There was a dreadful silence, deep and cold, in which Robert failed to repeat his claim, Shannon failed to come to my defense, and I failed, abysmally, to think of anything I could say. I was struggling to control my temper, to resist the black urge to say,
Robert has discovered I used to be a whore
. Stephen's gaze made the circuit again, Robert to Shannon to me, and then remained on my face, waiting, patient as stone and as hard.
Finally, I said, "Robert and I had a difference of opinion."
"Indeed," Stephen said. "I know you don't think highly of my brains, but you might give me more credit than that."
Robert, I realized, had no need to say anything. Stephen would not embarrass him without greater provocation than he had yet been offered—the last, poisonous legacy of Emily Teveria, Stephen's dead wife, Robert's dead sister. All Robert had to do was stand still and let Stephen drag it out of me.
I could not look at Shannon, afraid of what I would see on his face. And the blackness was getting worse, boiling around the edges of my thoughts. I took a deep breath and said, "Robert has discovered—I don't know how and I wish you would ask him—that I was a"—I thought for a moment I wasn't going to be able to say it, that the word was going to stick in my throat like a fishbone and choke me to death—"a… prostitute when I was fourteen."
The silence was merciless, and I could no longer count the number of people listening. Stephen's eyebrows rose slowly. "And that's why you called him a carrion-eating jackal? I think, Lord Felix, that you need to control your… temper."
Behind me, Robert hissed, too low for anyone but me to hear, "You should go back to Pharaohlight where you belong."
I could stand the humiliation no longer. Stephen was about to turn to Robert and ask for the details; Robert, I knew, would tell him, lavishly. And the news would spread throughout the Mirador of the truth beneath the lies I had built my life on, the degradation I thought I had escaped.
"My lord, I shall remove my… temper from your vicinity." Stephen gave me an infinitesimal nod, not so much permission as acknowledgment that he did not want to keep me. I bowed and left. Although I listened, all the way down the Hall of the Chimeras and out its massive bronze doors, Shannon neither followed me nor tried to call me back.
Mildmay
I met Ginevra Thomson in the ordinary way of business. She was looking for a cat burglar. I was looking for a client. Meet at the Glorious Deed in Ramecrow, second hour of the night, 10 Pluviôse. Ain't where I'd choose, but I said okay. The Glorious is tacky, but it is a real bar, not like in Dragonteeth, where you feel like you're stuck in the theater scenery for all the slumming flashies and the demimondaine. And I ain't good scenery for that kind of play.
I got there early. It's a habit, like always knowing how to find the back door of anywhere you walk into. It don't mean nothing in particular, just, you know, she
could
be fronting for the Dogs, even though I didn't think she was. No, since you ask, it ain't a nice way to live, but it sure beats the fuck out of dying.
The Glorious is about the most fashionable bar in Ramecrow. It opens its doors at sundown, and halfway through the first hour of the night it was already too loud and too smoky, and it seemed like everybody in there had about five elbows apiece. The bouncer gave me the hairy eyeball with mustard, but he let me by.
After an ugly quarter hour, a table opened up along the wall. I got there just before a slumming flashie
who didn't have the sense to wash off his decagorgon-a-flask perfume before he came down to the city. He thought he was going to argue about it—looked at my face and thought again—and by then the two gals at the next table had agreed they wanted to move in on this one, and they got him to sit down with them instead. When he wasn't looking, the taller one winked at me.
I sat down with my back to the wall and waited. Watched the crowd, looking for the gal who thought she needed a cat burglar. I was hoping she had something good for me, because this was starting off to be one shitty night.
She was a tall girl in green taffeta, and she recognized me by the scar on my face. Good as a fucking carny barker. I watched her come through the crowd like she was dancing. She wasn't coy. Came straight up to me and said, "You're Dennis?"
I ain't, of course, but I don't go around using my real name all the time neither. Too many people it would make too fucking happy if they knew where Mildmay the Fox was hanging out. "Yeah," I said.
She sat down. "My name's Ginevra Thomson. I believe we have business together."
"You want to talk about it
here?"
