From the pendulum chamber several stories above us came the faint tonging of the hour: well after the children’s bedtime. Like Sieur Maggot in a play, Miramar’s head suddenly popped around the corner of the door.
“Doctor Foster!” he scolded, clapping his hands so that the long azure cuffs of his robe swished against each other. “Wicked Doctor Foster. Come, children! Fancy, you know better than this! Benedick, Magnus Stoat will be joining you after breakfast tomorrow—”
Clucking and chirping like peevish sparrows they left calling goodbyes to Doctor Foster and Miramar and myself as they scurried to where the waiting elders met them in the hall and carried them upstairs to the nursery. Doctor Foster gave them a desultory farewell and nodded off in his chair. Miramar remained smiling in the doorway.
“Is your head better, cousin?” he asked me.
“Yes, uncle,” I said, suddenly nervous. I had almost forgotten the reason why I had stolen this evening at home. Now it came back to me, and my voice cracked as I said, “Miramar—I—could I speak with you?”
He nodded and motioned for me to follow him to his chambers.
A low brass table had been set with steaming glass carafe and two tumblers. I wondered uneasily if somehow he had been expecting me. Miramar knelt to pour our tea, crushing mint leaves and a cube of raw sugar into each glass.
“To your future,” he said, raising his tumbler and quickly downing its contents.
My heart sank; he knew. I flopped onto a pillow.
“Iris Bergenia told me this evening that Roland Nopcsa has offered you his bed in the Museum of Natural History.”
I bit my lip to keep from cursing, vowed to humiliate Iris publicly as soon as the opportunity arose. But to Miramar I showed a calm face.
“I was going to tell you tonight …”
He listened with studied casualness, eyeing the tea dregs that had settled at the bottom of the empty carafe. He lifted it and gently shook the damp leaves onto a saucer, then squinting tilted the plate to read them.
“What do they say?”
He smiled. “What they always say: love with a romantic stranger.” A flick of his scalloped nail dispersed the dregs into a sodden heap. I met his eyes.
“I’m going with him, uncle.”
As I spoke I realized this was not how I’d planned to make my announcement; but there it was. I stared at my feet.
“Mmmm.” No surprise. But a wince of regret tugged at his gentle mouth. Miramar sighed. “I could refuse you permission, you know.” But his expression showed such sorrow that I knew he would not refuse me. He never had.
“I had hoped you would stay—” he went on, cleaning his fingers on a linen napkin.
“I might come back,” I said, and was immediately ashamed. Because that proved I was afraid, had doubts; and I wanted to leave boldly. I bumped against the table and sent a tumbler rolling. With a sigh Miramar picked it up.
“I hope you do. You are …” He glanced up at the polished copper ceiling that reflected us floating in a molten sea. “The loveliest of all of us. We—wanted your daughters born here, because never have we had a child so beautiful.”
I looked away. Tears glittered in his eyes, and I knew I would cry too and change my mind if I saw him weep. “Thank you, uncle.”
“It’s no favor I’m doing you, letting you leave us.”
I stared at the arabesques in the carpet, but my voice betrayed my resentment. “You think I’m a fool to go,” I said at last.
“You’ve been sheltered and spoiled—we all have been,” he said gently.
“But especially Raphael.”
“Well, yes: of course.” He reached to stroke my leg. “But you understand why.” “Because I’m worth more than the rest.”
“Because you are more beautiful than any of us; because we love you. But they will not love you out there. Raphael—”
I shook his hand from me. “The Curators—” I began.
“The Curators consider us whores and fools! Do you think Roland wants you for your learning?”
“Do you think I want him for his bed?”
Miramar groaned in exasperation. “Listen to me! You could continue with Roland, use his books, and then return to teach the children here, if you like—”
“Teach whores and fools,” I snapped, then bit my tongue. Miramar’s face grew taut and he folded his hands upon the brass table.
“Your cousins,” he said softly; but I knew the glint in his eyes heralded anger. “Do you think you’re the first pretty toy to go among them to learn? Do you?”
As he leaned forward the table shook. The empty glasses rolled to the floor. I fumbled for a reply as I straightened the mess, but he cut me off with a brusque wave. “Do you know what happened to the others?”
I started to answer, but his voice rose above mine as he named them:
“Estevan High Braziclass="underline" raped and blinded by the Librarians. Lorelei Saint-Alaban, throttled when she fainted while entertaining Nelson Dewars’s guests at his birthday ball. Three children from Persia engaged for a Senator’s cotillion, strangled in their sleep.
“It is not safe for us to live among the Curators, Raphael. Maybe once it was; maybe before we had our own Houses and our own wealth bartered from them over the years.
“But not now; especially not now.” He paused, ran a finger along the rim of the glass carafe. “Last week I entertained an Ascendant janissary at High Brazil. He was there to receive a shipment of opium from the Botanists—” “You told me,” I said impatiently.
“I told you nothing. He was besotted with whiskey and frilite; he talked too much. They are sending a man to govern the City, an Ascendant commander—”
I smiled. “Come now, uncle—”
Miramar poured himself another glass of tea. As he sipped it he looked at me through slitted eyes. “Perhaps it won’t happen; perhaps he was lying. But the Curators are worried. If this rumor is true—if they really do send a Governor to intervene—at the very least it will disrupt trade within the City, and the black market with the Ascendants.”
He drank the rest of his tea as I waited. “And?” I said at last.
“The janissary I spoke with said that they intend to retake the City. There would be no place for us then, Raphael; no place at all.”
I thought on this in silence. Finally I asked, “Why would he tell you this?”
Miramar shrugged. “What am I to him? A mindless courtesan, just as I am to the Curators. Perhaps he meant to help me, to warn me to escape. But where could we go? We would have nothing without the City and without the Curators.”
“So we should hide here forever as their whores and ponces?”
Miramar pounded the floor in aggravation. “We are priests and merchants!”
“And currency!”
I thought he would dismiss me then. Instead he rocked back on his heels and, after a moment, laughed. “Oh, Raphael. I can hear myself saying the same things when I was your age.”
“Then why won’t you let me go without all this?”
“Only because I’ve never let anyone go without a warning. And because I am afraid: for you, for all of us. Roland will tire of you, Raphael. They always do.” He cut off my protests by placing his hand against my lips and with three fingers traced their curve. “And also because I love you. I had hoped you would stay to take my place as suzein one day.”
His voice was low but free of any wheedling tone. I met his eyes and saw there only affection and desire.
I shook my head, taking his hand firmly in my own. “I want to go, uncle.”
He stared at me a long time, those golden eyes blank and inscrutable as the Magdalene’s smooth face. “I wonder sometimes if your sister got all the brains. At least she knew enough to keep silent.”
His voice was bitter; but I knew it was finished. Miramar sighed and inclined his head as if praying. When he raised it he was smiling, and with a sardonic bow he stood and pulled me to my feet.