Corambis

  “Okay,” he said slowly, as if he wasn’t sure. And then again, more firmly, “Okay.” It was as good as a smile when he said, “Fuck the wolves anyway. You want some tea?”

  And I said, “Yes.” To all of it.

  Kay

  Somewhere between Lily-of-Mar Station and Carey House, Julian said explosively out of a dead silence, “Does it bother you that I’m an aethereal?”

  “No. Why should it?”

  “I’m unstable,” Julian said with more bitterness than I had ever heard from him, “emotional, impulsive, easily led.”

  “You are sixteen,” I said dryly.

  “I’ll probably go mad! Aethereals do, don’t they? Or I’ll have fits in public or talk to the furniture like Aunt Ella.”

  “Your mother’s sister?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, still bitter. “There’s none of this nonsense in the Carey descent.”

  “Need not welcome trouble before it comes calling,” I said cautiously.

  “I heard their voices,” he said, and his cold fingers gripped my wrist. “I heard them screaming and screaming, and I couldn’t find them. Mr. Harrowgate said there was nothing we could do to help them, but blessed Lady, I heard them.”

  He could add overwrought to his list of disparagements. I said, “I think you can trust Mr. Harrowgate,” and gently freed my wrist from his cold clutch.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—! Mr. Harrowgate was wonderful, and I’m sure he’s right. I just . . .” And then he said in a different tone, “We’re home. Are you going to tell Uncle Ferrand?”

  “Is no business of mine. Is between you and him. But if you think Cyriack Thrale is going to hold his tongue, I fear me you will be disappointed.”

  Julian did not leap to Thrale’s defense as I’d expected, but said, “You think I should tell him first?” Was considerable trepidation in his voice.

  “I think,” said I, “that no matter how ugly telling him is, will still be better than if he hears of it somewhere else first.”

  “Oh,” said he, and I knew he took my point.

  I was grateful, however, to be spared that scene, and did not argue with Springett about going directly to bed. I washed up, donned my nightshirt, bid Springett good night, and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

  And stopped dead, assailed by the scent of lilies.

  “I thought,” said Vanessa Pallister, and I heard the creak as she rose from my bed, “that we should talk.”

  “Did you?” said I. “What about?”

  A pause. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Have given me any reason to?”

  “And you don’t want this marriage.”

  “Is no matter what I want or don’t want,” I said tiredly. “But, an you have a point, what I want is that you come to it, so that you may leave again and I may go to bed.”

  “We don’t have to be enemies,” she said, and the scent of lilies grew stronger. I was braced for the touch of her hand against the open collar of my nightshirt.

  “Vanessa.” I took her hand and removed it from my person. “What do you want? You know I cannot refuse this marriage, whether I want it or not, so what matters it to you what my feelings are? You’ve made your own feelings perfectly clear.”

  She jerked away from me. “Maybe I don’t want to marry a man who hates me!”

  “You need not marry me,” I said. “Will not hinder you an you cry off.”

  “Damn you, you . . . you statue,” she said in a vicious whisper. She pushed past me; the door opened and slammed shut again.

  Not a statue, I thought. An Automaton, a monster with a clockwork heart. I went carefully to the windows, not knowing what Vanessa might have moved, and opened them wide. By morning, the scent of lilies would be gone.

  Chapter 13

  Mildmay

  On Lunedy morning, Felix had a plan.

  “You want me to what?”

  “It’s perfect,” he said. “You need to practice your reading and Kay certainly needs the distraction. And the company.”

  “But I can’t just—”

  “Visit a friend?” he said, one eyebrow going up.

  “Dammit, don’t do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “Put words in my mouth.” I glared at him over the teapot. “I can’t go and force him to put up with me.”

  “He likes you.”

