Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

  The words seemed to swirl in his silence like bright-hued, brittle leaves dancing, but she could not frame a sentence that did not fill her soul with panic.

  "I didn't know it could be different," he said at length. "I didn't know it could be this. I never would have offered for Alix had I known."

  And I never would have gone away had I known there was a chance of meeting you.

  But that wasn't true, and her panic increased, her sense of being unable to either have him or leave him, her fear that whatever she said would shatter forever her chance of future happiness—whatever happiness was.

  "Don't," she breathed, not knowing what it was she wanted or didn't want.

  Spenson drew her to him, and they kissed again, a long deep plunge into dark waters. All the despairing logistics, the helpless sense of uncertainty, cleared and resolved into a single thought: I want this man. I want him as friend, as lover, as companion, every day and every night and every morning. I want this, whatever it's going to be.

  The wizard in her answered, You want this more than magic?

  She drew away, dizzy, shaken, filled with the conviction that she was probably temporarily insane. Everything that she must say to him and that he must say to her—Your father will die of apoplexy… I can't give up magic… Alix's marriage contract—all these were in the look that went between them as they sat, hands upon one another's shoulders, breaths a soft mingling of sound.

  Then, as if by spoken consent, they each looked away, setting aside that silence and those words until another time.

  Kyra drew a deep breath to steady herself and said in her most businesslike voice, "Well, we've bought ourselves a little time, though my father is going to have a stroke when you announce that the entire wedding is off."

  "I hope you're a good Healer, then."

  "But the problem is far from solved. We're still left with the question of who would want to kill my sister and why and, most urgently, how."

  Spenson settled back into the wide oak chair beside the desk and folded his hands over his embroidered waistcoat. His square face was thoughtful. "In other words, when it's clear she's not to be married because the groom has other fish to fry, will the killer try again?"

  "Precisely. I've checked the two dog wizards my father wronged, and it doesn't seem to be either of them; Cousin Wyrdlees might try murder to prevent the birth of an heir to my father's business, but he's just gotten himself betrothed to Milpott's daughter, which should keep him in patent medicines for quite a while. Do you know of any… any of the great merchant families who would want to prevent the match badly enough to do murder over it?"

  Spenson was silent for a time, stroking his chin; like her, he had heard of such cases before. Finally he said, "Not with business as good as it's been this year. Whatever else can be said of him, the Regent's an able ruler; nobody's scrambling for pickings. And if it was me, I'd try disgracing the girl rather than killing her. It's safer."

  "You have a point," Kyra agreed slowly. "With the Regent's hatred for magic and wizards, I suppose it would be foolish to try something with a curse that could just as easily be done with a bribed footman. And I don't think it's a crime of passion. Algeron Brackett loves her too much to touch a hair of her head."

  "Algeron Brackett?"

  "The cook's assistant. He's been writing her poems."

  Spenson looked slightly ill.

  "Oh, they're quite good poems as far as I can make out, and they're desperately smitten with one another. In fact, at one time I was afraid—" She caught herself up, unwilling to reveal the depth of that secret, hopeless passion to the man whom she was already forgetting to think of as her sister's groom. Then she shrugged. "But, well, if the wedding's called off, that takes care of that possibility."

  "So all you could do was search the house."

  Kyra nodded. "I didn't go to the church this morning because it was the only time I could be sure everyone would be gone. And in three and a half hours all I could cover was the cellars, the laundry, and half of the drying room."

  "You'd have picked up another three hours, clear, during the ceremony."

  "Except that I knew there wasn't going to be a ceremony."

  He grinned, a white flash of teeth that turned his brown face boyish. "I wish you could have seen old Wooley's expression—but you did if you used your scrying-glass. And now of course everyone in both families will be all over the house for the rest of the day. How long would you need?"

  "Six, maybe seven hours."

  "A night's work, then."

  "I did consider that," Kyra admitted. She hooked one slender ankle through the rungs of the stool upon which she sat, with the immediate effect of upsetting it and precipitating herself almost onto the floor.

  As he sprang to catch her, Spenson laughed. "You didn't happen to have offended some powerful wizard and been cursed with clumsiness, did you?"

