The Mirador

by Sarah Monette

  The bees did not trust me, but they did not attack me, and when we reached Horn Gate, bedecked as it was with wisteria, they became less interested in me, crawling thoughtfully among the trailing blossoms. Thamuris was there almost as soon as I was, his anxiety visible around him in an indigo and cerise tumult.

  “Are you—oh. Is that them?”

  Neither grammatical nor particularly lucid, but I knew what he meant. “Yes. Come with me. I’m going to need your help.”

  He followed me, anxious but not arguing, and the bees followed us both. I had chosen a place for the rubies amongst the settled geography of the Khloïdanikos: a patriarchal oak that was ringed by brambles. The brambles had been trained over a trellis to form a gateway and now hung like a curtain. Their flowers were yellow, small and musky, and their thorns were fierce, jealous claws. The oak was strong enough to withstand the last lingering taint on the rubies, and the brambles would contain their malice.

  Thamuris held the curtain of brambles aside for me; we were both bleeding from several long scratches by the time I knelt in front of the oak, the bees flying in their silent circles around my head and hands.

  “Guard,” I said to the oak, to the brambles. “Hold.” I set the beehive that was also a gray wash-leather bag down on one of the cracked paving stones, placed my hands carefully to either side, palms flat against the rock.

  The Parliament of Bees. The Unreal City. The Nightingale. The Wheel. I drew the rubies through the symbols, from one to the next to the next, winding them onto the Wheel, ringing them with brambles. I felt it, when it took: a jar against my hands, and the beehive was a wash-leather bag with a shining ruby bee crawling across its drawstrings. I turned my attention toward my sleeping body and knew that the bag was no longer clutched in my left hand.

  “There,” I said, and got to my feet. “It worked.”

  I emerged back out of the brambled circle of the oak, and Thamuris let go of the trailing briars. “I wish,” he said, “that you would tell me a little more about the wizard those gems belonged to.”

  “What do you want to know?” I said, starting away from the oak and toward the ruined orchard wall.

  Thamuris followed me. “Well, if he were—and I know this is silly, but if he were to . . . well, to manifest, what would the signs be?”

  “That isn’t silly,” I said reluctantly as we entered the fallow orchard. “If he manifests himself, you’ll know him because he doesn’t—didn’t—look in the least Troian. Phenomena . . .” I ran through a rapid mental survey of everything I knew about Malkar, everything I’d watched for in the shadows and dreaded. “He always wore musk—at least when I knew him. He murdered a woman by burning her alive, by magic. He was very old—I don’t even know how old. He died by burning. And he was a blood-wizard, as I told you, so anything bleeding, any sign or smell of blood . . .”

  “You know a great deal about him,” Thamuris said. “And I would guess that he did not leave you these relics in his will.”

  I had betrayed myself. I should, I thought, have known that I would.

  The perseïd tree was still not dead. I reached out and laid my palm on its trunk, feeling the cold of the bark and beneath it the faintest sense of brightness. Of hope? “What is it you want to know, Thamuris?” I said wearily.

  “What I’ve just helped you put in the Dream of the Garden, for one thing.”

  “A little late to be asking that, don’t you think?”

  “I trusted your judgment.”

  “And now you don’t?”

  “I would like some more information,” he said, very levelly.

  I turned away from the perseïd tree. “Look. How I know him isn’t . . . it isn’t relevant.”

  “No? Then why does the phrase ‘death by burning’ have such a violent effect on you?”

  He was watching my emotions, damn him. And I was failing to control them.

  “It is how everyone I knew in my childhood died,” I said, both to defend myself and for the vicious, unworthy satisfaction of seeing him flinch.

  He did flinch, but he recovered and said, “That’s nothing to do with this man whose name you won’t tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.” Strange, how much of my time I seemed to spend these days telling people Malkar was dead.

  Thamuris’s breath hitched; I looked at him and saw his eyes widen. “He is your spirit-ancestor.”

