The Mirador (11 page)

“Oh, powers,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you, or nothing. I just get so damn tired.”

“Gideon thinks,” Felix said, “that you
should
blame me.”

“Fuck, I can’t help what
Gideon
thinks.”

He laughed, but said, “What if Gideon’s right?”

In pure desperation, I said, “We’re gonna be late if’n we don’t hurry.”

He looked at me for a moment, and then let it go. “Come on, then. And the unadulterated ‘if,’ if you please.”

Corinna was sallow and moaning softly to herself when I stuck my head around her door at nine. But she was up and dressed and applying kohl carefully to her eyelids; she’d do fine.

“You don’t need to say it,” she said without turning from her reflection.

“Yes, well, if you aren’t careful, it’s Mrs. Angharad who’ll be saying it—to the accompaniment of an eviction notice, I suspect.”

“Oh damn,” Corinna said and grimaced, although I wasn’t sure if it was at herself or me or the absent Mrs. Angharad.

“She’s going to let it go this time. And next time, you get to deal with her yourself.”

“Oh, Tabby. I
am
sorry.” She turned and rose, a single graceful motion, and crossed the room to lay one small hand apologetically on my forearm. “I was just . . . Do you really think Jean-Soleil will be able to find a way out?” At close range, that beseeching look was hellishly effective—and I still didn’t know how she did it. Corinna was three years older than me and more than capable of looking after herself.

“Like I said, my money’s on him. After all, he’ll never let himself be beaten by—”

“Dolly Vermin,” she finished with me, grinning. Jean-Soleil’s contempt for the impresario of the Cockatrice was legendary.

“Can I have Susan’s letter? I’m going to try to catch Jean-Soleil as soon as he gets back.”

“Oh, of course! Now where . . . ?” She frowned around her room with its darkly gaudy fabric jungle, then knelt and sorted through yesterday’s dress and petticoats as deftly as she had probably once picked the pockets of drunken or sleeping tricks. She emerged triumphant with Susan’s battered letter, which I tucked into my own bodice.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, although she was clearly hoping the answer would be no.

“No. Just be on time at noon, right?”

“You got it, lovey. Good luck.”

I made one of her gargoyle faces back at her and left with her laughter—her well-bred gurgling chuckle.

The day was brisk but sunny—good weather for the end of Eré, and the five blocks to the Empyrean was a pleasant walk. The brothels, curtains drawn, were still sleeping. The people out on the streets of Pharaohlight at this hour were dairymen and coal carriers, scullery maids and apprentice boys running errands, a woman hawking sachets of dried lavender and sage.

I caught myself thinking—for the first time in years— Hallam would like this. It was true; Hallam had always loved going out into Lamia, talking to the traders—everyone from the merchants from Aigisthos to the peddlers with their cheap ribbons and packets of pins. Even inside the Bastion, he had always been talking to the maids, the cooks, the caefidi, wanting to know where they were from, why they’d come to the Bastion, whether they’d spoken Midlander or Kekropian at home, if they’d left family behind. I’d lied to him, of course, but it was how we’d become lovers, Hallam’s hunger for knowledge, for connection, for
touch
, meeting my then quite desperate need for affection. He’d never backed away from my need; he’d given of himself as generously as rain gives itself to parched earth. Even when he’d realized I’d lied to him, as he inevitably had, he hadn’t withdrawn from me, but had continued to love me and to share his own abundant warmth.

Stop it, I said to myself, as loud as a shout in the confines of my skull. I’d taught myself years ago not to think about Hallam. It would have killed me if I’d let it, so I’d shoved it all in a box. Closed it. Locked it. And made it
stay
locked.

I had done it, and I would be damned if I was going to do it all over again.

I breathed deeply, straightened my spine, cloaked myself in Mehitabel Parr the actress—not any of those other Mehitabel Parrs who might still dream of Hallam’s gentle eyes—and went to meet Jean-Soleil.

I waited for Jean-Soleil on the sidewalk in front of the Empyrean. Although he walked out to Sauvage, Jean-Soleil hitched a ride back to Mélusine with his wife’s brother, the mayor of Sauvage, who brought the village’s trading goods to the Neuvième market in Gatehouse. Jean-Soleil always returned punctually at ten.

