The Virtu (33 page)

I took a gander up the back side of the house. It had one of those dumb ornamental balconies that ain’t wide enough for a cat, gilded like the front—the balcony, I mean, not the cat. Jam for cat burglars, balconies like that, even covered with climbing roses the way that one was. I left Miss Parr playing lookout and shinnied up one of the balcony’s supporting columns. My leg didn’t like it much, and neither did my hands, but I was right out of options. The windows on the ground floor were all curtained and dark, and the main floor was where the servants and guards and shit were likely to be. And anyway I was banking on Kekropian houses being like Marathine houses with the bedrooms on the third floor. And it would have been a real funny joke on me if I’d been wrong.

But the first window I got to was a bedroom, sure enough, with the mosquito netting across the windows but the drapes not drawn. Looked like a spinster cousin. I had a fuck of a time getting past without either being seen or falling off the balcony, but I managed it somehow. The ache in my bad leg was getting worse. Should’ve risked the door, Milly-Fox. But it was too fucking late now.

The next window had the drapes drawn, and I figured it was the best chance I was going to find to get myself in the house. Window was locked, but the lock was for crap, like every other lock in Aiaia. I didn’t figure Miss Parr was going to want this hairpin back, but it got me what I wanted.

Casement window, opening out just to keep me from thinking I was doing okay or anything. I got clawed across the back of the neck by one of those fucking rose brambles, but I got it open. And the first thing I heard was Mavortian’s voice.

“No, your Grace, I am afraid you will not change my mind.”

He sounded about as pissed off as he’d been the last time I’d heard his voice, the better part of an indiction ago. Of course, then he’d been pissed off at Felix—I couldn’t even remember for what—and now it sounded like he was pissed off at the Duke of Aiaia.

Another voice, deep and kind of slimy somehow. I couldn’t make out what he said—he was farther from the window than Mavortian. But Mavortian came right back with, “Then go ahead and burn me. I would prefer it.”

Oh fuck, Mavortian, don’t get your stupid self killed
now
. He’d got the duke mad enough to raise his voice: “Do you think I won’t?”

“I don’t care. Good night, your Grace,” and I heard a sound I knew for Mavortian rolling to face the wall.

There was a pause where I could imagine the duke trying to think of something to say. What he came up with was, “This is not over,” which didn’t impress me none and I was sure didn’t impress Mavortian, neither, and then the door slammed.

No fucking time, since it could be two days or a minute before the duke thought of what he wanted to say and came back. I went through the window like a sack of potatoes—no grace or nothing—and scared Mavortian half to death. He came bolt upright on the bed, and there was a second where he almost shouted. But he recognized me, and his jaw sagged open without any sound coming out.

He didn’t look as bad as Gideon, but he hadn’t been living no life of luxury up here in the duke’s palace, neither. He looked sick—kind of gray and with lines in his face I didn’t remember. And his pupils were shrunk down into nothing. They’d got him drugged on something, which wasn’t surprising when I stopped and thought about it. Kethe, I was hating the Duke of Aiaia and I’d never even laid eyes on the fucker. Didn’t want to, neither.

“Mildmay?” Mavortian said, and he sounded like he was figuring it for a drug dream.

“Yeah. Jailbreak. You game?”

Some of the ugly lines seemed to smooth out of his face. “You have to ask?”

“Polite. You know. Can you hang on to me?”

“If you’re getting me out of here, I can do anything you want.”

“Okay then.” I was already on the floor, so I just kind of scooted myself over to the bed and let Mavortian get his arms around my neck. And then I stood up, and that was no treat, let me tell you. I was pushing right along the ragged edge of what my bad leg was going to let me do. But I stood up, and I didn’t fall over, although there was a second or two where it was pretty close.

But I got my balance, got my weight on my good leg as much as I could, and said, “Can you hang on with your legs?”

