by Garth Nix
“Stephen Newington-Lacy,” said Stephen, after a moment, inclining his head in what could be judicially accepted as a bow.
Harnett hesitated for a moment, then returned it.
“Major Charles Harnett,” he said briefly. “Acting under the orders of General Leye. Here on official business.”
“Ah,” said Stephen. “The Emerald.”
“Does everybody know about it?” exploded Harnett. “Lady Truthful, I had hoped that you might display some discretion—”
“Stephen was there when it disappear . . . when it was stolen,” interjected Truthful. Her cheeks were white with anger. “If you are indeed here on official business I suggest you get on with it.”
“Ah,” said Harnett. “One of those cousins. The ones that offered to help.”
“Yes,” said Truthful. “Kindly and politely offered to help.”
Stephen glanced at Truthful and then at Harnett. They were both staring angrily at each other. He might as well not even be in the room.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I was just going anyway. Have to catch Cripley before he shuts up shop.”
“I’m sorry, Stephen,” said Truthful. She took his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for coming to see me and explaining about . . . well, explaining. Do give my best to your parents and Edmund and Robert.”
“I will,” promised Stephen. He bowed again very correctly to Harnett. “Sir.”
Harnett had the grace to look embarrassed.
“I apologise for my unseemly behavior, Mister Newington-Lacy,” he said. “The theft of Lady Truthful’s Emerald has become a matter of state and it . . . ahem . . . weighs heavily on my mind.”
“I am sure it does,” said Stephen, with the swiftest of sideways glances to Truthful. “Be careful, Newt.”
“Newt?” exclaimed Harnett.
Truthful ignored him.
“Show Mister Newington-Lacy out, please Dworkin,” she said. “Parkins, you may go too.”
There was a moment when Truthful thought she might not be obeyed. But Dworkin looked at Parkins, and though no visible signal was passed, he bowed and opened the door for Stephen. Parkins gathered up her skirts and departed in their wake, pausing only to curtsey on the way.
“Now we are alone you can berate me to your heart’s content,” said Truthful. “Though I cannot understand why you are so angry! I told you that I only disguised myself because I had no-one else who could find the Emerald.”
“What about your cousins?” asked Harnett.
“I had thought them gone on their own searches elsewhere,” said Truthful stiffly.
Harnett gave a grim chuckle.
“Idiotic boys!”
“How dare you speak of my cousins in such a . . . such a beastly way!” said Truthful. “Besides, if I hadn’t dressed as a man and been captured with you, then you’d be drowned by now!”
Harnett’s fists clenched and he took a step towards Truthful, but before she could do anything but return his angry stare, he bent his head and his fingers uncurled. With a long sigh, he sank down into the chair opposite Truthful and ran his fingers through his luxuriant hair.
“I am aware that you saved my life,” he said slowly. “I have not been sufficiently grateful, I know, I am not quick to . . . deal with certain surprises. I also regret that I put your life in danger. Your life and your reputation.”
“I made that choice when I assumed the identity of the Chevalier de Vienne,” said Truthful. She spoke warily, not sure whether this new, composed Harnett was any easier to deal with than the old angry one.
“I do not think you really knew what you were doing,” said Harnett. “You don’t seem to understand the consequences of your masquerade, Lady Truthful.”
“What consequences?” asked Truthful. “And more to the point what is this ‘official business’ you want to discuss with me?”
“Business? Oh, there is a concern Lady Plathenden may try to kidnap you, to help her with the Emerald. Such talismans often respond more easily to a familiar bloodline, and she would hope to compel you to assist her in mastering the stone. However, I have sent for men to watch the house and protect you, so there is no cause for alarm.”
“I am not alarmed,” said Truthful proudly, though in truth, she was quite perturbed. “I presume this means you haven’t captured her?”
“Not yet,” said Harnett. He clasped his hands together nervously, and stood up again. “But let us return to the matter of your reputation, Lady Truthful. I recognize that having compromised you—”
“What! Compromised me? How?”
