The Virtu (52 page)

“Do tell,” I said, and the next slow, winding phase of my exploration was to the accompaniment of Mildmay explaining to me what I eventually realized was the fall of the Ophidian dynasty and the rise of the Cordelian. What astonished me was not so much that Mildmay knew the history—although that was astonishing enough—as that he spoke about the people involved as if he’d known them all personally, as if this was not history to him, but gossip of the sort laundresses traded across their washtubs. I wanted to ask him where he had learned the story of Paul Cordelius’s ascension to the throne of Marathat, but the question would embarrass him, and I was afraid that he would stop talking altogether.

The weight of darkness pressing in on us from all sides was easier to bear with his voice to listen to.

We descended another staircase and another: spiral staircases; staircases barely the width of my shoulders, running inside the walls like mouse trails; broad sweeping staircases; servants’ stairs pitched almost as steeply as ladders. We walked through ballrooms, lords’ receiving rooms, wizards’ workrooms inlaid with symbols I did not know, anterooms and pantries, corridors and stoas and great echoing vaults forested with pillars. All of it abandoned a hundred years ago at least, all of it cold, brooding. Not quite awake enough to be hostile.

Mikkary.

I shivered, thinking that the sensation was not easier to bear for having a name to put to it, and Mildmay interrupted himself in the middle of explaining why the Bercromii had not rallied to the Raphenii’s raised standard to say, “Felix? You all right?”

“More or less,” I said. “These halls do not welcome us.”

“It’s that mikkary thing again, ain’t it? Because this feels exactly like that fucking maze in Klepsydra.”

How many times do you have to learn? I asked myself. Don’t underestimate him. “Yes,” I said. “This is mikkary. It cannot—” I had to stop, clear my throat. “It cannot harm us. It has not been channeled as the mikkary of the labyrinth was.”

“Do all old buildings get like this? I mean, if nobody uses ‘em?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know that the problem here, as in Klepsydra, is not merely that the buildings are old, but that they are places where magic was worked. Places
on
which magic was worked. And that makes them… different. I think it makes the mikkary stronger.”

“ ‘Cause that’s
just
what we need,” Mildmay muttered, and made me laugh.

A half staircase and the length of a stoa later, standing at an intersection marked with the points of the compass, I felt it, a jagged sense of déjà vu and broken magic. “There!” I said, and behind me, Mildmay said, “Um, Felix?”

I turned. His face had gone a ghastly color, even allowing for the witch-lights. “Did you know y’all got ghouls down here?”

And I remembered, in an entirely different and very visceral way, the death of Sherbourne Foss.

“They ain’t noticed us yet, but…” And I followed the direction of his stare; far down the corridor to my left, I could just make out dim, scuttling shapes. They hadn’t noticed us because they, too, were surrounded by witchlights, which I guessed was the effect of an almost entirely disabled Warding spell.

“Come on!” I said, grabbing Mildmay by the wrist and dragging him in the direction of my déjà vu. He followed willingly, only stumbling a little between the slight remaining untrustworthiness of his right leg and his apparent determination not to look away from those faint, moving lights.

“Where we headed?” he said in a voice pitched to carry to my ears and no farther.

“There should be a staircase,” I answered in kind. I’d learned that trick as a child, and Joline and I—

I cut that thought off viciously.

Then my witchlights, skittering and spinning, illuminated a pair of marble columns, an arch of roses. “That’s it,” I said, and Mildmay moaned behind me, “Oh shit they spotted us.” The next second, his hard, fierce weight knocked me off my feet and, for a moment, entirely clear of the floor. Then we were rolling, blunt edges and hard flatness, down the stairs, a tangle of limbs, and Mildmay was dragging me, one hand on my wrist and one painfully in my hair. White marble and a black iron threshold. He let go of me with a shove and I skidded on cold stone, and at the same time heard the great rasping groan of the door swinging shut.

