He let his head fall back against the tree and stared up into it. “Very well. Tell me your stories. As you say, they will pass the time.”
“In the beginning,” Emily began, using the same voice she used to tell stories to the village children, “there was the Goddess and only the Goddess. It was dark and quiet, and she was alone. There was no world, no light, and no companion but darkness. And so she gave birth to herself, to the Lady and then to the Lord. And the Lady and the Lord looked at one another with love, and they swore they would never again be parted. The Lord made the Lady a garden, filling it with flowers and trees, and she in turn filled it with life. They learned their rhythms there, that he could create, but that she breathed the breath of Life. They lived in happiness for a long, long time.
“But the Lord became restless, for it was his nature to explore and to grow. And so he left the garden to explore the world. The Lady came after, breathing Life, but she moved slowly, and they discovered they could not keep all life alive at once. And so Death was born. What the Lady touched had life, and what she abandoned knew death.”
“That’s not the story I heard,” Stephen said, sounding a little unnerved. “I thought the Goddess was the great mother. She doesn’t create Death. That’s the devil.”
“We don’t speak of devils here,” Emily said patiently. “Demons are trouble enough.”
“But that isn’t right,” Stephen insisted, “making the Goddess responsible for death and cruelty. And to give it to the Lady? How is that feminine?”
“Why is death cruel?” Emily asked. “And what do you mean, it isn’t feminine? Did you never think of the sacrifices and difficult decisions mothers have to make?” Emily saw that he hadn’t, and she shook her head. “The Lord could never create Death. His heart is too tender. He loves life, loves to create. He cannot stop. The Lady tempers his enthusiasm, remembering that all life must be tended and that death must come to all to make it meaningful.”
Now he was frowning. “This isn’t right, is all I’m saying.”
Emily lifted an eyebrow at him. “Would you like to tell the story?”
He smiled, but only half. “No. Go on.”
Emily continued. “The Lady grew even wearier trying to follow the Lord, but she saw he could not stop, and so she let him go. She sent with him the Wand of Life, which would allow him to create without her presence.”
She caught him grinning, and he held up his hands in self-defense. “I’m sorry, but it’s silly,” he said. “The Wand of Life? It’s very—”
“Phallic?” Emily finished for him coolly. “Yes. It’s why all the oldest art is never seen in museums, or when it is, it is always conveniently broken. They remove the phalluses. The Wand is important, and it’s just what you think it is.” She looked at him archly. “Without the little-boy snigger.”
He didn’t stay his grin. “I’m sorry, Miss Elliott. The little-boy snigger comes with the wand.”
She blushed and turned back to the fog as she went on.
“It pained the Lady to let the Lord go, for she knew she would see him less, but she loved him for who he was, and she knew he could not be happy to remain always in the garden. She made Death independent as well, to move about the world the Lord created and reclaim the life he made.
“But the Lady was not alone. She had many children by the Lord, as many as there were stars in the sky—they were, in fact, the stars in the sky. The Lord made many creatures in the image of himself and the Lady, and they were called human, but the children of the Lord and the Lady were the true heirs of the Lord and the Lady. They were each one beautiful, and they were as fluid and gracious as their parents in all things. And they were just as full of magic and wonder. The Lord, out of love for his children, encouraged them to come with him into the world, to explore it with him, and because they loved their father and his stories of the world, they went.”
“That is a nice story,” Stephen said, relaxing into the tree. “I suppose they are great leaders and examples? Oh, are they the witches?”
Emily shifted against the tree, the gesture making her shoulder touch his. “Sadly no.” She plucked a blade of grass and spun it idly in her hands. “It went badly for the children of the Lady and the Lord. They were too different, and their power was threatening. They had their parents’ magic, but they had their parents’ gender too. They were the children of the Goddess who had created herself. Their sexuality was fluid. The androghenie knew no difference between men and women and loved whomever their hearts loved. Some of them were so representative of their parents that their genders were impossible to determine.”
