The Mirador

by Sarah Monette

  Simon didn’t turn. “A happy ending,” he said, with a bitter note in his voice that was unlike him. He heard it himself, for he gave me a smile and said, “No matter.”

  “Simon, I—”

  “No, really, forget I spoke.”

  “Well, I admit they do look a pair of prize mooncalves,” I said, and he laughed.

  “There’s nothing so tiresome as new-minted love. I’m growing old and cynical. Give me some good scurrilous gossip, Mehitabel, and cheer me up.”

  I told him about Semper, which did the trick nicely, and we were talking about the ghastly spectacle of Philip Lemerius in velours rosace when we became aware of a commotion on the other side of the hall.

  “Felix,” said Simon, who was tall enough to see over intervening heads. “And—oh powers and blessed weeping saints— Robert with him.”

  He set off through the crowd without another word; I wondered if he really thought he could do anything to avert the disaster already happening. But I followed him. Out of morbid, vulgar curiosity. Nothing more—because I knew that Felix couldn’t be averted from disaster anymore than a cyclone could.

  Mildmay

  I should’ve seen it coming.

  I’d been looking for trouble from Robert of Hermione for decads, and I knew perfectly well he didn’t have no weapons left to use against Felix. And I knew, better than most anybody in that room, that the Lower City only keeps secrets until somebody pays enough for ’em. And I hadn’t forgotten about it—it wasn’t the sort of thing that ever really drops out of your memory—but it had happened so long ago, and it had been tangled up in so many other things, that I guess I had forgotten it was dangerous.

  Yeah, I know. Too dumb to come in out of the rain, that’s me.

  Felix had been drinking, not hard but steady. He’d got to about half lit early on, and he’d stayed there, not drunk enough that most people could tell. It was letting him pretend he was in a good mood, all charming and funny. He had all his bright, hard armor on, and I thought that as long as nobody tried to find a chink in it, we’d be okay.

  And that was when Robert of Hermione said, “You never cease to amaze me, Lord Felix.” All smirking and oily, and powers, we weren’t okay at all.

  “What now?” Felix said, like he was so sick of Robert he hardly even cared.

  It didn’t throw Robert, not even a little bit. “I have grown accustomed to the way you flaunt yourself in the Hall of the Chimeras, but—”

  “Me?” Felix said, turning on him, quick as a cat, quick enough that Robert went back a step without meaning to. “What about you?”

  “What have I done?” Robert said, innocent as a baby.

  “Shall I recite the full list? To start with—”

  “At least I’m not harboring the murderer of Cornell Teverius. ”

  “Cerberus Cresset,” Felix said, like a guy puts a hand up to block a punch.

  “Oh, him too,” and Robert’s smirk widened into a grin, all teeth and evil, like this fish from the Imari I saw once in a carnival. At least it’d had the decency to be dead.

  There was this sick pause, while nobody said nothing and I could feel things crashing around me like enormous stone vases being dropped from the Crown of Nails to shatter to bits on the granite of the Plaza del’Archimago.

  “I should have known,” Felix said. His head turned my direction. “Did you?”

  I felt like a dog being asked if he’d eaten the dinner roast. “Yeah,” I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

  He shut his eyes for a second, like he was in pain, and said, “What do you think can be done about it, Robert? Bring Lord Cornell back to life? That’s necromancy, and don’t think you’ll escape the heresy charge a second time.”

  "What? Felix, I—”

  Felix turned, looking at Robert sidelong out of his good eye, and it was a nasty look, ears laid back like a horse about to kick. “You’re not so lily-white yourself, after all. Or shall I”—and his voice started to rise, playing for the crowd gathering to listen— “shall I tell those assembled about your experiments in the basement of St. Crellifer’s?”

  “The ravings of a madman.”

  “You think?” And Felix’s smile was worse than Robert’s, because it was Strych, exactly like Strych. “There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Robert. And I have been very well trained to recognize what you did.”

  “The Curia consented!” And Robert almost sounded panicky.

  “I don’t think the Curia had the least idea what you were doing, not really. I could tell them. But I don’t think you knew what you were doing, either, or you would have done a better job. You’re incompetent, darling, and really I can’t think of a worse thing to say about anyone.”

  Robert’s mouth opened, hung that way for a second, and I guess he had the sense to see things were only going to get worse for him—Felix had that look on his face, like a cat wondering if the mouse is good for another round—because he cleared out. No parting shot, no nothing. Just bailed.

  And everybody all at once pretended like they hadn’t been watching and didn’t have the first clue what was going on, and were way more interested in something else besides.

  “Damn,” said Felix, real quiet, and Simon came up out of nowhere and said, “How comforting to see that Robert hasn’t lost his touch.”

  “Oh, quite. Do you think there’s any point in my trying to talk to Stephen?”

  “What are you planning to say?”

  But just then, we all got to find out. A voice said, “Lord Felix, a word please.” It was Lord Stephen, of course, standing a little ways off.

  “My lord,” said Felix, “I am at your service.”

