Dmitri was standing there, watching, and he said, dry as salt, "You said this man is your brother?"
I don't blush as easy as Felix, but I felt myself go brick-red. Because right about then I came out of my cold snap and it hit me—the way it always did, later—just how I'd gone about getting the job done.
And how the fuck did I explain any of it to Dmitri and the rest of the
Morskaiakrov's
crew, because they were all there now, standing and staring with their pale witchy eyes, waiting to hear what I'd say.
I said, "He ain't quite right in the head," and they all snorted and giggled because of course they done figured that bit out for their own selves. I was feeling worse and worse and stupider and stupider, but I kept going; "He's been hurt in his mind. That's why we're trying to find this Nephele place, to see if the people there can help him."
"The celebrants of Nephele are very wise," said an older guy with big streaks of gray in the red. He hadn't been on the beach, and I didn't know his name. "But what happened to your brother, to hurt him in his mind?"
"I don't know. I ain't a hocus."
Dmitri and the older guy kind of looked at each other, and I dragged out from somewhere the polite Kekropian word for "wizard."
If anything, their look got more squiggle-eyed, and Dmitri said, "Is your brother a wizard?"
Kethe, here it was. The question I'd been praying against for what felt like forever. And I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how these guys felt about hocuses. I didn't know if they knew the Mirador's tattoos when they saw them, or if they even knew what the Mirador was. And I ain't a good liar. I just ain't. And besides, the thing about committing yourself to a lie is that mostly you end up in twice the trouble, 'cause truth is like a whirlwind and you can't keep it in a box.
So I kind of stood there, not knowing what to say and wondering if I should just jump overboard now and save us all the bother. And after a minute, Dmitri said, "Vasili is our weather-witch."
Which I wasn't sure actually helped any, but it meant they'd already got their answer. "Yeah," I said. "But I ain't. I'm just annemer."
They kind of digested it for a minute, and I remembered and said in a hurry, "He can't work magic or nothing." I'd said it too fast and had to repeat myself, but they definitely looked happier about the whole thing after that.
And they were real nice about cramming us into their sleeping quarters. Dmitri asked if I thought a door with a lock would be a good idea, and I allowed as how it might, and so he moved all his shit out of his cabin—that being the only door with a lock on the whole ship—and I could lock Felix in there when I couldn't keep an eye on him and not have to worry. At least not as much.
And mostly, I got to admit, I was too tired to worry. The more I carried around that piece of glass, the more it seemed like I wasn't never going to sleep again. And I thought it was getting worse. I hadn't been sure, crossing Kekropia, because, you know, the more you think about not being able to sleep, the more you lay there with your eyes open. But now I was going two, three nights in a row with no sleep at all. And then the fourth night I'd sleep like a dead thing for maybe four hours, and then be wide-awake again. I didn't miss the irony of the fact that the best sleep I'd had in decads was the night we spent at Nera, and I was guessing that hadn't been natural, neither.
I would've liked to ask Felix about it, but that wasn't going to happen. Once he quit being too pissed off to see straight, he just went scared. I couldn't tell if it was me or the ocean or the Merrows or what, but getting any sense out of him would've been like squeezing blood out of a stone. And like I said, I couldn't hardly look at him for remembering the shitty thing I'd done. So I made sure he was eating and taking care of himself okay, and other than that I just left him alone. He didn't cause no trouble.
Felix
The room is small and dark and smells of salt water and excrement and rot. It pitches and tosses, and I know that I am on the ocean. Keeper comes in at intervals, but he does not seem interested in me; I am grateful. I miss my fox-headed brother. Keeper has killed him, as he killed Joline and Leo and Rhais and Pammy, and my brother's bones lie bleaching in the grass of Nera.
I want to kill Keeper, but I am so frightened of him. I know I cannot kill him; he will hurt me or throw me in the terrible ocean and laugh as I drown.
