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Entry tags:
quotations, melusine
As we come in a green shape rises from one of the chairs. I can't see it clearly, as if it moves in a trailing cloud of fog, just the greenness and a sense of ferocity carefully held in check.
-
"Come on, Felix," says the raven. "Gideon, will you go get the soap?" The green shape leaves the room; I watch it, anxiously, because it is strange.
-
The green monster returns with the soap, which I accept gratefully. The three monsters stand close together at the other end of the room. I know that they are whispering, but the roar and boom of it still hurt my ears. I would tell them that they don't have to whisper, that I can't understand them, but I still can't find any language in my head.
-
The green monster sits near me, and I can feel its brilliant gaze on me. I stare at my hands, and I suppose time passes, although I cannot tell.
The green monster touches my arm, gently; I wish I could explain my flinch was for the thunderclap, not for him. But I get up and follow the en and the statue. The green shape does not come with us. It is one fewer monster to worry about; it is bad enough that the raven is walking on my bright side.
-
"The other person in your suite," I said. "Who… ?"
"Oh," said Thaddeus. "Gideon."
"Gideon?"
"Gideon Thraxios. I knew him in the Bastion."
"Another defector?"
"Yes. He won't bother you."
-
The stranger, Gideon Thraxios, was sitting by the fireplace in Thaddeus's main room, curled up in one of the big chairs like a cat and reading a treatise on water magic from Imar Eiren. He stood up when we came in; either his manners were naturally very good or Thaddeus made him nervous. Or I did.
Now that he wasn't just a green shape in a cloud of fog, he proved to be a man of medium height, slenderly built, with the bronze tone to his skin that indicated he came from the eastern end of the Kekropian Empire. His hair was dark and curly, escaping from his queue in wild tendrils; his eyes were dark and startlingly intelligent, shining like beacons out of an otherwise undistinguished, snub-nosed face. He was older than I, but I wasn't sure by how much.
The colors between him and Thaddeus were a brooding brownish red shot through with lightning-white, belying the seeming friendliness of the way Thaddeus told Gideon about the Curia meeting and introduced him to me. Reintroduced, I corrected myself, but Gideon and I shook hands anyway. I decided his manners were just naturally good.
-
Thaddeus Vida, and Gideon had tactfully withdrawn to the other side of the room' where the periphery of my attention observed that they were having an undervoiced but heated discussion of their own.
-
Gideon had dragged a chair over to the sideboard and was engrossed, with pen, ink, and a dog-eared sheaf of papers, in something that looked like a diagram for a warding spell. They all three looked up when I came in, but none of them commented on my dishabille.
-
And Gideon said, "Felix?"
I looked at him. He had put his pen down. He said, in his perfect, though heavily accented, Marathine, "I fancy a walk. Would you care to come? I have a pair of slippers you can borrow."
I felt my face redden. But I wanted very badly to get away from Thaddeus and Vida and the things they thought they knew about me, and he was offering me an excuse. So I said, "Thank you," more or less to the floor, and Gideon went and fetched me a pair of scuffed carpet slippers.
"Have fun," Thaddeus said, very dryly, as we left, and I caught Gideon in a grimace of exasperation.
We walked in silence for a while. Gideon was a stranger to the Mirador, and I knew I should be exerting myself to identify landmarks and important rooms, to share the odd bits of history that I could remember. But my throat felt like it was full of ashes, and my eyes were burning, and it was all I could do to keep from the even greater rudeness of forcing Gideon to pretend not to notice that I was crying.
We came to an intersection, where a hallway hung with enameled scales, like the sides of a sea serpent or a dragon, met the Wooden Hallway, and Gideon said, "Where do you like to go?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You are an inhabitant of the Mirador. Which parts of it do you like?"
"Oh," I said. "The battlements."
"Then let us go there."
"All right." I hadn't gone up to the battlements since I had been returned to the Mirador.
There were staircases to the battlements scattered throughout the fabric of the Mirador, though most of them were in the Vielle Roche, leading to the Crown of Nails, the highest ring of merlons. We climbed up, around and around in a dizzying corkscrew, until we came out the narrow door at the top into a night cold and clear. I only then remembered that it was Petrop and should have been raining, looked at the stars sailing serene and distant above my head, and for the first time since the beginning of The Singer's Tragedy, felt my heart unclench just slightly.
Gideon said, "I have never been much of an astronomer. Where is the Minotaur?"
"There." I pointed. "That red star is Oculus, and see? There's his horns, and his shoulders."
"And his feet. Thank you." I could just make out Gideon's profile, he too, gazed up at the stars.
After a while, he laughed. "Consider the stars. Among them are no passions, no wars. They know neither love nor hatred. Did man but emulate the stars, would not his soul become clear and radiant, as they are? But man's spirit draws him like a moth to the ephemera of this world, and in their heat he is consumed entire."
"Is that a quotation from something?"
"The Inquiries into the World's Heart of Nahum Westerley. An atheist philosopher from Lunness Point."
"Oh. Do you read much philosophy?"
"I read everything," he said, perhaps a shade ruefully. "Since I have come here, I feel like I am drowning in a wealth of books. But the Inquiries into the World's Heart is an old friend. I had to leave my copy in the Bastion, where it has doubtless been burned, but I am told there are shops here—in the 'Cheaps' if I understood correctly—where I can buy another."
"You can buy almost anything in the Cheaps. You must have left the Bastion in a dreadful hurry."
"Oh yes. One doesn't sit on a decision like that. Secrets in the Bastion do not stay so for long."
"Why did you leave?"
"Because I had to."
It was gently delivered, but a rebuff nonetheless. I wanted to ask him why he and Thaddeus hated each other and why—that being so—he had not yet left Thaddeus's suite, but I did not have the courage, and he would not have answered me anyway.
I said, "I don't know much about philosophy. My education was almost entirely… pragmatic."
"It is either a consolation or the heaviest possible curse. I have never been able to decide which."
We watched the stars in silence for a few minutes longer before Gideon remarked that it was cold, and we went back in.
-
The other monster, the green one, says, "I thought you told me the Curia had him under interdict."
Gideon's voice, the blessed voice of reason—the thing I hadn't been able to think of.
-
through it, I hear them both cursing, Thaddeus's Midlander oaths of his strange, unnameable god, Gideon cursing in Kekropian, which I don't understand.
-
It will not be safe to work magic in Mélusine for days, perhaps for months. It took all Gideon's strength of will to perform a minor healing on my broken fingers, and even that slipped and went awry in the working I can feel the stiffness in my aching, swollen-jointed fingers, and I know that they will never fully recover from what Malkar did.
-
The wizards in the company are mostly the shy, inoffensive scholars who study thaumaturgical architecture, the only ones who have any hope of making sense of the ruins. Vicky also demanded the presence of Gideon Thraxios, who has the most recent information available on the Bastion's intentions and abilities.
-
But still, I am grateful when Gideon drops back to walk on Thaddeus's other side and starts a low-voiced argument in Kekropian. I catch my own name once or twice, and I can guess the general thrust of their debate. I wish, miserably and without force, to be dead.
-
My hands hurt, but Gideon's healing, warped though it is, has done its work, ad they are usable. I am glad that in the chaos no one thought to accuse him of heresy.
-
I observed that Thaddeus was still stuck with the baggage, sharing a room with Gideon and me, the volatile and undesirable elements of the party. I wondered if he had been asked to stand surety for our good behavior, like a thief-keeper retrieving a child from the Ebastine.
-
Thaddeus was angry enough. He and Gideon argued in Kekropian half the evening, and the colors around them showed me the depths of loathing underneath their sparring. They hated each other, and still I did not know why. I sat on the bed I was sharing with Thaddeus and rubbed at my aching hands. Thaddeus and Gideon ignored me; Thaddeus knew that I was as stupid as an owl about languages, and that there was thus no need to fear that I would understand their quarrel.
I caught occasional words—the Bastion, my name, Malkar's name, the Kekropian word for necromancy—enough to understand that they were still arguing about what Malkar had done and how, about his purpose and the Bastion's purpose behind him. But I was still completely unprepared when Gideon turned and demanded, "Felix! What do you think?"
Thaddeus snorted. "You'll get more sense out of the hotel cat. Besides, Lady Victoria and I already tried."
"Yes, I heard you. Felix, what do you think Malkar hopes to accomplish?"
"I… I don't know. Not what you think."
"What do you mean by that?" Thaddeus said, dark with suspicion.
"That he's Malkar. That he never wants what you think."
"Madness," Thaddeus said.
"Do you think so?" said Gideon. "I am inclined to think otherwise."
"Yes, well, it's not news that your mind is twisted." And he added viciously, "You always were a little sneak."
Gideon said, "Is this really the time to bring up the past?"
"Why not? Why in the name of God should we not talk about it? We were boys together." And Thaddeus smiled, although there was nothing good-humored or friendly about it. "Come, Gideon, let us reminisce."
"Thaddeus—"
"Yes, let's. I can tell Felix about being beaten for daring to ask questions, and you can tell him about being Louis Goliath's favorite minion. Don't you think?"
"Thaddeus—"
"Or are there other stories you'd like to tell? Perhaps you could tell him about the mystery cults of the Bastion. I'm sure he'd be fascinated, Perhaps he'll write a monograph."
"Thaddeus, enough." The colors around Gideon were terrible with rage and old pain and fear. "Baiting me accomplishes nothing, and baiting Felix…" I shrank back under the look he gave me. But all the passion seemed to go out of him, and he said tiredly, "Baiting Felix should be beneath you."
"Aren't we the gentleman?" Thaddeus said.
"No. I'm a docker's brat from Thrax. As you know and have known any time these past fifteen years. But at least I know what's decent behavior and what's not. I had imagined a man of your ideals would be able to distinguish that as well, but clearly I was mistaken."
"Are you quite finished being pompous?"
"Probably not. If you mean, shall we let our disagreement rest until tomorrow—by all means. Good night, Thaddeus."
Thaddeus gave him a savage parody of a bow. "Good night, Gideon." And snarled at me, "Good night, Felix."
He stalked out. The silence he left behind him seemed almost too thick to breathe. After a moment, Gideon pushed his hair off his face with both hands, then turned to me and said, gently, "You need to sleep."
"Yes, Gideon," I said and lay down obediently, huddled around my aching hands. But I did not sleep, could not sleep. I was still awake when Thaddeus came back in some hours later, and went to sleep finally with his stiff, angry presence like a sword beside me in the bed.
-
It was late morning when I woke up, for when the dream had let me go, I had fallen into a sodden, heavy blackness that contained neither dreams nor rest. The others were gone—I could feel their absence—except Gideon, who was sitting in a chair by the window, making notes in the endpapers of a book called A Treatise upon Spirit. He said, without looking up, "They've gone to frighten the Mayor."
"Oh," I said. The colors around him were blue with concentration, luminous as the sky. I was afraid I would disturb him.
He said, "Breakfast is still laid out in the parlor."
"Thank you," I said.
-
I went back to the bedroom. Gideon looked up at my entrance and did not say, Oh, it's you, although I saw it around him. Instead, after a moments contemplation, he put his book down and said, "Let's go out."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Surely there must be something in Hermione worth seeing besides that damned tower. Old fortifications or gardens or something."
"But won't Thaddeus—"
"Damn Thaddeus. Put your shoes on, and I'll ask the desk clerk about sites of interest."
Thaddeus would be angry if he found out. But I put my shoes on, because Gideon said to and because I had been stuck in that room for three days, and I did not love it. I was standing by the door, wondering if I should go downstairs to find Gideon or if I should wait, when he came back in.
"There you are. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Come on, then. The desk clerk says the Municipal Gardens across the river are worth a look."
"In the middle of Petrop?"
"There's a hedge maze. Hedge mazes are interesting year-round."
He was treating me like a person instead of an inconvenience or a disgrace. I could no more refuse to go with him than someone freezing to death could refuse the offer of a blanket. I put my coat on and followed him out of the Chimera Among the Roses.
It was a beautiful day for Petrop, the sun only half-obscured by clouds and the air no more than chilly. We walked briskly but without hurry, at first without speaking, but then Gideon began to tell me stories of his childhood in Thrax before he had been conscripted by the Bastion—in Kekropia, wizards could be pressed into service as young as thirteen—and I was able to respond with a few harmless, amusing things that I remembered from my early days in the Mirador. My mind was clear; although most of the people who passed us had the heads of animals, I knew that these were merely hallucinations, neither true nor necessary, and they did not frighten me.
As we descended a set of stairs toward the river, Gideon said, "I have been wondering since I first saw you: how did you come to Mélusine?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I did not think Troians ventured away from the coast."
"Who?"
He was a stair ahead of me; he turned to look up and back, frowning, "You must be Troian. Your hair, your height, your eyes and skin."
"I… I thought maybe I was Caloxan," I said timidly, skirting around the snarl of lies and truth, Malkar and Pharaohlight, that comprised my past.
"Caloxan!" He snorted. "You're Troian. You can't be anything else."
"Who are Troians?"
"Troians are the people who once ruled half this continent."
"Oh."
We had reached the path leading to the Linlowing Bridge; Gideon dropped back to walk beside me.
"They are tall, red-haired, pale-skinned. They have yellow eyes." Like one of mine, the good one. "Oh," I said again.
"The Empire still trades with them, but, as I said, I thought they never went inland. There are still, er, folk-beliefs."
