Corambis (53 page)

Much later, we were settled in a curve of the labyrinth, with Caloxan soldiers to both sides. Trant— who’d looked positively ill when we led Kay out into the lantern light— was clearly not taking any more chances. Julian and Corbie had curled up together for warmth, and I had carefully not eavesdropped on their conversation. Mildmay was already asleep, although I knew he’d be wide awake in a second if I needed him. Kay was lying on his back, his ban daged hands resting on his chest, his eyes open.

“Are you all right?” I asked softly.
He sighed. “In truth, I know not. I would have been grateful to be dead.”

He said it matter- of- factly, without emphasis.

“Why?”
“You need to ask?”
“Yes, actually, I do.”
“Shall I give thee the list?” But he could not manage his usual sparking

rancor.
“You didn’t feel this way in Esmer.”
“Perhaps I did, and you saw it not.”
But I knew I was right. “You said you’re a soldier. Why are you so eager

to surrender?”
“Because there is no war. Is neither victory nor defeat, merely an endless
series of days to be endured. I am tired of enduring.”
“What if things got better?”
“They won’t,” he said with bleak finality and rolled onto his side, facing
away from me. “Should sleep, Felix. Is still the engine to be dealt with.” Rebuff and rejection, and I knew I was far too tired to deal with him without making things worse.
“We’ll talk again later,” I said and knew by the tense line of his back that
he heard me.

I was a little surprised to find myself dreaming of the Khloïdanikos, arriving in it as if I had just stepped through Horn Gate. I took my customary path and found that the perseïd tree had actually put out a single beautifully defiant flower. I sat down, amazed and almost afraid to breathe, and that was how Thamuris found me.

