Felix? Yeah, but not now. I needed somebody people would listen to, not argue with for an hour first. Lord Stephen? Yeah, but I needed somebody who’d listen to me, and I didn’t think Lord Stephen would. Not now. Then all at once I thought of Lord Giancarlo. He didn’t like me, but he was a fair-minded man, about as fair-minded as a hocus could get. I knew without having to wonder about it that he’d listen to me, and he was the chairman of the Curia. Lord Stephen would listen to him.
I shifted my grip from Hugo’s wrist to his collar. “Come on, Hugo. Let’s see if you get better at spilling your guts with practice. ”
I stood and hammered on Lord Giancarlo’s door for what felt like an hour before he opened it. He was in his dressing gown, his thin gray hair all up on end.
“Mr. Foxe? What on earth?”
“Sorry to disturb you, m’lord, but I’m afraid of waiting.” I dragged Hugo in and kicked the door shut.
I’d judged Lord Giancarlo right. The eyebrows went up, but he said, “Clearly you have something to tell me. I am listening.”
“Talk, Hugo,” I said, and Hugo talked. I’d told him lies about Lord Giancarlo all the way up from the Mesmerine, about how he was the meanest, toughest hocus in the Mirador, about how Cerberus Cresset had answered to him, about how he was more powerful than Felix and I’d seen him turn a man into a dog for looking at him wrong. Hugo believed it all, and I’d gotten him more scared of Lord Giancarlo than of either me or Lord Ivo. He told him everything, more even than he’d told me, details about how they’d got rid of Lady Dulcinea, about how Vey and Lord Ivo turned against Gloria Aestia and Cotton Verlalius when they realized how stupid and dangerous they were. He even talked about the plot to kill Cornell Teverius. It was weird listening to it from that side, how they’d decided to try with Cornell, along of him being both greedy and not very bright, but how he’d gotten too cocky and started shooting off his mouth, and how Lord Ivo had written to Robert to say he’d betray them before they could get him the Protectorate, and so Robert had sent Hugo down the city again. And then details about how Lord Ivo’d moved back in and it was like nothing had changed and how Hugo’d gone to see Kolkhis twice, and I remembered thinking that the Guard would know if Hugo was leaving the Mirador and wanted to just die of my own stupidity. Lord Giancarlo was scowling like the end of the world, but he took notes and asked for dates and details, and I knew he wasn’t making the mistake of not taking the information seriously just because it came from a rabbit. He got everything out of Hugo there was to get and then got his valet to run for the guards to take Hugo down to the Verpine, the prison under the guard barracks.
“I must go to Lord Stephen,” he said to me.
“You don’t need me, do you?”
“No, if you do not wish to come.”
“Lord Stephen, he ain’t exactly . . .”
“I understand. You have done the Mirador a tremendous favor, Mr. Foxe. We will not forget.”
“Thanks, Lord Giancarlo,” I said. I could feel my face going red. “Well, good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Foxe.” As I left, he was throwing on his clothes.
I went to Simon and Rinaldo’s suite. Them and Gideon deserved to hear first.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Simon asked as he let me in.
“Yeah, and then some.” I looked around. “Where’s Gideon?”
“He got a message from Felix and went out. Come on, Mildmay! Don’t sit on it—what did you learn from the necromancer? ”
I gave them the rundown of what Luther Littleman had said, and then of what Hugo had said. Rinaldo applauded with delight when I told them about dragging Hugo to Lord Giancarlo. “I would have paid money to see the look on Giancarlo’s face.”
“It was mostly the eyebrows,” I said, and he boomed with laughter.
“What’s going to happen?” Simon asked.
“I dunno. Lord Giancarlo was gonna go talk to Lord Stephen, and I guess it depends on how much Lord Stephen believes. ”
“Stephen will listen to him,” Rinaldo said. “He has hated Ivo Polydorius since Dulcinea died.”
“Why?” I said.
“There were . . . words spoken at her funeral that would have gotten Ivo a challenge if Stephen had been older. Gareth was fond of Dulcinea, but he never loved her as her children did. And perhaps he was already beginning to look at Gloria Aestia. He accepted Ivo’s apology, and they remained on amiable terms until Gloria’s execution. I now see why Ivo was so desirous of leaving the Mirador at that time, and why he picked that clumsy fight with Gareth.”
“Clumsy?”
“I had thought Ivo was unnerved—we were all unnerved. He said something stupid to Gareth about Shannon’s place in the succession, and Gareth exploded. Although perhaps it was genuine clumsiness. That question must have been very near and dear to Ivo’s heart.”
“So he left,” Simon said, “and then Gareth died and Stephen became Lord Protector—”
“And I suppose it must have seemed like there was very little point in returning. They had tried an open coup once and failed. Better to wait, bide their time. They must have been ecstatic when Stephen married Robert’s sister.”
“Shit,” I said. “Her kid, they could’ve done most anything they wanted.”
“Exactly. But then she died, and Stephen did not marry again, and Shannon was his heir. And the Polydorii tend to be good at waiting.”
