Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  Happily, I was not a buffalo.

  Corbie sat down across from me and said without preamble, “Are you drunk?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice,” I said and gave her my best smile. “And this way I don’t mind the hecate.”

  “Darren said he’d been watering the drinks, but you look . . .”

  “Relaxed?” I suggested. “Happy? Darling, trust me. I am not drunk.” I pushed the fifteen hermits across the table to distract her.

  “Not bad for the first night,” Corbie said and proceeded to subject my poor hermits to some truly alarming mathematics.

  Five hermits went to the House of Chastity. Corbie called it the tithe, and it was the price of working in Bernatha without being pledged. “A third?” I said. “Of everything?”

  “Believe me,” Corbie said, “it’s cheap at the price. Jezebels who don’t tithe . . . Well, you don’t want to know.”

  That left ten hermits. Five were mine; two and a thrustle went to Darren to keep Crysolomon’s sweet, and the rest went to Corbie, although she turned around and gave them straight back, minus two pennies for the hecate.

  I walked back to the Fiddler’s Fox seven hermits and three pennies richer, with the strange-familiar taste of semen in the back of my throat. I checked on Mildmay—still sleeping, but even I could see the improvement since this morning—washed up carefully, locked the door, extinguished the candle, and lay down. And burst into tears.

  It was, truly, like being caught in a cloudburst; it was that violent and that abrupt. I knew part of it was the hecate and this flayed feeling of vulnerability; part of it was the alcohol. And I knew the root of it was the way I’d spent the evening and all the memories that had been stirred up. But what I felt was grief. I missed Gideon so much it felt like I’d been crippled. To say my heart was broken was trite, and in fact it didn’t feel broken. It felt gone, as if it had been wrenched from my chest, and though it continued to beat, it did so from some great, cold distance, like the moon in eclipse. I rolled over, burying my face in the limp pillow, and as I’d done in the days after Joline’s death, I cried myself to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  Felix

  The next night was easier—also more profitable. Mildmay woke up when I came in, although he didn’t stay awake long enough to do any more than mutter, “There you are,” before he was asleep again. But it was a good sign, and a reminder that the banshee and seven hermits I now had toward Practitioner Druce’s saint were necessary for reasons larger and more important than myself. I slept heavily and woke remembering only vague fragments of my dreams: fire again, and anger. I thought I’d been dreaming about Keeper, although I wasn’t entirely sure.

  When I came back from the bathroom, Mrs. Lettice was blocking the door.

  “Good morning,” I said warily.

  “Is Lunedy morning,” she said. “And I hear you’ve found a source of income.”

  “I . . .”

  “Charity to the indigent is one thing,” she said, “but indigent you are not, from what I hear. A banshee for the week.” I opened my mouth to protest, and she said, “And that’s at discount, your brother being so ill. I charge Chastity-girls a banshee and twelve, and that’s just for the room.”

  “I’m not seeing clients here,” I said.

  “And how am I to know that?”

  “I just told you?”

  “Anyone can tell a lie, Mr. Harrowgate,” she said, her eyes bright and hard. “A banshee for the week, if you please. Now.”

  A banshee and seven hermits became seven hermits on their own, and paying off my debt to Practitioner Druce looked suddenly much farther away. I was glad Mildmay slept through the whole sordid thing.

  Practitioner Druce’s was not the only debt I needed to pay, and with taking hecate nightly, my opportunities to deal with the Khloïdanikos were limited—especially as I was not about to add oneiromancy to Corbie’s lessons.

  Now? I thought wearily, but I remembered what Diokletian had said about Thamuris, and I knew I couldn’t put it off. I straightened the bedcovers and lay down on top of them, folded my hands carefully, and slowed myself into a trance.

  Oneiromantically, it was always easier to find one’s way back to a place one had been before. The door with the horn lock led me to Thamuris’s room, and I wasn’t surprised to find that he was there. Laudanum dreams.

