Watch your language, Milly-Fox. Keeper, and I could half feel the stinging cuff across the back of my head.
"Sorry," I said. "I ain't awake yet. What's your name?"
He drew himself up and compressed his lips and said in this nasty little voice like it should mean something to me and make me feel like a worm, "I am Khrysogonos of the House Ptolemais, Acolyte of the Nephelian Covenant."
So what crawled up your ass and died? I thought, but I didn't say it. I was holding a lousy hand here, and I knew it. I just said, "I'm Mildmay. No house or nothing." Let's pretend we're all normal and friendly. You can get quite a ways with that game if both sides are willing to play.
But this kid was having none of it. "I know what you are," he said in that same prissy, uptight little voice. "You are a murderer."
"Oh for fuck's sake," I said in Marathine. "Let's go on and call cow manure shit."
"What?" he said. "What language is that?"
He sounded like he was really confused, and I was betting on my two minute's acquaintance with him that this kid wasn't a good liar. So I felt a little better. At least I had
something.
"Marathine," I said. There was a black second where I thought I just wasn't going to be able to stop myself from translating for him, but I bit my tongue hard, and said, "It's a proverb."
"Oh," he said, kind of blank, like he'd thought other languages didn't have proverbs or I wouldn't know any or something. Then he shook it off and said, "You murdered for money," just like a terrier after a rat. Powers, I thought, we got a prick here and no mistake.
"Yeah," I said. "So?"
I don't think he'd been expecting me to admit it, but I remembered all those questions in my dreams, and it didn't take no genius to figure out where they'd come from. And, I mean, I ain't proud of having been what I was or done what I did, but I ain't going to lie about it.
He got kind of fish-faced for a second. Then he got up, said, "We should have let you die," and swept himself out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass in the window.
"Oh fuck me sideways," I said. My voice wasn't all that steady, but it was still steadier than I felt. Welcome to the Gardens of Nephele, Milly-Fox, Keeper said. Solve all your problems, right? And her laugh, like acid and broken glass, chased around my head until I finally fell back asleep.
I woke up again when the door opened, and I didn't remember my dreams, which I figured was a mercy. Small fucking favors.
"It is I," said the prick, grand as a king.
"You again."
"I am assigned to your care."
"I thought you were gonna let me die."
"It is against our covenant. Personal feelings do not enter into it."
"I'm touched," I said, and he gave me a funny look like he didn't know what to do with sarcasm when he heard it. "How long've I been here?"
"A week."
Flashie calendar. Figured. "Fuck," I said.
"You nearly died," he said, like I'd said something nasty about his mother. "The
Celebrant Lunar
had to treat you personally."
"Nice of him."
"
She
is the Arkhon of the Gardens." Way more important than a shit-eating rat like me, was what he meant.
"Uh-huh. So what's wrong with me?"
I used my fuck-with-me-and-I'll-kill-you knife-fighter's voice. Keeper would've smacked me. Zephyr would've rolled his eyes. The prick flinched I a little, and I felt better in a mean sort of way.
He said, in a high, angry, trembly voice, "I don't have to tell you anything." Oh, a prick for sure and certain.
"Yeah, you're right. I can figure it out for myself. My leg's busted." I caught myself then, clamped down on my temper. He was just a kid, and he hated my guts. I was lucky he wasn't trying to smother me with my own damn pillow.
"You are crippled. The Celebrant Lunàr thinks you will probably be able to walk again without a cane, but it may take months."
Months. Crippled. I shut my eyes and started counting a septad. But I'd only got to five when I remembered something a hell of a lot more important.
"What about my brother?"
"Your… brother?"
"Yeah, my
brother
. The guy with me. The crazy redhead hocus with skew eyes. Don't you dare tell me he's dead or I'll murder
you
next."
The prick probably didn't catch the end of that, but he understood enough to scare him. Just what I needed. "He isn't dead. We are caring for him. We will heal him." And all the time kind of looking from me to the door and back again, like he was checking to see if I was going to go for him and if he could get out the door fast enough.
