by Martha Wells
She started to ease away from the door but with fury in his voice the spiritualist said, "I am no ordinary medium, your grace. What I offer is contact of a more intimate, lasting nature. But to establish that contact I require something from the body of the deceased. A lock of hair is merely the most common item."
Necromancy indeed, Madeline thought. She had studied magic in her youth, when her family had still hoped she might demonstrate some talent for it. She hadn’t been the best student, but something about this pricked her memory.
"You require a lock of hair, and your fee," the Duchess said, and her voice held contempt.
"Of course," the man said, but the fee was clearly an afterthought.
"Aunt, this is ridiculous. Send him away." The niece, bored and faintly disgusted with the subject.
"No," the Duchess said slowly. Her voice changed, quickened with real interest. "If you can do as you say . . . there seems no harm in trying. . . ."
I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Madeline thought, though she couldn’t explain her uneasiness with the whole idea, even to herself.
"I have a lock of my son’s hair. He was killed in the Parscian colony of Sambra. If you could contact him—"
"Your son, not your husband?" The spiritualist was exasperated.
"What does it matter to you whom I wish to contact, as long as your fee is paid?" The Duchess sounded startled. "I would double it if I was pleased; I’m not counted stingy," she added.
"But your husband would be the more proper one to contact first, surely?" The man’s tone was meant to be wheedling, but he couldn’t disguise his impatience.
"I don’t wish to speak to my husband again, alive or dead or in any state between," the Duchess snapped. "And I don’t understand what it could possibly matter to you who—"
"Enough," the man said, sounding disgusted himself. "Consider my offer withdrawn, your grace. And the consequences are your own concern." Madeline clearly heard the hall door slam.
The Duchess was silent a moment, probably stunned. "I suppose I’ll never know what that was about. Bonsard, make sure that man is conducted out."
"Yes, my lady."
I’d do more than that, Madeline thought. I’d summon my sorcerer, and make sure my wards were properly set, and lock away any relics of my dead relatives. That man was mad, and he wanted something. But it wasn’t her concern. She eased away from the door, waited a moment, then slipped out into the hall.
The safe had yielded to Cusard’s ministrations and proved to hold nearly sixty small gold bars, each stamped with the royal seal of Bisra. Nicholas’s men had already packed them on the sledges they had brought and started back down the tunnel under Cusard’s direction when Nicholas, Crack and Lamane caught up to them.
Nicholas motioned them to keep moving, lifting one of the heavy bars with his good hand to examine the crest. The Duchess of Mondollot maintained a trading business with one of the old merchant families of Bisra, Ile-Rien’s longtime enemy to the south. This fact was little known and in the interest of keeping it that way, the Duchess did not store her gold in the Bank Royal of Vienne, which Nicholas knew from experience was much harder to break into. The Bank would also have expected the great lady to pay taxes, something her aristocratic mind couldn’t countenance.
Mother Hebra clucked at his burns and made him wrap his scarf around his injured hand. Lamane was telling the others something about the sewers being infested with ghouls and in such a nice part of the city, too.
"What do you make of it?" Cusard asked Nicholas, when they had reached the street access of the maintenance tunnel, which opened up behind a public stable across Ducal Court Street from Mondollot House. The other men were handing up bars of gold to be stored in the compartment under the empty bed of the waiting cart. The street boys posted as lookouts worked for Cusard and thus for Nicholas too, as did the man who ran the stables.
"I don’t know." Nicholas waited for the men to finish, then started up the bent metal ladder. The cold wind hit him as he climbed out of the manhole, the chill biting into his burns, making him catch his breath. The horses stamped, restless in the cold. The night was quiet and the men’s hushed voices, the distant music from Mondollot House, and the clank of soft metal against wood as the gold was packed away in the special compartment under the wagon bed, seemed oddly loud. "But I’ll swear it removed something from that room Crack found," he said as Cusard emerged.
Cusard said, "Well, I don’t much like it. It was such a sweet little job of work, otherwise."