  He was standing at the window, looking out at a landscape that I did not recognize and that certainly had nothing to do with the Gardens of Nephele. He turned when he became aware of me. “You’re back.” He didn’t sound surprised, but he also didn’t sound particularly pleased.

  “I, um . . .”

  “No, don’t tell me,” Thamuris said wearily. “Diokletian has explained to you my tale of woe, and you are sorry. You feel terrible. You didn’t mean to.”

  His imitation of my speech at its most affected was cruelly accurate, and since the things he accused me of feeling were exactly what I felt, he left me with nothing to say.

  He came closer. “And I think you did mean to. I have had a great deal of time to think about it, Felix, and I think you got exactly what you wanted.”

  “Thamuris—”

  “You wanted to be rid of those rubies. You wanted to be rid of your spirit-ancestor. Did you want to be rid of me as well?”

  “No!” I said, horrified. “I swear. I didn’t mean—that is, I admit it was stupid and selfish and wrong, but I wasn’t trying to . . . I didn’t intend to . . . I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Congratulations,” Thamuris said, his voice as scouring and bitter as sea salt.

  “Thamuris, please. I don’t deny I deserve it, but please. Don’t.”

  He stared at me for a span of time that felt cruelly endless, then said, “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to take the rubies back. Right now. If you’ll help me.”

  He considered that with the deliberation of laudanum and finally said, “Very well. That seems fair. What do you need?”

  “I can’t get into the Khloïdanikos. The briars are blocking Horn Gate.”

  “How appropriate,” Thamuris said, then held his hands up. “No, I promised. I’m sorry. Then you need me to bring you in.”

  “Yes. And I may need your help with the briars,” I said and added humbly, “Please.”

  “All right,” said Thamuris. “Give me your hands.”

  It was hard to do, both because I had learned to dislike touching Thamuris for the consumption that burned through him, and because Malkar had trapped me that way once. But I gritted my teeth and extended my hands. His touch was as fever-swampy as I had expected, but he was gentle even though I would have understood if he wasn’t. He laced his fingers through mine and squeezed, very slightly, and around us, the dream of his room dissolved into the Dream of the Garden.

  I jerked back from Thamuris, and almost immediately tripped over a strand of briars, landing hard and with a yelp. The briars’ thorns were as vicious as their vines were tough. I disentangled myself painfully and looked around, my breath coming shorter as I saw the damage I had done.

  The briars were the only things flourishing. The flower beds were full of withered petals and broken stalks; the grass was yellowing; the perseïd trees had shed their flowers. Everything looked ill and weak.

  “Are you all right?”

  I looked up at Thamuris. He looked as yellow and ill as the grass.

  “I’m fine,” I said, swallowing hard. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Thamuris and I went together to the oak in the circle of briars. Though I did not stop, I glanced in passing at the mostly dead perseïd tree against the ruined orchard wall—the perseïd tree that had been linked to Mildmay by Thamuris’s long ago divination—and saw that although it, too, looked sickly, it had not shed its leaves. Perhaps it was unreasonable, but I felt more hopeful after that.

  The briars were just as lush and wicked around the oak as they were everywhere else. The oak tree looked mange-ridden
, but like the shattered perseïd, it was not yet dead.

  It was not too late, no matter how stupid and selfish I had been.

  As we stopped in front of the overgrown trellis, first one ruby bee, then another emerged from the depths of the garden to circle hostilely about my head.

  “I don’t think they can sting,” Thamuris said. “Otherwise, they would have stung me when I was trying to reach their hive.”

  “The briars sting for them,” I said without thinking, and we both winced at the truth of it.

  Both of us were bleeding by the time I made it into the circle, and the ruby bees were crawling angrily on my face and hands. But they could not sting me, or impede me, and I thought I understood this piece of symbolism as well. They could do harm only to a construct like the Khloïdanikos; they could not touch me if I wasn’t stupid enough to let them.

