The Mirador Read online

  “From what I know, I have never considered him anything other than reprehensible.”

  “I see. What you wanted to know was if I am like him. I am not.”

  Mr. Perrault actually went back a step, and I didn’t blame him. Felix looked about ready to bite. I supposed I’d have to step in if things got really ugly, but I was hoping like fuck it didn’t come to that. Because I didn’t want no part of this conversation. Didn’t want to think about Malkar Gennadion at all.

  Or, to give him his real name, Brinvillier Strych.

  Brinvillier Strych had been Mélusine’s nightmare for a Great Septad, since he killed Lady Jane Teveria. By burning her to death in the middle of the Hall of the Chimeras. I’d heard they’d had to replace some of the mosaic, but I’d never yet been bored enough to see if I could spot the patch. The Mirador had caught Strych, and they said they’d killed him, but it didn’t seem like that had worked so good. He’d got out somehow—or maybe he really had died and had found a way back—and gone north to the Norvenas, where he’d fucked up Mavortian von Heber’s life. And when it’d been long enough, he came back. This time round, he called himself Malkar Gennadion, and he found Felix in a Pharaohlight brothel and bought him and trained him and got him into the Mirador.

  And used him to break the Virtu.

  Which Felix had fixed again, later, after we’d been all the way across Kekropia and back. And I figured Felix was right about Strych hating him, because that had drawn him back to Mélusine, so as to be able to lay a trap for Felix.

  Only he caught me instead.

  And what he did to me . . .

  Well, look. There’s this thing in the Arcane called the Iron Chapel and it’s where you go for a meet if you want to absolutely guarantee that nobody’s going to come across you by accident. Because people don’t go there. Nobody knows anymore who it’s a chapel to, although we all got our ideas. There’s a grate in the middle of the floor, iron, probably older than most of Mélusine and rusting to pieces one flake at a time. People tell stories about what happens when the grate rusts through, and they ain’t the sort of stories that end with hugs and kisses and happily-ever-after. But, I mean, since each bar is as thick around as my arm, it ain’t nothing I’m ever going to have to worry about. Somebody built that fucker to last.

  You don’t touch the grate. But if you lay down on the floor and look through it, you can see this kind of crack in the stone. Not dressed. Nobody made it or meant for it to be there or nothing like that, and how far down it goes . . . well, your guess is as good as mine. If it wasn’t for the grate, somebody would’ve found out by now, but I’ll tell you right now they wouldn’t be coming back to talk about it. The sewermen call it Mélusine’s cunt, and there are days when I figure they ain’t so far wrong. Because for sure if you try to fuck with Mélusine, you ain’t getting your cock back.

  And that’s what the inside of my head was like, around where my memories of Strych should’ve been. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know, and I most especially didn’t want to talk about it.

  Lucky for me, Mr. Perrault backed right the fuck down. “I am sorry. I have been tactless.”

  “No, you have a right to wonder,” Felix said. “I imagine I would wonder, too. But Malkar is not an edifying topic of conversation. Let’s go in.” He turned and started back down into the Mirador, and me and Mr. Perrault followed him.

  Mehitabel

  Rehearsals weren’t getting any better.

  Jean-Soleil, our impresario and part-owner of the Empyrean, insisted on doing a modern comedy after Berinth the King. I had nothing against Trevisan’s The Wrong Brother, but I wished Jean-Soleil wouldn’t bother—as I wished every time we did a comedy. Performances went well enough, but comedy was the Cockatrice’s forte, not ours, and I thought we looked as stupid trying to compete with them as they looked performing tragedies to try to compete with us. Madeleine Scott, she of the famously henna’d hair, was the only real tragedienne they had, and she must have been nearly forty, for all that she tried to hide it.

  And the Empyrean’s company was not suited to comedy; the rehearsals brought out the worst in all of us.

