I sat up and twisted around. Felix was still kneeling next to me, his left hand palm up. I could see the eye tattooed on his palm through the piece of glass he was holding, but it was all bubbly and wavy and weird. That was a piece of glass something pretty fucking nasty had happened to.
Felix said, very carefully, like he had to double-check every word to make sure it came out in Marathine, "You'll want to keep this on your person."
"Like Miriam's box," I said. "Okay."
"It has a… radius of influence, but I don't know how wide it is."
"Let's not find out then," I said. I held out my hand. After a second, he sort of woke up and tipped the glass into my palm. It was a little warmer than it should've been. Kethe. Hocus stuff. But I shoved it in my pocket, because I didn't particularly want to die, whether I deserved it or not, and I really didn't want to do it that way.
"Can you walk?" Mavortian said. "Because I think it might be for the best if we went back to the River Horse, quietly, now, before anyone becomes—"
"Unbecomingly curious," Mr. Thraxios said. "Felix and I should go back up and display ourselves to Thaddeus lest he come looking." He looked down at Felix and said, "He will, you know."
"Yes," Felix said. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then got up.
He looked worse than I felt, and I got to my feet in a hurry because I knew I had to say it, and I didn't want to do it from the floor. "Thanks," I said. "I mean"—and I looked from him to Mr. Thraxios—"I would've understood if you'd let me die. So… thanks."
Mr. Thraxios kind of waved it away. Felix shook his head, like he was trying to clear it, and said, "Be careful. There are still thorns."
"Okay," I said. I couldn't help giving Mr. Thraxios a look, because wherever Felix's head was at, it didn't look like it was no nice place to be. Mr. Thraxios gave me a nod, and I figured I'd have to take that for
I'll look after him
, because he was already dragging Felix toward the door, and I didn't know how to say none of what was bothering me.
We waited a couple minutes after they'd gone, and then left ourselves, sauntering down the stairs like there wasn't nothing wrong in the world, except that I wasn't letting go of the banister, and Mavortian and Bernard kept giving me these looks like they thought I was going to burst into flames or something. But it was good enough to get us by the soldiers, and that was good enough for me.
Felix
They were all staring at us as we came back into the workroom, bright unblinking eyes like hunting owls.
Figure of speech, I said to myself, and the room was
not
full of bird-headed monsters. Just Stephen and Shannon and six Cabalines who hated me. For a weak, craven moment, I wished the throbbing darkness in my head would swallow me again, so that I would not have to understand why I was hated.
"Well?" Vicky said.
I could only be thankful that Gideon knew how to answer her, that he remembered our quickly fabricated lies and had at his fingertips the information we had allegedly disappeared in order to acquire. He crossed the room to the others, talking about the phases of the moon and the energies of the earth. I stepped back and sat down against the wall, welcoming the feel of the cold stones through my shirt.
"And what of the Fressandran and his entourage?"
"Messire von Heber seemed dubious as to the esteem in which he might be held. He and his thugs have gone back to their hotel."
I bit back a protest. Whether Mildmay was or was not a thug, I would do neither him nor myself any good by defending him now. Even as it was, both Shannon and Thaddeus were giving me suspicious looks, as if they could read in my face that Gideon was lying.
"He must have been tremendously thorough," Shannon said. "You've been gone such a long time."
"Messire von Heber is a most learned wizard," Gideon said stiffly.
"I can't imagine he had much to teach
you
. And what about Felix? Was he your practice dummy?"
"Shannon," Stephen growled, as I felt my whole face burn. Shannon couldn't have indicated more clearly that he thought me worthless and irrelevant if he'd hired the chorus of the Opéra Ophide. "Can this wait?"
"Of course," Shannon said; I did not like the way he and Gideon were glaring at each other.
"Thank you," Stephen said with heavy irony. He looked around, the scowl on his face almost comfortingly familiar. "I suppose you'll all have to hear this sooner or later, so it makes sense to say it just the once."
