I.
First time I ever saw Felix Harrowgate, he was stark fucking mad, from his skew-eyes right to his ankles. I spent a good few months with him like that, when sometimes he'd go and pretend to be lucid and then turn around and start panicking again over something I couldn't see at all. It was scary, sometimes. But Kethe, if I don't know sometimes what's worse, Felix sane or Felix mad.
He's my brother, I guess. Don't mean much. We didn't even know we had a sibling until last year, that meeting I mentioned, where we kind of got thrown together. I guess because he didn't really like hocuses anymore than I did, at least not the ones he was with, and he had that kept-thief look like he was just waiting for someone to hit him. No one did – at least not physically that I saw, but he certainly flinched every time someone addressed.
Looking at him now – fuck, looking at him even just a bit after those Troians healed him – you'd never believe that man existed. Felix sane…well, he's a sight, certainly. Walking like he owns the world, talks so flash you'd never believe I heard him speak once in an accent so Lower City even I could hardly make it out. All arrogance and confidence and charisma and wicked tongue lashing anyone unlucky enough to try to converse with him. He's a downright bitch, sometimes, honestly, the way he lashes out at people – it makes me wince.
I wonder, sometimes, what anyone really knows about Felix. Not much, is mostly the conclusion I draw. Bits and pieces, a few people. Gideon probably knows most – he's seen Felix mad and sane, nasty and at his most charming. But I don't think he knows about Felix's… history. Not the bits with Malkar, especially. I get the feeling two people know about that – me and Malkar. And only one of us is still alive. Everyone in the Curia knows about the Shining Tiger, thanks to Robert – he hates Felix, deadly hates him, I know that kind of hatred when I see it, and I'm worried to ask why – but I don't think anyone except me knows about him being a kept-thief. Or about the scars.
Or about the water.
Shannon, maybe, knows a few things. Whatever Felix let him see. But I don't think that's much. And I know…a lot. Most of the history. A little of the personality. I don't know much of what really happened last year that shattered him and the Virtu or how in hell he put it back together. Most things I know. But I don't know if I really know him at all. Because which one's the real Felix? Fuck me if I know. It's like he tries on a new mask every day, every hour sometimes, occasionally rotates them through. There's a real man under there somewhere. But I'm not at all sure where or what he is.
Sometimes I think it was the man I saw during the madness. The wounded one, who flinched when people talked to him like he thought he was going to get hit. Or the one who spent an afternoon in a meadow building a maze so his dead people could be free and then tried to follow them. Or the one with the back striped in scars, ashamed, battered, alone. I didn't know. I don't think anyone knows.
Felix never lets you feel sorry for him for long, though. Every time I start to think it must be lonely, living like that, all on your own, there he is with his mocking smile and some nasty gibe on his lips and I just…can't. Kethe's cock. I don't know what to do with him. I don't envy Gideon. Sometimes I think he deserves better.
I used to think all hocuses were alike. All got along, working together to fuck with everyone else's lives. Now, living in the Mirador, and Kethe that's still weird to think, I know better. They bicker like old married couples. The Curia itself squabbles for days. It's almost satisfying when Felix can rout them like a fox among hens, just with a few well placed words – and he's fairly good at it. But that's not the point. Hocuses don't like each other any more than two thieves on the same territory like each other, and they're always scheming, not just for themselves, but for everyone else. To bring people down. And fuck me sideways if there isn't a whole bunch of people wanting to do for Felix.
I'm not…exactly sure what he did. Must've been bad, though. It's not just little people, either, trying to get status – people like Robert, people who have influence. It doesn't help that Lord Teverius and Felix are always prodding at each other, and it's obvious there's nothing good between them. Some people, that's good as permission.
I've had at least twelve people try to bribe me in the past few months into talking, saying something that can drag Felix through the mud. I don't know why he needs it. Seems like with all the shit that went on, would have been more than enough of that already. Not quite for some people, though, I guess. They want more than that. Some people probably even want him dead. Part of why I'm glad he's got me, for one. I don't care how good they are, no assassin's getting through me.
