“Duck down low, and hope for the best?”
Rathe shook his head, frowning. There was no sound from the stable, none of the usual murmur of voices that went with the flickering lamplight, click of dice or the slap of cards–not even the stamp and shifting of the horses, he realized, and took a quick step forward, peering in the window. The glass was bubbled, and the stove’s warmth had fogged the pane, but he wiped a corner clear, ignoring Eslingen’s hiss of protest.
It was the tackroom, he realized at once, the walls festooned with harness and brasses, all in various stages of repair. Four grooms sat slumped around the rough‑hewn table, lamp burning brightly in its center, cards and a handful of demmings scattered around it. A fifth groom was frankly asleep in the far corner, rolled into a horse’s traveling rug, and Rathe straightened, clearing a wider patch of glass. A small vase of flowers, pink bells and sallewort, stood on a shelf between the cans of oil and harness grease.
“They’re all asleep, too,” he murmured, and Eslingen leaned over his shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Why? What’s the point?”
“So no one can bear witness, I suppose,” Rathe said grimly.
“Or so they can’t be blamed,” Eslingen said, and Rathe looked at him.
“You think well of him.”
It wasn’t a question, and Eslingen made an embarrassed face. “I don’t condone the murders, believe me. But–yes, I liked him, Nico. And he’s always been good to his people.” He paused, seemed to read Rathe’s next question in his face. “And it won’t stop me from helping you call the point on him, don’t worry about that.”
“I wasn’t,” Rathe answered, but he was relieved all the same. He turned, glancing at the higher, unshuttered windows of the main house. “I suppose he’s done the same to the rest of the household.”
“I’d bet on it,” Eslingen answered, and reached up to chin himself on the windowsill, scattering snow in fluffy clumps. He shook his head as he landed. “I couldn’t quite see.”
“Give me a hand,” Rathe said, and Eslingen obediently braced himself, offering bent knee and cupped hands. Rathe chose the knee, and stepped up, clinging to the sill. This window was frosted, too, and he rubbed a little of the ice away, peering through the gap. The hall was dark, but in the faint light of the fading fire, he could see a woman curled in the settle, a child–Bice, he remembered, the girl who had first escorted him through the house–snuggled in her lap. They looked like any sleeping family, mother and child, except that there was a huge arrangement of flowers, at least three times the size of the one in the stables, looming like a pale shadow on the sideboard. He dropped back to the snowy cobbles, and knew he was shivering with more than cold.
“Yeah, they’re all asleep there, too, or at least what I can see of them.” He saw the same unease he felt reflected in Eslingen’s face, and went on more roughly, “Let’s go. At least we know no one’s going to bother us.”
“Unless Aubine’s home,” Eslingen answered, and Rathe grimaced.
“Let’s hope not.” But if he isn’t, where is he? he wondered, and then shoved the thought aside. Time enough for that after they’d gathered enough hedgebroom to neutralize the theatre arrangements.
The glasshouses almost filled the courtyard, unlit now, but steaming gently from the warmth within. There was no snow on the roofs, but the eaves dripped softly, their puddles hardening to ice as they flowed away from the glass walls. Rathe slipped on one and swore, catching himself against Eslingen’s shoulder, and both men stepped more carefully after that, watching the ground as well as the overshadowing buildings.
“Seidos’s Horse,” Eslingen said under his breath, and shook his head. “Four of them?”
“I thought you knew,” Rathe said.
“I suppose I’d heard, but I thought…” The ex‑soldier shook his head again. “I suppose I thought they were smaller, or something. Not like this.”
