Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  “No,” I said. “My brother.” I knew that Mildmay had met the Kalliphorne, although it was one of the many things, in the aftermath of Malkar, that I had never asked him about.

  “Brother,” it said, drawing the word out and hissing the th: brosssssssser. “Littermate.”

  “Er,” I said and decided not to explain all the ways in which the two words were not synonymous. “Yes.”

  “Not hurting him?” it said, still suspicious, and I wondered if it thought I might be Malkar.

  “No,” I said; it was at least true that I did not want to hurt him.

  It hissed thoughtfully, then said, “Okay. Dreamswimming, like ghost. Not being happy. What needing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said and sat down. “Where am I?”

  “You not knowing?”

  “Well, I know I’m in Mélusine somewhere. Am I in your dream?”

  At first it seemed not even to understand the question, then it said, “Seeing dreams,” which told me nothing. There was a sharp, flat sound like the handclap of a giant. I startled again and told myself to relax. Just because it was a man-eating monster didn’t mean it was necessarily going to attack me.

  “Calling husband,” said the Kalliphorne. “He knowing more. Giving better words.”

  Husband? I managed not to say.

  In a few moments—frighteningly few—there was another set of pale eyes at the water’s edge. I couldn’t see much more of them than that—dark, spiky shapes and the gleam of teeth—and thought that was probably for the best. They spoke to each other in a language that seemed to be composed mainly of sibilants and gutturals and an occasional drawn-out, indeterminate vowel, like the cry of a cat. Presently, the Kalliphorne said, “He saying we two-worlds living. Dreaming. Waking.” One hand, barbarously clawed, rose and made a back-and-forth motion. “Not own-dreaming. Not needing.”

  Her husband hissed. She said, “Like wizards and annemer. Being both and neither.”

  None of which made any sense, but then it sounded like mysticism, which generally didn’t. On the other hand, it made asking, “Do you know what this key unlocks?” seem positively rational.

  I showed them the key, which they sniffed at like inquisitive cats. Another hissing colloquy, and the Kalliphorne said, “Dreaming key means dreaming door,” and she pointed at something behind me. I turned and looked: just behind my right shoulder, a door, made of wood and carved in a pattern I couldn’t make out.

  “Is that door always there for you?” I said, unable to restrain my curiosity.

  That, when translated, got an odd clicking sound from the Kalliphorne’s husband, and then a considerable period of back-and-forth between them before she said, clearly doubtful, “He saying in dreaming always and never being same thing.”

  Definitely mysticism, and it would obviously require learning their language to get a better answer. “Thank you,” I said. “For helping me.”

  “Being rule of dreaming,” said the Kalliphorne. “Helping dreamswimmers. Always never.” She showed her teeth in a grin that made me press back against the wall, and then she and her husband were gone as smoothly and silently as if they were themselves no more than water.

  What did that mean? I looked at the key in my hand, looked again at the door behind me. But ultimately, it didn’t matter, because there was nowhere else I could go. Except into the water, and that wasn’t even a choice. I got up, turned. The lock plate was also made of horn, which was confirmation, though not comfort.

  I put the key in the lock, twisted it over. There was enough weight and resistance that it took both hands, and I was afraid the key might simply break. When the lock finally released, I felt the jar in all the bones of my hands and wrists, and those that had been broken and healed poorly began to ache.

  I turned the knob; it was as stiff as the lock. I wondered again if this was what I was supposed to do, but looking around showed me that the situation hadn’t changed. Right or wrong (always or never), I had no other choice. I forced the knob to turn and then had to pull the door open step by grim, struggling step.

  And then, when the door was open and I looked through it, I saw a solitary fox in a country of cruel stones. I could see the bright red blood staining the places where it had stepped.

  The fox looked up and saw me; its eyes were green as absinthe and cold and afraid. Then it turned away, dismissing me as neither threat nor salvation, and I heard my own voice, as if from a great distance, crying, “NO!” I leapt through the door, as unthinkingly as I breathed.

