The Mirador (48 page)

“Oh fuck,” Septimus said, only just loud enough that I could hear him. “Can you run?”

“No,” I said back, the same way.

“Fuck,” said Septimus, no louder but with teeth in it.

“Danny Charlock give Septimus Wilder the push? Never happen,” said another voice, and three more guys dropped down onto the roof. We’d walked right into ’em, and you don’t need to think I was feeling good about it. Stupid, Milly-Fox. Stupid stupid stupid. And being out of practice ain’t no excuse.

“So who is your little friend?” said Conroy Blackhand. I remembered a loudmouth little kid named Connie Blacksmith— remembered him on account of having had to put the fear of the almighty powers into him to get him to shut the fuck up—but powers and saints, he’d been doing some growing since then. And he must’ve been talking to Jenny about names.

“None of your business, Con,” Septimus said, but he knew as well as I did it wasn’t going to do us no good.

Conroy Blackhand said to me, “Has he fucked you yet, sweetheart? Fast and hard up against a wall? We seen you limping.”

They all laughed like he’d said something funny.

He was getting closer than I liked, too. I flipped my knife open, said, “I ain’t his type. And you ain’t mine, Connie Blacksmith, so back the fuck off.”

They had a dark lantern, and that got it open in a hurry, while Septimus said very quietly beside me, “Kethe fuck me upside down.”

Conroy Blackhand was staring at me like I was the blood-dripping ghost of King John Cordelius. “You must remember me, sweetheart,” I said and smiled at him.

He did back up, so him and his goons were in a tight little bunch. And it took him a second to get words out: “What’re you doing with Mildmay the Fox, Septimus?”

“Well, like he said, he ain’t my type. So what d’you think we’re doing? Connie?”

“Asking for trouble,” said the guy named Eris. He had a knife, too, and from the way he was moving sideways, trying to spread our target out, he might even know what to do with it.

Four on two wouldn’t’ve been so bad if I hadn’t been lame. Fuck, if I hadn’t been lame, I could’ve taken ’em myself. Or just lost myself in the roofs, which would’ve been easier and less messy. But there I was, lame and tired, too, and there wasn’t nothing fancy left up my sleeve, neither.

Septimus said, “You know, we don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, I think we do,” Conroy said. He was starting to grin, and I wished I’d hit him harder back when he was Connie Blacksmith. A lot harder. “I think I owe it to Mildmay the Fox.”

“You are such a fucking piece of shit,” Septimus said, kind of admiringly. And then he let out this yell—powers and saints, it was like a cat going through a mangle—and jumped Conroy so fast and so hard that he actually took him down.

I did the only thing that was going to make any difference. Closed my knife and threw it, hard, at the dark lantern. Broke the glass, which was nice. Startled the guy holding it into letting go, which was better. And somehow on the way down, the flame died, which was exactly what I wanted. I was over there in two strides, swung Jashuki hard into the nearest set of ribs, and burned my fingers a little getting my knife back. But while I was ducked down, I heard the guy I’d hit land a punch on one of the other goons. So I just slid out of the way, up onto the next roof nearer the Mirador, and waited.

I was backing Septimus to figure it out before any of them goons, and I was right. They were still fighting and hollering and carrying on when Septimus joined me on my piece of roof and said, “However fast you can go, I think now’s a good time.”

“Okay,” I said.

I couldn’t run, and we fucking well proved it, because Connie Blacksmith and his goons caught on about two steps and a drainpipe shy of where it wouldn’t have done them no good, and we spent the last couple hours of the night in the nastiest game of hide-and-seek I’d had to play for a while—me thinking to myself how a couple indictions back, I would’ve got out of that mess by just slitting Connie’s stupid throat, and are you sure this is an improvement, Milly-Fox?

But we could hide better than they could seek, and we saw dawn from the gilded roof of the Banke Haarien’s Mélusine branch, which fronted on the Plaza del’Archimago. We were both filthy and bruised and bleeding from scratches we couldn’t remember getting. But we were alive and pretty much in one piece.

