by Tanya Huff
Georges, Annette, and the twins waited just inside the door, their expressions identically confused as they stared from Dmitri to Yves and back again.
Dmitri blinked happily down at them. “Hello. Where’s Chantel? Jacques said he was going to bring her in to see me, but she never came.”
Yves pushed him back against the wall, grabbed a glass of punch from Georges, and shoved it into Dmitri’s hand. “Chantel,” he snarled, “is dead.”
“Dead?” He clung to the thought, fighting to hold it still long enough to release a meaning. “Dead?” Everything whirled a little slower. Chantel was dead? “She was my friend,” he whispered. “What happened?”
“Ask Louise,” Yves told him, mouth so close that hot breath lapped against Dmitri’s ear.
Dmitri’s head snapped around, searching for Louise in the crowd. By the time he turned to Yves again, all five of his friends were gone, and he was alone by the wall. “Ask Louise,” he murmured to himself. He could see her across the ballroom, a slender column of red surrounded by a circle of guests. After emptying the glass and setting it carefully back on the sideboard, he made his way toward her.
“I thought we weren’t going to do anything,” Georges muttered as he got himself another drink to replace the glass of punch Yves had given away.
Yves smoothed a hand down the tattered ribbons on his vest. “We aren’t.”
“But you …”
“Just suggested the little Nuikin talk to Louise. I don’t want her to feel as if he’s not paying enough attention to her.”
Georges shook his head, unsure if understanding or ignorance would be a better defense. “You implied she had something to do with Chantel’s death.”
Yves smiled viciously. “She did.”
“Are you trying to drive him away from her? There’s no point, you know; Chantel is beyond caring.”
“I know.” Yves watched Dmitri cross the room. With any luck, he’d still be disoriented enough from the drug that he’d blurt out an accusation and Louise would take his head off, simultaneously removing the irritating object of Chantel’s fascination, messing up whatever plan Louise had going, and really irritating Jacqueline—who would take out that irritation on Louise. “Come on.” He took a candle out of his cousin’s hand and tossed it under the table.
“Where are we going?”
“Closer to the door.” He caught Annette’s eye as the dance spun her past, then nodded toward the far end of the ballroom. Waiting until she whispered the information on to Henri—or Aubert, they were too far away and there were too many other family members masking the scent for him to be certain—he gripped Georges by the elbow and began to move them both in the direction of the exit, secure in the knowledge that what one twin knew the other soon would. “When things get interesting …” Digging his nails into his cousin’s arm, he cut off an incipient protest. “… and they will, I don’t want any of us trampled in the rush to safety.”
“Louise, did you know that Chantel was dead?”
Jacqueline turned and fixed Dmitri with a basilisk stare. “I beg your pardon?”
Dmitri felt his face burn as he stammered an apology. “It’s just,” he continued, trying to explain, “I mean, the dress, and well, you’re twins …”
“My son assures me that I’m more beautiful than my sister.”
“Your son …”
“Yes, Jacques. I’m sure you met him during your stay. He told me he was taking Chantel to see you when she died. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe this is Monsieur Egout’s dance.”
Dmitri bowed and murmured something as Jacqueline swept regally away. His thoughts were spinning again. He had to talk with Louise.
Louise saw Dmitri standing by her sister and snarled silently to herself. He had to be far enough away from both of them when Aurek arrived in order to confuse their identities. Which wasn’t going to happen if he was deep in conversation with Jacqueline!
She relaxed a little as her twin moved into the dance on the arm of an elderly cavalier and began to snarl again when the stupid boy scanned the crowd then started heading directly toward her. With one hand on the statue of Aurek’s wife, safely tucked in a pocket hidden within the full folds of her crimson skirt, she hurried around the edge of the room, her expression moving guests and family alike prudently out of her way.
Dmitri turned to follow.
Where were those idiot friends of his? Why couldn’t they distract him? Eyes narrowed, Louise swept her gaze over familiar faces and finally spotted Yves and the others standing together just inside the door. She raised a hand to beckon them closer but let it fall again without completing the gesture as a tall, gray-clad figure appeared in the doorway. Smiling to herself, she headed to where the pattern of the dance would deposit Jacqueline when the music ended.
Standing on the edge of the dance floor, Aurek stared about the ballroom, noticing nothing and no one except Louise Renier. Lips pressed into a thin white line, he set out on a course to intercept her.
Searching for Louise, a quest that had proven to be surprisingly difficult, Dmitri pushed his way around a weighty dowager whose feathered turban had momentarily blocked his view.
“Young man!”
He stopped only because the old woman had a surprisingly strong grip on his coat.
“You bumped me.” The dance had ended, and in the quiet her voice rang out over the murmur of the other guests. “I demand an apology.”
On another evening, the amused stares of a dozen people would have been a painful embarrassment. Tonight, Dmitri barely noticed. “Madame, I most humbly apologize.” He bowed as well as he was able, considering her hold on his coat, then yanked the fabric out of her hand.
Once around her indignant bulk, he spotted Louise easily. Or he spotted Jacqueline easily. They were standing together, heads bent, both smiling. Then one of them moved away.
