Engine of Lies ebook

by Barbara Howe

  “Thank God he never got the chance to paw you.”

  She paled. “He would have. He was my brother-in-law. We would have met, sooner or later.”

  “Not while your husband had any say in the matter.” I told her then, what he had done for her—the spells he had paid Mrs Wetherby for, his attempt to turn Edmund over to the Water Guild, his father’s threat, and the son’s defiance.

  Claire had bent her head; I couldn’t see her expression, but a tear splashed onto her plate. “Oh, Richard, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “So, you see, if ever he needs an understanding wife, it’s now. He doesn’t know what’s coming. He expects to look like a self-centred coward with no family feeling—which is bad enough, since none of it’s true—but when it’s over, his brother and father will look much worse. The Eddensfords’ reputation will be in shreds.”

  And it was my fault. The knowledge Frankland would be better off didn’t make me feel much better.

  Claire put her face down in her hands. “Can’t I warn him?”

  “No. I’ve made you a member of the counter-conspiracy now, and the magic won’t let you say anything to him until the conspiracy is exposed.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go to Paris with him. He’ll be in shock, and he’ll need you to prop him up. I’ll tell him he has to take you, and he’s not likely to argue. Not much, anyway.”

  “What will you tell him when he asks why?”

  I grimaced. “I’m still working on that. I had planned to say it wasn’t fair he’d been to Paris many times and you’d never been once, but you snuffed out that idea.”

  She picked up her fan and tapped my arm with it. “Never mind. I’ll tell him I’ve changed my mind and want to go. He’ll take me.”

  “You changed your mind? I was at least trying to think up a reason. I’ll make it an order if I have to.”

  Claire walked down the path at such a rapid pace I had to hurry to keep up. “Don’t,” she said. “I changed my mind, that’s all. Let me do the talking. I’m going up to my room to fetch something first, then we’ll talk to him.”

  She came downstairs empty-handed. For a moment I could not see a change, then spotted the lapis lazuli and gold bracelet. I chewed on my lip. Did she remember Granny Helene had lifted the spells on it? I shrugged. She knew better than I what it took to butter up an earl.

  We found her husband in the drawing room, listening to a servant report on the arrangements for his trip. He brightened and waved the servant away. “I’d much rather enjoy the company of a pair of lovely women than listen to any more of that. Let’s talk about something more pleasant than going to Paris.”

  “We came to talk about that,” Claire said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going with you.”

  The earl shook his head. “Any other time, my dear, I’d love to have you along, but not this trip.”

  Claire took his hands in hers. “That’s what I thought you would say, but won’t you please reconsider? I want to do this for you. You don’t want to go. Wouldn’t it be easier, knowing I’ll be waiting for you in the evenings when the business is all done?”

  I strolled away to let them have a private conversation. From across the room I watched him melt, his hangdog expression slowly changing to acceptance, and then to relief.

  They reached a decision, and walked arm-in-arm towards me. The earl smiled, but seemed a little dazed. I glanced at Claire and did a double take. Out in the garden she had, as always, been a beauty. With golden hair, fine white teeth, regular features, and porcelain skin, she must be one of the most beautiful women in Frankland.

  But the radiant angel approaching would eclipse every other woman in Europa. I was as dazzled as the earl.

  He said, “I’ve changed my mind about Paris. I just can’t go without Claire. It’s an imposition to ask such a favour from her at the last moment, but she agreed to come with me.”

  Claire said, “We need to tell the servants.”

  “Of course.” He patted her hand. “I’ll take care of everything. There are things I need to see to; I don’t know why I’ve put them off for so long.” He wished me a good day, and walked away, humming.

  Claire was once again merely gorgeous.

  I said, “How do you do that?”

  “Oh, it’s easy. He’d take me to the moon if I asked. Paris, that’s nothing.”

  “Were you using magic?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What magic?”

  “How should I know? I thought you did. You’re the one that told me about it.”

  “I did what? When?”

  “Two years ago. Don’t you remember sitting in an inn and telling me you’re a warlock? You told me about my bracelet, too. I don’t know what spells are on it; I just know that when I’m wearing it, I can convince anyone of anything.”

  Master Sven and I waited at the tunnel entrance for Hazel to finish seeing to her patients in Nettleton. I wiped my hands on my skirt. Sven wiped his brow for the second time.

  It had to be the heat. Sven enjoyed conspiracies, and he was a mage. If anybody could do this, he could. No reason for the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach to afflict him.

  He wiped his brow for the third time. If he did it again, I would flame him.

  Hazel came out of the croft, and started towards us. Her pleasure at seeing me was displaced by the normal female reaction on seeing Master Sven for the first time: wide eyes and a faint flush. But that was all. After greetings and introductions, she turned back to me with no apparent regret. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, Lucinda. Is anything wrong?”

  Did she have a beau? She hadn’t told me. Thank God, she didn’t simper.

  I said, “Yes, we have a problem, and need your help. Is there someplace we can go out of earshot?”

  “We can walk further along this track, away from the village. Will that do?”

  “Sure. While we walk, tell us everything you can about the White Duke.”

