Engine of Lies ebook

by Barbara Howe

  “Uh…”

  She smiled. “Assuming you believe that possible. Perhaps if I entrust the commentary to Sorceress Eleanor?”

  If she had offered a tour of the Crystal Palace, I would have begged off, but a tour of the town would take us out into the sunshine. I agreed, and they led me to the courtyard, where we climbed into an open carriage. Once through the gates, I shed my coat. Water witches and wizards watched our passage with wide eyes.

  The one road through Quays carved a wide arc along high ground; most traffic was on the crowded canals. The front door of each house opened onto stairs leading down to a moorage. I did not express my view it was a ghastly way to live.

  Two years earlier I would have held my breath and prayed each time we crossed one of the rickety bridges, but I had since learned to keep a polite face on with people I trusted far less.

  That was an eye-opening thought. Sometime over the past two years, I, a fire witch, began to trust a water sorceress, and the world hadn’t ended.

  While climbing down from the carriage on the far side of town, I turned my head too far. The Crystal Palace on its hill glittered in the sun, dominating the townscape behind us. I froze, one foot in mid-air.

  The coachman’s assisting hand steadied me. “Look away, ma’am,” he murmured. “Look down. Just one more step.”

  I finished the climb down, turned my back to the Crystal Palace, and raised my chin to the two water witches, but they were not laughing. Sorceress Eleanor’s eyes were wide and staring. The Frost Maiden, smiling a moment ago, bore a strong resemblance to Jean at the end of the war: the look of someone reaching the end of his or her endurance.

  “Now do you understand?” she said to the younger sorceress. “When the sight frightens a warlock, is it ludicrous innocent men must be dragged here in chains? Do you still wonder that they hate us?”

  When I reported to Beorn on the lock, the big wizard sagged into his chair. He leaned back with his eyes closed, tugging at his beard.

  “I had hoped,” he mumbled, “you could do it without getting hurt. I should’ve known better.”

  “Even if I could handle the lock, there’s still the Locksmith’s warning. We don’t know what her ‘terror’ means.”

  “Yeah.”

  I tucked my hands under my skirt. There wasn’t any delicate way to approach this. I took a deep breath and dove in. “Beorn, you’re a seer. Have you seen anything about unlocking the Water Office? Who lives? Who dies? Isn’t there something you can tell me?”

  He opened one eye wide enough to peer at me. Closed it again. “No. Not a thing.”

  I waited. After a while I stalked to the study door. “Fine. Don’t tell me. Just remember you need my help.”

  “Come back here,” he growled.

  I stood in the doorway and glared at him.

  “Sit down,” he rumbled. “That’s an order.”

  I returned to my chair and sat with my arms folded tightly across my chest.

  He leaned towards me, hands on knees. “Look, Lucinda, foreknowledge is a curse, not a blessing. What do you think I could tell you? That you’re going to die? You wouldn’t want to hear that, and I wouldn’t want to tell you. The only thing I could tell you would be you’ll live through it.”

  “So tell me that—I’d like to hear it.”

  “The problem is those kinds of ‘don’t worry, you’ll be fine’ assurances have a nasty way of backfiring. If you know you’re going to come through something just fine then you slack off, it’s human nature, and you end up getting hurt worse than you would have otherwise. Maybe you get hurt so bad you think you’d’ve been better off if you had died. Or maybe you come through it fine, but everybody else involved dies, and you’re mad as hell because I didn’t warn you about that. But I wouldn’t be able to warn you. The visions I have are always little bits and pieces—never the whole picture.”

  “But you’re Fire Warlock now—doesn’t the Fire Office help you see more of the future?”

  “Not a bit. The Great Coven wanted decisions made on accurate information about current events and the judgement of experienced warlocks. They thought those were better than wild-assed guesses based on fragments. They built foresight dampers into the Office, not amplifiers. I’ve not had a single vision since I’ve been Fire Warlock.”

