"Oh, powers, Felix!"
Dimly, I heard Thaddeus say, "By all means, my lord, please come in." Although I flinched at the sarcasm in his voice, there was no room in my thoughts for it to make more than a momentary impression.
Somehow we got ourselves sorted out, got inside Thaddeus's sitting room, the door closed, standing a little apart from each other, although our hands were clasped tightly. Without my rings, there was no need for caution in that touch, no need to fear that I would hurt Shannon. Thaddeus Vida, and Gideon had tactfully withdrawn to the other side of the room' where the periphery of my attention observed that they were having an undervoiced but heated discussion of their own.
Shannon's eyes, brilliant as sapphires, were fixed on my face. For a dizzying moment, I saw the alabaster statue, and then the world fell into place again.
Shannon was saying breathlessly, "Felix, I'm so sorry, I should have known, I shouldn't have let them, I didn't know, I never wanted—"
"Shannon," I said gently.
He stopped speaking at once, as if I'd… I remembered that I
had
hit him, that horrible night when I let Malkar get his claws into me again.
"Shannon," I said again, because I did not know what else to say. Slowly, clumsily, I said, "I'm not angry. You aren't… you have nothing to blame yourself for."
"But I—"
"You could not have kept me from destroying myself," I said, and then winced at the truth of what I'd said.
"Can we, do you think…"
"I don't know. I am… I am not the same." Even to Shannon I could not say, I am still mad.
"Can we
try
?"
"Yes," I said; the force in him was too much for me to stand against. "We can try."
Chapter 6
Mildmay
It was the third decad of Brumaire and I was more or less on my feet again, when Bernard brought the news that Felix Harrowgate was back in the Mirador. Mr. von Heber just about hit the roof, and he was mad enough to spit nails for two days. Me and Bernard kept our mouths shut. It was like they'd moved the hocus as a personal insult, aimed just at him.
But anyway, there wasn't nothing for him to hire me to do no more, and after dinner on 25 Brumaire, I said so.
Bernard looked up, like he'd been praying and praying I'd say it and now couldn't believe I had. I'd figured out, especially by listening when they Were talking in Norvenan and didn't know I could understand them, that they were half brothers or stepbrothers or something. Norvenan don't distinguish so as you can tell. But I was betting half brothers, and I was betting Bernard's mother had been a laundrymaid. That was how they acted toward each other. And one of the things it meant was that Bernard would grumble and argue and bitch from one end of time to the other, but he wouldn't ever go against Mr. von Heber, not straight out. So when Mr. von Heber had told him to quit hinting as how they should chuck me out on my ear, he did what he was told. But he didn't stop giving me the hairy eyeball, and I got to say I was tired of it.
Mr. von Heber looked up, too, from this book Bernard had brought him from the Cheaps a couple days ago. "What?"
"If he ain't in St. Crellifer's, then I ain't no good to you."
"But we know where he is. I don't see—"
"I ain't going in the Mirador."
For a second, they had the same look on their faces, like they thought maybe I was going to start biting. "All right," Mr. von Heber said. "But that doesn't necessarily mean that you are useless to us."
"Mavortian!" Bernard said. He'd thought they were rid of me, free and clear, and here was Mr. von Heber making up some shit to keep me around.
I got to admit, I kind of agreed with Bernard. "How?" I said.
"I don't know," Mr. von Heber said, perfectly cheerfully. "I'll think of something. Why won't you go near the Mirador?"
Fuck. " 'Cause I ain't crazy," I said.
He gave me a look—he knew I was hiding something, same as Ginevra had—then looked at Bernard and let it drop. Smart of him to figure out that I'd let him pull my toenails out one by one before I'd say anything in front of Bernard.
After a minute, I said, "Well, if you got any jobs that ain't in the Mirador, I'll do 'em. I think I'm okay to work again."
"You're still coughing," Mr. von Heber said.
"It's okay." I was going nuts with nothing to do but lay around and stare at the walls.
"I'll think of something," Mr. von Heber said, and grinned at Bernard.
