The Virtu (15 page)

I was starting to almost look forward to us getting to Klepsydra, because probably nothing good was going to happen there—I mean, odds were seriously against it—but at least I could get off the
White Otter
and maybe leave these fucking dreams behind.

The
White Otter
danced with the Kelephanian, making her way toward Klepsydra, and I caught myself again and again watching Mildmay, trying to make sense of who he was, trying to sort my idea of him out into order and coherence. Trying to find an understanding that would help me not to hurt him again.

I was hampered in my progress by two things. One was my own, irrational, insuperable desire for him, a lust like a slow-burning fuse which paid no attention to details such as our blood kinship or the fact that he was not inclined toward men or that I now apparently panicked at the approach of sexual intimacy. I wanted him—wanted the coarse fox-red hair he now braided back and tied with a scrap of indigo ribbon, wanted his body, his broad shoulders and stocky frame, lithe and muscular as an acrobat’s. I wanted his deep, slurred, Lower City voice, wanted the growl that threaded through his words. I wanted his eyes, cold absinthe-green jade, wanted his face, those feral bones, that stone scar. I wanted to watch passion transform him from stone and jade to flesh and blood, wanted to know if he cried out when he came, and what he sounded like when he did.

But I could not have him, and the tension between that knowledge and the unabated
wanting
made it difficult to think, even more so as it intertwined with that ugly, failed encounter with Ingvard and made me uncertain of myself, of my own desires and longings, in a way that I had not been since I was eleven.

And as if that were not enough, I further found that my idea of Mildmay, my understanding of him, was at once as clear and sharp as a chirurgeon’s knives, and clouded, obscure, impenetrable. I knew that I trusted him, but I did not know why. When I tried to understand it, my memory gave me only senseless flashes: him handing me a turnip that I did not want, him sitting under a street-lamp in a strange city, putting laces in a pair of shoes… memories of Joline, who had died when I was eleven and whom I had loved like a sister—like this brother whom I had not then known I had.

It made no
sense
, and it frustrated me. I could deduce that these strange snippets of memory were from the year and more that I had lost to madness, and even that they were moments at which Mildmay had been kind, protective, loving. But I could not know that that was true. They might have been things I had imagined, or dreamed. They might have been things that in my madness I had completely misinterpreted.

I became irritable, snapped at Arakhne, argued with Leontes, avoided Ingvard’s increasingly blatant attempts to get me alone. I knew that I needed to talk to Mildmay and I could not bring myself to do it. It seemed as if we had had this conversation too many times already. It would change nothing; it would not make me other than I was; it would not resolve this discord between us.

And then, five days out of Klepsydra (or so said Captain Yarth), I thought, Maybe I should tell him
that
. It was such a stupidly obvious idea that I burst out laughing even as I turned to look for Mildmay—and found myself face to face with Ingvard.

I fell back a pace, narrowly suppressing a yelp. But my alarm must have shown on my face, for he stepped back as well, raising his hands palms out; his smile was more than slightly sardonic, and it annoyed me.

“Ingvard,” I said.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Gracious. I wonder why.” I was as cold and supercilious as I could be and had the satisfaction of seeing Ingvard’s face go blotchy red with annoyance.

“Felix, what happened?”

“Your advances were unwelcome,” I said coldly. “I am surprised you need to ask.”

His manner had lost its last trace of amusement, and I was savagely pleased. Whatever else he might do, he would not sneer at me.

He took a deep breath and said with obvious care, “You frightened me. I’ve been worried.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Ingvard.” I smiled. “But unnecessary.”

For a moment, it seemed as if he would make some rejoinder, then he let the breath out wordlessly. He gave me a long searching look, but I was proof against it.

“All right,” he said. “I don’t… but it is no business of mine. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” He turned and crossed the deck to where his employer was standing, trying to instruct Florian in the rudiments of navigation. I watched him until I was sure he was not going to change his mind and return, and then I started, again, to look for Mildmay. I needed to explain.

So Florian’s father had come and dragged him off, and I was just sitting in the sun, kind of half-dozing, when I heard somebody coming up the ladder. I opened my eyes, figuring that Florian must have got loose somehow, and found myself staring at Felix’s trousers, with the tear in the leg I’d mended myself.

I kind of lurched, starting to get up, figuring he was pissed at me again, but he said, “No, don’t,” and sat down beside me.

I looked at him sideways, trying to figure out what was going on and if I was in trouble, and he was sitting, knees up and his arms resting on them, with his hands hanging down, right in the sun so the tattoos showed up like they were on fire. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring straight ahead, with this weird kind of little frown, not like he was angry, but like he was trying to remember something, or was thinking about something he didn’t much like. I couldn’t tell. So I sat and waited for him to cough it up.

And after a while he took a deep breath, still not looking at me, and said, “I need to explain something.”

He stopped, like when a hand-wagon hits a step. I said, “Okay.”

Another deep breath, and he was frowning off into space now, but if he was mad at me, he would’ve been looking at me, so I figured I was still okay. “I am not a nice person.”

I could’ve said some seriously snarky things back to that, but I didn’t. For one, I didn’t want him pissed at me if he wasn’t already, and besides, he was struggling with something, and he didn’t need me getting in the way.

“These fights we have,” he said, and stopped again.

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.” Which was nastier maybe than it needed to be, but he was still fighting with whatever it was in his head and didn’t pay no mind.

And then he just blurted it out. “They aren’t going to stop. The fights. And they’re going to be my fault. It’s… it’s what I am.”

