The Virtu (71 page)

“It’s no big deal,” I said and ducked my head to kiss her collarbone so she couldn’t see my face.

“I would’ve thought this would make it uncomfortable,” she said, and I half felt a finger tracing my scar.

“Don’t,” I said, jerking my head away before I could stop myself.

“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“Nah. Hardly any feeling there. I just don’t like—”

“Having it touched. I
am
sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I cupped one of her little tits. “You up for more?”

“I hate to break this to you, but
I
’m not the one who needs to be up.”

Powers and saints, I blushed like a bonfire, and she laughed. Her real laugh, not the sexy one, and that made it okay. “To answer your question,” she said, “yes, I’d love another round. But let’s do something for you this time.”

“You don’t gotta—”

“No? What’s your plan then? Kill me with delight, then skulk off to the water closet to masturbate?”

“Mehitabel!”

And she was laughing again, even as she shoved me flat and knelt over me. “Do you mind?”

“Whatever you want‘s fine with me,” I said, going breathless in the middle as she brought herself down.

“You really are almost frighteningly agreeable.” She shifted her hips and flexed something, grinning when I couldn’t bite back a moan. “My mother was a sideshow dancer. I think she’d be quite pleased by the uses to which I’ve put her lessons.”

She flexed again, tightening herself around me, and Kethe I tried not to, but I couldn’t help my hips bucking up, and Mehitabel said, “Yes, come on, Mildmay. A little less of the gentleman, if you please.”

“Don’t wanna hurt…”

“You won’t hurt me. I’m not a porcelain doll.” She arched her back, and things flexed a whole different way, making my hips buck again, and she said, “Oh, God, yes! Right like that! Like
that
!”

And we were moving together, her making breathless little coyote yelps, me with my teeth gritted not to make any noise at all. It didn’t take long before I felt her come, her fingers digging into my shoulders. Slid my hand between her legs, found her clit again, and she bucked and shuddered and snarled, “Take something for
yourself
, damn you!” And I could feel it building, white heat in my balls and cock and the pit of my belly, white shrieking yowling heat, and my other hand clamped around her hip, and I thrust up into her just as hard as she brought herself down, once, twice, and then, Kethe, I came like I was turning inside out, came like I was trying to break something.

And for a second, a single blessed second, I wasn’t nothing at all.

Afterward, she said, “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

“If you want.”

“You don’t?”

“Sure. I mean—”

She laughed, kissed me again. “You’re not a monster, Mildmay. Not even close. Anytime you need someone to remind you of that, you come find me.”

“It was okay, then?”

“Good God, man, you need to ask?”

She made me laugh with that, and I felt better. Felt like maybe it’d been worth her while.

“I do need to go,” she said and made a face. “Appearances to keep up.”

“Yeah.” I watched her get dressed, pin her hair back up. Made myself say, “Thanks.”

“You’re more than welcome. Just stay with us, all right?”

“Okay,” I said, and she gave me a smile that left me breathless and swept out.

When Felix came in, he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I saw him deciding not to say whatever it was he wanted to say. I laid down again, rolled to face the wall. Thought, oh fuck this, and said, “Good night, Felix.”

Silence. A long silence, long enough that even though I was waiting, I was half-asleep when he said, real quiet, “Good night.”

Somewhere between Medeia and Mélusine, I dreamed.

My construct-Mélusine was clean and light; for once, even the brooding presence of the Sim did not distort things. Horn Gate was open, and through it, I could see the perseïdes beckoning.

I had not been able to reach the Khloïdanikos for weeks, first because the mending of the Virtu left me no energy, and then because my sick guilt destroyed my concentration, making it impossible even to form the construct, much less use it. I went through Horn Gate gladly, gratefully. The Khloïdanikos noticed me as little as ever, but I did not care; part of its peace was its sublime indifference, that sense that whatever its builders had intended, it was continuing serenely, creating its own pattern as it saw fit.

I wandered for a while, basking in the silence and the warmth, but when I felt Thamuris enter the dream, I made my way to our usual meeting place.

We reached it at the same time. He looked better than he had the last time I had seen him, the hectic color no longer flaming in his cheeks, his real self no longer bleeding through his dream image. “It has been a long time.”

“I know,” I said. “Things got… complicated. But they’re better now.” I didn’t want to discuss Malkar with Thamuris, or what I had done to Mild-may. Any of it. I had confessed to Simon and Rinaldo; surely that was penance enough.

“I was worried,” he said mildly. “I couldn’t find you, and your gate was never here.”

“You can see it?” I twisted around, seeing its dark bulk over the trees.

“Well, of course,” he said. “But it’s not here if you aren’t, although sometimes I see… a shadow? a ghost?”

I shivered. “If I keep coming here, do you think it will become permanent?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how the Khloïdanikos changes.
If
it changes. Which reminds me, I should go see if the dead tree is still here and still dead.”

I got up to follow him. “The what?”

“When you were gone,” he said. “I found a dead perseïd tree. I don’t think it was here before, and I’ve been going back to see what happens to it.”

“A dead tree—here?”

“That is what I said.” He was eyeing me with some amusement, but he frowned suddenly, stopping in front of me so that I was forced to stop, too. “What on earth is the matter?”

“Matter?”

“You look distressed.”

Damn the Khloïdanikos and the things it would not allow me to hide. “It’s just that a dead tree is a symbol in a system I’ve been learning recently, and—”

“Something happened to Mildmay,” Thamuris said, and his voice was hard with that sickening intuitive leap. “
The dead tree will not shelter you
. Is he all right?”