"Rather," I said. I could imagine what kind of folk-beliefs he was talking about. Keeper always said my hair was unlucky, and beat me for it Lorenzo scoffed at superstition; he saw my hair as a draw and he made it be one. But the men who chose me were the men who wanted the illusion of danger in their cheap transactions with a cheap teenage whore. Malkar too, had traded on my hair with his story about Caloxan nobility, although apparently that was as much a lie as everything else.
Gideon broke in urgently on my thoughts: "When was this bridge built? Do you know?"
"No."
The Linlowing River was a tributary of the Sim; as it flowed through Hermione it was wider than the Sim, but slower. The Linlowing Bridge stood on five pairs of pylons; each pylon was carved in the shape of a man kneeling in the river, so that the bridge appeared to be supported on their shoulders. They stared out with blank, solemn faces, softened by time and water and wind, five looking east and five looking west. Gideon was entranced.
"It looks like Cymellunar work." As we reached the first pair of kneeling men, he leaned out over the parapet in a way that made me nervous. "Which would mean it's ruinously old. Do you know anything about it at all?"
"No."
"There will be someone to ask," he said cheerfully and, much to my relief, straightened up. Then he frowned at me. "You've gone white as a sheet. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
He looked at the statue's head, then back at me. "Heights?"
"No. Really, I'm fine." I started walking, because it wasn't the height that frightened me, it was the water underneath. Obligingly, he followed me; even more obligingly, he didn't press for an answer.
Hermione no longer extended to the south bank of the Linlowing, if ever it had. The great bridge served primarily as an awe-inspiring entrance to the town for traders from the south, and as the town's connection to the farmlands that supported it. The only land south of the Linlowing that belonged to the city was the expanse of the Municipal Gardens. They were vast, rigidly landscaped and bleak with winter. The entrance price was two centimes; Gideon paid, and we went through the gate. Gideon struck up a conversation about the Linlowing Bridge with the gatekeeper, who must have been both lonely and bored at this time of year, and because no one forbade me, I wandered away along the carefully tended path.
Everything was laid out in a strict geometry, exactingly and mercilessly pruned. The fountains were all dry and silent, prisoners of winter. I walked through a topiary—where the woven, leafless shapes made my eyes hurt—climbed a narrow staircase and found myself in a gazebo, looking north at Hermione proper. Clearly the gardens' designers had intended this as a splendid vista, evoking civic pride in the garden-strolling burghers. I remembered standing on the Crown of Nails, looking out across Mélusine, and to me Hermione seemed petty and dull.
But from here, I could see the wizard's tower. It looked as I knew it did, short, squat, the windows boarded up, and empty patches in its red-tile roof. The tower in my dreams was the creation of my madness, the black looming shape of my fear—nothing to do with the real world. "You are mad, Felix Harrowgate," I said to myself and turned to go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black shadow of the tower stretching across the river, reaching for me. I spun back, and there were no shadows at all. It was almost noon, and in any event, a three-story tower two blocks in from the Linlowing's northern bank could not cast a shadow that could reach me here. I knew that. But now I was afraid to take my eyes off the tower. And the longer I looked at it, the more it seemed to me that the real tower was the one in my dreams, that this dilapidated structure was only a façade. And if that was true, then the rest of my dream was true, and there was something in that tower, something terrible. I had to make Thaddeus believe me; I knew that, and at the same time, I knew he never would.
"Felix?" Gideon's voice, and I almost broke my neck getting down the stairs again. Whether I could make anyone believe me or not, I knew I could never be convincing with the tower where I could see it. And only then, back down on the path and trotting toward Gideon, did I think to wonder if maybe Gideon would believe me.
"Thaddeus would flay me if I lost you," he said. "Let's go look at the hedge maze."
"Do you like mazes?" I said, more or less at random. I was wondering how I could tell him about my dreams without sounding like… well, like a madman.
Gideon started talking about the theory and practice of mazes—mazes made of hedges, mazes made of stones, mazes inlaid in the floors of temples in the Myrian Mountains, a maze made of mirrors that was said to have stood in Cymellune before it sank. He mentioned the string mazes of the wizards of Lunness Point and the dance-made mazes of the far north. He told me about the De Doctrina Labyrinthorum written by Ephreal Sand, who had gone mad and spent his last years drawing insoluble mazes, first with pen and paper, then with a stick in the dirt, then with his finger in the dust, and finally in his own blood on the walls and floors and windows.
At that point, Gideon broke off abruptly and said, "I beg your pardon."
"Why?"
"I have a tendency—I've been told about it before, I assure you—to well, to go on rather about things that interest me. I must be boring you to tears."
"I'm not bored," I said, because I wasn't.
"Then you are unique." His momentary smile lit up his face like a flash of sunlight through clouds. "But I really have done about three people's share of the talking, and I ought to let you get a word in edgewise."
"There's the maze," I said.
"Oh good. The gatekeeper's description has not led me to hope for great things, but perhaps I shall be pleasantly surprised."
The hedges of the maze were only about shoulder high on Gideon, which was some comfort. At least we could not become permanently lost. "That tower marks the center," Gideon said. I followed the direction of his pointing finger rather wildly, but the wizard's tower was not lying in wait for me. The center of the maze had a square wooden openwork tower, with a roofed platform at the top. "If we climb up there, we'll be able to see our way back."
We started into the maze. Gideon led me confidently, muttering things under his breath about various books he'd read, and within ten minutes we had come to the wooden tower.
"As I expected," he said. "Shall we climb up?"
"All right," I said.
Five short flights of stairs brought us to the platform. Gideon leaned on the railing, looking out. "It's a nice maze," he said, "but child-simple."
I leaned beside him, looking at the neat square symmetry of the lines of the hedge. And I said, before I was fully sure I was going to, "Do you believe in dreams?"
"How do you mean?" he said, tilting his head to look at me.
"Do you think they can… that they can tell the truth?"
After a meditative silence, Gideon said, "As I recall, the Mirador teaches that they cannot."
"Yes. I mean, no. I…" I trailed off in confusion.
Gideon said mildly, "I've never liked Cabaline dogma."
"But you… that is…"
"Yes, I hate the Bastion, but that's more personal than doctrinal. I admire the Cabal quite dreadfully, mind you, but I think they were, in some ways, misguided. It is foolish to say, simply because one does not wish to have any truck with necromancers, that the magic that makes necromancy possible is evil."
"But dreams don't—"
"Have anything to do with necromancy? You say so only because you have not been properly taught. What do you believe about dreams?"
"I don't know. I know my dreams are strange. They always have been. There was an old man—he's dead now, so I guess it can't hurt to tell you about him. He taught me how to control my dreams a little, to keep the nightmares away, and I didn't think about them much for a long time. But they've gotten worse, since… since the Curia put me under interdict. More… more true, somehow."
"Well, with your magic out of the way," Gideon said, but he wasn't talking to me, not really; the look in his eyes was one I'd come to recognize, that distant but not at all dreamy expression that meant he was on the track of an errant splinter of thaumaturgical theory.
"But I thought you said my dreams were like necromancy."
"Good gracious, no. I said they were related to necromancy, and so they are. True dreams of the sort you're talking about exist in the same world of the spirit as ghosts and revenants—and the forces of divination, for that matter. But dreaming isn't magic, although for some people it can come close."
"You mean like what Malkar did?"
"No!" Gideon said, vehemently enough to make me flinch. "What Malkar did is something completely different. It's called a sending, and it is one of the nastiest pieces of magic the Bastion has failed to outlaw. Sendings use other people's dreams, not the caster's own. But that's not what you're talking about, if I'm understanding you correctly."
"I don't think I've ever used anyone else's dreams."
"You'd know if you had. Do you dream about the future?"
"Iosephinus—that was the old man's name, the one who helped me. Iosephinus Pompey—he said I could, but it was better not to. He said it never helped. I just… I dream about real things. I think."
"What do you mean?"
It was the opening I had been both hoping for and dreading, "The tower," I said, all in a rush. "There's something awful in the tower and tried to tell Thaddeus, but he won't listen. Gideon, can you talk to him?" I saw the refusal before Gideon said anything; the colors around him darkened and furled like wings.
"Felix, I'm sorry. I can't. He won't listen to me, and—I know it's hard to believe, but truly—I would only make things worse."
"It's all right. I didn't mean…"
"No, I am sorry. But it probably isn't as bad as you think. I don't know very much about the history of this wizard's tower, but probably you're just feeling… echoes of the past."
"It's there. It's there now. It's watching us."
"Are you sure," Gideon said very gently, "that it isn't just a nightmare?"
Yes, I thought. "No," I said aloud. "Maybe you're right."
An uncomfortable pause, and he said, "We'd better be getting back."
"Yes," I said hopelessly and followed him back through the maze.
The others didn't return to the Chimera Among the Roses until nearly sundown, and they were tremendously pleased with themselves. They had extracted the keys from the Mayor, and a promise that repairs to the tower would be undertaken as soon as the wizards told him what they needed. was almost sorry for the Mayor of Hermione.
But the longer I sat and listened to the wizards making plans, the worse the feeling got, the residue of my dreams, the knowledge that the thing in the tower was hungry and waiting and powerful. And finally, although I knew it would do no good, although Thaddeus had already laughed at me, I said, "Thaddeus, can I talk to you?" I knew no one else would listen to me; the other wizards all avoided me as if I were a leper—except for Vicky, whose mind was as inflexible as an iron rod—and Shannon was still looking through me as if I were not there. The guard lieutenant was faith fully following Shannon's lead, and the guards were all copying their lieutenant. If Gideon would not help me, there was only Thaddeus left.
His eyebrows went up, a slow, deliberate display of incredulity, a pause long enough to attract the others' attention and make them aware of the burdens he labored under. Then he said, "Very well. I assume you mean privately?"
I nodded, embarrassment choking me, and followed him up to the bedroom we shared with Gideon. It was already going wrong; the situation was already twisting out of true. But the only way out was to go forward.
-
I saw the light approaching from the north end of the bridge; I knew it was too much to hope that this might be some late-night wanderer who would not notice me, and so I was not surprised when the light stopped, a few feet shy of the giant, and a voice said, "Felix?"
But I had not expected it would be Gideon's voice.
"Gideon?" I said, my own voice shaking and shrill.
"Felix, please don't."
"Why not? You heard them—I'm traitorous, murderous, evil. Why shouldn't I jump?"
"They're wrong. I know they're wrong. You were trying to tell them something important, and they would not listen. What was it?"
"You said you wouldn't help!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't… I think I didn't understand." The light came a little closer. "Felix, please."
I could not answer him.
"Let me make amends for not believing you. Let me listen. Please."
"It…" My voice choked off into nothing, and I had to try again. "It's called a fantôme. It—"
But Gideon said something violent in Kekropian that sounded like it was both obscene and blasphemous, and then in Marathine, perfectly calmly, "I will flay Thaddeus with a dull knife."
"You believe me?"
"Yes. I certainly don't believe that if you were sowing dissension, that is the story you would pick. You're a Cabaline. Do you even know what a fantôme is?"
"It's evil. I felt it. I still feel it. It talks to me. It wants me to come to it."
"Oh, I'm sure it does. I can ward you from it, if you'll come back on the bridge."
"You can?"
"Yes. I promise. It will take no more than a minute. Please, Felix, let me help you."
"Will you talk to Thaddeus?"
"Oh, I'll do better than that. I'll talk to Lady Victoria."
"Vicky won't listen."
"Unlike Thaddeus, she isn't a fool. And she does not… never mind. Felix, I believe you. Trust me."
"I can't," I said, my fingers throbbing with their pressure against the stone giant's head. "I can't."
Gideon cursed in Kekropian, then said quietly, "The White-Eyed Lady must want you very badly. But she lies to you, Felix. She is not a kind lover and her embrace will not dull the pain you suffer. And her betrayal will never end. I realize that I betrayed you yesterday, although I did not mean to, and I am sorry. But that doesn't have to be the end between us. Do you understand me?" He stopped and then said, even more quietly, "Felix, you don't have to be alone."
"I…" But the words were gone. I had to lower myself flat onto the giant's head before I could move, and then I edged backwards, one horrible inch at a time, until my toes touched the parapet. I all but fell back onto the sidewalk. Gideon was there, warm and green and smelling slightly of cloves but not at all of bitterness and death, and I could hear no voices in my head at all.
-
Lady Victoria snorted, and the other Kekropian, the one who looked like a cross between a bank clerk and a choirboy, said, "My lady, I beg your pardon, but when do you imagine this 'story' was hatched?"
"What?" Lady Victoria said.
"When has Felix had time to talk to anyone long enough to invent a story like this one? And why do you persist in calling it a story when we have done spells to prove the thing's existence?"
"Eusebian spells," she said darkly.
"My lady," the Kekropian said, like he was getting ready to say something with knives in it, and Mavortian said quickly, "I assure you—and I will swear any oath you like—that I have never met Felix Harrowgate before, and I do not know the other person you mentioned."
-
"You know better than that," the choirboy-clerk said and then switched into Kekropian. I knew a little Kekropian, but I couldn't follow much of the fight they had then, because it was all hocus-talk, and I ain't ever been into that end of the dictionary. But when I noticed that the smuggler had the Mirador's tattoos and the choirboy-clerk didn't, I figured I could get the gist of it anyway.
-
"I know of three spells that would do what you ask. I imagine that the Kekropian gentleman—" He nodded at the choirboy-clerk, who bowed back and said, "Gideon Thraxios."
