by Prue Batten
Taking a step back he launched them into the air and they descended down, down to land as gently as a pair of pigeon feathers on the roof next to Gallivant. The hob took Adelina’s hand and led her to sit on a pile of stacked roof-tiles to rest her weary legs and then turned to Phelim to mutter tersely. ‘I should think so too!’
‘Better than dragging her from the depths of the canal,’ Phelim responded with a flash of white teeth in the gloom.
‘Like I said, I should think so. How much further?’ Gallivant chafed to get Adelina safe - every now and then a tiny thought at what had befallen her crept into his mind and floodwalls would begin to tumble so that he must forcibly drag his mind back to the job at hand. My life has never been so hard. He sighed. But would he go back, would he change it? He looked at the embroiderer sitting fatigued. No, never! Adelina had taught him to grow. Fancy that, a mortal teaching me something. He had to return the favour - he would love her and care for her as long as she needed him, it’s what one did.
He cleared his throat as Phelim replied. ‘Not far. Look, here’s an iron stair down the wall and a pontoon. And,’ he chuckled, ‘a gondola. How fortuitous.’
How Faeran, thought the hob.
They scrambled themselves and the woman down the stair and piled into the craft, Adelina subsiding like pricked balloon. Gallivant whispered to Phelim. ‘She’s almost at her end, we need to hurry.’
But the half-time mortal didn’t need to be told as the black sky began to lighten in the east. He poled the craft down the canal and round the bend to another mooring where they all jumped out and hurried down alleys and over bridges until they saw the welcoming glassed doors of the Esperia. Adelina stopped and grasped the doorframe with fingers that were white. With a small sigh she began to fold, her legs crumpling.
‘Adelina. No.’ Gallivant jumped to her side but before he could do anything, Phelim had scooped her up and pulled her to his chest as they broached the entrance. He leaped up the staircase, the hob clipping behind, to enter the room and lie Adelina on the bed.
The hob jumped from one side to the other. ‘Will she be better, will she lose the baby?’
‘Gallivant, be quiet.’ Phelim growled wishing Ebba were here. Please Aine, let Ebba’s thoughts guide me to help this woman. He laid his hand inches above her shorn curls and moved it in a smooth sweep over the length of her body. Whilst he had nothing of his stepmother’s skill, surely he could he help, even a little? He moved his hand back again and an unknown Faeran charm, whispered so as none could hear, came from his lips and dropped down upon the woman who had been so brutalised. She lay comatose but with evenly spaced breaths and her face had softened, showing no stress and strain. He could only hope she slept.
‘We need to rest.’ He poured a goblet overflowing with wine and threw it back, hoping it would settle his mind. Offering the hob one, he continued, ‘Gallivant, use the bed and I shall use the chaise.’ He lay down in his clothes, closing his eyes, ignoring the hob who wanted to disembowel all that had happened. He wanted peace. He wanted to digest the day in his own way and think about its effect on his own sensibilities.
He thought about Veniche where his duty would end. Since he had entered the precinct, it seemed bereft of Others and yet this place with a Gate. Where was the support the swan-maid had said would be waiting? He rolled over, hearing the hob snoring from one bed and gentle breathing from the other. The chamois bag rolled with him and rested against his ribs.
Aine, how could he not have registered it? The bag was comfortably warm. And now he thought on it, it had been warm since they had released Adelina from her attic prison. Is Adelina as important to them as their return to the world of Faeran? He glanced at her divine face as she slept. He felt himself drawn to her, to her courage, her spirit. Washed out light glanced off the rounded planes of her cheeks and her lips were slightly open. Her pregnant breasts rose and fell as she sighed. Is it wrong to feel drawn to a woman who had been through such trauma, practically a widow and with child?
He held the chamois bag gently in his broad hands and the warmth seeped into his fingers, comforting him and he slept as the third and final Day of the Dark emerged from its wet, night time shroud.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Severine had kept herself occupied the previous day and evening. One of the bonuses of being a woman of fiscal power in a city like Veniche was that she was sought out frequently and with obsequious respect. She revelled in the position she held. She wandered the palazzo on a cloud on that second day, dreaming of her future, conscious of her own importance. Adelina frequently crossed her mind and she would think, Where are you, bitch? I have so much to tell you and I so want to put you in your place.