“One for each season,” Rathe said, and narrowed his eyes, remembering. The glasshouse where he’d spoken to Aubine had been filled with summer plants; logically, the autumn house should be the one to its left. He reached for his picks, worked the lock with ease, and opened the door into the unexpected warmth of an autumn evening. He heard Eslingen swear again, softly, and shut the door behind them, sealing out the cold wind. There should be lamps ready to hand, Rathe knew, and found them almost at once, tucked neatly beneath the nearest bench, flint and tinder ready to hand. It was just where his mother would have left them, just where any gardener would have put them, and he shook his head. How could anyone who had made these houses and the nurturing of so many plants and species his lifework have murdered five people? The one didn’t follow, he knew, and he shoved the thought aside, concentrated on lighting the candles in the narrow lanterns. They were both sturdy, practical things, each with a metal hood and a glass door to shed the light, incongruous with the good candles they held, and he smiled in spite of himself. Only someone as rich as Aubine would use wax instead of tallow. He shook that thought away, too, and handed one lantern to Eslingen.
“You know what we’re looking for,” he said, and forced himself to speak in a normal voice. “You take the right‑hand aisle.”
“Right,” Eslingen said, and lifted his lantern.
Rathe nodded, and turned away, lifting his own lantern to throw more light on the narrow aisle between the benches. Aubine was true to his seasonal theme, he thought. The central bench was lower than the others, and the long trays were filled with the tall flowers of the harvest, daymare and connis and horsetail and collyflag, their stems confined by a lattice of string. Surely the hedgebroom would be there, he thought, but to be sure he searched the left‑hand bench as well. It was crowded with smaller plants, creepers and dwarfed shrubs studded with berries, and he caught the sweet smell of honeyvine as his coat brushed against a spill of leaves. So many, he thought. How will we ever find hedgebroom among all this?
And then he saw it, the first stand of it, tucked into a heavy stone pot as big as a washerwoman’s cauldron, the stems poking free of the string, flowers bright even in the wavering candlelight. There were more pots of it, too, a haphazard selection of clay and stone and even a wooden half barrel, as though Aubine had pressed every available container into service to make sure he had enough of the panacea. And very wise, too, Rathe thought, and I’m in the peculiar position of being grateful to him for his foresight. He glanced around, found a clear space on the opposite bench, and set the lantern there, reaching for his knife to begin the harvest. .
“Philip–”
“Nico! Over here!”
There was a note in Eslingen’s voice that stopped the pointsman in his tracks, and he resheathed his knife, moving to join the other man. His voice had come from the back of the house, and he rounded the last pot of hedgebroom to see Eslingen standing well clear of one of the long tables Aubine preferred for his workbench. A body was laid out there, arms folded across its chest–Aconin’s body, Rathe realized, and in the same instant saw the playwright’s chest move. So, not dead, but deep asleep, more deeply even than the watchman or the household servants. There were flowers at his head and feet, two plain, alabaster vases filled with greenery and a single weeping branch from a familiar tree. Both were heavily in bloom, studded with flowers only a little smaller than a man’s palm, each streaked with pink and red.
“Love’s‑a‑bleeding,” Eslingen said, and gave a shaky laugh. “Even I know that one.”
Rathe nodded. Each of the flowers looked vaguely like a tear‑streaked face; in the shifting candlelight, it was as though a hundred mourners wept for Aconin. “Lad’s‑love, we call it,” he said. A snatch of an old song ran through his head, incongruous– lad’s love is full of folly, sorry tears, and no tomorrow; maid’s love is true and gay, full of laughter all the day–and he shook it away.
“He’s not dead,” Eslingen said, and his voice was suddenly hard and cold. “I say we leave him–we’ll know where to find h
im when it’s over.”
Rathe hesitated–it was a tempting thought–then shook his head. “We can’t. Think, Philip–you yourself said Aconin knows more than he’s telling, he’s our best evidence against Aubine. Gods, he’s our only evidence, as it stands, he’s the only person who can say it was Aubine who bespelled him.”
“If he can,” Eslingen said.
Rathe sighed. That was true, there was always the chance that Aconin had been taken by surprise, had no idea who had attacked him and left him here… “No,” he said aloud. “He has to know more than that. He wouldn’t have been attacked if he didn’t.”
Eslingen nodded. “All right. But how do we break this?” He waved a cautious hand toward the flowers in their twin vases.
