The Virtu (67 page)

Thus, we read the cards, looking for the patterns, the ways the future might unfold in front of us. Mavortian had been surprised at how quickly I had learned the dance of significances through major and minor arcana; I had wondered with irritation how he imagined I had earned my tattoos, if he had so poor an opinion of my intelligence. I would have had to seduce the entire Curia, a feat which was frankly beyond my skill. I did not ask, though, for it was not worth open hostility between us, and I found I did not care if Mavortian thought ill of me.

Cade-Cholera’s card turned up with depressing frequency. It might mean change as well as death, and it might mean Malkar’s death rather than mine or Mildmay’s or any of my allies‘, but it was not a card of good omen, no matter how hopefully one tried to interpret it.

The Sibyl of Swords showed up repeatedly, as did the Knight of Swords. Mavortian told me how the Knight of Swords had brought Mildmay to him; I bit my tongue against any clever remarks about heresy and agreed that probably the Sibyl of Swords represented me.

“You and he are at the heart of the matter, as you have been all along,” Mavortian said, eyeing me thoughtfully as he shuffled the cards again. That was one thing I could not do as well as he, even with practice; the stiffness in my badly healed fingers made it impossible for me to manage even a box shuffle with grace.

I pushed away the memory of cards moving like water through Mildmay’s hands and said, “Does it hurt your pride?”

“It is disconcerting,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t lose sleep over it.” And he laid the cards out again.

Mehitabel returned near sundown, bad-tempered but successful. “I’m told this is the first time anyone has paid to get
into
the Bastion,” she said. “They all think I’m completely insane.”

“Will they talk?” Mavortian asked.

“No. They’d be arrested right along with us, and they know it. But if we are caught in the tunnels, we will be destroying those two old ladies along with ourselves.”

“We won’t be caught,” Mavortian said, and seeing the spark kindle in Mehitabel’s eyes, I said hastily, “Tunnels?”

“The last remains of Old Lamia,” Mehitabel said, with a raised eyebrow at me that told me she knew what I was doing and was allowing herself to be distracted. “Irene’s grandfather dug it out over a century ago—found it by accident, Irene says. And now she and Barbara make at least as much money off looking the other way when people come out of their cellars as they do from the tearoom itself.”

“Barbara?”

“Her widowed daughter-in-law.” She smiled, a little sharply. “They’re expecting us for the dinner service at eight o’clock.”

Guards got a routine. They make their rounds after dinner, make sure everybody’s tucked in and ain’t trying to dig their way out with a spoon or something. And then they don’t come round again for a solid four hours.

You learn a lot when you can’t sleep.

“Do you think he’s mad?” Simon says to Rinaldo.

“Indubitably,” Rinaldo says to Simon. “But I also think he’s perfectly lucid. I don’t know why he wants that lamp, but I’m sure he has a reason.”

“Probably to set us all on fire.”

“Simon.” Rinaldo sounds kind of pained. “He has shown not the slightest inclination to harm either of us once he realized we were not the people who had harmed him.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one with bruises on your throat.”

“I feel quite confident that if he wanted us dead, we would be dead already. We’ve proved we aren’t equipped to defend ourselves against him.”

“
Thank
you, Rinaldo.” Simon sighs. “I just wish he’d say something. Or that we knew his name. Or
anything
.”

“We know who brought him here. Is that not enough?”

Simon’s hands flinch back into his pockets. He’s had his own run-ins with Strych. “I’d just like to help,” he says, kind of sad.

“Until he
lets
us help him, we’ve done all we can.”

They sit and watch like stuffed owls.

The lamp finally comes loose. Rinaldo can hold it. Wire’s more useful.

“Is he doing what I think he’s doing?” Simon whispers to Rinaldo.

“He seems to be attempting to pick the lock. I wonder if he has the least idea how to—”

Old lock. Not a real good one. The tumblers groan and roll over. A push, and the door swings open. Come on, you stupid hocuses. Come on, move!

“He wants...”

“He seems to want us to escape.”

