Corambis (43 page)

I rode the fathom out and got off at Murtagh Station. I picked a direction that looked flash and started walking, and sure enough, there were the sphinxes, each about the size of a pony, and I walked up between them and knocked on the door.

Servant in livery, and I said, “Is Mr. Brightmore in?” Which, you know, I figured he was, but I could at least try and be polite.
“Beg pardon?”
Oh fuck me sideways. “Bright. More,” I said, as distinct as I could.
“Mr.
Brightmore
! Of course. Come in and—” For a second he looked exactly like a fish. “That is to say, if you will wait in the foyer, I will see if Mr. Brightmore is in.”
“Thank you,” I said. But I liked him for seeming happy that somebody’d come to see Mr. Brightmore, so I didn’t give him no trouble. And he came back real quick and said, “This way please,” and then he grinned at me and said, kind of low, “Mr. Springett thought I was joking, but he’s pleased as a pigeon for his lordship to have a visitor.”
“His lordship?” I said.
“Well, he ain’t no more,” he said, leading me to the stairs. “But he was. And he’s a gentleman for sure, and we think it ain’t respectful- like to be calling him ‘mister,’ no matter what them po liti cal people say. He’s up at the top of the house.”
Which figured. I leaned on Jashuki and took my time. I noticed it was the same here as at home— the farther you got from the front door, the more the house looked like people actually lived in it. Things quit being so fucking perfect, and Mr. Brightmore’s room when we got there could actually have used a new coat of paint. Of course, that said a whole different set of stuff about how they were treating him, but then it wasn’t like he cared. And I kind of thought he wouldn’t’ve cared even if he’d been able to see the walls.
He was all by himself, sitting on one of the window seats with his knees tucked under his chin. He looked real startled at having a visitor, so much that I said, “I don’t have to stay if you don’t want.”
“No, please.” He’d uncurled himself as soon as the door opened, and now he actually took a step toward me. “I wasn’t expecting . . . but I’m very pleased.” Pleased wasn’t something he looked like he’d had much practice with, but I thought he meant it.
“I’ll tell Cook to send up some tea, shall I, Mr. Brightmore?” said the guy in livery.
“Please,” said Mr. Brightmore, although he looked like he’d never had nobody offer to bring him tea in his entire life.
So the servant- guy left, and I said, “This is Felix’s idea. He thought you might like it if I read to you.”
“I cry you mercy,” Mr. Brightmore said, stepping back and sitting down again. “Is not your fault, but I didn’t catch a word of what you said.”
“Well, we thought you must be pretty bored.”
“ ‘Bored’ might cover it if spread thinly,” he said, which I figured after a moment to work through it was a snarky way of agreeing with me. “But haven’t you anything better to do?”
“Me? Powers, no. I mean, what am I gonna do, hang around in the back of the room while Felix teaches?” Which was exactly what I’d done in the Mirador, but that was the binding- by- forms, and I wasn’t keen on doing it here any more than I was keen on doing any of the stuff I knew best, that being thieving and cardsharping and murder. I’d been keeping myself busy learning Esmer and especially the little piece of it around our apartment, but Felix was right, even if he hadn’t come out and said it. I needed something more. “You mind if I sit down?”
“Please. Of course. I cry you mercy. I am a poor host and have no manners.”
I picked the chair nearest him and turned it so we were facing each other. Mr. Brightmore said, “Is hard to imagine him as a teacher.”
“He’s really good.” And, you know, it was nice to say that to somebody who wasn’t going to call me a liar just because it was Felix I was talking about.
“Am glad he has fallen on his feet. I cannot imagine what is like for him— for you— to have to put together a new life so far from everything you have known.”
“Oh, hey, don’t worry about me. The hard one for me was the Mirador.”
His head tilted. I’d got him interested. “What do you mean?”
So I did my best to tell him. About the Mirador and the Lower City and what they meant to each other and what it’d been like to try and live in the Mirador after spending my whole life trying to stay away from it.
The tea came somewhere in the middle, while I was trying to make him understand what court was like, and I stopped and poured tea and made him take a sandwich along of him looking like he needed it, and all he said was “Go on.” So I did, and that part was nice, too, being able to talk about the Mirador to somebody who
hadn’t
grown up with it. Kay hadn’t even read the novels. I know, because I asked when I finally got tired of my own damn voice.
“Have never had much time for plea sure reading,” he said, almost like he was proud of it. Then his face fell. “And now of course . . .”
“Well, I kind of figure that’s what Felix had in mind, sending me over here with this book and all. Now, I mean, you don’t got to listen. I ain’t exactly good at this whole reading thing, and I wouldn’t blame you—”
“You have a book?”
He really hadn’t been kidding about not catching a word of what I’d said back when I came in. “Yeah.
History of Corambis.
”
“And you’re willing to read? To me?”
“Well, yeah, but like I said—”
“Read,” he said, and it was probably the same way he’d told his soldiers to charge.
And that was okay by me.

