The Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

  “It’s just that I don’t trust Lady Earthwygg,” Kyra said dryly. She caught Alix’s wrist again; the pulse was normal. The deeper, secondary pulse, more guessed than felt, was normal, too. No trace of the imbalance that poison would bring.

  “Lady—”

  “Or Esmin. I wouldn’t put it past either one of them to dose your tea cakes with something that would...” She hesitated fractionally, then went on, “would have you throwing up on your shoe buckles for two days so they could have one last try at getting Spenson away from you.” And when Alix stared at her incredulously, she went on. “Alix, Lady Earthwygg would do anything to get him for her daughter. Anything.”

  Alix made a soft little sound, half a sob, half a chuckle, and sank onto the edge of the bed where her apple-green flowered overdress lay in a softly gleaming pile. At her movement shadow glistened and prickled on the rocaille beadwork of the crimson wedding dress in the corner, making it seem to move. In the candlelight the vivid silk looked black, like old blood. “No,” she said quietly. “No, it’s... ‘just love.’ I’ll get over it. Everybody does.”

  Nevertheless, Kyra descended two flights of dark and twisting back stairs to the kitchen quarters and found the sky-blue porcelain cups and plates used for “company” teas. They had been washed already and reposed on their usual shelf in the white-painted butler’s pantry; even touching them, willing her mind deep into the delicate, fine-grained texture of the ceramic itself, Kyra could feel no trace of either poison or the magic of ill.

  There’s no help for it, Kyra thought despairingly. I’ll have to search the place from top to bottom.

  In the kitchen behind her the bustle of supper was commencing, the white and gold fish-shaped tureen being loaded with its attendant dishes into the dumbwaiter by Joblin while Algeron assembled new city walls and palace turrets of gingerbread for another wedding cake. He would, Kyra guessed, be most of the night in the construction of this marvel, for Joblin was never a man to duplicate his effort; he would feel his honor impugned if this second cake were not five times more splendid than the first. The long table down the center of the room was three-quarters taken with the shells of tartlets and pies, into which the two trembling scullions and Neb Wishrom’s assistant cook were smoothing custards, scents of ginger and vanilla warring with the thicker smells of garlic, beef, and lime in the heavy air.

  They’ll be all night, Kyra thought, her heart sinking. And all day tomorrow... I’ll never get the place searched. Whoever was paid to place a sign of evil in this house could have put it anywhere. And I’ll still have to find who did the paying.

  She fingered the papers in her pocket. Even knowing the names of the dog wizards who might have placed death-marks would help when she finally found the thing. If she found the thing.

  Under the glare of a dozen whale-oil lamps she watched Algeron’s profile, bent above the fragile pink fretwork of a turret cap, and thought of Alix weeping in her room two floors above. The golden light gleamed on a tear of his own; he put down the paper icing cone quickly but not quickly enough and had to fetch a sable brush, such as he would later use for the detailing of colors, to remove the drop from among the candy roses into which it had fallen like a bead of unlucky rain.

  Kyra shook her head, collected two rolls and some cheese from the pantry, and stole out through the drying room, where only empty wine cups and the remains of stale cake showed where the musicians had been practicing. She tripped over the garlands piled there awaiting the departure of the supper guests, but no one in the kitchen noticed her in any case.

  “Miss Peldyrin?”

  At the sound of Spenson’s voice she stopped on the second-floor gallery. He detached himself from the end of the group proceeding into the dining room and strode back to where she stood at the top of the stair, moving with the sure strength of a man walking the deck of his own ship.

  “Is that for your sister?”

  Kyra managed a wry grin and shook her head. It was very good to see him after the exhaustion of a frustrating afternoon. “For me, I’m afraid. Alix said she didn’t want anything, though I expect Mother will send her up a tray later.” In the glow of the gallery lamps Spenson’s sandy hair seemed almost golden; from the rough brown tweeds and regrettable catskin waistcoat he’d had on that morning he’d changed into his bottle-green suit again and looked uncomfortable and slightly untidy. Kyra fought the urge to set down her makeshift meal and repair his cravat.