She wanted the woman to beg for her life, to kneel before her, to grab her hem like a supplicant, to cry. She laughed, that high pitched call that sounded like some hideous bird from the Goti high plains, the kind that sat on crags and swooped in to feed on carrion. Maybe a better punishment for the red headed whore would be a prison with a mirror so she could see herself aging and becoming mad; to suffer loneliness, to live with grievous memories and pain.
Her major domo entered the salon and coughed. ‘Madame, your bath is drawn and the maids have laid out your gown, the Libreria are sending a gondola at seven o’clock.’
‘Thank you, Hobarto. Tell Luther to come to the salon.’ She sat drinking her habitual wine and waited until Luther entered. She noticed a ruddy taint to his face, except for that loathsome scar which gleamed white as bone. But when he spoke his voice was as cool and controlled as ever. Was it drink or other habits that induced the florid hue? Ah, she didn’t want to know. ‘Luther, I am going to a dinner this evening at the Libreria. They have just taken possession of some remarkable Raji illuminated scripts. I want to see them and if they are something I should like to have then I shall talk to you further. They are sending a gondola and I don’t need you until tomorrow so you may have the evening for yourself.’
He inclined his ovoid head in what passed for deference.
‘One thing. The Traveller?’ She tapped nails against her glass goblet. ‘Has there been any sign yet?’
‘No Madame, I’m sorry, nothing. But I don’t think you should worry. She’ll be at the Gate tomorrow or somewhere close by, there’s no doubt. We shall snap her up.’ He lifted his fist and closed his fingers tight into a clenched bunch. ‘And then you will have all that you want.’ Severine’s delusions blossomed under Luther’s fertile words. ‘Madame, there will be none who can touch you. You will have all that you desire.’
‘I know,’ she whispered but then her eyes opened wide as she snapped out of her fantasy. ‘The robe, Luther, I need the robe far more than I need Adelina.’
‘But we know, Madame, don’t we, that one is dependent on the other. Leave it to me. Prepare for this evening’s engagement and I shall enjoy my night off because we have a big day tomorrow.’
He gentled her and led her to the door. She glanced at his reddened and glazed eyes and then walked up the sweeping stair to bathe and dress and once more show Venichese society why it was that she was so admired.
Luther watched her float away and then walked back into the salon, poured an overlarge measure of wine and seated himself on a padded couch that cushioned his tense body. Adrenalin flooded his muscles and nerves, washing any likely calm away. What he had done to Adelina today hadn’t quelled the desire, it had made it stronger and more rabid than ever and he knew the only way to control himself was to do two things - find another woman who could satisfy his lust and follow it with a stupendous drinking bout. If he did not then he was as like to kill Adelina the next time, even before Madame had seen her - a sure way to destroy his plans for the future, because Severine had promised him so much.
He sat quaffing wine, waiting for his muscles and nerve-endings to ease enough for him to seek a whorehouse somewhere. Some time later, he heard Madame leave. He placed the cut-glass goblet on the tray beside the empty bottle and walked on
steady legs to the hall, slipped on a black coat and closed the studded doors behind him.
With obsession or addiction, one’s contentment depends on frequent sorties to experience one’s desire. Severine imbibed that night and drifted home to sit in front of a mirror and gaze at herself, imagining the pleasure of looking the same at ninety three as at thirty three. She allowed the maid to brush her hair after hanging up the loathsome midnight gown she had been required to wear for the Dark.
Nevertheless, she mused, it had been a pleasant evening. All the better for seeing the manuscripts which were magnificent with their calligraphy and lavish illumination. Such colours: cobalt ground from azurite, vermilion ground from cinabar and the most regal one – ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli and all with copious accents of gold leaf. She craved the manuscripts for her own collection and would speak to Luther about arranging it. She smiled at herself and her maid noticed, commenting on her mistress’s evident happiness.
