The Virtu (21 page)

“And what? Vanished?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are we back to the evil wizard theory?”

“
I
don’t know,” she said, glaring at me.

I bowed her extravagantly toward the center of the courtyard. “Shall we look?”

The courtyard was far from vast, but it was large enough to have a paved quadrangle with a very small fountain. There were no footprints anywhere; the stones, of course, would not record them, and the borders on the other three sides were undisturbed. The fountain was
not
deep enough to drown in.

“Would they have come out here only to go back inside?” I asked the governess. “It seems awfully elaborate—”

“Maybe they opened the hollow stone,” a voice said above us.

All three of us jumped like startled cats. The speaker was a girl, four or five years older than Florian and much like him to look at, sitting in an open second-story window.

“Delila,” said Mehitabel Parr, “what are you doing?”

“Helping. Keria Parr, you
can’t
tell us to go back to our rooms because you’re going to help the foreign gentlemen find Florian, and then not expect us to help, too.”

“Yes, of course. And Angora is with you on this?”

“Yes,” the girl said, perfectly cheerfully.

“Kerina Gauthy,” I said, “what did you mean by the ‘hollow stone’?”

Delila Gauthy turned an alarming shade of pink, and I could hear giggling from the room behind her. But she remained steadfast. “Kechever always said he was going to figure out how to open it, but he never did. But that means Florian
would
.”

Miss Parr said, a
sotto voce
aside, “There is a certain matter of fraternal rivalry.”

“I don’t think Mother and Father know about it,” Delila continued, “but Florian will tell Ker Tantony
anything
.” She sniffed hard. “Idiot.”

“And Ker Tantony would be fascinated,” the governess said. “He loves secrets and finding out things he isn’t supposed to know.”

“Kerina Gauthy, thank you,” I said, causing her to become even pinker. “One more thing: where is this hollow stone?”

“Just to the right of where the other gentleman is standing. It sounds different when you stomp on it.” With that, her composure expended, she retreated, closing the window behind her.

“The young ladies aren’t supposed to talk to strange men,” Mehitabel Parr remarked.

“Then it was very good of her to help,” I said. I found the stone Delila had indicated, which did in fact sound distinctly hollow when thumped.

“Did Ker Gauthy build this house?” I asked.

Mehitabel Parr said, “My understanding is that he rebuilt it. The original house burned down in Empress Eunike’s Drought forty years ago. But I think the courtyard is original, and goodness knows how old that might make it.”

“Interesting,” I said. The hollow-sounding stone was absolutely flush with its neighbors, and there was no sign of any handhold or a place where a crow might be wedged. “Then if it’s operated by a spring, the mechanism is most likely in the fountain.”

“Keria Gauthy’s been wanting to have it taken out for years, but Ker Gauthy won’t agree. He says it has historic significance, and Jeremias agrees with him.”

“I imagine he does,” I said. “Mildmay, would you… ?”

“Sure,” he said, and I wondered why he was angry at me now.

The fountain was extremely simple, a basin on a plinth with an odd and very weather-beaten statue in the middle. The water appeared to be pouring from its hands. While Mildmay made his investigations, I said to Miss Parr, “What
is
that?”

“The statue? Very old is all I can tell you for sure. Jeremias has all sorts of elaborate theories—and I believe has been attracting very favorable attention at the Antiquarian Society in Aigisthos with them.”

“Indeed. And what is Ker Tantony’s theory?”

“Jeremias believes that Klepsydra was the center of a proscribed cult in the early days of the Empire. He says this statue is an archaic Troian deity, who was no longer worshipped in Troia at the time it was carved, and whose name means something like He Who Guards The Threshold.”

“And this god was the center of a proscribed Kekropian cult?”

“That was my question. And Jeremias said, ‘Not exactly,’ and became extremely evasive. And now I see why.” Her mouth compressed in a bitter line. “He has been preparing his coup.”

Mildmay muttered something under his breath that was almost certainly obscene and probably blasphemous. He took his coat off, rolled up his sleeves, and returned to the fray.

“Keria Parr,” I said, “forgive me, but are you fond of Ker Tantony?”

Her eyes met mine steadily, unabashed. “You mean, are we lovers?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, we are, but I am not fond of him.”

