A water-logged hare gusted in to swirl around Princess Aerinndís' hands, and Rian pulled loose the voluminous wrapping from her sword to offer up as a towel. Then she surveyed the mess. Would there be proof among all this that could remove the tarnish from Aedric and Eiliff's reputation? It seemed clear that the aim had been to destroy evidence, and it was particularly unfortunate that the safe had been open.
"Where did the fire come from?" she asked, puzzled. "They were using fulgite lamps."
"Where did our bull-bear come from?" Makepeace replied. "Some fire-breathing, teleporting animal whose existence no-one has ever reported?" He picked up a wad of scorched, sodden black cloth and held it up to display the design: a vertical and horizontal line meeting in the centre, like the hands of a timepiece at three o'clock. A sinuous eye filled the section within the two lines. "Nothing to do with the Aesir, I think—I can spot their thumbprints—but we can't overlook Gustav's possible involvement. And he might become even more of a headache if we haul off one of his aides for interrogation."
Princess Aerinndís retrieved the ledger, and used it to write a short note, which she then tore out. A transparent bird—perhaps a nightjar—whisked the sheet away.
"Do you propose anything further tonight?" she asked.
"I won't waste my time sitting around here," he said. "Delway's lot can sift and door-knock and give us a better picture of what's survived this. I'll find out what the Blairs have been up to."
"Lyle was having dinner with me," Rian offered. "It can't be more than an hour since I was with him, over at Westing Gate. Lynsey is theoretically at Tangleways." She briefly summarised the conversation she'd had with Lyle.
Makepeace eyed her narrowly, then said: "Him dancing attendance makes sense if he thinks you have that fulgite. Perhaps we can use it—or you—as bait."
Princess Aerinndís carefully tore the two portraits out of the ledger, and handed the volume back to Makepeace.
"We will leave mention of Albans out of official discussions, to minimise the chance of warning our target. Tomorrow evening Commander Delway and Professor Bermondsley can present their reports on their respective investigations, and we will decide a plan of action. I will return Dama Seaforth."
"Highness," Makepeace said, with a nod of acknowledgement, surprising Rian since he'd called Princess Leodhild "Hildy", and the otherwise formal Crown Princess treated him with a familial lack of ceremony.
Rian was now almost used to being whisked from her feet by a wind with antlers, and at least the pace was less unnerving as they slipped out of the warehouse and rose above London's rooftops. Events had moved as rapidly as the Night Breezes—after such achingly slow progress she had at last had confirmation that the fulgite thieves had been interested in the house at Caerlleon. The proof would come.
A gibbous moon had crested the horizon, thinning the blue tones of Rian's night vision and picking out the glistening capstone of the nearest pyramid. The major pyramids were the only structures rising above the ever-present shadow forest, and they reminded Rian forcibly that Egypt was part of this hunt, and that spies more formidable than ravens were waiting back at Forest House. But, oh, it was hard to be serious beneath this grand sweep of sky, above a forest that existed beyond the world, with curl-tailed hounds lolloping at her side, and Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn directly ahead. She rode with the gods.
And they were already descending, the trip just long enough to make Rian ache for more. Half-expecting to be deposited precisely where she'd been collected, she managed to hide any reaction when they swept directly over the roof of Forest House and stopped in front of an innocuous chimney. Two pairs of golden eyes blinked from the shadows, but the caracal and cat did not stir.
More wind hounds began to gather: long-legged, narrow of body, heads elegant, ears streaming back, and feathery tails low. They were sisters to Arawn's hounds, and they could strip fields, flatten towns, and easily tear even vampires apart. The damage wrought by the summer's scouring wind was nothing to the force the Night Breezes could muster, and here they massed, dozens, hundreds, until the whole of the grove was covered by a swelling wave building and yet not crashing upon the shore the warehouse roof.
Although most of their power was being held in check, the Night Breezes still produced a gale that tore at the leaves of the grove and made the tiling rattle. The two small felines that were the focus of the intensifying blast hunkered down, eyes slitted to nothing, only the chimney behind them keeping them in place.
And then the massed winds were gone, a hammer-blow dissipating before it landed, and there was only the stag and the three-tailed mare, cantering slowly in place.
"Goals may be obtained more quickly through co-operation," Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn observed, in passable Egyptian.
The cat and the caracal stood—with a hint of trembling muscles—then turned and walked unhurriedly away. Utter disdain, as represented by slowly switching tails, and twin nether eyes.
Below, the grove had filled with folies, but their numbers began to decrease. Forest House, thankfully, remained quiet. Rian glanced at Princess Aerinndís' face, expecting affronted hauteur. The Crown Princess was undoubtedly angry: the confrontation had been an expression of the Sulevia Sceadu's opinion of a foreign power offering help while prosecuting its own agenda. But the princess was smiling through her annoyance, her response more grim amusement than rage.
"Very likely they are under Command," Princess Aerinndís observed, as the wind whisked them to the attic windows. Tiny mice worked on latches, and dark hares gently gusted the casement open.
