The Virtu (16 page)

And then, after a bitter eternity of groping in the dark, I see light ahead, the warm flickering of torch-light. I feel sure that it must be the staircase and run towards it.

But it is not the way out. It is the heart of the maze, the place where the monster lives. The monster is not there, but its scent is harsh in my nostrils, and I know it is nearby. It has left its own heart behind it, and I stand in the doorway, unable to move, staring at the monster’s heart, which is a table. A wooden table. Fitted with straps, and I cannot keep myself from mapping where each one would go on my own body. Those around the ankles, that one across the hips, those at the wrists, that pinning the shoulders flat. The last strap, narrow and very short, would grip my neck tight enough to choke me. Standing there, my breath coming in harsh labored sounds like the cries of a hurt animal, I can feel it pressing against my jawbone, constricting my throat so that I can barely swallow.

I cannot look away. I want to turn, plunge back into the darkness, lose myself again. But I am rooted to the earth, turned to stone within my own skin. The monster will return soon and find me, strap me to the table which is its heart. It will not kill me. I know that. It will do something even more terrible.

Something touches my shoulder. I jerk around, making a strangled noise, one arm going up to ward the monster off—

And Arakhne’s voice said in the darkness, “Felix? Are you all right?”

A dream, I thought, knotting my fingers in the coarse fabric of the mattress-cover. It was a dream. I could hear myself breathing, feel my chest heaving, as if I had been running for miles, as if I had been battling dragons and ogres. It was just a dream.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a… a bad dream.”

“I thought you were dying.”

I remembered that last moment of the dream, my arm going up, remembered a distinctly undreamlike sensation of it colliding with something. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. Just scared me. A little.”

“For future reference, it’s probably better
not
to wake people up by shaking them.”

“Oh,” she said, sullenly. I wasn’t appreciating her selfless concern, and it irritated her.

Fortunately, I was still breathing so heavily that she couldn’t have detected my sigh. I was looking forward with intense anticipation to docking in Klepsydra and being free of the galling necessity of sharing a tiny room with a spoiled and frightened teenage girl. I said, “You should probably try to get back to sleep.”

“You’re not going to have another fit, are you?”

She was angry still, but I detected real fear in her voice. I wondered, my skin prickling with humiliation, just what kind of noises I had been making. “No,” I said. “I think I’ll go out on deck for a while, clear my head.”

“All right,” she said, and I heard her climb back into her bunk.

We both slept fully clothed and did not discuss the reasons why. I got up, opened the door.

Arakhne said, “Felix?”

“Yes?”

“What were you dreaming about? It sounded terrible. And I thought switching cabins was going to help.”

“Well, nothing helps with nightmares for long. Go to sleep.”

I went out, gratefully closing the door behind me. I did not blame Arakhne for her limpet-like tendencies, but I found them profoundly wearying and even more profoundly aggravating. I couldn’t turn around without falling over the silly child, and she stood too close to me, monopolized too much of the conversation, as if she were the one who knew my secrets instead of the other way around. I was not about to give her so much as an inch more leverage. I most certainly was not going to discuss my dreams with her.

I wished I could discuss the dream with someone, though. Other than Mildmay, that was, who would listen and then say, at most,
Dunno what it means, but it sounds fucked up.

I was accustomed to nightmares, but I had never been so upset by one that had no people in it. Dreams about Malkar, Keeper, long dead though he was, Lorenzo, even Shannon: those I was accustomed to, if not enured to. When I woke in limp misery from one of those dreams, I knew what had happened. But this—the narrow subterranean passages, the torches, the table that was at once perfectly innocuous and entirely terrifying—I did not hold the key to this dream, and I did not know why it had such power over me.

And that frightened me more than anything else.

We docked in Klepsydra on a beautiful, shining morning. All of us were up on deck, staring eagerly at the fast approaching city. There would be a slight delay, Captain Yarth had told us, before we would be allowed to disembark, a matter of tariffs and inspections, agreements between the empires of Troia and Kekropia which I did not perfectly understand, nor cared to. It seemed to matter a great deal to Leontes Gauthy, though; he and Ingvard stood a little to one side, muttering together over inventories and invoices.

Theokrita and Florian and Arakhne and I stood together, Arakhne too close as usual. I was aware of Mildmay, standing alone, just within earshot. I admitted to myself with some surprise that I would rather have been standing with him, but Arakhne was so tense I could almost feel her vibrating, and I wanted at all costs and above all other desires to avoid giving her any opportunity to create a scene. She had told me the night before, in the tones of one trying hard to convince herself, that it was highly unlikely the House Erekhthais would have been able to notify their agents in Klepsydra to be on the watch for her.

“I thought you said you’d shaken them off,” I’d said—unwisely, for I had noticed the way in which Arakhne’s stories changed as she told them.

“Well, of course they’d know it would be very likely I’d make for Aigisthos,” she said, and I made no rejoinder. But I wondered now just how much the House Erekhthais might know and just what kind of resources it had at its command.

The
White Otter
came gliding gracefully into the harbor of Klepsydra, which Florian informed me—loudly, and pointedly not looking at Mildmay—was named the Elphenore. Glancing past him to Theokrita’s glowering face, I gathered that she had again forbidden him to “bother” my brother. This time, seeing how near our journey was to completion, her edict might hold. I considered telling her that if either of us were to corrupt Florian, it was much more likely to be me than Mildmay, but that was an idle fancy born of anger on Mildmay’s behalf—anger and a reprehensibly wicked desire to see the look on Theokrita’s face. I said nothing.

