The Mirador (66 page)

“Felix made a pass at you?” I said, incredulous.

“No, actually. He offered me”—his mouth twisted—“his protection.”

“He . . .”

“If I left Ivo.”

I couldn’t read either his face or his voice. “Which isn’t likely?”

“No.” That sat between us a moment, and then he said, more softly, “Not unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“It’s pure foolishness.” The motion of his hands curling into fists—loosely because of those long nails—caught my eye and I knew.

“You don’t want to trade one bed for another.”

His breath released in a sigh that sounded painful. “Yes.”

“And you think Felix would . . . ?”

“I don’t think he would intend to. But, yes. Yes, I do.”

Because Felix was my friend, I wished I could have said Vincent was wrong. But I couldn’t.

Mildmay

This time it was me waiting for Septimus, and I didn’t have to fake being eager as fuck to see him, neither.

I’d got Mrs. Fenris to write the note for me—COME LIGHT A VOTIVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE—and Jenny’d put it in the drop, and they’d taken me back up the city. I’d had them leave me a couple streets away from the Plaza del’Archimago, along of how it’d be better if the guards didn’t get a look at either Mrs. Fenris or her coach, just in case. I picked Livergate to come back in through, because the guards there wouldn’t ask questions. Livergate was where they put the young guys, and though they’d see me, and know who I was, and tell anybody who was interested all about it, they wouldn’t have the nerve to say nothing to my face. And that was good enough for now.

And then I went up to the Altanueva and settled in to wait for Septimus. Because I didn’t know what the fuck to do about what the ghost had said, but I knew I had to tell Septimus before I did anything. Because he needed a chance to get clear.

I didn’t have to wait nearly as long as I’d thought I might. He hadn’t been lying about his system being good. It wasn’t even the fifth hour of the night when the arch behind St. Holofernes shuddered, and Septimus came through.

“You got something.”

“Yeah, fuck, I got something,” and I told him about Luther Littleman and the patterns and Gloria Aestia and Cornell Teverius and the Snake and the Rabbit, and he listened, listened hard, and muttered, “fuck,” between his teeth whenever I stopped for breath.

And when I was done, he paced halfway down the hall and back and said, “Fuck, you’re right. Vey fucking Coruscant. And I know you’re right, because I’ve seen this Rabbit guy. Seen him talking to Keeper. Seen him in the past two months.”

“Fuck me sideways. You got a name?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“But what?” I said, when he didn’t go on.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Fuck, do I look like I got a plan?”

“It’s just . . . are you gonna tell Keeper?”

“If I was gonna tell Keeper, I should’ve done it, what, three days ago? When you were begging me not to.”

He winced. “I just meant—”

“No, I ain’t. If you’ll tell me who the Rabbit is, I’m gonna go shake him until the rest of the story falls out. And if you ain’t, then get the fuck out of my way.”

“Slow down.” He had both hands up, palms out. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, if you don’t tell Keeper, she won’t tell you who got your gal killed.”

“Yeah.” And I felt the weight of that, too. But I could carry it. “I’ll cope.”

“No, I mean, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s the Rabbit. ”

So there was a slow count of seven where I couldn’t even figure out what the fuck he was saying, and then it, I don’t know, everything suddenly fucking fit. It was like having a tree grow from a seed to a giant in about half a second in my head. “Hugo Chandler. Are you sure?”

And I’d wondered how Kolkhis knew Hugo.

“Yeah. Keeper said . . . well, she said some stuff.”

She always did love to hint.

“Okay. Thanks. You want to go to ground for a decad or two. Don’t go back to Britomart.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough.” He gave me a once-over. “You okay? I mean—”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “Take care of yourself, Septimus.”

And I left him there to put whatever plan he had into action. Guys like him always have a plan.

