Corambis (21 page)

of her skirt.
“Gracious,” I said. “What melodrama.”
“And they got a specific place they’re going to fetch you from, and you’re

not to know anybody’s name— there’s gonna be a bunch of ’em— and—” I cut her off. “Corbie. Do any of their demands involve necrophilia?” “Nec- what?”
“Having sex with dead people.”
“There’s a
word
for that? Lumme. No. No sex with dead people.” “There’s words for all kinds of things. How about coprophilia or urophilia?”

“Well, I know what the ‘philia’ is now, but what about the rest?”

“Shit and piss,” I said, just to see the look on her face— which was entirely worth it.
“You’re making that up,” she accused me.
“No, actually, I’m not. But they’re things I won’t do. Like necrophilia.”
“Well, they don’t want anything like
that
.”
“And I don’t do women.”
“I told ’em that, too. They didn’t seem to care.”
“Then they can have as many peculiar demands as they want.”
“All right,” said Corbie. “I’m gonna take you, and that blindfold, to Our Lady of Fogs at twenty o’clock to night.”
“In the middle of your shift?”
“My night off.”
“I didn’t know you had nights off.”
“I got lucky,” she said sourly. “So I’ll sit with Mildmay again.”
“Corbie, are you—”
“It’s fine,” she said. “We’re gonna make a boatload of money to night anyway. So it’s just fine.”

