by K. E. Mills
Encouraged, Melissande waved her hands enthusiastically. “Well, then, Abel Bestwick’s been here for years. He might be a janitor, but he’d hardly be human if he hasn’t made at least one friend. You can make it your mission to find out who that is and what he or she knows. Gerald’s success here could depend upon it. Imagine how impressed he’ll be if you end up saving the day!”
Bibbie nibbled a fingernail, pondering the possibilities. “Yes,” she said at last. “Except this mysterious friend— assuming he or she exists—might not know anything. I don’t think it’s likely Abel Bestwick would’ve blabbed janitor business, even to a friend. Can you see Sir Alec leaving an agent here alone for so long if he didn’t know how to hold his tongue?”
No. Not at all. Stymied, Melissande slumped—then snapped up straight as fresh inspiration struck. “But he or she might not know that they know something important! And even if they don’t, or even if there isn’t a friend, someone has to have been the last person to see Bestwick in the palace before he bolted home to warn Sir Alec about the wedding. And that’s your other job, Bibbie. Finding out who that is and getting him or her to confide in you.”
“Confide in me?” said Bibbie, nonplussed. “Why the devil would some complete stranger want to pour out their secrets into my ear? I mean, yes, I s’pose I could encourage them a bit, I do know a rather effective little tittle-tattle hex, only Sir Alec did say—”
“And Sir Alec was right!” Melissande raised a warning finger. “Don’t you dare try hexing people. You’ll get us sent home in disgrace. Or worse, you could ruin things for Gerald.”
“Which wouldn’t endear me to him at all,” Bibbie agreed. “Fine. No hexing. Only how am I meant to—”
She grinned. “Easily. The only thing royal servants enjoy more than a good gossip is having a good whinge about all the dreadful things we do to make their lives impossible.”
“Ah,” said Bibbie, impish again. “So all I have to do is start whinging about you and I’ll have more confiding friends than I know what to do with?”
“Something like that,” she said, beginning to wonder if this was a good idea after all. “But don’t get carried away. Just start the ball rolling with some good, vigorous complaints and then throw in a few leading questions. Gently steer the conversation round to Abel Bestwick, and see what happens.”
“Yes,” said Bibbie, of a sudden looking uncertain. “But Mel, this is only going to work to my advantage if Gerald’s there to see my brilliance in action. What if he insists on being upstairs with you? What if he invokes the wrath of Sir Alec if he’s banished to the Servant’s Ball with me and the other miniony riff-raff?”
“He won’t,” she said. “He can’t. Algernon Rowbotham’s no more invited to the State Dinner than Gladys Slack is. Gerald might want to go, but in the end he has to do what I say.”
Bibbie’s lingering frown scrunched into a scowl. “In that case, you can tell him to stop trying to protect me for my own good!”
Oh, lord. Best to squash such a dangerous thought here and now. “I’m sorry, Bibbie, I can’t,” she said firmly. “Whatever’s going to happen between you and Gerald will happen without me.” She held up a hand, forestalling Bibbie’s protest. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy. I do. But no good ever comes from friends meddling with friends in affairs of the heart.”
“Really?” said Bibbie, plaintive again. “Are you sure?”
She folded her arms. “Positive.”
“Yes … well …” said Bibbie. “I s’pose so.”
Praise Saint Snodgrass. Another crisis averted. “Good. Now, come along, Miss Slack. The day is fast running away from us. Time for you to shake out my gown then run me a bath. Be sure you put lots of rose oil into it. If memory serves, Hartwig’s allergic to roses. That might be my only hope.”
“Blimey,” said Bibbie, groaning, and flailed her way off the vast bed.
“That’s Blimey, Your Highness, if you don’t mind,” said Melissande, very prim, and laughed as Bibbie made another rude noise.
Though she loved them dearly, the emerald earrings weren’t going to suit. So while Bibbie excavated the wardrobe, Melissande fished around a bit more in her jewellery box. In the end she chose her great-grandmother’s chandelier rubies. They were a nightmare to wear, all heavy gold and large-cut blood red stones, but they were the best fit with the gown she’d brought for the State Dinner. And what was a little pain, in the service of one’s adopted country?
She put the earrings aside, ready for polishing, and turned to see Bibbie brandishing a dress at her. “It’s this one, Mel, isn’t it?”
This one was the blue-and-gold dinner gown that a lifetime ago she’d worn to Lional’s coronation banquet. It was the only flattering gown she’d dared let herself possess, then, and she hadn’t worn it since. Nearly threw it away, after—after everything changed—only it had cost a small fortune and since New Ottosland taxes paid for it, she couldn’t bring herself to commit such waste.
“Yes, that’s right, only please don’t wave it about like a damp tea towel!”
“Sorry,” said Bibbie, rolling her eyes. She shook out the folds of heavy silk, then laid the elaborately bead-and-crystal sewn dress over a plushly padded chair. “It’s rather gorgeous, this. What a shame Monk’s not here to see you in it.”
Yes, wasn’t it? The dress really was very becoming … but instead of a chance to bask in Monk’s admiration, she was facing an evening of being boggled at by Hartwig. Bibbie was right. This janitoring business was turning out to be no fun at all.
“There,” Bibbie said, and gave the expensive dress one last smoothing pat. “And now I’ll go and stink up the place with oil of roses.”
But instead of retreating to the guest suite’s private bathroom, she wandered to the nearest window and peered down into the palace gardens far below.
