:Expel us all as spies. He’d love to ship me back to the Bastion in a box.:
:You’re never going to tell me why he hates you, are you?:
:No,: Gideon said and smiled at me sweetly. :The same way you’re never going to tell me anything except exactly what you want me to hear.:
:Gideon—:
:Don’t start,: he said fiercely. He sat down, opened one of the books, and bent his head over it in a fashion clearly intended to rebuff conversation.
I stood and watched him for some time before I said quietly, “I’m going to bed.” It took all my willpower not to allow my retreat to be a skulk or a scuttle.
It was much later when Gideon came to bed. Although I was awake, I said nothing, and although he knew I was awake, he did not try to touch me.
Mehitabel
I’d never exactly given up my room in the Mirador; no one had asked me to—it wasn’t as if they needed the space—and Mildmay and I found it very useful. Neither one of us had much privacy in the normal way of things.
I was very careful with him—there were too many things I didn’t want his terrifyingly sharp eyes to see. He came willingly enough to bed, and once there it was easy. Easy because he made it easy. The gentle expertise of his hands made a lie of the sullen silence he gave to the world. He let me take what I needed— almost flinched away when I tried to give in return.
We’d done this little dance a thousand times, me persisting until all at once he yielded; tonight it irritated me. “What,” I said, “you’re the only man in Mélusine who doesn’t like getting sucked off?”
“It ain’t that,” he said, and added humbly, “’M sorry.”
Perhaps I should have pursued it, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to talk. Not until afterward, when I could push the conversation where I needed it to go.
I lowered my head and got to work.
Mildmay
After we’d fucked, when I was laying there feeling basically boneless, Mehitabel said, her own voice kind of dreamy, “I hear the Lord Protector is really going to get married again.”
“About fucking time,” I said.
“Why does it matter? Wouldn’t Lord Shannon inherit anyway? ”
“That’s why it matters,” I said, tracing the line of her back with one finger.
She rolled over to look at me. “You’ve lost me.”
“Politics,” I said.
“Yes, but this really bewilders me. I thought Shannon was a legitimate heir.”
“Yeah.”
She smiled suddenly. “You’re teasing me, you devious little shit.”
“Yeah,” I said. She tried to tickle me, and we didn’t talk for a while. But she came back to it: “Why would it be so awful if Lord Shannon became the Lord Protector?”
“He’d bitch it all to fuck,” I said.
“Why? I know he’s a fop, but—”
“Gloria Aestia. And he’s molly. And . . . powers, I don’t know.” But I remembered the way he’d looked through me like I wasn’t there. “He just ain’t suited.”
“You know,” Mehitabel said, “I never have understood why Gloria Aestia is such a bugbear in this city. What did she do that was so terrible?”
“Treason ain’t enough for you?”
“History—Marathine as much as anyone else’s—is full of traitors. You’ve told me enough stories.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Dunno if I can explain it.”
“Oh, I have faith.” And she could’ve meant it to be snarky, but it didn’t sound like it.
“Okay. I’ll give it a go. Gloria Aestia was Lord Gareth’s second wife, right? And she was a lot younger than him. And, um, Lord Shannon was awful big for a septad-month baby.”
“She trapped him into marriage. That’s hardly unusual, either. ”
“Wait a minute. It gets better. See, it came out at the trial that she’d been Cotton Verlalius’s lover a lot longer than she’d been Lord Gareth’s.”
“So Lord Shannon might not be a Teverius at all?”
“Oh, he’s a Teverius all right. Legally, anyway. Lord Gareth made sure of that. But he might not be Lord Stephen’s blood-kin any more than whatsisface Verlalius is. The one that moons around you all the time.”
Which I shouldn’t’ve said, but she let it slide. “You think the legal fiction wouldn’t hold.”
“No, but it ain’t just that.” I struggled with it a minute, and she let me. “Because he looks just like her, you know. And some people figure being molly ain’t no better, morally speaking, than being a slut. And it ain’t just that she cheated on Lord Gareth, neither. D’you know what it was she was aiming to do?”
