"I…" But the words were gone. I had to lower myself flat onto the giant's head before I could move, and then I edged backwards, one horrible inch at a time, until my toes touched the parapet. I all but fell back onto the sidewalk. Gideon was there, warm and green and smelling slightly of cloves but not at all of bitterness and death, and I could hear no voices in my head at all.
Chapter 8
Mildmay
"What's a fantôme?"
"It's a type of ghost," Mavortian said. "At least, as most people understand the word. Necromancers would classify it as a spirit."
"What's the difference?"
"As I understand it—and I am not a necromancer—a ghost is more like a memory. A spirit is… aware."
"Oh. Kethe. That's bad, ain't it?"
"It doesn't have to be. But a fantôme is a spirit that has been invited to Partake of materiality."
"Come again?"
"Some appalling imbecile let it possess him."
"So there's some guy wandering around Hermione—"
"No. The cards say something
dead
. Some guy, as you put it, died while possessed by a fantôme."
"But it's still there? I mean, when he died, wouldn't it…"
"Unfortunately, no. Fantômes are raised with a spell, and they must be laid with a spell. Balance. With its vehicle dead, it would simply haunt its place of conjuration until…"
The look on his face was like a guy who's opened a door and found a pack of ghouls on the other side. "What?" I said.
"Until it found a suitable… host."
"I ain't following."
"It will want a wizard."
"Well, you ain't gonna go offer yourself or nothing, are you?"
"I'm not worried about me. But remember that we are chasing Felix Harrowgate."
"Yeah, I got that."
"The cards and the other divinations I've done say that he is in Hermione. Where there is a tower. Where, I would bet large sums of money I do not currently possess, the fantôme was conjured."
"Yeah. But still. I mean, nobody's using the tower or nothing—"
"If Felix Harrowgate, who we know is crazy and possibly a traitor, is in Hermione, I would be shocked to discover he is alone."
"You think there's hocuses in Hermione?"
"More than that. I think I know what they're doing there."
I waited, and he said, "The tower. They're planning to use the tower."
"Why?"
"Not being a Cabaline wizard, I really couldn't say. But they have a fondness for towers, and this must be the only tower within a week's ride of Mélusine. And clearly they don't know there's a spirit trapped in it."
"Won't they feel it or something?"
"They're Cabaline," he said and laughed, although not like there was anything funny. "They don't believe in ghosts."
We got to Hermione about the tenth hour of the day. We spent the rest of the afternoon hunting around for hocuses. I could think of things I'd've rather been doing, starting with getting a pair of pliers and pulling my own toenails out, but I'd hired on to Mavortian's crusade, and something that scared him as bad as this thing he said was in the tower wasn't nothing to wish on nobody.
The second hotel we tried, the desk clerk had heard there were hocuses in Hermione and was willing to say so. He said they were stayingin a place called the Crimson Ape. The Crimson Ape was a fleabag, and the gal there said as how she'd heard the hocuses were staying at the Dragon's Hoard, what passed in Hermione for a flash hotel. So we hiked back across half Hermione—we saw the wizard's tower over the roofs, and Mavortian made us go the long way round, to be sure we didn't get nowhere near it—and at the Dragon's Hoard, they said there weren't no hocuses on the books, but we could try at the Chimera Among the Roses for our friends.
"Sun'll be down soon," Bernard said when we came out on the sidewalk.
"So it will," Mavortian said.
"I'm just wondering how much longer this is going to take."
"I don't know, Bernard. Until we find them."
They both looked at me. "What?" I said.
"Nothing," said Mavortian. "Which way?"
"This way," I said, although I wanted to point out that I was just as much a stranger here as them and why didn't somebody else play guide. But I'd listened to the desk clerk's directions, and I knew where to go, and I wasn't going to help Bernard pick a fight.
The Chimera Among the Roses was only another four blocks east. It was two stories tall and sprawly—you could see the way the city had kind of snuck up behind it while it wasn't looking. I liked it.
This time the desk clerk got this sort of awed, nervous, unhappy look on his face and said, "Oh, yes. Is it Lady Victoria you wish to speak to, or Lord Shannon?"
