Corambis (30 page)

Felix came into our room at the Golden Hare in the Ingry Dominion of Esmer and said, “Dinner’s in an hour.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Mrs. Davidge is an exceedingly kind lady. Unlike Mrs. Lettice.” But he wasn’t looking at me and his face was going red. “She reads them
crazy- ass novels, don’t she?”
“
Doesn’t
, not
don’t
. And I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Red as a bad sunburn. “As I said, we’ve got an hour. Why don’t
you read to me?”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I know it ain’t no fun for you.” “That depends on what you mean by ‘fun,’ ” he said, coming over to sit
on the bed beside me. “If you mean, do I find it amusing, no, I don’t. But if
you mean, isn’t there something I’d rather be doing, no, there isn’t.” He
glanced up at me, but then looked down again quick. He was funny about
eye contact. “I’m trying to . . . Look. I’ve been really horrible to you, and I’m
trying not to be, all right?”
And I knew he didn’t mean just the past few months when he’d been surly
and bitchy and hateful about fucking
everything
. He meant the way he’d been
when Gideon left him, and the shit he’d pulled over getting Vey Coruscant
killed, and all the way back even to having been a prick on the
White Otter
and in the Gardens of Nephele. He’d gone blotchy red, and his hands were tight- clenched in his lap, and I knew he wasn’t looking at me now because he
hated apologizing and he was really really bad at it.
“It’s okay,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’ll get the book.” And it was
worth it just for the way he stared at me, eyes big as bell- wheels, like
nobody’d ever let him off the hook before in his life.

The news of my encounter with the Automaton of Corybant spread with a rapidity that would have done the gossip mills of the Mirador proud. By the afternoon of our first full day in Esmer, there was a delegation from the Institution, a virtuer and two adepts first grade, inquiring for me at the desk of the Golden Hare.

I’d sent Corbie out to learn the city; in truth, I couldn’t have kept her in if I’d wanted to. Mildmay and I inspected each other before we descended, agreeing ruefully that we looked as well as could possibly be expected.

The Corambin magicians were nervous— obviously so, and I remembered Miss Bridger saying a virtuer wouldn’t have been able to deal with the Automaton as I had. I had dismissed that claim as ignorance and excessive enthusiasm, but perhaps I had been wrong to do so.

Virtuer Hutchence was my own age, more or less; he was stocky and cheerful and seemed not terribly impressed with his own rank. The adepts were Lillicrop and Rook, and they were some ten years older. They were professional men where Hutchence was an academic, and were very dignified and dour. I couldn’t tell them apart.

They let Hutchence do the talking at first, which suited me very well. I knew how to deal with academic wizards. We exchanged credentials and chatted briefly about the relationship between the Coeurterre, with which the Institution was familiar, and the Mirador, with which it was not.

“What about your companion?” said Virtuer Hutchence.
I smiled. “He isn’t a wizard.”
And Hutchence simply nodded and said, “Now, about the incident in Nauleverer . . .”

I described what had happened, to the best of my ability— I had no basis on which to speculate about what the monster had been, except that it had been mechanical, twice the size of a man, and clearly hostile. Hutchence nodded and took notes and was settling comfortably into a disquisition on the flora and fauna of the Forest of Nauleverer and its reactions to the railroad when one of the adepts interrupted: “And you killed it with a lightning bolt?”
And, reminded, Hutchence was ner vous again.
“Not a lightning bolt, exactly,” I said. “The experiments I know of in

calling lightning all ended very messily.”
“Then what was it?” said the other adept.
“Do you want the entire theoretical framework of Cabaline luxomancy?”

“That hardly seems necessary,” the first adept said, sneering.

