by Carol Berg
I dipped a fingertip into the gray powder. Was it merely my distaste for hypocritical practitioners that caused this horrid wriggling sensation in body and spirit? Or was it the “sorcery” itself—the unexplained forces of nature some few mages were able to harness, pretending them the outgrowths of their singular power?
If the world was built upon the rules of physics and mathematics as I believed, a pinch of this would do nothing except perhaps intoxicate me into dreaming whatever I wished. Yet Lianelle had known I was a skeptic, and yearned for me to believe as she did. Something about her trinkets’ making—whether one called the principles she had used magic or natural science—had gotten my sister murdered. No longer could I hide childish terrors behind science and reason.
I rang for Ella and asked her to fetch me wine. As I waited, I stowed the red book in the hidden drawer alongside Lianelle’s ring and pendants. Once Ella had left me a pitcher of wine and a pewter cup, I emptied a green glass vial of nettle tincture Melusina made for my autumn sneezing and rinsed it clean. A pinch of the gray powder went into the vial, followed by two spoons of wine as near as I could estimate. As I shook it, the opaque mixture cleared to amber.
I pulled out the glass stopper and sniffed the contents. Odorless—no trace of the wine’s bouquet. I let a drop fall from the slender glass rod back into the vial. Thin and watery. The next drop I let fall on my tongue. Tasteless.
Nothing happened.
Ridiculous. Did I truly expect my body to vanish?
I plugged the stopper back into the vial and slammed it onto the dressing table beside the key to the hidden drawer, and remembered . . . The keyword is aventura, my sister had written.
If the world was as I believed, speaking a random Aljyssian word should not make a speck of difference in the effects of a potion. But I whispered, “Aventura,” and dispensed another droplet on my tongue.
A frosty finger traced my spine. The outlines of the furnishings and walls smeared like watercolors. Then, as if I’d jumped from Sante Paolo’s Pillar, the bottom dropped out of my stomach.
I gripped the bedstead, and in the moment’s stillness objects realigned themselves. But at the same time the ever-present hissing and buzzing in my ears shaped itself into whispered words. Voices. From the passage. From outside the window. Through the walls. Louder and louder . . . from above, from below, inside, outside . . . quiet, angry, tearful, droning . . . and behind them all, like the reinforcing wall of troops behind a charging brigade, an onslaught of grief and terror, excitement, exaltation . . .
I slapped hands over ears to quiet the growing pandemonium.
It made no difference. Louder yet, innumerable streams of jumbled words and feelings flowed, boiled together until they became a mighty river of sound. Meanwhile tables and chairs stretched themselves and rebounded into proper shapes. Madness!
I stumbled to the door. No daemon throngs waited in the passage. Nauseated, I shoved open the casement. No unholy mob had gathered beneath my window. Clinging to the sill, I gulped the damp night air. Stupid to take secret potions, no matter who had made them. Trembling, terrified, I held out my hand. It was visible, of course.
How could I imagine such a thing could work? Sorcerers would tell me I had mixed it wrong or spoken the keyword too loud or too softly or that the stars were not properly aligned. Was this what had caused Lianelle’s death? Rampaging voices in her head? A physical world that refused to steady, that somehow forced her into a mistake in her magic working?
It was lunacy to call the individual strands in the snarl voices. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the noise. Mental discipline, my mother’s family taught, was a matter of metred will. One step to suppress desire, another step to address each sense, controlling perceptions that might trigger desire. One step for each passion of the body, so that hunger, thirst, fear, or need might not drive one to yield. Summoning every practiced skill, I created an island of quiet in the torrent, a rock, a small fragment of reason. I clung to it, concentrated . . . until the babble receded to the edges of my mind.
Moving slowly, so that beds and chairs stayed in their shapes, I returned to the dressing table and the mirror that hung above it. Stars and sky! I blinked and squinted. I waved my hand before my face. My hand was visible . . . but only one. The actual hand. The mirror displayed no reflection. Even when I pressed cold fingers to the glass, only my bedchamber was visible.
A knuckle pressed to my mouth, I throttled panic. The world is rational. Men and women who study the properties of light and lenses and optical instruments could explain what I see or do not see. First principles . . .
