The Virtu (25 page)

“Do you think you can find the heart of the labyrinth? Or, failing that, Jeremias Tantony?”

“Yeah,” I said. There were a bunch of other things I wanted to say, but I settled for, “Be careful.”

“You need have no fear on that score,” Miss Parr said, and the three of them followed me out of the center of the maze.

It unnerved me, the way Mildmay moved through the labyrinth as if it were a house he knew well. We followed him closely, silently, each of us peering into the shadows as if we feared monsters were waiting for us. Considering the nature of the labyrinth, monsters seemed less implausible than I would have liked.

I was trying to remember, through my nerves, everything I had once known about Heth-Eskaladen and his Trials, Mélusine’s major religious festival. Keeper had seen religion and festivals merely as another opportunity to fleece the bourgeoisie; Lorenzo, although devout enough in his own grubby, primitive way, had been even less interested in the festivals, except that the Shining Tiger’s profits tended to be hefty on festival eves and much less so on the days of celebration themselves. Malkar had taken me out of Mélusine when I was fourteen, and he had sneered openly at all religion. By the time we had returned to Mélusine, to the Mirador, I had learned to ape him in that way as in so many others, and in any event a discreet agnosticism was
de rigueur
at court, no matter what worships and devotions the noble families might perform privately.

I knew a fair amount of theology, as all wizards had to, and even more about obscure Cymellunar gods and obsolete rituals. But the religion of the bourgeoisie and the Lower City was considered vulgar and naive by even the most orthodox and devout Cabaline, and I had been all too eager to let the sleeping dogs of my childhood lie. And so I had forgotten that Heth-Eskaladen was associated with labyrinths.

Heth-Eskaladen was a librarian-god, an archivist-god. I remembered that he had descended into death and returned—that was what the five days of the Trials commemorated—but I could not remember why, nor what exact part labyrinths had played in his agon. It was infuriating and demeaning to be forced to turn to my semiliterate younger brother for information, but he had come out with one of Ephreal Sand’s major tenets as if it was as natural to him as breathing. It did not seem as though I had much choice.

Ahead of me, just on the other side of yet another doorway, Mildmay said, “Oh fuck,” and stopped dead.

“Yes?” I said, and he answered in Marathine, “I think I found the guy.”

“You
think
?”

“Well, I
think
it’s a guy.”

“Oh dear,” I said as I realized why he had switched into Marathine. “Let me see.”

“Be my fucking guest.” He moved to one side, and I crawled through the doorway to stand beside him.

This was the heart of the labyrinth, a long, vaulted room with a double row of dark columns making an aisle down the middle, and at last we had found one of the booby traps Mildmay had been worried about.

Jeremias Tantony had found it before us.

It was easy to reconstruct in its brutal simplicity. Jeremias Tantony, who had not had my nightmarish experience in the temple of Graia, had started toward the end of the vault walking between the pillars. He had stepped on a stone that looked just like all the other squares that paved the room, and it had sunk beneath his foot. Somewhere beneath the floor, that weight had pressed down one end of a fulcrum; the other end, rising, had caught a narrow wedge carved out of the left-hand column—again, probably invisible before the trap was triggered. That wedge rose and displaced a wedge that was not stone, but iron. It, falling forward, had caught Jeremias Tantony squarely on the top of the head and split his skull like an egg, lodging itself in his brain. He would have been dead before he even could have realized he’d doomed himself.

Mildmay said in a low, shaky voice, “These people did
not
fuck around.”

“No,” I said, not much steadier. No wonder Mildmay had been sullen and snappish, knowing all the time that because he was leading the way, he was the one most likely to walk into something like this.

“What is it?” Mehitabel called. “What have you found?”

“Sacred bleeding
fuck
,” Mildmay said, and when I looked sideways at him, said in explanation, “Florian.”

“Oh,” I said and rubbed nervously at my mouth. “Yes. We can’t… ?”

“Can’t go around. Wanna get out, you gotta go through the heart.”

“Is Ker Tantony there?” Florian said.

“Um,” said Mildmay.

I said, as calmly and slowly as I could, “Florian, there’s been an accident.” It was the absolute and literal truth as far as Jeremias Tantony was concerned, although from the perspective of the makers of the labyrinth there was nothing accidental in the slightest about what had happened.

