The Virtu (14 page)

I got no sleep that night. Accepting that her secret had been discovered, Arakhne seemed almost frantic for a confidant, and although it was a role I knew myself to be temperamentally unsuited for, it was beyond the bounds of even my selfishness to refuse her.

She got herself cleaned up and then came and sat on one end of the lower bunk, while I sat on the other and her trousers were spread across the top bunk to dry, and told me her story.

Her house and the House Erekhthais had been at feud for fifty years. She was the last heir of the major line of the House Attalis, and therefore the last major impediment between the House Erekhthais and their goals: an end to the endless series of suit and counter-suit before the Aisxime—and the attendant, though disavowed, raids and assassinations—and the absorption of the House Attalis holdings into their assets. The claims of Arakhne’s more distant cousins were in fact no better than the claim of Hesukhios of the House Erekhthais, whose grandmother had been a daughter of the House Attalis.

“But first,” she said, “they need me either dead or married to an Erekhthaid. The Emperor and the Parliament cannot ignore
my
right.”

Unfortunately, not yet being of age, she had no recourse to either action or protection in Troia without making herself dependent on one of the other houses, which would merely be trading one greedy predator for another and would not improve either her situation or her chances of living to reach her majority. She was fleeing to Kekropia to claim sanctuary of the Emperor Dionusios Griphos—here there was a long, involved digression about the part of Kekropia in Troian politics, from which I gathered mostly that the Kekropians were as much inclined to meddle in the affairs of their neighbors to the east as they were in those of their neighbors to the west. Arakhne had not liked the looks of the
Penelope
any better than Mildmay and I had; she had therefore decided to take passage on the
White Otter
and find some way north once she was on Kekropian soil.

“And, er, the disguise?” I asked.

“The House Attalis has no sons of my age remaining,” she said with gruesome matter-of-factness. “And a boy traveling alone is much less likely to be bothered—or even noticed—than a girl. Assuming one’s disguise holds.” She glowered disgustedly into the middle distance.

“I won’t betray your secret,” I said, although I felt like the howlingest of hypocrites, considering how many secrets of my own I was so desperately concealing.

“Thank you,” she said. “I confess, I have been growing increasingly nervous. I do not think your brother suspects, but it’s hard to be sure without asking outright.”

“Mildmay wouldn’t betray you.”

Her look was frankly skeptical.

“He wouldn’t.”

“Then he
isn’t
the hired thug he looks, acts, and sounds like?” she said acidly.

“No. He is not.”

“Well, you would know,” she said, dismissing Mildmay completely, and went on to tell me in great detail about all the stratagems by which she had eluded her Erekhthaid pursuers.

I barely heard her. I had been viciously skewered, again, by the apparently irreconcilable difference between my perception of Mildmay and that of everyone else. In the Gardens, I had assumed the disjunct came from the celebrants’ gross initial misapprehension that Mildmay had terrorized and brutalized me from one end of Kekropia to the other. But Arakhne had no such false information; she knew nothing of us except what she had seen over the past two and a half weeks.

Certainly it was evident from Mildmay’s speech that he was uneducated; certainly the scar on his face gave him a forbidding aspect. But was it truly so difficult to look beyond that?

I thought of Mildmay standing alone and watching the waves, thought of him sitting silent and ignored at meals. Realized, my face heating even as I maintained the appearance of rapt interest in Arakhne’s convoluted and breathless narrative, that my treatment of Mildmay since we had come on board the
White Otter
would not have given any observer the impression that I regarded him as
other
than a hired thug.

Malkar had placed stringent restrictions on my behavior, lest I disgrace him, but it was a new and appalling idea that my attitude toward another person could cause other people to disdain him.

My memory promptly offered up my own cruel laughter, making mock of one or another unfortunate who had incurred my displeasure. And the laughter of my friends, my coterie… my clique.

I thought again, as I had thought before, that the world might well have been a better place if my mother had drowned me at birth.

“Felix?” said Arakhne. “Are you all right?”

“Just tired,” I said. “It hasn’t exactly been a restful night, you know.”

She checked her pocket-watch and had the grace to look guilty. “It’s almost dawn. I didn’t mean…”

“It’s no matter. But I think I’ll go out and watch the sunrise if you want the lower bunk for a while.”