He sat beside me and said simply, “I’ve missed you.”
“Well, there have been some complications.” I told him about the binding- by- obedience. “And besides,” I said to preempt the outrage I didn’t want to deal with, even if it was on my behalf, “I thought you might prefer it if I stayed away.” I was careful to keep my gaze on the perseïd tree. “I’m not . . . I don’t think I know how to be a decent friend.” I didn’t deserve outrage on my behalf, not from him.
“That’s not true,” Thamuris said sharply.
“You’re better,” I said, to change the subject. “The Khloïdanikos is healing you.”
“No. Not healing. But slowing the effects . . . People can live for years and years with consumption, you know. I could have— I could live.”
“If you spend all your time asleep.”
“You don’t understand,” Thamuris said urgently. “This isn’t sleeping. I can walk here, and it doesn’t hurt. And there’s always something to study. But it’s lonely, if you’re not here.”
I wasn’t sure what to say; fortunately, he didn’t wait. “You have to come. Because I don’t want to do it without you. It’s not worth it if there’s no one to talk to.”
“You have Khrysogonos. And Diokletian.” I wasn’t sure why I was arguing, but it made me uncomfortable to think that Thamuris needed me.
“Khrysogonos does his best, but he isn’t a scholar at heart. And Diokletian isn’t my friend. Not the way you are. I
missed
you.”
“You can’t depend on me,” I said, starting to feel a little frantic. “You must know that.”
“Is it so wrong to be needed?”
I would have lied, evaded, distracted, but I was dreaming, not tranced, and my defenses failed me. “Yes. If you depend on me, I will fail you.”
He looked at me, not speaking, until I turned back to the perseïd, staring at its black bark. My shoulders hunched tighter and tighter, and when he finally spoke, I startled as violently as if he’d pinched me.
“You believe yourself to be a monster,” he said.
“I
am
a monster,” I said, not looking at him, not looking at anything but the perseïd.
“Why?”
“What?”
Patiently, he said, “Why do you call yourself a monster?”
“I hurt people for my own plea sure,” I said, and there was something darkly satisfying in
saying
it, in admitting something I’d known was true since I was eleven years old.
“Sexually, you mean.” His voice was steady, but he was blushing furiously. As far as I knew, Thamuris was a virgin and likely to die that way.
“In part. You’ve been on the receiving end, so don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“But that was to defend yourself.”
“It’s not that simple. Or that excusable.”
Another long silence. I didn’t mind this one as much; I wasn’t trying to hide anything now.
“If you were a monster,” Thamuris said, “you wouldn’t care.”
“If I
wasn’t
a monster, I wouldn’t do it.”
“And you can’t stop?”
“I tried,” I said. “For two years, I tried to deny it. I failed.”
“You’re talking about sex again. I meant the other.”
“The man whose mind I destroyed. He killed himself. I saw it in my dreams.”
“Felix—”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone any longer,” I said, and I knew it was the truth by how much it hurt to say it. “But, no, I can’t stop.”
Thamuris did not answer for a moment; then he said simply, “Change takes time. And you have been hurt yourself.”
“I deserve it.”
He snorted. “Even if that’s true, what good is it?”
“What?”
“What
good
is it? What good is your pain doing anyone?”
I was sure there was an answer, but I couldn’t find it.
Thamuris said, “You have to understand the difference between an error and a crime. Errors don’t make you a monster, Felix, even terrible ones. If they did, I would be every inch as much a monster as you claim you are. Do you think
I
’m a monster?”
“No, of course not.”
“Exactly.” He stood up. “They’re going to want to take me out in the garden soon, so I’d better go. You’ll come back, won’t you?”
“You really want me to,” I said. It wasn’t quite a question, but almost.
“I really do,” Thamuris said and smiled at me.
“All right,” I said. “When I can.”
He nodded, said, “Try to forgive yourself,” and left, moving slowly. I got up and walked in the opposite direction, trying to decide if what he had said was true, or if it only felt true because I badly wanted it to be.
I could forgive myself for being Malkar’s cat’s-paw. He had worked a long time to instill the necessary responses in me, and although I wished I had resisted him, I could not truly blame myself for failing. I could forgive myself for Gideon’s death. I had not wished it, had done nothing knowingly to cause it. I regretted the way I had treated him, regretted the pain I had inflicted on him. I had been stupid to underestimate the threat posed by Isaac Garamond, but even with hindsight, I was surprised he had committed murder.
As for what I had done to Isaac . . . I wouldn’t do it again.
The realization startled me. I stopped by the koi pond, watching the calico fish play hide- and- seek among the water lilies without really seeing them. But it was true. I wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t do it in cold blood. I could not quite bring myself to wish it undone— could not bring myself to wish Isaac Garamond alive and sane— just as I could not deny I had done it knowingly. That, I supposed, made it a crime rather than an error in Thamuris’s definition, and the best I could say for myself was I wouldn’t do it again.
There, I proved myself a monster, but a monster who perhaps could learn better. And Isaac had been far from innocent himself. If I was a monster, so was he. He
had
acted in cold blood.
And so had I on another occasion. Mildmay might have forgiven me— Mildmay had his own understanding of monsters— but here, truly, was the worst thing I had ever done, and I knew it was a crime.
Here, it was no comfort to know I wouldn’t do it again. No excuse of grief or rage. I could claim I had been Mavortian von Heber’s cat’s-paw, and there was even a sense in which it wasn’t a lie, but that didn’t exculpate me. I had used the obligation d’âme on Mildmay. I had forced him to murder Vey Coruscant, and I couldn’t think of a way to describe my actions that didn’t involve the word “rape.” What Malkar had done to me, I had turned around and done to Mildmay. That I had thereby delivered him into Malkar’s own hands was cruel and unnecessary confirmation of the truth.
“How am I supposed to forgive myself for that?” I said; although my voice was no more than a whisper, I winced.
Forgiveness is a luxury,
whispered the fantôme from its prison.
Thou needst it not.

“Yes, well, you
would
say that.” I wondered if the noirance of the engine could reach the Khloïdanikos, and then realized that of course it could, that the Khloïdanikos was no more “in” Troia than it was “in” Corambis, and that in any event the fantôme was bound to me, bound in
my
construct, and thus the noirance would affect it through me even if the Khloïdanikos itself were immune. And I knew perfectly well the Khloïdanikos was not immune to noirant power; I’d proved that conclusively.

Thou wilt yield eventually,
the fantôme said.
And then this foolishness will not trouble thee. I promise.
“Yes,” I said tartly, “because I will have committed suicide. No, tha . . .” My voice died as thoughts of noirance and death and sacrifice and forgiveness lined up in a new way and dumped me abruptly back into the waking world.

I’d woken up around the fourth hour of the morning, and when I sat up, I saw across Felix that Kay was awake, too.