  “I think Father will be just as pleased with my absence from the dining room, and personally, I’m ecstatic about it.”

  His eyes lost their stolidness and began to twinkle. “You didn’t happen to bring enough of that for two, did you? We could sit on the back stairs. Would it be against your principles to put spells around us to keep us from being seen by that lot in there?”

  Kyra shook her head with a grin. “I’m afraid it’s your destiny to suffer. Though I’m sure Uncle Murdwym’s advice on how to fit and command a trading fleet will be of inestimable value to you.”

  “About as much value as your esteemed Cousin Wyrdlees’ advice on how he cures his boils, which he gave me, gratis, without my asking him at all.”

  “Generous of him,” Kyra approved with a gracious nod.

  “Though Angelmuffin did finally bite your cousin Pinny. I’m pleased to say her mother told her it served her right.”

  “I always did approve of Plennin’s wife, whatever her name is. For one thing, she serves to make him visible, like a red bow tied round a sheep’s neck to find him again in a herd. Do you have appalling relatives as well, Master Spenson?”

  He laughed, the ruby in his cravat pin—absolutely the wrong thing to wear with that coat even if it was the size of a melon seed—glinting in the branched light of the candles nearby. “Battalions. Well, you’ve met my father. You’ll see the rest of them at the church tomorrow morning.” He almost seemed to stumble on the words, and the old expression—or lack of expression—returned.

  “Spenson,” Kyra said hesitantly, and he held up a hand.

  “Spens,” he said. “We’re going to be related.”

  “Spens... this marriage isn’t easy on her, you know. I mean, it never is. I mean, she barely knows you.” She floundered, feeling suddenly like a complete fool, not knowing what she wanted to say, something that had rarely happened to her in her entire sharp-tongued life. And what, she wondered, could she say? That Alix was crying her eyes out upstairs and there was an absolutely penniless and unsuitable young man baking his heart like a carnival coin into the wedding cake down below? That she still harbored, deep in the back of her mind, the fear that her sister would cut her own wrists in a fit of incomprehensible eighteen-year-old despair?

  Spenson was silent for some time. Two days earlier Kyra would have thought that that silence betokened either rejection or complete incomprehension of what she had said; now she understood that this man was a man who chose his words carefully to make sure they truly expressed his thoughts. He just used fewer than Algeron did.

  “No,” he said at last. “She barely knows me. I’ve been at sea since she learned to walk.” He stood for a time, looking aside and down, the lights from the hall below casting upside-down shadows on the sudden harshness of his face.

  “We’ll both be learning a new thing,” he went on slowly. “I can’t stay a ship’s captain all my life; it’s high time I returned to learn the land side of the business, to take an interest in what will be mine. To find a wife and set up a household. To father heirs to follow me. I know that.”

  His breath came in a hard sigh, and the bright blue eyes returned to hers. “Are you asking if I’ll be kind?”

  She wasn’t but could not phrase into words all that she wanted to ask. For a time she only stood, looking across into his face, her own habitual glibness defeating her. She could say anything and everything, she realized, except what she truly felt. In that, this quiet man seemed to have the better of her.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll
be kind.”

  Kyra looked away, fumbled at the bread she carried, and managed to drop one roll; he caught it neatly, one-handed, and the acrobatic deftness seemed to break the tension between them. She smiled. “You’re getting very good at that.”

  “I’m getting plenty of practice.” He smiled back. Then, with a sudden resurgence of his old awkwardness, he went on. “If you’ll be speaking with Alix...”

  “She’ll not be speaking with Alix.”

  Kyra’s head came up; beyond Spenson’s shoulder she could see her father, framed in the lamplit brightness of the dining-room door. The brown velvet coat skirts belled behind him as he strode down the gallery, and his mouth had a grim set to it. “Master Spenson.” He inclined his head to his guest in a clear gesture of dismissal. “I’ll see you in a few moments in the dining room.”

