The Mirador

  And nearly walked straight into the massive and queenly form of our landlady.

  “Everything quite all right, Miss Parr?” she said dryly.

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Angharad.”

  “I trust Miss Colquitt’s indisposition is a temporary one?”

  Corinna, you owe me, I thought, and managed to turn gritted teeth into a passable smile. “Yes, thank you. She’s better already.”

  “See that she doesn’t relapse,” Mrs. Angharad said and moved with icy grandeur toward the stairs.

  I retreated to my own room and had rarely been more grateful to bolt its door behind me. I didn’t need this. Not on top of everything else. “Nothing more tonight,” I said fiercely under my breath, undoing my own buttons. “Not one more damn thing.”

  And it worked—if you don’t count the uneasy dreams.

  Mildmay

  So I didn’t get much sleep that night. Too busy thinking about Keeper and just how much I didn’t want to get in spitting distance of her.

  I never have figured out a good way to explain Keeper— except to people who grew up kept-thieves, and they don’t need the explaining in the first place. I still didn’t know, all these indictions later, whether I hated her or loved her. But I for sure hated the way she was trying to run me.

  I knew what I was to Keeper. I’d figured that out a long time ago. I was like one of them clockwork bears. You wound the bear up and put it on the floor and it walked forward, banging its sticks together. Me, you wound me up, pointed me in the right direction, and I killed people. Good old reliable clockwork.

  Only my clockwork had got busted somewhere along the way. And I knew exactly how much use Keeper had for busted things. So if she was putting herself to any kind of trouble to get me down in Britomart again, it wasn’t for old times’ sake, or to see how I was doing, or—saints and powers forbid—to say she was sorry. It was because she wanted something. And I was pretty sure that whatever Keeper wanted, I didn’t want to give it to her.

  So think, Milly-Fox. Not that you’re any good at it. Was there any other way I could get at the information I wanted? Anybody who might know, and would tell me if they did?

  I went round with it in circles for a couple hours, and most of what I came up with wasn’t good for nothing but making cats laugh. But I did think of one thing, and sure it was a long shot, but even in the morning when I looked at it again, it didn’t seem like it was completely batfuck nuts to try.

  Because Hugo Chandler was a musician in the Mirador now. I could get at him. And Hugo—stupid little rabbit that he was—had had a thing like a dying swan for Austin Lefevre, the poet Ginevra’d gone to when she’d dumped me. And, no, it didn’t make me feel better that Austin’d died with her, too.

  But he’d let Hugo hang around. I think he liked knowing Hugo’d slit his own wrists with a spoon if that was what Austin wanted. And so if there’d been somebody nosing around and asking questions, or if Ginevra’d said something stupid in company, odds were—maybe not great, but not bad either—that Hugo would’ve heard.

  It was something to try. If it worked, it’d mean I could stay the fuck away from Keeper. And powers, that didn’t seem too much to ask.

  When I came out of my bedroom, Felix and Gideon were fighting again. They gave me the same look, like I was somebody they didn’t know and didn’t want to.

  After a silence that lasted for septads, Felix said, “Good morning,” like a slab of marble.

  “I’ll be in the hall,” I said and ducked out. I couldn’t have gotten away from Felix’s voice in my bedroom—and if him and Gideon were really getting into it, he’d start yelling sooner or later—but from the hall I couldn’t hear a thing. Couldn’t’ve if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. I sat down against the wall and started reciting “Rowell’s Stand” in my head. It passed the time.

  I’d got to the middle of the thirteenth stanza, where Rowell’s wife looks in her mirror and it turns pitch-black, when Lord Shannon Teverius came into view at the other end of the hall. I guess right then Rowell’s wife and me probably felt pretty much the same.

  I got up as fast as I could. Lord Shannon was nobody to fuck with, and what exactly his thing was about Felix I couldn’t have told you. They’d been lovers, and Lord Shannon had dumped Felix when Felix was “not himself.” That was how Felix always put it, like being absolutely batfuck nuts for more than an indiction was just one of those things that happens to everybody once in a while. And when Felix came back to the Mirador with his head put back together, he didn’t want nothing more to do with Lord Shannon. Lord Shannon couldn’t stand that. I’d seen the way he watched Felix when he thought nobody was paying attention, and it was the kind of look that makes your skin crawl. He looked a little crazy himself. He laid traps for Felix, too, cunning things that Felix waltzed right out of without even seeming to see. Sometimes you could almost hear Lord Shannon’s teeth grinding.

