Corambis
Page 29
Me and Miss Leverick looked at each other. She said, “I’ll go,” but she wasn’t no steadier on her feet than I was, and I said, “Don’t. Somebody’ll come tell us if there’s something we need to know. And I mean, it ain’t like either one of us is gonna be any use.”
She sat down again. “I hate to say this, but you’re right.”
So we sat there, both of us staring out the window although there wasn’t nothing to see, just the big dark shapes of the trees, and I really did know better than to let myself think I saw things moving back there in the shadows. And we waited. Because there wasn’t nothing else we could do.
After a couple minutes, people started walking back from the front end of the train. They looked excited and maybe a little scared, but not sad and not angry, so I figured whatever Felix’d done, he hadn’t got himself or anybody else killed, and that made it a little easier to wait. Not a lot, mind you, but a little.
When Felix and Corbie and Miss Bridger finally showed up, they had a whole flock of guys in those red and gold uniforms with them, and Felix had on his wet cat look. Corbie was talking a mile a minute to one of the uniformed guys. Miss Bridger’s eyes were big as bell-wheels, and she was hanging on Felix’s arm in a way that maybe explained the wet cat look and maybe didn’t.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Leverick. “Olive is . . .”
I didn’t want to make her find the word she was looking for, so I said, “He don’t like being touched.” Which was true, and a whole lot easier than any of the rest of it.
“Oh?” said Miss Leverick, but I got lucky and Felix was in the doorway of the compartment by then, so I didn’t have to answer her.
The wet cat look was even stronger close-up. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been his idea and he didn’t want to talk about it.
Not that he was going to be able to get anybody else to shut up. Miss Leverick hadn’t even asked before Corbie and Miss Bridger and two of the guys in uniform were falling all over themselves to tell us. I couldn’t make much sense of it: “monster” and “smashed the tree to splinters” and “machine” and somebody said “the Automaton of Corybant.” “It almost killed Mr. Malley,” said one of the uniforms, “and Mr. Rundell’s spells just bounced off it.”
“And Mr. Harrowgate killed it!” Miss Bridger cut in. “With a lightning bolt! I don’t think even a virtuer could have done it.”
“But it did clear enough of the tree out of the way,” said the other uniform, “so we’ll be moving again as soon as everyone’s settled and Mr. Malley’s had a dr—”
“Restorative cup of tea,” the first uniform said loudly. “And we thought maybe you’d like the same.”
“That would be very kind of you,” Miss Leverick said, smiling at them.
They nodded and sort of bowed and jostled each other out of the doorway. Felix shut the door, locked it, and dropped down beside me, burying his face in his hands. His ear—which was all I could see of him—was bright red. Yeah, he loved attention, except when he really deserved it, and then it embarrassed the fuck out of him. Like it wasn’t okay for anybody to say anything nice about him. Ever.
“You did good,” I said. “You didn’t get eaten by bears.”
For a moment, I didn’t think it was going to work, but then his shoulders started shaking, and pretty soon he was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. Corbie was good and didn’t try to disturb him, and Miss Leverick did her part by dragging Miss Bridger into some sort of real quiet conversation, and by the time the uniforms brought our tea, Felix had his balance back.
He took a sip of tea and pushed his hair out of his face and answered a question I’d decided I wasn’t going to ask him. “It never got anywhere near me. Perfectly safe.”
If he wanted to get me going, he was going to have to try harder than that. “Good,” I said. “Was it the whatsit?”
“The Automaton of Corybant? It certainly could have been, from what I saw in the approximately three discontinuous seconds I had for observation while trying to avoid getting my head taken off.”
“That’s my boy,” I said, instead of grinning at him, and he gave me a special version of his wet cat look, like he hadn’t blasted a fucking enormous crazy machine to bits just to put up with smart-ass remarks from me. But his lip was twitching.
And then Miss Bridger said, “But how did you do it?” and Felix went tight as a knot again.