“We were tied up in a barrel together,” said Harnett slowly. “For some considerable time. We slept . . .”
“I was dressed as a man,” said Truthful defiantly. She tried to suppress the memory of being tied up with Harnett, particularly when she’d run her fingers along his muscular leg . . .
“That detail will only exacerbate the interest of ill-wishers,” said Harnett. He adjusted his neck-cloth and cleared his throat. “This being the case, the only course of action . . . the correct thing . . . I must offer . . . that is to say . . . you have to marry me, Lady Truthful.”
Truthful stared up at him. He met her gaze, but it was the look of a spaniel being dragged to an unwanted bath.
“You don’t want to marry me, do you?” she asked conversationally, though she didn’t know how she was able to sound so perfectly calm. Inside she felt a curious mixture of absolute rage and crushing regret.
Harnett did not immediately answer. His mouth moved a little, before he eventually spoke. He did not look at Truthful and his voice was low.
“I . . . I don’t think . . . I don’t wish to marry anyone. However, I recognize that I have compromised you and therefore must marry you. There is also something else I need to tell you that has considerable bearing on the—”
“Get out!” hissed Truthful. “Get out! I wouldn’t marry you even if we’d spent three days and nights in a barrel together!”
“Truthful, please listen to me! I have to tell you—”
Whatever he wanted to say was cut off by the sound of an explosion. The room instantly dimmed as thick clouds of sulphurous smoke boiled up from the street, obscuring the sunlight from the windows. Everything was silent for a long second, then there came a sudden hubbub of shouts and cries from outside.
“Malignant sorcery!” snapped Harnett, and leaped for the door with Truthful at his heels.
Chapter Thirteen
Hyssop and Rue
“Brooms, where are the brooms?” Harnett shouted as he charge down the main staircase towards the front door. Dark yellow, evil-smelling smoke was coiling in under the sill and puffing up into the entry hall, long wafts that moved like tendrils motivated by some cold intelligence and not at all like natural smoke.
Harnett was calling for the brooms of hyssop and rue that by law had to be on hand in every household, for their efficacy in dispersing malignant sorcery. Indeed, in the past such brooms had even been used on the persons of malignant sorcerers, though in those cases it was often the broom-handle brought down on an unprotected pate that had done the trick, rather than the brush end of straw intermingled with cuttings of herb-of-grace and Hyssopus officinalis.
Almost as Harnett shouted, Dworkin emerged from his pantry, a hyssop and rue broom in hand. Parkins popped out from the lower saloon, similarly equipped; and Cook emerged from the kitchen with an impressively large broom, the kitchen maids behind her waving long strings of garlic and bunches of rosemary.
None made as grand an entrance as Lady Badgery, who strode out on to the first floor landing in her fur-lined robe of watered silk, a silver-tipped ivory wand in her hand. She pointed it firmly at the front door and declaimed in a strong, commanding voice:
Brimstone and sulphur I revoke
Begone ye spirits of fog and smoke
This is not your place, not here
Sweet hyssop and rue, sweep all clear
A very strong sme
ll of new-cut herbs rolled down the stairs. The sulphurous smoke shrank back from it, coils spinning widdershins as they retreated under the door. Lady Badgery advanced down the stair, her wand held steady, while the servants lashed the air with their brooms, the eddying gusts they created breaking up the remnant clouds. Harnett took up one of the brooms brought in by a footman and joined in, but Truthful rushed to the bay window on the left of the door and looked out.
The sorcerous yellow fog was still very thick outside, but she could just discern her cousin’s familiar bay mare with the white patch over her eye, staggered to her knees on the road. Behind the horse, blurred silhouettes came into view, servants from the neighbouring houses beginning to flail about with brooms.
“Stephen!” cried Truthful, and rushed to the door. But even as she turned the handle to open it, Harnett caught her wrist and stopped her.
“Wait!” he commanded. “We do not know the nature of the fog. It will be banished soon. Lady Badgery has quelled its spread, and the brooms will clear it in a few minutes.”
