“I remember,” Serafina said with a smile.
Yes, that had been the first time they’d worked together. Serafina was newly arrived in Rotenek, and Princess Annek had required a truth-seeking mystery to counter the accusations of sorcery that had been made against her son, Efriturik. The research and sketches had overflowed the library and taken over the parlor, to Aunt Bertrut’s dismay. That was when the thought had first fastened itself in her mind: to have a larger place, a dedicated space for this sort of work. The academy had been an afterthought back then—a place that could include a lecture hall so that she needn’t compete with balls and concerts for space during the season. Now the school had taken first place in her heart and plans. But the workroom—that was a delicious luxury.
The long oak tables invited the placement of notes and diagrams. Standing lecterns had wheels so that the reference books could easily be moved with the work. At one end of the room, an open space was tiled in a decorative grid, the better to practice movements and note the placement of the larger apparatus. At the other end, she had brought in from a storeroom an ancient standing cabinet, crowded with drawers and tiny compartments, in which some Chasteld ancestor had assembled a collection of wonders and curiosities. By the time of Chasteld’s death, the valuable items had long since disappeared and it contained fragments of broken seashells, the tusks of some unknown beast, a jumble of minerals of a common sort and, behind one glass-fronted door, a pile of feathers that must once have been a stuffed and mounted bird. Margerit had claimed it to store and organize the various bits of common apparatus that experimental mysteries might call for. Candles of various sorts, oils, bits of parchment, small vials of water, both holy and distilled, inks in all colors and substances and, in one locked compartment, her small, precious collection of secondary relics, bits of wood and cloth.
But for now, they would be working with ideas alone—with the structures of symbol and logic that would invoke and bind together the divine grace symbolized in those objects. Margerit looked over to where Serafina waited with patient resignation. In the beginning, there had been hope. That was before failure had become a habit. It was time to move beyond that past.
“This time I want you to design the mystery and direct me in performing it.”
The resignation fell away, replaced with curiosity. “Me? How can I design it if—”
Margerit spread out the outline of the current palace ceremonial and handed Serafina the description and specifications that Annek had drawn up. “Begin with the markein as we always do. What will be the limits of the physical ambit?”
Serafina frowned down at the paper. “We’ll need something to represent the palace grounds.” She turned to the open tiled floor and asked, “Do you have a stick of chalk?”
Chapter Nineteen
Serafina
August, 1824
Serafina carefully avoided noticing the two pairs of eyes that turned to meet her when she entered the dining room. It had been a late night and a late morning. The boys were there, not to linger over breakfast, but for an early luncheon. Usually someone else would be present and the silence would not be so pointed.
Iohen Valorin didn’t like her. Serafina had yet to untangle precisely what it was he disliked beyond a vague jealousy of anyone who took his mother’s attention. He found excuses to come into their conversations, to come between them when walking, to have inconvenient need of his mother’s time. Luzie was patient, mingling excuses for his demands with guilt over the long separation they endured during the school year. Serafina was patient because there was nothing else to be.
“Good morning Maistir Iohen, Maistir Orrik.” She took a chair at the far end of the dining table. They were not on such terms that she could use Luzie’s pet names for them.
“Good morning Maisetra Talarek,” Rikke replied.
Serafina hadn’t decided whether there was malice behind his continued mangling of her name. It might be nothing more than a childish tongue turning it into something more Alpennian. Roman tongues had turned her father’s name into Talarico. Another change scarcely mattered and she didn’t care to betray how much it needled her. Rikke’s guileless questions often fell barely short of rudeness. Iohen’s rudeness was more subtle and more studied. He returned to his meal without a word.
Gerta came in and placed a small basket of rolls and a pot of butter on the table before her, asking, “Will that be enough, Maisetra? Or would you rather have luncheon? Cook says she has more of the cold pie but you usually only want bread in the morning.”
“That will do,” Serafina answered.
“There’s a letter for you,” Gerta added. “Not a regular letter, but a note that a boy brought round. Would you like it now?”
Serafina nodded, thinking it would save her from having to make conversation. Her heart had squeezed tightly at the word “letter,” but it couldn’t be from Paolo. All his correspondence came through the bankers.
The outside bore nothing except her name and a plain drop of red wax to hold it closed with no design on the seal. She could see a trace of fluctus threaded through the wax. Not Margerit, then. She wouldn’t bother with anything that elaborate and she certainly had no need for urgency. They saw each other often enough for ordinary questions. Before breaking the seal she examined the patterns of power it carried. Not the ordinary sort that traced whose hands opened the message, but one bound to the ink in some fashion. If the wrong person broke the seal, would the message disappear entirely? It seemed it might be so, but she couldn’t be certain. And who would be sending her such messages?
The answer was found in the small looping “K” at the bottom of the page. So the Austrian was back in town. But was there any need for this secrecy or was it merely a habit with him? The message itself was simple, if indirect.
I would like to make further use of your insight. I hear that you are fond of the gardens at Urmai. There is a statue of Prince Domric that shows to advantage in the afternoon light.
