"You gotta pick a direction before we go anyplace," I said.
"Do you have a suggestion?" Mavortian said, like he wanted to hear me admit I didn't.
"Sure," I said. "St. Millefleur."
Him and Mr. Thraxios looked at each other. I don't think Felix even heard us. "Why St. Millefleur?" Mr. Thraxios said.
Powers and saints, I thought, but Bernard still hadn't showed up, so I said, "If anybody wants us bad enough to try and follow us, they'll probably figure we're heading back for Mélusine, with savers on east—along of you being Kekropian—or maybe up to Igensbeck. But we ain't got no reason to go south."
"Which is a good enough reason to try it," Mr. Thraxios said. He was giving me a funny sort of look that I couldn't quite figure out.
"And it's a big city. Bigger'n Hermione. Good for hiding, shit like that."
"How far is it?" Mavortian said.
"Depends. How're we going?"
They looked at each other, and I thought, Oh, fuck me sideways, because you could tell they hadn't even thought about that part.
"I imagine," Mavortian said, "that taking the stagecoach would be as good as leaving a letter."
"Yeah," I said. "We're gonna make an easy group to remember."
"There's nothing that says we have to go together," Bernard said from the stairs. I turned around, not being real fond of having Bernard behind me.
"Bernard," Mavortian said.
I couldn't read the look in Bernard's eyes, but I knew it was aimed at Mavortian. "There isn't," Bernard said, almost through his teeth.
"I'm going with Felix," I said, because I didn't want to watch yet another fucking fight between the two of them. "You guys do what you want."
And then they were all looking at me like I'd started barking or something. "He saved my life," I said. "And I don't know, but it looks like it fucked him up pretty bad. I owe him."
"Indeed," Mavortian said, in that way he had. "Well, contrary to Bernard's opinion, I believe there are a number of reasons why we should stay together."
Yeah, and I know what they are, I thought, but I didn't want to get into that, not with needing to clear out before anybody over at the Chimera Among the Roses noticed they had a couple of hocuses missing.
Mr. Thraxios was thinking the same, because he said, "Then let us go."
I'd been worried about Felix, but he got up when the other two hocuses did, and he followed us all just fine, out of the hotel and down to the river and across the Linlowing Bridge heading south. Nobody gave us a second look, and I got to say, I was glad to be gone.
Felix
In my dream, I am walking through the Mirador, down in the dusty halls where no one goes. I am trying to find the stairs to the Queen Madeleine Garden, except that in my dream the stairs start in Malkar's workroom, instead of from the New Hall. I don't want to go to Malkar's workroom, and I know there's another staircase somewhere, but I don't know where exactly, so I am wandering in miserable circles. Malkar's door is open, laughing at me.
Iosephinus Pompey looks at me out of a mirror and says, "There are no gardens in the Mirador. Only graveyards."
And then I am standing in the Queen Madeleine Garden, and I see that Iosephinus is right; no roses grow here now, only tombstones and mausoleums. The fountain in the middle is dry and black. It is the Boneprince, the nightmare cemetery of the Lower City, and if I stay here I will die.
I climb to the Crown of Nails; I look toward Horn Gate, the city of Mélusine writhing beneath my feet like a black, rutting beast. Horn Gate is closed, and now I know, with perfect singing certainty, that the garden, the true garden, is behind it. I struggle to open the gate, my hands throbbing and aching and the bright blood dripping from my palms. Behind me, beneath me, the whole Mirador is laughing in Malkar's voice.
The bolts screech and shriek; the gate judders open, barely far enough for me to squeeze through. I find myself again in the garden with the black, twisted trees. I remember the yellow-eyed man, who said I could be cured.
"Where am I?" I say aloud, to the trees, to the grass, to the white paths. "Please, I have to know."
In Troia, the Daughter of the Morning. In the Gardens of Nephele, where peace flows like water.
Where you can he healed.
I cannot see the speaker; I do not know the voice. But I know it is not Malkar, and I know it is speaking the truth.