And the next second something hit it from the other side, hard and with a terrible hungry scrabbling as of claws.

“Fuck,” Mildmay said, a half-breathless exhalation.

I propped myself up on one elbow to look at him. He was leaning against the door, his forearms braced and his head resting against his hands. From the other side of the door, the scratching continued, interspersed with the thud of bodies throwing themselves against its blessedly unyielding mass.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“You ever seen anybody bit by a ghoul?”

“No, of course not. The Mirador doesn’t—”

“Believe in ‘em,” he finished for me. “Yeah, I know. Well, I saw what was left of Rory Salpêtre after the ghouls got done with him, and I almost got bit once myself. If I’d known there were ghouls down here, I wouldn’t’ve come, and I wouldn’t‘ve let you come, neither.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard him say so many words at one time when he wasn’t telling a story, and I bit back my reflexive response:
you couldn’t have stopped me
. Instead, more reasonably, I said, “I didn’t know either. Do you think they’ll be able to get in?”

He straightened away from the door. “Nah. This fucker’s solid.” And he broke off, and I had just enough of his profile to see his frown. Then he said thoughtfully, “Well, fuck me sideways,” and I heard the unmistakable sound of bolts being thrown, one at the top of the door, one—with an awkward stoop—at the bottom.

“Bolts?” I said stupidly. “On the
inside
of the door?”

“Yeah.” He extended a hand, and I let him brace me to my feet. “Guess they didn’t want nobody crashing their funerals.”

I tried not to laugh, but it was a lost cause. We ended up leaning against the tomb of Paul Cordelius in an act of the grossest lèse-majesté, both of us giggling and gasping for breath, more giddy than actually amused.

The ghouls continued to paw at the door.

Finally, Mildmay said, “I hope you’ve got some bright idea for getting us out of here. ‘Cause I’m guessing there ain’t no back door.”

“If what I’m trying to do works, we won’t need to worry about it.”

“And if it don’t?”

“Doesn’t. And let’s not worry about that until we have to.”

“Okay.” And then he raised one eyebrow at me. “What do I do to help?”

I got to admit, I love making Felix’s jaw drop.

And I guess he must’ve been expecting me to argue with him or something, because that sure did it.

He just stared at me for the longest time, like I’d, I don’t know, told him I was going to go set up as a portrait painter or something, and then he kind of shook himself and said, “It would help greatly if we could find the focal point of the original foundation. I know you can’t sense that sort of thing, but will you stay with me while I search?” He gave me a one-sided, not very happy smile. “I find my nerves are a little bit on edge.”

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, me, too. Where d’you want to start?”

“My first guess would have been the tomb of Paul Cordelius,” he said, laying a hand on the tomb we were standing next to. “Since it’s here so conveniently by the door. But there’s nothing here. My next guess would be John Cordelius, but I can’t imagine…” His voice kind of died in his throat, and he put one hand up to his head. It should’ve looked like a pantomime actress making fun of Madeleine Scott or Susan Dravanya, but it didn’t.

“What is it?” I said.

He gave me a look that was either a snarl or a smile, I couldn’t tell which, his eyes glittering in the witchlight in a way that spooked me the fuck out. “Let’s call it a hunch,” he said and took off down the line of tombs, muttering their names as he went: “Paul, Matthias, Sebastian, Edmund, Laurence, Charles… Claudius… Jasper… John. Damn them. I
knew
it.
Damn
them.”

“What?”

“It’s right here,” he said, and that look was a snarl, no two ways about it. Both hands were gripping the edges of the tomb like he was trying to break it in half.

“What is?”

“John Cordelius,” he said, glaring at me like he thought I was going to try and deny it, “last king of Marathat, was killed—executed—in a revolution that not merely brought his dissatisfied cousin Michael Teverius to power, not merely abolished the kingship, but also entirely exterminated the Cordelian line, since Queen Alix Cordelia and the infant prince Daniel Cordelius were both executed—or murdered, if you prefer—along with John. Why, then,
why
would anyone go to the trouble of interring him in the Cordelius vault, a foolishly sentimental gesture that would certainly get you hanged for treason if you were caught?
Why
?”