  He stopped when he reached me. I ain’t molly, but I could see why Felix had fallen for him, and why the court molls would just about kill themselves to make him smile. He really was that good-looking. He took after his mother, Gloria Aestia, the Golden Bitch, and looking at him made you understand what had happened to Lord Gareth.

  “I wish to speak to Lord Felix.” His eyes were perfect Monspulchran blue, and they were staring through me like I wasn’t there.

  Powers, I thought. “He’s, um, busy just now, m’lord, but—”

  “Nonsense.”

  If I was really, really lucky, Felix might throw a fireball at me, and I’d get out of the rest of this freakshow. I opened the door.

  Felix turned on me like he was glad to have somebody else to yell at. “WHAT?” Shit. Gideon had found the right place to push and the right words to push with.

  “It’s, um, Lord Shannon. He says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah,” I said and stepped to one side so he could see Lord Shannon behind me.

  Felix said, “Damn,” not quite under his breath. I’d turned to keep an eye on both of them, and I saw Lord Shannon twitch.

  When he wanted to, Felix could do these lightning-fast changes that made me feel like a cat in a room full of people with heavy boots. He did one now, went from acid to honey in the blink of an eye. “Come in, please,” he said, his voice low and pleasant. His smile wasn’t one of his best, but it didn’t look fake.

  Me and Gideon both tried to bail right then. “Sit down, Gideon,” Felix said, watching Lord Shannon. “Don’t leave, Mildmay, but do close the door behind his lordship.” I looked at Gideon. Gideon looked back at me. We did what Felix wanted. I stayed by the door and did the best imitation I could of the wall. Gideon picked a chair out of both Felix’s and Lord Shannon’s lines of sight and hunched down in it like he was hoping he would turn invisible. At least Lord Shannon didn’t look happy about it neither.

  “Now,” Felix said, “what can I do for you, my lord?”

  I knew Felix well enough to see the gloat behind his good manners, that nasty little light in his eyes that meant he’d got some poor bastard right where he wanted him. And that’s when I got it. Lord Shannon hadn’t wanted no witnesses, and Felix had seen it, and made sure we didn’t leave.

  There was a pause, the spine-crawling sort where you want to say anything just to make it quit. Then Felix said, in a horrible, purring voice, “I don’t know about you, my lord, but I have to prepare for court, and I haven’t a great deal of time at my disposal. So, please, tell me what it is you want.” I hoped he didn’t know how much he sounded like Brinvillier Strych.

  “I would prefer to speak to you alone,” Lord Shannon said finally, and I figured we could call it one-nothing Felix, for making him admit it.

  “Well, you can’t,” Felix said, brisker but less dangerous. “So either say what you’ve come here to say, or leave.”

  Lord Shannon looked around, and I thought for a second he was going to bolt. He had that kind of expression on his face, and ho
nestly, if he’d started for the door, I would’ve got the fuck out of his way and let Felix yell at me for it later. But he stood his ground and looked Felix in the eye and said, “Come back to me.”

  And powers and saints, that just sat there for the longest time—felt like an indiction at least, maybe two—and then Felix laughed, not nicely, and said, “No.”

  “Why not? Is it because of him?”—with a wave at Gideon, who was trying to look even more invisible—“Or him?” And he jerked his chin at me.

  I just about fucking swallowed my tongue. But Felix didn’t even blink, although he went awful white. He said, “No. It’s because of you.”

  They stared at each other. Right then, I don’t think there was anybody else in the world for either of them. And the funny thing was, Felix didn’t look mad. He just looked, I don’t know, tired. And after a long, long moment, just them staring at each other, Lord Shannon said, “I . . . I should go.”

  “Yes,” Felix said. Not mean or nothing.