"That Messire Thraxios," Mavortian went on, "knows several others just as efficacious. Since I understand that you are in some doubt concerning my truthfulness, I would suggest that we both perform such spells as we know, and you may judge the results."
There was this pause, where none of the hocuses were quite looking at each other.
"What?" Mavortian said.
"I have already done as you suggest," Gideon Thraxios said. "This morning."
"And your results?"
"Unambiguous," he said, and that thin little smile made him look for a second like somebody who wasn't a choirboy and wasn't a clerk. "We have been having doctrinal differences since then."
-
The argument between Gideon and Thaddeus—which had begun when Gideon had brought me back to the Chimera Among the Roses the night before—had been both protracted and vicious, and between that and my own state of nerves I had gotten almost no sleep before the equally protracted scene this morning as the wizards began to debate in earnest the existence of the fantôme.
-
A voice. Gideon's voice. Words I couldn't understand. The weight gone, the cruel hands gone. I rolled over, away from the light, from the harsh voices, and wept into the quilt, disgusted by the noises I was making, but powerless to stop.
The door slammed.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I spasmed away from it, making a dreadful, humiliating animal-like noise. And then the hand was gone, and I was sobbing again, so hard that the only noise I could make was a rasping struggle for breath.
Stop it! I said to myself. Stop it! But I couldn't. It only died down when my body was simply too exhausted to support it any longer. I lay there then and wished Gideon had left me on the Linlowing Bridge.
A voice said quietly, "Felix, I am sorry."
And there was Gideon. Again. I said, not moving, my voice thick and rasped halfway to nothing, "Why didn't you leave?"
"I couldn't. You are hurting."
I started laughing.
"What?"
"I'm sorry. It just… I couldn't…"
"Thaddeus will leave you alone," he said after a moment.
"He's afraid of you."
"A little. But that doesn't matter. Are you all right?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm fine."
His voice was suddenly hard. "Sit up. Look at me."
I sat up, looked as near as I could judge in his direction. I still couldn't see anything clearly, only the globe of candlelight near the door.
"Now say it again. Tell me you are well.and happy."
"Really, Gideon, I promise, I'm…" And I realized I had been about to say "okay," that ubiquitous piece of Lower City idiom that Malkar had beaten out of me before I was fifteen. I did a quick, panicky review of everything I'd said since Gideon first spoke to me, but I was fairly sure my Marathine had been standard and my vowels clean. "I'm really fine," I said lamely.
I wouldn't have been convinced either. Out of the murky jumble of darkness, Gideon's voice said, "Indeed? And that's why your eyes appear to be focused two inches to the left of my left ear? Can you even see me?"
"It's… it's very dark in here," I faltered, the blood mounting painfully to my face.
"I heard you describe your hallucinations to Thaddeus and Lady Victoria. Is that what's happening now?"
"Oh. Oh damn."
"I wish you would trust me."
"I… I'm sorry."
"Failing that," Gideon said, as if I had not spoken, "I wish you would tell me the truth." Everything in my chest congealed into a block of ice. Gideon continued: "For instance, when did your vision begin to… become peculiar? You seemed all right earlier."
He was after a different hare than Thaddeus had been. My relief made it possible to say, quite reasonably, "Why do you care?"
"Call it intellectual curiosity. When?"
"The spell," I said, remembering. "It was right after that Fressandran wizard cast his spell that…"
"Yes?"
I lay down again, staring up at the dark cloud that was the ceiling-"That the monsters came out," I said in a bare whisper.
"Interesting," said Gideon. I felt him sit down on the bed, but he did not touch me, and I was able to hold myself still. "Do you think there's a causal connection?"
"Between the Fressandran's spell and me being crazy?" I had my voice back under control now; I sounded almost sane.
"Let's clarify this," he said, almost snapped. "I'm tired of people calling you crazy, and I'm even more tired of you accepting the label."
"But I am crazy. Gideon, I appreciate your support, but you can't—"
"You have been profoundly damaged by a spell, in ways that no wizard in Marathat or Kekropia is competent to assess, much less mend. I grant that the end results look like madness, but it is not the same thing."
"The distinction fails to comfort me."
"That's because you're not thinking. This is the effect of a spell, Felix, not anything intrinsic to your mind. It may be possible to do something about it. Now, do you think the abrupt deterioration in your condition is or could be related to the fact that an act of magic was being worked near you?"
"Maybe. Magic… I could feel it, in the Mirador, whenever they were trying something else to mend the Virtu. It hurt."
"Aha."
"You have a theory," I said to the ceiling and wished Gideon would go away.
"I am investigating a theory. I think you may have developed a… a morbid sensitivity to magic."
"That sounds very impressive. What does it mean?"
He was silent for a moment. "You've said that Malkar separated you from your ability to do magic. Thaddeus thinks you're using that excuse to pretend that the Curia's interdict doesn't bother you—"
"Then Thaddeus is even stupider than I thought him."
"Point taken. I'm afraid I can't think of any way to explain this without resorting to a florid metaphor."
"I think," I said wearily, "that at this juncture your rhetorical style is the least of my problems."
"It's a wound that isn't healing. It's like raw flesh."
"And magic would be like salt, is that your thinking?"
"Crude but accurate."
"I'm not a poet. And I don't see what good it does us to know that."
"You don't find any shred of hope in the thought that it isn't some random and senseless plague that strikes you without warning or reason?"
"No."
"Then you are as stupid as Thaddeus." I felt him get up, heard him cross the room and go out. He shut the door firmly, but without slamming it.
-
Felix and Mr. Thraxios were standing a little apart from everybody else, and the other Kekropian looked like he was trying to put a hex on both of them.
-
One of the hocuses said, "Is it gone?"
"Yes," said Mr. Thraxios. "We should do something about this circle, but the fantôme is gone."
-
Gideon was standing by the window, watching the other wizards, the expression in his eyes thoughtful but otherwise unreadable. I was amazed, peripherally, that I could see him so clearly, since Stephen was shrouded with the mantle of the bear, and I saw other, stranger things out of the corners of my eyes. But Gideon was clear to me, and I was as grateful as I was surprised.
I went up to him. "Gideon?"
"Felix," he said, politely but without warmth.
"I don't want… it's not about me. Do you think you can tell the Fres-sandran wizard—"
"Von Heber."
"Von Heber. Do you think you can tell him he should go and find Mildmay right now?"
Gideon's eyebrows went up. "Why?"
"Because… because I think he's in trouble. And I don't think the others should know. Please?"
He gave me a narrow, green look.
"It may be extremely urgent," I said. "Gideon, please."
"All right," he said. I watched as he went over to the Fressandran wizard, touched his sleeve, said something in his ear. They had a quick, almost silent exchange, and then Gideon came back to me, the Fressandran limping behind him.
"Messire von Heber would appreciate it if you would explain what's going on," Gideon said.
"I can't," I said. "But… but Mildmay may be dying."
"Of what?" said the Fressandran.
"A curse. The curse. The Mirador's curse. But I don't know. I don't know how—"
"No wonder he said he wouldn't go anywhere near the Mirador. Are you sure?"
"No. Not really. But I think—"
"No, you're right. Find him first, work out the details later. Messire Thraxios, do you think you can spin a story…"
"To cover our hasty departure?" Gideon thought a moment. "Yes. We're going to consult about cleansing spells. I don't think they'll ask why Felix is tagging along."
Resentment flared and died at the contempt in the verb. I deserved nothing better. Gideon went and
caught Chloë Wicker, who was the best of his limited range of options. Von Heber crossed to the stairs, where his blond hireling was waiting, arms folded and eyebrows up. I followed him.
"Let's start down the stairs," von Heber said. "No haste, but no loitering."
"Something's going on," the hireling said.
"Brilliant, Bernard. He"—with a jerk of the head in my direction—"says Mildmay may be in trouble."
"How shocking," said Bernard.
We'd made one full circuit of the tower when Gideon caught up with us. "We'd better be quick," he said. "Thaddeus knows something strange is going on. And I must admit, that's all I know. Felix?"
"I'm not sure. I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong."
"Wrong about what?" said von Heber.
"I don't see why it would have been activated," I said. "The Cabal cast that warding curse on the Mirador itself, and it shouldn't—"
And then we heard the noise. It wasn't a scream, but it was more than just the harsh breathing of someone in pain.
"What's that?" said Bernard.
"I think you weren't wrong," von Heber said to me. "Where is he?"
Like a hurt animal, Mildmay had sought out a hiding place. We found that one of the doors off the stairwell was ajar. We went through it, von Heber and Gideon calling witchlights. For a moment, the shadows seemed to be watching us with tiny glowing eyes, but I said the words morbid sensitivity to myself like a talisman, and the hallucinations receded.
We found ourselves in a warren of tiny rooms; I knew the configuration of walls had to have some thaumaturgie significance, although I could not read it myself. Mildmay was curled in the far corner of the second room we came to, shaking as if he had an ague.
"What's wrong with him?" Bernard said.
"It's a curse," I said. "But I don't understand—"
"Bernard, shut the door," von Heber said. "We'd better not move him, and I don't think we want anyone else walking in. Now. Explain this curse to me."
I took a deep breath, hoping that I could stay lucid, hoping that they could understand what I could not. "Mildmay murdered the Witchfinder Extraordinary three years ago. I saw the Mirador's curse on him, and since that curse is designed to kill and Cerberus's killer is the only person who has ever escaped it…"
"Yes, I see," von Heber said. "But then what is this?"
"I don't know. I mean, I do know. It's the curse. But I don't understand what set it off, and I don't understand why it isn't working."
"What do you mean, it isn't working?" Bernard said. "It looks pretty effective to me."
"He's still alive."
There was an uncomfortable, unsettled pause before Gideon said, "Since most of the Mirador's spells are either broken or monstrously weakened at this point, I don't find that beyond explanation. My question is, what are we going to do?"
"We have to help him," I said.
Gideon gave me a politely disbelieving look. "Did I misunderstand you when you said he murdered a wizard?"
"No, but—"
"I have need of him," von Heber said.
"Gideon, please," I said. "I can't let him die."
"Why not?" Gideon said. "What is this farouche murderer to you?"
"My brother."
"Whose existence you were not aware of two days ago. Your fraternal concern is touching but overdone."
"Damn it, Gideon, are you saying we should stand here and watch him die?"
"Kethe! Just kill me and get it over with!"
We all jumped; none of us had imagined Mildmay was still coherent. But he raised his head, his eyes the lurid green of absinthe against his chalk-white face. He said, "I did for Cerberus Cresset, sure enough, so if you want me dead for it, go ahead and—" He broke off, bowing his head and I saw the spasm tear through him. When he could speak again, he said weakly, "This is gonna take hours."
"I think you have a choice, Messire Thraxios," von Heber said. "Either help us, or go inform the Cabalines upstairs—"
"You can't!" I said. "Gideon, please. You said you'd help me."
The look he gave me was like being, stabbed. "I did not realize what your definition of 'help' would entail."
"Then go on," I said, looking away from Gideon. "Go tell Stephen that you've found Cerberus Cresset's murderer. He will doubtless greet you like a long-lost brother, and I imagine you will be able to name any reward you like."
There was a long moment in which the only noise was Mildmay's rasping, panting breath. Then Gideon said, "No."
We all stared at him; even Mildmay's head came up a little. Gideon looked embarrassed but unbudging. "I didn't listen to you once, and that turned out to be a nearly fatal mistake. I don't feel inclined to make that mistake a second time. I shall make a new one instead. What do you intend to do?"
I discovered von Heber was looking at me, too. "I don't know," I said.
"You're the only Cabaline in the room," von Heber said.
"But we've never understood what happened."
Gideon shrugged. "So ask."
"Ask?"
"He's right here. Ask him."
"Oh." I could feel my face heat. I went down on one knee. "Mildmay, do you know why the curse didn't kill you when you… that is, when Cerberus died?"
"Miriam had a thing," he said, his words harsh and slurred and barely comprehensible.
"A 'thing'?"
"Yeah. Little wooden box. She said, don't open it, and I didn't."
"And what did it do?"
"Dunno. She said, keep it in your pocket. 'Til you're out of the Mirador. And I did. And the curse didn't get me. 'Til now." He stopped, going rigid against another convulsion.
"Oh," I said, straightening up again. "That's brilliant."
"What's brilliant?" Gideon said.
"I didn't think there was anyone in the Lower City capable of working that kind of magic. This wizard—Miriam—she constructed a decoy."
"Explain," said von Heber.
"When Cerberus Cresset died, Mildmay should have died with him—more accurately, Mildmay should have died before he was able to kill Cerberus. It's a protection spell, part of the quid pro quo the Cabal used to get their reforms enacted. But that little box must have been the vehicle for a spell that deflected the protective spell."
"Then I don't understand," Gideon said. "Why is he… ?"
"There's a second tier of spells," I said. "I don't think it was supposed to work this way, since I don't think anyone ever imagined it was possible to evade the protection spell, but there are warding spells on the Mirador itself. The decoy must have been able to hold those spells off long enough for him to get out of the Mirador again—"
"Miriam said, don't waste time," Mildmay said in a gasp.
"Exactly, but it couldn't get rid of them. The spell on Cerberus ceased to function when he died, but the spells on the Mirador are—" I stopped, my own guilt threatening to choke me.
"All but destroyed," Gideon said.
"And that explains why Mildmay's still alive," I said, forcing myself to keep thinking, keep reasoning. "The curse can't be operating at more than a quarter of its original power. But I still don't understand what set it off."
