The Mirador

by Sarah Monette

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to help her?” Simon said.

  “Sort of. I mean, yeah, but I wanna know what she was doing digging people up. She ain’t no resurrectionist.”

  “A what?” said Rinaldo.

  “Resurrectionist. Don’t they trade with the Mirador?”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Rinaldo said. “Again, what are resurrectionists?”

  “Um,” I said. “People that go around digging up dead people. ”

  “Why?” said Simon.

  “Well, ’cause people will pay ’em for it.”

  “What sort of people?”

  “Um, well, the necromancers in Scaffelgreen. And there’s a market for hair and sometimes people are buried with jewelry and shit like that.” You can make a profit off most anything in the Lower City.

  “Are they organized?” Simon said. “Like kept-thieves or the assassins’ guild?”

  “There ain’t no assassins’ guild. Never has been. But, yeah, the resurrectionists got a kind of system worked out, so they don’t go cheating each other or nothing. They even got a kind of guildhall out in Ruthven.”

  “So why don’t you go ask them?”

  “Well . . . um . . .”

  “What?”

  “That’s sort of what I need help for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I go down there by myself, I won’t get nothing. ’Cept another fight. I . . . I ain’t exactly popular in the Lower City no more.”

  “Ah,” said Rinaldo. “Because of Felix?”

  “Because of a lot of things,” I said, and I didn’t mean to sound so tired.

  “So,” Simon said, “where do I fit into this?”

  My face went red, but I said it anyway. “The one thing nobody in the Lower City will fuck with is the Mirador’s tattoos.”

  “Oh, then I’ll come,” Simon said, like it was no big deal.

  I couldn’t keep from asking, “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes,” Simon said. “It sounds interesting.”

  “Powers, you’re crazier’n I am. But thanks. When d’you want to go?”

  “Tomorrow won’t do. I’ve got a committee meeting. What about Mardy afternoon?”

  “Fine by me. I’ll show up here when Felix is done with me.”

  And maybe it was dumb, but I felt better. Because I could put off seeing Septimus Wilder again for another couple days.

  Mehitabel

  It took us a little over four hours that afternoon to read through a play that would take two-and-a-half in performance, not counting intermissions. The language was hard, and Jean-Soleil was visited by occasional spurts of enthusiasm, when he had to stop and try a scene again with a different interpretation.

  After the read-through was finally over and Jean-Soleil had bolted off to his office with scribbled-over wax tablets to wrestle out a plan for the play, Gordeny Fisher approached me hesitantly.

  “Madame Parr,” she said with an awkward bob that wasn’t quite a curtsy.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, and remembered to smile at her. “You’re Madame Fisher yourself now, you know.”

  "S’pose I am,” she said; her eyes widened with wonder, and for a moment she looked like the street urchin I was sure she had been.

  “A lifetime’s aspiration achieved?”

  “Oh, nothing like that. Just, you know how sometimes you end up places you’d never’ve thought you wanted to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember coming to a play here once when I was real little, and if you’d told me then I was gonna be one of them fine ladies up there on the stage saying all that poetry, I’d probably’ve blacked your eye. I was a hellcat.”

  “What did you think you wanted to do?”

  “Oh, kids get all sorts of crazy ideas. But I wanted to ask you . . .”

  “Yes?” I wasn’t going to pursue the evasion.

  She made a charming, nervous grimace. “Do you know, have I done something to make Mr. Baillie not like me?”

  Drin. “Has he been making himself unpleasant?”

  “No,” she said, although she clearly wasn’t sure of it. “It’s mostly the way he looks at me. I mean, maybe I’m imagining things or being too sensitive, but I didn’t . . .”

  Damn you, Drin. “It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s just Drin. He doesn’t like change.”

  “He don’t like girls from Queensdock, you mean.”

  “Doesn’t.”

  “Doesn’t,” she agreed, but her amber eyes remained steadfastly on my face.

  “No, you’re right. Drin thinks . . .” Oh dear, how to put it? “He thinks you might have an unsavory past.”

