I wanted to. I remembered the way he had moved, all that grace and power, perfectly controlled. Gone now, to be replaced by this ugly, awkward lurch that it hurt to watch. He would not accept my sympathy; he probably wouldn't even believe I meant it. I said, neutrally, "Have they treated you badly?"
"Oh, no, everything's just fucking peachy."
"They thought you—"
"I know what they thought. And I did, so it's fine."
"No, you didn't."
"I did. I did hit you. I yelled at you. I said things to you that nobody… I said things I oughtn't've. And I'm sorry."
"No," I said, struggling to find something to say that he would hear, that he would accept. "What they thought, that—"
Someone knocked on the door.
Mildmay's head came up, the startled wariness of the movement making his resemblance to a fox nearly uncanny. After a moment, he said, "Come in," in Midlander.
A moment after that, the door opened, and the acolyte Khrysogonos came in.
"Sacred fuck, you knocked," said Mildmay, and Khrysogonos blushed brick-red.
"Mildmay," Khrysogonos said. "Are you busy?" Mildmay's eyebrows went up, and I thought for a moment that Khrysogonos was going to bolt back out the door. So politeness was new here. "Felix?"
"We were just talking," I said. "What is it?"
"The… the Celebrant Lunar is here, with Diokletian and Theophanos," another Celebrant Terrestrial whom I had met and not much cared for. "They wish—"
Xanthippe appeared in the doorway, Diokletian and Theophanos behind her, and said, "We wish to learn the truth."
Mildmay didn't say a word. He sat there, silent as a stone, and his silence denied the goodwill that the celebrants were trying to bring into the room.
"Mildmay," Xanthippe said, and I admired her for it, "we are sorry—"
"For what?" In a voice like black frost, and I didn't know about the others, but I almost wished he had stayed silent.
But Xanthippe was made of sterner stuff than that. "We misjudged you."
"No," Mildmay said.
The celebrants looked at me, as if for help, but I didn't have any to offer. I couldn't read Mildmay's face either.
Diokletian said, "Felix told me—"
"It don't fucking well matter. You saw me plain. I ain't denying it."
Xanthippe asked Theophanos a question in Troian; I couldn't follow it, but Mildmay said, "No, ma'am."
All four of them were staring at him now, Khrysogonos and Theophanos going the color of cheese curds. Xanthippe said, "How did you learn Troian?"
"I ain't
stupid
, ma'am. I can't talk right, but there ain't nothing wrong with my ears."
"Blessed Tetrarchs," Diokletian said in a whisper.
"And so," Xanthippe said, and I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck with the quietness of her tone, "we come to something I was told by Thamuris of the House Pandionis, Celebrant Celestial of the Euryganeic Covenant. He is ill and not of our covenant, and I trusted my own celebrants before him. But now I think perhaps I should reconsider. Mildmay, does your leg still hurt?"
For a moment it seemed as if he would burst out laughing, but he controlled himself and said only, "Yeah. It does, some."
"Some?"
"Okay, a lot."
"And have you told anyone about this?"
"I tried. They wouldn't listen."
This time, whatever Xanthippe said was blistering, and it sent Theophanos out of the room at a dead run. I thought I saw a glint of appreciation in Mildmay's eyes.
"It will take some time for the Circle to be cleansed and readied, but we have erred, and our mistakes shall be remedied. I shall consider more expressive means of atonement later."
"Please," Mildmay said. "I—"
"Celebrant Lunar?" Khrysogonos said in a thin, unhappy voice.
Xanthippe and Diokletian turned to look at him. "Acolyte?" said Xanthippe.
"You should expel me right now. Or put me back to washing floors with the novices."
"I beg your pardon?"
"He was my charge and I failed him." It was said all of a piece, the way a man might cough up something that was choking him.
"Stop it!" Mildmay said, preempting whatever Khrysogonos might have gone on to say. "Please." His head was down, fingers knotted in his hair. "I don't want nobody's guilt. I… I ain't worth it."
Xanthippe opened her mouth, and I shook my head at her emphatically. She raised her eyebrows at me; I nodded, and jerked my head toward the door. She rounded up Diokletian and Khrysogonos with a glance, and herded them out in front of her. The door shut behind them with a faint click.