  Spenson looked as if he would speak, his temper flaring like blue fire in his eyes. Then he inclined his head in return and strode quickly away. In another man’s house there was little he could do.

  “And what’s that?” Gordam nodded at the rolls and cheese in Kyra’s hands. “Don’t you dine among your family like a civilized woman?”

  “I was simply endeavoring to respect your oft-repeated wish to have people forget me,” Kyra replied silkily. “I’m sure you wouldn’t wish me to impose myself on dear Uncle Murdwym and Cousin Wyrdlees.”

  Balked, he hesitated a moment, then went on. “And just as well. Not only do you have the Witchfinders watching this house as if we’re harboring a criminal, but now your mother tells me she’s heard the rumor running around that I paid you—paid you like a dog wizard!—to cast a glamour on Spenson in the first place to get him to consent to this match!”

  “Heavens,” Kyra murmured, and pushed a stray tendril of hair back into place. “My guess is that rumor is only ‘running around’ Lady Earthwygg’s elegant patrician mouth. Considering that she offered me money only this morning to do exactly that in favor of her daughter, the story can’t have gotten far.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Shadow outlined with sudden sharpness the bulge of a vein in his temple, just beneath the thinning wisps of his reddish hair. “It doesn’t matter how many people are saying it! From that rumor it’s a short step to saying that you and I have been in communication for years, that you’ve been aiding and assisting me in all my business ventures.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. Any of your business friends will know exactly how long it takes to get a letter as far as Lastower, let alone out to the Citadel, if and when they can find a messenger willing to go. If it’s the Witchfinders you’re worried about, their own Magic Office could tell them the impossibility of communication by scrying-crystal with a nonmage like you.”

  “And yet here you are in my house, on the very eve of the wedding!”

  He fell momentarily silent as the petite, dark-haired maid emerged squeaking from the back stairs and skidded to a halt at the sight of him, her hair tumbled about her shoulders; she was hastily straightening her bodice when the mandolin player came springing out on her heels. With elaborate casualness the two of them strolled off in opposite directions along the gallery.

  Gordam turned back to his elder daughter with a snort. “In my house,” he went on, “while my business languishes, a hundred and forty crowns’ worth of flowers rots in the midden, my servants gorge themselves on three hundred crowns’ worth of cake, sweetmeats, and imported southern raspberries, and those lute strumming Senterwing savages cover every maid in the place!”

  Kyra removed a fleck of invisible lint from the caramel satin of her bodice. “Well, under the circumstances, even Lady Earthwygg can scarcely accuse me of having come to lay spells of good fortune on your business. Bid Aunt Sethwit hello for me and tell her I’ll see her, Aunt Hoppina, and Leppice at the ritual bath in the morning.” She turned and started up the stairs.

  “I curse the day when I heeded your demand to be tutored by Tibbeth of Hale!” His harsh, despairing voice echoed in the narrow confines of the ascending stair. “All my troubles stemmed from that demand!”

  Kyra stiffened in her tracks, half turning to look at him through the chestnut tangle of her hair. “It wasn’t a demand, Father,” she said softly. “It was a plea.” And she walked up the stair and made her way back to the yellow room.

  Chapter XI

  IT WAS A PLEA.

  And her father had said no.

  Wrapped in Alix’s fluffy robe, Kyra lay for a long time on the yellow room’s high, old-fashioned bed, staring once more into the ascending chimney of trompe l’oeil clouds on the ceiling as if she expected to see the Moon Fairy with her handfuls of sleep dust flitting among the painted putti and birds.

  Downstairs, she could hear the muted voices of the footmen, the soft scrapings and clunkings as they brought the long trestle tables in from the stable loft and assembled them, ready for tomorrow’s feast. Her ride in Blore Spenson’s gig over the jolting cobblestones of Upper Tollam Street seemed weeks ago; her visit to the Cheevy Street Baths, loosening her muscles in the antiquated marble tubs with the steam rising about her face, a memory from some previous lifetime. Lady Earthwygg... poison... Hestie Pinktrees’ comfits and the smell of sausages and cheap perfume... Algeron shedding tears into the wedding cake...

