just caught sight of Vulpes in the crowd. His spell must have slipped. Got you, you little weasel, I thought, and said, “Felix?”

“In your arms, Tabby.”

“Don’t look like you’re looking, but who’s the wizard standing by King Cyprian? The one in the mustard-colored coat?”

“Isaac Garamond,” Felix said without looking at all. “Why?”

My heart was suddenly pounding nauseously in my chest. “He’s from the Bastion, you know.”

“Yes, I’m well aware.”

“No. I mean, from the Bastion.”

“What do you—ah. Should I ask why you know, or why you’re telling me?”

“Don’t,” I said, and I knew he could feel the cold sweat starting on my palms. “Please.”

We were silent for several measures before he said thoughtfully, “I’d always imagined you were the type to laugh at a blackmailer.”

“It’s not me. There’s someone . . . someone I love, and I can’t ...”

“You’ve got considerably heavier cannons than me in your arsenal these days.”

“It won’t help. I know how Eusebian wizards communicate. And how fast. And it wouldn’t take . . .” I wasn’t faking my distress, although I was giving into it more than I normally would have.

“You must love this person very much,” Felix said.

I couldn’t answer that, but said simply, “I can’t risk him. Felix, please. I told you because you need to know, but Garamond’s only gathering information. Just—be careful what you say to him. And don’t tell anyone. Please.”

“I’m surprised you trusted me enough to tell me,” he remarked, that negligent tone again, the one that meant he was hiding pain. “Given my past history.”

“I do you the honor of thinking you learn from your mistakes, ” I said stiffly, matching bleakness for bleakness.

“Thank you,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. Then I felt the sudden increase of tension in all the long bones of his already tense body. “I believe our tête-à-tête, delightful though it has been, is about to be ended. Here comes your swain.”

“My . . . oh God, Felix, must you?”

He was laughing at me as he released my hands and bowed extravagantly to Stephen. But he mouthed silently, I promise, just as he turned away, and even if it was foolish of me, I believed him.

Stephen was in a mood to be possessive; I’d never been danced with so heavily in my life. I wasn’t in a mood to put up with it and said, “Surely you don’t imagine Felix would be poaching on your preserves?”

He snorted. “No, it’s only my brother Lord Felix steals.”

There was nothing I could say to that; another turn and Stephen said, “Every damn puppy in the room is making eyes at you.”

“They can hardly make anything else,” I said reasonably, but that, if anything, seemed to increase his anger. Deliberately, coldly, I imagined telling this glowering bear that I spied for the Bastion because they held the life of the man I loved.

He’d send me to the sanguette. And Louis Goliath would tell Hallam I was dead and watch dispassionately as his grief destroyed whatever was left of him. And nothing in the Bastion would change.

I shook off that future and said tartly, “If you bruise me, my lord, you will be looking for another actress.”

That reached him. He said, “Oh—sorry,” and his grip eased.

“I accepted your invitation. And your terms along with it.” And because the conversation with Felix was still fresh to the point of rawness, I added, “I do have my own kind of honor.”

The basilisk eyes caught mine, revealing, as ever, nothing of what Stephen thought. Then he nodded. “I will remember.”

We finished the waltz in silence, each alone with our own dragons.

Part Three

Chapter 10

The Polydorius suite was in the Mirador’s high-rent district, up there with the Emarthii and the Valerii. The door had their crest carved and gilded on it, a sea serpent all coiled back on itself because the Polydorii claimed descent from the last true king of Cymellune. The gilding looked fresh, and I wondered just how heavily they were all banking on the girl catching Lord Stephen; like Felix said, there wasn’t no way she was going to. If there had been an excuse in the world that Felix would have bought, I would’ve lost the letter, because I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want it so bad I could taste it, thick and hot in the back of my throat. But nobody particularly cared what I did or didn’t want, and Felix had talked at me for half an hour before he’d let me leave, telling me all the things I was supposed to do and all the things I wasn’t.

I knocked on the door. It was opened by a liveried servant. I ducked my head a little, the way Felix had told me to, and said, “I have a letter for Lord Ivo Polydorius.”

“I beg your pardon?” he said, in the sort of flashie accent that shatters glass.

Fuck. I said it again, slower, and after a second he decided to admit he’d understood me. “Very well,” he said.

I handed it over and said, slow and careful, but still mushy, “Lord Felix hopes for a prompt response.” It was Felix’s phrasing, and I didn’t dare change it, because he’d know if I did. Somehow. And it would piss him off, because he was like that.

The servant nodded. I wondered if he’d really understood me or if he just didn’t want to stand out here and play charades ’til he did. But the door swung shut and I started away from it, almost wanting to sing with relief, and I figured at least the word “prompt” had probably come out pretty clear, and the rest of it was just sort of padding, anyway.