  “But.” I gulped, floundered. “He won’t want to hear all that philosophy stuff.” Because that’s what Felix had, from all the books he’d had in his rooms in the Mirador: seven books on magic and philosophy. I was learning on a book called A Treatise upon Spirit by Chattan d’Islay. It’d been Gideon’s. I’d been nervous, because I didn’t think I was going to understand any of it, even when I could read it, but Felix had just grinned and said that was the point of philosophy books: you read ’em until you did understand.

  Felix coughed and looked a little embarrassed. “We, ah, have other books.”

  “We do?” It was news to me.

  He looked even more embarrassed. “There are bookstores very near the Institution. Hutch showed me . . .”

  “I get the idea,” I said. “How much damage did you do?”

  “I only bought three,” he said, looking hopeful. “And one of them’s quite small. I really do need to get a grasp of the basic principles of Grevillian thaumaturgy before I—”

  “Felix.” Me trying to be stern with him was like a rat terrier trying to be stern with a wolfhound, so you can see why I was surprised as fuck when it worked. He was bright pink in the face, but he got up and opened the closet. He brought three books out and put them on the table in front of me.

  I took a minute to read the titles—but it really only did take a minute, and that was pretty fucking amazing. One, like he’d said, was a book about magic: Introduction to the Grevillian Theorems. One was called History of Corambis. And the third, the little one, was Common Wildflowers of Central Corambis.

  “None of the wizards here seems to know the first thing about botany,” Felix said, and it was weird how nervous he sounded. “And of course I could go over to the University, but honestly I’m afraid they’ll just see me as—”

  “Felix.”

  He stopped and looked at me. Hopeful and anxious, and powers and saints this was wrong.

  I said, “It’s your money. You ain’t gotta . . . I mean, you ain’t, what’s the word?”

  “Accountable?” he said quietly.

  “Yeah, that’s it. You ain’t accountable to me.”

  His mouth twitched into something that was maybe a smile and maybe not. “And if I blow our month’s budget buying books, you’re the one who’ll be cardsharping to make up the deficit. Which I think does make me accountable to you. Or at least responsible.”

  “Well, okay,” I said. Because that part was reasonable, and I was even glad he was thinking that way. “But you don’t got to—I mean, I ain’t mad. I ain’t gonna be mad.” And then I finally found the word I’d been looking for. “You don’t got to justify it to me.”

  He’d still been kind of pink, but now he went bright, slow red and then sat down and put his face in his hands. He said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him, “Malkar gave me spending money, but he always wanted to know what I spent it on. And he would tease me about ‘bettering myself’ and how all the erudition in the world wouldn’t wash off the mud of Pharaohlight. And Shannon teased me, too, about all the time I spent in bookstores and, well, I guess I do get a little overexcited sometimes.”

  I remembered how happy he’d been, the day he found some book Gideon’d been wanting, how he’d been so bright you could’ve threaded a needle by the light he was giving off. And I remembered the way Gideon had hugged him, smiling so big it was like his face was going to crack wide open. And I said, “Gideon didn’t tease you.”

  “No,” he agreed after a moment, not looking up. “Gideon didn’t tease me.”

  “I gotta say,” I said, like I didn’t kn
ow he was somewhere past embarrassed and just short of tears, “if I was gonna pick one of them for being nice and levelheaded and a guy you’d want to listen to, Gideon’d be it.”

  That made him laugh. A little choked, but a real laugh. “Mildmay, really. I know you didn’t like Shannon, but lumping him in with Malkar is a bit much.”

  “I’m just saying, if Gideon didn’t think you were dumb or embarrassing or whatever it is Malkar and Lord Shannon thought, then you weren’t.”

  “I ...” And then he sort of sagged. “All right.”

  “And I ain’t gonna tease. You said you wouldn’t tease me, I won’t tease you. Fair’s fair. And you don’t got to give me all the whys and wherefores when you buy a book. Okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “All right.” He took a deep breath and straightened up again. “In any event, I thought you and Kay could read the History of Corambis , and Kay would enjoy telling you everything the author got wrong.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I can see that.” And Felix grinned like the sun coming out.