  And Lord Shannon went. I got out of his way, and he didn’t so much as glance at me. Small fucking favors.

  And all the time Felix was getting ready for court—in a tearing hurry, of course, because he’d already been running late before Lord Shannon showed up—he kept saying, “I can’t believe I said that.” Sometimes he said it like it made him want to cry. Sometimes he said it like he was about to start laughing. Finally, when we’d actually gotten out and were on our way, I got fed up with it and said, “Then why the fuck did you?”

  He stopped walking for a second. “Because it was true, I suppose, ” he said when he started again. “Shannon made his personal feelings quite clear in that ugly little hotel in Hermione. If he hadn’t, I’d probably have gone crawling back to him like a dog. That’s what he wants, you know,” and he gave me a weird, sideways look that I wasn’t sure I’d been meant to see and I didn’t know what to do with anyway. “He doesn’t want me back—he’s got that new boy, whatever his name is—he wants me crawling around him the way the rest of them do.”

  “He don’t like you, um, holding out,” I said. The “new boy” was Lord Arden Anastasius, and I knew Felix knew perfectly well what his name was.

  “Exactly. That’s what’s driving him mad.” He sighed. “I hope he’s not going to start spreading that incest rumor again.”

  I remembered something . . . something Hugo’d said back before I’d walked into the bear trap called Brinvillier Strych. “The ‘Lai of Mad Elinor,’ ” I said. “He was having everybody sing it.”

  Felix didn’t say nothing for a moment, which was answer enough. “It . . . it isn’t aimed at you.”

  “Feel better if it was.”

  “Mildmay—”

  “Oh, never mind,” I said. “It don’t matter.”

  He turned on me so suddenly that I went back a step. “Don’t say that! They’re petty-minded bigots, and there’s not a thing in the world I can do about it, but it does matter.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Like it matters that your friends hate me.”

  A second later, I was wishing I’d bitten my tongue through instead. Felix flinched back like I’d hit him and said, in a very small voice, “They don’t hate you.”

  “Oh, powers,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you, or nothing. I just get so damn tired.”

  “Gideon thinks,” Felix said, “that you should blame me.”

  “Fuck, I can’t help what Gideon thinks.”

  He laughed, but said, “What if Gideon’s right?”

  In pure desperation, I said, “We’re gonna be late if’n we don’t hurry.”

  He looked at me for a moment, and then let it go. “Come on, then. And the unadulterated ‘if,’ if you please.”

  Mehitabel

  Corinna was sallow and moaning softly to herself when I stuck my head around her door at nine. But she was up and dressed and applying kohl carefully to her eyelids; she’d do fine.

  “You don’t need to say it,” she said without turning from her reflection.

  “Yes, well, if you aren’t careful, it’s Mrs. Angharad who’ll be saying it—to the accompaniment of an eviction notice, I suspect.”

  “Oh damn,” Corinna said and grimaced, although I wasn’t sure if it was at herself or me or the absent Mrs. Angharad.

  “She’s going to let it go this time. And next time, you get to deal with her yourself.”

  “Oh, Tabby. I am sorry.” She turned and rose, a single graceful motion, and crossed the room to lay one small hand apologetically on my forearm. “I was just . . . Do you really think Jean-Soleil will be able to find a way out?” At close range, that beseeching look was hellishly effective—and I still didn’t know how she did it. Corinna was three years older than me and more than capable of looking after herself.

  “Like I said, my money’s on him. After all, he’ll never let himself be beaten by—”

  “Dolly Vermin,” she finished with me, grinning. Jean-Soleil’s contempt for the impresario of the Cockatrice was legendary.

  “Can I have Susan’s letter? I’m going to try to catch Jean-Soleil as soon as he gets back.”

  “Oh, of course! Now where . . . ?” She frowned around her room with its darkly gaudy fabric jungle, then knelt and sorted through yesterday’s dress and petticoats as deftly as she had probably once picked the pockets of drunken or sleeping tricks. She emerged triumphant with Susan’s battered letter, which I tucked into my own bodice.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, although she was clearly hoping the answer would be no.

  “No. Just be on time at noon, right?”