I’d assumed Our Lady of Fogs was a church, but it turned out to be a sanctuary just outside St. Melior.
“A what?” I said.
“A sanctuary,” Corbie said.
“I heard you. But what do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? A sanctuary. Where you bury dead people.”
“You mean a cemetery.”
“We’re not Caddovians,” she said with tremendous dignity. “A
sanctuary
. With an intended and a . . . what’s the word?”
“I can truthfully say I have no idea.”
She made a face at me. “An anchor? Does that sound right? He lives walled up in the chapel.”
“Anchorite.”
“I knew it was something like anchor.”
“So you bury people there, and there’s an anchorite. But why is it a good meeting place?”
“It’s
sacred
. No fighting. Nobody can be arrested while they’re there. People swear contracts there for all kinds of things. Get wills witnessed. Business deals.”
“
Business
deals?”
“What?” she said, frowning.
“That doesn’t sound very sacred.”
“You break a swear to dead people and we’ll talk about sacred. So, you know, nobody asks any questions.” And at that point, I didn’t feel up to pursuing her logic any further.
Corbie was as broke as I was— her word was “skint”— so we walked from the Fiddler’s Fox down the Crait, across the causeway, and through St. Melior, a journey which took us a couple of hours. Corbie pointed out various sights of interest as we passed them, including the railway station, two churches, and the site, she informed me, of the murder of Jessmond Tuvey some fifty years ago.
“And we care about this because . . . ?”
So she sang me the ballad all the rest of the way to Our Lady of Fogs.
It was not at all what I thought of as a cemetery. The burial plots were not marked with headstones or obelisks or the more terrifying statuary of the wealthy Mélusinien tombs. At first, I thought the graves weren’t marked at all, but Corbie knelt down and showed me that the brick paths were edged on both sides with granite and bolted to the granite were plates engraved with dates and names. “But how do you know who’s buried where?” I said.
“That’s the chapel- intended’s job. The back wall of the chapel is the map, and he keeps it accurate. He has to, for the prayers.”
“Prayers?”
The look she gave me was almost scornful. “That’s what he’s
for.
He prays for the dead.”
“And nobody else sees the map?”
“It’s
sacred
,” she said again.
“What if you want to find somebody?”
I was half- expecting her to say,
Why would you want to?
but this apparently was a commonality between Corambin and Marathine culture, for she said, “You ask the chapel- intended. There’s a slot. And if you can’t write it yourself, you ask the sanctuary- intended and he writes it for you.”
“The sanctuary- intended?”
“Yeah. You know, he does the funerals and weeds the grass and takes food to the chapel- intended. And he witnesses.” She waved an arm generally around us, at the merchants’ stalls and food carts and clusters of people talking heatedly or arguing even more heatedly. At intervals there were waist- high slate topped pillars, which I realized were meant for people to write on.
“Everything is for sale,” I muttered.
“What?” said Corbie.
“Nothing. What do we do now?”
What we did was pool what little money we had and buy dinner in the form of a stuffed bread and two cups of the most vilely stewed tea I’d ever tasted, which I used to wash down the hecate. When we’d returned the pottery cups to the cart, Corbie insisted on going to put five carefully counted out pennies into the “intended’s box,” a locked box with a slot in the top where those so minded could make donations toward the upkeep of the anchorite Intended of Fogs. “It’s why Charity’s trying to get rid of the thrustle, you know,” Corbie said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Corbie rolled her eyes, although I wasn’t sure whether it was at me or at the House of Charity. “Part of this big argument with Patience that’s been going on forever and a day. Everybody knows it’s a thrustle for the anchorite, so they get rid of the thrustle. It’s just mean, is what it is. But anyway, it’s five of twenty, so you’d better put that blindfold on.”
“Are we in the right place?”
“This is the chapel,” Corbie said, waving her hand at the peaked- roofed little building behind us.
“That’s it? And somebody
lives
in there?”
“This intended’s only been there four or five indictions. But the old intended, he was in there nearly seven wheels. If he’d made it, they would’ve made him a saint.”
I wondered, stupidly and belatedly, if the intended could hear us. I’d read about anchorites, but I’d never actually imagined it, what it would be like to live in a space smaller than the room Mildmay and I shared at the Fiddler’s Fox, knowing that one was trapped there until death. I swallowed hard and didn’t ask Corbie if anchorites ever changed their minds.
Instead, I put the blindfold on. I couldn’t manage the knot behind my head, my fingers refusing to bend the way I needed. “Here, let me,” Corbie said, and I went obediently down on one knee so she could reach it. And tried hard not to think about Corbie as a tarquin.
She was very careful, tying the knot firmly but making sure none of my hair was caught in it. “All right,” she said finally, and I stood up again, feeling conspicuous and foolish and as if what I was about to do had to be emblazoned on me, as lurid as the red stained glass shrines in the Arcane, that people burned candles in to ward off plague. Corbie’s narrow, chilly hand slipped into mine, and after a moment, recognizing the generosity of her impulse, I squeezed back.
And a man’s voice said, “I see he obeys instructions well.”
I tensed, wringing a faint yelp out of Corbie before I remembered to release my clutch on her hand. She said, “You the party looking to hire a shadow for to night?”
“Yes. He is as unmistakable as you said.”
“One of a kind,” Corbie said, and I was simultaneously mortified and queerly warmed by the pride in her voice. “Banshee up front and you pay him and bring him back here with the catmint tomorrow morning. Right?”
“Right you are,” said the man. “Come along, shadow.” And a stranger’s hand, broad and sweaty and unpleasant, engulfed mine. I was on the verge of balking when Corbie said, just loud enough for me to hear, “We’ll be fine to night, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” And I remembered why I was doing this.
The stranger led me rather more swiftly than I was comfortable with, and I had no concentration to spare to wonder where we were going or even to think— much—about the people who might be watching. I didn’t think he led me very far, though, before he said, “Up you get,” and guided me impatiently into a closed carriage of some kind, about the size of a hansom, as best I could tell. He climbed in after me and thumped on one of the walls or the roof, and we set off with a clatter of hooves.
I knew that if I tried to speak to him, the man would merely rebuff me, and I had not the slightest desire to speak to him in any event. I folded my hands in my lap and sat perfectly still. Malkar had taught me how to wait.

I’m in the Boneprince. It’s the septad- night and black as the inside of a black cat in a mine shaft. I don’t want to be here. I know something bad is going down. I can feel it, and besides the wolves are everywhere with their eyes like cinders.

Iron- black Wolves. You can’t kill ’em, you can’t stop ’em. In the story, the children trick them with a deer’s heart and then with a crow’s heart and finally the little girl takes her own heart out of her chest and throws it into the river, and the Iron- black Wolves all leap into the river after it, and the water puts out the fire that lights their eyes and makes them go. But they ain’t dead, the story says. They’re just waiting for somebody to strike a lucifer for ’em. And the little girl don’t have a heart no more, which ain’t exactly what you’d call a happy ending.

And the wolves are fucking
everywhere
. And they’re waiting. I hear footsteps, and I know this is who they’re waiting for. Boot heels, a light, fast stride, and then I see the witchlights, green and dancing. It’s Felix, and the wolves are waiting for him. I try and call out to him, warn him, but I can’t. I can’t even move. I’m made of stone. All I can do is watch as he comes in the gate, starts up the Road of Marble, and all the wolves get up to meet him. And the stupid fuck doesn’t even run. He just stands there and holds something out to them, and just before the first one gets to him, I realize it’s his heart.