That night, as I lay thinking about Mildmay Foxe and his strange brusque shyness, I heard the outer door creak open.
“Who’s there?” I called, sitting up.

“For the Lady’s sake, hush!”

“Murtagh?” I said, obediently lowering my voice. “What in the world—”
“Isobel thinks it unwise of me to consort with you,” he said, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
“Will have stronger words than ‘unwise’ if she catches you creeping to my bed in the middle of the night.”
“I am not,” Murtagh said very precisely, “creeping to your bed. There’s a perfectly good chair here, and I intend to use it.”
Disbelieving, I listened to the sounds of him seating himself. “What do you want?”
“Why do I have to want anything? Can’t I just want to talk?”
“To me?”
He sighed. “You really don’t think we’re friends, do you?” “It makes no sense,” said I.
“Sense? Your experience of friendship must be vastly different than mine if you think it
sensible
.”
“You have a point.”
“Do you dislike me?” He sounded almost wistful, and I knew not if I could trust that.
But I answered him truthfully. “No, I do not dislike you.”
“Well, that’s something,” he said. “It took your sister most of five indictions before she’d unbend enough to say she found me not displeasing.”
“Then was not . . .”
“What?”
“I admit, I have wondered.”
“Wondered
what
?”
“If was in truth Isobel’s barrenness that has you childless.”
Silence, and then Murtagh said, very slowly, “Have I ever given you any reason to believe I mistreated your sister?”
Was danger in his voice, and I said, “I cry your mercy. I meant no such thing. Is just . . . an arranged marriage . . . and I do know Isobel’s temperament . . .”
“I assure you, our marriage has been very thoroughly consummated,” Murtagh said, but at least his voice had lightened. “And that provides me a very graceful segue to something I did want to speak to you about.”
“Vanessa.”
“Will you give her a chance, Kay?”
“Matters not what I would give. Is clear enough that the lady is accustomed to take.”
“Just try to see past her manner. She is in a difficult position.”
“She has all my sympathy,” I said bitterly.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother,” he said, and I heard him come to his feet.
“Would be better if you bothered less about me and more about Julian.”
“Julian will do as he’s told.”
“Yes, he will,” said I, “even when he should not.”
“Good night, Kay,” Murtagh said sharply.
“Murtagh!” I said as he opened the door.
“What?” he said, still sharp. But he answered, and was truth in that.
“You were right.”
“About what?”
“We must be friends,” said I. “Could not infuriate each other so an we were not.”
It startled him into laughing, and when he said, “Good night, Kay,” a second time, the sharpness was gone.

I was certain that at least half the students to whom I lectured thought Corbie was my mistress. It was a far more congenial, though senseless, explanation to them than the truth. Corbie, whose sense of humor was reprehensible, did nothing to dissuade them; indeed, if I would have let her do it, she would have draped herself across me like a stole. She was not at all discomfitted by being the only woman in the room, and she had the virtue of asking questions when she was confused, unlike the men, who nodded sagely and tried to look wise.

Things might have been quite different if I had not been her ally— to the rest of the Institution, after all, she wasn’t even a student— but that at least I was clear on: Corbie and I were allies.

I gathered up all my courage and told her about the fantôme.