Mildmay said something.
"What?" I said.
"The Lord Protector," he said, and I could see the effort it cost him to make the words comprehensible.
I started laughing; I couldn't help it, although von Heber and Gideon both looked rather alarmed. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry. It's just that—oh, Stephen will hate this—he's become a metonymy."
"What on earth do you mean?" Gideon said.
I took a deep breath; I could see it now, clear as day. "The assorted thaumaturgie cataclysms have resulted in the Mirador's warding spells being focused on the Lord Protector. I don't know when it would have happened or if we would have noticed if anyone had thought to look There are lots of things about the Cabal's spells that we don't understand and since Stephen is annemer… So, at the moment and for thaumaturgie purposes, Stephen is the Mirador."
Both Gideon and von Heber were silent, rapt in contemplation of the thing's marvelous idiocy.
"What are you going to do?" said the practical Bernard.
"We can't lift the curse," I said. "That would take a full assemblage of the Curia, and even if we had them here, they wouldn't do it. But maybe…"
"Maybe what?" said Gideon.
"Maybe we could put Miriam's spell back together. I understand what she did, I think, and I… oh."
"What's the matter?" von Heber said. "You've gone white as a sheet."
"The interdict," Gideon said.
"I can't do magic anyway," I said. "I'm useless."
"Tell us what to do," Gideon said. "We are both competent."
"It's not that. It's going to take a Cabaline—"
"Miriam wasn't," Mildmay said, panting.
"No, but…" I didn't know how to explain what I saw, the writhing snarling blackness around him. "There's no leverage otherwise."
Gideon and von Heber looked at each other. "Thaddeus," Gideon said thoughtfully. "Peter, Ferdinand, Victoria, Chloë, Gethruda. I suppose Chloë might do it."
Somewhere in the middle of his list, the answer hit me. I said in a thin, distant voice, "No. He'll die while you're arguing with them. We have to use the other way."
"What other way?" Gideon said.
"I—"
Mildmay spasmed again, swearing viciously; I caught a glimpse of his face, white and contorted in a snarl of pain, the scar like a bolt of lightning. I said in a rush, "You can use me."
"I beg your pardon?" said von Heber.
"But we just established that the interdict—" Gideon began.
I cut him off; I had to get the words out before my fear closed off my throat. "It's what Malkar did. If Robert could use it, I'm sure you can. The interdict's on me, not on my magic."
"That made about as much sense as a mud pie," said Bernard.
But Gideon and von Heber both understood. I looked away from the horror and pity in their faces and said, "We'll need a token."
Gideon said, "But shouldn't we try—"
"We don't have time." I could see the briars getting thicker and blacker and more vicious. "Please. Don't argue with me."
"What kind of token?" von Heber said prosaically.
I looked again at Mildmay, the lashing briars around him, the tornado colors clouding the air. "Glass would be best, but wood would do in a pinch. No clay and no stone. And it needs to be something small enough to carry."
Von Heber and Gideon began rummaging through their pockets.
"Oh, powers," said Bernard in disgust. He stalked away into the maze of little rooms. After a moment, we heard the sound of breaking glass, and Bernard returned with a triangular shard from one of the windows. "You'll want to do something about the edges."
"Thank you," von Heber said, and I took the shard.
"Do you understand what needs to be done?" I said to von Heber and Gideon.
"You want to use that piece of glass as an umbrella," Gideon said. "Do you really think it will work?"
"I don't know. But… None of the others will help him. You know that."
"Yes," Gideon said reluctantly. "But I have to ask: do you really want to do this? Do you know what it's going to do to you?"
"I have an educated guess," I said, and I knew the smile on my face was ghastly. "Do it."
Gideon looked sidelong at von Heber, who shook his head. "My understanding of Cabaline magic hardly rates the use of the label 'theoretical.' I understand what he wants, but I don't have the faintest idea how to do it."
"I'm not sure I do, either," Gideon said, "but I have committed myself to this foolhardy venture. Felix, I think it might help if you were touching him."
"Oh," I said. "All right." I knelt again, my left hand carefully cradling the shard of glass. I braced myself and reached through the briars to touch Mildmay's shoulder. He was rigid as a board; I said over my shoulder to Gideon, "Hurry!"
Gideon muttered something under his breath that I thought was a Prayer. I felt his touch against my mind. Unlike Robert and Malkar, he was gentle, trying not to hurt me. I forced myself to hold still, not to fight; I had to shut my eyes against the shadows and the colors and the monsters. But this time I had chosen it, and I embraced my madness willingly.
-
"Can you walk?" Mavortian said. "Because I think it might be for the best if we went back to the River Horse, quietly, now, before anyone becomes—"
"Unbecomingly curious," Mr. Thraxios said. "Felix and I should go back up and display ourselves to Thaddeus lest he come looking." He looked down at Felix and said, "He will, you know."
"Yes," Felix said. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then got up.
He looked worse than I felt, and I got to my feet in a hurry because I knew I had to say it, and I didn't want to do it from the floor. "Thanks," I said. "I mean"—and I looked from him to Mr. Thraxios—"I would've understood if you'd let me die. So… thanks."
Mr. Thraxios kind of waved it away. Felix shook his head, like he was trying to clear it, and said, "Be careful. There are still thorns."
"Okay," I said. I couldn't help giving Mr. Thraxios a look, because wherever Felix's head was at, it didn't look like it was no nice place to be. Mr. Thraxios gave me a nod, and I figured I'd have to take that for I'll look after him, because he was already dragging Felix toward the door, and I didn't know how to say none of what was bothering me.
-
I could only be thankful that Gideon knew how to answer her, that he remembered our quickly fabricated lies and had at his fingertips the information we had allegedly disappeared in order to acquire. He crossed the room to the others, talking about the phases of the moon and the energies of the earth.
-
And my longed-for illusion of security was shattered to pieces before I even got through the bedroom door. Gideon was on his knees by the far bed, throwing things into a bag.
"What?" I said, stopping where I was with one hand still on the doorknob. "What's wrong?"
"Those envoys from Vusantine," Gideon said.
"Oh," I said. It was getting harder to hear him; my ears were filling with the roars and booming of the monsters.
"They're going to want to talk to you."
The thought made me want to sit down where I was and howl. "But I've already told the Curia everything I know!"
"Not like that," Gideon said grimly. "I think we need to get out of town."
"What? But we—"
"You broke the Virtu, Messire Harrowgate. You were the instrument of the Bastion wreaking havoc on the Mirador. I don't believe anyone coming here from Tibernia is going to care very much for elaborate explanations of why those things aren't your fault."
"Oh," I said. I felt like he'd punched me. "But I don't—"
"No, don't worry. I'm not staying, either."
"You haven't done anything wrong."
"I'm Kekropian. Don't you think that's enough?"
"But, Gideon, they won't—"
"Felix," he said, deliberately and slowly, "they are going to be looking for scapegoats. You're going to be their first choice. But they are also going to be looking very much askance at anyone who came from the Bastion in the last year, and there are certain… let us merely say that I do not want to discuss my past with our learned colleagues from the Coeurterre. Is that all right with you?"
"Gideon, I didn't mean—"
"Come on." He stood up, slung the bag over one shoulder, and walked Past me out the door.
-
A hand closed around my wrist like a vise. I looked up into greenness, sharp like daggers. "Come on," Gideon said and dragged me without ceremony down the stairs.
-
And like he'd said, Mavortian and Felix and Mr. Thraxios were all sitting in the lobby. Mavortian and Mr. Thraxios looked about ready to start chewing their fingernails. I didn't blame Bernard for calling Felix a nutcase. He looked at me when I went over to them, but I don't know what he was seeing. I don't think it was me.
"What's going on?" I said, sort of generally.
Mavortian looked at Mr. Thraxios, who said, "The reason the Lord Protector appeared in Hermione today is that an embassy from Vusantine is riding to meet him here."
"Okay," I said, "but—"
Mavortian said, "Messire Thraxios believes—rightly in my opinion—that both the Cabalines and the envoys are going to be looking for someone convenient to blame."
"Oh," I said and looked at Felix, who was staring down at his hands.
"Exactly," said Mavortian. " 'Oh.' "
"Foreign wizards are also likely to be regarded with suspicion," Mr. Thraxios said, "and I can only imagine that you would prefer not to attract the attention of anyone involved with the Mirador."
"Bull's-eye," I said. "So we're bailing?"
They both looked blank.
"Clearing out."
"Yes," Mavortian said.
"Whereto?"
They looked blanker.
"We hadn't quite," Mr. Thraxios began at the same time Mavortian said, "It's a difficult matter to—" They both broke off and nobody got a sentence finished.
"You gotta pick a direction before we go anyplace," I said.
"Do you have a suggestion?" Mavortian said, like he wanted to hear me admit I didn't.
"Sure," I said. "St. Millefleur."
Him and Mr. Thraxios looked at each other. I don't think Felix even heard us. "Why St. Millefleur?" Mr. Thraxios said.
Powers and saints, I thought, but Bernard still hadn't showed up, so I said, "If anybody wants us bad enough to try and follow us, they'll probably figure we're heading back for Mélusine, with savers on east—along of you being Kekropian—or maybe up to Igensbeck. But we ain't got no reason to go south."
"Which is a good enough reason to try it," Mr. Thraxios said. He was giving me a funny sort of look that I couldn't quite figure out.
-
It got clearer and clearer to me, listening to them and watching Gideon's face getting pinched and gray, that what we were doing was stupid.
-
Gideon said he didn't care what the rest of us did, he wasn't going back into the Empire, and I thought he was the only one of the five of us who had his head screwed on right way 'round.
Bernard caved—Bernard always caved—and then it was just Mavortian and Gideon going at it like a pair of tomcats, and it turned out that Mavortian thought we really needed Gideon along, because we had to keep the Bastion from catching on that they had a Cabaline hocus wandering around like a sheep in their backyard, and apparently the only way to do that for sure was to have a Eusebian hocus sort of finessing the spells the Bastion used to keep an eye on the magic floating around the Empire. Gideon thought as how the Bastion's spells wouldn't pick up on Felix, along of him being crazy and not able to work magic, but Mavortian kept after him, and he finally gave in and admitted that he was just guessing. "Oddly enough," he said, all snarky and mad, "the problem has never arisen before." Mavortian said that wasn't good enough. I didn't know—I mean, it wasn't nothing like what the Mirador did, which I did know some about—but I frankly knew fuck-all about the Bastion, and if Mavortian said we needed Gideon, then I figured I had to believe him. I didn't want to get caught by nobody and especially not no Eusebian hocuses.
But Gideon kept saying he was sorry, but he wouldn't go. He had all sorts of reasons why none of us should go, and I could tell he was really scared, because of the way he wasn't looking at Felix. He never tried to argue that Felix didn't know what he was talking about or nothing like that, he just kept saying we couldn't cross the Empire, and we'd be strung up in a day and a half if we tried, and we should go south to St. Millefleur and maybe see if we could find some books that would let him and Mavortian figure out what kind of magic the Gardens of Nephele used and maybe they could do something for Felix that way. I think that idea was pretty lame and both Gideon and Mavortian knew it, but I ain't qualified to judge.
So they went back and forth for a while, until I guess Mavortian figured that he couldn't sweet-talk Gideon around, and then he worked a neat little piece of blackmail that tied Gideon up with a big red bow. Either Gideon helped us, Mavortian said, or Bernard would drag him to the nearest town and denounce him as a Eusebian.
And Bernard would do it. I don't know for certain if Mavortian was bluffing or not—I don't think he was—but I know solid that if he'd told Bernard to do that, Bernard would have. Gideon knew it, too. He was kind of standing there, like he was still looking for a loophole, and Mavortian got him on the backswing, with this nasty little smile on his face that I for one could have done without. He said as how Gideon shouldn't think he could go back on the deal once we were in Kekropia, because there'd be nothing easier than telling the Kekropians he was a defector from the Bastion, and we all knew what would happen to him then. I didn't, but I could tell from his face that Gideon did.
And it made me mad, watching Mavortian put the screws to a guy who didn't owe him nothing, so then me and Mavortian fought for a while, but he kept saying we had to have Gideon, and finally he said, "If you truly want to help your brother, and if you truly believe that he has had this fantastic dream, then believe me when I tell you that without Gideon, we are doomed to fail."
And he meant it. I didn't know if it was true, but I could tell Mavortian believed what he was saying, that he wasn't pulling this shit just because he could. And the fact of the matter was, if he said Gideon was the only guy could keep Felix safe, then I wanted Gideon along. And I couldn't help remembering that when it had been me in a bind, with the Mirador's curse trying to knot me up like a ball of yarn, Gideon's idea had been to just stand there and let me die. And whether I could see his point of view or not, that's a nasty sort of thing to remember about somebody when they ain't giving you something you want.
-
I figured out somewhere in that first decad that a lot of that was Felix. Gideon never said nothing—I mean, he wasn't talking to us, and it wasn't like there was any point in trying to tell Felix—but I saw the way he looked at Felix and the way it hurt him when Felix flinched back from him the way he did from everybody. I ain't much with the brains, but I can see what's right in front of me, even if I can't make sense of it. Gideon was in love with Felix, and I figured that made him crazier than Felix on the worst day Felix ever had. I didn't say nothing neither—because, I mean, it wouldn't help—and after I felt like I could trust Gideon not to, you know, take advantage of Felix or something, I even mostly quit worrying about it. I had plenty of other shit on my mind.