I could tell when we crossed the causeway again and restrained myself from saying something sarcastic. It was no business of mine how these people chose to manage their affairs, and they were certainly not paying me to have opinions.

Perhaps it was the blindfold making the hecate seem more than usually obtrusive to night, but I could feel my magic being removed from me, stifling gauze wrapping around me one layer at a time, and the light- headedness I was used to was very near to vertigo. I folded the fingers of my right hand under my left, so that I could dig my nails into my palm without the man seeing. I missed the sharp bite of my rings. But I stayed calm.

When the carriage stopped, I heard the door open; then one set of hands pushed me from one side and two more grabbed me and pulled from the other. Essentially, I fell out of the carriage, and they made only token efforts at catching me. I ended on my knees, with hands bruisingly tight on my shoulders holding me up.

“So,” said a new voice, and I was losing track of how many of them there were. “This is our shadow. Take his clothes off, and bring him in so we can see what we’re getting.”

I realized just barely in time that if I resisted, they would simply tear my clothes off me, and this was my only remaining coat. I cooperated, as much as I could when they seemed actively to want me to fight them, and I was naked and shivering in very short order. We were still outdoors, but from the lack of other sounds, I guessed it was a closed courtyard. The hands hauled me to my feet and dragged me, giving me no chance to walk, and then the surface changed beneath my feet, from cobbles to something slick and cold, marble maybe, and the hands shifted and shoved me forward. I staggered, nearly fell, but managed, just barely, to keep my feet.

