Mélusine (4 page)
Authors: Sarah Monette
I couldn't think of anyone. Friends, colleagues, former lovers—no one in the Mirador would accept me now. I could not go to Shannon, not like this, not with Malkar's reeking miasma still surrounding me.
I heard footsteps, coming toward me from around the next corner, and I knew, because this was the Mirador, that it would be Shannon, Shannon with some adoring young nobleman, talking and laughing. Or Shannon alone, his eyes red with weeping. I dove into an unfamiliar side hall and fled. And then my dream came back to me, or maybe the Mirador simply became strange. I was lost again. The floors were cold beneath my feet, the walls slick and hostile against my hands. I felt like a ghost, the ghost of someone dead for centuries, condemned now to wander forever in darkness, among familiar things turned strange and vague.
I remembered that I had been seeking damnation, and I knew that I had found it.
Mildmay
I waited for the septad-night before I started up to Lighthill.
The Otanius town house was one of them big houses from the Protectorate of Deborah that line up along Cherubim Street like they're getting ready to make some poor bastard run the gauntlet. I'd had business on Cherubim Street before.
I got there across the roofs. If you know what you're doing, you can get all the way from the Plaza del'Archimago to the Launderejs' Guild in Lyonesse without ever once having to set foot on the ground. And the cits never think to look up. People live on the roofs, too, them as have reason to. It's a good way to travel if you're leaving the Lower City and don't want to run into the Dogs. Which, not being in the mood for suicide, I didn't.
Felix
Dizzily, as I try to find a way through a series of rooms interconnected like honeycombs, I remember Shannon telling me that there are whole sections of the Mirador that no one has been into since his grandmother's time, some that aren't even marked on the thick roll of maps Stephen keeps in his study. Maybe I have wandered into one such deserted wing, or maybe the Mirador has become a ghost. Instead of me haunting it, maybe it is haunting me. Or maybe we are haunting each other, trapped in a chain of mirrors that cannot be broken.
The thought scares me, and I run from it.
Sometimes I think I am a child again, wandering the dark streets of the Lower City, looking for someone to steal from or someone to sell myself to. Sometimes I hear the roaring of the Fire behind me, and I know I have to keep moving; if I stop, the Fire will catch me, as it has already caught Joline and Eva and Jean-Croix and Keeper and Freddy and Sulla and…
I trip over something and fall, hurting my hands. But I realize that these rough stones are not the cobbles of the Lower City, that I am not a child any longer, and I am almost grateful for my stinging palms.
After a moment, I pick myself up and move on. I don't want the Fire to catch me.
Mildmay
Kethe's the patron saint—if he is a saint, which some folks take leave to doubt—of thieves and secrets and things done at the septad-night. He's also a practical joker, as all the stories will tell you, and so I shouldn't—I mean, really—I
shouldn't
have been surprised at what he had waiting for me three blocks down from the Otanius town house.
shouldn't
have been surprised at what he had waiting for me three blocks down from the Otanius town house.
The job itself had been a piece of cake. Let myself in through the attic of the house on Cherubim Street, found Miss Thomson's things. She'd been worried about the safe, but she shouldn't have been. The lock was gorgeous, the work of Selenfer and Kidmarsh, who'd been the hot boys in locks back in the Protectorate of Helen. I ain't much of a cracksman, not for the fancy stuff, but I could handle an old S-and-K combo. I was glad there was nobody standing behind me with their pocket watch, the way Keeper used to, but it wasn't no trouble. Blue velvet box, ugly gilded porcelain clock you couldn't have paid me to keep, and there was the figurine, a little bronze dancer, up on pointe and so perfectly balanced she looked alive. Kethe, she was gorgeous. I guessed her for a Tolmattin, and off the top of my head I could think of two guys in the Lower City who'd commit cold-blooded murder to get their hands on a genuine Tolmattin and a double septad more who'd pay through the nose for it. Miss Thomson hadn't been kidding about the value of the commission.
And it had been easy, the kind of job a guy like me prays for. Got myself back out of the house and started home across the roofs like I owned the whole city.
There's only four packs that run the rooftops. I was on pretty good terms with three of them, but the guy who led the fourth wasn't going to be happy until he had my balls on his watch chain. So—you can see it coming, can't you?—there ain't nobody I can meet, coming home across the Corandina's roof in the dark, excepting only Rindleshin and a septad-worth of his pack. It's the way things work.
