The Mirador Read online

  “And backwards. It’s harder to tell, but I’m pretty sure that”—and he pointed to the west—“is the upside down mirror image of Arktidion.”

  “This is going to give me a headache,” I said. “Have you a theory yet as to why?”

  “It seems to me that it might have something to do with, um . . . well, with why the Khloïdanikos has remained extant— remained stable—for centuries.”

  “Which is certainly a question deserving of an answer. Go on, Thamuris. Tell me.”

  For all that he was a Celebrant Celestial, Thamuris was self-deprecating to the point of insecurity about his intellectual abilities. I had learned to tread carefully, not to say things that would sound condescending or as if I were merely humoring him when I listened to him.

  He said, “From what Khrysogonos and I have been able to find, which isn’t much, the weakness of most oneiromantic constructs was that they needed periodic reinforcement. Otherwise they collapsed into the dreams of the person who made them or—if I understood the passage correctly, which I may not have—just dissolved back into the waking world. Or both, maybe. The monograph I’ve been reading is written in a dialect I’m not very good with.”

  “Either, or even both, would make a certain amount of sense. But what does it have to do with this lunatic sky?”

  “Well, those stars aren’t going to collapse back into the waking world, are they?”

  “No,” I said, looking at Astrape so egregiously out of place. “And you couldn’t just dream them, either. It must have taken a great deal of work.”

  “Oh yes,” Thamuris said. “And I think it works like . . . like an armature. Once they set the stars, it didn’t matter if the garden shifted a little here and there. Because those stars—”

  “They’re not a dream,” I said. “They’re thaumaturgic architecture. ”

  “If you say so,” Thamuris said doubtfully.

  “No, really. It makes sense. And you’re right. It explains why the Khloïdanikos doesn’t seem to need . . . anything. And why there are ghosts.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Think about it! The stars—to get them like that, they must have picked a particular day, mapped them all out, transposed them. It’s why the moon doesn’t have phases, either. There’s one day in the Khloïdanikos. Well, one day and one night, but you know what I mean. So everything that happens in it, happens at once.”

  “Now I’m getting a headache,” Thamuris said. “So why haven’t we run into ourselves, then?”

  “Who’s to say we won’t? I think it’s a very slow day, and since we can find either night or day . . . I don’t know.”

  “You think I’m right, though?”

  “I’m sure of it. Those stars are what keep the boundary. And that’s why we’ve never found the walls, either.”

  “Sorry?”

  “When we went looking for the boundaries. We didn’t find them, because they’re up there.” I jabbed an emphatic finger at the night sky. “The gardens can go on forever, as long as they’ve got that sky overhead.”

  “That’s . . . very odd.”

  “It’s brilliant. I would never have thought of holding a boundary that way.” I sat a moment, contemplating. “Do you suppose we can work out what day they used?”

  “The astrologists have charts—I know that much. I can send Khrysogonos to plague them. Does it matter?”

  “Probably not. But I would like to know just how long this has been . . .” Not “here,” because this wasn’t a place. Not exactly. “Has been extant. It might help us figure out how and why the Khloïdanikos does change. Because it does.”

  “Yes,” Thamuris said. “And I admit, I have been wondering a little if the boundary is, um, permeable both ways.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t explain it. Not yet. Let me marshal my thoughts first.”

  “You don’t have to mount a defense against me.”

  “I know.” But his smile was nervous, fleeting. “You’re just . . . you can be a little overpowering, you know. And I don’t . . . I should go.”

  “Thamuris!” I caught his wrist, and then flinched back. I was usually careful not to touch him, for I could feel the consumption in him when I did. I risked a smile, half in apology. “I know I get excited about things. But I’ve never wanted to make you feel . . .”

  “Crushed beneath your advance?” he said dryly. “It’s all right, Felix. Just let me take things at my own pace.”

  “All right. If you’re sure—”

  “It’s who you are. I don’t expect you to change.”

  He couldn’t know why that made me wince—an echo of Gideon I did not want, a reminder of my own foolishness in believing it could be true—and I said hastily, “I’ll try to remember not to browbeat you in the future.”