  Always.

  Never.

  The world shifted around me and shifted again, breaking and reforming like images in a kaleidoscope.

  Malkar’s workroom, a man spread-eagled on the floor, another man standing over him and smiling.

  A hallway in the Mirador, a man lying on the floor, bleeding, another man standing over him, not smiling, but the white, exultant fury on his face is worse than a smile.

  A room in the Arcane, a man curled on the floor, weeping, another man standing over him, his face like a mask.

  A room in St. Crellifer’s, a man strapped to a table, screaming, another man standing over him, grinning in triumph.

  A room in the Mirador, a man falling to the ground, screaming, another man standing, his face like death.

  A thousand thousand cruelties. Predator. Prey. Rapist. Victim. Everything. Nothing. Always. Never. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t—

  And then, as abruptly as a lit lucifer, I was somewhere else.

  It was sunny here, and I could have cried with relief. None of my labyrinths could feel the sun. The room was large, pleasant, wide windows and white walls, and the floor was light wood that nearly glowed where the sun-beams struck it. The bed which was the heart of the room was covered with a quilt made of lovely cool blues with brilliant blotches of crimson and emerald and topaz. The pillows were piled high, much as I’d done for Mildmay with the pillows at the Fiddler’s Fox, and lying on them, lying beneath the beautiful quilt, thin and pale and fretful with fever, was Thamuris.

  “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.” And shut his eyes.

  I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t make a sound.

  He opened his eyes again, lion-gold and deep, and said, “I’m dreaming you, aren’t I?”

  “Yes. I mean no.”

  “Well, that was helpful.”

  “You’re dreaming,” I said, “but I’m here. I mean, I’m not here—I mean, I’m not there—that is, I, um . . .”

  The fretful unhappiness on his face had been replaced by amusement, which was better, even if wounding to my vanity. “I can’t imagine you babbling like this. I’m not sure whether that’s an argument pro or con.”

  “I’m dreamwalking,” I managed. Finally. “So you’re dreaming, but it’s really me.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, but he was interested rather than skeptical or defensive.

  “I, um, try not to,” I said. “It’s not a good habit to get into.”

  “Ah. Then why . . . ?”

  “I. Um.” I took a step forward, then another. Thamuris’s hair was lying in two thick red plaits against his shoulders. His nightgown was white, open-collared; I could see the points of his collarbones with cruel clarity. “I did something stupid and evil and I . . .”

  I’m sorry?

  I need your help?

  I don’t know what to do?

  All of them true, and all of them things that stuck in my throat and rendered me mute.

  “I won’t pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thamuris said and shifted position with a sigh. “Diokletian and I have been doing the best we can, but—”

  “Diokletian?”

  “Who did you expect me to go to for help? After you disappeared and those briars started spreading. It’s not like I had many options.”

  “I know. I . . .” I remembered Mildmay saying, Don’t I rate an apology?—remembered the bitterness he h
ad tried not to show. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” Thamuris said. “I think you’re killing the Khloïdanikos.” My heart lurched nauseatingly, and it was just as well he went on without prompting, for I couldn’t find breath to speak. “I know it’s not what you meant, but the briars started spreading, and they didn’t even do what you did mean, because the bees just fly right over them, and every flower they land on dies.”

  I hadn’t thought it through—hadn’t wanted to think it through. But of course making Malkar’s rubies into the Parliament of Bees meant in oneiromantic logic that they were now as much bees as they were rubies. “So the briars thrive and everything else withers,” I said.

  “Essentially, yes. And the briars are . . . well, botanically speaking, they’re very odd. They’re extremely tough, and if you do manage to break them or uproot them, they bleed. And scream.”

  “I didn’t do that,” I said, although it was splitting hairs, and Thamuris knew it as well as I did.

  He said, “No, you only gave them something that would nourish them.”

