by Carol Berg
As the night waxed I lay abed, practicing the strict mental disciplines my mother’s family had taught me. If Duplais and his mage could bend my mother’s mind to breaking, I needed every tool I could muster to fight them.
CHAPTER 8
10 OCET, AFTERNOON
Sunbeams arrowed through the tall, narrow windows of the Royal Presence Chamber, striking the gold-crusted coats and jeweled turbans of the Arothi delegation. The resulting spits of light rivaled the sparkling showers of red and green fire launched from the balconies flanking the hall. Jugglers’ balls of faceted silver flew through the shimmering air, while leaves and rose petals drifted into carpets on the floor.
The Arothi fireworks were not magic, as they claimed; my father had shown us the explosive power of powdered sulfur, nitre powder, and charcoal packed in paper cylinders. The display was breathtaking nonetheless.
On my seventh morning at Castelle Escalon, Eugenie de Sylvae sat on a cushioned velvet throne beneath the glittering dome at one end of the Presence Chamber. With the king away, it fell to his wife to receive the annual tribute delegation from the kingdom of Aroth.
As the maids of honor had not yet been officially presented at court, we stood near the back of the hall. From so far away, the queen’s elaborate court gown, robes, and jewels masked any semblance of a real woman. I’d grown up thinking of Eugenie as an angel—tall, lovely, and soft-spoken. But those were an impressionable girl’s fantasies. At best she was a weak-minded woman who had allowed herself to be deceived by conspiratorial advisors plotting her husband’s overthrow. Even now she sponsored this mage Dante, encouraging his wickedness in some unhealthy hope of clinging to her dead.
The mage would be the sapphire-robed man at Eugenie’s right hand. The white staff and the silver collar were unmistakable. I could see no more than that.
A spray of green fireworks announced a parade of half-naked bearers. To the bone-thudding rhythm of tree drums, they paraded a fascinating array of exotic gifts through the hall: painted casks of Arothi brandy, porcelain masks as tall as a man, gold cages occupied by multihued birds and small furred creatures, nasty-looking things with intelligent eyes, sharp teeth, and jeweled collars. The Arothi ambassador, a slender man with a stiff mustache, described the trials and prosperity of his homeland for the past year, while the bearers laid the symbolic gifts at the queen’s feet. No doubt the bulk of the tribute payment was already safe in the Sabrian treasury.
The event was a welcome change from the household routine. Every morning began in the sitting room with lessons on precedence and the peerage, Her Majesty’s preferences in dress, and every sort of trivia. Afternoons I spent in the queen’s salons with some fifty household ladies, who played cards, embroidered, recited turgid poetry, and gossiped. Infinitely tedious afternoons. The queen had not joined us even once.
A few steps away from me a gentleman bent down to retrieve a few of the rose petals magically “transformed” from the fireworks. The close-trimmed curls named him the mature, fine-featured gentleman I’d met leaving Lady Cecile’s apartments. Twice since then I’d passed him in the east-wing corridors. Twice he had stood aside and bowed with a sober gallantry. Upon a third encounter, in the Kings’ Portrait Gallery, he’d seemed on the verge of addressing me, but had withdrawn with a wry smile when the doughty Lady Eleanor had hobbled around the corner.
“Dianne”—I edged closer to the most unrepentant gossip among the maids of honor—“who is the gentleman standing on the other side of Marie-Claire?”
She squinted, crinkling her nose and exposing dreadful teeth that left her status, if not her actual rank, as low as my own. “That’s Roussel, the queen’s new physician. A commoner, I’ve heard, a cobbler’s son or some such. Of course, even if he’d a fine demesne and was rid of his speech affliction, who’d care to be touched by a man who puts his fingers in wet noses and bloody pustules? Not even a royal appointment’s going to make him a decent match.”
Eligible marriage must ever be a maid of honor’s highest priority. Considering what kind of nobleman might find my modest dowry advantageous enough to overcome the stigma of my name, a cobbler’s son with a courteous manner might be a fine catch, even if his fingers traveled unfortunate places. A smile teased at my lips as I watched him sniff the rose petal, ply it with his fingers, and scrutinize its shape and coloring. He was a scientific man.