Rathe hesitated. At the theatre, all he had done was shove the stems of hedgebroom blindly into the arrangement, stabbing them haphazardly into the greenery until the pressure, the sense of the river’s waiting presence, had eased, and Eslingen had drawn a whooping breath. Too close, he thought, and forced his attention back to the matter at hand. “We have to use the panacea,” he said. “Well, we could try taking it apart, flower by flower, but I don’t know where to start.”
“And that could be crucial,” Eslingen said.
“Yeah.” Rathe reached for his knife again. “Let’s try the hedgebroom.”
Eslingen followed him with only a single glance over his shoulder to where the playwright lay in solitary splendor. He had left his lantern, Rathe saw, and as he stooped to cut the hedgebroom, he saw the light flicker on the motionless body. Metenere send I’m right, he thought, and sawed through the first tough stem. He cut half a dozen, and then cut them in half, so that he and Eslingen each had six stems, each with at least a few flowers blooming on them.
“All right,” he said, sliding his knife back into its sheath. “Let’s do it.”
“Do what, exactly?” Eslingen asked, and followed the other man back to the bench where Aconin lay.
Rathe paused, studying the plants in their containers. The branches were turned so that they faced Aconin, as though that directed their power toward him and him alone. There were gaps in the foliage, too, places where another flower could easily be forced into the water, and he pointed toward the nearest. His fingers tingled as he came within a hand’s breadth of the arrangement, a nasty reminder of the other flowers in Forveijl’s dressing room, and he was careful to move his hand away before he spoke.
“What we need to do is place at least one stem of the hedgebroom into each of these arrangements–there’s a gap there, see it? But we’ll do it at the same time, and with stalks that are as similar as possible.”
Eslingen nodded, and rummaged in the little bundle of greenery, pulling out a stalk tipped with half a dozen flowers. “Will this do?”
Rathe glanced at his own sheaf of plants, found one that matched. “Yeah.” He moved toward the vase at Aconin’s head, and without being told, Eslingen mirrored the movement.
“There?” he asked, pointing to the gap, and Rathe nodded.
“Yeah. On the count of three.” He took a breath. “One. Two. Three.”
Their hands moved together, angling the stems of hedgebroom toward the gap in the arrangement, and Rathe flinched as he felt the arrangement’s power tingling in his fingers. It wasn’t as sharp as it had been in Forveijl’s dressing room, but it was definitely present, an unnatural warmth and tingling, as though he were slowly dipping his hand into hot wax. From the look on Eslingen’s face, he felt the same thing, and Rathe wished he could spare the other man an encouraging smile. The stem touched the water, and he felt a spark, like static on a winter day, and the hedgebroom slid into place with sudden ease. He looked up, knowing his eyes were wide, and saw Eslingen looking at him with the same wary certainty.
“We’ve done it,” Eslingen said, and Rathe leaned back again, reaching for the bundle of hedgebroom.
“If one is enough.”
“It’s enough,” Eslingen said, sounding suddenly assured, and before Rathe could protest, Aconin’s head rolled to one side, eyelids flickering.
“Easy,” Eslingen said, and leaned close over the table. “Easy, Chresta.”
The playwright shifted again, like a man waking from a nightmare, and his eyes fluttered fully open. “I couldn’t possibly write this,” he said, and Eslingen lifted an eyebrow.
“Are you all right?”
Aconin closed his eyes again, hard, as though they pained him, raised hands to massage his temples. “Where in Tyrseis’s name–”
He broke off, visibly recognizing his surroundings, and Eslingen snorted. “He’ll live.”
“You’re in the landseur Aubine’s autumn glasshouse,” Rathe said. “Bespelled by his flowers.”
“Now I know this is real,” Aconin said faintly, and got his elbows under him, pushing himself upright. He moved as though his entire body ached, and Rathe stifled a twinge of sympathy. Eslingen grunted and caught the playwright’s wrist, tugging him into a sitting position. Aconin winced again and turned, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the bench. “You wouldn’t feature in my dreams, Adjunct Point.”
“For which I’m grateful.” Rathe took a breath. “You’ve lied to me enough, Aconin. You can tell me now what Aubine’s planning. And why he’s left you alive.”
