Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  The blow across the face took me completely unawares. The Hall of the Seven Virtues was full of echoes and chattering voices as the Bernathans and the Corambins celebrated the end of the Insurgence; I had had no idea there was anyone near me.

  I fell, my chains pulling painfully at neck and wrists, and a boot caught me in the ribs. “You coward. You craven crawling cringing dog. Did you even wait for Gerrard to die before you betrayed him? Did you sign your surrender in his still flowing blood? You vile maggot, you were never fit to lick his boots. Would that he were alive—alive to see the truth of you.”

  “Blandamere?” I said, bewildered. Blandamere was middle-aged, bull-necked and bull-headed; his hero-worship of Gerrard had been an open secret, but I had not thought he cared about me sufficiently to feel so obviously, rawly betrayed.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” said he, his voice thick with loathing. He kicked me again.

  Other voices, murmuring, “My lord Blandamere,” “Come away, my lord,” “Is no point, my lord,” and the sounds of Blandamere being led—or pulled—away.

  I sat up slowly, half-expecting another blow to strike me out of black nothing. But from what I could hear, no one was paying any attention; Glimmering’s grating voice was some distance away, and I thought that his back was turned to me. I was shaking, undone not by the physical violence but by my inability to defend myself, or even to be aware of the blow before it struck me.

  I recited the coraline in my head to drown out the rising panic. Could not be changed. Was no point in weeping or screaming or any other hysterical display, and especially not in front of Glimmering and the assembled dignitaries, for whom I was already serving as a macabre sort of party decoration. Link by link, I followed the chain back to the catafalque, and I pressed myself against it, for although I hated it, it was at least some protection.

  Or, I thought and curled tightly in upon myself, the illusion of it.

  Felix

  I slept very little that night. Mildmay was restless, seeming to have developed twice the usual number of knees and elbows, and even when I did sleep, I was afraid of what I might find in my dreams. Or what might find me. I could bear neither another dream of burning nor another dream of Isaac. I had rarely been so grateful for morning, and I was up and bathed and dressed and trying to convince Mildmay to eat at an hour when I would normally have been calculating how many minutes longer I could stay in bed and still make it to court on time.

  The thought was not a pleasant one. I sighed and said to Mildmay’s lowered head, “At least drink the tea.” Lack of appetite wasn’t a good sign, nor was the fact that he didn’t argue with me or tell me not to nag him. He drank the tea and looked at me shyly, clearly hoping for approval and not expecting to get it. I wondered how high his fever had risen.

  “That’s good,” I said, although I felt like the worst kind of patronizing fraud. And I felt even worse at the way his face lit up, as if I’d handed him his heart’s desire. It’s just that he’s ill, I told myself, but I suspected darkly that his illness was simply letting me see what had been there all along.

  Gideon had once said to me: You must be the only person in the Mirador who hasn’t realized Mildmay would walk on knives for you. I realized all too well, but I still didn’t understand, and I wasn’t selfish enough to ask him now, when he would almost certainly tell me the truth. Instead, I stood up, pushing away from the table with perhaps excessive force. Mildmay watched me wide-eyed, and I saw for a moment the half-feral child he had been.

  “I’m going to ask how we go about getting to Bernatha proper. Stay there.” It had been exhausting enough for him to get out of bed, dress himself, and navigate the stairs. I wasn’t going to make him leave that chair before it was strictly necessary.

  Corbie had said there was a causeway as well as a number of ferryboats called gondols. I personally would have preferred the causeway, having an abhorrence of boats, but the day clerk explained that the gondols were far cheaper. “Were you wishful of hiring one, sir? I can send the boy down to the moorings for you.”

  “That would be very helpful, thank you,” I said and tipped him as generously as I dared. “And, er, how much does the gondol hire cost?”

  “Five hermits,” he said. “I’ll send the boy now.”

  “Thank you,” I said and retreated gratefully to the dining room, where Mildmay was frowning at vacant space. I moved into his line of sight, since that seemed substantially easier than redirecting his attention, and after several seconds, he blinked and focused on me.