Despite aching feet and lingering frustrations, I enjoyed the two-hour exhibition, pleased that I could understand most of what the Arothi said, though I’d not studied their language as intensively as others. As the crowd dispersed, I hung back, trying to summon the courage to address a native speaker for the first time. Before I could decide, a commotion broke out not ten metres from me.
A skinny young man in gray robes had tripped over an Arothi birdcage, fracturing the fragile wood and releasing a flock of screeching red-plumed birds and a shower of feathers. The man’s stumbling propelled him into the back of Mage Dante, knocking the sorcerer face-first into a column of spiraled marble. A horrified gasp rippled through the departing courtiers.
The staggered mage whirled about, his unshaven jaw hammered iron, black brows lowered over deep-set eyes. Above the shoulders of a field laborer, the wide silver collar bound a sinewed neck. Body quivering, cheeks darkened with rage, he pointed his staff at the man sprawled on the floor. “Never touch me.”
Bloodred light streamed from the staff, but it was the mage’s thundering voice that projected truer menace. The poor adept backed away crabwise, attempting to distance himself. The mage followed, at each step jerking the staff in a circular motion that resulted in a burst of scarlet flame and a shower of sparks. “One would think an aspiring practitioner of sorcery with the mind of a pigeon and the talents of a stump would not wish to draw attention to himself.”
Another step. Another burst. Spits of fire rained upon the fallen man, who slapped clumsily at his exposed skin. “You will clean up this mess. Lick it up, if you must.”
With every burst, my intestines twisted, raveling and unraveling themselves like knots of string. Disgusting to think the mage had once touched my mother’s hands. Surely he was vile enough to break an innocent woman’s mind or to bury a young girl without grace. Murder? That, too.
As abruptly as it had begun, the assault ended. The mage turned his back and strode out of the Presence Chamber.
Staggering to his feet, the unfortunate adept flapped his hands and brushed his face, arms, and garments, as if the drifting sparks from the flaming staff yet stung him. Indeed the hall reeked of burning. The stench of scorched flesh and feathers set me coughing.
Piles of leaves and rose petals smoldered or flamed. The young man hurried from one to the next, stomping them out, his face stormy. A sharp-boned face . . . dark wedge of a beard . . .
The adept, too, had been at Montclaire on the day my mother was stricken! Perhaps he knew what this Dante had done to her. Surely he could be no ally of the man who had just shamed him before the entire court of Castelle Escalon. Somehow, at a better time, I’d find out what he knew.
As I hurried toward the doors, I could not shake the image of the mage’s flaming staff. The wood itself had not charred, nor had it splintered from the explosive energies. Yet the sparks had ignited true fire, hot enough to roast two birds. What was the mechanism?
“Damoselle Anne! Anne de Vernase!” Duplais stepped away from a group of chattering householders, hand raised to stay my steps.
Heads turned. Conversations died. I was tempted to pretend I had not heard and keep on walking. But a certain severity in the administrator’s tone promised more conspicuous consequences if I snubbed him. Better to give the gawkers nothing to titter at. “Sonjeur?”
He clasped his hands behind his back, like a nursery tutor. “Damoselle, perhaps I did not clarify the conditions of your presence here when I fetched you from the country.”
Molten heat flooded my cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“Surely you recall His Majes
ty’s three small requirements: to report to my office twice in each tenday, to submit your letters for inspection, and to offer your parole before witnesses that you will not leave Castelle Escalon without my permission.”
“But you never—” I tightened my lips. Nothing but gossip would be served by naming him a liar in such a public venue. “I am ever grateful for the clarification, sonjeur.” I moved to go.
“Damoselle?” He motioned to the onlookers—twenty or thirty secretaries, aides, and gentlewomen. “We have witnesses now.”
I hated him then, the officious little twit, aggrandizing himself before his minions. Pretending to seek truth and justice while playing with other people’s pain.
“You have my parole, Administrator,” I snapped. “As you say. But I can see no reason to seek you out. Fetch me when you wish me to grovel.”