Her eyes got wider and wider, and when I finished, she said, “Is there anything I can do?”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been dreading trying to persuade her I was telling the truth— as I would have had to persuade Hutch or any of my orthodox students— until that weight was abruptly gone. “Well, there is, actually. Do you know any stories about spirits of that kind? It called itself a rachenant.”
She shook her head.
“Then I’m going to introduce you to one of the great mysteries of wizardry.” I grinned at her. “It’s called
research
.”
The Institution had no library of its own, which I found both deplorable and more than a little disturbing; Corbie and I walked from the House, across the North Quadrangle— past Venables Hall and that which slept in its basements— and climbed the rocky half wilderness of Solstice Hill. Solstice Hill was the point where the University and the Institution met, and there was some considerable dispute about own ership. Thus, in practice, no one owned it, except the students from both sides who used it as a shortcut and a trysting place and probably a great many other things that, as Institution faculty, I didn’t want to know about.
We came down Solstice Hill into the University. There were more women students here, and more boys Julian’s age or younger. It was louder, more cheerful, and I felt Corbie relax.
“Is it very hard for you?” I asked before I realized I meant to. “Is what very hard for me?”
“The Institution.”
“Well, it would be if I was a student there, but I ain’t.” She grinned at me. “Don’t worry about me, Felix. I got it licked.”
“All right,” I said. “But tell me if—”
“I ain’t going back,” she said, and I let the matter go.
Hutch had shown me the University’s library, along with all the bookstores in walking distance, and it did make up, at least in part, for the Institution’s failure. It was a vast, sprawling building, turreted and gabled and ridiculous. I wasn’t surprised that its nickname was the Furbelow. Hutch, who was conscientious, had shown me the side staircase that led directly to the thaumatology collection, and Corbie and I went up that way.
“And all these books are about magic?” Corbie said, frowning. The mere quantity of books didn’t awe her; she was familiar with Bernatha’s bookstores, even if she hadn’t frequented them.
“Yes. And unfortunately, they aren’t cata logued.”
She looked at me with foreboding. “What does that mean?”
“That nobody actually knows what’s up here.”
“Oh.” Now she looked daunted.
“And this is the only surviving collection of Mulkist writings in the country, or so Hutch tells me.”
“Mulkist?” A definite squeak.
“It was a Mulkist warlock who called the thing, and I somehow doubt Grevillian authors are going to have much to say about it. Since as far as I can tell, there
are
no spirits in Grevillian theory.” Just as the Mirador didn’t believe in ghosts, and it occurred to me, as sudden and sharp and painful as a knife thrust, that even if I was ever allowed to return home, I wasn’t a Cabaline anymore. That maybe I never had been.
“Um,” said Corbie. “Good point. So, what? I just go look around?”
I shook myself back to the present. “Unfortunately, yes. See what you find.”
“That’s
it
?”
“In essence.” I shrugged at her disgusted look. “It’s what research is. You look around, see what you find. Think about it. Do some more looking.”
“What about, you know,
magic
?” She called her little purple witchlight, as if to demonstrate.
“That comes at a
much
later point,” I said firmly.
“Oh all right,” she said, half- grumbling, half- teasing, and I left her there among the books like Eilene among the deathly trea sures of Muil.

Mildmay Foxe was as patient as a stone. He came daily with his book about the history of Corambis and read it to me. We struggled together over the words he didn’t know; he confessed early on that he had been only imperfectly taught to read as a child.

“Are no schools in Mélusine?” said I.
“Well, yeah, but for bourgeois kids, flash kids. Not kept- thieves.” “Are no dominioner schools?”
“No dominions,” he said.
“But is no one then responsible for the children of the city?” That made him laugh. “That’s the Lower City in a nutshell. Ain’t nobody responsible at all.”

“But someone taught you something of reading?”
“My keeper,” he said, his voice gone dark and curt, not at all as I was accustomed to hearing it. “But I wasn’t no good at it, and she found better things to do with me.”
I knew I should not ask, and yet I could not keep the words behind my teeth: “Better things?”
“Stealing, cardsharping. Killing people.”
“Killing people,” I said, merely to be sure I had understood him correctly, but he took it as a sort of reproof.
“Murder for hire,” he said and then, although the word clearly vexed him, “assassination.”
“I too am a murderer,” I said. “I killed my first man at fourteen.”
“Huh,” he said. “You and me both.”

He came each day for a week; we did not speak again of our odd confessional, talking instead of Corambin history and, when I learned how to coax him, the stories of Mélusinien history of which he had an apparently inexhaustible store. On Lunedy afternoon, he was telling me of the gory end to the rule of kings in his city when there was a knock on the door, and before I could say, “Come in,” the door opened and Vanessa said, “We have been summoned to— oh! I beg your pardon. I’d no idea you had a visitor.”