The Virtu (42 page)

It’s a strange fucking world, and mostly the joke’s on us.

So I stuck to Felix like a leech, and we followed the black-skinned lady hocus through a maze of hallways like I’d never seen in my life. Even the Arcane had nothing on this shit, and I kept trying not to think about the maze in Klepsydra and not doing real well at it. And once it occurred to me how easy it would be for somebody to ambush us and stuff our bodies in one of them little rooms that nobody went into from one septad to the next, I couldn’t stop thinking about
that
, either.

And Felix just kind of sauntered along like he owned the place, and even though I knew it was an act, it still made me want to smack him. And I guessed from the looks she kept giving him that the lady hocus felt the same.

And then the hallways kind of shook themselves straight around us, and we were coming up on a pair of huge fucking doors, and I had to swallow hard because I knew where we were. I knew what those doors were, and where they were from, and how many people had died to get them here. And I knew what was behind them was the Hall of the Chimeras, and if it’d been an option, I probably would have fainted dead away then and there.

But it wasn’t an option, so I kept dogging Felix. Welcome to the rest of your life, Milly-Fox.

Felix told the others to stay in the back, unless they had particular business they wanted to bring up with the Lord Protector, which none of them did. Then he gave me a kind of come-along jerk of the head, and I followed him down the Hall of the Chimeras.

There are paintings of the Hall of the Chimeras. So I knew what it looked like. I knew about the ten-septad-foot vault, and the banners, and the chimeras laid in the floor. I knew about the dais down at the end of the hall and Lord Michael’s Chair on it and the Virtu. But the paintings, well, they were just paint on canvas or plaster or what have you. They didn’t do a thing to show how it really was. They missed out on all the really important stuff, like how our feet echoed, or how all the flashies and hocuses stood and stared at Felix so I couldn’t decide if they were cats staring at a mouse or mice staring at a cat. And the paintings particularly missed out on how fucking dark it was and how heavy the dark was pressing down out of all that space. It took a real effort to keep my shoulders straight. And powers and saints, the Virtu was just smashed to bits.

Felix did that, I thought. I couldn’t get my head around it. I mean, it wasn’t that I didn’t know he was a hocus, and it wasn’t that I didn’t know he was powerful. But the Virtu was the Virtu. Was supposed to be the Virtu. Not this ugly, spiky lump of glass. And the idea that
Felix
had done it—Kethe, I thought, I should be scared out of my mind just to be standing next to him.

But I looked at him sideways, and oh shit he had that look in his eyes again, the one that said as how he saw a chance to cause trouble and was just loving the fuck out of it, and I was so pissed off I couldn’t be scared. Leastways, not of him.

What I
was
scared of was the guy on the dais, sitting there watching us get closer with a look on his face fit to curdle milk. I’d only ever seen Lord Stephen Teverius close-to once before, and that had been in the middle of trying to get the fuck away from him. He was a big guy, bull-necked. Looked a little like something carved out of really hard stone by somebody who wasn’t much good at it. And then you got a look at his eyes, and none of the rest of it mattered. Gray eyes, cold and hard, kind of like being stabbed. I couldn’t breathe the whole time he was looking at me, even though I knew he was really thinking about Felix. And when Lord Stephen looked at Felix, I did, too, and Felix had this little smirk on his face that I would’ve counted as grounds for murder. I remembered, from a couple indictions and what felt like three lifetimes ago, the gossip about him and Lord Stephen hating each other, and I couldn’t help looking at Lord Shannon.

Now, Felix had said, and said like he meant it, that it was over between the two of them. And I’d been relieved that I wasn’t going to have to figure out how to talk to the Golden Whelp, or even just how to be in the same fucking room with him. I hadn’t thought about it much further than that. But the way Lord Shannon was staring at Felix said as how he’d never expected to see
this
Felix again, the one who had all his shit together and was sharp enough to cut diamonds. Lord Shannon’d ditched the madman—and I guess you can’t even blame him, really, although I can’t forgive him for it, neither—but only on the understanding that the hocus wasn’t coming back.

And in a nasty, petty sort of way, it even made me feel better to see that look on his face and know there was one person in the Hall of the Chimeras who felt worse than I did. Nice, Milly-Fox. Real fucking nice.

