Corambis (8 page)

I wish I could just sit still, but my dreaming self knows I can’t do that, either. The monster is hunting; I have to keep moving so it doesn’t find me.
I fall and fall and fall again. There’s blood on my palms, slick becoming sticky, and I know I’m never going to get out this way, but I can’t stop.
And then I fall over something that cries in protest. I almost scream; for a moment, I can’t breathe. But nothing attacks me, and when I can calm myself enough to listen, I hear something whimpering. I can’t tell if it’s an animal or a person, although there’s just enough light to see a bulk of shadows. I reach out carefully, slowly, and my fingers encounter cloth. A person, then, who flinches back with a wordless cry.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m . . .” But I don’t know what I am, and I finally say, “Lost.”
“Lost,” echoes the other in a raw thread of a voice.
“Who are you?”
“Lost,” and I can’t tell if it’s echo or answer.
“Where are we?” I ask, for I can’t tell any longer what labyrinth this is. But the other says only, “Lost, lost,” in its ruined voice and begins to sob.
The desperate need to move is cramping my limbs, but I can’t bring myself to abandon this wretched stranger. “Come on,” I say as gently as I can. “Come with me.” I’m more than a little surprised when it stands up with me, but we link hands like children and I continue on my miserable, groping progress.
I can’t tell where the light is coming from; it waxes and wanes with no logic I can follow. I stumble frequently, but mostly manage to keep my feet. My companion sobs drearily; I still can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. After a while, I realize that there’s a light ahead of us that isn’t waning, but growing steadily stronger, the oblong shape of a doorway. I urge my companion to walk faster. It says, “Lost,” dolefully, but follows me.
For a moment when we reach the doorway, what I’m seeing makes no sense. A wooden table fitted with straps to hold a human body. And then I do know; this labyrinth is St. Crellifer’s, and in that case . . .
I turn, and the mad wretched creature that was once Isaac Garamond raises its head to look at me and begins to scream.
No wonder I couldn’t rest. I am the monster I was trying to flee.
I woke with a violent jolt, almost enough to send me off the bed, and lay for more than a minute while my heart slowed, staring unseeingly at the sunlight pooling among the rumpled covers. And then I blinked and focused and thought, Where is Mildmay?
I shot to my feet. He wasn’t in the bed, or even in the room. His cane was gone, too— and I wasn’t really stupid enough to believe that anyone could have gotten him out of the room without his consent. I wasn’t.
This was an overreaction, I told myself, and put my trousers on. Mildmay couldn’t be in any kind of trouble, and if he’d gotten worse, either his coughing would have alerted me or, surely, he would have woken me himself, not just crawled off somewhere to die like a wounded animal.
On second thought, that sounded like exactly the sort of stupid thing Mildmay would do. I didn’t bother with socks or shoes.
But the Fawn daughter I encountered in the hallway told me that he’d gotten up early and asked about their bath house. “Said you might be interested, too,” she added and told me how to get there.
He was in one of the bathtubs when I opened the door, the steam rising in faint coils off the water. He glanced at me— making sure I was who he thought I was and not a threat— and closed his eyes again. His hair was unbraided, but he hadn’t ducked his head yet, and the oil lamps mellowed the harsh fox- red to auburn.
He was beautiful. He was beautiful, and he did not know it and would have laughed at me if I’d tried to tell him so. I turned away, making sure the door was latched before I began to undress.
“Nobody here’ll know what kept- thieves are,” Mildmay said, his voice simultaneously lazy and sharp. “It ain’t no fucking big deal.”
“It’s still ugly,” I said and hoped he hadn’t seen my flinch. “And people will still ask what happened.”
“They don’t ask about my face,” he said.
“You frighten them, the way you scowl.”
