But what the sweet sacred fuck was Jenny, of all people, playing resurrectionist for? Not for the Green Dancers, that was for damn sure.
I actually even kind of sympathized with Keeper for wanting to know what was going on. “And I find out, and you’ll tell me who got Ginevra Thomson killed.”
“Yes.”
“And who rolled over on me?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you that now, if you take down your hair.”
“What?”
“Take down your hair,” she said. “Oh, and wash that ridiculous soot out of your eyebrows.”
“You want me to take down my hair?”
“You’re slow, Milly-Fox, but you get there eventually.”
“Why, for fuck’s sake?”
Her smile was horrible. “Because otherwise I won’t tell you what you want to know.”
Give her what she wants and get it the fuck over with. I un-braided my hair, used the washrag she gave me on my eyebrows and hairline. Bared my teeth at her, and I wasn’t even pretending I was trying to smile. “Happy now?”
“Good boy,” said Keeper. “The young woman went by the unlikely name of Estella Velvet.”
“Oh.” I didn’t mean to make any kind of a noise. It just got out.
“She and another young woman left the next morning on the diligence for St. Millefleur.” Ginevra’s friend Estella. And her girlfriend, Faith Cowry. Estella must’ve cut a deal with the Dogs, traded Faith for me. I bet it hadn’t cost her so much as a sleepless night.
“Now, before you leave,” Keeper said brightly, “I need to introduce you to someone. His name’s Septimus Wilder. And, no, don’t you touch your hair.”
Oh shit. She’d never hit you once if she could hit you twice, and I knew that tone in her voice, too, the one that said as how she had your balls in a vise, and she thought she’d tighten it another notch, just to see what happened.
I figured I could guess who Septimus was, and I’d rather’ve gone out and jumped in the Sim than meet him, but that wasn’t something I got a vote on, so I didn’t say nothing—I fucking well knew better—and she got up and stuck her head out to yell at the nearest kid to go tell Septimus to get his ass down here. I sat still and kept my mouth shut, and concentrated on getting my face to where it wasn’t going to give nothing away.
’Cause I knew Keeper was going to be watching.
Keeper went wandering around the room, and it just about killed me, but I didn’t try to track her. It didn’t take long before there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she said, from right behind me, and maybe I should’ve been expecting her to knot her hand in my hair and drag my head back, but I wasn’t, and just as the door opened, she leaned down and kissed me, mean and nasty, and fuck me for a half-wit dog, I just sat there and took it.
And then she let me go and went back to her chair, and I couldn’t get myself to look away from her. “Mildmay,” she said, and she was smirking like a gator, damn her, “this is Septimus. Septimus, this is your . . . predecessor, Mildmay the Fox.” And then she just sat back to watch.
Bull’s-fucking-eye.
I turned my head like it was made of stone. Septimus Wilder was somewhere toward the end of his third septad. He was Keeper’s height and skinny and dark. He reminded me of a racing dog—all that energy and nowhere to put it. And he moved that way, too, sharp and finicky. You wouldn’t see a dog with eyes like that, though. I knew right off he had Keeper’s sense of humor. I didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean much. Those last couple indictions with Keeper, I hadn’t been paying no mind to the little kids, and if he’d kept his head down and his mouth shut, I wouldn’t hardly have known he was there.
Yeah, I know. And I’d got the same way—and oh powers and saints, this was no time to realize it, with him glaring murder at me and the taste of her like ashes in my mouth—after Strych. Not noticing nothing. Not doing nothing but what I was told. Not caring about nothing and not even being awake enough to see what I was doing to myself. With Keeper, I’d started to come up out of it once I started to think I was really going to do it, really going to leave—and had that horrible fucking fight with Jenny, too—but it wasn’t ’til maybe four or five months after I’d left that I realized how bad I’d been. And I’d sworn I’d never get that way again, too. I’m surprised I hadn’t been able to hear Kethe laughing at me.
Septimus Wilder looked me over real good, like he wanted to be sure he could describe me to the Dogs if he got the chance, and then he smiled, all teeth, and said, “Charmed.”
