quotations, the mirador

[thraxios]

Felix shut his book and said, “Do you want to go see Berinth the King tonight?”

“I don’t mind,” I said. Mehitabel was in it.

“Well, I don’t mind either,” he said—teasing me, but only a little. “It’s a nice change from arguing with Edgar and Simon about the nature of the stars.”

“You could wear your new coat,” I said, hoping I could keep his mind off me. “The one Rinaldo says—”

“Is an affront to seven hundred years of aesthetic philosophy. I could, couldn’t I?” He loved to wear this red-violet color that clashed with his hair something awful. He said enough people stared at him, they should suffer for it. The new coat, aside from the color, had gold bullion around the cuffs and down the lapels. “Loud” don’t quite begin to cover it.

A little pause, and he looked at Gideon. “Do you want to come?”

It wasn’t no big secret that you could hardly get Gideon out of the suite with a crowbar and an ox-team. I don’t blame him— powers and saints, if I’d had the choice, I’d’ve been right there with him, and I don’t know which one of us had the worse deal. I mean, there’s me with the obligation d’âme and being the guy that offed Cerberus Cresset, and then there’s Gideon being Kekropian for one thing, and having had his tongue cut out by the Duke of Aiaia for another. And then there was the fact that he was sleeping with Felix and everybody and their dog knew it. And the Curia wouldn’t let him take the Cabaline oaths. No, I don’t know why. Felix and Gideon were both so pissed off about it that I didn’t even want to ask. So, anyways, he didn’t go out much, and like I said, I didn’t blame him.

But Felix kept trying, first one way, then another, and mostly Gideon said no, but sometimes he said yes. And tonight, he gave Felix a crooked sort of half-smile and nodded, and got a smile back, too.

“All right,” Felix said. “Let’s go see Berinth the King.”

-

If he had been Louis Goliath, he would have had the sense to outwait me. I was the one with a performance of Berinth the King that evening; I was the one who had to placate him to get him out of my dressing room. But he let himself be rattled into forgetting that. He said, in a hard, falsely nonchalant voice, “I believe you know Gideon Thraxios?”

“I do,” I said. I did not turn away from the mirror.

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s a refugee from the Bastion. His tongue was cut out, so I assume he’s one of those cultists.” I made sure I continued to sound bored, half-distracted, as if it all meant nothing to me.

“And?” Vulpes prompted, confirming my suspicion that he had come from the Mirador. He knew perfectly well what “and,” or he wouldn’t be trying to make me tell him.

“I didn’t realize your curiosity was vulgar,” I said—dear God, if I sounded any more bored I’d have to pretend to fall asleep. “He’s Felix Harrowgate’s lover.”

“Is it a relationship of long standing?”

“They’ve been lovers for as long as I’ve been in Mélusine. Nearly two years.”

“Is the relationship a, er, happy one?”

I slewed round to stare at him, the gesture just exaggerated enough to sting. “In what sense, lieutenant? As the knight and his lady in a romance? Or are you asking me if Messire Thraxios is sexually satisfied?”

He was too swarthy to show a blush, but I knew I’d offended his prudish Eusebian soul. He said stiffly, “Do they quarrel?”

I didn’t try to bite back a shout of laughter. “Do they quarrel ? You realize that’s the same as asking if Felix has a pulse?”

He glared at me. “Do you think their quarrels are serious?”

“Meaning, do I think Felix would ever throw Gideon out? Not a chance.”

“What about Messire Thraxios? Might he leave?”

“Where would he go?” I said callously.

“I . . . see.” He changed the subject briskly: “Why has Messire Thraxios not sworn the Cabaline oaths?”

“Surely you’re better qualified than I am to answer that question.”

“But I’m asking you, Maselle Cressida. Why?”

“I don’t know. I try not to have anything to do with Cabaline politics.”

“That will have to change.”

“You would do better to cultivate a wizard.”

“Who says I’m not?” His smile was sharp and ugly. “But still, maselle, I have asked you, and I should like you to answer.”

“And I did. I told you. I don’t know.”

“Oh, come now. Your lover has told you nothing? I find that hard to believe.”

I said lightly, “Mildmay doesn’t like to talk about what he calls ‘hocus-stuff.’ ”

“Then you will have to induce him.” But at least he seemed to believe that I didn’t know anything, for he stood up, saying as he moved unhurriedly toward the door, “I will expect you to be a good deal more informative next time, Maselle Cressida. ”

“But what do you want to know?” I said. The exasperation in my voice was quite real; I only hoped it was adequate cover for the equally real desperation that was cold lead in the pit of my stomach. “Why Gideon hasn’t become a Cabaline—”

-

Small favors—tonight the Teverius box was empty. Which meant Felix was in a good mood. He was telling a story about the lady in the box opposite and who the father of her third son was supposed to be. Gideon grinned, and he must’ve said something, because Felix laughed out loud. They’d forget I was here in a minute or two. We might go backstage after the play, if Felix was feeling nice, and then we’d go back to the Mirador. They’d go into their bedroom, and I’d go into mine. I’d lay there and pretend like I didn’t have a clue what was happening on the other side of the wall.

-

So Felix and Gideon hung around in the stage-lobby while Felix flirted with Corinna Colquitt—she knew it wasn’t going no place, but it didn’t do her no harm to be seen flirting with him. And Gideon just watched, smiling a little. Madame Colquitt wasn’t no threat to him.

-

Oh, I was in a shitty mood. It was just as well Felix and Gideon wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d got up on the table and started dancing, because I would have picked a fight with Felix, just because I could. That kind of mood.

I went into my room and threw myself on the bed. I sat there and stared at the wall—the other side was Felix and Gideon’s bedroom and Kethe knows what they were doing in there, I didn’t want to—and spun my butterfly knife, first one way, then the other.

-

Gideon sighed, his body tensing in climax, his hands knotting in the sheets. He was very good; he never tried to touch my head when I did this for him. I swallowed copper-salt warmth, my throat muscles working around him, and then eased slowly back, kissing his thigh, the line of his hipbone, buying myself what time I could.

Gideon touched my shoulder gently, almost shyly. :Do you want to . . . ?:

Neither of us ever said the word.

I didn’t want to, particularly, but saying so would only lead to another of our increasingly frequent, futile arguments, and I wanted that even less.

I went carefully, slowly, biting the inside of my lower lip when the urge for power got too strong. Gideon was sacrificing as much of his autonomy as he could in submitting to me—and he could not think of it in any other way. I could not be so ungrateful as to tell him it wasn’t enough, especially when the one time I had dared hint at the ways of tarquins and martyrs, his revulsion had been all too palpable.

Gideon thought submission was demeaning. I knew it disturbed him that he enjoyed it, that I could make it good for him. He never asked me to submit in return, and it was something I could not offer. The words jammed and died in my throat even in imagination.

He achieved no more than half-hardness, although I kissed the knobs of his spine, stroked him, used clever caresses I’d learned at the Shining Tiger. Finally, he said, :Don’t bother about me. Once is all I’m good for tonight.:

:Are you sure?:

:Please. Just go ahead.:

My teeth sank into my lip until I tasted blood. Bright pain kept my hands gentle against Gideon’s hips as I thrust and strove and finally climaxed. We cleaned up silently, and then, finally, I could escape into sleep.

-

Gideon was probably awake; I could go in and pick a fight, but I knew how it would end, and Gideon did not deserve that.

