The Mirador

by Sarah Monette

  “M’lord,” Morny said, with a bob of the head at Simon. “Since she won’t tell us who the body is or what she was doing in Laceshroud, we’re hanging on to her. We won’t be able to much longer, since we don’t have the space, but I don’t like it when weird things happen in the cemeteries. It’s always bad news.”

  “If I can get her to tell you what you want to know,” I said, “will you let her go?”

  Morny looked at me, one eyebrow going up.

  “What she was doing was criminal anyway, so if you ain’t holding her along of it being a crime . . .”

  He laughed, a bass snort like a bull getting ready to charge. “You’re sharp. And you’re right. We can’t hold her for digging up dead bodies when there’s a whole damn guild in Ruthven we aren’t saying boo at. So, yeah, if you can get her to cough up a name or a reason or something, we’ll let her go.”

  “What about the corpse?”

  Morny rolled his eyes. “Powers. Let me tell you about that corpse. See, we don’t know who it is, and the Laceshroud people say it isn’t theirs, and they say we can’t bury it there, ’cause we don’t have burying rights in their cemetery. But we can’t bury it anywhere else, since we don’t know who the poor bastard was or whether he can go by rights in consecrated ground—but I hate to stick somebody in the Boneprince who doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Yeah. What’re you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. Sit on it ’til it hatches is what it looks like. But you wanted to talk to Miss Dawnlight.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, then,” he said, getting up with a grunt.

  As we followed him down another staircase, Simon said in my ear, “Gideon says he’s entirely convinced you’re plotting something.”

  “Tell Gideon he’s right.”

  “Are you going to get us arrested?”

  “They can’t arrest you—you’re a Cabaline. And they can’t arrest me. And they won’t arrest Gideon, ’cause Gideon ain’t gonna do nothing but take Jenny out to the fiacre. Don’t worry so much.”

  The look Simon gave me was just this side of a smack across the ear, but we came out on the ground floor then and had to catch up with Morny. He was sorting through his keys. “Okay,” he said, “you go on in and talk to the young lady. If you can get her to cough up any information at all, I’ll let you take her off our hands.”

  “You got a heart as big as all outdoors,” I said, to see how he’d take it, and he grinned, which I figured meant they really didn’t want Jenny no more.

  “Go on with you,” he said, unlocking the door to Jenny’s cell.

  "Y’all stay out here,” I said to Simon and Gideon. “I’ll try and not take too long.”

  “Please don’t,” Simon said pointedly, and I gave him a kind of a shrug for an apology as I went into Jenny’s cell.

  Morny closed the door behind me and I tried to pretend like I didn’t mind. “Hello, Jenny,” I said.

  She hadn’t looked around when the door opened. She’d just stayed on her cot, her face pointedly turned toward the back wall. Jenny’d always been good at playing the tragedy queen, and part of me was glad to see she hadn’t lost her touch.

  But she whipped around like a snake at the sound of my voice. She didn’t look like I remembered her. The smallpox had caught her, probably last summer when the outbreak in the Lower City had been so bad. She was lucky to be alive, but she’d lost teeth, and her face—well, nobody was going to call her pretty no more.

  “Mildmay?” she said, like she thought she was seeing a ghost.

  “Yeah. Me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Long story,” I said. “D’you mind if I sit down?”

  “No, ’course not.” She watched me limp across to the cot. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit. She moved a little farther toward the back wall. I sat down. “Did the Dogs arrest you?”

  “Nah. Nothing like that. They got you, though.”

  “Are you narking?”

  “Don’t tell me nothing if you don’t want to,” I said.

  “Okay.” She bit her lip, a coquette’s trick that didn’t work no more. “Why’re you here?”

  “I want to trade favors,” I said.

  “Favors? What kind of favors?”

  “I know who you’re working for,” I said. “If you’ll help me get in to see her, I’ll get you out of here.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe. You want to stay in here ’til your brain rots out your ears?”

  “How can you get me out?”

  “If you’ll tell the Dogs your corpse’s name, they’ll let you go.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Sure you can. It beats me telling them your necromancer’s name.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I might.”

  “Mildmay, you can’t do that. You don’t know what they’d do to her.”

  “Nothing much. And they sure ain’t gonna do nothing to your stiff, Jenny. Come on. I mean, I admire you standing mum all this time, but it ain’t doing you no good.”

  “But she needs that body.”

  “Did I say she wasn’t gonna get it?”

  She gave me a long, suspicious look. “I ain’t as dumb as you think I am. You ain’t got that kind of pull.”

  “Nope. But I got a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “Jenny, trust me.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” she said. “Why should I?”