  “No, he is not.” But if he wasn’t, why had I been so eager to find out how to do a thanatopsis?

  Of course Malkar—Brinvillier Strych—was my spirit-ancestor, my patron saint. Who else could it possibly be?

  Thamuris had quite rightly ignored my futile outburst. “I thought I understood what you were doing, but I don’t. You can’t treat a spirit-ancestor like a contagion—”

  “That’s what he is!” The banshee fury of my voice surprised me just as much as it did him, and for the first time in years, my concentration broke, splintered, shattered, and I lost the Khloïdanikos entirely in a nightmare, an old terrible nightmare of the Fire and pain and Malkar’s laughter until my own half-shrieking sobs woke me.

  Chapter 13

  Mehitabel

  There was, of course, a soirée in honor of Stephen’s impending marriage. Stephen was dining beforehand with the amassed Lemerii, and it was a good thing I wasn’t expected to join them, both because I couldn’t offhand think of a more dire way to start the evening and because if I had been, I would have been horribly late.

  Mrs. Damascus caught me after rehearsal for a final fitting of my costume—at this stage of the game, she took over almost entirely from Corinna. By the time she left, Jean-Soleil, Corinna, and Semper were all standing outside my door. Jean-Soleil looked apoplectic, Corinna anxious, and Semper wretched. Jean-Soleil barely waited for Mrs. Damascus to clear the door before he came in, shutting it behind him with a bang.

  “Harlot!”

  “Me?”

  “Great powers, no! Susan.”

  “What’s she done now?”

  “She came calling, all great lady and lah-di-dah, the narcissistic cow.” He stomped in a circle, muttering obscenities.

  “What did she want?”

  “For us not to put on Edith Pelpheria, of course. I couldn’t make out if Jermyn had sent her or it was her own idiocy.”

  “It sounds like Susan all the way down. Did she say what ought to motivate you?”

  “She said we were being dreadfully cruel to her.”

  I started laughing, relieved not to have to censor my reaction. Jean-Soleil’s mustache twitched, and then he burst out laughing, too. “Thank you, Belle. I was too mad to laugh at her.”

  “Susan’s particular gift is to make people take her most witless actions seriously. She can make a five-act tragedy out of dropping a handkerchief, and for God’s sake don’t let it get under your skin now.”

  “I couldn’t afford to get angry with her before. Have to keep the leading lady happy, you know. You have no idea how great a relief it is to be able to call Susan a harlot at the top of my lungs.”

  “You might be surprised,” I said dryly and made him laugh again.

  “I don’t think you need to worry about her coming near you. She seems to dislike you nearly as much as you dislike her.”

  “If that was news to you, it certainly wasn’t to anyone else in the Empyrean.”

  “No? Oh, dear.” Jean-Soleil worked hard to believe in the acting troupe as happy family, and in general we did our best not to disabuse him.

  “It’s all right, Jean-Soleil. She’s gone.”

  “Thank the powers,” Jean-Soleil said and left, only to be replaced by Corinna, who wanted to talk about Drin.

  “I can’t make him stop,” I said to her. “You know that. I can never make Drin do anything.”

  “You made him sleep with you pretty easy.”

  “Oh, please. You don’t imagine I had to work at that, do you? Why don’t you talk to him? He’s scared of you.”

&nbs
p; Corinna snorted.

  “No, he is. He’s a lot more likely to listen to you than to me.”

  “I just wish he wouldn’t be such a pig.”

  “I do, too, but I’m afraid that’s past praying for. Look, Corinna, I’ll back you up, but I am not opening the subject with him.”

  “Oh, all right, but I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Just not tonight!” I said to her at the door, which she acknowledged with a wave.

  I expected Semper to be upset about Drin, too, but he had a different thorn in his paw. He sat down at my invitation, his long, beautiful hands twisting in his lap, and furrows in his forehead you could have planted seeds in.

  “What is it?” I said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to be able to launch himself.