I’d never asked him that kind of question, because him being crippled was this thing that somehow nobody ever talked about with him. You just didn’t. But looking at getting back down that damn balcony with Mavortian’s extra weight to fuck me up, I wasn’t feeling real nice about other people’s sore spots. And he didn’t give me grief for it, just said, “Yes, although not well.” I could tell it hurt him to say that, but, you know, not as bad as being burned at the stake. And he brought them up around my waist. Wasn’t much of a grip, but it’d make things easier.

“Let’s fucking well do this, then,” I said, and went back out the window.

I would’ve liked to close it behind me, same way I’d closed the trapdoor in the jail, but that was just asking for me and Mavortian to both end up dead in the duke’s fucking rosebushes. So I checked over the balcony for the nearest pillar and started climbing.

And halfway down, my leg went. I’d been okay—I mean, it hurt like a motherfucker, but it was working—and then I went to brace against the pillar and there was just nothing there. Except for all them hornets I thought I’d gotten rid of back in Troia.

We were still way too high up off the ground. I did the only thing I could, in the split second where I could do anything at all, and grabbed the lip of the balcony in both hands, getting a double handful of rose thorns along with it. I felt the jolt in my shoulders as my hands took our full weight, and then I was hanging there with my palms bleeding into the roses and my leg burning white with the pain.

“Mildmay?” Mavortian said, real soft and real scared, in my ear.

“Bad… leg,” I said, my teeth clenched like grindstones. “Just… hold… still.”

And he held still like a champ, I’ll give him that. I found the pillar with my left leg and hooked my knee around it, right on out the other side of glad that I’d talked Felix into the corduroy trousers instead of the lightweight stuff he’d wanted.

I could do this. I’d been an assassin and a cat burglar, and I’d done harder things than get down a pillar with two arms, one leg, and a crippled hocus on my back. I was sure of it, even if I couldn’t right then think of none. But I was hating those roses in an up-front and personal way.

One arm around the pillar, then the other. Shift the leg down, grip again. One arm, then the other. I actually got annoyed by the second-floor balcony, because it fucked up my rhythm.

“We could stop,” Mavortian said. “Do something…”

“Only get worse,” I said. From the way my hands felt, the skin was hanging off my palms in strips, and I knew once I let go of the pillar, I’d never be able to make myself grab it again. I kept going, not thinking, just moving, and the first I knew about the ground was my right foot hitting it, and I just barely kept from howling like a mauled coyote.

And thank the powers, Miss Parr had realized something was wrong, and was there, holding me up while I got my left foot planted and finally let go of that fucking pillar. She smelled a little like lavender but mostly like sweat, and right then I would have sworn any oath you liked that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

“Got to… sit down,” I said, panting.

“Can we get farther from the house first?” she said.

“Yeah. Good idea.” And I managed it somehow, leaning on her. We got back behind the rosebushes, and I said, “Fuck,” through my teeth, and went down on my left knee and both hands, my right leg hanging off to the side like a dead thing.

Mavortian let go of my neck and rolled himself off me, and powers that was a relief and then some. I twisted myself around so I could sit down without bumping my right leg, and then I just sat there for a while, thinking all the worst swearwords I knew and rubbing at my thigh with both hands. Miss Parr sat beside me, and I was grateful to her—more than grateful—for keeping her mouth shut and letting me be.

When I finally straightened up again, with the worst of the pain backed off, she said, “What happened?”

“Bad leg went worse,” I said.

“Are you going to be able to… ?”

“Well, since it’s that or stay here—yeah. Think I am.”

“What about—”

“Mavortian,” said Mavortian. “Not that I’m not grateful, mind you, but escaping the bedroom to end up in the garden is not really what I had in mind.”

“Me neither,” I said, instead of something really nasty. “Long as I don’t have to do any more climbing, I think I’m okay. If I can get over the wall. But I need something to wrap my hands with.”

“The roses,” Miss Parr said, like she was catching on to something she’d been missing.

“Yeah.”