The afternoon? With no other indication, he must mean today, unless he expected her to travel down to Urmai every day until he appeared. He presumed a great deal to think she could drop any other plans she might have made. But there were no such plans and the location would cause no comment. She traveled down to the academy often enough, and one might run into anyone by chance at the pleasure gardens. Secrecy raised more questions than openness.
When Kreiser had first contacted her, she’d acceded as a favor to Margerit, not realizing that he’d never claimed that authority except by implication. His questions had seemed harmless. Had a certain object been touched by mysteries? To what purpose? Who had performed the rite? Where? Half the time she could see no trace of power. Only rarely could she follow the traces beyond the immediate event. As his questions moved from Alpennian matters to a wider search, she’d become uneasy about how far her cooperation should go. She knew too little about what interests the Empire might have in the Papal States—only that they did have interests. And she’d thought too little about how deep her own loyalties might be. She’d never had any reason to question her place in the forces that moved through the European courts and capitals. She had no allegience to Alpennia beyond personal bonds. Neither did she have the bone-deep attachment to Rome that Paolo and Costanza and even her brother’s wife Giuletta had. But the thought that she might find herself spying for Austria against the city of her birth…
The scrying he’d asked for was uneasily similar to what Paolo had wanted. But this time—with Kreiser’s help—she had succeeded. Success was intoxicating. Somehow, step by step, she’d become enmeshed, and now she was uncertain how to refuse. How important was Kreiser here in Alpennia? More important than she was, that was certain. Could she refuse?
She folded up the paper and slipped it into a pocket in her skirts.
When Gerta next came through clearing away the boys’ plates, she said, “If Maisetra Valorin asks, I’m going to Urmai for the afternoon.”
The maid no
dded. She was accustomed to serving as a calendar for the lodgers. “Will you be late for supper? Cook will want to know.”
Serafina calculated. “She shouldn’t wait on me.”
Meals were more predictable in the summer and Chisillic had higher expectations for promptness than in the eat-and-run of the winter season.
At the other end of the table, Serafina saw Iohen lean down to whisper something in his brother’s ear and then nudge him sharply.
The younger boy looked over at her with what might be a genuinely innocent expression. “Why do you sleep in my mama’s room?” he asked.
There was no guile in his voice, only curiosity, but Iohen was watching her under suspicious brows. Did he guess anything near the truth? Or was he only fishing for some tender spot? Who knew what the imagination of schoolboys might turn up.
“I sleep in your mother’s room,” she said carefully, “because I gave up my own room for the two of you.” She couldn’t tell whether Iohen was satisfied or not, but Orrik simply nodded and reached for another sweetbun.
* * *
She still hadn’t become accustomed to the rules of Alpennian society with regard to men and women, though she could always go to Jeanne for plain answers. She had presented herself as a married woman, and therefore the company of unfamiliar men was not forbidden to her. If she had been accompanied by a lady’s maid—or lived in those high circles where one might employ an armin—then she might dare to meet a man such as Mesner Kreiser in a private parlor at a café. It was only Luzie’s own strictures against male visitors that prevented him from coming to her at home. So many rules! She had been shielded from the need to know them in Rome by a girlhood spent outside ordinary society. Her father’s colleagues had scarcely considered her female, and when they did, his presence served as chaperone. After her marriage, Paolo’s position gave her the same protection. Costanza had been the one to open her eyes to how those rules could be used to a woman’s advantage, as well as how they could bring about her ruin.
The boat ride down to the school was more than familiar, though she usually tried to beg carriage space for the return to save the sharper upstream fare. The riverman who answered her hail knew her from previous trips and asked, “The Chasteld landing?”
She thought about telling him to continue down to the gardens, but something in Kreiser’s caution infected her and she only nodded. There was time to walk from there and then there would be no reason for anyone at all to remember.
She knew the monument Kreiser had specified. The gardens were not as full as the time she visited with Luzie and the boys. The children that played along the hedge-bordered paths today lived here, as did the shop girls out on a midday break. The visitors were a different mix as well: courting couples of respectable families, attended at a safe distance by maids or governesses, clumps of students from the university who hadn’t escaped the city for their more abbreviated summer season, walking with heads together in argument.
Serafina settled herself on a bench and looked around to see if Kreiser were in view. Her heart skipped. An achingly familiar figure was winding through the paths with an awkward case in hand.
Olimpia Hankez noticed her, hesitated, then shifted her path. “It’s a lovely day,” she offered.
It was what one said in Urmai. One praised the cool breezes that had first made the spot popular so many years ago. One admired the gardens and made note of whether the crowds were thick or thin. One didn’t exclaim in surprise at the sight of a former lover.
“You’ve come for work?” Serafina asked, nodding at the art case under her arm.
“I thought I’d set myself up and sketch. I need new faces,” Olimpia said, with a rueful twist of her mouth. “And you?”