Silently, carefully, I let myself out of the suite. I’d promised myself a year and a half ago that I wouldn’t go near Gideon unless I could be gentle, and there was no gentleness in me tonight.

-

I had studied, piecemeal, clandestinely, not wanting to discuss my fears—not with Gideon, and certainly not with any of my Cabaline brethren, who would merely sneer at my overactive and heretical imagination. Gideon would not sneer, but if Malkar was a miasma, I did not want to make Gideon breathe it. He had suffered enough in my company.

-

When I went out into the sitting room, Felix was wearing his wet cat look, the one that meant Gideon had taken after him for something he didn’t think was his fault. They went at it like firecrackers all through breakfast. I could tell by the glares they were giving each other, even though neither one was saying anything out loud. Finally, Felix burst out: “All right, damn it! Mildmay, you tell him. Was I flirting with Isaac Garamond last night?”

“Can’t you leave me out of this?” I said.

“Tell him,” Felix said.

“I didn’t see you flirting,” I said.

Gideon snorted. He didn’t believe either one of us. He knew I’d lie for Felix.

“Gideon, I swear—” Felix started, but Gideon cut him off, and whatever he said was poison mean. It took a lot to make Felix flinch.

“We’d better go,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

The look Gideon gave me was one I could read. It said, If he didn’t do nothing wrong, why are you bailing him out? But Felix’s face went absolutely sunlit, and he said, “You’re right. Come on.” He was out the door before he even finished talking.

I said, “He really wasn’t.” Gideon didn’t look at me. I got up and followed Felix.

-

And he was leaving the suite at night, and me and Gideon didn’t have the least idea where he was going, although it wasn’t hard to guess what he was doing when he got there. And there was the drinking.

-

When I came out of my bedroom, Felix and Gideon were fighting again. They gave me the same look, like I was somebody they didn’t know and didn’t want to.

After a silence that lasted for septads, Felix said, “Good morning,” like a slab of marble.

“I’ll be in the hall,” I said and ducked out. I couldn’t have gotten away from Felix’s voice in my bedroom—and if him and Gideon were really getting into it, he’d start yelling sooner or later—but from the hall I couldn’t hear a thing. Couldn’t’ve if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. I sat down against the wall and started reciting “Rowell’s Stand” in my head. It passed the time.

-

Felix turned on me like he was glad to have somebody else to yell at. “WHAT?” Shit. Gideon had found the right place to push and the right words to push with.

-

Me and Gideon both tried to bail right then. “Sit down, Gideon,” Felix said, watching Lord Shannon. “Don’t leave, Mildmay, but do close the door behind his lordship.” I looked at Gideon. Gideon looked back at me. We did what Felix wanted. I stayed by the door and did the best imitation I could of the wall. Gideon picked a chair out of both Felix’s and Lord Shannon’s lines of sight and hunched down in it like he was hoping he would turn invisible.

-

Lord Shannon looked around, and I thought for a second he was going to bolt. He had that kind of expression on his face, and honestly, if he’d started for the door, I would’ve got the fuck out of his way and let Felix yell at me for it later. But he stood his ground and looked Felix in the eye and said, “Come back to me.”

And powers and saints, that just sat there for the longest time—felt like an indiction at least, maybe two—and then Felix laughed, not nicely, and said, “No.”

“Why not? Is it because of him?”—with a wave at Gideon, who was trying to look even more invisible—“Or him?” And he jerked his chin at me.

I just about fucking swallowed my tongue. But Felix didn’t even blink, although he went awful white. He said, “No. It’s because of you.”

-

“Oh, right,” I said. “Like it matters that your friends hate me.”

A second later, I was wishing I’d bitten my tongue through instead. Felix flinched back like I’d hit him and said, in a very small voice, “They don’t hate you.”

“Oh, powers,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you, or nothing. I just get so damn tired.”

“Gideon thinks,” Felix said, “that you should blame me.”

“Fuck, I can’t help what Gideon thinks.”

He laughed, but said, “What if Gideon’s right?”

In pure desperation, I said, “We’re gonna be late if’n we don’t hurry.”

-

Gideon was there, an ink-smear across his forehead and his fingers knotted in his hair, wrestling with another of his thorny theoretical problems. Despite the Mirador’s refusal to admit him, he pursued his researches as fast as Felix brought him books from the Mirador’s myriad libraries or the bookshops which lined the side streets off the Road of Horn.

His delight at my arrival was patent; he shoved all his theorems and diagrams out of the way, and unearthed the wax tablet and stylus he used for conversations. What brings you here?

“Boredom,” I said with a vast mock-sigh and entertained him with a scurrilous and vindictive version of Bartholmew and Susan’s decampment, finishing by saying, “So, you see, I have nothing better to do for the next two days than bother my friends and interfere with their work.”

The benefit is all ours, Gideon wrote. Are you waiting for Mildmay?

“Will I annoy you?”

Not if you will talk to me, he said with a wide-eyed ingenue’s look.

“Yes, because obviously you’re dying of boredom.”

He grinned. No, but it does get a little lonely.

“With Felix gone all day, I imagine it must.”

Even when he’s here. He gave me a semidefiant glower.

“Are you fighting again?”

When are we not? He shrugged, although it was an uncomfortable, twisted motion, as if he were trying to get out from under some invisible hand.

“Same old subject?”

It hardly matters. He would far rather fight with me than give me a single scrap of the truth.

“The truth about what?”

I don’t know. He stared at the sentence for a moment, then changed the period into an exclamation mark. Something is eating at him, but he obfuscates it endlessly.

“Maybe he doesn’t know himself?”

No, that’s Mildmay.

He caught me off guard. I should have turned the conversation, but I said, “What do you mean?”

He raised his head and looked at me. The things he claims he doesn’t remember.

“You think he’s lying?”

No. I don’t think it’s that simple. But I think if someone pushed him — But Felix won’t, and I see you won’t either.

I broke eye contact and didn’t answer. After a moment, the stylus started scratching again. Felix thinks he has destroyed Mildmay.

“Felix is prone to melodramatic nonsense,” I said, parrying desperately.

Is that what it is? Think of Mildmay as you first met him. Can you find that man in him now?
“You should have been a dissector for the Medical College in Aigisthos,” I said, still trying to turn the conversation, although it was plainly too late.

Answer my question. It is important.

“Important to whom? I didn’t think you cared.”

His head jerked back a little. I consider him a friend. Don’t you?

I couldn’t find an answer fast enough.

Why are you so surprised? Do you really care so little about him?

“You know that’s not true,” I said, but it was a weak defense. I was trying to find something better when Felix and Mildmay walked in.

Gideon had the presence of mind to close the tablet and drop it back into his pocket. I got my expression clear before I turned, but the way Gideon looked at Felix was like a man staring into some deeply desired hell.

-

:I am impressed,: Gideon said sardonically. :You passed up an opportunity for a fight. Does this mean you won’t argue with me tonight either?:

:Not if you keep that up,: I said, groping for the person I was supposed to be. :Arguing with Mildmay’s no fun, anyway. No challenge.:

:Am I meant to be flattered?:

:Only if you want to be. Gideon—:

He waited, eyebrows raised.

:There’s something wrong with him, isn’t there?:

:Yes,: Gideon said gently. :But you know that.:

:Yes,: I said, abruptly too weary to deny it. :Malkar.:

Gideon said nothing; I turned away to stare blindly at the bookcases. “Damn him. Even dead . . .”

