The Queen's Necklace

by Teresa Edgerton

  “These are dangerous ideas. Very dangerous indeed. I wonder how Mr. Guilian comes by them?”

  Jarred shrugged. “I suppose he gets them from you, at least indirectly. You are the one who taught us both to question everything. Perhaps you taught Luke even better than you knew.”

  “But what of this journey he is planning to make, this tour of the continent? And he actually talks now of publishing his book: A Great History of the World, Refuting Everything. The very title so exceedingly provocative! I cannot think any good will come of it.”

  The king put a friendly hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You have a good heart, Francis. But only consider this: I have never seen Luke hold fast to a declared purpose in my entire life. I have a strong notion that whatever he intends to say in his book at the beginning, he’ll end up refuting no one so much as himself.”

  “But while he is travelling from place to place, living among strangers, asking so many ill-advised questions—I cannot help thinking he will prove a danger to himself, once he leaves Winterscar and your protection.”

  “My dear old friend,” said the king, “that is precisely the reason I have encouraged him to go.”

  The philosopher gave a violent start. “To put him into danger? Surely Your Majesty cannot possibly mean—”

  “No, no,” Jarred replied soothingly. “Nothing of the sort. But to teach Luke what it really takes for a man to make his way in the world. It was a great mistake, if you stop to think about it, when my father decided we should be reared together and Luke brought up like a young prince—but with none of the responsibilities. Secure in my favor and friendship, he can do as he likes, say what he pleases, create no end of a stir with his wild theories, and never have to consider the consequences. I hardly think he knows there could be consequences.”

  The philosopher gave a mournful shake of his head. “I cannot argue with anything you say. But I fail to see—”

  The king began to wander around the room, picking up bits of clockwork and giving them a cursory examination, then putting them down again with an impatient gesture. “Luke has always fancied himself the Champion of the Common Man, though he has no more idea than I do how the common man really thinks and feels. He has pursued no career, not even those a gentleman might, as diplomat, military man, or academic. As a result, he simply does not know what it means to be forced to compromise or to regulate his impulses. He never does regulate his impulses—except, occasionally, according to the promptings of his own generous nature.”

  “All this is true. But how, Your Majesty, can any of this be mended at this late date?”

  “Perhaps it can’t be,” said the king with a sigh. He touched a hidden spring on an amber and ivory casket; a tiny door opened in one side and a little golden clockwork serpent slid out and glided across the table, flickering a tiny red tongue. “Yet I still hope, with some broadening of his experience, that Luke may yet come close to becoming the man he might—nay, the man he ought to be. A man with so many inherent gifts and graces, so much could be made of him. So I encourage him to make this journey, to travel to places where no one knows him, to learn first-hand what it is like to be, if not a common laboring man, at least an ordinary private gentleman.”

  Jarred turned back to the philosopher with a wry smile. “In the end, I suppose, I hope he will gain—wisdom, which is the one great thing that he lacks.”

  “Indeed, I hope that he may gain wisdom,” said Purcell, though he appeared to doubt the thing was even possible.

  In happier days, the first dance had always belonged to Jarred and Zelene. Now that she was gone, it was up to him to choose another partner. But at this first ball since her death, he simply did not have the heart to lead out anyone else, and the idea of so many expectant faces turning his way as every female in the room waited to be chosen, their visible disappointment when they learned he was not dancing, was more than Jarred could bear. For that reason he had given the order, two days before, that his guests should begin the ball without him.

  When the king finally arrived in the ballroom, the musicians were playing and the dance floor was already crowded with elegant men and women engaged in a stately minuet. Candlelight shimmered on pale rose silks, embroidered white satins, and tissue of silver and gold. And yet, Jarred thought as he paused on the threshold, they were dancing their measure, these dainty modern ladies and gentleman, on the very same white marble floor where (if history was truthful and Lucius mistaken) the last Goblin empress and the ladies of her court, ponderous in their wide farthingales and immense cartwheel ruffs, had danced their wild galliards and voltas.

