Authors: Sarah Monette
Mildmay woke up coughing.
“It’s just the mountains,” he said. “Air’s too thin.”
He kept coughing, though, and I thought guiltily of the frigid water of
the St. Grainne. But Mildmay waved that idea off. “I’m
fine
, Felix,” he said, glowering. “Do what ever it is you’re gonna do with your ghosts and let’s get moving.”
“No, you were right,” I said, and he squinted at me in a way that was partly incredulity and partly (I suspected) a headache he wouldn’t admit he had. “The proper thing to do is tell a priest. That’s just never been an option before.”
He thought about that and decided to accept my excuse at face value. “Okay, yeah,” he said, and I shouldn’t have been so grateful to avoid another argument, but I was.
Our way grew steadily easier as we descended the mountain. The road became first better defined, then wider, and finally settled into a series of switchbacks with logs set crossways at regular intervals to give people and animals alike something to brace their feet against. By then it was nearly evening, and I insisted we stop, there being a level place beside the road which had plainly been used for that purpose many times before. Mildmay put up much less of a fight than I’d expected, which was also worrisome. I’d become accustomed to his being indefatigable. Sleep did not come easily.
I dreamed of fire again, a dream in which everything I touched burst into flame. I died burning again and again and again, until I was so weary of it that there was no horror left. Half- waking at some point, knowing I was just going to fall back into the fire as soon as I slept, I thought of Iosephinus Pompey and the tricks he had taught me; I didn’t have to surrender to this choking, filthy agony. And this time as I sank into dreaming, I summoned my construct- Mélusine, summoned my control over my dreams.
And instead of fire, I fell into thorns.
There was a fairy tale Belinda had told us, about a lady enchanted to sleep for a thousand years and how the briars grew in knots and mysteries around her tower and the only man who could reach her and wake her and love her was an embroiderer who’d gone blind over the white- on- white embroidery of the wedding gown of the Empress of Comets. My construct- Mélusine had become that tower, only the briars were on the inside, hemming me in so that I could not reach the gates. Even if I could have reached them, I couldn’t go through them, for the briars bound them shut— even Horn Gate, which once had been held open by wisteria vines. The only opening was the Septad- Gate, where there was a low, ragged gap for the silted, filthy, oily trickle of the Sim to ooze out.
I was trapped.
And as I stood there, trying to make sense of what I saw, the briars began to writhe; I realized just too late that they were reacting to my presence. A long strand like a whip lashed out and wrapped around my neck, dragging me closer so that other, shorter strands could catch my hands, my feet, could twine themselves through my hair. And the thorns dug with tender cruelty into my throat, so that I couldn’t fight. Trapped, trapped, and it was almost a relief to catch the scent of smoke. But then it was much worse, because the briars burned slowly, far more slowly than wood and cloth and old dried moss. By the end, I couldn’t help fighting, even though it was worse than futile, though it did nothing but coat the thorns in my blood. I struggled as mindlessly as any animal in a trap, wrenching at my wrists, screaming and screaming although I had no voice left to scream with, dying by brutal inches while the briars wove traceries of flame around me.
I jerked awake and was still trying to calm my breathing back to normal when Mildmay woke up, coughing again. He’d told me about his susceptibility to the Winter Fever, and I’d seen it for myself, the winter before this last one. He’d been sick for most of a month, coughing and fevered and unable to take a breath deep enough to carry his voice. And yet, when Gideon and I had tried to express our concern, he’d waved it off. “Ain’t that bad,” he’d said in that terrible rasping wheeze. “Ain’t out of my head or coughing up blood or nothing.”
“Well, thank goodness you have
standards
,” I’d said, and he’d cursed at me for making him laugh.
But now, remembering that, I wondered what we’d do if things got to a point that would be deemed “bad” in Mildmay’s lexicon.
By late afternoon, we were starting to see signs of habitation; I wondered if I should try to persuade him to stop at a farm house, but I couldn’t face the argument. And that at least turned out all right, because by sunset we’d found an actual town with an actual hotel: the Five Dancing Frogs of Arbalest.
The hotel was run by a woman named Agatha Fawn and her seemingly endless supply of daughters. She was the first person I’d seen who wasn’t Mildmay since . . . since we’d passed a woodcutter as we started up to St. Ulo’s Pass. For a moment, I couldn’t even remember how to talk to a stranger, and then I pulled myself together and asked her about traveling to Esmer.
“Esmer?” said Mrs. Fawn, rather as though I’d asked for directions to the moon. “Well, the best thing would be to take the stagecoach to Bernatha. You can get the train there.”
“They keep saying they’re going to run a line out here,” said one of her daughters, who was leaning on the desk and giving Mildmay a frank and lascivious appraisal. “But am not holding my breath.”