  Her forehead wrinkled, but she shrugged and started talking. I listened as we walked, nodding and making prompting noises whenever she paused, but most of my attention was on the filaments draped over her. One by one, Sven worked on each strand, cementing her connections to our copper-coloured counter-conspiracy strands; tying off and snipping the others, until only one connected her to the larger engine.

  This was too tedious. We couldn’t free more than a few people this way, and it would never work on the ones most entangled.

  The last strand was tied off, waiting to be snipped. If Sven’s spellcraft wasn’t solid…

  He made a face at me. I nodded. He snipped. The black filaments draped on Hazel flashed copper. The loose black ends shrivelled and blew away.

  Sven let out a gusty, “Whoosh!” I sat down, too hard, on a rock. Hazel’s head swivelled between us.

  “Our problem doesn’t have anything to do with the White Duke,” I said, rubbing my bruised rump.

  Sven explained about the counter-conspiracy and our plans. Hazel listened with a widening grin and gleaming eyes.

  “What can I do?” she said.

  I said, “Help us recruit Maggie Archer.”

  Sven said, “Come in, Lucinda,” without looking up. He hunched over my paper, scowling. Red ink from his annotations and corrections obscured the black from my pen.

  “Is it that bad?” I asked.

  “Bad? No, it’s worse. Worse than I imagined.”

  “Can I fix it?”

  He frowned at me. “You? Of course not.”

  I would never claim to be as fine a writer as Master Sven, but this was a bit much. I leaned on his desk with my hands on my hips. “Tell me the truth. I can take it. If you need to rewrite it, that’s fine.”

  “Rewrite? Oh, this paper. No, it’s fine for a first draft. O
f course you can fix it.” He shoved it at me, and it fell over the edge. I grabbed it before it hit the floor.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean that. I have other things on my mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing I should bother you with. Forget I said anything.”

  “It’s about the conspiracy, isn’t it?”

  “Uh…”

  I brought my face down level with his. “You gave me grief when you thought I was hiding things from you. You’d better not hide things from me either.”

  He glanced sideways at the door. I blocked him in and leaned closer. “Give,” I said.

  “Back up,” he said. “We’re going down to the practice room.”

  Baffled, I followed him. I sat at one end of the iron table; he stood at the other.

  “That’s better,” he said. “There’s nothing flammable here. You remember I said I intended to find out how widespread the knowledge is among the noblemen? My research traced who each learned it from. If I drew a chart it would look like a tree, going back to a single trunk. That would be Old Brimstone, if I traced it all the way back. I haven’t. I didn’t need to—it narrowed down to half-a-dozen men, much sooner than that.”

  “When? Go on,” I prompted, when he stopped and stared at me.

  “A little over a hundred years ago.”

  “You mean during the last Scorching Time?”

  He walked towards the door leading to his study. “No, I mean about five years after Quicksilver became Fire Warlock. He’s responsible for spreading the secret.”

  A Warlock’s Closest

  Friend

  Anger, it has been said, is a warlock’s closest friend, dearer to him than parents, wife, or children. Perhaps that is so. Anger was never far from me that August. If Sorceress Lorraine had not given me the gift of cold water, I might have behaved like Warlock Flint. Even with her help, my self-control shredded daily, if not more often, as tempers, not just those of the Fire Guild, flared all around me. The scramble to be ready for the unlocking, the hysteria among the nobles, and an epic heat wave took a toll on everyone.

  Sunbeam was determined to stop the rebuilding effort. He got into shouting matches with everyone on the Fire Guild Council, Mother Celeste, and Enchanter Paul. His discussion with Sorceress Lorraine only avoided shouting because she froze him in place and walked away in a huff. The healer in Blazes had to appeal to the Warren for help; she had never before treated anyone for frostbite.

  The nightly thunder from atop Storm King troubled the sleep of many residents in Blazes and the Fortress. Jean’s answer to everyone who complained was a polite but evasive, “It will end soon.” When a delegation complained to Beorn he told them to go to hell, and had guards escort them back to Blazes.

  Flint attacked Jean in the guildhall’s common room. The confrontation ruined three unlucky travellers’ holiday, and turned the building’s south-eastern corner into a heap of smoking rubble. When Flint, pale, bald, and scarred, came out of hiding a week later, the Fire Warlock ordered him to test and report on the defences of all Frankland’s Fire and Earth guildhalls, a task that, if we were lucky, would take weeks. Blazes breathed a collective sigh of relief. My joy was short-lived; the Fire Warlock handed me the roster and ordered me to track his progress and warn the healers he was coming.

  Sven developed a fixed scowl, and snapped at people wishing him a good day. We avoided discussing Jean, but our conversations sounded like two hissing cats with arched backs.

  Hazel cried at the least provocation, or no provocation at all.

  For several days René stormed in and out of the house, slamming doors and snapping at me as if I’d pissed him off, but he wouldn’t tell me why. I got fed up and hit him with a blast hard enough to knock him across the town square and singe his eyebrows. He acted more like his normal, cheerful self after that. Too bad that method wouldn’t work on my other friends.