At five minutes of ten, Jean-Soleil’s stocky figure came into view, swaggering up Paixe Street as if he owned all of it, and not just the forty-nine feet of sidewalk in front of the Empyrean. His stride faltered as he caught sight of me, and by the time he came up to me, his face was grim.

“I know you’re not standing out here just because you couldn’t wait to see me again—what is it?”

“Bartholmew and Susan,” I said and stopped, hoping he could fill in the blanks for himself.

“Verb, please?”

“Have deserted to the Cockatrice.”

“
Both
of them?”

“Here.” I gave him Susan’s letter. He raised an eyebrow over its crumpled and obviously already read condition, but opened it and scanned the contents.

I knew when he’d reached the part about
Edith Pelpheria
; he snorted and said, “I believe I’d pay to see the silly chit muff Edith.” He thought a moment, and suddenly his face lit up like a hundred-candle chandelier. “Fancy a go at her, my Belle?”

“What if it’s just a rumor?”

“Then we revive
Edith Pelpheria
with an actress up to its weight. No harm done.”

“Yes!” I said, and he laughed. Then my common sense caught up with me, and I said, “We’re still a second principal and an ingenue short.”

“Don’t worry about the second principal,” he said over his shoulder, unlocking the theater doors.

“And the ingenue?”

“We hold an open audition. Do you know how many young women in this city are panting at a chance to join the Empyrean? ”

“No,” I said. He held the door for me and I stepped into the warm darkness of the lobby.

“Neither do I,” Jean-Soleil said. “But we can find out.”

By noon, when we gathered in the largest rehearsal room, everyone had heard the news. We were a solemn little group. I didn’t know about Corinna, but I was thinking about those costumes in her room, made for actors who might not even have gotten the chance to wear them. Corinna had told me the story of the Merveille’s ingenue, Argine Pettifer, who had thrown herself into the Sim a week after the theater closed. She was now said to haunt the tenement that had gone in after the building burned down in the fires three years ago.

Morbid and unedifying, I said to myself sternly. Besides which, the Empyrean isn’t going to fold.

Jean-Soleil had assimilated the disaster and bounced back so quickly that I half guessed he had been expecting it. The open audition, as he said, was good publicity and easy to reshape as the Empyrean looking for fresh blood. “Not that anyone will
entirely
believe it, but if
Edith
comes off well—which it will— it will be clear that we are not pining for Madame Dravanya.”

“No,” I said, deliberately audible, and then did a double take, as if I hadn’t meant to say it. I felt the mood lighten, and Jean-Soleil gave me one of his twinkly little grins.

“The question is,” he said, looking around the circle, “what are we to do in the meantime? I’m afraid
The Wrong Brother
is, er, right out.”

We sat and thought. The six of us, with Bartholmew and Susan gone, were the core of the Empyrean troupe: Drin for the heroes and lovers, Jean-Soleil for kings and cuckolds and enraged fathers, me for heroines, Corinna for confidantes and nurses and mothers. Jabez Meridian, our principal comedian, played fools and clowns, and Levry Tannenhouse, a mild, cherubic little man with the shape and general demeanor of a small tame bear, seconded him when necessary and played servants and messengers when not.

“The Soldier of Ochimar,”
Drin suggested.

Jean-Soleil shook his head. “We’re looking to replace the Trevisan, not
Berinth the King
. Comedy, Drin my boy. Something to make
Edith
look even more spectacular.”

Drin made a face at him, and we all thought some more.

Then Jabez said,
“The Misadventures of Mardette.”

Corinna laughed—and it was the raucous bark from last night. “You must be out of your mind, Jabez. I’m too damn old.”

“No, you ain’t,” Jabez said.

“What are we talking about?” I said.

Jean-Soleil was eyeing Corinna speculatively. “It’s called a trouser-farce, Belle. They’re an old Mélusinien tradition.”

“That didn’t exactly help,” I said.