But I can't get rid of the anger. It circles endlessly around the room like a bat made of old umbrellas, crawling into the corners when Keeper comes in, but always sailing out again as soon as he locks the door behind him. It attacked me at Nera and again on the beach, enveloping Keeper and eras-ing him as it flung itself at me. I can't remember what happened after it trapped its musty, peppery wings around me; I hope I did not hurt any of the small bearlike monsters, for they are not to blame. I watch the anger circling and hope that it will not engulf me again.
I think it is getting bigger.
Mildmay
The thing I liked best about the Merrows was how they were all absolutely gone on stories. That's what they did when they weren't climbing around in the rigging like a bunch of smart-ass squirrels—they told stories, first one guy, then another, and I listened with my ears flapping. 'Cause I'm a story hound in the worst way myself, and these were all new to me.
I heard about the star-crossed love of Quenivar and Marden, the voyage of the
Seawrack
, Ilpherio's quest for-the Singing Stone, the feud of Yventhai and Kharmelian, and like a double septad more. I can't even remember all the names. Seemed like the Merrows had been collecting stories from everybody they ran into since forever. And I listened and listened as they went round the crew, and everybody told a story, and somewhere around the start of the third decad, Yevgeni looked over at me and said, "Hey, Scarface, you tell us a story?"
And they all perked up like they were waiting for me to make a fool out of myself again, but I said, "Sure, if you want."
They sat there looking like they'd been hit upside the head with a dead fish for a minute, then Ilia burst out laughing and said, "Come, then, and tell us a story from your Marathat," rolling the "r" out to make it sound silly.
"Okay," I said. I'd kind of been half-hoping they'd ask me and half-praying they wouldn't for a good decad and a half, so I had a story all saddled up and ready to go. I told them about Julien Tinderbox, the fox, and the second daughter of Time. Last time I'd told this story, I hadn't known how hocuses sounded, but now all I had to do was listen to Felix in my head, and I knew how to make Julien Tinderbox and all the other flash people talk. And I made the vixen Grief sound like me.
I ain't going to pretend it was the best story they'd ever heard or nothing, but it was okay, and they were
all happy because it was one they'd never heard before. And I think that was when they finally quit with the teasing. I mean, they still called me "Scarface" and everything, but I didn't feel quite so much like a dartboard.
And they were nice guys. I didn't fit in with them and we all knew it, but even when they were teasing pretty bad, they never shut me out, and they could've, easy. Things could've been way worse, and I reminded myself to be grateful for what I had. Small favors.
It was still tough, though, and the nights were the worst. I hadn't liked to tell them about the whole not-sleeping thing, along of
really
not wanting to discuss the Mirador's curse. So when it was time for bed, I went into Dmitri's cabin that I was sharing with Felix and locked the door and waited for morning.
Mostly Felix acted like I wasn't there, but, powers, I made any sudden move, and he'd be staring at me like I was a snake or something. He wasn't sleeping much, neither. So we'd sit there and not do nothing and not say nothing, and sometimes he'd fall asleep and sometimes I would, but mostly it was just us sitting.
That's the sort of situation where you end up doing a lot more thinking than you wanted. And what happened to me was I got way fucking homesick. I sat there in that cramped little room and remembered Mélusine. I thought about the Cheaps and my rooms in Midwinter and the courtyard of Min-Terris's. I wondered how Cardenio was doing, and I worked out all these long speeches to tell him I was sorry I'd acted like an asshole the last time I saw him. I mean, they were like five times longer than anything I'd ever actually
say
. But they helped. And I kind of prayed—although Kethe ain't much on answering prayers and I mostly don't figure nobody else cares—that Margot was okay, and her little Badgers, and anybody who might have got in the way when the Dogs came calling.
And I thought about Ginevra. I'd been doing better with that, between Mavortian and Felix and the rest of the excitement. I mean, it hadn't ever exactly
stopped
, if you get me, but it hadn't been front and center all the fucking time and it hadn't hurt quite so fucking much. But now my head was full of her—her face, her voice, her perfume, the way she looked when she was pissed off, the way her face changed when she laughed. Some of it was going cloudy, but that just made it worse. Keeper laughed at me in my head for being so torn up over this girl I couldn't even remember right. Keeper'd always kind of sneered at me for being soft and a sissy, and I figured she'd been on to something after all. Wallowing in it, Milly-Fox, I told myself. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. But that didn't get Ginevra out of my head. Didn't seem like nothing ever would.
