At the Hands of the Wicked, part two
Jan. 1st, 2007 04:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quasar273Link to Part One
Mildmay
When I woke up, it was dark. Pure pitch-blind dark, the kind you never get in the Mirador with all its flash windows paned with glass and crystal, and the servants to keep the fire alive, and here and there a lantern made by some hocus that never goes out. I could tell right off this wasn't the Mirador. It was cold and clammy, but sort of stuffy at the same time. The air smelled like sewage and dead fish and something else, something green. I was lying on a hard surface, and I was soaking wet.
I reached out, feeling for a wall, a candle, a weapon, anything. Something hissed, and I froze. The hissing went on, and it had some crackles and snaps in it -- like a teakettle just short of boiling, one of them cheap tin ones with the thin metal that pops when it warms up and cools down. I'd heard the noise before, but I couldn't place it right off.
There was the scrape of a lucifer, and a spark, and then a little candle flame too bright for my eyes, spitting and dancing from the wet. I looked away and blinked hard, then looked back at the man holding the candle.
Make that, the monster holding the candle.
"Kalliphorne?" I said, not sure I was right -- but what else could it be? "It's me, Mildmay. You remember me?" From what Cardenio said, she did remember. But this monster was staring at me with big yellow eyes and its head tipped on one side like I had two heads, both talking Kekropian.
"Hello?" I said again, sounding more like a little kid than a notorious thief and murderer.
The creature bared its teeth at me and hissed.
I pulled back, but then I figured the hissing was just how it talked. And maybe the teeth were supposed to be a smile. Or maybe it was warning me not to move. I was on a sort of a stone platform, like a table or a dais, and there was water all around. I was wearing just a night shirt and some light shoes, and I was fucking cold.
I looked back at the Kalliphorne leaning on the table, half in and half out of the water. It had the same dark greenish skin and scales and hairy crest and too many teeth, just like I remembered. And there was the six nipples down the front, but they seemed smaller than I thought they should be.
"Are you the Kalliphorne's husband?" I asked. "We met before, but we didn't really get to talk much."
He hissed and crackled back at me, and I figured that must be it. The Kalliphorne herself could speak Marathine, sort of -- good enough to understand, at least. But I never heard her mate say a word I knew. So maybe this was him. Or it could be another relative, I supposed. Just how many monsters were swimming around in the Sim that nobody knew about?
I had a look around me in the light of the little candle. This wasn't the same lair the Kalliphorne took us to before, and it didn't look anything like St. Kirban's. It was some sort of room that was more than half flooded, maybe from all the rains we'd been getting. The walls were made out of a dark stone -- gray, I thought, but it was hard to be sure because there was moss on them too. There were three of the table-things at this end of the room, sort of like altars, and I was lying on one of them. I couldn't see under the water, but I had the feeling it got deeper at the far end of the room. Maybe there was steps down under the water, and these altars up at the top end of the room, whatever they were for. There weren't no doors that I could see; they must be under the water somewhere.
"How did I get here?" I asked Mr. Kalliphorne. "You brought me, didn't you? But where from? And why?"
He just hissed and bubbled at me. I sighed. I could remember something about the river, but I thought that was just a dream. I was following someone what seemed like a long way through a long maze of corridors and doors. It was all fogged and blurry, like looking through a glass pane with frost on it.
Come to think of it, nearly everything from the past few weeks was kinda foggy in my memory. It went back all the way to the fever, maybe longer. It was like I'd been healed of the fever, but I still wasn't thinking straight.
Somebody must have put a spell on me. That explained the fogginess and maybe why I kept seeing Ginevra, because I remembered that right enough. I looked around me at all the water with that familiar river-smell about it, and I figured maybe that bit about following her down to the river wasn't a dream after all.
I looked at the Kalliphorne's mate. He was just watching me. "So, I'm guessing you're not the one that spelled me. But you brought me here . . . what, to get me away from the spell? Why here? There something special about this place?" Maybe that explained why I didn't feel like my head was stuffed with cotton soaked in rum anymore. "Y'know, it ain't going to do me much good to get away from the spell if I freeze to death doing it."
He broke into a whole bunch hisses and pops, pushing himself off the table with a splash. At least he left the candle sitting near me. He floated back across the water with more hisses and a couple of gestures that looked to me like the meant "stay there." Then his head slipped down under the water, and I was alone.
I looked around. Nothing much to see. Just me and a little smoky stub of a candle and a lot of sloshing water. "Well, fuck me sideways. Ain't this a box of shit tied up with a pretty bow?"
The water didn't say nothing back.
Felix
I paid little heed as Gideon drew me away from the water, up through the Arcane, and back to my rooms. If we got lost along the way, I didn't notice. Gideon built the fire high in my bedroom, bundled me with blankets, and held me while I shook from more than cold. Perhaps he cast a spell, or perhaps it was my own desire to escape from reality; whatever the reason, it was not long until I slept.
I dreamed of my brother.
He came to me smiling sweetly, which should have been wrong on his face but somehow seemed beautiful and reassuring. He clasped my hands in his and told me not to worry. He leaned down -- I was sitting, he standing -- and kissed me on the lips, hot and alive and passionate.
We twined upon the bed, and his eyes burned with a possessive desire as he stripped my clothes from me one piece at a time, then removed his own. In the dream, his body was perfect -- no twisted leg, no scars from Malkar's lash. His muscles slid smoothly beneath pale skin like fine-grained silk, and I wanted to lick every piece of him.
Though Gideon and I had experimented carefully with sharing control during our sex play, I had not allowed any man to penetrate me since Malkar's rape nearly two years ago. But this was Mildmay, my brother, who had given up far too much for me already. As much as I longed to teach him all the delightful ways of the ganumedes, I did not want to risk scaring him away. Let him take the lead for now, and I could initiate him into the deepest mysteries later.
His hands skimmed swiftly over my flanks and teased only briefly at my proud flesh before seeking what lay behind. I gasped to feel his fingers within me and parted my legs in eager invitation.
He bent me double, still with that unfamiliar smile upon his face, and entered me slowly, implacably. I burned with sensations I had almost forgotten, submitting my body to his care as he took possession of me in the most primal fashion.
I knew it was a dream, yet I wished so much for it to be real that almost it felt like a true-dream, a vision such as I might experience beyond the Horn gate. Mildmay whispered to me that it was real, that this was how it was always meant to be. That was a truth I could not deny; I had desired him even in the midst of my madness, had wanted to comfort and caress him when I saw his pain in the Gardens of Nephele, had ached for him even as I turned to Astyanax and Gideon and thoughts of others to relieve my desires.
Mildmay took me, and held me, and said marvelous things to me until he spilled himself within me and I spent, unaided, upon his belly. After, he curled beside me with his arm flung across my chest and his odd smile gone smug, like the cat that has stolen the cream.
"If I'd known you were that good, I might have tried it years ago," he murmured. I could hear my influence shortening his Lower Town vowels to a more clipped, cultured accent.
I lifted his hand, stroked the unbroken fingers. "When did you start wearing rings?" I asked him. Certainly rings had many purposes both symbolic and decorative, but in the Mirador they always marked a wizard. Mildmay was annemer, yet these rings were somehow familiar to me -- gold and emeralds. Where had I seen them before?
"They match my eyes," he said with a smirk. But Mildmay's eyes had always been a warm, living green, like sunlit leaves -- not like the cold ice-chips mounted on these rings. Not like the rain-cloud gray that regarded me when I lifted my eyes to his now.
I looked down again, and saw the tattoos of the Mirador twining up his arms. "But you're not a wizard," I said in confusion. Unless . . . "You're not Mildmay!" I sat up and pushed him from me.
He laughed at me, his hair lengthening and darkening, his eyes leaching of color, and still that horrible smirk on his face that could never have belonged on Mildmay's. I scrambled away from him and fell over the far side of the bed --
I woke up. Gideon watched me from a short distance away, hesitating to touch. Had I struck him or shoved him in my dream?
But it wasn't a dream, true or otherwise; I realized that now. It was a sending. Someone had attacked my mind while I slept. And I knew exactly who it was: the same person who had entangled my brother in a ghostly deception and led him to his death in the waters of the Sim.
