But all that happens is the corpse grabs me and drags me upright. I know it's the corpse, even though my eyes won't work, because my arms start going numb where he has touched me. And he turns me around and drags me out of the Hall of the Chimeras, and I am sobbing now with gratitude and relief.
As we leave the Virtu behind, back in the hallways of the Mirador, my vision starts to return, in patches and smears. I can see the snake's anger in front of me. I glance at the corpse, looking away before he can notice. He is as gray and indifferent as ever. Even this is a relief.
We walk to Livergate, where the snake shouts at the small monsters until one of them darts out to flag down a hansom. The snake comes over to me, far too close, and stares up into my eyes. I look back, almost mesmerized by its vile yellow eyes, until finally it turns away with a gesture of disgust. Then the corpse opens the hansom door and waves me in.
The hansom rattles out Livergate; again, I feel the Mirador leaving me like a burden finally set down. The release is like joy, but I remember the corpse beside me and do not move. And my head is still jangling. I remember the boy; his name was Magnus, and he needed help. It seems to me terribly important that I remember him, and I sit and think about him, about the crypt of the Cordelii, until the hansom turns through the gates of St. Crellifer's, and the corpse prods me to make me get out.
The pig is waiting for us on the steps.
Mildmay
It was probably a decad and a half—maybe more—before I could sit up and take notice again. It used to drive Keeper crazy, the way the other kids could have a sniffle, and I'd have a cough and a fever and a throat you could use to scour pots. And the Winter Fever is bad news. People die of it, Probably would have died if I hadn't happened to be useful to Mavortian von Heber.
They fought about it, him and Bernard. When I was really sick and supposed to be asleep—Mr. von
Heber had this syrup that I think was probably half laudanum—they'd fight in the room with me, in whispers, and I'd hear them even in my dreams. When I was getting better, they'd try to do all their fighting in their other room, the one they were sharing now that they had a sick cat burglar in the room that had been the hocus's but sometimes they'd forget. And sometimes I'd hear them through the wall anyway.
Bernard didn't like me. No skin off my nose—I didn't like him, either. I don't know whether Mr. von Heber
liked
me or not, but he sure was convinced I was useful to him. I couldn't figure out why at first—once I Was better enough to even care about it, I mean—but then I heard them going at it in the hall.
I didn't catch the beginning—though I'd bet money Bernard said something nasty. And Mr. von Heber said, "I read the cards again last night because I'm getting tired of this. They were clear as daylight. He's the key to it."
"You don't always trust your cards like this."
"Do you want to go out and bring me back a sheep so I can read the entrails? It'd be worth it to watch you trying to get it up the stairs."
"Mavortian… Look. I don't know about your fortune-telling, but I
do
know he's bad news. I don't want to come back some afternoon and find he's slit your throat for you."
"In his current condition? I think that's rather insulting."
"I don't argue with you about magic, do I? You know what you're doing. Why don't you believe that I know what I'm doing?"
"I do. Bernard, I'm not doubting for a moment that he is what you say I he is. I'm trying to tell you it doesn't matter. He's
still
the key, and I have been looking for a key for a very long time."
"And what good does it do you to find one if it gets you killed?"
"It won't. I'm not nearly as naïve—or as careless—as you think me. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
Bernard muttered something I couldn't hear and stomped off toward the stairs. The door opened, and Mr. von Heber came in.
He was a cripple. I didn't know what had happened—an accident or am illness or what—but his legs were just about useless to him. They'd hold him up, sort of, if he was mostly leaning on something else, but they'd barely move at all. He had a pair of them canes with the handgrips and the elbow braces, and he got around okay, but he was slow and it looked like awful hard work.
He shut the door behind him and started toward the chair by the bed. "You heard that, didn't you?"
"Yeah." No point in lying about it.
He sighed. "I hope you don't think…"
"It's okay. I mean, I don't care if Bernard—"
"Bernard is an idiot," he said, with some heat in it. "And he does not like Mélusine."
"Can't blame him."
