Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  “Mulled wine is just the thing I am wanting,” Skander approved with an easy attempt at cheeriness.

  “It is the dress—” Turning, Margaret stooped and began bundling the massive lengths of cloth back up into something like a tidy heap. A spool of golden thread took a tumble off her chair and a cup of tiny glass buttons began sliding down a trough of cloth, but the latter Skander managed, with a kingfisher-like plunge, to catch before it sprayed everywhere.

  “This is the dress…for the ceremony?” he queried, looking quizzically into the little cup.

  She took it from him and set it on the table out of elbow-range. “Yes, that dress. I have been working through the days on it, from cock-light to sun-down, in order to get it done on time.” She turned her head away lest he see the involuntary grimace of her mouth, as if she had bit into something sour. “Rhea has been helping, but it was more than she could manage in the amount of time we have so I, too, have been stabbing my fingers with needles.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  His voice, coming from behind her, was low and genuine. She remembered him as she had last seen him, earnest in the lamplight of his kitchen, regretful and yet incapable of reaching across the impossible distance to help her, though he stood but an arm’s length away.

  She smiled at him and gestured to a chair, seating herself as she did so. “What brings you down?” she asked politely. “You are a little early.”

  He folded himself up in the chair, making it look small and unwieldy; she had a sudden fear that it might break under him. Folding his arms across his chest, fluttering his shoulders, he said simply, “Cooped-up-ness! I’ve been to see Survance and Jacland—you remember Survance?—but we’ve had a flurry of snow in Glassdale, particularly down from Thrasymene—they always give us the damndest weather—and truth to tell, my own fireside was feeling a little bare. Aikaterine does what she can. She’s a good girl. But honestly I just got lonely.”

  Margaret fingered the rich, smooth folds of her half-made gown. “You must be very desperate for company,” she mused, “to come all the way down here for it.”

  “Yes, I must be…But winter is an hour of high fires and warm company, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes flicked to his a moment and she almost—almost—betrayed the memory which she had stolen from them. She was saved by Rhea’s re-emergence from the kitchen hall bearing a steaming chalice for Skander. He took it gladly and, as was his disposition’s demand, looked to Rhea’s face to thank her; but his countenance fell a moment, clouded by some inner doubt, and he hastily looked away.

  Yes. She does that to people.

  The maid padded soundlessly toward the kitchen again, but stopped a moment in the doorway to look back, not at them, but at the outer door. Following her gaze, Margaret’s blood jumped in her veins to find Rupert there, as if he had always been there, disapprobation in his handsome face.

  Over the rim of his cup Skander saw her face—she felt it drain of blood—and he turned around to see his cousin. “Ah, speak of the devil,” he said without mirth. “Where were you?”

  “In the north tower.” Rupert’s voice seemed carved of those very stones. “Did you just come?”

  “Just now. I have barely warmed the seat.”

  De la Mare unfolded. “I thought I felt a draught. What is the occasion for this visit?”

  “I am masochistic,” murmured Skander.

  Rupert turned his ear. “I cry you mercy.”

  “No occasion,” Skander said more loudly. “I felt like getting the fidgets out of my feet and found myself wandering down this way—to which place, don’t you think, we must all gravitate before long?”

  Rupert’s eyes moved straightly from his cousin’s face to Margaret’s and back again, like a sword-blade cutting through the air. Her blood slowly crawled back into her heart. “ ’Tis a long way to get out the fidgets.”

  “Some people have gambled longer,” replied his cousin caustically, “and against greater odds.”

  “There is mulled wine in the kitchen,” Margaret interrupted softly. “Do you not have a fire in the tower, Rupert? Your fingers are blue.”

  Skander seemed perplexed at being cut off by her. Rupert, putting up his hands as if he had forgot he had them, rubbed his thumbs against his fingertips and said, “It is only lapis lazuli. But the mulled wine, I think, sounds agreeable.”

  Livy, who had stood all the while at the back of the room, motionless as the sideboard, slipped out of the shadows and disappeared down the kitchen hallway.

