Corambis (32 page)

Even Virtuer Ashmead was visibly taken aback. There was a moment of utter silence, and then all the virtuers were talking at once. Virtuer Wooller became quite alarmingly red in the face shouting about sin, but I noticed his opponent was Virtuer Bullinger, who had heretofore looked as if he would be torn apart by wild dogs before he said a word in my defense. I didn’t attempt to make myself heard, but dropped back to crouch by Mildmay’s chair. He had his head in his hands, but raised it to say, “You couldn’t’ve eased ’em into it a little?”
“I’m not going to deny what I am,” I said, hurt.
“Course not. But you didn’t have to do it like that, neither.” I heard both exasperation and affection in his voice when he added, “You got all the tact of a bull alligator. A
hungry
bull alligator.”
“They asked,” I said defensively.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. I kind of figure they deserve it.” I wanted to tell him I didn’t need or want his approval, but that would only be another lie. Virtuer Ashmead called me; I squeezed Mildmay’s forearm and stood up, and the inquiry continued.
They did not ask me questions about my sexual habits, although I thought one or two of them wanted to. They did ask about Gideon, and I concentrated on keeping my voice level and my breathing steady as I answered. And then they swerved to ask about the Virtu and how it had come to be broken. If Mildmay had not been there, I might have tried to lie, or at least not to reveal all of the truth. But Mildmay
was
there, and although I knew he would understand, and possibly even condone, my reasons for lying, I could not bear to let him witness an act of such cowardice. I did not mention the rubies, which were a later development, and one I didn’t want to try to explain, but I told the truth about what Malkar had been, about what he had made me, and as they asked questions, as I answered them, I found myself thinking, There’s another lie I never have to tell again. There’s something else I don’t have to pretend not to be. I had expected the truth to feel like the burden it had always been, since Malkar— buried deep, his weight along my back, both hands in my hair pulling my head back so that
each breath was a strain— said in my ear, “You must never tell anyone, my darling. Shall I tell you what I’ll do to you if you do?” And he told me, adding details in his purring voice until I was crying and struggling to get away, but between his cock and his hands and his smothering weight, I couldn’t even move, and he’d sounded satisfied— although he still didn’t move, wouldn’t move until I lay as limp and helpless as a dead kitten beneath him, and only then did he fuck me— when he said, “You belong to me, Felix. You always will.”
Not anymore, I thought savagely, and told the Circle about the obligation de sang, the binding- by- blood.
They recognized the term. Bindings were familiar to them: the binding- by- blood, the binding- by- forms, the binding- by- troth, the binding- byobedience . . . bindings I’d never even heard of, and I’d thought I knew them
all. The inquiry degenerated for a time into its own mirror image, and I discovered that “flame” and “shadow” were also technical terms in Mulkist thaumaturgy, for a warlock and that warlock’s slaved wizards. The oldest of the wizards, Virtuer Pluckrose, unbent abruptly and described meeting, in his teens, a warlock who had been hunting for shadows. 

“I ran from her,” he said, “and she laughed and said, ‘I’ll find you when I want you, little treasure.’ I had nightmares about her until the war, until we stopped them.” “And there are no warlocks left now?”
“None,” Ashmead said positively.
I was beginning, unwillingly, to believe that Malkar’s choice to claim I was from Caloxa had not been random. I knew he had been in the north— in the Norvenas, ruining Mavortian von Heber’s life— and now I could not help suspecting that he had met a Caloxan warlock. After all, if one had tried to flee (and died, burning, in the midst of her vengeful magic), others almost certainly had as well. And perhaps they had succeeded. And found a sympathetic ear in Brinvillier Strych.
And that final piece of truth was pressing at me, the truth that proved my likeness to Malkar, that proved I was the mirror he’d tried to make me. I opened my mouth and the words fell out like stones: “I cast the binding- byforms on my brother.”
“Because I asked you to!” Mildmay said, struggling to his feet. His response was so immediate that he must have been expecting my confession. 