-
"Come on, Felix," says the raven. "Gideon, will you go get the soap?" The green shape leaves the room; I watch it, anxiously, because it is strange.
-
The green monster returns with the soap, which I accept gratefully. The three monsters stand close together at the other end of the room. I know that they are whispering, but the roar and boom of it still hurt my ears. I would tell them that they don't have to whisper, that I can't understand them, but I still can't find any language in my head.
-
The green monster sits near me, and I can feel its brilliant gaze on me. I stare at my hands, and I suppose time passes, although I cannot tell.
The green monster touches my arm, gently; I wish I could explain my flinch was for the thunderclap, not for him. But I get up and follow the en and the statue. The green shape does not come with us. It is one fewer monster to worry about; it is bad enough that the raven is walking on my bright side.
-
"The other person in your suite," I said. "Who… ?"
"Oh," said Thaddeus. "Gideon."
"Gideon?"
"Gideon Thraxios. I knew him in the Bastion."
"Another defector?"
"Yes. He won't bother you."
-
The stranger, Gideon Thraxios, was sitting by the fireplace in Thaddeus's main room, curled up in one of the big chairs like a cat and reading a treatise on water magic from Imar Eiren. He stood up when we came in; either his manners were naturally very good or Thaddeus made him nervous. Or I did.
Now that he wasn't just a green shape in a cloud of fog, he proved to be a man of medium height, slenderly built, with the bronze tone to his skin that indicated he came from the eastern end of the Kekropian Empire. His hair was dark and curly, escaping from his queue in wild tendrils; his eyes were dark and startlingly intelligent, shining like beacons out of an otherwise undistinguished, snub-nosed face. He was older than I, but I wasn't sure by how much.
The colors between him and Thaddeus were a brooding brownish red shot through with lightning-white, belying the seeming friendliness of the way Thaddeus told Gideon about the Curia meeting and introduced him to me. Reintroduced, I corrected myself, but Gideon and I shook hands anyway. I decided his manners were just naturally good.
-
Thaddeus Vida, and Gideon had tactfully withdrawn to the other side of the room' where the periphery of my attention observed that they were having an undervoiced but heated discussion of their own.
-
Gideon had dragged a chair over to the sideboard and was engrossed, with pen, ink, and a dog-eared sheaf of papers, in something that looked like a diagram for a warding spell. They all three looked up when I came in, but none of them commented on my dishabille.
-
And Gideon said, "Felix?"
I looked at him. He had put his pen down. He said, in his perfect, though heavily accented, Marathine, "I fancy a walk. Would you care to come? I have a pair of slippers you can borrow."
I felt my face redden. But I wanted very badly to get away from Thaddeus and Vida and the things they thought they knew about me, and he was offering me an excuse. So I said, "Thank you," more or less to the floor, and Gideon went and fetched me a pair of scuffed carpet slippers.
"Have fun," Thaddeus said, very dryly, as we left, and I caught Gideon in a grimace of exasperation.
We walked in silence for a while. Gideon was a stranger to the Mirador, and I knew I should be exerting myself to identify landmarks and important rooms, to share the odd bits of history that I could remember. But my throat felt like it was full of ashes, and my eyes were burning, and it was all I could do to keep from the even greater rudeness of forcing Gideon to pretend not to notice that I was crying.
We came to an intersection, where a hallway hung with enameled scales, like the sides of a sea serpent or a dragon, met the Wooden Hallway, and Gideon said, "Where do you like to go?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You are an inhabitant of the Mirador. Which parts of it do you like?"
"Oh," I said. "The battlements."
"Then let us go there."
"All right." I hadn't gone up to the battlements since I had been returned to the Mirador.
There were staircases to the battlements scattered throughout the fabric of the Mirador, though most of them were in the Vielle Roche, leading to the Crown of Nails, the highest ring of merlons. We climbed up, around and around in a dizzying corkscrew, until we came out the narrow door at the top into a night cold and clear. I only then remembered that it was Petrop and should have been raining, looked at the stars sailing serene and distant above my head, and for the first time since the beginning of The Singer's Tragedy, felt my heart unclench just slightly.
Gideon said, "I have never been much of an astronomer. Where is the Minotaur?"
"There." I pointed. "That red star is Oculus, and see? There's his horns, and his shoulders."
"And his feet. Thank you." I could just make out Gideon's profile, he too, gazed up at the stars.
After a while, he laughed. "Consider the stars. Among them are no passions, no wars. They know neither love nor hatred. Did man but emulate the stars, would not his soul become clear and radiant, as they are? But man's spirit draws him like a moth to the ephemera of this world, and in their heat he is consumed entire."
"Is that a quotation from something?"
"The Inquiries into the World's Heart of Nahum Westerley. An atheist philosopher from Lunness Point."
"Oh. Do you read much philosophy?"
"I read everything," he said, perhaps a shade ruefully. "Since I have come here, I feel like I am drowning in a wealth of books. But the Inquiries into the World's Heart is an old friend. I had to leave my copy in the Bastion, where it has doubtless been burned, but I am told there are shops here—in the 'Cheaps' if I understood correctly—where I can buy another."
"You can buy almost anything in the Cheaps. You must have left the Bastion in a dreadful hurry."
"Oh yes. One doesn't sit on a decision like that. Secrets in the Bastion do not stay so for long."
"Why did you leave?"
"Because I had to."
It was gently delivered, but a rebuff nonetheless. I wanted to ask him why he and Thaddeus hated each other and why—that being so—he had not yet left Thaddeus's suite, but I did not have the courage, and he would not have answered me anyway.
I said, "I don't know much about philosophy. My education was almost entirely… pragmatic."
"It is either a consolation or the heaviest possible curse. I have never been able to decide which."
We watched the stars in silence for a few minutes longer before Gideon remarked that it was cold, and we went back in.
-
The other monster, the green one, says, "I thought you told me the Curia had him under interdict."
Gideon's voice, the blessed voice of reason—the thing I hadn't been able to think of.
-
through it, I hear them both cursing, Thaddeus's Midlander oaths of his strange, unnameable god, Gideon cursing in Kekropian, which I don't understand.
-
It will not be safe to work magic in Mélusine for days, perhaps for months. It took all Gideon's strength of will to perform a minor healing on my broken fingers, and even that slipped and went awry in the working I can feel the stiffness in my aching, swollen-jointed fingers, and I know that they will never fully recover from what Malkar did.
-
The wizards in the company are mostly the shy, inoffensive scholars who study thaumaturgical architecture, the only ones who have any hope of making sense of the ruins. Vicky also demanded the presence of Gideon Thraxios, who has the most recent information available on the Bastion's intentions and abilities.
-
But still, I am grateful when Gideon drops back to walk on Thaddeus's other side and starts a low-voiced argument in Kekropian. I catch my own name once or twice, and I can guess the general thrust of their debate. I wish, miserably and without force, to be dead.
-
My hands hurt, but Gideon's healing, warped though it is, has done its work, ad they are usable. I am glad that in the chaos no one thought to accuse him of heresy.
-
I observed that Thaddeus was still stuck with the baggage, sharing a room with Gideon and me, the volatile and undesirable elements of the party. I wondered if he had been asked to stand surety for our good behavior, like a thief-keeper retrieving a child from the Ebastine.
-
Thaddeus was angry enough. He and Gideon argued in Kekropian half the evening, and the colors around them showed me the depths of loathing underneath their sparring. They hated each other, and still I did not know why. I sat on the bed I was sharing with Thaddeus and rubbed at my aching hands. Thaddeus and Gideon ignored me; Thaddeus knew that I was as stupid as an owl about languages, and that there was thus no need to fear that I would understand their quarrel.
I caught occasional words—the Bastion, my name, Malkar's name, the Kekropian word for necromancy—enough to understand that they were still arguing about what Malkar had done and how, about his purpose and the Bastion's purpose behind him. But I was still completely unprepared when Gideon turned and demanded, "Felix! What do you think?"
Thaddeus snorted. "You'll get more sense out of the hotel cat. Besides, Lady Victoria and I already tried."
"Yes, I heard you. Felix, what do you think Malkar hopes to accomplish?"
"I… I don't know. Not what you think."
"What do you mean by that?" Thaddeus said, dark with suspicion.
"That he's Malkar. That he never wants what you think."
"Madness," Thaddeus said.
"Do you think so?" said Gideon. "I am inclined to think otherwise."
"Yes, well, it's not news that your mind is twisted." And he added viciously, "You always were a little sneak."
Gideon said, "Is this really the time to bring up the past?"
"Why not? Why in the name of God should we not talk about it? We were boys together." And Thaddeus smiled, although there was nothing good-humored or friendly about it. "Come, Gideon, let us reminisce."
"Thaddeus—"
"Yes, let's. I can tell Felix about being beaten for daring to ask questions, and you can tell him about being Louis Goliath's favorite minion. Don't you think?"
"Thaddeus—"
"Or are there other stories you'd like to tell? Perhaps you could tell him about the mystery cults of the Bastion. I'm sure he'd be fascinated, Perhaps he'll write a monograph."
"Thaddeus, enough." The colors around Gideon were terrible with rage and old pain and fear. "Baiting me accomplishes nothing, and baiting Felix…" I shrank back under the look he gave me. But all the passion seemed to go out of him, and he said tiredly, "Baiting Felix should be beneath you."
"Aren't we the gentleman?" Thaddeus said.
"No. I'm a docker's brat from Thrax. As you know and have known any time these past fifteen years. But at least I know what's decent behavior and what's not. I had imagined a man of your ideals would be able to distinguish that as well, but clearly I was mistaken."
"Are you quite finished being pompous?"
"Probably not. If you mean, shall we let our disagreement rest until tomorrow—by all means. Good night, Thaddeus."
Thaddeus gave him a savage parody of a bow. "Good night, Gideon." And snarled at me, "Good night, Felix."
He stalked out. The silence he left behind him seemed almost too thick to breathe. After a moment, Gideon pushed his hair off his face with both hands, then turned to me and said, gently, "You need to sleep."
"Yes, Gideon," I said and lay down obediently, huddled around my aching hands. But I did not sleep, could not sleep. I was still awake when Thaddeus came back in some hours later, and went to sleep finally with his stiff, angry presence like a sword beside me in the bed.
-
It was late morning when I woke up, for when the dream had let me go, I had fallen into a sodden, heavy blackness that contained neither dreams nor rest. The others were gone—I could feel their absence—except Gideon, who was sitting in a chair by the window, making notes in the endpapers of a book called A Treatise upon Spirit. He said, without looking up, "They've gone to frighten the Mayor."
"Oh," I said. The colors around him were blue with concentration, luminous as the sky. I was afraid I would disturb him.
He said, "Breakfast is still laid out in the parlor."
"Thank you," I said.
-
I went back to the bedroom. Gideon looked up at my entrance and did not say, Oh, it's you, although I saw it around him. Instead, after a moments contemplation, he put his book down and said, "Let's go out."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Surely there must be something in Hermione worth seeing besides that damned tower. Old fortifications or gardens or something."
"But won't Thaddeus—"
"Damn Thaddeus. Put your shoes on, and I'll ask the desk clerk about sites of interest."
Thaddeus would be angry if he found out. But I put my shoes on, because Gideon said to and because I had been stuck in that room for three days, and I did not love it. I was standing by the door, wondering if I should go downstairs to find Gideon or if I should wait, when he came back in.
"There you are. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Come on, then. The desk clerk says the Municipal Gardens across the river are worth a look."
"In the middle of Petrop?"
"There's a hedge maze. Hedge mazes are interesting year-round."
He was treating me like a person instead of an inconvenience or a disgrace. I could no more refuse to go with him than someone freezing to death could refuse the offer of a blanket. I put my coat on and followed him out of the Chimera Among the Roses.
It was a beautiful day for Petrop, the sun only half-obscured by clouds and the air no more than chilly. We walked briskly but without hurry, at first without speaking, but then Gideon began to tell me stories of his childhood in Thrax before he had been conscripted by the Bastion—in Kekropia, wizards could be pressed into service as young as thirteen—and I was able to respond with a few harmless, amusing things that I remembered from my early days in the Mirador. My mind was clear; although most of the people who passed us had the heads of animals, I knew that these were merely hallucinations, neither true nor necessary, and they did not frighten me.
As we descended a set of stairs toward the river, Gideon said, "I have been wondering since I first saw you: how did you come to Mélusine?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I did not think Troians ventured away from the coast."
"Who?"
He was a stair ahead of me; he turned to look up and back, frowning, "You must be Troian. Your hair, your height, your eyes and skin."
"I… I thought maybe I was Caloxan," I said timidly, skirting around the snarl of lies and truth, Malkar and Pharaohlight, that comprised my past.
"Caloxan!" He snorted. "You're Troian. You can't be anything else."
"Who are Troians?"
"Troians are the people who once ruled half this continent."
"Oh."
We had reached the path leading to the Linlowing Bridge; Gideon dropped back to walk beside me.
"They are tall, red-haired, pale-skinned. They have yellow eyes." Like one of mine, the good one. "Oh," I said again.
"The Empire still trades with them, but, as I said, I thought they never went inland. There are still, er, folk-beliefs."
