“What?”
“I admit, I have wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
“If was in truth Isobel’s barrenness that has you childless.”
Silence, and then Murtagh said, very slowly, “Have I ever given you any reason to believe I mistreated your sister?”
Was danger in his voice, and I said, “I cry your mercy. I meant no such thing. Is just . . . an arranged marriage . . . and I do know Isobel’s temperament . . .”
“I assure you, our marriage has been very thoroughly consummated,” Murtagh said, but at least his voice had lightened. “And that provides me a very graceful segue to something I did want to speak to you about.”
“Vanessa.”
“Will you give her a chance, Kay?”
“Matters not what I would give. Is clear enough that the lady is accustomed to take.”
“Just try to see past her manner. She is in a difficult position.”
“She has all my sympathy,” I said bitterly.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother,” he said, and I heard him come to his feet.
“Would be better if you bothered less about me and more about Julian.”
“Julian will do as he’s told.”
“Yes, he will,” said I, “even when he should not.”
“Good night, Kay,” Murtagh said sharply.
“Murtagh!” I said as he opened the door.
“What?” he said, still sharp. But he answered, and was truth in that.
“You were right.”
“About what?”
“We must be friends,” said I. “Could not infuriate each other so an we were not.”
It startled him into laughing, and when he said, “Good night, Kay,” a second time, the sharpness was gone.
Felix
I was certain that at least half the students to whom I lectured thought Corbie was my mistress. It was a far more congenial, though senseless, explanation to them than the truth. Corbie, whose sense of humor was reprehensible, did nothing to dissuade them; indeed, if I would have let her do it, she would have draped herself across me like a stole. She was not at all discomfitted by being the only woman in the room, and she had the virtue of asking questions when she was confused, unlike the men, who nodded sagely and tried to look wise.
Things might have been quite different if I had not been her ally—to the rest of the Institution, after all, she wasn’t even a student—but that at least I was clear on: Corbie and I were allies.
I gathered up all my courage and told her about the fantôme.
Her eyes got wider and wider, and when I finished, she said, “Is there anything I can do?”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been dreading trying to persuade her I was telling the truth—as I would have had to persuade Hutch or any of my orthodox students—until that weight was abruptly gone. “Well, there is, actually. Do you know any stories about spirits of that kind? It called itself a rachenant.”
She shook her head.
“Then I’m going to introduce you to one of the great mysteries of wizardry.” I grinned at her. “It’s called research.”
The Institution had no library of its own, which I found both deplorable and more than a little disturbing; Corbie and I walked from the House, across the North Quadrangle—past Venables Hall and that which slept in its basements—and climbed the rocky half wilderness of Solstice Hill. Solstice Hill was the point where the University and the Institution met, and there was some considerable dispute about ownership. Thus, in practice, no one owned it, except the students from both sides who used it as a shortcut and a trysting place and probably a great many other things that, as Institution faculty, I didn’t want to know about.
We came down Solstice Hill into the University. There were more women students here, and more boys Julian’s age or younger. It was louder, more cheerful, and I felt Corbie relax.
“Is it very hard for you?” I asked before I realized I meant to.
“Is what very hard for me?”
“The Institution.”
“Well, it would be if I was a student there, but I ain’t.” She grinned at me. “Don’t worry about me, Felix. I got it licked.”
“All right,” I said. “But tell me if—”
“I ain’t going back,” she said, and I let the matter go.
Hutch had shown me the University’s library, along with all the bookstores in walking distance, and it did make up, at least in part, for the Institution’s failure. It was a vast, sprawling building, turreted and gabled and ridiculous. I wasn’t surprised that its nickname was the Furbelow. Hutch, who was conscientious, had shown me the side staircase that led directly to the thaumatology collection, and Corbie and I went up that way.
“And all these books are about magic?” Corbie said, frowning. The mere quantity of books didn’t awe her; she was familiar with Bernatha’s bookstores, even if she hadn’t frequented them.
“Yes. And unfortunately, they aren’t catalogued.”
She looked at me with foreboding. “What does that mean?”
“That nobody actually knows what’s up here.”
“Oh.” Now she looked daunted.
“And this is the only surviving collection of Mulkist writings in the country, or so Hutch tells me.”
“Mulkist?” A definite squeak.
“It was a Mulkist warlock who called the thing, and I somehow doubt Grevillian authors are going to have much to say about it. Since as far as I can tell, there are no spirits in Grevillian theory.” Just as the Mirador didn’t believe in ghosts, and it occurred to me, as sudden and sharp and painful as a knife thrust, that even if I was ever allowed to return home, I wasn’t a Cabaline anymore. That maybe I never had been.
“Um,” said Corbie. “Good point. So, what? I just go look around?”
I shook myself back to the present. “Unfortunately, yes. See what you find.”
“That’s it?”
“In essence.” I shrugged at her disgusted look. “It’s what research is. You look around, see what you find. Think about it. Do some more looking.”
“What about, you know, magic?” She called her little purple witchlight, as if to demonstrate.
“That comes at a much later point,” I said firmly.
