Corambis (47 page)

It was close on to the septad- night by the time I got home, and the only reason I wasn’t jingling was that Corambins used paper money.

They didn’t like me at the Blooming Turtle, especially after what happened to the guy who tried to get in my face about never coming back. I wouldn’t go back, though. Not for them, but because I felt dirty. No, not just dirty, that ain’t strong enough.
Filthy.
I’d felt dirty back around the first big hand I’d won, but I hadn’t stopped until I’d cleaned out the entire table. And even then, you know, if one of them had been stupid enough to pony up, I’d’ve gone ’round again. And won. Because that’s what I did when there was money in the game. When I didn’t have to be
careful
.

Powers and saints, I made myself sick.
I climbed the stairs in our apartment building, and by the time I got to the top, Felix was standing in the open doorway, arms folded. I was just as glad he was backlit so I couldn’t see his expression.
He waited until I’d heaved myself up onto the landing before he said, “Where have you been?” His voice was kind of tight, but nice and even, so he was upset, but not
really
upset, and he wasn’t mad at me. There were a septad and six different ways he sounded when he was mad at me, and none of them had anything to do with “even.”
“Stupid,” I said, because it was true. “You gonna stand there all night, or can I come in?”
He moved aside and I went in. He followed me, locked the door. Said, “I’ll believe many things of Esmer, but not that it actually has a fathom station for stupid. So, a different question: what were you doing?”
“This,” I said. I was emptying my coat pockets onto the table. “You think we can give it to the girl hocuses at the Institution or something?”
“Good gracious,” Felix said. His eyes weren’t bugging out, but he did look more than a little startled, and I could tell he was trying hard to not flip out at me. And I was grateful for it, too. And then he just looked guilty. “Is this because of what I said this morning?”
“Sort of. I mean, yes. But not just that. I’d even talked myself out of it and then Miss Leverick got me all worked up and stupid again.”
“You weren’t exaggerating when you said you didn’t need to cheat,” he said. He was looking at the money, not at me. “Miss Leverick? So you went to her society, what ever it’s called?”
“The Society for the Advancement of Universal Education,” I said. “And hey! I met a cat with blue eyes.”
That made him look up, and he actually smiled at me, which made me feel a little less like complete shit.
He said, “Why don’t you tell me about your day while we get ready for bed? And tomorrow you can come with me to the Institution. It seems like you might be less likely to get into trouble there.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said, but that wasn’t what I meant, and he knew it.

I had not expected Mildmay
actually
to come with me to the Institution, but the next afternoon when I left the apartment he was right beside me. I used what little common sense I had and held my tongue.

We reached the Institution in amiable silence, and I led the way to my classroom in Venables Hall. It wasn’t as pleasant as the Grenouille Salon, but the chairs were comfortable (though mismatched), and there was the option here, as there never was in the Mirador, of opening the windows.

Mildmay looked around carefully. I said, “You do that every time you come into a room. What are you looking for?”
He stared at me blankly for a moment, then quite visibly went back over the last few moments in his head and blushed. And then he gave me the list, ticking the items off on his fingers. “Goons. Doors. Windows. Stuff you could use as a weapon if you had to. Um.” His blush got worse, and he was distinctly not meeting my eyes. “You.”
“Me?” I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or insulted or incredibly flattered. “And which am I, potential threat or potential advantage?”
“Depends what kind of mood you’re in.”
“Oh marvelous,” I said, but I couldn’t keep my face straight.
“It’s just habit,” Mildmay said. “Don’t mean nothing.”
“On the contrary. It means that if a pack of crazed eteoklides charges the door in the middle of class, you’ll be ready for them.”
And he’d forgiven me for yesterday, because he said, “What’re eteoklides?”
“An ancient warrior cult from what’s now Lunness Point. I don’t remember most of the tenets of their faith, but they believed that if you died in battle for their god, you would be reborn into the cult. And if you did it enough times, you became a kouraph— not quite a god, but with many of the same benefits. For obvious reasons, the cult went extinct several centuries ago.”