“Shit,” I said, panting. “Some babysitter you turned out to be.”

Septimus Wilder tried to glare at me, and burst out laughing.

Mehitabel

I knew from the moment the wizards started their procession into the Hall of the Chimeras the next morning that something was horribly wrong. Something had happened. I glanced up at Stephen; from the complete blankness of his face, he had noticed it, too, and didn’t like it.

I knew the disaster when I saw it. Felix Harrowgate’s hard white face and blazing eyes were unmistakable signposts. I was just thinking, I should have known Felix was in this up to his neck, when I got a good look at Mildmay.

His expression told me nothing, but the ugly, scabbed-over welts on his right cheek told their tale as loud as shouting. Felix had hit him.

Court proceeded normally, if rather uneasily. I was acutely conscious of Felix and Mildmay halfway along the Hall of the Chimeras, and everyone seemed more fidgety than normal. Stephen refused to be rushed, or even to admit knowledge of the problem, and I had to admire his nerve.

As soon as Stephen had left, I started for the door. All around me, the gossip sprang into life, and the only way I could have avoided hearing bits of it would have been to stop my ears and run.

“. . . Felix looking like death . . . went to Simon Barrister, that’s what I heard . . . that poor mute wizard . . . so he gets dumped by his piece of Imperial ass . . . the Fox tried to protect Lord Gideon and Lord Felix struck him aside like he wasn’t there . . . never trusted . . . pitched a screaming fit in the middle of the Welkin Vault . . . see Lord Tomcat on the prowl again, you mark my words . . .”

I fought through to the doors and outside, and just when I thought I’d made my escape cleanly, there was a muffled cough at my elbow and I turned to find Lord Philip Lemerius rising from one of the benches.

I curtsied, cursing him in my heart. “My lord.”

“Madame Parr,” he said with a stiff little bow. “Will you walk with me?”

Oh God. I resisted the urge to say, I’d rather fuck a skunk— Corinna’s phrase—and instead dredged up the swan-daughter, the version of myself I’d learned to present to Antony. “Gladly, my lord, although my time is limited.”

“I know,” he said, offering me his arm. “You go back to your theater now, do you not? I will walk you to whichever gate you like.”

“Chevalgate, my lord.”

He nodded, and we turned in that direction. We walked for some time in silence before he said, most uncomfortably, “Madame Parr, will you do me a favor?”

Swan-daughter, I reminded myself. “I don’t know, my lord. What favor would you ask of me?”

He did not turn his face toward me, staring straight ahead as if resisting torture. Finally, he said, “My son.”

“Antony, my lord?” I said sweetly. Even a swan-daughter has weapons. “Or Semper?”

His teeth clenched. “Semper. I hear that he is now at the Empyrean.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Madame Parr. I do not think acting is a fit profession for him.”

“No, my lord? Why not?”

He ignored the question. “If you have any influence with him at all, I ask that you persuade him away from the stage.”

“And what am I to offer him in its place?”

“Eh?”

“What would you have him do instead?”

“He can come to me. I can find a place for him in my household. ”

“A noble offer,” I said, and I let myself say it coldly. “It occurs to me to wonder why you have not made it before.”

“I am not accountable to you for my actions, madame.”

“No, my lord, of course not. But if you ask me to intercede between you and Semper, then I think you must offer me assurances that I will be doing the right thing.”

We had reached Chevalgate. I removed my hand from his arm, and we stood facing each other, each aware of the guards not quite out of earshot.

I was a swan-daughter. I was cold and disapproving and perfectly in control. “I will bear a message, if you wish. I will tell him that you disapprove. More than that I will not do until I have greater faith that concern for Semper is at the bottom of your disapproval.”

“You are too kind, madame,” he said, with a stiff, jerky bow. I dropped him a form-perfect curtsy and he strode back the way he had come. I stood for a moment where I was, until I realized that I was wrenching my gloves in my hands as if they were some vermin I wanted to kill and made myself stop. I put my gloves back on, smooth and serene, as befitted a swan-daughter, and swept out Chevalgate to find a cab.

