The Virtu (46 page)

“You should be burned for heresy,” Stephen growled.

“I have performed no act of heresy while a wizard of the Mirador. You saw to that yourselves.”

“And even granted that we deserved this petty act of revenge,” Giancarlo said, “it is unconscionable of you to use an annemer—your own brother!—to achieve your ends.”

“I asked him to,” Mildmay said, his voice harsh and abrupt and like the distilled essence of the Lower City. Shannon and Stephen both twitched, and Giancarlo turned toward him with the most thunderstruck look of astonishment I had ever seen on his face.

“You
asked
him to?”

“Yeah.” Then Mildmay caught himself and said more carefully, “I mean, yes, m’lord.”

“Why? Why in the name of all the blessed saints would you do such a thing?”

Silence. Then, just as I realized what Mildmay was going to do, just as I was opening my mouth to create a distraction,
any
distraction, he said, “I killed Cerberus Cresset.” And no matter how slurred his speech, how thick his accent, there wasn’t a wizard in the Mirador who could have misheard that sentence.

Mildmay and I were quite abruptly standing in a circle of clear space, and the wizards were staring at us wide-eyed as frightened children.

“He is my brother,” I said to forestall the questions I could see forming. I caught Mildmay’s arm, said in a fierce undertone, “We are
leaving
,” and gave him barely a second to decide whether he would walk with me or be dragged.

They let us go; I supposed grimly that there was really nothing more to say.

At least not in public.

The way Felix tore into me once we were clear of the Hall of the Chimeras, you’d‘ve thought I’d offered to take out the Lord Protector right then and there if they’d pass the hat for my fee. I tried to say as how I hadn’t told them nothing they weren’t going to find out anyway, but Felix didn’t want to hear it. So I shut the fuck up and just tried to keep up with him and not listen all the way back to his rooms.

Where he threw the door open like he was hoping to hit somebody with it, and then stopped dead halfway across the threshold.

“What are
you
doing here?” he said, and I craned around him and saw Gideon standing up out of one of the armchairs looking kind of grim and bloodless but like he wasn’t going to let Felix throw him out until he’d had his say. Which of course I wasn’t going to be able to hear. But he wasn’t here to talk to me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what him and Felix had to say to each other anyhow.

Felix was silent a minute—listening to Gideon, I guessed—then said, not even looking at me or nothing, “Go to bed.” With the obligation d‘âme behind it, just in case I thought I was going to argue.

I wanted to tell him I didn’t want no part of his and Gideon’s business, but I held my tongue. I did say, “Good night, Gideon,” as I went past him, and he gave me a little nod and a nicer smile than I thought I deserved. And then I went into my closet of a room and shut the door with them on the outside and was fucking well glad of it.

I went to bed and dreamed about Cardenio all fucking night.

I knew it was seeing Hugo again that’d set me off. That, and being back in Mélusine and hating the Mirador and all the rest of it. But mostly it was that feeling of being stuck in this place where nobody liked me and nobody was going to like me, especially not now that I’d opened my big mouth and told them all about Cerberus Cresset. Hugo’d be keeping out of my way, too. I wasn’t going to lie to myself about that.

Was you born this fucking dumb, Milly-Fox, or do you practice every Dixième?

And Felix might not care so much about Cerberus Cresset for his own sake, but the way the other hocuses felt? That, he cared about, although he would have barbecued me with lemon if I’d been dumb enough to say any such thing to him. Which I wasn’t.

But Cardenio knew all that shit already, and we were friends anyway.

At least, I hoped we were still friends, since the last time I’d seen him, I’d done my best to make sure we weren’t.

Get your fucking hands off me.

Cade-skiffs had to be used to people being stupid, though. Especially when they’d just got done showing them their girlfriend’s dead body. Right?

I woke up with Cardenio more in my head than anything else. Which was just as well, really, since, powers and saints, that morning was fucking putrid.

