The Virtu (40 page)

He flushed a miserable red. :Truly, I am sorry. I didn’t mean…:

It was so easy to reach across the table, to tilt his chin up with one finger. So easy to read the desire and fear and embarrassment in his eyes. So easy to smile, to see his face light up in return, to lean across the table and kiss him.

For a moment he seemed petrified, and then his lips parted eagerly against mine, and I felt the soft, shy touch of his fingers stroking my hair.

I broke the kiss, leaning back, and was pleased when he neither protested nor attempted to claim the initiative. He merely looked at me, his wide eyes dark as night, and I could see that he was breathing a little faster than he had been. I knew, without having to ask, or even wonder, that he would be a compliant, submissive lover, as eager to please in bed as he was intransigent normally. He would not try to take before I was prepared to give, would not crowd me as Ingvard had done.

I smiled at him again, putting every ounce of charm I had into it, and said, “Shall we find somewhere more private?”

He looked away, clearly ashamed of his own reaction, but nodded.

“Good. Wait here a moment.” I had no fear that I would be disobeyed.

Mildmay was in our room, lying staring at the ceiling with his hands interlaced behind his head.

“Out,” I said.

He sat up. “Sorry?”

“Out. Go tell Mehitabel some more of your life story if you want.”

“Oh, powers. She didn’t—”

“Yes, she did, and right now I don’t want to discuss it with either her
or
you.
Out.
I’ll tell you when you can come back.” And it took only a featherlight touch on the obligation d‘âme to convince him I meant it. He fled—for all his dour stone face, he was ridiculously easy to hurt—and I went to fetch Gideon, knowing I was being cruel and in that moment not caring.

Gideon was waiting, anxiety clear in the stiffness of his posture and the frown line between his eyes. “Come on,” I said. “Our room is free.”

He stood up, still anxious. :Mildmay?:

“Taking a walk,” I said and smiled at him reassuringly. “We won’t be interrupted.”

He colored and looked away. :I’m sorry. It has been a long time since I’ve had any part in this sort of…:

“Exploit,” I suggested and got a small smile. “Look—don’t worry. And don’t apologize, either. Just come to bed.”

It was a calculated risk, and it paid off splendidly. He seemed stunned momentarily, but then his answering smile transformed him nearly into the beautiful boy he must once have been, and he came willingly around the table and into my arms.

I kissed him quickly, as a promise, then guided him to the bedroom, where I shut and locked the door behind us. For once, I did not need elaborate explanations or persuasions to convince my lover to blow out the candles; Gideon, an easy fifteen years my senior, was no more eager to be seen in good light than I was.

We undressed in the dark, and when I touched him, he was shivering.

“What? What’s the matter?”

:Nothing.: A shaky, soundless not-quite laugh, :It’s just—it has been a
very
long time.:

I answered him mind-to-mind, as he had to speak to me. :We don’t have to—:

:No
!: With unexpected force, and his hands were gripping mine tightly. :I’ve wanted you quite desperately since the first time I saw you, but I never believed, never
imagined
… I’m not going to back away now.:

I had more power over him even than I had thought—and I had an unwelcome memory of Mehitabel saying,
He just handed himself to you on a platter, didn’t he
? I pushed it away. Gideon had been there, too. Gideon had heard Mehitabel’s scathing indictment of my character, and the fact that he was here with me now…

I bent my head and kissed him carefully, lingeringly. He was as responsive as he had been before, and when my tongue slipped into his mouth, into that emptiness the Aiaians had created, he made a noise deep in his throat that was half gasp, half sob, and his hands came up to clutch at my shoulders so tightly I was afraid he would leave bruises.

I guided him backwards to find the bed, pushed him down gently. He went willingly; the only protest he made was when I moved my mouth away from his, and that was more of a sob. :Please.:

:Please, what?: I asked, teasing, testing.

:Please
.: His hands found my face, and he dragged me down into another kiss, his mouth open, begging.

I gave him my tongue again; we kissed fiercely, languorously, while my hands explored his body, all ribs and hipbones under dense curly hair. His erection was already hard with need when my fingers found it. A few strokes had his hips rocking, and then I plunged my tongue into his mouth and tightened my grip, and his climax arched him off the bed like a bow. He had not been lying when he said it had been a long time.

