Free The Mirador by Sarah Monette Page A

reached the top of the white marble staircase that me and Felix had found once, couple indictions back now, I guessed, I snagged one of the candles out of the nearest sconce. Mehitabel and Lord Antony followed suit. The door at the bottom of the stairs was still unlocked.
    “How many people do you think know about this?” Lord Antony asked.
    “Powers, I don’t know,” I said, and waved ’em ahead of me through the door. Old habits die hard. “I’d bet us and Felix are the first people been down here in at least a Great Septad. Prob’ly more like three.”
    “Amazing,” Lord Antony said. He was trying to look everywhere at once. He started off down the first aisle. About halfway along, he dug a tablet and stylus out of his coat pocket and began scribbling, using one of the tombs as a table.
    “He’ll be off in his own world until we drag him out of here,” Mehitabel said. “Are all of the Cordelii really in here?”
    “Nah. Just the dynastic line.”
    “So what’s the dynastic line?”
    “The kings and their kids and their wives, and I think the grandsons.” I remembered something else I thought Mehitabel would like—something that might keep her looking at me instead of her flashie. “And the kings’ hearts are down in the Arcane. ”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Kings’ hearts went to Cade-Cholera. They’re down in the Arcane, in the Mausolée de Verre.”
    “You’re putting me on.”
    “Nope.”
    It wasn’t my kind of joke, and she knew it. “What a grisly custom.”
    “The Mirador had a lot of stuff like that before the Wizards’ Coup.”
    “No, don’t tell me. Not in here.”
    “’Fraid of haunts?”
    She gave me a smile that was mostly teeth. “Morbidly imaginative. Shall we sightsee?”
    “Sure, if you want,” I said.
    But she only stayed with me a moment before she went off reading plaques. I stopped walking and leaned on a tomb to watch her, the way she forgot to behave like a lady and her eyes got wide.
    She came back to me. “Do you know who all these people are?”
    “Most of ’em.”
    “Come tell me about this one. She looks interesting,” she said and dragged me over to one of the wall plaques.
    The plaque she pointed to didn’t look no different from the others. Mehitabel read it out loud:
    HERE LIES AMARYLLIS CORDELIA
17 PRAIRIAL 14.1.3 - 11 FLORÉAL 14.6.2
Her waking over,
may her sleep be dreamless.
    “Who was she?”
    “Fuck,” I said. “I dunno. I mean, I know about one Amaryllis Cordelia, but she can’t be here.”
    “Why not?”
    “Not in the dynastic line, though that ain’t from lack of trying. ”
    “What do you mean? Who was she?”
    “Let’s sit down,” I said and started toward the row of freestanding tombs behind us. “D’you mind?”
    “All right,” she said, and sat with me on the nearest tomb. “Now talk. Who was Amaryllis Cordelia?”
    “Gloria Aestia with guts.”
    “Felix is right,” Mehitabel said. “You do talk in riddles.”
    Powers, how many people was he saying that to? “Sorry,” I said. “But it ain’t a riddle. She was born into a cadet branch, and she wanted to be queen.”
    “She didn’t make it, though.”
    “Nope. Bad timing.”
    She laughed.
    “It’s true,” I said. “Too young to marry Laurence and too old to marry Charles. She got married off to an Emarthius before Charles was old enough to care about girls.”
    “So what makes her like Gloria Aestia?”
    “She seduced them both.”
    “She what ?”
    “Her husband—poor bastard, I can’t think of his name—got some political appointment when Laurence was in his seventh septad, and—”
    “Don’t give me that septad nonsense,” she said.
    “Sorry. Laurence was older than forty-two and younger than, um, forty-nine. Charles was about sixteen, and the lady herself was, say, thirty.”
    “All right. I’ve got that now. Go on.”
    “She went after Laurence first, but he wouldn’t do her no good. He’d had lovers since he hit his second