  Skander gave an awkward cough and put away his cup. He seemed a little pained, but settled himself back in his chair and said, by way of peacemaking, “You may go on with the dress, Margaret. I am sure you will need all the time you have to finish it.”

  At an abbreviated nod from Rupert, Margaret took up her sewing again—though goodness knew she was wishing for a longer break from the monotony of stitching tiny glass beads onto the minute golden stems that covered the voluminous skirts. She was fast beginning to hate the sight of the gorgeous thing and, no matter how pretty Rupert or the fox might think her—no matter how pretty she might think herself—the beautiful gown seemed overwhelmingly ostentatious, even for something as grand as the Overlord ceremony.

  I will look a pale, gaudy little thing, she considered vehemently, jerking at the golden thread until it threatened to snap. She grabbed hold of a spray of golden stems and glass chinaberry beads and hauled the slipping fabric back into her lap. Even amid all their flurry of feathers and embroidered dragons.

  Dragons…

  Rupert was perched on the corner of the table, one leg swinging idly in the air, his hand cupped over a steaming chalice of mulled wine. Coming back out of her thoughts, Margaret felt chilled and wished for a cup of her own. But her hands were full, and she did not dare put a drink near her dress.

  “Darkling was here a week ago,” Rupert was saying casually. “He brought those two young siblings of his.”

  Skander coughed into his fist. “Yes, I remember he was taking them to the University.” Again he coughed and shifted in his chair. “I have never met them. How were they?”

  “Like two dog-teeth,” de la Mare replied, showing his own, “in the mouth of a dog whose show of friendliness you do not trust.”

  Margaret looked up, expecting Skander’s puzzled expression, but was startled to find the man had gone white and seemed to be struggling to draw breath for another cough. Rupert got down off the table—his cup clinked on the wood—and said,

  “To hell with you, man—what is the matter?”

  Skander shook his head, still struggling for breath. He hauled in one, a long, ragged gasp that cut Margaret’s nerves like a serrated knife. His lips were turning grey.

  “Don’t just stand there, Rupert!” she cried, flinging down the dress, beads and all. She grabbed hold of Skander’s hand: it was icy cold. “Send for a doctor! He’s sick!”

  Rupert pried Skander’s free hand away from his throat and put his own thumb and forefinger against the soft of his cousin’s jaw. “There isn’t one,” he growled. “He went down to Bendingwood and isn’t due back until Tuesday week.”

  His words were meaningless to her. Rigid under her hand, obviously trying to keep a handle on his mounting panic, the young lord of Capys was struggling to draw breath. She was struggling to draw breath. She felt only two things clearly: that, if Skander died, she would never forgive Rupert, and that she loved the lord of Capys more dearly than anyone she had ever loved before.

  “Don’t just stand there!” she shrieked at Rupert. “Get him to his room! Prop him up and let him breathe!”

  Mutely, stone-facedly, Rupert put his shoulder under his cousin and bore him up while Margaret, sobbing and hardly realizing she was sobbing, ran on ahead screaming, “Lilith! Lilith! I need you at once! At once!“

  She burst open the door to the guest chamber, stirring a flurry of chicory-coloured drapery, and ran across to the bed, hauling back the coverlet
while the sunlight, streaming in through a skylight, sparkled on the heavy embroidery of the cloth.

  Lilith appeared in the doorway, flustered and concerned.

  “I want black horehound and tansy! I want it hot and I want it five minutes ago! Hurry, girl!”

  Lilith vanished. As Margaret worked feverishly at the bedclothes and then flung herself upon the little private fireplace to make an attempt at a blaze, she heard a sharp scream in the hall. She heard Rupert’s voice, raised and abrasive. The matches snapped in her shaking hands.

  Focus, woman. Focus!

  Another match snapped.

  “D-damn,” she swore, and was too panicked to feel a pang of guilt as she launched, a second later, into a heart-wrung prayer that, regardless of herself, God might have some compassion on the faithful soul that was hanging in the mortal balance across Rupert’s shoulders.

  The kindling had taken the blaze when the man lurched into the doorway with his cousin half-slung across his back. Margaret started up, dropping the match on the hearth.

