Stargazy Pie

by Victoria Goddard

  Galderon, I thought: not a well-known university, and far away from Fiellan. It had something to do with revolutionary politics … and architecture and plumbing magic … And had Mrs. Etaris in her younger years studied any of those things?

  Mrs. Etaris went on, to my increasing astonishment, describing all sorts of little details that I had missed or entirely misinterpreted: Violet’s reaction to my mentioning Alisoun Artquist and her immediate suggestion I was over-tired, her distracting us from Domina Ringley’s attendant—and finding Dominus Alvestone—when we were in the market-place—her judicious explanation of the effects of wireweed, so that we all focussed on that question. When at last she stopped, Violet didn’t say anything.

  I said, “Mrs. Etaris, that was utterly fantastic.”

  Mrs. Etaris turned to me and grinned, looking abruptly young. “Wasn’t it? Pity it’s entirely fabricated. The second, and rather more genuine reason, Miss Redshank, is that I heard you discuss the situation with the Honourable Master Ragnor’s man down the back of the Raggle. The stepping stones come out near my back garden, and I happened to be down the bottom of the garden very early this morning when you went by.”

  She tossed the stone at Violet, who caught it with an astounded air and quick grace.

  “Now,” Mrs. Etaris continued, “I think it’s your turn to explain yourself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Violet looked at me, almost apologetically, then kept her attention on the shining stone in her hand. She spoke with a certain relief, as if glad not to be lying any longer.

  “I have no cousin named Daphne Carlin. I picked it out of a folk song—you’re quite right about that, Mrs. Etaris—I needed an excuse to be looking around Ragnor Bella, and that was the story I’d made up. I wasn’t expecting Jemis to be here—Jemis, I really wasn’t. I had no idea where you were from. I truly didn’t know you were the son of Jakory Greenwing. Lark never said.”

  I didn’t say anything. Mrs. Etaris said, “Why did you come, Miss Redshank?”

  “I came … I was sent to look for … two things. There have long been rumours that there is a source of clean magic somewhere in southern Rondé. Clean magic, untouched by the Fall, powerful good magic. We need that, where I’m from.” She looked down at Miss Shipston. “I’m sure you can understand that. When I was at Morrowlea I was able to look around, enough to know it wasn’t in that part of Erlingale. But when I heard the stories of Fiellan—for Lark did do some research into the area, Jemis, she didn’t just rely on your story—”

  I couldn’t help myself; I snorted.

  “Anyhow, it wasn’t in Morrowlea or southern Erlingale. The area was too restless, at any rate, for what we’d been hearing. There’s a sense of unrest, of urgency, of pain, growing in the hinterlands, Mrs. Etaris—not just Ghilousette and the Farry March, but Erlingale and even the farther parts of Ronderell are growing tense. Only Fiellan seems to be keeping calm and peaceful. I went back to … where Lark is from, with her. I told you, Jemis, I owe her family a great deal.”

  Could Violet be in the Indrillines’ power? It seemed incredible. But it had seemed incredible that she hadn’t stood up to Lark in the spring, too. “Go to,” I said stiffly.

  She winced, then looked at Mrs. Etaris. “I ran away from an arranged marriage at fourteen. Lark’s family took me in. I couldn’t just … not … I am obligated to them. Deeply obligated.”

  “I understand,” Mrs. Etaris said, with a strange note to her voice.

  Violet paused, then closed her eyes and nodded. “I heard someone talking about Ragnor Bella, how it was the dullest town in all Fiellan—all Rondé, someone else said—all of Oriole! a third person claimed—and it drew my interest. A dull town? Peaceful, prosperous, where the only interesting thing ever to have happened was the infamous Jakory Greenwing’s return from the wars? I thought this might well be the hiding place for the stone. When I reported back the—the family asked me to look into this.”

  “So the whole story about Ghilousetten trading in magic and the Knockermen is entirely false?” I asked, too incredulous to be outraged—yet.

  “No—yes—no—” Violet stopped, took a deep breath. “Look, I can’t tell you everything, Jemis. It’s not kind to you.”

  I laughed harshly. “The things that matter to you.”