All right, so maybe I care. What about it?
The point is, though, Felix is pretty unpopular. He has a fan club, but you can tell they're dying to see him fall. And he knows it, too. Every day that goes by without it is another win for him and a loss for them. It makes him more confident. It makes me nervous. Because someone, somewhere, is setting him up for a hard fall, and I'm worried I'm not going to see this one coming.
I guess that scares me. I don't…want to see Felix mad again. I almost want to ask Mehitabel to help me listen for something. But she thinks I'm an idiot for staying with him anyway. And maybe I am. But there's a part of me that doesn't forget that somewhere under the sometimes bastard I call older brother is that kept thief who flinches whenever someone looks at him, like he's going to be beaten.
And thinking about that, I guess everything else just don't matter so much.
II.
Relationships are really all about pretending, aren't they? Mildmay and I just happen to be very good at it. And sometimes somewhat more dramatic.
It goes like this: I mock him for a while. Tease. Go on like I do at everyone. And he puts up with it, because he's Mildmay. But eventually he snaps back. And then we both end up hurting until he comes back, I apologize, and things start over again. It's a comfortable little routine.
Sometimes we forget.
Sometimes we get a little carried away, sometimes I get a little too much wine and say something I don't mean to say, or do something I don't mean to do, and while it never goes so far that the damage is irreversible, but I'm afraid that maybe someday it will. That I'll go too far. That he'll go too far. And then it'll be done with.
I don't allow myself to be afraid of Mildmay leaving, the same way I don't let myself think of the black water of the Sim or Malkar's smile. The harder things get with Gideon – and they are getting harder – the harder I have to try not to be afraid. I can't be afraid, not now. And not here. In a city of people watching me for any sign of weakness, of madness, I can't afford not to be on my guard.
And the ghosts are coming back.
I haven't mentioned them to anyone. Mildmay might have guessed. Gideon has. We argued about it, an argument that ended, as usual, with ugly words and an unhappy parting.
Sometimes we forget.
Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night when I've fallen asleep and find Mildmay taking the cup gently out of my hand, or wake up and notice him watching me late when he thinks I'm asleep. I don't know why. And I don't ask.
Sometimes I forget, and catch myself just talking to him, laughing at something, maybe. It sounds odd, but I don't really laugh that much. Sometimes I forget, and find myself following the line of his jaw or the way he smiles with his eyes and thinking…
Of course, that's just ridiculous.
But sometimes…
III.
Mildmay held Felix through the night in the dark under the Mirador, until his shoulders stopped shaking and he subsided into sleep. He held him even after, feeling his own tears bitter in his throat stopped by the block that seemed lodged in place. Felix's head, hair mussed and dirty, rested against his chest; parts of his face were just visible as stark lines and planes, mouth a frown, jaw bruised where someone had hit him, skin death-pale. His body curled up, knees pulled into his chest and curled against Mildmay's body, the most vulnerable he'd ever seen him.
Mildmay put his arms around his brother and held him closer with a sigh, waiting out the dark. The penalty for heresy is death by fire. Looking at Felix, sleeping, he felt a chill.
His brother twitched, stirred, opened his eyes, and one of the long, clenched hands uncurled, reached up, touched his face, featherlight. "Gideon…?" His voice was sleepy, quiet, and Mildmay felt his stomach clench. "Gideon, is that you…?" The head began to turn, to look, and he didn't want to see the devastation in the skewed eyes.
"No," he said, roughly. "Sorry, Felix. It's…not Gideon."
The hand fell limply away. "Mildmay." It was almost a whisper. "You'll be all right. Won't you?" He sounded worried. It was the first time he'd ever heard Felix sound worried about anything. And Kethe, about him.
"Yeah," he said, roughly, the rasp of tears in his voice. "Yeah, I'll be all right."
"I didn't kill Gideon." Even quieter. He couldn't see Felix's face. He wasn't sure he wanted to. "They kept saying I did. I didn't. And he wasn't a spy."
"I know," Mildmay said, and his voice might have cracked a little, but the next moment he had control of it again. "I know, Felix. Kethe. I know."