Someone brought Nicholas his greatcoat from the cart and he shrugged into it gratefully. "I don’t either, that you can be sure of." The wagon had been loaded and he wanted to look for Reynard and Madeline. He told Cusard, "Take the others and get home; we’ll draw attention standing here."
The driver snapped the reins and the wagon moved off. Nicholas walked back down the alley toward Ducal Court Street. A layer of dirty ice and a light dusting of snow made the streets and alleys passable; usually they were so choked with mud and waste water that pedestrians had to stay on the promenades or use the stepping stones provided for street crossings. He realized Crack was following him. He smiled to himself and said aloud, "All right. It didn’t go at all well the last time I sent you away, did it? But no more ghoul-hunting tonight."
At the mouth of the alley, Nicholas paused to remove the small hairpieces that lengthened his sideburns and changed the shape of his mustache and short beard, and rubbed the traces of glue off his cheeks. The touches of gray in his dark hair would have to be washed out. He never appeared as Donatien except in disguise: if any of the men who had participated on one of these jobs recognized him as Nicholas Valiarde it could be ruinous. Maintaining the masquerade wasn’t much of a hardship; in many ways he had been practicing deception for most of his life and at this point it came easily to him.
He buttoned and belted his greatcoat, took the collapsible top hat and cane from one of the pockets, and tugged a doeskin glove onto his uninjured hand. With the other hand in his pocket and the coat concealing everything but his boots and gaiters, he was only a gentleman out for a stroll, a somewhat disreputable servant in tow.
He paused across the wide expanse of street from Mondollot House, as if admiring the lighted facade. Footmen stood ready at the door, waiting to hand down late arrivals or assist those making an early night of it. Nicholas moved on, passing down the length of the large house. Then he spotted their coach, standing at the corner under a gas street lamp, and then Reynard Morane waiting near it. Nicholas crossed to him, Crack a few paces behind.
"Nic. . . ." Reynard stepped down from the promenade to meet them. He was a big man with red hair and a cavalryman’s loose-limbed stride. He took a close look at Nicholas. "Trouble?"
"Things became somewhat rough. Where’s Madeline?"
"That’s the problem. I had the opportunity to provide a diversion for her but it went too well, so to speak, and I found myself asked to leave with no chance to retrieve her."
"Hmm." Hands on hips, Nicholas considered the facade of the Great House. For most women of fashionable society, getting out of the place unnoticed would have been an impossible task, but Madeline had studied tumbling and acrobatics for the more active roles in the theater and she wouldn’t necessarily need a ground floor exit. "Let’s go around the side."
Mondollot House was flanked by shopping promenades and smaller courts leading to other Great Houses and it was possible to circle the place entirely. The shops were closed, except for one busy cabaret set far back under the arcade, and all was quiet. There were no entrances on the first floor of the house except for an occasional heavily barred carriage or servants’ door. The terraces and balconies of the upper floors were all later additions: originally these houses had been impenetrable fortresses, frivolous decoration confined to the rooftops and gables.
They made one circuit, almost back to Ducal Court Street, then retraced their steps. Reaching the far side, Nicholas saw the panel doors on a
second floor terrace fly open, emitting light, music, and Madeline.
"You’re late, my dear," Reynard called softly to her, "we’ve been looking everywhere for you."
"Oh, be quiet." Madeline shut the doors behind her. "I’ve had to leave my best paletot behind because of you."
"We can afford to buy you another, believe me," Nicholas told her, concealing his relief. He should know her abilities too well by now to worry much about her safety, but it had been a disturbing night. "And it’s well earned, too."
Madeline gathered her delicate skirts and swung over the low balustrade, using the scrollwork as a ladder, and dropped to land in a low snowdrift just as Nicholas and Reynard scrambled forward to catch her. She straightened and shook her skirts out, and Nicholas hastened to wrap his coat around her. She said, "Not so well earned. I didn’t have a chance to distract the ward because someone had beaten me to it."
"Ah." Nicholas nodded, thoughtful. "Of course. I’m not surprised."
"He never is," Reynard said in a tone of mock complaint. "Let’s discuss it somewhere else."
