by Carol Berg
Her response came in a thick-tongued whisper: “The Fallen. The Souleater. In my dreams he lies with me, rousing me until I burn. He says we’ll rule Heaven together. Anne, help me. . . .”
Then she was asleep again, as if she had never stirred.
Confused, I corked the vial of smelling salts and set it on the bedside table. The candlelight set the wardstone on my finger gleaming—no longer benign silver, but the color of lapis. Not the color of poison, but of dangerous enchantment.
CHAPTER 33
25 OCET, NIGHT
“Only for an hour or two until Patrice arrives, Arabella, caeri,” said Antonia, sweeping into the room with a stout woman of fifty-odd summers, whose outlandish wig resembled the rag-mop hair of Syan idols. “You’ve naught to do but supervise Anne; she is so new at this.”
Heart galloping, I drifted away from the medicine box, as Antonia established the ample Contessa Arabella on a settee.
Antonia’s patter flowed like cream. “Just make sure the nursemaid tastes anything brought, whether food, drink, or medicine. And if Eugenie stirs, keep her abed and use her salts, lest she faint and start the dreadful bleeding again. Anne, caeri, where are Her Majesty’s smelling salts? The vial should be right here.” Her jeweled fingers tapped the bedside table.
“I’m sure I saw it earlier,” I said, spinning, my fingers wrapped tight around the very vial she wanted. “Ah, over here, my lady!”
I darted toward Eugenie’s dressing table, and with an obscuring sweep of my shawl and a twist of my hand, sent the crystal bottle flying. “Oh no!”
“You stupid, clumsy wretch!” Antonia’s screech must surely have waked half the palace.
“I’m so sorry, Your Grace! Where can I find more of the compound? From the physician? From the mage?”
“Cursed was the day you came here!” she said. “Cursed be your family, your ancestors.” Her venom scalded the sickroom air.
Lady Arabella, shocked speechless at such blasphemy, waved her embroidery needles at me in some message to do with sweeping. Comprehending, I offered to fetch a servant to clean up the splintered glass and salts.
“Yes, yes.” Antonia’s strangled agreement spoke more of fear than anger. Her trembling hands rattled through the medicine box.
I would have worried more about the sweeping girl or Arabella, who had set her embroidery frame and a large basket of spooled silks in the vicinity, save that the original contents of the vial were wrapped tightly and stowed in my pocket. The scattered crystals were some more benign formula I’d retrieved from the medicine box.
Clever villains, to use smelling salts as a vehicle for their enchantments. Who would think to have a taster take a whiff each time such a thing was used, more common among court ladies than swatting flies? And with so many vials at hand, they could be switched easily. Was there some aromatic compound that could cause a hemorrhage, as this one bound Eugenie in unnatural sleep? Perhaps Roussel could tell me.
Not long after Antonia and the sweeping girl had departed, Lord Ilario tiptoed through the door. After proper greetings, he flung himself on the settee beside Arabella, wrapping his long arm around her shoulder and his confidences about her ear. “Dearest Lady Arabella, a most distressing matter. Your son, the Baronet Montmorency, such a charming boy, so delicate in his choices of fabrics. Honestly, I adore his rose stripes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he loves his wine and his delicate health causes it to affect him so dreadfully. I’ve just had a report of a youth . . . rose stripes and ostrich plumes . . . uh, let us say . . . discharging . . . his dinner in the Faun Fountains or perhaps it was the Troll Regarde Fountain. Thought you should know.”
Mumbled commiseration soon popped Ilario to his feet. He hauled the distressed Arabella up and into his arms. “Certainly I can escort you, dear lady! We’ll borrow a footman or two. Dreadful frights in the courtyards . . .”
With handiwork as neat and quick as the contessa’s own, Ilario whisked Arabella and her embroidery frame away. Only a few spools of rose silk remained behind. I presumed he had a reason for removing her, and remained alert.
Sure enough, shortly after ninth hour, a soft click signaled a visitor. Yet the noise didn’t come from the outer passage, but from the wall to the left of Eugenie’s bed. A rectangular wall panel opened a few centimetres. Either the door to the servants’ stair had shifted its position or there was a second concealed access to her bedchamber.
