The Mirador (65 page)

What do you want?

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not that I hadn’t believed Mrs. Fenris was a necromancer and not that I hadn’t been expecting her to call up Luther Littleman’s spirit—but she did it so damn casually, the same way she’d told Jenny to get the box. I’d been expecting her at least to do stuff with chalk the way Felix did. But she didn’t seem to need to.

“Cycles, Luther Littleman. Cycles in Vey Coruscant’s workings. The first indiction of the reign of Narcissus, the last indiction of the reign of Narcissus.” 20.1.7 was the indiction I’d killed Cornell Teverius, so you’ll understand if I twitched a little. And 20.1.1 . . . It took me a moment to place it, and when I did I twitched again, so it was good nobody was looking at me. 20.1.1 was the indiction Gloria Aestia had been burned for treason.

The ghost said to Mrs. Fenris, I don’t remember. I am cold and tired. Let me rest.

“You can remember if you try,” Mrs. Fenris said severely. “You were her servant. You witnessed her actions. You kept her house. What was she doing?”

Why should I tell you? What will you give me?

Carefully, Mrs. Fenris squeezed another drop of blood from her hand. This one fell on Luther Littleman’s skull, making a dark, wicked stain just over the left eye socket.

Blood, said the ghost. I was beginning to be able to see it, a kind of misty lump just over the box. Blood is hot. Will you give me more?

“Answer my questions.”

What do you want to know?

“The first indiction of the reign of Narcissus. What was Vey Coruscant doing?”

Many things, said the ghost, and the eye sockets of its skull seemed almost sly. She was a busy woman, my master.

“What magics did she work?”

I wouldn’t know, the ghost whined. I was only her manservant. She did not tell me things.

“Luther Littleman, do not lie to me. I know what you were and why she had you killed.”

You are hard. I want to rest.

Mrs. Fenris gave the ghost another drop of blood. Now I could see its outline, a nondescript sort of guy, the kind you’d pass on the street and not even notice.

“I’ve seen the pattern. The first indiction, the last indiction, a fallow septad. Now we’re in the first indiction again. So tell me about her magics.”

My master is dead.

Mrs. Fenris made a huffing noise that was almost a laugh. “So are you, Luther Littleman. And you will tell me what I want to know.”

First indiction, last indiction. The Rabbit and the Snake. The Snake came late at night. She was cold and beautiful and she clawed my face open when I tried to kiss her. The Rabbit came in the day, and he couldn’t sit still, he was so frightened.

“What was your master doing with these people?”

Plotting for power, of course. She wanted power, my master, more than love or riches. She wanted to rule the city, and she thought she could.

“Through the Rabbit and the Snake?”

And her own magic. She worked many great magics. First indiction, last indiction. And yet they came to nothing.

“Why?”

The ghost was clear enough that I could see him shrug. Who can say? The stars were against her, perhaps. And she could never control the living as she could the dead.

“Who couldn’t she control?”

The Golden Bitch, said the ghost, and all three of us—the living people, I mean—startled back.

“Gloria Aestia?” Mrs. Fenris said in something that was nearly a squeak. “Your master was plotting with Gloria Aestia? ”

The Rabbit came from the Bitch, the Bitch and her dog-pack, and not all the dogs died with the Bitch. First indiction, last indiction.

“Who did the Snake come from?”

Oh, the Snake didn’t come from, for all her airs. The Snake came to, and she came when called.

“What did she do for your master?”

She arranged things. She could make people appear and disappear.

“Such as who?”

Oh I name no names. First indiction, last indiction. People appeared and disappeared, in and out of the mouth of the Snake.

I hate people, even dead ones, who go out of their way to show you that they know something and ain’t telling. Luther Littleman had clearly been a first-class prick when he was alive, and I could see why Vey Coruscant had liked him.

Mrs. Fenris knelt there and thought for a while. The ghost’s eyes were fixed on her hand and the blood starting to clot there. Finally, she said, “What magic was she working, that she thought would bring her power?”