  “If only that were true,” Lord Stephen said, and that hung there nastily for a moment before he went on. “But let’s pretend it is, and that you’ll do as I ask. I need to speak to your brother for a moment.”

  I felt like one of them vases I was talking about had cracked me on the skull.

  “Be my guest,” Felix said with a sort of lordly little wave. Powers and saints, he was pissed at me.

  “Mr. Foxe,” said Lord Stephen, with an odd, awkward bob of the head that was something almost like a bow.

  That threw me even further off balance, but I managed to say, “M’lord,” and give a kind of cautious nod back.

  Lord Stephen jerked his head at me, and I followed him—I spent most of my time, it seemed like, following people—back behind the bust of King Paul.

  He said, “I do not blame you for being an assassin.”

  “It was a septad ago,” I said, before I knew I was going to say anything. “I mean, I was, and I’m sorry, but I ain’t no more.”

  He looked at me for a while. I couldn’t read his face, and I wondered, with a crawling feeling all down my spine, what Mehitabel had told him about me. He was angry behind his good manners, I knew that much, but I couldn’t tell if he was angry at me or at Robert or maybe at Cornell or at somebody else entirely.

  “I was only going to ask,” he said finally, “who hired you?”

  Fuck. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” I was going to get some of that anger, whether it was really meant for me or not, but after Felix’s tantrums, I was really only worried that he’d have me thrown in the Verpine before he remembered he couldn’t.

  This wasn’t the time or the place to talk about thief-keepers and how they worked. I said, “I was hired through a third party.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “With a knife,” I said.

  “No. Not that. How did you get him down there?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you killed him.”

  Shit, I was going to have to explain it anyway. “When I was an assassin, I—well, I was a kept-thief first.”

  “What?”

  The word “assassin” is a bitch, and it never does come out right. I said it again, slower, and this time he got it.

  “Yes,” he said, lik
e he didn’t see where this was going.

  “It was my keeper made all the arrangements. I was just like . . .” I shut my mouth hard on the words “a clockwork bear” because I’d have to explain what I meant. “Like a knife or something. She told me what to do, and I didn’t ask questions. I did a lot of things I’m sorry for that way, like Lord Cornell.”

  “And Cerberus Cresset,” he said. He was sneering.

  “No. I ain’t sorry about Cerberus Cresset.” And then neither one of us could believe I’d said it.

  Lord Stephen decided to ignore it. “So you can’t tell me who hired you, and you can’t tell me how my cousin was lured out of the Mirador—”

  “I can tell you some things,” I said, “if you feel like you got to know.”

  “If you’re a knife, I want the person who threw you at Cornell. What can you tell me?”

  “The place where I was . . . I mean, whoever planned it, they brought him to me. I was in a place where people could buy boats and get down to the Sim and get out of the city. He was frightened of something when he came there, like he thought there was somebody after him. And there was a guy with him.”

  " ’A guy’?”

  “The servant. The one who gave the story about the guy in a boat.”

  His eyebrows went up. “You mean that was a lie?”

  “Um, yeah. There was no guy in a boat. Lord Cornell was dead before they got out on the river.”

  “So Drake was part of it. No wonder he wanted to try his fortunes in Vusantine.”

  Smart of him, I thought, but he’d been smart. Smart and cold-blooded, and I was willing to bet I knew what kind of fortune he’d found. But I didn’t say none of that.

  “Can you tell me anything else?”

  “Dunno. I mean, it was a big plot, but I don’t know how they found my keeper or what they paid her or anything like that.”

  “You didn’t even get paid?”

  He was mocking me. I shrugged. You don’t pay a knife. Or a clockwork bear.

  “Tell Felix that if he restrains himself, this doesn’t need to become official,” he said and stepped out from behind King Paul. After a minute, I dragged myself together and came out around the other side.

  Felix

  It was nearly three in the morning before I left the Hall of the Chimeras. I’d wanted and intended to make an early night of it, but after Robert’s little playlet, I knew better than to leave the gossip to ferment unsupervised. I talked and danced and smiled at people until my face ached, and Mildmay was always there, politely in the background, like the shadow of death. And politely, like the shadow of death, he followed me when I said my goodnights and started back for my suite.

  I hadn’t meant to say anything to him. There was after all, as I’d pointed out to Robert, no use. But I was exhausted and half-drunk, and my mouth betrayed me in the middle of the Glass-wing Corridor: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you?” he echoed, as if he were stupid.

  “Tell me that you’d murdered Cornell Teverius. Come on, Mildmay, wake up in there!” I aimed a halfhearted cuff at the back of his head; he dodged it without really seeming to notice.

  “Dunno,” he said.

  “That’s your answer to everything. Did it get you off the hook with Kolkhis?”

  I saw it hit home—not in his face, never that, but in the way his stride checked for a moment, as if he were uncertain of the ground.

  I said impatiently, “I’m not Kolkhis, and it doesn’t satisfy me. You must have a reason.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m not asking for a full confession. I’m saying, why didn’t you let me know before Robert of Hermione told the world?”

  “’Cause I didn’t think Robert would tell the world. If I’d wanted it talked about, I would have told you.”