  Have a heart of compassion! For the sake of us all, don’t let him die!

  With an unusual mark of tenderness Rupert laid Skander on the bed and stripped off his cousin’s heavy winter wear. He was saying something to himself, muffled and furious, but he would not meet Margaret’s eye. Skander’s face, gashed in half by light and shadow, was a wretched kind of death-mask, already sunken and turned grey; there was a purl of white at one corner of his mouth.

  “What is it? What is it?” Seated on the edge of the bed, Margaret worked Skander’s collar loose. His hands were cold; the skin under his collar was coal-hot. “What is it, Skander? Was it the ride?”

  Rupert’s hand closed over her wrist and tugged her hard off the bed. With an angry, cattish scream she fell, catching herself only in time to stumble after him out the door.

  “Let me go! Let me go, you brute! Skander needs me!”

  He jerked her away from the door. “Skander needs to get his soul right with his God, that is what he needs.”

  She had known from the grimness of Skander’s face that the situation was dire, but looking into Rupert’s level, black-splintered eyes, the lids drooping as if to hide the truth from her, something in her chest died. Rupert’s face said that it was beyond hope.

  Of a sudden, her spirit rose up like a Japanese wave and rebelled. “No!” She wrenched her hand out of his. “I am sending for horehound and tansy. He needs to breathe. I need to bring the fever down. He won’t have a chance if we do nothing! I don’t even know what is wrong with him—oh!”

  He gripped her by the jaw; she could feel every finger digging deeply into the little hollows between her bones. A roiling mix of hatred and regret warred in his face. “Margaret, stop listening to the screaming in your head and attend to me: the thing is beyond me. There is nothing we any of us can do.”

  He let her go with a jolt—she felt it shock down into the darkest part of her soul.

  What happened? What is going on? He was so cheerful. He was sitting there with me. He gave me a kiss on the cheek. He came down here because he was lonely. What happened?

  She breathed in desperation with one hideous sob. “How can you live with yourself!” she screamed at him. He was turning away, walking away, leaving shadows behind him. A wretched, red-tinged rage welled up inside her and she ran after him. With all her force she grabbed his arm and yanked him back. Her voice was still a wrangled scream. “He is your kinsman! With all your magic tricks—with all your wizardry, is there nothing you can do?”

  He looked for a long moment at her white hand gripping his sleeve—very white it looked against the black cloth, each nail a perfect fleck of red—and slowly his eyes climbed like iron, like the tip of a sword, to rest between her brows. She was staring up the naked blade of cold, calculating rage. Something held it in check, something the blade itself, perhaps, did not understand; and it was that knowledge only which kept Margaret from breaking under that gaze. His voice, dropping each word into the quiet like little glass beads, was sharpened with bitterness.

  “I do not possess the healing power.”

  Her breath shuddered out of her lungs. He unlatched her hand, dropping it, and turned away. In numbness she watched him go, choking on an airless rage, gagging on the disbelief. His figure, rigid in spine, carried in an untouched, dark sort of splendour, held not a single gentling curve of sympathy or familial charity. Did he care? Did somewhere behind those chilling pale eyes lurk a fierce pain for the loss of kin?

  There was a blur of shadow on the floor, a mixing of black and gold as birds rocketed by the window, stirring up the sunlight. Margaret was seeing the yellow sparks of bloom and charred remains of books, feeling again the sharpness of little things, sharp as the nails digging into her palms. Skander deserved better. He was twice the man his cousin would ever be, a better man than Margaret had ever known. He deserved to be fought for, tooth and nail, until nothing else could be done. He deserved everything she could give him. For spite and splendour and the sake of all good things in Plenilune, she had to do something.

  She plunged down the hall. She brushed past Livy with the horehound and tansy on the stair, saying, “Get out of my way!” without a second thought, and ran down into the dining room. If he followed her she did not care: she would reckon with that later. But there was no following tread on the stair. She was graciously alone as she yanked open the kitchen hallway door and, two seconds later, yanked open the door to the cellar. The hollow dark stared back at her but she hurtled into it without check, hoping she would not miss her foot in the dark and break her neck in the fall.

