He gave me a thin-lipped, furious smile. "We will see if Lady Victoria agrees with you."
He turned and strode out of the square with the brisk arrogance of a man who had never imagined the possibility of his being in the wrong. I followed him, because his theory would only look more convincing if I did not. Behind us the fantôme waited in its dustless room, watching with the patience of a predator who always hungered yet could never starve.
Mildmay
We ended up buying tickets on the Sharcross diligence, although me and Bernard had to take seats on the roof. Mr. von Heber was mad as a wet cat about the whole thing. But the diligence would get us to Hermione in three days, and I hadn't been able to see us doing it in less than a decad, considering Mr. von Heber's normal walking speed.
The second night, in the one tiny hotel room that was all we could afford—and I'd voted for sleeping on the floor instead of sharing the bed with either of them—Mr. von Heber got his cards and his watch fob out again. Bernard rolled his eyes and went down to the bar. I stayed put. I didn't want to go drinking with Bernard, I didn't want to wander down there and find out whether I could get myself into a game of Long Tiffany, even though the money would've been nice, and I was getting interested in Mr. von Heber's cards. I can't help it sometimes.
"Whatcha looking for tonight?" I said.
He shrugged a little, shuffling. "Information. The Spire is a bad card." He flipped it out of the deck so I could see, a big black shiny needlelike thing, with this guy…
I gave the card back to Mr. von Heber. "What's with the guy?"
"The impaled man, you mean?" he said, shuffling it back into the deck.
"The guy with the spike through his guts, yeah. What's he mean?"
"I told you. The Spire is a bad card. It can mean a literal tower, but it also means a fall from a height, whether literal or figurative, the destruction of something old and valuable. It means isolation, abandonment. It is the card of the scapegoat."
"
All
them things?"
He raised an eyebrow at me. "The card also means falling prey to your own self-confidence."
"Oh. Yeah. I'm with you. But how do you know which thing it means.?"
"Well, you don't exactly. That's why reading the Sibylline is an art. He started laying the cards out, and I shut up."
I recognized the Death card when it came up, and there was the Spire again. And there was a whole bunch of other cards I didn't know, but they didn't look pretty. Mr. von Heber's frown got darker and darker, and after a while he said, "Either I'm asking the wrong question, or there's some thing extremely peculiar about the tower in Hermione."
He swept the cards up again, shuffled, flipped the Spire card out. Then he shuffled again, and again—I lost count, but I think he did a septad, like the really superstitious cardplayers do when their luck's out. Then he cut the deck and flipped a card out. It landed across the Spire card.
"Shit," I said.
"Yes," he said.
The Death card, black and gold, laid there and laughed at us.
"What's
that
mean?" I said.
"The tower is death. The tower contains death. The tower is a place of stagnation, or a place where the dead can be talked to. I don't think it means anything good, but I don't know what the cards are trying to tell me."
"D'you got some other method? I mean, I knew people who did tea leaves and shit like that."
"Tea leaves are even more obscure than the cards. Most forms of divination are." But I noticed he didn't say nothing like,
Oh, never mind, I'll try again tomorrow
. And I sure wasn't saying,
Cut this shit out
so I can get some sleep
. We'd get to Hermione tomorrow.
"I wish I knew more about this tower," Mr. von Heber said. "You've never heard
anything
?"
"Nope. Sorry."
"Why doesn't it have a wizard in it? The Mirador sends wizards out all over the place—why not one to Hermione?"
"I really don't know."
"I'm sorry. I wasn't asking you. I was just
asking
. What's the
matter
with this tower?"
I almost didn't say it, but he looked like he was really racking his brains. "Could it be a ghost or something?"
"I beg your pardon?"
My face was getting hot. "Nothing. I was just… I mean…"
"The Sibylline is certainly trying to tell me about something dead. But even a haunting wouldn't give readings like this."
"But, I mean, what else is there?"
"All kinds of things," he said, and I could tell by the way he said it that they weren't none of them nice things. "But"—he sighed all the way up from his boots—"there's another kind of divination I can try."