I had always been amazed at the contrast between Stephen's formal speeches as Lord Protector and his habitual terse and graceless discourse. There had been a very cruel engraving that had circulated when he first succeeded to the Protectorate, comparing him to a bear that had been taught to waltz. Like most caricatures, this one's cruelty lay in its deadly accuracy.
Stephen took a deep breath. "Envoys from Vusantine are on their way here."
"
Here
?" Vicky and Ferdinand Emarthius protested in chorus.
"Here. Giancarlo scryed to them from Sauvage. He sent Parsanthia Ward back to let me know while he recovered from the two-week migraine."
"But why
here
?" Vicky said.
"Because," said Stephen through his teeth, "the wizards of the Coeurterre don't want to go to Mélusine."
The silence darkened the room to indigo. Gideon walked across the room to stand beside me; I looked up at him gratefully, but he was watching the other wizards.
Vicky said, "Stephen, what do you think—"
"I think we've got the Kekropians licking their chops on our doorstep. Given my choice, I'd rather be in bed with the Tibernians."
"A noble sentiment," Shannon said, sneering at me.
"Dammit, Shannon, will you shut up?" Shannon looked away from Stephen's anger with a muttered apology.
"Lord Stephen," Chloë Wicker said, "I know that we have had little progress to report to you, but we have—"
"Oh, it's not
your
fault," Stephen said. "I'm not displeased… that is, I think you all have done tremendously well. The Tibernians aren't taking over from
you
."
"Then what
are
they doing?" Thaddeus said. I could see red spikes of anger all around him; he would never have spoken to Stephen in that way if he hadn't been infuriated, although I did not know what had angered him.
Stephen preferred honest intransigence to sycophancy. He said, "Money. They are providing money, so that we can rebuild. In return, we are letting the Coeurterre examine the damage."
"We're
what
?" Vicky said.
"It was the best Giancarlo could do," Stephen said, matching her glare for glare. "I'm not going to bankrupt the Protectorate for this, and I am
not
going crawling to Elvenner Packer for a loan."
"You'd rather go crawling to Aeneas Antipater?"
"Yes."
Shannon nervously, tactfully, cleared his throat. Stephen looked up at toe watching Cabalines, none of them members of the Curia, and growled at Vicky, "Let's talk about this later."
As we returned to the Chimera Among the Roses, I could feel myself eroding. I had weighed the cost of saving Mildmay's life and accepted it freely, but that did not make the slow crumbling into darkness any easier to bear. I stood by the window in the private parlor, staring blindly into the hotel's back courtyard, gray and drowning in rain. Stephen and Vicky had gone, pointedly, for a walk. The wizards were arguing thaumaturgy in the front parlor, which the hotelkeeper had surrendered without a murmur of protest. He was trailing gold clouds of glory at the mere idea of having the Lord Protector of Marathat gracing his establishment, and he would have given up far more than his public parlor to keep that honor.
I heard voices and turned, but I did not have a chance to escape before the door opened and Shannon came in, followed by his guard lieutenant. Shannon's eyes were as brilliant as beacon fires, and the colors around the lieutenant were coruscating gold and rose. I knew why they had chosen the private parlor, and I wanted, more than anything else, to run. But I stood there, frozen, while Shannon's brilliant eyes looked me up and down, his unforgiving anger burning around him. I could feel him sorting and discarding, looking for the words that would wound me most. Once, I would have been able to strike first and harder—Shannon did not think well on his feet—but now I just stood dumbly, waiting for my annihilation.
The lieutenant looked between us anxiously and said, "My lord, should I—"
"Don't be silly," Shannon said, and his gaze caught mine. I looked down and away; I couldn't meet his eyes. "Felix was just leaving to find his Kekropian, weren't you, Felix?"
He didn't need knife-edged words. He did it all with the tone of his voice—that casual, contemptuous familiarity that didn't even care enough to be annoyed. I meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.
"Yes, my lord," I said in a bare mumble and fled the room, my shoulders hunched against Shannon's mocking laughter.
I stumbled up the stairs to the dubious sanctuary of the bed that was dubiously mine. As I went, I saw the shadows writhing and blooming' I knew that Shannon had, at long last, hurt me more cruelly than I had hurt him.
