Corambis (24 page)

Powers, I was fucked up. And I knew I was fucked up— I just didn’t seem to be able to do nothing about it.

I mean, I knew this wasn’t the Anchorite’s Knitting and the people arguing weren’t Mavortian and Bernard. Some of the time I even remembered Mavortian was dead. But knowing that didn’t fucking help. I was still stuck and Felix was still in trouble and sometimes it was Strych and sometimes it was wolves, but all of the time it was bad fucking shit and I couldn’t fucking get up off the bed.

My chest hurt and my head hurt and I swear by all the powers every separate bone in my body I’d ever broken hurt like a motherfucker and I was either too hot or too cold and every time I coughed it was like dying all over again. And let’s not talk about the shit I was bringing up, neither. Shouldn’t nothing inside a person be that shade of green and I had the taste of it in my mouth all the time, brackish and bitter and just fucking nasty.

And did I mention the part where Felix and Corbie wouldn’t shut the fuck up? Seemed like every time I made it up away from the wolves, the two of them would be snarling and snapping like wolves themselves. Sometimes it scared me and sometimes it pissed me off, depending on how high my fever was and whether I knew it was them or not. Sometimes it
was
Mavortian and Bernard, even though I knew Mavortian was dead. Sometimes it was Kolkhis and whatsisface, the boyfriend she’d had when I had a septad and one and got the Winter Fever so bad I still don’t know why I didn’t die of it. Of course, even when I knew who they were, I couldn’t follow what they were saying, and eventually it occurred to me that I had the Winter Fever now and must be running one fuck of a fever, not to mention the green shit in my lungs and the glass in my head.

Oh, I thought. Well, that explains it. And then I fell asleep and didn’t dream and when I woke up Felix was sitting next to me with these yellow and green bruises all down one side of his face.

I said, “What the fuck happened to you?” His head jerked up, and I was sorry I’d startled him, but still.
“How are you feeling?” he said, like I hadn’t said nothing.
“Like pounded shit. What did you do to your face?”
He went a little red. “Don’t worry about me. You need to—”
“I ain’t
worried
. Them bruises are a couple days old. But I really do want to know what the fuck you did.”
He broke eye contact, jerked his chin up. Said, “Your grammar clearly broke along with your fever. ‘
Those
bruises’ is the correct form.”
Oh shit. I glared at him, best I could do, and said, “You know perfectly well I don’t give a rat’s ass. What. The. Fuck.
Happened?
”
He gave me a nasty look back. “We were out of money, and you were out of your head.”
“Money? But you don’t . . .”
Know the first thing about making money,
I was about to say, but then I remembered my dream and the wolves and what Felix had been before he’d been a hocus. He
did
know the first thing about making money. “Oh sacred bleeding fuck tell me you didn’t.”
He looked down at his hands. I followed his gaze, and oh fuck me sideways, more bruises and scabbed over patches, and what the fuck had he gotten himself into while I wasn’t around to keep him safe? “It is what I was trained to do.”
“Trained?”
I said, and I would’ve gone on, but I started coughing. Not out of the woods yet, Milly- Fox. And by the time I could breathe again, I didn’t care so much about chewing him out.
But then he went and opened his mouth. “You need to rest. What happened while . . . Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“The fuck it don’t,” I said, and I wanted to shake him again. How stupid did he have to be? “How bad are you hurt? Tell me that.”
“Mildmay, it doesn’t
matter
.”
“Why not?”
“What?”
“Why don’t it matter if you’re hurt? It’d matter if
I
was hurt. So why the fuck don’t it matter if
you
’re hurt?”
And he was giving me his crazy- blank stare again, like I wasn’t even talking the right language. He didn’t have an answer. And, I mean, I knew that, but it hurt, it hurt worse than anything, to see it up close and where he couldn’t dance around it or pretend it wasn’t there.
“How bad are you hurt?” I said.
“I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just bruises.”
“That ain’t bruises,” I said and didn’t quite touch the nasty scabs on his left wrist.
“It’s healing,” he said.
“Well,
yeah
. Shit
does
. But that ain’t the point.”
He got his head up enough to glower at me. “Do you want me to just tell you everything that happened?”
“You could,” I said, and the horrified look he gave me, like I’d said he could take one of my kidneys out and barbecue it for dinner, was almost funny. Almost.
“Maybe later,” he said, meaning
never
, and bounced up off the bed. “Corbie will be here soon. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
And I let it go. And I ain’t even pretending. It was because I knew it would come back.

The fantôme waits for me in my dreams. It tries different shapes to seduce me, taking them from my memories: Murtagh, Gideon, Vincent. It offers me a boy with Corbie’s long nose and violet eyes; it offers me Mildmay, and I wake— vilely, achingly hard— and slink away to the lavatory to deal with myself as best I can. I don’t want him anymore, not like that, but I cannot control what the fantôme finds in the murk of my dreams.