“Olive,” Miss Leverick said warningly.
“But—”
“Even if Mr. Harrowgate wished to discuss it, I doubt you would understand his explanation. You are, after all, not even a student yet at the Institution, and you yourself said you didn’t think a virtuer could have achieved what he did.”
Miss Bridger went all stiff and outraged, like Miss Leverick had slapped her. Felix rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “I don’t mind,” although it was plain as a wart that was only half-true at best.
Miss Bridger said, “No, Miss Leverick is right. I shouldn’t pester you. I apologize.” She turned and stared at the compartment door, and we all heard her sniff like she was trying not to cry. Miss Leverick made a face at Felix that looked like part apology and part wanting to brain Miss Bridger with her own handbag.
Miss Bridger was about the age of the kids Felix had taught in the Mirador, and he’d had months to work out how to deal with them. He said, “Miss Bridger, how much do you know about light-spells?”
“Um.” She gulped, but I gave her credit for trying not to sob all over Felix. “Light-spells?”
“Like this,” Corbie said, and she called up a little spinning purple chrysanthemum and then winked it away again.
“Oh,” said Miss Bridger. “Yes, I can do that.”
“Show me,” Felix said, nice and quiet and calm.
She gulped again and nodded, and she was pretty tough for a little bourgeoise gal, because she did it. I mean, it wasn’t much—little yellow spark like a lightning bug forgetting to go out—but it was there.
“Good,” Felix said. And then he called his witchlights. Three of ’em, each the size of my thumbnail, and each three times as bright as Miss Bridger’s—or Corbie’s—without even trying. And, you know, green.
Miss Bridger made one of her little gasping noises, and even Miss Leverick looked impressed. Corbie just tried to look like she’d seen it all before. Felix smiled, but it wasn’t one of his five-alarmers, or even the smile he got when he was pleased with himself. He just looked tired. “When you can do this,” he said, “find me and I’ll show you the next step.”
“The next step?” Miss Leverick said.
“You don’t go straight from here to lightning bolts,” Felix said, and his witchlights spun in a circle and disappeared.
“When did you start studying magic, Mr. Harrowgate?” Miss Bridger asked.
There wasn’t any smile left. “When I was fourteen.” And they both got the message that he wasn’t going to talk about it.
The train lurched and groaned and started again, and I was leaning back into my corner when somebody tapped on the door.
“Now what?” said Felix under his breath, and then louder, “Come in!”
It was a skinny little Corambin guy with big ears, and the way Felix twitched, you would’ve thought that little guy was a ghoul or a blood-witch or something. But he didn’t do nothing scary, just kind of bowed and said, “His Grace the Duke of Murtagh wishes to offer you his hospitality for the remainder of the journey.”
I saw the look Felix and Corbie gave each other, but I didn’t know what it meant. And then Felix said, smooth as silk, “I would be delighted. Thank you. Are my companions included in this offer?”
“Of course,” said the skinny little Corambin, and he offered his arm to Corbie like he was some kind of lord himself.
Just one fucking thing after another, I thought, and reached for Jashuki.
Felix
The dead of Corybant were still screaming.
I was trying not to hear them be
cause I couldn’t help them. They weren’t even ghosts, just screams, a pattern ingrained so deeply into the noirance of Nauleverer that I could not imagine any way of making it stop. I could push it to the very back of my awareness, but it was a relief when the train started moving, even a relief—although an ironic one—to have an opportunity for physical movement, following Murtagh’s manservant down the swaying corridors of the train.
Here was another new experience to add to my ever-growing list. I’d never had to negotiate a social encounter with a former client before, and certainly not one who had seen me . . .
I am not embarrassed, I told myself firmly and knew perfectly well it was a lie.