He snorted, but it was perfectly true. I’d watched hotel maids, shopkeep ers, bartenders fold and fail under the unrelenting weight of that scowl. If he recognized flirtation, he never welcomed it, and I thought he mostly didn’t recognize it. When I’d been trying to flirt with him, in Klepsydra, I’d had to resort to the broadest and most caricatured version of myself to get him to notice. And then he’d blushed and looked at me as if I terrified him.
I had, eventually, stopped trying.
It was an effort to take my shirt off, even knowing that Mildmay had seen my back dozens of times before and was not bothered by it. I untied my hair, ran my fingers through it. Bent to take off my boots and Mildmay said, “I knew a gal once had scars like yours.”
I hadn’t thought he knew how to do this, how to wield a conversation like a knife. On the other hand, he’d had all the time he needed to learn from my dreadful example. “What was her name?” I said tiredly.
“Jeanne- Zerline. She worked in the Goosegirl’s Palace down in the Arcane. Died of smallpox about a septad back.”
I took the rest of my clothes off and climbed gingerly into the second tub. Mildmay wasn’t watching me. Of course he wasn’t watching me. He wasn’t interested, and I knew it. The hot water was blissful; I felt my spine relax by slow degrees, and finally I could say, “I remember her. She was older. Keeper’d sold her on already before the Fire.”
He didn’t say anything, and I would have let it drop, except that a horrible thought occurred to me: “How did you know about her scars?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “How d’you think?”
The water was turning my skin red, but I was achingly cold. “Did you pick her for her scars? Did they excite you?”
“No, fuckwit. And that ain’t how I knew.”
“But—”
He silenced me with a glare. “The St. Dismas Baths. Remember? Where you decided I didn’t get to go no more?”
“Oh,” I said stupidly, uselessly.
“Jeanne- Zerline never cared about them fucking scars,” he said, grabbing the soap and working up a savage lather. “She had one made her left tit lopsided, and she didn’t fucking care.”
“It can be a . . . selling point,” I said, now as hot as I had been cold only a moment before. It had certainly been a selling point at the Shining Tiger.
“What if it don’t matter?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“What if. It. Don’t. Matter.” He rinsed the soap off and ducked his head before starting on his hair. “What if you say, I don’t care and fuck anybody who does. What happens then?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He sighed and handed me the soap. “I know you don’t. And it ain’t like I’m any good at it my own self.” He slid down to rinse his hair; numbly, I started washing myself. When he sat up again, he said, “If there was any way in the world you could get rid of them scars, I’d help you do it. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” I said. My throat was suddenly tight.
“But there ain’t. They’re part of you. And, you know, they ain’t no nice part, but.” He bent his head a little, caught my eyes, and held them. “Pretending they ain’t there and hiding them all the time, it don’t help.”
“You would feel differently if that scar weren’t on your face,” I said bitterly, viciously, watching the soap lather over my pale skin.
“You think?” His voice was neutral, and I was not about to look at him. He carefully worked his way out of the bathtub. He didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t offer. He dried off while I quickly washed my hair. I got out of the bathtub while he was still rubbing the towel vigorously over his head.
“You think that scar makes you ugly,” I said.
He straightened up, watching me warily. How good we are at this, I thought detachedly. How easily we read each other when we’re out for blood. “You think yours make you ugly,” he countered.
“No. I think my scars show what I am. But you think that scar makes you ugly. You think
you
’re ugly.”
“I am ugly.”
“No, you aren’t.” I stepped closer, painfully aware that we were both naked, aware of the scars on his face and thigh, of the scars on my back. Of my tattoos, which were scars in their own way. “Did Kolkhis tell you that? Did she tell you you were repulsive?”
He backed away from me, but there was nowhere to go, and he jarred his shoulders against the door. “Kolkhis don’t have nothing to do with—”
“Oh yes she does. Because I’m right, aren’t I? She told you you were hideous. She told you no one would ever want to kiss you.”
His tongue touched his upper lip ner vous ly. “Maybe.”
