Mélusine (9 page)

He paused, waiting for me to make some response, but the briars and the abyss were all that were in my head, and they gave no answers. Stephen's grip tightened on my coat, and he went on, his hatred staining both of us with carmine guilt. "We haven't been this vulnerable since the days of Lucien Kingdom-Breaker. Every wizard in the Mirador has been working desperately to shore up our defenses since we realized what you had done. I shouldn't have taken Lady Vida away from that, but I
thought
her services as a member of the Curia would be required to hold you. I
thought
you'd put up a fight." He stopped, staring at me; the red blackness of his eyes was making me dizzy. "Why did you do it?" He shook me, a sharp, hard snap like a terrier killing a rat. I wished it had killed me. "Damn you,
why?"

I could not answer him; he shoved me away in disgust, sending me sprawling, and said, "Get this vermin away from me. And make sure you tie his hands."

The riders surrounded me, tying my hands, pulling the ribbon out of my hair, shoving me roughly up onto a horse.

"Do you have him, Vida?" the bear demanded.

The lady is an obsidian statue with eyes of green stone. "He's taken phoenix. He won't be able to concentrate to work magic until—"

The obsidian statue bowed her head. "Yes, my lord. I can hold him until we return to the Mirador."

"Then, by the powers and saints, let us ride."

I could feel their revulsion, Stephen's and Vida's and Luke's and Esmond's and everyone's, and I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. I did not want Stephen's excoriating mockery, and that was all he would have for my tears. Hate splashed around the horse's hooves in oily pools. I shut my eyes and wished I knew how to pray.

try to pretend I am not here.

I can tell that time is passing because the city gets louder in my head. I can hear it screaming. And I can see it, getting bigger and bigger, like a tower of thunderclouds.

They stop at sunset. I am glad. I don't want to ride into the screaming city in the dark. They drag me off the horse. They are all monsters, with the heads of owls and cats. They are all drenched in blood; they leave trails of it behind them when they move. I wonder what they have killed.

They speak to each other; their voices are like breaking glass. Then they are around me again, their hands on my arms. The bear-headed monster is not with them. I can't see him, or the woman made of obsidian. I try to cry out, but I have no voice. They are pushing me and dragging me, and I don't know where we are going, or why. All I can see is blood and broken glass.

Then the ground is gone, and the air. It is all water. Water and hands. Hands gripping my shoulders, my arms, hands knotted in my hair. The hands hold me under the water, until my lungs are burning and blackness is swallowing the world. Then they pull me up. Mud under my hands. I am gasping for air; I can't see anything.

I hear a voice, as cruel as glass, "Can he swim?"

"Nah."

"Then throw him in."

Hands haul me upright. There are too many of them. The ground is gone; everything is gone. The water is cold, black, like hatred. I fight it desperately, screaming, and I know the monsters are laughing at me. Then there are hands again, holding me under, dragging me down. I am screaming and screaming. And then the ground is under me again, and the hands are pushing me down, like Malkar, and I fight them, clawing and biting. They hit me until I can't breathe and can't scream and can't fight, and they hit me and hit me.

And then the hands are gone, and a monster is roaring. Different hands come and drag me upright. For a moment I hear Stephen's voice, "… think I want to try any of you idiots for
his
murder?" And then we are going in a direction I know is away from the river, and I am shaking and can't stop.

Then the bear tells me to sit down, and they tie my hands and feet and drop a blanket over me.

The obsidian woman gives me one flat, indifferent glance and looks away.

After a time, I sleep.

My dreams are all of broken glass and deathly water.

Mildmay

Min-Terris's courtyard was packed when I got there, even more so than normal, which was saying something. People were talking about the Mirador and the Virtu and the hocus along with all the usual talk about getting laid and calling people out and where to score good spiderweb. I said " 'Scuse me" a lot, working through the crowd, looking for Miss Thomson. It was half an hour after we'd agreed to meet that I finally spotted her. She was still in her shop dress, like she'd been the day before.

"Let's get out of the crowd," I said. "C'mon."

