Corambis

  “Felix?”

  “Like a plug centime,” I said, forcing my voice to cheerfulness. “Always turn up again when you least want me.”

  “Or a yellow cat,” he muttered; I decided against asking him to explain.

  He was trapped in a thicket of metal thorns, his clothes snagged in several places. His hands—palms and backs—were bleeding from several long narrow gashes, and as I knelt carefully beside him, I saw that his forearms were bleeding as well. He had been fortunate, though; none of those knife-edged spines had found his face. Or his throat.

  “Hold still,” I said. “I’ll have you free in a moment.”

  “I have to find the center,” he said. “There’s a plate, shining silver. Will you help me? Will not take long for a sighted man.”

  “And what’s your plan after that?” I said, keeping my voice light. “Or are you going to leave me to guess? I must warn you, my guesses are going to be shockingly accurate.”

  He flinched. “Is the right thing to do,” he said, his hand reaching forward and then pulling back again, as if he thought I would not let him touch me. “I should have—”

  “No, you should not,” I said, knowing how that sentence was going to end: died with Gerrard. “Kay, do you know what this thing does?”

  “Gerrard said it would save Caloxa.”

  “How?”

  He frowned. “I know not. Gerrard . . . Gerrard said to trust him. He knew it would work.”

  My opinion of Prince Gerrard Hume had not been high to begin with. “Yes, well, I’ve been to talk to the magician you hired, and I’m not convinced ‘save’ is the right word.”

  “What do you mean?” The frown was deepening.

  “This engine feeds on death. It is unlikely in the extreme that it gives anything but death in return.”

  “Am a soldier. I expected nothing else.”

  That rattled me more than a little, but I pressed on: “Whose death?”

  “What?”

  “I understand that you’re ready to sacrifice yourself—and we can talk later about whether that’s noble or just stupid—but whose deaths are you buying? Who has to die to save Caloxa—and how many?”

  “I—”

  “Because if you think this thing can be aimed so that it only kills Corambin soldiers, I’m afraid I have to disabuse you of that idea. As far as I can tell, it can’t be aimed at all.”

  “No, I—”

  “And I have the nasty suspicion that, in fact, it’s designed to ‘save’ Caloxa by making it so undesirable that even Corambis wouldn’t want it. Like disfiguring your sister—or killing her—to ‘save’ her honor.”

  He shuddered hard. “But Gerrard wouldn’t . . .”

  “Wouldn’t he?”

  He was silent for a moment, and then his shoulders sagged. “Ah, Lady, have mercy on us all. I know not. We were all half-mad at the end. Perhaps is but fond delusion to think I know what Gerrard would or would not do. He led us all into death from the moment he raised his banner.”

  “Then stop following him,” I said sharply. It was the right thing to say, because Kay lifted his head, and this time when he reached out, he let his hand find me, those blunt fingers closing on my forearm.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ve got you disentangled, but you’ll need to move exactly as I tell you, or you’ll just get tangled up again. How you got in this situation . . .”

  “It trapped me,” he said, his voice hard and perfectly certain. “I could hear it moving.”

  “Mildmay,” I said, raising my voice, “Kay says the engine is moving on its own. Will you watch, please?”

  “Me and Julian are already on it,” Mildmay called back. “And Corbie’s taking notes.”

  “Good,” I said, and then to Kay, “We’re going to do this slowly, because if you do get caught again, I don’t want you getting cut. We don’t want to give the engine any more of your vi.”

  He nodded, then went still, his hand tightening on my arm again. “But, Felix, the Usara said—the only way to stop it stealing vi from everything it can reach—”

  “Kay.”

  He subsided, though his grip was going to leave bruises.

  I said, “Something has to be done, yes. But your vi—your death—is not the answer.”

  “They said—”

  Obstinate as a mule. “Are the Usara going to care how many Caloxans it kills?”

  “Oh,” he said, and his grip on my arm loosened again.

  “We’re going to think of something,” I said. “Which will not involve you dying. Okay?”