  “How are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m okay,” he said, but it was as automatic and meaningless as a clock chiming the hour.

  “You’re a liar,” I said amiably and sat down.

  He looked like he was going to argue, but he started coughing instead, a painful, croupy-sounding cough that left him white-faced and sweating. But he sounded more like himself when he said, “Okay, yeah. I’m a liar.”

  “Let’s try again. How are you doing?”

  “I feel like shit, thanks for asking.”

  “Is it the Winter Fever?”

  “Fuck,” he said, exhausted and disgusted and maybe a little scared. “Yeah. It’s the Winter Fever. I ain’t gonna be much use for the next decad or so.”

  And that was an optimistic estimate. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’re going to cross to Bernatha and find a cheap hotel, and we’ll stay there ’til you’re well again.”

  He frowned at me, although it looked like it hurt. “Shouldn’t we be getting on to Esmer and them hocuses you’re s’posed to talk to?”

  “When you’re better.”

  “But—”

  “They’re unlikely to go anywhere. And it’s not as if they’re expecting me.”

  He still looked unhappy. I said, “It’s not worth you killing yourself over.” In truth, I wasn’t sure he could make it as far as the front door, never mind a complicated undertaking like trying to get to Esmer when we had only an imperfect understanding of what the Corambin railroad was, much less how to use it. And then in Esmer we would be in the same position we were in here: staying at the first hotel we came to, without the slightest idea of where else to go. I’d gotten lucky once in the person of Corbie; I didn’t want to gamble on being lucky again.

  And there was the darker thought that I didn’t know what the Corambin wizards were going to do with me when I presented myself to them, or in consequence what would happen to Mildmay. There were too many possibilities, too many of them nightmarish—Mildmay left alone and helpless while I was shut in the Corambin equivalent of the Verpine. Or of St. Crellifer’s. “Trust me,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  “If you’re sure,” he said. He was really too ill to care, except that he was worried about me.

  “Yes,” I said firmly, and that satisfied him.

  A gondol turned out to be a long narrow rowboat. The gondolman and I packed Mildmay into one end and I sat at the other; the gondolman and his oars were in the middle. The main island of Bernatha, the Crait, seemed disturbingly far away, but having seen the causeway, I knew I would have disliked it just as much—narrow and completely devoid of railings. At least in the gondol I didn’t have to worry about Mildmay fainting and falling into the sea.

  Of course, there was always the possibility I would faint. I shut my eyes as the gondol moved into open water, letting my grip on the edge of the seat go white-knuckled. The wind cut straight through me and everything reeked of salt and dead fish.

  “Beautiful day, sir,” the gondolman said, sounding unwholesomely cheerful.

  I opened my eyes; he seemed to be sincere. I looked at the sun, half-obscured by clouds, and at the sea, tormented into tiny whitecapped waves by the wind. The gondol lurched across them like a drunken horse trying to waltz.

  “Is the weather often worse than this?” I said finally.

  It made him laugh. “May the Lady bless you, sir, there’s not above two months in the indiction all told that it
isn’t raining in Bernatha. And we’re known for our fogs.” He jerked his head in a peculiar gesture, which I realized when he continued was meant to indicate the two tall towers visible on the island behind him. “That’s why we’ve got the Sisters. Best lighthouses in Corambis. They say Grimglass is taller, but it can’t match them for beauty.”

  Clearly bragging about their city is a Bernathan disease, I thought, then reminded myself that I would dislike any man who dragged me out in a ridiculously tiny boat and then seemed happy about it. I forced myself to say, “They are very lovely,” and he beamed at me like a half-wit.

  I shut my eyes again; the gondolman began to sing.

  Kay

  There was a sentimental picture of which my sister Serena had been fond. She had cut it carefully out of the Mirror of Mode and hung it on the wall of the dressing room she and Isobel shared, despite Isobel’s strident protests. The picture was called Most Loyal Friend and depicted a hound lying across the foot of a freshly dug grave, clearly spurning all attempts from the black-garbed people around it to lure it away.