“She lied.” I was close enough now to feel the damp heat of his body, to see water beading at his hairline. “I can show you just how terribly she lied to you, Mildmay.”
“No,” he said, flatly, with finality, and— unbearably—with pity.
“You won’t . . .”
“No. I ain’t molly, and I don’t want you. And you promised you wouldn’t rape me.”
His voice wavered a little, but his eyes didn’t, and I hated myself. Again. Still. Just one more reason on top of all the others. My hands clenched, and I burst out, “Hit me.”
“What?”
“Hit me. If you won’t kiss me, hit me.”
“Felix, you don’t—”
“Damn you.
Hit me.
You want to. You’ve wanted to for years. I know it, you know it. So
do
it.”
His eyes had clenched shut; I could see the tension radiating upward from his fists, turning his shoulders into a bar of pig iron. I wanted to feel his strength; I wanted to feel
him
. I didn’t care how anymore. I just wanted him to touch me.
And I knew how to do it.
“Hit me,”
I said, pushing the obligation d’âme as hard as I could, and at the same time I swung at him.
It wouldn’t have been much of a blow in any event—
You hit like a girl,
some tormentor sneered in the back of my head: Keeper? Lorenzo? Malkar? I couldn’t even tell— but Mildmay had the reactions I didn’t, and my hand didn’t come anywhere near his face before he moved, faster than I could see, and I was on my back on the floor, with my ears ringing.
Mildmay was still standing against the door, hands poised defensively in front of his body, and he said, snarling, “You happy now?”
“Deliriously,” I said, not moving.
“Good.” His eyes were lurid poison green. “Then get the
fuck
away from me. And if you ever do that again, I will fucking kill you. You hear me?”
“Yes,” I said, still not moving.
He wrenched the door open and left, not bothering with his clothes. Some lucky Fawn daughter, I thought remotely, was going to get an eyeful.
It was a good minute and a half before I was able to make myself move.

The Pigrin train station was like being trapped in a metal rookery. My hands instinctively went to cover my ears, though it did no good, and when the catafalque lurched forward, I had to stagger and lunge to keep my feet under me. I had learned within minutes of leaving the church’s courtyard not to let myself fall, for the ox driver would not halt his beasts on my behalf.

I had walked from Howrack to Pigrin, knowing the destination only because the soldiers spoke of it to one another, complaining bitterly that they had not been given leave to visit Miss Evie’s, which I knew to be one of Pigrin’s jezebel houses. The catafalque stopped several times; each time I, like the oxen, was given water. My hands had to be guided to the dipper; at the third stop, they had to be supported as well, for I was shaking too badly to get the dipper to my mouth unaided. I expected the soldiers to mock me, but they did not. They spoke to me as little as possible, but they were not cruel; when I stumbled painfully over a road stone as we entered Pigrin proper, someone’s hand in my shift collar dragged me back to my feet. I did not understand it, but I was grateful.

I did not know Pigrin well; had come here once to speak to Gerrard when his wife, pregnant with Charles, was taking the waters. I remembered walking with Gerrard through the great, vaulted, rose marble halls of the Pigrin Chalybeate, remembered his laughter echoing and the scandalized expressions of the invalids and ancients. Did not remember what we had spoken of. And I had not taken the train, for I hated them, foul- smelling cacophonous horrors that they were— and ah, Lady, who will keep them out of Rothmarlin now?— so that although I had been able to follow a rough mental map from Howrack to Pigrin, for Pigrin itself I had no map. I could only follow the pressure of the collar around my throat. Was all I had ever been able to do, in truth, but it had been easier to bear when I had had some sense of the direction we traveled. Now I felt as though every step might lead me over the edge of a precipice. It shamed me to admit it, even to myself, but without the catafalque to drag me, I might not have been able to move at all.