I wake staring up at the moon, sailing serene and untouched above this sphere of troubles. I remember my dream; I remember the voice. I have to find the Gardens of Nephele; I have to find Troia. I cannot lie still any longer, when somewhere to the east are twisted trees with beautiful white flowers and people who look like me, who will help me.
I crawl to my feet. There are monsters sleeping around me. I do not disturb them. I can find my own way.
I start east across the dull winter grass. But I have barely gone fifty feet when I hear someone coming after me. I turn, quickly. It is one of the monsters, the fox-headed man whose eyes are silver with grief.
"Where're you going?" he says when he has come up to me.
"The Gardens of Nephele," I say. "Troia. East."
"Right now?"
"I have to. They can help me."
"Okay, but who's 'they'? How do you know them?"
"I dreamed it." I start walking again, but he catches my arm. "
Please
." I pull away from him. "I have to go."
"You can't go haring off in the middle of the night by yourself. You'll end up dead in a ditch by sunrise. Come back and wait for morning, okay?"
"But they won't let me go. They won't listen."
"Yes, they will. And I'll go with you, I promise. But not tonight."
I think I can trust him. I am tired and lonely and scared; I
want
to trust him. I follow him back to where the other monsters are still sleeping, and I lie down to wait for the sun.
Chapter 9
Mildmay
Decad and a half after I stopped Felix from walking off into the blue all on his own, we landed in this little town called Yehergod that was also a duchy. I never did get a grip on how the Empire parceled itself out, and whether the dukes in the south really answered to the Emperor, and what the Bastion had to do with any of the rest of it. Basically it didn't matter, because nobody was our friend anyway, and if you want pointless, just think about Mavortian and Bernard, arguing and arguing and arguing about whether we should go straight east, or dip kind of south, or dip kind of north, or go all the way south to the coast, or what. It got clearer and clearer to me, listening to them and watching Gideon's face getting pinched and gray, that what we were doing was stupid. And not just a little stupid, neither, but the kind or stupid where somebody ought to smack you upside the head for your own good, because you're too dumb to bring yourself in out of the rain.
Which I guess means I got to try and explain why we were doing it anyway.
Mostly it was Felix. I mean, when I'd seen him wandering off in the middle of the night and bolted after him, I hadn't missed what was going on. I don't think I ever managed to explain it so Mavortian and Gideon understood, and it was worse than useless asking Felix, because all
he'd
say was, "I dreamed it." But what he meant was there wasn't no way to stop him from going. I mean, I guess we could have tied him up and carried him to St. Millefleur and locked him in an attic or something, but otherwise… I don't even know if he knew there was the whole Empire of Kekropia between him and where he wanted to go, but I knew he didn't care. I'd figured it was about the best I could do to get him to wait for morning.
And then I'd told the others, and they hadn't believed it, even though they knew what he was talking about, which was more than I had. But Mavortian said he couldn't have dreamed
that
, and Gideon talked about how far away Troia was and how we'd never make it across Kekropia, and Bernard just sort of sneered, and finally, I said, "Look. You can't stop him from going, and I'm going with him. Nobody's got to come with us, but we don't got to stay with you, either."
Mavortian saw that I meant it, and I think what happened was he was bound and determined not to let Felix out of his sight. And maybe he figured Felix would get tired, or I was making shit up, or he could jigger things later or something. He was always thinking about his options, was Mavortian. So he said, Okay, we'll all go. And of course Bernard said that was the stupidest damn thing he'd ever heard in his life, and Gideon said he didn't care
what
the rest of us did, he wasn't going back into the Empire, and I thought he was the only one of the five of us who had his head screwed on right way 'round.
Bernard caved—Bernard
always
caved—and then it was just Mavortian and Gideon going at it like a pair of tomcats, and it turned out that Mavortian thought we really needed Gideon along, because we had to keep the Bastion from catching on that they had a Cabaline hocus wandering around like a sheep in their backyard, and apparently the only way to do that for sure was to have a Eusebian hocus sort of finessing the spells the Bastion used to keep an eye on the magic floating around the Empire. Gideon thought as how the Bastion's spells wouldn't pick up on Felix, along of him being crazy and not able to work magic, but Mavortian kept after him, and he finally gave in and admitted that he was just guessing. "Oddly enough," he said, all snarky and mad, "the problem has never arisen before." Mavortian said that wasn't good enough. I didn't know—I mean, it wasn't nothing like what the Mirador did, which I did know some about—but I frankly knew fuck-all about the Bastion, and if Mavortian said we needed Gideon, then I figured I had to believe him. I didn't want to get caught by nobody and especially not no Eusebian hocuses.
