Mélusine (48 page)

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Authors: Sarah Monette

BOOK: Mélusine
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I sat and seethed, formulating ways to tell him just what he could do with his
don't go nowhere
and his damn key, but when he came back in he wore the fox's head and lambent silver eyes, and my fury died in my throat. I shook my head, and he was Mildmay again, looking at me with his eyebrows quirked as he closed the door.
"You okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine." The improvement I'd felt that day, as we got farther and farther from Mavortian, had lured me into thinking there would be no further retrograde motion in the path of my madness through my personal sky. But that, I realized coldly, was nothing but self-delusion. Each time my magic was used—by Malkar, by Robert, by Gideon at my own instigation—my recovery took longer and was less and less complete. The lengthy period of quiet travel after we left Hermione had given me the opportunity to notice that I
was
recovering, but that did not mean that I was sane again, or even anywhere close. Mildmay was right not to trust me.
He had been explaining the arrangements he'd made, but I wasn't listening until the phrase "bring up the bath in an hour" caught my attention.
"Bring
up
the bath?"
His eyes were green and calm and perfectly ruthless. "You ain't going in a bathhouse where any prole can just wander in and gawk."
"But… what did you tell the hotelkeeper?"
"That I'd pay extra." He didn't grin because he never did, but I could see his amusement in diamond sparks around him.
"All right. As long as you're sure it's safe."
"Safer'n going around looking like a pair of tramps."
"I suppose so," I said, and I couldn't deny, either to him or to myself, that I would feel infinitely better for a bath.
A chambermaid brought the food—bread, cheese, cold meat, and beer—and squeaked with pleasure at the tip Mildmay gave her.
"I thought you wanted to be inconspicuous," I said.
"We ain't, and we ain't gonna be. So I'd rather she remembered a good tipper." He put cheese on a slice of bread and started eating.

I knew he wouldn't talk until he was done; he might not care about having been a kept-thief, but he was

morbidly self-conscious about the scar on his face. I took a slice of bread for myself and watched the dark colors swirling slowly around him. I wondered what the grief was that would not leave him, but asking would mean admitting that I was still seeing colors, and I was not prepared to do that. He already knew too much about me; I would not offer him further ammunition.
There was a great deal of bustle over bringing in the bath; I retreated into a corner and watched, noting that Mildmay's strategy of paying generously for odd requests was a successful one, at least in this hotel. The maids were transparently eager to please, bringing extra towels, assuring him that the second lot of water would be ready whenever he wanted it. One of them was even trying to flirt with him, although I didn't think he realized it.
He herded them all out the door again, closed and locked it, and said, "You first."
"What?"
"You go first," he said, slowly and as distinctly as he could.
"I understood you."
"Then what?"
I tilted my head meaningfully at the door.
"Nope," said Mildmay.
"What do you mean, 'nope'?"
"We ain't splitting up."
"You can stand right outside the door."
"Oh, and nobody's gonna think
that's
weird."
"What does that matter? You said we can't be inconspicuous."
He gave me a stony look and said, "I ain't going. You want to argue about it, it's your bathwater getting cold."
His obstinacy was all around him, granite and iron. And I wanted a bath so badly, wanted to be rid of the mud and dust and stickiness.
He is not Brother Orphelin, I said to myself. I took my clothes off, deliberately, one garment at a time, not looking at Mildmay, giving him his chance to stare his fill at the wasteland of my back.
He said nothing until I was settled in the tub, my knees practically up around my ears. Then, as I was working the soap into a lather, he said in a quiet, careful voice, "What happened?"
"Malkar."
"The guy who… ?"
"Yes."

It was a comfortless lie, but I could not admit that being a kept-thief, so commonplace to him, had damaged me so deeply. If I told the truth now, he would remember I had not told the truth earlier, and that would tell its own tale as clearly as my scars did. Let Malkar bear the weight of blame.