“Here.” I heard cloth tear, and she handed me two pieces off her dress. I wrapped them around my hands—sloppy but it would do—and got back to my feet. “Fuck,” I said.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Have to be, don’t I? But I can’t get down again. Can you help Mavortian get up?”

She did it somehow, and I bent over, and then Mavortian’s arms were around my neck again, and I hoped I didn’t dream about being strangled tonight. Hoped we got out of Aiaia and nightmares were something I’d even have to worry about.

I got over the wall on pure cussedness and a lot of help from the fruit trees and Miss Parr. And it was purely Miss Parr’s doing that I ended up on the other side still on my feet. “Fuck,” I said again, because I wanted to scream and couldn’t, and started for the western wall and the door Bernard had told us about.

We were about two blocks away from the main square when the hullabaloo began. Fuck. We ducked into a shrine to a fat cross-eyed goddess and just barely avoided a squad of guards galloping toward the duke’s house. And then we ducked back out and kept going. Because it was down to a race now. Either we made it to the tunnel before we got caught or we didn’t.

Kethe, I would’ve given most anything to just be able to
run
. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even walk fast, although the cramp was working itself out a little and I wasn’t almost falling down with every step. Mavortian’s grip on my neck was probably leaving bruises, but I was grateful even for small backhanded favors. If he hadn’t lost a bunch of weight since the last time I’d seen him, I couldn’t have managed at all. Miss Parr played scout, and that saved us from at least one more group of guards. I gave up on cussing—I’d run out of words filthy enough—and just started praying. Kethe probably wasn’t listening, but there wasn’t nothing else I could do.

But we got to the spot along the wall Bernard had said without nobody seeing us, and the brick worked just like he said it would. I was thinking the Aiaians really were stupid enough to just let us waltz out of the city with all three of their prisoners, when we heard people running our way. The guards in Aiaia don’t sound that much different from the Dogs in Mélusine.

“Somebody caught on,” I said and swung Mavortian into the tunnel. “Go on, Miss Parr.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said and kicked the door shut, grabbed me, and dragged me down into a clinch.

Kethe, I’m about as dumb as a rock. It took me
forever
to realize what she was doing, but then I played up for all I was worth. I dug my fingers into her hair pretty vigorously—that neat shopgirl’s hairstyle wouldn’t do for any lady who’d be out along the wall this time of night. By the time the guards got close enough to see us, we’d got into the swing of things. So if we looked guilty, well, there was a reason.

“Hey, you!”

Me and Miss Parr kind of jumped back from each other, like we hadn’t even heard the guards coming.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” And now she sounded like she could’ve been the sister of one of the slatternly maids at the hotel.

“Does either of you have a license to be out this late?” the captain said.

Miss Parr’s breath hitched a little. “Left it in my other pants,” I said, and let my scar do what it wanted to the way the words came out. “What gives?”

The captain pulled himself up, all stern and shit. “The wizard has escaped.”

Miss Parr gave a little screech and shrank back against me.

“Have you two… seen anything?”

Another time, I might’ve made him eat that smirk. But Miss Parr said, “I thought I heard voices down toward the gate about ten minutes ago.” She did it just right, too, not helpful, exactly, but like she’d thought there was something funny about it at the time.

The guards all perked up like dogs catching a scent.

“I’ll let you off with a warning this time,” the captain said, like it was some big favor he was doing us and not that he wanted to be the guy to catch poor Gideon.

“I hope you guys get him,” Miss Parr said.

“Oh, we will.” And they sprinted off.

The instant they were out of sight, I pushed the brick and we fell over each other through the opening.

“I thought I’d seen the last of you,” Mavortian said.

“We haven’t time,” Miss Parr said. “They’ll realize.”

“And soon,” I said, and between the three of us we got Mavortian on my back. “Tell you later. Did I hurt you?”

“Not as much as they would have. Let’s go.”

We came out of the wall in the middle of a cemetery. Like the Ivorene back home. Picked our way to the gate, which was rusting right off its hinges, and got out onto the road.

And then walked the fuck away from Aiaia.