“An honest answer to an impertinent question. Thank you.” I smiled at her. She gave me a rather suspicious look and then smiled back.

“So,” I said, “the Gauthys have a statue of an ancient Troian god in their courtyard.”

“That’s Jeremias’s theory,” she said, and I saw her gratitude that I was not going to pursue the question of why she had taken as her lover a man whom she did not like.

“And if he’s a threshold guardian…”

“Then what threshold is he guarding? I annoyed Jeremias very much by asking that question. At the time I assumed it was because he didn’t know the answer, but now I think it was because he did.”

Mildmay let out a choked exclamation of triumph, and the side of the hollow stone nearest the fountain juddered up just far enough that I could wedge my fingers under it and lift. After a second, Mildmay was there to help, and together we swung it up on its concealed hinge.

“Keria Parr,” I said, “something to prop it open?”

“Of course,” she said. She was gone barely two minutes, returning with a stout length of firewood that did the job handily.

We stood and looked at the dark hole we had discovered.

“There’s stairs,” Mildmay said, shrugging back into his coat.

“And I suppose we ought to go down them,” I said. I could not muster any great enthusiasm for the prospect.

The governess said, “Shouldn’t you tell Keria Gauthy first?”

I found that I had even less enthusiasm for
that
prospect.

“Wasting time,” Mildmay said. “They might be hurt.”

Miss Parr looked at me inquiringly. I said, “He says it’s a waste of time. And Florian and Ker Tantony might very well be hurt.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. But… wait a moment.”

She picked a pebble out of the fountain’s basin to toss against Delila Gauthy’s window. On the instant, the window went up, and Delila leaned out.

“Delila,” said Miss Parr, “Ker Harrowgate and Ker Foxe have found a staircase under the hollow stone. They think it likely that that is where Ker Tantony and Florian have gone. We are going to go after them. Tell your parents, but no one should come after us. We don’t know what we may find. Understand?”

“Yes, Keria Parr.”

“And give us a quarter hour’s head start.”

“Yes, Keria Parr.” Delila withdrew and shut the window again.

“ ‘We’?” I said. “You intend to come with us?”

“I’m not going to stand and flutter my handkerchief after you like the heroine of a Tibernian romance, if that’s what you mean.”

Mildmay opened his mouth and closed it again.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“If you have an objection, you’d do better to make it now.”

“Ain’t she gonna get in trouble?”

I wasn’t entirely convinced that was what he had intended to say, but it was a good question, and I put it to Mehitabel Parr.

“Perhaps,” she said, as one to whom the matter was of supreme indifference.

“Keria Parr—”

“No! Ker Harrowgate, I have sufficient reasons, and I beg that you will leave me to deal with the consequences.”

Mildmay said something I didn’t fully catch; the word “trap,” however, came through clear as a bell, and Miss Parr flushed a dull, ugly red.

“I assure you, I would not stoop so low,” she said, “nor do I need to.”

I wondered why Mildmay had taken such a dislike to Mehitabel Parr, but I said, “Keria Parr, he meant no offense. We are strangers here and unfamiliar with local customs.” I glared at Mildmay; he glared back at me, but at least had the sense to hold his tongue.

Miss Parr and I both knew I was lying, but she nodded stiffly and said, “In any event, I assure you I would certainly not be such an imbecile as to try a trick like that on a wizard or anyone under his protection.”

“I ain’t—”

“Mildmay.” I cut him off coldly. “I believe you said something about not wasting time.”

The only hint I had that the blow had landed was the hesitation before he said, “Yeah. I’ll go first then,” and turned to squeeze under the raised stone.

I called witchlights and sent them after him, tiny offerings of peace. Then Mehitabel Parr and I followed him down into the darkness under the Gauthys’ respectable house.

Them stairs were a bitch, I’m here to tell you—and I very nearly wasn’t a time or two. They were steep and narrow and even with Felix’s little green Chrysanthemums that spooked me out although I wasn’t going to say so, it was hard to see what you were doing. Also, the stairs were all uneven and swaybacked, the way the stairs were in some of the really old parts of the Arcane. I didn’t much care for touching the walls, along of the cobwebs and the damp and just generally not liking the looks of things, but there wasn’t nothing else to brace yourself on, and I figured I’d like things even less with my neck broke. Oh, and before you ask, my leg fucking
hated
it.