  So he went off to the Institution, and I went off to find Carey House, which I knew was where Kay lived because Julian’d said so.

  The thing I liked best about St. Ingry Station was that where the Sunflower Street Station had that snooty mural, St. Ingry Station had this big-ass map of Esmer with all the fathom stations picked out in blue and the train stations in red and everything labeled so I could learn Esmer and practice my reading at the same time. The gals in the ticket booths had got used to seeing me, and sometimes if things weren’t busy, they’d come out and show me what dominions they lived in and tell me about things I should be sure to see, like St. Nath’s Tower which was all that was left of the kings’ palace from back when Corambis had kings, and the Museum of Corambis which was way out in Vander Dominion and had a map of the whole country that was big enough you could walk around on it.

  Esmer wasn’t laid out as tidy as Mélusine, and no wall, either. So the city just kind of went where it wanted to, and you could imagine the mapmakers running along behind trying to make sense of it and mostly not having much luck.

  The Institution was sort of in the middle of the southeast of Esmer, if that makes any sense at all, and I knew all the flash houses were in Nath Dominion because one of the ticket girls had said so. So I found St. Ingry Station—there was a big blue star to mark it—and then worked north and west from Ingry Dominion to Mar to Osper and Phadon and then Nath. One of the stations in Nath Dominion was called Murtagh Station, which I figured was probably a good sign, so I went and asked the ticket girls, and they said as how, yeah, Carey House was just down the block and everybody knew it because of the sphinxes that were one to either side of the door. And I even knew what a sphinx was, so I didn’t have to look dumb by asking.

  I rode the fathom out and got off at Murtagh Station. I picked a direction that looked flash and started walking, and sure enough, there were the sphinxes, each about the size of a pony, and I walked up between them and knocked on the door.

  Servant in livery, and I said, “Is Mr. Brightmore in?” Which, you know, I figured he was, but I could at least try and be polite.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Oh fuck me sideways. “Bright. More,” I said, as distinct as I could.

  “Mr. Brightmore! Of course. Come in and—” For a second he looked exactly like a fish. “That is to say, if you will wait in the foyer, I will see if Mr. Brightmore is in.”

  “Thank you,” I said. But I liked him for seeming happy that somebody’d come to see Mr. Brightmore, so I didn’t give him no trouble. And he came back real quick and said, “This way please,” and then he grinned at me and said, kind of low, “Mr. Springett thought I was joking, but he’s pleased as a pigeon for his lordship to have a visitor.”

  “His lordship?” I said.

  “Well, he ain’t no more,” he said, leading me to the stairs. “But he was. And he’s a gentleman for sure, and we think it ain’t respectful-like to be calling him ‘mister,’ no matter what them political people say. He’s up at the top of the house.”

  Which figured. I leaned on Jashuki and took my time. I noticed it was the same here as at home—the farther you got from the front door, the more the house looked like people actually lived in it. Things quit being so fucking perfect, and Mr. Brightmore’s room when we got there could actually have used a new coat of paint. Of course, that said a whole different set of stuff about how they were treating him, but then it wasn’t like he cared. And I kind of thought he wouldn’t’ve cared even if he’d been able to see the walls.

  He was all by himself, sitting on one of the window seats with his knees tucked under his chin. He looked real startled at having a visitor, so much that I said, “I don’t have to stay if you don’t want.”

  “No, please.” He’d uncurled himself as soon as the door opened, and now he actually took a step toward me. “I wasn’t expecting . . . but I’m very pleased.” Pleased wasn’t something he looked like he’d had much practice with, but I thought he meant it.

  “I’ll tell Cook to send up some tea, shall I, Mr. Brightmore?” said the guy in livery.

  “Please,” said Mr. Brightmore, although he looked like he’d never had nobody offer to bring him tea in his entire life.

  So the servant-guy left, and I said, “This is Felix’s idea. He thought you might like it if I read to you.”