The Duke of Murtagh was exceedingly gracious, and I admired him for taking the bull promptly by the horns. A single glance between us agreed that this meeting occurred between duke and suddenly notorious wizard, not tarquin and martyr. He also introduced Kay Brightmore without any evidence of uneasiness, although it was another potential social nightmare. Brightmore looked far better than he had the last time I had seen him, both healthier and better groomed; Murtagh was clearly a kinder jailer than the Duke of Glimmering.
Brightmore returned my greeting civilly, but frowned. Then his face cleared. “I remember your voice,” he said, sounding surprised. “The foreigner with common decency.”
“What’s this?” said Murtagh. “You two have met before?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “We encountered each other in the Hall of the Seven Virtues.”
“And you are now slaying monsters,” said Brightmore, something like bitterness on his face. “I thank you.”
“No more than anyone else does, Kay,” Murtagh said. “Mr. Foxe, you should sit down, I think.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Mildmay said, sounding alarmed at the attention, but he was starting to look a little gray.
“Sit,” I said, and he sat obediently next to Brightmore.
At that point we reached some necessary distance from Corybant, and the screaming faded; I tried not to sigh with relief too obviously.
The train carriage suitable for the dignity of a duke was not at all like the second-class compartments. It was divided, not into closed boxes, but into a series of semi-open rooms, with curtains that could be drawn to shut each off from the next. One of the rooms was set up with beds, another with chairs which were bolted to the floor but had some cunning mechanism whereby they could be turned to face either the windows or the center of the carriage. There were two together at one end, then a group of six, and then another two. Mildmay and Brightmore being in one of the paired sets, the rest of us sat in the group of six. I sat at one end, so that my bad side had Mildmay—and Brightmore, who was unlikely to make any sudden dangerous moves. Corbie got the seat next to me, possibly by the expedient of treading on Olive Bridger’s toe; Miss Bridger took the third seat. Murtagh took the opposite side, and Miss Leverick sat next to him.
It was inevitable that we would talk about the Automaton of Corybant—less inevitable, but a great relief to me, that Miss Leverick and the Duke of Murtagh would get into a terrifically polite argument about whether the machine I had destroyed was in fact the Automaton of Corybant as described in folklore.
“It was there,” said Murtagh. “I don’t see the need to construct elaborate and, if you will forgive me, implausible explanations when the obvious truth is there in front of us.”
“Yes,” said Miss Leverick, “but if it is the Automaton of Corybant, it’s been there for what, eight, nine centuries? Why would it suddenly wake up now? What elaborate and implausible explanation do you have for that?”
Murtagh snorted with sudden laughter. “We should ask Mr. Beckett that, shouldn’t we, Kay?” And to the rest of us: “The man who apparently restarted the Clock of Eclipses had some quite remarkable theories about Cymellunar engines.”
“Why do you say ‘apparently’?” I said. It was a somewhat risky question, but I had been reading the newspapers very carefully, and the explanations given had been both vague and curiously misleading; there had not been so much as a hint of what had truly happened in the deepest basements of the Clock Palace. But none of the newspaper accounts had suggested that Edwin Beckett was not the person responsible.
“Because I’ve met the man,” said Murtagh. “And listened to his theories, which seem to me some of the most arrant nonsense ever dreamed up by a half-educated turnstile-witch.”
“You know something about thaumatology?” I said.
“Only what a well-educated annemer can pick up,” he said with a shrug and an easy, gleaming smile. “Which I fully admit may be less than the knowledge of a half-educated turnstile-witch. But I do not believe that the great works of Cymellunar magic were achieved in the way that Mr. Beckett suggests.”
I hope not, I thought and for a horrible second feared I’d said aloud. But Miss Leverick said, “You must know more about Cymellune than we do, Mr. Harrowgate. Your brother showed me where it was. And he said it sank?”
