Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  “And in any event, the matter is moot, as Julian is both very obedient and, I think, unwilling to put Thrale’s friendship to any sort of real test.”

  “Poor Julian,” said Mildmay.

  “Yes,” Kay agreed. “But enough! What new witlessness has Mr. Otway in store for us this afternoon?”

  “You aren’t impressed by Otway?” I said.

  “Bah. Has done nothing save sit in a room in Esmer and write a book.”

  “Scholarship is also a kind of action,” I said.

  “But is not even scholarship,” Kay said. “You would not believe the errors he makes.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” Mildmay said. “Ain’t that how history works?”

  I twisted to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  As always, direct attention discomfited him, and he looked down at the book in his hands. But he said, “Just—I dunno, but it’s like storytelling, ain’t it?” He glanced up to see if I’d understood him, and interpreted my expression correctly because he looked back at his hands and continued, “You know. One guy tells a story, maybe about something that’s really true, and the next guy says it wasn’t like that, it was like this. And then a third guy who’s been over in Pennycup hearing how they tell it comes in and tells it his way. And after a while nobody knows the truth no more, and they just go with what sounds best.”

  “Well,” I said, “history isn’t supposed to—”

  “Oh, come on,” Mildmay said. “This all happened, what? A thousand indictions ago? You weren’t there. I wasn’t there. Otway wasn’t there. Nobody knows. So you tell the best story you got and people argue with you. That’s how it works.”

  Kay snorted, clearly unconvinced. “Then he should say he knows not. Should not pretend to be speaking the truth.”

  “You do that too often, and nobody hears the story,” Mildmay said. “I mean, it’s all lies anyway. Even if I tell you a story about something that happened to me, I’m not telling the truth.”

  “You aren’t?” I said.

  “Course not,” he said. “I mean, I ain’t lying—unless I am, but that’s different—but it ain’t what really happened.”

  I wrestled with that for a moment, and he said, “Okay, look. I told you what happened at Nera, right?”

  “Mildmay, do we have to—”

  “Nera?” Kay said. “You mentioned it once before, but was not time to inquire.”

  “Okay,” Mildmay said and sat up straighter. “Let me tell the story again. And then we can talk about whether it’s true or not.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Felix, for fuck’s sake. I don’t come out of this one any better than you do.”

  I felt myself go scarlet and looked down at my hands. A defensive gesture we shared. Lovely.

  “So,” Mildmay said, taking my silence as permission, “me and Felix were trying to get to a place called the Gardens of Nephele, because he’d been hurt in his mind, and the wizards there were the only people that could help him. Problem was, the Gardens were farther from Mélusine even than Esmer is, and we didn’t really know the geography or nothing. And we had a bunch of other problems, too, but they ain’t important. So we were walking, along of not having the money for nothing better, and trying to keep away from the Imperial dragoons, and Felix was . . .” He glanced at me.

  “Insane,” I said. “You can say it. I was insane.”

  “You were hurt,” Mildmay said. “And besides, the part where you were hearing the ghosts wasn’t about you being crazy.”

  “Hearing ghosts?” Kay said, double-checking—I thought—to be sure he’d understood Mildmay correctly.

  “Crying people,” Mildmay said, picking the story up again. “He said he heard crying people, and he had to help them. And I didn’t know how to stop him without hurting him worse, so I just followed him to where he said his crying people were, and it turned out to be Nera.”

  “And what is Nera?” Kay said.

  Mildmay raised his eyebrows at me, inviting me to supply the footnote.

  I said, “Nera was the capital of the empire of Lucrèce, which was even older than Cymellune. It was conquered, razed, and annihilated by another civilization. They slaughtered everyone in Nera. Some of them they raped first. The emperor they forced to watch while he bled to death from a spear in his stomach. They burned the bodies like cordwood, giving them neither honor nor peace.”

  Kay had stopped pacing. “You sound as if you were a witness.” He had not turned his head toward me, but I could feel his attention.

  “He dreamed it,” Mildmay said. “That night. Because his crying people were the ghosts of all the people that got murdered, and they needed us to help them.”

