The Virtu (44 page)

I stayed where I was.

I’d had time to myself to explore. He had a big sitting room shaped like a blocky L. The fat end had a fireplace—and I swear to all the powers the thing was big enough to roast an ox—and bookcases along the walls, and a couple of big chairs, old and singed here and there but comfortable. The other end of the room had a big, dark lion-footed table with chairs to match. It was hard to imagine eating off it, but the big sterling teapot in the center said as how that was exactly what Felix did.

The long wall behind the table had two doors. One was to Felix’s bedroom, where he had a four-poster Keeper would’ve envied and two wardrobes big enough that either one could’ve swallowed me whole. I didn’t open them. Figured I’d be getting an eyeful of Felix’s clothes soon enough.

The other door off the sitting room was to a narrow little room like a closet with big ideas. I don’t know what Felix had used it for before, but Mr. Architrave had had them set up a bed in it, and I guessed that meant it was going to be my bedroom. Which was a huge fucking relief because I’d figured on a lot of nights spent trying to sleep on one of the armchairs while Felix fucked Gideon. And it don’t matter how comfortable an armchair is you’re going to wake up with a cramp.

So I’d made the rounds and settled in one of the armchairs where I could stare at the fire and wait for Felix. It seemed safer than going anywhere or trying to guess if Felix would want me to do anything.

Or, to put it another way, I was too fucking scared to move.

So I was glad when Felix showed up, even if he was in a mood to bite a gator. I mean, I was still in the Mirador, but at least I wasn’t alone.

He came slamming back out a few minutes later and said, “Where did they put the others?”

“Mehitabel on the Grand-West, and Mavortian and Bernard on the, urn, Filigree Corridor. Mr. Architrave said you’d know where that was.”

“Indeed. I must remember to thank Master Architrave. And he is
Master
Architrave, not
Mister
.”

“Okay,” I said, and he shot me this look I’d seen from Keeper so many times I had it fucking memorized: 7
know you’re stupid, but TRY not to embarrass me, okay
? And, powers and saints, I hated it just as much from Felix as I ever had from Keeper.

Then he said, sharp and brisk-like, “Come on. I want to find company for dinner.” And somehow I didn’t think he meant Mehitabel and Gideon.

“What’re you gonna tell ‘em? About me?”

“That you’re my brother.”

“But—”

“Not until they’ve reinstated me.” And he gave me a smile that had way too many teeth in it. “Not until it’s too late.”

So I followed him. What the fuck else was I going to do?

I would’ve thought we walked all over the Mirador looking for the “company” Felix wanted, except that I knew we probably hadn’t even covered a tenth of it. It was hard to keep in your head all at the same time how big the Mirador was, and I wondered how anybody could live here and not go completely fucking insane. And then I realized I wasn’t sure they
weren’t
all crazy, and I tried to think of something else instead of wondering how long it was going to take me to start barking. Didn’t have much luck.

Felix told me the names of all the hallways and rooms we went through, kind of over his shoulder like he didn’t care whether I heard him or not. I figured, like the old joke says, I needed all the help I could get, so I listened hard enough to give myself a headache.

We passed groups of people here and there, hocuses, flashies, some groups of both, musicians, an artist painting a portrait by candlelight. Felix marched right on past them with barely even a look. He finally found the people he was after in a long room with a barrel vault so low it was walls as well as ceiling. It was a nice room, though, with warm red tiles on the floor and the big grown-up brother of Felix’s table down the center. The people there were all hocuses wearing the Mirador’s gold sash, and I wasn’t a bit surprised.

“The Seraphine,” Felix muttered to me and walked in like a parade.

It took a moment before they noticed him, and then everybody got real quiet all at once, except for a big red-faced hocus with gray hair who kept talking into the silence until he realized nobody was listening to him. Then he turned around and saw Felix, and then he was being real quiet, too.

“Well?” Felix said. “Isn’t anyone going to lie and say how glad you are to see me?”

Fuck me sideways, I thought and only just kept myself from saying it out loud.

They gave each other these little sidelong looks, and I could see they knew as well as I did that when Felix was in this sort of mood, you’d flap your arms and fly to Vusantine sooner and easier than you’d find the right thing to say. Their expressions went from scared to embarrassed to actually guilty, and I realized these were Felix’s friends.

Or had been.

Powers, Felix, can’t you be nice just once when it would do you some good? But he couldn’t. It wasn’t how he was built, and he’d said as much himself. I wanted to strangle him, and I also wanted to just sit down and cry.

Finally, one of them, a lady hocus with a round face and bright brown eyes, figured that somebody had to say
something
, and said, “Hello, Felix.” I admired her guts more than her common sense.

“Fleur,” he said, and it was that purring voice that made me feel sick. “I’m so pleased you didn’t give me the cut direct. This time.”

She
was
a friend of his. She knew not to rise to the bait. “It’s good to see you looking well.”

“And good to see you back,” chimed in one of the others, a guy who should’ve been old enough to know better.

It kind of hung there for a minute while we all watched Felix decide whether to shred the poor dumb fuck to ribbons or not. And then Felix smiled. “Mervyn. Tactful as ever.” He started toward them, extending his hands to the lady named Fleur, and I felt something unclench in my chest.

I went to bed alone that night, although I could have had my choice of companions if I had desired.