“You’re
very
kind.”

I smiled back at her and made my escape. It wasn’t kindness; I just wanted to get away from her.

Outside the cabin, the world disappeared into fog, which was much more soothing than a clear view of the sea would have been. I went up on the cabin-deck, where I would not be in the sailors’ way, and stared at the beautiful blank grayness and wondered what to do now.

I did not delude myself. I was not a kind person, and my instincts were always to wound. And the combination of Mildmay’s stone face and the vulnerability he hid behind it would bring out—had already brought out—the worst in my nature.

Someday he will murder you, I said to myself, and you will deserve it.

Florian Gauthy wouldn’t fucking leave me alone.

Now, you’d think seeing Felix just about blow a gasket would be enough to warn a kid off—and if not, then for sure the chewing out I heard him getting from his mother. But Florian Gauthy was as stubborn as they come, and he kept on trotting along after me like a puppy dog. The crew thought it was the best joke they’d ever seen.

And I guess I can see how it would be funny if it didn’t happen to be you. I mean, Florian was about as bourgeois as you can get, and I can’t even
pass
for bourgeois. And I don’t suppose I looked like I wanted him around. Which I didn’t, but he didn’t care about that neither.

And I couldn’t seem to bring myself to tell him to fuck off. For one thing, I figured the only thing likely to piss Mrs. Gauthy off worse than having Florian hang around with me would be if I didn’t let him. And aside from that, I was lonely. I couldn’t really make friends with the crew—Felix had given me this snotty little speech a couple days out about “low company,” and while I itched to ask him what he thought I was, that looked like being a pretty sure-fire way to get him to never talk to me again. And none of the passengers except Florian wanted to give me the time of day. Mr. Vilker wasn’t mean about sharing the cabin or nothing, but we both knew I wasn’t the guy he wanted in there. And Phaëthon had turned out to be Felix’s new best friend. I couldn’t keep myself from wondering if they were fucking.

Felix still wasn’t talking to me, although in a different way now. Seemed like every time I turned around he was staring at me with this weird little frown on his face. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done or if he was really even still mad at me, and since he wouldn’t come near me, I couldn’t ask.

And there was Florian Gauthy, asking questions, telling me about Klepsydra, looking for whales and seals and mermaids and Kethe knows what all, and after a couple days it just felt natural to talk to him, and a couple days after that I started telling him stories. Because it was better than answering questions about me.

Florian ate my stories up like they were candy. He didn’t seem to know none of ‘em, and when I asked, he said he’d read plenty of stories in books, but he’d never heard anybody
tell
a story before. I think it was about then that I quit caring what Mrs. Gauthy thought and just started telling Florian every story I could think of. ’Cause, I mean, I’m sure stories in books are okay, but they ain’t real. Stories ain’t real unless you hear ‘em.

And Florian listened with his ears flapping. He always wanted to know where the stories were from and where I’d heard them and if I was telling ‘em exactly like they’d been told to me. Which, of course, no, I wasn’t, because you don’t. I tried to explain it to him, how the story is what happens when you tell it for yourself, but I didn’t say it very well, and I don’t think he really understood me. But I told him stories I’d heard as a kid, stories I’d heard in the Arcane, in the Cheaps, stories Cardenio had told me that he’d heard from other cade-skiffs—and I hoped Cardenio was okay, and someday I’d be able to go and tell him that I’d told the story of Elisabeth Raphenia’s wedding night on a ship on the far side of Kekropia and be able to see his eyes get big as bell wheels. I told Florian stories I’d heard in Kekropia, traveling east with my crazy brother—although I didn’t tell him that part—and I told him stories I’d heard on the
Morskaiakrov
, because they were the ones that weren’t mine yet.

I didn’t particularly want to talk about the
Morskaiakrov
, but when Florian learned me and Felix had gotten to Troia on a Merrow ship, that turned into something else he wouldn’t fucking leave alone.

“Were they
pirates
?” he said.

“Well, they were smugglers,” I said doubtfully, because I wasn’t quite sure what he meant—or thought he meant—by “pirates.”

“Did the Imperial Armada chase you? Did you have to fight them off?”

“Fuck, no.” He looked disappointed. “What, you think having these Armada guys show up would’ve been fun?”