But which one?
Totally unaware of his brother’s presence in the ballroom, Aurek saw the sisters together, saw them separate, and found it unnecessary to try to tell them apart. The moving twin caught his eye and nodded once.
Louise.
He walked closer to Jacqueline. Shoving his right hand into his pocket, he rolled the tiny iron rod up into his fingers and began the first of the four segments of the spell.
Aurek? Dmitri watched his brother cut through the crowds and recognized the rigid set of head and shoulders. Aurek was furious. And he was heading right toward …
Louise!
It was happening just as she’d said it would! His hand on the dagger hilt, Dmitri began to frantically push his way through the protesting aristocracy of Pont-a-Museau.
Jacqueline, who had been watching her sister through a thick fringe of ebony lashes, saw Louise nod and turned slowly to face in the same direction. Although they couldn’t have known why, the guests were instinctively parting like flesh under a razor as Aurek strode toward her across the ballroom floor. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of his gathering power.
When he was close enough, she lifted her eyes to his. “I don’t think so,” she said softly.
Claws clicking against the polished wood, hundreds—thousands—of rats suddenly poured out of cracks and holes in walls and floors and even the ceiling, every single one of them heading directly for Aurek Nuikin.
Townspeople screamed and began running, some toward the doors, some in circles. The family didn’t waste time screaming—they just ran.
With Georges by his side, the twins and Annette following, Yves led the way out of the chateau. He could hear cries of panic coming from the ballroom behind them as the door proved too narrow for the number of people who wanted through it. Lips curled up off his teeth in amusement as the panic turned to shrieks of pain. Under these circumstances, the family wouldn’t allow a few humans in the way to delay them.
He’d miss Chantel but, in sobering up the little Nuikin, he’d done what he could to avenge her death. He’d be a fool to risk more, and she’d have
been the first to tell him that.
As the five raced along the landing toward their boat and safety, Yves shoved a servant, who dared ask him what was going on, off the dock.
“Company for Chantel,” he explained as the dark and frigid water closed over the astonished man’s head and cut off the first terrified scream.
It was the kind of memorial she’d appreciate.
Back inside the ballroom, Dmitri froze as a small brown body landed on his shoulder and launched itself toward his brother. Rats? He didn’t understand.
“Mama!”
The piercing cry from the balcony turned only two heads, Dmitri’s and that of the woman he thought was Louise. Unlocking her gaze from Aurek’s face, she glanced upward, scanning the second level. When she raised her hand, and the small head shoved through the banisters withdrew, Dmitri realized that Aurek had attacked the wrong twin. His brother wasn’t facing Louise; he was facing Jacqueline!
Desperately, Dmitri searched the frenzied crowd for Louise.
She wasn’t far. Her lips were pulled back off her teeth in a fierce anticipatory smile, and her hands were curled into fists. She was staring at Aurek and her sister with glittering eyes.
Eyes …
Dmitri’s thoughts began to whirl again, but this time a pattern emerged through the weakened influence of the drug.
Blood matted the white fur, and one dark red eye stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He had the strangest feeling he’d seen that eye before.
“Ask Louise.”
“He told me he was taking Chantel to see you when she died.”
… his gaze slid sideways to the body of the giant rat. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what.
He hadn’t killed that rat. Its neck was broken.
Louise was the only other person in the room.
“Ask Louise.”
“… taking Chantel to see you when she died.”
“It was young. The young seldom take the time to think things through.”
Chantel was dead.
He had the strangest feeling he’d seen that eye before.
“Ask Louise.”
Chantel had white hair and eyes so dark a red they looked almost brown. Louise had killed a white rat with eyes so dark a red they looked almost brown and referred to it, directly after, as “she.”
“Mama says only a wererat can kill another wererat.”
“NO!”
The single word cut through the other sounds in the ballroom as though they were flesh and it a sword.
Three of the four segments of the spell completed, Aurek jerked around at his brother’s cry. He was alive! He was safe!
“Dimitriiiii!” The name turned into a howl of pain as the first of the rats reached him and sank chisel teeth through the negligible protection of his trousers into his calf.
“Aurek!” Dmitri clung to his brother’s name, used it to pull himself further out of the trap he’d found himself in.
How much of what Louise had told him was a lie and how much the truth became unimportant. Aurek needed him. His brother needed him.
If Louise was a wererat, then Jacqueline was a wererat, and one of them had to be controlling the rats. Jacqueline was closer. Drawing the dagger Louise had given him, Dmitri threw himself at her sister.
“Dmitri! No!” Thinking only to protect his brother, Aurek yanked a rat off his thigh, stomped on another, and brought his thumbs together. Ignoring the pain, ignoring the spell he’d nearly finished, he grabbed for focus and concentrated. Spreading his fingers, he spun around until Dmitri was no longer within the parameter of the spell and screamed, “Burn!”
Rats shrieked and ignited as jets of searing flame shot from his fingertips.
The ballroom quickly filled with clouds of greasy black smoke.
Coughing and choking, eyes squinted almost shut, Louise didn’t know how it had happened, but it was all going wrong. Her carefully constructed, cunningly complicated plan was tumbling down around her like a house of cards!