“An accident?”

“It’s… not pretty.”

“Is he…” Florian stopped, and then said in a much smaller voice, “Is he dead?”

“Um,” said Mildmay. “Yeah.”

I heard Mehitabel’s sharp intake of breath and remembered belatedly that she and Jeremias Tantony had been lovers. I turned; she was already ducking through the hole. Mildmay and I both instinctively backed out of her way. She looked at the body for a moment, expressionlessly. “Yes, That’s Jeremias,” she said. “Florian, be as brave as you can.”

“Yes, Keria Parr,” Florian said. He climbed through the hole; Mehitabel held her hand out to him, and he took it before he looked at the body. He stared, then turned away and was violently and comprehensively sick.

Cravenly, Mildmay and I let Mehitabel deal with him, which she did briskly but not unkindly. Or, at least, I was craven. Mildmay, I realized after a moment, was examining the hall we stood in, his sharp gaze quartering the space methodically. He said, in a low voice, “I don’t think we want to get between them columns at all.”

I decided not to ask what he saw. “But how can we… that is, where are we trying to go?”

“There.” He pointed, and I sent my witchlights down to the end of the hall, where what I had taken for a deeper well of shadows in the corner proved to be a doorway.

“Is it the way out, do you think?”

“We don’t want to go back the way we came.”

“Why not?”

“ ‘Cause it ain’t that kind of maze.”

His voice was patient, but flat. It was another of his fiats I was becoming so exceedingly tired of. But this was neither the time nor place to argue about it. I was too aware of Mehitabel and Florian, too aware of the crushing darkness around us, far too aware of the stench of the Sim.

And he said, “But we got to get there.”

“Right,” I said. “Oh dear.”

“Yeah. I can see some of what we got to get around, but I’m betting there’s stuff I
don’t
see.”

“I imagine you can count on it.”

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for a moment. Mehitabel said, “Are we going to have to stay here much longer?”

“Until we can find a way out that will not involve any of us imitating Ker Tantony,” I said waspishly; Mildmay was under enough strain already.

“But can’t we—”

“It ain’t that kind of maze,” Mildmay said without looking up.

Mehitabel’s silence was distinctly offended; I wondered wearily whether traveling across the Grasslands with the two of them would actually be any better than traveling with only Mildmay. And then I wondered, stiffening my neck against the impulse to glance at Ker Tantony’s corpse, whether that question might not prove to be quite remarkably moot.

I heard him take a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I think I know how to do it, but y’all
got
to do what I say.”

“We will,” I said.

He gave me a look narrow with suspicion, as if he thought I was making fun of him.

“I trust you,” I growled under my breath, too soft for Mehitabel or Florian to hear.

For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me either, then he turned away as suddenly as if I’d thrown water in his face—or as if I had offended him.

Mehitabel, who now had her arm around Florian, said, “We believe you, Ker Foxe. We will follow where you lead.”

“Okay,” Mildmay said, still not looking at me. “Then what we want to do is, go along
that
wall. See where there’s that worn-down strip?”

We looked in the direction he pointed, and I sent my witchlights across.

“I figure,” Mildmay said, “that’s where the, you know, the worshippers must’ve walked. ‘Cause you got to have a pretty easy way through here—”

“Or your numbers begin to fall off dramatically, yes, I see,” I said.

He said, “If I’m wrong… I mean, if I go and something gets me… well, I don’t know what y’all do then. But I think I’m right.”

“As inspirational speeches go, that leaves something to be desired,” I said, and he gave me an irritated half shrug, still looking past me at Mehitabel and Florian.

“Y’all got that?”

“Yes, Ker Foxe,” Mehitabel said, and Florian echoed her.

“Okay.” He limped across to the side of the hall, stopping by the body to pick up the lantern, and I noticed how careful he was about where he put his feet. We followed him, a nervous flock of sheep.

He said to me, “Wait ‘til I get to the other end safe, okay?”

“Yes,” I said. We stood and watched his progress; I did not know about Mehitabel and Florian, but my pulse was hammering with how fragile he looked, and how brave, perfectly straight except for the slight off-kilter twist of his limp.