Very
smooth, Milly-Fox.
"Can I see him?"
"You can't even walk."
The conversation died right there, funeral, lilies, and all. I didn't figure it was any job of mine to dig it back up again, so I lay there and stared up at the ceiling and waited for him to go the fuck away.
"Are you hungry?" the prick said after a while. Guess he remembered he had a duty here.
"No."
"Do you need anything?"
"No." And I wouldn't tell you if I did, you fucking numbnuts prick.
"Then I shall leave you," he said, all grand again, and made his same exit. It was a wonder he hadn't broken the window yet.
Felix
They will not leave me alone. The owl-eyed people with their hair like fire, they are always there, staring at me, touching me. Their words drop from their mouths like stones and do not reach me. They do not seem to notice the water dripping from my hair, my clothes, my fingers. They do not understand that I have drowned and that they cannot reach me. The anger has been made stronger by drowning; it is circling and circling. I can feel its greed, its eagerness. When they touch me, it comes closer.
Mildmay
Kethe, that room was a pit. I mean, I know it wasn't really that bad, but I lay there with nothing to look at but the ceiling or the walls—or the prick when he came in—for most of a decad, and I got to where I knew and hated every crack in the fucking plaster. Although not as bad as I hated the prick.
He quit picking fights with me, and I swear to the powers and all the saints besides that I was being grateful for small favors. I mean, I didn't pick no fights with him. But when you can't get up out of bed without somebody to drag you up and then mostly carry you… it ain't no good time even if it's your best-ever friend giving you a hand to the water closet. And with him and me both trying to pretend the other one didn't exist, even the absolutely fucking putrid time when my knee buckled in the middle of the hall anyway, and I went down and dragged him down with me—I seriously thought sometimes that I had died on that beach, and that this was my circle of Hell.
And even with him and me ignoring the shit out of each other most of the time, and even with him nagging me to eat when I didn't give a rat's ass what he wanted and didn't want to eat, along of feeling most of the time like I'd swallowed a stone, he was practically a friend compared to my other visitors, the people who came in every couple days—celebrants, the prick said, and some of 'em were Celebrants Minor and some of 'em were Celebrants Major and I couldn't figure out what the fuck the difference was—oh, those people I just plain wanted to kill.
They came and stood over me and poked at my leg and talked to each other in this fast, heavy Kekropian with the stresses in funny places. Mostly what they did made things hurt worse, although I didn't say so because I knew if they cared at all they'd be happy about it, but after about a septad days, when nothing they were doing was making it any better, I figured I had to say
something
. Because Kethe knows they wanted me gone—and I wanted to
be
gone in the worst possible way—and it wasn't going to happen if I didn't get the fucking hornets out of my leg. So when the Celebrant Minor—skinny little gal with fat red pigtails—was done with the hornets, I screwed up my courage and said this sentence in Kekropian that I'd been practicing every time the prick wasn't in the room, "My leg is not getting any better." Good grammar and everything. Keeper probably would've passed out on the spot.
The Celebrant Minor just reared back like I'd bit her and said, "We don't work miracles. Healing takes time.."
The prick translated into Midlander, because I'd never exactly got round to telling him that I understood Kekropian way better than I'd ever be able to speak it.
"I know that," I said, "but—"
"The celebrant has better things to do than listen to you whine," the prick said, and the Celebrant Minor lofted her nose in the air and stalked out. The prick followed her and slammed the door hard enough for two.
Well, that was about as dumb as kissing a gator, I thought, then I wished for the umpteenth septad time that I wasn't trapped in this fucking awful room.
After that first day, the prick wouldn't talk about Felix except to tell me he was okay and the celebrants were taking care of him and I should quit nagging. I asked him once—because I'd been having nightmares about drowned people—about the
Morskaiakrov
, if anybody knew if the crew was okay, but he just said, "Oh, smugglers," in such a snotty voice that there wasn't no point going on. And, I mean, there wasn't nothing I could do anyways. Whether they were alive or dead, me knowing wouldn't help none. But Felix was different. And the more the prick wouldn't tell me nothing, the more worried I got.