I remembered Lady Victoria, too, but there wasn’t no more showing on her face than there was on Lord Stephen’s. She was looking at Felix like she’d never seen him before in her life. And next to her on the dais was a guy I didn’t know, tall and skinny and near as pale as me, wearing a black tabard worked in scarlet and gold with Tibernia’s leopards—his face perfectly blank, like he practiced that expression a lot. So Vusantine had their claws in Lord Stephen. No fucking wonder, and I figured they probably had some fancy word they were using instead of “spy.”

Felix stopped a little less than a septad-foot from the dais and bowed. And gave me a glance sideways, so I bowed, too. Because the obligation d‘âme said I shouldn’t unless he told me to. Felix hadn’t showed any signs of wanting to bring that up with anybody, and I didn’t want to, neither. Fuck, did I not want to have to explain that. Or listen to Felix explain it, for that matter. So I bowed, and Lord Stephen ignored me, and said to Felix, only just loud enough for Felix to hear him and not loud enough to carry to the rest of the court, “I wasn’t expecting to see
you
again.”

“I know,” Felix said, just as quiet. “But you should have known I’d come back if I could.”

“Like a bad centime. What are you doing here, Felix?” He sounded tired and resigned and pissed off all at once, and I had to wonder about the bad history between them, because from the sound there was a fuck of a lot of it.

“I want to be reinstated,” Felix said.

“And we’re all very flattered, I’m sure,” Lord Stephen said. “But considering what you did when you
were
a wizard of the Mirador, I’d really like to know why you think we ought to want you back.”

“I can mend the Virtu.”

Lord Stephen’s eyebrows went up. “That’s quite a claim.”

“I broke it. Why shouldn’t I be able to mend it?”

“As I recall, you said
Malkar
broke it. Are you changing your story?”

“No,” and I wanted to tell Felix not to snarl at the Lord Protector, but I didn’t dare open my mouth or even look like I could hear what they were saying. “But it was
my
power. Besides, Malkar would never make you this offer, not if you threatened to have him burned.”

“I could have
you
burned,” Lord Stephen said, like he was thinking maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.

“You could, but what good would it do?”

Lord Stephen bared his teeth. “It would be extremely satisfying.”

“My lord, let me
try
first. If I can’t mend the Virtu, then you can go ahead and burn me with my good wishes. I’ll even light the pyre myself. But give me this chance first.”

“Redemption, Felix? Somehow I hadn’t thought you’d care.”

“Call it what you want. But let me try. No one here can mend it, or you would have done it already. So what do you have to lose?”

“Don’t ask me that question.” Lord Stephen glared at Felix, and Felix lifted his chin and glared right back.

And Lady Victoria said, cold as a dead fish on ice, “You have to consult the Curia first, Stephen, no matter what your decision.”

“Powers, do you think I don’t know that?” The glare went from Felix to Lady Victoria without missing a beat. “But it
is
my decision, Vicky. I’m the one it falls on.”

Felix coughed slightly. Lord Stephen and Lady Victoria ignored him. “You should at least ask the Curia if it
is
possible,” Lady Victoria said. “For myself, I doubt it, but I do not know.”

“The Curia won’t know, either,” Felix said, and that got the glare back at him in a hurry.

“Enough!” Lord Stephen snapped. “All right. Clearly you’re going to hound me until I either let you do what you want or have you killed.”

Felix bowed again, even deeper.

“I’ll convene a meeting of the Curia,” the Lord Protector said, looking and sounding like a baited bear. “And don’t think the threat to have you burned is an idle one.”

“My lord,” Felix murmured, “I know it is not.”

I had never imagined, when I was a member of the Curia, that there could be circumstances under which I would be glad to see the Lesser Coricopat again. But I could not pretend that the feeling of homecoming was anything other than what it was.

I had told Mildmay to stay with the others and see about getting rooms for them, and about getting my old rooms back. He’d given me a rather baleful look but hadn’t argued. Neither one of us wanted him in this room with me now, and he knew it as well as I did.

The Curia sat around that long oval of polished and carved cherry-wood, their hands folded, rings gleaming, eyes hooded and watchful. I stood where any petitioner to the Curia would stand, at the foot of the table. Unlike most petitioners, I had sufficient sangfroid to look Giancarlo in the eye.