“The binding- by- forms?” said Ashmead, as if he could possibly have misunderstood me. “The shadowing?” They were now all ten of them looking at Mildmay with appalled pity.
“I asked him to!” he shouted at them. “And he ain’t never—” He stopped and said, for the first time in my memory using correct grammar: “He hasn’t abused it.”
“Yes, I have,” I objected.
“Once. And that was . . . You won’t do it again.”
“No. But, Mildmay—”
“The binding- by- forms is corrupt by its nature,” said Ashmead. “Is it
still on him?”
We both looked at him blankly. “It can be taken off?” I asked. Their expressions were mingled pity and contempt, and I hated them.
“Your Lord Protector,” said Virtuer Giffen, “asked us to curb your powers. I begin to see why.” He looked around the table; the other nine wizards werenodding.
I wanted desperately to defend myself, but there was nothing I could say.
I couldn’t even claim my intentions had been good, because all too often, they hadn’t been. “I agreed to submit myself to your judgment,” I said, in lieu of excuses, pleas, or justifications. And then I swallowed hard and said, “What must I do?”
There was a brief mute colloquy among the Circle, which seemed to result in Ashmead being saddled with the dirty work. He stood up and came around the table; he was moving slowly, clearly reluctant, but I saw nothing but grimness and resolve on his face.

 “The binding- by- obedience requires physical contact,” he said, “but nothing untoward. Nothing like, for example, the binding- by- troth.”
I remembered the kiss I’d forced on Mildmay to seal the binding- by- forms and could imagine what the binding- by- troth might have involved. The other virtuers rose and formed a circle around Ashmead, Mildmay, and me. 

“Give me your hands,” said Ashmead.
I obeyed him. I’d already made my choice, made it months ago and held fast despite Mildmay’s arguments. I wasn’t going to back down now. He said a string of words; I recognized the language as Cymellunar, though none of the words was familiar. The pain was unexpected, quite literally blinding, and my knees buckled.
What happened next I could not quite comprehend; there was a rush of movement, the sounds of collision. Someone yelped. I blinked, forced my eyes to focus, to track. Ashmead was no longer holding my hands. I was on the floor, folded over my own knees like a dropped marionette, and Mildmay was standing over me, clearly prepared to use his walking stick as a weapon. The snarl on his face was inhuman, frightening. I could feel the obligation d’âme jangling in my head, an echo of the clamor it must have been causing in Mildmay’s.
“Mildmay,” I said. “Mildmay!” I reached up, careful not to jar his lame leg, and put my hand flat on his chest, as high as I could reach. That seemed to break the near- fugue he’d entered into, and he looked down at me, his face relaxing into a frown.
“He was hurting you,” he said, as if that explained everything. His eyeswere very clear and very cold, the eyes of someone I did not know. He had been an assassin, and it occurred to me that I had been stupid never to realize what that meant. I had used it— had used
him
— but I had never thought about what it meant that my gentle, silent brother, who had saved me from myself over and over again, had been— to be unpleasantly blunt, as he had been when the subject had come up— a murderer for hire. He’s saved you from yourself, but have you ever considered that maybe you should return the favor?
Carefully, carefully, I snaked out from under him, so that I could stand up.

Carefully, carefully, I said, “I agreed.”
“Yeah, but you—” He stopped himself, but I heard the rest of the sentence as clearly as if he’d said it:
you agreed to what they did in Bernatha, too.
“Listen,” I said. “They’re right. I’ve done some terrible things, and I—” “Need to be punished,” he said sourly.
I recoiled.
“You been punishing yourself for months,” he said. “I mean, if you’re sure this is right, that’s one thing, but don’t let ’em do it because it’s just another way you can hurt yourself.”
The saving grace, I thought with semi- hysterical detachment, was that there was no possibility the virtuers had understood him.
Ashmead, frowning, said, “We can remove the binding- by- forms first.” “Won’t change a fucking thing,” Mildmay said, and I could tell they’d
understood him by the way all of them startled and three of them blushed. Ashmead now looked frankly perplexed. “Mr. Harrowgate?” “Mildmay,” I said. “Sit down.”
He glared at me.
“I
will
use the obligation d’âme if you make me.”
“Felix, are you
sure
?” And while he looked merely hostile, he sounded agonized.
“I’m sure I don’t want to fight our way out of here,” I said unkindly. It jolted him back into self- awareness. He looked at the virtuers, who were
clustered against the table watching him warily, then turned a bright, mortified scarlet and sat.
I said to Ashmead, “Are you still willing to allow me to teach?” Ashmead was nonplused. “Do you
want
to?”
“I need employment.” Mildmay shifted, and I said, “No, you won’t. Now hush.”
Ashmead glanced at the other virtuers, but they seemed to have abdicated responsibility, for he looked back at me almost immediately and said, “Yes. We need teachers. And I think your experience could be very valuable to our students.”
As the closest thing to a practicing warlock they’re ever likely to encounter,
I finished, but only in my head. I held out my hands. 

“Do it.” 