  I wilted. “So you weren’t evading. You really don’t have anything you can tell me.”

  “I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am I’ve not had any visions. I’d rather trust your judgement.”

  “Beorn, I’m afraid. My sense of prescience is screaming at me not to do it. The future to me looks black—black as death.”

  He chewed on his moustache. “I’m not optimistic about anything right now either. Keep on working on calling down the lightning. I’ll give you as much time as I can. Even if you weren’t a good friend, I’d like you to still be here to unlock the Fire Office when this mess is over. Now, go home and sleep on it. Maybe it’ll look better in the morning.”

  Sleep on it, Beorn said. Sleep wouldn’t come. My sense of day and night had been out of kilter ever since we had come home. At four in the afternoon, I had to use magic to prop my eyelids open. At four in the morning, they wouldn’t stay closed.

  Others in the house were also restless. Jean was not in bed. I donned a robe and walked downstairs to his study. He looked up as I walked in and sat down across the desk from him. We studied each other in silence for a few moments.

  I said, “It’s no good. Either of us could write a textbook on locks more complete than that one. It’s no help.”

  He grimaced and closed the book in his hands. “I know, love. I am not being sensible, trying to find something new in a text I have already read a dozen times, but scholarly research is comforting to me. It gives me the illusion I am doing something.”

  “Doing something? You’ve been doing a lot, haven’t you? I’ve hardly seen you since we got back. Aren’t things calming down?”

  He shook his head. “No riots appear imminent, but the mood of the country is not calm. The charged tension is that of two circling swordsmen, each watching for the opponent’s misstep. It is only a matter of time before a new disaster sets them lunging again.”

  I sat on my trembling hands. “Is it really so bad? I thought with you and René and our staff helping out, things would get better.”

  “Even with our return, the Fire Guild is stretched as thin as in any period in our history. The guards and most fire witches and wizards have been diverted from their normal duties to police troubled districts. The other guilds are assisting, but it is not enough. Another senseless Water Office action will undo our efforts.”

  I looked away from him. My throat felt tight. “It’s up to me, isn’t it? I was afraid, when I told you I could the release the lock, you would order me to do it.”

  “Order you? I am no longer the Officeholder. I cannot issue orders to another warlock. As your husband, I know you do not obey orders, even from me. I may persuade you to a course of action, but you will do what you believe you must, though the whole world stands against you.”

  I stared into the darkness outside the open window. I couldn’t argue with that.

  He said, “It is one of the reasons I love you. It is far more satisfying to have you follow my advice because you agree with me than if you obeyed orders you did not agree with.”

  “But you haven’t tried to persuade me—one way or the other. How do you feel about it? Most Franks would never dream of letting their wives do something so awful.”

  He leaned his forehead on the heel of his hand and said heavily, “You have a right to be angry with me. I have been a success as Fire Warlock, and more recently as your teacher, but I am a failure as a husband—”

  “I never said—”

  “—because I cannot protect my beloved wife from danger.”

 
; The things my women friends had said two years ago came to mind, unbidden: they were glad I was marrying the retired Fire Warlock, he could protect me from all danger. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t a failure, but the words stuck in my throat. I forced other words out. “You shouldn’t have to protect me. I’m not defenceless. You’ve made sure I’m not.”

  “And I would not love you so dearly if you were. If I admired feminine helplessness, I would not have begun teaching you to call down the lightning. Tell me how you would feel if I ordered you to not consider unlocking the Water Office for another year.”

  The night was still, the silence broken only by crickets chirping and the clock ticking. The pendulum swung back and forth, back and forth. I’d been annoyed with Sunbeam for thinking a woman couldn’t handle the Fire Office. Jean had more than once said a warlock’s responsibility to Frankland’s security trumped everything else. If Jean were the locksmith, he would not hesitate, even with a wife and young child. The Fire Guild would honour him as a hero, and ensure his family did not go without.