I kissed him through the aftermath, and he clung to me with mouth and hands. He might have been crying; in the darkness I could not tell, and I did not care to know. I could leave him some privacy, some remnant of pride.

After a while, he said, his voice dry and calm, as if by force of will he could deny his body’s abject capitulation to my control, :I believe the correct expression is, ‘Turnabout is fair play.’ What do you want me to do?:

:You know what I want,: I said, letting my fingers slip between his thighs.

:Yes.: A shiver, quickly repressed.

:You don’t have to,: I said, as my fingers traced a slow path along scrotum and perineum.

:I want to,: he said stubbornly and then made a tiny, needy moan as my fingers found and caressed what they sought.

:Perhaps you do, at that,: I said and let him hear my amusement. :Roll over.:

He did, still obedient, and I left the bed briefly to find the herbal oil that Mildmay used to keep the scarred skin of his leg pliant. I’d observed weeks ago that it was well suited to other functions, but had not expected to have the chance to prove it.

I lay down beside Gideon again and said aloud, possibly more for my benefit than his, “If you tell me to stop, I will.”

Gideon made no reply. I uncorked the oil and began to make my preparations, trying not to pretend that this was Mildmay’s body beneath my hands, Mildmay’s back arching with pleasure, Mildmay’s breath catching in that little sigh. Gideon’s body, half-starved and middle-aged, was nothing like Mildmay’s; there was no difficulty except in my own useless desire for what I could not have.

And Gideon was beautifully responsive, delighted, coming to this pleasure almost like a surprised virgin.

:Has no one ever bothered to make this good for you before?: I asked.

:Not like this,: he said and moaned—a soft noise, but the loudest I had heard him make since we had met again in Julip.

I thought of Malkar, who always preferred sex to be accompanied by pain—mine, not his. And I thought of Shannon, and even of some of the patrons of the Shining Tiger, who had cared enough to go about this activity properly. And I was finally able to forget Mildmay in my desire to give Gideon pleasure. He climaxed again before I was done, and from the stunned undertones to his postcoital comments, I could tell that not only had he not expected to, he hadn’t believed it was possible.

Maybe that was something I could do, I thought, kissing Gideon one last time before I got up to find Mildmay and tell him he could come to bed. I could give him pleasure in return for everything I took.

Before you ask, yeah, I knew what they’d been doing. I would’ve had to be deaf and blind to miss it. And I know what sex smells like.

Poor Gideon couldn’t even look me in the eye. I wanted to tell him it Was okay—I knew how he felt about Felix, and it had only ever been a matter of time before Felix figured it out. And it wasn’t like I had any problem with the two of them fucking if that was what they wanted to do. But I couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t embarrass the fuck out of both of us and make everything about a septad times worse. So I just pretended not to notice as best I could and hoped that was what Felix wanted. I couldn’t tell, and he wasn’t giving me nothing.

Of course, he wasn’t giving nobody nothing the next couple of days. He was pissed off at me and pissed off at Mehitabel, and the closer we got to Mélusine, the more like a Cabaline he acted. If we’d run into trouble crossing from Kekropia to Marathat—which we didn’t—we could’ve sailed through on his brass alone.

There’s this old law on the books in Mélusine about the ways hocuses can and can’t enter the city. They have to declare themselves at whatever gate they come in through—no sneaking around not telling the Mirador they’re back—and they have to come up the city openly. “No more gloves,” Felix said, and I really think he would’ve burned his if me and Gideon hadn’t convinced him to put them in a church donation box instead. He put his rings on like he was daring somebody to try and stop him.

The law don’t say nothing about how the hocuses travel, but Felix told me there was a tradition in the Mirador that you didn’t walk unless you were in some kind of serious trouble. And he said, with a smile that scared the shit out of me, that he might be in that sort of trouble, but he wasn’t about to admit he knew it. I didn’t like to ask how much of the trouble was my fault.

