Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  “An idea about the engine?”

  “Yeah. But don’t ask me what, because he didn’t say and I wouldn’t’ve understood him if he did.”

  “All right,” Kay said, and then we were in the labyrinth, and Felix was saying, “I knew I could count on you,” which made me feel warm all over, and fuck, yes, I know how stupid that is.

  Felix had a dark lantern, which was better planning than he usually showed, but he went clear around the first bend before he’d open it. I didn’t complain, because I opened my mouth to say something, and then thought about Kay, who’d gone the whole distance in pitch blackness that no amount of light was ever going to help with, and I closed my mouth again. I suppose, really, we didn’t even need the lantern. It wasn’t like we could get lost or take a wrong turn. But I was glad when Felix slid the shutter aside anyway, because it carved out a little circle of light in all that dark and I felt like I could breathe again.

  Nobody said nothing for a long while, and then Kay said, “Mildmay says you have an idea.”

  “Yes,” Felix said. “I’m sorry to drag you along, but since I don’t fully understand how the engine works, and don’t particularly want to experiment, I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.”

  “You think I . . . affect it, somehow?”

  “I think you might. It moved, after all.”

  “It might have done that for anyone.”

  “Yes, I know, but that’s one of those experiments I don’t want to do. I’m not asking you, or Mildmay, to come any farther than the door, but I need it to accept what it’s being offered.”

  “What’re you offering?” I said.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “You don’t want to talk about it,” I said, because I could do the math on that one.

  “You won’t like it. And I don’t want to waste time while you try to talk me out of it. I don’t think we have much time left. It moved last night. And I think it’s trying to drive Kay to suicide.”

  Kay didn’t like that, but Felix told him what Intended Marcham had told us about the two men who’d killed themselves for no reason, and that made him think. He said, “Was happening in Bernatha. The suicides.”

  “Nemesis drove people mad,” I said.

  “Diadumenian Butler is said to have killed himself by jumping into its gears,” Felix said. “Not that that stopped it. But that’s not quite the same thing. Nemesis and the Clock of Eclipses—and presumably Juggernaut, although I can’t imagine the Bastion would ever admit as much—cause suicides by their working. This engine needs suicides in order to work at all.”

  “Powers,” I said. “Okay. I won’t argue with whatever you’re gonna do.”

  “Promise you won’t try to stop me.”

  “You really think I ain’t gonna like this.”

  “I know you aren’t,” he said with a flicker of a smile. “But I promise I have no intention of sacrificing myself.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t. ’Cause that’d make it go off, right?”

  “Exactly,” he said, and he sounded so pleased with me that I went warm again.

  “But what are you offering?” Kay said. He’d learned the key thing about any serious conversation with Felix, which was that you couldn’t let him distract you.

  “Something I think it will accept,” Felix said.

  “Is no answer.”

  “No,” Felix agreed, perfectly cheerful. “I don’t want to waste time arguing with you, either.”

  “And if I promise not to argue either? Will you tell me then?”

  “Are you promising not to argue?”

  “How can I make that promise, when I know not what you intend?”

  “Impasse,” Felix said, still cheerful. “Let me do this, Kay, and I promise I will explain after.”

  “It sounds as if thou mightst not live to keep thy promise.”

  Felix stopped. He turned and touched Kay’s face gently and said, “I would not be grateful to be dead,” and I knew that was part of the conversation him and Kay had had while I’d laid there and pretended to be asleep, but all I could think of was the Road of Corundum in the rain and Felix saying he would’ve thanked Lord Stephen for sentencing him to death. And something I didn’t even know I’d been carrying since then rolled off my shoulders. I practically heard it hit the floor.

  “All right,” Kay said. “I will not hinder thy knight errantry. Let us, for the Lady’s sake, get it over with.”

  “On we go, then,” Felix said, and we followed the turns and twists and ended up back in the heart of the labyrinth with the engine crouching there like a big fucking spider. It knew all it had to do was wait.