"Rather," I said. I could imagine what kind of folk-beliefs he was talking about. Keeper always said my hair was unlucky, and beat me for it Lorenzo scoffed at superstition; he saw my hair as a draw and he made it be one. But the men who chose me were the men who wanted the illusion of danger in their cheap transactions with a cheap teenage whore. Malkar too, had traded on my hair with his story about Caloxan nobility, although apparently that was as much a lie as everything else.
Gideon broke in urgently on my thoughts: "When was this bridge built? Do you know?"
"No."
The Linlowing River was a tributary of the Sim; as it flowed through Hermione it was wider than the Sim, but slower. The Linlowing Bridge stood on five pairs of pylons; each pylon was carved in the shape of a man kneeling in the river, so that the bridge appeared to be supported on their shoulders. They stared out with blank, solemn faces, softened by time and water and wind, five looking east and five looking west. Gideon was entranced.
"It looks like Cymellunar work." As we reached the first pair of kneeling men, he leaned out over the parapet in a way that made me nervous. "Which would mean it's ruinously old. Do you know anything about it at all?"
"No."
"There will be someone to ask," he said cheerfully and, much to my relief, straightened up. Then he frowned at me. "You've gone white as a sheet. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
He looked at the statue's head, then back at me. "Heights?"
"No. Really, I'm fine." I started walking, because it wasn't the height that frightened me, it was the water underneath. Obligingly, he followed me; even more obligingly, he didn't press for an answer.
Hermione no longer extended to the south bank of the Linlowing, if ever it had. The great bridge served primarily as an awe-inspiring entrance to the town for traders from the south, and as the town's connection to the farmlands that supported it. The only land south of the Linlowing that belonged to the city was the expanse of the Municipal Gardens. They were vast, rigidly landscaped and bleak with winter. The entrance price was two centimes; Gideon paid, and we went through the gate. Gideon struck up a conversation about the Linlowing Bridge with the gatekeeper, who must have been both lonely and bored at this time of year, and because no one forbade me, I wandered away along the carefully tended path.
Everything was laid out in a strict geometry, exactingly and mercilessly pruned. The fountains were all dry and silent, prisoners of winter. I walked through a topiary—where the woven, leafless shapes made my eyes hurt—climbed a narrow staircase and found myself in a gazebo, looking north at Hermione proper. Clearly the gardens' designers had intended this as a splendid vista, evoking civic pride in the garden-strolling burghers. I remembered standing on the Crown of Nails, looking out across Mélusine, and to me Hermione seemed petty and dull.
But from here, I could see the wizard's tower. It looked as I knew it did, short, squat, the windows boarded up, and empty patches in its red-tile roof. The tower in my dreams was the creation of my madness, the black looming shape of my fear—nothing to do with the real world. "You are mad, Felix Harrowgate," I said to myself and turned to go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black shadow of the tower stretching across the river, reaching for me. I spun back, and there were no shadows at all. It was almost noon, and in any event, a three-story tower two blocks in from the Linlowing's northern bank could not cast a shadow that could reach me here. I knew that. But now I was afraid to take my eyes off the tower. And the longer I looked at it, the more it seemed to me that the real tower was the one in my dreams, that this dilapidated structure was only a façade. And if that was true, then the rest of my dream was true, and there was something in that tower, something terrible. I had to make Thaddeus believe me; I knew that, and at the same time, I knew he never would.
"Felix?" Gideon's voice, and I almost broke my neck getting down the stairs again. Whether I could make anyone believe me or not, I knew I could never be convincing with the tower where I could see it. And only then, back down on the path and trotting toward Gideon, did I think to wonder if maybe Gideon would believe me.
"Thaddeus would flay me if I lost you," he said. "Let's go look at the hedge maze."
"Do you like mazes?" I said, more or less at random. I was wondering how I could tell him about my dreams without sounding like… well, like a madman.
Gideon started talking about the theory and practice of mazes—mazes made of hedges, mazes made of stones, mazes inlaid in the floors of temples in the Myrian Mountains, a maze made of mirrors that was said to have stood in Cymellune before it sank. He mentioned the string mazes of the wizards of Lunness Point and the dance-made mazes of the far north. He told me about the De Doctrina Labyrinthorum written by Ephreal Sand, who had gone mad and spent his last years drawing insoluble mazes, first with pen and paper, then with a stick in the dirt, then with his finger in the dust, and finally in his own blood on the walls and floors and windows.
At that point, Gideon broke off abruptly and said, "I beg your pardon."
"Why?"
"I have a tendency—I've been told about it before, I assure you—to well, to go on rather about things that interest me. I must be boring you to tears."
"I'm not bored," I said, because I wasn't.
"Then you are unique." His momentary smile lit up his face like a flash of sunlight through clouds. "But I really have done about three people's share of the talking, and I ought to let you get a word in edgewise."
"There's the maze," I said.
"Oh good. The gatekeeper's description has not led me to hope for great things, but perhaps I shall be pleasantly surprised."
The hedges of the maze were only about shoulder high on Gideon, which was some comfort. At least we could not become permanently lost. "That tower marks the center," Gideon said. I followed the direction of his pointing finger rather wildly, but the wizard's tower was not lying in wait for me. The center of the maze had a square wooden openwork tower, with a roofed platform at the top. "If we climb up there, we'll be able to see our way back."
We started into the maze. Gideon led me confidently, muttering things under his breath about various books he'd read, and within ten minutes we had come to the wooden tower.
"As I expected," he said. "Shall we climb up?"
"All right," I said.
Five short flights of stairs brought us to the platform. Gideon leaned on the railing, looking out. "It's a nice maze," he said, "but child-simple."
I leaned beside him, looking at the neat square symmetry of the lines of the hedge. And I said, before I was fully sure I was going to, "Do you believe in dreams?"
"How do you mean?" he said, tilting his head to look at me.
"Do you think they can… that they can tell the truth?"
After a meditative silence, Gideon said, "As I recall, the Mirador teaches that they cannot."
"Yes. I mean, no. I…" I trailed off in confusion.
Gideon said mildly, "I've never liked Cabaline dogma."
"But you… that is…"
"Yes, I hate the Bastion, but that's more personal than doctrinal. I admire the Cabal quite dreadfully, mind you, but I think they were, in some ways, misguided. It is foolish to say, simply because one does not wish to have any truck with necromancers, that the magic that makes necromancy possible is evil."
"But dreams don't—"
"Have anything to do with necromancy? You say so only because you have not been properly taught. What do you believe about dreams?"
"I don't know. I know my dreams are strange. They always have been. There was an old man—he's dead now, so I guess it can't hurt to tell you about him. He taught me how to control my dreams a little, to keep the nightmares away, and I didn't think about them much for a long time. But they've gotten worse, since… since the Curia put me under interdict. More… more true, somehow."
"Well, with your magic out of the way," Gideon said, but he wasn't talking to me, not really; the look in his eyes was one I'd come to recognize, that distant but not at all dreamy expression that meant he was on the track of an errant splinter of thaumaturgical theory.
"But I thought you said my dreams were like necromancy."
"Good gracious, no. I said they were related to necromancy, and so they are. True dreams of the sort you're talking about exist in the same world of the spirit as ghosts and revenants—and the forces of divination, for that matter. But dreaming isn't magic, although for some people it can come close."
"You mean like what Malkar did?"
"No!" Gideon said, vehemently enough to make me flinch. "What Malkar did is something completely different. It's called a sending, and it is one of the nastiest pieces of magic the Bastion has failed to outlaw. Sendings use other people's dreams, not the caster's own. But that's not what you're talking about, if I'm understanding you correctly."
"I don't think I've ever used anyone else's dreams."
"You'd know if you had. Do you dream about the future?"
"Iosephinus—that was the old man's name, the one who helped me. Iosephinus Pompey—he said I could, but it was better not to. He said it never helped. I just… I dream about real things. I think."
"What do you mean?"
It was the opening I had been both hoping for and dreading, "The tower," I said, all in a rush. "There's something awful in the tower and tried to tell Thaddeus, but he won't listen. Gideon, can you talk to him?" I saw the refusal before Gideon said anything; the colors around him darkened and furled like wings.
"Felix, I'm sorry. I can't. He won't listen to me, and—I know it's hard to believe, but truly—I would only make things worse."
"It's all right. I didn't mean…"
"No, I am sorry. But it probably isn't as bad as you think. I don't know very much about the history of this wizard's tower, but probably you're just feeling… echoes of the past."
"It's there. It's there now. It's watching us."
"Are you sure," Gideon said very gently, "that it isn't just a nightmare?"
Yes, I thought. "No," I said aloud. "Maybe you're right."
An uncomfortable pause, and he said, "We'd better be getting back."
"Yes," I said hopelessly and followed him back through the maze.
The others didn't return to the Chimera Among the Roses until nearly sundown, and they were tremendously pleased with themselves. They had extracted the keys from the Mayor, and a promise that repairs to the tower would be undertaken as soon as the wizards told him what they needed. was almost sorry for the Mayor of Hermione.
But the longer I sat and listened to the wizards making plans, the worse the feeling got, the residue of my dreams, the knowledge that the thing in the tower was hungry and waiting and powerful. And finally, although I knew it would do no good, although Thaddeus had already laughed at me, I said, "Thaddeus, can I talk to you?" I knew no one else would listen to me; the other wizards all avoided me as if I were a leper—except for Vicky, whose mind was as inflexible as an iron rod—and Shannon was still looking through me as if I were not there. The guard lieutenant was faith fully following Shannon's lead, and the guards were all copying their lieutenant. If Gideon would not help me, there was only Thaddeus left.
His eyebrows went up, a slow, deliberate display of incredulity, a pause long enough to attract the others' attention and make them aware of the burdens he labored under. Then he said, "Very well. I assume you mean privately?"
I nodded, embarrassment choking me, and followed him up to the bedroom we shared with Gideon. It was already going wrong; the situation was already twisting out of true. But the only way out was to go forward.
-
I saw the light approaching from the north end of the bridge; I knew it was too much to hope that this might be some late-night wanderer who would not notice me, and so I was not surprised when the light stopped, a few feet shy of the giant, and a voice said, "Felix?"
But I had not expected it would be Gideon's voice.
"Gideon?" I said, my own voice shaking and shrill.
"Felix, please don't."
"Why not? You heard them—I'm traitorous, murderous, evil. Why shouldn't I jump?"
"They're wrong. I know they're wrong. You were trying to tell them something important, and they would not listen. What was it?"
"You said you wouldn't help!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't… I think I didn't understand." The light came a little closer. "Felix, please."
I could not answer him.
"Let me make amends for not believing you. Let me listen. Please."
"It…" My voice choked off into nothing, and I had to try again. "It's called a fantôme. It—"
But Gideon said something violent in Kekropian that sounded like it was both obscene and blasphemous, and then in Marathine, perfectly calmly, "I will flay Thaddeus with a dull knife."
"You believe me?"
"Yes. I certainly don't believe that if you were sowing dissension, that is the story you would pick. You're a Cabaline. Do you even know what a fantôme is?"
"It's evil. I felt it. I still feel it. It talks to me. It wants me to come to it."
"Oh, I'm sure it does. I can ward you from it, if you'll come back on the bridge."
"You can?"
"Yes. I promise. It will take no more than a minute. Please, Felix, let me help you."
"Will you talk to Thaddeus?"
"Oh, I'll do better than that. I'll talk to Lady Victoria."
"Vicky won't listen."
"Unlike Thaddeus, she isn't a fool. And she does not… never mind. Felix, I believe you. Trust me."
"I can't," I said, my fingers throbbing with their pressure against the stone giant's head. "I can't."
Gideon cursed in Kekropian, then said quietly, "The White-Eyed Lady must want you very badly. But she lies to you, Felix. She is not a kind lover and her embrace will not dull the pain you suffer. And her betrayal will never end. I realize that I betrayed you yesterday, although I did not mean to, and I am sorry. But that doesn't have to be the end between us. Do you understand me?" He stopped and then said, even more quietly, "Felix, you don't have to be alone."
"I…" But the words were gone. I had to lower myself flat onto the giant's head before I could move, and then I edged backwards, one horrible inch at a time, until my toes touched the parapet. I all but fell back onto the sidewalk. Gideon was there, warm and green and smelling slightly of cloves but not at all of bitterness and death, and I could hear no voices in my head at all.
-
Lady Victoria snorted, and the other Kekropian, the one who looked like a cross between a bank clerk and a choirboy, said, "My lady, I beg your pardon, but when do you imagine this 'story' was hatched?"
"What?" Lady Victoria said.
"When has Felix had time to talk to anyone long enough to invent a story like this one? And why do you persist in calling it a story when we have done spells to prove the thing's existence?"
"Eusebian spells," she said darkly.
"My lady," the Kekropian said, like he was getting ready to say something with knives in it, and Mavortian said quickly, "I assure you—and I will swear any oath you like—that I have never met Felix Harrowgate before, and I do not know the other person you mentioned."
-
"You know better than that," the choirboy-clerk said and then switched into Kekropian. I knew a little Kekropian, but I couldn't follow much of the fight they had then, because it was all hocus-talk, and I ain't ever been into that end of the dictionary. But when I noticed that the smuggler had the Mirador's tattoos and the choirboy-clerk didn't, I figured I could get the gist of it anyway.
-
"I know of three spells that would do what you ask. I imagine that the Kekropian gentleman—" He nodded at the choirboy-clerk, who bowed back and said, "Gideon Thraxios."
"That Messire Thraxios," Mavortian went on, "knows several others just as efficacious. Since I understand that you are in some doubt concerning my truthfulness, I would suggest that we both perform such spells as we know, and you may judge the results."
