Corambis (42 page)

Corbie continued to live in that tiny room at the Golden Hare, so she got off at Sunflower Street. Mildmay and I rode two stops farther, to St. Ingry, and then walked to our apartment building under Esmer’s hissing streetlights.

He was looking thoughtful, and when we reached home, with the door locked behind us, he said, “D’you suppose this Automaton thing was sort of like the Iron- black Wolves?”

I knew the story, but it didn’t help. “I beg your pardon?”
His color heightened a little. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“But I do mind,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he said again with a shake of his head. “It’s stupid.” “That, I doubt.”
“No, really, it’s just this stupid dream I had. When I was sick. About the

Iron- black Wolves. So I’m thinking about them, I guess.”
“Well,” I said slowly, uncertain how I ought to respond, “given that they’re
something in a fairy tale and the Automaton is quite real . . . Yes, I suppose
there are certain similarities.”
“Huh,” he said. “They couldn’t be stopped.”
“Thankfully, that isn’t one of the similarities,” I said and almost got him
to laugh.
But something was bothering him. I sat at our scarred table and watched
him limp around the room, checking the lock, then checking the windows, into the kitchen and back out. If I pushed, he’d retreat. I waited, and bit my tongue, and waited some more, and finally he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t save
you.”
“What? From the Automaton? I didn’t need saving.”
“Not that.” He was getting redder. “From the wolves.”
“From the
wolves
?”
“Oh fuck me sideways,” he moaned to himself, then rubbed the scarred
side of his face. “I mean, in Bernatha. The . . . the people who hurt you.” “That was the night you dreamed about the Iron- black Wolves,” I said,
understanding suddenly.
Red as a tomato now, but he jerked his head in a nod, and then muttered
something I didn’t catch at all. And that was rare enough these days that it
was one more alarm bell added to an already deafening cacophony. “What was that?”
“I said I didn’t save Ginevra either. Not the same wolves, but.” He
stopped, glaring not at me, but at a crack in the plaster, then said— this quite
clearly—“Fuck it, I’m going to bed.”
And if he got his way, the subject of Iron- black Wolves would never
come up again. I scrambled to my feet, scrambled to keep him, and what
came out of my mouth was the truth: “But you
did
save me.”
He stopped in the doorway and turned. “The fuck I did,” he said, staring
at me in frank disbelief.
“Not in Bernatha,” I said. “But you couldn’t have saved me, just as you
couldn’t have saved me from any of the other cataclysmically stupid things
I’ve done because I chose to do them. As for example the binding- by- obedience.
But you
did
save me. You saved me in Hermione.”
“Other way ’round,” he said, and I knew he was thinking of the Mirador’s curse.
“No, it isn’t.” I was desperate to make him understand— to make him
believe what I was trying to say. “You saved
me
. And you did it again. And
again. You
always
save me.”
Disbelief had softened into bewilderment, and he said, “I don’t understand what you mean.” But I thought what he meant was that he did understand and didn’t want to.
“You can’t save people from themselves. Not Ginevra, not me. But you
can give them a place to . . .” I broke off, gesturing in frustration, and tried
again. “You’re the only one who looks at me and doesn’t see the person who
made all those stupid decisions. You see somebody who can choose differently. You
let
me be somebody who can choose differently, even when you
have no reason to think that I will.” His gaze flickered; I didn’t need to say
Malkar’s name. “And that’s far more important than being a knight in a story.” And finally I found the words I needed. “You help me be someone
who can save himself.”
His eyes were wide. Probably, no one had ever said anything like that to
him in his life. Certainly, I never had. After a moment, he said, “You
mean it?”
“Yes,” I said, although it was an effort to hold his gaze, to hold still and
let him see the truth of me. “I mean it.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, as if he wasn’t sure. And then again, more firmly,
“Okay.” It was as good as a smile when he said, “Fuck the wolves anyway.
You want some tea?”
And I said, “Yes.” To all of it.