  I thought it had moved again, since last night, but I wasn’t sure enough to say anything.

  Felix gave me the lantern. “I want you and Kay to stay here—in fact, move back a few feet. I don’t want it to be able to reach you.”

  “Okay,” I said, because I wasn’t arguing with that.

  “And I want you to stay here. I’d use the obligation d’âme if I could. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. I get you. We’ll stay put.”

  “Good,” he said. “Remember that, no matter what happens. Don’t move.” His mouth quirked. “I’d draw you a circle of protection, too, but I haven’t any chalk and somehow I don’t think using blood is a good idea.”

  “No,” I said, probably a little too hard, and added, “Thank you all the same,” which even made him laugh.

  Then his head tilted a little, and he said, “I was right. It can feel Kay. It wants its sacrifice.”

  Kay shivered, and I shivered with him. Felix gave me a weird little nod, which I figured was him trusting me to keep my promise, and trusting me to keep the engine from getting Kay. Which, yeah. I moved us back another three or four feet. I could still see the engine and most of the room around it, but I was pretty sure none of its arms could reach this far. And if I was wrong, we could move further back. Get around the bend, and it couldn’t touch us. Which wasn’t much of a comfort, but I was hanging onto it as hard as I could. We could get away from this fucking thing if we had to.

  On the other hand, Felix couldn’t, because when I’d gone backwards, Felix had gone forward.

  “What is he doing?” Kay asked, his voice just above a whisper.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “No, I mean—what is he doing? What actions is he taking?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. He’s walked into the middle of the thing, and now he’s just standing there. I’d think he was getting ready to do magic or something, but he can’t, so I don’t . . .” I knew what him doing magic looked like, and I knew what him in an actual trance looked like, and they weren’t all that different, but a little. “He’s tranced.”

  “What means that?” Kay asked, and I realized we were holding hands.

  “He’s doing something in that world of the spirit thing that he talks about all the time.”

  “But not magic.”

  “No. Something else. I’d tell you more if I could.”

  “I fault thee not,” he said. “Is not thy doing that he keeps secrets.”

  “No,” I said, “but—”

  In the middle of the room, Felix went stiff, and I heard him say, clear as daylight, “I am yours.” And I swear I heard glass breaking.

  I clamped my hands down on Kay’s, and just in time, because he made a lunge toward the engine.

  “He promised,” I said. “And he wasn’t lying.”

  “But—” He was fighting me, fighting hard, and I guess it wasn’t surprising that he knew what he was doing. Unlike Felix, who was the last person I’d had to wrestle to the ground and sit on. But I could see, and I was bigger than him. I got him down on his stomach, with both his wrists pinned in the small of his back, and then I looked up and Felix was watching us.

  Only it wasn’t Felix.

  I mean, it was, tall and skinny and with the hair and the spooky eyes, but I’d never seen Felix stand like that
in his life, and, well, the best I can say it is, the person looking at us with Felix’s skew eyes was somebody else. Somebody I’d never met and didn’t want to.

  And somebody who could do magic, because while I just sat there staring, Felix’s little green witchlights that I’d never thought I’d miss popped in, one at a time, all around his head like a saint’s halo. The person wearing his body like a secondhand coat said, “Thou art the brother.” And powers and saints, if Felix had ever given me a smile like that, I’d still be running.

  Beneath me, Kay quit fighting.

  “So who’re you?” I said, and I tried to sound like I wasn’t scared to death, but I don’t know how good I did. Probably not very.

  “My name matters not. I am rachenant.”

  I didn’t know that word, but Kay tensed up and said, “A spirit of vengeance. The Mulkists used them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh fuck you’re the fantôme.”

  That threw him. Or her. Or it. Fuck, I don’t know. The thing in Felix’s body. It blinked and kind of shook its head. “He has spoken of me?” And fuck me sideways, it sounded hopeful. Like a gal with a crush wanting to know if the guy even knew she existed.

  “Not a lot.” I’d ask, and he’d say he was handling it, and if I pushed, what I got was a lot of big words and no answers.