The fantôme shows me the night in the Clock Palace again and again, and I wake shuddering and sweating, but I don’t change my mind. I don’t give it what it wants, and it retaliates by dragging out all the worst memories it can find.
This can stop anytime thou wishst,
it tells me, insouciant in the shape of Malkar Gennadion.
It is up to thee, Felix.

But I know that trick— know it, ironically, from Malkar himself— and I shake my head, unspeaking, fearing that the fantôme will have the same gift for twisting my words that Malkar did.

It drops me into St. Crellifer’s; I see myself, all bones and dirt and staring eyes, scrubbing floors, and crouched beside me, weeping, is Isaac Garamond. No matter how hard I work, the floor will never be clean, for his tears track red across his face and make a spreading pool of blood at our feet.

I jerked out of sleep again and again, and by the third morning after Mildmay’s fever had broken, I was in no shape to deal with his sharp eyes and sharper mind. He expressed a bone- deep desire for a bath, and so I helped him limp to the bathroom and ran the hot water for him. The plumbing fascinated him, and he had a thousand questions about it, none of which I could answer.

He stripped off his nightshirt, as unconcerned as ever with his nudity; that abhorrent dream came back to me, and I looked down at my hands where the bruises were fading to yellow and brown. He used my shoulder to balance as he got into the tub, and I gritted my teeth and stood still for it. He needed me, not my airs and fancies.

He gave an audible sigh, of relief or plea sure or both, as he sat down, and then said, abruptly, “Why didn’t you hock your rings?”
“I beg your pardon?” I said, as breathless suddenly as if he’d hit me.
“Your rings. Remember ’em? Big gold and garnet things I been carry ing since we left Mélusine? If we were so fucking hard up for cash, why didn’t you hock ’em?”
I stared at him. The words barely even made sense. “You want me to sell my rings?”
“No,” he said, as slow as if he were talking to an idiot child. “Pawn them. You do know about pawnshops, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Felix, I could’ve gotten them back for you. Two days, tops.” He leaned forward, carefully, and put one wet hand on my wrist. “And I’d rather’ve done that than have you go out and let yourself get fucked for the money. Okay?”
I felt myself going scarlet, and I pulled away from him. The truth was, it hadn’t even occurred to me, and I couldn’t help resenting his easy assumption of superiority:
he
could deal with our financial difficulties in two days, unlike his poor stupid brother. It was a relief to find an objection: “It wouldn’t have been enough.”
“No?” he said skeptically, as if he could hear my wounded pride.
“Doctors are quite phenomenally expensive, darling,” I said. “We can do the math later, if you want.”
“I ain’t trying to— oh fuck it. I’m just saying, I hate that you got hurt because of me.”
My face was burning; I turned away from him and said, “If you’re going to bathe, you might as well do it.”
“Felix—” I didn’t turn, and after an excruciating pause, I heard him sigh, this time undoubtedly with exasperation. “All right. Have it your way.”
I didn’t turn around until I was sure he wouldn’t try again.

At least with Mildmay on the mend and alert, the arguments with Corbie stopped. Half the time, I didn’t even know what we were arguing about, which was not a situation I was used to being in. But Corbie was like a handful of needles, every angle bringing a different attack.

She thought I should “lay a charge” with the House of Honesty against the people who had hired me for their thaumaturgical orgy; from the newspapers, we knew who they were, and she insisted furiously that they were in breach of contract.

“It’s not that simple,” I’d said, more than once.

