“Or he can stay where he is,” Vanessa said. “What is it you wished to say to me?”
A small pause, and he said, “I don’t know what Murtagh has been saying to you, Vanessa, but you need not make this marriage. I realize the connection with the Careys may seem advantageous, but—”
“Have you a better option for me?” Vanessa said coolly. “A more suitable candidate, perhaps, or another way to ensure my son’s inheritance against Lord Darne’s greed?”
“Well, it’s hardly your son’s inheritance, is it, if Kay Brightmore is made Warden of Grimglass? Don’t think he’ll hesitate to sacrifice your son to the interests of his own children.”
“That eventuality has been considered,” Vanessa said, still cool. “His Grace of Murtagh and I—”
“If you don’t know he’s got Murtagh wrapped around his little finger, you are a greater fool than I thought possible. There is no agreement made, no promise, that Murtagh will not go back on if it suits him.”
“What did he promise you, that the breaking of it rankles so deeply?” said I. “Ownership of me as I were a dog? Caloxa for your own private kingdom?”
“Kay,” Vanessa said sharply, “hold your tongue.”
“Ah,” said Glimmering. “I see. You think you have him broken to bridle.”
“I find both your wordplay and your metaphor offensive, sir,” said Vanessa. “If you have a proposition to make to me, kindly do so. If you have merely veiled slurs to offer, I suggest you go join my mother’s paper games.”
“Very well,” said Glimmering. “I am suggesting that you ally yourself to Glimmering rather than Murtagh. I will not fetter you with a husband. I will assume guardianship of your son and his estate, and provide you with a jointure such that you may live in Esmer as fashionably as you please.”
It took me a moment to realize Vanessa was laughing at him. Took Glimmering several moments longer.
“It is a solution to your dilemma, Vanessa,” said he. “And it has to be more palatable than marriage to a blood-soaked beast like this. Don’t be so quick to ridicule it.”
“My lord duke,” said Vanessa, sobering abruptly, “I don’t see how I can be a greater fool than you thought possible, for clearly you think I am the greatest fool on the face of the world. I have no fancy to trade Glimmering for Darne, and thus while I thank you for your very kind and selfless offer, I feel I must decline. And so, Your Grace, good night.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Glimmering said, trying to sound concerned rather than merely angry.
“That’s as may be. I still like my mistake, and my blood-soaked beast, better than yours.” And from the sound, I guessed that she closed the door in his face.
“What an awful man,” said she. “I hope you don’t mind if we don’t invite him to the wedding.”
“Vanessa,” said I, “why are you marrying me?”
“Because I have few choices and all of them are bad. If I do nothing, or if I marry again to suit myself, either Darne will swallow Grimglass like a comfit, or he will negotiate with Rodger’s brothers—a tax, perhaps some reallocation of currently fallow land. And either way, Richard’s inheritance will be lost.”
“Do you care so much?”
“I may put it most cogently by pointing out that if Richard is ousted, he and I will have no choice but to come live on my brother’s charity like poor Ortenzia, with my mother dripping poison at every turn. And while I am often bored at Grimglass, I don’t want to see it, or its people, neglected, nor to see its concerns used as bargaining tokens for political power. Murtagh’s proposal actually suits me very well—or it would if you did not hate me.”
“I do not hate you,” I said, although I feared it was a feeble protest.
She snorted. “You would rather be fed to the Yammering than marry me. You’ve made that much very clear.”
Could have said, And you have been so loving and saintly yourself? but was not the point and I knew it. “Is not you,” I said and went on haltingly. “Is that . . . I became Margrave of Rothmarlin when I was fifteen, and since that time I have followed no man save out of love, and my own sense of duty, and as I chose. But now . . . I am blind, destitute, beholden. I have no choice. What Murtagh appoints for me, I must do.”
“Do you think I wanted to marry Rodger Pallister?” she said scathingly. “Do you think I don’t resent daily, hourly, being saddled with his child and his debts and his great ramshackle blot of a house and the lighthouse! Sweet blessed Lady, I would rather walk into the sea and have done with it. But I can’t. I have to do the best I can with the cards I’ve been dealt. And if that means marrying you, then marry you I will. And I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”
“But not very,” I said dryly.
“Well, only insofar as that it will make both our lives very unpleasant.”
“Well,” I said, feeling as if I surrendered again, though I knew not who my enemy was, “maybe we can work on that part.”
The scent of lilies and a light touch to the back of my hand. “Maybe,” said Vanessa Pallister.
Mildmay
It was close on to the septad-night by the time I got home, and the only reason I wasn’t jingling was that Corambins used paper money.
They didn’t like me at the Blooming Turtle, especially after what happened to the guy who tried to get in my face about never coming back. I wouldn’t go back, though. Not for them, but because I felt dirty. No, not just dirty, that ain’t strong enough. Filthy. I’d felt dirty back around the first big hand I’d won, but I hadn’t stopped until I’d cleaned out the entire table. And even then, you know, if one of them had been stupid enough to pony up, I’d’ve gone ’round again. And won. Because that’s what I did when there was money in the game. When I didn’t have to be careful.
Powers and saints, I made myself sick.