  His mouth quirked in a smile. “Okay.”

  Much later, we were settled in a curve of the labyrinth, with Caloxan soldiers to both sides. Trant—who’d looked positively ill when we led Kay out into the lantern light—was clearly not taking any more chances. Julian and Corbie had curled up together for warmth, and I had carefully not eavesdropped on their conversation. Mildmay was already asleep, although I knew he’d be wide awake in a second if I needed him. Kay was lying on his back, his bandaged hands resting on his chest, his eyes open.

  “Are you all right?” I asked softly.

  He sighed. “In truth, I know not. I would have been grateful to be dead.” He said it matter-of-factly, without emphasis.

  “Why?”

  “You need to ask?”

  “Yes, actually, I do.”

  “Shall I give thee the list?” But he could not manage his usual sparking rancor.

  “You didn’t feel this way in Esmer.”

  “Perhaps I did, and you saw it not.”

  But I knew I was right. “You said you’re a soldier. Why are you so eager to surrender?”

  “Because there is no war. Is neither victory nor defeat, merely an endless series of days to be endured. I am tired of enduring.”

  “What if things got better?”

  “They won’t,” he said with bleak finality and rolled onto his side, facing away from me. “Should sleep, Felix. Is still the engine to be dealt with.”

  Rebuff and rejection, and I knew I was far too tired to deal with him without making things worse.

  “We’ll talk again later,” I said and knew by the tense line of his back that he heard me.

  I was a little surprised to find myself dreaming of the Khloïdanikos, arriving in it as if I had just stepped through Horn Gate. I took my customary path and found that the perseïd tree had actually put out a single beautifully defiant flower. I sat down, amazed and almost afraid to breathe, and that was how Thamuris found me.

  He sat beside me and said simply, “I’ve missed you.”

  “Well, there have been some complications.” I told him about the binding-by-obedience. “And besides,” I said to preempt the outrage I didn’t want to deal with, even if it was on my behalf, “I thought you might prefer it if I stayed away.” I was careful to keep my gaze on the perseïd tree. “I’m not . . . I don’t think I know how to be a decent friend.” I didn’t deserve outrage on my behalf, not from him.

  “That’s not true,” Thamuris said sharply.

  “You’re better,” I said, to change the subject. “The Khloïdanikos is healing you.”

  “No. Not healing. But slowing the effects . . . People can live for years and years with consumption, you know. I could have—I could live.”

  “If you spend all your time asleep.”

  “You don’t understand,” Thamuris said urgently. “This isn’t sleeping. I can walk here, and it doesn’t hurt. And there’s always something to study. But it’s lonely, if you’re not here.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say; fortunately, he didn’t wait. “You have to come. Because I don’t want to do it without you. It’s not worth it if there’s no one to talk to.”

  “You have Khrysogonos. And Diokletian.” I wasn’t sure why I was arguing, but it made me uncomfortable to think that Thamuris needed me.

  “Khrysogonos does his best, but he isn’t a scholar at heart. And Diokletian isn’t my friend
. Not the way you are. I missed you.”

  “You can’t depend on me,” I said, starting to feel a little frantic. “You must know that.”

  “Is it so wrong to be needed?”

  I would have lied, evaded, distracted, but I was dreaming, not tranced, and my defenses failed me. “Yes. If you depend on me, I will fail you.”

  He looked at me, not speaking, until I turned back to the perseïd, staring at its black bark. My shoulders hunched tighter and tighter, and when he finally spoke, I startled as violently as if he’d pinched me.

  “You believe yourself to be a monster,” he said.

  “I am a monster,” I said, not looking at him, not looking at anything but the perseïd.

  “Why?”

  “What?” “What?”

  Patiently, he said, “Why do you call yourself a monster?”

  “I hurt people for my own pleasure,” I said, and there was something darkly satisfying in saying it, in admitting something I’d known was true since I was eleven years old.

  “Sexually, you mean.” His voice was steady, but he was blushing furiously. As far as I knew, Thamuris was a virgin and likely to die that way.

