The Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

  “Alix and Algeron have eloped,” she gasped as they plunged into the darkness of the garden. “Spens, they’re getting married!”

  “Halt, in the Regent’s name!” The voice came from the corner of the house, where the cobbled kitchen yard ran back toward the street, but Kyra’s mage-sighted eyes picked up dark forms by the black slit of the garden gate. “Two by the gate,” Kyra said softly as she guided Spens along the grass verge of the path at a run. Their feet made little sound, and the night, typically of Angelshand in the spring, was thickly overcast. “I can’t use magic...”

  “Don’t—you’ll never clear yourself if you do.”

  Footsteps crunched the gravel, then there was a dry, thrashing tangle of feet snaring in low hedges and rosebushes. Kyra heard a man swear; evidently the Inquisition’s sasenna lacked the mageborn vision in darkness. Spens swung the broom, and there was a satisfying crack, followed by gasps and curses; he grappled and scuffled with someone, first on gravel, then on grass, then in the thorns. Though not only common sense but every impulse inculcated by her training made the use of magic against another human being nearly impossible, Kyra had no qualms about using her mageborn senses against a man nearly blind in the pitch-black shadows. She bent the candle snuffer over the skull of one warrior when he lunged, clutching at her, and shoved the other, stumbling, off Spens with the broom. Spens finished the operation with an elbow across the man’s face, a boot in his groin, and a hard shove that sent him reeling into his advancing fellows while Spens and Kyra dove through the postern and into the stinking gloom of the alley beyond.

  “This way!” She caught Spenson’s sleeve and dragged him three steps right and through the gate to the Wishroms’ kitchen yard, which thankfully was still unlatched from the flute player’s earlier retreat. Instants later they heard the Witchfinders thunder up the alley. “And to think I threatened to skin that nice young man,” she muttered, leading Spens quickly to the cellar door, down the steps, through the drying room there, and up on the other side to the pantry. All the Wishroms’ servants were, of course, in Baynorth Square watching the excitement. No one opposed them as they passed through the downstairs offices and out a side door into Mouch Lane.

  “What now?” Spens asked as they calmly hailed a cab at the comer of Upper Tollam Road and rattled away from the scene of the crime.

  Looking across at him in the dim flashes of light through the cab windows from the oil lamps in these more elegant streets, Kyra saw that his eyes sparkled as they had in the Cherry Orchard when he’d spoken of pirate fights over breakfast. His face, sweat-streaked with exertion, had turned suddenly young.

  The cab was an old one, badly sprung and stinking of wine and tobacco; the jolting of its iron wheels over the cobblestones jarred Kyra breathless, so that she could barely speak.

  “We have to find Alix! Spens, they’ve eloped!”

  He blinked at her for a moment, nonplussed; then his eyebrows dove. “Eloped...”

  “The marks—the evil eyes—were on her shifts, probably the one she’s wearing and whatever she took with her. The laundry maid...”

  “How could they get there? Who... How do you know?”

  “I found them,” Kyra said, trying to call to mind what Tibbeth’s wife had looked like. In addition to glimpses in the vestibule of the court, Kyra recalled seeing her half a dozen times during the year she was going to Tibbeth’s shop to study but could call to mind nothing of her face—only the impression of extreme youth.

  Tibbeth had been right about the power of illusion in her own life. It had never occurred to her to regard that flaxen nonentity as a person in her own right any more than it had ever occurred to her to note the color of Merrivale’s eyes or the names of the footmen and maids.

  She did remember that Tibbeth’s wife had been no more than a few years older than herself. She had assumed that the laundry maid was much older, but that, she knew, could be the result of the poverty that lined a woman’s face, thickened her figure, and robbed her of teeth when she was no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

  She had never inquired. Her face heated with shame.

  “I think my mother’s laundry maid was Tibbeth’s wife,” she said after a time. “I don’t really remember; she wasn’t someone I took any notice of in those days. Lady Rosamund says it’s possible for a wizard’s ghost to occupy part of the mind of someone whom the wizard knew well, if that person lets him.”