“We can’t escape from the Bastion!”

Drag ‘em, push ’em, just get them on the other side of that fucking door where their magic will work. Don’t have to worry about ‘em if their magic’s working. They’re like fucking sheep. Been penned up too long, forgotten how to run. Kick the door closed again with them on the right side of it. Catch the skinny one. Ugly voice, hoarse and muddy, not like a person at all: “Gonna give you one fuck of a distraction. Gonna murder Brinvillier Strych.”

Suddenly, I felt him. It was like the moment when, after searching for something for three days, one finally
sees
it, and it made me spill my tea.

Mavortian, Bernard, and Mehitabel all stared at me, and I felt my face flush crimson. But I remembered to keep my voice low when I said, “I can feel him.”

“Feel him?” Mehitabel repeated doubtfully.

“I couldn’t before—I don’t know why. But now I can. I could walk straight to him.”

“Could it be some sort of trap?” Bernard asked. A reasonable question.

“I don’t think so.” I knew more about binding spells than Malkar did, for all that he’d been the one to teach me about them. He had never figured out how I’d broken the obligation de sang, and if he didn’t know that, I did not think he would be able to influence the obligation d‘âme so subtly.

“Do you think it’s likely to prove temporary?” Mavortian said.

“I don’t know.”

“Then perhaps, Maselle Parr, our amiable hostesses might be persuaded to show us the way into the cellar now, rather than later?”

“Yes. Wait here a moment.” She got up, crossed the room to the elderly lady who sat knitting beside the giant gold-and-red-enameled tea urn. A quick exchange of words, and Mehitabel came back. “Irene says she will not be sorry to have wizards gone from her tearoom.” Another sharp smile. “You bring bad luck.”

“Is that bad luck the literal or metaphorical kind?” Mavortian asked as he began struggling to his feet.

“In Lamia, it’s Imperial dragoons. Come on.”

The tunnels beneath Lamia looked like the corridors of the Warren, the same narrow, ruinously old, uneven courses of stonework, smoke-darkened and hostile. Mehitabel carried a lantern the old woman had given her; neither Mavortian nor I felt witchlights were worth the varied risks they would bring with them. If we were spotted, the longer we could keep from being identified as wizards, the better.

“Is the way marked?” I heard Bernard murmur to Mehitabel.

“Yes, if you know what to look for.”

“And you know?”

“Better than I’d like.” Something bitter in her voice, something old.

But she did not lead us wrong; every turn she took brought me closer to Mildmay. I felt as if I was beginning to be able to breathe again for the first time in three weeks or more. And I could feel Juggernaut ticking.

We climbed a narrow staircase—almost more like a ladder—Bernard carrying Mavortian. At the top, Mehitabel whispered, “This door takes us into the Bastion’s cellars. From here, I guess Felix is going to have to lead.”

“Unless we go after Messire Gennadion first.”

“We discussed this,” I said, feeling anger like sparks from a fire float upward in my chest. And I had wondered why he was being so complaisant. He had merely been biding his time. “Since we cannot be sure of killing, or even incapacitating, Malkar, we—”

“Why ‘incapacitate’?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mavortian’s eyes had an unpleasant shine in the lanternlight. “Are you not so sure you want Messire Gennadion dead after all? Perhaps you would rather your teacher was left alive?”

“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said, stiff with the effort of not letting my temper overwhelm me. “Of course I want him dead. I just don’t want him dead more than I want Mildmay alive.”

“What if you cannot have both?”

“Then I will save my brother’s life. You can do what you want. Mehitabel?”

“I’m with you, Felix.”

“You can’t let him get away,” Mavortian said, a hiss like a snake’s.

“It’s not like he’s running.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.” The savagery in his voice far outstripped the words themselves. “Bernard and I will do what’s necessary.”

“It depends on how you define ‘necessary,’ ” I said, and nodded to Mehitabel to open the door.

Fucking hocuses won’t go away.

Sheep.

Not a sheepdog. Clear the fuck out already.