I didn’t. Except for the part where I was going to tear the lights and liver out of a rabbit. Hugo fucking Chandler. I’d never thought about him twice. He looked like a rabbit, and he acted like a rabbit, and I’d never even thought about the possibility that he wasn’t a rabbit inside—or, he wasn’t as much a rabbit as he made himself out to be. He was a weedy little guy I could have taken apart with one hand tied behind my back, and so I’d never even wondered if he might be lying to me. He must have been laughing at me all this fucking time. Him, Hugo Chandler, fooling Mildmay the Fox, and Mildmay the Fox, sitting there taking it, trusting as a fucking lamb.

Well, I was done with that shit.

Felix

I felt filthy—not merely untrustworthy, but rotten with depravity, oozing monstrosity, as if I would contaminate anything I touched.

I stood at a cross hallway, trying wearily to decide what to do. I could not bear the thought of returning to my rooms, not until I was certain Mildmay would be there; seeking out any of my so-called friends would merely get me more sanctimony and disapproval, and I’d had as much of that as I could stand. There were places I could go in the Arcane, even barred as I was from the Two-Headed Beast, men who would plead with me to hurt them. I’d proved that already.

But it wasn’t enough. I’d proved that, too. I couldn’t trust myself, and I’d been painfully aware of that the nights I’d tried it. I’d pleased the men picked up in one bar and another in the Sim-tainted depths of the Arcane, but I’d kept remembering that last night in the Two-Headed Beast, and I hadn’t been able to release my cramped control over my own desires.

It was no wonder Vincent didn’t trust me.

I repulsed myself, and with Malkar dead, there was really only one place I could go.

Isaac Garamond was not pleased to see me. He was untidy, flustered, harried, and he tried to tell me he had an appointment elsewhere. But I could see it was a lie, and I could see the desire he hated in himself sparking, catching, starting to burn. He hadn’t got the information his masters wanted from me, but he’d certainly learned a few things about himself.

I smiled at him as the words caught and crumbled in his throat.

“All right,” he snarled. “Come in.”

“Thank you,” I said, and pulled the door gently out of his grip to close it.

Chapter 17

I knocked on Hugo’s door. He was a stupid rabbit and opened it. Two seconds later, he was pinned against his bedroom wall with my knife at his throat, and the door was closed.

“Mildmay,” he said, gasping because my hold on his collar was choking him. "W-w-what—”

“That’s what you’re gonna tell me,” I said. “Vey Coruscant, Hugo. You’re going to tell me all about her.”

“She’s dead!”

“Yeah, I got that part.” I increased my leverage just a little, tilting his jaw up with the flat of my knife. His breath was sour. “But before she was dead, you had shit going on with her. You told her how to find Ginevra.”

“I didn’t!”

“Don’t fucking lie to me. You
did
. And you know what the sad part is? I don’t even care. It bit you on the ass, didn’t it?”

“Austin wasn’t supposed to die,” he said in this horrible watery whimpering voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you fuck around with Vey Coruscant. Even if you are in good with her.” I shook him a little, to be sure he was paying attention. “You used to run messages to her. From the Mirador. And now I understand you’re running messages to Kolkhis. And I wanna know who your boss is.”

“How’d you find out?” he said in a panicky little whisper.

“I got my sources. Who is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“’Course you can, same way I can cut your throat. Or, you know, pop your eyeball like a cherry tomato.”

He was a clever rabbit, but he was a rabbit. “Lord Ivo! Him and Lord Robert and some other lords—I don’t know all their names, I swear!”

“Fuck me sideways ’til I cry,” I said. That sure explained how Robert had known about Cornell Teverius. “Is this the truth? I’m tired of you lying to me.”

“I swear it! I swear it! Anything you like!”

And it probably
was
the truth. I realized, standing there with Hugo’s breath sobbing inches from my face, that this was too big for me. If Lord Ivo’d been tangled up in trying to get Lord Shannon on the throne once, and if he’d been laying low for two septads but he’d come
back
, and then Lord Stephen hadn’t married his daughter, and Kolkhis was involved again . . . I wasn’t anybody who could handle the trouble this looked like it was going to be. Somebody else needed to be told.