My hand slipped into the fitchet in my skirt. I didn’t draw my knife, but neither was I inclined to step up and shift the stool that blocked the door from opening further. Would a revenant need a doorway?
When a long arm clad in scarlet and trailing a year’s output of a lace maker’s art at the wrist reached through and dragged the stool aside, I relaxed my guard. Not ghostly Soren, but Ilario poked his fair head cautiously around the blue panel.
“None’s here but me,” I said.
“Good. Thank the saints for Arabella’s easily seduced brat. I needed to speak with you alone.” He joined me at the bedside, his eyes all for his sister. “How is she, truly?”
“Restless and dreadfully weak. But she doesn’t seem to be in pain. I might have found the cause for all this . . .” I told him of Eugenie’s brief waking, Dante’s visit, and the smelling salts.
“Sante Ianne,” he said, anguished, “I’ve offered her the vial myself. When she was so dizzy in the carriage, I may have given her the very dose that felled her. If there was a child . . .” He did not hammer his fists on the wall, but I would not wish to be the first of these conspirators who ventured within reach of Ilario de Sylvae’s sword.
“For what comfort it might give, Roussel does not believe there was a child.” The good knight’s pain but hardened my resolve. “Chevalier, where has Duplais gone? He told me he had important business outside the palace, but he should have returned hours ago.”
Ilario wrenched his attention from poison and murder. “I knew nothing but what you told us, until his man brought me this a short time ago. Portier charged Heurot to deliver it if he’d not returned by the middle-night. The lad was too anxious to wait longer.” He passed me a smudged scrap of paper—a handbill for a play given years ago in the town of Archenase. A message had been scribed in a neat, even script.
To the kindest man in the world from the world’s most pitiful gull: Though I forbade you oath swearing, hope tells me that your promise of aid remains sealed in your heart. I am desperate. Judgment for my folly looms like a headsman’s ax. I’ll wait at the crossroads at Voilline until sunset tomorrow.
Two additional lines, written in Duplais’ bolder hand, appeared below.
Matters must have gotten more complicated. Forgive me for not confiding in you.
Keep to your path, friend. Trust the girl.
“The idiot!” I said. “This is what took him away? Look at this last; he suspected it was a trap!”
“The writer is surely Maura ney Billard,” said Ilario, as he perched on the edge of Eugenie’s bed, absently stroking her temple. “Portier claims he knew her too short a time to truly love her, but I observed otherwise. The lady reflected the sentiment, even before he risked his life and Geni’s to get her out of the Spindle.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I presume you’re the girl to trust.”
“Stupid, stupid,” I murmured, holding the paper close to the lamp, as if I might see additional information squeezed amid the spare prose. Was Maura dupe, victim, or traitor? And Voilline . . . something nagged about it.
“I never thought the woman fool enough—or so careless of his safety—to return to Sabria,” said Ilario. “She’s dead if Philippe finds her. And our librarian friend will be, as well, if he’s found with her. If Portier’s damnable holy righteousness fails again . . .”
I snorted. Ilario must truly be an innocent as his sister believed, an idealist at the least. “I’ve always considered Duplais’ righteousness more daemonish than holy.”
“You’re not a Cultist.” The quiet co
mment drew my attention from the page.
“You subscribe to the Cult of the Reborn?” I’d forgotten he wore the phoenix ring.
“Four years ago, I was sure I witnessed the two Invariant Signs made manifest. Certainly the refusal to die without meaningful purpose.”
His earnest sobriety . . . reverence . . . from a person who personified irreverence banished all inclination to amusement. “You believed Duplais to be a Saint Reborn?”
“I saw him step out of a holocaust as the Swan burned and men died around him. And none but a Saint Reborn could have survived the battering he took at Eltevire. Then, but a few months ago, Portier told me about the night his father tried to murder him because he’d failed at his study of magic—because he could not elevate their family to their ‘rightful rank’ as royal kin. Portier believes he actually died that night and was returned from Ixtador. Kajetan was there and coddled him back to health, but conveniently forgot ever to mention the dying part.”
Threads of connection knotted themselves into a lacework. “You don’t suppose Kajetan believes this about him?”
