“He don’t think he can come,” I said.
“Did he say why?”
“Said his master won’t let him.”
“He is not a slave,” Felix said, and I knew I’d hit him on the raw.
“Servants got masters, don’t they?”
He pulled himself up short on whatever he’d been going to answer that with, and said, “Let’s not fight. Did he give you any reason?”
“Nope.” I didn’t want him mad at me really, so I said, “He seemed scared.”
“Scared?” Felix frowned and quit talking.
We went back to the suite, where there was a letter sealed with the Polydorius crest waiting on the mantelpiece. Felix ripped it open and glared at it. “It does not suit his lordship’s pleasure,” he said to me and Gideon, “to allow his servants to go gallivanting about the Mirador with persons of questionable morals.”
“Um,” I said.
“Charming,” Felix said. “Let’s see what light Vincent’s commentary throws on this.” He opened Mr. Demabrien’s letter and read it, once quickly and then again slower. “Vincent says only that Lord Ivo is jealous and capricious. He says that he will try again when his lordship is in a better humor.” He stood for a moment, frowning like a thundercloud, and his hands crumpling and twisting at Lord Ivo’s letter. Then he came back to himself and said, “I won’t want you this afternoon, Mildmay. Do what you like.” He didn’t give either of us time to say anything, but was gone almost before the words were out of his mouth.
I shrugged at Gideon. Gideon shrugged back at me. And, well, it’d worked last time, so I said, “Hey, you wanna go to the Lower City with Simon and me?”
And Gideon grinned like a kid.
Mehitabel
“You’re late, Madame Parr,” Jean-Soleil’s voice came booming at me from the stage.
I had thought carefully all the way from the Mirador to the Empyrean about how to play this scene, about what I wanted the troupe to know, assume, and conjecture about my arrangement with Stephen. Breezy and self-satisfied, I had decided. A woman who had what she wanted. “Damn. Am I really?”
“I trust you were enjoying yourself, wherever you were.”
“Enormously,” I said, grinned impudently, and started down the aisle. As a dignified tragedienne, I was supposed to go around the auditorium and make my entrance always from the wings, but even Jean-Soleil wouldn’t care about that today. I was late. I had promised to be on time for a noon rehearsal, and I’d just heard the bells chime the half hour as I came in through the Paixe Street entrance.
“I’m delighted that you could find time for us in your crowded schedule, madame,” Jean-Soleil said, giving me a hand up onto the stage. “I trust we aren’t inconveniencing you too greatly?”
“Of course not, messire,” I said and swept him a low curtsy.
His mustache twitched, and I knew my new role was working. One less thing to worry about. He turned to the other actors and said, “Now that our Edith has joined us, shall we start from the beginning of Act Two?”
We all shuffled around in our scripts, and I was deeply comforted to feel my normal, daylight life wrapping itself back around me as if I had never been gone.
Mildmay
So the resurrectionists had been interesting, but not, you know, actually very helpful, and I’d been racking my brains—in between getting told off by Rinaldo for being a half-wit dog and avoiding three different fights Felix tried to pick and all the rest of the stuff that made up my life these days—trying to figure out what to do next. Keeper wasn’t a patient lady, and if I didn’t get her something soon, she was liable to decide it’d be more fun to tell Felix the whole thing. I mean, it wasn’t like I was the only goon she could send running around the city. I was just the goon it amused her to play with. Her very own clockwork bear.
And, you know, I probably could’ve dealt with Felix finding out—he already knew enough bits of it that it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I even thought about telling him myself, but I was too afraid he’d forbid me to keep going, and even leaving aside the mystery—and it had its teeth sunk in me pretty good—this was still the only way I could find out who got Ginevra killed. And maybe it was too fucking late, and maybe it wouldn’t change how much of it was my fault, and it sure as fuck wouldn’t make her love me—but it was the only thing I could do, and the fact that it wasn’t enough didn’t make a difference.
And the answer had come to me in the middle of the night, the way things do sometimes when you think you’re stuck fast and ain’t never moving again in this life or any other. So me and Gideon went over to Simon and Rinaldo’s suite. When Simon opened the door, I said, “Want to go out?”
“Of course. Where?”
“Havelock. I want to talk to somebody who might maybe still be a friend.”
Simon wasn’t anywhere near as involved in the running of the Mirador as Felix was. He was ready to go almost before I’d told him what I wanted. He didn’t have as bad a time with the cabbie this time ’round. Havelock’s pretty respectable. Although I did wonder if the cabbie knew enough to refuse to go to St. Kirban’s, which was not only not respectable, but also really unhealthy. Either way, he only grumbled a little about taking us to the Fishmarket. Even people from the Mirador went sometimes, and you didn’t have to worry that the cade-skiffs were sizing you up as their next piece of merchandise. They were paid by the Lord Protector himself, whether he knew it or not, and that made them as close to incorruptible as any set of people is likely to get.