Felix
It took several days, but we ended up where we had both known we would: Shannon's bedroom, in the sprawling territory of the Teverius apartments. Shannon had made a brave statement when he had moved out of these apartments to live with me, and I was not surprised to discover that he had moved back when I had… when I had fallen.
His suite in the Teverius wing was familiar to me from the early days of our relationship; I noticed that he had redecorated since then, and that his taste had improved. But the furnishings were the same, and especially the massive curtained bed that had belonged to his great-grandmother Helen Teveria.
We had been to see a play; Thaddeus had protested, but Shannon had said airily that Thaddeus didn't own me, and I would be the better for not moping around his suite all the time. And I did not want to make any attempt to insert myself back into the society of the Mirador. Those of my former friends whom I had seen in the halls had either hastened away in embarrassment or driven me to flight by their extravagant concern. I blamed neither camp, but it was not comfortable.
And thus Shannon had taken me to the Cockatrice, to see Madeleine Scott in
The Singer's Tragedy
. I had not enjoyed the play—Madame Scott's notorious flame-red hair had seemed a mockery, and the play itself a farrago of doleful nonsense—but I had not told Shannon so. I was afraid of displeasing him.
He was sitting on the bed, taking off his boots and dissecting the performance of one of the secondary characters, whose role in the convoluted plot I could no longer remember. Shannon had always favored candlelight in the bedroom—as did I, for different reasons; it lit his hair like a dragon's treasure and made the planes of his face remote and abstractly exquisite. His eyes were shadowed, and without their light, his face seemed like a cruel stranger's. I had never been awed by his beauty before, though I had reveled in it endlessly, but now I thought, Why does he want me?
"Felix, are you even listening?"
"Yes, of course," I said. Malkar had trained me well. "You said Vitellian could have been played with more conviction by a cross-dressed twelve-year-old girl and added a disparaging remark about Edwin Croyland that I prefer not to repeat."
"Prude." He smiled and tossed his boots across the room for his valet to deal with. "Have you
ever
been caught nodding?"
"Not for a long time," I said, forcing myself to smile back.
He held out a hand, half-inviting, half-commanding, and I crossed the room to stand beside the bed. "You've gotten so shy," he said. "Not even a kiss?"
"I'm sorry. What…" My mouth was dry; I swallowed hard and tried again "What would you like me to do?"
His eyebrows went up. "The ingénue doesn't suit you, you know Sit down, for the love of the saints! I'm getting a crick in my neck."
I sat, obediently. The colors around him were the colors of fire orange and gold and red. He would not tell me so, but he was angry. Probably he was angry at me; probably I had done something wrong. "I know," he said, "that we did not… part well, and I am sorry for that. But you said you weren't angry at me."
"I'm not."
"Then why are you so standoffish?"
No one, not the Curia, not Thaddeus, had demanded the details of Malkar's ritual, and I had not been forced to tell anyone that he had physically raped me. The devastation his spell had wrought was enough that I supposed no one saw any need to look further for explanations. And without the relentless hammer of questions, I could not say it. I could not confess that sordid, bitter truth, any more than I could bring myself to describe the table in the basement of St. Crellifer's. And because I could not say that touch was pain and disaster, I could not tell Shannon that I was afraid.
"I don't know," I said, tried a shrug, a smile. "You try being crazy for eight months and see if
you
can explain yourself afterward."
The color mounted into his face. "Oh, Felix, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just wondered if it… if it was
me
."
"No! No, it isn't that. It isn't that at all." And because I did not want to hurt him, and I did not know how else to make him believe me, I leaned forward and let him kiss me.
I had been a prostitute; I had learned how to have sex with men who repelled me. To submit to Shannon was easier by far. I let him run his fingers through my hair; short as it was, it seemed to please him. Remembering fragments of our old routine, our old love, I reciprocated by untying his hair ribbon and unbraiding his queue; unbraided, his hair fell nearly to his waist, running like sunlight through my hands.
He remembered my preferences and snuffed the candles before we began to undress. I was doubly grateful tonight, not merely that he would not be able to see my back, but that he would not be able to see my face. My body could lie; Malkar had often told me that my face was transparent against glass.