“Look,” Corinna said, half exasperated, half amused. “You get a young, pretty, abundantly stacked girl, and you get her in trousers, and a shirt she can spend the play half falling out of, and then you put her in the stupidest, silliest plot you can think of, and pretend that nobody can tell she’s a girl.”

“Lots of molly jokes,” Levry said.

“That’s what I started out doing,” Corinna said, “but I’m too old. I’ve hit my fifth septad, Jean-Soleil.”

“Couldn’t I do it?” I said. Not that I was all that much younger than Corinna, but I had not lived as hard as she had, and I could still pass for twenty-five.

They all looked shocked, and there was a confusing babble of negatives.

“It’s not for serious actresses, lovey,” Corinna said over the rest of them.

“No reputable tragedienne would dream of appearing in a trouser-farce,” Jean-Soleil said. “You’ll have to sit this one out, Belle.”

“We’re not going to
do
it?” Corinna said.

“Of course we are,” Jean-Soleil said. “It just takes you and Jabez and Levry, and it’s not like it needs complicated sets or anything.”

“And it won’t take us more’n a day to get up to speed, even with Levry learning his lines,” Jabez said. “When’s the last time we did
Mardette
?”

“’Bout a septad,” Corinna said, and as if that harder laugh had brought it, the Mélusinien drawl was back in her voice. “But, yeah, I could still do her in my sleep. All right, damn you. But they’re going to hiss me off the stage.”

“No they won’t,” Jean-Soleil said. “Wait and see.”

Drin had that look in his eye, the one that said he wanted to corner me, although whether it was to make a pass or just to whine I couldn’t tell and didn’t want to know. I went to ground in my dressing room and discovered I had escaped from wolves to be trampled by buffalo: Vulpes was waiting for me. I wished I could have pretended it was a surprise.

“Good afternoon, Cressida,” he said.

“Lieutenant Vulpes,” I said and dropped a curtsy. He was clearly wondering whether it was ironic or not, and that was fine with me.

I told him what I had learned from Peter and Antony. I hated being glad to please him, but there was no denying the rush of gratitude and relief when he nodded and said, “Very interesting. And yet—why is Lord Stephen’s marriage of such concern? He
has
an heir.” And when I didn’t answer immediately, he frowned at me. “Doesn’t he?”

“I . . . don’t know.”

“It is a simple yes or no question, maselle,” he said crossly, and I thought, If you believe such a thing exists, you don’t know anything about Marathine politics.

I said, “As I understand it, Lord Shannon’s position is ambiguous. ”

I was even more gratified by his obvious bafflement than I’d been by his approval. “He’s not . . . that is, I understood that Lord Gareth had been
married
twice.”

Prude, flinching from the word
bastard
. “Lord Shannon is perfectly legitimate,” I said, “but his mother is the only annemer in the history of Mélusine to be burned for treason.”

“Oh,” said Vulpes.

“I don’t understand the legalities of the situation—”

“Find out.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I imagine you heard me perfectly well. And I’m sure you know who to ask. And how.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, and didn’t let my voice twist. “But I thought you were interested in Gideon.”

“You don’t think this is an avenue worth pursuing?”

Insecurity is a terrible trait in a spy. “How should I know?” I said, and I did smirk at his suspicious glance.

“Find out about Shannon Teverius,” he said through his teeth and flung himself out the door.

“Have a pleasant day, lieutenant,” I said under my breath and prepared for my next move.

I was itchily aware that I had not treated Mildmay very well over the past few days. So tonight I really ought to go up to the Mirador and see Mildmay. And it would be easy to ask him about Lord Shannon, especially with the news of Lord Stephen’s plans as an excuse. And I didn’t have to worry that Mildmay might tell someone I’d been asking. He wouldn’t.

I took a hansom to Chevalgate and tipped a page a demigorgon to find out where Mildmay was. It was the better part of an hour before the boy came panting back to report that Lord Felix Harrowgate was in a meeting of the Sponsors’ Board and that the meeting should be done by four o’clock. I had him take me to Felix’s suite to wait. Mildmay would just have to cope if Felix and I got into it.