“A kouraph, huh? Like an angel?” he said, slyly enough that I knew he was making one of his infrequent and odd jokes. He had told me about Mrs. Weatherby and her theories so, unlike some of his jokes, this one I got.
I smiled back at him. “Blood- drinking angels.”
“That’s a benefit?”
“To the eteoklides,” I said demurely.
“Powers. The things some people think are fun.” He retreated into the back of the classroom, and a moment later, the first of my students came in.
They didn’t all notice him. Those that did looked at him, looked at me, and showed better discretion than I’d thought them capable of and did not ask. Corbie went and sat beside him, and punched him in the arm at something he said. Cyriack Thrale actually smiled at him and after class— another frustrating hour of trying to teach them something they did not want to believe— went over to say hello. I was trapped at the front of the room by Jowell, the most plodding of my students, so I could not hear Cyriack and Mildmay’s conversation, although it seemed lively.
Cyriack was still talking, intensely, earnestly, when they came over to me, and Mildmay jerked his chin. “Just a moment, Jowell. Yes, Mildmay?”
Mildmay said, “Mr. Thrale’s got a new bog body, and he wants to—”
“I beg your pardon. A
what
?”
Mildmay looked hopefully at Cyriack, who said, “A bog body. They’re what I work on, over at the Mammothium. Ancient people whose bodies were preserved in peat bogs.”
I had been told about the Mammothium, so at least that part made sense. “And you’re sightseeing?” I said to Mildmay.
“I’m
interested
, okay?” He looked as abashed as I’d ever seen him.
“No, of course, it’s fine.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a body that had been buried in peat for hundreds of years, but it couldn’t be any worse than Jowell’s conversation. I said to Cyriack, “May I come, too?”
“Of course,” Cyriack said, almost embarrassingly delighted.
The Mammothium had been a private house, not a public building like most of the rest of the Institution, which made the enormous skeleton in the front hall look even more incongruous. Cyriack was pounced on by another student as soon as we came through the door, and dragged off into another room for what was either an argument or a sexual encounter— nothing else generated that kind of urgency. Most likely an argument. But I didn’t mind; I was still staring at the skeleton when Corbie and Mildmay came in.
“That’s the mammoth,” Mildmay said.
“Rather,” I said. “And when were you here before, to be introduced to it?”
He looked at the mammoth instead of looking at me. “Well, that day we moved into the new place?”
“Yes, I remember it vividly, seeing as it was less than a month ago.”
“Yeah, well, it was Mr. Thrale that found it for me, because I’d come here looking for—”
“So you’ve seen these bog bodies before, too?”
“Just one of ’em,” he said apologetically.
“You didn’t mention it.”
He shrugged, still staring at the mammoth. “Didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“You could have told me anyway. I wouldn’t mind.”
He gave me a startled glance— trying to decide if I was teasing, I suspected, and I wondered if I deserved that or not.
Corbie straightened up from an examination of the mammoth’s toes and said, “And these things lived
thousands
of indictions ago?”
“That’s what Mr. Thrale says,” said Mildmay.
She was frowning. “How old is the world, anyway?”
A decent answer to that question— which would have taken all afternoon and still would have boiled down to, essentially,
No one knows
— was forestalled by a commotion from the hallway indicating Cyriack’s reemergence. “For the last time, Stanhope,” he said over his shoulder, “
I can’t help you
.” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “I’m so terribly sorry, Mr. Harrowgate. Would you like to come upstairs?”
“What’s the matter with Stanhope?” Corbie asked as Cyriack began herding us toward the stairs. I tried not to inquire into Corbie’s social life, but I noticed that she was clearly familiar with the denizens of the Mammothium.
Cyriack rolled his eyes. “Those damn sheep in Murrey. He’s getting as bad as Jowell and Hutch. He’s trying to figure out the cause of death, and he’s convinced himself I can help him. Which I
can’t
.”
“Is that the pesti- whatsit?” Mildmay said.
“Pestilence,” I said.
