“We add our own spices, but Darkling, I will admit, makes the best wine. A glass, please, Skander…”
Two new glasses were filled. Margaret’s was filled a second time. Dammerung got up, as if it was his own room, and played host with softly padding care and suppressed delight. Fishscale light scattered across the face of the dark-wood table they drew up between them.
Margaret turned to Skander, who was seated around the table on her right. “Did anyone ask about Dammerung?”
“Did anyone!” He laughed. “I have never seen people hedge so beautifully trying to ask a question while not seeming to mean anything. For some I was too busy to reply, with others I had to say—though I feel I said it too candidly—that you were a witch and had raised Dammerung from the dead. To be honest,” he added with a quick flare of suspicion, “even I do not fully know how you came back. You were most cryptic about it.”
Woodbird frowned at Dammerung. “Yes. Skander could not tell me adequately. We all assumed you dead, sir. What did happen?”
Dammerung, caught between them, seemed to hesitate between a blithe lie and the heavy truth. But his eye wandered to Margaret’s and hovered there, and he came down on truth. “My brother Rupert de la Mare tried to kill me to remove me from the running as Overlord.” Woodbird’s face, careful and still, grew white. “Only he was not skilled enough to kill me, so he locked me in our cellar—where I have been for the past two years—and studied the old arts to murder me. But Margaret went to the Great Blind Dragon, got a spell-breaking spell, and set me free. I have been living at Lookinglass with Skander Rime since. That was a little over a month ago.”
Both Skander and Woodbird fixed their surprised and appraising gazes on Margaret. She felt her cheeks burn, suddenly the centre of their attention, but there was nowhere to hide and nothing to say.
“You went to the Dragon?” breathed Skander. He shifted as if he meant to rise, but caught himself. An appreciative curse, which somehow warmed Margaret further, broke through his lips. “There are many things of wood and water and air that I should face, but at heaven and hell I should balk. And you went, lady, just like that?”
She lifted one shoulder. “There was nothing else to be done,” she said simply.
“By heaven!” Woodbird exploded. “The man a murderer, a sneak-thief and a rogue? How is it that we countenance his presence among us? I wonder!”
“Because the man is more than a match for any of you,” Dammerung said levelly. “I have already said as much to the Lady Margaret: would you say nay to the man?”
The woman’s eyes sparked, but a touch as of remembered pain greyed the hollows of her cheeks and she said nothing. When she could speak, it was in a low whisper. “I have always hated him and never known quite why. Now I have a reason to hate, but no means. If anything galls me, it is that.”
Dammerung flicked a supercilious brow at her which spoke volumes to Margaret, but thankfully Woodbird was intent upon some thought in the middle distance and did not see. But he did say, after he had drained his glass and let her think a moment in silence, “I would be grateful if you would keep that knowledge to yourself until such time as I give you leave to disclose it.”
She turned upon him, eyes flashing scorn. “You may find me a paragon of discretion. If anyone asks, that Lady Margaret is a witch seems sound enough. She is largely unknown, and what is known is that she has cause to hold a grudge against de la Mare. Your secret is safe with me.”
Dammerung took her words between his teeth and bit them with a smile.
Drawing back from his countenance, Woodbird turned to her beau. “And now, sir?” Her voice was still sharp; her eye, inexorably drawn, flicked back to Dammerung before darting away again. “And now? Do you not mean to expose him?”
“As soon kick over a hornets’ nest when you wear no shoes,” Skander replied levelly. He avoided his cousin’s gaze and looked steadily upon the carpet between their feet, brows furrowed. “The devil is pre-eminently a gentleman: it would not do to strike him in cold blood.”
Woodbird looked hard at Dammerung, her lips pressed into a thin line. He sat with his elbow on the arm of his chair, chin in his palm, and smiled back at her coyly, playfully, as if he knew what was warring behind her uncanny eyes. She sucked in her breath. “I see what you mean by honour being cumbersome.”