“What Mr. Lillicrop means,” Hutchence said hastily, “is that we don’t need a full explanation now. Merely a broad outline.”
As a placatory gesture, it was a failure. Lillicrop and Rook looked offended, and I myself resented the implication that I was accountable to the Institution, even though that was exactly why Stephen had sent me here.
“I did this, only amplified.” I summoned witchlight, hard and fast and aimed very precisely. The corner of Hutchence’s quire glowed briefly, brilliantly green, and caught fire.
He yelped and dropped it; he and the adepts backed away, and I couldn’t tell whether they wanted distance from the flame or distance from me. Mildmay nudged me aside and stamped out the fire before it had a chance to really catch.
“Does that answer your questions, gentlemen?” I said.
Hutchence picked up the quire and examined the singed edge. His entire face had become round with astonishment. “Luminiferous aether!” he said. “I had no idea it could do that!”
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“We can all manipulate aether,” he said and called witchlights of his own, very small and not very bright, but a veritable constellation around his head. “But since it is heatless and has no mass, it never occurred to anyone that it could be made to have an effect on material bodies. How very astonishing.”
“Aether?” I said. I sorted through five different ways of saying,
I have no idea what you’re talking about,
and settled for the most dignified: “I’m not familiar with that term.”
“The old term is vi,” Lillicrop said, sneering again.
“I thought that was something only people have.”
“Oh, no, no, no, not a bit,” Hutchence said brightly. “Aether, or vi, is the substance of magic. People have it, animals have it, objects have it. It’s just that only magicians can
use
it.”
“Manar,” I said inadvertently. Ephreal Sand wrote a great deal about manar, the world of the spirit, in
De Doctrina Labyrinthorum
, but it had never occurred to me to connect manar to my witchlights. It had never occurred to me, I realized, to think about my witchlights at all.
“I’m not familiar with that term,” Rook said, and I turned quickly enough to catch the mockery on his face.
“You wouldn’t be,” I said and smiled at him as if I hadn’t noticed. “It’s Kekropian thaumaturgy.”
“How quaint,” said Rook.
Lillicrop and Hutchence were muttering together, and Hutchence looked up to say, “I’m quite sure the Circle will want to speak to you in person, Mr. Harrowgate.”
“The Circle?” I said. “I understood your governing body was the Congress.”
“The Congress is all of us,” said Hutchence. “The Circle is like our Convocation. I imagine you’ll be asked to appear before the Congress as well, but the Circle first.”
“Um,” I said. “Mildmay, do you have those letters?”
Of course, he did. Mildmay kept track of everything.
“Letters?” said Hutchence, accepting the oilskin packet. “You didn’t say anything about those earlier.”
I only wished I thought I could have gotten away with not mentioning them at all. “They’re for your Circle,” I said, and I was feeling unsettled enough to be deliberately nasty. “Not for their flunkies.”
Hutchence took it in perfectly good humor, although I could see him, sharp behind his amiable, slightly naïve façade, noticing I’d been put out of countenance and wondering why. Lillicrop and Rook were simply offended; before they could say so, Hutchence said, “I will be sure Virtuer Ashmead receives them. Mr. Lillicrop, Mr. Rook, I recall your urgency to return to your offices.”
He shepherded them out, closing the door behind himself with a politely definite click.
Mildmay gave me one of his unreadable looks and said, “Next time you’re gonna set something on fire, you wanna warn me first?”
“It could have been worse,” I said. “My first choice of target was Mr. Lillicrop’s cravat.”

I had not sought the Khloïdanikos since the night in Bernatha when I drowned the fantôme, afraid of what I might find there— or what I might bring with me. But that was a wretched way to repay Thamuris for his help and kindness, and so finally, lying that night in the Golden Hare, I gritted my teeth and reached. Horn Gate was, most thankfully, still open; I plunged through it without stopping.

The Khloïdanikos was green again; though it was not as vibrant as it had been before I had brought Malkar’s rubies into it, it was clearly repairing itself, returning to its centuries- held equilibrium. Thamuris was there, sitting on the bench we had always favored, and he, too, looked better. He turned his head sharply as he sensed me, and bounded to his feet. “Felix! Where have you been? What
happened
to you?”

“It’s very complicated,” I said, rather weakly.

“Yes, I can see that,” he said. I looked down at myself and saw tatters of noirance whipping about me. “Is there something . . .
with
you?”
“Not any longer, I hope. It’s called a fantôme.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a kind of revenant. The old necromancers used them.”
“A spirit- ancestor?”
“A dead wizard. My understanding is that by allowing the ghost to possess them, the caster could make themselves immeasurably more powerful.” Certainly that had been the aim of the foolish wizard in Hermione. The murdered Caloxan wizard had simply not been picky about her means of revenge.
I could see Thamuris’s revulsion. “And you sought to increase your—”
“Not me!” I cried out, revolted in turn. “I wouldn’t . . . I don’t . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Thamuris said, and was my friend again, not the stone- eyed judge. “I’m sorry, truly. I know you wouldn’t. But why did it—”
“Hunt me? I . . . I attracted its attention. Inadvertently. And it is— it is the nature of fantômes to be— hungry.”
“Like a fire,” Thamuris said.
“Yes,” I said. “Like a fire.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“No, it’s gone. I just need some time.”
“Well, let me show you something that maybe will help. At least, I think it is encouraging.” I followed him, and by the ruined orchard wall, the perseïd tree was . . .
“It’s budding?” I said; I wasn’t sure I dared to believe it.
“I’ve been watching it for you. Not that I would be able to do anything if—”
“Thank you.” I touched one of the tiny white buds, laid my hand gently against the tree’s black bark.
“Is Mildmay . . . all right? I know you said he’s with you, and if the perseïd really is linked to him somehow . . . I didn’t know, but I was hoping.”
“I think maybe Mildmay
is
all right,” I said, and it occurred to me that this might be the first time in all the years I’d known him that that was true.

At breakfast, as if to refute my hopeful dreaming, Mildmay was frowning and silent— not that he was ever talkative, but there was a weight to this silence that made me uneasy— and finally, I said, “For the love of cats, what is it?”