“G’morning,” I said, whispering even though Felix was sleeping hard. “I’m getting up. You want to?”
“Yes, please,” Kay whispered back. Once we’d worked our way out around Felix, Kay said, “And tell me, please, how you came here. Is most bewildering.”
Yeah, I’ll bet. So I told him our end, and we came out into the sunlight and there were suddenly Caloxans fucking
everywhere
, falling over themselves to make Kay happy, which mostly seemed to make him embarrassed. But I didn’t mind using it to get some breakfast and to find out that Julian was off showing Corbie the horses and, well, I wished him luck.
So me and Kay were eating, with Caloxans kind of hanging around, not exactly with us but where if Kay wanted something, they were right fucking on top of it. And Felix came out with his hair hanging in his face and his eyes all dreamy, and he came up to me and crouched down and said, “I know what to do.”
“You know what to do,” I said.
“Yes. Come on, take a walk with me. Here, you! Come sit with Kay and make him stop moping.” The nearest Caloxan jumped like he’d been bitten.
“Am not—!” Kay said.
“Oh yes you are, darling,” Felix said cheerfully. “Come on, Mildmay.”
So I hauled myself up and followed him off to where there was nobody else in earshot, and he said, “I know what to do about the engine. But I need your help.”
Of course I said, “Okay,” because I was never going to be able to say nothing else when he asked me for help. He was kind of wild- eyed and dreamy, and I had to ask him twice before he got around to telling me what he needed me to do. Which was pretty simple, really. Get Kay into the labyrinth, but nobody else.
Simple, but not easy.
All the Caloxans were watching Kay like the world was going to end if they didn’t know right where he was every second, and I didn’t need to run the conversation through my head but once to give up on the idea of just saying,
I need to borrow Kay for a while if y’all don’t mind.
Because they
would
mind, especially when they asked what I wanted him for and I had to say I didn’t know.
Yeah, we could just skip that part.
So I went and found Corbie and told her I needed a diversion. And she looked at me funny and said, “What for?” and I said, “Felix says,” and powers and saints, that was good enough for her.
I told her to give me a minute to talk to Kay and then draw the Caloxans off any way she could think of that wouldn’t actually hurt nobody. I went over to where Kay was standing and glaring at nothing the way he did. I gave the Caloxan watching him a glower and said, “D’you mind?”
Which shouldn’t have worked, really, but it got him flustered and he backed off.
Kay turned his head toward me, and his eyes were just about as spooky as Felix’s, because I knew he couldn’t see me, but it looked like he was staring straight at me and not liking me much, neither. He said, “What is it, Mildmay?”
He just sounded tired, like he figured I was going to lay into him about something. I said, “I need you to cooperate, okay?”
“Cooperate?” Kay most always had about half a frown on, that line between his eyebrows that never really went away, but now he was frowning for real. “Cooperate with what?”
And that was when Corbie— may Kethe bless her wicked heart— spooked the horses. I waited a couple seconds, watched Caloxans heading for the picket as fast as they could go, and said, “Going this way. Please.” And I caught Kay’s arm and started dragging him toward the entrance to the labyrinth.
He didn’t fight me. Kept up with me, even, and said, “What happens?”
“Felix has an idea,” I said. “I don’t know more’n that.”
“An idea about the engine?”
“Yeah. But don’t ask me what, because he didn’t say and I wouldn’t’ve understood him if he did.”
“All right,” Kay said, and then we were in the labyrinth, and Felix was saying, “I knew I could count on you,” which made me feel warm all over, and fuck, yes, I know how stupid that is.
Felix had a dark lantern, which was better planning than he usually showed, but he went clear around the first bend before he’d open it. I didn’t complain, because I opened my mouth to say something, and then thought about Kay, who’d gone the whole distance in pitch blackness that no amount of light was ever going to help with, and I closed my mouth again. I suppose, really, we didn’t even need the lantern. It wasn’t like we could get lost or take a wrong turn. But I was glad when Felix slid the shutter aside anyway, because it carved out a little circle of light in all that dark and I felt like I could breathe again.
Nobody said nothing for a long while, and then Kay said, “Mildmay says you have an idea.”
“Yes,” Felix said. “I’m sorry to drag you along, but since I don’t fully understand how the engine works, and don’t particularly want to experiment, I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.”