We started back toward Rue St. Bonamy. About halfway there, between a little gang of hookers in black velvet and a couple of muscle-men who were probably there with a pusher, Miss Thomson caught at my arm. "Sorry," she said, "but I'm afraid if I lose track of you now, I really
will
have to go by myself."

"It's okay." Her perfume smelled like summer. "C'mon," I said again.

Out on the street, she let go of my arm. We started for Ruthven and the Boneprince. After a block or two, Miss Thomson said, "Do you mind if I talk?"

"Mind?"

"I know I chatter too much. But I'm nervous. And I'd feel better if I… if, you know…"

"Kethe, I don't mind. If you need to shut up, I'll say so."

"Thanks," she said, only a little snarky. She talked the rest of the way to the Boneprince, not minding that I didn't say nothing back. And I could see that she glanced at me, like we were really having a conversation, and like my face didn't bother her.

She talked about her job. It was boring, she said, and she'd quit as soon as she'd found "something better." I knew what she meant, but I didn't say so. And she told me more about the hocus that broke the Virtu. She knew a woman who'd seen him once, in one of them flash jewelry stores so far up the Road of Carnelian they're practically in the Plaza del'Archimago. "He came in with
Lord Shannon
," Miss Thomson said, in a kind of awed whisper. "Minna says he dyes his hair bright red."

Powers, who'd want to? I thought. But I didn't say that, neither.

"And she says his eyes don't match. One's blue and the other's
yellow
. She says she was scared to death the whole time that he'd hex her."

"Did he?"

"I don't think so. But they were there for an hour and a half, and Lord Shannon was looking at stickpins while this wizard, Lord Felix, was sort of wandering around. You know, the way people do in stores when they don't want to buy anything. And then finally, Lord Shannon says, 'Felix, what do you think of this one?' And Lord Felix says, 'Darling, I think they're all hideous, but buy whichever one you like.' And then they left without buying anything. Minna said that was hex enough."

"Oh," I said. I knew Lord Shannon was molly—he wasn't at no pains to hide it and hadn't been since he finished his second septad—and I'd heard rumors he was sleeping with a hocus. Mostly, people look the other way from the Teverii's love affairs. It's polite—and it's less likely to get you sent to the sanguette. After the Golden Bitch, the whole city is pretty damn twitchy about that kind of thing. And I guessed that explained why the Lord Protector was always fighting with this Lord Felix. The Lord Protector didn't like molls.

I told Miss Thomson when we crossed into Ruthven that we'd be reaching the Boneprince in another couple blocks. She fished in her reticule and brought out a pair of them sunflower-yellow kidskin gloves that were all the rage this season. If I'd chucked a stone just right in Min-Terris's courtyard, I could've bounced it off five women wearing gloves that exact color.

"No matter what you think, I'm not a
total
flat," she said and smiled at me in a way that made my stomach turn over.

"There's the Boneprince," I said, pointing up ahead where the spikes on the gate stuck up over the buildings. There was a ring of vacant lots around the Boneprince, like a moat—or the mange—and it was easy to see.

"Why is it called that?" Miss Thomson said. " 'The Boneprince'?"

"Where're you
from
?" I said without meaning to.

"Wraith," she said, like she was daring me to make something of it.

"Oh. Well, okay. It's Adrian's Park, right?"

"Right."

"Well, what Adrian's famous for, in Mélusine, is fucking up his chance to murder his brother."

"Excuse me?"

"Him and Richard were twins. Mathurin the Open-Handed's sons. Richard was older by like a quarter hour. So, when he finished his third septad, Adrian had a pretty good go at getting rid of Richard—him standing between Adrian and the throne and all. Only some people, when they tell the story, they say Adrian didn't care about being king. He wanted to kill Richard because Richard was telling lies about him to Mathurin. Richard was called the Visionary, when
he
was king."

"Oh," said Miss Thomson.

We were at the gates now, black and awful like dragon's wings. I stopped where I was, to finish the story.