Got to find Strych. They ain’t a part of it. Need to
go away
.

But they say they don’t know where to go. Say they’re lost. Keep following. Can’t ditch them. They’ll get caught, get hurt. Don’t know where to take them. Don’t know where to find Strych.

No fucking good at thinking anyway.

Footsteps. Lanternlight. No way to hide Rinaldo in the shadows. You could stand in Lyonesse and hear him breathing in Verdigris.

No weapons. Hands will do.

Wave the hocuses back. Useless in a fight. Ain’t even got their witchlights lit. Eyes big as bell-wheels, both of ‘em. Up to the corner, quick count of seven, swing round and aim hard for the throat.

Fuck. Pull it at the last second, catch at the wall to stay upright.

Mehitabel Parr says, “Are you always this friendly, or did I just get lucky?”

There was nothing human in his eyes. Truly the eyes of the fox he resembled: cold, flat, filled with fear and savage hatred, a fox brought to bay by monstrous dogs. I was vaguely surprised he did not actually bare his teeth at us in a snarl.

If he recognized us—if he recognized
me
—he gave no sign.

And then a voice said, from around the corner, “Um, has anyone died yet?”

Marathine-speaking, a faint Monspulchran accent. Not a Eusebian, and I managed to take a breath deep enough to get words out. “No, no one has died. Hopefully, no one will.”

A small, sharp silence. “
Felix Harrowgate
?”

The lanternlight was abruptly doubled. A tall man, my own height or nearly, long blond hair starting to go gray, wide bright blue eyes behind a pair of terribly battered spectacles. Beside him, a second man, shorter, much fatter, gray-haired, with tiny twinkling eyes like the wise eyes of an infinitely good-natured pig. Both of them with the Mirador’s tattoos winding in barbaric beauty around their arms.

Simon Barrister and Rinaldo of Fiora, lost in the Empire years ago, Simon before Thaddeus de Lalage had been sent to Aurelias, Rinaldo so long ago that I barely remembered seeing him, would not have remembered a man of lesser girth. And apparently they had been imprisoned in the Bastion all this time. I would never even have known to look for them.

The corridor was thronged with things we wanted to say, things there was not time for. Simon, with the habitual awkward delicacy of a stork, put his head on one side and said, “Do you know him?” The blue eyes cut sideways at Mildmay.

That’s a very good question
, I almost said. “He’s my brother.”

“Oh,” said Simon, looking from one to the other of us. “Of course.”

“Has he not… ?”

Rinaldo said, “The only thing he’s said in almost a week is that he’s going to murder Brinvillier Strych.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Simon said. “We don’t know… that is, he’d been hurt before we ever saw him, and I’m most awfully afraid it’s affected his mind.”

Simon was trying to say, politely, that Mildmay was insane. And he was, if he thought he would get anywhere near Malkar like this. But that wasn’t what Simon meant.

“Actually,” I said, “that part makes perfect sense. You see, Brinvillier Strych is also Malkar Gennadion.”

I saw Simon’s wince, knew that here was another thing that Malkar had broken in his passage through the world. Rinaldo merely frowned and said, “Can you prove that assertion?”

“Do I need to?”

He thought for a moment, and then his lips quirked in something that was not quite a smile. “No, I suppose you don’t. Malkar—”

“This is not,” Mehitabel interrupted, “the best place for a convivial chat.”

“No. And I need to find Mavortian. If Mildmay’s all right.”

“I’m not sure Mildmay
is
all right,” Mehitabel said.

“He’s upright and mobile,” I said.

“He got us out of our cell,” Simon added.

“Let’s call it provisionally all right and get moving,” I said.

“Your party, sunshine,” Mehitabel said. “What do you want to do?”

“Um.” I thought hard. “Will you take Simon and Rinaldo and Mildmay back through the tunnels?”

“How will you and the others get out, then?”

“I’ll follow the bond to Mildmay,” I said, and did not miss the sharp look Rinaldo gave me. More things that would have to be said later.