The Virtu (60 page)

Sloppy, Milly-Fox. Very sloppy, and if you end up dead for it, don’t come crying to me.

But it had to be Vey Coruscant, because even flash ladies’ maids didn’t wear floor-length skirts. Unless, of course, it was Vey’s light of love or niece or something, and while if she was either of those things, she probably wasn’t no nice person, that didn’t mean I wanted to murder her on accident. And I didn’t know what Vey Coruscant looked like, having gone pretty far out of my way to be sure the lady and me were never eye to eye.

Closest I’d ever been to her before, it was pitch-dark and raining in the Boneprince.

And then she called, “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’ll only be a moment.” I heard footsteps in the hall, moving away, but, Kethe, I didn’t care. I had a cold sweat starting in my armpits, because oh fuck oh saints and powers and Kethe patron of thieves and secrets, I knew that voice.

It was Vey Coruscant, all right.

That was when she opened the armoire, and I was moving, cold and clear and like I had a diagram to follow. I had the scarf that’d been covering my head, and it was looped around Vey’s neck with the knot tightening before she even knew I was there. Her mouth came open, but she never had a chance. I’m no hocus, but I can move fast enough to beat one. We hit the floor hard, me on top, and I got my knees braced to pin her arms, set my wrists, and pulled.

Strangling is a fucking ugly way to die. She’d been pretty, Vey Coruscant, with light brown hair and hazel-green eyes, not looking a day past her third septad. Blood-witches can do that. It’s in all the stories, though I’ve never wanted to ask exactly how they go about it. She thrashed under me, and her light brown hair came loose from its pins as her face turned blue, then purple, and her hazel-green eyes bugged out of their sockets. She didn’t make a noise, though, not loud enough for anybody but me to hear.

And then she was dead.

I unknotted the scarf, tried to smooth it, although I knew it was useless, and why the fuck was I bothering? I could get it ironed, back in the Mirador. Give it back to Mehitabel. Maybe she wouldn’t‘ve noticed it was gone, and I wouldn’t have to tell her what I’d done with it.

Get up and go, Milly-Fox, said that voice in my head, and I stuffed the scarf in my pocket and started to get to my feet—and what the
fuck
had I done to my bad leg?—and then I realized there was a shadow in the doorway.

I was up, my heart slamming in my chest, and staring at this guy. He was big, taller than me and bulky, with dark red-brown hair queued back like a flashie, and light brown eyes that looked as clever and fake as glass.

“Gracious,” he said mildly, like there wasn’t a dead body on the floor and it wasn’t somebody he knew. “
You
weren’t the tiger I was expecting to catch.”

I couldn’t move. It was like them shiny eyes had me pinned, same way I’d pinned Vey Coruscant. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, and then reached out, like I was so much fucking statuary, caught my chin in one hand and tilted my head. He had rings on his big broad ugly hands, but no tattoos.

“How intriguing,” he said. And I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t move, couldn’t even fucking fall down and die. “How
very
intriguing. And this may serve even better than my original plan. Certainly, you have rid me very tidily of one obstacle.”

He nudged Vey’s body with one foot. “She was a clever child, but a faithless one. That much I will grant Felix. He has tried to rebel against me, oh, many times, but he has never
betrayed
me. Of course, I was a far stricter master to him than I ever was to Vey. Truly, discipline
is
good for the spirit.” He smiled like a dog snarling, I guess at the look on my face. “I see you’ve realized my secret. You must be smarter than you look—although that wouldn’t be difficult.” His voice had dropped down into a purr, and I hated it and recognized it because I’d heard it in Felix’s voice a thousand times. “But, please, I must not neglect my manners. Allow me to introduce myself.” The smile widened, and I wanted to look away but I couldn’t fucking
move
. “I am Malkar Gennadion. Otherwise and formerly known as Brinvillier Strych.”

It was the nightmare again—the dark room, the table with straps, the heart of the maze, the heart of the monster—and I was almost glad to be woken by someone pounding at the outer door of my suite as if they meant to break it open with their bare hands.

A woman’s voice, carrying well, “Felix! Goddamn you, I know you’re in there!
Felix
!” Mehitabel Parr’s voice.

I remembered she had been furious with me at the soirée the night before. I still didn’t know what I’d done, but it looked rather as if I was going to find out.

I crawled out of bed, groping for my dressing gown. She was still hammering, and I wondered why Mildmay hadn’t opened the door. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper to begin with, and—

For a moment, everything seemed to stop. My mind, my breath, the heart in my chest, the blood in my veins.