  “I’m trying not to implicate you further!” she said intensely, but with a low voice. “Jemis, use the brain you were given. I cannot tell you where I am from. I cannot tell you who sent me. The family is not known for liking tattletales. I was sent to look for what could be the source of Fiellan’s relative stability and prosperity since the Fall. I have certain resources and connections from the family, and was also asked to look into certain of their business interests. These, together with other indications—such as those I told you before about the Ghilousetten connection—drew me to Ragnor Bella and, eventually, here to the Talgarths’.”

  I swallowed an exclamation, and managed cautiously: “Am I correct about Domina Ringley?”

  Violet shook her head in what appeared relieved exasperation. “I don’t know her story, but I’m sure … you see, the Knockermen—the ones not in the Legendarium—run the largest smuggling operation this side of the Ord, and I …”

  “You can’t get too close to them?”

  “Everyone should be careful around them,” she replied gravely. “I won’t say I wasn’t asked to notice details if I could. The more I looked into it, the more I realized that the stone was the key—after your and Mr. Dart’s story about the cult, I was sure it had to be it.” She looked at the stone in her hand. “It is very alluring.”

  “I don’t see how it could be a source of clean magic,” I said, “given what the cult priests were doing with it. It was absorbing blood and all sorts of things.”

  Violet withdrew her finger from touching a bit of the stone between the folds of the handkerchief. “What is it, then?”

  “And where did Miss Shipston find it?” I added, relieved to let my mind turn from revelations of Violet’s—what could I call it? Perfidy? Betrayal? Secret life?—to this piece of the puzzle. We both turned to Mrs. Etaris, who was smiling and seemed not a whit disconcerted by Violet’s story.

  “Ah,” she said, “perhaps this is where Miss Carlin comes in to the tale again. Miss Shipston, if you would?”

  We looked down, but Miss Shipston was nowhere to be seen. “How odd,” Mrs. Etaris said calmly, but I noticed that she spun the dagger in her hand until she was holding the hilt properly. “Well, I can tell you that—the Lady bless you, Mr. Greenwing.”

  I sneezed again, and a third time, and gulped back cool air in the hopes that it would help. “The ring was working,” I said, and felt abruptly near tears, as the familiar phlegm began to fill my airways. I scrubbed at my face with the soiled glove. “Excuse me.”

  “But the stone is no source of magic,” Mrs. Etaris said, “not unless Magistra Bellamy is entirely—Miss Shipston!”

  “Run!” the mermaid gasped, breaking the water in a sudden flash of water droplets. “They are coming, the Dark Kings are coming!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Etaris said.

  “Over the drawbridge, they are coming, they are going within.”

  Violet and I looked at the shining stone in her hand. I said, “The Black Priest brought me here. The stone was here. Dominus Alvestone is here. The wizard attendant sent me to open the door to the Black Priest—I forgot to mention it—I keep forgetting it—he cast something on me—I don’t understand why—”

  “You just said it,” Mrs. Etaris said: “The house is full of wireweed.”

  Violet shook her head in admiration. “What a brilliant cover. A cult of the Old Gods to cover the Knockermen’s crimes …”

  “The cult is criminal as well,” I said, trying discreetly to wake Mr. Dart up. He didn’t seem inclined to move, except that his stone arm slid out of its sling and weighed down my foot. It was really quite heavy; my heart contracted that he had been bearing
it so quietly.

  “But it sounded as if there were protections against the cult,” I said, and then the penny dropped again. “But that’s because the attendant is part of it. May even be the ringleader.”

  “Last night there might have been protections,” Mrs. Etaris said thoughtfully, “but tonight there is a dinner party, and Dame Talgarth does follow the old conventions.”

  “Meaning?”

  Violet put her hand within her conical bodice and drew out the small book of Fifth Imperial Decadent Dinner Parties: A Handbook. I blinked at her. “Did you steal that?”

  “You sound remarkably aghast for someone who has been sneaking around someone else’s house on false pretences all night.”

  “That’s from our store.”

  “A day and a half!” Mr. Dart said suddenly, leaping bolt upright.