“Felix Harrowgate,” he said, his voice rolling like thunder out of his chest. “I understand that you are petitioning the Lord Protector for reinstatement as a wizard of the Mirador.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said.

There was a little murmur of shock and disapproval around the table. Giancarlo and I ignored it.

“And I trust that
you
will understand,” he continued, “that the Curia feels a certain amount of skepticism about this proposed plan.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said, and although there was nothing I could do about the blush I felt heating my face, I would be damned if I dropped my gaze.

“Put plainly, Mr. Harrowgate, there are too many questions remaining unanswered from the circumstances of your…” He hesitated fractionally.“Your disbarment.”

“Yes, my lord.” And some of those questions were mine, but they were not questions that could be posed here.

“We must have answers, Mr. Harrowgate, before we can contemplate your petition.”

“I understand, my lord.”

“We must have answers,” said Agnes Bellarmyn, whom I had always hated, “before we can decide whether to carry through on your death sentence.”

“Oh, did you sentence me to death?” I said, with my best tone of bright interest. “I’m afraid my memories of my trial aren’t too clear. Since I was mad at the time.”

As an admission of weakness, I hated it. As a weapon, it worked admirably. Agnes’s bosom swelled with wrath, but I saw winces from some of the other wizards around the table—Istrid von Kulp, Hamilcar Nashe, Lindsay Bethonius, wizards who had not made a lifelong hobby of opposing me. Agnes was a lost cause; it was these other wizards I had to convince.

“Your sentence was suspended until such time as we could understand what you had done,” Giancarlo said. “A matter that is still very much a mystery, Mr. Harrowgate.”

“It isn’t what
I
did,” I said. “It’s what Malkar used me to do.”

“Yes, that’s your story, isn’t it?” Agnes, sneering, the mouthpiece as always for Robert of Hermione. Robert was one of the people I had questions for, but it was just as well he did not sit on the Curia. I might hate Agnes, but that was nothing compared to my loathing for Robert and his for me.

“It is the truth,” I said, keeping my voice quiet, calm. “I can’t help it if it isn’t what you want to hear.”

“All we have ever asked of you is the truth,” Giancarlo said, perhaps a touch sadly. Giancarlo would have liked to have been my mentor when I had first come to the Mirador, but that was something I had only realized years later. At the time, raw from Malkar’s teaching, scared to death that I would betray what he had taught me so carefully to conceal, I had seen Giancarlo only as another threat.

“I will tell you the truth,” I said.

“You had better,” muttered Johannes Hilliard, another of my foes.

“Lords and ladies of the Curia,” I said, letting my voice open out, “my purpose in returning to the Mirador is simple. I believe I can mend the Virtu. All I ask is the chance to try.”

It stunned them, as it had stunned Vida. It had not stunned Stephen only because he was annemer and did not truly understand what the task entailed. And hard-minded Vicky had simply not believed me.

I dropped my voice again, said, “But I cannot touch the Virtu if I am not a wizard of the Mirador, if my oaths are not recognized. Please. Ask me your questions. Give me this chance to redeem myself.” Stephen’s word, and a bitter shard of irony, but it was language even Agnes would understand. In truth, to me, it was not a matter of my redemption; that was, so to speak, past praying for. It was a matter of restitution, but also of rebellion: it was not what Malkar would want.

Giancarlo was the first to recover. He cleared his throat, fussed with his papers, and said, “We believe we understand, in broad outline at least, what Malkar Gennadion did to the Virtu. What we do not understand is what he did to you.”

I did not think I entirely hid my flinch. “I beg your pardon?”

“How was he able to put a compulsion on you?” Marius Thatcher broke in. “How did he circumvent the Virtu’s protections
before
he broke it?”

“Oh,” I said, and did not let my voice shake or become shrill with relief. If that was what they wanted to know, I would not have to describe to them how Malkar used me in the destruction of the Virtu, how he had raped me and driven me mad. This was nothing by comparison, although I knew that the person I had been two years ago would not have thought so.

But then that person, poor silly fool, had thought he had escaped from Malkar for good.