“Corybant was said to be a sinful city. It brought judgment on itself.” His tone said he wasn’t happy with that answer.
“I don’t understand enough about the way these engines work,” I said, standing and tugging Kay to stand with me. “Hutch was very kind to let us go first, but I think we’d better get out of the way now.”
We retreated to a fallen tree—not nearly such a giant as the one which had blocked the rails and which the Automaton had smashed on its approach to the train—and sat. One group of wizards and annemer scholars had converged on the Automaton; others were moving purposefully if mysteriously about in the sparser woods surrounding the railroad line. The dead of Corybant continued to scream.
Mildmay said suddenly, “Hey, d’you think the stories about the knocken are true?”
“Why?” I said. “Do you see something?”
“Oh very funny. Nah. I just wondered.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what happened here. The Automaton is one thing, but the noirance—”
“The what?” said Kay.
“Hocus-talk,” Mildmay said.
“Yes, but it’s useful,” I said, and to Kay, “Noirance, and its opposite, clairance, is a way of talking about the feeling of a place, its magic—I suppose, really, its aether. And this place—all of Nauleverer—is drenched in noirance, in darkness and confusion and the feeling of being lost.”
“Blindness,” said Kay.
“Well, yes and no. Noirance isn’t about not being able to see. It’s about not being able to find your way out of the dark. Being lost in a maze. Or being the creature in the heart of the maze who waits for the lost to come to it, as they always will.”
“Felix,” Mildmay said sharply, warningly, and I jerked back to myself, shaking away the screams of the dead of Corybant. Without the protection of my magic, I was far too susceptible to noirant patterning, too likely to be dragged into its current, as a poor swimmer—like myself—was likely to be caught by an undertow.
Very abruptly, I understood a part of how my madness had worked.
“In any event,” I said quickly, to mask my shiver, “the noirance here is strange. It’s almost like the railroad—it runs in lines.”
“You ain’t making a lick of sense,” Mildmay said.
“Aren’t. And don’t tell me you can’t feel the mikkary.”
“Oh I ain’t saying nothing of the sort.” And then he frowned. “Are mikkary and noirance the same thing?”
“They’re related. Mikkary is—or can be—what happens when noirance is left to stagnate. But mikkary doesn’t have to be caused by magic, although magic will make it stronger. Noirance is a kind of magic, and it doesn’t have to generate mikkary.”
“Have lost me again,” Kay said, sounding more rueful than irritated. “What is mikkary?”
“The feeling a room gets when there’s been murder done in it,” Mildmay said.
Kay’s face was very still for a moment; then he said slowly, “Yes, I know that feeling well.”
“This forest is a room, then,” I said, “and something more than murder was done here. And I don’t understand . . .” For Mildmay’s definition was exactly right. Mikkary belonged to human structures, to rooms. With the wholesale destruction of Corybant—with no stone left standing on stone—there should have been nothing left to collect mikkary. “Mildmay, did Nera . . . Was there . . .” I couldn’t seem to frame the question.
But Mildmay understood. “Just grass,” he said. “Not like this.”
“I cry your mercy,” said Kay, “for I seem to be perpetually two steps behind your conversation, but—” He broke off, frowning, his head tilting as he tracked something—which I realized as she reached us was Corbie’s rapid passage through the site.
She was talking before she’d even reached me. “Felix, have you seen Julian?”
“Julian?” said Kay, coming very sharply alert.
“He kept saying he heard something, so I told him to come ask you about it . . . but he didn’t, did he?”
“No. How long ago was this?”
“Not very. Quarter of an hour, maybe?”
Unless Corbie’s time sense was far superior to the average, that was anything from ten minutes to half an hour. Either, I thought, looking around at Nauleverer’s darkness, was enough to get lost in.
“I’m sorry,” Corbie was saying. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t think he’d—”
“Is not your fault,” Kay said with perfect calm authority. “Julian is quite old enough to know not to wander off into the woods by himself. But we—but he must be found.”
