The Virtu (64 page)

“When I was…” My throat seemed to close; I had to swallow hard, twice, before I could continue. “When I was not myself, in the madhouse, something… something happened to me.”

His fingers tightened slightly. :Were you raped?:

He startled me into looking up. “No, not that. That wouldn’t… never mind. Someone thought they would turn what Malkar had done to me to their own advantage. They tied me down”—and I removed my hands from Gideon’s, indicating where the straps had gone—“so I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even turn my head, and then they…” I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, refusing to cry.

:You
were
raped,: he said. Just not physically.:

“I suppose,” I said, heaved in one painful, shaky breath, and then another.

:Was Robert successful?:

“I didn’t—”

:You didn’t need to.:

“Oh. I… I don’t remember that part very clearly, but I don’t think so. He brought me back here, I think?” I couldn’t help it being a question, even though I knew it was nonsense to look at Gideon for the answers. “He did. And he tried…”

:He tried to use you to mend the Virtu,: Gideon said. :Thaddeus quite forgot he hated me in raving about that.:

“Thaddeus was
there
?”

:No. But he heard about it. Surely, I don’t need to tell you how gossip travels in this place.:

“No,” I said, “no, you don’t.” And then something else occurred to me. “Why wasn’t Robert burned for heresy on the spot?”

:How should I know?: But his dismissive shrug was not entirely convincing, and I only had to wait a few moments before he said, :They were desperate and frightened, circumstances that can cause the strongest theology to wobble, and I understand that Robert was quite convinced it would work.:

“And?”

:And you were a traitor, heretic, madman, and according to the reports from St. Crellifer’s, no better than a beast.:

“Not worth burning anyone over.”

:They believed you had broken the Virtu yourself,: he said, almost gently.

“I’m not saying I didn’t deserve what I got. I just—”

:Then you should be.:

I had been staring at my hands, running my fingers over and around my rings. I looked up at Gideon, shocked. “
You
say that? You know what I am.”

:Whatever you are, or aren’t, you did not deserve what happened to you.: He leaned forward, kissed me gently. :I understand why you don’t want to be dominated in bed, but can we… ?: He was blushing again.

“Try for equality?”

He nodded, almost shyly.

“I would like that,” I said, and his smile was beautiful enough to make me believe it might work.

In my dream, I am in a vast vaulted room, a room the size of the Hall of the Chimeras, but abandoned, desolate. There are the remains of a mosaic beneath my feet, but in such a fragmentary condition that I cannot tell what the subject matter might once have been; there are only scattered spots of color, blue and green, gold and red. It is the most miserably forsaken room I have ever seen. There is a single light, a cold, hard, pitiless white witchlight that hangs like a tiny, unnatural sun beneath the vault; around me, under my feet and over my head, pressing in against my body, I can hear a slow pulse, a throbbing mechanical heartbeat, the relentless ticking of a clock so vast it could cast a shadow against the stars.

Someone is shoved into the illuminated circle cast by the witchlight. A man, naked, his hands manacled together behind his back, a collar around his neck, and a leash stretching back into the shadows. He goes down on one knee, and I see whip weals scrawling their cruelty across his back. He struggles to his feet again; he almost falls when his right leg buckles beneath his weight, but he saves himself, an effort of raw strength that it hurts to witness. I want to go to him, to help, but I cannot. His head is down, his face obscured by his long, tangled hair, but I can see bruises on his chest and stomach, more welts marking his thighs. He is shivering, although whether with cold or fear I do not know.

I don’t hear the voice that shouts at him, but I know what it says: Raise your head! It shouts it over and over again until he does, bludgeoned into obedience with sound. His face is horribly bruised as well; a scar slashing across the left side of his face stands out stark and livid. One eye is swollen shut; the other is wide and green and not quite sane.

The voice shouts again. It wants him to say something, to send a message to his loving brother. For a moment, he seems unable to respond, unable to form words, and then he is shouting, a single word over and over and over until the leash jerks, dragging him back into the shadows, dragging him into silence. I wake with the word “Strych” ringing in my ears.