  Perhaps Glimmering had also been fond of that picture in his childhood, for he kept me chained at the foot of the catafalque in the cold and airless Hall of the Seven Virtues in the Clock Palace of Bernatha day after weary, endless day; I sat and clenched my teeth against the urge to howl as that pining hound had doubtless howled. And the good citizens of Bernatha came and gawked and gossiped. And I learned from their jabbering many things I would not otherwise have known.

  I hated them for it.

  But I listened. Had no choice, unless I would put my hands over my ears like a child. I learned that Glimmering’s cattle had been taken to the House of Mercy, where their milk was being given to wounded Corambin soldiers. I learned that there was still skirmishing in eastern Caloxa, in the foothills of the Gorballants; were rumors that Gormont had thrown his lot in with the Usara. Gormont was old, and his only son had died at Thornycroft. An he preferred death to surrender, who could blame him?

  I learned that the Convocation had sent a representative to the Seven Houses, one Roderick Lapwing. I learned that the Seven Houses were trying to use this opportunity to wring more concessions out of Corambis. And I learned, a full day before she came to view her husband’s body, that the princess was in Bernatha. The wagging tongues did not tell me if Charles was with her; I hoped he was not.

  Princess Clara was the daughter of a Wildar merchant. Although I did not understand it, I believed Gerrard’s love for her had been sincere. Certainly he was faithful to her; unlike his father, who had sired half a dozen bastards—and I wondered bleakly how many of them were going to end up imprisoned or dead, now that Gerrard’s failure had made them dangerous again—Gerrard had had only Charles. He had wanted more children, but he had been confident that there would be time for such matters once he was king.

  I did not need my eyes to tell me when Clara at last deigned to pay her respects. The sound of her progress was clearly audible, and I learned something else: Bernatha loved Clara.

  Why, I asked myself bitterly, was I so surprised? Gerrard’s emotional appeal had been to Caloxan tradition, Caloxan pride, and Bernatha had never considered itself part of Caloxa. It barely considered itself part of Corambis. But Clara, though enthralled by Gerrard’s fairy tales, was mercantile in her bones, born to it, bred to it. She had no more head for politics than a pig, but that didn’t matter now. She was young, beautiful, and a widow, and she knew the value of a bolt of Ygressine silk against a bolt of Caloxan wool. I kept my head down and wondered, neither happily nor charitably, what she would find to say to me.

  I needn’t have worried. She made it, by my best estimation, about three-quarters of the way from the door to the catafalque. Then she stopped, said in a low, husky murmur completely unlike her normal speaking voice, “Oh, Gerrard.” There was a slithering rustle of fabric, a thump, and then a general outcry. Clara Hume had fainted, and I would have bet, had there been anyone to bet with me, that she hadn’t disturbed so much as a hairpin. She was taken out with much clamor and confusion, and I knew, as surely as I knew the feeling of the collar around my throat, that she would not be back.

  In fact, Clara Hume did not return to the Hall of the Seven Virtues, but that did not mean I was rid of her. That night, after the Bernathan guards had been replaced by Corambins—for such was the compromise agreed upon by the interested parties, as if there were any need to keep me under constant guard—Glimmering’s boots announced themselves.

  I was getting better at deducing movement from sound—I was perforce getting a great deal of practice—and I tracked those boots and their aggressive, swaggering stomp from one end of the hall to the other and back before they came and stopped in front of me. He did not speak, and I had no patience for his games.

  “What do you want?” I said and added “Your Grace” before he could rebuke me.

  A moment’s pause and he said, “Clara Hume.”

  “What of her?”

  “Why did she come here?”

  “To cause a sensation. And she succeeded.”

  He moved not.

  “I know nothing of Clara Hume’s frippery mind. An you want more information, will have to ask her. Or someone in her counsels, as I assure you I am not and never have been.”

  And still he moved not.

  If I could just have seen him, I could have ignored him, but as it was, my entire attention remained painfully focused, straining desperately to perceive clues that would allow me at least to guess at his intentions. Finally, defeated, I said, “What do you want?” the words grating in my throat like broken machinery.