“Oh all right,” she said, half-grumbling, half-teasing, and I left her there among the books like Eilene among the deathly treasures of Muil.
Kay
Mildmay Foxe was as patient as a stone. He came daily with his book about the history of Corambis and read it to me. We struggled together over the words he didn’t know; he confessed early on that he had been only imperfectly taught to read as a child.
“Are no schools in Mélusine?” said I.
“Well, yeah, but for bourgeois kids, flash kids. Not kept-thieves.”
“Are no dominioner schools?”
“No dominions,” he said.
“But is no one then responsible for the children of the city?”
That made him laugh. “That’s the Lower City in a nutshell. Ain’t nobody responsible at all.”
“But someone taught you something of reading?”
“My keeper,” he said, his voice gone dark and curt, not at all as I was accustomed to hearing it. “But I wasn’t no good at it, and she found better things to do with me.”
I knew I should not ask, and yet I could not keep the words behind my teeth: “Better things?”
“Stealing, cardsharping. Killing people.”
“Killing people,” I said, merely to be sure I had understood him correctly, but he took it as a sort of reproof.
“Murder for hire,” he said and then, although the word clearly vexed him, “assassination.”
“I too am a murderer,” I said. “I killed my first man at fourteen.”
“Huh,” he said. “You and me both.”
He came each day for a week; we did not speak again of our odd confessional, talking instead of Corambin history and, when I learned how to coax him, the
stories of Mélusinien history of which he had an apparently inexhaustible store. On Lunedy afternoon, he was telling me of the gory end to the rule of kings in his city when there was a knock on the door, and before I could say, “Come in,” the door opened and Vanessa said, “We have been summoned to—oh! I beg your pardon. I’d no idea you had a visitor.”
There was something tight and sharp in her voice that I had not heard before. I said, for I was obliged to, “Vanessa, this is Mildmay Foxe, who is kind enough to come read to me. Mildmay, this is my fiancée”—the word still stuck in my throat like sand—“Vanessa Pallister.”
The sounds of Mildmay getting to his feet. “I should go,” he said. “I can—”
“No,” Vanessa said, sounding almost as alarmed as I felt. “This will only take a moment, and I do beg your pardon for interrupting. Kay, we have been summoned to an audience with my mother. She says we will leave tomorrow, and we may return to Esmer on Geovedy.”
“Is your mother always this high-handed?”
“Frequently worse,” she said, with that tightness in her voice again. “That’s all. I’ll have to check Ottersham to find out when the train leaves.”
“You will find me here,” I said, and she shut the door.
“So,” said Mildmay after a long silence, and I heard him sit down again. “That’s the lady you’re marrying.”
“Yes,” said I.
“You, um, don’t seem real happy about it.”
I laughed, though it was bitter. “Is not of my choosing. But, no matter. You were telling me of the mother of Michael Teverius.”
There was another pause, in which I knew he was considering pressing the matter. Then he said, easily, “Yeah. Inez Cordelia. Now she was a piece of work.” And I blessed him silently for letting it go.
Vanessa’s parents—cousins of Murtagh in some degree, although I neither knew nor wished the details—lived at Isser Chase, an estate some ten miles out of Isserly, the principal city of the Duchy of Murtagh. The train left from Pollidean Station at noon. Vanessa and Vanessa’s maid and Springett and I duly caught it. We did not talk on the train journey north and reached Isserly at half past sixteen.
Vanessa left me with Springett and her maid, Woodlock, in the lobby of the train station while she sallied forth to hire a carriage for the journey to Isser Chase. It should have been my task, but had been made very clear to me that it was not.
I sat where Springett put me and tried with painfully little success to cease thinking. Springett and Woodlock stood nearby, talking quietly. Woodlock was a native of Whallan, hired when Vanessa’s Esmer-born maid did what Vanessa could not and quit, and she was clearly very nervous about the new ramifications of her position.
“He’s not going to bite you,” Springett said, and I realized with horrified amusement that one of the things of which Woodlock was nervous was me.
“We get the papers, you know,” she said. “Even all the way out in Whallan.”
“I’m not saying he was right, or he didn’t do things any decent person would be ashamed to think, but look at him. He can’t go two feet without someone to hold his hand, and he knows it.”
Outwardly, I kept my face blank, as if I didn’t even know they were talking; inwardly, I curdled. Truly, Springett had mastered the art of damning with faint praise. And I could not keep from contemplating all that I had done that Springett might think I should be ashamed of.
I considered the course of the Insurgence. Gerrard had raised his banner in Barthas Cross, the ancient city of the kings of Caloxa, and the Margrave of Larrowan, whom I disliked but respected, had been the first to swear fealty to him. I had been the second.
It had been the experience of those of us trained to fight the Usara that had allowed us to last as long as we had. We knew that war wasn’t like the colored plates in children’s history books; we cured Gerrard of his desire to meet the Corambins head-on. We knew to attack from ambush, to present a moving target, to strike at the most vulnerable target, not the most obvious. If we could have avoided the siege of Beneth, we might still have been fighting. I did not allow myself the fantasy that we would be any closer to winning, but had never been any real hope of that. Our plan had been to outlast the Corambins, not to defeat them.