“Don’t you?” His head jigged with the movement of his jaw. “But Capys is right: I won’t trod on the bastard’s head, for sure he should bite my heel. We are gentlemen, he and I—”
“Ha!” Margaret pressed her hand to her lips a moment too late.
“—and play a bloody and delicate game.” He slid a smile at her out of the corner of his mouth, though his eyes did not move from Woodbird’s face. “Surely you realize what is at stake is more than my life and my honour, a matter more than a criminal brought to justice. This is for Plenilune, and dear God in heaven I should sooner do this gently than upstir the lives of so many innocents and bury them under good Plenilune dirt—as would happen,” he added, “if I were to step out of that door right now and point my finger at Rupert and let slip to all what he did to me. You see that, Ladybird? You see how all in a moment the hot blood is churned and how quickly a man’s sense is blinked out by airlessness? Man has blood enough to power his brain or his brawn, not often both at once.”
Margaret watched the colour spring to Woodbird’s cheek, angry but quiet. “I, of all people,” she said softly, “should know that lesson well.”
There was a pause—then Dammerung leaned across the distance and set his hand over Woodbird’s a moment before drawing away again. She was still, looking at the hand he had touched…then she closed it, drew in a breath, and seemed to wake from a distant, uneasy sleep.
“I still have guests,” she said, “for whatever it is worth. I should not leave them unattended long.”
Since Aikaterine had gone away Margaret leaned forward to collect the glasses. “Oh yes,” she said blithely. “You mustn’t deny them the honour of not knowing whether to congratulate you or offer sympathy. The awkwardness makes one so superior.”
Woodbird flung round her head with a sharp, genuine laugh, shedding a cluster of soft candid feathers from her headdress. They fluttered after her as she rose and went out on Skander’s arm, settling like late snow on the dark braided carpet.
Margaret stooped and picked them up. The room was quiet; presently Aikaterine would come back to replenish the fire, but for now she and Dammerung stood silently, listening to the words they had said. Her fingers ran over the feathers: she did not know what sort of bird they had come from, only that they were white and one had a suggestion of grey, and that the course of the day had broken open some of their barbs.
“Odd,” she murmured, half to herself. “I had thought they would be red.”
“Shuh!” Dammerung rocked with his mirthless laugh. He pushed up the hem of his tunic and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Fie for a sceptic! She turned out bonny.” He cocked a smile at her. “I dare swear the lady is worth fighting for, after all.”
Margaret shook her head with wry disapproval. “You are one to gamble before you have tested the mint.”
“It is only what I should want someone to do for me,” he protested. “You did.”
She had not thought of it that way. To be frank with herself, she had to admit that she had not thought of it at all. When she had stood before the Dragon, empty of thought and full of determination, she had counted no cost but gambled upon a single life—his own—with a single life—her own—and she had not known the mint of either. Of a sudden she shied, embarrassed by the attention. “Tush! I should break my tooth trying to bite into your metal.”
His eyes danced. “Am I that hard to swallow?”
“Sooth!” she retorted, “and taste of fire and iron!”
Her words fluffed up his fur and he purred to himself. But he, too, seemed to have had enough attention. He returned to his book and was quiet, thoughtful, and had a plea
sant spirit for the rest of the afternoon. In the morning they would begin the trip back to Lookinglass, but until then Dammerung did not want to stir out of their suite. He and Margaret sat out the afternoon in companionable silence, each at their own work—and yet Margaret could not help feeling that they were both talking to each other in their silence.
That night, in the small, crocus-coloured light of the candleflame, Margaret stayed up a moment after Aikaterine, seated at the little table with her diary open under her hand. She checked the face of the sleeping maid once more to be sure she was asleep, then put her pen to the page for one last line:
“I ask myself: do you know what pain sounds like? It sounds like the looks in their eyes.”
20 | Trinity
Margaret had expected something sudden, like a clap of thunder or a thief in the night, or something inexplicable like poison; but when Rupert, as they all knew he would, undertook to make his move, it was the last move she had anticipated.