“Lots of time in the pillory for the Indecency Act, then,” Stephen said quietly.
“It was for them the pillory and the Indecency Act were invented. It was not good for them here, but once fallen to earth, it was difficult for them to return to their mother in the garden. They were long, long-lived, and they feared death. Their father tried to help; he created a sanctuary for them, a great house of stone and beauty with magical gardens and a forest much like the one their mother lived in. He brought their mother to them when he could. But they used the sanctuary to hide, which made them more miserable. Hurt and frightened, they killed their father and tried to trap their mother.”
“But how can you kill a Goddess?” he demanded. “Lord, Lady—how can you kill someone who can create a world?”
“With magic,” Emily said. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know how, honestly. The stories get fuzzy here. This is where they tell the story of the Lord being dead and the Lady being lost, of when the Cloister Army came across the ocean and killed the Old Ones—that’s the androghenie again. This is when the first Houses were born: four, one for each element. You must at least know that, being one of them.”
“My mother told me not to listen to the stories,” he said. “She said it was nonsense and nothing to do with me, and I wasn’t to let them mire me in their family politics. She kept me well away from my grandfather.” He glanced at her. “You, though—an Elliott, living here—you’re right in the middle of it, aren’t you?”
Emily tucked her knees to her chest. “I’m not a true Elliott. Not by blood. My father adopted me.” She drew her knees in a little tighter. “I have the name, but I’m just something of an echo.”
“Oh.” There was a pause, and it was an awkward one, but Emily waited through it, as she had done before. “Oh,” he said again. “I didn’t—well, it doesn’t matter, of course, but—you surprised me, is all.”
Emily tugged at more grass. “It matters to most people. I’m used to it.”
She let the moment linger, letting the thought fold gently into his mind, then became ready to change the subject, but to her surprise, he pressed it further.
“It shouldn’t matter,” he said firmly. “Blood is just blood. It shouldn’t matter where it comes from.”
She laughed and turned to smile at him. “You were kept very far from your grandfather.” But as she studied him, her smile faded. “You should know the story of the Houses. For you blood matters, regardless of what your mother told you.”
He blushed. “I’m not—there’s Jonathan, back again, and Charles—”
“But it’s the blood,” Emily insisted. “That’s the point. The androghenie created the Houses. The androghenie were frightened of the world, and so they made the Houses and bound them by blood to their House daemon to serve and protect the androghenie in their sanctuary once their parents were gone. They made the daemons soul guardians of each House, and they made the blood of that House bound magically to the daemon of that House.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Mr. Perry, people have died for insisting it was nonsense. Look at my cousin! Andrea Carlton, the last bloodline of her House. She died a horrible death at your father’s hands for thinking the same way as you.”
“That’s because my father was a sick madman,” he said. “And because Andrea played my brothers off one another.”
&nb
sp; “That’s true,” Emily admitted. “But it is part of the curse. The House blood has been unstable ever since the androghenie were killed. The daemons are now a curse, because there is nothing to protect. They destroy one another, and the last one left will be a terrible beast, eating the souls of the other Houses. And they encourage those of the Houses to do a human version of the same to the other Houses.”
He didn’t look impressed. “I refuse to believe that. It doesn’t make any sense. If my name is Perry or Elliott or Whitby or Carlton, I am doomed to be lunch? Why even bother to live at all?”
“It’s the blood,” Emily insisted, then sighed and sank back against the tree. “Madeline explains it better.” She glanced again toward the abbey. “I wish we could go to her, Mr. Perry. I worry for her. As I’m sure you worry for your brother.”
Stephen kicked a leg out in front of him, drawing the other knee to his chest. “I should have gone to him when he was in Boone, but I only just…” He shrugged. “I should have gone. I heard he was coming here, and I wanted to see him before my grandfather arrived. But now I don’t even know what I’m going to say. There are things I want to tell him, but now that I’m here, they seem foolish. Why would he care? He’s been in the war, doing important things. I haven’t done anything. I feel like an idiot.” He sighed, then rested his hand briefly on her fingers. “I shouldn’t burden you with all this. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t a burden.” Emily tried to smile reassuringly. “You did rescue me, back in the garden. I didn’t even know I was in trouble. The ghosts were trying to warn me, but I didn’t understand.”