Cyriack said, “Yes. Although now they aren’t sure it
is
a pestilence. It’s not spreading like one, and the magician- practitioner in Howrack insists the sheep are perfectly healthy— apart from being dead, of course. I keep telling Stanhope the only thing to do is go down there himself, but he acts as if Caloxa were on the other side of the moon. Idiot.”
“Well, he’s frustrated,” Corbie said more charitably.
As we reached the top of the staircase, Cyriack darted ahead to unlock a door halfway down the hall and said over his shoulder, “I don’t blame him, but that doesn’t make it my problem. Come in, please. There isn’t much room, but I don’t think we’ll be
too
crowded.”
The room was dominated by a long table, on which reposed a huddled shape draped by a sheet. “She’s not as old as the other one I showed you,” Cyriack said to Mildmay. “Maybe a thousand years. And Adept Chellick’s trying a new preservation technique,” he added, indicating the sheet. Then he twitched it neatly away, and I went lurching backwards, nearly knocking Mildmay over, my whole body going cold.
It was not that the woman was dead, or that her body was twisted and flattened horribly. Or that she stank, of stagnant water and of something sharp and foul that I did not recognize. But the noirance poured off her in waves, so strong I could almost believe it was the foul smell I couldn’t identify.
“Whoa,” Mildmay said, catching himself with his cane and then steadying me. “You okay?”
“Don’t you feel it?” I said to Corbie, to Cyriack— both of whom were staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Feel what?” Cyriack said. He looked at the body critically. “I suppose she’s a rather gruesome sight, if you aren’t accustomed—”
“Not that,” I said. “The noirance. The . . . the darkness.”
“The what?” said Corbie.
“Are you talking about her aether?” Cyriack said. “But she doesn’t have any. She’s dead.”
“Preserve me from rationalists,” I said under my breath, then, to my students, “No, I am
not
talking about aether. I’m talking about noirance.”
“But—” said Cyriack.
“Shut up,” I said. “Listen to me while I say it one more time. Our perceptions of magic are filtered through meta phors. Your aether is very useful, as these meta phors go, but it’s limited. In this par tic u lar case, thinking in terms of aether, which dead creatures do not have, is
preventing
you from seeing that this woman is saturated in magic just as much as she is saturated in bog water. And that the magic in which she is saturated is noirant. Dark. Dangerous.”
“Evil?” Corbie said. She didn’t entirely look as if she believed me, but she did at least look worried. Although perhaps that was because she thought I was insane.
“No, not evil. Or, not necessarily evil. Noirance is difficult to categorize.”
“But she’s saturated in it,” Cyriack said, skepticism manifest in every syllable.
“Yes.” I forced myself to take a step forward; it wasn’t nice to keep Mildmay jammed up against the door.
“Show us.”
“I beg your pardon.” I raised an eyebrow at him, stalling for time. I knew all too well what Cyriack meant. He wanted proof— proof that only problematically existed in the first place, and that under the binding- by- obedience I could not provide. I had avoided direct confrontations during class, but I’d known my luck wouldn’t hold forever.
“If there’s all this
noirance
floating around, show it to us.”
“I can’t,” I said, and went on before he could fire his next arrow, “but I may be able to teach you to see it if you’re willing to try.”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Cyriack said, and I knew that pose of careless bravado, knew it from the inside.
“Not ‘willing to let my words go in one ear and out the other while you nod politely,’ ” I said. “Willing to
try
.”
That stung him, as I’d known it would, and he agreed on the instant. Corbie was frowning at the bog body; she said, “Sure. It’s spooky as shit, though.”
“Yes,”I said, and reminded myself to go gently with them. I was suddenly— and rather absurdly, all things considered— glad that I’d chosen to bring Ynge’s
Influence of the Moon
into exile with me. I’d read it so many times between Mélusine and Esmer that I had the relevant passages essentially memorized. And I knew they would work, if Cyriack and Corbie would let them; they’d worked for me.