I stared at him, wide-eyed, voiceless. I had forgotten about the huphan-tike he had told me:
Love and betrayal, the gorgon and the wheel. The dead tree will not shelter you, and the dead will not stay dead. Though you do not seek revenge, it will seek you all the same
. Forgotten it and enacted it, like a puppet willfully blind to the strings that pulled its limbs.

“Felix! Is he all right?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice a choked whisper. “Love and betrayal, two sides of the same coin. He loved me and I betrayed him. The dead tree—the Mirador. Or the obligation d‘âme. Or maybe his friends, the monster, the little cade-skiff. They couldn’t help him, either. And the dead will not stay dead.” I bit my lower lip, hard, to kill a fit of hysterical giggles. “Brinvillier Strych certainly did not. And revenge. He didn’t want revenge. He knew it wouldn’t do anyone any good. And I didn’t listen.”

“Come sit down,” Thamuris said, shepherding me onto the grass.

“I didn’t listen,” I said to him, folding down onto my knees. “I didn’t listen to him, and I didn’t listen to you, and I made it happen.”

“It would have happened regardless.” I turned away, and he caught my wrist. “No. Listen to me.
It would have happened regardless
. That pattern. The huphantike that I made true. It might not have been those events, but it would still have happened.”

“Yes,” I agreed desolately. “But it might not have been my fault.”

Thamuris blinked wise, dreamy golden eyes at me and said, “Who else could it have been? Who else does he love?”

Cruel truth, and it burned like acid. I held myself still before it for ten deep, slow breaths, and then said, “Let’s go see about your dead tree, shall we?” I scrambled up, hauled Thamuris to his feet.

The perseïd tree was a black, shattered huddle of branches against a tumbledown stone wall. Dead indeed. I knelt, reached out to touch the knotted bark, gently, as if I thought I had the right to apologize. The wood was cold and wet beneath my fingers.

I let my hand drop, looked at the small shining pebbles among the roots of the tree while I tried to regain my composure, put myself back together again around my guilt and my failure. Then Thamuris said, “Look!” his hand gripping my shoulder, and I looked up and saw at the end of an out-flung twig the first tender unfurling of green.

No fanfare accompanied our return to the Mirador. But, on the other hand, I wasn’t arrested and thrown on a pyre the instant I walked through the Harriers’ Gate, either. Mehitabel separated from us at the second major branching past the gate—the Tree of Ash, it was called on the older maps—kissing Mildmay on the cheek and whispering something in his ear that made him blush. I did not ask. Although he was speaking again, even having something approaching conversations with Mehitabel and Simon, to me he had said nothing more than “good morning” and “good night.” It was his choice; I had no right to make him talk to me. I was leaning away from the obligation d‘âme as hard as I could, trying to pretend it wasn’t there, trying to pretend there was no obligation, in the wider sense, between us.

Of course, there was. Otherwise, he would not be here, padding silently at my heels as we wound our way into the Mirador to find Master Architrave and tell him rooms were needed for Simon Barrister and Rinaldo of Fiora. But all I could do was pretend.

Master Architrave was delighted and flummoxed; we left Rinaldo and Simon in his more than capable hands, and I led the way to my rooms, where the door opened on firelight and warmth, and Gideon looking up from his book, first blankly, and then with a look of such transparent joy that I nearly stumbled. Then he looked past me, saw Mildmay, and came to his feet.

“ ‘M all right,” Mildmay said, forestalling the need for Gideon to relay the question through me. “Going to bed.” Slurred into one mumbled word:
gontabed
.

Gideon raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged helplessly and said, “Good night. Sleep well.”

“ ‘Night,” Mildmay said, without turning, and the door of his small room shut decisively behind him, leaving Gideon and me in a silence that stretched from awkward to uncomfortable to excruciating, until finally, desperately, I said, “Did Thaddeus leave you alone?”

:Thank you, yes. Your suite is very peaceful, and the servants most polite. I believe they lied to Thaddeus on my behalf more than once.:

The gossip in the Mirador could be trusted to be up-to-date and accurate; I was not surprised that the soft-footed young men who tended the rooms on this hall had known who Gideon was and why he was in my suite. I had told them only that a guest would be staying, and they had not asked me questions.

“You’re, ah, welcome to stay. If you’d like.”

One eyebrow rose sardonically; I turned away, my face heating, and went to poke up the fire.

:How is Mildmay?:

“I don’t know. He didn’t talk to anyone for five days. He still isn’t talking to me, particularly. Mehitabel told me he told her he doesn’t remember what Malkar did to him.”

:It would not be surprising,: Gideon said and added pointedly, :It is a common defensive reaction to severe trauma.:

“Thank you so very much.”

:Give him time.:

“There’s nothing else I
can
give him.” I sighed, setting the poker down; Gideon came up beside me and gently laid a hand on my shoulder.

:If I were to stay…:

“Yes?”

:You will treat him—:

“Like he was my brother, yes.” I felt Gideon’s flinch at my bitterness.

:And how will you treat me?:

I turned to look down at him, to meet those grave, dark eyes. He did not ask the question idly or rhetorically.

And I had been thinking about this, too, in the long silent hours between Medeia and Mélusine. “You said you didn’t expect me to be other than what I am. But I don’t want to make you be other than yourself, either. And I don’t know how…”