But Gideon kept saying he was sorry, but he wouldn't go. He had all sorts of reasons why none of us should go, and I could tell he was really scared, because of the way he wasn't looking at Felix. He never tried to argue that Felix didn't know what he was talking about or nothing like that, he just kept saying we couldn't cross the Empire, and we'd be strung up in a day and a half if we tried, and we should go south to St. Millefleur and maybe see if we could find some books that would let him and Mavortian figure out what kind of magic the Gardens of Nephele used and maybe they could do something for Felix that way. I think that idea was pretty lame and both Gideon and Mavortian knew it, but I ain't qualified to judge.
So they went back and forth for a while, until I guess Mavortian figured that he couldn't sweet-talk Gideon around, and then he worked a neat little piece of blackmail that tied Gideon up with a big red bow. Either Gideon helped us, Mavortian said, or Bernard would drag him to the nearest town and denounce him as a Eusebian.
And Bernard would do it. I don't know for certain if Mavortian was bluffing or not—I don't think he was—but I know solid that if he'd told Bernard to do that, Bernard would have. Gideon knew it, too. He was kind of standing there, like he was still looking for a loophole, and Mavortian got him on the backswing, with this nasty little smile on his face that I for one could have done without. He said as how Gideon shouldn't think he could go back on the deal once we were in Kekropia, because there'd be nothing easier than telling the Kekropians he was a
defector
from the Bastion, and we all knew what would happen to him then. I didn't, but I could tell from his face that Gideon did.
And it made me mad, watching Mavortian put the screws to a guy who didn't owe him nothing, so then me and Mavortian fought for a while, but he kept saying we had to have Gideon, and finally he said, "If you truly want to help your brother, and if you truly believe that he has had this fantastic dream, then believe me when I tell you that without Gideon, we are doomed to fail."
And he meant it. I didn't know if it was true, but I could tell Mavortian believed what he was saying, that he wasn't pulling this shit just because he could. And the fact of the matter was, if he said Gideon was the only guy could keep Felix safe, then I wanted Gideon along. And I couldn't help remembering that when it had been me in a bind, with the Mirador's curse trying to knot me up like a ball of yarn, Gideon's idea had been to just stand there and let me die. And whether I could see his point of view or not, that's a nasty sort of thing to remember about somebody when they ain't giving you something you want.
So I did the only thing I could square it with myself to do, which was to go over and ask Felix if he was sure about this idea. Even when I got his attention, he wouldn't say nothing except that same old song about having a dream and having to go east, but he was absolutely sure he had to do it. And if we were drawing up sides, and it kind of looked like we were, then I was on Felix's side.
And the long and the short of it is, we went east. Got across the border no sweat. I knew how the smugglers did it, and Bernard must have spent half his life oiling across borders without nobody the wiser, he was so good at it. And I got to hand it to Gideon, once Mavortian'd put the screws to him, he went ahead and did the best by us he could. I mean, he wasn't talking to nobody, and I know he wasn't sleeping much, but he was doing what Mavortian wanted, and he wasn't bitching about it neither. Unlike Bernard.
I figured out somewhere in that first decad that a lot of that was Felix. Gideon never said nothing—I mean, he wasn't talking to us, and it wasn't like there was any point in trying to tell Felix—but I saw the way he looked at Felix and the way it hurt him when Felix flinched back from him the way he did from everybody. I ain't much with the brains, but I can see what's right in front of me, even if I can't make sense of it. Gideon was in love with Felix, and I figured that made him crazier than Felix on the worst day Felix ever had. I didn't say nothing neither—because, I mean, it wouldn't help—and after I felt like I could trust Gideon not to, you know, take advantage of Felix or something, I even mostly quit worrying about it. I had plenty of other shit on my mind.