  “How can one help the dead?”

  “Well, it kind of depends.”

  “Depends? On what?”

  “On what they believed when they were alive. These people believed that if they could walk a labyrinth, they could find the way to the White-Eyed Lady, and she’d let them rest.”

  “The White-Eyed Lady?” Kay said, almost uneasily.

  “The Kekropian goddess of death,” I said. “Her cult is proscribed but still apparently flourishes. My . . . my lover was a devotee.”

  “A goddess worshipped with labyrinths? As our Lady is?”

  “I dunno,” Mildmay said cautiously. “I don’t know nothing about your goddess.”

  “Oh, it matters not,” Kay said, shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever was troubling him.

  “She ain’t a bad goddess,” Mildmay said. “I mean, not like the God of the Obscured Sun.”

  “I pray you,” Kay said, beginning to pace again, “continue your story.”

  Mildmay looked at me. I nodded. I suspected Kay was bothered by the labyrinth under Summerdown, with the murderous engine at its heart, and unless we could offer either comfort or proof, it was better to leave that subject alone.

  “Well,” said Mildmay, “I told you the ghosts needed a labyrinth, and the nightmare Felix had that night about Nera made it pretty clear that we needed to give ’em one. So we spent that next day making a labyrinth by pulling up grass. Best we could do. And it worked. Because the ghosts used it. But the problem was . . .”

  I watched Kay turn toward him.

  “The problem was, the ghosts made Felix a promise.”

  “A promise?” Kay said softly, almost whispering.

  “They promised him he could go with them. And if he did, he could find his friend who’d died when he was a kid.”

  “My only friend,” I said. “My . . . my sister in spirit.” For surely if there could be spirit-ancestors, there could be spirit-sisters. And that was Joline.

  “Hey,” said Mildmay, “who’s telling this?” But he wasn’t angry. “So the ghosts had told him that, and he believed it. And he wanted to go.”

  “But wouldn’t that mean . . .” Kay trailed off uncomfortably.

  “Well, that was what I figured,” Mildmay said. “So I wouldn’t let him. I beat the crap out of him, to be perfectly fucking frank, and pinned him down until the ghosts were gone. I didn’t know what else to do.” He paused, then sighed and said, “So that’s the story.”

  “All right,” Kay said. “But is not the truth?”

  “Well, I left some shit out,” Mildmay said. “Like the rainstorm. And I didn’t know about Joline.”

  “And you still don’t know,” I said, “whether the ghosts were real or just my delusion.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure they were real. But, here. Here’s a thing that means this story can’t ever be the truth. I don’t know why the ghosts made Felix that promise. I don’t know if they just wanted somebody else to be dead along with ’em, or if they were trying to do something nice for him, or if it was all lies and they were really, you know, the ghosts of blood-witches or something, and what they wanted all along was to get him in that maze with them.”

  “That seems rather far-fetched,” I said.

  He shrugged. “But it could be t
rue. Unless you remember something that says it ain’t.”

  “I don’t really remember Nera at all. Except that nightmare. And I remember wanting to go to Joline. I thought you were Keeper, because you wouldn’t let me.”

  “Because I hurt you,” he said.

  “Because I was insane,” I said, and realized too late how sharp my voice had become.

  But Mildmay didn’t even blink. “So, see, I was there, and I’m telling the story, and I’m trying to tell the truth, but I can’t get all of it. Because I only know what I saw, and I know I didn’t see what really happened, because I can’t see ghosts. And it’s gotta be a septad times worse when you’re talking about something like a battle, where nobody can see all of it, and everybody sees something different, and you know, you gotta feel sorry for the guy who has to try and make sense of it and write it down.”

  “Maybe,” Kay said grumpily. “Is still ridiculous.”

  “Most human endeavors are,” I said.

  Kay thought about that, up and back. “I suppose that’s true. Are all creatures of folly. Very well, I will be more tolerant of Mr. Otway’s idiocies.” He pointed, accurately, at Mildmay. “Read.”