Somewhere between Lily- of- Mar Station and Carey House, Julian said explosively out of a dead silence, “Does it bother you that I’m an aethereal?” “No. Why should it?”
“I’m unstable,” Julian said with more bitterness than I had ever heard from him, “emotional, impulsive, easily led.”
“You are sixteen,” I said dryly.
“I’ll probably go mad! Aethereals do, don’t they? Or I’ll have fits in public or talk to the furniture like Aunt Ella.”
“Your mother’s sister?”
“Oh yes,” he said, still bitter. “There’s none of this nonsense in the Carey descent.”
“Need not welcome trouble before it comes calling,” I said cautiously.
“I heard their voices,” he said, and his cold fingers gripped my wrist. “I heard them screaming and screaming, and I couldn’t find them. Mr. Harrowgate said there was nothing we could do to help them, but blessed Lady, I
heard
them.”
He could add
overwrought
to his list of disparagements. I said, “I think you can trust Mr. Harrowgate,” and gently freed my wrist from his cold clutch.
“Oh, I didn’t mean—! Mr. Harrowgate was wonderful, and I’m sure he’s right. I just . . .” And then he said in a different tone, “We’re home. Are you going to tell Uncle Ferrand?”
“Is no business of mine. Is between you and him. But if you think Cyriack Thrale is going to hold his tongue, I fear me you will be disappointed.”
Julian did not leap to Thrale’s defense as I’d expected, but said, “You think I should tell him first?” Was considerable trepidation in his voice. “I think,” said I, “that no matter how ugly telling him is, will still be better than if he hears of it somewhere else first.”
“Oh,” said he, and I knew he took my point.
I was grateful, however, to be spared that scene, and did not argue with Springett about going directly to bed. I washed up, donned my nightshirt, bid Springett good night, and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
And stopped dead, assailed by the scent of lilies.
“I thought,” said Vanessa Pallister, and I heard the creak as she rose from my bed, “that we should talk.”
“Did you?” said I. “What about?”
A pause. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“Have given me any reason to?”
“And you don’t want this marriage.”
“Is no matter what I want or don’t want,” I said tiredly. “But, an you have a point, what I
want
is that you come to it, so that you may leave again and I may go to bed.”
“We don’t have to be enemies,” she said, and the scent of lilies grew stronger. I was braced for the touch of her hand against the open collar of my nightshirt.
“Vanessa.” I took her hand and removed it from my person. “What do you want? You know I cannot refuse this marriage, whether I want it or not, so what matters it to you what my feelings are? You’ve made your own feelings perfectly clear.”
She jerked away from me. “Maybe I don’t want to marry a man who hates me!”
“You need not marry me,” I said. “Will not hinder you an you cry off.”
“Damn you, you . . . you
statue
,” she said in a vicious whisper. She pushed past me; the door opened and slammed shut again.
Not a statue, I thought. An Automaton, a monster with a clockwork heart. I went carefully to the windows, not knowing what Vanessa might have moved, and opened them wide. By morning, the scent of lilies would be gone.

On Lunedy morning, Felix had a plan.
“You want me to
what
?”
“It’s perfect,” he said. “You need to practice your reading and Kay certainly needs the distraction. And the company.”

“But I can’t just—”
“Visit a friend?” he said, one eyebrow going up.
“Dammit, don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Put words in my mouth.” I glared at him over the teapot. “I can’t go

and force him to put up with me.”
“He likes you.”
“But.” I gulped, floundered. “He won’t want to hear all that philosophy

stuff.” Because that’s what Felix had, from all the books he’d had in his rooms in the Mirador: seven books on magic and philosophy. I was learning on a book called
A Treatise upon Spirit
by Chattan d’Islay. It’d been Gideon’s. I’d been ner vous, because I didn’t think I was going to understand any of it, even when I could read it, but Felix had just grinned and said that was the point of philosophy books: you read ’em until you
did
understand.

Felix coughed and looked a little embarrassed. “We, ah, have other books.”
“We do?” It was news to me.
He looked even more embarrassed. “There are bookstores very near the Institution. Hutch showed me . . .”

“I get the idea,” I said. “How much damage did you do?” “I only bought three,” he said, looking hopeful. “And one of them’s quite small. I really do need to get a grasp of the basic principles of Grevillian thaumaturgy before I—”

“Felix.” Me trying to be stern with him was like a rat terrier trying to be stern with a wolfhound, so you can see why I was surprised as fuck when it worked. He was bright pink in the face, but he got up and opened the closet. He brought three books out and put them on the table in front of me.

I took a minute to read the titles— but it really only did take a minute, and that was pretty fucking amazing. One, like he’d said, was a book about magic:
Introduction to the Grevillian Theorems
. One was called
History of Corambis
. And the third, the little one, was
Common Wildflowers of Central Corambis
.