Blood, said the ghost. She was seeking to turn the power of the Mirador from the bloodline of the Teverii. First the Golden Bitch and the Golden Whelp, and then the Other Child. Her magic could do much. But it could not do everything. Thus the Rabbit. And the Snake.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I had the cold spooked-out horrors crawling up and down my spine now, not over the ghost himself—he wasn’t nothing compared to the dreams I’d been having—but over what he was saying, what Vey Coruscant had been doing.

“Why did she want Lord Shannon to be the Lord Protector?” Mrs. Fenris asked.

I could have told him if the ghost hadn’t said it. Because he was malleable. He was but a child, and he was more like his mother than his father. My master could not influence the Lord Protector, save in his weakness for beauty, and she could not touch his heir. She could gain no hold. But the Golden Whelp would have been different.

Powers and saints, she hadn’t been the only one to think so. It had sure been his mother’s plan, hers and Cotton Verlalius’s, to make Lord Shannon another Puppet King.

“And the, er, Other Child?”

A fool, the ghost said. Well, that was Cornell Teverius, all right.

So now I knew. The thing I’d never wanted to know, and now I knew. Mrs. Fenris was still talking to the ghost, but it was all hocus stuff, and I lost it for a while along of being too busy trying not to puke.

The Other Child was Cornell Teverius. There wasn’t nobody else it could be. And that meant Vey Coruscant had been the buyer behind the job at St. Kirban’s. I’d killed Cornell Teverius for Vey Coruscant.

Small fucking world, huh?

And Kolkhis was the Snake. It was a good name for her. Suited her. And she’d been working with Vey Coruscant for two septads. Maybe longer. Powers and saints, I really didn’t want to know this.

I concentrated on Mrs. Fenris talking to the ghost. It was better than listening to the inside of my own head. I didn’t understand more than half of what she was talking about—cycles and tides and Kethe knows what all—but I got the part about why she was digging around now, even though Vey Coruscant was dead and you’d think that’d be the end of it. There was a pattern—first indiction, last indiction, like the ghost kept saying. First indiction of the reign of Narcissus, 20.1.1, and the last indiction of the reign of Narcissus, 20.1.7, and then what Mrs. Fenris called a fallow septad, but now it was 20.3.1, and there was a new pontifex, Valentine after Berenger, like it’d been Berenger after Narcissus, and she was afraid the pattern was going to start up again. Or her magic said the pattern was starting up again. I couldn’t tell.

And I thought of Septimus saying he didn’t want to assassinate Lord Stephen, and I knew, cold as cold, that Mrs. Fenris was right.

Mehitabel

Stephen had a formal dinner that evening, the sort at which a light of love’s presence was not at all the thing; he came to my rooms beforehand, and I spread myself out on my bed and tried not to think about Mildmay with only middling success.

But afterward, sitting propped against the headboard, Stephen said, “I get the feeling I’m not very good at this.”

“Sorry?” I said.

He gave me an odd little smile, and I was shocked to see he was embarrassed. “What I mean is, it’s not doing much for you, is it?”

“My lord, I assure you—”

“Oh, stop it.”

Startled, I closed my mouth hard.

He looked down, pleating a corner of the sheet very carefully. “You’re the second woman I’ve ever had sex with, and Emily didn’t know any more than I did.”

“But—”

“I was not going to be my father,” he said flatly. “And being the heir to the Protectorate . . . it’s like being a wolf in a menagerie cage, you know. Everyone watches. I could have gone to Pharaohlight, but I couldn’t have gone without the entire court knowing about it before I even got back. And by the next day, the stud report would be circulating, too. I’m not like Shannon. I couldn’t face it.”

Silence. Finally, I said, “You trust me not to bear tales.”

“You said you have your own kind of honor.” A one-shouldered shrug. “I believe you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Another silence. He said, glaring at me, “What I’m trying to say is, will you teach me?”

Wonders will never fucking cease. “Yes, my lord,” I said. "C’mere.”