  “Well, it beats the fuck out of your other options,” I said, and it made her laugh.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here if you’re gonna get me out. The guy’s name was Littleman. Luther Littleman, if you got to know.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “We’re gonna go out there, where Sergeant Morny and a couple of my friends are waiting. One of ’em’s going to take you out to the fiacre. He’s a nice guy, but he’s mute, so don’t expect no conversation.”

  “What about you?” she said. She was still smelling a trap, and I guess I don’t blame her.

  “Me and my other friend are gonna go spring Luther Littleman, ” I said.

  It went off just like it was supposed to. Morny said, “Littleman, huh?” but I could tell it didn’t mean no more to him than it did to me. Jenny just about fainted when she saw one of my friends was a hocus from the Mirador, but she kept her head, and I was able to get her and Gideon moving without looking funny. Me and Simon followed more slowly with Morny. Morny and me were sort of talking about Luther Littleman—or I guess a better way to say it is that we were pretending to talk about Luther Littleman, since neither of us wanted to tell the other guy anything. When we got to the staircase that would take him back up to his office—and he had to be itching to get up there and start his men nosing around after who Luther Littleman had been before he got into Laceshroud—I said, “You must be wanting to get shut of us. We’ll be fine from here,” and stepped back onto Simon’s foot.

  “You’ve been very helpful.” Which was a nice way of not agreeing with me right up front. But it was a hike from here to the doors and back again, and he had other things to do written all over him. “I’ll bid you good afternoon then,” he said with a funny sort of bow. “My lord, Mr. Foxe.” He started up the stairs. Simon and I started for the front door. But I tugged him aside at the first cross-corridor.

  “Are you mad?” he demanded, but in a whisper. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I told Jenny we’d get her stiff out. So we’re gonna. Come on.”

  “You are mad. How do you think you’re going to do that?”

  “Well, strictly speaking, I ain’t. You are.”

  “ME?”

  “Keep your voice down, would you? This place is crawling with Dogs.”

  “Merciful powers, Mildmay, it’s the Ebastine. What on earth do you think—”

  “Look. They got Luther Littleman in a box down in their morgue. All you do is go in there and say you�
��re collecting him, and it’s a piece of cake. Just keep your hands where they can see ’em, and won’t nobody ask questions or nothing.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “For one, I ain’t a hocus. For another, they know who I am. Simon, all they’ll see of you is your tattoos.”

  “But what about when Morny figures out he’s gone?”

  “What about it?”

  “Mildmay!”

  “He don’t got jurisdiction in the Mirador. He can come ask you why you made off with Mr. Littleman, but that’s it. Oh, and I guess he can tell Lord Stephen he’s pissed at you, but that don’t matter.”

  “And what am I supposed to tell Lord Stephen?”

  “Anything you like. I mean, I wouldn’t say nothing about me, if I was you, since he don’t like me, but I’m sure you can come up with something. Come on, Simon. I promised Jenny.”

  “We’re both mad.”

  “All you got to do is say you want the corpse Guinevere Dawnlight was caught with in Laceshroud. They’ll give it to you.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure. Trust me, Simon.”

  “I can’t believe this. All right, all right. I’ll do it.”

  I’d kept him moving while we wrangled, so it was only a couple more minutes before we found the morgue.

  “Go on,” I said. “And keep your hands out of your pockets.”

  “Powers,” Simon said under his breath. But he took his hands out of his pockets and walked into the Kennel’s morgue.

  The next septad-minute lasted an indiction and a half, but when Simon came out he was carrying a latched box. We started away from the morgue at what I guess you might call a fast saunter, and he said, “That was amazing.”

  “What?”

  “You were right. I said what I wanted. They looked at my hands, and they went and got it. Didn’t ask my name, or what I wanted a corpse for, or anything.”

  “You can say thanks to Cerberus Cresset and the rest of the witchfinders if you want to. That’s what they’re scared of.”

  “But no one in the Ebastine could possibly be a heretic.”

  “Neither could some of the people the witchfinders burned. It’s hard to get over being scared about that.”

  “No wonder you don’t like wizards.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Oh, please. Give me credit for some intelligence.”

  “I like you,” I said. “And Rinaldo and Gideon.”

  “I didn’t say you—”

  There were footsteps coming. There were no doors along this piece of hall, no place to hide. If it was Morny, we were sunk.

  “Don’t look guilty,” I hissed at Simon, just in time to get his chin up before a Dog came around the corner. He looked surprised to see us, but me and Simon kept walking, and I saw him notice Simon’s tattoos, at which point he got very interested in his own feet and stayed that way until we were out of sight.

  “Powers and saints,” Simon said. “I wasn’t cut out for a life of crime.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “There’s the doors. Just walk past the guys on duty like you own the world, and we’re outta here.”

