Mélusine (16 page)

I lowered my eyes, not wanting him to see my revulsion.

"We'll talk later," he said and led me out of the storeroom and back to the ground floor again. We left the water behind in the basement. This time, he held open the vestibule's inner door; still aware of the porter's smirk like a knife between my shoulder blades, I walked into St. Crellifer's.

"Come then," Brother Orphelin said as I passed him in the doorway, smelling the bloated reek of his sweat. I could not help looking at him as his face widened in a hideous smile. "Let me show you your new home."

Mildmay

Cardenio'd asked me this afternoon, "So why do you go?" and I hadn't been able to tell him. Not like I didn't know, mind you, but I couldn't tell Cardenio. Couldn't tell nobody.

See, the thing was, I was jealous. Austin Lefevre, him and his poems and his long black hair that he wore queued like a gentleman—which I'm here to say he wasn't. And the way he looked at Ginevra, and the way he'd say when he came in, "I wrote a new poem for you," and hand it over. He used the best-quality stationery—three gorgons for four septad sheets—and violet ink. And Ginevra'd read his fucking poems, and her eyes would go all wide and her face would go pink. I couldn't write poems for her. I could barely even write my own damn name.

And, powers, he could talk. He told stories about the guy he worked for, this crazy old historian who lived in Nill and was trying to write a history about the Raphenii, along of how he thought he might be a descendent of theirs. He'd hired Austin to keep track of his notes and his letters and shit like that, and to hear Austin tell it, it was a full-time job for three or four guys, so it was lucky the old historian was crazy and didn't care that he could never find nothing.

And Austin told stories about the other poets he knew—seemed like there was quite a rookery of them over in Nill and the north end of Havelock—and about things he said he did at night, wandering around in Gilgamesh and Britomart. I knew those were all lies, but I didn't say nothing Nobody'd believe me, and it'd just piss Ginevra off. She didn't like nobody saying catty things about Austin. .

But that night he was telling stories about hocuses. Faith wasn't there or maybe he wouldn't've. Estella just sat and watched him like he wasn't even worth her while getting mad at. And, I mean,
everybody
was telling hocus stories. The mood was getting worse and worse in the city. People weren't thinking about the nature-witches at St. Cecily's—and, I mean, they might be about as much use as garters to a cat, but at least they was trying—they were thinking about the necromancers and the blood-witches and the Obscurantists. Powers, it seemed like every damn story I'd ever heard about the Obscurantists I'd heard again in the past decad and a half. And most of the shit Austin was talking was just them same old rehashed stories, about kids disappearing from orphan houses and which guilds were hiding secret cults—and if you believed everything you heard, that was like three-quarters of the guilds in Mélusine that were really Obscurantists and only fronting as coopers or chandlers or whatever. But then he started talking about the Mirador's witch-hunts and about all the good Cerberus Cresset had done and all the blood-witches he'd found and how the Lower City had been safe when he was in charge, and I just couldn't stand it no more.

I hadn't meant to say nothing. I didn't want to talk to Austin, and I didn't want to make Ginevra mad, and I didn't want to get going on the witch-hunts anyway, but it was like he just trotted out one too many of them old tired lies that the Mirador's been living on for septads, and I said, "That's bullshit."

Everybody looked at me like I'd turned bright, coal-tar purple. "I
beg
your pardon?" Austin said, in this snotty sort of voice.

Shit, Milly-Fox, I thought. You and your big fucking mouth. But I couldn't back off it now. "I don't mind you telling lies," I said, " 'long as they ain't hurting nobody else."

"A liar, am I?" he said, his eyebrows going up.

"Gilroi," Hugo Chandler said, all nervous and squeaky, "don't—"

I said to Austin, "If you don't know you're lying, you got no right to talk about Cerberus Cresset."

Too fucking much, I thought. "Lemme tell you a story," I said.

"A
story
." Austin got this look on his face, like a kid seeing somebody'd left the candy shop unlocked. "Well, go on then, Gil. Tell your story."