She looked around, puzzled, and I thought, Oh, powers, a flat. She said, "But I thought… I don't know anyone in Ramecrow."
"Don't mean they won't listen in, sweetheart. Come on."
It wasn't raining, for a change, and after the inside of the Glorious, the air tasted practically clean. Miss Thomson followed me okay, but she was frowning, and when we got about a block away, she said, "I don't see how anybody could have eavesdropped on us. It's so
loud
in there."
"I ain't taking chances. 'Less you want to get hauled off to the Kennel, you better follow suit."
"Oh," she said, in a tiny voice.
She came with me then, no more fuss, and it was only after we'd crossed from Ramecrow into Pharaohlight that she said, "Where are we going?"
"Min-Terris's."
"What? Are you
mad
? It'll be
crawling
with people."
"Not the roof."
"Oh. Is that safe?"
"Safe enough." I stopped and turned and looked at her. "You don't got to come if you don't want."
She thought about it for a moment, then her chin came up, and she said, "I'm coming."
"Okay," I said and went on.
Min-Terris-of-Pharaohlight is the Pharaohlight district's biggest cathedral. It ain't a patch on the cathedral of Phi-Kethetin in Spicewell, and it ain't got that big bronze dome that makes Ver-Istenna's the best landmark in the Lower City. But for my money, it's the prettiest cathedral in Mélusine, like one of them fancy cakes that the bakers in Breadoven do for flashie weddings and the Mayor's birthday and shit like that. And the roof of Min-Terris's—they let tours go up there every Cinquième, but otherwise it's as deserted as anybody could ask, and if you climb up one of the minarets, you can see people coming from miles off.
So that's where I took Miss Thomson. We worked our way through the crowd in the courtyard—whores and pickpockets and jugglers and candy sellers and all the rest of them—and into the cathedral itself.
"Dennis," Miss Thomson said. "Where are we going?"
She sounded nervous, like she was thinking of bolting.
"It's okay," I said. The stairs to the roof are in the corner of the foyer—I know that ain't the right word, but you know what I mean. They lock the door, but it ain't much of a lock, and I'd jiggered it so many times that I didn't even have to think about it.
We climbed the stairs, up and around a spiral so tight I was practically stepping on my own heels, and then up and around again through purely brilliant moonlight, up to the top of the minaret, where there wasn't room for but two people, and anybody tried anything clever and you'd
both
be human custard on the flagstones. Another reason I like Min-Terris's.
"Okay," I said. "What's the deal?"
"Finally," she said with a sniff. "I used to be the lover of Lord… of a nobleman with a house in Lighthill. We, um, parted ways about a month ago." She didn't sound sorry. She looked up, caught me full force with her big blue eyes, and said, "I want my jewelry."
"He kept it?"
"Yes."
"Bad manners."
"I'm sorry. What?"
I said it again.
"He was a pig," she said. "And I want a couple other things, a clock and a figurine."
"How much jewelry?"
"It's a blue velvet box, about so big—" Her hands shaped it in the air.
"Okay. I can do that. Now, payment—"
"You can take your commission out of what you recover."
"You sure?"
"Oh yes. I was worth it."
I believed her. Tall, stacked, with those big blue eyes—her flashie wouldn't have gotten to see how hard her eyes were, or how smart. I wondered how many guys she had on her string.
She asked, "How long will it take you?"
I shrugged. "Maybe a decad."
"A
decad
?"
"What, you got a deadline?"
She tilted her chin away from me, like she didn't give a rat's ass. "Of course not."
"I
could
go after 'em sooner, but I got other business…" Which was a lie, but she didn't need to know that.
She thought about it. "If I ask you to go tonight, what's your price?"
"Four septas."
"Four septas," she said, like she thought she hadn't heard me right. "You must think I'm a cretin. Sixteen gorgons."
"Three septas and four."
"Eighteen."
"Lower'n three septas and you go get 'em yourself."
For a second, she thought she was going to turn on her heel and march right back down all them stairs. But she didn't do it. "Oh, all right. Three septas. But you don't get your commission 'til I've seen them." She gave me a smile as fake as the paste diamonds in her ears. "Some of those pieces have sentimental value."