Mildmay
I had a look about the room while the Kalliphorne's mate was gone. The three altars were just far enough apart that I couldn't jump from one to the other, not with my leg like it was. When I slid down carefully, the water in between was about belly-button deep. Up close, the walls looked plenty solid -- no doors, just like I thought -- and the black slime coating them didn't go up very high, which made me think the water wasn't usually this deep. When I headed for the far end of the room, I went a couple of steps and felt the floor drop off. I stuck my toes down far enough to tell it was just a step and not a straight drop. Holding the candle up high, I could just about tell how far away the other end of the room was, but I couldn't make out details. I sloshed back to my altar and climbed back up on it and sat huddled around the warmth of the little candle flame, wondering how long it would last. Maybe I should try burning my nightshirt.
Mr. Kalliphorne said stay here, and I didn't think he meant me no harm, but how much could I trust him? Did he even know that humans could die from cold? Or what if Phoskis trapped the Kalliphornes with his portcullis and no one ever came back? How long should I wait?
My other choice was to go swimming around the room and probably find no doors, and then I could try diving down to look for a door, and no knowing where it would lead or if I could hold my breath long enough to get there. Oh, and I would have to do it all in the dark, since candles don't burn so good under water.
Waiting for a bit seemed like the thing to do, but that didn't make it no easier. I sat and shivered so hard I felt ready to throw up. I tried to stand up and move about a bit, get the blood moving, but there ain't a lot of moving about a person can do on top of an altar. My leg gave out on me and I came within a gnat's bite of kicking the candle over, or falling into the water and knocking my head on the altar along the way. Not so smart, Milly-fox. So I just swung my arms about and jiggled a bit, and it didn't do much to warm me up.
Then I heard a splish and I squinted across the room to see a couple of big yellow eyes blinking back at me. Then two more popped up a little ways off, and the pair of Kalliphornes came gliding through the water at me.
Seeing them together, I could tell them apart right enough. The she-Kalliphorne was a paler green color and had more hair on her crest, and when she hoisted herself up from the water her dugs was definitely more developed. Still not the kind I liked to see, but bigger than her mate's.
"Young fox-like one," she said to me in that two-tone voice like a street organ or a cat in heat.
"K-kalliphorne," I said with my teeth a-chatter. "Why w-was I brrrought here?"
She brought out a little oil-cloth pouch -- I didn't care to think where she carried it -- and got out another little candle-stub. Just in time, because the first one was starting to sputter.
"My hus-band saying you has bad magic on you," the Kalliphorne said. "He bringing you here to be safe."
"And where's here?"
"We is under the wizards' tower, but no wizards is coming here," she told me. "We finding this place after he is so sick. This is safe place, no magic here."
Now, I don't know much about hocus-stuff, but it seemed strange to me that there would be a place with no magic right underneath the Mirador, in one of those forgotten corridors where the maps don't go. Why would hocuses want to keep magic out of a place like this, a place with altars? Wouldn't this be a place where they wanted to cast spells?
But maybe they wanted to make sure there was no outside magic mixing with whatever they planned to do inside here. It wasn't no stranger than having part of the Bastion shielded against magic. Strych kept me in a room like that, and Felix said he couldn't sense me there, even through the binding.
The binding. Thinking of that made me frown. Could Felix sense me in here? "What kind of magic did you say is on me?" I asked.
"Baaad magic," she moaned. "Chains is on you, chains all over."
I groaned. "That's not bad magic," I told her. "Well, it could be, but in this case it isn't. I asked my brother to do that. It's to keep me safe from people want to hurt me."
She hissed like an angry cat. "No, no, is bad magic, is! Old chains, yes, same as before, same as when you is leaving the city in the boat with the bad wizard."
That stumped me for a bit; I thought she was talking about two years ago when I escaped with Mavortian and Bernard. But she wouldn't call Mavortian a bad wizard, after he healed her husband. Then I realized she meant when Strych kidnapped me. I wasn't awake for that part, so I didn't remember leaving the city.
"But also," the Kalliphorne said, "my husband is smelling new magic. Lies and death is tangled in the chains."
So did that mean she wasn't talking about the binding by forms? I thought no other hocus could spell me when Felix put the obligation d'âme on me -- that was the whole idea. But it sounded like she was saying someone used the binding to get at me with some new spell, and that was nasty. That was how Strych got to me.
"Okay, so I'll tell my brother, and he'll take the new magic off me," I tried to reason with her. "But I can't stay here -- I'll freeze to death!"
She turned to her mate and they hissed and burbled at each other for a bit. "Not safe," she said finally. "Bad magic is trying to kill you with lies. My husband saw."
"What did he see? How did he bring me here?"
More teakettle noises. "You is being led to the river by lies," the Kalliphorne said. "You is being led into the river. My mate is bringing you here to be safe. Young fox-like one helps us, we helps him."
"Yeah, thanks," I sighed. So the dream about following Ginevra through a maze wasn't just a dream. And the fog blurring my thoughts wasn't just from the winter fever. And fuck, maybe the fever wasn't just from the cold rains, either. But hiding out with a couple monsters in some dead hocuses' flooded worship-hall wasn't going to fix any of that. I coughed a little and tried to figure a way to make her see reason. "Okay. Now that we know there's a problem, my brother can fix it. Thanks for helping me out and all, but we can take of this now. Just show me the way out of here, I'll go straight to Felix and get him to take this curse thing off me."
"Not safe, not safe!"
I groaned and swiped the damp hair back from my face. "Look, I'm not safe here, either. I could die from being cold too long, do you understand that?" My hands and feet were numb, and I wasn't shivering so much anymore. I knew that was a bad sign. I didn't feel stupid or slowed down, but the Kalliphorne was talking faster than me even with all those teeth in her way. So maybe I was slow and just didn't know it. I tried humming a bit of Jeniard's Lover, but the tempo didn't feel right.
Meanwhile, the Kalliphorne was talking to her husband again. Then he just slipped down under the water and ended that little talk.
"He is checking," she told me. "Checking to see if safe."
"Good. Great. So . . . you can show me a way out of here? To where the wizards are?"
She shook her head. "We is not going near wizards."
Lovely. I was cursed, half-drowned, freezing, and lost. Just a perfect fucking night all round.
Felix
I stormed into Robert's workshop with my night-robe flapping about my shins. He was waiting, as I knew he would be. He raised one carefully-sculpted eyebrow and said archly, "Why, Felix! Such haste to come to my side. It's true, our encounter was cut sadly short. But don't you think you should --"
Cabaline wizards are sworn never to cast spells directly upon another person, but there are ways around such restrictions for a wizard sufficiently motivated, powerful, or trained to think sideways -- as I am. I called a wind that blew the words from Robert's mouth, tumbled his books and instruments to the floor, and pressed him steadily back until his shoulders met the wall. He was shouting at me, but his threats couldn't escape past the wind of my fury.
I moderated the force of it a little, just enough to let him speak while still holding him against the wall. "What did you do to my brother?" I growled.
Robert's face twisted in a sneer. "What's the matter, did someone take your favorite toy away?"
"What did you do to him?!" My voice rose. "What did you do to me?"
Twisting uncomfortably in his pinned position, Robert nonetheless managed to look impatient and contemptuous. "Now Felix, I should think by now you would recognize the handiwork of a fellow student."
"What?"
"Did Beau not teach you all his tricks? I'm not surprised. He could scarcely get rid of me fast enough once he bought you from that brothel in Pharaohlight, but I knew he wouldn't be able to give you a full education in the time he had. It's no wonder if he left out a few things here and there, what with having to teach you how to speak and write and mimic your betters."
"Beau? What are you --"
"Beaumont Livy, my mentor. Oh!" Robert smiled falsely. "I forgot. You knew him as Malkar Gennadion."
I was so shocked that I let the wind abate slightly. Robert was a student of Malkar's? It made sense, it a twisted fashion. This was how Robert had known of my history, and how he'd just happened to reveal it to the court at a time that would drive me conveniently back into Malkar's arms, just when it would be most helpful to his plans.