He did not take them, looking troubled. “It shouldn’t have hurt you. I don’t—”

“It’s most likely Malkar’s fault. Think of it as, oh, thaumaturgical scar tissue.” Like the scars on my back.
He looked from me to Mildmay and said firmly, “I’m going to undo the binding- by- forms first.”
“My brother,” I said and glared at Mildmay, who glared right back, “will not interfere.”
The virtuers formed their circle again, albeit reluctantly, and Ashmead took my hands.
This time, I was prepared, and the pain did not surprise me.

Felix wouldn’t look at me.

The virtuers had done their thing. I’d felt the binding- by- forms go, like a dislocated joint popping back into its socket. I’d still wanted to kill all ten of the sneering bastards, but that was just along of me hating them. The extra thing, the thing like a rat chewing on my heart, that was gone. So I sat and thought about what I wanted to do to them instead of getting up and actually doing it.

I could see that what they were doing hurt Felix like a motherfucker, but he didn’t make a sound, and he was still standing when they were done. White and sweating, but still standing. Virtuer Ashmead looked like he wanted to open Felix’s head up and rummage around until he found out what was wrong. What made me kind of like him, even though I still wanted his balls on a chain, was that he looked like he wanted to fix it once he’d figured out what it was.

Which is to say, he looked almost as sick as Felix did.
And Felix wouldn’t look at me.
I mean, he wasn’t making no real eye contact with nobody— and I didn’t fucking blame him, either— but even when he looked in my direction, he never got no higher than my knees, and when Virtuer Ashmead said, “We have a contract to discuss,” Felix went with him meek as could be and left me with Virtuer Hutchence.

Virtuer Hutchence waited until all the other virtuers had cleared out, and then boosted himself up to sit on the table. Which I was pretty sure virtuers weren’t supposed to do.

I raised my eyebrows at him, and he gave me a grin that made him look like he hadn’t even reached his second septad yet. “It caused Pluckrose and Wooller physical pain when they offered me a seat in the Circle. But I’m the only enginist here who can teach worth a damn, so they didn’t have a choice.”