So I finally just came out one morning and said, "I want to see my brother," before he'd even got himself through the door. He stopped for a second where he was, with that stupid, blank sheep-look on his face, then came on in and shut the door. I saw he was holding a walking stick, but right then I didn't care. "I want to see him," I said, clear and slow and not shouting.
"It will not be permitted," he said.
"Why not?"
"It is the decision of the Celebrants Terrestrial. They have told me you are not to see him."
"Fuck," I said, mostly because it would make him twitch. And because I would've said it anyway, and it kept me from doing something stupid like screaming or pleading with him.
"Here," he said, a little shrill and a little shaky, and pushed the stick at me. "You need to start walking again."
The hornets just about died laughing at that one. "What?" I said.
"Walking. I thought that was what you wanted."
"I
want
to see my brother," I said through my teeth.
"No," said the prick.
"Get the fuck out of my room!" And he saw I was ready to throw that stick at him, because he went like a rabbit.
I just sat there and cussed for I don't know how long. It was better than crying and better than screaming and probably better than going and hunting down the Celebrants Terrestrial, whoever the fuck they were, and beating the shit out of them. Not that I could. I slammed my fist down on my right thigh and then just about did scream, because it was the stupidest thing I'd done since the
Morskaiakrov
went down. Kethe, it hurt. It was like there was a ball of glass shards in there somewhere about midway up, and I'd just sent the points shooting out from the bone like a firework star. I was amazed I wasn't bleeding.
But stupid or not, it did bring me back to where I could think, and after a little while longer, I worked things out to where I realized that the prick was right. I needed to start walking again. It was either that or go batfuck nuts. So I swung my legs over the side of the bed, real slow and one at a time. I sat there for a minute, with the stick ready for action out in front of me, and I felt like a sick, useless old man.
"I fucking hate this," I said and got up.
I heard myself scream—and, powers, that's a bad thing—and then I was on the floor with some new bruises, and the hornets square dancing up and down my thigh. I kind of lay there and cussed a while longer, and then I got up again. It took like an indiction and a half, but I did better, and this time when I was standing up, I stayed that way. I wasn't
enjoying
it or nothing, mind, but I was standing.
But the kicker was that I was scared to try and move. I'd never thought I was a coward, and Kethe knows I'd kept going through some pretty nasty shit when I was doing jobs for Keeper. But I just felt like I couldn't face it. Even if I didn't fall down again, I knew how much it was going to hurt, and it was like I was trying to nerve myself up to lay my hand down on a red-hot anvil. I could feel myself starting to shake, and there was a whole chorus in my head saying as how the best idea was just to get back on the bed again and lay down for a while. But I knew if I did that, I never would be able to make myself take this first step, and I furthermore knew that I'd end up, sure as fuck, having to explain myself to the prick. And I wasn't going to let him see that.
"Don't be a sissy, Milly-Fox," I said out loud, to make them whining voices shut up, and I took a step forward.
I probably should have sold tickets, because I bet it was funny to watch. Left leg fine, stick fine, right leg forward, and then my knee buckled and I was on the floor again. I wasn't swearing this time, because I'd run out of words nasty enough. I was kind of crying a little, and that made me even madder. And now, of course, if the prick walked in he'd find me laying on the floor like a drunk, and that was even worse than him finding me sitting on the bed too scared to try. I dragged myself up, cursing and panting and sobbing, and shuffled back inch by fucking inch to the bed. When I fell down on it, like a building caving in, I was sweating like I'd just fought off five or six goons. I lay there until my heart quit racing and I was breathing normal, and then I picked myself up and tried again.
By the time the prick came back that afternoon, I'd got myself all the way across to the armchair by the window, where I'd been sitting for like two hours because by the time I got there, it felt like my whole leg was made of glass and fixing to shatter. So I just sat and looked out at the piece of garden I could see through the window and loved every damn inch of it for not being plaster.