  I picked up the hive and watched the bees crawl into it, one by one. The truth of their nature, I thought, and the truth of their nature when I held their hive was that they were ten smoke-stained rubies in a wash-leather bag. That was the truth.

  I rested my palm for a moment against the trunk of the oak tree and whispered, “I’m sorry.” And then I made my way back out of the circle. This time, it almost seemed as if the briars were fighting me, and Thamuris said in a strained voice, “I’m starting to wonder about these briars.”

  “Do you think I brought them?”

  “No, not that. Hold still.” I held still while he very gently removed a trailing whip of thorns from its clawed hold in my hair. “But I don’t imagine we’re the first wizards to think of, um, storing problematical materials here.”

  I shut my eyes, only partly to avoid having them ripped out by the vine Thamuris was struggling with. “And like does, in fact, call to like, at least on the thaumaturgic level. So of course this would present itself to me as the perfect place to put these damnable rubies.”

  “I don’t know,” Thamuris said. “But these briars—ow!”

  We gave up on trying to have a conversation until we were both free of the briars and several feet away. “Hopefully,” I said, “they’ll quiet down now.”

  “I expect the Khloïdanikos can tame them, now that they don’t have help. What will you do with . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The same way I didn’t know before this recklessly stupid experiment.” We started walking, a mutual, tacit decision to get away from the center of the damage. “At least I don’t have to worry about them interacting with the Mirador any longer.”

  “You don’t?” He sounded alarmed.

  Of course, I thought. There was no reason he would know. “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I’m with Mildmay. We’re fine.”

  “But, Felix—”

  “Don’t worry. It’s all right, really.”

  “It’s not anything good, is it?” he said quietly.

  “No,” I said and sighed, defeated. “Not really. My lover is dead, and I’ve been exiled for destroying the mind of the man who murdered him.”

  Thamuris’s breath caught, and I felt even worse; there was no call to be cruel to him, just because I was tired and unhappy and burdened again with this last reminder of Malkar, like a bloodstain that would not wash out of a handkerchief.

  “And I’ve been so mean to you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. You were right. The other circumstances don’t change that.”Thamuris hadn’t the least idea of how to go about being mean, but I didn’t say so and especially did not remark that I could give him lessons if he wanted.

  “Still. I am sorry. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Grief howled up, black and choking in my throat, and I fought it back down. “Thank you,” I said. “I . . . I appreciate it.”

  “Are we still . . .”

  “Still?”

  He stopped walking, and I turned to look at him, raising my eyebrows. “Friends?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I get to make that decision,” I said. “You have every reason to be angry at me.”

  “I don’t like being angry at you,” he said, rather plaintively, and I was reminded of how young he was. “Diokletian says I shouldn’t be too quick to forgive you, but I don’t see why.”

  “Diokletian doesn’t trust me.”

  “I know that,” Thamuris said, and managed something that was almost a smile. “He says you’re trying to corrupt me.”

  “I’m what?”

  “He says that you would never spend this much time with anyone if you didn’t want them sexually.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said sourly. “Don’t worry, darling. I only want you for your mind.” That actually made him laugh, and I felt something unfurling in me, as fragile as a perseïd blossom: hope.

  Kay

  That tiny bedroom was as a cage, and I was as the captive cougar. I could not leave the room without someone to guide me, and there was no one who would do so. Murtagh was gone much of the time; I gathered from the bits and fragments I overheard that the political situation was not nearly so straightforward as he had tried to convince me to believe. The servants were polite and efficient and unhelpful. Tinder told me that His Grace thought it best if I stayed out of sight. And I even understood. For if I was in truth a “hero of the Insurgence,” surely it was to everyone’s benefit to keep me out of the public eye, away from the witless bees who would swarm to any rising, whether queen or drone or vicious cannibal wasp. But I was caged, and I did hate it.

  Tinder must have spoken to Murtagh, for that evening there was a tap on the door and Murtagh’s voice saying, “I hear that you are near-mad with boredom.”