Shocked titters followed me out of the Presence Chamber. In the foyer Lady Cecile was engaged in serious conversation with Mage Dante’s red-faced assistant. An interesting sight after her warnings for me to avoid anything to do with sorcery or sorcerers, but then, I would guess that hypocrisy ranked close to vanity in the palace hierarchy of virtues.
12 OCET, EVENING
IT REQUIRED ONLY ONE CLEAR moment to realize that my rebellious intent to avoid Duplais was doomed. Unless Queen Eugenie herself overruled his strictures—and I had yet to have a personal exchange with her—I must seek Duplais’ permission to visit Ambrose.
Distance from the event did nothing to explain Duplais’ lie. Though anger named his display churlish, reason judged it more complicated. Portier de Duplais was a man of mature and relentless logic. His every move was well considered—such as allowing the ambush at Vradeu’s Crossing to test me. So why would he wish to demonstrate my humiliation so publicly, even as he took such care to convince everyone at court he was insignificant? He must believe someone was paying attention, which set me forever looking over my shoulder.
Thus it was with an entirely sour disposition that I attended Lady Cecile’s review session two evenings later. The evening promised naught to revive my spirits. I had now attended four sessions with Belinda, Lady Cecile, and one or both of our overbearing instructors. At no time had the ducessa offered the least sign of interest or familiarity. I’d begun to doubt my memory of her welcome.
“Eleanor and Patrice are at cards with Her Majesty this evening,” she said when I arrived at the evening’s venue—the Rose Room, a writing room set aside for the queen’s ladies. “We shall have to proceed without them, which is why I’ve brought us here. Belinda, you must continue copying your letters, now Anne has so kindly written them out for you. It is critical that they be sent in your own hand. Hematians are very sensitive to such personal touches. As for you, Anne, Her Majesty has expressed particular wishes that all her young ladies be trained to serve in her bedchamber.”
At least I might advance this ridiculous course toward its completion tonight. I had often wondered what “review” I was supposed to accomplish when the entirety of our evening sessions had been devoted to Belinda’s impending betrothal.
“This entry is not for common use.” Lady Cecile pressed the latch of a plain door in the corner of the Rose Room and motioned me through.
We entered the royal apartments through an octagonal waiting room of scarlet silk and velvet. Two blue-liveried guards snapped to attention as we entered, and a bald gentleman in blue brocade bowed. “Divine grace, bellassi Cecile,” he said in heavily accented Sabrian. “Time be for serving lessons tonight?”
“Yes, Doorward. Damoselle Anne is new to Castelle Escalon this season. Her Majesty is at cards, I understand.”
“Indeed so. Damoselle, welcome. I am Rulf de Viggio, Doorward Hereditary of the Queen’s Household.” The gentleman briskly opened an elaborately carved door three times my height.
Lady Cecile ushered me through an extensive series of luxurious apartments, done up in shades of blue and lavender. I’d no time for any impression beyond high ceilings, refined comfort, and gracious simplicity, at least not until we arrived at a large sitting room.
None could miss the evidence of pervasive superstition: a bundle of dried herbs in every doorway, a grapevine wreath over every window, a bunch of small brass bells and colored feathers on the marble mantelpiece. Charms, I knew, but whether intended to ward off sickness or poison, to freshen the air, to prevent mold, or to keep ink from drying too fast, I had no idea.
An altar stone held a place of honor along one wall. Hung with pimpernel, toadflax, and deep green, wax-leafed ivy, it held far too many tessilae for a woman not yet forty.
Above a white marble hearth, a grand watercolor depicted creatures from faerie tales, dancing in a forest clearing bathed in moonlight. Male and female dancers, some wearing stag horns or goat’s legs, some humanlike and draped in spidersilk, were depicted in such lifelike rendering, I could almost feel the wind of their spinning. The artist had created them almost transparent, fading into the flowers and grass and mighty oaks. Transcendent beauty, imbued with overwhelming sorrow . . .
“Sit over here.” Lady Cecile’s command startled me. I rubbed my prickling arms and took a place on a settee next the cold hearth. She sat across from me. A few locks of graying hair fell loose from their precise pinning and dangled across her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice.