  “I see,” Spens said quietly. “Then it was she who called the Witchfinders.”

  “She saw me with the wedding dress,” Kyra said. “She knew then I’d guess and didn’t want me tracking Alix.”

  “And where is Alix?”

  “That’s just it!” Kyra cried helplessly. “I don’t know! I can’t get an image of her in the crystal! It’s as if she were mageborn herself—or had a counterspell.”

  “Could she?”

  “Well,” Kyra said, calmed a little by his reasonableness, “scry-wards do cost a good bit of money, though I suppose Alix could have traded her jewelry. As young as she is, she doesn’t have much—” She broke off again, thinking, remembering the note. Then, abruptly, she half stood and leaned out the window of the cab. “Driver! Yoo-hoo...!”

  The man half turned in his seat, bright green eyes peering over a thick muffler. “Yes, miss?”

  “Never mind Salt Hill Lane; take us to Pea Street south of the river!”

  Chapter XVII

  “GOOD HEAVENS, CHILD, you know I can’t give you that kind of information, even if I knew it!” Hestie Pinktrees looked from Kyra to Spens and back, then paused suddenly and turned to consider Spenson again.

  “Yes,” Kyra said. “Him. The one Lady Earthwygg wanted the philters for. I wrote counterspells all over the latest one you sold her this afternoon, by the way.”

  Pinktrees chuckled richly, her whole rosy face dimpling with delight at the joke, then rose to her feet like the ascent of the harvest moon. “So you were mageborn all the time! Shame on you, coming in here telling me stories about ill-wishing a man who’d wronged you! Little slyboots.” In deep settings of flesh and kohl her eyes twinkled good-humoredly. “But you might have saved yourself the risk of discovery, Snow-Tear, my child. That one looks too stubborn for a philter to give him anything more than itchy dreams. Would you care for some tea, either of you? It’s so chilly out tonight.” And she bustled from the room in a foam of flowered skirts, as if the Emperor’s gardens had suddenly decided to uproot themselves and take a walk.

  “Snow-Tear?” Spenson asked, and Kyra shook her head. “Itchy dreams, indeed.”

  “I realize it’s nearly suppertime.” The plump dog wizard rustled her way back in with an enormous silver tray between round white hands like bejeweled puddings. “I made these this morning; you do look famished.”

  Kyra realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the tea sandwiches at Lady Earthwygg’s. She’d meant to get something from the kitchens and avoid dining with the family—without the musicians to fill it, the silence in the dining room would have been unbearable even if Alix had not eloped—but her mother, and then the Inquisition, had forestalled that plan. Spens was looking askance at the white and yellow china plates of powdered tea balls, date bars, and lemon tarts, but Kyra ran her fingers lightly above them and sensed no magic in them beyond the magic of a skilled cook, no ill save those inherent in such a quantity of butter and sugar.

  “Did you make a talisman of scry-ward for my sister?” She handed a comfit to the still-doubtful Spenson. “It’s important that I know,” she added, seeing Pinktrees hesitate. “I know she’s eloped with that boy of hers.”

  “As who wouldn’t?” the mage giggled.

  “Who indeed? But I have reason to believe that a death-curse has been laid on her, a death-curse that will fall on her wedding night.”

  The fat woman sat up straighter, her rosy mouth suddenly losing its laughter, a lemon tart hanging unnoticed in her pudgy hand. In the tiled stove the fire hissed softly on
the coals; the two butter-colored cats lay in the pool of the russet light that came through its barred grate, curled in on themselves like enormous slippers. Behind the swagged lace and velvet ribbons that decorated the windows, Kyra was ever more conscious of the denseness of the night.

  “Pinktrees, we have to overtake them! We have to find them, and find them soon!”

  “They won’t be in danger tonight,” Spenson said, and both women turned to look at him in surprise.

  “Well, think. Even if they stop at the first big village outside of town—Underhythe to the south, or Mintrebbit to the north, or Glidden up along the river—by the time they get there, it’ll be too late to find a priest. Whatever they’re doing tonight—and they may be romantic enough to sleep apart at whatever inn they’ve sheltered at—they won’t be married at least until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Unless they’ve taken ship,” Kyra said, her eyes dark with fear in the soft reflections of the candles. “If they were going to Senterwing or the colonies, the ship’s priest could have wed them.”