"You were a student of Malkar's," I mused, not really asking Robert to confirm it. All the pieces were coming together now. When Robert had come to St. Crellifer's, when he had strapped me down and forcibly taken my magic for his own purposes, he must have left something behind. Some kind of trigger or back door that allowed him access to me even when the wards of the Mirador and my own powers were restored. That was how he'd been able to invade my dreams. And that must be how he had reached Mildmay, as well -- through me!
Robert flung up his hands and cast at me, trying to take advantage of my distraction and dismay. But he misjudged. I had faced down Malkar himself not long ago. A discarded apprentice was not going to best me in direct conflict, when I had all my faculties about me. I swatted his stream of fire aside, and it ignited several books piled upon a side table that had not toppled in my first attack. I called the wind again, and it fanned the flames as it pressed Robert tightly into the wall.
"You used my magic to attack my brother," I snarled. "No wonder he couldn't resist the compulsion to follow -- you used the obligation d'âme!"
Robert writhed, trying to get his hands free, eyeing the growing flames uncomfortably. "You're the one that put the binding on him," he spat. "I can't see why you'd object to my having a little fun with it, too."
I flashed upon Mildmay, lurching unsteadily in the foul water of the Sim, until that vile dead hand came up to pull him under. "You killed my brother!" I roared in tandem with the deepening voice of the fire.
Robert's eyes lit with triumph. "Oh, did he drown, poor boy?"
I screamed in inarticulate rage and flung my hands out at Robert. Snatching at his clothes, I lifted him up with magic so that he was pinned higher on the wall, each sleeve and boot held firmly in place. A few feet from his right hand, the fire was rippling up toward the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" Robert cried, wiggling his fingers futilely. "You can't harm me -- your oaths forbid it!"
It was true. And though I hadn't been entirely true to them, though I had seen the value in methods of magic outside the Cabaline strictures, I still held those oaths important. I ground my teeth, then let the wind drop completely, and the bubbling flames shrank down. Without the fuel of my rage, the fire would make little headway against the comprehensive wards of the Mirador. Still, I was happy to see it doing plenty of damage to Robert's books and the delicate instruments that had been set out on his worktable.
"What of your oaths, Robert?" I growled at him. "What do you think Stephen and the Curia will do when they learn you killed Mildmay?"
"Nothing!" he said firmly, encouraged by the retreat of the flames even though he could not be comfortable splayed out upon the wall. "Your gutter-rat brother murdered a wizard of the Mirador. They'll be glad to see him gone!"
"And when I tell them you're a student of Malkar's?" I asked. "When I tell them you used Malkar's methods on me? You'll burn for heresy, Robert. Why shouldn't I get started on that right now?" I twitched a finger, and the lessened flame stood a little taller, leaning toward Robert.
"If you tell them that, I'll tell them you performed necromancy!" Robert shrilled. "Here, in the Mirador, while you were under oath. We'll burn together!"
"Oh no, Robert," I said sweetly. "Stephen already knows about the necromancy. He agreed there was nothing else I could have done, and there would be no prosecution for it."
The furious flush that had suffused Robert's features drained away, leaving him an odd purple-gray color. "You -- what? No, Stephen would never condone --"
"But he did," I insisted. "After all, I was only reversing the heresy established two hundred years ago by the Cabal itself. What, you didn't know about that? They used ghosts to create the Virtu, and the Virtu then created more ghosts. I laid them all to rest, and then I mended the Virtu without making use of such unsavory methods. Stephen is grateful to me for cleaning up the Cabal's mess, and for keeping quiet about it."
Robert deflated for a moment, then clenched his fists and railed with new energy, "And what would he say if I told him your teacher was really Brinvillier Strych? Do you think he'd believe your tale of harmless, helpful necromancy then?"
"That wouldn't help you much, since you were his student too," I pointed out.
"Who says so? You?" Robert sneered. "Who do you think they would believe, you or me?"
He might be right about that. Despite my feat of mending the Virtu, my reputation was still very shaky among the Curia. They would be quick to jump on any new evidence that I was actually an enemy of the Mirador -- and I had no doubt that Robert could produce evidence linking Malkar to his previous incarnation as Strych. Robert's own standing on the Curia was far more solid; at the worst, they considered him occasionally inept.
"They can still detect the spells you cast on me, and on Mildmay through me," I said.
"If they care," Robert snapped. "I'll say I was ridding the Mirador of filth."
"Using Strych's methods? You'll prove my accusation for me!"
Robert hesitated a moment, then shrugged in false bravado. "Fine. So we burn together. Or we both keep our mouths shut, and neither of us has to die."
Stalemate. The Ten of Swords. I snarled in frustration. "Maybe I'm willing to pay the price, if I can have my revenge. You killed my brother!" I encouraged the flame higher still, and though it did not have the feral voice it had gained from my wind, it licked eagerly enough at Robert's boot.
He shook and twisted, but didn't break. "Willing to burn to death for your incestuous love? I never would have thought it of you, Felix."
I cursed, dropping my eyes. He knew me too well. I had no wish to be burned and have my head set on a spike over the gates -- or even to be cast out from the Mirador. But Robert had to pay, somehow.
I turned my hand, brushing the fire aside, and called his rings. It should have been impossible; the rings should be bound to Robert's fingers by magic. But he was weak, and occasionally inept for all his clever scheming, and my magic easily overwhelmed his. One by one the rings slid from his fingertips and leapt to my hand. I called his sash as well, broke his pendant and bracelet, yanked the earrings bleeding from his ears. All the magical paraphernalia that marked and empowered him as a Cabaline wizard came flying to my hand.
He writhed and screamed when the earrings came out. "What are you doing?"
"Both of us, or neither, Robert," I said, closing my fist around the jewelry. "You're not going to tell anyone about what happened tonight, or we'll both burn. Say you had an accident in your workroom with an experimental spell. Started a fire --" I tossed the sash into the flame "-- and ruined your jewelry. You'll have to buy all new now, and re-spell them one by one. And you won't use emeralds." I opened my fist to reveal a lumpen slag of half-melted silver and gold marked with bumps where the gemstones hid.
Then I turned my back and left his workroom. Left him hanging there on the wall with the fire eating its way through his worktable. My spell holding him up would die within minutes, but without his jewelry, Robert would have to do actual work to put the fire out.
It was a pitiful revenge, wholly insufficient to pay for what Robert had done to me, and to Mildmay. But I could think of nothing better. My stomach roiled and my hand clenched about the remains of Robert's jewels as I stalked through the deserted halls.
Mildmay
When the Kalliphorne's mate came back and started all the hissing and burbling again, I didn't pay too much attention. I was starting to feel tired, and numb, and like none of it really mattered. I wasn't even that cold anymore -- and I knew that meant I was in trouble, but I couldn't really make myself care.
Then the Kalliphorne turned to me and said, "Bad magic smell iss gone."
"Mmm?"
"Chains is still seeking you, but death lies is gone."
"Oh. Well . . . good." I tried to sit up and think about what that meant, but my thoughts wouldn't run straight. "So, uh . . . Felix must've figured it out then, huh? Knew he would."
"Iss safe for you to be leaving now."
"Oh! Right." I tried to stand up, but my right leg wouldn't hold me. "Um . . ." I crouched lopsided on the stone, looking down at the water and wondering how I was going to do this.
"We will be taking you," the Kalliphorne said, and hauled me into the water without giving me a chance to protest. At least she was nice enough to keep my head above the surface, for the first bit.
Mr. Kalliphorne was wrapping up the half candle stub that was left. We were already halfway across the room by the time the light went out. "You breathing big now," the Kalliphorne moaned in my ear.
I took a deep breath, and then a clammy sage-scented hand clapped over my mouth and the water closed over my head.
I got a good sense of direction, but turns out it don't work so good underwater. I knew we went down first, and there was a tunnel that went sideways, and then a dark place where they let me catch my breath again, and another tunnel -- hallway, most likely -- and then I lost track. The two Kalliphornes handed me off from one to the other like a sack of loot, and I couldn't see anything with eyes open so I mostly kept them closed. We went down so deep one time my ears popped and my chest burned, and when they let me breathe after that trip I had to cough for a couple minutes. It was good they didn't expect me to do no swimming, because my leg was near useless from the cold.