“Dunno,” I said, although I was beginning to have a nasty feeling like maybe I did.

“Because necromancy works most strongly upon the newly dead. And most enduringly upon those who died by violence.”

My fingers were making the sign to ward off hexes before I could stop them. “Powers and saints. So you mean—”

“There’s something rather grimly appropriate about the symbolism—which may help to explain the Virtu’s legendary stability. The Cabal quite literally built their working on John Cordelius’s dead body.”

We stared at each other for a long time, listening to the ghouls thump and scrabble against the door. Finally, I said, “So what do we do to break it?”

And Felix said, “We draw a maze.”

He had chalk in his pockets, so he took one stick and I took another, and we laid out a maze around the tombs of the Cordelian kings and their wives and their children.

It wasn’t nice work, in case you were wondering, and the sound of the ghouls trying to break the door down didn’t help. Felix asked once, almost whispering, “If this doesn’t work, will they give up? Eventually?”

“Nope,” I said, and I was whispering, too, although there wasn’t no reason to. “They ain’t smart enough.”

“Fantastic,” Felix said with a shudder, and we kept drawing.

When the maze was done—and I don’t suppose I need to mention how hard I was trying to keep from thinking how much the lines of red chalk looked like old faded bloodstains—it covered most of the floor space in the crypt, except for a piece right by the door that Felix had told me to leave clear. John Cordelius’s tomb was the heart, which made things pretty badly off center, but we’d worked it out okay.

We were both standing in the clear space by the door. I gave Felix back the chalk, and he dropped it in his pocket without seeming to notice. He was frowning at the crypt, sort of generally, and then he turned and frowned at me, but not like I’d done something wrong. Then he got down on his knees and drew a diamond around me, scribbling a symbol at each point.

“What… ?”

“That
should
keep you safe,” he said, scrambling up and dusting off his trousers. “And if it doesn’t, I apologize in advance.”

“Wait—what about you?”

“I have to walk the maze.”

“
What
?” It came out almost in a sort of shriek, and I lowered my voice. “Are you absolutely
batfuck
?”

“You told me the story yourself,” he said, not loud or angry, and I knew I didn’t have a hope of changing his mind. “At the Trials, when you walk the curtain-mazes, what are you doing?”

I didn’t want to answer, but it wasn’t like I could pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about. You and your big fucking mouth, Milly-Fox. “Finding the way so the dead can follow.”

“Exactly.”

“But them ghosts in Nera—”

“Were, as Gideon was at such pains to point out, followers of a different religion. These are the dead of the Mirador, and they need a psychopomp.”

“A what?”

“A guide. Someone to find the way.”

“You.”

“Yes. Stay within the diamond. Please. I don’t want you hurt.”

Powers, he was a manipulative bastard. Because of course I went all blotchy red and said, “Okay, I promise,” and he got what he wanted just like always.

“Good. Wish me luck?” And then he gave me this twisted, nervous little smile, and I realized he was scared half out of his mind. Remembered that he might
sound
like he knew what he was doing, but it was all just guesswork and old stories.

I had to clear my throat twice before I could get the word out, but I said, “Luck.”

He nodded, kind of choppy, then turned and started to walk the maze.

Kethe, I hated standing there watching him and not being able to do nothing. He didn’t go fast. Good, steady pace, and his head up, and I knew he was trying to give the thing some dignity, for all these dead people who’d been stuck here for almost four Great Septads by what the Cabal had done. And I loved him for it.

He reached the heart of the maze we’d drawn, poor greedy stupid John Cordelius’s tomb, and he got his chalk out and started marking symbols around and on top of it. He was muttering under his breath, but I couldn’t make out the words, and I wasn’t sure it mattered.