No! This is my chance! Kicking a burning rat aside, she pulled the statue from her pocket and raced toward Jacqueline. If she couldn’t use Aurek’s wife as a hostage, the statue would still make a dandy weapon smashed down on the back of her sister’s skull.
Large hands closed, with a crushing grip, around her upper arms. She snarled and kicked but couldn’t break free.
When the smoke cleared a moment later, Jacqueline and Aurek faced each other across twelve feet of open floor. The burned, smoldering bodies of dead rats fanned out behind the wizard. The silent, watching bodies of live ones fanned out behind the Lord of Richemulot.
Jacqueline held Dmitri in one hand, her claws dimpling the flesh of his throat. A trickle of blood ran from her thumb down under his collar. Dmitri no longer held the knife. It lay gleaming on the floor at Jacqueline’s feet.
Aurek held Louise, a hand enclosing each arm. Louise held a small porcelain statue in both hands. He couldn’t change his grip or she’d drop the statue, and as much as she wanted to smash it, she knew it was the only thing keeping her alive.
Glancing quickly around the room, noting a pile of bleeding bodies in the doorway that were all that remained of the guests who hadn’t escaped, Aurek inclined his head to Jacqueline. “We seem to be alone.” His voice, a little hoarsened by the smoke, was remarkably steady.
“The others have fled lest they be implicated in the attempted coup.” Jacqueline smiled. “Rats, as it were, leaving a sinking ship. Tomorrow they’ll deny they were ever here.” Then she sighed, and the smile disappeared. A glittering green gaze fell first on her sister, snarling in Aurek’s grasp, and then down at her own trembling captive. “So the little Nuikin races to his brother’s rescue; it seems that you mean more to your family than I do to mine.”
“That’s not true!” Louise cried. “I was running to defend you when he grabbed me.”
“Don’t be a bigger fool than you have to be, Louise.” Exasperation and anger mixed equally in her tone. “You’re making the family look bad.” Her fingers tightened slightly. Dmitri whimpered.
Cornered and desperate, Louise twisted around until she could stare up into Aurek’s face. “Kill her,” she growled. “Kill her, or I’ll drop it!”
It was an empty threat, and Aurek knew it. If she dropped Natalia while he held her, she knew she was dead the second the statue hit the floor. The moment he released her, and she could scurry to safety, Natalia’s life was forfeit. It no longer came down to whether or not he could trust Louise. Natalia’s life wasn’t the only life he had to worry about. “If I attack your sister now, she’ll kill my brother.”
“Who cares about your stupid brother?”
Aurek stared across the space at Dmitri, who was staring in horror at Louise as though he were seeing her for the first time. “I care,” he said quietly.
Dmitri swallowed in spite of Jacqueline’s grip. His eyes filled. Tears spilled down his cheeks and trickled over the back of Jacqueline’s hand. “I’ve been such an idiot, Aurek. I’m so sorry.”
“It was as much my fault as yours. I should never have pushed you away.”
“Touching,” Jacqueline murmured dryly, “but I don’t think you’ve picked the best time for an apology.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied Aurek’s face. “A simple scholar?”
Aurek’s chin rose, and a muscle jerked in his jaw. “It’s all I wanted to be. But because of my foolishness—my pride—in believing that research for the sake of research exempted me from the responsibilities of power, my wife is trapped alive inside that statue and my brother’s life is in your hands.” He inclined his head. “I have nothing more to hide. We are at your mercy.”
“You always were,” Jacqueline told him, her voice cold. “This is my domain, and nothing happens I do not know about. Something you, Aurek Nuikin, at least should have remembered, since I warned you in the beginning. I expected better from you, and I gave you every chance to confide in me.” Her expression held no
mercy. “If you hadn’t tried to pass yourself off as something you weren’t, I might not have torched the workshop.”
“You …” He saw again the ash, the total destruction of hope, and his vision darkened.
“Perhaps you should have told me what you were looking for when you asked for my permission to search. Did you think I have no feelings? Did you think I would take advantage of your love’s helplessness? Did you think I have never loved?” She almost shrieked the last question, but a heartbeat later the slip of control might never have happened. “Had you confided in me, I would have known the workshop was important to you and not merely a part of my sister’s plotting.”
“It was her!” Louise squealed. “She burned the workshop! Avenge your wife! Kill her!” She felt his fingers begin to loosen and started to struggle.
He couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk his Natalia. Not even to destroy the one who’d condemned her to remain in her living hell. “No.” He tightened his grip.
Jacqueline’s lips curved up off her teeth, though the expression could in no way be referred to as a smile. It was impossible to tell if she approved of his choice or thought him a fool for making it. “As it happens, I have no real interest in either of you. Shall we trade hostages?” Opening her hand, she moved it from Dmitri’s throat to his back and pushed him toward his brother.
Louise read her fate off her sister’s face, saw the suffering she would endure at her sibling’s hands, saw the pain to come. This human who held her would hand her into her sister’s grasp, pry the statue of his wife from her fingers, collect his brother, and all three of them would go off to a happy ending.