The ship docked; the captain sent a sailor trotting to the Customs office. We waited. Leontes and Ingvard continued to pore over their lists and ledgers. Florian pestered his mother and me indiscriminately with questions and speculations about the other ships in the harbor. Theokrita could have done herself a tremendous favor by letting Florian stand with Mildmay this last morning. But I didn’t say that, either. Beside me, Arakhne scanned the wharves obsessively, but I doubted if she knew what she was looking for.

Captain Yarth paced the deck behind us, growling under his breath with increasing vehemence as half an hour became an hour became an hour and a quarter. Finally, the sailor reappeared; Captain Yarth strode to meet her as she came up the gangplank, and they plunged into a heated discussion, the sailor looking no less annoyed with the delay than the captain. Mildmay was standing near enough to hear them, and after a couple of minutes, he came limping along the deck and said, “Felix?”

I raised my eyebrows at him, and he jerked his head at the opposite railing. Both Theokrita and Arakhne looked as if they wanted to protest, and that was annoying enough that I didn’t argue with Mildmay but followed him across to the other side of the ship.

“Well?” I said.

“Most of what held Vera up ain’t no business of ours, but a guy stopped her on the way back wanting to know about all the Troian passengers.”

I looked across at Arakhne before I could stop myself. She was watching me anxiously.

Mildmay said, “Oh. D’you think it’s him they’re after? I was figuring…”

He had been exercising the caution of the fox he resembled, who walked into nothing without checking first to see if it was a trap. I said, “No. We may be pursued across Kekropia, but I hardly think our enemies would be waiting for us on the docks.”

“Mostly, I just thought it was weird and you should know.”

“Yes,” I said. “Excuse me one moment.” I crossed back to Arakhne and said, “We need to talk.”

Spoiled she might be, but she wasn’t stupid. There was no color in her face as she followed me into the cabin we had shared.

I told her what Mildmay had told me. Her yellow eyes were huge pale disks in her bone-white face. She whispered, “What shall I do?”

I did not know if it was cruelty or optimism that made me say, “You escaped them before.”

“Not like this. Not…” She caught at my sleeve; I held myself in and did not strike at her hand or shake her off. “Felix, help me, please. They’ll kill me. It’s not worth their while to take me back to Troia now. They’ll kill me and that will be the end of the House Attalis as well as me. Please.”

I cared not a scrap for the House Attalis, but if I had not been able to repulse Arakhne before this, I could not abandon her now, knowing that it would be to her death.

“Do they know you’re disguised as a boy?”

“Yes,” she said miserably. She had told me previously that they did not.

“Then I think I have an idea. But it will require telling my brother the truth.”

“Him?
Why
?”

“Because there are three ‘Troian’ passengers,” I said, “and I’m much too tall.”

The idea had come into my head even as I was telling Mildmay that our enemies would not be waiting for us on the docks. It was a primitive ruse, but I could see no reason why it would not work.

“Oh,” said Arakhne; it was almost a gasp. “Would he?”

“Let me get him in here. Unless you have a better idea?”

She hesitated a moment, clearly wishing she did, then said, “No. If you think he’ll do it.”

“He’ll do it,” I said.

I went back out and waved at Mildmay. He followed me into the cabin, where Arakhne was sitting on the bunk, twisting her fingers together nervously in her lap.

“Shall I tell him or will you?” I asked her.

She did not answer me immediately, and Mildmay said, “Tell me what?”

A nasty, fraught little silence. Arakhne opened her mouth, hesitated, and said, “I am Arakhne of the House Attalis.”

“Not Phaëthon?”

“No. I was… I was traveling disguised as a boy to escape my House’s enemies. But their agents are—”

“Uh-huh.” He turned to me. “And you knew about this?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Mildmay, it doesn’t—”

“How fucking long?”

“A week and a half. About.”

“And you’re telling me now. Why?”

“You know why,” I said, annoyed; it had, after all, been he who had told me about the man asking questions.

“Not what I meant.” He shut his mouth like a trap and stared at me.

“What
did
you mean?”

The look he gave me was scathing. “What d’you want, Felix?”

It rattled me. Not just the look or the question—although those were bad enough—but the realization that he’d simply taken a short-cut through the conversation I’d anticipated having and reached the finish line ahead of me. I’d known he was much smarter than he seemed, but I hadn’t appreciated before how quick he was, that his mind was not in any way hobbled by the scar that slowed and distorted his speech. It was so terribly easy to forget that.

I said, after a taken-aback pause, “We need to get Arakhne safely off this ship. A decoy.”

“A decoy.” He looked at Arakhne and back at me. “You want me to pretend to be her.”

“Yes.”

“So the goons after her will bash my head in instead?”

I flinched and despised myself for it. “They’ll have no reason to harm you when they realize they’ve made a mistake.”

“Uh-huh.” But he looked at Arakhne again, and I supposed he could see as plainly as I could how frightened she was, for he said, “Okay. Assuming I can ditch the goons, where do I find you?”

Something in his voice, some note of weary familiarity, told me that he had done things like this before, that his career as a kept-thief had been more varied and dangerous than mine.