:It is often said in Kekropia, to comfort the newly bereaved, that the dead person is not truly dead until the last person who remembers them dies.:

“Oh.” I pressed my fingers to my mouth to try to stem a tide of lunatic giggles. “What a . . . what a horrible thought.” It was no use; the laughter would not be stopped, and it was nearly a full minute before I could calm myself again.

When I turned back to face him, Gideon said, at his driest, :It is not a theory I subscribe to,: and that nearly set me off again.

But there was a question I wanted to ask, a serious one. :What do you believe? About the fate of the dead?:

:You want to talk about theology,: he said slowly, clearly wondering if my interest was genuine.
“I want to talk about the dead. And why they . . . haunt us.”

:Literally or figuratively?:

“Sorry?”

:You understood me. Do you want to talk about ghosts or do you want to talk about why Malkar Gennadion continues to plague your brother—and you—nearly two years after his death?:
Gideon’s eyes were too damnably sharp. :I suppose I want to be certain they are not the same question.:

:Do you believe you are being haunted by the ghost of Malkar Gennadion?:

His tone was neutral, but the question still stung. “No, of course not!” I said, pacing across the room to stare into the fire.

Into the silence, Gideon said, :But you are afraid.:

“I’ve been afraid of Malkar half my life. It’s a hard habit to break.”

Gideon crossed the room to stand beside me. :Mildmay is not being haunted by any but the specters in his own mind. I know the signs of haunting.:

:But he doesn’t remember what Malkar did to him. He says so.:

:And how much effort is it costing him to keep Malkar safely forgotten?:

I said nothing.

:Felix—: He touched my arm lightly, as if he was afraid I would only move away from him. :Have you talked to him? About Malkar?:

I didn’t move away. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even raise my head. :I kept expecting him to shake it off. To be himself again. And when I realized that wasn’t going to happen . . . I don’t know what to say! I don’t know how to reach him, or even if it’s possible. Frankly, I don’t know if I have any right to try.:

Because it was my fault. But Gideon didn’t need me to tell him that.

He said, :You are the only one who does.: I started to protest, but he cut me off. :Because you are to blame—and because you are his brother. Because you were . . . what you were to Malkar Gennadion. You’re the only person who can understand.:

:Simon—:

:Mildmay won’t talk to him. Do you think Simon hasn’t tried?:

“I know,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “But I’m afraid . . .”

Gideon waited.

“What if he won’t talk to me?”

Gideon started laughing.

I wrenched away from him. He said, :You must be the only person in the Mirador who hasn’t realized Mildmay would walk on knives for you.:

:Yes, but he’d find that much less unpleasant.: I took a deep breath, raked my fingers through my hair. :What do you want, Gideon? Shall I promise to try?:

I could feel his gaze on me, although I refused to look at him. :This is not about what I want, although I realize it would be much easier for you if it were.:

“Stop it,” I said and was horrified to hear my voice shaking. “Just . . . stop.”

He sighed and after a moment moved away from me, back to the table and its piles of books. :What would you prefer to discuss? The weather?:

I struck back viciously. :Why don’t we talk about the Bastion?:

:And her refugees in the Mirador? Yes. Let’s.:

:Do you think Gemma Parsifal’s offer of amnesty is sincere? : I asked, before he could say anything about Isaac, and it stopped him.

:No,: he said bleakly. :The Bastion does not—cannot— forgive. It relies too greatly on loyalty.:

:So does the Mirador.: Anything to keep him away from the subject of Isaac Garamond and where I went when I left the suite at night.

:No, not . . . I misspoke. It isn’t loyalty at stake. It’s obedience . And if the disobedient are not punished, then how can the obedience of the rest be commanded?:

I shivered at his tone, dull, flat, as if he was too weary to be horrified at what he knew.

:Once you have run,: he said, grimly pursuing the question, :you cannot be welcomed back. There is no abasement great enough to erase your sin. I don’t know if Gemma knows she’s lying, but she’s lying all the same.:

:Then why make the offer?:

:To get us back,: Gideon said and bared his teeth in something that was not a smile. :And to wring every last scrap of information about the Mirador out of us that they can.:

He cut off my protest before it was even fully formed. :Don’t think anything has changed. Gemma is far more politically astute than old Jules Mercator, but that doesn’t mean that if you scratch her, she’ll bleed a different color.:

:You sound as if you speak from personal knowledge.:

:I do.: He gave me no chance to ask further, but said, :The Bastion wants to see the Cabalines fall. They want the Mirador for themselves. And Lord Stephen having been such a great disappointment to them after the disasters of Jane’s and Gareth’s reigns, they are becoming less and less choosy about the means they employ. I am only afraid that some of the younger wizards may be foolish enough to trust Gemma’s pretty words.:

:You could speak to them.:

:What need? Thaddeus and Eric between them will say all that can be said.:

:I am given to understand that Thaddeus tore up his letter of amnesty on the spot and threatened to feed it to Aias Perrault.:

:That’s Thaddeus,: Gideon agreed. :Subtlety is ever his watchword.:

:He’s probably already urging Stephen to declare war.:

:Expel us all as spies. He’d love to ship me back to the Bastion in a box.:

:You’re never going to tell me why he hates you, are you?:

:No,: Gideon said and smiled at me sweetly. :The same way you’re never going to tell me anything except exactly what you want me to hear.:

:Gideon—:

:Don’t start,: he said fiercely. He sat down, opened one of the books, and bent his head over it in a fashion clearly intended to rebuff conversation.

I stood and watched him for some time before I said quietly, “I’m going to bed.” It took all my willpower not to allow my retreat to be a skulk or a scuttle.

It was much later when Gideon came to bed. Although I was awake, I said nothing, and although he knew I was awake, he did not try to touch me.

-

“It’s Gideon,” he said, and I relaxed a little. “He don’t leave Felix’s rooms hardly ever, and him and Felix are fighting, and I thought if you didn’t mind, he could maybe come along with you, and then—”

“You wouldn’t have to worry about him,” I finished. That was practically babbling, for Mildmay, and I’d understood him mostly from long practice and context.

“Yeah.” And he was definitely blushing.

I forbore to tease him, remembering Gideon’s far more eloquently expressed concern for Mildmay himself.

-

Gideon had been reluctant, but Mildmay’s clumsy manipulation had worked; he was even more reluctant to admit to me that he didn’t want to go. We watched together as first the courtiers came in, then Lord Stephen and his siblings entered through the door behind the dais.

-

I practiced being a swan-daughter, as I did whenever I attended court, tall and grave and distant, and Gideon stood sharp-eyed and aloof beside me. But interested. After court, after Lord Stephen had made the announcement of his plans to seek a bride, it was Gideon who noticed Antony heading toward us. A sharp nudge in my ribs and a nod in Antony’s direction, and I could see the inquiry in his raised eyebrows: friend or foe?

“Lord Antony Lemerius,” I said under my breath. “Harmless. ”

That got me a sardonic quirk of his mouth, and he moved back a little.

-

Gideon blinked. He pulled his tablet and stylus out of his coat pocket and wrote in his neat, swift, highly Kekropian hand, Won’t I be in the way?

“Not a bit,” I said brightly, ignoring the appalled expression on Antony’s face that said otherwise. “And if you’re along we won’t have to worry about the candles going out.”