  “In part. You’ve been on the receiving end, so don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “But that was to defend yourself.”

  “It’s not that simple. Or that excusable.”

  Another long silence. I didn’t mind this one as much; I wasn’t trying to hide anything now.

  “If you were a monster,” Thamuris said, “you wouldn’t care.”

  “If I wasn’t a monster, I wouldn’t do it.”

  “And you can’t stop?”

  “I tried,” I said. “For two years, I tried to deny it. I failed.”

  “You’re talking about sex again. I meant the other.”

  “The man whose mind I destroyed. He killed himself. I saw it in my dreams.”

  “Felix—”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone any longer,” I said, and I knew it was the truth by how much it hurt to say it. “But, no, I can’t stop.”

  Thamuris did not answer for a moment; then he said simply, “Change takes time. And you have been hurt yourself.”

  “I deserve it.”

  He snorted. “Even if that’s true, what good is it?”

  “What?”

  “What good is it? What good is your pain doing anyone?”

  I was sure there was an answer, but I couldn’t find it.

  Thamuris said, “You have to understand the difference between an error and a crime. Errors don’t make you a monster, Felix, even terrible ones. If they did, I would be every inch as much a monster as you claim you are. Do you think I’m a monster?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Exactly.” He stood up. “They’re going to want to take me out in the garden soon, so I’d better go. You’ll come back, won’t you?”

  “You really want me to,” I said. It wasn’t quite a question, but almost.

  “I really do,” Thamuris said and smiled at me.

  “All right,” I said. “When I can.”

  He nodded, said, “Try to forgive yourself,” and left, moving slowly. I got up and walked in the opposite direction, trying to decide if what he had said was true, or if it only felt true because I badly wanted it to be.

  I could forgive myself for being Malkar’s cat’s-paw. He had worked a long time to instill the necessary responses in me, and although I wished I had resisted him, I could not truly blame myself for failing. I could forgive myself for Gideon’s death. I had not wished it, had done nothing knowingly to cause it. I regretted the way I had treated him, regretted the pain I had inflicted on him. I had been stupid to underestimate the threat posed by Isaac Garamond, but even with hindsight, I was surprised he had committed murder.

  As for what I had done to Isaac . . . I wouldn’t do it again.

  The realization startled me. I stopped by the koi pond, watching the calico fish play hide-and-seek among the water lilies without really seeing them. But it was true. I wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t do it in cold blood. I could not quite bring myself to wish it undone—could not bring myself to wish Isaac Garamond alive and sane—just as I could not deny I had done it knowingly. That, I supposed, made it a crime rather than an error in Thamuris’s definition, and the best I could say for myself was I wouldn’t do it again.

  There, I proved myself a monster, but a monster who perhaps could learn better. And Isaac had been far from innocent himself. If I was a monster, so was he. He had acted in cold blood.

  And so had I on another occasion. Mildmay might have forgiven me—Mildmay had his own understanding of monsters—but here, truly, was the worst thing I had ever done, and I knew it was a crime.

  Here, it was no comfort to know I wouldn’t do it again. No excuse of grief or rage. I could claim I had been Mavortian von Heber’s cat’s-paw, and there was even a sense in which it wasn’t a lie, but that didn’t exculpate me. I had used the obligation d’âme on Mildmay. I had forced him to murder Vey Coruscant, and I couldn’t think of a way to describe my actions that didn’t involve the word “rape.” What Malkar had done to me, I had turned around and done to Mildmay. That I had thereby delivered him into Malkar’s own hands was cruel and unnecessary confirmation of the truth.

  “How am I supposed to forgive myself for that?” I said; although my voice was no more than a whisper, I winced.

  Forgiveness is a luxury, whispered the fantôme from its prison. Thou needst it not.