  Thinking of Luke, the king’s eyes passed quickly over the ballroom, seeking him out. There he was, fresh from the hands of his barber and valet, unusually resplendent in claret-colored satin and antique bone lace, his dark hair tied back with a crimson bow. He was dancing with—

  Jarred felt his mouth go suddenly dry, his heart begin to thump in his chest. He shook his head to clear it, wondering what could have possibly come over him. Surely not a glimpse of the unknown girl in pearl-grey satin who was dancing with Luke. And yet—no, he was sure they had never met. Though she was not precisely beautiful, there was something deeply appealing about her heart-shaped face, which he should have remembered, and as for those dark, dark eyes—

  Without moving from the arched doorway, he signaled to his major-domo, who immediately wove a silent and unobtrusive path across the dance floor. “Who is the lady, the pale girl in the ash-colored gown, dancing with Mr. Guilian?”

  “No one seems to know, Your Majesty. Indeed, it is what everyone seems to be talking about. We have just been waiting for you to arrive and tell us what ought to be done; not wishing to commit any discourtesy, should she prove to be the wife or daughter of some foreign dignitary. But if you wish her escorted out—”

  “No. Let her stay for a time at least. A touch of mystery might—enliven this evening.”

  No lady’s maid or seamstress dressed up in her mistress’s finery could possibly feign that dainty air of hauteur. Or could she? Jarred moved toward the dais and took a seat in one of the two rose brocade chairs between the silver lions.

  As always, he was uncomfortably aware of the empty seat on his right. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the whisper of Zelene’s pale silken skirts, smell the faint, elusive scent of her perfume. But if he closed his eyes, when he opened them again the disappointment would be too sharp, too painful.

  Shaking off these melancholy reflections, Jarred allowed his gaze to wander across the ballroom, and again his attention was caught by the girl in the grey gown and cobweb lace.

  She was standing alone at the far end of the long room, because the music had stopped and Luke had deserted her. If she had come in with a proper chaperone, surely this was the moment for some solicitous female to appear and lend the girl countenance, yet nobody even moved in her direction.

  But how extraordinary, Jarred thought, for such a very young lady to come in without an escort. Particularly wearing a fortune in diamonds. They sparkled in her powdered hair, on the bracelet she wore on one slender white arm, even on the high heels of her brocade slippers.

  Without any conscious volition, he left his chair on the dais and crossed the ballroom. The girl tilted her head up at his approach, rewarded him with a dazzling smile.

  “With your leave, this next dance is mine,” he heard himself murmur.

  She lowered her eyes and, without a word, allowed Jarred to lead her out to the center of the dance floor.

  “So now Jarred is dancing with the fair unknown,” drawled a lazy voice.

  A portly figure in cherry-colored velvet swam on the fringes of Luke’s vision. He turned to find that Jarred’s uncle, Lord Hugo Sackville, had joined him at the edge of the ballroom, under a stained-glass window painted with the Walburg swans and lilies. “Quite a little beauty and so lavishly dressed. Now, I wonder who is keeping her? And who, among this brilliant company, is hiding his chagrin
at the sight of the little baggage putting herself on display?”

  “Do you think she is—a beauty, I mean?” Lucius ignored the nastier part of Lord Hugo’s speech; the man was inclined to be vulgar, and Luke never liked to encourage him. “I suppose she is, if you admire the type. If you’re not put off by that sharp little chin and the generally vixenish look to the face.”

  “If you are, then why did you ask her to dance?”

  Lucius was not quite certain, as he indicated with a characteristic shrug. “Curiosity, most likely. My fatal flaw. Like everyone else, I wanted to know who she is.”

  “And did you find out?” Lord Hugo reached into a waistcoat pocket, brought out a gold snuffbox set with rubies and a large cameo, and flicked it open.