Rian ducked her head as they wafted inside, and found herself intensely glad that Makepeace was not there to know her feelings, to look at her and see her excitement. What did it say about Rian that she was so enormously aroused by the display, by the sheer power of the Sulevia Sceadu? Rian did not know whether to be entertained by herself, or embarrassed.
"I do not see what it is that makes you less than an artist."
Wrenching her thoughts back to less exciting paths, Rian saw that the Crown Princess was still holding the sketches of Lyle and Lynsey Blair. The question at least was a familiar one, and she used it to pull herself together, to shrug lightly, as she had so many times before.
"I could bore you with a long monologue on the nature of art, but the short answer is that I grew up thinking that I was an artist, and spent many years diligently training my skills, because it never occurred to me to be anything else. When I eventually realised that the whole of my motivation revolved around my parents, and none of it for the work, I gave it up."
"You do not miss it?"
"Not particularly. It's not as if I swore never to pick up a brush again—I help one of my cousins painting theatre backdrops whenever I visit Lutèce. I'll draw something if I particularly want to remember what it looked like. But I don't…" She paused, pushing aside an impulse to explain properly. "I treat it as a craft. A semantic quibble, perhaps."
Princess Aerinndís had crossed to the workbenches, which fortuitously were no longer strewn with studies of her young sister. Instead it seemed that Eleri had at last started work on Eluned's replacement arm. She had shaped the forearm from a length of dark wood, and all the small joints of the fingers had been laid out, leaving a gap for the back of the hand.
"Did you consider your brother an artist?"
"Oh, yes. I hope we recover this missing automaton. His work was always beautiful."
"And the girl who is making this? Is she an artist?"
Rian was becoming amused. "Eleri's drive seems to lean to the science behind the process, but yes, I would call her one. The work I've seen of hers is very stripped back, but there's a certain spare elegance that she strives for. Does it offend your sense of what is correct, Highness, that I choose not to name myself an artist?"
"It concerns me that the new Keeper of the Deep Grove may be so fractured within herself that she will fail in her duty."
This was a large leap into the unexpected. "M
y duty being considerably more than opening a gate every twenty-five years?"
"The service of the Keeper is Cernunnos' contribution to the Treaty of the Oak," Princess Aerinndís said. "You are the second to hold the position since the Trifold Age began. Comfrey is dragging his feet in acknowledging that because you represent the beginning of his end, but avoiding change will not alter the fact that Prytennia's defences now involve you. The foreseeing was an immediate acknowledgement, as much as we have attempted to downplay it. Having taken on this duty, you must do everything you can to prepare for it."
Rian frowned at her, bemused. "By facing my own failings?" she guessed.
"There are attacks a sword cannot defend against." The Crown Princess had found herself a chair, her habitually upright posture giving her the manner of a strict teacher waiting to hear a student's excuses.
Since Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn was all of twenty-three, Rian was not entirely certain she cared for the image. But this, for all she'd been run into the choice with no preparation, was part of what she'd agreed to by giving her allegiance to Cernunnos, and so she set herself on the nearest trunk and approached the question seriously.
"I can't say I've ever thought of myself as fractured," she said. "Resilient, yes. Not broken. I don't consider my relationship to art to be some unhealed wound, but a reflection of the environment in which I was raised."
"Child of famous parents?"
"A house where art was venerated. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, and my parents were very supportive of me doing whatever I wanted. Naturally, what I wanted was to be like them, to do the things that they valued. It did not come so easily to me as it did to Aedric, but technique is something that hard work can address, and so I worked very hard indeed. I made considerable progress, and my parents were proud of me."
"And then?"
"That's where we get to the discussion on what is art. My parents' house overflowed with guests, students, patrons and petitioners. These last, I soon learned, were pitiful creatures who produced 'daubs', or were derivative, or had nothing to say. They would come wanting to be taken on as students.
"My father was quite open in his scorn. To him there was nothing worse than the deluded, the pretenders. My mother would allow anyone to show her their work, and would offer constructive advice. And my father would give her a questioning look after she left them, and she would give the tiniest shake of her head.
"I was a little too young for such dismissal, of course. I'm not certain if anything would have been different if she hadn't died when I was fourteen. Perhaps she would have found some way to direct my energies elsewhere. As it was, she died and I fumbled about trying to understand the family finances—I fortunately have always found numbers easy to get along with—and then I threw myself back into the next important step in living up to her legacy: developing my own style."
"The difference between derivative and worthy?" The Crown Princess was listening with solemn attention, a single owl drifting in a tight circle above her.
"You don't advance anything copying other people, and if you're not trying to reach, to transfigure, to say something, to realise a goal beyond an image...then all you are doing is producing daubs." Rian shook her head. "Which is in itself a rather limited view of art, but it is what I was drowning in.
"My father had not coped well with Mother's death, and his anxiety about me leaked through, though he tried very hard to be encouraging. Some of his visitors were less careful, and I worked myself to the bone to prove them wrong, to make the breakthrough I kept telling myself was inevitable. And then my brother came home from university with Eiliff Tenning."
How nervous and proud Aedric had been! And her father had revived for a while, become more like his old self.
"Eiliff gave me a great gift. She was quite a brilliant person, you know. Prytennia really suffered a loss with her death. I admired her immensely, and she tried to have a conversation with me about something other than art."