“You think I . . . affect it, somehow?”
“I think you might. It moved, after all.”
“It might have done that for anyone.”
“Yes, I know, but that’s one of those experiments I don’t want to do. I’m not asking you, or Mildmay, to come any farther than the door, but I need it to accept what it’s being offered.”
“What’re you offering?” I said.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“You don’t want to talk about it,” I said, because I could do the math on that one.
“You won’t like it. And I don’t want to waste time while you try to talk me out of it. I don’t think we have much time left. It
moved
last night. And I think it’s trying to drive Kay to suicide.”
Kay didn’t like that, but Felix told him what Intended Marcham had told us about the two men who’d killed themselves for no reason, and that made him think. He said, “Was happening in Bernatha. The suicides.”
“Nemesis drove people mad,” I said.
“Diadumenian Butler is said to have killed himself by jumping into its gears,” Felix said. “Not that that stopped it. But that’s not quite the same thing. Nemesis and the Clock of Eclipses— and presumably Juggernaut, although I can’t imagine the Bastion would ever admit as much— cause suicides by their working. This engine needs suicides in order to work at all.”
“Powers,” I said. “Okay. I won’t argue with what ever you’re gonna do.”
“Promise you won’t try to stop me.”
“You
really
think I ain’t gonna like this.”
“I know you aren’t,” he said with a flicker of a smile. “But I promise I have no intention of sacrificing myself.”
“Well, you wouldn’t. ’Cause that’d make it go off, right?”
“Exactly,” he said, and he sounded so pleased with me that I went warm again.
“But what
are
you offering?” Kay said. He’d learned the key thing about any serious conversation with Felix, which was that you couldn’t let him distract you.
“Something I think it will accept,” Felix said.
“Is no answer.”
“No,” Felix agreed, perfectly cheerful. “I don’t want to waste time arguing with you, either.”
“And if I promise not to argue either? Will you tell me then?”
“Are you promising not to argue?”
“How can I make that promise, when I know not what you intend?”
“Impasse,” Felix said, still cheerful. “Let me do this, Kay, and I promise I will explain after.”
“It sounds as if thou mightst not live to keep thy promise.”
Felix stopped. He turned and touched Kay’s face gently and said, “I would not be grateful to be dead,” and I knew that was part of the conversation him and Kay had had while I’d laid there and pretended to be asleep, but all I could think of was the Road of Corundum in the rain and Felix saying he would’ve thanked Lord Stephen for sentencing him to death. And something I didn’t even know I’d been carry ing since then rolled off my shoulders. I practically heard it hit the floor.
“All right,” Kay said. “I will not hinder thy knight errantry. Let us, for the Lady’s sake, get it over with.”
“On we go, then,” Felix said, and we followed the turns and twists and ended up back in the heart of the labyrinth with the engine crouching there like a big fucking spider. It knew all it had to do was wait.
I thought it had moved again, since last night, but I wasn’t sure enough to say anything.
Felix gave me the lantern. “I want you and Kay to stay here— in fact, move back a few feet. I don’t want it to be able to reach you.”
“Okay,” I said, because I wasn’t arguing with that.
“And I want you to
stay
here. I’d use the obligation d’âme if I could. Do you understand?”
“Yeah. I get you. We’ll stay put.”
“Good,” he said. “Remember that, no matter what happens. Don’t move.” His mouth quirked. “I’d draw you a circle of protection, too, but I haven’t any chalk and somehow I don’t think using blood is a good idea.”
“No,” I said, probably a little too hard, and added, “Thank you all the same,” which even made him laugh.
Then his head tilted a little, and he said, “I was right. It can feel Kay. It wants its sacrifice.”
Kay shivered, and I shivered with him. Felix gave me a weird little nod, which I figured was him trusting me to keep my promise, and trusting me to keep the engine from getting Kay. Which, yeah. I moved us back another three or four feet. I could still see the engine and most of the room around it, but I was pretty sure none of its arms could reach this far. And if I was wrong, we could move further back. Get around the bend, and it couldn’t touch us. Which wasn’t much of a comfort, but I was hanging onto it as hard as I could. We could get away from this fucking thing if we had to.
On the other hand, Felix couldn’t, because when I’d gone backwards, Felix had gone forward.
“What is he doing?” Kay asked, his voice just above a whisper.
“I wish I knew.”
“No, I mean— what is he
doing
? What actions is he taking?”
