The Virtu (68 page)

“Of course,” Mehitabel said. “Silly me. All right. You go play hero. I’ll try to get everybody else out alive.”

“That’s just as heroic as anything else that happens tonight,” I said, smiled at her poleaxed expression, and cast into the maze of the Bastion for Malkar.

I only wished it had been harder to find him.

But feeling Malkar was as easy as feeling the poisoned ache of an infected wound. His magic had a flavor to it, a bitter, grinding bite, and he was using magic now, using it—

—using it to kill Mavortian von Heber, one agonized inch at a time.

I took off running.

I knew, even as I ran, that I was already too late, but there was nothing else I could do. I had to try. Even if it was not entirely my fault that Mavortian had been trapped—and I knew that the blame was truly Malkar’s, and to some degree Mavortian’s in his own right for choosing to separate from me—part of the responsibility was on my shoulders. I had valued Mildmay over Mavortian, and it seemed that that had not been necessary. Mildmay—and I should have known it—was perfectly capable of rescuing himself. Mavortian was obsessed and reckless with it, and although I had tried to explain, I thought perhaps he had not grasped exactly who and what Brinvillier Strych was, who he was dealing with beyond the man he had hated for so long.

He had not wanted to grasp it, but that did not mean I should have left him to walk into Malkar’s jaws alone.

I ran, my witchlights skittering around me, tracing a tangle of corridors and antechambers and half staircases without more than the most passing attention paid to any of it. For once in my life, I was not worried about getting lost.

Stairs down, and more stairs down, and I wondered distractedly what business Malkar had had in the Bastion’s subbasements, before I skidded around a corner into a room lit by sulfurous witchlight: chains on the walls, a pentagram inlaid in the floor, a drain gaping like a hungry maw.

Bernard was lying, limp as a rag doll, against one wall, Mavortian’s canes broken underneath him; Mavortian was pinned, unnaturally stiff, against another, his eyes bulging from his head, blood already beginning to drip from nose and mouth and ears. Malkar stood in one point of the pentagram, his hands raised, the witchlight reflecting evilly from the rubies in his rings. And then I knew. Somehow, Malkar had felt us coming; I did not know which of us had betrayed himself, Mavortian or I, and it did not matter. Something had alerted Malkar. And being Malkar, he had done what he did best: he had set a trap.

He didn’t bother to turn around; he had no need. And all the rich, purring cruelty in the world was in his voice when he said, “There you are, darling. Come to watch the show?”

He’s
going to find Strych. Mehitabel can look after the hocuses. They’ll be fine.
He’s
the one to follow.

No problem getting away from them. They ain’t gonna go wandering around in the Bastion. Got a new sheepdog to keep ‘em safe, and she’s no dummy. Easy to follow him and his little green witchlights. Just keep back, keep out of the way.

Harder to keep up. Long legs, and he’s moving fast. Follow. All or nothing.

Down and down. Sim don’t run under the Bastion. Small favors. Down, and there’s the smell of Strych. You don’t forget it once you’ve learned it.

He
turns a corner and stops dead. Hang back, don’t get cocky. Strych’s voice. Words don’t matter. Nothing matters but the smell of death.

A scream. Don’t have to look to know somebody’s dead. That ain’t the sort of scream you live through.
He
says something, like it hurts him. Angle past him, and there’s Strych.

Now it’s just down to waiting.

Good.

Mavortian was dead, terribly, a heap of splintered bones in a pool of blood.

“Are you really Brinvillier Strych?” I said into the silence.

“Yes.” Malkar’s smile was mocking. “I would have told you before if you had asked.” He took a step forward.

My back was against the wall before I even realized I was going to move, instincts ingrained by years of pain and fear telling me that when he was like this, I had to keep out of his reach.

Not that it had ever done me any good.

He took another step, his smile widening.

Oh you useless sniveling vermin! Aren’t you even going to
fight
? Can’t you for once in your damned worthless existence stand up for yourself? But I’d never been able to fight Malkar, not since his gorgons dropped into Lorenzo’s palm, and he turned to me with that little smile and said,
Let us find out if you are worth the price
. I could hate him; I could cherish my fury and hoard it like a miser. But face-to-face with him, and all there was left was fear.