But Beneth Castle controlled the Crawcour, and the Corambins had already had the overpowering advantage of the railroad. Could not let them have the river as well. It had taken the Corambins three indictions to bring Beneth down, and Benallery’s plain little sparrow of a margravess fought them every inch of the way, though it meant her death.
In the aftermath, knowing we were doomed to defeat, watching Benallery struggle against his grief like a man with a mortal wound struggling to stay upright, I had ceased to take prisoners. My men had been as heartsick, as helplessly furious, as I, and although I had ordered the massacre at Angersburn, there had barely been any need. And Angersburn, most likely, was what Springett meant.
As Springett truly said, any decent person would be ashamed. Was I? I discovered that I did not have an answer. My life had been one war after another since I was fourteen, and was not ashamed of that. Had killed far more Usara than the three hundred men of Angersburn, and no one was suggesting I was monstrous for that. I’d waded in blood in a defile of the Perblanches that didn’t even have a name. Did it make a difference that it was Usaran blood? It had been just as dark, just as sticky, the reek just as choking. The Usara had been just as dead.
My head ached; I realized I was rubbing my eyes and forced my hands back into my lap.
Springett said, “Are you all right, sir?” He was conscientious, whatever he thought of me.
“Fine,” I said, although my voice lacked conviction. “Do you think Mrs. Pallister will be back soon?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Do you want anything?”
“No,” I said, because what I wanted was nothing I could articulate, and nothing Springett could give me in any event.
“Some water, maybe?” Springett said, and I realized I was causing him anxiety, most likely because I was sitting with my head down and my shoulders hunched, and my hands were now gripping each other tightly.
“No, thank you,” I said. I forced my shoulders straight, forced my head up, forced my face to smooth out of a frown. I turned my head toward Springett. “Truly, am fine. Am sorry to have worried you.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, although he sounded dubious. I had never wondered about my own skill in lying before. Had never needed it. As a margrave, as a soldier, I had prided myself on my truthfulness. Was one of the reasons Isobel and I struck sparks off each other; neither of us had mastered the art of the politic lie, and we were both proud of it. Foolishly proud? I had never thought so before, but then the truth had never been my enemy before.
I had never been ashamed of what I was.
Now, I was. Ashamed of being blind, of being helpless, of being alive when Gerrard and Benallery were dead. Ashamed of having failed. Ashamed of being a token in the negotiations between Vanessa and Murtagh. Ashamed of . . . blessed Lady, Lady of Dark Mercies, I had not words for what I was now.
I hunched forward again, burying my face in my hands. “Please,” I said. “Am fine. Just . . .” Was nothing I could think of to ask Springett to do, except to leave me alone, a child’s defiance, a tantrum.
“There’s Mrs. Pallister now,” said Springett, and some small honest part of me hated him for sounding so relieved.
The smell of lilies reached me first, and then Vanessa’s sweet Corambin voice. “Kay? Are you all right, darling?”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, the words grating in my throat.
“Fine. Are you all right, bonehead?”
She surprised me into laughter. “I am well, I thank you.”
“Good,” she said briskly. “Then let’s get going. I want to reach Isser Chase before full dark.”
“Yes’m,” said Springett and Woodlock, and I was gathered up with the rest of the impedimenta in Vanessa
’s wake.
Felix
I’m standing in the courtyard of St. Crellifer’s. The doors stand open, and madness is flowing out, dark and corrosive and cruel. Like the Sim. A dead madwoman is standing beside me; her blood is a halo around her head. I don’t know why I’m here—don’t know if I’m dreaming or if this is true.
Watch, says the dead madwoman and points.
And I look up, up past the barred and glaring windows to the roof, where someone has climbed onto the parapet and is standing, peering down. At this distance, I can’t make out his features, but I know who it is.
I remember Mildmay telling me once that all the buildings in the Lower City have roof-access doors. Along of fire, he’d said and given me one of his solemn sidelong looks that said he knew I knew exactly what he meant. I’d never found that door, but then when I had been in St. Crellifer’s, I hadn’t known Mildmay.
Then this is a dream. I should be relieved, but I can’t feel it.
What is he doing? I ask.
Learning to fly.
I remember St. Crellifer’s. It has three storeys and its steep-pitched attics. I don’t know if the drop alone would be enough to kill anyone, but when he jumps—and he does jump, deliberately and hard—he jumps head-first. The sound of his head hitting the paving stones is sharp and thick, and blood and bone and other things spread across the pavement like flowers.
Or wings.
The dead madwoman touches two bloody fingertips to my forehead and smiles the smile of a saint. He can fly now, she says, and I wake up.
Mildmay
Martedy I couldn’t go read to Mr. Brightmore along of him being off meeting Mrs. Pallister’s family, and if I’ve ever seen a guy who would rather’ve cut his own head off with a butter knife, Mr. Brightmore was that guy.
I was reading the paper to Felix while he ate breakfast, something about a way to make the mines in the eastern mountains safer by using magic to detect bad air earlier, and he just sat there looking sourer and sourer, and I finally said, “What? You got something against mining?”
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