The winter had whiled out quietly in Lookinglass. On returning from Thwitandrake, the weather had closed in bitterly cold and had kept them cooped up worse than before. Dammerung had borne it quietly for a spell, then he had paced, vainly trying to amuse himself with books, games, and philosophy. Philosophy had held him best—to hear him and his cousin talk had been as much a diversion and a source of interest for Margaret as for Dammerung—but Skander could not always be on hand for his cousin to sharpen his wits on as iron against iron, and Dammerung, at the end of his patience, stood for long spells at the window willing the weather to let up so that he might stretch his legs.
At last the weather had turned. March, which Dammerung had called the Alder Moon, had raged in more like a dragon than a lion, roaring in the empty woods like the passage of a train, and then torn away at the end of the month into a soft ragged streamer of white clouds in a sky as pale as Dammerung’s eyes, teased by high winds that the fell country could barely feel. Even Margaret felt the blood stir inside her as the world took on a fresh yellow colour of sunlight and the woods, full of rising red sap and tawny buds, swelled with renewed birdsong. At the first bunting’s cry of “devil! devil! dinna touch me-e!” Dammerung had flung himself out of the house and gone off no one knew where at a running pace, and Margaret could not blame him.
The piano had been tuned. For the whole of the morning Margaret had occupied herself with burnishing her skills at it and she had begun to be pleased with herself. She had chosen a light tune from among the dishevelled sheet music, learning the bars of it, and, when Skander had finally gone away and left her to her own amusement, she had begun to sing.
There was a storm in Glassdale-mouth
Only the other day:
The wolf-wind and the torrent rain
Have closed the roads today.
It had been open and bonny
With dap’ling light and shade:
You could almost want to tarry
Where the ford at the water played—
But there was a storm in Glassdale-mouth,
So come by another way.
It reminded her of Skander and the studious letters he wrote to Woodbird, often more than two letters in a week, which never seemed to take time away from his busy schedule and yet seemed like tiny sabbaths for the young man whenever he could break away to write them.
Come in at the garret window—
Left a’latch for you—
Where the curtains billow and bluster
In the last of the evening glow.
I’ll leave them open and bonny,
With candlelight for show:
Sure your heart could never tarry
When I sit in the twilight for you.
So there was a storm in Glassdale-mouth?
Come by the dreaming-way!
As if called the door swung open, startling Margaret’s notes into an abbreviated silence, and Aikaterine stepped in. The look on the maid’s face was familiar, and sent the blood in Margaret’s veins shocking cold back to her heart.
“I have misplaced our lords,” said Aikaterine through tight-set lips, “and Rhea has come to call.”
Margaret sat in complete stillness at the piano, her fingers resting on the silent ivory keys. She could feel her heart beating interminably—thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump—numberlessly counting out the straining moment. The room seemed to have gone dark, clouded at the edges and sharpened by some hard feeling behind her breastbone. But then it cleared, and she said aloud—though she did not realize until later that she had said it aloud—
“Does the chit want to die?”
Aikaterine gestured to the door. “I do not want to leave her long alone and I cannot find either my Lord Skander Rime or the War-wolf.”
Margaret awoke. Rising, she said imperiously, “I will go. It seems there is no one else.”
They went down through the clear sunlight and the breeze that was blowing through the open windows and doorways, Aikaterine after Margaret, until they came out on the passageway above the round sun-room—an open room full of granite slabs and sunlight—and Margaret saw the little figure of the witching-maid waiting for them below. At the sight of her the scarlet rose in Margaret’s blood again: she was not sure she hated even Rupert so desperately as she hated Rhea.
She went down to the landing of the staircase in full view. With a grey flutter Rhea turned at her step; even at that distance Margaret could see the other’s cheeks flame as brightly as her blood.
“The War-wolf is not in seat at present,” Margaret said coldly. “I will speak for him.”
Rhea had to look up—she always had to look up—to see Margaret’s face: there was a momentary flash of something cruel, something pained, but it was over in a moment and the maid seemed to choose wisely not to mock as she had nearly done. The lesson had been bitterly learned.
