Mélusine by Sarah Monette Read Free Book Online Page B

I started wondering what it meant that she'd worn it tonight and stopped myself in a hurry. I said, "Good. You'll give her a bad moment with that."

    She was frowning. "How do you know all this?"

    "Don't matter. You'll wear it?"

    "If it will make you feel better."

    "Yeah. And don't let her touch you if you can help it. Can you use a knife?"

    Her hand moved toward her reticule again. But she stopped it and, blushing, said, "Not for fighting."
    "It ain't that hard. Point the sharp end at the other guy."
    "Very funny," she said, but her mouth twitched a little.

    "Other'n that… where d'you want to meet?"

    "Oh. Min-Terris's. Is that all right?"

    "Sure." Min-Terris's courtyard is always crowded, and one more gal meeting one more guy—nobody's going to give a fuck. "How quick can you get there?"

    "We close at sundown, and I can take a hansom. Give me half an hour?"

    "Okay. We want to be early 'stead of late."

    "I understand."

    Looking at her, I thought maybe she did, and that was the best news I'd had since my stupid mouth had agreed to go with her to meet Vey Coruscant, the woman folks in the Lower City, when they had to talk about her at all, called Queen Blood.

    Felix

    We met no one in the halls—the one time when I was begging the Mirador to send me a vile coincidence, none came. Malkar moved without hindrance down through the snarl of half staircases and spiraling, slanted rooms called the Nautilus, debouching in an old, old servants' passageway in the heart of the Warren. Perforce, I moved with him. The fog of phoenix around me made it difficult to remember from one moment to the next what was happening, where we were going, why I should not go there. It made it even more difficult to remember that I was twenty-six instead of twenty, that Malkar was no longer my master.

    A second's unwelcome clarity: Malkar had never quit being my master. He had just let me run on a remarkably long leash.

    "Could you have called me back anytime you wanted?" I said, as we turned into a long hallway, pouring with soot and cobwebs and the ominous, intrinsic darkness of its stones.

    "Of course I could, my dear. But I didn't call you back. You came to me of your own accord."

    I opened my mouth to protest, saw Malkar's eyebrows raised in polite disbelief, and looked away, the words withering on my tongue.

    "You can't deny what you are." He sounded amused. "And you're useful, my dearest, but about as stable and resolute as an aspic. Can you deny it?"

    "No, Malkar," I said, thinking of the boy in the Arcane.

    "At least you are honest… for a whore."

    I couldn't help the way my muscles tensed with revulsion—for him, for myself—and he roared with laughter. "What, dearest, no devastating riposte? Can this truly be Lord Felix Harrowgate, whose deadly wit is the terror of the court?"
    No, I thought. No, that was someone else. That was someone who wasn't afraid of Malkar. But I was as terrified as I had been in Arabel, so terrified that I could not even answer him. That pleased him—Malkar was always annoyed by defiance—and he forbore to taunt me further. We came in silence to the door, his door—ironbound, worm-eaten, it looked no different than any of the doors along that hall. But I knew what lay behind it. He unlocked it and, with abrupt violence, shoved me through.
    I almost kept from falling, ending up on one knee, with my left hand braced against the floor. Behind me, Malkar locked the door again, calling witchlights as he did. The phoenix was lifting, faster and faster, as I looked around, seeing the familiar threadbare hangings, the familiar ugly braziers, the familiar red mosaic pentagram… the completely unfamiliar shackles anchored to four of the pentagram's five corners.

    After a second, the implications sank in, and I made a noise that was too thin, too paralyzed to be a scream.

    "None of that," Malkar said. He dragged me upright again. "Really, Felix, why couldn't you have drunk yourself into a stupor and