And then one of them set me up on a ledge where the water was shallow, and the other one said, "Here. There is a way up from here." And her mate lit the sputtering candle again, and I realized I knew where we were.
It was the water-maze directly under the Hall of the Chimeras, where Felix did part of his spell to fix the Virtu. I would have laughed, except I was afraid it'd sound more like crying.
"You is going home now?" the Kalliphorne asked. She sounded sort of worried. Maybe she really cared.
I gave my leg a rub, but I couldn't feel anything anyway. So I tried standing up, real careful, and that sort of worked. I'd have to watch where I stepped with my toes all numb, but I thought I could manage.
"Yeah, I know the way from here," I said, and took the candle stub from Mr. Kalliphorne. "Thanks for, um, helping me out. Again. I know a few months ago you told Cardenio when I was kidnapped. So I guess I owe you one, now."
She bared her teeth at me. "Is good to be having friends."
I forced my numb face into a smile. "Yeah. Friends. Thanks again, and, uh, maybe I'll see you around. Send word if you need anything."
Then they were gone with a couple of splashes, and it was time for me to head home with a lot more splashing.
If following Ginevra down to the river seemed like a dream, this was more of a nightmare. I kept running into things and tripping because I couldn't feel my feet, and my right leg wouldn't come up more than a couple inches from the floor anyway. On all the stairs -- and there were lots of them -- I lead with my left leg on every step, until it was aching almost as bad as the right. All I wanted to do was stop and lie down and go to sleep, but I knew that was a good way to get dead, so I just kept going, one painful step at a time. The candle died before I got to the part of the Mirador that lit up, so then I had to grope along with numb hands. I was filthy with dust on top of wet and half-dead from exhaustion by the time I reached Felix's rooms.
Gideon was curled up in a chair in the sitting room, watching the fire die down. He turned to look when I came in and nearly fell out of the chair. His mouth dropped open so I could almost see the stump of his tongue. Then he charged across the room and hugged me, dirty and clammy as I was.
"Missed me?" I guessed.
He went into a flurry of gestures. I could usually understand Gideon all right, partly because he didn't try to tell me anything too complicated. But this time he had to go over and over what he was trying to tell me until I finally got it. "You thought I was dead? Why?"
He made another sign that I realized was supposed to mean something sinking underwater.
"Drowned?" I said. And then a memory came back to me. Felix was there when I got to the river. How could I have forgot that? "Oh no, he saw me go under, and then he couldn't sense me -- oh, fuck me sideways with a bargepole!"
All this time I was near freezing to death and trying to convince the Kalliphornes to let me go back to my brother, he was thinking I'd drowned. And that had to be just about the worst thing that could happen to Felix. Sure, he was terrified of drowning himself, but only half his fear came from that crazy Keeper of his trying to drown Felix as a little kid. The other half came from watching the bastard drown Felix's friends. For him to be there watching me disappear into the river -- he must have gone just about batfuck.
"Where is he?" I demanded.
Gideon pointed at the door to Felix's bedroom and made sleeping gestures.
"Really? How'd you manage that?"
He shrugged, a little sheepish.
"Okay, well, I guess I better go tell him I'm not dead." All I really wanted was to collapse into a nice warm bed, but this was more important.
Gideon stopped me. He ran his hands over my hair and shoulders, and his lips moved a little, and all of a sudden my nightshirt was dry, and so were my shoes and my hair. Then he did it again, and I felt warmth wrap me up like a blanket, and the nasty burning tightness in my chest eased off. I moaned and swayed a little. It felt so good I just wanted to go to sleep right there.
Gideon pointed me at the bedroom door and gave me a little push between the shoulder blades. I went.
Felix
I wasn't sure just what roused me from the sleep Gideon had urged on me. Someone was in the room, standing between the bed and the dim light from the hearth. It almost looked like Mildmay, and I probed stupidly at the lost bond as one tongues the hole where a tooth has fallen out.
The bond was alive and pulsing, and the man it attached to was in the room with me.
"Mildmay!" I leapt from the bed so quickly that black spots swam before my eyes. He caught at me, but his own balance was scarcely better. I managed, just barely, to direct our fall toward the bed, and we tumbled upon the soft mattress with my brother chuckling weakly.
"Mildmay!" I whispered. "You're not . . ." I couldn't even say it.
"Not drowned, no," he said. He was warm and safe in my arms and not trying to pull away from me.
"But I saw her pull you down. Your ghost."
He shook his head against the tumbled coverlet. "Not a ghost. That was the Kalliphorne."
It took me a moment to place the term: it was the monstrous creature Cardenio had described, which warned him of Mildmay's kidnapping.
"Actually," he went on, "it was the Kalliphorne's mate. We done him a good turn once, me and Mavortian. He smelled some curse on me and tried to help. Took me to some abandoned room under the Mirador where he said magic couldn't reach. I guess that's why you couldn't sense where I was."
"Like when Malkar had you." I swallowed. "The curse was from Robert. I knew he was planning something, but I didn't know he was another student of Malkar's. He used . . . some technique I don't know, to reach you through the bond."
Mildmay's eyes narrowed as he filed that information away.
"I went after him," I said. "As soon as I realized. But I couldn't -- he knows things that could get me burned for heresy."
Mildmay's face hardly moved, but I could read the amusement there. "Heresy? You?"
I snorted. "I couldn't give Robert what he deserved, but I did strip his rings from him." I sat up, calling a witchlight, and picked up the lump of twisted gold and jewels from beside the bed. "He won't be able to do any magic for a while."
Mildmay touched the slagged jewelry in my hand. "Cabaline magic, you mean?"
"Any magic," I corrected. "The only way he could have been using Malkar's tricks inside the Mirador without being detected is to cover them up with some sort of Cabaline gloss. Without his rings and sash, he won't be able to hide what he's doing. So we'll have a little while to figure out some better way to get to him." I was already considering some possibilities, but they might need adjustment now that Mildmay wasn't dead.
He yawned hugely. "Forget Robert. I need to sleep now. Gideon dried me off and warmed me up, but I still ain't slept right in weeks."
"Haven't slept properly," I corrected.
Mildmay just made an impatient noise, his eyes drifting shut. I realized he was speaking more freely than he had with me since we got him from the Bastion. I hoped he wouldn't revert, in the light of day. I wanted to preserve this moment, the two of us tangled innocently on my bed.
"Stay here," I urged.
His eyes slitted open doubtfully.
"Just to sleep," I added quickly. "My room is warmer than yours. And I want . . . I need to be able to keep an eye on you, just for a little while. I won't be able to relax unless I know you're safe."
He considered. "My choice?"
I hadn't used the obligation d'âme on him, and I wouldn't. Not for this. "Your choice," I said, clenching my fist around the lump of gold.
"Okay then." He forced his eyes open and looked about blearily, trying to figure the best way to get into the bed.
I took him by the shoulders, surprised when he didn't object, and half-pulled, half-lifted him into the warm nest I had so recently occupied. I went around to the other side of the bed -- the cooler side, away from the fire -- and climbed in, propped on my elbow to watch him.
Mildmay was asleep within seconds, the harsh lines of his face smoothed by relaxation. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead. I wanted to clean it off, to hold him and kiss him and soothe all his hurts away. But he hadn't given me that right.
So this was Death, I thought. Not literal death, but a painful change indeed. My heart belonged to Mildmay even more than it had before, and nothing -- not sex or revenge or the recognition of my peers -- was as important as his safety. Robert's ruined jewelry lay forgotten on my table as I watched over my brother's sleep.
~*~
When I woke up, it was dark. Pure pitch-blind dark, the kind you never get in the Mirador with all its flash windows paned with glass and crystal, and the servants to keep the fire alive, and here and there a lantern made by some hocus that never goes out. I could tell right off this wasn't the Mirador. It was cold and clammy, but sort of stuffy at the same time. The air smelled like sewage and dead fish and something else, something green. I was lying on a hard surface, and I was soaking wet.