“Stephen might not have a few minutes,” said Truthful fiercely. But she did not try to break free of Harnett’s grasp. Instead, she slowly raised her hands and set her palms against the door, so she might feel the timber, and through it the air outside. Harnett did not let go, but his grip was light, as if they danced together.
Truthful reached out to the air above and around the house. It would have been easier in the open, under the sky, but she still felt the movement of the wind high above. She called to it, with all the magic in her being, directing that breeze to come down, to bowl along the street and sweep away the choking fog that lingered where it should not.
The breeze answered. Shutters rattled, windows shook. Leaves swirled up from the gutters, dark spots in the fog. The yellow smoke thinned, divided and then was gone as if it had never been, and there were people chasing their hats down the street, brooms on their shoulders, as if some strange new game had just been invented.
Harnett let go of Truthful’s wrist. She opened the door and ran down the steps. Stephen’s mare was struggling to get up, her eyes wild. Instinctively she ran to her and took the bridle, helping the horse to rise, stroking her neck and whispering soothing words. As always with Truthful and horses, the mare quietened almost immediately. But Truthful’s actions were all instinct, her conscious mind intent on Stephen. She looked around desperately for him, expecting to see him thrown and injured.
But there was no sign of him. He wasn’t anywhere nearby.
As far as she could see he wasn’t in the square at all, not on the street and not over the road in the square-garden.
“Where is Stephen?” she asked plaintively, looking back at Harnett, who was carefully looking across the square. He had a pocket pistol in his hand, she noted, and the expression of someone who strongly desired a suitable target.
A watchman who looked strangely familiar to Truthful ran over to Harnett.
“They took him, sir,” he gasped. “A hackney comes up alongside of him as he mounted, they grappled him across and then the brimstone cloud—”
“And where were you, Sergeant Ruggins?” demanded Harnett. “And where are Culpepper and Roach?”
“They’ve gone after the hackney,” said the unfortunate Ruggins. “I was only across the way, sir, honest I was, but they was too quick and then the cloud—”
“Very well,” snapped Harnett. “I’ll speak to you later. Lady Truthful, you had best return inside the house.”
“I have to rescue Stephen,” protested Truthful. “Where did this hackney go?”
“My men are already following the hackney,” said Harnett. “Please, Lady Truthful. You may still be in danger, it would be best to go inside.”
“But why would someone take Stephen!” exclaimed Truthful, staring across the square. There were no hackneys in sight, there were only servants returning to their houses, brooms in hand, and several gardeners in the central square scratching their heads and eyeing a fallen branch torn off by the wind.
“I regret to say the kidnappers were undoubtedly in Lady Plathenden’s employ. They would have thought he was you, and as I said, needed to assist with the Emerald,” said Harnett quietly.
“How could they think Stephen was me!”
“You in your French persona,” said Harnett quietly. “You are much alike in that case, moustaches and all.”
“But . . . but . . . how would Lady Plathenden know about me . . . about being the chevalier?” asked Truthful.
Harnett leaned in even closer, and whispered.
“Fontaine had pigeons aboard the Undine,” he said. “Upon questioning, the crew reported they were regularly used to apprise Fontaine’s masters or fellows of his activities, and two were known to fly after our removal from the barrel. So we must suppose that Lady Plathenden does know you and Henri de Vienne are the same person. That is what I meant by you being compromised more than you think, because if Lady Plathenden knows then others may know too. Now, if you would allow me a few minutes I must tell you—”
He spoke to empty air, Truthful stalking up the steps of the house. She tried to slam the front door behind her in Harnett’s face, but it was too heavy. He arrested it easily and followed her in.
Lady Badgery was in the hallway, wand still in her hand.
“A fine way to wake up an old lady from her well-deserved afternoon rest,” she declared. “Are we all to be slain in our beds?”
“Not this time, Lady Badgery,” replied Harnett. “But I fear your great-nephew has been kidnapped, presumably by servants of Lady Plathenden.”