“I regret it’s taken so long to have a private word,” she said, keeping her voice low, “but I feel it critical to belie any suspicion of familiarity between us. You must keep a tighter rein on your feelings, Anne. One is always under observation at court.”
“Of course, my lady. I can see that.”
“Here, at least, we’ll not be overheard.” She gathered her shawl tighter, as if she’d taken a chill, and she glanced about the open doorways uneasily. “Perhaps I should not have spoken.”
Her pause was so long, I feared my questions would go begging yet again. “My lady, you hinted my mother’s condition was no accident. You implied I could be in danger.”
“Yes, yes, but I’ve only bits and pieces and no idea how they fit together.” She heaved a deep sigh and leaned forward. “Tell me about your father, Anne.”
Of all questions. “Lady, my father is a coward, a murderer, and a traitor.”
There, I’d said it. Was this a test of loyalty? Must I swear upon my mother’s muddled head to prove I spoke my true belief? Perhaps I should mark my face with blood, as mountain folk did to call their gods to witness.
Cecile rapped her finger rings on the arm of her chair in agitation. “What I need to hear are details of his birth and family, and what reasons might lead him to betray the author of his fortune. Trust me, Anne, for your mother’s sake.”
In no way did I trust her. Perhaps that would come; servants and ladies uniformly adored her. Yet my father’s history was no secret.
“What would you hear? My father was raised at the regimental headquarters in Delourre by an elderly chevalier and his dame. The dame, at least, was not his blood kin. Her kitchen maid had run away, leaving him in a basket by the stove. Papa assumed he was the chevalier’s . . . by-blow.”
Lady Cecile’s expression registered no shock. Papa had certainly found no shame in his questionable birth. He had snorted at Mama’s kinswomen who clucked and scowled about it, and he had laughed at courtiers who tried to insult him with it, proclaiming it a badge of good fortune that he was the fruit of “youthful passion.” His laughter had rumbled Montclaire’s floors and filled its rooms like spring windstorms.
I squeezed my mind shut. The man of those memories did not exist. Had never existed.
“Chevalier de Menil moved from one border posting to another, perpetually short of money. He used every kivre he had to see Papa knighted, falling so far in debt he held my father’s investiture feast in a tavern. He died in the same battle in which my father saved Philippe de Savin-Journia’s life.” The old man had never known that his beloved protégé had become the Conte Ruggiere on Philippe’s coronation day
, given all the wealth, honor, and influence a decent man could want.
Of course, my father had demonstrated that he was a particularly indecent man. “Should I continue?”
“I want to hear everything, even things you might not consider important.”
So I told her of Papa’s service to King Philippe, of how in our childhood it was most often riding at the king’s side in battle, but that as time went on diplomatic missions—negotiating alliances, inspecting outposts, raising levies of men and money—replaced martial ones. She seemed interested in the smallest detail: that he stayed home teaching the three of us when he was not on campaign, that he preferred books of natural philosophy to any other, that he engaged in lengthy correspondence with a few old friends, soldiers like Basil de Reyne, governor of Kadr, and men of science like the astronomer Germond de Vouger.
“. . . No, none of those friends or acquaintances dabbled in sorcery, my lady. Why would they?”
I could have told her a great deal more. When Papa came home from his travels, my mother would hear nothing of dangers or intrigues that might haunt her the next time he had to leave. Ambrose would not sit still for any stories beyond war and combat, and Lianelle was preoccupied with magic. But my father delighted in history and politics, cities, temples, and strange cultures, just as he delighted in languages, astronomy, and mathematics, and I was the only one in the family who shared his fascination with all of it. Until those last few journeys, he had told me everything. Or so I had imagined.
What I would give to erase treacherous memory! I would not grieve for a man so depraved as to leech the blood from a young girl to feed some sorcerer’s odious magic.
“Why would your father become enamored of sorcery after proclaiming skepticism for twenty years?” Cecile said, her pale knuckle rubbing her upper lip. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The ducessa’s unrelenting intensity reminded me of Duplais. Increasingly uncomfortable, I averted my eyes. “This is all so long ago, my lady. I was only sixteen when he vanished.”