The Virtu (56 page)

At the bottom, I instinctively cast for more light, feeling the size of the darkness that met us. We all stared for a moment, unable to take in what we saw.

Mildmay said, “Sacred bleeding fuck,” mostly under his breath, a genuine expression of awe.

Gideon said, :I thought she was not worshipped this far west, but—:

:I know,: I said, answering in kind because I did not care to have Mavortian hear. :I can see it.:

It was not a temple, as in Huakinthe, nor a great cathedral, as in Klepsydra. I wondered if the labyrinth in Nera might once have been like this, and knew that, whether it had or whether it had been completely different, the ancient Troians had destroyed without bothering first to understand.
They worshipped abominations
, Themistokles had said, and if they had worshipped the God of the Obscured Sun, that was certainly true.

But still… even in the darkness and decay, even through my own fear and desire for flight, I could see what had been here. It was the obverse face of the labyrinth in Klepsydra, a reminder that the White-Eyed Lady could also be kind.

Someone had made of the Sim a water garden, laid out in the twining, spiraling knots of a maze, and all these centuries later, it still ran obediently in its channels, still sang as the maze’s designers had wished. I hated it, and yet I could not deny its beauty, could not deny that what they had done was a work of reverence and honor.

Mavortian said, “I would be quite surprised to discover that the Virtu is not directly above the center of this maze.”

“Heart,” Mildmay said, and I nodded at him in appreciation of the distinction. Mavortian ignored him.

“Thaumaturgical architecture is a very odd discipline, but I think I am beginning to grasp its principles. Shall we go find out if I am wrong?”

:Architectural thaumaturgy,: Gideon said, crossly pedantic.

There was nothing I wanted less than to find the heart of that maze, to stand and try to work magic while surrounded by the Sim. Be grateful, I said to myself. You could have found yourself trying to work magic while standing
in
the Sim. Small favors, as Mildmay sometimes said. I smiled at Mavortian and agreed, “No time like the present.”

The maze beneath the Mirador—if “beneath” was the correct term when it had once been part of the Mirador as the Hall of the Chimeras was now—was not difficult; it was not meant to be. :It’s quite like that hedge maze in Hermione,: Gideon said, :only here we can each serve as our own observation tower.:

I made some noncommittal agreement, and would have even if I had remembered what he was talking about. The farther into the maze we penetrated, the sharper my memories of Keeper became. I was flinching from the expectation of hearing his voice over the gentle music of the water maze.

I’d learned to fellate a man when I was eight years old. Two of the five times I’d come close enough to drowning to feel death—to feel, I realized, the White-Eyed Lady’s cold kiss—had been for refusing. Or trying to.

One of the five had been for doing it too well, to the wrong man.

Keeper had taught me I was a whore. He had taught me I was beautiful, too, by the way he looked at me. He’d taught me how to use what I was to get what I wanted, even when all I wanted was not to be hurt anymore. He’d taught me how not to gag on an erect penis, taught me how to swallow semen and say thank you for it.

He’d taught me how to die.

And he’d taught me how to fear, taught me so well that all these years later, I was still afraid.

If you fall in, I reminded myself, Mildmay will come in after you. But it wasn’t the river I was afraid of, and I wasn’t sure Mildmay could save me.

I wasn’t sure anyone could save me. Keeper had taught me I could not save myself. Malkar had hammered that lesson home. And if it needed an object lesson, the shards of the Virtu hundreds of feet above us would do nicely.

But I kept following Mildmay, my hands knotted into fists and my teeth digging into my lower lip. Not screaming, not running. Continuing into the water and darkness in the arrogant and misguided belief that I could for once in my life do something right.

And if I was wrong… none of us would survive to explain, and it was quite possible that no one in the Mirador would survive to care. Water-working was chancy at best—though not as straightforwardly suicidal as wood—and working at this scale meant that even the tiniest of mistakes would be magnified.

It was the only solution I had, I reminded myself, and I had learned enough from observing Mavortian to be able to feel the necessity of doing
something
. If we simply dismantled the Virtu entirely, the Mirador’s magic would fall apart, the Cabaline school would dissolve—maybe not this month, or this year, but soon. Or would simply not be strong enough to withstand another assault. The Virtu, and the oaths sworn on it, and the tradition it represented, were what held us together, and we needed that. But unless the Virtu was restored, able to resume its function as a power-channeler, to find all the voices of its fugue again, the magic of the Mirador would be dragged continually askew, warped by the brokenness at its center. Again, weakness led to vulnerability, and vulnerability was what the Bastion was waiting for. Waiting for the moment when they could conquer: burn the city, raze the Mirador, put to death every Cabaline wizard who did not flee swiftly enough. They had not attacked yet presumably because Stephen had had the wits to call in the Coeurterre, and the High King of Tibernia behind them, but the Coeurterre would not stay forever. Stephen would not permit it; Marathat was not a vassal state of Tibernia any more than it was a duchy of Kekropia, and the balance between the two was one that the Lords Protector had been maintaining for the nearly two hundred years of the Teverian dynasty. And Stephen had to be aware of how close that balance was to slipping. It was no wonder he had agreed to my reckless gamble.

We reached the heart of the maze, a broad disk carved and channeled into a mandala of water—itself a symbol of balance, and I wondered if I dared believe in omens sufficiently to take that as a good one.

