Floodtide

by Heather Rose Jones

Maisetra Iulien looked sideways at the tall woman and I could see that dangerous spark in her eyes, like she’d had when she first talked about exploring the chanulezes. Or that first day I met her when she’d run away from home in boy’s clothes. “You’ll need to come with me. I could scarcely go running around in the palace basements with a man I’m not related to and keep my reputation unless I have a chaperone with me.”

  Mesnera Chazillen frowned at her, but I could tell her mind was upstairs with her baby. “Don’t expect me to answer to your cousin for this.”

  “Please?”

  I wasn’t sure if Maisetra Iulien needed her permission or wanted her blessing, but Mesnera Chazillen sighed and turned to open up the wooden case she’d set on the table. “Here. If you’re going to be running around with fever in the streets, at least I can give you this. It’s no protection but if you get sick it may help. We’ve worked out how to make them reliably now.” She tucked a small, smooth stone as clear as crystal into Maisetra Iulien’s hand and then offered one to me as well. She looked down at my muddy skirts. “Ainis, perhaps you might lend this young person a clean dress so she looks respectable enough to be a proper vizeino. Go to the palace gates on the north side of the grounds. Tell the guard I’ve sent you to fetch something from my workshop. Iulien, you know the way. After that, you’re on your own.”

  I looked at the stone in my hand. It felt cool—not just in my hand. I could feel the cold in my belly and all along my spine. I tucked it away in the pocket under my skirt.

  She turned to Celeste. “While we wait for the adventurers to return, perhaps you could make a demonstration of your fever charm.” Her voice went tight for a moment. It was her baby that was sick upstairs. “I’m not so proud I won’t take any help that’s offered.”

  * * *

  I hadn’t thought further than asking Maisetra Iulien for help. And I’d thought Maistir Brandel would be there.

  “Have you been to the palace before?” I asked as we hurried up the Merketrez toward the palace. A hired carriage would have been faster, but there were none to be seen. It wasn’t too much of a distance, a bit past the cathedral and across the Plaiz, then around to the north side of the palace grounds.

  “Of course I have,” she said. “I’ve been there any number of times with Cousin Margerit.”

  But visiting the palace in company with Maisetra Sovitre was a different thing than walking in by ourselves to try to talk to the son of the Dowager Princess.

  We followed the iron fences around the edge of the grounds to the gate Mesnera Chazillen told us to use. People said the royal gardens were open to everyone in the city, but you had to go through the upper city neighborhoods to get there and past the uniformed guards. I’d never have tried it by myself, but Mesnera Chazillen was right. We only had to say her name to the guard and he bowed us in without a second look.

  As soon as we’d gone a bit into the gardens out of his sight, Maisetra Iulien stopped where a path crossed, looking between the palace proper and a set of smaller buildings at our left where black smoke billowed from a chimney.

  “Is that where they do alchemy?” I asked. Was there someone there who could help us? I wanted to ask Maisetra Iulien if she had a plan, but she looked as uncertain as I felt.

  She pursed her lips and slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat. And then a smile came over her as she pulled out the smooth crystal and held it up. “This may unlock the doors for us. Come on,” she said, turning toward the smaller building.

  I didn’t know what alchemy would look like. I guess I thought maybe it would be like Celeste’s charmwork, but it looked more like a factory and an apothecary’s shop all mixed up together with furnaces blazing and all sorts of jars and mortars and things on the tables higgledy-piggledy. In the middle was a heap of clear stones like the ones we’d been given, but glowing like they’d come right out of the oven. There were several boys and girls my age grinding and mixing things and tending the furnace and a woman a bit older with a scarred cheek who glanced up when we came in and asked, “What’s happened?” without pausing in her work.

  “Nothing bad,” Maisetra Iulien said quickly. “We’re here to see someone in the palace. I need to borrow a couple of work aprons.”

  The woman looked puzzled and then suspicious. “I won’t ask what you’re about, Iuli, but is it something to get Mesnera Chazillen in trouble?”