  She burst out laughing, a warm, full-bodied, infectious laugh as compelling as her speaking voice. “Me? I’m just a docker’s kid. Poor but virtuous, that was my parents.”

  “I didn’t say I believed it,” I said, although my suspicion was that Drin was more right than wrong. Gordeny Fisher would clearly tell lies with the same candid air with which she told the truth. And what had she wanted to be when she grew up? “Drin has a fertile imagination.”

  “Well, if that’s the problem, there ain’t—I mean, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do about it.”

  “Give him time,” I said. “He’ll come around.”

  She thanked me and sauntered off, as nonchalant as an alley cat. I hoped that what I had told her was true, and also that Gordeny Fisher’s secrets were not going to turn and bite her.

  My own secrets, with their fierce panoply of teeth, were waiting for me in my dressing room. Vulpes was sitting with his feet up on my dressing table, reading my copy of The Wrong Brother.

  He looked up as I came in; the door closed and bolted behind me, and he said, “What in the name of God did you do to Mildmay Foxe?”

  I considered my options for a split second. A little misdirection wouldn’t hurt, and I was calm enough that what had been real with Stephen would be playacting with Vulpes. “Nothing,” I snarled. “Get out of my chair.”

  He got up, smirking, and I sat down in front of the mirror and began viciously pulling the pins out of my hair. “What do you want now?”

  “What happened to Mildmay Foxe?”

  “Somebody beat him up,” I said and left the words you moron palpable but unspoken.

  “Was it Felix?”

  The idea was laughable, so I laughed at it. “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  "I know both of them,” I said, hard and sharp enough to sting.

  “I see.” Sulky, and that was a real pleasure to hear. He switched topics. “How many wizards do you think will accept the amnesty?”

  “Good God, how should I know? Surely you, lieutenant, are in a better position to answer that than I.”

  In the mirror, I watched him start to pace. “An opinion then, Maselle Cressida. How many do you think?”

  “I can’t imagine what good my opinion will do you, but I don’t believe that any of the wizards who have taken the Mirador’s vows will return to the Bastion. They don’t trust General Parsifal.”

  “Yes,” he said, peevishly. “The busy tongue of Thaddeus de Lalage.”

  “Don’t put it all on Thaddeus,” I said. “Eric Ogygios will never trust the Bastion no matter what Gemma promises.”

  “But at least Eric is rational. What is the matter with Lord Thaddeus?”

  “I don’t know. He hates the Bastion. Many people do, lieutenant. ”

  He waved that away, like the stupidities of lesser beings weren’t worth his time. “What of the others? The Eusebians who haven’t submitted to those barbaric tattoos?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I imagine it will depend on the individual wizard.”

  “What about Gideon Thraxios?”

  “You must be out of your mind. What possible reason could Gideon have for returning?”

  Vulpes paced crossly; it would probably be quite a coup to get Gideon to return to the Bastion of
his own free will. “Have you heard anything else of interest?”

  “The Lord Protector’s going to hold a soirée on Mercredy,” I said. “People are dragging their daughters in from all over the Protectorate.”

  “Ah, yes, the Lord Protector. Tell me, Maselle Cressida, how was your dinner with his lordship?”

  “Very pleasant. Lord Stephen is a charming host.”

  Vulpes didn’t believe me for a second, but it hardly mattered. “What did you learn?”

  “He’d like to get along better with Felix.”

  “Hmmph. What else?”

  “I don’t think he grieves for his wife any longer. He seems more amused than anything else by this hunt for a second wife.”

  There was a pause. “Is that it?”

  “He’s not particularly forthcoming. But he said he would invite me again.”

  “At least that’s something.” He muttered something under his breath that was probably blasphemous and took another turn up and down the room.

  “You seem edgy, Lieutenant Vulpes. Is something wrong?”

  Louis Goliath would have given that question the answer it deserved, and I wouldn’t have asked him in the first place. Vulpes said, “Wrong? No, nothing’s wrong,” and changed the subject. “Are you doing anything tonight, Maselle Cressida?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Then go up to the Mirador. Talk to your friends. I want to know what people are thinking about the Lord Protector’s wedding. ”

  “I can tell you that now,” I said, and relayed what I’d learned in the Painted Grotto and from Simon and Rinaldo.

