The raven is sitting at the broad, scarred common table. The stone lioness is sitting across from him; she wears Vicky's rings. They both watch my approach, with eyes unblinking and pitiless.
"Sit down, Felix," the raven says, but I no longer believe the friendliness in his voice. Once, I know, Thaddeus and I were friends, but the colors tell me he does not like me now. He does not want to be here, and it is my fault he is.
I understand wizards; if I do not cooperate, I will be coerced. I sit.
The lioness says, brisk, no-nonsense, Vicky dealing with a distasteful subject, "How did Malkar do it?"
"Do it?" I say. My own voice, a tenor as light and fragile as half-rotted gossamer, sounds not merely mad, but half-witted.
"How did he reach you?" the lioness says. "How could he put a compulsion on you? How did he
do
it?"
"I don't know."
"Come now," says the raven. "You must have
some
idea. You were his student."
"I don't know! I really don't."
"We have to find out," the lioness says. "What if he does it again?"
"It will kill me," I say, the truth emerging unexpectedly from the darkness. "It has already driven me mad."
They eye me suspiciously and with distaste.
"You have the head of a raven," I tell the monster who I hope is really Thaddeus. "You are a lion made out of granite," I say to the other. "The colors around you are red and purple, streaked with black, shot through with green. You are angry, and you dislike each other, and you would rather drown me in the river and be done with it."
"Really, Felix, these histrionics are pointless," the lioness says.
"I don't think he's lying about being crazy," the raven says, and his callus tone cuts through me like knives.
"Will you let us look?" the lioness says. Vicky has ever been single-minded.
"I cannot stop you," I say and lay my hands, palms up, on the table.
"Powers, Felix, must you be such a bastard about it?"
"But I
can't
stop you. I'm still under interdict."
"I was being polite," she says, her voice a growl like millstones grinding.
"Oh, leave it be," the raven says. "Let's just get this over with."
Their examination is excruciating. I do not faint, although there is a long, slow space of time when I think I may; I emerge from the thunderous red-shot blackness to find my hands pressing palms down on the table, as if it can anchor me, and the lioness and the raven arguing across me. Their voices keep dissolving into howls and roars, so that I cannot follow their debate clearly, but I understand that they have found something strange in the Cabaline spells, something small, something the Curia overlooked—something, the raven says, that no one would find without already knowing it was there. They call one of the other wizards over, a badger round and amiable with small, blinking eyes. There is more debate, but I am hearing fewer and fewer words in the dreadful booming that reverberates through me as if I were the clapper of a bell.
The raven catches my shoulder, shaking me, and his voice comes clear "Felix!"
I stare at him. I want his hand off my shoulder, but I cannot move I am no longer sure that it is safe.
"Did Malkar ever cast any spells on you?" I wince at the exaggerated patience in his voice; he must be
repeating himself for at least the third time.
"Yes," I say, because it is true.
The lioness and the badger mutter like the dying echoes of thunder. The raven lets go of me. I want to leave the table, but I am afraid they will drag me back. And no one else cares.
The truth coalesces around me like a layer of ice. No one cares. I have no friends among the monsters and shadows. Even if I could get someone to believe me, believe in the colors and monsters and darkness and pain, they would think it is no more than I deserve.
And maybe that is true.
Mildmay
It was well past the septad-night when me and Bernard and Ricko got the last pissed-off drunk shoved out the door and we could go to bed. Ricko'd cleaned out a space in one of the storerooms, and Jeanne-Phalange had chipped in blankets and stuff. She got some kind of kickback from Ricko but I ain't exactly sure what their deal was.
Mr. von Heber'd done okay. I think people are crazy, myself, but since the cards weren't magic, they were falling over themselves to find out what they said. If we'd said they were magic, or been dumb enough to admit Mr. von Heber was a hocus, the best we could've hoped for was to get run out of town on a rail.
Mr. von Heber looked up from counting his take when me and Bernard came in, and said, "We've got to do something about your hair."