"You don't sound happy about it."
"I don't like automatic writing. It's a necromantic technique to start with and my teacher always said it was better left to the necromancers."
"What is it, exactly?"
"If you'll ask at the desk if I can borrow pen, ink, and paper, I'll show you."
So I went back downstairs. The gal at the desk wasn't real crazy about the whole idea, but she was even less crazy about having me hanging around all night, and she caved pretty quick. I came away with a bill of lading from last indiction, a half-full jar of rusty ink, and a seriously mangy quill. Bernard was still in the bar and not likely to be much help anyway. I went back upstairs alone.
"Mr. von Heber?"
He was laying out his cards again, and said without looking up, "You
can
call me Mavortian, you know. I shan't be offended."
"Okay. I, um…"
He looked at what I'd got and pushed his cards out of the way. "It'll do. If this is going to work, it won't take long."
"So what're you gonna do?"
"Automatic writing is one of the most direct forms of divination. The diviner goes into a trance and writes."
"Writes what?"
"That's the interesting part. If it works—and oftentimes it doesn't—one writes the answer to a question or the words closest to the shape of the pattern. Frequently, one merely writes gibberish. But it is the only form of divination I know of that produces simple words." He found a clear space on the paper and dipped the quill in the ink. "I'd appreciate it if you'd guard the door."
"Um, okay. Sure." I was just as glad to be nowhere near him. I braced my back against the door and waited.
Mavortian raised the pen and set it down on the paper. I saw him close his eyes. Then nothing happened for a really long time. I was just starting to wonder if maybe he'd missed the trance or something and just gone to sleep, when the pen jerked.
It wasn't him moving it. I can't explain how I could tell, but I could. It started scrawling across the paper, fast and hard, and my heart was up in my throat, and I was thinking he should've told me how you
stopped
doing this automatic writing shit, when his eyes came open, and the pen made this long jagged shriek across the page, tearing right through it, and then he threw the pen across the room.
And then he sat there, staring at the paper and cursing under his breath in Norvenan, until I finally figured it was okay to move and came across to look at what the pen had written.
I don't read so good, but I could see this was the same word, over and over and over again.
"What is it?" I said.
Mavortian looked at me. His face was white as white. "Fantôme," he said
Felix
Vicky believed Thaddeus. They all did. They called me saboteur and malcontent and running dog, said they should have known all along, said they had never trusted me, said I was Malkar's creature through and through. They called me deranged, delusional, hysterical, untruthful, craven, sneaking. They would not listen to me. I stared at my hands and did not let myself cry, but when Thaddeus banished me to the bedroom, I fled their hatred and their anger, lay on the bed and still did not cry, staring with hot, dry eyes at the cracks in the ceiling and listening to the fantôme in my head. It could not invade me at this distance, could not possess me as it had possessed that poor, stupid wizard, but it could feel me, it could call to me, and I knew that before long I would answer it, whether I wanted to or not.
It knew my name.
"I can't fight it alone," I said to the ceiling. And the wizards did not believe me and would not help me. They gave the fantôme more fuel, for it whispered to me that it could make them sorry. I could use its power to hurt them, and it would help me willingly. It would protect me, it said, and no one would be able to hurt me ever again. All I had to do was come to it, step back into the circle, and let it in.
"No," I said, but I heard the weakness in my own voice.
"I cannot fight it," I said again. I got up, opened the window, and climbed out onto the roof of the veranda. The fantôme exulted; inside, cold and small and wretched, I wept.
I climbed down from the veranda. The fantôme pulled at me like true north to a compass needle, but I still had enough strength to resist. I started toward the Linlowing Bridge.
The streets were deserted, abandoned to the darkness. I did not make swift progress, for the fantôme was dragging at me with all the strength it had. But I remembered the look in the black-haired wizard's eyes, and I kept going. Even the cold death of water would be better than becoming that.
No, screamed the fantôme, he was a fool! He didn't understand' Things would be different. I was different, more worthy, better able to appreciate the gifts the fantôme could offer.