Mavortian's eyebrows shot up, but he covered like a champ, saying, "I didn't know Lord Shannon was with them," in this way that said as how somebody—somebody stupid like maybe Bernard or me—must have forgot to tell him. "I believe my business is with Lady Victoria."
"Yes, sir," said the desk clerk. "If you'll step into the parlor, I'll send somebody to fe… to ask if she is available." And the way he looked around told me a couple things. Firstly, that he didn't have nobody to send except himself, and secondly that the Chimera Among the Roses had never had flash types staying with them before and the desk clerk, for one, was praying hard they never would again.
So we went into the parlor, and Mavortian sat down with a sigh of relief, and Bernard sat down next to him, and I went and looked out the window and tried to think of a good excuse for leaving suddenly—something that Mavortian wouldn't see through like it was window glass I mean, so that I wouldn't get him asking me what was really wrong. Not to mention something that wouldn't make Bernard laugh himself sick.
I hadn't thought of nothing by the time a voice said, "I believe you wished to speak to me?" and I turned around and got my first close-up look at Victoria Teveria. She was tall, square-shouldered, dark-complected. She had the Teverius jaw, which was square and heavy, and heavy eyebrows besides. She wasn't bad-looking, but she just naturally looked like a fairly low-grade goddess fixing to smite somebody. And it didn't make me feel better to realize the blond with her—the guy about twice as pretty as her and not quite as tall—had to be Shannon Teverius, only child of the Golden Bitch.
Fuck, I thought, because there wasn't nothing else I could do, and waited to see how Mavortian was going to play it.
He hauled himself up out of the chair and made the best bow he could with the canes and all. He said, "My lady, thank you for seeing us."
"I am rather busy," she said, and I realized that some of the thundercloud on her face was left over from something else, "so if you could be quick, Mr. er… ?"
"Mavortian von Heber," said Mavortian. "I am a wizard of the Fres-sandran school."
"Diviners," Lady Victoria said, her eyebrows going up a little.
"Yes, my lady. Do you, as a good Cabaline, deny utterly the validity of my methods?"
She thought about that, and I noticed the way she didn't mind no more about how much of her time he took up, now that she knew he was a hocus, too. "The Fressandran school, so far as I know, does not promulgate heresy." Something that maybe she thought was a smile jerked at one corner of her mouth. "Is that the safe-conduct you desire?"
"It will do. Lady Victoria, I have come to warn you."
"To warn me? Of what?"
"There is," Mavortian started, but he didn't get no farther, because right then Lord Shannon looked at me—not only noticing I was in the room, I mean, but actually looked at my face—and just about passed out.
"Vicky!" he said and clutched at her arm.
"What?"
"That, that—who
are
you?"
"Me?" I said, and now Lady Victoria was staring at me, and I saw her sign herself.
"Is there a problem?" Mavortian said.
"No," said Lady Victoria, although she was lying and we all knew it. "There is… the resemblance is… Shannon, do you think it can possibly be a coincidence?"
"No," said Lord Shannon. "Is your hair dyed?"
"I wish it was," I said. Mavortian got it, and gave me half a grin.
"Is this some kind of trick?" Lady Victoria said, her voice like a carving knife.
Mavortian said, "I am afraid that none of us has the slightest idea of what you mean."
"Let's have this out right now," Lady Victoria said. "Go get Felix."
Lord Shannon went. Mavortian said, "Felix Harrowgate?"
"As if you didn't know," she said, and you could have withered ripe corn with the look she gave him. "I was frankly prepared to dismiss Thaddeus's theories as paranoia and hysteria, but this is really more than I can stomach. How much is Malkar paying you?"
"Malkar?" said Mavortian, and I'd never heard him sound quite so much like he'd had a fast frying pan upside the head.
She heard it, too, and she must have known how hard it is to fake total
what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about confusion, because now
she
was looking confused. She said, "But it
can't
be coincidence, you showing up with someone… and what was it you wanted to see me about?"
In Mavortian's place I would've been tempted to try a lie and known better, and he did, too. He said, perfectly straightforward, "There is a fantôme in the wizard's tower."