So we hired horses from one of the livery stables along the Road of Chalcedony, out past Chalcedony Gate where it was starting to settle down to be just a road again. The ostler who came out to see what we wanted did a pantomime-perfect double take at Felix’s tattoos, stammered, gulped, turned three different shades of red, and bolted like a rabbit to find the head ostler.

And I knew I was back in Mélusine.

We’d all done the best we could with clothes, although the secondhand shops in Julip and Farflung and Wassail were nothing to get excited about, especially compared to what you could find in the Engmond’s Tor Cheaps, and that was another thing Felix was biting everybody’s head off over. He had some kind of picture in his head about how he wanted us all to look—
Felix Harrowgate Entering the City
done by one of the flash painters in the Mirador if I had to guess—and it was driving him absolutely batfuck that he couldn’t have it. I mean, everybody was decent, but we were all shabby and out-of-date and riding job-horses to boot.

And he was especially pissed off at me, riding up to Chalcedony Gate, because I was wearing black and he couldn’t honestly tell me I shouldn’t. No matter how much he wanted to.

I said as how the old stories weren’t much use in dealing with the binding-by-forms, and they weren’t. But one thing they were real clear about was that the annemer half of the thing, namely me, dressed in black. I think it was mostly meant to be instead of livery, so people would know they weren’t dealing with an ordinary servant, but that’s really just a guess. For all I could tell, it had some sort of important magical meaning, and anyway it was about the only fucking thing I knew about how I was supposed to behave.

So I’d sorted out plain black trousers and a plain, high-collared black coat, a plain black waistcoat and a plainer than plain unbleached linen shirt to wear under it, and black stockings with some seriously lumpy darns and a pair of black boots that were probably a septad older than me. And Mehitabel got into the spirit of the thing and found me a black ribbon so I could queue my hair back like a gentleman.

Kethe, the kids I grew up with would’ve been laughing so hard they puked.

Felix just about had a fit. But he couldn’t argue with the part where it was what I was supposed to be wearing, and that pissed him off worse than anything else.

Of course, I don’t know why he bothered getting so worked up over it. The guards at Chalcedony Gate weren’t looking at nothing but him and his tattoos and his spooky skew eyes. They knew who he was. You could see it as loud as if they’d said it. I laid a private bet with myself that they’d be sending a boy up to the Mirador as hard as he could run. If he was fast and smart, he’d be there well before we were, and the Mirador would have time to decide what they wanted to do about it.

That wasn’t no nice thought, and I wished I hadn’t had it.

I’d been trying all that morning not to look at the Mirador, but we came through Chalcedony Gate and it just hit me right between the eyes like a fucking crowbar. I don’t know if I can explain how it was. I mean, I don’t like the Mirador. They burned my friend Zephyr, and there ain’t been a single thing in my life that’s been better for the Mirador being a part of it. But then the Mirador sure as fuck beats the alternative, that being the Bastion and the Empire and being ruled by greedy fuckers like the Duke of Aiaia. The Bastion would’ve burned Zephyr just like the Mirador, only they would’ve taken all day about it.

And the Mirador itself—the fortress, I mean, with its towers and walls and banners and gates. It was just
there
. It had always been there. For me and for everyone I knew and their parents and their parents’ parents, all the way back farther than I could count, maybe farther than I could even imagine. I could remember staring at it when I was a little kid, trying to make out the pictures on the banners and bugging the shit out of Nikah to tell me what they all meant. And the Mirador looked the same then as it looked in pictures from ten Great Septads ago, and the same as it looked ten indictions later when I was going up the city to kill Cerberus Cresset, the Witchfinder Extraordinary.

But that wasn’t how it looked now.

It was like the difference between an ugly old man and his corpse a decad and a half later when the resurrectionists dig it up.

And I don’t got the words to explain how fucking
wrong
it was, seeing the Mirador like that, all scorched and sooty, and with its roofs still only half-mended because, powers, it had fucking
acres
of roofs and I didn’t like to think about how many days in the indiction the roofers wouldn’t be able to go up, even with the best will in the world.

And I knew it was my imagination, but I felt like there was still smoke hanging over the city, like I would still taste ashes if I breathed too deep.