  "Of course not," Kyra replied with dignity, setting the stool to rights. "And I'm not clumsy, precisely. It's merely that the world is not designed to accommodate women as tall as I am."

  "I see."

  "I did think of taking one night to search the house," she went on, sitting down on the deep window seat at his side. "But in a house that large someone always wakes up, and I don't think those wretched musicians ever go to sleep. And with the Witchfinders in the alley and the square, I don't see how I could cast a sleep-spell over the place and do it properly."

  "I'll take care of the Witchfinders," Spenson said. "Well, I took care of Lady Earthwygg's roughs, didn't I?" he added as she widened her eyes at him.

  "All of them? A tall order even for such a doughty sticksman as yourself."

  "Sticks, hell." Spenson got to his feet and offered his hand. "There's one thing I learned in the slave and spice ports of the Jingu Straits: if you want serious derring-do… hire someone."

  "Hi, handsome." The woman's voice was a throaty murmur in the dark of Mouch Lane. Though the shadows of the granite houses and the crowding mansard roofs of Baynorth Square hid her face, fragments of ice-white moonlight fell through the moving clouds to light threads of her hair and show it fair rather than dark, decorated with bunches of freesia whose frail scent vied with the general stinks of sewage and horse droppings. "It's a cold night to be out." And indeed, her breath was the softest puff of white in the inky dark.

  Though she was far back in the alley, Kyra had a wizard's hearing. Had she not, the Witchfinder's muttered dismissal would have been completely inaudible to her.

  "Is that a way to talk to a poor girl who's only out for a little companionship? Seems to me I've seen you here before."

  Another exhortation, longer this time, exasperated, and cut off rather abruptly in the middle.

  Kyra smiled.

  A carriage passed by in the square, a clatter of harness and hooves and creaking leather springs, the dim yellow beams of its sidelights jarring briefly down Mouch Lane in time to show two men in rough wool jackets bending over the fallen shape of the Witchfinder while the blond woman readjusted her dress. Behind her in the lane Kyra heard Spenson's unmistakable brisk stride. He passed her without seeing her—even had the windows of the small shops that looked onto the narrow passage been unbarred and lighted, he would not have seen her—and she was able to watch him, as if watching a stranger, as he paid off the three of them.

  "Take him out to Pennyroyal Commons with the other," she heard him say as silver clinked sweetly from the bag he held. "Make sure their hands are well tied, but don't take their clothes or their cloaks if you know what's good for you. I'll find it out if harm comes to them from the cold, and I know who to tell them to look for."

  "We'll treat 'em like they was our little brothers," a jocular bass voice growled, and in the darkness Kyra could see the glint of Spenson's smile.

  "I'm sure you already have. Off you go, then."

  The smaller man, who'd been counting what he'd been given, looked up with a surprised grin and tugged a greasy forelock. "Goo
d hunting, then, guv'nor."

  The three shapes slid into the grimy shadows, making them, Kyra reflected, probably a little grimier. When the last of their footfalls had faded, she let the spells that cloaked her drop away and, taking care not to trip over the high doorsteps that lined the curving alley or to slip on the wet cobbles, made her way to where Spenson stood looking out into the wan moonlight of the square.

  "Unheroic but efficient," she said approvingly, and he turned around with a start. She saw the bright twinkle of his eyes within the leather carnival mask he wore.

  "Give me efficiency over heroics any day of the week." He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her warmly on the lips, leaving her flustered, startled, and prey to a flood of unaccustomed delight.

  "The man who's been watching the garden gate is on his way to Pennyroyal Commons as well."

  "Is that the usual dumping ground for the victims of footpads?"

  Spenson shook his head. "Most bandits just leave them where they lie. Now and then some young sprig who goes whoring in the dives on Buttercup Hill ends up there."

  "Did you ever?" she asked curiously as they made their quiet way back down the lane to the alley and thence along the wall of her father's house toward the garden gate.

  His eyebrows shot up. "Great heavens, no! I had more money—and better advice from my disreputable Uncle Drake—than to do my drinking in places like that. But I've gone there more than once looking for some of my stupider cousins who feel that the lower a place is, the more fun it's likely to be." His hand on her waist had a light strength to it, as sure and as protective as if he, not she, could see in the dark. High above them a dim glow marked one of the attic windows; below that, the stronger radiance of many candles turned her mother's window and Alix's to squares of molten gold.