"Austin," said Hugo, still trying to make peace.

"Shut up, Hugo," Austin said.

I hated him. I hated him so much I went ahead and told them about Zephyr Wolsey, even though I knew Zephyr deserved better than having what happened to him pawed over by this mangy bunch of weasels. "Okay," I said. "I knew this guy, Zephyr Wolsey. He was a hocus, a pretty good one from what I understand. He was a nature-witch. He lived down in Gilgamesh, and he did some healing and some good-luck charms—just shit like that, nothing big, nothing scary. He had an apprentice, and he was teaching him right, warning him off of blood-magic and the hard-core necromancy. Not hurting nobody. And then Cerberus Cresset comes down the city with his goons and he starts asking people to name nature-witches, and he says, 'If'n you don't give me names, I'll know it's 'cause you're hiding 'em, and you know that's treason, don't you?' And people got scared, and they started naming folks off, and somebody told him about Zephyr. And they came and trashed his shop and dragged him off. But we all figured Zephyr'd be okay, 'cause he wasn't doing nothing wrong, wasn't hurting nobody, wasn't doing no necromancy or that shit blood-witches get up to. And he was tried and convicted, and then he was burned. So don't tell me what a hero Cerberus Cresset was."

There was this silence. I was remembering Zephyr, how he'd been tall and heavyset and had a face like the full moon, round and all scarred from smallpox, and it didn't matter what you'd come in for, he'd tell you all about his latest experiments with growing roses and the weird thing he'd found in the Library of Heth-Eskaladen last Neuvième, and, oh yeah, that thing you were asking about the other month, I think I got an answer for you. He never said a mean word about nobody, and about the only thing Zephyr wouldn't help you with was hexes. He'd never done nothing wrong in his life—except not playing by the Mirador's rules. And they burned him for it.

Ginevra said, loud and fake, "I think we'd better be going. Come on, Gil."

I didn't want to hear what Austin was going to say about Zephyr. I got up and followed Ginevra out.

She walked for a block and a half without saying nothing, just staring straight ahead. She had her lips pressed together, and I knew she'd have lit. tie lines between her eyebrows. We'd had enough fights I knew what she looked like when she got mad.

Finally, she said, "Thank you very much for embarrassing me like that."

"Ginevra, I didn't mean—"

"Of course you did. You told that horrible story on purpose to make Austin look stupid."

"Well, yeah, but what's that got to do with you?"

"He'll think I put you up to it!"

"So?"

"Powers!" She turned. We'd gotten into the north end of Ramecrow by then, the part people always joke about making its own district called Losthope. Nobody lives there no more, and nobody wants to. Nothing wants it. Even the Fire didn't touch it. "Let's get this over with," she said and stalked into one of the courtyards—weeds growing between the paving stones, empty, broken windows staring down on all sides.

"Ginevra, we—"

"What if I
do
think he's handsome? What then?" she said. She was too well launched to listen to me. "What does it matter? Is that why you dye your hair, because you think you'll look more handsome?"

"I don't—"

"Yes, you do, you liar!"

"So does Austin," I said.

"He does not!"

"'Course he does."

"You just don't like him, that's all. You don't like any of my friends. Aren't they good enough for you?"

Kethe knows what I would have said to that, and Kethe knows where he fight would have gone, except that a voice said in my ear, "Tell the lady keep her trap shut, and maybe nobody gets hurt."

That's the trouble with Losthope and why it ain't such a good place to thrash things out. You got the jackals. But this one, by somebody's mercy, was stupid, stupid enough to start yapping before he had either mark where he wanted them. I said, "Ginevra, get back!" even as I was ducking down for the knife I kept in my boot, and coming back up at him from where he wasn't expecting me.

I didn't want to kill him—not worth anybody's blood, this stupid little fuck-up—so I slammed the knife out of his hand and got him pressed up against the wall before he knew where he was or where I was or what he should be doing about it.