We were silent for a while as I applied soap vigorously, and then he said, "I got my face laid open in a knife fight."
I looked at him; he met my eyes steadily. "They thought it would heal okay, but it got infected. This side of my face ain't moved right since."
No wonder he would not smile. I looked away, scalding with shame. He had answered my lie with truth, my silence with honesty. I plunged my head underwater, but I did not feel cleaner when I came back up.
Mildmay
My map had told me what I needed to know.
I knew where we were, because I'd got the stationer to show me. That was Medeia, a little black square out there in the middle of a whole lot of nothing, but with two of the thick black lines that meant Imperial roads crossing right through it, and I figured that explained why Medeia was looking so new and shiny. The place we wanted to get to, the coast of Kekropia where we could find a boat to take us to Troia, was way the fuck at the other edge of the map.
I'd listened to Mavortian and Gideon arguing about where they wanted to end up, which was how I knew there was an ocean between us and Troia to begin with. Mavortian had been pushing hard for Aigisthos, and even an ignorant lowlife like me knew that was the capital of Kekropia, where the Emperor hung out. Mavortian said Aigisthos was the biggest port along the whole coast, and it was so busy nobody would even notice us.
But Gideon was dead set against it, and when you consider he felt like the whole damn trip was suicide, that had to mean something. He said caravans to the Bastion—and I'd found the big red circle like a plague boil that showed where the Bastion was—anyway, Gideon said caravans to the Bastion always left from Aigisthos, and there were Eusebians at the Emperor's court, and if there was anywhere in the east end of Kekropia where somebody was going to figure out what Felix was, Aigisthos was it. And besides, he said we were way south of Aigisthos and wouldn't do nothing but add to our travel time trying to get there. His choice was a place called Klepsydra.
I'd scanned down the coastline and found Aigisthos and Klepsydra. I'd been careful to get a map in Midlander, along of it having the same alphabet as Marathine, which Kekropian don't, and although I don't read much better than I sing, which ain't at all, I'd managed to spell out AIGISTHOS and KLEPSYDRA without asking Felix for help. I didn't want him gloating over me, and I knew he would.
As best I could tell, Klepsydra was pretty much due east of Medeia. And if the map was telling me the truth, the road we'd been following would take us there. A nice straight shot, and I wondered why it didn't make me feel better—aside from dragoons and hocuses and Kethe knew what all between us and it, I mean.
But at least it was something to aim for. We started out of Medeia first thing in the morning, before the sun was even all the way up. Stopped to rest at the first milestone, and I looked over at Felix and didn't much like what I saw.
"You okay?"

"Yes." But he didn't snap it at me the way he would when he
was
okay, and I thought, Fuck. Because he was going back down the well again, and I'd been hoping I'd have the other Felix, the topside Felix, for a couple days at least. When I started walking again, he followed me, and I knew he was down the well for sure, because he was hanging back. He had long legs and a fast stride. When he was in a good spell, he'd walk alongside me or even ahead of me if he got too fed up with my pace. But when he was down, he stayed back behind me, like he thought maybe I'd forget about him if I couldn't see him. It drove Mavortian stark barking mad, the way Felix would end up like three septad-feet behind the tired old mule we'd pooled our money for, because even Mavortian allowed as how he couldn't walk all the way across Kekropia. That mule didn't have but one speed, and that was somewhere between an amble and a funeral march, and there Felix would be, trailing along behind it like a stray dog scared somebody Would start chucking stones. And you couldn't make him catch up, neither. Topside or drowning, he hated to be touched, and when he was in the Well, he flinched anytime somebody got in striking distance, and that just plain did not help.