I did not desire. I did not want to expend the energy and attention to make love, and I no longer had anyone in the Mirador to whom I could go for something more honest.

And I wanted, badly, to talk to Thamuris. I needed his intelligence. I needed to talk to someone who was neither Cabaline nor Eusebian, someone who had no preconceptions about the Virtu and what it could or could not do. And someone who had no preconceptions about me and what I was capable of. Someone with whom conversation did not have to be a war.

I needed to talk to a friend.

There was more power in my construct-Mélusine here, where it echoed the physical structures and lines of force that grounded my sleeping body. I could feel the need for caution, for care and thought, like the taint of ozone in the air. The jagged, broken magic of the Virtu underlay the whole, and I could all too easily impale myself on it, tear myself to shreds and tatters. The Seventh Gate was like a diseased and gaping maw, and I found myself uneasy about turning my back on it; Iosephinus’s warnings about mental constructs were almost audible as I observed the ways in which what had been a simple schematic of the city was changing, becoming in some respects more representational and in others decidedly less. Darkness shrouded the Lower City, with pinpricks of light in Pharaohlight and Simside, while the rest of Mélusine basked under a loving summer sun. The Mirador itself, on whose battlements I stood, seemed to be made of black glass; the sun shone through but could not illuminate it.

I turned toward Horn Gate almost desperately, afraid of what I might see here if I lingered too long. It was standing open, wreathed in white clematis, and beyond it I could see the winding paths of the Khloïdanikos and the twisted perseïdes. I stepped through gladly, gratefully, and found my accustomed place to wait for Thamuris.

I had to wait longer than usual and was beginning to be worried when I felt the Khloïdanikos resonate to his presence like a tapped glass. He himself appeared only a few moments later, hurrying into view at the end of the allée, and he looked much more like his waking self than I was accustomed to. The hectic color of consumption was in his face, and his hair, instead of hanging in burnished waves down his back, was in two fat, homely plaits. His garment was definitely a nightshirt.

I rose to meet him, and he said, “I’m sorry I took so long. The celebrants won’t leave me alone.” I could hear his struggle for breath and knew that that, too, was showing through from his waking self.

“You’re worse.”

He waved it aside almost angrily. “It’s the nature of the disease. I have been much more ill than this several times.”

“That is no excuse for abusing yourself now. You should be resting properly.”

“How can I? They won’t leave me
alone
.”

I wondered how high his fever was, and gave up on the idea of persuading him to forgo this meeting; it would be kinder to give him something to think about that was not his own wretched body. I coaxed him to sit down and told him about my return to the Mirador, the encounter on the Road of Chalcedony, the Curia’s deliberations, and especially the singing of the Virtu that I could still hear even though I was no longer mad.

My description of the Virtu distracted him nicely, both from himself and from any questions he might have asked about why I had leaped so spectacularly to Mildmay’s defense. I did not want Thamuris’s opinion of the obligation d‘âme.

“Singing, you say?”

“I don’t know any other way to describe it. It’s definitely a melody.”

“And how long did you say the Virtu had been incorporate before it was broken?”

“A hundred and seventy-eight years. It was the oldest continuous thaumaturgie working on the continent.”

Thamuris frowned, and the brightness in his yellow eyes was more than fever. “And its physical foundation?”

I thought of the jagged shards still in the Hall of the Chimeras and shivered. “I believe the correct term is ‘temporally coterminous.’ ”

He nodded. “You called it a loom. Do you think you could also call it a polyphonic fugue?”

“Um,” I said. “I recognize ‘fugue’ as a musical term, but…”

“If a tapestry is a picture made by weaving different colored threads together, then a fugue does the same thing with melodies.”

“Then, yes, I suppose so. Although it isn’t the metaphor I would have chosen.”

“Ah, but you did. Because the song you describe is the remaining unbroken strand of the Virtu’s magic.”

“Is it,” I said flatly, hearing the incredulity in my own voice.

“Yes. Our minds have to translate magic into symbols we can understand. That’s what the various schools of magic
are
, you know—different sets of symbols for interpreting magic to our minds. Words, objects, rituals, diagrams… and your mind chose music.”

“How marvelous.”

“It should make the task you’ve set yourself much easier, though,” Thamuris said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm and anxious to allay it. “It gives you another, completely separate system with which to analyze the problem and judge your progress.”

“I suppose it does,” I said, trying to sound encouraged. I did not want to explain to Thamuris how bad the memories were that that song brought back. There were no words, nothing but pain and fear and wretched confusion, and I was afraid of what invoking those memories here might do to the Khloïdanikos if I could not control them.

I smiled at Thamuris and said, “I should stop bothering you with my theoretical puzzles. I’ll talk to you later.” I left before he could formulate a protest, hoping that the tranquility of the Khloïdanikos would help him rest.

The Curia’s decision was a foregone conclusion, despite the best efforts of Agnes and Johannes. They needed the Virtu mended, and I was the first sign they’d had in over a year that such a thing might even be possible, much less achievable. In the end, consensus was unanimous.

I was the second wizard in the history of the Cabaline ascendancy to petition for and be granted reinstatement. The first, one hundred and sixty years ago, had been Damon Esterley, called Damon Turncoat, the only wizard ever to take his allegiance from the Mirador to the Bastion and to return.