We stared at each other, Rindleshin and me, like we couldn't neither of us believe our luck. Then I took off running like an alley cat. If Rindleshin caught me—well, I might not be dead before the sun cleared the city walls, but I sure would
wish
I was dead by then.
wish
I was dead by then.
Rindleshin hated me because of something stupid—a knife fight, almost a septad ago, where I'd made him look really fucking dumb. It's easy to do if you're good and the other guy only thinks he is. And I was too young and too dumb myself to see that it's better to leave the other guy some face. I thought I was quite something back then, like I was another Charlett Redding and they were going to have my hands plated with gold when I died.
Anyway, Rindleshin's hatred of me was pure poison-green, and his pack hated me right along with him. That's what you got a pack leader for, I guess, to tell you what to think. I knew, the same instant I bolted, that I had to make it to the Badgers' territory. Rindleshin would follow me into the streets, but he wouldn't follow me there. Badgers and Rindleshin's pack were about half an inch this side of war, and Margot was a friend of mine. She'd render him into lard if he took me down on her turf.
Rindleshin's Pack ran mostly in Simside and Queensdock and almost never came up farther than Engmond's Tor. Kethe only knows what they'd been doing in Lighthill. They didn't know the ground, and I thought, running, to be glad for small favors. On their turf they would've had me cold in a septad-minute, tops.
They couldn't catch me, but I couldn't fucking ditch them, either. I was lucky to get across the Corandina ahead of them, and I just about killed myself vaulting down into the maze of tenement roofs. It bought me a little time, though, because you got to have training to do it that way, and not all of them did. They were smart enough to know they didn't want to split up.
I dragged in a breath, got my bearings against Ver-Istenna's bronze dome, and then I put my head down and ran. Ver-Istenna's marked the north side of the Badgers' territory. I could hear Rindleshin's pack yelling behind me, like I was cheating or something. I wanted to turn around and tell them to go fuck themselves sideways with a barge pole, but my lead wasn't long enough. I just ran, and they didn't quite catch me.
Up the fire escape on Lornless's sweatshop like a madman, praying the rungs wouldn't break under me. Rindleshin's pack was shouting ideas about what they wanted to do with me. I ran full tilt across Lornless's roof and didn't even stop at the edge. I just jumped, like a squirrel in Richard's Park, and caught hold of one of Ver-Istenna's gargoyles, the ones that watch all the time, in all directions, to tell her where balance is slipping out of true.
I glanced over my shoulder then. I couldn't help it, because I was a big fat target, spread out there with my fingers digging into the gargoyle's neck like I was trying to strangle it and about half a foot braced on the cornice or a window. Anybody in Rindleshin's pack fancied themself a knife-thrower, and my life was going to get even nastier than a three-and-a-half-story drop under me and a gargoyle covered in pigeon shit.
The pack came to a screeching halt at the edge of Lornless's roof. Then they stood there and watched me like owls. After a moment, Rindleshin shouted, "You're going to break your fucking neck, Mildmay!"
"Don't you wish," I said between my teeth. But he wasn't telling the kids with him to break out their throwing knives, so I figured I was at least safe from that direction.
I took stock of my situation, real quick-like. The gargoyle was steady—nobody cut corners when they were doing stuff for Ver-Istenna. I edged my left foot a little farther onto the cornice, then braced my right foot against the wall and used the leverage to hook my right elbow over the gargoyle.
The fuckers on the roof gave me this snarky round of applause.
But I was in a better position, and it wasn't no big thing to go from leaning against the gargoyle to getting one hip up on it. It didn't stick out quite far enough for anything super-fancy, but I could just reach, by bracing my right foot as high up as I could get it and pushing sideways, a crevice in the frieze of eyes and balancing scales, and once I had a handhold up there, I could get my right foot on the gargoyle, and it was plenty big enough to stand on.
And from there—well, I'm a cat burglar. And cathedrals are easy. There was a bad moment with the overhang around the dome, but I'd gotten into my rhythm by then and hooked my knee over before I'd really even had time to think, I'm fucked if this don't work.
And then I was standing on the walkway around Ver-Istenna's dome. Her priests do tours, too, like Min-Terris's. I turned around. Rindleshin and his pack were still standing on Lornless's roof, staring up at me round-eyed as owls.
I gave 'em the finger, like I'd been itching to do for, I don't know, a good half hour—ever since they gave me that snarky applause for not turning myself into pâté on the pavement. Then I walked widdershins around Ver-Istenna's dome and started for Midwinter.