Rian blushed. She felt the heat rise up, as scorching as it had been that day.
"I attended a village school. And back then the law only required attendance until you were twelve. Even when I was there, I did nothing but draw, and the teachers encouraged this because I was Charlotte Seaforth's daughter, and of course I would earn my living through art. I could barely read."
"What was the gift?"
"Incredulity. Eiliff, who was a rather blunt person, tried very hard not to gape at me in disbelief. She valued art—and had a good eye for it—but she also venerated knowledge, and believed in…contributing, in working toward the betterment of the world. She thought me selfish for spending my time painting when I was not producing something of worth, and she did not hide that she believed I should redirect my time toward being what father termed a 'devotional'—someone who, lacking the capacity themselves, centred themselves around the valuable work of others. I didn't care for that idea at all, but the strength of her reaction forced me to look at myself from the view of someone other than my parents. And I kept looking long after her visit. All that time trying to reach without copying, trying to express something ineffable, and the problem was I had nothing to say. I had no passion for the work, let alone its subjects, and no goal beyond my parents. I stopped trying to make myself into an artist to give myself a chance to be me."
"This must have been years ago. Do you still have nothing to say?"
"That's…I don't look at it that way," Rian said. "I've never felt the decision to stop as a loss. Only a relief."
The Crown Princess stood, leaving Rian feeling like she'd faced a test, and perhaps not passed.
"Can anyone excise a portion of themself and call themself whole?" the princess asked. "I will trust to your judgment, Dama Seaforth. Comfrey will bring you to the meeting tomorrow."
The sacred mare moved so quickly, whisking the Crown Princess out of the window before Rian could even stand up. Rian crossed and looked out over the now-quiet grove, and then sat on the sill, feeling drained.
A great deal crammed into a few hours. She had watched someone die, and she had discovered that she had misjudged one of the Blairs. She had flown above London, then been asked if she was whole.
Wouldn't you know it, if you were broken inside? Rian had certainly reached adulthood mired in her own ignorance, mortified by how little she knew, but she had methodically worked to catch herself up, climbed out of the well, and enjoyed herself a great deal once she'd reached the surface. What was wrong about who she was?
Her mistake had been taking the question seriously enough to even try to answer. Dredging up her childhood never left her feeling even-keeled. Now she'd waste her time wondering what it was Princess Aerinndís had seen in her to make her ask. Stupid to not stick to the short answer.
It was a romantic impulse, this wish to be properly understood. The last person she'd told all that to was Carelius, and he'd given her a sharp lesson in status in return. But at least she could not delude herself into thinking that Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn would ever consider marrying her: the Suleviae's ban on marriage took that out of the question altogether.
What a distraction. Rian needed to put herself in order, to set aside ideas that would lead her places fierce and full of jagged edges. She would leave it to Eleri to pursue princesses, and return her attention to murder. They were so close now.
Rian looked out over the grove into the boundless forest, and refused to think of flying.
Twenty-Two
Aunt Arianne had left a note that she wasn't to be woken for breakfast: an irritating development because Eleri wanted money from her before they set out on their next round of workshop visits. The morning improved when Griff found a wooden sword in the attic. Even Eleri joined in for dashing fights against a broomstick, but that soon palled, for they were impatient to get on.
"No money left in the safe," Eleri said, restively swinging the sword while Griff went for drinks. "Amasen horns are gone too. Doesn't trust us."
"She pr
obably sent it to the bank," Eluned said. "Would you have taken some?"
"Why not? Said she'd give it to us. Not really the Aunt's anyway. Or half yours."
"I don't think I had to give nearly as much allegiance. I only see the forest when I'm with her."
"Still wasting our time. Stayed out late drinking. Only cares about herself."
This was entirely unreasonable, but Eluned knew Eleri in this temper wasn't going to listen to argument. What they needed was a distraction.
Griff, pounding up the stairs, happily provided.
"Elli, Ned, the things from the old house have been delivered!" he shouted, grabbing a crowbar and racing out again.
"Don't call me Elli," Eleri snapped, though she lost no time chasing down after him, eager to retrieve what little they'd been allowed to keep from their parents' workshop.
The main hall of Forest House was far too large for a dozen crates and trunks to make much impact, but it was still a formidable pile up close. Griff was already working on the first crate with the help of one of the new day staff, an easily-flustered man called Jack.
"There's my big trunk," Eluned said, not sure she was ready to be reunited with her old sketchbooks.
"The one on top of it should have the design folders," Eleri added, relieved.
Griff produced a tremendous cracking and splintering noise, and hopped backward as the side of the upright crate he'd been working on fell toward him.
"Try not to scratch up the floor," Eluned said, then frowned, counting. "Why are there so many crates?"
"This isn't ours!" Griff said, tugging a large framed painting out of the crate. "Is it?"
It was a landscape, a heat-drenched grassland dotted with gazelle, and a lone flat-topped tree drawing the focus of the scene.
"It's a Ngoyo." Eluned slid another painting out, and found a lush-curved woman done in quick brushstrokes of deep purple and black. "This is a Salzine."
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