  Both Levry Tannenhouse and Bartholmew Hudson looked hungover, and I wondered if Adolphus Jermyn at the Cockatrice had been throwing out lures to Bartholmew again—he was watching Jean-Soleil with the “give me one good reason” expression we’d all gotten so tired of. Drin Baillie was sulking— ostentatiously and with one eye on his audience, as always. He’d made a pass at me just before rehearsal started, although perhaps calling it a pass was being too kind. Drin believed himself another Seigneur Christophe, misled by the reactions of middle-aged burghers’ wives and shopkeepers to his profile, and he did not seem to realize that both Corinna and I knew exactly what he meant when he leaned close and murmured that he’d been dreaming of our kisses.

  I’d fended him off with an elbow and said, “Clarisse got tired of you and you don’t have another girl lined up.” And I’d laughed, hard and deliberately, at the look of wounded reproach he gave me. Nothing but brutality would discourage Drin, and I had great faith in his self-love; once he was satisfied that everyone had noticed how he was suffering, he’d bounce back.

  Susan Dravanya, the Empyrean’s first tragedienne and my personal bête noire, was sulking because she felt comedy was beneath her. Susan was extremely beautiful, pale-skinned, and she rimmed her pansy-brown eyes with kohl and put belladonna in them to make them lambent. She had a deep, throbbing, mellifluous voice, and when well-coached in a role like Pasiphaë, Berinth’s mad queen, she could make an audience’s hair stand on end. But she had no comic timing, and she was as stupid as an owl. Every break we took was filled with that deep, throbbing, mellifluous voice complaining like a spoiled child denied a sweet.

  For my part, as I waited in the wings for my entrance cue, my mind was more on Vulpes than the play. And I hated him for it.

  I hated him for waking up the person I’d been, for resurrecting a past I’d thought safely buried and forgotten when I left the Empire behind me.

  I should have known better. Should have thought things through. But I’d let my wishing do my thinking, in my Aunt Charmian’s phrase, and now I was paying the price, for Vulpes had started the game three moves ahead, and it would take a stroke of luck bordering on the miraculous for me to catch up to him.

  I desperately wanted to upend the situation and rid myself of him. But I couldn’t. Just couldn’t. I didn’t know what they’d do to Hallam—I’d always been agonizingly careful not to know. Used every shred of my acting ability to keep Louis from guessing I was discontent. When I ran, there was no warning, no clues before or after. And they hadn’t caught me. So there’d been no point in hurting Hallam, and I knew Louis Goliath, the spider.

  He never did anything without an eye to its effect, never did anything petty or spiteful. It was one of the reasons he scared me to death.

  But it was different now. The Bastion had no reason to trust me, and they knew it. Vulpes would have a way of communicating with Louis—wizards were clever about that sort of thing— and if I gave him any reason to be dissatisfied with me, Hallam was the one who’d suffer.

  I remembered the last time I’d seen him, half a year before I ran. They’d cropped his hair, and for a moment all that registered was the staring bones of his skull, the great dark misery of his eyes. He was nothing but bone under lusterless skin, crippled, captive, chained by the spells of the Bastion like lead around his heart. He could never be freed, for even if the stress didn’t kill him, those spells would, and I knew it would be a slow, suffocating death. Louis’d been very careful to explain it to me in the immediate aftermath of Hallam’s capture.

  Louis knew we’d been lovers; I could touch Hallam at least, trace the line of his cheekbone, give him a fragment of tenderness. But I was careful not to appear sympathetic, to say harshly, “God, Hallam, I told you not to run.” And those dark eyes lowered, and he whispered, “I know. I’m sorry.”
/>   I hoped he’d understood later, when I’d run myself. Hoped wearily that he’d forgiven me.

  Of course, I’d also hoped that my leaving the Bastion would be the end of it, and we could all see how well that had worked.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, half-listening to Bartholmew and Jean-Soleil shriek at each other like barrow-wives. It would be so easy, if only I didn’t love Hallam. If I could say to Vulpes, “He’s no concern of mine,” and mean it. And I’d tried. I’d tried everything I knew to cut him out of my heart, to cauterize the raw bloody mess I’d let him make of me. And I couldn’t. Couldn’t get rid of the love. Or the guilt—for I should have stopped him from running, should have confessed my own plans, gotten him to wait, to be silent, to pretend acquiescence. But I’d protected myself, curled up in an armored ball like an armadillo, and he’d suffered for it. And the fact that I hated myself for it now meant absolutely nothing. Didn’t change anything. Didn’t redeem anything. It was just something else I had to live with as part of who I was.