When they were sheltered from the wind inside the well-upholstered coach, Nicholas had Madeline tell her part of the incident and gave the others his description of the unexpected encounter in the Duchess’s vaults.
Reynard swore softly. "Do you suppose someone sent it after you, Nic? You know we have old acquaintances that wouldn’t mind seeing you dead."
"I thought of that." Nicholas shook his head. The coach jolted along the uneven stones of the street, making the tassels on the patent leather window shades dance. "But I’m certain it took something out of that room Crack found. A room which isn’t on any of the house plans that we were able to obtain, either. I think that was why the creature was there. It was only as an afterthought that it tried to kill me."
Madeline tucked the woolen lap rug more firmly around her. "And the key for the house ward had already been destroyed. I think it was that awful little man who wanted a lock of the late Duke’s hair. What sort of spiritualist asks for something like that? It’s too much like necromancy."
What sort of spiritualist indeed? Nicholas thought. "I wonder why the creature was still there? It was already in the wine vault; it didn’t have to attack me to escape. If it successfully removed something from that room, why was it coming back?"
"For the gold?" Madeline suggested thoughtfully. "Though that isn’t exactly common knowledge."
Nicholas had deduced the gold’s existence from investigation of the Duchess’s trading concerns. Someone else might have done so as well, but. . . . "Possibly," he said. Possible, but perhaps not probable.
Reynard leaned forward. "What’s that muck on your arm?"
Nicholas had given his greatcoat to Madeline and was making do with one of the lap rugs. In the musty darkness of the coach, the sleeves of his workman’s coat bore a green-tinged stain that faintly glowed. Nicholas frowned. At first glance it looked like ghost-lichen, but he couldn’t remember brushing against the walls of the room where it had grown so profusely. He remembered the ghoul’s fingers, strong as iron bands, gripping him there, and the way it had shone with a dim unhealthy radiance in the dark cellar. "I believe it’s a memento from the ghoul." It made him want to return to Mondollot House to make an examination of the corpses of the three watchmen in darkness, to see if their clothing had the same residue. He didn’t imagine Madeline and Reynard would be amenable to that suggestion.
When the coach stopped outside the fashionable Hotel Biamonte where Reynard kept rooms, Nicholas said, "I suppose you’re going out to celebrate."
"I would be mad not to," Reynard replied, standing on the snow-dusted promenade and adjusting his gloves. Behind him the doors and fogged windows of the hotel spilled light and warmth, music and the laughter of the demi monde.
Worried, Madeline added, "Take care."
He leaned back into the coach to take her hand and drop a kiss on the palm. "My dear, if I was careful I would not have been cashiered out of the Guard and we would never have met. Which would have been unfortunate." He tipped his hat to them and Nicholas smiled and pulled the coach door closed.
He tapped his stick against the ceiling to signal the driver, and Madeline said, "I worry about him. Those bucks at Mondollot House were holding grudges."
"They may talk, but they won’t act. If they were in his regiment they know what Reynard is like with sword and pistol. He can take care of himself."
"I wish I could say the same of you," she said, her voice dry.
Nicholas drew her close, inside the circle of his arms. "Why my dear, I’m the most dangerous man in Ile-Rien, its provinces, and all the Parscian Empire combined."
"So they say." But she said no more on the subject, and their thoughts quickly turned to other things.
It was a relatively short ride to Coldcourt, which stood in one of the less fashionable quarters just outside the old city wall.
They drew up in the carriage way and Nicholas helped Madeline out as Crack jumped down from the box.
This was the house that had been Nicholas’s first real home. The walls were thick natural stone, built to withstand the Vienne winter. It was only three stories at its tallest, sprawling and asymmetrical, and boasted three towers, one square and two round, all with useless ornamental crenelations and embellishments in the style known as the Grotesque. It was ugly and unfashionable, and not terribly comfortable, but it was home and Nicholas would never give it up.
Sarasate the butler opened the door for them as the coachman drove the horses around to the stables in the back and they gratefully entered the house.