  Sven and Enchantress Winifred appeared to have moved beyond mere flirtation. They sat with their heads together, whispering, at the meetings of the full coven. I was trying, without success, to view it in a positive light—a little romance might reduce the tensions between the Fire and Air Guilds—when she snatched up her papers and stormed out of the room without asking leave. We turned to stare at Sven. He glowered, red-faced and thin-lipped.

  Enchanter Paul said, “I hope you will have the decency to apologise for whatever insult you offered her.”

  Sven’s colour deepened, even his ears turning red. “How can a mage’s offer to tutor someone who isn’t a scholar be construed as an insult? I’m offended she rejected my offer to help.”

  Enchanter Paul stiffened. “The Air Guild has its own, fully qualified theory teachers.”

  “Indeed,” Sorceress Lorraine snapped, cutting off Sven’s retort, “and I will expect you to ensure she uses them. Shall we proceed?”

  I began to hate the many meetings, and rarely left one without a headache. Even the meetings with the mages, which I should have enjoyed, became distasteful. The discussions grew frantic as September first approached, and I resented the constant reminders. The smaller meetings, with Jean, the Officeholders, and their apprentices, were no better, with arguments between the best of friends. I walked into the amber chamber one afternoon on the heels of the two sorceresses. Beorn and Mother Celeste were growling at each other.

  Mother Celeste said, “…safer in the Warren,” before they noticed us and cut off the argument.

  Sorceress Lorraine snapped, “Will you please continue this discussion some other time, when I do not have to listen to it?”

  Beorn and Mother Celeste mumbled apologies, but Lorraine was not cool and calm. She looked like a fire witch, with nostrils flaring, lips tight. Sorceress Eleanor didn’t look any happier.

  Afterwards, I followed Beorn to his study, and tackled him alone, on a subject he’d already insisted he didn’t want to talk about.

  “Beorn, you had visions before you became Fire Warlock. Isn’t there anything you can tell me about the future?”

  He glared at me with his arms crossed. “If I told you something you liked you might not work so hard, and if you didn’t like it, you might give up too easy, so I’m not going to tell you a damn thing. Get out of here. We’ve both got work to do.”

  I stomped to the door, annoyed the thick carpet muffled my footfalls, and swore at him all the way down the stairs.

  On the twenty-second of August, I woke with terror crawling down my back like an itch I couldn’t reach. An hour with the trouble-seeking spells provided no information to either confirm or dispel my fears, but the itch grew stronger as the day crept on. I was short with the queue of people reporting problems, and lost my temper so thoroughly with Katie that she fled, mumbling curses. After several snappish exchanges with René, he called me a first-class old hag and refused to talk to me any longer.

  By late afternoon, I abandoned any pretence of working on the Fire Warlock’s behalf and demanded Sven come down from the Fortress and deal with the queue. Tom kept his distance as I huddled over a small fire in the study. The house and its surroundings, the streets in Blazes, the royal palace where Beorn was arguing with the king; I searched them all for any sign of immediate danger.

  Jean was in London. I scoured the crowds, Mayfair to Shoreditch, looking for the threat. After two hours, half blind with tension, I abandoned Jean for René, and found him in a crowded inn, ignoring rising anger as he coaxed information from a trembling serving girl. Black death reared behind him, from two directions. I dove through the fire, shot flame, grabbed an ear and an arm, and yanked. We fell out of the fire onto the floor of the study. The screaming girl landed on top of me with her shoulder to my middle. I shoved her off and rolled into a ball, clutching at my stomach.

  René, swearing, brought the fire to a full roar and opened a window into the chaos in the inn w
e had just left. Two men, one by the bar, the other less than an arm’s reach away from where René had been, blazed like torches. Other men and women, close to them or to where I jumped out of the fire, beat at burning clothes. Howling bodies surged for the doors and windows.

  I scrambled to my feet and fled into the garden, retching. When my stomach was empty, I crept back into the house and peered around the study door.

  Jean was calming our staff and the hysterical serving girl. Tom was pouring himself a glass from a bottle of our best brandy. René, wan and quiet, choked down more of the same.

  I slunk away and climbed the stairs to my bedroom. I dropped down beside the sleeping cat on the bed and buried my face in her fur. The startled cat hissed, swiped me with her claws, and stomped away with her tail in the air. I lay face down, and sobbed.

  When Jean came to the door some time later, I didn’t raise my head. “How many people did I… How many died?”

  “No one died, my dear.”

  “No one? But… I watched them burn. How…”

  “The inn had burn cloths on hand, and the Earth Guild house is directly opposite. The two would-be assassins survived, as did the young women trampled in the panic. No one will even carry scars from the burns.”

  I took a tighter grip on the pillow. Still staring at the far wall, I said, “So you’ve come to scold me for not being forceful enough.”

  “No, my love, I have come to offer an apology for not trusting your instincts. You used the force needed to thwart the attack and save René, and no more. Your control, your aim, your timing were perfect. It was a superb performance for one so young. I could not have bettered it.”

  I rolled over and stared at him. “You’re not angry.”