"So, anyway, Adrian tries and fails, and they arrest him. They got to, you know, but you got to pity the guys who drew the short straw on that one. And he manages to kill himself before they figure out what to do with him, or who's got the right to try him, or anything. Richard brought him poison."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Some people say it was to show he forgave Adrian, and some people say it was an apology, and there's some people say it's 'cause Richard knew which side his bread was buttered on, and wanted Adrian's mouth shut permanent-like."

"That's horrible."

"Some people got nasty minds." I shrugged. "But Mathurin didn't care. He'd had the parks built to celebrate their second septad, and now he said Adrian's Park was going to be a cemetery for murderers and heretics. Adrian was the first burial. That's why it's the Boneprince."

She signed herself, a religious gal's reflex, and I decided I wouldn't tell her about the ghosts.

It was way worse at night.

And then there were the kids' graves. Not even in the gates yet, and I was already tensing up. About a Great Septad ago, Lady Jane had decided to clean up the Lower City and get rid of all the kept-thieves. Kethe only knows what put that into her head, since you didn't need but a thimble-worth of common sense to see it wasn't going to work. But the Dogs rounded up a bunch of kept-thieves—even a keeper or two—and gave them all to Madame Sanguette. Don't know what happened to the keepers' bodies, but the kept-thieves were buried in the Boneprince. Their graves lined the way from the one and only gate to the statue of Prince Adrian in the middle of everything, like the Boneprince was still a park. No gravestones or nothing. Nobody remembered their names. Nobody'd thought to ask before they whacked their heads off. There were never flowers on the kept-thieves' graves, although sometimes there'd be flowers left for Marius Leeth, an assassin who'd been in the Boneprince for ten septads, or even the poisoner Quinquill, who'd died in the days of the last Ophidian king.

Everywhere else in the Boneprince, they'd tore up the marble that had paved the paths. They left it there, though, on the path from the gate to the statue, between the kept-thieves' graves. People called it the Road of Marble, as a sort of nasty joke. Didn't matter where you went in the Boneprince, you'd feel yourself being watched, but it was always worst along there, and that night, powers and saints preserve me, it was like getting hit with a sandbag. We were wrong and stupid to be here, and if it hadn't been Vey Coruscant we were meeting—and we were even stupider to be doing that—I would have said,
Let's ditch this and go get drunk someplace, okay
? But no matter what you thought she was up to, you didn't break a date with Queen Blood.

"Dennis?" Miss Thomson said. "Do you feel something… odd?"

"Ghosts," I said, too nervous to lie. "Watching."

"
Ghosts
? For real?"

"Yeah. If we're lucky, they won't do nothing but watch." The kind of luck I was talking about was the kind of luck that lets one cat escape from a septad dogs, and that kind of luck don't happen to people very often. I mean, Vey Coruscant had a reason to be here, and I didn't think it was a reason me and Miss Thomson were going to like. And I couldn't help thinking, us walking down the Road of Marble like two stupid kids in a fairy tale, that Brinvillier Strych was buried somewhere in the Boneprince. And, alive or dead, Brinvillier Strych—him the Lower City called Lord Bonfire—was bad news. Even worse news if that had anything to do with Vey Coruscant wanting to meet here. Fuck me for a half-wit dog, I thought, how the fuck did I get into this?

But I knew the answer to that. I'd fallen for Ginevra Thomson's big blue eyes, and the way she brought her chin up when she was facing something she was scared of. Stupid, Milly-Fox. Very stupid.

We got to the statue at last—even two minutes walking through the Boneprince at night was like one of them Great-Septad-long journeys in the stories about Mark Polaris. The statue was bronze, life-size, bolted to a big square piece of granite. Originally, it'd been gilded, but thief-keepers liked to send in their best kids to scrape the gilding off, mostly right around the septad-night. That separated the sheep from the wolves in a hurry. If you didn't come screaming out of the Boneprince within a septad-minute of being sent in, you had the nerves for cat burglary—and worse things, too, if your keeper was into those, like mine was.