‘My life will change tomorrow night,’ Severine murmured, ‘change beyond imagining. I want you to dress my hair magnificently for the Ball. I want people to remember me. Have my gown and shoes been delivered?’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘And my mask?’
‘It is in your dressing room. Madame if I may say, the emerald green silk will become you and your mask with its peacock feathers is a perfect accompaniment. I brushed and steamed the black velvet damask coat so all is in readiness.’
Severine dismissed the maid and found as she shut the door that her fingers shook with anticipation. Damnation, she hoped she had drunk enough at dinner to sooth her for sleep. She hurried to her bedside cabinet and retrieved a tiny beaten silver box, spilling a small glass vial into her hands. It contained the strongest sedative her apothecary could devise - the same drug she had used on Adelina repeatedly at Mevagavinney. She sized up the powerful medic and tipped a couple of drops under her tongue before lying under her bedding to wait for sleep.
Luther had whored his way through a number of women and left them worse physically for the encounter, if richer. Then he had gone from one of the laguna taverns to another until his legs began to buckle and his words slurred. He paid a gondolier to pole him to the palazzo and pour him onto the landing and then he dragged himself to his room. Like Severine, he reached for drugs to render him unconscious until the next day. It was safer this way.
Neither of them heard the hob as he fell off the iron ladder onto the adjoining roof as two companions spirited the unfortunate Adelina away.
***
My saviours thought I was asleep on that little bed at Phelim’s tavern but I wasn’t, not immediately. The drapes were slightly ajar and as grey dawn light fingered its way into the room, I heard the sounds of dreams as my friends slept around me but I lay awake, thinking.
I lay on my side staring at the one called Phelim who slept on the chaise. As I marked as much as I could see of his high cheekbones and strongly etched eyebrows and mouth, I knew I stared at Liam’s longlost brother. It seems part of me knew this from the first moment I saw him at Ferry Crossing despite Gallivant’s best efforts to deny it. Phelim was broader than Liam and more contained, much less Faeran, but even so there was still that frisson. Anyway, I thought, what did it really matter? Liam was dead and I had so much more to deal with.
I knew the third Day of the Dark was approaching and with it my moment. What would I do? My hands wrapped my belly, cocooning it. It seems that my hands were attached to my belly perpetually and why not? This was my child I communed with and I wondered what it would want me to do. Avenge the death of its father, avenge those Faeran who may have loved it or would it want me to turn the other cheek? Yes, no, do it, don’t do it. I couldn’t make up a mind that swung from numbness to confusion like a pendulum.
Once again I had escaped from the clutches of Severine and Luther. With the assistance again of Others. My unborn babe and I had the eldritch of the world to thank for our safety. I could only imagine how hard it will be to break my promise to them. They saved my life twice, the life of my babe once. That is worth more than a promise, isn’t it?
I’m trying my hardest not to think of what Luther did. That I feel violated and unclean are feelings I must quash because there is so much more that is important - my baby, its future, my future.
You can seenow that the story begins to run rapidly to some form of conclusion. And to reach that, you must return this latest book to its place of concealment and move away from the tricorn hat of our groom to the petit point underskirt of the bride.
The skirt is white with a tracery of tiny scarlet climbing roses and I have welted the hem in silk. If you carefully unpick it from the silk of the stumpwork robe, you will find a white book opened flat - this is because I didn’t want it to be obvious or spoil the line of the underskirt.
So there are now only two such journals left, one concealed and one very obvious. Read on then dear friend, and we shall see what they all contain...
Chapter Thirty Nine
Midday had passed. Severine and Luther had each slept on unaware of the day drifting wetly by. Luther slept heavily and untroubled, safe and secure in the knowledge that in the early evening he would deliver what Madame had required for so long and would receive more than just rewards. Drunk and drugged, he slept with a cunning smile on his face.