I looked again, closer, straining my eyes until they hurt. I glanced behind me and then back at the mirror. All right. It was not that I was invisible. What I saw in the mirror was not what existed directly behind me. Lianelle’s potion must have skewed my eyesight, just as it had afflicted my hearing. This was not magic but optics and alchemistry.
I rang for Ella.
The door opened. “Damoselle, did you need more—? Oh! S’pose not.”
I held motionless and silent as she straightened the bedclothes, blotted a spill of water beside the basin, then pulled the door open again.
“Ella,” I whispered.
She swung around and looked in my direction. But her glance passed through and over me, flicking away and darting about the room. “Damoselle?”
When I did not answer, she shivered and slammed the door. Ella had not tasted the potion.
Frost fingers traced my every bone.
Think, Anne. Perhaps the mixing had caused light itself to bend. Without analyzing the absurdity of this reasoning, I stepped into the passage. A liveried footman stood outside Belinda’s door, a few metres down the corridor. A youngish man sporting a narrow mustache, he slouched against the wall, yawning and idly twisting one of the blue silk ribbons that dangled from his pouffed sleeves.
I tiptoed down the passage, halting directly in his line of vision. He did not move or acknowledge me. I waved my hand. His eyes shifted up and down the corridor, but did not rest on me.
Halfway back toward my room, I turned and spoke quietly. “Footman.”
He immediately stood up straight and squinted up and down the corridor. At a loss, he spun and tapped on Belinda’s door.
I fled to my bedchamber and slammed the door. Madness yet hovered at the verge of my thoughts. But whatever this chance, I had to take it.
Each drop a quarter of an hour. I retrieved the vial, removed the glass stopper, and dripped eight more drops on my tongue. “Aventura.”
I would have two hours.
LADY CECILE’S DOOR WAS NOT locked. The footman wearing the yellow badge was nowhere in sight. Exulting in my luck, I waited until a pair of chambermaids carrying clay pots of heated herbs passed by, then slipped through the door.
The ducessa’s chambers were dark, the hearths and lamps cold, and the draperies drawn. I’d not thought to bring a lamp, but had no difficulty seeing my way. A wash of pale blue light limned the familiar furnishings as with winter moonlight.
During our tutorial sessions, the sitting room had always been comfortably cluttered, with writing materials near to hand, extra shawls or light blankets left on the chairs, teacups, playing cards, books and papers, and spools of embroidery silk scattered here and there. Now it was perfectly tidy. Books were returned to the cupboard by the hearth, leaving no evidence of the ducessa’s choice of reading materials in her last days. Only blank sheets of paper lay on her writing table. No item of clothing or jewelry; no bit of needlework lay ready to hand. Even Belinda’s stack of Hematian letters was gone.
The bedchamber was the same. Silver brushes were lined up like armored soldiers on her dressing table. The bed was smooth. Clothes hung straight and still in her wardrobe. Nothing was left to indicate that anyone had actually lived in these rooms. Someone had been here before me.
Disappointment weighed my spirit and feet with lead. The strain of keeping the rampant voices at bay threatened to b
lind me.
I didn’t even know what to look for. I picked through the wide drawer in her writing desk and found no correspondence, no lists, no sketchbooks, no notations of any kind. Her bookshelves revealed a preference for romances and travel memoirs, none of which exhibited any quality of interest beyond any other, and a somewhat surprising interest in physics. She owned every one of Germond de Vouger’s works.
I was searching her armoire, thinking I might find clues tucked among her scarves or undergarments, when a door shut softly. My heart near stopped.
“It must be here somewhere.” The woman’s voice, sharp as struck brass, came from the sitting room. “Orviene babbled to her incessantly. She’s the only one who could have taken it, the meddlesome thing. What interest could she have had? Why is it you’re the first to tell me? They should have come to me four years ago.”
A lower voice, a man’s voice, mumbled a response I could not decipher. Orviene had been one of my father’s sorcerers, executed for treason. Silently, I closed the armoire and ducked behind a folding fabric screen in the corner beside the doorway, the best of bad alternatives.