  “No, I did not.” With a slight shake of his head, Luke declined the offer of perfumed tobacco. “It was an odd conversation, now that I think of it. For all she was so evasive about who she was and where she had come from, she was impertinent enough to ask about me. And when I told her that Jarred and I were second cousins, she gave me such a look out of those black eyes of hers—”

  “Yes,” prompted the royal uncle, taking a pinch of snuff for himself before snapping the box shut.

  “It was only a passing fancy. I thought to myself: This must be how a corpse feels, being measured for his shroud.”

  Lord Hugo gave an uneasy shout of laughter. “You’ll be the death of me yet, young Guilian, you and your extraordinary notions. But tell me, dear boy, did you chance to mention that you were going abroad, that you’d be on your way to Kjellmark when the light returns in a few more weeks?”

  “Yes, I did,” answered Luke with a puzzled frown. “Though I can’t tell you why I was so absolutely eager to tell her what she wanted to know!”

  Going through the figures of the dance, breathing in the heavy scent of the musk and orris root his partner had mixed with the rice flour that powdered her hair, King Jarred felt increasingly baffled by his own reactions to the mysterious young woman. When he first took her cold hand in his, he had felt a deep shudder of revulsion, but now he was gripped by a powerful attraction, an urgent need as unexpected as it was embarrassing. No woman had attracted him at all since Zelene’s death, and yet here he was: not merely aroused by this girl, but beginning to feel possessive, hungry, obsessed. It felt like betrayal.

  To make matters worse, every time that he tore his eyes away from her, he became aware of a discomforting distortion in his vision: the marble pillars holding up the painted ceiling began to tilt alarmingly; the long windows and the silver gilt mirrors lining the room went out of square and seemed to hang crookedly; even the faces of the dancers to either side blurred and elongated. Only when he brought himself to look directly into her face did everything else settle back into its proper size and proportion. Somewhere at the back of his mind, the image of poor old King Izaiah in the madhouse pricked at him incessantly.

  Am I going mad? The question occurred to him again and again, yet he was desperately determined not to believe it. He was only reacting to the heat of the crowded ballroom, the intoxicating scent of the girl’s perfume. To cover his confusion, he tried to make conversation.

  “Do I know you—mademoiselle?”

  Though it had not yet been established that she came in with some foreign dignitary, how else to explain that uncanny something about her, the occasional odd inflection when she spoke, the merest hint of a lisp that he found so fascinating? He had heard that accent before, or one very like it, when travelling in the south many years before.

  “Did we meet here in Tarnburgh—or somewhere abroad? But no, that’s impossible. You must have been still in the nursery when Francis and I were touring the continent.” Whenever their fingers touched in the course of the dance, a delicious shiver passed over his skin.

  “Surely that would be for Your Majesty to say. I wouldn’t presume to claim an acquaintance.” She lowered her eyes demurely, but a smile played about the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps I merely remind you of someone. I have been told I am very like your late—” She broke off with a faint blush, as though suddenly conscious of an error in taste.

  Jarred tried to see it. He tried very hard to trace a resemblance to his beautiful Zelene in that sharp little face, since that would explain the attraction. But there was no similarity beyond her size and her coloring, and the coincidental choice of the color of her gown.

  “You are certainly very lovely. But that doesn’t seem to be it.”

  The music stopped and she curtsied very low, going down almost to the floor in a welter of grey taffeta and rustling petticoats. “If we might be alone for a moment. I will show you something which may explain everything.”

  Why he should be so quick to oblige, he did not know. Keeping his grip on her hand, he led her into a curtained alcove between two long mirrors. With his free hand, he drew the heavy curtains of gold brocade together behind them.

  “I don’t even know your name,” he said with an embarrassed laugh.

  He could hear the sudden buzz of comment out in the ballroom, the flurry of startled speculation. But let them wonder and speculate, said a new voice in his mind. I may be a widower, but I’m not the one who is dead and buried. And again he was shocked at his own disloyalty.

  Somehow, her hand slid out of his grip. “My name is Ys, Your Majesty. You will not find it familiar, but perhaps you recognize this.” She drew a string of—pearls?—out of her bosom and held the necklace invitingly before him. Something that looked like a heart cut out of ice glowed in her palm.