Mehitabel shook her head.
“Her and Cotton Verlalius and their friends were going to get rid of Lord Gareth. She’d seen to it that Lord Gareth had named her regent—she could make him do damn near anything she wanted. And once she was regent, something was going to happen to Lord Stephen. And probably Lady Victoria, too.”
" ’Something’?”
“Sort of thing that mostly happens to inconvenient people. And then there Lord Shannon would be. Lord Protector with a good septad of his minority still to go.”
“And his mother pulling strings. I see why you said Amaryllis Cordelia was like her.”
“They would’ve understood each other. And it’s worse’n that, even, her not being Marathine and all—”
“She had a Marathine name.”
“She was Monspulchran. Like Simon. Monspulchra ain’t far from here, but it’s Tibernian. And she never shut up about how much better it was, neither. And at the trial, Cotton Verlalius spilled his guts and said as how she’d wanted to make Lord Shannon a king.”
“And a king would be different from a lord protector how, exactly?”
“King ain’t got the Cabinet and the Curia riding herd on him. It’s what the Wizards’ Coup was for.”
“Ah,” said Mehitabel. “All right. I can see that Lord Shannon’s mother was a nasty piece of work. But do people really think that Lord Shannon would turn into her the instant he took the throne?”
“Well, yeah. Some people do. But it ain’t really . . . I mean, the problem ain’t what people think Lord Shannon would do. It’s . . .” I really didn’t know how to make her understand how bad it would be. “Well, he’d be a shitty Lord Protector anyway. And we’d be fucked.”
“Countries have survived bad rulers before,” she said.
“Not when they got Tibernia on one side and Kekropia on the other.”
“You’re allied with Tibernia.”
“Yeah, we’re allied with Tibernia, same way Lord Shannon’s a Teverius. Everyone pretends real hard and it works okay. Mostly.”
“What about the envoys?”
“They’re new. Weren’t no envoys before the Virtu got broke.
See, the king is leaning on Lord Stephen to quit pretending and knuckle under for real, and it’s only ’cause Lord Stephen’s stubborn as a pig that he ain’t caved yet. But Lord Shannon couldn’t hold out against ’em.”
“What would that mean?”
“Well, the Tibernians come in. They take the Protectorship apart, and if they’re feeling really full of themselves, they take the whole Mirador apart with it. And then it’s just Tibernia and Kekropia going head to head to see who’s gonna get to be emperor. ”
“Emperor?
“Fuck, yes. It’s only the Mirador keeping Aeneas Antipater back. ’Cause the hocuses here, they don’t want the king telling ’em what to do. They figure the Bastion’s their problem. Bastion split off from the Mirador, you know, way back when, and the Mirador wants it back. Like a personal grudge. Do the hocuses out there feel the same way?”
“I beg your pardon?” She sounded startled, almost alarmed.
“Just wondering,” I said.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you said something else.” She frowned a little. “I think some of them do feel that way, but for most of them it’s just part of what they’re sup
posed to do, like obeying orders. But I’m still confused.”
“Get used to it,” I said.
“But I thought the Mirador was doing what the king told them to.”
“Darlin’,” I said, “it ain’t that simple. Why d’you think Felix spends half his mortal life in Curia meetings? It’s all politics.”
“Everything is,” she said and kissed me.
Mehitabel
The Mirador had more clocks in it than any place I’d ever seen. In the Bastion, there was only one clock, a monstrous giant called the Juggernaut, which could be heard everywhere, in every corridor, staircase, and closet. The Mirador had once had such a clock; its name had been Nemesis. It was said to have been haunted, Mildmay had told me, his eyes shining with delight in a good story, and by the reign of King Mark Ophidius, the bells had no longer marked the hours, but rang at odd times and in a jangling cacophony that was said to have driven several people mad, including the wife of Mark’s heir. It had been disassembled and its bells melted down. After that, understandably, the Mirador wanted nothing more to do with what were called Titan Clocks, and instead it became infested with small clocks which struck the hours regularly and sweetly—though rarely in time with each other.