  “In that case there is nothing we can do,” Spens said quietly. “Not tonight, not tomorrow... Never.” He looked across at the dog wizard in her lilac clouds of ruffles and lace. “Have they taken ship?”

  “I don’t know.” She set her lemon tart on the tiny plate before her, regarding him with deep concern in those oddly wise hazel eyes. A cart went by on the road, filled with laborers on their way back from Little Harbor, drunk and singing in the darkness. The cats rolled luxuriantly over into undignified positions and settled themselves to serious slumber. The steam of the teapot sent soft whispers of chamomile and lemon grass into the still air.

  “One of Lady Earthwygg’s footmen came here about noon, asking me to go to her house immediately and telling me it would be well worth my while, which indeed it was. Your sister, my dear—and my! but she’s a beautiful girl, and so sweet—was there, and that nice young man.”

  Pinktrees sighed reminiscently and helped herself to what remained of her tart and another one as well. “Her ladyship said that Alix, as she called her, and Algeron were going away and were afraid that Alix’s sister, who was a wizard, was going to try to stop them, and would I give them a scry-ward so that the sister couldn’t find them? I should have known there was something afoot, for I charge twenty crowns for a scry-ward, and Perdita Earthwygg has yet in her life to lay out twenty coppers for something that doesn’t benefit her. Alix looked as if she’d been crying her eyes out, poor lamb, with the end of her nose all red under the powder, and holding onto Algeron’s hand, though I noticed it was she who did all the talking. Such a handsome young man, but he didn’t have two words to say for himself and was obviously terrified of Lady Earthwygg.”

  Kyra smiled, recalling Algeron’s account of his brief career as Janson Milpott’s secretary. Whatever volcanic outburst of passion and love had drawn Alix into realizing she couldn’t live without Algeron, she had a fairly clear idea of who was in charge of the logistics of the flight.

  The dog wizard sighed again. “She said her parents would never forgive her and that her father would send his men after them and would get you—although of course I didn’t associate it with you, my dear Snow-Tear—to scry for them in your crystal so that they could be dragged back.”

  “Had Lady Earthwygg given them money?” Kyra asked.

  Spens looked startled for a moment at the very idea. Then, as he thought about it, his homely face broke into a grin. “That little vixen...”

  Pinktrees nodded. “After I’d given them the talisman—a very nice bit of silver and rabbit skin, with two chips of opal worked in...” She ticked the ingredients off on her fingers around the comfit she held. “Lady Earthwygg even provided the opal, which was tremendously good of her, since, gimcrack as the stones were, they were far better than anything I can afford, and the footman brought them their cloaks; Alix clasped her ladyship’s hand and said how she’d always thank her for giving them the money to take a proper start of their life together.”

  “Of course.” Spenson chuckled with pure delight. “Lady Earthwygg would give her whatever money she asked for just to get her out of town.”

  “Well, her ladyship certainly did look like Saffron does when he thinks I haven’t noticed him licking out of the butter icing spoon. Isn’t that right, my tiny cream cake?”

  One of the cats on the hearth—twenty pounds of “tiny cream cake” at the lowest possible computation—twitched a fluffy tail in sleepy response.

  “I thought she might have,” Kyra said slowly, “from what Alix said in her letter about starting in respectable trades. The only thing preventing her from marrying Algeron was money to get them set up in business.”

  “Well, it isn’t surprising, considering the amount Lady Earthwygg has paid me for love-philters and to put marks on your house, Master Spenson, to make you desire that rat-faced daughter of hers.” Pinktrees poured out another cup of tea for herself and judiciously selected a date bar. “Not that the poor girl’s looks have anything to do with it, because actually the girl’s quite pretty, and my own niece has a face like a door scraper and it didn’t stop the kindest young man in the world from taking to her—but that Earthwygg girl has eyes like a shrike. But as to where they were bound, truly, I don’t know. Her ladyship kept me afterward to make up another love-philter—‘now that troublesome chit is out of the way,’ I believe she put it. But she did serve me some truly excellent raspberry tartlets, and with the cost of raspberries at this time of year, that was generous of her.”