Felix? Yeah, but not now. I needed somebody people would listen to, not argue with for an hour first. Lord Stephen? Yeah, but I needed somebody who’d listen to me, and I didn’t think Lord Stephen would. Not now. Then all at once I thought of Lord Giancarlo. He didn’t like me, but he was a fair-minded man, about as fair-minded as a hocus could get. I knew without having to wonder about it that he’d listen to me, and he was the chairman of the Curia. Lord Stephen would listen to him.

I shifted my grip from Hugo’s wrist to his collar. “Come on, Hugo. Let’s see if you get better at spilling your guts with practice. ”

I stood and hammered on Lord Giancarlo’s door for what felt like an hour before he opened it. He was in his dressing gown, his thin gray hair all up on end.

“Mr. Foxe? What on earth?”

“Sorry to disturb you, m’lord, but I’m afraid of waiting.” I dragged Hugo in and kicked the door shut.

I’d judged Lord Giancarlo right. The eyebrows went up, but he said, “Clearly you have something to tell me. I am listening.”

“Talk, Hugo,” I said, and Hugo talked. I’d told him lies about Lord Giancarlo all the way up from the Mesmerine, about how he was the meanest, toughest hocus in the Mirador, about how Cerberus Cresset had answered to him, about how he was more powerful than Felix and I’d seen him turn a man into a dog for looking at him wrong. Hugo believed it all, and I’d gotten him more scared of Lord Giancarlo than of either me or Lord Ivo. He told him everything, more even than he’d told me, details about how they’d got rid of Lady Dulcinea, about how Vey and Lord Ivo turned against Gloria Aestia and Cotton Verlalius when they realized how stupid and dangerous they were. He even talked about the plot to kill Cornell Teverius. It was weird listening to it from that side, how they’d decided to try with Cornell, along of him being both greedy and not very bright, but how he’d gotten too cocky and started shooting off his mouth, and how Lord Ivo had written to Robert to say he’d betray them before they could get him the Protectorate, and so Robert had sent Hugo down the city again. And then details about how Lord Ivo’d moved back in and it was like nothing had changed and how Hugo’d gone to see Kolkhis twice, and I remembered thinking that the Guard would know if Hugo was leaving the Mirador and wanted to just die of my own stupidity. Lord Giancarlo was scowling like the end of the world, but he took notes and asked for dates and details, and I knew he wasn’t making the mistake of not taking the information seriously just because it came from a rabbit. He got everything out of Hugo there was to get and then got his valet to run for the guards to take Hugo down to the Verpine, the prison under the guard barracks.

“I must go to Lord Stephen,” he said to me.

“You don’t need me, do you?”

“No, if you do not wish to come.”

“Lord Stephen, he ain’t exactly . . .”

“I understand. You have done the Mirador a tremendous favor, Mr. Foxe. We will not forget.”

“Thanks, Lord Giancarlo,” I said. I could feel my face going red. “Well, good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Foxe.” As I left, he was throwing on his clothes.

I went to Simon and Rinaldo’s suite. Them and Gideon deserved to hear first.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Simon asked as he let me in.

“Yeah, and then some.” I looked around. “Where’s Gideon?”

“He got a message from Felix and went out. Come on, Mildmay! Don’t sit on it—what did you learn from the necromancer? ”

I gave them the rundown of what Luther Littleman had said, and then of what Hugo had said. Rinaldo applauded with delight when I told them about dragging Hugo to Lord Giancarlo. “I would have paid money to see the look on Giancarlo’s face.”

“It was mostly the eyebrows,” I said, and he boomed with laughter.

“What’s going to happen?” Simon asked.

“I dunno. Lord Giancarlo was gonna go talk to Lord Stephen, and I guess it depends on how much Lord Stephen believes. ”

“Stephen will listen to him,” Rinaldo said. “He has hated Ivo Polydorius since Dulcinea died.”