Mildmay had gotten—scavenged or stolen, I didn’t know and didn’t ask—a clock for the room we used, one with a cunning mechanism by which you could have a bell ring at a particular hour. When we spent the night together, he would set it to ring at six o’clock—what he called the first hour of the day—so that he could get back to Felix’s suite before Felix was awake.
He woke immediately and completely with the shrill clamor of the clock; I lay lazily in bed and watched him dress, admiring the play of muscles in his back and buttocks—Felix might be breath-stealingly gorgeous, but Mildmay had his own beauty, though I didn’t think he was aware of it.
He’d braided his hair and was tying it with a black ribbon I’d given him long ago when he asked, “You going to court?”
“I thought I would.” It would keep me visible, and that was not a bad thing—especially since it would be goodness knew how long until I was back on stage again. And I had to keep moving, had to keep working, had to keep the present real so that the past did not paralyze me.
“Would you . . . I mean, could you do me a favor?”
The hesitancy with which he asked—as if he expected me to say no—hurt, and I said unguardedly, “Of course. What is it?”
Stupid to make a promise so blindly, but almost worth it for the way his expression lightened. “It’s Gideon,” he said, and I relaxed a little. “He don’t leave Felix’s rooms hardly ever, and him and Felix are fighting, and I thought if you didn’t mind, he could maybe come along with you, and then—”
“You wouldn’t have to worry about him,” I finished. That was practically babbling, for Mildmay, and I’d understood him mostly from long practice and context.
“Yeah.” And he was definitely blushing.
I forbore to tease him, remembering Gideon’s far more eloquently expressed concern for Mildmay himself.
And Felix between them like the Uleander Tree in Edwin and Esterhin, beautiful and poisonous.
“I’d be glad to,” I said, and I wasn’t even lying.
Mildmay
That morning, Lord Stephen read out this long thing that, stripped down of all the flourishes and pretty bits, was basically fair warning. He was looking for a wife, and anybody wanting to get a gal married off was going to have a chance to show her to him. I watched the way people reacted. I saw a lot of quick sidelong glances at Robert of Hermione, standing as usual just behind Lady Victoria. Robert himself was looking glassy and blank, trying to pretend like this wasn’t a nasty kick in the balls for him.
See, the only reason Robert was anybody in the Mirador was him being the brother of Lord Stephen’s first wife, Emily. Robert wasn’t much of a hocus, and he was about as bright as ditchwater on a cloudy day—and a nasty-minded little shit to boot. Oh, and Felix hated him like there wasn’t nobody else around who’d do it right. But Lord Stephen protected him— even seemed not to mind him, but maybe that was just good manners—because of Emily. But you couldn’t imagine any second wife letting that go on.
It’d be nice, I thought, if Felix would keep his mouth shut for the next few days, and not give Robert a target. When Robert didn’t like what Stephen was doing—and he hated most everything Stephen had settled with the envoys from Vusantine over the winter—he looked for ways to make other people’s lives a misery. And him and Felix hated each other so fucking much, it was like being in the middle of a war.
Fuck me sideways ’til I cry, I thought, and wondered why it seemed like everything that happened these days was something that was going to make Felix’s mood worse.
Mehitabel
Gideon had been reluctant, but Mildmay’s clumsy manipulation had worked; he was even more reluctant to admit to me that he didn’t want to go. We watched together as first the courtiers came in, then Lord Stephen and his siblings entered through the door behind the dais. Lord Stephen took his seat in Lord Michael’s Chair, as the throne of the Lord Protector was styled, and then the wizards filed in to perform the daily ritual of loyalty, swearing their oaths to Stephen and committing their magic to the Virtu, which shone like a blue-green star from its plinth. And Mildmay was just behind Felix like a shadow. His part in the ritual—by the Mirador’s own laws—was to fail to participate in it. The obligation d’âme meant that his only allegiance was to Felix, making them a separate kingdom of two, with Felix as king and Mildmay as ministers, army, and populace all combined in one. A stormy little kingdom, I thought, with periodic flare-ups of civil war and a magnificently unstable government. And I was glad I wasn’t a citizen of it.