“I’m meeting someone,” Serafina returned, trying to keep the answer as uninviting as possible. She could still be moved by Olimpia’s energetic grace. The betrayal hadn’t changed that. Luzie hadn’t changed that. Luzie filled a different place in her life, in her heart. A quieter place. Other spaces were still empty. Olimpia had filled one of them for a time. There had never been any word of forever between them. How could there have been? Olimpia dealt in bodies—explored them, appreciated them, immortalized them and then moved on. And for her? She barely knew what she was searching for.
From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Kreiser’s ruddy face. Olimpia saw the movement and followed it. Her eyes widened slightly. Had she recognized the Austrian? Or did she think it an assignation? Or both perhaps?
She said only, “It was good to see you again,” and moved on.
If Kreiser had noticed Olimpia he said nothing when he settled himself on the bench and placed a well-worn atlas in her lap. Even before she opened the covers she could feel the tingle of some mystic residue within the pages. There were no preliminaries this time.
“I thought this might help. Open to the marked page,” he instructed.
She found the ribbon and spread the book across her lap. It was only a section of land, taken out of context, with little markings for roads and rivers, tiny buildings indicating towns, and a faint glow perceptible only to the sensitive where Kreiser had marked a pattern of symbols across one part.
Next he opened a small case that shone brightly with fluctus and unwrapped layers of cloth to lay a frozen lump in her outstretched hand. It became slick with melt and made her fingers ache with the cold.
“Don’t worry about where the ice itself came from,” he said. “Follow the cold. Trace it back to its origin. Use the map.”
Serafina clenched her fingers around the ice, holding it away from the atlas and hoping that she could find the thread before it had melted away.
The last time they had worked together she had become lost in the visions, like one wandering in a fog. There had been no landmarks, no sense of distances or scale. This time the search was more focused and the atlas provided an anchor. She stared down at the page, trying to shift her mind into that floating state where even the faintest trace of fluctus would be apparent.
It had been easier to achieve within the walls of a church, where every habit and instinct called to those inner eyes. Here it took more conscious effort to remove distractions one by one: the laughing children, the small flock of songbirds in the tree behind her, the still unsettling memory of Olimpia’s appearance. She stared fixedly at the pages of the atlas so long that her eyes swam and the ink moved on the page. No, that wasn’t the ink. The mystic sigils had lifted up and were no longer tied to the paper.
She closed her eyes and followed those guides to their home. Not the page, but the land itself. She was a bird soaring high, a cloud drifting across the land. She could feel the cold of the snow-capped peaks sinking into her bones, spreading from her shivering fingers, even here in the sunlit gardens.
Yes, there was the shape at the heart of it. It felt like a rounded mass with waves lapping outward. Or like the opening petals of a rose. This was the pattern it had been impossible to find before, when the ripples and cross-ripples of those waves echoed back and forth across the landscape, confusing her senses. In her mind, she plucked away the petals from the edges of the mystery one by one. The later echoes, the spreading influence, the currents that the curse had traced across field and mountain. There was the core, the bud, the central mystery as it had been set.
She felt giddy at her success. This was different from observing the formal ceremonies in the cathedral. This was wild and uncertain, a puzzle to solve.
A sudden laugh behind her brought her back to Urmai. One hand was damp and empty and the other hovered over a page, pointing to one of the small black marks set on the page.
“Yes.” Kreiser let it out like a sigh. “Now for the harder part. That may be where the mystery was first invoked, but it’s unlikely that the celebrants worked it in that spot. I want you to cast your mind through and past. Find the source or sources.”
It took some time to compose herself again, returning to the landscape with its snow and
peaks and full-blown rose of light nestled in one mountain pass. The giddy joy was gone and she set to work plucking the petals away again, one by one, to reach that core. It was easier this time, now that she had that image to follow. Now what? A stem, a branch, roots in the soil pointing to what had sprouted and nourished the mystery. She could feel them, like encountering a cobweb in the dark. Insubstantial but resistant. Invisible yet present. Her finger brushed a strand and it twitched and jumped, as if plucked at the other end. But there was another end. She could feel it stretching out, anchored somewhere…
And then there was only the park, and the atlas, and Kreiser sitting patiently beside her. Was it the image of the cobweb that betrayed her? She moved her fingers over the page again but could no longer pick up the strands. They melted away like the lump of ice had. The touch of her mind wasn’t delicate enough to trace the threads from across the gulf of miles. They were there, they led somewhere, but…
With a sigh, she rested her hands on the pages, tired from holding them raised above the book, and opened her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t the skill.”
Kreiser was staring at her curiously. “If that was a failure of skill, may I aspire to fail so badly.”
“What does it mean?” Serafina asked. She brushed her fingertips across the skirts of her dress, still feeling those clinging strands.
He shook his head and said slowly, “Shall we try a different question?”
He placed a bright gold coin in her hand this time. For a moment she thought it was payment, but he opened the atlas to a page somewhere near the back.
“No mysteries or disasters this time. Can you trace what path that coin has taken?”
Serafina recognized the outlines of the coast where Ravenna stretched up toward Venice. This had nothing at all to do with the weather mystery. “No,” she said. “Do you think me a child? I won’t do your spying for you.”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 30