I said, “Likewise.” Both of us lying like rugs.
“Septimus is going to act as my liaison,” Keeper said, and I knew she was hoping to make me ask what that meant.
Sorry, sweetheart, you’re shit out of luck. I’d been going to Curia meetings for two indictions. I only wished I could smirk at her the way she’d been smirking at me.
“Okay,” I said, like it didn’t make no nevermind to me.
And what she did next was Keeper in a nutshell—if I ever started to forget what she was like, all I’d need to do was remember her right then. She didn’t get what she wanted from me, so she turned right around and went after Septimus.
“Septimus,” she said, sweet as poison, “can use the practice. ”
He was too dark to show a blush easy, but the way he said, “Keeper!” was just the same as me going tomato-red. And Keeper gave me a look I’d seen her give her friends over and over and over. Her Isn’t he cute when he’s flustered? look, and if I started trying to tell you how much I hated it, we’d be here all night.
I didn’t like it no better from this side, neither. I didn’t say nothing, and Keeper gave Septimus the eyebrow—and powers, I remembered that, too—and he said, trying hard not to let on she’d got him flustered as bad as a virgin in a tarquin bar, “We need to fix a meet.”
It hit me then, the trap Keeper’d laid for me and I’d walked right into. Because the last thing in the world I wanted was to talk about the binding-by-forms. With anybody. But especially not in front of her. I said, “Good fucking luck.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Keeper said, “I will suggest you not adopt Mildmay’s vocabulary. ”
“I’d have to be able to understand him first.”
I see why she likes you, I thought. But I didn’t say it. They could go on and be snarky at me ’til the end of time. I didn’t care.
But Keeper turned it back on me. “If you recall, you have a stake in this matter, too. You’d be wise to be helpful.”
She got me on the raw just like she meant to. “You know perfectly fucking well I can’t go making arrangements like that.”
“No? Why not?”
“You know.” I knew she did. Because the whole fucking city knew. And because she’d set this up. She knew me, knew just how fucking putrid this was going to be. And the look in her eye said this was what I got for walking out on her.
“Oh!” said Septimus. “You mean the binding-by-forms.”
“Yes, the fucking binding-by-forms!”
“Well, you came down here, didn’t you?”
He sounded like he honestly didn’t understand what the problem was, and I knew I shouldn’t hate him more for that.
“I got lucky,” I said. “I can’t . . .” But I didn’t know how to explain it, didn’t know the right words to use.
“What Mildmay is trying to say—and so eloquently, sweetheart—is that he is not his own master. Does your brother even know you’re here, Milly-Fox?”
“No,” I said, and powers, I could hear it myself—she’d got me right back where she wanted me, like I’d never fucking left.
“And I doubt he’d be pleased if he learned, would he? No, don’t bother to lie. You do it so badly. And anyway, I’ve met him.”
“You what?” And for all she wasn’t leaning on it, I knew blackmail when I heard it. For a moment, I thought I was actually going to be sick, but I swallowed hard, and it passed.
“We did business together a couple indictions ago. I’m surprised he didn’t mention it.”
No, you ain’t, you fucking bitch. I don’t know how I kept from saying it. My hands were clenched so tight the bones ached. And there was Septimus Wilder with his ears flapping.
It hurt like eating glass, but I talked myself back down. Keeper let me—she always did know exactly when to stop pushing if she wanted any use out of me. I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, to just get up and walk out of there, but I couldn’t do it, may Kethe bless my stupid, stupid head.
Finally, I said, “How you getting in?”
“Sorry?” said Septimus.
I repeated myself.
He gave Keeper a kind of funny look. I said, “Oh for fuck’s sake. Whatever it is, I know about it already. Talk!”
He startled a little, but he said, “The shrine to St. Holofernes.”
“In the Altanueva, yeah. Okay. That’s as good a place as any. You be there every night at the septad-night. If I ain’t there in half an hour, I ain’t coming.”
“Every—”
“Septimus,” Keeper said, and he shut up meek as you please.
“You got what you wanted?” I said to her.