“Oh, right. Sorry. He’s walked into the middle of the thing, and now he’s just standing there. I’d think he was getting ready to do magic or something, but he can’t, so I don’t . . .” I knew what him doing magic looked like, and I knew what him in an actual trance looked like, and they weren’t all that different, but a little. “He’s tranced.”
“What means that?” Kay asked, and I realized we were holding hands.
“He’s doing something in that world of the spirit thing that he talks about all the time.”
“But not magic.”
“No. Something else. I’d tell you more if I could.”
“I fault thee not,” he said. “Is not thy doing that he keeps secrets.”
“No,” I said, “but—”
In the middle of the room, Felix went stiff, and I heard him say, clear as daylight, “I am yours.” And I swear I heard glass breaking.
I clamped my hands down on Kay’s, and just in time, because he made a lunge toward the engine.
“He promised,” I said. “And he wasn’t lying.”
“But—” He was fighting me, fighting hard, and I guess it wasn’t surprising that he knew what he was doing. Unlike Felix, who was the last person I’d had to wrestle to the ground and sit on. But I could see, and I was bigger than him. I got him down on his stomach, with both his wrists pinned in the small of his back, and then I looked up and Felix was watching us.
Only it wasn’t Felix.
I mean, it
was
, tall and skinny and with the hair and the spooky eyes, but I’d never seen Felix stand like that in his life, and, well, the best I can say it is, the person looking at us with Felix’s skew eyes was somebody else. Somebody I’d never met and didn’t want to.
And somebody who could do magic, because while I just sat there staring, Felix’s little green witchlights that I’d never thought I’d miss popped in, one at a time, all around his head like a saint’s halo. The person wearing his body like a secondhand coat said, “Thou art the brother.” And powers and saints, if Felix had ever given me a smile like that, I’d
still
be running.
Beneath me, Kay quit fighting.
“So who’re you?” I said, and I tried to sound like I wasn’t scared to death, but I don’t know how good I did. Probably not very.
“My name matters not. I am rachenant.”
I didn’t know that word, but Kay tensed up and said, “A spirit of vengeance. The Mulkists used them.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh fuck you’re the fantôme.”
That threw him. Or her. Or it. Fuck, I don’t know. The
thing
in Felix’s body. It blinked and kind of shook its head. “He has spoken of me?” And fuck me sideways, it sounded
hopeful
. Like a gal with a crush wanting to know if the guy even knew she existed.
“Not a lot.” I’d ask, and he’d say he was handling it, and if I pushed, what I got was a lot of big words and no answers.
“Oh,” it said, and it
was
disappointed. I wasn’t making that up. And I knew that because Kay said, “But we are annemer, he and I, and Felix does not speak to us of warlocks’ matters.”
Which was only sort of true, but it was the right thing to say, because the fantôme nodded.
I was going to have some things to say to Felix later, if we all got to “later” and I ever got to talk to Felix again, things like what a stupid stunt this was to pull and had he not considered it might go wrong and could he not have given me at least a fucking
hint
about what he thought he was trying to do so I didn’t have to figure it out here with a fantôme watching and the engine getting ready to do Kethe knows what. And okay, what the fuck were you thinking, adding a fantôme into the mix when, according to you, we already had way more noirant magic floating around than we needed? Because there was no way a fantôme wasn’t noirant. I might not be real bright, and I might not know fuck all about magic, but I could get that much.
The fantôme took a step toward us, and I wondered how much it knew about close fighting, and then it stopped. Its hands came up and witchlight went out sideways in two arcs and I swear to the powers caught every spur and spine of metal on the entire engine. For a second I was as blind as Kay— nothing but green— and if the fantôme had rushed me, I don’t know what would’ve happened, and that’s the truth. But it didn’t. I blinked and blinked and finally got to where I could see around all the green, and it was still standing there, head down.
“You said . . . you’d do my bidding.” How I knew it was Felix, I can’t tell you, but it was.
“I know thy bidding.” And that was the fantôme. “The true desire of thy heart. I know it, and thou canst not hide it from me.”
Felix’s body went to its knees. “No! You do not choose my desire for me. You do not choose what I want.”
“Thou knowst not thine own heart,” and sweet merciful powers I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere I didn’t have to listen to Felix and the fantôme arguing both in Felix’s voice.