  Did the Frost Maiden and Sorcerer Charles have conversations like this? They must have, and theirs would be no less difficult. Water witches and wizards have their own notions of duty, but are not indoctrinated from childhood to believe that duty involves giving one’s life for one’s country.

  “I’d be angry,” I said, “that you weren’t treating me like a warlock.”

  The set of his shoulders relaxed a trifle. I walked to the window and gazed up at the massive Fortress looming over us, gleaming in the moonlight. Beorn was up there, getting some sleep, I hoped. Jean could not give orders to another warlock, but the Fire Warlock could. If it came to a choice between saving my life and saving the country, he would choose to save the country. As I would in his shoes.

  I couldn’t wait for Beorn to order me to unlock the Water Office. The magic would be stronger if I volunteered.

  I said, “You believe warlocks must be prepared to lay down their lives in Frankland’s defence. You’d be ashamed of yourself for putting family above country. You’d be ashamed of me for my cowardice. I’d be ashamed of myself.” I turned and looked at my husband. “It would tear us apart, more slowly but just as surely, as trying and failing would. Wouldn’t it?”

  He managed a bleak smile. “You have confirmed my trust that you would understand. If we fail, and you are taken and I am left, all the years you have given me will be as bitter as ashes. But neither you nor I can tolerate inaction. The years will be as bitter if we do nothing.”

  “So, if you’d really wanted to take the decision out of my hands, and force me to agree to release the lock, you’d have ordered me not to.”

  His expression lightened. “I must be careful what I say to you. You are far too clever.”

  I reshelved the book on locks. “We should make good use of whatever time we have left. Stop this exercise in futility and come to bed.”

  “You are ever practical, my dear. I love that about you.”

  I said, “Especially since neither of us can sleep.”

  His mouth curved into a smile as he reached for the lamp. “I see. Carpe noctem, indeed.”

  Jean was right in that I could not stand inaction, but I still could not make a decision on how soon I would unlock the Water Office. He did not prod me, and I alternately blessed him and cursed him for letting me make up my own mind. I dithered and dawdled, and made myself frantic for the next day and a half over my own procrastination.

  I had had enough. Action was called for. After a midday nap—mine, not his—I gathered up Edward and the nursemaid and set off to do what I’d wanted to do long before we came home: pour out my heart to a girlfriend.

  Reunion

  In the two years we were away, Mrs Cole had written several dozen long, chatty letters. Hazel, my friend in the Earth Guild, had sent nearly as many small packages, filled with advice and bundles of herbs for treating upset stomachs and other travellers’ ills.

  In that same time, Claire sent three two-sentence messages. The first, saying she was engaged, arrived while we were still in the New World. The second, coming soon after, said she had gotten married, and Granny Helene had returned her bracelet in time for the small, private ceremony. The third, reaching us in Cathay, announced the birth of a healthy baby boy and begged me to come see her when I got back home.

  She must have married for love, after all. That was the conclusion I reached on arriving at the address included in the last message. The street was tidy, the houses and gardens well maintained, but it was a neighbourhood of minor merchants and craftsmen. Claire’s was a narrow townhouse in a row of identical façades. Comfortable, but not impressive by anyone’s standards.

  I lifted the latch on the gate and stopped.

  My nursemaid, a level-one fire witch, asked, “What is it?”

  “There’s magic at work here. Lots of it.”

  I sent my mental eye roving over the gate, the fence, the façade, and the roof with growing astonishment and suspicion.

  “There are spells on everything—half-a-dozen at least I don’t recognise, on top of the usual ones. They’re Earth Guild protective spells, I can tell that much, and they’re strong, but I can’t make out what they’re protecting against.”

  “That would be expensive, wouldn’t it, ma’am?”

  “Sure would. This much protective magic must be worth at least half as much as the house itself. Odd.” Odd, too, that even with three messages from her, I didn’t know her husband’s name or occupation.