"Uh-huh. Now. What can you tell me about the lay?"
"The what?"
Kethe, spare me from flats. "The layout, the deal. Where'm I going and what'm I doing when I get there?"
"Oh." She opened her reticule—a ladylike little job with some not half-bad crewelwork—and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "I drew a map."
"Easier if you tell me whose house I'm after."
"Oh!" The gasp was about as ladylike as her reticule. "But I can't—"
"D'you think I'm not gonna know when I get there?"
"You won't…"
"Won't what?"
"I heard… things."
Well, you must've heard
something
to have found me in the first place. "I don't do nothing I ain't paid for. So cough it up."
"Oh, all right. Lord Ellis Otanius."
"Thanks. And whereabouts in the house?"
Her hand paused on the clasp of her reticule. "I did… I drew a map."
All at once I liked her. She was a flat, sure, and she was spoiled, for damn sure, but she'd done her best to think things through, and she was trying hard not to make the same mistake twice. Some days you got to accept that's all you can do, and it takes guts to admit that's the kind of day you're up against.
"Hand it over," I said, and she smiled and gave me the map.
Couldn't get no good look at it by moonlight, but I could tell she'd drawn it big enough to read.
"It's a wall safe," she said. "And I'm really sorry, but I don't know the combination. I know that makes it harder…"
I shrugged that off. "Anybody likely to be up?"
"Oh, they're all off in St. Millefleur for the winter. They won't be back 'til Ger—Endes, I mean."
"Smart."
"I try," she said, and even by moonlight I could see the corners of her mouth tuck up in a little smile.
"Okay. Meet tomorrow, same time. Where?"
"Where do you suggest?"
And
she was a fast learner. I said, "Worried about your virtue?"
"What?"
"If I hire us a room, you gonna come over all coy and tell me you can't be alone with me or something?"
"Oh." She looked around. I had to agree, she was about as alone with me as she was going to get. "No, I don't think I mind that."
"If you bring a knife," I said carefully, "I won't get mad."
"Thank you." She met my eyes, and I liked her for that, too.
"Okay. Then we'll meet at the Spinning Goblin on Rue Celadon, Engmond's Tor. You gonna be able to find that okay?"
"I think so."
"It's on the maps." There are streets in the Lower City that ain't, but they ain't places I'd take a flat.
"Then I'll be fine," she said, her chin coming up.
"Good girl," I said. I hadn't meant to. It just got out, 'cause it's the sort of thing you say to somebody you're training when they do something right—or just show willing, the way Miss Thomson had done. I expected to get my ears boxed for it—and I would've stood still and let her do it—but instead she gave me another knockout smile.
All the way down the stairs, following the rustle and swish of her dress, the smell of her perfume, I was saying to myself, Watch it, Milly-Fox. Watch your stupid self. Don't get involved with the demimonde. You fucking well know better.
But I wasn't listening, and I knew it.
Felix
I stood on the battlements for an hour, my hands clenched around the edge or the parapet, barely feeling the cold. The stars shone heartlessly against the vast indigo drape of the sky. Below me, the lights of the Lower City were warmer, smaller—the sordid markers of the things that happened in Mélusine after dark. I did not look toward Pharaohlight.
I had hoped that I might replace the burning blackness in my mind with the simple, remote darkness of the night sky. Sometimes I could calm myself that way, but tonight the longer I stared at the sky, at its untouchable beauty, the more I wanted to hurt someone.
When I opened my pocket watch and saw, by the light of the lantern I had brought up with me, that it was ten-thirty, I knew I could find a victim. I knew Shannon would have returned to our suite by now, no matter what he and Stephen had said to each other.
I stalked through the halls of the Mirador. The servants I encountered murmured, "Lord Wizard," and backed hastily against the walls. They were tempting targets, but they wouldn't give me any real satisfaction, and I passed them by. I came to our suite without meeting a single other wizard, and even through the blackness I knew that was for the best.