  Mildmay, who had been patiently holding the book open all this time, bent his head and began.

  Kay

  “Kay,” said Julian on Lunedy morning, coming into the room without knocking, “the man we met at the train station brought a letter for you.”

  I stopped pacing. “Lucas brought a letter?”

  “Yes, and he says he has to wait for your answer. He says it’s tremendously important.”

  “Lucas is in the house?” I said, alarmed.

  “No. He stopped me on my way back from—well, I was talking to Intended Godolphin. Lucas said he’d wait in the fathom station.”

  “Thank the Lady,” I said and meant it. “Had best read me the letter then.”

  “Me?”

  “Am not going to ask Isobel.”

  “Right,” said Julian, and paper crackled as he unfolded it.

  To Kay Brightmore, the former and true Margrave of Rothmarlin, greetings from your most loyal and devoted servant, Geoffrey Trant.

  “’Sdeath.” I found my way to the chair and sat down heavily. Geoffrey Trant was indeed my armsman and had been my father’s, but he was also the leader of the Primrose Men, who were the most radical of the various populist groups which had supported Gerrard. The Primrose Men favored not merely independence, but complete separation from Corambis, along with a number of other impracticable ideas. I had always deeply appreciated their loyalty to me—several of them were Rothmarlin men by birth—but also found it somewhat of an embarrassment. And now that I thought about it, I wondered why I hadn’t heard from Geoffrey Trant before now.

  “Kay?” said Julian, sounding somewhere between doubtful and worried.

  “Go on, please,” said I.

  “All right,” said he, still doubtful.

  My lord, I pray you forgive me writing to you in such a fashion and for such a reason. And I pray your forgiveness further that I was not at your side at Summerdown and left you prey to the Corambin jackals.

  “Trant has no love for Corambins,” I said in Julian’s uncomfortable pause.

  But I could not come to you then, as we were pinned down by the Usara at Cinderfold, and I have not been able to come to you since, as I have been prisoned by the Usara in a place of which I can tell you nothing, save that it was dark and foul and most full of despair, for our captors told us of your fall, and we wept.

  “He was fighting the Usara?” Julian said. “But I thought . . .”

  “The great danger of the Insurgence,” said I, “aside from our inevitable defeat, was that the Usara would take the opportunity to burn and plunder our lands. So certain of our forces”—those whose hatred for Corambins was so fervent as to make them a liability in battle, but I had not said that to Trant, and I did not say it to Julian—“were ordered to defend against such incursions. Apparently, they, like us, were not successful. I pray you, continue.”

  I write to you now, my lord, from Summerdown—

  “Summerdown?”

  “I’m sure that’s the word,” Julian said nervously. “Should I go on?”

  “Yes, I cry your mercy. Do.”

  —from Summerdown, at the behest of the cephar Dothaw. He says that you will remember his name.

  “Keep reading,” I said grimly. I did indeed remember Dothaw’s name, for he had held me captive for two months the summer I was twenty-four. None of my memories of that time was fond, but I knew that Dothaw was honorable.

  The cephar Dothaw says that he will negotiate our release—that of myself and the five men who were captured with me—but only with you, and that if you will not negotiate, he will have us put to death. I believe that he is interested in further negotiations, but he will not speak of his intentions to me.

  “Dothaw must be mad,” I said, getting up again and pacing savagely. “I have no power to negotiate anything, and the Usara may be many things, but they are not ignorant. Finish reading, Julian.”

  Dothaw permits me to send Vyell and Leadbitter to Barthas Cross to await you. Vyell assures me he can find a way to get this letter to you, despite being unable himself to come to Esmer for reasons I am sure your lordship will remember, and he and Leadbitter will meet every train. My lord, I am sorry to put this imposition upon you, but the cephar Dothaw is unyielding, and while I care not for myself, I cannot wantonly sacrifice these five brave and honest men.

  “And that’s it,” Julian said. “Kay? What are you going to do?”