“You can’t be seen here,” said the woman. “It would be remarked. I don’t know why you insisted on coming.”
Fabric rustled—satin skirts and softer fabrics. Hinges squeaked. Cabinet doors slammed, followed by a series of muted thuds.
As the litany of noises continued, I peered cautiously past the edge of the screen and through the sitting room doorway. Though her back was to me, the piled curls were unmistakable. Lady Antonia. She was pulling books from the shelves, flipping through the pages, and tossing them onto the floor alongside cushions, pillows, and shawls.
Her male companion was no more than a darker mass in the shadows by the outer door. Yellow light streamed from his extended hand. I could see no lamp. My eyes must be playing tricks. My stomach heaved, and the noise in my head threatened to swamp my barricades and engulf reason.
When Antonia had tossed aside the last volume, she spun around. The yellow light danced across her face, her painted lips thin and angry. “Stupid cow. Where could she have hidden it?”
She charged straight toward me, the screen quivering as she swept into the bedchamber. The yellow light followed, gleaming from the doorway.
Holding my breath, I pressed myself into the corner. Through the stretched, painted gauze of the screen, I watched her poke and prod the pillows and bedding, shaking out the hangings, and even kneeling to peer underneath. She pulled every drawer out of the armoire and dumped out its contents. Discarded cases and enameled boxes spilled jewelry, pens, buckles, and keys onto the floor. She pawed through the debris, mumbling curses. Clothing followed, gowns, shifts, undergarments, hose, skirts and sleeves. She examined every fold and pocket.
Unlike me, she seemed to know what she was looking for. The little red book, perhaps?
Angry and frustrated, the dowager and her companion soon retreated to the sitting room, and I breathed again.
“All right, so it’s not here. I’d best get someone to straighten these chambers, or we’ll have another scandal.”
“So she didn’t have it. You’ve been too hasty . . . endangered your plan . . .” I could only hear a few of the man’s whispered words, but his tone of reproach rang clear.
Lady Antonia joined him at the door. “Easy for you to quibble. We intercepted a letter she wrote to her scholar friend in Tallemant. She claimed to have the key to unravel the conspiracy and root it in the Blood Wars. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she lied. Either way, she was getting too close. The damnable woman was talking of going to Seravain to get the truth of the girl’s death! No one would be able to silence the rumors once word got out. It had to be done.”
Revelation rocked me on my heels. This woman, once Queen of Sabria, Queen Eugenie’s own foster mother, spoke of murder.
The two stood by the door, arguing in whispers, not even half of their words audible. “. . . not afraid of taking action,” said Lady Antonia. “We’ll settle this tomorrow night . . . after cards . . . examine the codices. . . .”
“I’ll go first,” said the man.
As soon as Lady Antonia had followed her companion out the door, I scuttled across the room and peered into the passage, hoping to identify the man. But the corridor was deserted.
The certainty that I’d been right to come, right to suspect that this death was linked to Lianelle’s, that all these terrible events were connected, cleared my head for the moment. An idea had struck as Lady Antonia emptied the wardrobe. The key, she had said. I thought I might know where to look.
I first picked out every key from the litter on the floor. She’d paid no attention to them, so clearly she had known these weren’t the type of key she sought. Clutching the slips of brass, bronze, and silver, I poked around the decorative corners and scallops of the painted armoire—quite an old piece. Sure enough, behind a piece of green-painted scrollwork, similar to that in my own wardrobe, I found a keyhole. Many false starts later, I pulled open a long, narrow drawer. With a fierce joy, I snatched up the sole article in the drawer—a small pouch. I relocked the drawer and tossed the keys in the scattered debris.
As I slipped into the passage, Morgansa, Lady Antonia’s red-haired waiting woman, rounded the corner with a pale, scrawny serving girl in tow. I flattened myself to the wall, skin awash with sweat, floundering for excuses. I’d no idea how much time had passed. The potion would wear off at any moment.
The woman bustled past, murmuring sharply to the child. “. . . tell no one or we’ll have your mam thrown into the deepest dungeon in Sabria.” Neither of them looked my way.