  “No, I swear. She sent us.” Maisetra Iulien held up the stone she’d been given as if it truly were a magic talisman. But it was her coaxing tongue that would get us through. She didn’t need magic stones for that.

  Maisetra Iulien took off her coat and we both put on the heavy smocks, marked with the same burns and stains I’d seen on Mesnera Chazillen’s dress. Now I could see where they came from.

  From there, it seemed we were already in the palace. We followed hallways and galleries that led from the workshop to the main buildings. The farther in we went, the more people we saw hurrying here and there about business of their own. I don’t know if it was the alchemists’ smocks or Maisetra Iulien acting like we belonged there, but nobody stopped us or asked questions until we came to a set of doors so tall they seemed to go up to the sky.

  Besides being tall, there was nothing to make them different from every other door we’d passed. I wondered how anyone found their way about here, but at a quiet knock the door opened so quickly I knew the footman on the other side had no other job except that one. Or maybe one other job. He stared down his nose at our work smocks and said, “The Dowager Princess is not in residence,” in a tone that told me she’d never be in residence for the likes of us.

  “I know,” Maisetra Iulien said quickly. “We’re here to deliver something for Mesner Atilliet—from the royal alchemist.”

  He looked us over again and, having decided that our clothes matched our words, he said, “Wait here,” then disappeared into the next room.

  When he came back, he took up his position at the door once more without a word. A gray-haired woman in a silk dress came to meet us after a short wait and stared at us even sharper.

  “The royal alchemist,” she said. Her voice was as hard as the stone Maisetra Iulien was still clutching in her hand. “The Dowager Princess is not interested in any…gifts from that quarter.”

  I could tell there was some story to that, but Maisetra Iulien started explaining in that sweet coaxing way that it was an amulet against the fever and the royal alchemist knew how concerned the princess was to have allowed young Mesner Atilliet to remain in the city and more things like that until your head spun. I think with enough time, she might have talked her way around almost anyone, but there was another soft knock behind us and this time when the footman opened the door, there was Mesner Aukustin himself with his tutor—the one who’d come to the Strangers’ Market with him. And when he said, “Iuli— Maisetra Fulpi!” in surprise, there wasn’t anything the lady-in-waiting could do about it.

  “You know these people?” she asked. When the tutor nodded and waved us toward a sitting room off to one side, she gave a little harrumph and followed to stand stiffly at the door.

  “So what have we here?” the tutor asked.

  I might have thought Maisetra Iulien was tongue-tied when she looked from Mesner Aukustin to the tutor and back, except I’d never believe she was lost for words. Then I understood when she asked, “Mesner Atilliet, what does your tutor know of Saint Rota?”

  His frightened look told the rest of the story, though it was the waiting woman that he glanced at. So he hadn’t gotten leave for exploring. His tutor might have looked the other way, like he did that day at the Strangers’ Market, but he couldn’t say so with the woman listening in. Knowing that, Maisetra Iulien spun a story that never mentioned that Mesner Aukustin had been in the boat exploring the chanulez under the Plaiz with the rest of us.

  “And so we need to fetch more water from Saint Rota’s well,” Maisetra Iulien finished up. “We can’t go by the chanulez again because the
river’s too high. But we thought if the old door led somewhere under the palace…”

  “And the royal alchemist sent you on this quest?” the tutor asked.

  Maisetra Iulien shook her head. That was stupid, I thought. Why would she give up that story now when we needed him to believe us?

  “No, we’ve come on our own. Roz’s friend Celeste—you remember her?—she’s the one who needs the water. She’s made a charm to cure the fever.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  I could tell he didn’t really believe us. Why would he? Would Mesner Aukustin help? He’d left off his bossy ways here in the palace, like he was waiting to be given permission. Maybe he was.

  “Chautovil,” he said with a tone that was halfway between begging and ordering, “if there’s a chance this charm might do some good for my people, I should help where I can.”

  My people, he said. As if he’d been named the heir already. Well, that was nothing to me, but maybe it was something to Chautovil, for he nodded like it was an examination in school.