Ilario shrugged. “The second Invariant Sign is an inerrant perception of righteousness, and anyone who knows Portier for more than an hour can see that honor and compassion are rooted in his bones. So I always assumed he saw something in Maura worth saving, the same as he did with Captain de Santo. I feared he had the same conviction about Dante, but he didn’t defend the mad mage for smashing me to smithereens. I appreciated that.”
“He doesn’t defend Kajetan, either,” I said, “though he wants to very badly. But that doesn’t make him a reborn soul.”
“Certainly not. Portier himself certainly doesn’t believe it. It was the matter of his dreams had me convinced. He recounted a few of them on the road to Eltevire. Vivid dreams of extraordinary deeds . . . every one of which I could pull straight out of Cult texts.”
“Great Heaven, Voilline!” Understanding set my blood racing. Not belief that Duplais was some altruistic soul repeatedly returned to life throughout history, but the meaning of the place he’d gone to meet his fugitive friend. “This came from a history text Dante was reading, about the Gautieri and the Mondragons and the last great battle of the Blood Wars.”
The text poured from my lips: “ ‘Abandoning the broken Ring Wall, the Gautieri retreated into the Voilline Rift. . . . Backed deep against the foot of the crags where Ianne, the first Saint of the Reborn, had brought humankind the gift of fire, the valiant Gautieri mage line unleashed the fires of Creation.’”
Did Kajetan believe this cult idiocy or was it merely that his master, the Aspirant—the down-on-his-luck nobleman, the Gautier survivor—wanted to revisit the place where his ancestors had been slaughtered by the hated Mondragons?
I shook the treacherous paper. “This was a trap, and the fool Duplais suspected it before he went. This morning, he insisted I let events unfold, as that was the only way we could comprehend this grand scheme. That’s exactly what he’s done . . . full knowing. I don’t know what they’re going to do with him, but as sure as sunrise, they’ve take him to the Voilline Rift. That’s where they’re going to work their cataclysm.”
“Not the rift,” said Ilario, softly. “Portier told me about places on the earth where magic works better than others. People name them holy sites, like the field where the Creator planted the first grapevines, or cursed ones, like that damnable village of Eltevire, where stories say one human first shed the blood of another. He also told me that in one of his dreams, he was chained to a rock in punishment for a crime he could not remember.”
Ilario extended his hand into the candlelight and twitched one long finger, setting the gold phoenix ring flashing. When he raised his gaze from the ring to meet my question, his blue eyes burned as if a thousand candles had been lit within.
“He didn’t know me then—this me—so I didn’t mention the Cult story. And I didn’t know about the battle in the rift, but your text tells you. When Ianne the Blessed brought fire to humankind on Mont Voilline, he tore a rip in the Veil to fetch the flame from Heaven. Some say the Creator punished him for the damage by chaining him to the mountainside until he died, and that’s why he chose to return to the world again and again instead of moving on to Heaven. Some say the Souleater chained him to the rock in vengeance for giving fire to humans, so they were less frightened of him and his Fallen, and that Ianne remained there forty years until his human friends could learn how to break the devilish chains. They’ve taken Portier to the mount, Anne. God’s mercy, they’re going to kill him—”
“Thinking he won’t die,” I said. If persons and objects carried intrinsic power, as my friend of the mind had told me, what power for magic might be bound up in a being who could refuse death?
“Or perhaps that this time, he will,” said Ilario. “Killing one of the Reborn before his work is done must surely alter the universe forever.”
“Lord, we must get the Mondragon Book of Greater Rites from Dante. Tonight. That way, when the king arrives tomorrow night we can tell him what they plan.”
“I can arrange a meeting with Philippe. He’s the only other person that knows . . . this.” He pointed to himself and rolled his eyes. “But the damnable book . . . I’m willing, but last time I ventured into Dante’s laboratorium, I ended up most of dead, and I am no Saint Reborn.”
“I’m no saint, either,” I said, “but I know a way to get the book and decrypt it. The mage will never know it’s gone. As soon as you and Antonia return for the night watch, I’ll steal it. But then . . . you wouldn’t happen to know enough about magic to help me interpret the cursed thing?”