I turned my head to raise my eyebrows at Mildmay, who gave me a half-exasperated, half-helpless shrug back. “I know some things about Cymellune,” I said cautiously. “And ‘sank’ is perhaps not the best word. The survivors spoke of a wall of water, which rose above Cymellune and crashed down upon it. And when the waters receded, the city was gone. About their magic, I know a fair amount, for my own school of wizardry is descended from the great schools of Cymellune.” I remembered, just in time, that the newspapers had not explained Mr. Beckett’s theories and instead of denying outright such slip-shod practices among Cymellunar wizards, asked, “What is Mr. Beckett’s suggestion?”
“Nonsense, as Murtagh says,” Kay Brightmore said brusquely, and continued, changing the subject with the ruthlessness of a sanguette blade, “I know you are a foreigner, Mr. Harrowgate, but where are you from?”
“Mélusine,” I said.
“And such a tremendously long way from home,” said Murtagh. “What brings you to Corambis?”
Wicked amusement in his eyes. I said, “It is a very long story.”
“We have nothing but time,” Murtagh said amiably.
“I am an exile,” I said. Predictably, Miss Bridger gasped.
Murtagh smiled at me, acknowledging his victory, and said, “And what of you, Mr. Foxe? Are you also exiled, or do you accompany your brother out of the goodness of your heart?”
Mildmay, I saw, did not like Murtagh. He said shortly, “Not gonna leave him alone,” and I was probably the only one who understood him.
“Mildmay feels,” I said lightly, “that I’m not fit to be let out on my own.”
Murtagh’s eyebrows went up. Miss Leverick, who seemed to be picking up at least some of the undercurrents, said, “He said as much to me. It seems to be common between siblings. Certainly, I am still not convinced that my second-youngest sister can be trusted to boil water, although I would like to say, for the record, that there is considerable experiential evidence to back me up, including the incident of the beef brisket which set my youngest sister’s hair on fire. Fortunately, my second-eldest brother has quick reflexes. Unfortunately, what he was holding at the time was a jar of my mother’s loganberry syrup, which is, as I and all my sisters can attest, the stickiest substance in the Duchy of Kennerack.”
“Miss Leverick, you’re making that up!” said Miss Bridger.
“No, no, I assure you,” said Frances Leverick, and she told stories about her large and apparently quite accident-prone family all the way out of the forest and into the remains of the daylight.
Part three
Chapter 10
Mildmay
Felix came into our room at the Golden Hare in the Ingry Dominion of Esmer and said, “Dinner’s in an hour.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Mrs. Davidge is an exceedingly kind lady. Unlike Mrs. Lettice.”
But he wasn’t looking at me and his face was going red. “She reads them crazy-ass novels, don’t she?”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I know it ain’t no fun for you.”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘fun,’ ” he said, coming over to sit on the bed beside me. “If you mean, do I find it amusing, no, I don’t. But if you mean, isn’t there something I’d rather be doing, no, there isn’t.” He glanced up at me, but then looked down again quick. He was funny about eye contact. “I’m trying to . . . Look. I’ve been really horrible to you, and I’m trying not to be, all right?”
And I knew he didn’t mean just the past few months when he’d been surly and bitchy and hateful about fucking everything. He meant the way he’d been when Gideon left him, and the shit he’d pulled over getting Vey Coruscant killed, and all the way back even to having been a prick on the White Otter and in the Gardens of Nephele. He’d gone blotchy red, and his hands were tight-clenched in his lap, and I knew he wasn’t looking at me now because he hated apologizing and he was really really bad at it.
“It’s okay,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’ll get the book.” And it was worth it just for the way he stared at me, eyes big as bell-wheels, like nobody’d ever let him off the hook before in his life.
Felix
The news of my encounter with the Automaton of Corybant spread with a rapidity that would have done the gossip mills of the Mirador proud. By the afternoon of our first full day in Esmer, there was a delegation from the Institution, a virtuer and two adepts first grade, inquiring for me at the desk of the Golden Hare.
I’d sent Corbie out to learn the city; in truth, I couldn’t have kept her in if I’d wanted to. Mildmay and I inspected each other before we descended, agreeing ruefully that we looked as well as could possibly be expected.