  “Yes, well, you would say that.” I wondered if the noirance of the engine could reach the Khloïdanikos, and then realized that of course it could, that the Khloïdanikos was no more “in” Troia than it was “in” Corambis, and that in any event the fantôme was bound to me, bound in my construct, and thus the noirance would affect it through me even if the Khloïdanikos itself were immune. And I knew perfectly well the Khloïdanikos was not immune to noirant power; I’d proved that conclusively.

  Thou wilt yield eventually, the fantôme said. And then this foolishness will not trouble thee. I promise.

  “Yes,” I said tartly, “because I will have committed suicide. No, tha . . .” My voice died as thoughts of noirance and death and sacrifice and forgiveness lined up in a new way and dumped me abruptly back into the waking world.

  Mildmay

  I’d woken up around the fourth hour of the morning, and when I sat up, I saw across Felix that Kay was awake, too.

  “G’morning,” I said, whispering even though Felix was sleeping hard. “I’m getting up. You want to?”

  “Yes, please,” Kay whispered back. Once we’d worked our way out around Felix, Kay said, “And tell me, please, how you came here. Is most bewildering.”

  Yeah, I’ll bet. So I told him our end, and we came out into the sunlight and there were suddenly Caloxans fucking everywhere, falling over themselves to make Kay happy, which mostly seemed to make him embarrassed. But I didn’t mind using it to get some breakfast and to find out that Julian was off showing Corbie the horses and, well, I wished him luck.

  So me and Kay were eating, with Caloxans kind of hanging around, not exactly with us but where if Kay wanted something, they were right fucking on top of it. And Felix came out with his hair hanging in his face and his eyes all dreamy, and he came up to me and crouched down and said, “I know what to do.”

  “You know what to do,” I said.

  “Yes. Come on, take a walk with me. Here, you! Come sit with Kay and make him stop moping.” The nearest Caloxan jumped like he’d been bitten.

  “Am not—!” Kay said.

  “Oh yes you are, darling,” Felix said cheerfully. “Come on, Mildmay.”

  So I hauled myself up and followed him off to where there was nobody else in earshot, and he said, “I know what to do about the engine. But I need your help.”

  Of course I said, “Okay,” because I was never going to be able to say nothing else when he asked me f
or help. He was kind of wild-eyed and dreamy, and I had to ask him twice before he got around to telling me what he needed me to do. Which was pretty simple, really. Get Kay into the labyrinth, but nobody else.

  Simple, but not easy.

  All the Caloxans were watching Kay like the world was going to end if they didn’t know right where he was every second, and I didn’t need to run the conversation through my head but once to give up on the idea of just saying, I need to borrow Kay for a while if y’all don’t mind. Because they would mind, especially when they asked what I wanted him for and I had to say I didn’t know.

  Yeah, we could just skip that part.

  So I went and found Corbie and told her I needed a diversion. And she looked at me funny and said, “What for?” and I said, “Felix says,” and powers and saints, that was good enough for her.

  I told her to give me a minute to talk to Kay and then draw the Caloxans off any way she could think of that wouldn’t actually hurt nobody. I went over to where Kay was standing and glaring at nothing the way he did. I gave the Caloxan watching him a glower and said, “D’you mind?”

  Which shouldn’t have worked, really, but it got him flustered and he backed off.

  Kay turned his head toward me, and his eyes were just about as spooky as Felix’s, because I knew he couldn’t see me, but it looked like he was staring straight at me and not liking me much, neither. He said, “What is it, Mildmay?”

  He just sounded tired, like he figured I was going to lay into him about something. I said, “I need you to cooperate, okay?”

  “Cooperate?” Kay most always had about half a frown on, that line between his eyebrows that never really went away, but now he was frowning for real. “Cooperate with what?”

  And that was when Corbie—may Kethe bless her wicked heart—spooked the horses. I waited a couple seconds, watched Caloxans heading for the picket as fast as they could go, and said, “Going this way. Please.” And I caught Kay’s arm and started dragging him toward the entrance to the labyrinth.

  He didn’t fight me. Kept up with me, even, and said, “What happens?”

  “Felix has an idea,” I said. “I don’t know more’n that.”