He shrugged, sort of embarrassed and sort of impatient, and said, “I woke up, and you weren’t there. Where did you go?”
“Down to the Dismal.”
“The . . .” He looked for a second like he’d swallowed a spider, but he recovered fast. “You know I don’t like you going there.”
“Yeah, you’ve said so often enough. But I didn’t drown nobody or nothing.”
“Anybody or anything,” he said. “And I didn’t imagine you had.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The Dismal Baths are not a nice place.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. “What? You think I can’t take care of myself?”
“Look, I don’t like you going there, all right?”
“You gonna forbid me?”
“I will if I have to.” He meant it. I could see that in the way his face reddened and he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. When he was bluffing, he’d look me straight in the eyes and not so much as turn a hair. He hated using the binding-by-forms like that. He said it made him feel sick. Which mostly was fine by me.
But this was just weird. “I don’t see what you got against the Dismal.”
“Do I have to give you reasons for everything I do?”
“But this ain’t something you do. I ain’t making you go down there, so what does it matter if I go every once in a while?”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Powers, I done figured that part out. I just don’t understand why.”
He caught my eyes. “Don’t go down there. And don’t argue about it.” Commands, both of them. Whatever it was that had got him, it had him by the short hairs.
“You’re the boss,” I said, and I didn’t care if I sounded sullen.
He looked at me for a moment, like there was something he wanted to say—but he never apologized for nothing. He went back into his and Gideon’s bedroom to start getting ready for court.
And I stood there with that fucking dream still like wet shiny paint in my head, and I started to wonder if maybe I needed to go talk to Keeper after all.
Chapter 5
Mehitabel
I thought about my mother a lot that night, as I lay in the bed Mildmay and I had occasionally shared and tried not to think about him, not to think about Vulpes, and above all else not to let my memories of Hallam overwhelm me. Her name had been Dorothea. She had been from Skaar, the daughter of a carnival sword-swallower, and she’d had broad, flat cheekbones that had given her face the perfect, watchful stillness of a mask. She had been breathtakingly beautiful. She’d always said she lost her virginity to a snake-handler when she was thirteen.
She had been fifteen when the Zamyatin-Parr troupe came through the village of Tumbril, where her carnival was playing. She had helped her father, a drunken gambler whom she hated, with his act since she was old enough to walk, and since her body had matured, she’d had an additional act of her own as a dancer. When I was a little girl, she’d danced sometimes before the troupe performed, if Gran’père Mato thought the crowd needed “softening up,” and I remembered the amazement with which I had watched her, knowing that this was my mama. My father, Ephesus Parr, had gone to the carnival in Tumbril, seen my mother dance, and fallen instantly in love. Or so the story went.
I did in fact believe that my father had loved my mother madly; she died in childbirth when I was twelve, and my father might as well have died with her for all the interest he showed in life after that. His children—me, my sister Elisabeth, and our little brother Damian—became scarcely more than ghostly shadows to him, things that hurt him to think about because they reminded him of Dorothea. I’d remember all my life the night I’d finally gone to him and said I didn’t like the way Uncle René was staring at me. Even then, Uncle René had gone considerably beyond staring, but I hadn’t wanted to tell my father that. I wondered sometimes, as an adult, whether if I’d told him everything, he might have responded differently, but I couldn’t have done it. I was only fifteen, and Uncle René terrified me. And my father had looked at me as if I had no right to remind him of my mother if I wasn’t going to be her and said, “Tabby, don’t make up stories.”
I’d run away that night, knowing that if my father wouldn’t believe me, no one would, and the only thing I regretted was that I’d left Libbie and Damian on their own.
So, certainly, Ephesus Parr had loved Dorothea Stillman Parr, but I’d never been sure what she felt for him. She had been a very catlike person, affectionate when she wanted to be but entirely self-sufficient; I’d been old enough when she died to understand that she never allowed anyone to touch her very deeply.
And if I’d learned that lesson from her properly, I wouldn’t be in the bind I was in now.