  “Will they let us in?”

  I opened the latch. “We’ll find out.”

  Whatever they guarded against didn’t include two fire witches and a baby. Not a whisper of resistance met me on walking from the gate to the stoop. I stood on the stoop for a moment, still suspicious, but unable to sense any threat.

  The nursemaid said, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “No, I’m not.” I squared my shoulders and knocked.

  A shriek of “Lucinda!” from an upper story window settled that question. A servant ushered us up the stairs into the nursery, and for a while, babies drove thoughts of anything else from my head. Claire’s child, named Lawrence after her husband’s grandfather, she said, was as adorable as Edward. They cooed and cried and spit up, and acted like perfect babies. Claire and I fussed and rocked, and she pelted me with questions about our travels. I talked about Jean, she talked about Richard, her husband, and we had a splendid time laughing about the wonders of married life.

  Throughout, she evaded every question I asked about her husband’s occupation.

  Later, while both babies napped, she showed off the rest of the house. The furnishings were as out of proportion to the house and neighbourhood as the protective spells. Her bedroom was a feminine delight of satin sheets, feather mattresses, ruffled valances, and embroidered hangings. A duchess would not have turned up her nose at the gowns in Claire’s wardrobe.

  “Claire, how can you afford all this? Who is your husband? What does he do?”

  She dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Never mind him. Will you look at the gorgeous deep blue silk in this skirt? The lighter blue underskirt is a perfect match.”

  “Stop it.” I snatched the dress from her and shoved it back in the wardrobe. “I don’t want to talk about clothes. I want to hear about your husband. How much time does he spend here? I don’t see many of a man’s things…”

  Claire—the enchanting butterfly who never cried, raged, or even raised her voice—flushed a bright, angry red. “What do you mean, ‘How much time’? Do you think he doesn’t live here? I hope you’re not suggesting I’m a kept woman. What kind of a woman do you think I am?”

  “The kind with too hard a head and too much self-respect to throw away her life being somebody’s mistress.”

  She tossed her head. “I sho
uld think so. I am married. I have proof.”

  “Then why do you need to argue about it? I didn’t think you weren’t. You’re the one using the words, ‘kept woman’.”

  The angry flush faded. She sat down on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap, her head drooping. “That’s what I feel like,” she mumbled, not looking at me. “That’s what people think.”

  I sat cross-legged on the rug and peered up at her. “Tell me. All of it.”

  The misery in her expression gave way to relief as the story tumbled out. “I married the richest bachelor—the best catch in the whole city. But he insisted we keep it a secret until his father dies. His father’s very sick, and the healers say he won’t live much longer. He wants Richard to marry the Red Duke’s daughter. Richard’s afraid of him, and thinks he’ll be angry when he finds out Richard married a commoner.”

  “You married a nobleman? Which one?”

  “The Earl of Eddensford’s oldest son, Lord Richard. Do you remember, when you came to see me before your wedding, going with me to the needlework shop? We met him on our way out. I don’t love him, but he loves me—I’m sure of it.”

  Could I forget seeing such naked desire in a man’s face? “I remember. He followed us until we ducked into a coffee shop.” I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d pursued her, or that she had accepted his proposal. I was more sophisticated now than I’d been three years ago in Lesser Campton, and knew that desire often doesn’t turn into love, or lead to honourable behaviour. Still, Claire was telling the truth. She believed her marriage was genuine.

  A chill finger walked down my spine. “Claire, show me your proof.”

  She pulled a set of keys from a pocket, and unlocked a cupboard beside the bed. While she rummaged through it she said, “I didn’t like it either. I wondered if he was already married, so I took him to see Granny Helene. She may not be an Earth Mother, but she’s close, and she can tell when people are lying, like a Mother can. He swore up and down to her that he loved me, and he wasn’t already married, and his intentions were honourable. She said she believed him, and he signed his full name and title in the book at the wedding. You know that’s binding.