  A pang of guilt pinched her like a bodice laced too tight. At Spenson's advice she had not gone anywhere near her parents, although, following their interview at the countinghouse, Spens had returned to Baynorth Square and had had what, through the scrying-stone, looked like an extremely stormy and trying talk with her father in the book room. She knew Spens was going to tell Gordam Peldyrin that in the face of such repeated misfortune he thought it better to postpone the wedding to his daughter indefinitely. As she had feared, her father had flown into a towering rage. In the crystal's silence she was unable to hear any of the bitter recriminations about supplies bought and rebought, the venomous blame for four days business utterly lost, the furious accusations of ruined reputation and the threats of lawsuit. She knew her father far too well to need to. She knew Spenson, too, and could only marvel at the tight-lipped silence in which he met all this. His face grew very red, but he didn't lash back with counter-threats and counteraccusations, didn't—clearly—try to throw blame back on his attacker, and in the end quieted his prospective father-in-law enough to make an appointment for the following day, bow, and take his departure.

  And as Kyra had known he would, her father then proceeded to storm up the stairs and along the gallery to the yellow guest room, his long purple wedding robe fluttering behind him, and burst into the chamber to stare about him with the blind rage of a thwarted bull looking for something to charge.

  What he had charged—and this was why, though the thought of it nauseated her in advance, she had wanted to be there to have the fight with him and get it over with—was Alix. Her mother, downstairs in what appeared to be an amicable chat with Lady Earthwygg, aunts Sethwit and Hoppina, Winetta Wishrom, and several other influential female merchants or merchants' wives, was too busy trying to stem the inevitable tide of gossip to be of any help, and Kyra knew absolutely that between keeping the servants from running about the town with a dozen distorted versions of the tale and remedying the tumult that the second cancellation of the wedding banquet would cause in the kitchen, no help could be expected from that quarter. So Alix was alone when her father came raging into her room.

  When Kyra, nearly an hour later, slipped unseen through the Wishroms' cellar and the postern gate and up the back stairs to Alix's room—as she had suspected, her mother's voice could be heard from the direction of the kitchen, frantically trying to mollify a despairing Joblin—Alix had been nearly ill with weeping.

  "He made it sound as if it were all my fault!" she sobbed. "I don't want this wedding—I never asked for it!—but he's going to be my husband and I'll be happy with him! And it isn't my fault all these things happened! Kyra, he—"

  "It's all right." Kyra tried to gather her into her arms, but Alix fought free of her, clutched her pillows again, and buried her face in them, golden hair tangling on the embroidered shams. The wedding dress's gold and ruby glory lay over a chair in a welter of stiffened linen petticoats; Kyra wondered whether it was considered bad luck to put it on a second time after the first, abortive attempt. She knew to the penny how much wedding gowns cost, particularly those designed and constructed by the redoubtable Hylette.

  On the other hand, she reflected, Spenson wasn't going to marry her sister, anyway, and given everything that had happened so far and might yet happen, a little more bad luck connected with this particular wedding was laughably superfluous.

  "I will marry him," Alix whispered. "I will, and I will be happy, only… Damn it!" Her hand clenched convulsively and buried itself in the down of the pillows with a soft thump. "I wish it would just get over with! I can't stand this."

  Again Kyra had tried to hold her, and again she had fought free, as if determined to keep her own sorrow, her own decision, to herself. As if she feared that in surrendering even to that touch, all her other strengths would break down and she would wash away in a flood of emotion that she could no longer control. She curled up on her side, wrapping her arms around herself like someone naked in bitter cold.

  After that Kyra had no stomach for confrontation with either her father or her mother. Climbing the back stairs to the attic, she had settled herself in one of the deserted rooms of the servants wing, surrounded its door with spells of There-Isn't-a-Door-Here and Don't-You-Have-Urgent-Business-Elsewhere? had curled up on the floor in her old cloak, and had fallen asleep.