I reached out, feeling for a wall, a candle, a weapon, anything. Something hissed, and I froze. The hissing went on, and it had some crackles and snaps in it -- like a teakettle just short of boiling, one of them cheap tin ones with the thin metal that pops when it warms up and cools down. I'd heard the noise before, but I couldn't place it right off.
There was the scrape of a lucifer, and a spark, and then a little candle flame too bright for my eyes, spitting and dancing from the wet. I looked away and blinked hard, then looked back at the man holding the candle.
Make that, the monster holding the candle.
"Kalliphorne?" I said, not sure I was right -- but what else could it be? "It's me, Mildmay. You remember me?" From what Cardenio said, she did remember. But this monster was staring at me with big yellow eyes and its head tipped on one side like I had two heads, both talking Kekropian.
"Hello?" I said again, sounding more like a little kid than a notorious thief and murderer.
The creature bared its teeth at me and hissed.
I pulled back, but then I figured the hissing was just how it talked. And maybe the teeth were supposed to be a smile. Or maybe it was warning me not to move. I was on a sort of a stone platform, like a table or a dais, and there was water all around. I was wearing just a night shirt and some light shoes, and I was fucking cold.
I looked back at the Kalliphorne leaning on the table, half in and half out of the water. It had the same dark greenish skin and scales and hairy crest and too many teeth, just like I remembered. And there was the six nipples down the front, but they seemed smaller than I thought they should be.
"Are you the Kalliphorne's husband?" I asked. "We met before, but we didn't really get to talk much."
He hissed and crackled back at me, and I figured that must be it. The Kalliphorne herself could speak Marathine, sort of -- good enough to understand, at least. But I never heard her mate say a word I knew. So maybe this was him. Or it could be another relative, I supposed. Just how many monsters were swimming around in the Sim that nobody knew about?
I had a look around me in the light of the little candle. This wasn't the same lair the Kalliphorne took us to before, and it didn't look anything like St. Kirban's. It was some sort of room that was more than half flooded, maybe from all the rains we'd been getting. The walls were made out of a dark stone -- gray, I thought, but it was hard to be sure because there was moss on them too. There were three of the table-things at this end of the room, sort of like altars, and I was lying on one of them. I couldn't see under the water, but I had the feeling it got deeper at the far end of the room. Maybe there was steps down under the water, and these altars up at the top end of the room, whatever they were for. There weren't no doors that I could see; they must be under the water somewhere.
"How did I get here?" I asked Mr. Kalliphorne. "You brought me, didn't you? But where from? And why?"
He just hissed and bubbled at me. I sighed. I could remember something about the river, but I thought that was just a dream. I was following someone what seemed like a long way through a long maze of corridors and doors. It was all fogged and blurry, like looking through a glass pane with frost on it.
Come to think of it, nearly everything from the past few weeks was kinda foggy in my memory. It went back all the way to the fever, maybe longer. It was like I'd been healed of the fever, but I still wasn't thinking straight.
Somebody must have put a spell on me. That explained the fogginess and maybe why I kept seeing Ginevra, because I remembered that right enough. I looked around me at all the water with that familiar river-smell about it, and I figured maybe that bit about following her down to the river wasn't a dream after all.
I looked at the Kalliphorne's mate. He was just watching me. "So, I'm guessing you're not the one that spelled me. But you brought me here . . . what, to get me away from the spell? Why here? There something special about this place?" Maybe that explained why I didn't feel like my head was stuffed with cotton soaked in rum anymore. "Y'know, it ain't going to do me much good to get away from the spell if I freeze to death doing it."
He broke into a whole bunch hisses and pops, pushing himself off the table with a splash. At least he left the candle sitting near me. He floated back across the water with more hisses and a couple of gestures that looked to me like the meant "stay there." Then his head slipped down under the water, and I was alone.
I looked around. Nothing much to see. Just me and a little smoky stub of a candle and a lot of sloshing water. "Well, fuck me sideways. Ain't this a box of shit tied up with a pretty bow?"
The water didn't say nothing back.
I paid little heed as Gideon drew me away from the water, up through the Arcane, and back to my rooms. If we got lost along the way, I didn't notice. Gideon built the fire high in my bedroom, bundled me with blankets, and held me while I shook from more than cold. Perhaps he cast a spell, or perhaps it was my own desire to escape from reality; whatever the reason, it was not long until I slept.
I dreamed of my brother.
He came to me smiling sweetly, which should have been wrong on his face but somehow seemed beautiful and reassuring. He clasped my hands in his and told me not to worry. He leaned down -- I was sitting, he standing -- and kissed me on the lips, hot and alive and passionate.
We twined upon the bed, and his eyes burned with a possessive desire as he stripped my clothes from me one piece at a time, then removed his own. In the dream, his body was perfect -- no twisted leg, no scars from Malkar's lash. His muscles slid smoothly beneath pale skin like fine-grained silk, and I wanted to lick every piece of him.
Though Gideon and I had experimented carefully with sharing control during our sex play, I had not allowed any man to penetrate me since Malkar's rape nearly two years ago. But this was Mildmay, my brother, who had given up far too much for me already. As much as I longed to teach him all the delightful ways of the ganumedes, I did not want to risk scaring him away. Let him take the lead for now, and I could initiate him into the deepest mysteries later.
His hands skimmed swiftly over my flanks and teased only briefly at my proud flesh before seeking what lay behind. I gasped to feel his fingers within me and parted my legs in eager invitation.
He bent me double, still with that unfamiliar smile upon his face, and entered me slowly, implacably. I burned with sensations I had almost forgotten, submitting my body to his care as he took possession of me in the most primal fashion.
I knew it was a dream, yet I wished so much for it to be real that almost it felt like a true-dream, a vision such as I might experience beyond the Horn gate. Mildmay whispered to me that it was real, that this was how it was always meant to be. That was a truth I could not deny; I had desired him even in the midst of my madness, had wanted to comfort and caress him when I saw his pain in the Gardens of Nephele, had ached for him even as I turned to Astyanax and Gideon and thoughts of others to relieve my desires.
Mildmay took me, and held me, and said marvelous things to me until he spilled himself within me and I spent, unaided, upon his belly. After, he curled beside me with his arm flung across my chest and his odd smile gone smug, like the cat that has stolen the cream.
"If I'd known you were that good, I might have tried it years ago," he murmured. I could hear my influence shortening his Lower Town vowels to a more clipped, cultured accent.
I lifted his hand, stroked the unbroken fingers. "When did you start wearing rings?" I asked him. Certainly rings had many purposes both symbolic and decorative, but in the Mirador they always marked a wizard. Mildmay was annemer, yet these rings were somehow familiar to me -- gold and emeralds. Where had I seen them before?
"They match my eyes," he said with a smirk. But Mildmay's eyes had always been a warm, living green, like sunlit leaves -- not like the cold ice-chips mounted on these rings. Not like the rain-cloud gray that regarded me when I lifted my eyes to his now.
I looked down again, and saw the tattoos of the Mirador twining up his arms. "But you're not a wizard," I said in confusion. Unless . . . "You're not Mildmay!" I sat up and pushed him from me.
He laughed at me, his hair lengthening and darkening, his eyes leaching of color, and still that horrible smirk on his face that could never have belonged on Mildmay's. I scrambled away from him and fell over the far side of the bed --
I woke up. Gideon watched me from a short distance away, hesitating to touch. Had I struck him or shoved him in my dream?
But it wasn't a dream, true or otherwise; I realized that now. It was a sending. Someone had attacked my mind while I slept. And I knew exactly who it was: the same person who had entangled my brother in a ghostly deception and led him to his death in the waters of the Sim.
I had a look about the room while the Kalliphorne's mate was gone. The three altars were just far enough apart that I couldn't jump from one to the other, not with my leg like it was. When I slid down carefully, the water in between was about belly-button deep. Up close, the walls looked plenty solid -- no doors, just like I thought -- and the black slime coating them didn't go up very high, which made me think the water wasn't usually this deep. When I headed for the far end of the room, I went a couple of steps and felt the floor drop off. I stuck my toes down far enough to tell it was just a step and not a straight drop. Holding the candle up high, I could just about tell how far away the other end of the room was, but I couldn't make out details. I sloshed back to my altar and climbed back up on it and sat huddled around the warmth of the little candle flame, wondering how long it would last. Maybe I should try burning my nightshirt.