He made me a small, ironic bow.

“Good,” I said, and to Antony, briskly dismissive, “We’ll meet you at nine in the Stoa St. Maximilian.” Gideon was happily quick to pick up my cues, quicker than many actors I’d worked with, and we made our exit.

Back in Felix’s suite, he was still eyeing me with puzzled speculation. “What?” I said.
He wrote, Why do you want me along?

“Can’t I enjoy your company?”

It embarrassed him; he looked away for a moment, then wrote, I hope that you do. But that does not answer my question.

“Oh, God, Gideon, do you have to analyze everything to death? Look, that crypt isn’t a very pleasant place, and Antony is, um, uninspiring company at the best of times.”

His eyebrows went up; I said, “I know, I know—that being so, why did I offer?” I didn’t know the answer to that myself, so I chose a reason I thought he’d accept: “I didn’t want Mildmay to have to put up with Antony on top of everything else he has to put up with all the time. All right?”

He considered me a moment. It is not a crime to love someone.

That depends very much on whom you love. But I didn’t say it.

-

Mehitabel and Gideon left at some point, and it was only after they’d gone that I realized I’d forgotten to find out where they were going. I was mostly just glad we wouldn’t have to think up some fancy story for them.

-

Felix barely even seemed to notice when I remarked that Gideon and I had plans for the evening and would be out late; I saw Mildmay register the news, but he didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow at me. I hadn’t intended to keep it secret from him, exactly, but there seemed no point in discussing it when he and Felix were so clearly somewhere else. I could see in Gideon’s face when we closed the door behind us at quarter of nine that he was as relieved as I was.

-

“Ah,” I said warily, but Gideon interrupted with a touch at my sleeve. His witchlights illuminated his tablet very nicely: Who was Amaryllis Cordelia?

It was a fair question. It wasn’t hard to get Antony started, either, and the rest of the way to the crypt, we regaled Gideon with the sordid history of Amaryllis Cordelia.

The door was still unlocked. Antony led the way directly to Amaryllis Cordelia’s tomb. Gideon read the inscription and wrote thoughtfully, Is this a common sentiment for memorials?

Antony considered a moment, taking candles from the sack he had brought and lighting them to let their wax anchor them to the freestanding tombs nearest Amaryllis Cordelia’s plaque. “I know of three or four variations on that same platitude. Why?”

Gideon shrugged, running his fingers over the deeply carved letters of her name, and then wrote, Only a folk belief common in the Grasslands, that ghosts are the dreams of the dead.

“You mean someone was trying to avert haunting?” I said.

Possibly. From what you said of her life, I can understand not wanting her ghost to walk.

“It’s an interesting idea,” Antony said, “but it hardly matters, because she isn’t here.”

“Do you think it’s just a fake, then? Nothing but the slab?”

“I think it’s a riddle,” Antony said, and the unsettling light in his eyes wasn’t all reflections from the candles.

Gideon and I exchanged an uneasy look. “What kind of riddle? ”

“What better place to hide secrets than in a crypt?” Antony said, flourishing a crowbar he’d pulled out of his sack.

“Don’t answer questions with questions, Antony,” I said.

He glared at me. “You need not help if you don’t want to, but kindly don’t get in the way.”

I promptly got in the way. “I want to think this through again.”

“What is there to think through? An obviously, demonstrably false tomb—it’s only logical to assume that it’s a hiding place for something.”

“But what in the world—”

“That,” said Antony, stepping around me, “is what I intend to find out.”

The tombs of the Cordelii had been designed so that one could open them again without breaking anything, if one really wanted to. I wondered morbidly, watching with Gideon as Antony levered the stone out of the wall, if that had been in case they forgot and buried one of the kings with his heart still in his body. I hadn’t meant to help—this felt wrong to me, and I was increasingly sure I wanted no part of it—but I ended up taking one end of the stone, just to keep it from smashing to bits on the floor. I figured we’d be putting it back in another couple minutes.

It was a thin stone, not as heavy as I’d expected; on the count of three, Antony and I pulled it free of the wall and laid it down.

Gideon screamed.

I had never heard him make a noise before, not once since Bernard Heber and Mildmay had hauled him out of the oubliette in Aiaia. At first, I didn’t even connect the noise with Gideon but looked frantically up at the tomb, assuming in some morbid madness that such an awful, senseless sound had to have come from there.

I might have screamed myself; later, I found my memory of the next few seconds vague, until I was standing, with Gideon and Antony, pressed back like cornered animals against the tomb of Geoffrey Cordelius, the same one Mildmay and I had sat on as he told me the story of Amaryllis Cordelia and her ambition.

There was a body in the wall niche, now slumped halfway out; Gideon later confessed that for a moment he had thought the body was a ghoul, like the ones that infested the swamps to the south of the city. It was richly clothed in a gown of what had once been velvet, black stitched with white seed pearls; its hair, long and colorless, was dressed under a cap of the same. The eyelids were open, the sockets clotted and staring. The hands had petrified into claws, and every time I tried to close my eyes that night, I saw them again.

-

We have to put her back, Gideon wrote, in straggling, wobbly letters completely unlike his normal handwriting.

Antony and I looked at him in horror.

We can’t leave her like that.

“God,” I said again, knowing he was right. “Who’s going to touch her?”

We looked at each other. I had seen death before. But this thing which had once been Amaryllis Cordelia . . . I bit back the question rattling around my skull: do you suppose she died before or after they put that stone in place?

“I’ll do it,” Antony said. “It is, after all, my fault.” Neither Gideon nor I was moved to protest. Antony carefully lifted the corpse back into its niche and laid it out flat; he put the dreadful claws together over its chest, the beryl signet uppermost, in a parody of peace.

I helped Antony guide the tombstone back into place. It was harder to lift than it’d been to let down; in the end Gideon had to help after all, bracing it as we lined it up with its tiny grooves. When it slotted back into place, it did so with a sudden thump of finality.

-

When we got back from the Warren, we found Gideon, Mehitabel, and Lord Antony huddled around our fireplace like kids who’ve been told too many stories about the Tallowman to be able to sleep. I think me and Felix felt about the same.

-

Whatever Felix was after, he didn’t find it, and dinner that night was silent like falling down a well. Felix was staring off into space like he was waiting for some answer to come walking through the door. Gideon looked like the only reason he wasn’t asking questions was being afraid Felix would answer him. I remembered that I still didn’t know what Felix had been doing the night I showed Mehitabel and Lord Antony the crypt of the Cordelii—and was she with him now?—and I didn’t blame Gideon for not really wanting to know. There’s things you can’t unknow once you’ve got a good look at them, and some of them are the kind of thing that kills love dead as stone.

-

Gideon wasn’t there, and I was fine with that. Because once he knew something was up, he wouldn’t let me leave until he knew what it was. And once he knew what I was doing, he wouldn’t let me do it.

-

It didn’t help, but I had to open the door anyway. I can’t even tell you how relieved I was when there was nobody there. There was a note on the table, Gideon’s handwriting: HE SAYS MEET HIM IN THE CERULEAN ANTECHAMBER. It took me a while to figure out “cerulean,” but I didn’t have to ask who “he” was or what the note really meant, which was, kindly get out before either of us has to look at you. And it was just like Felix to make Gideon write the note.

-

Rinaldo said, changing the subject about as bald as an egg, “Gideon came to visit us yesterday afternoon.”