“Mrs. Fenris said something about a fallow septad.”
“I don’t pretend to understand heretical thaumaturgy,” Rinaldo said. “But I do understand politics. Ivo would pass his schemes on—not to his wastrel son, but I’m sure there are other young Polydorii who cleave a little closer to the true line. But then Stephen announced he was getting married again, and Ivo got nervous. No one could have imagined Stephen would marry Zelda. But it gave him an excuse.”
“Powers,” I said. “That’s nasty.”
“That’s the Polydorii,” Rinaldo said.
Simon yawned. “If you find Gideon in Felix’s suite, tell him he can come back or pick up his things, whatever he wants.”
“I will,” I said and left. It was really Gideon I wanted to tell the story to anyways, and if him and Felix were together, I could tell it to both of them. That felt like a good idea. It was the first time in a decad or more that I’d really been happy about going back to Felix’s suite.
But they weren’t there. Felix’s bedroom door was open and everything. I stood for a minute in the middle of the sitting room sort of going, What the fuck? to myself, but then I figured that maybe Gideon’d wanted neutral ground for whatever it was Felix had to say to him, and I couldn’t blame him for that.
So I got the cards off the mantel and started laying out another round of the Queen of Tambrin. I could wait.
Mehitabel
Even after Vincent left, I couldn’t settle. The romance seemed stiff and nonsensical, my bed uninviting. I couldn’t get that little pained smile of Felix’s out of my head.
Finally, I said to myself, “There’s nothing wrong with being worried about a friend,” found my shoes, and went to see if Felix was all right.
My nerve nearly failed me when I reached his suite. It was ridiculous, I told myself; I wasn’t afraid of Felix and never had been. I knocked.
And Mildmay opened the door.
We gave each other a good blank look, a fast silent mutual agreement to pretend neither one of us was embarrassed, and I said, “Can I talk to Felix for a minute?”
“He ain’t here,” Mildmay said.
“No?” I said, and my mind was immediately thronged with foolish images of disaster.
Mildmay saw my distress, for he added, “Off with Gideon somewhere.”
Oddly, this did not help. “With Gideon?”
The tiniest hint of a frown. “Yeah. Sent Gideon a note and all.”
“When?”
The frown was getting less subtle. “Dunno. I mean, Gideon’d gone out when I got over to their
place, say, an hour and a half ago?”
“But, Mildmay, an hour and a half ago, Felix was with me. He said you’d deserted him, and he was lonely. And he left because—oh, never mind. But it wasn’t to meet Gideon. I’m sure of that much.”
“What the fuck?” Mildmay said, more or less under his breath.
“I’m trying to think of an innocent explanation,” I said tightly.
“Well, either Gideon was lying to Simon, or Felix was lying to you, or . . . I hate the fuck out of all of these, y’know?”
“Yes. Where would he go?”
“Felix?”
“Gideon could be anywhere.” He nodded reluctantly. “Look, Felix wasn’t . . . when he left me, he was . . .”
“He was in a mood,” Mildmay offered.
“That’ll do. Where would he go?”
“Dunno. But—you think we’d better find him, don’t you?”
I was remembering Isaac Garamond pacing my dressing room in a frenzy. “Yes.”
“Okay. Will you check around with his friends? You know, Fleur and Edgar and them?”
“All right. What are you going to do?”
“I got another idea,” he said, grimly enough that I decided I didn’t want to know.
As for me, I’d go to Fleur Masterton and Edgar St. Rose if I had to, but I thought I’d start with Isaac Garamond.
Mildmay
So, you’re Felix, you’re in a mood, and you’ve got the whole fucking Mirador laid out like a quarter-gorgon whore in front of you. Where do you go?
I’d thought of the battlements right off, but even Felix wouldn’t go up there all by himself in the dark. Thought of the Arcane, seeing as how he was like one big raw twitchy bruise every time anybody mentioned it, but if he was down there I couldn’t go after him nohow. Fucking binding-by-forms. If he’d gone to one of his friends, Mehitabel’d find him, and that was better than me going round like a sheepdog who’s lost his only sheep.
And then I thought of something else. And I know I only thought of it because I’d had Strych in my head all fucking day, but, you know, it made too much sense. It’s the sort of thing Felix would do, and the thought of him down in that nasty little room all by himself gave me the creeping crawling screaming horrors. So even if I was wrong, I had to go look.
I took a lantern, because I was starting to wonder if I was crazy, but I wasn’t going to be stupid about it. Didn’t have no trouble finding my way, neither. Only ever gotten lost the once in my whole life, and there’s a couple different ways that wasn’t my fault.
So I found the door again, the one Felix had hexed shut, and there it was, open maybe a quarter inch. Fuck, I thought, because I hadn’t wanted to be right, and tried to get ready to talk Felix down from wherever he was at.
Gideon was the first thing I saw when I opened the door.