I could feel blood sticky on my feet against the smooth stone of the station floor, and I wondered if I was leaving a trail of red footprints like the sea maiden in the story. My neck was bleeding, too, where the soldering had left rough edges, and there was the heat of bruises across my shoulders. Art lucky to have come so far without worse injuries, I told myself, and then, in proof or mockery, my foot came down on something that burned it. I yelped like a kicked dog, my whole body jerking sideways, and had it not been for a hard- callused hand that closed around my upper arm, the combination of my unwise movement and the drag of the chain would have put me on the floor.

“Steady, m’lord. You stepped on a cinder, that’s all.” A Corambin voice, like Intended Gye’s. A soldier— the same one who had saved me before?
“Leave him
be
, Oddlin!” shouted someone else, and I recognized a sergeant’s voice when I heard it, even with Corambin vowels.
“Thank you,” I said in a whisper as raw as the bleeding places on my neck, and the hand was gone. I followed the pull of the catafalque, limping now, trying to keep my burned instep from touching the floor. Trying not to think about the possibility of more cinders.
Then the pull changed, becoming slower and . . . upward? A ramp beneath my feet, stubbing my toes, and I understood: we— the catafalque, the oxen, and I— were being loaded into a baggage car.
The prospect was actually less unpleasant than the idea of being chained in a passenger car with Glimmering for several hours.
The catafalque halted. I heard the sergeant’s voice again, this time ordering one of his men to block the wheels and another to help the driver with the oxen. Someone bumped me in passing; I edged to my right, away from the ramp and the open door. Three cautious, shuffling steps, and my outstretched arm found the wall of the car. It would have to do, for I did not think I could keep on my feet any longer. Whether was grief or blindness or something else that weakened me, I knew not, but a journey that would ordinarily have been a pleasant morning’s walk had left me exhausted. I put my back to the wall and sat down, drawing my knees up under my chin so that I might be as little in the way as possible. Did not truly expect that to be enough, and it was not. I barely had time to feel relief at having my weight off my aching feet before the sergeant was shouting, equally at his men and at me; I was dragged upright again and pushed hard enough that I could not brace myself. I staggered forward, my hands coming up reflexively, and collided with the side of the catafalque. A hard boost from someone and I was sprawling across Gerrard’s shins. “You’ll be out of the way up there,” the sergeant said; I bit my tongue and did not ask,
Out of the way of what?
In another moment, I found out. The noise was unmistakable, even if it made no sense here, clattering hooves and an aggrieved noise somewhere between a moan and a yell: the bawl of a cow who did not want to go where she was being driven.
“Cattle,” I said blankly.
“His Grace’s gift to the Seven Houses,” said someone, most likely Oddlin, who had helped me before.
“Cattle?”
said I, still not quite able to believe it, but then the first of the cows came up the ramp, and if anyone answered me, I had no hope of hearing it.
The half- wild shaggy Caloxan cattle were small but hardy, and their milk was richer than that of their larger and more placid cousins. Listening to the soldiers and the cowherds cursing each other and the cattle indiscriminately, I realized I ought to be grateful to be up on the catafalque, out of the way of boots and hooves alike. But Gerrard was lumpy and dead underneath me, and one good kick from a cow might have put an end to this wretchedness, even if for only an hour. I was not grateful.
I was, though, exhausted, and willing to risk wrath that I was fairly sure would not be forthcoming. These soldiers had their orders, and they would follow them, but they were not zealots. Was it obvious to them that my penance was a sham, a ploy of the duke’s? I shifted carefully, trying to find some measure of comfort without further disturbing Gerrard’s body. And then, my head pillowed on a wadded section of the burlap draperies, and despite the appalling noise, I fell instantly and heavily asleep.
I woke once when the train began to move— to which the cattle objected, as they had objected to everything else— but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me, and if nothing else, I thought with grim, half- dreaming humor, I’d learned my lesson about seeking trouble. I fell asleep again.