I guessed from the way Gideon and Felix were looking at each other, and then just about killing themselves not to make eye contact, that they’d fucked but they’d done it instead of talking. Which, you know, means you don’t have the argument right then, but it don’t really help nothing, neither.

So there was that—which all by itself was enough to curdle milk—and then there was court, and if I’d known in Farflung that that was the sort of thing I was going to have to do, I would’ve gone straight to Livergate and strung my own self up. Would’ve been cleaner.

Because, see, the obligation d‘âme—and Felix explained it all to me over breakfast, real careful and mean, and I didn’t eat much—is particular about how the annemer becomes not just the hocus’s servant, and not even really just their property. It’s more like part of their
self
. Legally, anyway, and I was just as glad Felix didn’t feel like interpreting literally. But it meant I had to go everywhere with him, and I wasn’t supposed to talk to nobody without Felix said it was okay first, and I wasn’t loyal to nobody but Felix.

Which meant bowing to the Lord Protector during the oath-swearing ceremony—just for an example, can’t think why
that
come to mind—was right out.

Which, I mean, I’d known. In a general way. But I hadn’t really thought about it, because out in Farflung, it hadn’t mattered and I hadn’t cared. But here in the Mirador it mattered. Fuck did it matter. Because the hocuses had to get up and swear their oaths to Lord Stephen every day, and now that everybody knew me and Felix were bound by the obligation d‘âme, we had to act like it. No more finessing the situation by ordering me to stay with Gideon.

So there was Felix with his gold sash and beautiful coat, and there was me like some kind of pox-ugly crow, and there was the Hall of the Chimeras full of people watching us. And of course Felix loved it. He loved being watched. Whereas me, I just wanted to crawl under a cobblestone and die.

But I couldn’t, so I followed Felix down the Hall of the Chimeras, and everybody was quiet as quiet, so I could fucking
hear
myself limping, and Lord Stephen sat up there on that dais and watched us coming, the bastard, and Felix stopped and bowed, and I stopped and didn’t bow, and the whole time Felix was saying his oath, Lord Stephen was staring me right in the eye. I figured he wanted to see if he could make me blush or embarrass myself somehow. But he could be Lord Protector all he wanted, he
still
wasn’t a patch on Keeper, so I just stood there and stared back at him and kept my face still.

He looked away first.

Then back down the hall, and Felix picked a spot next to Lady Fleur, and I stood behind him and wondered how I could get to the Fishmarket to see Cardenio. Beat the fuck out of listening to the goings-on of the Mirador trying to run itself, which I wasn’t going to understand anyway and didn’t want to.

I had plenty of time to think.

But I hadn’t come up with any good answers by the time people finally started clearing out. Felix kind of faded back and let them, so I went with him, and when the Hall of the Chimeras was empty except for us, he said, “
Now
then,” like he’d been every bit as bored as me, and went striding down the hall toward the dais.

I went after him because he hadn’t told me not to, but when he walked up on the dais like he had a right to it, I stayed on the floor.

“I’ve been wanting to get a good look at this thing for days,” he said, climbing up on Lord Michael’s Chair like it was just another piece of furniture, and stood on tiptoe to look at the shards of the Virtu.

I didn’t want to ask—didn’t want to say nothing—but my stupid mouth opened and I heard myself bleating, “Is it safe?” like some dumb kid who’s Just barely finished his first septad.

Felix sort of laughed. “Not particularly, but the danger isn’t anything you need to worry about.” Being annemer, he didn’t say, but he didn’t need to. We both knew that part.

“Okay,” I said and stood my ground.

He smiled at me over his shoulder, a little smile and kind of twisted, but it meant he was glad I was here, and it made me warm all the way to my fucking toes.

Yeah, I’m an idiot, thanks for noticing.

And I couldn’t help holding my breath when he reached out to poke at the shards with one finger, like a kid poking a dog to see if it’s asleep.

But nothing happened, and Felix muttered to himself while he climbed down off Lord Michael’s Chair like he’d been hoping a bolt of lightning would knock him on his ass or something. He straightened his cuffs. And then he looked at me and said like it didn’t make him the least little bit happy, “It seems that I must rely on Messire von Heber after all.”