"Kethe, mister," he said in this shaky little voice, "don't kill me."

Fuck me sideways 'til I cry, I thought. He was a kid—two septads, two septads and one, no older than that. "I ain't gonna kill you," I said. "You fond of that knife?"

It took him a second to understand what I'd said. Then he said, "Oh. No! No, I ain't!"

"Good. Then I'm gonna let you go, and you're gonna leave. Okay?"

"Okay! Sure! I'm sorry, mister, really I am. I thought you was—"

He stopped short.

"You thought I was a flat," I said. "I ain't. Now scram."

I let him go, and he bailed.

I turned to Ginevra. "You okay?"

"There was a kid thought he was gonna get your jewelry."

"Oh. And you just—"

"I been there myself," I said. "Come on. Let's go home."

Mildmay

The Dogs started raiding on 19 Prairial. They were supposed to be rounding up heretics and spies, but you noticed how they were starting in Queensdock and Simside, and you had to wonder. Erasmus Spalding had one idea about what was going on, and Mayor Elvenner Packer had another. The Dogs didn't touch Scaffelgreen, and they didn't touch Dassament, a sure sign that Vey Coruscant was alive and well and looking out for her own. And those smug, stupid fucks in the Mirador didn't know enough about their own city to know that the Mayor and the Dogs were lying to them. For the Mirador, I guess it was all just the Lower City, and Breadoven no different from Ruthven. And the Dogs didn't believe in Obscurantists and Kekropian spies. They wanted to clean out the packs and the kept-thieves and the pushers. And the Mirador had handed 'em an excuse on a stick.

The Dogs did raid in Candlewick Mews. Even the Mirador knows there are hocuses there. And the Dogs don't like the nature-witches. They ain't like ordinary cits, but you can't rightly say they're doing anything wrong„ trying to heal folks and shit like that—'til the Mirador wakes up and notices all over again that it's got heretics in its backyard.

I was gladder and gladder I hadn't let Ginevra spend the money from the dancer, because it didn't take no genius to see we were going to need it. The whole Lower City was scared and thinking mainly about keeping their heads down. Nobody was going to want to hire a cat burglar, and even Lollymeg couldn't promise me good prices if I brought anything in.

Which is how come I was home
and
awake on 23 Prairial when Estella Velvet came looking for Ginevra.

"She's at work," I said before I took in how Estella was looking. I'd never seen her scared before. "What's the matter?"

"It's sweet of you to pretend you care," she said. But I guess she'd got to the point where she had to tell
somebody
, because she said, "They arrested Faith."

"Shit," I said.

"That's not a bad way of putting it." She closed her eyes and pushed her fingers against her eyelids—carefully, so she wouldn't smudge her maquillage. "I don't even know why I came here. Ginevra's no help with stuff like this."

"What d'you mean?"

She looked at me, her eyes mocking and mean and sad all at the same time. "Oh, poor Gilly. Haven't you figured it out yet?"

"Don't call me that."

"But Gilroi doesn't suit you at all. Let me give you some free advice, Gilly. Keep Ginevra happy, because she'll leave you flat if you don't."

She turned and started down the stairs.

"Don't worry," she said and gave me a look like she was daring me to notice that she was crying. "I'll figure something out."

My dreams that night were fucking terrible. I dreamed that there was something I had to tell Zephyr, something he could tell the witchfinders and then they wouldn't kill him and everything'd be okay. So I'm looking for him everywhere in Gilgamesh, but his shop's been burned to the ground and all the bars and teahouses he liked are closed, and I can't think of nowhere else to look. And it's getting dark—it's one of
those
dreams and once it's dark, I know it'll be too late, that then Zephyr will be dead and
he'll
come looking for
me
. And I keep meeting other people, like Christobel and Nikah and Letty, and if I could tell them the right thing, then
they
wouldn't be dead. But the thing I know, it'll only work for Zephyr, and I can't help them.