Mr. Kalliphorne said stay here, and I didn't think he meant me no harm, but how much could I trust him? Did he even know that humans could die from cold? Or what if Phoskis trapped the Kalliphornes with his portcullis and no one ever came back? How long should I wait?
My other choice was to go swimming around the room and probably find no doors, and then I could try diving down to look for a door, and no knowing where it would lead or if I could hold my breath long enough to get there. Oh, and I would have to do it all in the dark, since candles don't burn so good under water.
Waiting for a bit seemed like the thing to do, but that didn't make it no easier. I sat and shivered so hard I felt ready to throw up. I tried to stand up and move about a bit, get the blood moving, but there ain't a lot of moving about a person can do on top of an altar. My leg gave out on me and I came within a gnat's bite of kicking the candle over, or falling into the water and knocking my head on the altar along the way. Not so smart, Milly-fox. So I just swung my arms about and jiggled a bit, and it didn't do much to warm me up.
Then I heard a splish and I squinted across the room to see a couple of big yellow eyes blinking back at me. Then two more popped up a little ways off, and the pair of Kalliphornes came gliding through the water at me.
Seeing them together, I could tell them apart right enough. The she-Kalliphorne was a paler green color and had more hair on her crest, and when she hoisted herself up from the water her dugs was definitely more developed. Still not the kind I liked to see, but bigger than her mate's.
"Young fox-like one," she said to me in that two-tone voice like a street organ or a cat in heat.
"K-kalliphorne," I said with my teeth a-chatter. "Why w-was I brrrought here?"
She brought out a little oil-cloth pouch -- I didn't care to think where she carried it -- and got out another little candle-stub. Just in time, because the first one was starting to sputter.
"My hus-band saying you has bad magic on you," the Kalliphorne said. "He bringing you here to be safe."
"And where's here?"
"We is under the wizards' tower, but no wizards is coming here," she told me. "We finding this place after he is so sick. This is safe place, no magic here."
Now, I don't know much about hocus-stuff, but it seemed strange to me that there would be a place with no magic right underneath the Mirador, in one of those forgotten corridors where the maps don't go. Why would hocuses want to keep magic out of a place like this, a place with altars? Wouldn't this be a place where they wanted to cast spells?
But maybe they wanted to make sure there was no outside magic mixing with whatever they planned to do inside here. It wasn't no stranger than having part of the Bastion shielded against magic. Strych kept me in a room like that, and Felix said he couldn't sense me there, even through the binding.
The binding. Thinking of that made me frown. Could Felix sense me in here? "What kind of magic did you say is on me?" I asked.
"Baaad magic," she moaned. "Chains is on you, chains all over."
I groaned. "That's not bad magic," I told her. "Well, it could be, but in this case it isn't. I asked my brother to do that. It's to keep me safe from people want to hurt me."
She hissed like an angry cat. "No, no, is bad magic, is! Old chains, yes, same as before, same as when you is leaving the city in the boat with the bad wizard."
That stumped me for a bit; I thought she was talking about two years ago when I escaped with Mavortian and Bernard. But she wouldn't call Mavortian a bad wizard, after he healed her husband. Then I realized she meant when Strych kidnapped me. I wasn't awake for that part, so I didn't remember leaving the city.
"But also," the Kalliphorne said, "my husband is smelling new magic. Lies and death is tangled in the chains."
So did that mean she wasn't talking about the binding by forms? I thought no other hocus could spell me when Felix put the obligation d'âme on me -- that was the whole idea. But it sounded like she was saying someone used the binding to get at me with some new spell, and that was nasty. That was how Strych got to me.
"Okay, so I'll tell my brother, and he'll take the new magic off me," I tried to reason with her. "But I can't stay here -- I'll freeze to death!"
She turned to her mate and they hissed and burbled at each other for a bit. "Not safe," she said finally. "Bad magic is trying to kill you with lies. My husband saw."
"What did he see? How did he bring me here?"
More teakettle noises. "You is being led to the river by lies," the Kalliphorne said. "You is being led into the river. My mate is bringing you here to be safe. Young fox-like one helps us, we helps him."
"Yeah, thanks," I sighed. So the dream about following Ginevra through a maze wasn't just a dream. And the fog blurring my thoughts wasn't just from the winter fever. And fuck, maybe the fever wasn't just from the cold rains, either. But hiding out with a couple monsters in some dead hocuses' flooded worship-hall wasn't going to fix any of that. I coughed a little and tried to figure a way to make her see reason. "Okay. Now that we know there's a problem, my brother can fix it. Thanks for helping me out and all, but we can take of this now. Just show me the way out of here, I'll go straight to Felix and get him to take this curse thing off me."
"Not safe, not safe!"
I groaned and swiped the damp hair back from my face. "Look, I'm not safe here, either. I could die from being cold too long, do you understand that?" My hands and feet were numb, and I wasn't shivering so much anymore. I knew that was a bad sign. I didn't feel stupid or slowed down, but the Kalliphorne was talking faster than me even with all those teeth in her way. So maybe I was slow and just didn't know it. I tried humming a bit of Jeniard's Lover, but the tempo didn't feel right.
Meanwhile, the Kalliphorne was talking to her husband again. Then he just slipped down under the water and ended that little talk.
"He is checking," she told me. "Checking to see if safe."
"Good. Great. So . . . you can show me a way out of here? To where the wizards are?"
She shook her head. "We is not going near wizards."
Lovely. I was cursed, half-drowned, freezing, and lost. Just a perfect fucking night all round.
I stormed into Robert's workshop with my night-robe flapping about my shins. He was waiting, as I knew he would be. He raised one carefully-sculpted eyebrow and said archly, "Why, Felix! Such haste to come to my side. It's true, our encounter was cut sadly short. But don't you think you should --"
Cabaline wizards are sworn never to cast spells directly upon another person, but there are ways around such restrictions for a wizard sufficiently motivated, powerful, or trained to think sideways -- as I am. I called a wind that blew the words from Robert's mouth, tumbled his books and instruments to the floor, and pressed him steadily back until his shoulders met the wall. He was shouting at me, but his threats couldn't escape past the wind of my fury.
I moderated the force of it a little, just enough to let him speak while still holding him against the wall. "What did you do to my brother?" I growled.
Robert's face twisted in a sneer. "What's the matter, did someone take your favorite toy away?"
"What did you do to him?!" My voice rose. "What did you do to me?"
Twisting uncomfortably in his pinned position, Robert nonetheless managed to look impatient and contemptuous. "Now Felix, I should think by now you would recognize the handiwork of a fellow student."
"What?"
"Did Beau not teach you all his tricks? I'm not surprised. He could scarcely get rid of me fast enough once he bought you from that brothel in Pharaohlight, but I knew he wouldn't be able to give you a full education in the time he had. It's no wonder if he left out a few things here and there, what with having to teach you how to speak and write and mimic your betters."
"Beau? What are you --"
"Beaumont Livy, my mentor. Oh!" Robert smiled falsely. "I forgot. You knew him as Malkar Gennadion."
I was so shocked that I let the wind abate slightly. Robert was a student of Malkar's? It made sense, it a twisted fashion. This was how Robert had known of my history, and how he'd just happened to reveal it to the court at a time that would drive me conveniently back into Malkar's arms, just when it would be most helpful to his plans.
"You were a student of Malkar's," I mused, not really asking Robert to confirm it. All the pieces were coming together now. When Robert had come to St. Crellifer's, when he had strapped me down and forcibly taken my magic for his own purposes, he must have left something behind. Some kind of trigger or back door that allowed him access to me even when the wards of the Mirador and my own powers were restored. That was how he'd been able to invade my dreams. And that must be how he had reached Mildmay, as well -- through me!