We both knew what I was asking. “For now,” she said, and I could still feel her smirk in the back of my neck—still fucking taste her in the back of my throat—when I slammed the warehouse door behind me.
Mehitabel
As Jean-Soleil had been expecting, Nuée Duskrose made a dreadful scene. Growing up in an acting troupe, I’d been a connoisseur of hysterics by the age of five; my mama had thrown some very pretty tantrums in her time, and she had been nothing compared to my Norvenan aunt Anna Melissa, of whom even Gran’père Mato went in awe. Nuée Duskrose was, by comparison, a rank amateur. Jean-Soleil dealt with her in a matter of moments and evicted her onto the pavement still shrieking.
At close range, Gordeny Fisher was even more arresting. Although she did not have Susan’s stunning beauty, the sulfurous yellow glints in her brown eyes were as disconcerting as the gaze of a half-tamed hawk. The eyes and the voice were what you would remember, and that was enough to start with.
She listened attentively to Jean-Soleil’s strictures and promised quite faithfully to abide by them all. When he dismissed us, Corinna said, “Come on, Tabby, let’s give Gordeny the grand tour.”
“I’m game,” I said, “although I warn you now, Gordeny, you’re going to spend a week getting lost anyway.”
We took her all over the labyrinth of the Empyrean, from the attics to the storage rooms beneath the stage. We showed her Hell and the Firmament, introduced her to Cat and Toad, the two silent boys—lovers or brothers, I’d never been able to determine which—who ran the scenery and lights and did sound effects when we needed them. They practically lived up in the Firmament among the catwalks and pulleys, and Jabez had told me they’d rigged the thunder machine all by themselves. We showed Gordeny Jean-Soleil’s office, an oddly shaped wedge chopped out of the space behind the stage. It was actually about halfway up the back wall, and had a spindly stair—almost more of a ladder—that led to it and nowhere else. Jean-Soleil claimed that it was only the fear of someday not being able to get up there that kept him from becoming grossly obese. His office window was a jutting oriel, allowing him to survey his kingdom from above.
We showed Gordeny the rehearsal areas and the dressing rooms, with particular attention to Susan’s, which would now be hers. Corinna promised to introduce her to the rest of the staff—the ushers, the house managers, the rest of the crew— and the two of them departed to see if the Velvet Tears had a free room.
I had business in the Mirador.
Vulpes’s business, of course. He wanted to know more about Gideon; he wanted to know how the Mirador was reacting to Stephen’s marriage plans. No power in the world would have gotten me anywhere near Felix’s suite, but Felix was hardly the only person—or even the only wizard—I knew in the Mirador. And truth be told, I didn’t want to go back to the Velvet Tears, to a barren room and a narrow bed, to the images that would be waiting for me when I closed my eyes. Anything was better than lying awake in the dark, thinking about Hallam.
I started in the Painted Grotto, where the young nobles and their lovers came to see and be seen. There, the talk was all of younger sisters and cousins, and I noted carefully which names were already being bandied about: the Novadii, the Lemerii, the Valerii. Lionel Verlalius told me that his manservant had told him that the Polydorius suite was being aired out and that that could only mean Lord Ivo Polydorius was bringing his daughter to the market.
Not that Lionel put it like that, of course.
I bore the Painted Grotto as long as I could, but the company seemed to me too much like a pack of coyotes, hiding their interest in a dying buffalo behind their sharp-toothed smiles. And I was not in the mood for fending off delicate insinuations about my own interest in the Teverii. I left sooner than I’d meant to.
It was hard not to imagine Vulpes watching from every shadow, and I had to restrain myself from telling the page who guided me from the Painted Grotto to Simon and Rinaldo’s suite to hurry. I am still doing your bidding, lieutenant! Leave me be!
Simon and Rinaldo were at home, as I’d expected. They didn’t go out much.
They weren’t lovers, although most people thought they were. They were as comfortable with each other as a long-married couple; being imprisoned together in a small room in the Bastion for a number of years will do that to you. Rinaldo wasn’t molly. He said he was merely lazy, and growing old; if there was some darker reason, I didn’t know it. Simon, tall, stooped, myopic Simon, was janus—and terribly shy. And also painfully self-conscious about his mutilated hands. Another blight to thank Malkar Gennadion for.
