Corambis

  “This isn’t about—”

  “No!” he said fiercely, although even if the lamps had been lit, I wouldn’t’ve been able to see his face, because he had his head buried in his hands. “I was . . . I was wrong. I have to respect your choices, and I forgot that.”

  “You pushed,” I said.

  “Yes. And I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  You were lonely and scared and hating yourself. But I didn’t say that. “So we’re not talking about why I won’t sleep with you.”

  “No,” he said, not as fierce now. “Not that.”

  “We’re talking about being friends. About why I’m your friend.”

  “Are you?”

  “Well, I try to be,” I said, and that made him laugh a little.

  “I know. Sometimes I make it difficult.”

  “Sometimes you do,” I said, not agreeing to be mean, but because it was the truth. “But what I was trying to say was, I do want to be your friend. And I’m not gonna change my mind or think less of you or something, just because you’ve done stuff you ain’t proud of. I mean, we can trade if you want. You tell me how much money you made fucking, and I’ll tell you how much money I made killing people.”

  “I don’t know. I never saw the money.”

  “Yeah, well, neither did I.”

  I don’t know which one of us started laughing first, and I’m not sure how long it took us to calm down again. But finally, Felix said, “You know, for depraved and unnatural monsters, we’re not very good at it.”

  “Prob’ly time to try something else,” I said and yawned—it’s the worst of the Winter Fever, how even when you can breathe again and you don’t feel like shit all the fucking time, you can’t lift a hairbrush without having to lie down for an hour. “I’m just saying, if you want to talk to me, you can. I’d . . .” And I was sleepy enough that telling the truth wasn’t as hard as it’d been. “I’d like to listen. If it’s what you want.”

  “Thank you,” Felix said, and I knew for once he’d heard me right.

  Chapter 8

  Felix

  The schedule by which trains ran in Corambis was so complex that they published it in a book, a neat little sextodecimo volume bound in green leather. It was called Ottersham’s Compendium of the Corambin Railway System and referred to in conversation as if it were itself a person, as in Ottersham says the train to Copperton only runs on alternate Venerdies. I was told by the clerk at Waddilow & Berowne that the Usaran savages consulted Ottersham as an oracle; although I wasn’t sure I believed it, I would have liked a detailed explanation of the numerological system of divination they allegedly used.

  I purchased Ottersham, and with it, a smaller, paperbound pamphlet entitled Ottersham’s Errata for the Second of the One Hundred Fifty-second, which was an appendix detailing all the points at which Ottersham was wrong. “It’s mostly the Insurgence,” said the clerk, “and things will probably get back to normal fairly soon now that we’ve got a governor again and everything. But for now, you’d better check the Errata.”

  The journey Mildmay, Corbie, and I were facing—and for which Corbie was little better prepared than we were, as she had never been out of Bernatha in her life—was a complicated one. We had to take a train from Bernatha to Wildar, and then take a different train from Wildar to Esmer. Trying to coordinate the schedules of the Bernatha-Wildar and the Wildar-Esmer trains simply in Ottersham was hard enough; adding the Errata to the mix made the whole thing so nightmarish I had surrendered and thrown myself on the mercy of the ticket clerks at Clave, Bernatha’s train station, where it had turned out the conundrum was even more complicated than I had realized, for Esmer had three train stations, Lily-of-Mar, Fornivant, and Pollidean, and I had no idea which one I wanted.

  “I need to go to the Institution,” I said helplessly, bracing myself for the inevitable Which Institution?

  But in fact the clerk, a plump young redheaded woman with tawny, freckled skin, said, “Oh, then you want Lily-of-Mar,” and proceeded with perfect aplomb to book three tickets from Clave to Dennifell Station in Wildar, and then from Dennifell to Lily-of-Mar, as if navigating Ottersham and its Errata were the simplest thing in the world. “There. The train leaves Clave at nine-thirty-two on Martedy, and you’ll reach Lily-of-Mar at twenty-twenty-seven,” she said. “If you’re going to the Institution, you’ll want a hotel in Ingry Dominion, which is cheaper than anything in Mar anyway. Would recommend the Golden Hare, if you don’t already have somewhere in mind. Is clean and cheap and the landlady’s the widow of a railroad man.”