  “I cry you mercy,” Mr. Brightmore said, stepping back and sitting down again. “Is not your fault, but I didn’t catch a word of what you said.”

  “Well, we thought you must be pretty bored.”

  “ ‘Bored’ might cover it if spread thinly,” he said, which I figured after a moment to work through it was a snarky way of agreeing with me. “But haven’t you anything better to do?”

  “Me? Powers, no. I mean, what am I gonna do, hang around in the back of the room while Felix teaches?” Which was exactly what I’d done in the Mirador, but that was the binding-by-forms, and I wasn’t keen on doing it here any more than I was keen on doing any of the stuff I knew best, that being thieving and cardsharping and murder. I’d been keeping myself busy learning Esmer and especially the little piece of it around our apartment, but Felix was right, even if he hadn’t come out and said it. I needed something more. “You mind if I sit down?”

  “Please. Of course. I cry you mercy. I am a poor host and have no manners.”

  I picked the chair nearest him and turned it so we were facing each other. Mr. Brightmore said, “Is hard to imagine him as a teacher.”

  “He’s really good.” And, you know, it was nice to say that to somebody who wasn’t going to call me a liar just because it was Felix I was talking about.

  “Am glad he has fallen on his feet. I cannot imagine what is like for him—for you—to have to put together a new life so far from everything you have known.”

  “Oh, hey, don’t worry about me. The hard one for me was the Mirador.”

  His head tilted. I’d got him interested. “What do you mean?”

  So I did my best to tell him. About the Mirador and the Lower City and what they meant to each other and what it’d been like to try and live in the Mirador after spending my whole life trying to stay away from it.

  The tea came somewhere in the middle, while I was trying to make him understand what court was like, and I stopped and poured tea and made him take a sandwich along of him looking like he needed it, and all he said was “Go on.” So I did, and that part was nice, too, being able to talk about the Mirador to somebody who hadn’t grown up with it. Kay hadn’t even read the novels. I know, because I asked when I finally got tired of my own damn voice.

  “Have never had much time for pleasure reading,” he said, almost like he was proud of it. Then his face fell. “And now of course . . .”

  “Well, I kind of figure that’s what Felix had in mind, sending me over here with this book and all. Now, I mean, you don’t got to listen. I ain’t exactly good at this whole reading thing,
and I wouldn’t blame you—”

  “You have a book?”

  He really hadn’t been kidding about not catching a word of what I’d said back when I came in. “Yeah. History of Corambis.”

  “And you’re willing to read? To me?”

  “Well, yeah, but like I said—”

  “Read,” he said, and it was probably the same way he’d told his soldiers to charge.

  And that was okay by me.

  Kay

  That night, as I lay thinking about Mildmay Foxe and his strange brusque shyness, I heard the outer door creak open.

  “Who’s there?” I called, sitting up.

  “For the Lady’s sake, hush!”

  “Murtagh?” I said, obediently lowering my voice. “What in the world—”

  “Isobel thinks it unwise of me to consort with you,” he said, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

  “Will have stronger words than ‘unwise’ if she catches you creeping to my bed in the middle of the night.”

  “I am not,” Murtagh said very precisely, “creeping to your bed. There’s a perfectly good chair here, and I intend to use it.”

  Disbelieving, I listened to the sounds of him seating himself. “What do you want?”

  “Why do I have to want anything? Can’t I just want to talk?”

  “To me?”

  He sighed. “You really don’t think we’re friends, do you?”

  “It makes no sense,” said I.

  “Sense? Your experience of friendship must be vastly different than mine if you think it sensible.”

  “You have a point.”

  “Do you dislike me?” He sounded almost wistful, and I knew not if I could trust that.

  But I answered him truthfully. “No, I do not dislike you.”

  “Well, that’s something,” he said. “It took your sister most of five indictions before she’d unbend enough to say she found me not displeasing.”

  “Then was not . . .”