The darkness around us, especially the darkness above us, seemed to be drawing closer, getting heavier. I had a momentary, disconcerting feeling of being in the Mirador, and then it was gone, leaving me bewildered.

Halfway along, Mildmay stopped suddenly, almost overbalancing. I heard Mehitabel’s breath catch, and was perversely relieved to discover I was not the only one in an advanced state of nerves. But he stayed upright. I noticed how careful he was not to use the wall for balance, and my mind was instantly thronged with disquieting reasons why that might be.

There was a pause, almost like a hitch in the labyrinth’s breathing, and I thought idiotically, After all, we are in its heart. Then Mildmay said, “There’s a… there’s a thing here where you don’t want to step.”

“How will we recognize it?” Mehitabel asked.

“ ‘Cause when you’re close enough,” he said, “you can see as how ain’t nobody
ever
stepped on it. I’m figuring they got good reason.”

Florian said, “You’re right across from the fourth column down. So we can tell that way.”

“Yeah. That’s good.” There was something that was almost a waver in his voice. With infinite, excruciating caution, he stepped forward; nothing happened, and after a moment like a prolonged flinch, he kept going.

It seemed very close to a miracle that he reached the other end of the hall safely. He turned and waved at us, almost a salute, and called, “Florian first. Then Keria Parr. Felix, you go last, okay?”

“All right,” I called back.

“And don’t touch the wall!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I called, with completely unwarranted cheerfulness, and couldn’t help grinning when his response was an obscene gesture I remembered from my childhood.

One by one, we made our way through the heart of the labyrinth beneath Klepsydra. When my own turn came, it felt as if with every step I sank deeper and deeper into a pool of water, invisible, inaudible, but crushing the breath out of me. Without wanting to, I remembered the temple of Graia, remembered through it the choking madness of Nera. Those were the White-Eyed Lady’s places, just as this was, as the starving wells were. They were places sacred to her by reason of horror and cruelty and death, she was both torturer and protector. She dwelt in, around, through blood and pain and mikkary.

And finally, I understood mikkary. “Misery”
was
close, but mikkary was more than that. Mikkary was despair and malice, madness and regret—all the festering emotions that drove a man to suicide were mikkary, and a hundred other things besides. Mikkary was arrogance and spite and things less nameable than that. It collected like dust in unused rooms.

And mikkary was my madness. I stopped at the midpoint, just before the stone on which Mildmay had said not to step, and for a moment, I did not think I was going to be able to continue. There seemed to be no reason in the world not to let my foot come down on that one unworn patch in the floor. I belonged in this place more surely than I had ever belonged anywhere in my life, and I knew that its bride-price was death. At that moment, it did not seem too high a price to pay.

Then Mildmay said, “Felix? You okay?”

“I…” The words would not come; language would not come. Mikkary flowed in my veins like blood. I was more truly the White-Eyed Lady’s child than the child of Methony Feucoronne who had died by fire as she had lived. And then I managed somehow to draw a breath, although it felt like swallowing knives, and said, “I’m all right.”

“You sure? I can—”

“No! Stay there. I’m… just give me a minute.”

“Okay,” he said, but very doubtfully. I knew that if I did not move soon, he would come after me, and it was that more than anything else that broke my stasis. I could not drag Mildmay down into this pool of mikkary after me.

I stepped over that strange place in the floor, unpolished by any person’s foot, continued to move, slow, methodical, step after step, and all the while the mikkary throbbing in my temples, running like iron rods down my back.

I could not have told anyone how long it took me to cross the heart of the labyrinth; a second or a century, and it would have felt the same. At the far end, where the others were clumped together, wide-eyed and waiting, I avoided their gazes, avoided Mildmay’s half-outstretched hand.

“What now?” I said, and my voice was shrill and thin in my own ears.

“Um,” said Mildmay, and I felt the mikkary tightening like a vise around my neck.

“What ‘um’?”

“There’s, um. A bridge.”

“A bridge?”

“Over the… over the river.” Any other man would have been visibly braced; with Mildmay the only sign that he knew the import of his news was that he was even more inarticulate than usual.