They were pleased to see me. Simon fussed about chairs and drinks, while Rinaldo blinked at me like a magnificently self-satisfied portly old tomcat and said, “To what do we owe the honor?”
It didn’t bother him in the slightest that he knew I had an ulterior motive. I smiled and said, “I’m a little unwelcome in the Harrowgate household at the moment.”
“Then Mildmay really . . . ?” Simon asked.
“Mildmay dropped me like a dead rat,” I said and let my smile twist out of true.
They both made sympathetic noises, and Simon pushed a glass of sherry into my hand. From there, asking them about Stephen’s marriage was easy and natural: of course I would want to change the subject.
Their take on the matter was quite different from the Painted Grotto’s, for they weren’t interested in the question of which lucky girl Stephen was going to choose. Simon said, “Robert looks like he sat on a hornet.”
“Robert,” Rinaldo said, “was expecting to leech off Stephen for the rest of his unpleasant life. But even the most amiable sheep of a girl is going to object to having her predecessor’s brother around.”
“Especially that brother,” Simon said.
“Will he make trouble?” I asked.
“He would if he could.”
“Would have already,” Simon said.
“Probably did. But even if Stephen would marry him, he can’t provide an heir.”
“At least he’s quit bleating about Lord Shannon’s claim.”
“Shannon said he didn’t want to be Lord Protector,” I said.
“Of course he doesn’t,” Rinaldo said. “He may be a feather-brained fop, but he’s not a fool.”
“Then why would Robert . . . ?”
“Not out of any love for Shannon, I assure you. But that’s the solution that allows him to maintain his own status quo. And that, my dear, is the only thing Robert of Hermione has ever or will ever care about.”
I asked, because I’d always wanted to know, “Why do he and Felix hate each other so much?”
“Natural antipathy,” Simon said with a shrug.
“Robert, like Stephen, does not like gentlemen of Felix’s, ah, persuasion,” Rinaldo said. ??
?And Felix doesn’t have the tact to be ashamed of himself.”
Simon added, “He is also, to be fair, monumentally inconvenient. ”
“How so?”
“He has ideals. And he insists on making the Mirador live up to them.”
“Oh,” I said, rather blankly. It had never occurred to me to cast Felix as an idealist.
“He does not,” Rinaldo said, dry as a sandstorm, “compromise well.”
“And he isn’t quiet. Well, you know how he argues.”
“Yes.”
“And his influence isn’t dependent on anyone’s good will,” Rinaldo said abruptly, as if he’d only just thought of it himself. “His influence is based entirely on his being himself. Robert is not the only one to find this irksome.”
“I’m sure he isn’t,” I said. And wondered in a back corner of my mind if that was why Vulpes found him so interesting.
“Felix, you see, doesn’t need to worry about who Lord Stephen marries. And that must gnaw at Robert’s dry little soul like a rat.”
“How poetic of you, Simon,” Rinaldo said, and Simon laughed and poured him more wine.
Mildmay
Somebody’d told somebody else. It’s the way things work in the Lower City, and if I’d had my head screwed on straight I would’ve been expecting it.
They caught me in Gilgamesh—being careful not to embarrass Keeper by taking me down on her turf. They were all heart, those guys. There were three or four of them—I never did get an exact count—and they were stupid enough to think that just because I was a crip, I was easy pickings. They didn’t know I was too fucking mad to see straight.
They weren’t expecting the knife, either.
I don’t think anybody got killed, but one guy ended up two fingers less than he’d come into the world, and another one went through a shop window when he hadn’t meant to. But I was a crip, and there were more of them than there was of me. Shit, the details don’t matter, do they? We were just to the point where I was either going to have to do something fucking amazing or I was going to go down and they were going to kick me the rest of the way out, when we heard the thump and jingle and shouting of Dogs running toward us. Me and the guys still interested in the fight all froze. We might hate each other’s guts, but Dogs were Dogs. Then one of them said, “You got lucky, cocksucker,” and they bounced me off a wall and lit out running south.