  “A wise decision.” He took a long look at Maisetra Iulien like he was calculating sums. It was the same sort of look Celeste got when she was working something out. Then he looked at me like he was adding me into the sum. “It would, of course, be outside my authority to permit you to risk your safety in the palace cellars, but should you want to examine the oldest plans of the buildings to advise someone else on that task, you might convince the archivist to show them to you.”

  I think this sort of thing must have been a game between them, because Mesner Aukustin grinned like he’d been let loose on holiday. It seemed strange to me that a boy as old as him would be held on so short a leash. Nan’s brother was the same age when he’d gone for a soldier. And my cousin was younger than that when he was sent driving bullocks to market on his own. But watching Mesner Aukustin I could tell it chafed at him and that his tutor knew it and gave him as much leash as he could. From what the gray-haired lady-in-waiting had said, I figured it was his mother, the Dowager Princess, who held the leash tight.

  I thought about that sometimes: how being well-born didn’t leave you free to do as you pleased. Sometimes Maisetra Iulien had even fewer choices than a girl like me. I thought it was different for men, but maybe it was only that they had other rules. One way it was different for certain: the both of them—Maisetra Iulien and Mesner Aukustin—they might break those rules today, but if things went wrong Maisetra Iulien would be ruined and he wouldn’t face anything worse than a beating. Maybe not even that. And that was why I was here, to be able to swear that nothing went wrong in that kind of way.

  Maybe I had something else to do. “Maisetra Iulien,” I said as we left the private rooms and went down a hallway we hadn’t taken before. “When we get to the well, what will we carry the water in?”

  She stopped and looked back at me. “I hadn’t thought. I suppose…how much do we need to fetch?”

  Mesner Aukustin waved at us impatiently and I answered as we got moving again. “The charm she did for Liv’s nephew took up a few spoonfuls maybe. What we had left in that last little bottle. I don’t think it needed that much, because she tried a few things first, and there was some left over. So maybe one spoonful for every time she works the charm?”

  “And how many people are sick?” Mesner Aukustin asked.

  I was surprised how angry the question made me. He went around calling them “my people,” but he didn’t have any idea how many were sick? I thought about the baby, all limp and burning away, and so many others across the city. But I didn’t know either. “Hundreds,” I said. “Thousands maybe. Nobody’s counting.”

  Maisetra Iulien started doing sums under her breath. “A dozen spoonfuls in a teacup. Four teacups in a wine bottle. So nearly a hundred charms in two bottles. A thousand cures would be twenty bottles worth. That would fill half a small barrel, like the kind they put brandy in.”

  “I don’t know that I could carry a small barrel,” I pointed out. I knew pretty well that I’d be the one carrying it. “Couldn’t we ask someone to help?”

  “No.” Just that.

  Maybe he didn’t figure he needed to give a maid reasons. But maybe he knew how narrow a path we were walking. Asking for help gave people a chance to refuse.

  He softened it a little. “If we find the way to the well we can go back later.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. We could carry a barrel out of the palace once. But like landing a boat during a blockade, it would be harder a second time.

  We came to a cramped office where an old man was patiently copying figures from slips of paper into a ledger book. He didn’t look up for the longest time as if he was hoping we’d go away. Finally Maisetra Iulien nudged Mesner Aukustin and he cleared his throat and said, “Maistir Zenit, I’d like to examine some of the old plans for the palace foundations.”

  “Would you now, young mesner,” he answered without looking up. “And which set of plans would that be? The ones from when Domric first built here? Or when Filip rebuilt it after the fire? Or perhaps Iohen’s plans when the new wings were added and the gardens redesigned?”

  I could see dismay creeping over Mesner Aukustin’s face. He swallowed, then set his shoulders back and said, “All of them. There was a passage, at one time, that ran from the palace to Saint Rota’s well that sits on the chanulez hidden under the Plaiz. I need to find that passage if it still exists.”

  “Saint Rota’s well?” the man said doubtfully. “That old rivermen’s legend?”