  “Noirance,” I said, for it made perfect sense.

  “I beg your pardon?” Thamuris said, and I wondered in an irrepressible, irrelevant corner of my mind whether he’d picked up that particular inflection from me or I’d picked it up from him.

  “It’s a thaumaturgical theory I got from reading the Coeurterrenes. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a fancy way of saying you’re right.”

  He glared at me, unimpressed. “In any event, Diokletian and I can’t get through the briars, and even if we could, we’re both rather doubtful that we could pick up the beehive, and even if we could, what in the name of the blessed Tetrarchs are we supposed to do with it?”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. I have to take it back. Do you think . . . Is the Khloïdanikos dead?”

  “Not yet,” Thamuris said, almost grudgingly. “It’s very strong. But Diokletian doesn’t think it can last much longer.”

  “Diokletian is an inveterate wet blanket,” I said, which was true.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” Thamuris said, unyielding.

  “I didn’t say he was,” I said and sagged down to sit at the foot of the bed. “But there’s another problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “The briars. They . . . that is, I’m not sure how, but—”

  The world split open with a tremendous rattling clap of thunder and dumped me back on the floor of the room in the Fiddler’s Fox.

  It was broad daylight, and someone was knocking on the door.

  Chapter 4

  Kay

  Common decency, the foreigner had said in his light, oddly breathless voice, and it was revealed to me, like a bandage ripped off a festering wound, that this was what I was come to, that strangers, foreigners, looked on me and felt pity, felt that common decency demanded they do something.

  The thought was insupportable, all the more so as there was nothing I could do about it. It was not by choice that I crouched here on the cold marble, chained like a beast to my master’s dead body, not by choice that I was filthy and shivering, not by choice that I was blind. As they were not my choices, I could not make different ones. I could not even choose to bear my captivity more nobly, for was not as if I had been mewling or cursing or displaying myself lewdly to the citizenry. I had been cuffed across the back of the head, hard and more than once, for “looking” at my lady visitors. I kept my head down.

  And was that pragmatism or broken pride? I knew not, and I had not cared, until I had heard the truth in his voice: he would not treat his enemy’s dog as I was being treated.

  Day by day, my fate became less certain. Glimmering wanted me paraded around the countryside; the Convocation in the person of their secretary wanted me brought to Esmer for a trial or an excoriation or something they had not yet thought of; the Seven Houses wanted me put in Stonewater, which from all the stories was no more than an excuse to avoid the mess and bother of a public execution. No one could decide if I was a traitor or an enemy or a criminal; no one could decide to whom I belonged. They wrangled over me like a bequest in a disputed will. I was viewed by a succession of parties: Glimmering with other Corambin generals; Glimmering with the representatives of the Seven Houses; several different configurations of Bernathans, most of which I could not puzzle out; and finally a group of Bernathans escorting Roderick Lapwing, the Honorable Secretary to the Convocation.

  I knew Roderick Lapwing, had met him twelve indictions ago, during the negotiations over Isobel’s marriage. He had not been Secretary to the Convocation then, merely secretary to His Grace the Duke of Murtagh. I remembered his hands, soft and unworked and beautifully kept, and his voice, which was the epitome of the Corambin voice that I had been taught to mock as a child.

  Here in Bernatha, he did not speak to me any more than any of the others did; an I had been able, I would not have listened as they spoke to each other, but was another choice I did not have. And I could not deny my curiosity. I would have expected the Duke of Glimmering and his staff to be very much about Mr. Lapwing, and yet here he was and I heard nothing but Bernathan voices around him.

  They were speaking of the action Corambis would have to take to reestablish governance of Caloxa. The Bernathans were angling openly for concessions, seeking as always to increase their separation from and independence of Caloxa. It was not so much that they wished to be dependent on Corambis as that they considered the Convocation, being farther away, easier to ignore. The Corambins had yet to understand this; thus the Seven Houses were likely to get what they wanted. And later, someday, the Corambins would learn that Bernatha had no loyalty to be bought.