“None of the wizards here seems to know the first thing about botany,” Felix said, and it was weird how ner vous he sounded. “And of course I could go over to the University, but honestly I’m afraid they’ll just see me as—”

“Felix.”

He stopped and looked at me. Hopeful and anxious, and powers and saints this was wrong.
I said, “It’s
your
money. You ain’t gotta . . . I mean, you ain’t, what’s the word?”
“Accountable?” he said quietly.
“Yeah, that’s it. You ain’t accountable to me.”
His mouth twitched into something that was maybe a smile and maybe not. “And if I blow our month’s bud get buying books, you’re the one who’ll be cardsharping to make up the deficit. Which I think
does
make me accountable to you. Or at least responsible.”
“Well, okay,” I said. Because that part was reasonable, and I was even glad he was thinking that way. “But you don’t got to— I mean, I ain’t mad. I ain’t gonna be mad.” And then I finally found the word I’d been looking for. “You don’t got to
justify
it to me.”
He’d still been kind of pink, but now he went bright, slow red and then sat down and put his face in his hands. He said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him, “Malkar gave me spending money, but he always wanted to know what I spent it on. And he would tease me about ‘bettering myself’ and how all the erudition in the world wouldn’t wash off the mud of Pharaohlight. And Shannon teased me, too, about all the time I spent in bookstores and, well, I guess I do get a little overexcited sometimes.”
I remembered how happy he’d been, the day he found some book Gideon’d been wanting, how he’d been so bright you could’ve threaded a needle by the light he was giving off. And I remembered the way Gideon had hugged him, smiling so big it was like his face was going to crack wide open. And I said, “Gideon didn’t tease you.”
“No,” he agreed after a moment, not looking up. “Gideon didn’t tease me.”
“I gotta say,” I said, like I didn’t know he was somewhere past embarrassed and just short of tears, “if I was gonna pick one of them for being nice and levelheaded and a guy you’d want to listen to, Gideon’d be it.”
That made him laugh. A little choked, but a real laugh. “Mildmay, really. I know you didn’t like Shannon, but lumping him in with Malkar is a bit much.”
“I’m just saying, if Gideon didn’t think you were dumb or embarrassing or what ever it is Malkar and Lord Shannon thought, then you weren’t.”
“I . . .” And then he sort of sagged. “All right.”
“And I ain’t gonna tease. You said you wouldn’t tease me, I won’t tease you. Fair’s fair. And you don’t got to give me all the whys and wherefores when you buy a book. Okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “All right.” He took a deep breath and straightened up again. “In any event, I thought you and Kay could read the
History of Corambis
, and Kay would enjoy telling you everything the author got wrong.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I can see that.” And Felix grinned like the sun coming out.

So he went off to the Institution, and I went off to find Carey House, which I knew was where Kay lived because Julian’d said so.

The thing I liked best about St. Ingry Station was that where the Sunflower Street Station had that snooty mural, St. Ingry Station had this big- ass map of Esmer with all the fathom stations picked out in blue and the train stations in red and everything labeled so I could learn Esmer and practice my reading at the same time. The gals in the ticket booths had got used to seeing me, and sometimes if things weren’t busy, they’d come out and show me what dominions they lived in and tell me about things I should be sure to see, like St. Nath’s Tower which was all that was left of the kings’ palace from back when Corambis had kings, and the Museum of Corambis which was way out in Vander Dominion and had a map of the whole country that was big enough you could walk around on it.

Esmer wasn’t laid out as tidy as Mélusine, and no wall, either. So the city just kind of went where it wanted to, and you could imagine the mapmakers running along behind trying to make sense of it and mostly not having much luck.

The Institution was sort of in the middle of the southeast of Esmer, if that makes any sense at all, and I knew all the flash houses were in Nath Dominion because one of the ticket girls had said so. So I found St. Ingry Station— there was a big blue star to mark it— and then worked north and west from Ingry Dominion to Mar to Osper and Phadon and then Nath. One of the stations in Nath Dominion was called Murtagh Station, which I figured was probably a good sign, so I went and asked the ticket girls, and they said as how, yeah, Carey House was just down the block and everybody knew it because of the sphinxes that were one to either side of the door. And I even knew what a sphinx was, so I didn’t have to look dumb by asking.