Coldcourt was also as drafty as its name implied, but the spacious hall felt warm and welcoming after the chilly night. The straight-backed chairs along the walls and the sideboard were well-used, though still in fine condition, relics of the time when Nicholas’s foster father had lived here. The carpets and hangings were new, though in a restrained style in keeping with the rest of the house, and they had only had gas lighting laid on in the main rooms on the first two floors and the kitchen. Nicholas didn’t like vulgar display and Madeline’s taste was even more particular than his. Still, the plaster above the dark wainscotting was looking a little dingy and he supposed they might afford to have it redone now.
Madeline headed immediately toward the stairs; Nicholas supposed her patience with delicate and cumbersome evening dress had reached its limit and she was going to change. His own progress was more leisurely. His ribs ached from the encounter with the ghoul, or whatever it had been, and he felt singed and three times his age. He shed coat and makeshift bandages as he crossed the hall and told Sarasate, "Warm brandy. Hot coffee. And Mr. Crack will be staying the night, so if his usual room could be prepared, and a meal. . . . If Andrea hasn’t gone to bed?"
"He thought you might want something after such a late night, sir, so he prepared a bit of veal in aspic and a chestnut souffl้."
"Perfect." Sarasate and the coachman Devis were the only Coldcourt servants who knew anything about Nicholas’s activities as Donatien. Sarasate had been at Coldcourt for at least thirty years; Devis was Cusard’s oldest son and almost as reliable as Crack. Nicholas saw the butler collecting the ghoul-stained coat with an expression of distaste, and added, "That coat’s ruined, but don’t dispose of it. I may need it later." That was Sarasate’s one fault as a butler—he understood nothing about the sometimes vital information that could be gleaned from objects that otherwise appeared to be rubbish.
Nicholas went to the last door at the end of the hall and unlocked it with the key attached to his watch chain. The room was chill and dark and he spent a moment lighting the branch of candles on the table. There were gas sconces on the yellowed plaster walls, but gas fumes could damage oil paint, and it was very important that the work of art in this room not be altered in the slightest degree.
The flickering light of the candles gradually revealed the painting on the far wall. It was a large canvas, almost six feet long
and four feet wide, set in a narrow gilt frame. It was a copy of a work by Emile Avenne called The Scribe, which purported to be a depiction of harem life in an eastern land. It showed two robed women lounging on a couch while an aged scholar turned the pages of a book for them. Nicholas knew the scene came from nowhere but the artist’s imagination. Experts had long maintained that the styles and colors of the tiles on the floor and walls, the detail of the fretted screens and the textiles draping the couches were not common designs known in Parscia, Bukar, or even far Akandu. But it was a subtle, masterful work and the colors were rich and wonderful.
The original hung on the wall of the library at Pompiene, Count Rive Montesq’s Great House. Nicholas had sold the painting to the Count, who had affected to believe that he was doing a favor for the foster son of the man whose work he had once sponsored. Nicholas’s public persona was that of an art importer and he used his inheritance from Edouard to act as a patron to several young artists of notable talent. He was more of a patron than most people realized, having once anonymously retrieved some paintings stolen from the public gallery at the old Bishop’s Palace and punished the offending thieves severely. He didn’t believe in stealing art.
Nicholas dropped into the velvet upholstered armchair which had been carefully placed at the best point for viewing the work and propped his feet on the footstool. In the long dead language of Old Rienish, he said carefully, "Beauty is truth."
The colors in the painting brightened, slowly enough at first that it might have been a trick of the eye. They took on a soft glow, obvious enough for the watcher to tell this was no trick, or at least not a natural one. The painting then became transparent, as if it had turned into a window opening onto the next room. Except the room that it revealed was half the city away, though it appeared just as solid as if one could reach out and touch it.
That room was dark now, just a little faint light from an open door revealing bookcases, the edge of a framed watercolor, and a marble bust of Count Montesq sculpted by Bargentere. Nicholas glanced at the clock on his own mantel. It was late and he hadn’t expected anyone to be about. Again in Old Rienish, he said, "Memory is a dream."