  And nothing to show... nothing learned... nothing gained.

  All my troubles stemmed from that demand...

  It had been the last time she’d let her father see her cry.

  But having worked up the courage to finally ask, to finally step out of the column of red pain in which she lived, every hour when she was pretending to be what she once had been—her father’s clever helper with the books and the business, the designer of increasingly outrageous dresses and jewelry, the caustic arbiter of social nuance for the amusement of her friends—she could no longer have the refuge of his ignorance.

  She’d admitted she was mageborn. There was no going back from that.

  “I want you to forget this nonsense,” he’d stormed at her toward the end of that stomach-twisting, throat-burning interview in the book room. “It won’t do, Kyra. You can see that it won’t do. People will find out. People always find out things like that. Good God, people may suspect already if they’ve seen you going to that man’s house in the afternoons. How could you deceive your mother and me the way you have?”

  But he couldn’t forget. He hadn’t asked her to help him with the bookwork that evening or the next. She’d lain in her room and heard his step hesitate on the gallery, then pass by. And the omission had lodged in her stomach like a lump of uncooked bread, leaden and indigestible, a nausea that remained with her for days; a silence between them that flooded her eyes with heat and her throat with pain but that neither of them could break.

  Once he’d opened the door of her room and come in unannounced, saying brusquely, “You have to understand my position. You’re a businesswoman, Kyra; you understand that no other businessman in the city, in the Realm, is going to trust us if you become a wizard! Let alone what Lord Earthwygg will do. The Court’s absolutely against wizardry, and without his backing, we’d certainly lose the charity hospitals contract and probably the Imperial Ballet School and the barracks as well! I’ve worked for thirty years to build our reputation. I can’t let you destroy it on a whim. It’s your future, too.”

  “I didn’t ask for it!” she cried desperately. In the past year she had found that Tibbeth was right: During those times when, knowing all that her father was telling her now, she had tried to put her studies aside, the pain had only grown worse. It was pain such as she’d never known, a pain of desiring, of yearning, of half guessing, half knowing what that unknown life could be, a pain she hadn’t even guessed human beings were capable of experiencing.

  “Oh, nonsense, girl; you asked for it only the other day! I’m not trying to be hard-hearted,” he went oh in a more kindly tone. “But you just aren’t thinking of what this will mean for you. And what I’m going to say to Dutton Droon abo
ut your marriage negotiations...”

  “I didn’t want to be born this way!” she pleaded. “But I am, and I have to follow what I am!”

  He sighed. “Kyra,” he said gently, “men and women are born with free souls and free minds. We can choose what we will be, choose which paths we wish to follow. Yes, I know it’s difficult. I know you want this now, but you’re young.”

  “It isn’t being young!” She half raised herself from the bed where she had lain—it sometimes felt—for all of those two days, though she knew objectively that she’d been downstairs for meals and had gone walking with her mother and even done a little shopping, all activities seen, as if through glass, through the feverish, alternating colors of yearning for the unknown new life and a desperate yearning for the cool peace of the old. “It isn’t want! It’s need, Father.”

  He said nothing, but in his eyes she could see him thinking in sentences that started Girls your age...

  Sometimes she thought she was going to die of the pain. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep from taking a fork or a hairpin and stabbing it repeatedly into the flesh of her hands and arms, though she didn’t know exactly why she wanted to do that or what she fantasized it might accomplish. Sometimes she was able to talk to Alix, or read books, or design dresses as if it were all two weeks ago and everything was fine.

  She hadn’t realized she’d stopped eating until her mother began pleading with her to do so. Then she threw most of it up.

  Her father shouted at her for being willful while she lay on her bed with her face turned toward the windows, watching the pigeons wheeling over the gray roof tiles against the cloud-piled sky. Later Alix came in and lay down in the bed beside her, wrapping Kyra’s bony, growing limbs with her own soft coltish ones, holding her close and crying.