  That got a proper smile. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. But I really do need to go. Xanthippe wants to show me to a healer visiting from Theodosia.”

  “But I’ll see you Jeudy?” I couldn’t keep the anxiety out of my voice.

  “Of course,” he said and strode away with a vigor and brisk-ness he only had here, in this garden of dreams.

  I stayed until the Mirador’s dawn, watching the twisted constellations in the Khloïdanikos’s immutable sky.

  Mildmay

  Felix hated the Lower City. For him, it was all about hate, the way he hated Pharaohlight and Simside, the way he’d hated his keeper and his pimp. He didn’t get why I missed it, didn’t get how I could ever have been okay with my life there. And he didn’t get that I’d been brought up to hate the Mirador the same way he hated the Lower City. He hadn’t lived in the districts where the Mirador went witch-hunting. He’d only seen that from the Mirador’s side, where it got called “necessary purging”—and you want a phrase to spook you the fuck out? Think about that one for a while. Nobody in the Mirador really understood that Cerberus Cresset being the Witchfinder Extraordinary was a reason for somebody to want him dead. And I was only in the Mirador because of Felix. Last fucking place I’d ever thought I’d end up. He didn’t get that, either.

  I was sort of wishing I did hate the Lower City the way Felix did, because then walking through the Arcane wouldn’t’ve hurt so fucking much. Wouldn’t’ve been like a list of things I couldn’t do no more, places I couldn’t go, people I couldn’t talk to. And, you know, it did hurt. And it hurt worse because I couldn’t tell nobody about it. Nobody who’d listen to me could understand what I meant. And the people who’d understand were never going to fucking listen. They’d say I’d made my choice and it was too fucking bad if I didn’t like it.

  Three hookers and two pushers gave me the come-on in the three blocks I walked down Rue Souterraine between the back alleys of the Limerent and the Goosegirl’s Palace. I guess they figured my money was good anyway.

  The bouncer on the side door of the Goosegirl’s Palace recognized me straight off. I knew him, too. Tiny d’Orisco. Biggest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on—six and a half feet tall and almost as broad.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me,” I said and waited, not in grabbing distance. I could hurt Tiny in a brawl, but he could hurt me way worse.

  “Whatcha want?”

  “Talk to Elvire.”

  Tiny grunted. He gave me the sort of look he gave drunk guys just before he bounced them, then stuck his head in the door and yelled at one of the eunuchs to tell Elvire that Mildmay the Fox was on the doorstep.

  “If she tells me to joint and gut you, you know I’ll be happy to oblige,” Tiny said while we were waiting.

  “I know,” I said. She could, too. I was betting she wouldn’t, because the thing I knew about Elvire was that she was a junkie for information. She wouldn’t turn me away if she thought I had something she could use. I hoped, anyway.

  And the eunuch came trotting back and said as how madame would see me, so I’d won the toss.

  Elvire’s look wasn’t much warmer than Tiny’s, but she waved
me to a seat. “What do you want?” She had that perfect flash voice that nobody knew if she’d come by natural or been trained like Felix had. I’d heard Felix slip a time or two, but never Elvire.

  “I don’t want to make trouble,” I said, “and I ain’t here ’cause anybody sent me.”

  She gave me the hairy eyeball. “I see. And how do you suggest we prove that?”

  I very nearly said, Why don’t you get out the thumbscrews? but I was afraid she’d take me up on it.

  “Look,” I said. "S’pose I tell you what I want. Then you can decide what you think.” She gave me a grudging sort of nod. I told her what I wanted.

  “That’s old information,” she said. “You only want this for yourself?”

  “Swear it on anything you like.”

  “What makes you think,” she said—and she still sounded like a plate of icicles, but she couldn’t quite sound as bored as she wanted. Elvire loved the hunt. “What makes you think that anyone will remember?”

  "C’mon, Elvire. It ain’t that old, and there were people watched Vey Coruscant’s doings pretty close.”

  Elvire signed herself against hexes. “Is it true you killed her?”

  “Yeah. Thought that was common knowledge.”

  “Rumor is rumor,” she said. “What do I get out of this— aside from the pleasure of having you in my house?”