I woke the second time because the train stopped with a tremendous jerk. I was thrown forward and then back so violently that I ended up lying on the floor of the baggage car, entangled with Gerrard’s body in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace, the breath knocked from my body and my head ringing like a full peal of church bells. Around me, the cattle were bawling like outraged virgins, the oxen were bellowing, and the soldiers were cursing with an impressive fluency and variety of expression. I lay still, afraid that if I moved, I would damage the body, and after a few moments, the sergeant interrupted his excoriations of the train, the cattle, and life in general to say, “Ah, strewth, we’d better pick up his lordship. Oddlin— you’ve a talent that way.”
So it had been Oddlin who had helped me the first time. I could not decide if it made me feel better to know that I had a champion, or more like a helpless girl.
It took two of them to lift Gerrard’s body back into the catafalque. I stayed still, listening to the sergeant ordering someone to go up the train and find out what had happened, listening to the cowherds settling the cattle. “Art not hurt, thou great daft mop,” one of them said, exasperation and affection so mingled that they could not be separated, and I remembered Benallery saying to me, long ago, “Just because Gerrard throws himself down a well, doesn’t mean you have to jump after him.” Even then I’d known, although I hadn’t said so, that that was exactly what it
did
mean.
I felt motion and heat beside me, and recognized Oddlin’s voice when he spoke. “Are you hurt, my lord?”
“No,” I said, being now fairly sure I told the truth. “What happened?”
“We don’t know, my lord, but Lark’s gone to find out. Come on, then.” He lifted me first to my feet and then onto the catafalque; I realized he was larger even than I had thought. Most men were taller than I— and many women, too— but this one seemed a giant, maybe as tall as Angel Vyell, who was over six feet, the largest man I had ever known. I added to my list of things I ought to be grateful for, even if I wasn’t able to be, the fact that Oddlin was inclined to be gentle.
They had made no effort to arrange Gerrard’s body— and why should they? Was not
their
failed king. Shouldst be grateful, again, that they do not desecrate the body. I thought of bodies I had found after the Usara had finished with them, and could not help shivering a little, imagining those things done to Gerrard.
Hesitantly at first, expecting to be ordered to stop, I straightened Gerrard’s body as best I could. None paid me the least heed; though I knew I did a poor job of it, it gave me some comfort to know that I had tried, and that it was better than nothing. I lay down again, but not to sleep. Not when something had happened that my keepers did not understand. I listened— as I should have been doing from the start— and figured out that there were six of them, counting the absent Lark. They had served in the long, grim, bloody siege of Beneth Castle; this assignment was in the nature of a vacation for them, nursemaiding a dead body, a blind prisoner, and twenty- four cows from Howrack to Bernatha.
With a long, rattling clatter, they opened the side door, and I was genuinely grateful for that; the cows made the air rather too rich to breathe.
“Hey,” said one, “ain’t that that fucking hill we started out at this morning?”
“Summerdown,” said another. “Yeah, we’ve come in a great big fucking circle. Welcome to the army, Tredell.”
“Oh fuck you,” Tredell said without any malice. “It’s just creepy, that’s all. I heard Webber talking about it. What they found, you know. I was glad to get away from there, tell you the truth. And now here we are back again.”
“Tredell, you talk too fucking much,” the sergeant said.
The soldier named Lark returned then, panting, and said that something had gone wrong with the engine of the train and the enginists were fighting over what exactly, and Major Browne said to sit tight and he’d let them know if there was any need for action.
“Meaning we shouldn’t be asking in the first place,” the sergeant grumbled. “But if I hadn’t sent a man, he’d be all over me wanting to know if we were all asleep back here.”
“Welcome to the army, Sarge,” said Oddlin, and the sergeant swore at him blisteringly while the other men laughed.
My time sense was gone, lost in foul unending night, but it was not very long before the train jerked and groaned and began moving again. The soldiers raised an ironic cheer, and I fell back asleep as abruptly as falling down a well. Although it was Benallery who had followed Gerrard this time, not I.