There was this pause, where none of the hocuses were quite looking at each other.
"What?" Mavortian said.
"I have already done as you suggest," Gideon Thraxios said. "This morning."
"And your results?"
"Unambiguous," he said, and that thin little smile made him look for a second like somebody who wasn't a choirboy and wasn't a clerk. "We have been having doctrinal differences since then."
-
The argument between Gideon and Thaddeus—which had begun when Gideon had brought me back to the Chimera Among the Roses the night before—had been both protracted and vicious, and between that and my own state of nerves I had gotten almost no sleep before the equally protracted scene this morning as the wizards began to debate in earnest the existence of the fantôme.
-
A voice. Gideon's voice. Words I couldn't understand. The weight gone, the cruel hands gone. I rolled over, away from the light, from the harsh voices, and wept into the quilt, disgusted by the noises I was making, but powerless to stop.
The door slammed.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I spasmed away from it, making a dreadful, humiliating animal-like noise. And then the hand was gone, and I was sobbing again, so hard that the only noise I could make was a rasping struggle for breath.
Stop it! I said to myself. Stop it! But I couldn't. It only died down when my body was simply too exhausted to support it any longer. I lay there then and wished Gideon had left me on the Linlowing Bridge.
A voice said quietly, "Felix, I am sorry."
And there was Gideon. Again. I said, not moving, my voice thick and rasped halfway to nothing, "Why didn't you leave?"
"I couldn't. You are hurting."
I started laughing.
"What?"
"I'm sorry. It just… I couldn't…"
"Thaddeus will leave you alone," he said after a moment.
"He's afraid of you."
"A little. But that doesn't matter. Are you all right?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm fine."
His voice was suddenly hard. "Sit up. Look at me."
I sat up, looked as near as I could judge in his direction. I still couldn't see anything clearly, only the globe of candlelight near the door.
"Now say it again. Tell me you are well.and happy."
"Really, Gideon, I promise, I'm…" And I realized I had been about to say "okay," that ubiquitous piece of Lower City idiom that Malkar had beaten out of me before I was fifteen. I did a quick, panicky review of everything I'd said since Gideon first spoke to me, but I was fairly sure my Marathine had been standard and my vowels clean. "I'm really fine," I said lamely.
I wouldn't have been convinced either. Out of the murky jumble of darkness, Gideon's voice said, "Indeed? And that's why your eyes appear to be focused two inches to the left of my left ear? Can you even see me?"
"It's… it's very dark in here," I faltered, the blood mounting painfully to my face.
"I heard you describe your hallucinations to Thaddeus and Lady Victoria. Is that what's happening now?"
"Oh. Oh damn."
"I wish you would trust me."
"I… I'm sorry."
"Failing that," Gideon said, as if I had not spoken, "I wish you would tell me the truth." Everything in my chest congealed into a block of ice. Gideon continued: "For instance, when did your vision begin to… become peculiar? You seemed all right earlier."
He was after a different hare than Thaddeus had been. My relief made it possible to say, quite reasonably, "Why do you care?"
"Call it intellectual curiosity. When?"
"The spell," I said, remembering. "It was right after that Fressandran wizard cast his spell that…"
"Yes?"
I lay down again, staring up at the dark cloud that was the ceiling-"That the monsters came out," I said in a bare whisper.
"Interesting," said Gideon. I felt him sit down on the bed, but he did not touch me, and I was able to hold myself still. "Do you think there's a causal connection?"
"Between the Fressandran's spell and me being crazy?" I had my voice back under control now; I sounded almost sane.
"Let's clarify this," he said, almost snapped. "I'm tired of people calling you crazy, and I'm even more tired of you accepting the label."
"But I am crazy. Gideon, I appreciate your support, but you can't—"
"You have been profoundly damaged by a spell, in ways that no wizard in Marathat or Kekropia is competent to assess, much less mend. I grant that the end results look like madness, but it is not the same thing."
"The distinction fails to comfort me."
"That's because you're not thinking. This is the effect of a spell, Felix, not anything intrinsic to your mind. It may be possible to do something about it. Now, do you think the abrupt deterioration in your condition is or could be related to the fact that an act of magic was being worked near you?"
"Maybe. Magic… I could feel it, in the Mirador, whenever they were trying something else to mend the Virtu. It hurt."
"Aha."
"You have a theory," I said to the ceiling and wished Gideon would go away.
"I am investigating a theory. I think you may have developed a… a morbid sensitivity to magic."
"That sounds very impressive. What does it mean?"
He was silent for a moment. "You've said that Malkar separated you from your ability to do magic. Thaddeus thinks you're using that excuse to pretend that the Curia's interdict doesn't bother you—"
"Then Thaddeus is even stupider than I thought him."
"Point taken. I'm afraid I can't think of any way to explain this without resorting to a florid metaphor."
"I think," I said wearily, "that at this juncture your rhetorical style is the least of my problems."
"It's a wound that isn't healing. It's like raw flesh."
"And magic would be like salt, is that your thinking?"
"Crude but accurate."
"I'm not a poet. And I don't see what good it does us to know that."
"You don't find any shred of hope in the thought that it isn't some random and senseless plague that strikes you without warning or reason?"
"No."
"Then you are as stupid as Thaddeus." I felt him get up, heard him cross the room and go out. He shut the door firmly, but without slamming it.
-
Felix and Mr. Thraxios were standing a little apart from everybody else, and the other Kekropian looked like he was trying to put a hex on both of them.
-
One of the hocuses said, "Is it gone?"
"Yes," said Mr. Thraxios. "We should do something about this circle, but the fantôme is gone."
-
Gideon was standing by the window, watching the other wizards, the expression in his eyes thoughtful but otherwise unreadable. I was amazed, peripherally, that I could see him so clearly, since Stephen was shrouded with the mantle of the bear, and I saw other, stranger things out of the corners of my eyes. But Gideon was clear to me, and I was as grateful as I was surprised.
I went up to him. "Gideon?"
"Felix," he said, politely but without warmth.
"I don't want… it's not about me. Do you think you can tell the Fres-sandran wizard—"
"Von Heber."
"Von Heber. Do you think you can tell him he should go and find Mildmay right now?"
Gideon's eyebrows went up. "Why?"
"Because… because I think he's in trouble. And I don't think the others should know. Please?"
He gave me a narrow, green look.
"It may be extremely urgent," I said. "Gideon, please."
"All right," he said. I watched as he went over to the Fressandran wizard, touched his sleeve, said something in his ear. They had a quick, almost silent exchange, and then Gideon came back to me, the Fressandran limping behind him.
"Messire von Heber would appreciate it if you would explain what's going on," Gideon said.
"I can't," I said. "But… but Mildmay may be dying."
"Of what?" said the Fressandran.
"A curse. The curse. The Mirador's curse. But I don't know. I don't know how—"
"No wonder he said he wouldn't go anywhere near the Mirador. Are you sure?"
"No. Not really. But I think—"
"No, you're right. Find him first, work out the details later. Messire Thraxios, do you think you can spin a story…"
"To cover our hasty departure?" Gideon thought a moment. "Yes. We're going to consult about cleansing spells. I don't think they'll ask why Felix is tagging along."
Resentment flared and died at the contempt in the verb. I deserved nothing better. Gideon went and
caught Chloë Wicker, who was the best of his limited range of options. Von Heber crossed to the stairs, where his blond hireling was waiting, arms folded and eyebrows up. I followed him.
"Let's start down the stairs," von Heber said. "No haste, but no loitering."
"Something's going on," the hireling said.
"Brilliant, Bernard. He"—with a jerk of the head in my direction—"says Mildmay may be in trouble."
"How shocking," said Bernard.
We'd made one full circuit of the tower when Gideon caught up with us. "We'd better be quick," he said. "Thaddeus knows something strange is going on. And I must admit, that's all I know. Felix?"
"I'm not sure. I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong."
"Wrong about what?" said von Heber.
"I don't see why it would have been activated," I said. "The Cabal cast that warding curse on the Mirador itself, and it shouldn't—"
And then we heard the noise. It wasn't a scream, but it was more than just the harsh breathing of someone in pain.
"What's that?" said Bernard.
"I think you weren't wrong," von Heber said to me. "Where is he?"
Like a hurt animal, Mildmay had sought out a hiding place. We found that one of the doors off the stairwell was ajar. We went through it, von Heber and Gideon calling witchlights. For a moment, the shadows seemed to be watching us with tiny glowing eyes, but I said the words morbid sensitivity to myself like a talisman, and the hallucinations receded.
We found ourselves in a warren of tiny rooms; I knew the configuration of walls had to have some thaumaturgie significance, although I could not read it myself. Mildmay was curled in the far corner of the second room we came to, shaking as if he had an ague.
"What's wrong with him?" Bernard said.
"It's a curse," I said. "But I don't understand—"
"Bernard, shut the door," von Heber said. "We'd better not move him, and I don't think we want anyone else walking in. Now. Explain this curse to me."
I took a deep breath, hoping that I could stay lucid, hoping that they could understand what I could not. "Mildmay murdered the Witchfinder Extraordinary three years ago. I saw the Mirador's curse on him, and since that curse is designed to kill and Cerberus's killer is the only person who has ever escaped it…"
"Yes, I see," von Heber said. "But then what is this?"
"I don't know. I mean, I do know. It's the curse. But I don't understand what set it off, and I don't understand why it isn't working."
"What do you mean, it isn't working?" Bernard said. "It looks pretty effective to me."
"He's still alive."
There was an uncomfortable, unsettled pause before Gideon said, "Since most of the Mirador's spells are either broken or monstrously weakened at this point, I don't find that beyond explanation. My question is, what are we going to do?"
"We have to help him," I said.
Gideon gave me a politely disbelieving look. "Did I misunderstand you when you said he murdered a wizard?"
"No, but—"
"I have need of him," von Heber said.
"Gideon, please," I said. "I can't let him die."
"Why not?" Gideon said. "What is this farouche murderer to you?"
"My brother."
"Whose existence you were not aware of two days ago. Your fraternal concern is touching but overdone."
"Damn it, Gideon, are you saying we should stand here and watch him die?"
"Kethe! Just kill me and get it over with!"
We all jumped; none of us had imagined Mildmay was still coherent. But he raised his head, his eyes the lurid green of absinthe against his chalk-white face. He said, "I did for Cerberus Cresset, sure enough, so if you want me dead for it, go ahead and—" He broke off, bowing his head and I saw the spasm tear through him. When he could speak again, he said weakly, "This is gonna take hours."
"I think you have a choice, Messire Thraxios," von Heber said. "Either help us, or go inform the Cabalines upstairs—"
"You can't!" I said. "Gideon, please. You said you'd help me."
The look he gave me was like being, stabbed. "I did not realize what your definition of 'help' would entail."
"Then go on," I said, looking away from Gideon. "Go tell Stephen that you've found Cerberus Cresset's murderer. He will doubtless greet you like a long-lost brother, and I imagine you will be able to name any reward you like."
There was a long moment in which the only noise was Mildmay's rasping, panting breath. Then Gideon said, "No."
We all stared at him; even Mildmay's head came up a little. Gideon looked embarrassed but unbudging. "I didn't listen to you once, and that turned out to be a nearly fatal mistake. I don't feel inclined to make that mistake a second time. I shall make a new one instead. What do you intend to do?"
I discovered von Heber was looking at me, too. "I don't know," I said.
"You're the only Cabaline in the room," von Heber said.
"But we've never understood what happened."
Gideon shrugged. "So ask."
"Ask?"
"He's right here. Ask him."
"Oh." I could feel my face heat. I went down on one knee. "Mildmay, do you know why the curse didn't kill you when you… that is, when Cerberus died?"
"Miriam had a thing," he said, his words harsh and slurred and barely comprehensible.
"A 'thing'?"
"Yeah. Little wooden box. She said, don't open it, and I didn't."
"And what did it do?"
"Dunno. She said, keep it in your pocket. 'Til you're out of the Mirador. And I did. And the curse didn't get me. 'Til now." He stopped, going rigid against another convulsion.
"Oh," I said, straightening up again. "That's brilliant."
"What's brilliant?" Gideon said.
"I didn't think there was anyone in the Lower City capable of working that kind of magic. This wizard—Miriam—she constructed a decoy."
"Explain," said von Heber.
"When Cerberus Cresset died, Mildmay should have died with him—more accurately, Mildmay should have died before he was able to kill Cerberus. It's a protection spell, part of the quid pro quo the Cabal used to get their reforms enacted. But that little box must have been the vehicle for a spell that deflected the protective spell."
"Then I don't understand," Gideon said. "Why is he… ?"
"There's a second tier of spells," I said. "I don't think it was supposed to work this way, since I don't think anyone ever imagined it was possible to evade the protection spell, but there are warding spells on the Mirador itself. The decoy must have been able to hold those spells off long enough for him to get out of the Mirador again—"
"Miriam said, don't waste time," Mildmay said in a gasp.
"Exactly, but it couldn't get rid of them. The spell on Cerberus ceased to function when he died, but the spells on the Mirador are—" I stopped, my own guilt threatening to choke me.
"All but destroyed," Gideon said.
"And that explains why Mildmay's still alive," I said, forcing myself to keep thinking, keep reasoning. "The curse can't be operating at more than a quarter of its original power. But I still don't understand what set it off."
Mildmay said something.