I climbed the stairs in our apartment building, and by the time I got to the top, Felix was standing in the open doorway, arms folded. I was just as glad he was backlit so I couldn’t see his expression.
He waited until I’d heaved myself up onto the landing before he said, “Where have you been?” His voice was kind of tight, but nice and even, so he was upset, but not really upset, and he wasn’t mad at me. There were a septad and six different ways he sounded when he was mad at me, and none of them had anything to do with “even.”
“Stupid,” I said, because it was true. “You gonna stand there all night, or can I come in?”
He moved aside and I went in. He followed me, locked the door. Said, “I’ll believe many things of Esmer, but not that it actually has a fathom station for stupid. So, a different question: what were you doing?”
“This,” I said. I was emptying my coat pockets onto the table. “You think we can give it to the girl hocuses at the Institution or something?”
“Good gracious,” Felix said. His eyes weren’t bugging out, but he did look more than a little startled, and I could tell he was trying hard to not flip out at me. And I was grateful for it, too. And then he just looked guilty. “Is this because of what I said this morning?”
“Sort of. I mean, yes. But not just that. I’d even talked myself out of it and then Miss Leverick got me all worked up and stupid again.”
“You weren’t exaggerating when you said you didn’t need to cheat,” he said. He was looking at the money, not at me. “Miss Leverick? So you went to her society, whatever it’s called?”
“The Society for the Advancement of Universal Education,” I said. “And hey! I met a cat with blue eyes.”
That made him look up, and he actually smiled at me, which made me feel a little less like complete shit.
He said, “Why don’t you tell me about your day while we get ready for bed? And tomorrow you can come with me to the Institution. It seems like you might be less likely to get into trouble there.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said, but that wasn’t what I meant, and he knew it.
Felix
I had not expected Mil
dmay actually to come with me to the Institution, but the next afternoon when I left the apartment he was right beside me. I used what little common sense I had and held my tongue.
We reached the Institution in amiable silence, and I led the way to my classroom in Venables Hall. It wasn’t as pleasant as the Grenouille Salon, but the chairs were comfortable (though mismatched), and there was the option here, as there never was in the Mirador, of opening the windows.
Mildmay looked around carefully. I said, “You do that every time you come into a room. What are you looking for?”
He stared at me blankly for a moment, then quite visibly went back over the last few moments in his head and blushed. And then he gave me the list, ticking the items off on his fingers. “Goons. Doors. Windows. Stuff you could use as a weapon if you had to. Um.” His blush got worse, and he was distinctly not meeting my eyes. “You.”
“Me?” I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or insulted or incredibly flattered. “And which am I, potential threat or potential advantage?”
“Depends what kind of mood you’re in.”
“Oh marvelous,” I said, but I couldn’t keep my face straight.
“It’s just habit,” Mildmay said. “Don’t mean nothing.”
“On the contrary. It means that if a pack of crazed eteoklides charges the door in the middle of class, you’ll be ready for them.”
And he’d forgiven me for yesterday, because he said, “What’re eteoklides?”
“An ancient warrior cult from what’s now Lunness Point. I don’t remember most of the tenets of their faith, but they believed that if you died in battle for their god, you would be reborn into the cult. And if you did it enough times, you became a kouraph—not quite a god, but with many of the same benefits. For obvious reasons, the cult went extinct several centuries ago.”
“A kouraph, huh? Like an angel?” he said, slyly enough that I knew he was making one of his infrequent and odd jokes. He had told me about Mrs. Weatherby and her theories so, unlike some of his jokes, this one I got.
I smiled back at him. “Blood-drinking angels.”
“That’s a benefit?”
“To the eteoklides,” I said demurely.
“Powers. The things some people think are fun.” He retreated into the back of the classroom, and a moment later, the first of my students came in.
They didn’t all notice him. Those that did looked at him, looked at me, and showed better discretion than I’d thought them capable of and did not ask. Corbie went and sat beside him, and punched him in the arm at something he said. Cyriack Thrale actually smiled at him and after class—another frustrating hour of trying to teach them something they did not want to believe—went over to say hello. I was trapped at the front of the room by Jowell, the most plodding of my students, so I could not hear Cyriack and Mildmay’s conversation, although it seemed lively.
Cyriack was still talking, intensely, earnestly, when they came over to me, and Mildmay jerked his chin. “Just a moment, Jowell. Yes, Mildmay?”
Mildmay said, “Mr. Thrale’s got a new bog body, and he wants to—”
“I beg your pardon. A what?”
Mildmay looked hopefully at Cyriack, who said, “A bog body. They’re what I work on, over at the Mammothium. Ancient people whose bodies were preserved in peat bogs.”
I had been told about the Mammothium, so at least that part made sense. “And you’re sightseeing?” I said to Mildmay.
“I’m interested, okay?” He looked as abashed as I’d ever seen him.
“No, of course, it’s fine.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a body that had been buried in peat for hundreds of years, but it couldn’t be any worse than Jowell’s conversation. I said to Cyriack, “May I come, too?”
“Of course,” Cyriack said, almost embarrassingly delighted.