I sped through the corridors. To my dismay, a guard had taken up a post, blocking the passage to my bedchamber, and, of all people in the world, Portier de Savin-Duplais stood talking with him. There was no alternate route. My head throbbed so viciously, I was near screaming.
I slipped around the guardsman, and edged carefully past Duplais.
The Royal Accuser whirled in my direction. No more than three paces from him, I dared not move or breathe.
“Who’s there?” he called, his glance attending the crossing passage, the silent doorways.
“N-none’s here, sonjeur,” said the guardsman. “Who could be here?”
I crept a step backward. Duplais shook his head. “Someone . . .”
Eventually he moved into the main passage. The guardsman pulled some kind of amulet from underneath his armor and kissed it. I ran.
By the time I reached my bedchamber my entire body shook with exhaustion. I threw myself on the bed, pulled a pillow over my head, and fought to hold on to my defenses. But fabric and feathers could not hold off chaos.
Confusion, terror . . . those were my own. But the voices themselves encompassed every possible expression: a child crying with a nightmare, a mother’s comfort, a lover’s whispers—oh, sweet heaven, I had never imagined such tender eloquence—a husband’s grief, a woman’s hunger, an argument over money, a drunken tavern tale . . .
Wonder and amazement nibbled away at my terror, and I began to truly listen, thinking of each voice as a distinct mind that existed somewhere in the encompassing night beyond my window. Madness! Yet as the clamor began to fade, I found myself straining to hear more, opening my ears, my mind, my soul—wherever this strange phenomenon was occurring. Two distinct presences lingered long after the rest.
One was little more than a cool stillness, quiet and wary. Surely it was my own mind that shaped unspoken curiosity into a word. Who?
And the second, so faint, yet clear as honed steel, embedded a dagger in my soul. A voice that testified to pain beyond bearing. A voice—great Creator of Heaven and Earth—a voice I knew, though I had never heard it so bereft of hope or joy: Impossible. Impossible. Yet you feel so near tonight. Hear me, child of my mind, daughter of my heart. I am not what they name me. Help me. By the bones of Heaven’s Gates, Ani, help me. . . . It was my father.
CHAPTER 12
18
OCET, MIDMORNING
“Papa!” The cry burst from my lips as I shot up from my pillows, my heart galloping. Sunlight glared through my window, accusing me of loitering while lives hung in the balance.
Doubt, skepticism, all those things I expected to overwhelm me as I roused to the new day were nowhere in evidence. Scarce more than a dozen words sorted from chaos had shattered Reason—the truest god of my two-and-twenty years. The sense of my father’s presence had been immense, so vivid, so real, as if for that moment I had lived inside his flesh. Somewhere he existed in torment, captive, innocent of the crimes the world laid at his feet . . . that I had laid at his feet. Neither wish nor dream, that moment had borne the undeniable, sharp-edged clarity of truth.
Beyond the horror at his state, beyond the guilt of my own betrayal, the certainty of his life limned every moment with a joy I had not felt in five years. I had to find him. I would find him.
The green glass vial stood innocent on my dressing table, tempting me to taste its contents once again and open my mind to mystery. Was the potion magic? Did it spur some intervention of the saints and angels I’d scorned since I was fourteen? I had to consider, for what science could explain my walking about unseen, or hearing the prayer of a man I believed more vile than any daemon?
I had succumbed to the temptation repeatedly on the previous night—twelve more drops, three more hours of racked senses. The unceasing battery of human joy and grief, anger, longing, hatred, and ecstasy near shredded my mind, yet I had held together, listening, tasting, examining every word and emotion until exhaustion hammered me to sleep. Not another whisper of my father had I sensed. Yet still, on this bright morning, I believed. Magic. In the result, if not the act.
Though shallow sunlight insisted that half the day was gone, I was not late for my duties. All was changed this day. Lady Cecile was dead—murdered.
Amid the turbulence of my spirit, I could scarce grieve for a woman I hardly knew. Yet she had not deserved to die in the vigor of her middle age. Justice demanded that I report what I knew, but who would believe it on my word alone? The dowager queen, once the Queen Regent of Sabria, a murderer. And for what?