Felix
I wake up thinking I have been buried alive. I am in a dark, enclosed space that reeks of decay, and for a moment I cannot think of anything it can be save a mausoleum. Then I feel the world sway beneath me and realize it is worse: I am on a ship.
I lie still, trying to breathe shallowly in order not to vomit, and struggle to remember how I came here, to this non-place that cannot be mapped or marked or known. I remember Nera; I remember the maze-and the dead people and the rain. But after that everything is darkness, with only lightning flashes of pain and fear. And now this room like a coffin.
I remember waking up like this once before, in the Mirador with the corpse and the snake nearby. I remember talking to a ghost boy in a maze—no, not a maze, a crypt. The maze was in Nera, itself a necropolis, and now I am awake and alone in a tomb.
I mean a ship cabin.
I get up, discovering that I have to keep my head bowed in order not to brain myself on the ceiling. The stench seems worse now that I am standing up, or perhaps it's merely that I'm using more air. I am afraid to move, afraid of falling into the ocean, or walking into the embrace of a corpse, afraid that there is something waiting for me in this reeking darkness.
I don't know how long I stand there, afraid to move but unwilling to lie down again, to become like a corpse myself. Presently there are glowing lines in the darkness, the outlines of a door. I realize that someone is approaching my tomb with a lantern.
I sit on the bed, a position that looks less foolish than standing with my head tilted like a parrot, and watch the door, hoping that the monster will be kind.
The door opens with a flood of lamplight. I bring one hand up to shield my dazzled eyes, and the monster says, "Felix. You're awake."
No, not a monster. A ghost. The ghost of my fox-headed brother. "Where are we?" I say, hoping he can tell me which circle of the underworld I have been sorted into.
He sets the lantern on its bracket before he answers me. "We're on the—" And I cannot understand either the name of the ship or the name of the place he says we are going. But I do understand the rest: "Ilia says the folks there'll be able to tell us how to get to this garden-thing you're after."
"Oh. Am I dead?"
"Are you
what
?"
"Dead. Am I… dead?"
"No. Why d'you think… oh, never mind. You ain't dead."
"Oh." I cannot decide if this is good or bad and so settle for, "Thank you."
"Sure." The colors around him are cautious, exasperated—still dark with grief, although he is dead now and surely his grief should be ended—but chased through with bright sparks of amusement. I am afraid to ask what it is I've said that he finds funny.
He sits down on the other narrow shelflike bed and tilts his head at me. "You okay?"
"Me?"
"You been a little weird lately."
It comes with being dead. But I do not say it. He says I am not dead, and I believe him. "I'm all right," I say, but it is a feeble and obvious lie.
"Okay," he says, and I can tell that all he means is that he's not going to push me. "Since you're 'all right,' d'you want to come up on deck for a little?"
"Out of the smell?" I say before I can stop myself.
"Yeah. We won't go near the rails or nothing. Just be polite to the Merrows, okay?"
I would promise anything if it would get me out of this fetid tomb. I give my assent eagerly, and he says, "Okay. Come on, then. It's a nice starry night, and you can tell me all their names." I follow the ghost of my fox-headed brother. The passageway is as cramped and dark and reeking as the cabin, but we come swiftly to a ladder that leads us up into clear, crisp, salt-laden air. The stars are like jewels, seeming almost within reach, and I lose myself gladly in staring at them. After a moment, I remember that the ghost asked about their names, and I begin to tell him.
I have to pause for breath, for a corrective against dizziness, after I have told him the names of all the stars in Genevieve's Crown, and a voice says in Kekropian from the darkness, "We call that one the Mortar."
"Oh," says the ghost, "hey, Vasili."
A shape emerges into the light of my ghost-brother's lantern. I cannot tell if it is ghost or monster; it is a strange, dark presence, thick with clouds and smelling of rain.
"Vasili's the weather-witch," the ghost tells me and then says to the other, "Felix is feeling better."