I sat on Mildmay's bed and waited. After a time, without moving, he said, "Felix?" as if he expected I would be gone.
"Right here."
"How'd you get rid of them?"
"I glared at them," I said, and he laughed a little.
"Are you all right?" I said.
"Yeah, sure. I'm fine."
"Will you be offended if I say I think you're lying?"
"I might."
"I didn't betray you knowingly."
"I know."
All at once, I saw what I had to do if I wanted him to trust me again; I saw what he needed from me. For a moment, I didn't think I could give it, even to him, but I looked at the pain in every line of his body, remembered the man who'd handed me a turnip in a cold Kekropian field, and said, "I need to tell you something."
"What?" He didn't care.
But I did, and I realized that I cared enough for both of us. "Everything, I guess. Everything I lied to you about."
He looked up a little at that, as if he thought I was making fun of him.
"No," I said, "I mean it. I've never told anyone, but… will you listen?"
"Yeah," he said, and sat up straight again. "I'll listen."
For a moment, I couldn't even start. There were so many lies, all of them precious, all of them necessary. Then I just opened my mouth and let the words come out: "I was sold to a thief-keeper in Simside when I was four. He was a monster. When one of us did something that made him angry, he… he'd take you and drag you down to the Sim and hold you under until he decided you were sorry enough to suit him. He's responsible for my back. He used a nun's scourge on us when we weren't quite bad enough for the river."
"Powers," Mildmay said.
"He died in the Fire of 2263, and I was so glad…" I came to a complete halt for a moment, but I had to go on. "In Kekropia, when I was… when I wasn't myself, I thought you were him."
"Oh fuck," Mildmay said. "Oh Kethe, no wonder you were scared of me. I am so sorry."
"No, you shouldn't be. You didn't know. I didn't tell you."
His head was up and his absinthe-green eyes were wide. "But, powers, I mean, I can imagine… oh, sacred bleeding fuck, you should've
told
me."
"I couldn't. Let me get a little farther with this story, and you'll see why." I managed to smile at him, although it didn't feel convincing, even to me. "As I said, my Keeper died in the Fire. He'd always done some pimping on the side—not the hard trade, just some lamprey-work and the occasional ten-year-old virgin. But word got around that he'd gone up in smoke, and the wolves from Pharaohlight started circling. And there we were, a herd of little ewe lambs. Ripe to be sheared and sold. I ended up in a brothel called the Shining Tiger, and that's where Malkar found me."
"Malkar. That's the guy—"
"Hang on," I said and nearly choked. That was the Lower City reemerging like a kraken from the depths. Malkar had schooled my voice obsessively, rooting out every last inflection, idiom, and turn of phrase. I couldn't let it come back now. I took a deep breath and said evenly, "Let me tell it in order."
He nodded; he could see I was upset, although he didn't yet know why. But he would. I looked away, because I didn't want to watch that stone face; if he reacted, I didn't want to see it.
"Malkar bought me from Lorenzo. It's not legal, but procurers in Pharaohlight do it all the time. You
probably know that. I was fourteen. For the next six years, I belonged to Malkar, body and soul, in the most absolute, abject way you can imagine. He was my teacher, my lover, my torturer… I loved him, and I feared him. I wanted to kill him, and I worshipped him. Hopelessly."
"Like a keeper," Mildmay said.
"Yes, a little. No. More than a little. He was another version of Keeper. He took me out of the city, to a country estate near Arabel. I didn't leave it for three years, while he taught me everything I needed to know to pass myself off as a gentleman in the Mirador. And he taught me a story that didn't have Pharaohlight or Simside in it anywhere, that I was from Caloxa, a nobleman's child. He bound me to him with spells—and yes, that is heresy—and then he… he taught me I could never tell
anyone
the truth. I won't tell you what he did to me when I slipped, but… it was effective. And when I was seventeen, he brought me to the Mirador and got me initiated as a Cabaline wizard."
I glanced up; Mildmay's face was impassive, but his eyes were on me, and they were bright with interest. No matter how dreadfully, crawlingly naked this made me feel, no matter that I was shivering, even now, with the memory of Malkar's punishments and threats: it was working.