I knew for a fact she had been unfaithful to my father, that she’d had lovers in every town we toured regularly; it had been an open secret in the troupe that Damian was the son of a bank clerk in Iver, and it was anybody’s guess who had fathered the poor little girl that died with her.
Gran’père Mato had hated her. “Whore,” he called her, and worse things, and my father went red in the face and shouted and raved, and my mother just sat and smiled her tiny, secret smile, and went her own way. She’d left pain and destruction in her wake, but she’d taught me how to be what I was. My Aven in Berinth the King was almost entirely my memories of my mother; any situation that required brass-faced flaunting called her up in me, and I needed that now.
I took up my usual position in the Hall of the Chimeras, conspicuous but not encroaching upon the nobles’ space, and heard the susurration of rumors spreading out around me; for a moment, purely as my mother’s daughter, I reveled in it. People would come to see Edith Pelpheria just for the scandal, and that was absolutely fine with me.
When Lord Stephen came in, I felt his single glance like a fire. And then his siblings’ attention: Lady Victoria’s cool hostility and Lord Shannon’s bright blue curiosity. I wondered what, if anything, Lord Stephen had told them.
And then the wizards came in, and I forgot about the Teverii. The other reason I’d been determined to attend court before returning to the Empyrean was that it was never going to get easier to look Mildmay in the face. Best to get that first, worst confrontation over with before I could develop the habit of avoiding him. For a flashing, craven moment, I wanted to step backwards into the crowd and escape Mildmay’s cold green eyes. I needn’t have worried; he didn’t so much as glance at me as they passed, although I knew from the rigid way he held himself that he knew I was there.
I was taken aback by the venomous glare Felix gave me, there and gone like a flash of lightning. I hadn’t expected that, and I felt absurdly like cornering him and saying, He ditched me, you asshole. But I knew that wasn’t true in the strictest sense of the word, and also, inescapably, that I had hurt Mildmay far worse than he had hurt me.
And then they were past, and I made a shaken mental note to avoid being alone with Felix Harrowgate for a while. And I wondered, uncomfortably, just how hard Mildmay was taking it.
He ditched me! a little interior voice protested again. But that wasn’t the issue, and I knew it. I played swan-daughter all through court, using that to keep myself calm, centered, not thinking about the thousand and one things that suddenly seemed too dangerous to contemplate. As I was leaving the Hall of the Chimeras, a page panted up to me, presented a note with a nervous little bow, and pelted off. I stopped and read it where I stood, letting the courtiers eddy around me. It was an invitation to lunch from Shannon Teverius.
Mildmay
The Mirador called today Samedy. It was Felix’s other day to get out from under the committee meetings and shit and go do what he wanted. Usually, he went poking around in one of the libraries. Today, I didn’t know what he was planning to do—something with Edgar and Fleur, and that could mean anything—but a blind man could’ve seen he didn’t want me around.
“It’s okay,” I said to his nervous, sort of embarrassed
look. “Really. I just need to talk to you for a second.”
“Talk away, darling,” he said, lordly and bored and loud enough for Fleur and Edgar to hear. I made him follow me farther down the corridor before I told him what Josiah had said about what Thaddeus was saying. I didn’t know if Felix and Edgar had a thing going, but I didn’t have to climb in bed with them if they did—especially when I was only half sure I wanted to tell Felix this anyway. But even pissed at him like I was, there was this little voice in my head saying that he needed to know, that it didn’t matter what we thought of each other right now, that letting him go on not knowing about what Thaddeus was saying was just plain dumb. Thaddeus might not be on the Curia himself, but I knew he was pretty thick with Lady Agnes, and it’s purely amazing how much trouble one asshole can cause if he’s got his heart set on it.
“I’m not surprised,” Felix said when I was done. “Thaddeus really is a little unbalanced on the subject of the Bastion. I’ll ask around and see if it’s anything more serious than that.”