I looked around; there was a chair in the corner, and I pointed Mildmay at it. “This may take a while. You might as well sit down.”
He gave me the look under his eyebrows he always gave me when I worried about his health, but he sat. Insofar as I could read him, he seemed interested, but not at all alarmed. “All right,” I said to Corbie and Cyriack. “Remember you promised to give this an honest effort.”
They nodded, Corbie cooperatively, Cyriack scowling with impatience. I said, “I want you to think about the moon. You can close your eyes if it helps, but you don’t have to. Think about the moon at the half.”
Cyriack opened his mouth to object, caught my eye, and subsided. Corbie had her eyes squinched shut in a look of desperate concentration; I needed to remember to start teaching her basic mental imagery. But cooperation was cooperation; the fine details were a matter for later. “The moon is at the half,” I said. “In the night sky, it’s half a circle, but you know that in reality, there’s a full circle, half- light and half- dark. Yes?”
“Yes,” Cyriack said, and Corbie nodded. Cyriack had his eyes closed now.
“Good,” I said. “You have a circle, half- light and half- dark. You can see both halves in your mind.” Next was the tricky bit; I was careful not to let my voice alter. “Now I want you to imagine this moon, the moon at the half, in a white sky. Where before the dark half was invisible, now the light half is invisible. You have the dark half of the moon hanging in a white sky. Are you still with me?”
Corbie’s face had smoothed out; Cyriack was frowning slightly. But they both nodded.
“Good. Now reverse it again: the moon against a black sky. But remember the full circle is always there.” I took them through the switch a couple more times, and then said, “Now hold that image of the moon, the full circle, half- light, half- dark, in your head, and open your mind to your magic. Let your magic fill the moon, half- light, half- dark. The moon is your magic, halflight, half- dark. You see both sides at once.” I waited a moment, watching their faces, and said, “Now open your eyes and look at this bog body.”
Corbie staggered backwards exactly as I had. Cyriack held his ground, but his face went a dreadful color, and his voice cracked when he said, “What is
that
?”
“That,” I said, “is noirance. Congratulations.”
“But . . . I . . . but it wasn’t . . .” He turned to Mildmay. “Do
you
see it?”
“Annemer,” Mildmay said, perfectly calmly.
Cyriack turned, like a bear at bay. “Corbie?” Corbie was still staring at the bog body. Cyriack looked wildly at me. “What did you
do
to us?”
I smiled at him. “I taught you a new meta phor.”
“But this . . . this isn’t . . .”
“I’ve been telling you for weeks that aether isn’t real, any more than noirance is. They’re just different ways of looking at something we aren’t built to understand.”
Corbie announced, “I need a drink.”
“Right,” said Cyriack. He all but bolted from the room. I didn’t entirely expect him to return, but he did, only five minutes later, carry ing a bottle and four glasses. He splashed whiskey in the glasses and handed them around. Corbie knocked hers back like a woman taking medicine, and Cyriack poured her more without being asked.
I sipped my whiskey and waited. The next move was clearly theirs.
And they were clearly very uncomfortable with making it. Neither Cyriack nor Corbie would meet my eyes, and I watched the way they both kept glancing at the bog body and then quickly away. Mildmay folded his hands over the head of his cane and observed everything with attentive disinterest. I would have to remember to ask him later whether he’d classed the bog body as a threat or an advantage.
Finally, Corbie couldn’t stand it any longer and said, “But if there’s all this . . . this noirance, where is it
coming
from?”
“An excellent question,” I said, “to which I don’t have an answer. Shall we look?”
Corbie looked at me as if I’d suggested biting the heads off babies for fun.
“She’s still dead,” I said. “Her noirance can’t hurt you unless you let it.”
“Wait a moment,” said Cyriack. “How do you ‘let’ magic do anything?”
“Don’t think of it as a force of nature,” I said. “It’s not like your elements, fire and water and so on. It’s a human force, shaped by human will and human desire. And it holds impressions frighteningly well.”
“I don’t understand,” Corbie started, and Mildmay said, “He means ghosts.”