“Sweet Tyrseis.” Aconin shook his head, and then looked as though he wished he hadn’t. “Oh, gods, I hurt.”
“Answers,” Rathe said, and somehow Aconin dredged up a shaky laugh.
“Well, you must know some of it, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“We know Aubine is planning something at the masque,” Eslingen said brusquely. “Probably to kill whoever it is he blames for the death of his leman, using these Dis‑damned flowers.”
“We know you knew about at least some of it,” Rathe said, and stopped abruptly, remembering something Eslingen had said. “You had a working copy of the Alphabet, you must have, or Guis couldn’t have used it against me. Stolen from Aubine?”
Aconin managed another nod. “He promised it to me–it was for the play, he suggested it to me, when I said I was working on a play about de Galhac. He was right, too, it was brilliant…” His voice trailed off, and Rathe restrained the urge to shake the story out of him. If Aconin had spoken earlier, at least three people might still be alive.
“He promised me the copy,” Aconin said again. “But then when the play was written and accepted, he told me I’d have to wait until the run was over, that he didn’t trust me not to take it to the broadsheets. So I took it.”
“But he still had enough information to make all this,” Eslingen objected, waving his hand toward the arrangements, and Aconin’s eyes fell.
“He had two copies.”
“And he’s had plenty of time to practice,” Rathe said. “So why hasn’t he killed you, Aconin? He’s killed everyone else who got in his way.”
“I think I’m left to take the blame for the last murder,” Aconin said. “Or maybe all of them.” He shook his head. “I crossed him, betrayed him, by his own lights, and he doesn’t take kindly to that.”
“How long have you known about this?” Rathe asked through clenched teeth, and Aconin looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Not long enough to stop it, I swear to you. Not so that you could do anything about it.”
Liar. Rathe said, “I should call a point on you, for abetting these murders.”
Aconin looked up. “And if I had said anything, I’d be dead myself a week since.”
Rathe stared at him for a long moment, mastering his anger with an effort. There was some truth to what the playwright said–but not enough, not when so many people had died. “We’ll leave that for later,” he said at last. “For now–tell me this, and tell me the truth, for once. Does Aubine mean to kill the queen?”
Aconin nodded slowly. “Yes.” As though a dam had broken, the words tumbled out. “It’s the arrangements, of course, you figured that much out, but it’s als
o the play, little alterations his friends will make in the lines, nothing that wouldn’t pass for a stumble, a simple mistake, but, oh, gods, deadly, deadly in the right stars and with these plants to focus the power. You must believe me, I didn’t know, I had no idea what he would do–”
“His friends?” Rathe interrupted, and Aconin drew a shuddering breath, got himself under control with an effort that wracked his slender frame.
“Yes. It’s not just him, though the arrangements, the idea, it’s all his. He’s found others who’ve lost their loves, maybe not the same way he has, but for the same reasons, the differences of station driving them apart, and he’s promised them their chance at revenge, if only they’ll help him take his. A conspiracy of lovers, all of them hurt, hurt badly–that’s why de Raзan died, you know, for treating Siredy so badly.”
“Siredy’s not part of this, surely,” Eslingen said.
Aconin shook his head. “Call it a–generous impulse.”
“More likely he wanted to be sure the flowers would work,” Rathe said. “Can you name the conspirators, Aconin?”
“Some of them.” Aconin took a breath, and slid off the table, wobbling for a moment before Eslingen caught his arm. “There’s an intendant, Hesloi d’Ibre, I know for sure, her mother made her abandon her son by a common man, so she could have a granddaughter better born, and the Regent Bautry, she loved a woman too far above herself. And Gisle Dilandy, she’s the one who’ll speak the lines.”
Eslingen swore again, but Rathe nodded. He recognized those names, had always thought d’Ibre and Bautry to be honest women, had admired Dilandy’s acting. “Who else?” he demanded, and Aconin shook his head again.
“Those are the only ones I know for sure. But there’s a list, in the house. Aubine made it, made them sign it, to keep them loyal.”
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