  Simon came through like a champ. When I asked him later, he said he’d just imagined how Felix would handle the situation, and that carried him out the door, down the steps, and into the fiacre like Luther Littleman wasn’t even there. I just followed him and did my best to look like everything was Simon’s idea. The Dogs didn’t ask no questions.

  “Where to?” Simon asked when I’d closed the fiacre door. “The cabbie will want to know.”

  “Where d’you want to go?” I asked Jenny.

  “Me? I thought . . . I mean, you’re letting me go?”

  “Sure, I told you, I want to talk to your boss, not make your life a misery.”

  “Powers,” she said. “Okay. Um.” Her eyes lit up, and for a second she was the girl I’d known, back before we’d both fucked up our lives in our different ways. “Tell him to take me to Scaffelgreen Theater.”

  “You’d better do it,” I said to Simon.

  “Not again,” Simon said, but cheerfully. “Er, what am I to do with . . .”

  “Give him to Jenny. He’s her stiff.”

  “Luther Littleman, miss,” Simon said and gave Jenny the box before leaning forward to fight with the cabbie through the trap.

  Jenny’s eyes got wide. “You mean . . .” She undid the catches and took a hasty look at the contents of the box. “Mildmay, you’re a saint.”

  “Nah. Like I said, I want to talk to Mrs. Fenris. I want to know what she wants with Luther Littleman.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said. “Miss Gussie’s a little . . . I mean, she’s real shy. But I can manage her most of the time.”

  The fiacre started with a lurch, and Simon sat back. “There’s other ways I can get at her,” I said to Jenny, “but they ain’t gonna be good for somebody who’s ‘shy.’ ”

  “I’ll talk to her, I said. Honestly.”

  “Honestly, Jenny, you’re a liar and always have been. I’m just saying, don’t go forgetting what you owe me.”

  “I won’t.”

  Gideon swung his foot sideways into my ankle. He was right, and I held my tongue.

  Simon said, “The cabbie’s not at all happy with me. Where did I just tell him to go?”

  “Public scaffolds,” I said.

  “Powers,” Simon said. “You’re going to get me murdered yet.”

  “Nobody in the Lower City is stupid enough to touch a hair on your head. Jenny, when you’ve got an answer from Mrs. Fenris, send a message to Simon. Simon Barrister.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. She was looking at Simon through her eyelashes in a way that had probably been sexy once but was now just sad and shy. “I’ll tell Miss Gussie.”

  “And you should probably promise her,” Simon said, “that the Mirador has no, er, official interest in her. I’m just doing a favor for Mildmay.”

  The look Jenny gave me was sort of awed and sort of resentful, like if I was so grand that I had hocuses doing favors for me, why hadn’t I got her out of the Kennel a decad ago? But neither of us wanted to start arguing again, and she just said, “Okay. I’ll tell her.”

  We didn’t talk on our way through the Lower City. Jenny sat hugging the box like she was afraid Simon might take it away from her again. Simon and Gideon might have been talking, but it was hard to tell, since they were both looking out the fiacre windows, one on each side. And I thought, since I didn’t want to pick a fight with Jenny, maybe it would be better if I just kept my mouth shut. Me and Jenny never had been able to go more than a septad-minute or so without arguing, and it seemed like all the things that had changed hadn’t changed that.

  Scaffelgreen Theater’s this big open square like the Plaza del’Archimago, only in the middle are the gibbets and scaffolds and Madame Sanguette instead of the Mirador. And maybe that ain’t so big a difference as you might think. The fiacre pulled up right on the edge, like the cabbie was afraid if he got any closer, the ketches would come out and hang him and his horses.

  Jenny said, “Thank you. I mean . . . thank you.”

  “Just talk to Mrs. Fenris for me,” I said.

  “Our pleasure, Miss Dawnlight,” Simon said, like she was a real lady, and held the door for her. “Will you tell the cabbie please to take us back to the Mirador?”

  “You got it. And I will talk to Miss Gussie, Mildmay. I promise.” Simon shut the door. A moment later, the fiacre started rolling again with another nasty lurch.

  “He hates us,” Simon said.

  “He’ll be shut of us soon enough,” I said.

  Mehitabel

  Before rehearsal, Jean-Soleil had a very pointed and public word with Drin about upstaging other actors and generally being an asshole. Drin was dark with embarrassment by the time he was done, and Corinna nodded when I glanced at her. It
would do the trick.

  And it did. Not that rehearsal went smoothly—there was no such thing as a smooth rehearsal the night before an opening— but at least problems were no longer being caused. They were simply happening, and thus could be fixed. And both Gordeny and Semper improved tenfold simply from not having Drin stepping on their metaphorical heels.