A voice hissed, behind me, “Mr. Foxe!”

I turned around, way too fast, and had to stagger sideways to keep from falling over. It was Mr. Demabrien, standing in front of a door two doors down from where I had been. He waved me over. He was in a hurry, and as I got closer I could see he was frightened.

“He won’t let me come,” he said when I was close enough to hear him whisper. “I know he won’t, although he hasn’t said so yet. But I have a letter for your . . . for Felix.” He handed it to me, and I wondered which word it was he’d changed his mind about. “Brother” or “master”?

I stuck the letter in my inside coat pocket, gave him the same sort of nod the servant had given me, and started away. He caught at my sleeve.

Felix is the one who hates being touched, but I didn’t want Vincent Demabrien’s hand on my arm. I gave him a look, and he jerked back like I’d burned him. “You’ll give it to him, won’t you?” he asked. “You won’t . . .”

“He’ll get it,” I said. I didn’t care if Mr. Demabrien could understand me or not. This time when I walked away he didn’t try to stop me.

I didn’t give Felix the letter before court because there wasn’t time for him to read it, and if he knew about it, he’d just drive me and him crazy by fidgeting while we were supposed to be paying attention. Mehitabel was there, just off the dais, wearing the longest rope of pearls I’d ever seen in my life. I tried not to look at her, but my eyes kept sliding back that way. Let it go, I thought. It turned into a kind of prayer, or something, like the chants that some of the cults use to keep sinful thoughts away. I didn’t care if my thoughts were sinful. I just wanted to stop thinking.

I gave Felix the letter the instant we were out of the Hall of the Chimeras. For a wonder, he didn’t ask me why I’d waited, and he didn’t stop to try and read it right there, although I could tell he wanted to, the way his fingers twitched across the sealing wax.

“He don’t think he can come,” I said.

“Did he say why?”

“Said his master won’t let him.”

“He is
not
a slave,” Felix said, and I knew I’d hit him on the raw.

“Servants got masters, don’t they?”

He pulled himself up short on whatever he’d been going to answer that with, and said, “Let’s not fight. Did he give you any reason?”

“Nope.” I didn’t want him mad at me really, so I said, “He seemed scared.”

“Scared?” Felix frowned and quit talking.

We went back to the suite, where there was a letter sealed with the Polydorius crest waiting on the mantelpiece. Felix ripped it open and glared at it. “It does not suit his lordship’s pleasure,” he said to me and Gideon, “to allow his servants to go gallivanting about the Mirador with persons of questionable morals.”

“Um,” I said.

“Charming,” Felix said. “Let’s see what light Vincent’s commentary throws on this.” He opened Mr. Demabrien’s letter and read it, once quickly and then again slower. “Vincent says only that Lord Ivo is jealous and capricious. He says that he will try again when his lordship is in a better humor.” He stood for a moment, frowning like a thundercloud, and his hands crumpling and twisting at Lord Ivo’s letter. Then he came back to himself and said, “I won’t want you this afternoon, Mildmay. Do what you like.” He didn’t give either of us time to say anything, but was gone almost before the words were out of his mouth.

I shrugged at Gideon. Gideon shrugged back at me. And, well, it’d worked last time, so I said, “Hey, you wanna go to the Lower City with Simon and me?”

And Gideon grinned like a kid.

“You’re
late
, Madame Parr,” Jean-Soleil’s voice came booming at me from the stage.

I had thought carefully all the way from the Mirador to the Empyrean about how to play this scene, about what I wanted the troupe to know, assume, and conjecture about my arrangement with Stephen. Breezy and self-satisfied, I had decided. A woman who had what she wanted. “Damn. Am I really?”

“I trust you were enjoying yourself, wherever you were.”

“Enormously,” I said, grinned impudently, and started down the aisle. As a dignified tragedienne, I was supposed to go around the auditorium and make my entrance always from the wings, but even Jean-Soleil wouldn’t care about that today. I
was
late. I had promised to be on time for a noon rehearsal, and I’d just heard the bells chime the half hour as I came in through the Paixe Street entrance.

“I’m delighted that you could find time for us in your crowded schedule, madame,” Jean-Soleil said, giving me a hand up onto the stage. “I trust we aren’t inconveniencing you too greatly?”

“Of course not, messire,” I said and swept him a low curtsy.

His mustache twitched, and I knew my new role was working. One less thing to worry about. He turned to the other actors and said, “Now that our Edith has joined us, shall we start from the beginning of Act Two?”

We all shuffled around in our scripts, and I was deeply comforted to feel my normal, daylight life wrapping itself back around me as if I had never been gone.