  “Oh,” it said, and it was disappointed. I wasn’t making that up. And I knew that because Kay said, “But we are annemer, he and I, and Felix does not speak to us of warlocks’ matters.”

  Which was only sort of true, but it was the right thing to say, because the fantôme nodded.

  I was going to have some things to say to Felix later, if we all got to “later” and I ever got to talk to Felix again, things like what a stupid stunt this was to pull and had he not considered it might go wrong and could he not have given me at least a fucking hint about what he thought he was trying to do so I didn’t have to figure it out here with a fantôme watching and the engine getting ready to do Kethe knows what. And okay, what the fuck were you thinking, adding a fantôme into the mix when, according to you, we already had way more noirant magic floating around than we needed? Because there was no way a fantôme wasn’t noirant. I might not be real bright, and I might not know fuck all about magic, but I could get that much.

  The fantôme took a step toward us, and I wondered how much it knew about close fighting, and then it stopped. Its hands came up and witchlight went out sideways in two arcs and I swear to the powers caught every spur and spine of metal on the entire engine. For a second I was as blind as Kay—nothing but green—and if the fantôme had rushed me, I don’t know what would’ve happened, and that’s the truth. But it didn’t. I blinked and blinked and finally got to where I could see around all the green, and it was still standing there, head down.

  “You said . . . you’d do my bidding.” How I knew it was Felix, I can’t tell you, but it was.

  “I know thy bidding.” And that was the fantôme. “The true desire of thy heart. I know it, and thou canst not hide it from me.”

  Felix’s body went to its knees. “No! You do not choose my desire for me. You do not choose what I want.”

  “Thou knowst not thine own heart,” and sweet merciful powers I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere I didn’t have to listen to Felix and the fantôme arguing both in Felix’s voice.

  “Oh, I assure you, I do.” I didn’t like the way he said that. “I’ve tried revenge. If you can see my heart, you can see that. And it isn’t what I want.”

  “Thou canst lie to thyself,” the fantôme said, and I liked that tone even less, all soft and patient and almost cooing, like it was trying to jolly a baby out of a temper tantrum. “But thou canst not lie to thy rachenant.”

  “I forgive them!” Felix howled. “All of them! I forgive their errors and their crimes. I even forgive you.”

  “What meanst thou?” it said, sharp as glass.

  My leg couldn’t hold no more. I sort of fell sideways off Kay, and he sat up and reached for me, and we ended up huddled together against the wall. Neither Felix nor the fantôme noticed as far as I could tell.

  “I mean,” Felix was saying, and it was his silky voice, the one that sounded like Strych and always meant trouble, “I forgive you. I forgive you for the people you killed. I forgive you for deceiving and entrapping me. I forgive you for the rape you are trying to commit. I forgive you—”

  “Stop it!” cried the fantôme.

  “I forgive you,” Felix said, his voice rising, “for being a mockery of the person you once were. I forgive you.”

  I couldn’t tell who was controlling Felix’s body because the scream it made was, powers, it was like metal. It got to its feet like a puppet being worked by a drunk. It wobbled in a sort of circle, and it was the fantôme whimpering, “This is not thy desire, cannot be thy desire. Thou dost not want this,” while Felix’s body lurched two steps forward and one step sideways and grabbed onto the upright bar of metal in the middle of the engine like you’d have to break all its fingers—again—to make it let go.

  “This is my bidding.” Felix’s voice, through his teeth. “And you will do it.”

  I couldn’t see what happened exactly, but the next second Felix threw himself flat and five of the engine’s arms swung through the empty air where he’d been standing.

  Except it seemed like it wasn’t empty. I didn’t exactly see anybody there, but I didn’t exactly not, either, and the engine’s arms pulled back and up into a shape sort of like the ugliest flower you can imagine, and you didn’t have to be a hocus to know it was getting ready, gathering itself like a cat about to pounce, and if I was thinking anything at all, it was, Kethe love us, we are fucked.