“Yes,” I said, “and the quicker the better. But I’m afraid I don’t . . . Mildmay?”
“City boy,” he said, raising both hands in an oddly defensive gesture. “But we’re fucking surrounded by hocuses. Ain’t they good for anything?”
“I’ll get Cyriack,” Corbie said.
“Corbie, d—” But she was already on her way.
“I admit, Mr. Thrale would not have been my first choice,” Kay said, “but he does seem to be Julian’s friend. Know you anything to his discredit?”
“Merely that I dislike him. But you’re right. This is no time to be choosy.”
And when Corbie returned with Cyriack, he seemed quite sincerely distressed. He also had a spell, a clever little thing he said he’d learned from an adept visiting the Institution from Sconner, that illuminated a particular person’s footsteps. “The window of viability is pretty small,” he said, “but we should be—ah!”
The spell showed deep pink smudges on the dead leaves. “Let’s go,” I said to Cyriack, who looked at me strangely.
“Are you an aethereal, Mr. Harrowgate?” he said when we were away from the others.
“A what?”
His look, when I glanced up from the pink smudges, was even stranger. “A person abnormally sensitive to aether. Generally, no one but the magician who cast it can see the results of this spell. But most aethereals can’t do magic.”
“At the moment, neither can I.” And his reaction, embarrassed rather than surprised, confirmed my suspicion that the Institution as a whole knew about the choke-binding.
After a moment, though, he persevered, and I was reminded of all the reasons I did not like Cyriack Thrale: “They’re a bit of a nuisance. Nobody knows what to do with them. You’d think the logical thing would be to train them to assist us, but apparently that’s too Mulkist. So mostly these days they go into the church, but that’s not really satisfactory either. Some dominions don’t want aethereal intendeds, and you can’t really blame them.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Aethereals aren’t reliable,” Cyriack said. “I don’t mean magicians who have a sensitivity to aether,” he added hastily, “but the annemer. They don’t have the mental fortitude. They’re emotional and easily led—it’d be almost as bad as having a woman as your intended.”
“I see.” I thought of Vincent Demabrien, who would almost certainly be labeled an aethereal in the Corambin system, thought of Mehitabel Parr, who would stand like iron when young men like Cyriack Thrale crumbled and mewled, and it was probably fortunate—at least for Cyriack—that just then I heard a voice that was not the mindless wailing of the Corybant dead. I broke into a run.
Julian had fallen into a snarled stand of briars woven around and between three of the enormous trees. They had caught him in a dozen different places, and the more he struggled, the more entangled he became.
“Hold still,” I said. “Julian! Hold still and let me help you.”
He twisted toward me; his light amber eyes were wide in his flushed face and he was bleeding from a long scratch across his forehead. “Mr. Harrowgate! Where are they? I want to help them, but I can’t find them! Do you hear them? Who are they?”
“The dead of Corybant,” I said, gingerly taking hold of the first strand of briars, “and they are beyond our help.”
I looked u
p as I said it and saw the truth in Cyriack’s stiffly judgmental face: Julian Carey was an aethereal, and I hoped, thinking again of Vincent, that his Lady would protect him from the consequences.
It took nearly half an hour to free Julian; I got rid of Cyriack finally by sending him to bring Mildmay, and by the time they made it back, I’d talked Julian through an exercise to quiet the screams—which had the additional benefit of shoring up my own resistance—and was helping him stand up. Mildmay might have grumbled, but didn’t, and I thought from the way he was eyeing Cyriack that he’d already figured out my motives.
We returned to the site via a much shorter route, following Mildmay, and found we were just in time for lunch. “I trust,” I said to Cyriack, “that you are not a gossip.”
“Of course not,” he said stiffly and with great offense, and stalked off to join his friends.
“I don’t know how much good that’ll do,” I said to Julian as we crossed the railway line to where Corbie and Kay were waiting. “The more offended a person is by the suggestion, the worse a gossip they generally are, and that goes double for wizards.”