He cleared his throat. “That—the other one. The magistrate’s son. He didn’t—I wasn’t—” He cleared his throat again. “I couldn’t quite tell, so forgive me if I presume, but you seemed…familiar. I thought.”
Emily was glad the shadows hid her blush. “We are all a bit familiar here in the parish,” she said, adding for her own benefit, something I would have done well to remember last week before I let him into my bed.
He nodded, shifting his feet against the ground as if he couldn’t quite get comfortable. “I was only—It shocked me, that he would abandon you to the alchemist when you were addressing each other by given names.”
Emily hadn’t even thought of that. She’d been so focused on Mr. Perry—then just a stranger, so vulnerable without a charm—that she hadn’t yet thought much of what Alan had or hadn’t done. She dwelt deeply on it now, however, and her cheeks were well past flushed and now very hot. She found she could not answer Mr. Perry.
“Ah,” he said, sounding abashed. “I apologize. That was rude of me to point out.”
“No.” Emily rubbed her arms lightly as if she could brush the bad feelings away. “No, I think it was quite the contrary.”
He mistook her gesture and came up on his knees as he removed his coat. “Lean forward,” he said and moved to drape it over her shoulders.
Emily opened her mouth to stop him, but he didn’t look interested in being countermanded, and she was still feeling low about Alan, so she did as he instructed and let him slide her arms into his jacket. It was rich and soft, and it smelled of him. She liked it more than she should. It was this sort of nonsense that had led her into trouble with Alan.
“You’ll be cold now,” she said, but she settled back against the tree.
He shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
She watched him as he sat down again. He wasn’t precisely handsome, not with that hair or those freckles or those squinty eyes set too close together. Perhaps they weren’t squinty, but they were at best only plain, and too small. He was pleasant, though. He was kind, and he was pleasant.
And he had rescued her when he hadn’t known who she was, when it would have been no profit to him at all. He had done it simply because it needed doing.
“Did you mean what you said before,” Emily asked. “About blood? That it shouldn’t matter?”
He didn’t answer right away. “It shouldn’t matter,” he said at last. “But I’m afraid it very often does.”
Emily pulled his coat tighter around her body. It wasn’t as if she had planned to flirt with him or that she was prone to romantic delusions. She had no right to feel so saddened by his reply, or so rejected.
“I would like to hear more of your stories, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said.
Emily pushed her gloomy thoughts away. “Certainly, Mr. Perry.”
His hand touched hers briefly. Tentatively. “Stephen, please.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Formality seems ridiculous after all we have endured together, even if it was all in the space of an evening.”
She smiled, then inclined her head in a nod to hide it. “Very well. Stephen.”
Their shoulders touched, and their hands brushed lightly, but beyond this and the embrace of his jacket and her use of his given name, they had no further intimacy between them.
Emily cleared her throat and drew her knees back up to her chest.
“Once upon a time, there was a maiden…”
* * *
In the study below the tower bedroom, Timothy poured Charles Perry another drink.
Charles had produced a dusty, nasty-looking bottle of spirits from the back of a drawer in the desk and an even dirtier bin of coal from a door built directly into the wall and obscured by a heavy, moth-eaten curtain. After building a fire in the hearth, Timothy had encouraged his companion to relax on one end of the tattered sofa, promising to join him after he wiped out a pair of glasses. Timothy did, indeed, wipe out the glasses. He also laced Charles Perry’s liberally with baetlbeth, and once he had poured himself a virgin round, he doused the bottle of spirits with the same before taking up a chair beside the sofa. The glass Timothy was pouring Charles now was his third; Timothy himself had just finished his first and was embarking carefully on his second, as all subsequent rounds were now spiked with drug. He had a considerable immunity to it, but he had no interest in playing the fool with Jonathan’s half brother again. He wanted information, and he intended to get it.