"I am not," I said. "I am
not
."
The fantôme told me it was the envy and hatred of those around me that made me think so. It could see their small, petty minds. It knew differently, it said. It saw my worth, my beauty. It would love me, it promised, love me and protect me and allow nothing to hurt me.
"You will devour me," I said. And I almost sobbed with gratitude to discover myself at the top of the steps. The river was near, and the end of pain.
But I will end your pain! the fantôme protested. Trust me, Felix. Trust my love.
"No," I said, descending the stairs with both hands on the rail. And I kept saying it, under my breath, a prayer, a mantra, swinging my denial like a sword at every promise, every seeming kindness the fantôme offered.
I came to the bridge and began to climb. I passed the first pair of supporting giants, then the second. As the great, patient heads of the third pair emerged from the darkness, I knew I was at the highest point of the bridge. If I jumped from here, the river would kill me even if the fall did not. I climbed onto the parapet and then, on hands and knees, edged out onto the giant's head.
I could hear the river, although I could not see it. The fantôme's entreaties in my head were replaced by the memory of Keeper's hard, booming voice, his hard hand on the back of my neck. I remembered what it was like to be held down underwater, fighting not to breathe, not to struggle, because he wouldn't let you up until he felt you'd submitted to him. I remembered the children he had drowned, maybe by accident, maybe not: Rhais, Marco, Ursy, Paulie, Leo, Belinda… Keeper didn't care. There were always more.
I forced myself forward another few inches, until my fingers felt the slope of the giant's forehead. And then I froze, crouched on this great stone head in the dark, listening to the terrible river somewhere beneath me. It is not the Sim, I said to myself. It will not be black and bitter. It will be kind. But I did not believe myself. I could not move, neither back toward the fan-tome nor forward toward the memory of Keeper's hand and the black reek of the Sim. I cursed myself for a craven fool, but I could not move.
I saw the light approaching from the north end of the bridge; I knew it was too much to hope that this might be some late-night wanderer who would not notice me, and so I was not surprised when the light stopped, a few feet shy of the giant, and a voice said, "Felix?"
But I had not expected it would be Gideon's voice.
"Gideon?" I said, my own voice shaking and shrill.
"Felix, please don't."
"Why not? You heard them—I'm traitorous, murderous, evil. Why shouldn't I jump?"
"They're wrong. I know they're wrong. You were trying to tell them something important, and they would not listen. What was it?"
"You said you wouldn't help!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't… I think I didn't understand." The light came a little closer. "Felix,
please
."
I could not answer him.
"Let me make amends for not believing you. Let me listen. Please."
"It…" My voice choked off into nothing, and I had to try again. "It's called a fantôme. It—"
But Gideon said something violent in Kekropian that sounded like it was both obscene and blasphemous, and then in Marathine, perfectly calmly, "I will flay Thaddeus with a dull knife."
"You believe me?"
"Yes. I certainly don't believe that if you were sowing dissension,
that
is the story you would pick. You're a Cabaline. Do you even know what a fantôme is?"
"It's evil. I felt it. I still feel it. It talks to me. It wants me to come to it."
"Oh, I'm sure it does. I can ward you from it, if you'll come back on the bridge."
"You can?"
"Yes. I promise. It will take no more than a minute. Please, Felix, let me help you."
"Will you talk to Thaddeus?"
"Oh, I'll do better than that. I'll talk to Lady Victoria."
"Vicky won't listen."
"Unlike Thaddeus, she isn't a fool. And she does not… never mind. Felix, I
believe
you. Trust me."
"I can't," I said, my fingers throbbing with their pressure against the stone giant's head. "I can't."
Gideon cursed in Kekropian, then said quietly, "The White-Eyed Lady must want you very badly. But she lies to you, Felix. She is not a kind lover and her embrace will not dull the pain you suffer. And her betrayal will never end. I realize that I betrayed you yesterday, although I did not mean to, and I am sorry. But that doesn't have to be the end between us. Do you understand me?" He stopped and then said, even more quietly, "Felix, you don't have to be alone."