"What?" I said.
"The Lord Protector," he said, and I could see the effort it cost him to make the words comprehensible.
I started laughing; I couldn't help it, although von Heber and Gideon both looked rather alarmed. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry. It's just that—oh, Stephen will hate this—he's become a metonymy."
"What on earth do you mean?" Gideon said.
I took a deep breath; I could see it now, clear as day. "The assorted thaumaturgie cataclysms have resulted in the Mirador's warding spells being focused on the Lord Protector. I don't know when it would have happened or if we would have noticed if anyone had thought to look There are lots of things about the Cabal's spells that we don't understand and since Stephen is annemer… So, at the moment and for thaumaturgie purposes, Stephen is the Mirador."
Both Gideon and von Heber were silent, rapt in contemplation of the thing's marvelous idiocy.
"What are you going to do?" said the practical Bernard.
"We can't lift the curse," I said. "That would take a full assemblage of the Curia, and even if we had them here, they wouldn't do it. But maybe…"
"Maybe what?" said Gideon.
"Maybe we could put Miriam's spell back together. I understand what she did, I think, and I… oh."
"What's the matter?" von Heber said. "You've gone white as a sheet."
"The interdict," Gideon said.
"I can't do magic anyway," I said. "I'm useless."
"Tell us what to do," Gideon said. "We are both competent."
"It's not that. It's going to take a Cabaline—"
"Miriam wasn't," Mildmay said, panting.
"No, but…" I didn't know how to explain what I saw, the writhing snarling blackness around him. "There's no leverage otherwise."
Gideon and von Heber looked at each other. "Thaddeus," Gideon said thoughtfully. "Peter, Ferdinand, Victoria, Chloë, Gethruda. I suppose Chloë might do it."
Somewhere in the middle of his list, the answer hit me. I said in a thin, distant voice, "No. He'll die while you're arguing with them. We have to use the other way."
"What other way?" Gideon said.
"I—"
Mildmay spasmed again, swearing viciously; I caught a glimpse of his face, white and contorted in a snarl of pain, the scar like a bolt of lightning. I said in a rush, "You can use me."
"I beg your pardon?" said von Heber.
"But we just established that the interdict—" Gideon began.
I cut him off; I had to get the words out before my fear closed off my throat. "It's what Malkar did. If Robert could use it, I'm sure you can. The interdict's on me, not on my magic."
"That made about as much sense as a mud pie," said Bernard.
But Gideon and von Heber both understood. I looked away from the horror and pity in their faces and said, "We'll need a token."
Gideon said, "But shouldn't we try—"
"We don't have time." I could see the briars getting thicker and blacker and more vicious. "Please. Don't argue with me."
"What kind of token?" von Heber said prosaically.
I looked again at Mildmay, the lashing briars around him, the tornado colors clouding the air. "Glass would be best, but wood would do in a pinch. No clay and no stone. And it needs to be something small enough to carry."
Von Heber and Gideon began rummaging through their pockets.
"Oh, powers," said Bernard in disgust. He stalked away into the maze of little rooms. After a moment, we heard the sound of breaking glass, and Bernard returned with a triangular shard from one of the windows. "You'll want to do something about the edges."
"Thank you," von Heber said, and I took the shard.
"Do you understand what needs to be done?" I said to von Heber and Gideon.
"You want to use that piece of glass as an umbrella," Gideon said. "Do you really think it will work?"
"I don't know. But… None of the others will help him. You know that."
"Yes," Gideon said reluctantly. "But I have to ask: do you really want to do this? Do you know what it's going to do to you?"
"I have an educated guess," I said, and I knew the smile on my face was ghastly. "Do it."
Gideon looked sidelong at von Heber, who shook his head. "My understanding of Cabaline magic hardly rates the use of the label 'theoretical.' I understand what he wants, but I don't have the faintest idea how to do it."
"I'm not sure I do, either," Gideon said, "but I have committed myself to this foolhardy venture. Felix, I think it might help if you were touching him."
"Oh," I said. "All right." I knelt again, my left hand carefully cradling the shard of glass. I braced myself and reached through the briars to touch Mildmay's shoulder. He was rigid as a board; I said over my shoulder to Gideon, "Hurry!"
Gideon muttered something under his breath that I thought was a Prayer. I felt his touch against my mind. Unlike Robert and Malkar, he was gentle, trying not to hurt me. I forced myself to hold still, not to fight; I had to shut my eyes against the shadows and the colors and the monsters. But this time I had chosen it, and I embraced my madness willingly.
-
"Can you walk?" Mavortian said. "Because I think it might be for the best if we went back to the River Horse, quietly, now, before anyone becomes—"
"Unbecomingly curious," Mr. Thraxios said. "Felix and I should go back up and display ourselves to Thaddeus lest he come looking." He looked down at Felix and said, "He will, you know."
"Yes," Felix said. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then got up.
He looked worse than I felt, and I got to my feet in a hurry because I knew I had to say it, and I didn't want to do it from the floor. "Thanks," I said. "I mean"—and I looked from him to Mr. Thraxios—"I would've understood if you'd let me die. So… thanks."
Mr. Thraxios kind of waved it away. Felix shook his head, like he was trying to clear it, and said, "Be careful. There are still thorns."
"Okay," I said. I couldn't help giving Mr. Thraxios a look, because wherever Felix's head was at, it didn't look like it was no nice place to be. Mr. Thraxios gave me a nod, and I figured I'd have to take that for I'll look after him, because he was already dragging Felix toward the door, and I didn't know how to say none of what was bothering me.
-
I could only be thankful that Gideon knew how to answer her, that he remembered our quickly fabricated lies and had at his fingertips the information we had allegedly disappeared in order to acquire. He crossed the room to the others, talking about the phases of the moon and the energies of the earth.
-
And my longed-for illusion of security was shattered to pieces before I even got through the bedroom door. Gideon was on his knees by the far bed, throwing things into a bag.
"What?" I said, stopping where I was with one hand still on the doorknob. "What's wrong?"
"Those envoys from Vusantine," Gideon said.
"Oh," I said. It was getting harder to hear him; my ears were filling with the roars and booming of the monsters.
"They're going to want to talk to you."
The thought made me want to sit down where I was and howl. "But I've already told the Curia everything I know!"
"Not like that," Gideon said grimly. "I think we need to get out of town."
"What? But we—"
"You broke the Virtu, Messire Harrowgate. You were the instrument of the Bastion wreaking havoc on the Mirador. I don't believe anyone coming here from Tibernia is going to care very much for elaborate explanations of why those things aren't your fault."
"Oh," I said. I felt like he'd punched me. "But I don't—"
"No, don't worry. I'm not staying, either."
"You haven't done anything wrong."
"I'm Kekropian. Don't you think that's enough?"
"But, Gideon, they won't—"
"Felix," he said, deliberately and slowly, "they are going to be looking for scapegoats. You're going to be their first choice. But they are also going to be looking very much askance at anyone who came from the Bastion in the last year, and there are certain… let us merely say that I do not want to discuss my past with our learned colleagues from the Coeurterre. Is that all right with you?"
"Gideon, I didn't mean—"
"Come on." He stood up, slung the bag over one shoulder, and walked Past me out the door.
-
A hand closed around my wrist like a vise. I looked up into greenness, sharp like daggers. "Come on," Gideon said and dragged me without ceremony down the stairs.
-
And like he'd said, Mavortian and Felix and Mr. Thraxios were all sitting in the lobby. Mavortian and Mr. Thraxios looked about ready to start chewing their fingernails. I didn't blame Bernard for calling Felix a nutcase. He looked at me when I went over to them, but I don't know what he was seeing. I don't think it was me.
"What's going on?" I said, sort of generally.
Mavortian looked at Mr. Thraxios, who said, "The reason the Lord Protector appeared in Hermione today is that an embassy from Vusantine is riding to meet him here."
"Okay," I said, "but—"
Mavortian said, "Messire Thraxios believes—rightly in my opinion—that both the Cabalines and the envoys are going to be looking for someone convenient to blame."
"Oh," I said and looked at Felix, who was staring down at his hands.
"Exactly," said Mavortian. " 'Oh.' "
"Foreign wizards are also likely to be regarded with suspicion," Mr. Thraxios said, "and I can only imagine that you would prefer not to attract the attention of anyone involved with the Mirador."
"Bull's-eye," I said. "So we're bailing?"
They both looked blank.
"Clearing out."
"Yes," Mavortian said.
"Whereto?"
They looked blanker.
"We hadn't quite," Mr. Thraxios began at the same time Mavortian said, "It's a difficult matter to—" They both broke off and nobody got a sentence finished.
"You gotta pick a direction before we go anyplace," I said.
"Do you have a suggestion?" Mavortian said, like he wanted to hear me admit I didn't.
"Sure," I said. "St. Millefleur."
Him and Mr. Thraxios looked at each other. I don't think Felix even heard us. "Why St. Millefleur?" Mr. Thraxios said.
Powers and saints, I thought, but Bernard still hadn't showed up, so I said, "If anybody wants us bad enough to try and follow us, they'll probably figure we're heading back for Mélusine, with savers on east—along of you being Kekropian—or maybe up to Igensbeck. But we ain't got no reason to go south."
"Which is a good enough reason to try it," Mr. Thraxios said. He was giving me a funny sort of look that I couldn't quite figure out.
-
It got clearer and clearer to me, listening to them and watching Gideon's face getting pinched and gray, that what we were doing was stupid.
-
Gideon said he didn't care what the rest of us did, he wasn't going back into the Empire, and I thought he was the only one of the five of us who had his head screwed on right way 'round.
Bernard caved—Bernard always caved—and then it was just Mavortian and Gideon going at it like a pair of tomcats, and it turned out that Mavortian thought we really needed Gideon along, because we had to keep the Bastion from catching on that they had a Cabaline hocus wandering around like a sheep in their backyard, and apparently the only way to do that for sure was to have a Eusebian hocus sort of finessing the spells the Bastion used to keep an eye on the magic floating around the Empire. Gideon thought as how the Bastion's spells wouldn't pick up on Felix, along of him being crazy and not able to work magic, but Mavortian kept after him, and he finally gave in and admitted that he was just guessing. "Oddly enough," he said, all snarky and mad, "the problem has never arisen before." Mavortian said that wasn't good enough. I didn't know—I mean, it wasn't nothing like what the Mirador did, which I did know some about—but I frankly knew fuck-all about the Bastion, and if Mavortian said we needed Gideon, then I figured I had to believe him. I didn't want to get caught by nobody and especially not no Eusebian hocuses.
But Gideon kept saying he was sorry, but he wouldn't go. He had all sorts of reasons why none of us should go, and I could tell he was really scared, because of the way he wasn't looking at Felix. He never tried to argue that Felix didn't know what he was talking about or nothing like that, he just kept saying we couldn't cross the Empire, and we'd be strung up in a day and a half if we tried, and we should go south to St. Millefleur and maybe see if we could find some books that would let him and Mavortian figure out what kind of magic the Gardens of Nephele used and maybe they could do something for Felix that way. I think that idea was pretty lame and both Gideon and Mavortian knew it, but I ain't qualified to judge.
So they went back and forth for a while, until I guess Mavortian figured that he couldn't sweet-talk Gideon around, and then he worked a neat little piece of blackmail that tied Gideon up with a big red bow. Either Gideon helped us, Mavortian said, or Bernard would drag him to the nearest town and denounce him as a Eusebian.
And Bernard would do it. I don't know for certain if Mavortian was bluffing or not—I don't think he was—but I know solid that if he'd told Bernard to do that, Bernard would have. Gideon knew it, too. He was kind of standing there, like he was still looking for a loophole, and Mavortian got him on the backswing, with this nasty little smile on his face that I for one could have done without. He said as how Gideon shouldn't think he could go back on the deal once we were in Kekropia, because there'd be nothing easier than telling the Kekropians he was a defector from the Bastion, and we all knew what would happen to him then. I didn't, but I could tell from his face that Gideon did.
And it made me mad, watching Mavortian put the screws to a guy who didn't owe him nothing, so then me and Mavortian fought for a while, but he kept saying we had to have Gideon, and finally he said, "If you truly want to help your brother, and if you truly believe that he has had this fantastic dream, then believe me when I tell you that without Gideon, we are doomed to fail."
And he meant it. I didn't know if it was true, but I could tell Mavortian believed what he was saying, that he wasn't pulling this shit just because he could. And the fact of the matter was, if he said Gideon was the only guy could keep Felix safe, then I wanted Gideon along. And I couldn't help remembering that when it had been me in a bind, with the Mirador's curse trying to knot me up like a ball of yarn, Gideon's idea had been to just stand there and let me die. And whether I could see his point of view or not, that's a nasty sort of thing to remember about somebody when they ain't giving you something you want.
-
I figured out somewhere in that first decad that a lot of that was Felix. Gideon never said nothing—I mean, he wasn't talking to us, and it wasn't like there was any point in trying to tell Felix—but I saw the way he looked at Felix and the way it hurt him when Felix flinched back from him the way he did from everybody. I ain't much with the brains, but I can see what's right in front of me, even if I can't make sense of it. Gideon was in love with Felix, and I figured that made him crazier than Felix on the worst day Felix ever had. I didn't say nothing neither—because, I mean, it wouldn't help—and after I felt like I could trust Gideon not to, you know, take advantage of Felix or something, I even mostly quit worrying about it. I had plenty of other shit on my mind.