  “It’s not a legend,” Maisetra Iulien said. “We followed the chanulez up from the river when the water was low. We’ve been to the well. But we can’t go that way now.”

  “You’ve been to the well.” He made a dismissive noise. “I don’t have time for games or to spend hours pulling old plans off the shelves.” He waved at the cases that covered one wall. “You’re welcome to search if you please, but don’t put anything out of order.”

  It didn’t look like there was any order to begin with. There weren’t as many books as Maisetra Sovitre had in her library, but they were stacked in heaps and covered in dust. There was no way we could find anything without pulling it all out of place. He was mocking us.

  I expected Maisetra Iulien to start doing her coaxing and try to bring him around, but it was Mesner Aukustin who said, “I command you to find the plans for me. Some day when I am prince I will remember who helped me and who stood in my way.” His voice was all thin and brittle.

  “Some day when you are prince,” the clerk echoed. But he looked at Aukustin more thoughtfully. “Well, and perhaps some day you might be. But for now I take my orders from Her Grace, your cousin. What do you say to that?”

  Maisetra Iulien started to say something, but Mesner Aukustin stopped her.

  “I say…if you won’t do it for me, then do it for the people of Alpennia.” Now he sounded softer and more urgent, like he was feeling out what voice would work best. “Do it for those suffering from river fever who will be cured by the water from Saint Rota’s well. Help me for the sake of someone dear to you for whom this could be their sole chance.”

  Maisetra Iulien wasn’t the only one who could coax people to do what she wanted. This wasn’t a sweet-talking type of coaxing. It was more like the bugles that started a charge. There was no reason why the old clerk should have paid him any more mind than anything else we’d said. But I saw a tear start in his eye.

  “I had one son. He and his mother died back in the war. Not river fever, but fever all the same. We were all hungry too. Nobody came bringing me holy water for a cure or even for last rites. Not till it was all over. I don’t hold much with charms, but it would have mattered if someone brought us water.”

  He sounded so bitter I thought it meant he’d refuse to help. But he set his pen aside and carefully stoppered the inkwell, then pushed his stool back and went to climb a short ladder to one of the shelves.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  October 1825—
Searching

  They didn’t need me crowding around the maps and dusty scrolls with them. I was bone-tired despite the bit of sleep I’d had in the morning. How could it still be the same day that had begun rowing back over the river with Liv? I found a comfortable chair and closed my eyes for a bit. I’d learned to do that evenings waiting up for Maisetra Iulien. I knew I was dozing because I’d wake with a little start every time they found something.

  “Here, look, on this drawing. This one shows the chanulez, and that must be the well, there across from the cathedral steps.”

  “This one’s before the chanulez was covered over. It runs right through the middle of the Plaiz. There are the steps going up to either side of the fountain.”

  “But the palace isn’t laid out like today. The council hall and the old south wing are the same, but how can we—”

  And then the voices dimmed again.

  It took Maisetra Iulien shaking me by the shoulder to bring me back.

  “Roz, wake up. We’ve found it.”

  She didn’t sound tired—or at least she was more excited than tired. I rubbed my eyes and stood.

  “Yes, maisetra. Where are we going?”

  “Aukustin knows the way and I have the corridors all drawn out and where the door should be.”

  What if the door needed a key? We hadn’t seen any keyhole on the chanulez side, only a plain wooden door that couldn’t be budged. Maybe a bar on the other side. Or maybe it was bricked over. And there might be a locked door at the other end of where it led. Did Maisetra Iulien have it all figured out or was that left to fate?

  Mesner Aukustin led the way through a maze of hallways and rooms. Sometimes down bits of stair, but not so you could tell which level we were on. The marble tiles and painted walls gave way to brick walls and wooden planks and then to plain stone for both as the air turned damp and chill. Not a sharp cold. It was the cold of places that never saw the sun.

  No one stopped us, though we got curious looks. We’d picked up lamps, but there was no need to light them yet. At last we came to a locked door at the wine cellar. We could look through the wrought iron bars to see long rows of casks under stone arches.