And my longed-for illusion of security was shattered to pieces before I even got through the bedroom door. Gideon was on his knees by the far bed, throwing things into a bag.
"What?" I said, stopping where I was with one hand still on the doorknob. "What's wrong?"
"Those envoys from Vusantine," Gideon said.
"Oh," I said. It was getting harder to hear him; my ears were filling with the roars and booming of the monsters.
"They're going to want to talk to you."
The thought made me want to sit down where I was and howl. "But I've already told the Curia everything I know!"
"Not like that," Gideon said grimly. "I think we need to get out of town."
"What? But we—"
"
You
broke the Virtu, Messire Harrowgate.
You
were the instrument of the Bastion wreaking havoc on the Mirador. I don't believe anyone coming here from Tibernia is going to care very much for elaborate explanations of why those things aren't your fault."
"Oh," I said. I felt like he'd punched me. "But I don't—"
"No, don't worry. I'm not staying, either."
"You haven't done anything wrong."
"I'm Kekropian. Don't you think that's enough?"
"But, Gideon, they won't—"
"Felix," he said, deliberately and slowly, "they are going to be looking for scapegoats. You're going to be their first choice. But they are also going to be looking very much askance at anyone who came from the Bastion in the last year, and there are certain… let us merely say that I do not want to discuss my past with our learned colleagues from the Coeurterre. Is that all right with you?"
"Gideon, I didn't mean—"
"Come on." He stood up, slung the bag over one shoulder, and walked Past me out the door.
I couldn't move; I couldn't think. My head was filling with darkness; the pain was beginning to unroll itself behind my eyes. And I could hear things, terrible things, whispering and whimpering to themselves in the corners.
A hand closed around my wrist like a vise. I looked up into greenness, sharp like daggers. "
Come on
," Gideon said and dragged me without ceremony down the stairs.
Mildmay
So we made it back to the River Horse, and I fell on the bed and slept like a dead thing for I don't know, maybe two hours, maybe three, and then Bernard was thumping on my door, and I felt like he'd been thumping on me the whole time I'd been asleep. Kethe, I ached, and when I say I crawled out of bed, that's exactly what I mean. It took me two tries to get upright again, and I was hating every minute of it.
"What?" I said at Bernard, hanging on the doorframe to keep myself from hitting the floor again.
"New problem. We're leaving town."
"Oh, for fuck's sake. What is it
this
time?"
"Do I
look
like I know?" He didn't. He looked mad enough to spit nails. "All I know is, your nutcase brother and that Kekropian fellow are downstairs, and they talked to Mavortian, and he says we're leaving today, before they close the city gates. Pack your things and let's hoof it."
I didn't have much in the way of "things," so I made it downstairs before Bernard, even taking the stairs in this sort of horrible slow wobble. And like he'd said, Mavortian and Felix and Mr. Thraxios were all sitting in the lobby. Mavortian and Mr. Thraxios looked about ready to start chewing their fingernails. I didn't blame Bernard for calling Felix a nutcase. He looked at me when I went over to them, but I don't know what he was seeing. I don't think it was me.
"What's going on?" I said, sort of generally.
Mavortian looked at Mr. Thraxios, who said, "The reason the Lord Protector appeared in Hermione today is that an embassy from Vusantine is riding to meet him here."
"Okay," I said, "but—"
Mavortian said, "Messire Thraxios believes—rightly in my opinion—that both the Cabalines and the envoys are going to be looking for someone convenient to blame."
"Oh," I said and looked at Felix, who was staring down at his hands.
"Exactly," said Mavortian. " 'Oh.' "
"Foreign wizards are also likely to be regarded with suspicion," Mr. Thraxios said, "and I can only imagine that you would prefer
not
to attract the attention of anyone involved with the Mirador."
"Bull's-eye," I said. "So we're bailing?"
They both looked blank.
"Clearing out."
"Yes," Mavortian said.
"Whereto?"
They looked blanker.
"We hadn't quite," Mr. Thraxios began at the same time Mavortian said, "It's a difficult matter to—" They both broke off and nobody got a sentence finished.