His eyes brightened, and he started telling me about this book he’d read, where the hero was accused of something he hadn’t done and had to run off with a pirate ship and have the sort of adventures that the smugglers I’d met would have gone clear to St. Millefleur out of their way so as not to get involved in. I didn’t quite have the heart to say that to Florian, though—and even if I had, I don’t think I could’ve fit it in, because he went straight from that into complaining about how boring living in Klepsydra was and how nothing ever happened and even if it did, his mother would make sure he never knew about it until it had been over for a month.

I guess people have to be stupid when they’re his age. Kethe knows I was. So I didn’t tell him I’d trade my life for his in a heartbeat, just listened, and when he’d worked some of the boil off, it turned out that what was really getting up his nose wasn’t so much the not being a pirate as it was the fact that he was the youngest of six, and only the second boy, and his mother seemed to want him to keep him in cotton-wool until he was old and gray and toothless. Which I could at least see as being something you’d get sick of in a hurry. And what really pissed him off, as far as I could tell, was the way his brother and sisters got in on the act. His oldest sisters treated him like they were his mother, too, and the younger girls and his brother, Kechever, used him like a kind of screen. “They could get away with murder while Mother was scolding me,” Florian said bitterly. “And the servants are just as bad as Mother. Even Ker Tantony won’t let me—”

He stopped, gulped, and turned bright brick red. I remembered Tantony was the name of his tutor, and although this wasn’t anything I specially wanted to get into, I said, “Even Mr. Tantony won’t let you what?” because… well, I guess, really, because it’s what my friend Margot would have said.

“Nothing,” Florian said. “He treats me like I’m an idiot, too.”

Which I’d‘ve bet my eyeballs wasn’t what he’d been going to say. But it wasn’t like I could say so or nothing, and it really wasn’t like it was any of my business. So I kind of waited, long enough that he knew I hadn’t quite bought it, then said “Uh-huh,” and asked some stupid, easy question that would get us both off the hook. And Florian answered it and then asked me to tell another story I’d heard on the
Morskaiakrov
, and it was like we’d just thrown the whole thing overboard and let it sink.

Except of course for the part where I couldn’t quite forget about it. I wondered if I should tell somebody, but figured that Mrs. Gauthy wouldn’t believe me, and she wouldn’t be grateful anyway, and if what Florian hated most in the world was people treating him like he was too little and too stupid to be trusted not to eat the soap, then he wasn’t going to love me at all, neither, for pulling a stunt like that. And I didn’t even pretend to myself that Felix would care.

So I put it out of my mind as best I could, and mostly just worried about Felix and Mr. Vilker and what I was going to do with myself now. My leg was better now, but I still limped, and that wasn’t ever going to go all the way away. ‘Cause it hadn’t healed straight. I’d been trying and trying to pretend to myself that that wasn’t what it was, that it was just the muscles weren’t strong enough yet, but somewhere out in the middle of the ocean between Endumion and Klepsydra, I just gave up on lying about it. I could see it myself if I watched my feet, and I could feel it clearer and clearer because my leg muscles
were
getting stronger and so the thing that was fundamentally wrong was showing up better. It was like… Kethe, I don’t know what it was like, not so as to be able to describe it. But it was like at the mid-point of my thigh, someone had taken the bone and turned it like a fraction of a circle, barely even enough to notice, you’d think, to the left. And then strapped an iron bar or something along from my thigh to my heel, so it couldn’t turn back the way it was supposed to and so that knee had to fight the rod to bend. It wasn’t so much that it hurt as that it just wouldn’t
go
.

So it worked okay for getting around on, but I couldn’t trust it no more. I had to face it. I was a crip now, and crip cat-burglars—well, let’s just say there’s a reason you ain’t never heard of one. But I didn’t have the first fucking clue what I was going to do instead.

It got into my dreams, worse even than it had that first couple of decads in the Gardens. Keeper’d send me out after something, and I’d fall out a window or something stupid like that, and there I’d be in Ginevra’s grave with her cold rotting arms around me and her voice in my ear all thick and slow, “Love me, Milly-Fox. Make me warm,” and then I’d jolt awake and lay there, panting and sweating and scared to move, and listen to Mr. Vilker snore until dawn.