  “I got a letter from my father.” He looked up at me. “Is it true his daughter is going to marry the Lord Protector?”

  “Yes.”

  “He says . . . he says it would be a disgrace and a scandal if anyone found out that his son was working with the Lord Protector’s, er . . .”

  “Lover.”

  “Yes. Would it be?”

  I shrugged, as indifferently as possible. “The Mirador’s weathered worse.”

  He wrestled with it a moment and burst out: “I just wish he’d quit nagging me!”

  “Lord Philip has managed his family by nagging for years and years. It seems to work. But if it’s not going to work on you . . . ?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Then you need to call his bluff.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  I grinned at him. “Come to the soirée with me this evening. I dare you.”

  His eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I am. I learned this trick from my mother. Meet it head on, and scandal loses most of its power. And it cuts Lord Philip’s feet out from under him very neatly indeed. So will you?”

  He was too smart not to see it. He was grinning, too, when he said, “Yes.”

  Another complication for an already complicated evening. But more worth it than not. “Then come on, and let’s find you something to wear. And I’ll write a note to Enid.”

  Enid’s reply came just before dinner. Four words: How excessively like Father. I gave it to Semper, who laughed with delight and tucked it carefully into an inside pocket, like a talisman.

  Mildmay

  I got all the way to the door of the suite just fine, and there I stuck fast, one hand up to knock. After a minute where I must have looked either like a half-wit or a dressmaker’s dummy, I let my hand fall again and backed up to the other wall. He’d have to come out sooner or later. It might even be on time, since there was nobody in there to fight with. We had to go to this stupid soirée together, but there was nothing said I had to put myself in the way of his nasty temper before then. So I just waited.

  After about five minutes, the door opened. Felix said, “Oh, it’s you. I thought I heard some buffalo snorting around in the hall. You might as well come in.”

  “Might as well,” I said. I went in and sat in the chair by the door, the uncomfortable one for visitors. I was tired of cosseting Felix and his little airs. I mean, it wasn’t like he was the only person in the world who’d ever had somebody walk out on him.

  He said, “You’re stubborn as a pig,” and flitted into his bedroom to finish dressing. I didn’t say nothing, since I realized— about two inches shy of opening my mouth—that I was fixing to pick a fight myself. What had been keeping me out in the hallway was my nasty temper, not his. Powers, I thought, this is going to be a long fucking night.

  “It was clever of you to get one of the servants to come for your clothes,” Felix said, coming out again. “How did you know I wouldn’t yell at him?”

  Fuck. He really was on the prowl. Any answer would be the wrong answer, so I just gave him the truth. “They get paid to have hocuses yell at them.”

  Felix’s eyes narrowed. I was bracing myself when he flipped open his pocket watch and said, in this nice, level, lethal voice, “I promised Fleur I would be on time for this thing if it killed me. Come on.” He snapped it shut again, dropped it in his pocket, and I followed him out the door, just like I’d done Great Septads of times before. Some of those times we’d been out for each other’s blood, too.

  Mehitabel

  The soirée began with the betrothal ceremony, very formal and restrained; only mannequins of wax and papier-mâché and clockwork could have managed the thing with less emotion.

  That was fine, that was perfect; no one wanted any unbecoming displays. Afterward, I circulated, Semper in tow, introducing him left, right, and center. He took it very well, blushed charmingly at some of the things Phegenie Brome said to him, was exactly the right mixture of shyness and excitement. Give him a little time to find his feet, and he’d be cutting a swath through the Mirador as wide as anyone could wish.

  I seized the chance to introduce him to Lord Shannon—one perfect gold eyebrow rose very slightly at the “Philipson,” but he didn’t comment—and that propelled Semper neatly into the middle of Shannon’s theater-mad friends. Shannon himself stepped back a little, watching, and after a moment I said, “He is lovely, isn’t he?”