Simon paid the cabbie to wait again. I said, “Get your hands out of your pockets.” He made a face at me, but he did, and him and Gideon followed me through the colonnade to the Fishmarket’s front door. I couldn’t remember off the top of my head who put the colonnade up—some flashie with more gorgons than brains who’d lived during the reign of Matthias Cordelius, was all I could get, and that was just from the way the columns, in the Imperial style with the big leaves at the tops, didn’t sit right with the building itself. The Fishmarket really did start out as a fish market. They used the Dead Gallery to keep the fish fresh long enough to sell it. Dunno how or why the cade-skiffs got it, back in the day of Cyprian Ophidius, but it still looks like a warehouse and so not very well suited to columns.
The doors had been redone when they put the colonnade in. They were ironbound oak and fucking huge, and if one of ’em fell on you, you’d probably be dead. I didn’t have to knock. The right-hand door swung open as we got close, and a tall, dark cade-skiff built like an ox was staring at us. I couldn’t read from his face what he thought about us, but I figured it was a good sign he’d opened the door.
I said, “Can I talk to Cardenio?”
“Cardenio?”
“He’s still here, ain’t he?”
“Yes,” he said. “Master Cardenio is here.”
Shit. Cardenio is a Master now? And then I thought, Time don’t hold still just ’cause you ain’t watching, Milly-Fox. Get a grip. “Then can I talk to him?”
“Who should I say wishes to see him?”
I gave him a look, but he was pretending to be stupid.
“Mildmay the Fox,” I said. “And these are Lord Simon Barrister and Gideon Thraxios.”
“I will see if he is available,” the cade-skiff said and shut the door.
“So what weird guild is this?” Simon said.
I reminded myself again that Simon wasn’t from Mélusine. “This is the cade-skiffs’ guildhall.”
“And what are cade-skiffs?” Beside him, I could see Gideon’s eyes lighting with interest.
“They’re cade-skiffs,” I said. “You know.”
“No, I don’t have the foggiest idea, aside from a guess that they’ve got something to do with Cade-Cholera and boats.”
“Well, there you go.”
“What?”
“I mean you got it. Mostly what they do is fish dead people out of the Sim.”
“It takes a guild for that?”
; “They do other stuff, but—”
The door swung open again, silent as death, and I wondered how much oil they went through keeping these monsters in shape. The big cade-skiff said, “Master Cardenio will see you. Follow me.”
We followed. I’d been in the Fishmarket, even before I’d had to come identify Ginevra. When you get an assassin job, it generally pays to go eyeball what the cade-skiffs got in the Dead Gallery. I’d saved myself a lot of work a couple of times. Often-times people who get one guy mad enough at them to hire them dead, they’ve got a lot of other people mad at them, too. Sometimes the other people ain’t so squeamish. So I knew the big square corridors, the white plaster walls, the flagstoned floor. None of it had changed, and I was in the sort of mood where that was a comfort, even though I knew how stupid it was. The cade-skiffs hadn’t done it for me.
Cardenio was waiting for us in the Masters’ Hall, which was otherwise just a big room with a long table and a bunch of chairs. The carpet on the floor had been high-quality once, say a Great Septad or two ago, but it was frayed and worn now, with the dye rubbed away in a circuit around the table and a big inkblot right by the door. Cardenio didn’t look much different from what I remembered. He was still small and mild, but I would never have thought of calling him a mouse. Something had steadied in him. I thought for a second about the way everybody identified Hugo Chandler as a rabbit first and foremost, and wondered what Cardenio had found that Hugo hadn’t.
Then he said, “Hey, Mildmay,” just like he always did, and I saw he was still wearing the jade dragon earrings I’d given him.
A big heavy dog jumped off my shoulders, and I said, “Hey, Cardenio. Congratulations on your Mastership. When’d you get it?”
He went a little pink. “Just a few months ago. I’m afraid I ain’t what you might call an important person.”
“You got time yet,” I said.
He went pinker and said, “Will you sit down, you and your . . . friends?”
“Cardenio, this is Simon, and this is Gideon.”
Cardenio almost boggled, but he pulled himself together and stuck his hand out. Definitely not a mouse. He shook hands with Simon and with Gideon, and we all sat down around the table. Cardenio said, formally, “What brings you to the guildhall of the cade-skiffs?”
“I need information,” I said.
“Information we got. What do you need to know?”
I told him about Jenny, with him listening close and asking me to go back when he hadn’t understood something. I was getting pretty good at my spiel, and if I had to tell it many more times, it was going to turn into a story instead of just half a lie. “So if she ain’t a resurrectionist,” I finished, “I kind of figure she’s got to be working for a necromancer, and I was wondering if y’all could tell me which one.”
“Why do you want to know?”