Robert flung up his hands and cast at me, trying to take advantage of my distraction and dismay. But he misjudged. I had faced down Malkar himself not long ago. A discarded apprentice was not going to best me in direct conflict, when I had all my faculties about me. I swatted his stream of fire aside, and it ignited several books piled upon a side table that had not toppled in my first attack. I called the wind again, and it fanned the flames as it pressed Robert tightly into the wall.
"You used my magic to attack my brother," I snarled. "No wonder he couldn't resist the compulsion to follow -- you used the obligation d'âme!"
Robert writhed, trying to get his hands free, eyeing the growing flames uncomfortably. "You're the one that put the binding on him," he spat. "I can't see why you'd object to my having a little fun with it, too."
I flashed upon Mildmay, lurching unsteadily in the foul water of the Sim, until that vile dead hand came up to pull him under. "You killed my brother!" I roared in tandem with the deepening voice of the fire.
Robert's eyes lit with triumph. "Oh, did he drown, poor boy?"
I screamed in inarticulate rage and flung my hands out at Robert. Snatching at his clothes, I lifted him up with magic so that he was pinned higher on the wall, each sleeve and boot held firmly in place. A few feet from his right hand, the fire was rippling up toward the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" Robert cried, wiggling his fingers futilely. "You can't harm me -- your oaths forbid it!"
It was true. And though I hadn't been entirely true to them, though I had seen the value in methods of magic outside the Cabaline strictures, I still held those oaths important. I ground my teeth, then let the wind drop completely, and the bubbling flames shrank down. Without the fuel of my rage, the fire would make little headway against the comprehensive wards of the Mirador. Still, I was happy to see it doing plenty of damage to Robert's books and the delicate instruments that had been set out on his worktable.
"What of your oaths, Robert?" I growled at him. "What do you think Stephen and the Curia will do when they learn you killed Mildmay?"
"Nothing!" he said firmly, encouraged by the retreat of the flames even though he could not be comfortable splayed out upon the wall. "Your gutter-rat brother murdered a wizard of the Mirador. They'll be glad to see him gone!"
"And when I tell them you're a student of Malkar's?" I asked. "When I tell them you used Malkar's methods on me? You'll burn for heresy, Robert. Why shouldn't I get started on that right now?" I twitched a finger, and the lessened flame stood a little taller, leaning toward Robert.
"If you tell them that, I'll tell them you performed necromancy!" Robert shrilled. "Here, in the Mirador, while you were under oath. We'll burn together!"
"Oh no, Robert," I said sweetly. "Stephen already knows about the necromancy. He agreed there was nothing else I could have done, and there would be no prosecution for it."
The furious flush that had suffused Robert's features drained away, leaving him an odd purple-gray color. "You -- what? No, Stephen would never condone --"
"But he did," I insisted. "After all, I was only reversing the heresy established two hundred years ago by the Cabal itself. What, you didn't know about that? They used ghosts to create the Virtu, and the Virtu then created more ghosts. I laid them all to rest, and then I mended the Virtu without making use of such unsavory methods. Stephen is grateful to me for cleaning up the Cabal's mess, and for keeping quiet about it."
Robert deflated for a moment, then clenched his fists and railed with new energy, "And what would he say if I told him your teacher was really Brinvillier Strych? Do you think he'd believe your tale of harmless, helpful necromancy then?"
"That wouldn't help you much, since you were his student too," I pointed out.
"Who says so? You?" Robert sneered. "Who do you think they would believe, you or me?"
He might be right about that. Despite my feat of mending the Virtu, my reputation was still very shaky among the Curia. They would be quick to jump on any new evidence that I was actually an enemy of the Mirador -- and I had no doubt that Robert could produce evidence linking Malkar to his previous incarnation as Strych. Robert's own standing on the Curia was far more solid; at the worst, they considered him occasionally inept.
"They can still detect the spells you cast on me, and on Mildmay through me," I said.
"If they care," Robert snapped. "I'll say I was ridding the Mirador of filth."
"Using Strych's methods? You'll prove my accusation for me!"
Robert hesitated a moment, then shrugged in false bravado. "Fine. So we burn together. Or we both keep our mouths shut, and neither of us has to die."
Stalemate. The Ten of Swords. I snarled in frustration. "Maybe I'm willing to pay the price, if I can have my revenge. You killed my brother!" I encouraged the flame higher still, and though it did not have the feral voice it had gained from my wind, it licked eagerly enough at Robert's boot.
He shook and twisted, but didn't break. "Willing to burn to death for your incestuous love? I never would have thought it of you, Felix."
I cursed, dropping my eyes. He knew me too well. I had no wish to be burned and have my head set on a spike over the gates -- or even to be cast out from the Mirador. But Robert had to pay, somehow.
I turned my hand, brushing the fire aside, and called his rings. It should have been impossible; the rings should be bound to Robert's fingers by magic. But he was weak, and occasionally inept for all his clever scheming, and my magic easily overwhelmed his. One by one the rings slid from his fingertips and leapt to my hand. I called his sash as well, broke his pendant and bracelet, yanked the earrings bleeding from his ears. All the magical paraphernalia that marked and empowered him as a Cabaline wizard came flying to my hand.
He writhed and screamed when the earrings came out. "What are you doing?"
"Both of us, or neither, Robert," I said, closing my fist around the jewelry. "You're not going to tell anyone about what happened tonight, or we'll both burn. Say you had an accident in your workroom with an experimental spell. Started a fire --" I tossed the sash into the flame "-- and ruined your jewelry. You'll have to buy all new now, and re-spell them one by one. And you won't use emeralds." I opened my fist to reveal a lumpen slag of half-melted silver and gold marked with bumps where the gemstones hid.
Then I turned my back and left his workroom. Left him hanging there on the wall with the fire eating its way through his worktable. My spell holding him up would die within minutes, but without his jewelry, Robert would have to do actual work to put the fire out.
It was a pitiful revenge, wholly insufficient to pay for what Robert had done to me, and to Mildmay. But I could think of nothing better. My stomach roiled and my hand clenched about the remains of Robert's jewels as I stalked through the deserted halls.
When the Kalliphorne's mate came back and started all the hissing and burbling again, I didn't pay too much attention. I was starting to feel tired, and numb, and like none of it really mattered. I wasn't even that cold anymore -- and I knew that meant I was in trouble, but I couldn't really make myself care.
Then the Kalliphorne turned to me and said, "Bad magic smell iss gone."
"Mmm?"
"Chains is still seeking you, but death lies is gone."
"Oh. Well . . . good." I tried to sit up and think about what that meant, but my thoughts wouldn't run straight. "So, uh . . . Felix must've figured it out then, huh? Knew he would."
"Iss safe for you to be leaving now."
"Oh! Right." I tried to stand up, but my right leg wouldn't hold me. "Um . . ." I crouched lopsided on the stone, looking down at the water and wondering how I was going to do this.
"We will be taking you," the Kalliphorne said, and hauled me into the water without giving me a chance to protest. At least she was nice enough to keep my head above the surface, for the first bit.
Mr. Kalliphorne was wrapping up the half candle stub that was left. We were already halfway across the room by the time the light went out. "You breathing big now," the Kalliphorne moaned in my ear.
I took a deep breath, and then a clammy sage-scented hand clapped over my mouth and the water closed over my head.
I got a good sense of direction, but turns out it don't work so good underwater. I knew we went down first, and there was a tunnel that went sideways, and then a dark place where they let me catch my breath again, and another tunnel -- hallway, most likely -- and then I lost track. The two Kalliphornes handed me off from one to the other like a sack of loot, and I couldn't see anything with eyes open so I mostly kept them closed. We went down so deep one time my ears popped and my chest burned, and when they let me breathe after that trip I had to cough for a couple minutes. It was good they didn't expect me to do no swimming, because my leg was near useless from the cold.
And then one of them set me up on a ledge where the water was shallow, and the other one said, "Here. There is a way up from here." And her mate lit the sputtering candle again, and I realized I knew where we were.
It was the water-maze directly under the Hall of the Chimeras, where Felix did part of his spell to fix the Virtu. I would have laughed, except I was afraid it'd sound more like crying.
"You is going home now?" the Kalliphorne asked. She sounded sort of worried. Maybe she really cared.