  “How did she pay you?” Kyra broke in, leaning forward.

  The dog wizard looked startled. “Well, in flimsies, naturally.”

  “I mean, did she send a servant out of the room for the money, or was it there in the room with her when you entered?”

  “Ah!” Pinktrees rose and rustled her way to the exquisite cherrywood sideboard near the window. She withdrew a small purse of stamped leather from whose top protruded the edges of a substantial roll of yellow bank notes. “How extremely clever of you, my dear.”

  “What?” Spenson looked from one wizard to the other, completely lost, as Kyra moved her chair closer to the stove and bowed her head over the purse, which she held cradled between her hands. Their hostess dimpled and came back to the table to hand him another tart.

  “Now, this is just a little wizardry, dear,” she said in a motherly voice. “Sit quiet and have some more tea.”

  He retreated, discomfited, to the depths of his overstuffed chair, and the fluffier of the two cats, having risen and stretched from claw tip to the last ostrich-feather curl of her tail, sprang into his lap and confidently made herself at home.

  Kyra closed her eyes and sank her perceptions into the soft fabric of the leather and the money.

  For some time she was aware only of its touch and its smell: the faint camphory perfume of the bag, the scents of the leather mingling with the dim potpourri that had been in the sideboard’s secret compartment, the ambergris that clung to Lady Earthwygg’s clothing and hands, the gray filthy smell that any money would pick up in handling. She was conscious of the warmth of the stove against her knuckles, her cheeks, and her knees through her gown, conscious of Pinktrees’ jasmine perfume and the slightly rotted scent of the paper-whites in the swirled vase of Kymil glass on the sideboard, of the lemony scent of the tarts and the resinous fragrance of the fire, of the leather and orris root and the smell of Spenson’s flesh.

  Then, deeper, pictures began to form in her thoughts. The vision of Lady Earthwygg’s drawing room came easily, for she had been there herself that day. It was earlier than she had seen it, the sunlight lying strong against the red silk of the wallpapers, gleaming on the variously colored marbles of hearth and window seat and floor. Her ladyship was dressed not in the stiff white and rose gown she had worn that afternoon but in a wrapper of bronze-green silk frothing with lace and a lace cap on her storm-colored hair. Alix and Algeron sat, looking stiff and anxious and a litt
le embarrassed, on the curly-legged love seat where Esmin had been seated that afternoon. Alix wore the plain dark gown of one of the maids, Lily, perhaps, quite possibly the one Kyra had borrowed for her expedition to the Cheevy Street Baths. Had that only been the day before yesterday?

  Alix was saying, “I’ve computed what we’ll need to set myself up in a good shop in a good street in Kymil. Algeron can easily find employment as a pastry chef either with one of the established pastry shops or in a private mansion. Five hundred crowns would keep us well until business starts coming my way.”

  “Five hundred,” Lady Earthwygg began, aghast either at the sum or at Alix’s temerity in asking it.

  “How much did you offer my sister to make Master Spenson fall in love with Esmin?” The doelike brown eyes, red-rimmed though they were with spent tears, met the bulging black ones with cold steadiness. “That’s got to be easier once I’m out of the way.”

  “I always said you were an outrageous hussy, girl!”

  “As long as I’m an outrageous hussy in Kymil, you shouldn’t have complaints,” returned Alix. Algeron gazed at his beloved with awe at such courage. “Besides...” And here Alix smiled and looked for a moment like her usual teasing self. “I’m not, really. Kyra’s the outrageous one. Though I suppose I am a hussy now. I just... want to be happy. I want to be free.” And her hand closed around the slim, muscular ink-stained one that it held.

  “My pearls didn’t bring very much,” she went on after a moment. “You know girls my age don’t get real jewelry, and besides, the best of them were given to me by my mother, and I wouldn’t sell them were I starving. You’re our only chance, my lady.”