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “Train?”
“The railroad,” Mrs. Fawn said, which enlightened me not at all. And that must have shown on my face, for she said, “I know you’re foreign, but where are you
from
?”
“Um,” I said. “Mélusine.”
And Mildmay and I watched in alarm as Mrs. Fawn became transfigured.
“Mélusine,” she breathed, and then her gaze jerked down to my hands, where they were folded on the desk. I wasn’t wearing my rings; even if I had felt I deserved them after what I did to Isaac Garamond, they were exactly the sort of thing a traveler in a strange country should
not
go flashing about to all and sundry. But my tattoos twisted and twined across the backs of my hands, gold and scarlet, emerald and azure. “And you’re a . . . not a magician, I know they don’t use that word. A wizard!”
“Yes,” I said, even more alarmed.
“I never thought I’d
meet
one,” Mrs. Fawn said. “Have read all the novels from Esmer, you know.”
“You have?” I said weakly.
“Oh has she,” said her daughter, with emphasis.
“Mama and her romances,” agreed another daughter, who’d been brought out of the back by the sound of new voices. They were looking at me with interest, but not the way Mrs. Fawn was, which put me uncomfortably in mind of the way Shannon Teverius’s coterie looked at him, moths positively yearning to fling themselves into the candle flame.
“Well, are exciting,” Mrs. Fawn said; this was obviously a defense she’d mounted many times before. “And much better than those silly things about places that don’t exist. A real wizard!”
“I didn’t know anyone was writing novels about . . .”
“Has been kind of a craze,” Mrs. Fawn admitted. “Since Challoner published his travel book, oh it must be nearly ten indictions ago now, because I remember I was pregnant with Norinna and my- husband- may- the- Lady- rest- his- soul brought me that and the first of the novels to cheer me up. Mr. Challoner wrote all about Mélusine, you see, and your Mirador”— which she mispronounced horribly—“and the six gates of the city and the Catacombes des Arcanes”— which she also mispronounced horribly—“and it’s all just so . . .”
“I see,” I said hastily, since I didn’t want to know what adjective she might eventually light upon. “I, um . . . That’s very interesting. Maybe later we could—”
“Do you have the tattoos on your palms, too?”
Lacking any helpful alternative, I turned my hands palms- up and endured her little “oh” of wonder, endured the way her daughters leaned forward to see better. I was, I told myself firmly, going to draw the line at taking off my coat to let them see my forearms.
Before it came to that, though— before Mrs. Fawn had quite gotten up the nerve to ask me if she could touch the eye tattooed in the center of my left palm— Mildmay said, “We
still
don’t know what a train is.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Fawn as if he’d jabbed her with a straight pin. “Of course. I cry your mercy. Is like a stagecoach, but much faster. And it doesn’t need horses.”
“It runs on rails,” one daughter supplied.
“I really don’t understand,” I said, and felt myself blushing with the admission.
“Well, I know not how it works. Is magic.” Mrs. Fawn’s expression was almost accusing, as if I should have understood instantly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said hastily. “The first step is the, er, stagecoach to Bernatha, right?”
“Prob’ly like a diligence,” Mildmay said. “We’ll need tickets.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Fawn, clearly latching onto the word “tickets.”“Will be a banshee for the both of you.”
I didn’t manage to nod quite quickly enough, and one of her daughters said, “Will not know our money, Mama. Had better explain.”
“And thou hadst better get back to the kitchen,” Mrs. Fawn said. “Or do the potatoes scrub themselves now?”
The young woman made a face at her mother and disappeared; Mrs. Fawn said, “Just a moment,” and dug around in the drawers on her side of the desk. “Here.” She laid five coins out on the desk and named them for me: “Obol, penny, hermit, banshee, saint, angel. Two obols to the penny, ten pennies to the hermit. Twenty hermits in a banshee, seven banshees to a saint. And seven saints make an angel, but will probably never see one.” Which explained why she’d named six coins but only laid out five. She read my face correctly and said, “No one in Arbalest has angels. Oh, and is a five- penny coin called a thrustle, but you probably won’t see that, either.”
“Stop!” I said, laughing, although it was hard to make it sound natural, and held up both hands in surrender— a tactic which did not merely stop Mrs. Fawn’s lesson, but completely distracted her. Her expression was that of a child presented with a fairy- tale knight, winged horse and all. I was, I reflected grimly, going to have to find some of these Mélusinien novels and see just what it was they were saying about Cabaline wizards.
“Okay,” said Mildmay. “You know anybody who might want to buy a mule? She’s a good mule.”
Mrs. Fawn and her daughter traded a look. Mrs. Fawn said thoughtfully, “Unc’ Elmeric would probably give you a good price. Lord Seaward requisitioned both his mules last indiction, and he figures will never see them again.”