“And now you got stuck with me,” I said cautiously.
“I’m sure it’s supposed to be a punishment,” he said, and he sounded so cheerful about it he made me laugh, even though I was trying not to. Then he sobered up and said, “And someone should keep an eye on you. We don’t know very much about the effects of bindings on annemer and, well— you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Worry about Felix, not me.”
“John’s very good. The best medical magician on the faculty. Your brother will be fine.” And he didn’t even sound like he thought I was crazy for caring, although I knew he was probably thinking it.
“I really did ask him to do it,” I said, speaking slowly and doing my best to keep my consonants from going to mush.
And he must have been dying to ask: “But why? Why would you
ask
someone to do that?”
Fuck me sideways. “It’s complicated,” I said, “but none of it’s his fault.
None
of it.”
Virtuer Hutchence looked at me funny, like he wasn’t sure he should believe me, but I could see him figuring that if I didn’t want to tell him, he didn’t have no way to make me. He said, “If you want someone to talk to . . . I’ll swear silence like intendeds do.”
I shook my head.
“I won’t judge,” he offered. “Neither you nor Mr. Harrowgate.”
“Don’t like talking,” I said. Which was true, and a fuck of a lot simpler than all the other reasons I wasn’t going to go spilling my guts to him, no matter how nice he was.
He sort of hesitated, then nodded. “Well, the offer stands if you change your mind.”
“Thanks,” I said. I knew I wouldn’t, and he probably did, too.
The door opened, and a student came in. You could tell them from the clerks because they didn’t dress as nice and mostly they looked hungry. At home, I would’ve assumed they were pack kids.
“Hutch? Jowell said you were in here.”
Virtuer Hutchence stayed right where he was and waved the student over. “What is it, Cyriack?”
Cyriack didn’t even look at me. He said, “There’s another report of a failure on the Barthas Cross line.”
Virtuer Hutchence sat up straighter. “
Another
one? That makes, what?”
“Three in the past two weeks,” Cyriack said, sort of gloomy and proud all at once. One of those guys that are never happier than when they’ve got bad news to wallow in, I figured.
“Was it the same thing?” Virtuer Hutchence asked, and I ain’t even going to pretend I followed the conversation after that, because I didn’t. Something about the trains, and something going wrong with the magic that made them work. At least it didn’t sound like nothing was exploding.
They were still going at it like badgers with a hole to dig when Virtuer Ashmead brought Felix back. Felix was still pale, and he still wasn’t looking at me, but I could see he’d pulled himself together some. At least enough that Virtuer Ashmead was smiling like he was glad he was giving Felix a job and not just from charity, neither.
“Then I’ll see you Lunedy,” he said to Felix.
“I have some ideas already,” Felix said, “but I’ll be glad to get a better understanding of your curriculum.” His eyes slid sideways and didn’t quite hit me. “Are you ready to go?”
“Sure,” I said, and levered myself up. Powers and saints, I hated being a cripple. Before we’d made it to the door, Virtuer Ashmead had got himself dragged into the discussion with Virtuer Hutchence and Cyriack, and I ain’t even sure they noticed us go.
Felix didn’t say nothing all the way back to the glass birdcage, and the whole trip on the fathom, and then all the way back to the hotel. And sometimes he got like that, when he was mad or when he was thinking about some hocus thing, but this wasn’t that. Because he never forgot for a second that I was with him, and he never forgot about letting me keep up with him, and he never looked through me like I wasn’t there. I waited, because whatever the fuck was going on in his head, I didn’t want to try and get it out with an audience, and especially not an audience that was already staring at us with eyes big as bell- wheels.
But as soon as the door of our room closed behind us, I said, “What’s wrong?”
He twitched, but said, “Nothing at all,” in a pretty good fake of his normal voice. “I have gainful employment and an entire new system of magic to study. What could possibly be wrong?”
I looked at him a moment, until his nerve broke and he turned his head. “If you want me to believe you,” I said, “you might want to work on that smile. You look sick as a lemon. What is it?”
He sat down on the bed and yanked the ribbon out of his braid. “It’s nothing.”
I waited. And he knew as well as I did how this was going to go, because it wasn’t even half a minute before he caved. “If you want to go home, I’ll get an advance on my salary from Ashmead.”
“If
I
want to go home? What about you?”
He shook his head, tiredly, like he was trying to get rid of something. “What I want isn’t your problem any longer.”
“What the
fuck
?”
He flinched, lowering his head so that all I could see was his hair like a veil. “It was only the obligation d’âme that forced you . . . I know you never wanted to leave Mélusine.”
Kethe love the both of us, here we go again. And I couldn’t stand it. Because I knew him, and I knew that if he got his way, we’d be going around and around on this same fucking thing until we either died of old age or I upped and strangled him just to get him to shut the fuck up about it. He was punishing himself again. I said, “Felix.”
And I waited until he raised his head, although he was still sort of twisted in on himself so all I could see was the yellow glint of his good eye. It’d have to do. I said, “What I didn’t want to leave was the Lower City. Okay? And I can’t go back. For the same reasons I couldn’t go back in the first place.”
He was frowning. “But . . .”
“What the fuck do you think I’ve got to go back
to
?”
“Oh,” he said in this little nothing of a voice.
“Look,” I said, and even though I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, I sat down beside him on the bed. Left side. Always the left side unless he needed somebody guarding on the right. He turned a little so he could still see me, but he didn’t startle or flinch or get up again to get away from me, so I figured I was okay.
And then, of course, I couldn’t think of a single fucking thing to say to him.
He was twisting his fingers together, still hunched in on himself like he was expecting me to hit him. Which was probably what happened every time things got rocky when he was a kid, and you know, I wasn’t laying no bets about Lord Shannon, neither. It would’ve been easier if I could’ve just hugged him, but he didn’t work like that, and finally I said, “I chose, you know.”
“What?”
“When I asked you to do the binding- by- forms. I
chose
.”
He muttered something, and for once it was me asking somebody else to repeat themselves. “False choice,” he said more distinctly, but not looking up.
“Well, it was a rock and a whirl pool kind of thing,” I agreed. “But listen. I ain’t sorry.”
“You should be,” he said darkly.
“No. Felix, for fuck’s sake. I love you, okay? And that has absolutely fuck all to do with the binding- by- forms. If you’d get your head out of your ass for a moment, you’d know that.”
Well, at least it got him to look at me, even if he was staring like nobody’d ever told him they loved him before, and while I was pretty sure that wasn’t true, it did occur to me that he could probably count on the fingers of one hand the times somebody’d said it without there being sex involved. And have fingers left over, too.
I figured I’d better push while I had him silent and listening. I said, “And what that means is I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d quit expecting me to leave. Because I ain’t going. And now that the binding- by- forms is gone, you can’t make me.”
He made a funny choking noise and then he started laughing. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t hurt me none. And when he got himself back together, he didn’t look half so tragic as he had.
And when he smiled at me— a real smile, and a pretty good one, even if his eyes were a little too bright— and said, “You were a terrible
esclavin
, you know,” I knew we were going to be okay.