The Mirador (53 page)

“What is it?” I said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to be able to launch himself.

“I got a letter from my father.” He looked up at me. “Is it true his daughter is going to marry the Lord Protector?”

“Yes.”

“He says . . . he says it would be a disgrace and a scandal if anyone found out that his son was working with the Lord Protector’s, er . . .”

“Lover.”

“Yes. Would it be?”

I shrugged, as indifferently as possible. “The Mirador’s weathered worse.”

He wrestled with it a moment and burst out: “I just wish he’d quit nagging me!”

“Lord Philip has managed his family by nagging for years and years. It seems to work. But if it’s not going to work on you . . . ?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Then you need to call his bluff.”

“Beg pardon?”

I grinned at him. “Come to the soirée with me this evening. I dare you.”

His eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am. I learned this trick from my mother. Meet it head on, and scandal loses most of its power. And it cuts Lord Philip’s feet out from under him very neatly indeed. So will you?”

He was too smart not to see it. He was grinning, too, when he said, “Yes.”

Another complication for an already complicated evening. But more worth it than not. “Then come on, and let’s find you something to wear. And I’ll write a note to Enid.”

Enid’s reply came just before dinner. Four words: How excessively like Father. I gave it to Semper, who laughed with delight and tucked it carefully into an inside pocket, like a talisman.

Mildmay

I got all the way to the door of the suite just fine, and there I stuck fast, one hand up to knock. After a minute where I must have looked either like a half-wit or a dressmaker’s dummy, I let my hand fall again and backed up to the other wall. He’d have to come out sooner or later. It might even be on time, since there was nobody in there to fight with. We had to go to this stupid soirée together, but there was nothing said I had to put myself in the way of his nasty temper before then. So I just waited.

After about five minutes, the door opened. Felix said, “Oh, it’s you. I thought I heard some buffalo snorting around in the hall. You might as well come in.”

“Might as well,” I said. I went in and sat in the chair by the door, the uncomfortable one for visitors. I was tired of cosseting Felix and his little airs. I mean, it wasn’t like he was the only person in the world who’d ever had somebody walk out on him.

He said, “You’re stubborn as a pig,” and flitted into his bedroom to finish dressing. I didn’t say nothing, since I realized— about two inches shy of opening my mouth—that I was fixing to pick a fight myself. What had been keeping me out in the hallway was my nasty temper, not his. Powers, I thought, this is going to be a long fucking night.

“It was clever of you to get one of the servants to come for your clothes,” Felix said, coming out again. “How did you know I wouldn’t yell at him?”

Fuck. He really was on the prowl. Any answer would be the wrong answer, so I just gave him the truth. “They get paid to have hocuses yell at them.”

Felix’s eyes narrowed. I was bracing myself when he flipped open his pocket watch and said, in this nice, level, lethal voice, “I promised Fleur I would be on time for this thing if it killed me. Come on.” He snapped it shut again, dropped it in his pocket, and I followed him out the door, just like I’d done Great Septads of times before. Some of those times we’d been out for each other’s blood, too.

Mehitabel

The soirée began with the betrothal ceremony, very formal and restrained; only mannequins of wax and papier-mâché and clockwork could have managed the thing with less emotion.

That was fine, that was perfect; no one wanted any unbecoming displays. Afterward, I circulated, Semper in tow, introducing him left, right, and center. He took it very well, blushed charmingly at some of the things Phegenie Brome said to him, was exactly the right mixture of shyness and excitement. Give him a little time to find his feet, and he’d be cutting a swath through the Mirador as wide as anyone could wish.

I seized the chance to introduce him to Lord Shannon—one perfect gold eyebrow rose very slightly at the “Philipson,” but he didn’t comment—and that propelled Semper neatly into the middle of Shannon’s theater-mad friends. Shannon himself stepped back a little, watching, and after a moment I said, “He is lovely, isn’t he?”