It was a dismissal—take yourself off now, kid—and that was fair enough.
“See you later,” I said.
“Are you all right? Really?” I wasn’t sure whether he meant about our argument this morning or Mehitabel, but I wasn’t talking to him either way.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Go on and have a good time.”
He gave me a look. I thought for a moment we were going to get in another fight right there in the middle of the corridor with Edgar and Fleur watching. But then he decided I wasn’t worth it. He turned on his heel and went back down the hall. Soon as I was sure he wasn’t going to change his mind, I limped off fast as I could in the opposite direction.
Mehitabel
It was not, of course, an invitation so much as a command. I would be cutting it fine to get back to the Empyrean before the audition for our new ingenue started, but I could hardly tell the Lord Protector’s brother that I was too busy for him. I presented myself at his door precisely at noon and was admitted by a manservant very nearly as handsome as his master, although his brilliant dark eyes and olive-bronze complexion spoke of Grasslander blood rather than Monspulchran. Lord Stephen’s butler had had “old family retainer” written all over him; after two years of Mildmay’s quiet tutelage, I could easily identify this one as “Lower City boy on his way up.” I wondered if it was luck that had gotten him this far or if he’d made his own. For a young man as beautiful as this one, manufacturing luck wouldn’t have been hard.
Lord Shannon was waiting for me in a pleasant sitting room, made even more pleasant by one of the Mirador’s rare interior windows. The view, of course, was only of another blind wall, but it was still real sunlight beyond the leaded glass. Lord Shannon, disconcertingly beautiful, rose to meet me and shook hands. “I have admired you from a distance for a very long time, Madame Parr. It is truly delightful to have this chance to meet you.”
“Your invitation was most kind, my lord,” I said with a cautious half-curtsy.
He looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then said, “The pleasure is all mine,” and began talking lightly, but with evident devotion, about the theater. I followed his lead, and the conversation continued over lunch: an exquisite omelette and accompanying dry white wine. Lord Shannon didn’t do a very good job of hiding his anxiety, but he didn’t let the conversation falter.
It was only as the plates were cleared away that he said, twisting a napkin nervously in his elegant hands, “What did you think of my brother, Madame Parr?”
“He was a charming host, my lord,” I said, not quite certain what Lord Stephen would want me to say.
“Do you . . . like him?”
Clumsy. I remembered Felix remarking once that Shannon had no head for intrigue. “I have only met him the once, my lord.”
“Ah.” He was manifestly unhappy, and I thought, Victoria put him up to this.
I smiled at him brilliantly and said, “Are you looking forward to your brother finding a new bride?”
I expected a charming and platitudinous lie; I was surprised when he paused to consider his answer, even more surprised when the answer he gave was blunt and unvarnished truth. “I think his methods are misguided—not to mention barbaric—but I hope it works. Stephen needs an heir.”
“You don’t wish to be Lord Protector?”
"Great powers, no! I’d rather be walled up in a church like an anchorite.”
I was startled all over again because he clearly meant it.
There was a pause; he seemed to be girding himself to try again, and I was quite grateful when his manservant came in with a message from Arden Anastasius. I leapt at the excuse, thanked him profusely, and made my escape. If I caught a hansom in the Plaza, I’d be on time for the audition at the Empyrean.
Mildmay
I got as far as Ucopian’s Cross before I figured out just how much Felix had fucked me over. And then I stood there and cussed for a couple minutes before I could think straight again.
See, I’d had a plan. Go down in the Arcane and pay somebody enough that they’d forget they hated me for an hour. Get ’em to take a message to the Stag and Candles telling Keeper to meet me in the Iron Chapel at the septad-night. But Felix had put paid to that.
Don’t go down there, he’d said, and he hadn’t just meant the Dismal Baths. He’d meant the whole Arcane. Not the Lower City, mind. Just the motherfucking Arcane and how the fuck did he think I was supposed to live in the motherfucking Mirador if I couldn’t get out of it when I needed?