“I have word for either Capys or the War-wolf alone,” she insisted. “I am not to give it to anyone else.”
“Do you think I am just ‘anyone else’?” Margaret demanded. Her hand upon the balustrade tightened until it was white. “Do me a courtesy, if you even know how: I am not so daft as to turn you over alone to anyone.”
“You think very highly of yourself!” Rhea replied before she could stop herself.
Aikaterine stiffened, white with rage. Before Margaret could do or say anything—she would have liked to have gone down and given the maid a slap in the face—Skander appeared from the inner hallways of the house and stood a moment, frozen in shock, his eyes fixed on Rhea. The maid swung and locked her gaze on the man; her red lips parted a moment, teeth showing, but whether she meant to speak or to sneer Margaret did not know.
“What,” said Skander bluntly. His hand moved to his side as if in search of something sharp.
Margaret came down in a hurry to cut the two apart. “She says she comes with word from Rupert for you or for your cousin. She will not give it to me.”
Aikaterine followed and, raising herself up, whispered something in her master’s ear. Skander’s face turned an angry white and his eye, levelled like a blade at Rhea, grew colder and paler amber by the moment. Margaret did not like having her back to the maid; she looked over her shoulder to find the girl had not moved but stood quietly, rigidly, her hands clenched at her sides and her chin downthrust in a bullish, defiant gesture.
“Thank you, Aikaterine,” Skander said abruptly. He broke away and went forward, but not close, to meet Rhea. “I am not used to employing condescending tones to my people so I’ll tell you frankly: I am surprised you dare come here and I give bare a fig for what you have to say to me or to my cousin. You come bold-facedly, wench, and give little deference to a lady and no honour at all to your betters!” He took another step forward. Something flashed a warning in Margaret’s mind—a sick taste of panic surged in her throat:
He’s going to do her damage!
At that moment there was a movement in the sun-room doorway, a flood of light and shadow, and all turned as if a harsh note had
been struck in the air—Margaret, too, turned, but not before her gaze chanced to pass across Rhea’s face and saw the hateful whiteness there.
It was Dammerung who stood in the doorway, his head up, his eyes narrowed, his chest expanding and falling from his recent exertions. He saw them all, of that Margaret was sure, but she had the feeling of being swept away by him, of them all being swept away by him save Rhea alone. To her his gaze went, on her his pale blue eyes were fixed.
“Rhea,” he purred at last, a panther-smile curling on his face. “Mine own familiar Rhea, who starved me and took all the light out of my world, what does she here? She knows her cunning and beauty. What need has she of a looking-glass?”
The jest whistled by the maid and Rhea, whose countenance had after that first instant regained its colour, turned her head in scornful deference. “I am come on an errand of words.”
The young lord’s nostrils flared with a horrible mirth. “Sooth!” he exclaimed. “On an errand of words? Does your lord not know in what esteem I hold you, and does he not fear never seeing your comely face again?”
The witching lashes curled upward; the gaze was piercing. “You would kill a woman?”
“I might,” said Dammerung coldly.
She had known him to be mysterious, she had known him to be furious, but never had Margaret heard the blade in Dammerung’s words as she did then, nor the perfect honesty which was like final judgment and lent terrible gravity to his voice. The silence that lingered in the room was awful more than it was awkward.
At last Dammerung spoke again, his tone once more civil, if only barely so. Never for a moment did they all, Margaret was sure, lose the feeling that they were held like shining balls in his hands, to be tossed and caught at will.
“Give to me the words of your errand.”
Rhea shuddered visibly, as if she had been struck, or as if she were resisting against some better judgment. With a red flash her eyes lanced up into his, with no gesture of obedience did she turn her gypsy-queen head. “The words are of my lord Rupert, Prince of the Mares, and the words are this: that he desires a moot of the men of the Honour-lands, and that they assemble here in Capys Lookinglass, for a na�ve man—” her gaze now darted to Skander, and became biting like acid “—and guileless is Skander Rime his cousin.”
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