  “Fox!” she called as she tumbled down the short stairs into the wine cellar. “Fox, quick! I need your help! Skander is—”

  She stopped in horror, staring at the spectacle before her. It was not the fox—yet it was the fox. She felt somehow that the enormous rush of black body which uncurled and leapt to its feet had the same soul. But the image was all wrong. He was as big as a horse with a thick wolf’s mane and bushy wolf’s tail, and the paleness of his eyes was aflame with blue fire. She gave a strangled scream but stood her ground.

  “Margaret!” he cried guiltily, his voice altered from the depth of his chest. “I thought you would come sooner—what is it?” He took two huge strides forward. The wine-crate beside him trembled. “By the twelve houses, woman—what is it! You spoke of Skander—”

  She gulped back the nausea of surrealism. “He’s dying,” she choked out. “He’s cold and discoloured and he can’t breathe and Rupert will do nothing or can do nothing and he doesn’t have much time and please can’t you do something!”

  The fox’s big wolf body seemed to swell as the words came tumbling out of her. Every hair on his spine lifted into a boarback ridge. The air crackled with electric energy. “Here’s a fey time to be dying!” he roared with a kind of savage ecstasy. “Go to the first floor, to my Lady’s chamber, the last door on the right. It will be in the southwest corner. Find the long box under the bed with the horn in it. Fill the horn with water and give it to Skander. I will put my back into the work. Go, woman! Hitch your skirts up! Go!”

  His hulking shoulders arched, green sparks flaked off his rippling fur. Margaret stood a moment longer, benumbed by the awful sight of him, then she grabbed her skirts in one hand and stumbled at a blind run back through the dark, reckoning nothing of Livy or Rupert or anything that might get in her way. The air seemed to shear behind her as if blue-fire claws were being raked through it: a howl rose up in a welling wave of sound like thunder. China rattled in the cupboards as she staggered through the dining room. Painting frames chattered on the walls as she raced up the stairs. She remembered that howl but did not know how or when she had heard it before. It seemed to her like the cry of every broken heart and every cheated love and every lost soul and every righteous fury that man had ever felt. There was power in it, a raging, thrashing, sobbing, terrible power. The hairs on her arms stood on end and prickled like
cold needles.

  She tore past Rupert’s door, past her own, past Skander’s without looking. The last door on the right. The last door on the right. She tore past other doors, past doors that were closed and doors that were open, letting in bars of perry-coloured light. The last door on the right—she met the end of the hall and turned to the last door, the last door on the right. She grasped the oblong handle and tried to turn it, but it would not give. With an enraged cry she heaved on the knob, swearing again in a choking, sobbing way while the angry electricity of the fox’s ‘putting his back to it’ crawled up her skin. I don’t have time for this! With all she had she flung herself backward, both hands around the knob: with a jar that nearly tore her arms from her shoulders she jerked to a stop, then felt the wood give way. She crashed down at the foot of the opposite door with the handle lost somewhere among her skirts, the carpet under her feet littered with splinters. She was able to scramble up and get one hand through the ragged hole in the door to push the latch back and swing the door open.

  Another howl rocked the building.

  Margaret had first a confused glory of late light as an impression, then she saw the bed, which she was looking for, in much the same position as her own. She ran to it, flung back the skirt, and dug down underneath it. She pulled out hat boxes and wicker boxes, a strong box that gave a loud pearly rattle, and wood and bamboo boxes of all sizes. They were all dusty. She pulled out one long wooden box with dark mother-of-pearl inlay which she thought must be the one, but the lid opened up only on a thick collection of what looked like letters written in a foreign language. She dug through them and cast them aside in disgust, heedless, in her panic, of the mess she made.

  At last she found it: a two-foot long box of almost black velvet walnut with scarlet scoring on its panels. It was a beautiful piece of work, but Margaret nearly broke the latch in her haste to get it open. Later she remembered rich blue velvet, pearly grey and brown flecking, but almost before she had accepted that the horn was there she had grabbed it and was running back toward Skander’s room.