“Yeah?” I said. So that was where he had gone.

“And Mehitabel in the evening,” Simon said.

“Our popularity is becoming quite dizzying.”

I knew what Simon was fishing for, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. “What did Gideon want?”

“Just to talk to someone who didn’t want to argue, I think,” Simon said. “He looked tired. Are he and Felix fighting again?”

“You know Felix,” I said. “He’s got to fight with somebody, and I won’t oblige him.”

-

Gideon said Malkar was not haunting Mildmay, but Gideon couldn’t see ghosts, either, only the “signs” of haunting, whatever exactly those were supposed to be. And I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t worried about Mildmay, but about myself. It was unforgivably selfish; even Gideon would find it so.

-

I had tried to talk to Gideon about it. Gideon was terrifyingly well-read; I had thought if anyone would know where I might track this idea down, it would be he. But my poor, halting explanation was made worse by my selfish desire to keep the Khloïdanikos to myself; it was the one thing I had that I did not have to share, not with Mildmay, not with Gideon, not with my foul haunting memories of Malkar. And so I had explained badly and had been unable to distinguish the kind of openness I meant from the Eusebian understanding, which was far closer to the Euryganeic theory Thamuris had been taught. Openness—what the Eusebians called ereimos—was a quality in younger wizards which older wizards exploited ruthlessly. One tried to learn to be anereimos, closed (“properly bounded in the self ” was how Gideon put it), as quickly as one could, so that one could become a predator in turn, instead of remaining prey. There was also some sexual connotation to the word, which Gideon was profoundly unwilling to discuss, but I thought it had to do with why he framed intercourse between two men always and only in terms of one man’s submission to the other.

I knew it didn’t have to be like that, just as being open did not have to mean being ereimos, being prey, but I didn’t know how to explain it. I didn’t know how to change the terms of our relationship. And I was afraid. Afraid of giving up control, afraid of letting Gideon see what I truly was. I trusted him not to hurt me, but I couldn’t trust him to understand. I couldn’t trust him not to leave.

-

“What about Gideon Thraxios?”

“You must be out of your mind. What possible reason could Gideon have for returning?”

Vulpes paced crossly; it would probably be quite a coup to get Gideon to return to the Bastion of his own free will.

-

He hesitated at the door of his own room. I wondered if Gideon was lying awake waiting for him.

-

Both Felix and Gideon were in the sitting room. My first step away from the support of the door damn near ended with me flat on my face, and I heard Gideon’s breath catch.

-

“Gideon says you should be in bed,” Felix said.

“Be better if I keep moving.”

-

He looked over at Gideon, listening. “Gideon says that although he’s not keen on helping you kill yourself, it occurs to him that we might ask Rinaldo if you could borrow a walking stick. Would that work?”

-

While Felix wrote his note, I sat and made my breathing even out, and then I looked up at Gideon and said, “Sorry.”

His eyebrows went up.

“For the things I said.” I could feel myself going as red as a tomato. “You know. On Deuxième.”
He shook his head and made a kind of gentle pushing-away gesture, like he was saying it didn’t matter.

“I kind of think it does matter.” I wished like fuck Felix wasn’t sitting there, but I couldn’t put it off no longer. “And I’m sorry.”

Gideon looked at me a moment, and then he smiled, warm as sunlight, and poured me a cup of tea. Which I figured meant I was forgiven.

-

I hadn’t slept much, but I wasn’t no ray of sunshine anyway, and Felix and Gideon seemed to have mended their fences, from what I could tell. I’d thought sometimes that it was Gideon’s special curse that he couldn’t stay mad at Felix. No matter what Felix did, they never stayed on the outs for long.

-

Sergeant Morny hadn’t shown up yet, but Gideon was there, looking extremely well-dressed and well-groomed, which I figured to mean he didn’t like this no better than I did. He was wearing his best brown coat, and he’d tied his hair back with a wide brown ribbon. He looked absolutely respectable, and the thought got across my mind before I could stop it, that I wished his tongue hadn’t been cut out so he could talk to the sergeant instead of me. Nice, Milly-Fox. Real fucking classy.

“Hey,” I said and sat down.

He nodded back, and we waited together. I used the time to rebraid my hair, pretending hard that if I looked like a cit, the Dogs would treat me like one. Gideon got up and came around behind me and retied the ribbon. He went back to his seat and smiled at me in a way that said he knew as well as I did that we were being stupid.

-

The bruises on my chest and belly and back were in their full rainbow glory, and it was worth it to see Waterman’s face when he realized I couldn’t possibly be lying. I didn’t look at Gideon.

-

And then it was just me and Gideon, and Gideon was giving me this bright-eyed I’ll get it out of you if I have to ask Felix look, and fuck, I had to kill that before it spread.

I knew right how to do it though. Said, “Hey, you want to come visit the resurrectionists’ guildhall with me and Simon?”

And it worked. Like fucking magic.

-

“All right. Ready, Gideon?”

Gideon nodded. His clerky, choirboy face was as hard to read as ever, but his eyes were bright. He looked better than I could remember him looking in a long time, and I wondered if maybe he hated the Mirador as much as I did.

-

And him and Gideon weren’t real good with each other, neither. I didn’t want to know what was going on in their bedroom when I slipped out and headed for the Altanueva, but I did kind of hope it was something, I don’t know, nice.

-

Gideon did not want me to go to the soirée.

I asked him why, struggling to be reasonable, and he merely shrugged and turned away.

“Gideon?”

:Is it not enough that I have asked?:

:Well, frankly, no. And it’s not like you to try that sort of manipulation, anyway.: He’d been out of sorts all afternoon, sniping at me with more than his usual, amiable venom, goading me into retort time and again—Mildmay had made his escape almost immediately after dinner— and if he’d planned to manipulate me, he wouldn’t have gotten my back up so thoroughly as a start. Something had to be wrong. :What is it?:

:I don’t imagine you’ll care about my reasons. You never have before.:

“Either talk to me or don’t,” I said, stalking into the bedroom to choose a coat.

:Is there any use? Really?:

“I don’t know,” I said with exaggerated patience. “Since you won’t tell me what you’re talking about, I’m hardly qualified to say.”

:Don’t be disingenuous.:

:I’m not.: I turned to face him, digging my nails into my palms against the urge to strike him or shout at him. :I’m asking you to stop fencing and tell me what the matter is.:

:Isaac Garamond.:

:What?:

He held my gaze. :Or whoever it is you’ll go off with this time. But most likely Messire Garamond, since he is your newest toy.:

“Gideon, I—”

:Don’t think of him that way? Of course you do. How stupid have I been, Felix, to imagine that you think of me in any other way?:

:You know perfectly well I don’t—:

:I know no such thing! You’ve certainly never bothered to be faithful to me.:

:It’s not like that.:

:I beg to differ. It is exactly like that. If I asked, could you even tell me the names of all the men you’ve slept with in the past two years?:

“Sleeping isn’t an activity I engage in with other men, darling, ” I said, turning back to the wardrobe and yanking out a coat. “And anyway, you’ve made it perfectly clear what you will and won’t put up with, so—”

:Have I? When? When have I ever refused you anything?:

“The look on your face was more than enough, thank you.” And the memory still stung like salt on raw flesh.

:So it’s my fault? You’re going out . . . :

“Whoring is the word you’re looking for,” I said and gave him a hard smile.