  “You got it, lovey. Good luck.”

  I made one of her gargoyle faces back at her and left with her laughter—her well-bred gurgling chuckle.

  The day was brisk but sunny—good weather for the end of Eré, and the five blocks to the Empyrean was a pleasant walk. The brothels, curtains drawn, were still sleeping. The people out on the streets of Pharaohlight at this hour were dairymen and coal carriers, scullery maids and apprentice boys running errands, a woman hawking sachets of dried lavender and sage.

  I caught myself thinking—for the first time in years— Hallam would like this. It was true; Hallam had always loved going out into Lamia, talking to the traders—everyone from the merchants from Aigisthos to the peddlers with their cheap ribbons and packets of pins. Even inside the Bastion, he had always been talking to the maids, the cooks, the caefidi, wanting to know where they were from, why they’d come to the Bastion, whether they’d spoken Midlander or Kekropian at home, if they’d left family behind. I’d lied to him, of course, but it was how we’d become lovers, Hallam’s hunger for knowledge, for connection, for touch, meeting my then quite desperate need for affection. He’d never backed away from my need; he’d given of himself as generously as rain gives itself to parched earth. Even when he’d realized I’d lied to him, as he inevitably had, he hadn’t withdrawn from me, but had continued to love me and to share his own abundant warmth.

  Stop it, I said to myself, as loud as a shout in the confines of my skull. I’d taught myself years ago not to think about Hallam. It would have killed me if I’d let it, so I’d shoved it all in a box. Closed it. Locked it. And made it stay locked.

  I had done it, and I would be damned if I was going to do it all over again.

  I breathed deeply, straightened my spine, cloaked myself in Mehitabel Parr the actress—not any of those other Mehitabel Parrs who might still dream of Hallam’s gentle eyes—and went to meet Jean-Soleil.

  I waited for Jean-Soleil on the sidewalk in front of the Empyrean. Although he walked out to Sauvage, Jean-Soleil hitched a ride back to Mélusine with his wife’s brother, the mayor of Sauvage, who brought the village’s trading goods to the Neuvième market in Gatehouse. Jean-Soleil always returned punctually at ten.

  At five minutes of ten, Jean-Soleil’s stocky figure came into view, swaggering up Paixe Street as if he owned all of it, and not
just the forty-nine feet of sidewalk in front of the Empyrean. His stride faltered as he caught sight of me, and by the time he came up to me, his face was grim.

  “I know you’re not standing out here just because you couldn’t wait to see me again—what is it?”

  “Bartholmew and Susan,” I said and stopped, hoping he could fill in the blanks for himself.

  “Verb, please?”

  “Have deserted to the Cockatrice.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Here.” I gave him Susan’s letter. He raised an eyebrow over its crumpled and obviously already read condition, but opened it and scanned the contents.

  I knew when he’d reached the part about Edith Pelpheria; he snorted and said, “I believe I’d pay to see the silly chit muff Edith.” He thought a moment, and suddenly his face lit up like a hundred-candle chandelier. “Fancy a go at her, my Belle?”

  “What if it’s just a rumor?”

  “Then we revive Edith Pelpheria with an actress up to its weight. No harm done.”

  “Yes!” I said, and he laughed. Then my common sense caught up with me, and I said, “We’re still a second principal and an ingenue short.”

  “Don’t worry about the second principal,” he said over his shoulder, unlocking the theater doors.

  “And the ingenue?”

  “We hold an open audition. Do you know how many young women in this city are panting at a chance to join the Empyrean? ”

  “No,” I said. He held the door for me and I stepped into the warm darkness of the lobby.

  “Neither do I,” Jean-Soleil said. “But we can find out.”

  By noon, when we gathered in the largest rehearsal room, everyone had heard the news. We were a solemn little group. I didn’t know about Corinna, but I was thinking about those costumes in her room, made for actors who might not even have gotten the chance to wear them. Corinna had told me the story of the Merveille’s ingenue, Argine Pettifer, who had thrown herself into the Sim a week after the theater closed. She was now said to haunt the tenement that had gone in after the building burned down in the fires three years ago.