I practiced being a swan-daughter, as I did whenever I attended court, tall and grave and distant, and Gideon stood sharp-eyed and aloof beside me. But interested. After court, after Lord Stephen had made the announcement of his plans to seek a bride, it was Gideon who noticed Antony heading toward us. A sharp nudge in my ribs and a nod in Antony’s direction, and I could see the inquiry in his raised eyebrows: friend or foe?
“Lord Antony Lemerius,” I said under my breath. “Harmless. ”
That got me a sardonic quirk of his mouth, and he moved back a little.
Antony didn’t notice him. “Mehitabel,” he said. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor.”
Not again. I bit my lip against the impulse to laugh and said, “What is it?”
“I, er, I wish to return to the crypt of the Cordelii to test a theory, and I was wondering if you would ask Mr. Foxe if he . . .” He trailed off, looking at me hopefully.
I said, “I can show you the way.”
And then I wondered what in the world had possessed me.
“Could you?” Antony said with unmistakable relief.
“I remember the route Mildmay took. When do you want to go?”
“Er, this evening? About nine?”
Not the ideal time for exploring a crypt, but in the great and windowless bulk of the Mirador, it hardly mattered.
“All right.” And then a thought hit me, mingled charity and malice, and I said, “Gideon, do you want to come?”
Gideon blinked. He pulled his tablet and stylus out of his coat pocket and wrote in his neat, swift, highly Kekropian hand, Won’t I be in the way?
“Not a bit,” I said brightly, ignoring the appalled expression on Antony’s face that said otherwise. “And if you’re along we won’t have to worry about the candles going out.”
He made me a small, ironic bow.
“Good,” I said, and to Antony, briskly dismissive, “We’ll meet you at nine in the Stoa St. Maximilian.” Gideon was happily quick to pick up my cues, quicker than many actors I’d worked with, and we made our exit.
Back in Felix’s suite, he was still eyeing me with puzzled speculation. “What?” I said.
He wrote, Why do you want me along?
> “Can’t I enjoy your company?”
It embarrassed him; he looked away for a moment, then wrote, I hope that you do. But that does not answer my question.
“Oh, God, Gideon, do you have to analyze everything to death? Look, that crypt isn’t a very pleasant place, and Antony is, um, uninspiring company at the best of times.”
His eyebrows went up; I said, “I know, I know—that being so, why did I offer?” I didn’t know the answer to that myself, so I chose a reason I thought he’d accept: “I didn’t want Mildmay to have to put up with Antony on top of everything else he has to put up with all the time. All right?”
He considered me a moment. It is not a crime to love someone.
That depends very much on whom you love. But I didn’t say it.
Mildmay
Today was Jeudy in the Mirador’s reckoning, and Jeudy afternoons were when Felix locked himself in his workroom and did hocus stuff. Sometimes he told me to clear out. Sometimes he dragged me in with him, because he needed me for one reason or another, because of the obligation d’âme or just because he needed somebody to stand still at a particular spot on the floor. Every once in a while, he’d let me choose if I wanted to come with him or go off on my own. I always stayed with him. On Jeudy afternoons he was like a different person. He never said anything mean, and he’d talk to me sometimes the way he talked to his friends, like I was smart enough that it mattered to him that I understood him. I hoarded up those afternoons like a miser counting decagorgons. And it always seemed to make Felix happy, too.
This afternoon I was expecting him to run me off. But he stopped at the door and raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you want to come in?”
“Um. Sure. I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“If I minded, I would have told you to go away,” he said. But there was no sting in it. He unlocked the door. “Come on.”
We didn’t talk much for an hour or so. He was tangled up in some crazy thing that had him crawling around on the floor with lots of string and chalk. And it seemed like he kept running into the east wall, like it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Finally, he sat back on his heels and said, “Damn. Damn, damn, damn.”
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