I cussed some more, and then I turned around and went back to Felix’s suite. But I wasn’t beat yet, not by a long shot. If Felix didn’t want me to go to the Arcane, fine, but I’d be fucked blind if he was going to keep me out of the Lower City altogether.
Gideon wasn’t there, and I was fine with that. Because once he knew something was up, he wouldn’t let me leave until he knew what it was. And once he knew what I was doing, he wouldn’t let me do it.
I knew where to find what I wanted, which was a damn good thing. I hated being in their bedroom. But Felix had a couple of headscarves—he used ’em when he was working with fire spells because his hair never would stay in a braid—and my hair was the thing that would be a dead giveaway. Sure, the scar and the limp didn’t help, but there are a lot more lame guys in the Lower City than there are redheads, and I wasn’t planning on letting anybody get a good look at my face. And I couldn’t do nothing about the scar anyway.
I was on my way out when I had another idea. Might as well be hanged for a sheep. I grabbed one of Gideon’s coats. Mine were all black, and Felix’s, aside from not fitting, were carnival-tent gaudy. Gideon’s didn’t fit quite right, either—I was broader in the shoulders—but that was okay. Nobody’d look twice at a guy wearing an obviously secondhand coat.
I got some soot from the fireplace to darken my eyebrows and my hairline, took off my waistcoat, shrugged into Gideon’s coat, and tied the scarf. I tucked my pigtail up into it and checked the effect in the sitting room mirror. It was okay. The scar was ugly, but I was used to that. At least I didn’t look like a redhead. I left the sitting room again, and this time I wasn’t coming back until I’d talked to Keeper.
Felix
Edgar’s plan for the afternoon was perfectly innocuous: a visit to his tailor. He wanted my advice, and I had no objections. Perhaps getting out of the Mirador would clear my head.
But Fleur’s plan was not so innocent. She wanted to talk— more precisely, she wanted me to talk—and she had no compunction about taking advantage of a captive audience. She waited until the first flurry was over and Edgar had been taken off to look at fashion plates from Vusantine and Igensbeck, and her opening salvo was quite mild: “How’s Gideon?”
“Fine, thank you,” I said warily. I knew Fleur and that brightly casual tone, and I remembered her the night of our semi-impromptu soirée for Aias Perrault, talking to Mildmay— or trying to.
“And you?” she said, rather more point
edly. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, too, thank you for asking,” I said and gritted my teeth in a smile.
“Your work going well?”
“Perfectly fine. What next, Fleur? I don’t have an aged mother you can ask after, and you like to pretend my brother doesn’t exist—except when you’re pumping him for information, of course.”
“Felix!” But she kept her voice low, mindful of the tailor’s assistants, hovering gracefully not quite in earshot.
“What is it you want to know? Why don’t you spare us all a good deal of tedium, and just ask?”
She laughed. “You never change, do you? Tact is for the weak of heart.”
“And what is it you were going to be tactful about?”
“We’re getting a little worried about you, you know,” she said, and I wondered, with a shudder I was careful to hide, if there were genuinely more people than Fleur in that we. “You’ve been awfully short tempered lately, even for you. And you’ve been . . .”
“What?” Whoring in the Arcane? Practicing heresy?
“Drinking,” she said in a hushed voice.
I truly didn’t intend to laugh—although it was the best response I could have made. At least I didn’t have to try to stop myself. “Oh horrors!” I said finally, fighting my giggles back under control. “Next thing you know, I’ll be going down to Dragonteeth to pick up boys.”
“I’m serious,” Fleur said forcefully. “I’m worried about you. I’d like to help.”
“You’d like to have me pour my heart out to you, you mean,” I said, and would have gone on to tell her just how unlikely such an event was except that Edgar called me over to talk about imported lace.
When I came back, Fleur picked up right where she’d left off. “Felix, it’s not a crime to let someone help you.”
“You’re assuming there’s something to help with, Fleur. So far as I know, I haven’t agreed to your starting premise.”
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