The Mammothium had been a private house, not a public building like most of the rest of the Institution, which made the enormous skeleton in the front hall look even more incongruous. Cyriack was pounced on by another student as soon as we came through the door, and dragged off into another room for what was either an argument or a sexual encounter—nothing else generated that kind of urgency. Most likely an argument. But I didn’t mind; I was still staring at the skeleton when Corbie and Mildmay came in.
“That’s the mammoth,” Mildmay said.
“Rather,” I said. “And when were you here before, to be introduced to it?”
He looked at the mammoth instead of looking at me. “Well, that day we moved into the new place?”
“Yes, I remember it vividly, seeing as it was less than a month ago.”
“Yeah, well, it was Mr. Thrale that found it for me, because I’d come here looking for—”
“So you’ve seen these bog bodies before, too?”
“Just one of ’em,” he said apologetically.
“You didn’t mention it.”
He shrugged, still staring at the mammoth. “Didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“You could have told me anyway. I wouldn’t mind.”
He gave me a startled glance—trying to decide if I was teasing, I suspected, and I wondered if I deserved that or not.
Corbie straightened up from an examination of the mammoth’s toes and said, “And these things lived thousands of indictions ago?”
“That’s what Mr. Thrale says,” said Mildmay.
She was frowning. “How old is the world, anyway?”
A decent answer to that question—which would have taken all afternoon and still would have boiled down to, essentially, No one knows—was forestalled by a commotion from the hallway indicating Cyriack’s reemergence. “For the last time, Stanhope,” he said over his shoulder, “I can’t help you.” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “I’m so terribly sorry, Mr. Harrowgate. Would you like to come upstairs?”
“What’s the matter with Stanhope?” Corbie asked as Cyriack began herding us toward the stairs. I tried not to inquire into Corbie’s social life, but I noticed that she was clearly familiar with the denizens of the Mammothium.
Cyriack rolled his eyes. “Those damn sheep in Murrey. He’s getting as bad as Jowell and Hutch. He’s trying to figure out the cause of death, and he’s convinced himself I can help him. Which I can’t.”
“Is that the pesti-whatsit?” Mildmay said.
“Pestilence,” I said.
Cyriack said, “Yes. Although now they aren’t sure it is a pestilence. It’s not spreading like one, and the magician-practitioner in Howrack insists the sheep are perfectly healthy—apart from being dead, of course. I keep telling Stanhope the only thing to do is go down there himself, but he acts as if Caloxa were on the other side of the moon. Idiot.”
“Well, he’s frustrated,” Corbie said more charitably.
As we reached the top of the staircase, Cyriack darted ahead to unlock a door halfway down the hall and said over his shoulder, “I don’t blame him, but that doesn’t make it my problem. Come in, please. There isn’t much room, but I don’t think we’ll be too crowded.”
The room was dominated by a long table, on which reposed a huddled shape draped by a sheet. “She’s not as old as the other one I showed you,” Cyriack said to Mildmay. “Maybe a thousand years. And Adept Chellick’s trying a new preservation technique,” he added, indicating the sheet. Then he twitched it neatly away, and I went lurching backwards, nearly knocking Mildmay over, my whole body going cold.
It was not that the woman was dead, or that her body was twisted and flattened horribly. Or that she stank, of stagnant water and of something sharp and foul that I did not recognize. But the noirance poured off her in waves, so strong I could almost believe it was the foul smell I couldn’t identify.
“Whoa,” Mildmay said, catching himself with his cane and then steadying me. “You okay?”
“Don’t you feel it?” I said to Corbie, to Cyriack—both of whom were staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Feel what?” Cyriack said. He loo
ked at the body critically. “I suppose she’s a rather gruesome sight, if you aren’t accustomed—”
“Not that,” I said. “The noirance. The . . . the darkness.”
“The what?” said Corbie.
“Are you talking about her aether?” Cyriack said. “But she doesn’t have any. She’s dead.”
“Preserve me from rationalists,” I said under my breath, then, to my students, “No, I am not talking about aether. I’m talking about noirance.”
“But—” said Cyriack.
“Shut up,” I said. “Listen to me while I say it one more time. Our perceptions of magic are filtered through metaphors. Your aether is very useful, as these metaphors go, but it’s limited. In this particular case, thinking in terms of aether, which dead creatures do not have, is preventing you from seeing that this woman is saturated in magic just as much as she is saturated in bog water. And that the magic in which she is saturated is noirant. Dark. Dangerous.”
“Evil?” Corbie said. She didn’t entirely look as if she believed me, but she did at least look worried. Although perhaps that was because she thought I was insane.
“No, not evil. Or, not necessarily evil. Noirance is difficult to categorize.”
“But she’s saturated in it,” Cyriack said, skepticism manifest in every syllable.
“Yes.” I forced myself to take a step forward; it wasn’t nice to keep Mildmay jammed up against the door.
“Show us.”
“I beg your pardon.” I raised an eyebrow at him, stalling for time. I knew all too well what Cyriack meant. He wanted proof—proof that only problematically existed in the first place, and that under the binding-by-obedience I could not provide. I had avoided direct confrontations during class, but I’d known my luck wouldn’t hold forever.
“If there’s all this noirance floating around, show it to us.”