Shit. I gave him a glare, and he went pink again, but he didn’t back down. “I ain’t bringing the Mirador down on anybody. ”
“Fuck me sideways, Cardenio, that ain’t what I want.”
Simon said, “Should I wait outside?” sounding sort of uncomfortable and guilty, and me and Cardenio fell over each other apologizing to him.
He waved it off. “I promise I won’t, er, ‘bring the Mirador down on’ anyone. I’m mostly doing Mildmay a favor—and your guild fascinates me.”
Cardenio perked up. “I could give you a tour. Once I get this thing settled for him. Y’all wait here, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, and he went to talk to the other cade-skiffs or whatever it was he had to do. I sat and priced the table and the drapes, just from habit. Gideon and Simon were talking. I knew how that looked.
It took Cardenio a long time. I wondered if he was having to do some fast talking to get anybody else to want to help us. He didn’t say nothing about it when he came back, just sat down again and said, “Your friend seems to be working for a necromancer named Augusta Fenris.”
“D’you know anything about Mrs. Fenris?”
Cardenio shrugged a little. “For a necromancer, she seems honest and reliable. I mean, she’s half-crazy, but they all are. She gets her subjects from the resurrectionists, rather than, um, making them herself. She does divining for us sometimes.”
“Does what?” Simon said.
“Identifies bodies. She’s pretty good at getting ’em to talk— better than Otto Yarley, for all that he’s here twice a decad asking if we need any help.”
It sounded like there were a couple-septad worse people Jenny could have fallen in with. “If I wanted to talk to this Fenris lady, how would I go about it?”
“I got her address.”
He handed me a raggedy slip of paper and I shoved it in my pocket. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Anything else I can do for you?”
“No. Mrs. Fenris’s name was all I was after.”
“Then, if your lordship would like . . . ?”
Simon was delighted and said so, and Cardenio showed us all over the Fishmarket, and answered Simon’s questions—and about half of ’em I figured for Gideon’s questions. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before, of course, but I wasn’t bored. I was watching Cardenio, saving up his voice, and the way he smiled, and the way he was happy and loved what he was doing.
When he’d showed us everything the cade-skiffs’ll show to outsiders, Cardenio walked with us back to the front door, walking with me this time. He talked about himself, and I knew it was ’cause he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable by asking how I was doing. So he told me what his duties as a Master were and how much he liked his job. When we got to the doors, he stopped and looked me in the eye and said, “Are you okay? Really?”
I owed it to him not to lie. I said, “I think I’m getting better.”
"That’s good,” he said. “I mean . . .” And he was blushing, and it was so like old times I wanted to cry.
“Hey,” I said. “Nice earrings.”
His face lit up. I mean, it was a smile and a half. He said, shyly, “Good luck,” and I said, “Thanks,” and then I followed Simon and Gideon out to the fiacre. Cardenio stood in the doorway of the Fishmarket, waving, until we were out of sight.
Mehitabel
Isaac Garamond was waiting for me in my dressing room; I didn’t even bother wondering anymore how he made his way in and out of the theater. “You must grow here like mold,” I said and shut the door behind me.
He said, “Aias Perrault left this morning.”
I knew that; most of the court’s business had been a tedious ceremonial farewell to Messire Perrault and the small handful of Eusebians who had chosen to return to the Bastion with him. Laurel de Narance and Andromachy Sain had worn matching scowls.
I also knew that Isaac would have seen me in the Hall of the Chimeras that morning—although again I hadn’t seen him. He’d slipped up last night, and I wasn’t about to tell him so. I folded my arms and waited for him to get to his point.
“My report went with him.”
“Messire Perrault works for Louis Goliath?”
“Good God, no! As far as Aias knows, he’s carrying a letter from me to Captain Sarpedon. Captain Sarpedon will pass my report on to Major Goliath.”
“And what did you report, Lieutenant Vulpes?” I said.
“Precious little. I fear Louis will not be happy with me, even though I promised to hold myself in readiness for a sending.” He turned on me with a snarl. “What did you and Felix talk about last night?”
“The Lord Protector’s marriage,” I lied.
“And what did you and the Lord Protector talk about last night?”
Oh, God, here we go again. I summoned up a half-smirk. “Surely, lieutenant, you do not imagine we wasted our time with talking.”
He was visibly taken aback; it took him a moment to regroup. “I did not mean to pry into your private affairs, maselle. I merely thought that you might have learned something of interest.”
“Not to you, lieutenant,” and I did get some
small, vicious satisfaction out of watching his embarrassment. I was almost beginning to feel sorry for Isaac Garamond, caught between Felix and Louis. I knew what Louis Goliath’s anger was like, and Hallam had told me about sendings, how a powerful wizard could walk in another wizard’s dreams. The sendings from his master Octavian d’Armigier had been one of the reasons Hallam had tried to run. When he could no longer tell his own nightmares from Colonel d’Armigier’s sendings, his nerve had snapped.
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