  “Meaning that at least you weren’t the one who told Robert.” He’d meant several other things as well, but I didn’t want to deal with them, at least not yet.

  “Look. I ain’t proud of having killed all them people, and it ain’t exactly the sort of thing I go around bragging about.”

  I stopped where I was and waited until he turned to face me. “Let’s clear up a misconception. I’m not asking, why didn’t you tell me all the gory details? I’m asking, why didn’t you tell me you’d been involved in both of the Mirador’s big mysteries?”

  “I don’t know, all right? I just don’t.”

  I couldn’t quite tell if he was lying or not, but one thing was very clear: “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “What? Felix, I—”

  I shouldn’t have said it, but now that I had, I’d be damned if I was going to let it drop. “You don’t. You never have.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake. I asked you to do the obligation d’âme, didn’t I? What’s that if it ain’t trust?”

  “Desperation. You don’t trust me. You wanted to know how we could help each other. That’s your answer, Mildmay. Trust me.”

  “How can I trust you? Anything I told you, the next time you get mad at me, you’ll tell whoever the fuck you’re standing with.”

  I stared at him, feeling suddenly breathless. “You think that?”

  “I know how you work. You make fun of me to other people; why wouldn’t you betray me, too?”

  “Mildmay, it’s not the same—”

  “It’s the same to me, okay? Just the fucking same.”

  He meant it. I swallowed hard, managed: “I won’t do it again.”

  “Like that helps. You’ll just find something else to do, something that ain’t what you said you wouldn’t, but that works just the same. I don’t care. You can be as mean to me as you like, but don’t come ’round wondering why I don’t trust you. Good night, Felix.”

  He left me there, and I stood as if I’d been turned to stone and watched him go.

  Mildmay

  I dreamed that night about the cellars of St. Kirban, about standing on the bottom step with a lantern, looking out at the blackness and the water. There were boats on the water, Phoskis’s little black boats, and every single one of them had a corpse in it. I spent the whole night looking for somebody I hadn’t killed.

  Chapter 14

  Mehitabel

  I’d written to Vincent to tell him he could come early if he (or Lord Ivo) wanted, and he did. “Lord Ivo,” he said apologetically, “thinks it an excellent thing for me to cultivate your acquaintance. I haven’t, of course, mentioned Felix.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you,” I said and gave him a strong but nonflirtatious smile. “Come sit down. And would you like something to drink?”

  He accepted sherry, and when we were settled, I asked, “Does Lord Ivo find Felix so reprehensible, then?”

  Vincent bought himself time by making a very small show of tasting the sherry, but he said quite mildly and without a hint of discomfort, “It’s more that Ivo doesn’t find Felix useful. The people with whom he wants to ingratiate himself do not care for wizards.”

  I remembered Antony saying, The Lemerii do not consort with wizards.

  Vincent continued, “And Felix himself . . .” His shrug was graceful, economical, and very elegant.

  “Do you find him much changed?”

  “Felix?”

  “From what he was when you first knew him.”

  “In some ways,” he said, the somber lines of his face lightening with a reminiscent smile. “He was beautiful—and arrogant with it even then—but . . . He came from Simside, you know. Dreadful accent, and all the poise of a cornered rat. He wears the mask far more naturally now.”

  “You must have come from a very different background,” I said.

  Vincent laughed, a light, chilly sound, and said, “Once upon a time, there was a poor but virtuous scrivener who lived in Havelock. He had three sons. The youngest and most beautiful of the three was named Vincent.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend to pry.”

  It was
mostly a lie, but partly true, and in any event the right thing to say, because Vincent said in a much more natural tone, “I used to wonder how it was I got into the wrong story, where it was that I should have started having fabulous adventures and ended up in the Shining Tiger instead. I never did figure it out. The story’s simple enough, though: my father died when I was twelve. All of his money had been sunk in sending my eldest brother, Jonathan, to the Academy so that he could become a secretary. Jonathan, who really was the sort of eldest brother one encounters in stories, had promptly cut the entire family dead. I know my mother went up to see him after he didn’t come to the funeral; she came back weeping and told Conrad and me that Jonathan would help us when he could. She was a very bad liar.”

  I said, carefully, “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “It’s nothing but old bitterness now, like the last trace of a bloodstain on a sheet. And, you know, no one’s ever asked. I rehearsed it for years planning what I would say to the young, wealthy, sensitive noble who saw my sterling qualities beneath the hard veneer of whoredom and took me away to his palace in Lighthill. But I was never in that story, either.” His smile was bitter and thin, mocking his former self. “My mother was bad at a lot of things, you see. She couldn’t find work, she couldn’t fight my father’s employers for the widow’s gift they were supposed to give her, she couldn’t seem to understand how to make last what little savings my father had. Conrad was old enough to have helped—he was fourteen—but his love had been for my father, not really for any of the rest of us. He ran away about a month after Father was buried, and I have no idea what became of him. And then, a few weeks later, a man came to the door. I don’t know who told him to try his luck with the Widow Demabrien, but it was good advice. He told her a pack of plausible lies and gave her a septagorgon. That was all it took.”