  "They'll be up till all hours, won't they?"

  Spenson's voice in her ear brought her back, startled, to the present. She nodded. "I suspect Mother's been all day receiving callers, serving up tea and cakes, and trying to act as if everything's all right, and betweentimes trying to sort things out in the kitchen. Joblin must be ready to commit suicide—that cake was his masterpiece. His latest project is always his masterpiece. I've seen him in tears over a fallen shrimp soufflé. God knows what Father's been up to, and of course the servants are running around like chickens."

  "The whole town must know what happened," Spens remarked, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make out something other than the indistinct shape of the roof against the sky. His cool aplomb seemed worlds distant from the stiff silence of the man in the awful red suit— surely it hadn't been just three days ago!—the night of that disastrous dinner with the Bishop. "Are we going to wait till everyone goes to sleep?"

  Kyra shook her head. "I don't know how long this will take." Three streets away, the clock in the tower in front of St. Farinox chimed ten. This close to the equinox of spring, she translated mentally, that was roughly the fourth hour of the night, old-style. She'd slipped out of the house at around sunset to meet Spens in a tavern, where they'd supped. She was surprised to find herself ravenously hungry again. "I only hope that having started out to the wedding, this isn't technically Alix's wedding night."

  "Could it be?" Spens asked, startled.

  "Depending on how the curse is written, yes." She was silent for a time, struggling with another thought, then said slowly, "Depending on how the curse is written, I could be the… the curse."

  Spenson smiled. "Well, your father would say so."

  No! I mean… The wedding's been destroyed. Having this kind of scandal break, this kind of pressure put on her, could be what drives Alix to… to do so
mething foolish." The memory of her sister's tears returned to her, the brittle, desperate note in her voice. I can't stand this ... Joblin wasn't the only one in the household who was reacting to pressure. Curses had been used to provoke suicides before this. Nandiharrow had instructed them in several that were designed to do just that.

  He put a warm, powerful arm around her shoulder and drew her close. "You mean that what I feel for you—and what I hope you feel for me—is a result of the curse? Like those dreams about Esmin?"

  "No," Kyra said, and though a part of her mind had toyed with the idea, the moment he spoke it aloud she knew that what she felt was no illusion. Whatever it was—madness or disaster or some random jest of fate—it was as true and as much a part of her as the bones within her flesh. "No."

  "No," Spenson echoed quietly. Turning her face to him, he kissed her again, gently, on the lips. "Come," he said. "The night's going to be long enough."

  In the blackness of her mother's table-size rose garden, hemmed by the cliffs of the houses all around them, Kyra wrought her spells.

  Spenson stood guard by the door that led to the rear hall of the house, a powerful figure in his coffee-colored leather and concealing mask. She closed her mind off swiftly from all but the most superficial awareness of his presence. It was more distracting than she had thought, and she was novice enough, even after six years of formal training, to fear for the disruption of her magic that such a distraction could cause.

  She concentrated instead on the Circle of Protection she sketched about herself in the soft spring earth; on the ritual gateposts outside it, to establish the field of clarity around her; on the Circles of Light, and Earth and Air. Within their wall she closed her eyes, sank into meditation, and built within her mind the house she had known since babyhood: the slate of the roofs and the angles of their slopes, the smell of the moss on the chimneys, the bird droppings, the soot. Stone by dirty stone she formed the outer walls in her mind, differing textures, Angelshand granite and Halite brownstone, ornamental marble, plaster, brick, and glass. Room by warm room she touched it inside: the dust smells and dimness of the attics where the musicians celebrated among flute songs, champagne, and the salty sweetness of sex; each bedroom as she recalled it, down to the pattern of her mother's violet satin comforter and her father's yellow and white china shaving things; the plaster garlands on the ceilings, the flittering painted cherubs and trompe l'oeil fruit. The rugs in the empty parlors, the books in the library, the smells of dried herbs and dust in the schoolroom where Tibbeth of Hale had taught her… The heat and bustle of the kitchen, smelling of tomorrow's bread and today's staling syrups and creams. The hall with its silent chandeliers and smells of cooling wax, cellars with their musty coals and flowers heaped on ice, browning in the darkness…