  And then Bartholmew started Act Two, and for a while I could be someone else.

  Mildmay

  Felix dragged Mr. Perrault all over the Mirador that afternoon. I limped along behind, feeling like I’d felt when I was a kid, and Nikah and Leroy would let me tag along after them, so long as I didn’t get in trouble and didn’t bother them. And it was worth it, too. Every once in a while, Felix would throw a question back at me, but mostly he talked. That was typical.

  Mr. Perrault said “yes,” and “no,” and “fascinating,” and not much more, but I could see the way he was forgetting to be stiff and formal. The cult of Felix in action. Once, during the winter—after Felix’d started drinking too much—his friend Edgar St. Rose had bet him that he couldn’t work that trick on one of the Tibernians, the guys that Lord Stephen had had to let in to get the Mirador repaired and now couldn’t get shut of. Felix had done it in less than half an hour, and I don’t think I’d ever hated him quite as much as I did that night, watching him melt that poor guy with a smile he didn’t even mean.

  It hadn’t lasted, of course, but it had worked for that half hour, and Edgar’d had to pony up a septagorgon. And it was working now on Mr. Perrault. When Felix could be bothered to do it, it most always worked. I thought that was why he generally couldn’t be bothered, ’cause it was too easy, and it bored him, and maybe because it made him feel like a whore again.

  We went most everywhere in the dayside of the Mirador, but I noticed Felix was being careful about where we didn’t go. We didn’t go up under the roofs anywhere, and he kept out of the Tiamat and the Grosgrain, where they were still working on the damage from the fire. I didn’t know if it was along of not wanting to show Mr. Perrault—and the Bastion behind him—just how slow repairs were going, or along of him feeling guilty. That fire had sort of been his fault. Or at least that was how some people saw it.

  Now, most of those “some people” were Thaddeus de Lalage, and I didn’t think Felix should give a rat’s ass what Thaddeus thought. But Felix wasn’t built that way. Him and Thaddeus had been friends once, and I didn’t think it was that Felix wanted to be friends again—the things he said about Thaddeus weren’t no nicer than the things Thaddeus said about him—but it was like he couldn’t quit caring. Even when he knew it wasn’t doing him no good.

  I was just as glad not to have to smell like smoke the rest of the day. And also glad not to have to listen to Felix going off about the Tibernians and how they weren’t helping at all, just hanging around like vultures waiting for us to die.

  And that was the other reason—now that I thought about it—Felix had taken that stupid bet. He really didn’t like the Tibernians, most especially their hocus, and having them here itched at him almost as bad as it did at Lord Stephen.

  So I figured he was probably being nice to Mr. Perrault on purpose, and I wasn’t as surprised as I might’ve been when it turned out he’d put some thought into it. Along about sunset, Felix led Mr. Perrault to the Seraphine, where it turned out somebody’d put together a sort of little soirée. Hocuses, mostly the people Felix got along with—“friends” might be pitching it a little strong—plus a handful of Kekropians: Andromachy Sain, Elissa Bullen, Isaac Garamond, some others I didn’t know. None of ’em with the Mirador’s tattoos, and, I mean, nobody’d want to put Thaddeus in this kind of situation, but Felix liked Eric Ogygios, whose spine was all twisted from what his masters in the Bastion had done to him. He had a tongue on him like a cheese grater, and he hadn’t forgiven the Bastion nothing. Eric would’ve made poor Mr. Perrault’s life a misery, and Felix must have been tempted to invite him. But he hadn’t.

  All the same, though, he wasn’t doing the Bastion no favors. These weren’t people who were going to be sweet-talked into taking the offers of amnesty Mr. Perrault had brought. I’d seen Isaac Garamond all over Lord Giancarlo like a cheap coat, wanting to know how the oaths worked and what he’d have to do and when the Curia would be listening to petitions again. Which they weren’t right now, along of the tantrum Felix had pitched over Gideon, but they couldn’t hide from it forever.