  She handed me a folder with the tickets: crimson pasteboard printed with black. “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very kind.”

  Her smile was beautiful. “Is why I like my job.”

  I’d told Corbie to meet us at Clave, for I suspected Mildmay would be as much as I could manage, if not rather more. Not that he had any wish to be difficult, but it was still as much as he could do to get to the lavatory and back unaided. I wasn’t sure we should be making the journey to Esmer so soon, but Mildmay was determined. And I could not help admitting, when he asked me outright, that I wanted desperately to get away from the ticking of the Clock of Eclipses. Every time I tried to go into a trance, the ticking shook me out again. I couldn’t ignore it; I couldn’t work with it—I’d tried that once. But not a second time. It showed me everything drenched in noirance, showed me the rubies, still hidden in Mildmay’s boot, pulsing to the rhythm the clock laid down.

  Mildmay said, and his dreams concurred, that the Clock of Eclipses reminded him too much of Juggernaut and the Bastion. “I ain’t gonna get better with it ticking at me all the time, so let’s just go, okay?”

  And I’d said yes.

  I’d hired a vinagry, paying extra to cross the causeway rather than having to negotiate Mildmay in and out of a gondol—even though I found vinagries both ridiculous and disturbing. I perfectly understood the satirical engraving I saw in one of the newspapers, of a man, in harness and blinkers, pulling a vinagry in which a horse, elegantly dressed, reclined at leisure. But it was an economical mode of transportation, and sensible for Bernatha, and it would get Mildmay to Clave Station without exhausting him.

  Getting him down the stairs was disaster enough. We’d known his lame leg was going to be worse after all this time confined to bed, and thought we were prepared. He had the cane Rinaldo of Fiora had given him, and I was right beside him, ready to support him if he needed it. But with the first step down, his knee joint made an ugly popping noise, and his leg simply buckled. I made a frantic grab and caught his coat collar, but if he hadn’t had the reflexes and sense to throw his weight backwards, all I would have accomplished was falling down the stairs with him, and while misery might love company, that seemed a bit excessive.

  “Fuck,” Mildmay said shakily after a moment. “Sorry about that.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. Powers. Ain’t had that happen in a long time.”

  “It’s happened before?”

  “Back in Troia,” he said, as if it hardly mattered, and Mrs. Lettice appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a cluster of maids behind her, wanting to know if we were all right.

  In the end, the vinagry man came inside, and he and I carried Mildmay down the stairs. Mildmay hated it but endured, his face red and his teeth digging into his lower lip in a way that made his scar even uglier. He was delighted, though, by the vinagry, saying, “Wouldn’t this make the Handsome Men as sick as dogs?” as we steadied him into it. I had no idea what he meant, but I was glad for anything that made him happy. I noticed when I climbed in after him, though, that all the color had gone from his face, and he leaned back into the cushions and shut his eyes.

  “We don’t have to leave today,” I said guiltily, “If you’d rather—”

  “What, go back up all them stairs? No thanks.” He opened his eyes and frowned at me. “I’m fine. I mean, all I got to do is sit dow
n all day anyhow, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Felix,” he said, in a particularly long-suffering tone. “Let me make my own choices here, okay?”

  “Right,” I said, and was glad to be able to turn away and watch the vinagry man strapping our carpetbags onto the back of his cart; I’d hidden the rubies in the bottom of one, bundled into the toe of a sock. Mildmay muttered something under his breath, but I didn’t hear it clearly and I didn’t ask him to repeat himself.

  Mildmay looked eagerly at everything, even if he didn’t have the energy to lean forward, and I told him about the things I could—things Corbie had told me and things I had read in Lilion. As we rattled across the causeway, he frowned. “Weren’t we in a boat on the way over, or did I just dream that?”

  “No, we were in a boat. A gondol.” I pointed at one sculling past toward the Crait.

  “You must’ve hated the fuck out of that,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t sound so gleeful about it.”

  “Well, considering what I had to do to get you in the boat out to the Morskaiakrov, I’m thinking this is payback. I’m just sorry I missed it.”