:Is it? Isaac Garamond isn’t a whore.:

“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of Isaac?”

:Blessed saints, am I jealous?: His stare was incredulous as well as infuriated. :I’m forty-five, Felix, and apparently inadequate for your sexual sophistication. Why in the world would I be jealous?:

“Because you’re being stupid,” I said, shrugging into my waistcoat and doing up the buttons. “Whatever I do with . . . with other men, has nothing to do with you.”

:Yes, it does.:

The ferocity of his tone startled me into looking at him; his eyes were brilliant with anger, his hands clenched—he was more vital and compelling than I’d seen him in months. :You may believe it has nothing to do with me, but you’re wrong. I am telling you, as plainly as I can, it has everything to do with me, and I can’t stand it any longer.:

“You’re awfully dramatic,” I said, going to the mirror to tie my cravat. I was careful not to meet my own eyes.

:No, don’t think you’ll slide out from under by making me embarrassed. You love dramatics, and you know it.:

“So what are you leading up to, anyway?” I said, doing my best to sound unconcerned. “Throwing me over?”

:Not unless you make me.:

“I can’t make you do anything.”

:Liar.:

I hoped he couldn’t see my flinch.

:I’m telling you,: he said, :if you want me to stay, you have to stay.:

“But—”

:Coming back is not the same as staying, and don’t pretend you think it is.:

Luckily, Malkar had drilled me in the proper tying of a cravat until I could do it with my mind three-quarters elsewhere. “What is it you want, Gideon?”

:I want you to stop going to other men’s beds. Whatever it is you need, let me do it.:

Oh, you don’t want that, I thought, and did not smile at my reflection. I turned to get my coat.

:All or nothing, Felix. I won’t stand for anything else.:

“I hear you,” I said.

:And?:

“Now that I have my orders,” I said, keeping my voice mild, “I guess I can decide whether to obey or to mutiny.”

:That’s not what I meant.:

“No? That’s certainly what it sounded like.” I shrugged my coat on, checked my reflection again.

:Do you truly not care?:

“Of course I care. But you don’t understand—”

:Because you won’t let me.: He caught my wrist. :Felix, please.:

“All right!” I said and pulled free. “But I’m still going to this damned soirée. I promise, however, that I will not come back to anyone’s bed but yours. Will that do?”

He looked at me for a long moment. I wondered, as I always wondered, what it was he saw, what it was he thought he loved. Finally, he said, :The sign of a good compromise. We’re both angry. Yes, go. We’ll get no use out of each other this evening anyway.:

“How right you are,” I said and left, slamming the door vindictively behind me.

-

His mood was Gideon’s fault. I don’t know what Gideon’s problem was that afternoon, but he was pissed at Felix and he wasn’t letting go of it, neither. They were sort of snarling at each other all through dinner, and it only got worse when Maurice came in with the hot water and Felix started getting ready.

I got dressed and rebraided my hair and tried to ignore them. But Felix was starting to answer Gideon out loud, and that was a real bad sign. I said loudly, “I’ll be out in the hall when you’re ready, Felix,” and ducked out the door before he could think to stop me. I hated watching them fight, and if I was in the hall, it might maybe give Felix a way to escape quicker.

-

“Gideon lies like an angel,” Thaddeus said, and his hand caught my biceps.

-

I shrugged at Gideon. Gideon shrugged back at me. And, well, it’d worked last time, so I said, “Hey, you wanna go to the Lower City with Simon and me?”

And Gideon grinned like a kid.

-

Simon had things to do, so me and Gideon went back to the suite. Felix wasn’t back from wherever he’d gone, and I figured that was okay.

I shut the door. Gideon touched my arm. I looked at him, and he pointed at my leg, and raised his eyebrows.

“It’s okay,” I said.

He gave me a look, sort of impatient and disgusted, and pointed at my leg again.

“No, really, it’s okay. It don’t hurt too bad.”

He flapped his hand at me, like it wasn’t worth arguing about, and pointed me at a chair. I sat down and waited. He sat down across from me and got out his tablet. Wrote a word on it and pushed it across the table.

JENNY?

“You’re curious.”

He nodded with a sort of apologetic shrug.

“We were kids together. I mean, Keep—Kolkhis ran her like she did me.”

He made a go on sort of gesture.

“There ain’t no more. She started hooking ’bout the time I was getting good at killing people.”

He took his tablet back and wrote another word. He pushed it back at me. Now, under JENNY? it said: FRIENDS? He was good about making the letters regular and not using hard words. It was still a fucking awful way to run a conversation, though.

“Me and Jenny?”

He nodded.

“I dunno. I never liked her much.”

He yanked the tablet back and wrote in big letters: WHY? And he jabbed with his stylus more or less in the direction of the Lower City.

“Can you explain everything you do?”

He shook his head, but the way he kept his eyes on me told me he wasn’t letting me off the hook.

I wasn’t getting into the whole thing about Ginevra and Keeper with him. And even if I didn’t like it, there was another side to the thing. Because I kept thinking about Jenny being in the Kennel, and it wasn’t making me happy, neither. So I said, “Maybe ’cause there’s so few of us left. I mean, there’s Margot, and she hates me, and there’s Jean-Tigre, and he don’t know me to spit on me no more. Lots of ’em I just lost, and the rest are dead. So it’s like I can’t just pretend Jenny don’t exist, ’cause I remember her when we were little and we worked together.”

He nodded. He seemed to understand what I meant.

I’d been meaning to tell him about Thaddeus anyway, and now seemed like a perfect fucking time to distract him away from me. I said, “I mean, that don’t work for everybody. You and Thaddeus were kids together, weren’t you?”
He nodded, but his face went wary.

“He, um, said some stuff at the soirée.”

Gideon fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and pushed it across the table. This one was one of his savers—the things he would’ve been writing so often it made more sense to just keep ’em—a little square with a big question mark on it.

“Same old. About you being a spy.”

Gideon made a face.

“Well, you know, I don’t think he really believes it, or he wouldn’t be saying it to me. I mean, of all the people he could pick. But he is saying it.” I looked at him, wishing I had a better idea of what happened in his head. “He don’t seem to like you very much.”

Gideon thought that was funny. He didn’t really laugh anymore—he wouldn’t open his mouth—but you knew when he was laughing just the same.

“Felix says Thaddeus helped you get to the Mirador.”

Gideon shrugged widely and then nodded.

“You got something on him.”

He grinned at me. It was a sharp, nasty grin. Mute or not, Gideon wasn’t somebody to fuck with. I had to remind myself of that every so often, because it was easy to be sorry for him and forget just how hard he could bite if somebody pissed him off. Him and Felix were well matched.

“He ain’t a spy, is he?”

He shook his head.

“Then it ain’t none of my business, I guess,” I said. “But if you got a leash on him, you might want to give it a yank.”

Gideon waved that away.

“You sure?”

Gideon nodded.

“Then I won’t ride you about it. But Thaddeus’ll do you a mischief if he can.”

Gideon shook his head, and I knew what he meant: He can’t.

-

Finding a copy of Ezrabeth Ynge’s Influence of the Moon on the Energy of Souls was simplicity itself compared to some of the treasure hunts I’d gone on for Gideon. It had taken me over a month and visits to three different booksellers to replace the copy of Chattan d’Islay’s A Treatise upon Spirit he’d lost in Aiaia, and I wouldn’t have found Edmond Sang’s translation of Matthew Nausikaaïos’s Psukhomakhia at all if I hadn’t quite literally fallen over it in the Archive of the Seven Queens. The Ynge only took me the better part of an afternoon.