He didn’t say he was sorry, but Felix
didn’t
say that, and the fact that he’d said anything was pretty much an apology all by itself. I didn’t know what to say, though, because
it’s okay
would have been a big fat hairy lie. Likewise
I understand
and everything else I could think of. And I didn’t feel like lying was going to make this thing between us any better.

And he’d only stopped because he’d hit another step, not because he was waiting for me. “I’ve always been like this. It’s not you.” He turned then, and I couldn’t help a tiny bit of a flinch, because his eyes were so spooky, and it was the first time in a couple decads that he’d looked at me straight on and like both of us were really there. “That’s the important thing. It’s not your fault. It’s me. And I’d promise to change, except that it would be a lie.”

“And that wouldn’t help,” I said, because it was what I’d just been thinking.

“No. It wouldn’t. And I don’t know that telling you this will help, either. But… I had to try.”

This time, he stopped because he was done. And I sat and thought it over, and for once he didn’t try to rush me or get impatient or nothing. He just sat and watched me, his spooky skew-eyes burning out of his face, like we had all the time there ever was and this was the only thing that was ever going to matter.

And you know, I hated him for that. Just a little. I hated him for being able to turn that feeling on and off like a cistern tap. Because he was making me feel like I really mattered to him, but I knew he was right. A couple days, a couple hours, a septad-minute, and he’d be walking over me like I wasn’t there again, or making some nasty, catty little joke about the way I talked. Like he’d said, it was what he was.

I was afraid to say any of that, though. Because I didn’t think it would come out the way I wanted, and by the time I’d figured out how to say it, he’d most likely be bored. Or somebody would’ve come up to talk to him. Or something. So I just said, “It does help. A little.”

He smiled. Not one of the dazzlers he used to get his own way. Just a smile, a little one, kind of crooked. And Kethe, it was like I’d never been mad at him at all.

Mr. Vilker was in a stew that night. I lay on my bunk and watched him pace around our tiny cabin. He had about two steps each way, and I thought of telling him to open the door, so he could at least get himself a sort of half-assed triangle, but I still didn’t think he liked me much, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate lip from me.

But it was seriously getting to the point where I wanted to hit him over the head just to get him to fucking stop, when he did stop, right in front of the bunk and staring at me, and said, “Is he really your brother?”

“Sorry?” I said.

“Is Felix Harrowgate really your brother?” he said, sort of through his teeth.

“Half-brother. Yeah.”

And damned if he didn’t start pacing again. But in about half a minute he stopped, dead-center and square-on to me again and said, “Were you raised together?”

“What?”

“Were you raised in the same household?”

“No.”

He snorted, like I’d disappointed him somehow, and said, “Do you think he’s mentally stable?”

“Do I what?”

“Your half-brother. Do you think he’s sane?”

“Um. Dunno,” I said. “D’you think he’s crazy?”

“I don’t know
what
to think.” I remembered Felix saying this afternoon,
It’s what I am.
Mr. Vilker took another two steps up, two steps back. “You know what he is, don’t you?”

I could think of a bunch of things he might mean by that, most of them somewhere between lousy and the end of the world. “Um,” I said.

“That he… that his tastes aren’t…” Mr. Vilker was going a nice sort of cherry color.

“Oh. You mean he’s a moll. Yeah, I know that.”

“A what?”

Well, I didn’t know no nice Kekropian words for it. “He fucks guys.”

Mr. Vilker’s eyes got big and round, and he went even redder. Nice manners, Milly-Fox. Very smooth. “Um,” said Mr. Vilker, “yes.” Another quick up and back, and he said, “Do you think he’s sleeping with Phaëthon?”

Well, since I’d been wondering the same thing, it wasn’t like I could say no, and have it sound like I meant it. “Dunno,” is what I actually came up with. But that explained what Mr. Vilker was fretting about. Jealousy’s jealousy, and if him and Felix had had some kind of scene, you couldn’t really blame the guy—what with Felix latching onto Phaëthon all of two minutes later—not for the wondering and not for the part where he felt kind of shitty about it.

He was pacing again. I said, ‘cause I couldn’t quite tell, “D’you even
like
him?”

“I don’t know. How can I, when every time I talk to him, it’s as if I’m talking to a different person?”

“He don’t like people knowing too much about his business,” I said, which I figured was about as far as I could go without Felix hunting me down and skinning me with a dull knife. And then I said, “He ain’t worth driving yourself nuts over.”

Which Felix really would have skinned me if he’d heard me say it, but, I mean, it was the truth. It wasn’t worth Mr. Vilker’s time to get dragged into this.

“Is that your considered opinion?” he said, nasty and sharp.

“I’m just saying. It ain’t worth it to you.”

“You can’t know that.”

And powers I felt like I was the oldest thing in the world, like I’d been the first thing to come up out of the rocks and mud when Phi-Kethetin started singing fire. “You ain’t gonna get what you want from him. Whatever it is.” Because as far as I could tell, nobody got what they wanted from Felix unless it was exactly what he happened to want to give.

He gave me an ugly look. “What has he told you?”

“Fuck all. But I know him. You don’t.”

The look got uglier for a moment, and then he said, “I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t let me keep you up,” I said, and we kind of snarled at each other, and then he climbed into the top bunk and snuffed the light.

Damn you, Felix, I said, but only to myself.

In the dream, I am in a place I don’t know—a cellar, a basement, something like that. Somewhere dark and dank and reeking of the Sim.

It is a maze as well as a basement, and I am lost in it. There’s a staircase somewhere—there has to be—but I can’t find it, can’t find my way up out of the dark and the cold. I go on searching, hopelessly, because I know that no one will come to help me, that no one would care if I died down here, left my skeleton in the corner of one of the odd-shaped little rooms that smell so sweetly and foully of death.