“They fucked you up,” she said, glaring up at me balefully, “and I don’t care about them fancy words, that wasn’t the agreement.”
“Corbie, it isn’t—” But I didn’t know how to explain without betraying my own weaknesses. I didn’t want her to know what had been done to me any more than I wanted Mildmay to know.
And when we weren’t arguing about that, she was apt to go off like a firecracker, defending herself aggressively against what she called “talking down.” She said she wouldn’t put up with it, and I certainly believed her, but I couldn’t figure out what constituted “talking down,” or why she thought I would want to do such a thing in the first place.
Mildmay made her wary and unnaturally quiet; that afternoon, after less than fifteen minutes of the strained atmosphere in our room, she said, “Felix, can we go walking or something? Get some fresh air?” Her eyes cut over at Mildmay, and I knew what she meant.
Of course, so did he. “Yeah, since you can’t throw me out.”
“It ain’t that,” Corbie said.
If I’d had the chance, I would have told her it was useless, but Mildmay said, “Sure it is. And I ain’t even a hocus, so I don’t know what you’re so twitchy about. But go on. Least I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Mildmay,” I said, although I didn’t know quite what I wanted to say.
“Go
on
,” he said, and Corbie gave me an imploring look; I gave in.
We walked downhill, away from the Clock Palace, for reasons neither of us was prepared to discuss. The farther we walked, the more anxious and unhappy she looked, and I finally said, “Corbie, what is it?”
“I, um.” She fiddled with the lace on the cuff of her coat. “You’re going to Esmer, right?”
“When Mildmay’s well enough to travel, yes.”
“To go to the Institution?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to present myself to the governing body of the wizards of Corambis, but I don’t actually know what that is.”
“The Congress. That’s the Institution.” She frowned up at me. “Why do you got to ‘present’ yourself to them?”
I wasn’t prepared for that question, even though I should have known it was coming. I nearly tripped over my own feet, and then had to school myself not to jerk away from Corbie when she reached to steady me. “I, um . . .”
“Oh,” said Corbie. “It ain’t a good reason, is it?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘good.’ It’s certainly a
cogent
reason. But, no, it isn’t a very nice one.”
“Are you sick?” she said, and the anxiety in her voice was rather embarrassing. “Some kind of magicians’ disease?”
“No, nothing like that. I . . .” I couldn’t lie to her; I should have told her the truth days ago— should have told her the truth the instant she asked me to teach her. “I’m exiled from Mélusine because I . . .”
I’d said it to Thamuris, but Thamuris knew me and knew what dreadful things I was capable of. And although I had taught him some things, being a far more experienced wizard than he, I had never thought of myself as his teacher.
“I destroyed a man’s mind,” I said, the words hard and flat and not even half as ugly as they should have been to describe what I had done.
Corbie’s eyes were wide and very dark. “Why?” she said.
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah, actually. Because if you did it for a reason, that’s one thing, but if you did it just for fun, that’s something else.”
“No, I didn’t do it for fun. He murdered—” My throat closed, the words so much harder to say awake than they had been in the Khloïdanikos. “He murdered my lover.”
The fantôme stirred hopefully in the back of my mind, and I denied it.
“So you had a reason,” Corbie said.
“I don’t know,” I said wearily. “But you were going to ask me something else.”
She gave me a doubtful look, but let the subject go. “Yeah. I was. Because I was wondering . . .”
She was going red. “What?”
“Can I go with you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Tomato- red now. “When you go to Esmer, can I go with you?” “Why in the world would you want to?”
And she might be deeply embarrassed, but she got her chin up and answered the question. “Because you’re teaching me. Because you don’t think it matters that I’m a girl. Or that I’m a jezebel. Because I want to learn
more
.”
I felt strange and cold and rather remote. “I’ll have to talk it over with Mildmay,” I said. “Let’s just call today a wash, and I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”
“You ain’t mad that I asked, are you?” she said. “Because I know maybe I shouldn’t’ve, and maybe you’re sick to death of me, or, you know, you don’t—”
“Corbie,” I said. “Shut up. I’m not mad. I just . . . I need to think and I need to talk to Mildmay. Tomorrow, all right?”
“All right,” she said with a quick, jerky nod, and darted away.
I walked back rather more slowly to the Fiddler’s Fox, where I found Mildmay awake, despite what he had said. I told him what Corbie wanted. “That’s kind of a mess,” he said.
“You have no idea,” I said and sat down beside him.
“Well, I kind of do,” he said. “Because I know how you feel about taking apprentices.”
“This isn’t—” But of course it was. That was exactly what it was, and I realized that I was actually shaking, very slightly.
“Felix,” Mildmay said. “You ain’t him.”
“No?” My voice cracked.
“No,” he said, steady and patient. “You wouldn’t hurt a hair on that little gal’s head. I can see that just as well as she can.”
“Are you jealous?”
He snorted. “I’m sick, is what I am, and it’s making me say stupid shit. No, I ain’t jealous. I wouldn’t be a hocus if you paid me. And she’s a good kid. I knew kids like her at home, and I would’ve wanted them to take this chance if they had it.”
“Which chance?”
“The chance to get out,” he said. “To not be so fucking stuck somewhere that you can’t even tell if you want to be somewhere else because there
ain’t
nowhere else. Ain’t a chance I ever had.”
“But you got out,” I said. “You
are
out.”
“Huh,” he said. “I s’pose that’s true.”
“So you don’t mind?”
He gave me a slow, assessing look. “I don’t mind.” And one eyebrow went up. “If you don’t.”
I wanted, suddenly, to snap at him not to make allowances for me, that I wasn’t the damaged, frail creature he obviously thought I was. But he was still sick, and I was morbidly uncertain that if I told him that, I would be telling the truth. So I said, “I don’t mind, either,” and if it was a lie, at least it was one he didn’t call me on.