-

Gideon greeted me with a scowl, which lightened quite perceptibly when he saw the book in my hand.

:No,: I said, :I was not indulging in an afternoon assignation, with Isaac Garamond or anyone else.:

:I didn’t think you were. But I’ve noticed how careful you’re being not to be alone with me since last night.:

:Less than twenty-four hours hardly constitutes evidence of anything,: I said, more sharply than I meant to because he was right.

:Don’t forget that I know you,: he said, and I irritated myself immeasurably by blushing.

Dinner was not a comfortable meal, and afterward, Gideon said bluntly, :Let us adjourn to the bedroom.:

I could think of few things I felt less like doing. But I could not say so. It was so rare for Gideon to instigate sex, and after the fight we’d had before the soirée . . . I couldn’t reject him.

I put the Ynge aside and followed him into the bedroom.

We undressed in the dark and lay down together. I spun the foreplay out as long as I could; Gideon loved kissing, loved having my tongue in his mouth. I found the sensation more disturbing than erotic, and if I sometimes imagined what it would be like to have his mouth, that warm wet emptiness, engulfing my sex, I never said so. Gideon was not a whore, to make such cruel demands of. But still, I would kiss him for as long as he wanted.

But he was also intensely self-conscious about his desires—embarrassed by them. I had tried, once, to tell him he shouldn’t be; he had told me furiously not to patronize him. I had not mentioned the matter again except, of course, when we fought.

So I didn’t demur when he pulled away, although I was still not aroused. I moved down the bed. He was only half-hard, but he responded well to my mouth and fingers. My own body remained sluggish; even a calculated, clandestine brutality got no more than a flicker. With the right erotiques, I might have been able to remedy the problem, but I kept no such toys. I had not, I thought bitterly, anticipated the need.

I would not be able to sustain the active role tonight. I drew back, lay down on my stomach beside him, deviating from our usual practice, a series of actions as formal and measured as a ritual, and felt Gideon’s surprise, even before he spoke.

:Felix?:

All the words I knew for this were ugly.

I said, :You wanted . . . more. More of me.: I reached, found his hand in the darkness, placed it on my left buttock. Surely that was explicit enough, invitation enough.

But Gideon did not move. After a long, deathly pause, he said, :Why now?:

:What?:

His fingers tightened, very slightly, forbidding me to move. :We’ve been lovers for two years. Why now?:

:You said—:

:This,: he said, with a stinging slap to my haunch as he released me, :isn’t what I meant, and you know it.:

“You don’t want me?”

:That’s not the point here.:

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, sitting up. “Seeing as how we’re in bed together, I think whether you want me or not might be very much to the point.”

:No, the point is whether you want me.: I flinched away from his hand cupping my genitals. :You don’t, do you?:

“Gideon, it’s not—”

:Oh, but it is. Darling.:

I snarled back, “Well, forgive me for not finding self-sacrifice arousing.”

:What’s that supposed to mean?:

I got up, called witchlight in a hard glare, dragged on my dressing gown. “It’s not like you’ve taken any particular pains to hide the fact that you’d rather read Coeurterrene theory than come to bed with me.:

:And how am I supposed to feel, sharing you with—Felix! Don’t you dare walk out in—:

I slammed the bedroom door open.

On the other side of the sitting room, Mildmay startled so violently that a half-finished layout of the Queen of Tambrin cascaded gracefully to the floor.

“Come on,” I said.

He’d already been halfway to his feet, but he froze, staring at me. “Where?”

I bared my teeth at him in a hard, savage smile. “The Crown of Nails. Now.”

:Felix!:

I ignored Gideon; Mildmay picked up his cane and said, “You catch the Winter Fever and die, don’t blame me.”

“Oh, I won’t.” I called to Gideon, “Don’t wait up, darling,” and set out into the Mirador. If we happened to meet anyone, that would be their problem.

-

I had known Gideon would be incandescent with jealousy, and I bore his tirade as long as I could. But finally, I said, “He invited me to dinner. What was I supposed to do, tell him my lover won’t let me go?” Gideon didn’t dignify that with a response, which had been my intention. Anything to get him to shut up.

-

Isaac Garamond did not. I could be myself with him in a way I never could with Gideon—Gideon, who claimed he did not want to change me, but who would not accept me as I was.

-

I walked back alone.

When I came in, Gideon looked up from a diagram he was making with three different colors of ink. His eyebrows went up.

“Yeah,” I said. “He sent me back.”

Gideon pointed at the chair opposite him. I didn’t want to be alone. I sat down.

Gideon made a kind of come on gesture.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s pissed off about or why . . .” I thought a second, said carefully, “You know he don’t care about Mr. Garamond, right?”

Gideon gave me a flat I don’t want to talk about it head-shake. And powers and saints, I didn’t want to push. I said, “Look. You want to play cards or something?”

He shrugged and nodded, giving me a lopsided smile that said as how I was no good at changing the subject but he wouldn’t get on my case about it.

We played cards until the ninth hour of the night. Felix still hadn’t come back by the time we went to bed. Gideon lost the last five hands like he’d never seen a deck of cards before in his life.

-

Felix and Gideon were standing in the middle of the room, staring at each other. Felix was still wearing last night’s clothes. They both turned toward me, like they thought I was going to attack them. I stopped right where I was because it seemed like they were maybe an inch, inch and a half, from starting to throw magic around, and I didn’t want to get in the way of none of that.

Gideon said something to Felix. I could tell by the way Felix stiffened. I thought, praying, that Felix was going to be able to keep himself from answering—that was the only way they could get out of the bad fights—but then he said, “No, I’m not bound-by-forms to you, and I’m fucking well grateful for it.”

Oh fuck me sideways ’til I cry, I thought. That was the worst sign, the worst ever. Felix never swore, never anything worse than “damn.” But Gideon was every bit as mad, maybe even madder, and I stood there and watched and saw Gideon doing something I hadn’t thought you could. He was playing the fight by Felix’s rules, and he was winning. Felix actually backed up a step, and I saw something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen there in a long time.

I was praying at Gideon to see it too and stop, but he was past anything like that. I knew what had got him going—it was that same old fight about Felix cheating on him, the fight they’d been worrying at like an old bone the past couple days—but even in the fight that winter where they hadn’t spoken to each other for three days, it hadn’t been like this. Because this time Gideon wasn’t stopping. I could see it. He had had enough, and it got clearer and clearer for me, standing there with one hand still on the door, that this was everything Gideon hadn’t said to Felix for like an indiction and a half, everything he’d turned a blind eye to or laughed off or told himself was just Felix—all of it coming back in Felix’s face at once. Felix wasn’t mad no more. He was white as paper and his eyes seemed to be eating up his face.

“Gideon—”

Gideon stopped him with a gesture, like he was pushing him away. Gideon looked from him to me, and I saw that right then he didn’t care about me any more than he did Felix. He turned and walked out the door. We both stood there, staring after him. Felix said, “Go after him.”