Felix
The fog burned away at last, and I knew where I was: a tiny, circular antechamber off the Stoa Errata, hung with the sand-colored velvet that had been in fashion when Shannon's grandmother had been Lady Protector. My watch, miraculously still in my pocket, told me that it was five-thirty. I snapped it shut without letting myself read the inscription Shannon had had engraved on the inside of the case.
I didn't want to think about Shannon.
I sat down on one of the spindly chairs. My hands were shaking. I was shaking, as if with cold. I knotted my hands together, pressing them between my knees, and tried to work out what to do.
I remembered my revelation of the evening before, that there was no one in the Mirador I trusted. If Thaddeus de Lalage had been here, things might have been different, but Thaddeus was in Aurelias, had been for five years, and even Thaddeus… no, I could not have gone to Thaddeus. There was too much truth in the air around me. I was not sure I could look anyone in the face. I remembered Shannon saying,
Didn't you trust me?
I had trusted no one since Joline, and Joline had been dead for sixteen years.
"I cannot stay," I said aloud, and flinched at the sound of my own voice.
I got up again, beginning to pace, seeing myself caught between two impossibilities. For I
could
not stay, could not bear the thought of meeting Shannon again. Even worse was the thought of looking across the Hall of the Chimeras and seeing Malkar smile at me. But I could not go, for where would I go
to
? I tried to imagine myself, like Thaddeus, going to a faraway town to help the townsfolk, to teach the children, to send the gifted ones back to the Mirador—Lord Gareth's gentle inspiration, after a century's worth of thaumaturgie war, a way to be sure that blood-magic and its vile offshoots were not being practiced. But first I had to imagine myself asking Stephen to let me go, and that I could not do.
could
not stay, could not bear the thought of meeting Shannon again. Even worse was the thought of looking across the Hall of the Chimeras and seeing Malkar smile at me. But I could not go, for where would I go
to
? I tried to imagine myself, like Thaddeus, going to a faraway town to help the townsfolk, to teach the children, to send the gifted ones back to the Mirador—Lord Gareth's gentle inspiration, after a century's worth of thaumaturgie war, a way to be sure that blood-magic and its vile offshoots were not being practiced. But first I had to imagine myself asking Stephen to let me go, and that I could not do.
And if I were just to leave… with the tattoos on my hands and forearms, crimson and azure, emerald and gold, gaudy, blazing, like a fanfare of trumpets or a cavalcade of banners, I could not hide what I was. The guards at the city gates would not hinder my passage, but they would remember me, and they would tell anyone who came riding after me just when I'd passed the gates and which direction I'd been going when they lost sight of me.
I wondered, with a convulsive shiver, if I could hide in the Lower City, he Lower City had always been a haven for apostate wizards, heretics, dissidents of all stripes. Would my tattoos make them leave me alone, or would they turn them against me? I tried to remember what I had thought of wizards as a child, before Malkar had found me, but all I could remember were the times I'd had them as clients. I'd asked one about the tattoos, I remembered:
Don't it hurt, having that done
? And he'd laughed and said,
Everything worthwhile hurts. Surely you know that.
Don't it hurt, having that done
? And he'd laughed and said,
Everything worthwhile hurts. Surely you know that.
But the thought of the Lower City gave me the answer. The Arcane. I went down there often enough; if the denizens were not used to me per se, they did not look on me as anything peculiar. They might give me space. And the court wouldn't know to look for me in the Arcane. The court barely knew the Arcane existed.
I almost bolted out of that antechamber, despairingly glad to have a direction, a purpose. I realized only then, as I crossed from the straw-colored carpet to the smooth parquet of the Stoa Errata, that my feet were bare. I must have left my stockings and boots in Malkar's suite, and of course it would have amused him to let me do so, to let me walk out with my feet bare, my hair unbraided. I ran a panicky glance over my person, but the only other thing missing was my gold wizard's sash, and I wouldn't need that where I was going.
"I can buy shoes," I muttered to myself. "I can buy shoes in the Arcane." And then I gave a sort of strangled howl and plunged my hands into my pockets. No money, of course. I'd used the last of it the night before, buying… I flinched away from completing that thought.
But my fingers found my watch, the watch that Shannon had given to me for my birthday last year. I didn't know when my birthday was, of course, but Shannon had asked and I had made up an answer, and I could still remember the delight on his face when I opened the box he gave me. My hand clenched around the watch's cool, hard smoothness, and I thought, it's perfectly possible to redeem things from a pawnbroker. Once I'm making money again, I can get it back. I did not ask myself how I was going to make money in the Arcane, but there were always ways. My childhood had taught me that.
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