Someone said from behind me, “Blessed Lady! Look at this!” I flinched, exactly as I would have from a blow. Someone touched my back, high on the shoulder where I could still feel it, and their fingers skated down, tracing the scar tissue into the desolation.
“Bring that candlestick over here,” someone said, and there was no use in telling myself to hold still. I lurched away from them, turning, trying to find somewhere I could hide myself from their avid eyes and greedy hands. But there was nowhere. No shelter, no cover, no kind darkness, only the darkness I was trapped in.
“Well,” said someone. He didn’t sound distressed in the slightest. Pleased. A cat finding that its prey has a spark of life left in it after all. “I wasn’t expecting to need the shackles so early in the eve ning.”
I forced myself to stop, to straighten. To stand still even as I heard their feet coming toward me and felt the greedy, grasping heat they brought with them. “I’m sorry. I was—”
I was backhanded across the face, staggered, but kept my feet. “You were not given permission to speak, shadow. Now. Hold
still
.”
I swallowed hard, braced myself as best I could. Hands patted my back and haunches, ran over my chest and stomach. Someone’s fingers caught my jaw, tilted my head. “Almost as pretty as a girl.”
“Trust me,” said someone, “you won’t be disappointed.”
Someone pinched my left nipple, hard, and I yelped.
“Responsive,” said someone, and a hand tugged gently at my sex, while someone else twisted my right nipple. I flinched, but my sex stirred.
“Let’s get him down,” someone said. Someone’s hand fisted in my hair, dragging me in a new direction. There were hands everywhere, shoving, pinching, pulling, patting. My breath was coming fast and panicky, but there were too many of them. I couldn’t fight them. I couldn’t escape and— I remembered, desperately clinging to the present, to the rational reasons I had agreed to this— if I didn’t do this, they wouldn’t pay me, and I couldn’t pay Practitioner Druce or Mrs. Lettice, couldn’t keep Mildmay safe.
Stairs, and it was only the press of bodies that kept me from falling. Stairs and stairs, slick and shallow, then rougher and deeper, and it was getting colder; I didn’t know now whether I was shivering with cold or fear or the twist of arousal in the pit of my stomach.
Then the hands jerked me to a halt. “This is our throne,” said someone. “Lie down on your belly. Spread yourself.” I lay down, extended my arms and legs, tried not to flinch at the coldness of metal against my ankles and wrists, at the sound of the shackles closing.
“Bring the candelabra,” said someone, and even through the blindfold I saw the dazzlement of light, was flooded with it. I lay still, tried not to feel their bodies near mine, their hands on the parts of my back that were still sensate.
“What happened to you?” someone asked lazily. I remembered, and choked on a laugh that wanted to be a scream, the story I’d told Shannon, the Caloxan disease I’d claimed I’d suffered as a toddler. I’d never imagined, spinning that extravagant lie, that I would be answering that same question
in
Caloxa, never imagined that the recoil could hurt so much.
A hand in my hair, dragging my head back. “You were asked a question, shadow.”
“A nun’s scourge,” I said, my voice thin and tight with the strain.
“A what?”
“It’s a kind of small whip.”
“A
crop
did this?”
“I was a child,” I said and gasped with relief as my head was released. I wouldn’t have to tell them about the treatments for adhesions, which gave me freedom of movement but left scars of their own.
“A child?” And someone’s fingers were moving lower, tracing across my right buttock and hip. “How old were you, shadow, when you lost your virginity?”
“Eleven,” I said, and if I had not been shackled down, I would have curled up, no matter how futile it was.
A murmur. Someone was running a finger slowly, one at a time, down the knobs of my spine. “And what about the tattoos? They mark you as a magician, right?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t going to insist on proper nomenclature.
Someone reached and wrenched my left hand over, exposing the palm; my fingers curled futilely, but I couldn’t protect myself, not even in that smallest of ways.
“Barbaric,” someone muttered.
Someone was still tracing my spine; he reached my tailbone. He rested his hand flat and said, “Bring me the oil.”
My hips jerked helplessly, and he laughed. “Does that idea frighten you, shadow? Or are you excited?”
Please don’t make that a question I have to answer. And he didn’t, exactly. His hand slid lower, between my thighs, exploring my sex. I squeezed my eyes shut behind the blindfold, clamped my lower lip between my teeth. But I had been
trained
for this, by every man who had ever touched me, and my traitorous body responded.
“Oh, this one’s a slut,” he said triumphantly, and my face burned with humiliation even as my sex hardened against his hand. “Get your hips up, slut. Let the others see what you are.”
There was some play in the chains, enough that I could get my knees under me. I kept my head and shoulders down, knowing that it made my position all the more obscene but needing the illusory protection of the padding pressed against my cheekbone.
More hands. My teeth sank farther into my lip as I fought back the urge to scream at them, to tell them to get their fucking hands off me. Laughter, and hands spreading my buttocks, oil dripping, horrible and slimy, and I bucked once because it was either that or fly apart, although it achieved nothing.
“He’s very eager,” someone said, and I felt the same dark gloating in the hand that cupped my sex as I heard in the voice.
“Well, let’s not disappoint him,” said someone, and I pulled uselessly against the shackles.
The bulk of a body behind me, pressing against my thighs. Fingers prodding me open. I tried to writhe away, but they just laughed, and there were too many hands— hands on my hips, hands pressing my shoulders down, hands, terrible hands, stroking my sex. Someone behind me pushed forward, and I couldn’t relax and accept it the way I knew I needed to, couldn’t keep myself from fighting, from trying to throw off all those hateful burning hands.
My struggles were as useless as they’d been against Malkar, against Lorenzo, against Keeper. My body was invaded, pinned and penetrated; the hands caressed me, pinching my nipples gently, squeezing my sex. Hands tightened on my hips, and someone began to fuck me steadily, angling his thrusts with cruel accuracy.
The sob broke free despite everything I did to hold it back. Someone’s hand pushed the hair off my face, then gripped, holding my head still. “He’s crying,” a voice said with cool interest.
A high- pitched voice.
Too high to be a man’s.
My eyes spasmed open, though it did me no good, and I went rigidly tense, which hurt even more. Someone laughed; there was the press of a body against my shoulder and something rubbed across my face: silky, yielding skin, and I felt the hard nub of a nipple against my lips. I threw myself backwards against the shackles, making a noise that didn’t have enough breath behind it to be a scream. More laughter. Someone fucking me knotted one hand in my hair at the nape of my neck. “Release his hands.” Someone did. My ankles were still chained and someone had me scruffed like a kitten; I was keening in protest, but I was dragged upright, forced to straddle someone’s thighs, while he continued fucking me with the same relentless steadiness. I was displayed for all of them, my arousal jutting out shamefully, the tear tracks on my face attesting to my weakness.
“Shall I?” said someone, the woman’s voice again, and there was a hand, narrow as Corbie’s, folded around my sex.
I realized what she intended, but they had caught my wrists and were pinning my hands. “No,” I said, “no, you bitch! Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking
dare
!” But the cock up my ass made it impossible for me to get away from her. I was screaming at her, but there was nothing I could do to stop her. She planted her hands on my hips and went down on me, took me in deep, and I couldn’t get away, couldn’t fucking make it stop, and someone shoved their tongue in my mouth so I couldn’t scream, but I was still trying, still trying with everything that was in me to just get
away
, when those fucking bastards made me come.