I gave my leg a rub, but I couldn't feel anything anyway. So I tried standing up, real careful, and that sort of worked. I'd have to watch where I stepped with my toes all numb, but I thought I could manage.
"Yeah, I know the way from here," I said, and took the candle stub from Mr. Kalliphorne. "Thanks for, um, helping me out. Again. I know a few months ago you told Cardenio when I was kidnapped. So I guess I owe you one, now."
She bared her teeth at me. "Is good to be having friends."
I forced my numb face into a smile. "Yeah. Friends. Thanks again, and, uh, maybe I'll see you around. Send word if you need anything."
Then they were gone with a couple of splashes, and it was time for me to head home with a lot more splashing.
If following Ginevra down to the river seemed like a dream, this was more of a nightmare. I kept running into things and tripping because I couldn't feel my feet, and my right leg wouldn't come up more than a couple inches from the floor anyway. On all the stairs -- and there were lots of them -- I lead with my left leg on every step, until it was aching almost as bad as the right. All I wanted to do was stop and lie down and go to sleep, but I knew that was a good way to get dead, so I just kept going, one painful step at a time. The candle died before I got to the part of the Mirador that lit up, so then I had to grope along with numb hands. I was filthy with dust on top of wet and half-dead from exhaustion by the time I reached Felix's rooms.
Gideon was curled up in a chair in the sitting room, watching the fire die down. He turned to look when I came in and nearly fell out of the chair. His mouth dropped open so I could almost see the stump of his tongue. Then he charged across the room and hugged me, dirty and clammy as I was.
"Missed me?" I guessed.
He went into a flurry of gestures. I could usually understand Gideon all right, partly because he didn't try to tell me anything too complicated. But this time he had to go over and over what he was trying to tell me until I finally got it. "You thought I was dead? Why?"
He made another sign that I realized was supposed to mean something sinking underwater.
"Drowned?" I said. And then a memory came back to me. Felix was there when I got to the river. How could I have forgot that? "Oh no, he saw me go under, and then he couldn't sense me -- oh, fuck me sideways with a bargepole!"
All this time I was near freezing to death and trying to convince the Kalliphornes to let me go back to my brother, he was thinking I'd drowned. And that had to be just about the worst thing that could happen to Felix. Sure, he was terrified of drowning himself, but only half his fear came from that crazy Keeper of his trying to drown Felix as a little kid. The other half came from watching the bastard drown Felix's friends. For him to be there watching me disappear into the river -- he must have gone just about batfuck.
"Where is he?" I demanded.
Gideon pointed at the door to Felix's bedroom and made sleeping gestures.
"Really? How'd you manage that?"
He shrugged, a little sheepish.
"Okay, well, I guess I better go tell him I'm not dead." All I really wanted was to collapse into a nice warm bed, but this was more important.
Gideon stopped me. He ran his hands over my hair and shoulders, and his lips moved a little, and all of a sudden my nightshirt was dry, and so were my shoes and my hair. Then he did it again, and I felt warmth wrap me up like a blanket, and the nasty burning tightness in my chest eased off. I moaned and swayed a little. It felt so good I just wanted to go to sleep right there.
Gideon pointed me at the bedroom door and gave me a little push between the shoulder blades. I went.
I wasn't sure just what roused me from the sleep Gideon had urged on me. Someone was in the room, standing between the bed and the dim light from the hearth. It almost looked like Mildmay, and I probed stupidly at the lost bond as one tongues the hole where a tooth has fallen out.
The bond was alive and pulsing, and the man it attached to was in the room with me.
"Mildmay!" I leapt from the bed so quickly that black spots swam before my eyes. He caught at me, but his own balance was scarcely better. I managed, just barely, to direct our fall toward the bed, and we tumbled upon the soft mattress with my brother chuckling weakly.
"Mildmay!" I whispered. "You're not . . ." I couldn't even say it.
"Not drowned, no," he said. He was warm and safe in my arms and not trying to pull away from me.
"But I saw her pull you down. Your ghost."
He shook his head against the tumbled coverlet. "Not a ghost. That was the Kalliphorne."
It took me a moment to place the term: it was the monstrous creature Cardenio had described, which warned him of Mildmay's kidnapping.
"Actually," he went on, "it was the Kalliphorne's mate. We done him a good turn once, me and Mavortian. He smelled some curse on me and tried to help. Took me to some abandoned room under the Mirador where he said magic couldn't reach. I guess that's why you couldn't sense where I was."
"Like when Malkar had you." I swallowed. "The curse was from Robert. I knew he was planning something, but I didn't know he was another student of Malkar's. He used . . . some technique I don't know, to reach you through the bond."
Mildmay's eyes narrowed as he filed that information away.
"I went after him," I said. "As soon as I realized. But I couldn't -- he knows things that could get me burned for heresy."
Mildmay's face hardly moved, but I could read the amusement there. "Heresy? You?"
I snorted. "I couldn't give Robert what he deserved, but I did strip his rings from him." I sat up, calling a witchlight, and picked up the lump of twisted gold and jewels from beside the bed. "He won't be able to do any magic for a while."
Mildmay touched the slagged jewelry in my hand. "Cabaline magic, you mean?"
"Any magic," I corrected. "The only way he could have been using Malkar's tricks inside the Mirador without being detected is to cover them up with some sort of Cabaline gloss. Without his rings and sash, he won't be able to hide what he's doing. So we'll have a little while to figure out some better way to get to him." I was already considering some possibilities, but they might need adjustment now that Mildmay wasn't dead.
He yawned hugely. "Forget Robert. I need to sleep now. Gideon dried me off and warmed me up, but I still ain't slept right in weeks."
"Haven't slept properly," I corrected.
Mildmay just made an impatient noise, his eyes drifting shut. I realized he was speaking more freely than he had with me since we got him from the Bastion. I hoped he wouldn't revert, in the light of day. I wanted to preserve this moment, the two of us tangled innocently on my bed.
"Stay here," I urged.
His eyes slitted open doubtfully.
"Just to sleep," I added quickly. "My room is warmer than yours. And I want . . . I need to be able to keep an eye on you, just for a little while. I won't be able to relax unless I know you're safe."
He considered. "My choice?"
I hadn't used the obligation d'âme on him, and I wouldn't. Not for this. "Your choice," I said, clenching my fist around the lump of gold.
"Okay then." He forced his eyes open and looked about blearily, trying to figure the best way to get into the bed.
I took him by the shoulders, surprised when he didn't object, and half-pulled, half-lifted him into the warm nest I had so recently occupied. I went around to the other side of the bed -- the cooler side, away from the fire -- and climbed in, propped on my elbow to watch him.
Mildmay was asleep within seconds, the harsh lines of his face smoothed by relaxation. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead. I wanted to clean it off, to hold him and kiss him and soothe all his hurts away. But he hadn't given me that right.
So this was Death, I thought. Not literal death, but a painful change indeed. My heart belonged to Mildmay even more than it had before, and nothing -- not sex or revenge or the recognition of my peers -- was as important as his safety. Robert's ruined jewelry lay forgotten on my table as I watched over my brother's sleep.
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Date: 2007-06-23 06:23 pm (UTC)I know You wrote this some months ago, but i only found this wonderful piece now and ...*sighs dreamily*
I really liked it. It was good, a tad short (but all the good ones are, i'm affraid)
It's a shame really that there aren't more stories like this one.
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Date: 2007-06-24 12:00 am (UTC)Anyway, I'm very glad you liked it, and thanks for commenting! I'm always happy when people find my stories, even if they're MUCH older than this one.
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Date: 2007-06-24 10:22 am (UTC)And reall, i have to comment, when i like something, if only to prompt (or hope to prompt) the author to write more :)
I hope You will, for i liked this story and there aren't many Melusine stories.
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Date: 2007-06-25 08:05 am (UTC)(Yeah, I realize it's not for everyone. I was obviously not in my right mind, but it turned out well...)
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Date: 2007-06-25 08:19 am (UTC)I might just do that then, if i'm feeling crazy/creative/suicidial enough XD gotta do what one can to support the fandom, right?