Shannon's voice murmured in the darkness, words of love, of passion I could not think of anything to say in return, but he did not seem to mind.
I lay down on my back, as he wanted me to. His hands touched my face, my neck and chest, stroked across my stomach and thighs. I lay still; I told myself that this was Shannon, who did not want to hurt me, with whom I had made love hundreds of times. His hand caressed the arc of my hip; his lips met mine.
And I couldn't do it. I couldn't respond, couldn't soften my lips to meet his, couldn't raise my hands to touch his body. Shannon liked languorous foreplay, liked to spend a long time in soft, teasing, mounting excitement before the often savage release of our coupling. And all I could think tonight was how long I would have to wait, in cold anticipation, before…
I choked back a sob, wrenched free of his hands, scrambled off the bed, already searching desperately for my clothes. I had to get out of here before I started crying, before Shannon realized just how damaged, how broken, I was.
"Felix? What are you doing?"
I said nothing. I dragged on my trousers, wrestled my arms into my shirt, and grabbed my waistcoat and coat off the floor. My cravat, my boots, my underthings and stockings were somewhere, but I didn't want them now. I was shaking in violent all-over tremors, in a way I hadn't since Thaddeus had brought me before the Curia.
"You're not
leaving
?" Shannon said. I could hear him moving. I couldn't bear the thought that he might touch me and fled for the door.
"You bastard!" cried Shannon, who was never vulgar. I wrenched the door open and bolted, overwhelmingly grateful that Shannon's servants were all somewhere else, not witnessing this shameful debacle. And as I fled, Shannon's voice echoed after me: "Don't come back! Don't you dare come back!"
Out in the hall—knowing that my luck was not going to hold more than a few minutes longer, and knowing, too, that Shannon would not follow me—I stopped and fastened the buttons of my shirt and trousers, my hands jittering so badly that the task was almost impossible. I put on my waistcoat and coat, but I couldn't cope with the buttons. I was decent; at this point, surely the Mirador expected nothing more of me. I set off as swiftly as I could for Thaddeus's suite, a rabbit fleeing from a fox.
Around the next corner—and I must have known it was inevitable, for why else waste time on buttoning my shirt straight?—I all but ran into Stephen Teverius.
"Felix," he said, his voice grating.
"My lord," I said and essayed a sketchy, wobbly bow that would have made Shannon laugh.
"You're out late," he said. He eyed my clothes with disfavor and added, "Prowling."
"My lord, I beg your pardon. I will not… trouble you further."
"I sincerely hope not. Did I not tell you to stay away from my brother?"
I knew now, I thought, how the pebble felt when it was dropped into a deep well. "I will not trouble you further, my lord."
His eyebrows went up. But although Stephen hated me, he was not as insensitive as his stone façade made him seem. "Pleased to hear it. Good night, Felix."
"Good night, my lord." I could feel him watching me all the way down the corridor, until I turned the corner and was mercifully out of his sight.
Thaddeus and Vida were sitting by the fire when I came in. Gideon had dragged a chair over to the sideboard and was engrossed, with pen, ink, and a dog-eared sheaf of papers, in something that looked like a diagram for a warding spell. They all three looked up when I came in, but none of them commented on my dishabille.
I crossed to the fireplace and stood, hoping that the palpable heat would counteract the ice within me. Thaddeus, Vida, and Gideon continued to watch me silently.
"Have you talked to Sherbourne?" I said abruptly.
"Sherbourne?" Thaddeus's eyebrows went up. "Yes. Why?"
"Would you tell him… would you tell him I'm sorry about what I said that day in court? That I didn't mean it? He'll know what you're talking about."
"Can't you tell him yourself?"
"No. I can't." My voice threatened to crack; I stopped, swallowed hard. "If he believes you… tell him I'd like to see him again."
"Just out of curiosity, what
did
you say?"
I looked at Vida.
She shook her head. "I didn't hear it, and he won't tell me."
"I don't remember it exactly. But it was monstrous."
"You could have said it was none of my business," Thaddeus said.