He rolled to meet me, and he was beginning to smile.

I dined alone and told Lenore she could have the evening to herself, settling in with a romance called Astraea that Stavis had lent me. But I had barely begun to sort out the characters when there was a knock at the door. I cursed under my breath, took my spectacles off, and answered it. Felix.

I raised my eyebrows at him; his smile was rueful. “Mildmay has deserted me, and the Mirador is lonely tonight. May I come in?”

“You could do better than me, sunshine.”

“You underestimate yourself, Tabby, my love,” he said; I made a face at him, and he laughed. “Please?”

“How anyone ever says no to you, I can’t fathom,” I said and stood aside.

“Some people find it quite easy,” he said, but waved aside the bitterness before it had a chance to collect. “Don’t mind me. I don’t seem to have any control over my tongue these days.”

“That never used to bother you,” I said, sitting down again.

The blood showed beautifully beneath his pale skin when he blushed. “So I’m trying to do better.”

“You astound me, sir,” I murmured and made him laugh again. “But really, Felix, why me? When you could—”

Another knock at the door.

“If it’s Stephen, I’ll go,” Felix said.

“It won’t be.”

It was Vincent. “I’m sorry, Mehitabel, but Ivo wanted privacy to fight with Manfred, and I couldn’t think . . .”

“Enough of this incessant apologizing,” I said. “I wasn’t busy, and it’s just Felix with me.”

Vincent hesitated, but then came in and sat down. He asked Felix, “Did you get my message?”

“About Magnus?” said Felix. “Yes, thank you.”

The atmosphere was thick, almost choking. There was something between them. There had always been something between them, but this was different. This had edges sharp enough to draw blood.

“Who’s Magnus?” I said—anything to keep away silence— and poured brandy all around.

“Magnus was a Cordelian prince. One of Sebastian’s sons, I think.” Felix’s voice was light, brittle. “I tried, two years ago now, to lay him, disperse him, but apparently I failed.”

“He was very grateful that you’d tried,” Vincent said. “But he was hoping you could try again. He is . . .” Another of Vincent’s graceful gestures, eloquent of frustration. “Not in pain, since he has no body to feel pain with, but—”

“Something like pain,” Felix finished. “I’ve failed him twice, you know. Can you imagine how horrible that must be? To be trapped and in pain and the person you ask for help—the only person you can ask for help—keeps making all the right noises but never does anything?”

“He doesn’t blame you,” Vincent said; he sounded anxious, and I was right there with him. “He isn’t angry.”

“Maybe he should be!” Even Felix seemed startled by that outburst. He blinked, manufactured a smile from somewhere, said, “Well, maybe this time I can get it right for a change. I’ve been combing my notes, all the books I have, trying to find out what went wrong. I need another day or two.”

“Felix,” Vincent said gently, “you aren’t answerable to me.”

Felix’s flinch was visible in the sudden agitation of the brandy in his glass. He covered with an airy gesture, said lightly, “Well, tell him if he comes to perch at the foot of your bed tonight. Or whatever it is ghosts do.”

That was deliberate provocation, but Vincent did not rise to it. After a moment, a nervous swallow of brandy, Felix began to talk about the thaumaturgical theory of laying ghosts to rest, his voice like a frail, brave boat on a heavy sea. Vincent was watching Felix carefully; Felix was . . . not looking at Vincent, and his color was high. He lost the thread of his remarks. Regrouped. Lost it again and stood up, abrupt and gawky as a colt. “I should go.”

“You don’t have to,” Vincent said.

“Yes,” Felix said with a painful smile. “I do. Good night, Tabby.”

He was gone before I could stand.

“What the fuck?” I said.

“My fault,” Vincent said. “I’m sorry.”

“Vincent, I’ve warned you before . . .”

“Oh, powers.” A reluctant smile warmed his eyes. “All right, I’ll try to stop. But this is my fault. Felix made me an offer last night, and I turned him down.”