Once it was clear I was not going to speak, Malkar said, “It really is amazing, how much you and your brother look alike. I had thought my memory was playing tricks on me.”

It was a mistake. He never made mistakes, and I didn’t know what had prompted this one—what cue he had misread. It occurred to me, in a moment of sickening shame, that if he’d made Mildmay describe the way I behaved toward him, the picture he would have gotten would have justified a belief that I cared no more for Mildmay than a bear-baiter did for his dogs. But Malkar’s words did to me what I had been unable to do to myself: jarred me out of the rut of fear and memory his voice had trapped me in. I saw Mildmay as he had been in my dream, beaten and scared but still fighting, using Malkar’s own games against him.

My hands came up, and they were full of fire.

Malkar swatted my lightning aside. “You aren’t thinking. You know you can’t win—you could never beat me before.”

“This isn’t before,” I said.

Malkar laughed. “And you think you can escape your past, my poor deluded child? Trust me, my darling, it can’t be done.”

And that was when the shadows behind me, on my bad side, exploded in a snarling howl, the scream of an animal goaded finally beyond endurance; I shied sideways, hard enough that I lost my balance and fell, and it took me a moment to realize it was Mildmay, and he was leaping for Malkar’s throat.

Only chance. Only shot. Can’t kill a hocus if they see you coming.

Strych laughs, and that’s it.

Now.

Now now now.

Aim for the throat. Vulnerable. Windpipe and choke vein and all kinds of good shit. Shove his voice box out through his spine. Both hands, grip hard, bear down. Don’t matter that it’s him, don’t matter how much he hurt you. Just kill the son of a bitch and it’ll be over.

He’s surprised. Like it on him. Clamp down, hard. It’s going to work. It’s
gotta
work. Come on, you fucker, die already!

But one big hand’s moving. Too late to dodge.

—oh fuck—

Pain. Like before. Raw screaming. On the floor, Strych’s foot pressing down. Hard to breathe. Hard to hear. Can’t scream anymore, though, and that’s good. Strych’s voice like thunder.
His
voice answering. Don’t do anything stupid, please. Please. Please don’t let him hurt you, too.

Please.

Mildmay was on the floor, Malkar’s boot resting across his throat.

“A cunning animal,” he said, one hand rubbing his own throat.

I was on my feet again, lightning dancing from finger to finger, but I could not attack, not when all he had to do was redirect my lightning to my brother’s helpless body.

“But I can’t imagine why you had to cast the obligation d‘âme on him, my darling. Surely a creature like this would never dare to be disloyal.”

“Your example has taught me never to be overconfident about such things,” I said—and regretted it the next moment, as his foot bore down harder, and I heard Mildmay choke.

“Flippancy does not become you, dearest. I suggest instead of being clever, you devote your attention to deciding what you’re going to do now. It isn’t as if you have many choices.”

No, I didn’t. I couldn’t let him hurt Mildmay, but I could not see how to defeat him otherwise.

You know you can’t win
—
you could never beat me before
.

And that was true. I had never been able to defeat Malkar. Never once.

And then the thought turned itself around in my head, and I had to fight to keep sudden enlightenment from showing on my face. I could not defeat Malkar any more than I could have defeated the Sim, but I could—I had always been able to—give in to him.

I did. I lowered my hands, let the lightning fade.

Malkar cocked his head at me, his smile resurfacing. “Surrender, my dear?”

I stepped forward, hoping that he would take my trembling for exhaustion and despair. “I can’t…” I said, letting my voice trail away. He knew I wasn’t articulate at moments like this—he, better than anyone, knew that. It didn’t bother him that I didn’t say what it was I couldn’t do.

“So sudden,” he said, “and yet so expected. If you are very good to me, my darling, I may not make you watch me eviscerate your little brother.”

He stepped forward himself, meeting me, his foot finally off Mildmay’s neck, and said, “Kiss me, sweet. Remind me of what you’re good at.”

“Yes, Malkar,” I said and kissed him.

And with the kiss, I flung my magic around him, locking us together, letting the weight of his attack—which I’d known was coming, as surely as I knew I breathed—carry us both down, not physically, but down into the dark underlayer of dreams, of divination, into my construct-Mélusine. He had been expecting resistance, expecting my strength arrayed against him, so he could not check our fall. But my advantage lasted only the barest moment; as soon as he realized his miscalculation, he was fighting me, his magic twisting against mine, struggling for dominance.