I had been hoping it might unfold like something in a story: Thamuris would give me the insight I needed to mend the Virtu by myself—and preferably with a single lordly wave of my hand.

I had known better, but that hadn’t quite been enough to squelch the foolish little voice saying that it
could
be true.

It wasn’t.

Knowing that the music I heard was the last unbroken strand of the most complicated thaumaturgical construct the Mirador and its wizards had ever produced helped me to understand what I was hearing. It did not help me to understand how to rebuild the fugue I did not hear.

Mavortian was right. I needed someone who was used to sensing patterns. It galled me to admit it, even to myself—and I intended never to make that confession of
need
to Mavortian—but I did not have time to coddle myself with comforting illusions. I had used up my last scrap of the Lord Protector’s most emphatically finite patience. If I crossed him again—or even displeased him—I would be facing the Verpine for certain, and quite possibly the pyre in front of Livergate. Blackmailing the Lord Protector into condoning flagrant heresy was all very well, but it was also not the smartest thing I’d ever done. I had been afraid and angry that night in Farflung, and I had let fear and anger do my thinking.

And, to be fair, my absolute belief that Mildmay meant what he said.

But for all my fine and noble words before the Curia, it was anger that had brought me back to the Mirador. Neither pure nor simple, but the black, cruel rage that I had been fighting against all my life. I had wanted—I
still
wanted—to make them sorry. To prove, viciously, indisputably, that they had been wrong about me. And I wanted it to hurt.

That part, I’d managed, but I had also come much closer to proving them right than proving them wrong.

My resemblance to Malkar was most damnably pronounced.

There was, therefore, neither sense nor reason in putting the unpleasantness off. Stephen and the Curia had agreed to give me full access to the Hall of the Chimeras when court was not in session, and I had a terrible, though sourceless, sense of urgency. It was true, as Hamilcar had said, that the Virtu was not going to get more broken, and I knew it, and yet… and yet I kept wanting to look over my shoulder to see what was gaining on me.

We found Mavortian in his room on the Filigree Corridor—and, of course, the ever-faithful Bernard.

Bernard was no different from Mildmay, I reminded myself, except perhaps in that Bernard’s loyalty was freely given, not compelled.

“So,” Mavortian said. “Messire Harrowgate. I wondered how long it would be before you turned up.”

I could not quite make my voice pleasant when I said, “You need wonder no longer,” but I kept it noncommittal, neutral.

I felt Mildmay’s watchful gaze and knew I wasn’t fooling him. But I also knew that if there was one thing in the world I could count on, it was on Mildmay holding his tongue.

Mavortian smiled, showing too many teeth. “What can I do for you, Messire Harrowgate?”

“What do you think? You say you can tell me how to mend the Virtu. I want you to prove it.”

“How can I refuse when you ask so politely?”

“Well,” I said, “you can’t. Not if you want my help with this Beaumont Livy of yours.”

“You said you didn’t know him.”

“And you said your strong divination couldn’t be wrong. Which of the two of us are you going to trust?”

“I certainly know which is more trustworthy.”

Beside me, Mildmay stirred and subsided; a glance showed him and Bernard glaring at each other. If they’d been dogs, I would have been able to hear them snarling, could have touched Mildmay’s neck and felt his hackles bristling, I had not realized before how much he disliked Mavortian and Bernard, and the thought made me recognize how quickly I’d let the situation escape my control.

I pushed both hands through my hair; took, held, released a deep breath. “If you do not intend to help me, please just say so, and I will leave you in peace.”

“I never said I did not intend to help you.”

Cat-and-mouse games. Malkar had loved them. I liked them myself, but not when cast as the mouse. “Yes or no, Messire von Heber?”

“Of course I will help you, Messire Harrowgate. And you will help me in return.”

“Of course,” I said and gave him a thin smile, as thin and insincere as the smile he gave me.