Mr. von Heber got to the chair, and we didn't say nothing while he was getting settled. Then he looked at me and said, perfectly pleasant, "Your roots are showing."
"Fuck," I said, one hand going up out of pure stupid reflex, like I could hide something Mr. von Heber had already seen.
"What color is it naturally?"
"Red. Oh sacred bleeding
fuck
."
"What's the matter with that? Many people rather like red hair."
"How many redheads you seen since you been here?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, frowning. "Now that you mention it… people here don't even use henna, do they? It's quite the rage in Ervenzia."
"Unlucky," I said. You go waltzing around with red hair in Mélusine, and people are liable to think you're a spy for the Empire or a blood-witch or something. And it's fucking conspicuous, which I always figured was why people like Felix Harrowgate and Madeleine Scott used henna. They didn't have to worry about what people said about them.
Keeper didn't care about the stories. She just didn't want me walking around with my damn head like a torch. People tend to remember things like that. You can guess, maybe, how pissed off she was when I got my face laid open. But she made me keep dyeing my hair anyway. I'd been going to a guy in the Arcane since I hit my fourth indiction. The dye stank, and it cost the earth, but Purvis did it right every single time.
"I thought black didn't suit you," Mr. von Heber said.
"Thanks."
He gave a kind of sigh and said, "How are you feeling?"
"Some better. Got all the way to the water closet without leaning on Bernard." I didn't think I'd tell him how near I'd come to crawling back.
"Good."
"You're still wanting me to go get the hocus for you."
It took him a moment to understand what I'd said—I think I mumble the word "hocus" because it makes me nervous—and then he said, "Yes."
"Gonna be another decad at least. I can't do nothing until I quit with the cough some."
He nodded, so I didn't have to tell him how bad it upsets your plans when you have a coughing fit in the middle of somebody's upstairs hall. A hospice would be worse, because there'd be people awake at all hours. And I wasn't real happy about walking into a nest of crazies anyway, but it wasn't like I had anything better I was doing with my life.
"There isn't any great hurry," he said. "Felix Harrowgate isn't going anywhere."
"Yeah," I said. "Don't s'pose he is."
Kethe must've been laughing his ass off.
Felix
This time, the Sunling comes into my dreams. He is a thin, cloudy presence, like a ghost, but he is there, and his eyes shine like lamps.
"Felix," he says, his voice cutting through the great murmuring throng that surrounds me in this dream. They fade away, like fog before the sun, and leave me standing alone.
Slowly, I lower my hands, which were protecting my head from the stones the crowd threw, stones that were also bones. The Sunling comes toward me through my dream, which is now just a great, cloudy, echoing space. "You found me," I say.
"It wasn't easy," he says. "And this will not last long. What is that? He points to something I hadn't noticed, a black, jagged spike skewering through the layers of my dream like a sword. But I recognize it when see it."
"The Mirador."
"The
Mirador
? Are you a wizard of the Mirador?"
"I was."
"No wonder. I have read of the Mirador; the little oneiromancy I have can do nothing with it. Were you inside it, this meeting would not be possible at all."
"But why are you here?"
"I want to help you."
He says it as if it should have been obvious to me; I cannot think of anyone else in the world who wants to help me. Because I do not know how to tell him so, or to thank him, I say, "What is your name?"
"Diokletian. But—"
And then the dream surges and heaves and dumps me out into the waking world, where my feet are cold because the blanket I have is not long enough, and the monsters prowl restlessly around the ward.
Later—the next day, the day after? I don't know—the dove-headed monster takes me downstairs. I do not want to go, for I am afraid of the snake and the terrible things I can almost remember happening to me, but the monster booms at me and boxes my ears, and I follow it obediently.
We do not go to the stairs that lead down to the basement, and I feel marginally less frightened. Instead, the monster leads me to the parlor where once I talked with the snake, back when I could understand the monsters' speech. I don't want to go in there, but I know the monster will merely box my ears again if I try to balk. And I have a vague feeling that the snake isn't as dangerous up here, that maybe things will be all right.