  He listened and nodded, but I could see that he was thinking frantically. Racking his brains for some other task to set me, was my guess.

  “One of your lovers is a nobleman, isn’t he?”

  “Antony Lemerius.”

  “The same Lemerius . . . ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t quite say Ha! “Then go find out.” And he left hurriedly, as if he didn’t want to give me the chance to ask him anything else. I changed into a slightly richer dress, did my hair, and headed doggedly for the Mirador.

  The footman who opened the door of the Lemerius apartments seemed distinctly harried; I understood why, sitting in the foyer and listening to the muffled commotion. Antony came out after a few minutes and bowed over my hands with every evidence of delight. I raised my eyebrows expressively in the direction of the ruckus, and he made a pained face. “Father’s bringing Enid up from Copal Carnifex.”

  “Enid?”

  “My youngest sister.”

  “Oh. For the . . . ?”

  “Of course,” he said bitterly. “Father is slavering at the prospect of becoming the Lord Protector’s in-law. And powers and saints, he’s not alone in that.” He ushered me through the public rooms to his private sitting room, which an uninformed visitor could have been forgiven for mistaking for one of the Mirador’s official libraries. “At least Enid is old enough to handle it. Zelda Polydoria can’t have been fifteen for more than a month.”

  “Polydoria? Isn’t that . . .”

  “Distant cousins,” Antony said, clearing books and tablets and quires of notes off various flat surfaces, including a chair. “Nothing wrong with that. I imagine the real impediment to that match is the prospect of Ivo Polydorius as a father-in-law.”

  I racked my mind, trying to find a face to put with that name. I failed, although I remembered Lionel Verlalius mentioning him. “I haven’t met him, have I?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. He’s been living in seclusion for years and years. Had a big falling-out with Lord Gareth. There’s bad blood in the Polydorii, and it seems to have all come out in the dynastic line, more’s the pity. Nicoletta Milensia said she’d rather kill herself than marry Ivo, but in the end she didn’t have the nerve. Their children take after her, and people still argue over whether that’s unfortunate or not. But that sort of gossip”—he straightened up, having unearthed enough furniture that we could both sit down—“isn’t fit conversation.”

  “Did you have a better topic in mind?” I asked, taking a seat.

  “Have you dined? Would you care to join me?” He sounded almost embarrassingly hopeful.

  I hadn’t even had to hint. “I’d like that very much.”

  “Excellent. Just a moment.”

  He stepped out. I occupied myself by trying to make sense of his notes; between the illegibility of his handwriting and my own ignorance of Marathine history, it was doomed to failure, but it was an amusing pastime. When he returned, he was neither surprised nor offended, but said, “I’ve been thinking about the date of Amaryllis Cordelia’s alleged death: 11 Floréal 14.6.2, the date on both tombs.”

  “And when do you think she really died?”

  “Late 14.5.7—Wilfrid lost his post sometime in Fructidor and was back at Diggory Chase to celebrate the Trials of Heth-Eskaladen by the end of that month. Between her real and her alleged death—that’s only two indictions, and what I was wondering was, what if there was no second Amaryllis Cordelia at all? Wilfrid returns to Diggory Chase in Fructidor of 14.5.7 and writes a letter to the Mirador at the end of Floréal two indictions later saying his beloved wife Amaryllis has died in childbirth and the child along with her, examined by our good doctor Grizzleguts and so on and so forth. Diggory Chase was out in the middle of nowhere in those days, and no one was going to check the facts.”

  “They would have had to buy off the entire house of Emarthius,” I objected.