  “Even an I would, I cannot deny it,” I said. I had explored every inch of that tiny, barren bedroom—and certainly I had profited thereby, for I had found a path which I could pace and at least channel some of the energy for which I had no use. But it was not enough.

  “Then perhaps you will condescend to talk to me,” Murtagh said. I heard him come in and shut the door behind him.

  “Condescend? Your Grace, I—”

  “For the love of the Lady, don’t start,” Murtagh said and startled me so much I nearly bit my tongue. “You are the most arrogant, intolerant, self-righteous son of a bitch I have ever met, but I like that better than when you try to crawl. Humility does not suit you, my lord of Rothmarlin.”

  “But I am not lord of Rothmarlin. Not any longer.”

  “Does that mean you’re no longer yourself?” Murtagh asked; he sounded intrigued. He walked through my pacing as neatly as a girl skipping rope, and I knew by the creak that he’d sat down on the bed.

  “Means I must learn to be someone else. Is not fitting for a dependent of the Duke of Murtagh to put on the same airs as the Margrave of Rothmarlin.”

  “What about the Warden of Grimglass?”

  “What?”

  “The Warden of Grimglass,” he repeated, enunciating distinctly.

  “You wish me to marry his widow. I remember. But is no heir?”

  “There is a boy of seven. And while he is certainly the previous warden’s heir, the question of his guardianship has been ugly and protracted and well-nigh insoluble.”

  “The previous warden left no will?”

  “The previous warden, if you will permit my saying so, was an idiot. His ‘will’ consists of a letter written to his wife a few days before he died—on campaign in Blandamere, if you were wondering—”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “A letter to his wife saying that he trusted she and his three brothers would ‘work something out.’ ”

  I considered that from one wall to the opposite. “ ‘Idiot’ is perhaps too kind a word?”

  “Well, I never met the man, so I try to be generous. But he certainly displayed a complete lack of understanding of either his wife or any of his brothers. One of them is a naval man and has no time for administering the estate, even if he could be reached for consultation more than once or twice an indiction. The other two, ho
wever, are ambitious and apparently have been at each other’s throats since the cradle, and the widow . . .”

  “The one you want me to marry.”

  “Yes, he has only the one widow,” Murtagh said a trifle waspishly. “The widow is a spoilt bitch, but very clever. And of a grasping disposition.”

  “Your concern for my future happiness unmans me,” said I.

  “She’s a political creature. I don’t think she’ll give you any trouble, especially if you consent to let her live at least part of the indiction in Esmer. She is much too cosmopolitan for the far west.”

  “You sound as if you know her?”

  “Distant cousin,” Murtagh said. “She was Vanessa Carey before her marriage.”

  “Have not actually answered my question,” I observed.

  “And now I remember why my chief emotion in the weeks leading up to my wedding was the desire to strangle you,” Murtagh said amiably. “Yes, I know Vanessa. My aunt Evelina sponsored her.”

  “Your aunt Evelina who was at daggers-drawn with Isobel from the moment they laid eyes on each other?”

  “That very one.”

  I paced my circuit twice before I said, “You came up with this plan very quickly. Have you spent many of your leisure moments in the past three indictions contemplating my marriage?”

  Silence for another two circuits. Murtagh said, “The night after the news reached Esmer, I got no sleep. Your sister was as near hysterical as I have ever seen her. Every newspaper in the northern duchies was baying for your blood, and we actually gave thanks to the Lady that Thomas Albern is an ambitious, petty-minded, vengeful fool, for it meant that he would not have you hanged out of hand. I knew I could convince the Convocation that with Hume’s death, you were no longer a threat, but only if I could tell them what I would do with you—we hear about the Primrose Men in Esmer, you know. I thought very very fast.”

  “I am rebuked,” I said.

  “You are a stiff-necked idiot,” Murtagh said, and I wondered if I could trust that that was fondness I heard in his voice. “But I actually wanted to ask you about something else.”