  I staggered away from him and nearly went into the moat. Violet caught me, and I floundered upright, only to see the door swinging behind Mr. Dart.

  “He’s gone back inside!”

  “Thank you for that statement of the obvious,” Violet said, with a delicious mockery of our tutor’s manner. “And Mrs. Etaris has gone off around the corner.”

  I shook my head. “What … I am so confused … what did she mean?”

  Violet shoved the book at me. “I think she means that Dame Talgarth will be having an illusionist as the finale of the dinner party—that’s the appropriate ritual ending for the first New Moon after the autumn equinox.”

  “The Honourable Rag thought Domina Ringley would be providing illusions.”

  “There you are.” She flipped the pages, frowning as her high periwig cast a shadow on the page from the werelight behind her. I moved to stand next to her where I could see the text. “The problem is that—”

  “The orgy is supposed to come first. Dame Talgarth surely isn’t—”

  “Not just that, but you let the Black Priest across the threshold. And the Dark Kings come at the beginning and the end.”

  Sex and death, that meant. I swallowed. “Hell.”

  We stared at each other. “I shouldn’t trust you,” I said.

  “No.”

  “You keep lying to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re never going to tell me the truth, are you?”

  “Probably not.”

  There didn’t seem to be much I could do about that. I straightened my shoulders. “Well,” I said, trying to drawl in imitation of how I’d always imagined the debonair Fitzroy Angursell to have spoken on the eve of some grand adventure. “It looks as if we might be staging a rescue.”

  Violet smiled slowly at me. My heart beat faster. The drugs and the magic, of course; except that it wasn’t, of course. She slipped the book back into her bodice, lifted her freed hand, and I thought for a moment—but then she shook her head. “You can’t possibly go back inside like that. And what happened to your periwig?”

  I blinked. “I left the Honourable Rag lying on it. He slipped and knocked himself out.”

  “Men. I’ll do my best with the powder.” She pulled out a small round tin from down her bodice. I barely refrained from commenting on how much room she appeared to have down there, which on a hasty second thought was a distinctly ungentlemanly sort of thing to notice.

  She flicked it open to reveal a quantity of grey powder and a small sponge, with which she quickly and thoroughly repaired the damage running, sneezing, wiping my face, and so forth had done to my make-up, and then proceeded to dump most of the rest of it on my head.

  “Your hair is so silky,” she murmured, using her fingers to twist it back into a tidy queue. She pulled out one of the ribbons from her own ensemble and tied it. “There. Not perfect, but I expect by this stage of the evening no one will care. I regret to say I asked Alisoun to spike the wine before I realized what exactly was going to be going on with the dinner party.”

  “Dare I ask with what?”

  “—This is all very civilized and delightful,” Mrs. Etaris burst in, rushing back at us like a dark blue sheepdog herding her flock, “but I’m afraid we really should be going inside if we don’t want our friends and neighbours to be sacrificed to the Dark Kings. Especially since it would be a botched sacrifice given that Miss Redshank is in possession of their ritual stone.”

  “I think on the whole, I’d prefer not to lose my one close friend in Ragnor Bella to their machinations.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, dear Mr. Greenwing, you have many friends.”

  “In Ragnor Bella, I said, Violet.”

  “Hush,” said Mrs. Etaris, her eyes bright and flashing behind the scarf, which she’d arranged to cover the lower half of her face. “Are you ready?”

  “You’re certain this isn’t truly magic?” Violet asked, folding the handkerchief more completely around the stone.

  “Magistra Bellamy—I have no time to explain—no, it’s a piece of polished obsidian from Kaphyrn, which is why it has magical resonances, but it is not in itself a source of magic, and according to Magistra Bellamy is purely a conduit.”

  “Very well, then,” said Violet, and tucked it down her bodice as well. I tried hard not to stare. Morrowlea fashions had run to much looser stays and flowing Arcadian-style gowns in pale colours. Surely even a tight corset didn’t make that much of a difference to the shape of a woman’s bosom?

  I was still trying to work out how Violet could possibly have that much room down her maid’s outfit when we went through the door to find ourselves at the tail end of a mass of cultists in full bacchic fervour.