The green eyes flicked up at me and away. “I had this weird dream last night.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You were in it. So was Thamuris.”
I’d never had any ability to hide things from him, and the evidence indicated I wasn’t going to start now. I felt my own guilty flinch, and Mildmay said, “It wasn’t just a dream, then.” He sounded grimly unsurprised.
“The obligation d’âme,” I said. “I did warn you about—”
“And I heard you. That ain’t the part I’m interested in. Was it really Thamuris— not just you dreaming him, I mean?”
“Yes, it was really Thamuris,” I said dully, braced for the next inevitable question: what was this fantôme we were talking about?
But Mildmay said, “How long you been talking to him in your dreams?”
“Since we left Troia, roughly.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment; when he did speak his voice was quiet, almost reflective: “You motherfucking cunt.”
“Mildmay, what—”
“I figured he was dead,” he continued over me. “I figured he died three fucking indictions ago, and all this time you been talking to him?”
“You didn’t say anything about—”
“For fuck’s sake, Felix!” He’d never turned that look on me before, impatience, almost contempt, like flint and iron. Like that terrible dream of him dead. “How was I s’posed to know you and him were doing hocus things in your sleep? And does it really take that much to figure I might want to know?”
“You hate ‘hocus things.’ ”
“That he’s
alive
!” Mildmay all but howled. Then he caught himself. “No, never mind. No point. If you’d realized, you would’ve said. Just— is he okay? I mean, aside from the consumption?”
His forgiveness almost hurt more than his anger, especially because I wasn’t sure he was right. I
hadn’t
realized, but even if I had . . . I’d known I was being selfish, even before Thamuris’s indictment, but just how deep had that selfishness run?
I took a deep breath. “I think he’s all right. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Well, he must be sort of okay. I mean, if he’s meeting with you regular.”
“I think he’s surprised the celebrants, that he’s doing so well.”
“That’s good,” Mildmay said, and to my great relief he let the subject drop.
I tried all that day to think of a way to tell Mildmay about the fantôme, and I couldn’t. It was— well, it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? As if my life was nothing but one catastrophe heaped on top of the next, without even the decency of a layer of tissue in between. I remembered Mehitabel comparing my life to a romance, and that was exactly, horribly right.
The fantôme is gone, I told myself. No need to distress him. And I did my best to believe it.

The letter from the Circle came the next morning.
“I expected as much,” Felix said, but not like it made him happy or
nothing.
I watched him open it and read it— after a moment, his eyebrows went
up. “Well, I wasn’t expecting
that
.”
“What?”
“They say that if the inquiry goes well, they’re prepared to offer me a
lectureship at the Institution.”
“You mean like a job?”
“Yes. Exactly like a job.”
I didn’t even care he was being snarky at me. Because, you know, I’d
been
trying
not to worry about money and us not having none and what
Felix might think he had to do about it this time, but I hadn’t been doing
real well. So all at once it was like I could breathe again, except for the part
where Felix was still frowning.
“What’s this inquiry thing?”
He made an unhappy kind of coughing noise, and I was right back to
not breathing. “They, ah, they’ve read the letters from Stephen and Giancarlo. They’re concerned.”
“Yeah?”
He shut his eyes for a second. “Stephen gave them authority over me.” “Okay. And?”
“They are concerned about what they call ‘a clear and blatant abuse of
power.’ I think I’m on trial. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” From what I knew, you were either on trial— and most likely
going to get yourself hanged— or not. It wasn’t a thing you could do “sort of.” “Well, it’s not a
real
trial. They’re quite careful to explain that neither
the Circle nor the Congress is a judicial body. They can’t send me to prison
or have me executed or anything like that. Although I imagine they could
make strong recommendations to what ever ‘judicial body’ there is here.” “So what
can
they do to you?”
“What Mortimer Clef said. At my real trial.” His mouth twisted, and he shoved his fingers through his hair, which was always a sign he was fretful.
“They can bind my magic.”
“And you’re gonna let ’em?”
It was a real question. I meant it, and after a moment where I thought he
was going to skin me alive, he saw that I meant it, and his frown went from
pissed off to just kind of thoughtful.
“Because,” I said, “you don’t
have
to.”
“We’ve come all this way,” he said, not disagreeing exactly, but like it
hadn’t occurred to him that he had a choice.
“I know. And I ain’t saying we
should
bail. Just . . . well, we don’t really
know nothing about these hocuses, and I don’t know, it seems like maybe
you shouldn’t be in a big hurry to let them do shit like that to you.” His eyebrows went up. “That was quite the speech.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t try and change the subject by picking on me. It won’t help.” He kind of flinched. “Old habits,” he said, and I knew what he meant
was
I’m sorry.
“I know that,” I said, to both what he said and what he meant. “I’m just
saying, don’t do it. Because I ain’t gonna play, and there just ain’t no fucking
point, is there?”
“I suppose there isn’t,” he said. Then, abruptly, “If I didn’t . . . if we left,
where would we go?”
“Where d’you want to go?”
“Home,” he said before he had a chance to catch himself. And then we
just both kind of sat there for a while, along of there being nothing anybody
could say.