“What? Oh yes.” And I realized Shannon hadn’t been watching Semper at all. He’d been looking past Semper to where Felix Harrowgate was standing in a knot of courtiers and some of the younger wizards. Felix’s face was animated, and he was gesturing widely, clearly in the middle of a story that was, to judge from his audience’s reactions, both hilarious and scandalous.

I opened my mouth to say something—I didn’t even know what—and Shannon said, sounding amused and regretful and resigned all at once, “He’s telling them about the meeting between Evadne Corvinia’s second husband and fifth lover. Unless it’s the fifth husband and second lover. I could never keep that story straight.”

“Oh,” I said, with perfect uselessness, but he continued, “I still love him, you know. Isn’t that stupid?”

“No, my lord,” I managed.

“He hates me,” Shannon said, “and after the way I treated him, I deserve it. But I just . . . Do you remember, Madame Parr, in The Wooden Daughter, when the old alchemist says everyone has one thing they can’t think straight about?”

“Yes,” I said, and quoted: “It is a rose planted in your heart, and as its thorns tear you, so does it thrive and flower.”

“It sounds rather romantic, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It isn’t at all. I couldn’t forgive him for my own betrayal of him, and so I betrayed him twice. Three times? I can’t keep this story straight either.” He smiled at me with such aching melancholy that I could almost have been tempted, if he hadn’t been Stephen’s brother, to tell him about Hallam. My own stupidities, my own betrayals.

I didn’t say anything; he didn’t expect me to.

“But tell me,” he said, turning the conversation with grace and finality, “when are you going to give your recital for Lady Enid?”

I answered—no date was set, since Lady Enid’s schedule had become quite complicated—and we fell to talking about what I might perform for her, a conversation that attracted the attention of first one, then another, of Lord Shannon’s clique, and brought Semper, too, for he confessed to ignorance of almost all plays, and there was a flurry of recommendations, and squabbles about recommendations, and Shannon shook off his melancholy and was in the thick of the debate, laughing at Semper’s polite but manifest bewilderment, when Lord Philip Lemerius came upon us.

It couldn’t have been better timed, since Philip probably disapproved of Shannon even more than he did of Semper. And Shannon wasn’t a provincial nobody whom Philip could stare down. Philip was expanding like a monstrous rose-colored bullfrog—he shouldn’t have let his tailor talk him into the velvet—and for a moment I worried he might go off in an apoplexy. But then he said to his son, “What are you doing here?” and I changed my mind. An apoplexy was better than he deserved.

The blank look Semper gave him couldn’t have been bettered; I wasn’t sure if he was acting or not.

“Good evening, Lord Philip,” Shannon said pointedly.

“My lord,” Philip said. It came grating out between his teeth as if there were several other things that would have come out more smoothly. “I must ask you to excuse us for a moment—”

“There’s nothing to say,” Semper said. “Is there, Father?”

Philip choked, sputtered. Finally he said, still grating, “I am very disappointed,” and turned on his heel and stalked away.

Shannon divided an inquiring look between Semper and me. Semper was turning slow scarlet; I said with mocking precision, “Lord Philip has certain definite opinions on the morality or lack thereof of the acting profession.”

“I see,” said Shannon. “You know, Semper, I think now would be an excellent time for you to be introduced to my brother. Coming, Mehitabel?”

“I believe I can trust you not to lose the baby,” I said.

“Mehitabel!” Semper moaned faintly, but Lord Shannon smiled, his eyes alight with shared wickedness.

“I’ll take good care of him. Come on, Semper.”

I watched them make their way, in a graceful but unswerving line, toward Stephen and Enid, and turned around smack into Simon Barrister.

We both yelped; we had been standing back-to-back without knowing it, each of us watching a different playlet. As we exchanged courtesies, I glanced in the direction Simon must have been looking and saw Dinah Valeria and some noble cadet whose name I didn’t know, half-obscured behind the bust of King Henry, standing gazing into each other’s eyes as if they’d never seen another human being before.