Mildmay

Felix sent me away the moment court was over. Nothing had changed, and I was glad to get away.

I’d cleaned up before court in Mehitabel’s old room, since the one thing I figured I could be sure of was she wouldn’t show up there. All her things were gone. It was probably the safest place in the whole fucking Mirador. And there was a bed. But I didn’t want to go back there. I sat on one of the benches outside the Hall of the Chimeras and made a sad, stupid list of all the things I did want to do and how many of them I could manage. Which was none. Flashies and hocuses and servants would go by and look at me, but nobody stopped. Finally I sorted it down again, about the same way I had yesterday. I couldn’t do nothing about Felix. I couldn’t even imagine anything to do. I mean, I tried to pretend I was thinking about going to Fleur or Charles the Dragon or even Isaac Garamond and trying to get them to talk to him or something, but I knew I wasn’t. For one thing, they wouldn’t have listened to me, except maybe for Fleur. And anyway, Felix would have skinned me with a dull knife. I did think, for a little while, about going to Gideon and begging him to come back, but when I looked at it square on, I knew he wouldn’t. If he wouldn’t do it for Felix—and it was pretty fucking obvious he was done doing things for Felix—there was no fucking way he was going to do it for me. And it wouldn’t’ve been right to ask him anyway. I couldn’t drag Felix out of the pit he was in, that was the long and the short of it, not until he asked me to throw him a rope.

But the bitch of it was that I didn’t seem to be able to do nothing about Jenny, neither. Maurice and Jean-Tigre and Hugo weren’t going to go down the city for me. Brunhilde at Mrs. Fenris’s place wasn’t going to help nobody. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.

And probably there is something wrong with you, Milly-Fox. Nice, normal people don’t go around killing folks for money.

And wouldn’t that be one of the reasons Maurice and Jean-Tigre and Hugo don’t want to go back down the city—’cause it’s full of guys like you?

Oh, c’mon, I said to myself, about like I’d said to Jean-Tigre. I don’t do that no more. I quit doing shit like that a long time ago.

So you think the leopard can change his spots? I actually brought my head up, because it sounded so much like Felix I thought he had to be there with me. But it was only my own head and yet more stupid fucking questions about things I’d done or hadn’t done or should’ve or shouldn’t’ve or Kethe knows what all.

I put my head in my hands. I felt like driving it straight back against the wall—that at least might shut the questions up—but I didn’t. They’d be waiting when I came round, only I’d have a headache to go with ’em.

And the point wasn’t me anyway. The point was Jenny, sitting there in the Kennel, not telling the Dogs nothing. And Kolkhis, sitting there in Britomart not telling me nothing. And nothing I could fucking do about it.

And then I thought about that Brunhilde saying You want to know about her, you get her out of prison and ask her yourself. And, you know, back at the start of this whole fucking mess, I’d sworn I wasn’t going anywhere near the Kennel, but I should’ve known better. Because Jenny was there and like I’d said to Septimus, I had insurance.

Except—

“Fuck,” I said, out loud and loud enough that a servant going by just about dropped his broom and dustpan. Of all the people in the world who weren’t going to want to talk to me just now. Powers and saints.

But finally I said to myself, You can sit here and drive yourself crazy or you can go try. If they say, no, they ain’t gonna listen, well, then you’ll be right where you are except at least you’ll have tried. It’s not like things can get worse.

That seemed true enough. I hauled myself to my feet and started for Simon and Rinaldo’s suite.

Mehitabel

Rehearsal was bad. Not that anything went wrong, exactly, but Drin was stalking around the stage like a tomcat who smells another cat on his turf, and I couldn’t tell whether his black glares were meant for Semper or for Gordeny. Happily, Drin was cast as the villain, so his smoldering malevolence could at least be usefully channeled, but he wasn’t acting, and we all knew it.