"And you ask me to believe this isn't a trick!"
"I assure you, there is no trick involved," Mavortian said, and that's when Lord Shannon got back.
He wasn't alone. There were two medium-sized Kekropian guys with him, and, powers, if looks could kill, them two would've taken each other out in a heartbeat. There was somebody taller behind them, and then one of the Kekropians—the one who looked like the brother of all the smugglers I'd done business with for Keeper—he grabbed the guy behind and dragged him forward, and I understood why Lady Victoria and Lord Shannon looked like they'd been seeing ghosts.
It wasn't my face. I mean, it
was
—same corpse-white skin, same Wanted eyebrows, same mouth, even with my scar—but his cheekbones Weren't as sharp as mine, and nobody'd ever broken his nose. And his eyes… I'd made a hex sign before I even realized what my hands were doing, because he was skew-eyed. His left eye was yellow, like an owl's, like a Sunling's out of the stories. His right eye was pale, cloudy blue, and it didn't even look human. And that was how I knew this guy that looked like me was Felix Harrowgate.
After a second, I started taking in the other details. He was half a foot taller than me, and his hands—long-fingered like mine—well, the Mi-rador's tattoos are gaudy. They start at the knuckles and go all the way to the elbows. He was a hocus, all right. You couldn't miss that a mile away in the rain. And his hair, wild and curly and way badly cut, was even darker red than mine.
I didn't quite know what to make of the way he was staring at me, and I was even less sure of what to
make of
him
. I mean, here he was, the monster who broke the Virtu, and he didn't look like a monster. He looked scared half to death, to be honest, and I thought it was the other hocuses he was scared of. And that made me think maybe the Lower City hadn't got the whole story. Like always.
"I don't s'pose you dye your hair," I said.
He flinched at the sound of my voice.
"Hey," I said. "It's okay." I'd finally placed the way he was looking at me. He looked like a little kid who'd just been bought by a thief-keeper, like there was nothing familiar in what he saw and probably somebody was going to hit him soon. I'd seen that look a lot, but never on the face of a grown man, and I didn't care what he'd done, nobody should have to have that look on their face. "I mean, I hope it's okay."
"Felix," said Lady Victoria, "who is this man?"
He moved his flinch-look from me to her, then back to me. "I don't know," he said. His voice was higher than mine, which I totally hadn't expected, and he talked way flash, vowels and all. Kethe, I thought, because I could see how scared he was of them, and I hadn't thought hocuses got scared of each other. I mean, except for people like Porphyria Levant and Brinvillier Strych, but it's only common sense to be scared of people like them.
"What about this wizard?" Lady Victoria said, with a gesture at Ma-vortian.
Felix Harrowgate's weird eyes turned to Mavortian, but I don't think he saw him. I don't know what he was seeing, but I bet it looked like nightmares. "I don't know," he said again.
"He also says that there is a fantôme in the tower," said Lady Victoria. "I congratulate you on the coordination of your stories."
"Did you see a fantôme in the tower?" Mavortian said, pouncing like a cat on the first thing in the whole conversation that made any sense.
Felix nodded, but I saw the way his shoulders hunched, and I knew he was expecting to get hit.
Lady Victoria snorted, and the other Kekropian, the one who looked like a cross between a bank clerk and a choirboy, said, "My lady, I beg your pardon, but when do you imagine this 'story' was hatched?"
"What?" Lady Victoria said.
"When has Felix had time to talk to anyone long enough to invent a story like this one? And why do you persist in calling it a story when we have done spells to prove the thing's existence?"
"Eusebian spells," she said darkly.
"My lady," the Kekropian said, like he was getting ready to say something with knives in it, and Mavortian said quickly, "I assure you—and I will swear any oath you like—that I have never met Felix Harrowgate before, and I do not know the other person you mentioned."
"Then what about… what
is
his name?"
"Mildmay," Mavortian said.
She waited a moment. "Just 'Mildmay'?"
"Yes, m'lady," I said. I don't care to be talked about like a piece of furniture.