  “Want?” said Glimmering, and blessed Lady, how I had come to loathe the sound of his voice. “What makes you think I want anything from you?”

  “Your continued presence,” said I. “Or do you but gawk at the savage beast?”

  “I was thinking of what the princess said,” he said with a lightness that deceived me not at all.

  Was my turn to stay silent. I had never cared what Clara Hume thought of me. An were to begin, it would not be now.

  “She said the collar and lead suited you. And that Gerrard would agree.”

  Was a lie, petty cruelty on Clara Hume’s part—or on Glimmering’s, for it seemed even a little fanciful for Clara. But still he persevered. “She said Gerrard always called you the most faithful of his dogs.”

  There, he touched me on the raw, not because it was a lie, but because it was true. Had been a joke between us, a small one, for kay, the Usaran word for a cougar, was the word in Murrey, where Gerrard had grown up, for the heavy-shouldered bear-baiting dogs. Gerrard’s favorite dog when he was a child had been a kay. So, yes, was true. He had said that. But I had not known he had said it to her.

  She was his wife, witling. And he loved her. As he loved not thee.

  The sudden drench of grief, as bitter and cold as the water of Our Lady of Marigolds, was not that he had loved her, stupid and unworthy woman though she was. Was not even that he had told her of our joke. Was no secret, and I knew Gerrard had never said it cruelly, no matter how Clara might twist his words now that he was dead. But that he had told her—that he had shared it with her—showed me what I had always wished not to know. She had meant more to him than I ever could. And with his death, she owned him whole. She was the widow, I merely and always the faithful dog. And Gerrard might have found that valuation just.

  Glimmering was still standing there, gloating. “I may be a beast,” I said, my voice thick with mingled savagery and misery, “but at least I do not mock other beasts in their grief.”

  I heard the huff of his breath, as if I had struck him, as if perhaps my words had reached through his self-righteousness. Then his boot heels stomped away. I buried my face in my hands and did not weep.

  Felix

  “Oh hey,” Mildmay said. “I got you a book.”

  “I beg your pardon. You did what?”

  “From that guy in Arbalest. He said
we’d need it more than he did. Here. Toss me my coat.”

  I’d only just managed to get him out of the coat and lying down. He had gotten a second wind when we reached the Fiddler’s Fox, which had made him weirdly, cheerfully scattered. He wasn’t at all combative; it was just that I’d say, “You should lie down,” and he’d agree and immediately find five things he had to do first. I gave him the coat in preference to having him get up to fetch it, and then watched as he went through its pockets, of which there were an astonishing number, before coming up with a book which he handed to me.

  It was called A Guidebook of Myriad Wonders in the Convocate of Corambis and had been written by a gentleman named Thomas Lilion. Its most immediately salient feature was a map folded into the end papers.

  “And the man in Arbalest gave this to you?”

  “Yeah. I meant to give it to you that night, but . . .” He shrugged, and I mentally completed the sentence: You pissed me off and I forgot about it.

  I unfolded the map across the bed, treating the aged paper with care, and Mildmay propped himself up so that he could see it as well. I found BERNATHA marked in neat crimson letters in the lower left corner, with its three islands distinctly drawn and even tiny boats with oars between them and the mainland. On the other—western—side of the Crait, a much larger boat had been drawn with extravagantly billowing sails, and an arrow, labeled YGRES, pointed off the edge of the map. On the mainland, St. Melior was merely a dot, but I was pleased to see that the guidebook was not so out-of-date as it might have been, for the railways, as identified by the legend, were marked with doubled and hatched lines, one running east and the other running first northeast, through a black dot marked GRANDERFOLD, and then branching like a spider at a dot marked, with more crimson letters, WILDAR. I followed the line north from Wildar, through smaller black dots marked KILREY and SKIMFAIR, and then into a great sprawling jaggedness: FOREST OF NAULEVERER. On the other side of the forest, the railway found another small black city, FOLLENFANT, and then shot triumphantly straight north into a great black and crimson star labeled ESMER.