“Yes,” Mavortian said. He was standing in the center of the mandala, craning awkwardly on his canes to look up at the ceiling, his witchlights strung out in a vertical line like beads. “Directly above us. I still think you’re insane, but there’s a possibility this will work.”

“It will work,” I said, with more confidence than I felt, and joined him at the center of the mandala. The water was only an inch deep, and I could feel the symmetry of the maze converging on this place. I could also feel a faint echo of the Virtu, like a faraway jangle of untuned violins.

“Maybe if they had known this was here, they wouldn’t have…”

“You said it yourself,” Mavortian said. “They were trained necromancers. They wouldn’t have taken a risk like this.”

“I suppose not.” I sighed, looking down at the dark water with a grimace. “I’d better take my boots off.”

Boots and stockings, given to Mildmay to hold. The water was cold, the current tugging gently at my toes as I planted my feet. I clenched my teeth until the urge to scream ebbed a little, then said, “It would help if each of you would stand at one of the compass points.” I caught the anxiety in Mildmay’s look and said, “As placeholders to help guide me. Nothing more.” He nodded, although the tension did not dissipate from his shoulders. I directed him to the south, Gideon to the east, Mavortian to the north, and Bernard gave me a grudging half nod and took west.

I stood facing Mavortian, feeling oddly reassured by having Mildmay behind me. Mavortian said quietly, with no trace of his usual bite, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” I said. “You know what I need from you?”

“Yes.” He banished his witchlights.

“Good.”

I shut my eyes for a moment, wishing the smell of the Sim was not thick enough in the air to taste, and banished my own.

We still had light; Mildmay was holding a lantern, and—I reminded myself as my nails bit into my palms—either I or Mavortian or Gideon could summon witchlights anytime we chose. And the water was still no more than an inch deep, the current still no more than a very gentle pull. This was not the labyrinth beneath Klepsydra. For all its age and long desertion, for all that it was a place meant for the White-Eyed Lady, there was no mikkary here, no old hatred running in the lines of the maze. And that, more than anything, made me hope that this casting would work, that the third foundation would hold.

We had straightened the Virtu’s twisted magic, Mavortian and I, working from the patterns he and his cards found as a dowsing rod finds water. I could feel the Virtu now, from where I stood, feel the way it pulled against its two anchors, the Rock and the Dog. Mavortian took out his cards, ran them through his hands, pulled out, one at a time, the Rock, the Dog, the River; he put the other cards back, held the Rock and the Dog in his left hand, raised the River in his right. I reacted into the pattern we had made, found the place where the third anchor belonged, gave it that card of the Sibylline.

That was the easy part; even broken and twisted, the Virtu was responsive, willing. But the card was only a placeholder, as the men standing at the points of the compass around me were placeholders, to keep me grounded in this place. This place and no other. As a placeholder, the symbol of the River wouldn’t stand for very long; the Virtu’s anchors had to be thaumaturgically stable, like stone, or constantly renewed, like the Cabaline oaths. Or constantly moving, unstable, shifting, changing, but undying, like the black river that was Mélusine’s blood.

I had to show the Virtu that the Sim was the River, that the symbol I had given it as an anchor represented this flowing darkness, this cruelty and strength. This river and no other. But to do that, I had to work the Sim into the pattern. And that meant…

I forced myself to keep breathing deeply, forced myself to be aware of Mildmay, Gideon, Mavortian, Bernard. I forced myself to feel the water against my feet. I knelt and did not allow myself to wince as the water soaked into my trousers. I sat back on my heels to find my balance; then carefully, slowly, I reached down, both hands, and laid my palms flat against the stone. I looked up. Mavortian was still holding the River face out in his left hand. I could feel the pattern of the Virtu’s magic pulling to the card and then pulling away again.

I took a breath, held it a seven count, let it out again. And began to work the river.

It was like drowning again. Only this time, it was my own hands holding me under. I remembered not to struggle. I let the force of the river take me.

Though they had never said so, I knew Mavortian and Gideon had expected me to fight the Sim, to control it. That was how most wizards thought, Cabalines and Eusebians, Fressandrans with their strong divination. But I had learned from Thamuris and the Khloïdanikos. I could not control the Sim; I could only kill myself trying. But I could open myself to the river, surrender to the river.

I could drown. I could drown in an inch of water, and they would find no water in my lungs.

That will happen if you panic, I said fiercely to myself. Remember where you are. I could not lift my head, could not tear my gaze away from my hands, from the distorted underwater gleam of the garnets in my rings. But I could feel Mildmay behind me, the obligation d‘âme like a rope between us, a rope woven of iron and silver, the heat of breath and the salt of skin. He won’t let you drown, I said to the screaming, sobbing child locked in the cage of my ribs, and my magic gathered and reached into the heart of the river.

It was the surrender that was hard, not the magic. The pattern was there in the thaumaturgy, just like the pattern of channels that made the water maze. The river flowed into it, into the course Mavortian and I had laid. I watched it twine around the other two foundations, felt a hesitation, a shudder, and for a vivid moment saw them braided together, black and silver-gray and scarlet, river, rock, and blood.

And then I was on my knees in the water, starting to shiver with cold.

The Virtu was still unawakened, still dark.

But the third foundation was set.