  In the meantime, however, it seemed that the governorship of Caloxa was up for grabs, and Lapwing was trying to sound out the Bernathans, to discover whom they favored. Would not have been surprised to find Bernatha giving her support to the corrupt and ineffectual former governor, Miles Jaggard, but perhaps they had not cared for his taxation schemes, or perhaps they were playing a deeper game. All I could extract from the portion of the conversation to which I was an audience was that they objected to the idea that Glimmering, as the person who had ended the Insurgence—merely, as the Bernathans delicately pointed out, by virtue of being the person to whom I had surrendered—should have any say in the matter at all. The cows had clearly not been as effective a gift as he had hoped, and I was pettily pleased.

  I was no longer a margrave; I had the bitter, hateful luxury of being petty, and nothing in the long cold hours of my existence to provide better thoughts. I was fed twice a day, escorted shuffling and chained to the lavatory twice a day. Sometimes my guards, and they were never the same men, would allow me to drink from the sink faucet; mostly they would not. At night I slept, still chained, at the foot of Gerrard’s catafalque. Sometimes the guards remembered to give me a blanket before they left; sometimes they did not.

  I learned to gauge the passing of time by the temperature of the hall, for it was cold in the mornings, and grew steadily warmer through the afternoons. In what I reckoned had to be late afternoon, I even felt the direct heat of a sunbeam; thus I deduced that the hall faced west. And thus also the residual heat which made the nights less horrible than they might have been.

  The day after my encounter with the foreigner, I had endured the morning and reached the moment when the warmth began to grow, when a voice said, “My lord Rothmarlin, I must speak to you.”

  I did not raise my head. “I am no lord.”

  “Then what am I to call you?”

  “Why need you call me anything? Who are you?”

  “My name is Edwin Beckett. I was a correspondent of the late Prince Gerrard.”

  The late Prince Gerrard whose body was no more than three feet from us. But I remembered the name. “Are the man who wants to start the Clock of Eclipses again.”

  “Yes! And that is why I must speak to you.”

  “I know nothing about the Clock,” said I, perplexed
.

  “No, not that. I need you to tell me what went wrong.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Prince Gerrard wrote to me because he wished advice about starting a Cymellunar engine he said he knew to exist under Summerdown. I advised him as best I could and told him much about my own efforts. But he did not write me again. And so I must know why he failed.”

  “Is not obvious enough? He failed because it killed him.”

  “Surely it’s the other way around. It killed him because he failed.”

  “I cannot help you,” said I.

  “I have Lord Glimmering’s permission to speak to you. He assured me you would be cooperative.” His voice was soft and level, but the threat was clear. Glimmering continued to attempt to buy the Bernathans’ favor, first with cows, now with me.

  “He hired the services of a magician-practitioner in Barthas Cross,” I said dully. There was no use in fighting. Was not as if it mattered to anyone save me. And, apparently, this Edwin Beckett. “Anselm Penny was his name. He walked the labyrinth and examined the engine, and he and Gerrard conferred a great deal, but I know not what they said. He sent Gerrard directions, and we followed them. And six men died.”

  “Tell me what happened,” said Edwin Beckett, inexorable.

  I would liefer have allowed him to set me on fire, but I cooperated as Glimmering had said I would. I described the ritual Gerrard had performed, for indeed I remembered it as clearly as it were engraved in the place inside my skull where my sight had been. Beckett took notes—I heard the scratching of his pen—and peppered me with questions, although at least he was not interested in what had happened when the engine came to life. He wanted the details of where each man had stood and what Gerrard had said and how Penny had determined the sequence in which to complete the ritual’s tasks.

  With that last, I truly could not help him, for Practitioner Penny and I had not liked each other. Gerrard had been very closemouthed about Penny’s letters. He might have told Benallery, but he had not told me, and no, I most certainly had not asked.