I’d hoped for a smile, even a faint one, but Julian said distraitly, “It doesn’t matter. I just . . . Mr. Harrowgate, I am so sorry!”
“Good gracious, what for?”
It tumbled out in a disjointed welter of words, and I stopped him where we were, out of earshot of anyone else. Mildmay gave me a nod and went past—I hoped he was going to tell Kay we’d found Julian and he was unharmed.
Julian, I gathered, knew he was an aethereal, had known for years. He’d thought about becoming a priest, but then his parents had died and he’d gone to live with the duke and duchess, and it had been made very clear to him that it was his duty to be the next Duke of Murtagh. “And I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good intended,” he said with naïve honesty.
Murtagh had laid down an iron-clad rule. No one was to know Julian was an aethereal, and he was not to talk about it. It was not an asset for a duke’s heir. “Intended Godolphin figured it out somehow, but I swear I didn’t tell him. And he wanted me to go to the Esmer Theological College. Uncle Ferrand was furious.” So Julian had been sent to the University instead, which he loved, and he’d made friends with lots of magicians, and he’d just begun to wonder if maybe he could trust one of them with his secret—his eyes flicked unhappily past me, and I knew he was looking for Cyriack—when this happened and he’d disgraced himself and his descent and Uncle Ferrand would never let him go anywhere again “and what you must think of me I don’t know!” he finished, more or less in a wail.
“I think none of this is your fault,” I said firmly, wishing I could master Kay’s authoritative tone. “And I think we should have lunch.”
After lunch, the scholars, both annemer and magician, began preparing the Automaton of Corybant for transport. Corbie, with a mulish set to her jaw, dragged Julian over to help. She had gone very quickly from flirting with him to treating him as a younger brother, and I felt confident she would take care of him. Mildmay, Kay, and I sat on the fallen tree, and, determined to keep my focus on the present and the living, I described Virtuer Hutchence’s broadly pantomimed frustration with both his students and his learned colleagues until Kay finally broke down and laughed.
Mildmay said, “He’s gonna sock Virtuer Bullinger here in a minute, just you wait and see if he don’t.” Then he winced. “Sorry, Mr. Brightmore, was that a bad thing to say?”
I wasn’t sure how Kay would handle it, but he said, “Only if when he ‘socks’ him—by which I presume you mean ‘punch’—you don’t tell me about it.”
“Hopefully, gentlemen,” I said repressively, “it won’t come to that.”
“If you mean it,” Mildmay said, “you might want to get over there. Because I don’t think that professor-guy is helping.”
“Damn him for a feckless half-wit,” I said, bouncing to my feet. “I’ll be right back.”
That, as it turned out, was a lie. Hutch and Bullinger really were on the verge of blows by the time I reached them, and I spent the rest of the afternoon, until the arrival of the train from Wildar, mediating, first between Hutch and Bullinger, then between Hutch and Dombey, and finally just telling people what to do. The Automaton was not merely massive, it was heavy and terrifically unwieldy, and it required rather more organized cooperation than came naturally to either wizards or scholars.
But we did get it loaded onto the train, and the party had the same number of members returning it had had starting out, which I counted as a personal triumph.
Julian sat very close beside Kay on the journey back to Esmer, and Kay allowed it. Corbie curled up like a kitten against Mildmay and slept, and Mildmay put an arm around her and stared out the window. Once we were away from Corybant’s noirance and I could relax, Hutch and Kay and I had a long rambling conversation in which I learned a good deal more about Institution politics and also that Hutch was Caloxan by birth.
“You don’t sound it,” I said.
He winked at me and said in an accent every bit as strong as Kay’s, “Have learned the northermen’s speech, for they will not take you seriously else. And,” he added, dropping back into his usual voice, “I haven’t been back to Larrowan since I came to Esmer, and that was when I was Julian’s age. It’s my childhood speech that sounds strange to me now.”
Kay turned his head; he knew where my face was, even if he couldn’t see it. I remembered what he’d said that morning: Caloxa is dead. And this, too, was what he’d meant.