So I didn't say nothing and I didn't look back. I just kept walking heading east toward this place that Felix said was going to help him.
We landed a ride with a carter around about the septad-day. I held his horses' heads while he dealt with a stone that was giving his offside horse considerable trouble, and in return he said he'd take us to the next big town, a place called Hithe. So we sat in the back with bales and bales and bales of cloth, while the carter up front sang to his horses, and all the time I was so grateful I could have kissed him if it hadn't been for that being a really bad idea. Because it was sinking in deeper and deeper just how big Kekropia was and just how long it was going to take us to get across it. I mean, I'd known that all along, but I was only just now starting to
feel
it, like a weight on my shoulders making it hard to breathe and hard to think.
But one thing I knew whether I wanted to or not. I was going to have to start cardsharping again. Pickpocketing was just not going to work a second time. I could feel it, the way I used to be able to feel sometimes not to take a job no matter how much the guy was offering. I'd never argued with that feeling, so I didn't have proof about it, but on the other hand, I hadn't ended up in the Kennel, either, and some days that felt like proof enough. And I sure as fuck wasn't going to start arguing now. Cards were safe. I was good enough I probably wouldn't even have to cheat.
It wasn't nothing I was looking forward to, though. I mean, I actually like playing cards just as a way to pass the time, but once there's money involved it turns into a whole different thing. It's like I transform or something, like in a werewolf story. I can't even explain it, but a guy I played with once, back when I was sharping for Keeper, he said he thought I was going to kill him if that was what it took to keep him from winning, and that gets pretty close to it. And it ain't about the money. I mean, it ain't the money I
want
. It's just that if there's money riding on it… Well, that's why I don't play for money except when I absolutely got to, because it feels like the kind of thing that's going to kill you if you give it its head.
But sometimes you ain't got no choice, and I wasn't so high-minded as to let me and Felix starve to death just because I was looking at something I didn't want to do. I just hated the shit out of it, that was all, and it didn't help none that Felix was sitting there like he was scared I was going to smack him for breathing too loud. Don't get me wrong. He was a real prick when he was topside, and I wasn't even trying to pretend I thought that was because of his situation—which was damn nasty, to be fair about things. But that ain't what gave him that tongue like a flaying knife.
That was just how he was. But I would've put up with that all the way to Hell and back home the long way round, rather than the way he got when the madness was holding him under.
Not that I had any fucking choice about it.
Felix
I can feel Keeper's anger all around me like thunderclouds.
I didn't know he was Keeper at first, when he shook me awake in the dark, but then it all became just like the last time I had seen Keeper, the curt order to get ready to leave, the sounds of adults talking in the dark, the anger and impatience, Keeper cursing at all of us as he shoved us down the stairs, coughing and sobbing. We'd been only halfway down when the roof collapsed, and that was when Joline was pinned under a burning rafter and I'd dragged her out and she'd died in the middle of Rue Orphée. Keeper'd never made it out at all.
But now it has happened again, and this time it is Joline and the others who were lost. Keeper dragged me out alone, leaving the rest to burn. I rub the yellow and purple bruises on my wrist where his fingers had clamped like a vise, and that, too, is familiar; that is part of what Keeper is.
He has gone out. I am alone in our hotel room, light-headed with relief, able to breathe for the first time all day. I open the window for a moment, just to feel the bite of the night air against my face. I think that I will sleep, while he is gone and I know it is safe.
I lie down on the bed, stretch out as I cannot when he is here. The sheets are thin enough to be translucent, but they are clean and soft. Everything is quiet, peaceful; even my hands have stopped aching.
The desire for oblivion weighs my bones like lead, but sleep remains distant, unobtainable. I open my eyes. The single candle is still burning; the room is full of shadows, but there is no reason to be frightened. Keeper is away, and I am safe.
Except that I am not. There is something wrong, something in the air of the room that should not be there. Now I cannot keep my eyes closed; the shadows are too thick, and there is a tinge of blood in their blackness. My ears are thunderous with sounds I cannot quite hear.
I can't stay lying down; there is too much of the room I can't see. I bolt up off the bed and back into the corner nearest the candle.
Then I press my hands to my mouth to stifle a scream. I couldn't see what was wrong with the room because I was lying in it. A woman's ghost is lying on the bed, bruised, bleeding from bite marks and deep scratches, her eyes black, mindless pits of agony and terror. Her legs are spread, stiff and awkward, and her body is being slammed against the mattress in a fast, brutal rhythm. She is being raped, and I cannot see her rapist—her murderer, for I know she did not live through this. She died on this bed, died with some man's breath hot on her face, his semen poisoning her body.

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