Simon didn’t turn. “A happy ending,” he said, with a bitter note in his voice that was unlike him. He heard it himself, for he gave me a smile and said, “No matter.”

“Simon, I—”

“No, really, forget I spoke.”

“Well, I admit they do look a pair of prize mooncalves,” I said, and he laughed.

“There’s nothing so tiresome as new-minted love. I’m growing old and cynical. Give me some good scurrilous gossip, Mehitabel, and cheer me up.”

I told him about Semper, which did the trick nicely, and we were talking about the ghastly spectacle of Philip Lemerius in velours rosace when we became aware of a commotion on the other side of the hall.

“Felix,” said Simon, who was tall enough to see over intervening heads. “And—oh powers and blessed weeping saints— Robert with him.”

He set off through the crowd without another word; I wondered if he really thought he could do anything to avert the disaster already happening. But I followed him. Out of morbid, vulgar curiosity. Nothing more—because I knew that Felix couldn’t be averted from disaster anymore than a cyclone could.

Mildmay

I should’ve seen it coming.

I’d been looking for trouble from Robert of Hermione for decads, and I knew perfectly well he didn’t have no weapons left to use against Felix. And I knew, better than most anybody in that room, that the Lower City only keeps secrets until somebody pays enough for ’em. And I hadn’t forgotten about it—it wasn’t the sort of thing that ever really drops out of your memory—but it had happened so long ago, and it had been tangled up in so many other things, that I guess I had forgotten it was dangerous.

Yeah, I know. Too dumb to come in out of the rain, that’s me.

Felix had been drinking, not hard but steady. He’d got to about half lit early on, and he’d stayed there, not drunk enough that most people could tell. It was letting him pretend he was in a good mood, all charming and funny. He had all his bright, hard armor on, and I thought that as long as nobody tried to find a chink in it, we’d be okay.

And that was when Robert of Hermione said, “You never cease to amaze me, Lord Felix.” All smirking and oily, and powers, we weren’t okay at all.

“What now?” Felix said, like he was so sick of Robert he hardly even cared.

It didn’t throw Robert, not even a little bit. “I have grown accustomed to the way you flaunt yourself in the Hall of the Chimeras, but—”

“Me?” Felix said, turning on him, quick as a cat, quick enough that Robert went back a step without meaning to. “What about you?”

“What have I done?” Robert said, innocent as a baby.

“Shall I recite the full list? To start with—”

“At least I’m not harboring the murderer of Cornell Teverius. ”

“Cerberus Cresset,” Felix said, like a guy puts a hand up to block a punch.

“Oh, him too,” and Robert’s smirk widened into a grin, all teeth and evil, like this fish from the Imari I saw once in a carnival. At least it’d had the decency to be dead.

There was this sick pause, while nobody said nothing and I could feel things crashing around me like enormous stone vases being dropped from the Crown of Nails to shatter to bits on the granite of the Plaza del’Archimago.

“I should have known,” Felix said. His head turned my direction. “Did you?”

I felt like a dog being asked if he’d eaten the dinner roast. “Yeah,” I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

He shut his eyes for a second, like he was in pain, and said, “What do you think can be done about it, Robert? Bring Lord Cornell back to life? That’s necromancy, and don’t think you’ll escape the heresy charge a second time.”

"What? Felix, I—”

Felix turned, looking at Robert sidelong out of his good eye, and it was a nasty look, ears laid back like a horse about to kick. “You’re not so lily-white yourself, after all. Or shall I”—and his voice started to rise, playing for the crowd gathering to listen— “shall I tell those assembled about your experiments in the basement of St. Crellifer’s?”

“The ravings of a madman.”

“You think?” And Felix’s smile was worse than Robert’s, because it was Strych, exactly like Strych. “There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Robert. And I have been very well trained to recognize what you did.”