  “No, actually. Diggory Chase was a small secondary residence. The dynastic line of the Emarthii was living at a place called Heligar. I found the records. Diggory Chase was given to Wilfrid on his marriage by his father. He and Amaryllis never went there, since she’d pulled strings to get him a post at the Mirador. The only people who had to be in the know were Wilfrid Emarthius’s liveried servants, and probably not many of them. I imagine one could have lived reasonably well at Diggory Chase for two years with only four servants: a valet, a housekeeper, a cook, and a groom. If one retires there in seclusion, having been disgraced by one’s wife, no one will be surprised at one’s failure to throw parties or invite guests.”

  “It still seems unlikely.”

  “Ah,” said Antony, and I realized I’d fed him the straight line he’d wanted, “but consider the career of Wilfrid Emarthius after his wife’s alleged death on 11 Floréal 14.6.2. Six months later, still dressed in mourning, he receives an even better post in the Mirador than the one he’d lost. Diggory Chase starts expanding like a mushroom—I suppose Wilfrid must have discovered he liked it. In 14.6.4 he marries again, this time to a daughter of the dynastic line of the Milensii—they’ve fallen on hard times, but in Wilfrid’s day Genevieve Milensia was a better match than Amaryllis Cordelia. Although Wilfrid himself is a member of a cadet branch, in 14.7.4, the year after Charles dies, he buys out the dynastic line of the Emarthii.”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “It was never a common practice—and it was abolished at the Wizards’ Coup—but Wilfrid was neither the first nor the last to manage it. If a cadet line of a noble house became substantially wealthier and more influential than the dynastic line, it could petition the king to have the dynastic privilege transferred to it.”

  “Bolstered by a generous donation to the royal treasury, no doubt.”

  “Exactly. Wilfrid died rich and happy and surrounded by grandsons at the age of eighty-one. I haven’t traced it, but I think the current House-holder is descended directly from him.”

  “He was bought.”

  “Yes. Wilfrid Emarthius was paid exceedingly well to live in obscurity for two years and to add verisimilitude to their lie— which, as you pointed out, is otherwise pretty thin. I don’t know if the fake tomb at Diggory Chase was his idea, but it was a nice touch.”

  “But we’re still left with the question we started with,” I said after a while. “Who put up that inscription in the crypt?”

&nbs
p; “I don’t know,” Antony said. He looked at his hands as if they did not please him, and then back at me. “I just don’t know.”

  Mildmay

  I came bolt awake sometime in the middle of the night feeling like some bastard with a grudge had driven an icepick through my right thigh and was twisting it around. I could hear myself panting for breath like a beaten dog. I reached down and there was nothing but rock from my knee halfway up my thigh. I couldn’t even twitch, just lay there, my fingers digging at my leg. I’d had cramps before, but nothing like this, nothing so bad I couldn’t even curse it.

  Suddenly there was light, a flurry of Felix’s little green witchlights. I shut my eyes. The light seemed to make my leg worse.

  “Mildmay? Are you—no, clearly not.” He was standing by the bed. His fingers touched my thigh, prodding gently. “Here,” he said. He shifted my hands and began to knead at the red-hot agony in my leg. I kept my eyes shut.

  He worked at my leg for a long time. His hands were strong. I could feel where some of his fingers didn’t bend quite right anymore—they’d been broken before I met him and had healed a little funny—but he knew what he was doing. After a while, I was able to breathe again. A little after that, he pushed my leg into straightening.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “What brought it on?”

  “Dunno. Most likely the fight I got into yesterday.”

  “And what was that fight about?”

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong fucking face.”

  “That’s straightforward enough, I suppose, although dreadfully nonspecific.”

  “The only specific thing there was me. Most anybody in the Lower City would have been glad to do what those guys were trying.”

  “There’s one of my questions answered, then. Shall we try for another?”

  “Powers, Felix, it’s the middle of the fucking night!”

  “The best time for talking. You should get up and walk around some anyway.”

  I scrambled out of bed. He had to catch me when my leg buckled.

  “Steady, little brother,” he said, and I knew he was laughing at me. “The sitting room isn’t going anywhere.” He helped me out of the bedroom and then dropped into his favorite chair while I began lurching around the room, leaning on the walls and furniture to keep me upright. Three of his witchlights circled around me like tiny dancers. It hurt like fuck, but I kept walking.