If Charles suspected he was being manipulated, he was playing a deep game, for he appeared as nothing but happily drunk and beautifully disoriented by the baetlbeth. His head, apparently grown too heavy for his neck, had lolled over onto the arm of the sofa, and he grinned sideways at Timothy as he reached out to take the glass. The sofa groaned and sagged disturbingly as Charles leaned over its edge. Their fingers brushed as the glass passed between them, and Timothy noted the way Charles Perry’s eyes darkened, then narrowed into slits at the contact. Timothy too felt a kick and a hum, but he funneled the abstract attraction into his desire to maintain the high ground in this encounter. If Charles Perry wanted to make himself such an easy mark, Timothy would be happy to take whatever advantage of him he preferred.
Timothy let the corner of his mouth curl up briefly, let Charles see it, and reached back for his own glass and the decanter from the table. He aimed for the other end of Charles’s sofa, gesturing to the empty space with the decanter before lifting his eyebrows in silent question.
He enjoyed the way Charles’s eyes went still darker. “Please.” He slid his feet back to make room—but not too much. He grinned and added, “Just be sure to bring the bottle.”
“By all means.” The sofa groaned again as Timothy sat down; then as he slid his foot along the back, behind Charles’s half-stretched leg, a sharp pop heralded the demise of one of the springs. It was sticking out of the back cushion, looking to be digging into Charles’s side, but if Charles felt it, he didn’t seem to mind.
Timothy drew his other foot onto the couch, tucked it beneath his outstretched leg, and leaned back against the arm. “Tell me about Smith.”
The look of drunken contentment on Charles’s face evaporated, replaced by an anger that made Timothy worry he had moved too quickly. He waited, tense, as Charles lifted his glass.
“You want to know about Smith?” Charles said this to the brandy, staring into it, swirling the glas
s as he spoke. “Well, what would you like to hear first? That he’s psychotic? That he has a shriveled pea for a soul?” His expression turned haunted, and he spoke the next in a whisper. “He’s a monster. Don’t go near him. You’ll never be sorrier if you tangle with him.”
“Then why are you with him?” Timothy realized he was speaking too sharply and forced himself to calm. He took a drink, a small one, thinking the drug might ease his tension. “If he’s such a nightmare, why are you his accomplice?”
Charles curled his lip at him. “Accomplice. Don’t be so stupid. Do I look like an accomplice?” When Timothy didn’t answer, he threw his hands wide, spilling a great deal of his drink over the back of the sofa. “Does this look like an accomplice? Does it?” He snorted a laugh and lowered his arms. “No, it does not. It looks like a patsy, is what. An idiot. I am Smith’s idiot, and he uses me however he pleases.” He shivered, drawing the glass tight against his chest, staring into its depths again. “I’m with him because he tricked me into consigning myself to him, and now I can’t leave until he’s finished with me.”
Timothy remembered the way it had felt to be under the alchemist’s compulsion, and he knew both empathy and new wariness. “If you are enchanted to remain with him, how are you here now?”
This induced another grin, which, with his head still bowed over his glass, made Charles look delightfully wicked. “You knocked him unconscious. It seems to have dulled things for the moment. And Madeline did something, I think.” He glanced up at the ceiling, looking anxious but resigned. “What he has on me is deeper and nastier than what he did to you. I can’t explain it much because I don’t understand. He said he was going to take my power from me through sex magic, and I thought it was a joke because I’m no magician, and how could sex do that? But when he—” Charles cut himself off, staring with dull eyes into the hearth. “It hurts,” he whispered. “Like nothing I can describe. It’s as if he’s taking pieces of me in strips, over and over again, and with an act that should be nothing but pleasure. I keep waiting for him to run out, for the next spell to be the last, and then I will be dead and free, but it just keeps on going, worse every time.”
The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Page 17