I could hear Felix and the teacher-lady talking behind me. I wished they’d shut the fuck up, but I knew better than to say it. Felix had already showed me perfectly clear where I got off. And if he wanted to buddy up with some strange Kekropian woman we knew purely fuck-all about, that was his problem. I just wished I didn’t have the feeling that sooner or later it was going to turn out to be
my
problem.

The stairs weren’t in a spiral, but they weren’t exactly straight, either. They kept kind of turning, just a little bit at a time, and it really fucked up my sense of direction, which normally nothing can mess with. And, I mean, it wasn’t like I was
lost
, really, but just… I don’t know. Just like nothing was quite where it was supposed to be. Even more than I wanted to tell Felix and Miss Parr to shut up, I wanted to tell them to turn around and go back up these fucking stairs and back out into the daylight. But I didn’t, because Florian Gauthy had been nice to me and listened to my stories. And Felix could get lost in a teacup. He wouldn’t get what I was trying to say. And I was afraid he’d make fun of me.

So we went down and around in this kind of half-assed circle, and things got damper and damper, and after a while I started thinking I smelled the Sim.

Now, that was all kinds of bad news, and not just on account of a big fucking river being the last thing we needed right now. Felix was scared to death of the Sim, even worse than he was of the ocean, and I really didn’t want to deal with him having a fit about it down here in the dark.

He ain’t crazy now, I said to myself. He’ll be fine. But I remembered his face after he took his first good, long look at the ocean, and I wasn’t buying, even before he said, out of the dark behind me, “Mildmay?”

“Yeah, Felix?” I said, like I didn’t already know.

“Is that… do you smell…”

“I think it’s the Sim,” I said, trying to keep my voice as dull and bored as I could.

There was this horrible kind of gap where Felix should have been saying something to prove he wasn’t losing his shit, and then Miss Parr said, “The river, do you mean?”

“Yes,” Felix said.

“It’s how the city got its name. Klepsydra. Thief of Water. About a mile west of the old city walls, the Phaidris dives underground and never resurfaces. Everyone assumes it empties into the ocean somewhere, but no one really knows. Just as if someone had stolen the river away.”

“How quaint,” Felix said, and I heard the shake in his voice.

We went down about another ten steps, and then Felix said, trying so hard to sound casual it damn near broke my heart, “Do you suppose this proscribed cult Ker Tantony is on the track of has anything to do with the river?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Parr said. She sounded kind of cautious, like she’d figured out there was something fucked up but didn’t know what. She was smart, all right. “Perhaps.”

“Lovely,” Felix said, and now I was praying for him to shut up because he was doing a shitty job of hiding how nervous he was, and, I mean, he drove me up the wall, but I didn’t want to watch him embarrass himself in front of this strange woman.

So I figured I’d better ask some question to get Miss Parr talking, and I’d better do it before Felix tried to be all casual again. I racked my brain and managed, “What kind of thing would Mr. Tantony be looking for down here? What’s he wanting to find?”

Powers, it was a lame question, and Felix had to repeat it for her, but it did the trick. I admit, I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying, along of really not giving a rat’s ass, but I noticed when Felix started asking questions, and that he sounded more or less okay again. Then I just completely shut them both out and concentrated on, you know, not falling down them fucking stairs.

And, Kethe, it seemed like they were going to go on forever, and we’d come out on the other side of the world, where the people have heads like dogs and vultures. We went down and down, and I tried not to wonder what kind of nastiness a cult would be into that it needed all these stairs between it and daylight. I could think of some things, along of having heard way too many stories about the Obscurantists, and I know it was just my imagination, but the darkness seemed like it was getting heavier, and I don’t know, kind of like it was breathing. And I was starting to hear things, just little funny things I couldn’t quite place, and all of a sudden I realized Felix and Miss Parr had quit talking. And you know, as much as I’d been wishing they’d shut up, now I was wishing they’d start yapping again, so I could have something to listen to that I knew was really there. Which just shows you how spooked I was getting.