  Chapter Thirty

  Even Mrs. Etaris halted before launching into the mass.

  She looked up and down the hall, as if counting. Violet—I don’t know what Violet was assessing, but she looked calculating and thoughtful. I imitated them to very little purpose, except for finding one of the hidden doors near us.

  Mrs. Etaris whispered, “They seem to know the house well. They’re splitting, I would guess one portion to collect the wireweed and the other to the sacrifice. Now … we must get upstairs to the dining hall before things go utterly awry …”

  “Up here!” I said, glad to be of help, and pushed open the door to reveal one of the serving stairs.

  I had to stop at the top of the third flight of stairs to catch my breath, my throat sore. I didn’t sneeze, but did cough at the dusty air kicked up by our arrival. Violet raised her eyebrows deprecatingly at me. “You need to find some stairs to run up for practice.”

  “I don’t really intend to make a habit of this.”

  “No? It’s ever so much fun.”

  “I’ll look for a fencing partner instead.”

  “Because Ragnor Bella runs so much to sword fighting.”

  Mrs. Etaris was breathing a little heavily as she joined us. She wrapped her scarf again around her face, tucking the ends securely under. Violet assisted her to arrange a fold to cover her mousy-auburn hair.

  “There. No one should recognize you.”

  “I wouldn’t expect them to,” Mrs. Etaris said, eyes crinkling in a merry smile. “They have no reason to expect me here, and, of course, they will be both drunk and half-enchanted by this stage of the evening, I should think.”

  “And drugged with ardmoor, I’m afraid,” Violet added.

  Ardmoor. That was what I’d drunk down in the kitchen, the famous aphrodisiac of Orio. Albeit habit-forming, at least it was not reputed to be quite as dire in its addictive side effects as wireweed.

  “Mm, I see.” Mrs. Etaris opened the door before us a crack, and peered out carefully. “Right. This opens into the next room over from the hall, the wine steward’s pantry … and oh my word.” She let the door slide carefully shut as she started to chuckle.

  “What is it?” I asked, more nervously than I quite liked. Violet glanced at me deprecatingly again.

  “Oh … Mr. Benson appears to be in … cahoots … with Domina Ringley’s attendant.”

  I edged forward to peer through the crack, an
d stifled a snort. “Is that what you call it, Mrs. Etaris?”

  Mrs. Etaris might have been blushing behind her scarf; she sounded very prim. “It’s one name for it.”

  Mr. Benson and the lady in green and purple were sprawled up against the wine steward’s table. The decanters were pushed inelegantly against the wall; one crystal decanter had already fallen off under their movements and another was near to toppling. Viscous ruby port spilled across the white marble floor, making me for a moment fearful of blood before I saw the shards.

  “I think we might pass quickly behind them and into the dining chamber,” Mrs. Etaris said. “They seem most preoccupied, don’t you think, Mr. Greenwing?”

  “Oh, I expect so,” I said, and backed away. “I’m not certain … I’m surprised Mr. Benson would be party to this. He seemed like the Proctor at Morrowlea, Violet, entirely concerned with the proper arrangement of the evening.”

  “From that book, this sounds very much part of the proper arrangements.” She took her turn with the crack. “He also looks as if he’s the one being seduced.”

  “How do you reckon that?”

  Violet and Mrs. Etaris both looked at me, then exchanged glances, and then Mrs. Etaris said gently, “Never mind that, Mr. Greenwing. Now, shall we go see what is happening with the dinner party?”

  “I think that’s a good idea, Mrs. Etaris,” Violet said, and from a pocket in her skirts drew forth a long silver dagger. I was merely grateful she didn’t have that down her bodice as well, and was a bit late realizing that both the women were armed and I wasn’t.

  Mrs. Etaris and Violet had already gone into the room, ducking down below the line of the lady’s dubious attention. I was trying to watch both of them and tripped on a rucked-up piece of carpeting laid to muffle the sounds of shoes on marble. I tumbled right up against Mr. Benson’s feet and knocked him and the wizard off the table with a crash from the remaining decanters.