  “What? Oh yes.” And I realized Shannon hadn’t been watching Semper at all. He’d been looking past Semper to where Felix Harrowgate was standing in a knot of courtiers and some of the younger wizards. Felix’s face was animated, and he was gesturing widely, clearly in the middle of a story that was, to judge from his audience’s reactions, both hilarious and scandalous.

  I opened my mouth to say something—I didn’t even know what—and Shannon said, sounding amused and regretful and resigned all at once, “He’s telling them about the meeting between Evadne Corvinia’s second husband and fifth lover. Unless it’s the fifth husband and second lover. I could never keep that story straight.”

  “Oh,” I said, with perfect uselessness, but he continued, “I still love him, you know. Isn’t that stupid?”

  “No, my lord,” I managed.

  “He hates me,” Shannon said, “and after the way I treated him, I deserve it. But I just . . . Do you remember, Madame Parr, in The Wooden Daughter, when the old alchemist says everyone has one thing they can’t think straight about?”

  “Yes,” I said, and quoted: “It is a rose planted in your heart, and as its thorns tear you, so does it thrive and flower.”

  “It sounds rather romantic, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It isn’t at all. I couldn’t forgive him for my own betrayal of him, and so I betrayed him twice. Three times? I can’t keep this story straight either.” He smiled at me with such aching melancholy that I could almost have been tempted, if he hadn’t been Stephen’s brother, to tell him about Hallam. My own stupidities, my own betrayals.

  I didn’t say anything; he didn’t expect me to.

  “But tell me,” he said, turning the conversation with grace and finality, “when are you going to give your recital for Lady Enid?”

  I answered—no date was set, since Lady Enid’s schedule had become quite complicated—and we fell to talking about what I might perform for her, a conversation that attracted the attention of first one, then another, of Lord Shannon’s clique, and brought Semper, too, for he confessed to ignorance of almost all plays, and there was a flurry of recommendations, and squabbles about recommendations, and Shannon shook off his melancholy and was in the thick of the debate, laughing at Semper’s polite but manifest bewilderment, when Lord Philip Lemerius came upon us.

  It couldn’t have been better timed, since Philip probably disapproved of Shannon even more than he did of Semper. And Shannon wasn’t a provincial nobody whom Philip could stare down. Philip was expanding like a monstrous rose-colored bullfrog—he shouldn’t have let his tailor talk him into the velvet—and for a moment I worried he might go off in an apoplexy. But then he said to his son, “What are you doing here?” and I changed my mind. An apoplexy was better than he deserved.
>
  The blank look Semper gave him couldn’t have been bettered; I wasn’t sure if he was acting or not.

  “Good evening, Lord Philip,” Shannon said pointedly.

  “My lord,” Philip said. It came grating out between his teeth as if there were several other things that would have come out more smoothly. “I must ask you to excuse us for a moment—”

  “There’s nothing to say,” Semper said. “Is there, Father?”

  Philip choked, sputtered. Finally he said, still grating, “I am very disappointed,” and turned on his heel and stalked away.

  Shannon divided an inquiring look between Semper and me. Semper was turning slow scarlet; I said with mocking precision, “Lord Philip has certain definite opinions on the morality or lack thereof of the acting profession.”

  “I see,” said Shannon. “You know, Semper, I think now would be an excellent time for you to be introduced to my brother. Coming, Mehitabel?”

  “I believe I can trust you not to lose the baby,” I said.

  “Mehitabel!” Semper moaned faintly, but Lord Shannon smiled, his eyes alight with shared wickedness.

  “I’ll take good care of him. Come on, Semper.”

  I watched them make their way, in a graceful but unswerving line, toward Stephen and Enid, and turned around smack into Simon Barrister.

  We both yelped; we had been standing back-to-back without knowing it, each of us watching a different playlet. As we exchanged courtesies, I glanced in the direction Simon must have been looking and saw Dinah Valeria and some noble cadet whose name I didn’t know, half-obscured behind the bust of King Henry, standing gazing into each other’s eyes as if they’d never seen another human being before.