  “I’ll pay you what I can, but it ain’t much.” Felix would give me all the money I wanted, but he’d want to know what it was for.

  “To think the day would come when I would hear Mildmay the Fox say that.” She gave me a look like curdled poison. “I don’t need your money. Is it true that Felix Harrowgate is also Methony Feucoronne’s son?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled. I wondered how much somebody was going to pay her for that, and I wondered why the fuck they wanted to know. “I will look. Do you expect me to send you billets-doux in the Mirador?”

  “I ain’t that dumb,” I said. “I’ll come back on Huitième and ask.”

  She nodded. I’d given myself away—never, never let anybody know how bad you want something when you’re bargaining. But it was sort of okay with Elvire. She’d jack up the price—more secrets that weren’t mine to give, most likely—but she wouldn’t lie to me, whether she hated me or not. As far as things like that went in the Lower City, she was trustworthy.

  That far and no farther.

  Chapter 2

  Mildmay

  I thought we were going to make it out of court okay. Felix wasn’t stopping to pick a fight with nobody, and nobody seemed minded to pick a fight with him. But just as we got to the door, one of the pages comes trotting up and squeaks, “Please, my lord, His Lordship wants you.”

  Although all the hocuses and flashies pretend like everybody’s title means the same, there’s only one “His Lordship” and that’s Stephen Teverius. “Thank you,” Felix said, and the two of us turned around and hiked all the way back down the Hall of the Chimeras to the dais, where Lord Stephen was waiting.

  “My lord,” Felix said and bowed, and I stood there and racked my brains trying to think of what he could’ve done this time to make Lord Stephen mad. It turned out, though, it wasn’t nothing to do with Felix specially, just that somebody had to hold the baby—meaning the Bastion’s messenger. He was what the Bastion called a caefidus, somebody who had sworn oaths to the Bastion but was annemer, not a hocus. Kind of like the obligation d’âme and kind of a shitty hole to be stuck in, if you ask me.

  Felix had other things to do Lundy afternoon and started to say so, but Lord Stephen said, “Don’t argue. Simon Barrister will talk to them for you. You’re going to be nice to Messire Perrault this afternoon. Don’t lose him.”

  Felix opened his mouth, shut it again, and said, “Yes, my lord.”

  Lord Stephen waved the messenger forward. He was a middle-aged Grasslander, dark and with lines on his face like he frowned a lot. Good hands. “Lord Felix has graciously agreed to put himself at your disposal this afternoon,” the Lord Protector said. He watched the two of them shake hands like he wanted to be sure it happened, and then left.

  Mr. Perrault said, “I hope I do not inconvenience you, Lord Felix.”

  “Not a bit,” Felix said. “What would you like to do with the afternoon?”

  Mr. Perrault looked a little sheepish, but he brought it out anyway. “I should very much like to walk around the Mirador with someone who knows it.”

  “Nothing could be better,” Felix said. “Just a moment.”

  He flagged down a pageboy and dragged him aside. It wasn’t a long message, whatever it was, because in less than a minute the boy went haring off and Felix came back. He picked up the conversation right where he’d left it. “Roaming around the Mirador is my favorite hobby. Anything of special interest?” He started toward the door, Aias Perrault keeping step and me a couple paces behind, just like always.

  Mr. Perrault laughed a little. “Considering that I cannot find my way from my room to this hall without the guidance of an adolescent boy, I scarcely feel qualified to say.”

  “People say us and the Bastion are on the same plan,” I said. Because they did.

  Mr. Perrault looked at me funny, like he hadn’t thought I knew how to talk, but he said, “I do not know. Certainly, if it is true, it is not helpful.”

  “The Mirador is strange,” Felix said. “Wizards who’ve lived here for twenty years get lost occasionally. And although it and the Bastion might once have been twins, they are no longer. Let’s start at the top.” He’d led the way to one of the narrow, twisty staircases that went to the Crown of Nails, the Mirador’s highest ring of battlements. Oh fuck me sideways, I thought. I hated those stairs.