  I only half heard him. Trant knew not that I was blind; had he known someone would be reading it to me, that letter would have been much more circumspect. And he knew not what he was asking. Was one thing for a sighted man to escape a soft prison like Carey House and make his way to Barthas Cross, but I could not simply . . .

  “Kay?” said Julian.

  And then I knew.

  “Julian,” said I, “wilt come with me to Barthas Cross?”

  Mildmay

  Lunedy, I went to Carey House only to find out Mr. Brightmore had gone out with Julian. Which, you know, okay, and I suppose he didn’t have no way of getting a message to me, but it still kind of stung. Martedy morning, I was watching Felix wander around the apartment the way I’d watched him wander around his suite in the Mirador, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his tie shoved into one pocket, drinking tea and arguing with the newspapers, his hair hanging in his eyes because he wouldn’t use the cream stuff the barbers had recommended, when there was a knock on the door.

  Felix raised his eyebrows at me. “Are we expecting anyone?”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, and it wasn’t Corbie’s knock. So I went and answered the door and it was the fucking Duke of Murtagh, large as life and twice as natural, and behind him was the lady Kay was going to marry.

  “Good gracious,” said Felix. “Come in, Your Grace, and—I don’t believe I know the lady?”

  “Vanessa Pallister,” she said, and I stood aside because otherwise it looked like she’d just walk straight through me. “Kay Brightmore’s fiancée.”

  “Ah,” said Felix, his eyebrows going up even higher. “Charmed to meet you, I’m sure.” She was a big lady—taller than me and heavy-built—and she wasn’t no looker, with her jaw as heavy as a man’s and her eyes too small for her cheekbones, and it didn’t help that she wore her hair with these heavy bangs hanging over her forehead. All in all, she really did look like a bear that somebody’d taught to stand up on its back legs and wear a dress.

  Which wasn’t no nice thing to be thinking, and powers and saints, it wasn’t like I had any room to talk, so I turned back and said, “Come in, Your Grace,” as polite and not mush-mouthed as I could.

  The duke came in, and I closed the door. Mrs. Pallister turned to me and said, without wasting no more time, “Have you seen Kay?”

  “Um. Not since Domenica.”

  “
He didn’t come here? Or say anything about where he might go?”

  “Have you misplaced him?” Felix asked, and she gave him a look like bottled poison.

  I said, “On Lunedy, they said as how he’d gone out with Julian. But that’s all I know.”

  Felix said, past Mrs. Pallister and me, to the duke, “What’s going on?”

  The duke said, polite and precise, and oh yeah, he was mad as fuck about it, “Kay left Carey House sometime before twelve yesterday, in company with Julian. Neither one of them has been seen since. Julian left a note, but it is a deplorable example of its kind, being firstly, nearly illegible, and secondly, utterly uninformative. He says, in essence, that he has to go with Kay, but that they’ll be back soon, and we aren’t to worry. And he adds, very scrupulously, that he has taken a saint from my desk for traveling expenses, but that he will pay me back as soon as he can. Feckless idiot.”

  “We’ve already asked at the University and the Institution, and no one’s seen them,” said Mrs. Pallister. “But I remembered you were reading to him, Mr. Foxe, and he’d told me a little about you, so I thought maybe . . .”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “If Julian needed traveling expenses,” Felix said, “it sounds like they were planning to leave Esmer.”

  “But that makes even less sense,” said Mrs. Pallister. “Where would they go?”

  “Not to Rothmarlin,” Murtagh said. “Kay is not close to his mother, and he loathes his cousin Cecil. And not, I think, to Julian’s personal holdings, for Swale has been closed up since he came to live at Carey House, and in any event, there is absolutely nothing there. None of Kay’s close friends survived the end of the Insurgence, so . . .”

  “Would he return to Summerdown?” Felix said. “I know it preys on his mind.”

  “It seems unlikely,” said Murtagh, frowning. “Although I suppose, if he had a maggot in his head, he might have gone to talk to that magician-practitioner in Barthas Cross, the one who figured out the ritual for Hume. What is the dratted man’s name?”