Severine had no such smiles upon her own visage and tossed and turned with nightmare upon nightmare. Others plagued her - the seelie who would aid and assist mortals. She screamed and yelled in her dreams and they crowded around her as she ordered them to move, waving the ring in the air and threatening them with quick annihilation. They split apart from her like a fissure in the ground until only one man remained. He was elderly with white hair cut short against his head and his black coat blew around him in vast cracking folds in a welkin wind. She laughed uneasily - a Faeran no less. But he stood there to defy her as she held up the ring and he wiped his hand carelessly, carelessly, through the air. The ring split in two and fell from her fingers and she woke with dread in her belly, calling out hoarsely, ‘No!’
Sweat dripped from her forehead and gathered in damp lines underneath her arms and breasts. It was only a dream - too much rich food and wine and then the drugs. She threw off the bedding and dragged a fine shawl over the damp body as she went to draw the curtains away from the long casements. Nothing had changed - it poured outside. But, she thought through the turbid haze of her narcotics, something is different, what is it? And then she seized upon the fact - it is today, the third day of the Dark! The day everything changes. In an instant, the dread from the dream was washed away on an incoming tide of such euphoria she could not help clutching her arms across her body and spinning in a circle. The maid commented as she carried in a brunch tray, for the hour was now well past midday, that it was good to see Madame so excited about the Ball and Carnivale.
‘I’ll spend the rest of the day preparing. A massage, a scented bath, my hair washed and dressed and I shall leave at six. Make the arrangements for my conveyance will you, and tell Luther to attend me as soon as he has risen.’
Luther received his summons, as excited and filled to the brim with bubbles of anticipation as Severine. He walked into Madame’s chamber on light toes, eager to go to the room at the top to see her again, to have sex, then to deliver her to Madame with the whereabouts of the robe and then to take her away - his prize which he would use as oft as not until in the end some urge filled him to do to her what Madame wanted.
He looked forward to the Ball as Madame’s escort, there would be so many who had snubbed him in the past and who would now be licking his boots. Ah, how the tables turn.
‘Luther, good morning to you. Such a day.’
Severine’s excitement was fascinating to watch, he thought. That iced visage melted and she smiled and it was such a transformation. She was almost desirable - almost. But nothing like Adelina. Still, best pay attention, Severine’s destiny was his own.
&nbs
p; ‘So. Adelina?’
He thought for less than a second. ‘Nothing yet Madame, but it is odd. I have a feeling that within the afternoon I will have her.’ How true. ‘And then I will bring her to you and she will give you the robe on a platter.’
‘And this evening I will have any soul I want. Not just Lhiannon and her bag of pathetic souls. Do you know I almost don’t want them now - it’s enough they are dead, that they were punished. When I think on it I think a show of my power, by the syphoning of two more souls might be just what I should do. The Ca’ Specchio will go down in the history of Eirie.’
‘Have you thought Madame, how to find the Gate?’ Luther watched Severine’s reflection in her dressing mirror. She purred like a cat with a bowl of Trevallyn cream.
‘The Ca’ Specchio is renowned for its Hall of Mirrors, Luther. I think it’s a question merely of finding an Other at the Ball for they will be there, and following them to one of the mirrors. You’ll help, two pairs of eyes such as yours and mine won’t miss a thing.’ She laughed softly, a sigh of ecstasy. ‘Have you a coat and breeches for the ball?’
‘Indeed, Madame, I won’t disappoint you.’
‘Good, be ready to accompany me from the Director’s palace to the Ca’ Specchio. In between times go to the glassmaker’s, collect the paperweights and convey them back to my cabinets in the entrance hall. I leave you... no, I trust you to place them amongst the others. And I want you to arrange to relieve the Libreria of the illuminated scripts as planned and then Luther, tonight we shall enjoy ourselves. I doubt our lives will ever be the same again.’
Within half an hour, Luther had laid his orders for the securing of the manuscripts with those of the rough-cut henchmen he preferred for such a job and then he returned to the palazzo via the kitchen door, stepping across the courtyard with care as the continued torrents had made the cobbles as slick as ice. He had no intention of breaking limbs at such a crucial time.