  And, you know, even the hocuses like Elissa Bullen who weren’t all that excited about putting their souls in hock to the Mirador, even if the protection you got in return was the best to be had—Miss Bullen was talking about going farther west and maybe settling in Vusantine, not about going back to Kekropia.

  Gideon wasn’t here—I mean, not that he would’ve come— and neither were Simon and Rinaldo. And I bet Felix had been tempted to invite them. They’d probably still be in the Bastion if I hadn’t got dumped in their cell when Strych got tired of me.

  I wished they were here, though. Because at least they didn’t mind talking to me, and they didn’t look at me like I was going to bite them or give them plague or something. And even more than wishing they were here, I wished I was there, that I could just disappear like a hocus in a story, go off to Simon and Rinaldo’s suite and play Long Tiffany until Felix was done. Felix teased me sometimes by calling me a duenna, and truth to tell, that was pretty much how I felt, like some old maid chaperone along to keep everybody else from having a good time.

  The hocuses were happy enough to ignore me, though. It was easier on them. People didn’t go around using the obligation d’âme no more, and the whole Mirador was pretty spooked by the fact that Felix had. It was worst for the hocuses who were trying to be friends with him, because the only people in stories who did the obligation d’âme were the bad guys, like Porphyria Levant. I’d thought more than once that Felix would be pretty fucking convincing as the bad guy in a story, but the obligation d’âme didn’t have nothing to do with that.

  I picked out a chair and settled in to watch. Dominic Jocelyn had a crush on Felix the size of a buffalo, and was trying hard to be witty to impress him. Felix was being nice and not letting on that he knew, but him and Fleur were giving each other these looks behind Dominic’s back. Elissa Bullen and Charles the Dragon were doing everything but standing on their heads to make Aias Perrault happy, and he was even letting them.

  I watched, and they let me alone, until Isaac Garamond came over and said, “Messire Foxe, we had hoped you would join us.”

  For fuck’s sake, I thought, why? Mr. Garamond was maybe an indiction or two younger than Felix, about my height, sleek and bright-eyed like an otter. He wasn’t one of my favorite people, but I didn’t have what you might call a reason for it. I said, “Thanks, Mr. Garamond, but I’m okay over here.”

  “It must be very dull,” he said.

  “I’m okay,” I said, instead of either agreeing with him or lying.

  He looked at me, one of those hard looks like a trepan, and said, “I feel certain, Messire Foxe, that you are a more interesting person than you choose to appear.”

  Oh powers, what does this prick want? I didn’t know what to say to get rid of him without being rude, so I ended up not saying nothing at all.

  He smiled and said, “As you wis
h.” He went back to the hocuses. Whatever he said made them laugh.

  Mehitabel

  After the curtain went down on Berinth the King, my dressing room collected the usual flock of courtiers and gentlemen— what Mildmay called “flashies.” Also, “boy-toys.”

  I swatted that thought irritably aside and took stock of my admirers—not for their talents in bed or their scandal potential, but whether they might know something Vulpes would find “interesting. ”

  Most of them deserved to be called boy-toys; they hardly had two thoughts in their heads to rub together, much less anything to say that anyone would find interesting. I was thinking that Ashley Demellius might be the best of a bad lot—he was a featherwit, but also a gossip—when the door opened and like the saturnine answer to my prayers, Antony Lemerius came in.

  He didn’t bother to hide his impatience with the young men blocking the door, and I carefully didn’t smile at the haste with which they got out of his way. Antony wouldn’t find it funny.

  I shifted my weight, dropped my shoulders a little, became the Mehitabel Parr Antony would want. Antony, thank God, was bored by stupidity rather than threatened by intelligence; he’d been one of the first to transfer his favor from Susan to me. But his sense of his own dignity was smothering, like the air on a really humid day in the Grasslands, and if you didn’t measure up, he’d have nothing to do with you.

  He was very like his father, whom he hated in the particularly venomous fashion reserved for those whose good graces we must cultivate. And his father, Philip Lemerius, was one of Lord Stephen’s cronies. If there was anything stirring in the Mirador’s inner circles, Antony would know about it.

  And even if I didn’t get a thing out of him, Vulpes couldn’t accuse me of not having tried.