Mildmay hadn’t come back. I had sent him to murder Vey Coruscant, Queen Blood, the greatest, and possibly only, blood-wizard now living. He hadn’t returned, and I wondered dizzily why I’d thought he would, why I’d thought my annemer brother would be able to defeat the queen of blood, the queen of stolen bones and graveyard earth.

I had promised not to rape him, and what a lie that had turned out to be.

I was lurching like a drunk by the time I reached the door. I threw it open and said to Mehitabel Parr, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Dead, and my fault. Dead, and I killed him.

“No,” she said, startled. “Well, he might be by now.”

I realized there was someone with her, someone I didn’t know. A man, short and slight, wearing a long black coat and holding a broad-brimmed soft black hat in both hands. I recognized the traditional clothes of a cade-skiff, and looked back at Mehitabel in confusion. If he wasn’t dead, why was a cade-skiff here?

“This gentleman has some information for you,” she said. “May we come in?”

I stood aside obediently, shut the door behind them. “Why are you here?” I said to Mehitabel and realized a moment later how rude that sounded. “I didn’t mean… but—”

“Let’s take the story in order,” she said. “Starting with Cardenio’s information.”

“Cardenio?”

The cade-skiff blushed bright carnation pink and mumbled, “Yes, your lordship.” Mousy, unremarkable face, accent thick enough to butter bread—Mildmay’s friend.

“Sit down,” I said, my voice thin and utterly hollow to my own ears. “Please. And tell me what news you have brought.”

He sat, almost swallowed by the armchair. I took the other, and Mehitabel dragged over a chair from the table. I saw Cardenio’s fingers tighten on his hat, but his voice was level and clear when he said, “I got a visitor this morning told me they saw Mildmay being taken out of the city by a hoc—by a wizard who smelled like bad magic. And when I came out of the morgue my master told me Vey Coruscant had been murdered.”

“Wait,” I said. “Someone came to you
in the morgue
?”

“Yes,” he said and met my eyes when he said it. “Out of the river, actually.”

A headache was starting to throb in my temples. “Wait,” I said. “Stop. Can we take this one fact at a time? Vey Coruscant is dead.”

“Murdered,” said the cade-skiff. “Strangled. I saw the body. I only know one man in Mélusine who could have done it, and that’s Mildmay.”

“And he’s left town?”

“Been taken,” Cardenio corrected me. “Out through the Seventh Gate.”

“The river.”

“Yes.”

“But if Vey Coruscant is dead, then who… ?”

“I believe,” Mehitabel said waspishly, “the gentleman’s name is Malkar Gennadion.”

I got the story from Cardenio question by question, patient answer by patient answer. I had already slept through court for the fourth day in a row; we were not interrupted. I could not let myself think beyond the next question, the next answer. Could not let myself think about what I had done.

Around the eleventh hour of the night (Cardenio said, and I mentally converted to about five o’clock in the morning), he had been roused by a confrère of his, the journeyman who had night duty in the cade-skiffs’ morgue beneath their guildhall; Cardenio did not tell me what night duty entailed, and I did not ask. This cade-skiff told him that someone wanted to see him, and refused to say anything more beyond the fact that he didn’t think they should be kept waiting. Cardenio had dragged some clothes on and accompanied his colleague down to the morgue.

From Cardenio’s manner, I gathered that this was not the first strange request he had met with since joining the guild.

What was waiting for him was a monster. He described it as best he could, and I gained an impression of a creature like the mermaids of folktales, only not a half-human maiden, whether benign or malevolent, but a scaled thing, with a human torso and arms but a tail like a sea serpent, and great pale eyes like nothing, Cardenio said, he had ever seen before. But what really took him aback was when it spoke to him, calling him by name.

It demanded to know if he was Cardenio, and if he was a friend or Mildmay’s. He said yes, to both—“I ain’t seen him in a long time, but if we ain’t friends, it’s on his side, not mine.” His eyes met mine, not defiantly, but steadily, and I said before I could stop myself, “You’re the only person I’ve ever heard him call a friend.”

He said shyly, “I’m glad,” before continuing his story.

The monster identified itself as the Kalliphorne. To Cardenio, that name had evidently meant something. To me, it meant nothing. He had to explain about St. Kirban’s flooded vaults, the nature of the traffic through them, the man who controlled them, and just how he kept that control. As a cade-skiff, Cardenio had seen what Phoskis Terrapin’s watchdog could do; he had never doubted that the creature existed—as many in the Lower City apparently did—and he had no hesitation in believing it.

It told him Mildmay had spoken of him as someone who could be trusted, though it did not explain how it came to be on speaking terms with my brother, and it told him what it had seen and smelled that night: a man reeking of bad magic and Mildmay in his company. “It said there was something wrong with him. Like he couldn’t see where he was going.”