-

I felt Felix like a fire all morning. If we hadn’t had to go to court, if he’d been able to go after Gideon and talk to him, I think things might have come out okay. Not great, maybe, ’cause I had a kind of idea that some of the things Gideon had said were things that you couldn’t leave lay once they were out, but good enough to get by on. But we had to go to court, and we had to stand there, and Felix had time to think. And that was bad. I could feel his mood shifting. I think he’d almost been to where he might have said he was sorry to Gideon—something he said even less than he swore—like Gideon had managed to tear off that spiked armor. But the longer we stood there—dunno what was going on ’cause I sure as fuck wasn’t listening—the more I could feel the armor going back on, and the spikes getting longer and sharper. By the time court was over, not only was Felix not sorry, he was pissed off at Gideon again.

-

Simon stepped aside. There was nothing else he could do. I didn’t have no choice either. I followed Felix in. Gideon was sitting in a chair by the fire, and he stayed sitting there, his hands folded in his lap. He looked at Felix, and I got to say that it wasn’t a look I’d ever have wanted turned on me.

Whatever they said to each other, it stayed silent. Felix started, I think, because I could tell when Gideon interrupted him. Gideon’s face didn’t change. It was like he’d moved himself into some other place, someplace where he didn’t have to forgive Felix or listen to him or care what he thought. I kind of wished I could get there with him, but I knew I never could.

He didn’t say much to Felix then. I don’t think he had to. It looked to me like there wasn’t anything much left to say, and Gideon knew it. Felix hadn’t, but Felix never could understand when an argument had to be over, not unless he’d won it. Gideon found the right words this time, whatever they were, because there was a moment’s silence—a real silence, with neither of them saying anything—and then Felix said in a weird, flat voice, “Very well. If that is how you feel.”

Gideon didn’t even answer him. He turned away and looked into the fire. I’d never seen Felix dismissed like that—even people who hated him couldn’t ignore him—and there was nothing in my head when we left the room but stupid swear words.

-

And, you know, there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do for him anyway. I couldn’t make Gideon come back, even if I’d wanted to try. And I didn’t, because, as awful as it made me feel, I thought Gideon was right to go.

-

“. . . Felix looking like death . . . went to Simon Barrister, that’s what I heard . . . that poor mute wizard . . . so he gets dumped by his piece of Imperial ass . . . the Fox tried to protect Lord Gideon and Lord Felix struck him aside like he wasn’t there . . . never trusted . . . pitched a screaming fit in the middle of the Welkin Vault . . . see Lord Tomcat on the prowl again, you mark my words . . .”

-

I did think, for a little while, about going to Gideon and begging him to come back, but when I looked at it square on, I knew he wouldn’t. If he wouldn’t do it for Felix—and it was pretty fucking obvious he was done doing things for Felix—there was no fucking way he was going to do it for me.

-

“You don’t have to leave,” Rinaldo said.

“Yeah, I do,” I said. I didn’t mean to look at Gideon when I said it, but my eyes slid that way anyway.

“Gideon says he isn’t upset with you for anything,” Simon said.

“Thanks, Gideon, but I know how Felix would feel about me being here. And, I mean, you can’t exactly want me around. I’ll just go.”

-

It felt weird being back in Felix’s suite. I mean, everything was the same—Gideon hadn’t even gotten his books off the shelves—but nothing seemed like it was quite in the right place.

-

“I’m the guy who killed Cornell Teverius,” I said. “Ain’t you heard?”

Stupid, nasty thing to say, I know. But there were so many things I was pretending hadn’t happened by not ever talking about ’em. It was like that old story about the boy and the dam, how he can stop one hole with his finger, and another with his foot, but then there’s a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and finally he just gets washed away. That’s what happened with me and that crack about Cornell Teverius. I hadn’t meant to say it. It just burst out.

Simon said, “Mildmay, I didn’t mean—”

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve said it. It was stupid.”

“Gideon says that you are allowed the occasional outburst.”

-

As we followed him down another staircase, Simon said in my ear, “Gideon says he’s entirely convinced you’re plotting something.”

“Tell Gideon he’s right.”

-

Gideon was the first thing I saw when I opened the door.

Somebody’d lugged a chair down, and he was in it, facing the door, a lantern by his feet. And he was dead. It wasn’t suicide, and it wasn’t an accident. People don’t get strangled without somebody meaning it to happen. His face was swollen and dark. It took me a moment to figure out what was wrong with him, why he didn’t look like all the dead, strangled people I’d seen in my time, and then it hit me, so hard my knees buckled, and I ended up on all fours, gasping, trying not to cry and not to puke. His mouth was sagging open, but there was no tongue sticking out.

Kolkhis had taught me how to be cold, and I needed it right then, even though I hated it. Hated myself for it. But it got me back on my feet, and got me close enough to the thing that had been Gideon to take a good look.

He’d probably been dead an hour or so, though I wasn’t no expert on that end of things, and whoever had done it had taken some pains with the body. Same way you don’t get strangled by accident or because you decide to do it yourself, you don’t sit there and let somebody get their knot all tidy behind your ear. He hadn’t died with his hands folded all neat like that, neither.

There was a piece of paper under them, like Gideon was a paperweight or something. I couldn’t see most of the message, but the signature was in plain view, and it was one of those words I didn’t have no trouble with: Felix.

-

“Oh, I definitely can,” Felix said. “Did you murder Gideon?”

“Of course not!”

But he was lying. We could all hear it—even Mr. [Isaac] Garamond himself, because when I finally quit being such a fucking coward and looked at him, I’ve never seen a guy with more guilt on his face.

-

I kept seeing Gideon, the smile he’d given me when he left the Lady’s Lapdog, kept thinking that while I’d been scaring the shit out of poor, stupid Hugo Chandler, Gideon had been dying, choking and strangling with Isaac Garamond’s wire around his throat. And, Kethe, I knew just exactly how it would’ve happened, the way his fingers would have scrabbled at the wire and at Mr. Garamond’s hands, the way he would’ve twitched and struggled and then gone limp, just another sack of dead meat.

-

We were silent again, because I didn’t know what the fuck to say, then he said, “Mildmay?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think it’s dark, where Gideon is?” And, powers, his accent had gotten away from him, and his voice was barely more than breath, and he sounded so fucking lost.

"Oh, sweetheart,” I said, and my voice broke. "C’mere.” We found each other in the dark, and I hugged him, and for once he didn’t go stiff or shrug me away, but hugged me back.

“I don’t want him to be in the dark,” he said into my shoulder. “I don’t want him to be afraid.”

“His White-Eyed Lady was waiting for him,” I said. “She’ll take care of him. She’ll help him rest.”

“Do you think so? Really?” He was crying, the way you learn to cry when you’re a kept-thief and you don’t dare make any sound about it. But I could feel his tears soaking into my shirt.

“Really,” I said, and held him against the dark.

-

To punish myself, I put Ephreal Sand on top of Ezrabeth Ynge. There. That was two. I could take five of Gideon’s books.

I picked the Principia Lucis because Gideon had considered it the greatest theoretical work on thaumaturgy ever written; A Treatise upon Spirit and the Psukhomakhia because I had made him happy by finding them for him; the new Concerning the Thaumaturgy of Wood because it was the book he had been reading when . . .

That was six. I searched the shelves, looking for the book that Gideon himself would most have wanted to take. And I knew, my breath hitching with something that was not quite pain, when I found it. Nahum Westerley’s Inquiries into the World’s Heart. I’d never seen Gideon reading it; he didn’t need to. He could quote long passages of it from memory. But he’d insisted on buying a copy all the same, and I knew, I knew, that that was the book he would have chosen.