Not for flight. Never for flight.

My raw power was greater than his. He had known that from the moment he found me in the Shining Tiger, had moved quickly, brutally to ensure that I would never be capable of using that strength against him. Even now, it was all I could do simply to withstand him, to keep from rolling over and showing him my belly like a dog.

I held on, thinking of the fear in Mildmay’s eyes. Malkar bludgeoned me savagely, but I could feel his confusion; he didn’t know what I was trying to do, and that wrong-footed him. He was used to being able to predict my actions, my thoughts. I was his creature, as he had liked to remind me, and as transparent to him as a pane of glass.

But not now. He had always disdained thaumaturgie architecture, sneered at the magic of dreams and divination, and so he could not understand what I had learned from Gideon and Thamuris, from losephinus long ago. He was as blind to the world of the spirit, Sand’s
manar
, as he was to the idea of compassion, of love, of loyalty that was not anchored and founded in fear. And so he was uncertain, a feeling that had to be an unwelcome novelty to a monster as old and clever as Brinvillier Strych, and he did not strike with quite his full force, did not, even now, try to disengage. And it baffled and enraged him that I would not fight back; he fought harder, his own power now holding him as much as I was, for the more he grappled with my construct-self—rather than drawing back to engage my physical body as he could have done, at least at first—the more he accepted the symbolism of this construct-Mélusine, the more the symbolism accepted him and worked upon him.

And since I was not fighting him, and I was not fighting it, the construct acted as it always wanted to, dragging us both down, back, south, through its jagged mockery of the Seventh Gate and into the dark, mirish madness of the swamps beyond. I dragged Malkar down with me, exerting myself only to hold him. Now he was struggling, now he was trying to free himself from me, but he could not. He himself had let me close—had told me to kiss him. His own symbolism chained him to me, left him vulnerable to my symbols, and as the mire closed over our heads, still locked together in that grotesque, nauseating kiss, I called on the symbols I had been immersed in for the past several days, the stations of the Sibylline: the River, the Drowned Man, the Two-Handed Engine, finally, with every scrap of power and self I possessed, the Heart of Light.

And Malkar screamed.

Screamed and burst into flames.

Our physical bodies jolted apart, so violently that I wasn’t even burned. I was screaming, too, I realized distantly, but my attention was focused on holding my spells on him, on keeping him under the knotted web of magic and madness that was killing him.

Later, I came to realize that he probably couldn’t have saved himself in any event. Brinvillier Strych or not, greatest living blood-wizard or not, he was burning from within, as if my touch had ignited his bones. Even burning, his eyes were aware, and the look in them, fixed on me, was a searing compound of shock and rage. He hadn’t thought I could do it—he hadn’t thought
anyone
could. Even then I wondered how long it had been since anyone had hurt him, since anyone had dared to try.

The fire, unnatural as it was, consumed him quickly, but to me it was a ghastly, crawling eternity before something in him—his heart, I thought, for that was where the fire had begun—exploded. I ducked away, cowering against the wall, and felt hot shreds of him fall on my hair and left shoulder and back. It was only partly the pain that had me in a panic to shake them off and beat out the sparks.

When I could look again, Malkar Gennadion was a pile of coals settling slowly into ash. He was dead; he could be nothing but dead. There could be no miraculous resurrection from this for him.

I drew a deep, shuddering, painful breath. I stepped around the remains of my former master, torturer, lover, teacher. Knelt down by my brother.

His eyes blinked open, dazed and hurt, but maybe… maybe they were not quite so cold? Maybe I was deluding myself.

“Dead?” His voice was a harsh, slurry rasp, worse than I had ever heard it.

“Yes.”

“Need…” He reached for me, and I understood. I helped him sit up, edged myself awkwardly around so that he could see.

He looked, unblinking, for a long time. It was only very slowly that I realized he was crying, even more slowly that I realized I was crying, too. I put my arms around him; he hugged me back with surprising strength. We crouched there for some time in the darkness, weeping while the ashes of our nemesis settled and smoldered in the middle of the room.