I was getting punchy with lack of sleep, and it took me a minute even to understand what he'd said. I said, "What?"
"It's looking very… peculiar."
Bernard gave me this look and said, "I can think of some other words."
"I think you should strip the dye out of it," Mr. von Heber said before I could get my act together to tell Bernard what he could do with his words.
"You're nuts," I said.
"Whatever it is that you use, it's not going to be easy to come by outside of Mélusine."
"How long you planning on being gone?"
"Who says we're coming back?"
I looked at him for a while, thinking things through. "You gonna start paying me?"
"I thought you admitted yourself to be in my debt."
"You just upped the stakes—and don't try and act like you don't know it."
"What does it matter to you? You have nothing holding you in Mélusine."
That hurt because it was true. "It's still my home. I mean, I wasn't ever thinking…" But I couldn't find no
good way to say what I meant.
"I will reward you for your service," Mr. von Heber said.
"Them's weasel words." That sort of thing sounds great in stories, but when somebody trots it out in real life, you'd better watch 'em close, because they're fixing to pull a fast one.
"I can't offer you a salary," he said, sharp enough that I knew I'd called him on something he'd thought he could get away with.
"You want me to leave Mélusine, you'd better offer me something more than 'The cards say you're important.'"
"Can't this wait?" Bernard said. "I don't know about the two of you, but I'm tired. Fight it out tomorrow."
"Whatever," I said.
"I am crushed by the rebuke of your common sense," Mr. von Heber said to Bernard, which I thought was snarkier than it needed to be, but at least it meant we could get some sleep.
I had this weird dream that night. I dreamed about my mother.
You got to understand, I don't really remember her. I got sold to Keeper when I didn't have no more than three indictions, and most of what I knew about my mother is what Keeper told me, and that ain't much. So I knew she was a whore, and she had red hair and yellow eyes like Jenico Sun-Eyes in the stories, and I knew the weird fucking thing she gave me for a name. And I knew her name was Methony. Keeper said she had funny accent, but I never had a clue about where she was from.
So I don't remember her, but every once in a while, I'll have a dream and she'll be in it. I had nightmares for indictions after Keeper told me how my mother died, that were just dreams of her burning. Not screaming or nothing, just burning and burning and staring at me out of the fire with eyes like a wolf's. And I'll have dreams where I'm in some flash house and I'm supposed to be stealing something, only I know my mother's somewhere in the house, and I can't do nothing until I find her. Mostly I don't find her in those dreams, though every once in a while, I'll open a door and there'll be a red-haired woman staring out a window. And that's when I wake up.
This dream, I was in the Cheaps, outside the leather-workers' shop. I was waiting for Ginevra, but I knew she wouldn't come. But it wasn't no big deal, and anyway she
might
show up, so I was leaned against the wall watching people go by. I saw Margot and Lollymeg and Crenna. Anna Christina and Elvire walked by, talking like they were old friends. I saw Zephyr across the way, but he didn't notice me waving at him—nose in a book like always. Cardenio was there for a while, waiting with me, but he didn't say nothing. I lost the thread of the dream there for a while because I was trying to say I was sorry for being such a prick, but he didn't seem hear me, and after a while Scabious darted out of the crowd and tugged on his sleeve, and they both waved at me and left. I remember thinking, it's okay, he don't seem mad, and I'll apologize next time.
I saw some more people go by, most of them dead, and then the door of the leather-workers' shop opened, and my mother came out.
I can't tell you what she looked like—I couldn't really see her, even when I was staring straight at her—but she stood next to me and said as how she was sorry she'd let me be sold to Keeper. "It's okay," I said. "I mean, it could've been worse."
That made her even sadder, but I didn't know why. She was trying to explain to me what had happened, only she was a ghost and couldn't use real words, and I was still looking for Ginevra, so I wasn't paying attention
and
kept missing what she wanted me to understand. Even in the dream I wanted to smack myself for it, except there was something important I had to tell Ginevra, something really important, and it was hard to see people in the crowd.