Somebody’d lugged a chair down, and he was in it, facing the door, a lantern by his feet. And he was dead. It wasn’t suicide, and it wasn’t an accident. People don’t get strangled without somebody meaning it to happen. His face was swollen and dark. It took me a moment to figure out what was wrong with him, why he didn’t look like all the dead, strangled people I’d seen in my time, and then it hit me, so hard my knees buckled, and I ended up on all fours, gasping, trying not to cry and not to puke. His mouth was sagging open, but there was no tongue sticking out.
Kolkhis had taught me how to be cold, and I needed it right then, even though I hated it. Hated myself for it. But it got me back on my feet, and got me close enough to the thing that had been Gideon to take a good look.
He’d probably been dead an hour or so, though I wasn’t no expert on that end of things, and whoever had done it had taken some pains with the body. Same way you don’t get strangled by accident or because you decide to do it yourself, you don’t sit there and let somebody get their knot all tidy behind your ear. He hadn’t died with his hands folded all neat like that, neither.
There was a piece of paper under them, like Gideon was a paperweight or something. I couldn’t see most of the message, but the signature was in plain view, and it was one of those words I didn’t have no trouble with: Felix.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. But Felix wouldn’t’ve killed him like this. First thought that got through that wasn’t purely obscene. Garotte’s a sneaky sort of thing, all cold and planned out in advance. Felix wouldn’t do it like that. Beat him to death, sure, or knife him even, or just fucking magic him to death. But not creep up behind him with a strangling wire.
And then I thought, Felix wouldn’t’ve brought him here to kill him anyways.
And then I thought, Mehitabel said Felix wasn’t going to meet Gideon.
And then I saw the hair tangled in Gideon’s fingers, long and red and curly, and I knew with the trouble somebody’d taken over arranging Gideon’s hands, that hair hadn’t got left there by accident either.
This was a frame-up. Somebody wanted Felix dead, and they couldn’t kill him themselves, along of the spells Cabalines all got hung on them. I was the only guy who’d ever murdered a Cabaline despite all that, and nobody’d been asking me how I did it recently. Only people who ever had asked were Felix and Gideon and Mavortian von Heber. And two of them were dead.
I bit down hard on my knuckles, and got thinking again.
Gideon wasn’t a Cabaline. They wouldn’t let him swear their precious fucking oaths. And he wasn’t real big, and he wasn’t no fighter. Easy. And with Felix wandering around like a thunderstorm, you just rig your murder a little, and hey presto! like Jean-the-Wizard always says in the pantomimes. Because who’s going to believe Felix when he says he didn’t do it? Especially when they find the body in a room only Felix knows about . . .
“Fuck,” I said under my breath, but hard enough that it hurt my throat. I had to find Felix, and I had to find him right fucking now. There was no time to fuck around with guessing and asking, because this room was a trap, and I didn’t figure the guy who set it was planning to just wait for somebody to come along and wonder what the awful smell was. He’d’ve found a way to spring it, and it was only the purest, stupidest luck that I’d gotten to it first.
I got myself back out into the hall, not thinking about it until I was pulling the door shut on Gideon’s dull, bulging eyes. “I’m sorry, Gideon,” I said, as fucking useless as anything in the world has ever been.
I didn’t latch the door. Left it just like it had been. Because it was proof—I mean, not great proof, but something—that somebody’d wanted the body found. And if Felix had killed Gideon, he would’ve shut the door and hexed it again, and not in no little way, neither.
You got to find him, Milly-Fox. And there ain’t no time to be nice about it, neither.
I shut my eyes for a second.
I’d been leaning away from the binding-by-forms as hard as I could for—well, for a while. Because when I was stuck in the Bastion with Simon and Rinaldo, it’d nagged at me ’til I wanted to smash my own brains out just to make it stop. And then I hadn’t wanted Felix in my head, and I hadn’t wanted to deal with it. And I’d just sort of shut it down. Felix had used it on me, but I hadn’t used it back on him. I’d even quit hearing his voice all through my dreams the way I had at first.
“Fuck,” I said out loud. “You did it to your own self, you sissy.” And instead of ignoring the binding-by-forms like a headache, I gave it some room, and all at once, something fell open in my head, and I knew where Felix was. Could’ve got to him blindfolded.
Couldn’t run, but I had Jashuki, and I was moving as fast as I fucking well could.
Mehitabel
There was light showing under Isaac Garamond’s door, so I knocked. Knocked again harder when there was no answer. Tried the handle. Locked, of course, and I didn’t have Mildmay’s way with a hairpin.
I pounded on the door, making it shudder in its frame, and at last heard signs of life from the other side.
“Who’s there?” Isaac’s voice, and I supposed I could understand why he soun
ded rather cautious.
“I need to find Felix. Is he with you?”
“Cre . . . Meh . . . M-Madame Parr?”
Oh, very smooth, Lieutenant Vulpes, I thought, and repeated, a bit louder, “I have to find Felix.”
And blessedly, Felix’s voice, more muffled than Isaac’s, “I’m here, Tabby. What’s the matter?”
I wish I knew. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, it damned well can’t. Now, sunshine.”
“Well, unless you want to see me in all my glory—oh. Thank you, darling.”