I woke tangled in the sheets, my breath coming in hard, painful gasps.

:Felix?: Gideon, sitting up next to me, his eyes dark with worry in the shine of his witchlights.

I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop the horrible noises I was making. Gideon put his arms around me, and I let him, even leaned against him, grateful for the warmth, for the quiet, natural sound of his heartbeat. And after a while, I had some shreds of control again, some vestiges of my rational self, and I told him what I had dreamed, start to finish.

And he sat and held me and listened, and when I was done, said, :I remember that you are prone to true-dreaming.:

“This wasn’t a dream,” I said. “It was a sending. Malkar’s good at them. But I’m sure he didn’t believe Mildmay would have the wits to turn it against him.”

:You think that wasn’t—:

“If Malkar had wanted me to know he was Brinvillier Strych, he had all the time and opportunity in the world to tell me. I wish Mildmay hadn’t done it, though.”

:But at least now you know what you’re up against.:

“I already knew that. Just because he’s also Strych doesn’t mean he’s not Malkar.”

:Ah. I see your point.:

“Yes.” But even in the midst of the horror and guilt and grief that had my heart pounding like a lead pendulum against my ribs, simply knowing that Mildmay was not dead, that it was not too late, was a thin, cold mercy, something at last that I could hold to. And as I thought about the dream, thought about the details around the image Malkar had orchestrated, I realized I had something else.

“I know where he is,” I said.

:You what?:

“I know where he is. I know where that room is. I know what that
sound
is.”

:Felix?:

“He’s in the Bastion.” Saying it out loud made it horrifyingly real. Gideon’s grip on me tightened, as if in protest.

:How can you be sure?:

I couldn’t smile at him, couldn’t be reassuring. “Because the Titan Clock of the Bastion is still running.”

The Titan Clocks were ancient, dating back to the days when the Mirador and the Bastion had been fortresses in the service of the same emperor. Juggernaut was the Bastion’s clock; Nemesis had been the Mirador’s. And there had been others, although their names and locations were now lost.

Five hundred years ago, the Nemesis Clock had been dismantled, ripped out of its matrix of stairs and hallways, and destroyed. Accounts differed as to the cause, most wizards preferring to blame the Clockmakers’ Guild—which had certainly borne the brunt of the city’s fear and anger—without ever explaining exactly how a group of annemer craftsmen, some of them only semiliterate, could have done
anything
to affect a Titan Clock. Annemer accounts were much simpler. They said the clock was haunted.

Titan Clocks were made with iron and gold and human bone; they did not break, and they did not fail. Haunting was not at all unlikely, and certainly the Nemesis Clock must have been saturated in mikkary.

Nemesis was no more; the only Titan Clock remaining was the Bastion’s Juggernaut. And I knew the ticking of Juggernaut had been the sound underlying Malkar’s sending.

:But how can he be in the Bastion?: Gideon said.

I shrugged. “It is where he said he was going, all those months ago. I think the more important question is how I’m going to get into the Bastion to find him.”

:To
find
him? Are you
mad
?:

“I have to get Mildmay away from him. I know what Malkar’s terms will be, when he gets around to sending them, and I can’t accept them. I can’t… If it were
just
me, if I were annemer, I’d trade myself for Mildmay in a heartbeat—if I thought Malkar could be trusted to honor his bargain. But it isn’t just me. I can’t let him have the use of my power again.”

:It’s a pity you didn’t think of some of this sooner.:

“Yes, it is. But I can’t do anything about that. I can only deal with the situation as it is, no matter how much I wish my own selfish stupidity hadn’t caused it.”

:I am sorry. That was unfair. And you do not bear sole responsibility, you know.:

“If you think that makes things any better, you are sadly mistaken. But it does remind me—I need you to tell me what Mavortian did to you.”

:Why?: Gideon said warily.

I couldn’t help sighing. “Because I can’t do this alone.”

:I—:

“You can’t go.”