But it isn't the snake waiting for me. This monster has the black, shiny head and bead-bright eyes of a raven. I stop just inside the door, bewildered. It stands up, booming something. I cannot back up; the dove-headed monster is just behind me, and behind it the door is closed.
The raven advances. It wears rings, as the snake does, and the rings look familiar: gold set with tiger's eyes. It stops in front of me, its hands extended, palms up. I do not know what it wants, and can only stand and stare at it.
The dove and the raven are booming at each other around me. The raven is angry, I think, and drop my gaze; perhaps it does not want to be stared at.
The dove grabs my right wrist, hard enough to bruise, and shoves my hand toward the raven. Before I can twist away, the raven has taken my hand; the dove lets go.
There is a crack like thunder, only silent, all through my head. For a moment, I hear a man's voice, swearing vilely in Midlander; then I wrench free of the raven's grip. I cannot get out the door, but I can at least get out from between the two monsters, get my back against the wall. I crouch in the corner, so that my right side is against the wall, too, and then I just wait. My head hurts, and even my good eye is blurred.
The dove and the raven boom back and forth some more; then the raven leaves, slamming the door behind it. After a moment, the dove turns toward me, and I feel my fingernails digging into my palms. But I can bear any punishment it chooses, so long as it does not tell the corpse. The dove does not like the corpse—I see the colors around it when the corpse is nearby—and I think maybe it will not tell him. It is the only thing I can hope for.
The dove comes to fetch me from the ward again sometime later. I don't know if it's day or night; light is untrustworthy. The dove did not tell the corpse; it did not even punish me, beyond boxing my ears again. I think it is trying to be kind. I follow it back to the parlor. The raven is waiting, and there is another monster with it: a statue made out of obsidian, who wears silver rings set with dark amethysts.
The dove herds me into the room and stands with its back against the door. The raven and the statue stare at me; I hear the roaring of their voices. Then the raven approaches me; I back up, bump into the unyielding solidity of the dove, duck sideways—and the obsidian hand of the statue closes around my upper arm. Her other hand touches my temple.
Thunder echoes through me; I can't pull away, because the raven has come up on my other side and is holding my other arm. And a woman's voice says, "Powers and saints, what
is
that?"
"It looks like a compulsion to me." A man's voice, a Kekropian accent. "Didn't anyone notice?"
I recognize the voices; these are people I used to know. But I can't remember their names, any more than I can see their faces.
"I don't think anyone looked," the woman says. "But if that's a compulsion…"
"Exactly. Makes you wonder what might happen if we took it off, doesn't it?"
"But this is terrible! This isn't madness, most of it."
"What do you mean?"
"It's like being told someone's been crippled by disease and finding that their legs have been broken in five places. I don't think…" Some thing prods at the broken places in my mind, and I gasp with the pain "Blessed saints. He didn't
go
mad—he was
sent
mad."
"Malkar. I can guess at some of what must be behind that compulsion then."
"I can't do this on my own. We have to take him to the Curia."
"What?"
"He's under the Curia's interdict. I don't have the authority to… to meddle. Come on."
"But we can't—"
"Robert could, the weasel. And Giancarlo will want to see this."
"Well, I… Brother Ferien?"
"Yes, m'lord?"
"We need to take your patient to the Mirador. Is that all right?"
"Well, I guess so, m'lord. I ain't been told otherwise."
"Good," says the woman in a low voice. "
Now
, Thaddeus, before that vile warder comes back."
They are still holding my arms; they turn me and march me out the door. I would like to tell them that they don't have to, that I understand what they say and I want the compulsion taken off me so badly… but I can't. I can't seem to make any sound at all.
Out of the parlor, down the hall, through the vestibule, where the porter, who is Brother Orphelin's creature, stares and does not help, but is too frightened of my escort to hinder. Pieces of the world are coming into place around me. The rings the raven and the statue wear are wizards' rings; their voices are agonizingly familiar. They have a fiacre waiting on the street. I climb in; without their touch, I lose their voices as well, but I hold on to the knowledge that they want to help me, that they have seen the compulsion and are going to do something about it.