We reached Lily-of-Mar Station at twenty-two o’clock. Wizards and scholars dispersed. Hutch boarded the carriage with the Automaton, which now faced a farther, complicated journey across and beneath Esmer to reach the Experimental Nullity beneath Venables Hall. Mildmay and Corbie and I saw Kay and Julian into the Duke of Murtagh’s carriage and took the fathom home.
Corbie continued to live in that tiny room at the Golden Hare, so she got off at Sunflower Street. Mildmay and I rode two stops farther, to St. Ingry, and then walked to our apartment building under Esmer’s hissing streetlights.
He was looking thoughtful, and when we reached home, with the door locked behind us, he said, “D’you suppose this Automaton thing was sort of like the Iron-black Wolves?”
I knew the story, but it didn’t help. “I beg your pardon?”
His color heightened a little. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“But I do mind,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he said again with a shake of his head. “It’s stupid.”
“That, I doubt.”
“No, really, it’s just this stupid dream I had. When I was sick. About the Iron-black Wolves. So I’m thinking about them, I guess.”
“Well,” I said slowly, uncertain how I ought to respond, “given that they’re something in a fairy tale and the Automaton is quite real . . . Yes, I suppose there are certain similarities.”
“Huh,” he said. “They couldn’t be stopped.”
“Thankfully, that isn’t one of the similarities,” I said and almost got him to laugh.
But something was bothering him. I sat at our scarred table and watched him limp around the room, checking the lock, then checking the windows, into the kitchen and back out. If I pushed, he’d retreat. I waited, and bit my tongue, and waited some more, and finally he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”
“What? From the Automaton? I didn’t need saving.”
“Not that.” He was getting redder. “From the wolves.”
“From the wolves?”
“Oh fuck me sideways,” he moaned to himself, then rubbed the scarred side of his face. “I mean, in Bernatha. The . . . the people who hurt you.”
“That was the night you dreamed about the Iron-black Wolves,” I said, understanding suddenly.
Red as a tomato now, but he jerked his head in a nod, and then muttered something I didn’t catch at all. And that was rare enough these days that it was one more alar
m bell added to an already deafening cacophony.
“What was that?”
“I said I didn’t save Ginevra either. Not the same wolves, but.” He stopped, glaring not at me, but at a crack in the plaster, then said—this quite clearly—“Fuck it, I’m going to bed.”
And if he got his way, the subject of Iron-black Wolves would never come up again. I scrambled to my feet, scrambled to keep him, and what came out of my mouth was the truth: “But you did save me.”
He stopped in the doorway and turned. “The fuck I did,” he said, staring at me in frank disbelief.
“Not in Bernatha,” I said. “But you couldn’t have saved me, just as you couldn’t have saved me from any of the other cataclysmically stupid things I’ve done because I chose to do them. As for example the binding-by-obedience. But you did save me. You saved me in Hermione.”
“Other way ’round,” he said, and I knew he was thinking of the Mirador’s curse.
“No, it isn’t.” I was desperate to make him understand—to make him believe what I was trying to say. “You saved me. And you did it again. And again. You always save me.”
Disbelief had softened into bewilderment, and he said, “I don’t understand what you mean.” But I thought what he meant was that he did understand and didn’t want to.
“You can’t save people from themselves. Not Ginevra, not me. But you can give them a place to . . .” I broke off, gesturing in frustration, and tried again. “You’re the only one who looks at me and doesn’t see the person who made all those stupid decisions. You see somebody who can choose differently. You let me be somebody who can choose differently, even when you have no reason to think that I will.” His gaze flickered; I didn’t need to say Malkar’s name. “And that’s far more important than being a knight in a story.” And finally I found the words I needed. “You help me be someone who can save himself.”
His eyes were wide. Probably, no one had ever said anything like that to him in his life. Certainly, I never had. After a moment, he said, “You mean it?”
“Yes,” I said, although it was an effort to hold his gaze, to hold still and let him see the truth of me. “I mean it.”
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