  And then it was almost like the engine hiccupped. Its arms jerked, and jerked again, and from somewhere in the middle of it I heard something shatter, like the tiniest glass ball a glassblower could possibly make.

  I shouted at Felix, “Keep your fucking head down,” even as I was rolling me and Kay over, pressing us up against the wall, protecting my neck and the back of my skull with my hands as best I could. And my instincts were right, because the next thing that happened was the engine exploded.

  Chapter 16

  Mildmay

  So the whole fucking world showed up in Howrack. Hocuses came from Esmer and from Bernatha where they were studying that clock. There was a whole swarm of intendeds. The Margrave of Murrey, which was where we were, showed up and picked fights with everybody. And the Duke of Murtagh came swanning into the middle of it, too. Like a fucking carny ring.

  Even that complete asshole Edwin Beckett showed up, but wouldn’t nobody give him the time of day, and I heard that Murtagh sent a couple guys around to lean on him, so he left pretty quick. I would’ve liked to break his nose first, just for starters, but Felix wouldn’t let me. He said it would just make Beckett feel persecuted and like he was being martyred for his beliefs, and, well, I guess so.

  Felix had to explain everything to the hocuses, and then he had to explain it again. And again. And he had to explain about the fantôme and how come his magic was working again, and then about the Automaton of Corybant, and then he had to explain about the Clock of Eclipses and just exactly how it was that Mr. Beckett had got it going, which I thought was going to kill him, but powers and saints, he stood up and did it. And the hocuses listened and took notes and their eyes got big as bell-wheels and none of them could really look him in the face after, except that Virtuer Ashmead got up and came over and said, “I will resign before I put the choke-binding on you again.”

  “Me, too,” said Virtuer Hutchence.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Felix said uncomfortably.

  “I watched you suffer under it,” said Virtuer Ashmead. “Yes, it was.”

  “Maybe you should anyway,” Felix said. He wasn’t looking at either of them. “Surely this proves once and for all that I cannot be trusted.”

  “That’s an interesting interpretation,�
� said Virtuer Ashmead. “When I think of all the things you could have done, I would say that it proves exactly the opposite. Don’t think I don’t understand the temptation you were faced with in the rachenant.”

  Felix kind of glanced at him. “I couldn’t have.”

  “I know,” said Virtuer Ashmead. “And that’s how I know you can be trusted. We do, however, have a problem, although please believe me when I say it isn’t your fault.”

  “I make them nervous,” Felix said softly. He was looking at the other hocuses: two other virtuers and three adepts from Esmer, and a virtuer and four adepts from Bernatha. “It’s the Mirador all over again.”

  Virtuer Hutchence said, and not like he was happy about it, “People—such as for example my esteemed colleague Virtuer Wooller—are going to start saying that you’re unfit to teach our innocent young men.”

  “Hutch,” said Virtuer Ashmead.

  “Oh, come on, John! Tell me he won’t.”

  “No, I know he will. And I’m afraid most of the Circle—certainly the majority of the Congress—will agree with him.”

  “I’ll be fired,” Felix translated, and his shoulders hunched just a notch tighter.

  “Unless we find you another position first,” Virtuer Hutchence said, and got another startled glance from Felix.

  “You seem to be under the impression,” Virtuer Ashmead said, sharp as lemon, “that we don’t understand what it was you saved us from. I assure you, we do. And we are not simply going to abandon you as a reward.”

  “I thought,” said Virtuer Hutchence, “that perhaps you would accept the lighthouse keeper’s position at Grimglass.”

  “Grimglass? Isn’t that out at the back of beyond?”

  “It is,” Virtuer Hutchence said and made an apologetic face. “But we need a virtuer out there, and—”

  “I’m not a virtuer,” Felix said.

  “You will be,” said Virtuer Ashmead. “That much even Wooller can’t argue with.” And then he sighed. “Especially if you’re safely out of sight at Grimglass.”

  Felix shoved his fingers through his hair. “I must be the only person in the history of the world to be exiled from exile.”