Finally, my mother sighed and started to walk away toward the flower market. But she stopped and came back and stood in front of me, and all I can tell you is how yellow her eyes were. She reached out and touched my scar, and her fingers were so cold they woke me up.
It was nearly the septad-day. Looked at in daylight, there wasn't nothing I could do about the mud and stains on my coat and trousers. I was wondering where Mr. von Heber and Bernard were—I'd heard 'em get up and go out, about the time Cardenio went off with Scabious—and whether I could talk Jeanne-Phalange into giving me some breakfast, when they came back. They had breakfast with them, and secondhand clothing from the store run by Jeanne-Phalene's head housekeeper's second cousin. It was all clean, and it didn't fit too bad.
We changed clothes and ate, and while we were eating, Mr. von Heber said, "This town has more apothecaries and alchemists than any town I've ever been in."
"Poisoners' town," I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Didn't you know that?"
"Know
what
?"
"All the court poisoners—back when they had 'em—came from Alchemic. All the good ones, anyway. Quinquill and Godiva Frethwarren and Merleon the Halt. All from Alchemic."
"Powers," Mr. von Heber said.
"It's the swamp," I said. I think my dream had made me nervous. "Stuff grows there that don't grow nowhere else 'til you get south of St. Millefleur. And I heard there's stuff there that don't grow nowhere else at all."
" Interesting. That certainly explains why I didn't have any trouble getting a powder that should deal with your hair."
"We didn't decide we
were
'dealing' with my hair," I said. I try not to lose my temper with people, because it's too easy to hurt somebody you're mad at, but Mr. von Heber was really starting to piss me off.
They both looked sort of taken aback, and I thought, I been letting these guys walk all over me like they own me.
"I have come up with an arrangement," Mr. von Heber said, almost nervously.
"Let's hear it."
"One-third of whatever money we make is yours. When we don't have any money, of course, this means you don't get paid, but that doesn't seem egregiously unfair."
I wanted to ask what "egregiously" meant, but I didn't say nothing.
"What more do you want?" And I was glad to hear how pissed off he sounded.
"I want to know what you're doing. What you want Felix Harrowgate for. I ain't leaving Mélusine for a pig in a poke."
"Your gratitude doesn't stretch very damn far at all," Bernard said.
"Shut up, Bernard," said Mr. von Heber. "He has a right to be curious." But he didn't look no happier than Bernard did.
I'd reached the end of where I gave a rat's ass what either of them thought. All my choices looked basically shitty from here, and I wanted to know if going back to Mélusine on my own—probably to starve to death in a gutter in Ruthven or something—was really going to be worse than whatever the fuck it was Mr. von Heber wanted me for.
He heaved this big sigh, like I was asking him to start yanking his own toenails out, and pulled the locket he wore out of his shirt. I'd seen it before, but I'd figured it for some hocus thing like his watch fob, and I hadn't wanted to know no more. But now he pulled it off over his head and opened it and handed it to me.
It was a miniature, a nice one, of a Norvenan-looking girl. She had the white-blond hair, all in curls around her face, and her eyes were a kind of gray-blue color. She was pretty. I priced the locket at maybe a septa-gorgon and handed it back.
"Anna Gloria Pietrin," Mr. von Heber said.
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
"She died twenty-five years ago. We were engaged to be married."
"Sorry," I said.
"She committed suicide in Myro. She was abandoned there by the man who did this," and he waved a hand at his near-useless legs. "He seduced and betrayed her. His name is Beaumont Livy, and my purpose is his death."
Fuck, I thought. He really does think he's in a story. "How you gonna do that?" I said.
"I don't know," he said, and he gave me a nasty, nasty smile. "The strong divination I performed at the turn of the year gave me the name of Felix Harrowgate, and the cards have brought me you. There. Now you know as much as I do."
Yeah, right. But I hadn't lost sight of him being a hocus, and I knew I couldn't push much further without getting myself in some serious trouble. "Okay. So you're looking for this Livy guy to kill him. And you don't know where he is?"