  “You should be,” I said darkly. “Because it will never happen again.” And I felt rewarded sevenfold for the misery of that crossing by his laughter.

  Clave was a vast brick building, like a tunnel with all the surrounding earth removed, people streaming in and out of it as steadily as ants. “Good thing I left plenty of time,” I said, once we were standing on the pavement with our bags and the vinagry man had been hailed by another patron and trotted off.

  “Um,” said Mildmay. “Yeah.” He edged a little closer to me.

  “Are you all right?”

  He glowered at me. “Ask me that again, and I swear by all the powers I’m gonna break your nose.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said and grinned at him.

  He lost hold of his glower, said, “Yeah, okay. I’m good enough to get by on—just ain’t looking forward to this none, you know?”

  I did know, could imagine what an ordeal this must represent in his fragile state. But we were already beginning to attract stares. I picked up our bags, hesitated a moment—but the worst he’d do was curse at me—and said, “If you want to, er, hold my arm, I won’t take it amiss.”

  “Powers, do I look that bad?” He seemed astonished more than anything else; I winced a little at the evidence that he knew just how much I disliked being touched.

  I said, “I don’t want to get separated,” which was true.

  “Okay,” Mildmay said, eyeing the crowds. “I can see that.” He tucked his free hand neatly under my elbow, and I had to admit I was heartened by the contact, too.

  Inside, there were people everywhere, rushing from one unknown place to another, arguing with ticket clerks, haranguing men in crimson and black uniforms with gold trim, exchanging greetings or farewells, standing in clumps and staring at us, which made Mildmay’s grip on my arm tighten until I said, “Ouch,” and he eased off.

  Corbie found us—I was, as Fleur had once remarked, as good as a burning torch in a crowd—and came rushing over. “The Duke of Murtagh’s taking our train!” she blurted. “And I think he’s got Lord Rothmarlin with him!”

  “Good morning, Corbie,” I said dryly. “Did you sleep well? And what in the name of the Virgin of Sothen did you do to your hair?” Instead of the untidy curls I was used to, Corbie’s hair was slicked flat against her skull and pulled into a smooth and complicated knot at the back of her head. It was also several shades darker. She was wearing a dark coat and a dark sheath skirt, none of the lace or exuberant colors of her normal wardrobe; she looked, in fact, nearly indistinguishable from any other woman in the station.

  “Hair pomade,” she said, a trifle guiltily. “Didn’t want to go off to Esmer looking like a half-breed jezebel.”

  “Half-breed?” Mildmay said.

  “Yeah, you know. Half Ygressine. With the hair and the nose and all.” She looked from Mildmay to me very doubtfully. “You guys hadn’t noticed?”

  Mildmay and I exchanged a glance. “We’d noticed your hair and, er, so on,” I said, “but I suppose we didn’t know what it meant.”

  “Means my daddy was a sailor off one of the Ygressine ships that come in and out of Patient Harbor every damn day. It’s all I know about him.”

  “I don’t even know that much,” Mildmay said matter-of-factly, and from her puzzled look, he turned to me. “Didn’t you tell her?”

  “It didn’t seem relevant.”

  “Powers,” he said. “You mean you didn’t want to talk about it.” He turned back to Corbie and said, still perfectly matter-of-fact, “Our mother, his and mine, was a whore. I don’t know nothing about my father except maybe he had green eyes.”

  “We should get to the train,” I said, knowing it was obvious I was changing the subject and not caring.

  But Mildmay said, “Oh powers and saints, with the crowds. Yeah. We’d better.”

  It was easier than we’d feared. Mildmay and I were such obvious foreigners—even in Corambin clothing—that people’s inclination was to stop and stare, thus impeding other travelers, but giving Mildmay, Corbie, and me a clear path. And when someone saw and recognized the tattoos on my hands, people began actively getting out of my way, although I couldn’t even guess what they thought I might do. I’d have to ask Corbie about those Mélusinien novels her friend had recounted to her.

  “Just like home,” Mildmay said, only loud enough for me to hear.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You think people in the Lower City don’t scramble to get out of y’all’s way? Only difference is, they don’t stop and gawk.” He was glowering again, this time in disapproval of the Bernathans’ bad manners; for no reason I could explain, that cheered me up immensely.