“Glory, woman, I’ve managed to fill my head with a few useful things through the years, but a scholar I am not. I still maintain Philippe’s clocks are daemon work and that mathematics beyond calculating the cost of new breeches is a language meant for the Pantokrator and his angels.”
“I’ve another friend who might be able to help me,” I said, teetering on the unlikely verge of laughter. Or hysteria. “I’ll get word to you when I can.”
He kissed Eugenie on the forehead and let his temple rest against hers for a few moments. “Stay with me, sweet Geni,” he said softly. “We’ll fight through this and find your happiness.”
Moving quickly, Ilario tweaked a piece of a gilded pilaster. The wall panel swung open. “Saints guard you, damoselle.”
“And you,” I said as the panel closed. “And all of us.” I wished I had more faith in saints and angels. The daemons I already knew.
I COULD NOT PROCEED AS Duplais had asked me. I hadn’t his faith that unfolding events would reveal the Aspirant and his plan in time for us to do anything about it. Believing that Eugenie’s poisoning and Duplais’ disappearance signaled the opening salvo in the final battle, I could wait no longer to take action. I hoped I was not too late already.
Thus at second hour of the night watch, I stood outside Dante’s apartments, body and spirit a riot of nerves. Fetch the book. Learn what they plan. Words were so simple. If he’s awake, retreat and try again later.
Lianelle’s potion, as always, had opened me to the mindstorm—tonight in full frenzy. As always I listened for my friend, not intending to delay my mission, but only to feel his steady quiet, a solid anchor in the chaotic aether. But I could not sense him. All logical reasons for dismissing Duplais as my friend of the mind crumbled. What had they done to him?
The wind had come up in the middle-night hours, sweeping away the rain and mist. The waxing moon dodged scudding clouds and gleamed through the tall windows at the end of the sorcerers’ passage. I would have preferred a darker night, no matter that Lianelle’s magic had rendered me invisible. Human instincts are difficult to overcome with logic, especially when one walks the most illogical realms of sorcery.
I pressed my ear to Dante’s door. Hearing no hint of activity within, I summoned every discipline of mind and pressed the latch.
Heat bit at my fingertips and riffled up my
left arm. Bearable. The mage did not fear determined visitors. The heavy door swung inward. Catching it before it struck the wall, I crossed the threshold and closed the door softly behind me.
The unsteady moonlight bathed the sitting area before the great windows and the sorcerer’s ring in the center of the room, but did not reach so far as his worktables. It was enough to tell me he wasn’t there, asleep or awake. I released my pent breath.
I’d spent my last hours in the sickroom recalling every detail of Dante’s chamber, trying to guess where he’d keep such a precious book. Well hidden, I feared, with his door so easily breached.
I would dismiss the easy places first. Barefoot, slippers stuffed into my belt, I padded over to the whitewashed bookshelves. Only a moment to survey the contents. Another to scan the volumes scattered on couch and tables.
I set aside a cold lamp and opened the lid of the schoolmaster’s stool, a better hiding place. But its cavity sat empty save for the decades’ tally of spilled ink and dropped penknives. No dust, though. Ours at Montclaire had an extra compartment.
With a frisson of anticipation, I felt around the thin molding that framed the bottom of the cavity. A gap marred its continuity, and I fiddled and pushed until a piece of the molding slid sideways. There was a similar gap on the opposite side of the cavity. I shifted the corresponding piece and with trembling fingers lifted the false bottom.
No Mondragon book. Only a motley stack of journals and unbound pages, written in an oddly skewed script. Some yellowed; some faded. Most of them hard used. They might provide fascinating reading, but the book must remain my focus.
Bitterly disappointed, I restored all and moved to the worktables. Gloomed in shadows, the laboratorium took more care. I dared not disarrange anything. Fortunately the mage seemed to keep his books separate from the clutter of his work—the sharp edges and implements that might tear fragile pages; the liquids, plants, and dirt that might soil them. I removed the lids of baskets and crates on the floor, peered under benches. A wooden case with a small latch opened to reveal five palm-sized silver spheres. So Dante wasn’t out raising the dead this night.