  At least it was a pretty day. I sat down in a patch of sun, and Felix pointed out interesting bits of Mélusine to Mr. Perrault: the two cathedrals to Phi-Kethetin, the one in Spicewell, and the big fucking brick one up in Dimcreed. Ver-Istenna’s dome. The Vesper Manufactory. Bercromius Park, which the Bercromii were hanging onto like bear-baiting dogs. Last open land of more’n about a septad-acre in the whole city. You could get in for a decacentime on Cinquièmes, and a tour of the house was another septacentime. Only place in the city where the Sim looked like a river instead of just like death.

  And then the other flashie houses in Roy-Verlant and Lighthill and Nill, and Mr. Perrault said, “A strange name for a city district. I understand the word means ‘nothing.’ ”

  Felix gave me an eyebrow.

  “Nighthill,” I said, " ’cause it’s on the west.”

  “My brother doesn’t speak in riddles on purpose. The extended version would be that ‘Nill’ is a contraction of ‘Nighthill’ and the district was so named because it is, as you can see, on the west side of the Mirador.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Perrault. “And which part of the city is it that you call the ‘Lower City’—it is all lower than the Mirador, yes?”

  “Um,” said Felix. “That’s not exactly what ‘lower’ means in this context, although”—and he waved an arm out vaguely southeast—“the ground does descend toward the St. Grandin Swamp as you go south. The Lower City is the oldest, poorest, and most crime-ridden quarter of Mélusine. I don’t suggest going there without a, er, native guide.”

  “I have no intention of leaving the Mirador,” Mr. Perrault said. He gave Felix a funny look. The pause was just long enough for me to know what he was going to ask next: “Is it true you yourself are from the Lower City?”

  Felix had seen it coming, too. “Both of us are,” he said, like it didn’t cost him nothing to admit it. “Mildmay retains the native dialect.”

  Thank you so very fucking much, I thought.

  “I meant no insult,” Mr. Perrault said. I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or Felix. “As the child of sharecroppers, I have no high place from which to throw mud. I was merely curious.”

  “Curiosity is popularly agreed to have killed the cat,” Felix said. I couldn’t tell
if it was a real warning, or if he was just fencing to see what Mr. Perrault would do.

  What Mr. Perrault did was laugh. “Do you have any idea of the stories that are told about you in the Bastion?”

  I don’t think he could’ve shocked Felix more if he’d done it on purpose.

  “Messire Gennadion made no secret of how he had contrived to break the Virtu,” Mr. Perrault said, “and your Lord Protector has made no secret of how it was mended. Can you blame me for being curious?”

  “How appalling,” Felix said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I hope you don’t believe everything Malkar said about me.”

  “I myself never met him—my duties keep me mostly away from the Bastion—but I know there is still debate over how much Messire Gennadion should have been listened to.”

  “The correct answer being: not at all. Malkar would never tell the truth if a plausible lie was available. I assure you, from fifteen years’ experience of him, you should not believe anything for which he was your sole authority.”

  “Such as the idea that you are the linchpin of the Mirador’s strength?”

  “Me?” Felix burst out laughing. “Good gracious, no. I’m nothing more than a troublemaker. Ask Lord Stephen. Ask Lord Giancarlo.”

  “Messire Gennadion swore that your destruction would be the downfall of the Mirador.”

  “Did he?” Felix’s mouth twisted. “I imagine he wanted to believe so, since it would provide a magnificent rationale for his desire to . . . destroy me. But it’s certainly not true. Oh, I grant you that I’m the most powerful wizard in the Mirador, and I do sit on the Curia, but if I died tomorrow, the Mirador would go on without so much as a wobble. I’m afraid Malkar was merely telling you all what he wanted you to believe—an art he excelled at.”

  “But why did he want you dead?”

  “I’m sure he hated me as much as I hated him. I’d given him reason.”

  “You are frank.”

  “About Malkar? I have no reason to be anything but. As I said, I hated him.”

  “And yet—”

  “I know, I know!” Felix threw a hand up, like he was warding off a blow. “And yet I was his apprentice and his lover. If you had known him, Messire Perrault, you would understand that these were reasons to hate him.”