“Will show you the way,” her daughter said with enthusiasm, and I was left alone with Mrs. Fawn. We conducted an exquisitely polite verbal duel: Mrs. Fawn wanted to know everything about Mélusine and did not want to talk about why Lord Seaward had been requisitioning people’s mules; I found talking about Mélusine rather akin to having my fingernails pulled out one at a time, and I was exceedingly interested in those mules and what Lord Seaward had been requisitioning them for. When Mildmay returned and I was able to retire from the lists, I thought the honors were about equal. I had certainly told her more than I wanted to about Mélusine, although I’d managed to keep from being cornered into talking much about myself, and I had learned rather more about the current state of affairs in Corambis than Mrs. Fawn was comfortable explaining.
We had come to Corambis, it seemed, at the tail end of a war; we’d only missed the war itself by a matter of days. News of one side’s surrender had reached Arbalest only the day before we’d arrived, and that explained a good deal of Mrs. Fawn’s discomfiture: the defeat was still raw.
The war had been fought between the northern half of Corambis and the southern— or, rather, as Mrs. Fawn said with a mulish glint in her eye, between Corambis and Caloxa. Any wizard knew the importance of using the proper names of things, and I understood immediately that one of the issues at stake was whether
Caloxa
was the proper name for the southern half of Corambis. Forty years was not enough to settle that question, and I doubted this Insurgence, or its defeat, had done the job, either.
The Corambins of forty years ago had not been as thorough as Michael Teverius. When he came to power in the Wizards’ Coup, he had personally murdered every last scion of the house of Cordelius, including the infant prince Daniel. I’d never quite believed the stories of Michael throwing Daniel from the Crown of Nails, but the murders were real enough: one night in a grisly mood, Shannon had shown me the axe, rusting away beneath the blood that had never been cleaned off.
The Corambin generals, however, had been content with executing the king, James Hume. They had left
his
infant son, Gerrard, alive, and that mistake had now cost them, and everyone else involved, dearly. Gerrard, whom Mrs. Fawn called variously Prince Gerrard and the Recusant— another disputed piece of nomenclature— had raised his army against the Corambins, and although Mrs. Fawn said reluctantly that he never had a hope of winning, it had taken the Corambins three years to defeat him. And in the end, he seemed to have defeated himself, for the news brought was definite. Gerrard Hume was dead, and had been dead before the surrender had been given by someone called the Margrave of Rothmarlin.
Before I could dig further, and before Mrs. Fawn could trap me into describing the circumstances of my exile, Mildmay came back. He looked dreadful, almost gray and sweating and leaning on his cane more heavily than he normally allowed himself. And the cough was definitely worse, no matter how he tried to suppress it.
“Is a nasty cough,” said Mrs. Fawn. “Pleuriny?”
At a guess, “pleuriny” was what Corambins called the Winter Fever. “I hope not,” I said. “We’d like the room for two nights.”
Mildmay opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again, but he was still frowning when we reached our room, which was only marginally large enough for two grown men. I closed the door and said, “What?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Game they play here ain’t one I like.”
“So? You can manage one extra night in a hotel without playing cards, can’t you?”
“Not if we want to pay the bill.”
“I thought you just sold our mule.”
“That’s for the diligence or stagecoach or what ever the fuck they call it.”
“And what? You couldn’t be bothered to get
enough
money for her? You forgot what you were doing in the middle?”
“Maybe I didn’t feel like taking the poor bastard for everything he had, okay?” he said, nearly shouting, and then went scarlet.
“You pick the oddest times to have an attack of morality,” I said, which only made him go redder.
But then he said, “Maybe since I’m the one has to deal with it, it ain’t no business of yours.”
“In other words, I should shut up and be thankful, is that it?” “You could try it.”
“Yes, because I have so much to be thankful for in the delight of your company,” I said bitterly.
That hit home; he turned stiffly and went out without answering me. I followed him, and we ate dinner in uncompromising silence before Mildmay, without a glance in my direction, insinuated himself into a card game. I went to bed early. He barely twitched an eyebrow. From his face and his lazy posture, no one could have guessed that he was playing for the money to pay our bill— or that he was sick. I hated myself for my selfishness as I climbed the stairs. This was
my
exile he was funding, after all, Mildmay dragged along only because of the obligation d’âme, and when he’d asked me to cast it, he surely couldn’t have been expected to be agreeing to be taken away from everything he’d ever known.
But he’d done that for me before we were bound together by magic. He’d walked across Kekropia for me, for no good reason. It occurred to me that I’d never even asked him why he’d done it, and I shuddered; right now I didn’t even want to know.
Maybe when we reached Esmer, I would feel brave enough for that conversation. Maybe, if I was lucky, I would get distracted and forget to ask.