I said, "I think now that he was planning to break the Virtu even then. I think somehow his spells on me must have done something to the Cabaline oaths—even though I broke away from him when I was twenty. But it must have left him a loophole, because, you see, that's how he broke the Virtu."
"Sorry. What?"
"That's how he broke the Virtu." I could feel my chest and throat tightening, and my voice came out thin and unsteady.
"You don't got to tell me if you don't want," Mildmay said, with a cautious gentleness that I did not deserve. "I mean, you ain't obliged."
I looked him in the eyes then. I had to. I said, "No, I think I have to tell someone. The whole truth. Because I'll never tell anyone else, and… and I don't want to be made of lies anymore. Let me say it."
"Okay," he said. "I won't tell nobody. I swear it."
"Thank you. I know." I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and concentrated on making my words come out slowly, evenly, clearly, and without the least hint of the Lower City in the vowels. "Malkar broke the Virtu by means of a spell that he cast on me. It let him use me, use my magic, which is stronger than his. And the way he worked the spell was…" I couldn't say it. I couldn't get the words out. I was staring at my tattoos now, the brilliant gold-edged vines tangling across the backs of my hands.
"Felix?" I heard Mildmay get up, heard him limp across to the bed. He sat down beside me, on my left side, and did not touch me; I flinched a little, inside, with how well he understood me. "Felix, you okay?"
"I just have to say it. I have to get it out." I reached out with my left hand, and after a moment, hesitating, he took it. His hand was square and warm and strong; I gripped it hard and said, my voice barely a. whisper, "He raped me."
"He…"
"
He raped me
. He raped me and used me to break the Virtu and drove me mad and sacrificed me to Stephen and—" My breath hitched painfully, and I could feel my shoulders hunching, fearing punishment, but I couldn't keep the words silent anymore, the words I had kept locked in the lowest, darkest regions of my mind for years, since Malkar first half seduced, half raped me in that filthy upper room in the Shining Tiger. I said, "And I hate him."
"No fucking wonder," Mildmay said, and I felt tears spill over my eyelids, tears of relief and pain, for I had said it and not died. Mildmay had heard me and did not find me abhorrent. I let go of his hand, rubbed my face, and looked at him. The face was stone, still, but the green eyes held neither condemnation nor anger.
"It's okay," he said. "I mean, can't do nothing about it, but…"
"It's okay," I said, using the word deliberately.
His face brightened in its nonsmiling way, and he said, "Yeah. Still brothers, right?"
"Yes," I said. "Still brothers."
The celebrants had returned and taken him away. They would not let me go with him, for reasons that he seemed to understand better than I did. I was left with Xanthippe, who watched me fidget around the room for a bit and then said gently, "When they are ready, we will observe the proceedings. I assure you, I will not let him come to harm a second time."
"Thank you," I said, and bit back the bitter words that wanted to follow. I had no right to say them.
Still brothers
? he had asked me, and I had agreed, knowing that it was what he needed, knowing also that I wanted it, although I was not entirely sure what it meant, either to him or to me. I did not remember us
being
brothers, except for strange, isolated glimpses of his protective care. I knew that he had treated me as a brother almost from the moment we met, but I had no idea why. I did not know him—although I trusted him without reservations or second thoughts.
And he trusted me. That was what he meant by "brothers," I thought: trust.
He trusted me
. It was a cruel and bitter irony; every trust that had ever been placed in me, I had betrayed, including his.
I was also painfully aware that he had no one else. Xanthippe was mortified, infuriated by the celebrants' mistake and determined to correct it, but her feelings ran no deeper than that, and I doubted that the other celebrants felt any differently—if they even cared as much as she did. They did not understand him, any more than they would have understood me if I had told them the truth. Mildmay had understood. I snorted as it occurred to me that if he had no one else, then neither did I.
"Felix?"
"Nothing." To get away from the barbed circles of my own thoughts, I asked, "What are they going to do? What went wrong?"
"We won't know for certain until the Celebrants Terrestrial have finished their initial examination. Thamuris said the curse wasn't properly lifted, and I fear that may prove to be true." She paused and added hesitantly, as if unsure how I would take it, "It was a wicked thing."