  There were signs pointing the way, handsomely painted in crimson and gold: “DEPARTURES FOR WILDAR.” They led us to a hall running the length of the station building, open to daylight at both ends. The train, the same brilliant crimson and gold as the signs, was perfectly alarming, a manufactory’s dream of Yrob the World Snake. The head of the train was jet-black with crimson and gold trim, long-snouted with a wide-mouthed chimney sprouting like a tree from its middle. I supposed it had to be the engine, the thing which somehow moved without horses to pull it, and which would, in its turn, pull all these carriages after it. It was making terrible noises, as if it had to give birth before it could start and its child had iron claws.

  “Sacred bleeding fuck,” Mildmay said very softly. I was inclined to agree.

  Our good fortune was that the servants of the train were professionally accustomed to people who had never ridden, or seen, a train before. We were handed from one polite gentleman in a crimson and gold uniform to another and ended up eventually in a second-class compartment despite having third-class tickets because the last of the polite gentlemen, alarmed by Mildmay’s increasingly grayish pallor, prevailed upon the occupants to share.

  The compartment had been booked by two women, and they watched us with—at first—mistrustful gazes. They seemed reassured by Corbie edging into the compartment after me, and Mildmay was clearly not malingering, having gone a dreadful dead-fish-belly-white and needing my support simply to sit down without falling. He managed a nod at the two women, and then did not so much lean back as collapse into the corner, and shut his eyes. After a few minutes, when his breathing had evened out, he said, “I’m okay,” without opening his eyes and, as far as I could determine, fell instantly asleep.

  I let my own breath out slowly and turned to smile at our audience, feeling Corbie’s anxiety beside me. The younger woman blushed and averted her eyes; the elder returned my smile and said, nodding at Mildmay, “Will he be all right?”

  “He’s recovering from the, er, from pleuriny. He’ll be fine. I’m Felix Harrowgate. He’s my brother, Mildmay Foxe. And this is”—Corbie’s foot connected briskly with my ankle—“Miss Corbie.??
?

  “Frances Leverick,” said the older woman. “And my traveling companion is Olive Bridger.”

  The younger woman managed a mumble and a much weaker smile.

  Miss Leverick I judged to be forty or so, Miss Bridger probably Mildmay’s age or a little younger. Both of them had the heavy-jawed squareness to their faces that I had observed to be typical of Corambins. Miss Bridger was remarkable only for her flax-pale hair, being otherwise indistinguishable from any other young Corambin bourgeoise; I wondered if she, like Corbie, was of Ygressine blood. Miss Leverick’s face had considerably more character, laugh and frown lines both; her eyes were light brown, flecked with gold, and very sharp. They were both dressed respectably in dark suits; Corbie had judged her wardrobe well. Miss Bridger wore some unbecoming pearls; Miss Leverick’s only jewelry was a ring, amber set in silver, on her right index finger. As far as I had been able to determine, rings had no thaumaturgical meaning in Corambis; I was fairly certain in any event that Miss Leverick was annemer. Miss Bridger, on the other hand . . .

  I leaned forward, caught and held her attention. Her eyes widened; she jerked her chin up, breaking eye contact, and I sat back.

  “I’m glad,” I said, “that you’ve learned that much.” I had not, when Malkar found me. And then my words, my tone, echoed in my mind, and I was chilled by how much like Malkar I sounded, a predator deigning to toy with his prey.

  “Everyone learns,” Miss Bridger said tightly. “Resisting a warlock is the first thing we’re taught.”

  “Warlock?” Miss Leverick said. “Olive?”

  “He ain’t!” Corbie said indignantly.

  “He tried to enthrall me,” Miss Bridger said.

  “Oh please,” I said. “I did no such thing.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Corbie said, still indignant. “He’s my teacher.”

  Miss Bridger turned rather sharply to look at Corbie; they locked stares, reminding me irresistibly of a pair of cats squaring off for a fight. “Ladies,” I said, kicking Corbie’s ankle in my turn, and they looked away from each other quickly, both flushing.