  “Perhaps I do,” said Jarred, reaching out. Viewed so close, he could see the necklace was made up of polished white stones, as lustrous as pearls, but lit with a cold internal fire. And he had handled something like them before, certainly, but the harder he tried to remember, the harder it became for him to think at all. The fire of the milky stones was burning him in places he had not been touched in a long time, creating in him a craving, a deep body hunger that—

  “Look into the crystal heart,” said Ys. And mindlessly, Jarred did as she told him.

  Once he did so, he could not turn his gaze elsewhere. He felt a curious sensation at the base of his spine; every nerve in his body was thrumming like a lute. There was a voice speaking inside his head, the same voice which had prompted him a while before, so softly he had mistaken it, then, for a mere echo of his own thoughts, his own desires. But now it was speaking with a penetrating clarity which was like her voice, though with a strange quality infinitely sweeter. It was offering him the most alluring blandishments, promising him the most impossible pleasures, if he did what it said, if he did everything it wanted him to do. There was an edge to that sweetness which made him distrust it, which made him try to resist it, but with every struggle of his, the sweetness of that voice shivered along his nerves in a way that was half pleasurable, half painful. In the end, he knew that he had no choice but to obey.

  As soon as he acknowledged this, the voice grew quieter, its tone became nearly matter-of-fact. No longer alluring, no longer hurting him, it simply told him what he must do.

  So Jarred listened. As the voice continued to speak, a series of vivid pictures appeared in his mind and began to spin through his brain, faster and faster.

  “Do you understand? Will you do as I told you?” The words, when at last she spoke out loud, sounded harsh in his ears.

  “Yes.” Once the promise was made, he discovered that he could shift his gaze. Yet he was shaken and confused; there was a deep sense of dissatisfaction, a baffled craving, as though something long desired had been denied him. What that something was, he did not know. Everything that had happened in the last few minutes was rapidly receding from his conscious memory.

  Ys reached out, and wordlessly took back the necklace, and slipped it back inside the front of her gown.

  “Then you may kiss me,” she said, turning up her face, which glowed faintly pearlescent in the candlelit alcove.

  Tentatively,
reluctantly, Jarred bent forward and touched his lips to hers. And that kiss was longer, sweeter, colder, and more terrifying in its way, than anything he had ever experienced before.

  6

  Hawkesbridge, Mountfalcon—

  4 Niviôse, 6538

  The hour was well past midnight, but the tavern known as the Leviathan was alive with clandestine activity. In the taproom, two highwaymen divided their booty; in a private parlor, someone plotted an assassination; in one of the chambers above, a young man of good family but diminished fortune sat down to drink himself to death with gin and wormwood.

  In Sir Bastian’s room Lilliana woke with a start. She had been dozing in a ladderback chair beside her patient’s bed, when someone rapped sharply on the door. Jumping to her feet, she hurried across the room.

  “Who is there?”

  “If you please, ma’am, you be needed mortal bad on t’floor up above.” It was the voice of one of the Leviathan barmaids, and she sounded agitated. Lili opened the door a cautious few inches, saw that the thin, shabby female figure was the only one standing in the dark corridor, and opened the door a tiny bit wider. “We been told you and your aunt be doctors.”

  Lili’s heart sank. It seemed that her fumigations and her other precautions had not been sufficient; the Black Bile Fever had claimed another victim. Her hand went instinctively to the tiny mousefoot soaked in camphor that she wore in a satin bag between her corset and her gown. “Someone is ill?”

  “No, ma’am, not ill. There be a man bleeding to death near t’steps up above.”

  Lili hesitated. What was really needed here was a surgeon, not a physician, someone skilled in the treatment of wounds and broken bones. But there would be no time to send for anyone now. “I will come at once.”

  Stepping out into the corridor, Lili closed the door softly behind her. She followed the barmaid down the dark passage to the stairwell and there she went ahead.