“My great-nephew?” asked Lady Badgery, her eyebrows rising. The only great-nephew she possessed was a babe of three, and presumed safe with his parents in Gloucestershire. “But how—”
“No, not aunt’s great-nephew,” interrupted Truthful quickly. “Stephen Newington-Lacy. The other side of the family.”
“This sort of thing never happened when I was a girl,” grumbled Lady Badgery.
“No, I believe it was much worse,” said Truthful, taking her great-aunt’s arm. “Shall I escort you back to your bedchamber?”
“Not yet!” snapped Lady Badgery. “I want to know what is happening and in any case, we have a guest!”
“I believe Major Harnett is just leaving,” said Truthful. The words had barely left her mouth before she regretted them, and not only because she would need Harnett’s help to rescue Stephen.
“No, I am not,” said Harnett decisively. “Lady Badgery, your skill as a diviner is well-known. Could I prevail upon you to seek out Stephen’s Newington-Lacy’s whereabouts? I think it is very likely he is being taken to wherever Lady Plathenden is hiding. If you could scry him on his way before he comes under the aegis of the Emerald—”
Lady Badgery shook her head.
“I fear not,” she said. “That dismal cloud was very strong and pressed hard upon the house. It took all my strength to turn it back outside. I dare not attempt a divination or other sorcery until I have rested. But surely you have diviners in government service?”
“It would take too long to fetch one here, where the signatures are fresh,” said Harnett. “It seems I must rely on my men keeping the hackney in sight . . .”
He did not sound very confident.
“And I must go and and change my dress,” said Truthful. Without thinking, she touched her upper lip where her moustache would be affixed. Once more disguised as the chevalier, she could go forth in search of Stephen.
“Change your dress?” asked Lady Badgery. She clearly knew what Truthful was intending, and drew the young woman closer to her with a bony, heavily ringed hand. “No, dear. I am going to lie down and you will read to me, until it is time to prepare for Lady Mournbeck’s ball.”
“Aunt!” protested Truthful. “We can’t go to the ball with Stephen kidnapped!”
“Yes we can,” said Lady Badgery. “In fact we must. It is of the first importance that we appear to be unruffled by
any such happening. If you are asked of it, which I doubt, you will smile and say ‘boys will be boys’ or words to that effect. We must take care that your reputation is not any more . . . that is, we must be careful.”
“If I might beg a few words with you first, Lady Truthful,” said Harnett. “There really is a most important fact that you need to be apprised—”
“Now, now, Major Harnett,” said Lady Badgery. “We have all had quite a shock, and I must lie down. By the way, is your first name Charles or James?”
“Charles,” said Harnett automatically. He frowned and turned his attention away from Truthful to Lady Badgery. “That is, I can explain, Lady Badgery. If you would allow me—”
“Oh, why aren’t you out searching for Stephen!” cried out Truthful. “If I was a man I wouldn’t be prosing on forever here when someone is in so much danger!”
“I am sure my men will find him,” retorted Harnett. “And the Emerald! And I do not need to be told my duty, or rather my several duties, which I am attempting to do if only you would let me get a word in edgeways!”
“You are unbearable!” gasped Truthful. Wrenching herself from her great-aunt’s grip, she ran up the stairs.
Harnett took a deep breath and turned once more to Lady Badgery, who inclined her head and gave him an encouraging smile.
“Lady Badgery, the truth is that acting under information received and in the haste of the moment, I was forced to assume—”
“Sir! Sir! Roach is here! Them kidnappers overturned their hack on Seymour Street!”
Ruggins was calling excitedly through the open doorway. Out on the street behind him, a plainly-dressed man on horseback with the tough look of former military service and a small golden crown in the button-hole of his blue coat waved to Harnett.
“We got one of ’em, sir! Culpepper and some locals ’ave took him to the roundhouse!”
“And the kidnapped young man?” asked Harnett quickly.
“Him too, he’s a right game one, he did summat sorcerous-like to the horses,” said Roach. “Made ’em bolt on the corner, so they clipped the gutter and went all arsy-versy.”