“I wonder where Gerald’s got to? He’s been gone for ages. Don’t you think he should be back by now?”
Yes, she did. “Perhaps he got lost,” she said, trying to ignore a treacherous sizzle of nerves. “Grande Splotze is a bit of a sprawl, you know.”
“Lost? Gerald?” Bibbie drummed her fingers on the windowsill. “You don’t think he could’ve run into trouble, do you?”
Precisely because she did think it, because when it came to trouble Gerald was more attractive than honey to flies, she made a scornful tutting sound.
“No, of course I don’t, Bibbie. After all, he’s a rogue wizard. Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s fine.”
Dizzy with nausea, Gerald bent double over the nearest bit of refuse-clogged gutter and heaved up another burning mouthful of bile. It seemed that not even his newly enhanced potentia could protect him from the persistently lingering savagery of blood magic.
Head pounding, guts aching, he pressed his fists to his knees and slowly straightened. Where the devil was he? A long way from Abel Bestwick’s wrecked half-house, that much he knew for sure. Otherwise …
Am I lost? Hell, don’t let me be lost. I’ll never hear the end of it if I am.
Splashed on the cracked cobblestones at his feet, more of Abel Bestwick’s blood. The splotchy crimson trail had enticed him out of his fellow janitor’s living room and into the alley behind the run-down lodging. Bludgeoned by the stench of blood magic he’d blindly followed the dried smears as they led him streets and streets away from the Canal and the centre of Grande Splotze, out to the ragged edge of the city’s slummy district. The dwellings here were even more depressing and dilapidated than those in Voblinz Lane. If not for the occasional suspicious twitching of a curtain as he passed, he’d have thought them deserted.
“Dammit, Bestwick,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Where are you?”
Balled in his pocket was one of the agent’s dirty socks. Monk said you couldn’t improve on a good, smelly sock when it came to a seeking. But even with that, and with the strongest locator hex he knew, Abel Bestwick remained stubbornly elusive. Sir Alec had warned him
that field agents dosed themselves regularly with an obscurata incant but he’d not lost any sleep over that. He was Gerald Dunwoody, rogue wizard. Abel Bestwick had no hope of hiding from him! But it turned out his rogue status hadn’t made any difference. Bestwick was gone, vanished like mist in sunlight.
Bloody hell. If I don’t find him, Sir Alec really will go more than spare.
Throat tight with frustration, Gerald dropped to one knee in the filthy lane and touched his fingertips to Bestwick’s dried blood. Then he held out his hand and waited for the answering tingle from the next splash, somewhere ahead.
Nothing.
“What?” he muttered, and tried again. Come on, come on, come on. But though he strained his senses to the point of fresh nausea, still he felt nothing. The trail had gone cold.
“Dammit!” he said, shoving to his feet. “Bloody, bloody, bloody—”
The sound of a front door opening behind him made him turn. A skinny woman wrapped in an old, faded apron stood on the front step of her shambling, paint-peeling cottage, scrawny arms folded, thin face pinched with suspicion.
“You there,” she said, accusing in rough Splotzin. “What’s that you’re up to? This idn’t no place for strangers. Be off.”
Praise the pigs. A sign of life. Wiping his hands down the front of his tweed coat, Gerald hastily rearranged his face into its gormless butterfly prince expression.
“Oh! Good day, madam! I’m sorry to bother you!” he said, switching languages, and crossed the lane towards her. “Only I’m looking for a friend of mine, and—”
The woman stepped back inside her cottage and slammed the door in his face.
“And I guess that means you can’t help me,” he finished. “Damn.”
Uncertain, frustrated, he stared along the lane, willing Bestwick to magically appear. He didn’t, the miserable bugger.
Just you wait, Bestwick. When I finally catch up with you, we’re going to have words.
He blew out a harsh breath and looked at the sky, where the sun was slipping swiftly towards the unseen horizon. Damn. If he didn’t get back to the palace soon the girls would likely send out a search party. But he couldn’t go back empty handed. How was he meant to explain that to Sir Alec?
The grimoire magic that had healed his bruises, healed his ruined eye, seethed with quiet power under his skin. Waited for him to call on it, like a dragon tamed to his fist. Heart thudding, he pulled Bestwick’s manky old sock from his pocket, closed his fingers around it, and let his eyelids drift shut.
Come on,Abel.We’ve got work to do. Come out, come out, wherever you are …
The grimoire magic lashed through him, dropping him to his knees. He scarcely felt the pain of skin and bone striking cobbles. Astonished, appalled, he wrestled it into submission. Channelled it into one last effort to find Sir Alec’s missing man.
Fireworks exploded behind his eyes—and then, like Abel Bestwick, the world disappeared.
“All right,” said Bibbie, pacing the guest bedchamber’s plush carpet. “That’s it. I’m going to look for him.”
Freshly bathed, smelling of roses and wrapped in a quilted silk dressing gown, Melissande leapt to bar her way. “No, Bibbie. You can’t.”
“Melissande, I have to!” Eyes bright with tears, Bibbie fought back a sob. “I can’t just sit here, not knowing what’s happened! He could be bleeding in a gutter, or lying in a hospital, or—”
“Or on his way back right now without so much as a scratch,” she said, and put a restraining hand on Bibbie’s arm. “Bibs, if you kick up a fuss you could put him at risk. Is that what you want?”
“Don’t be a gudgeon!” said Bibbie, wrenching free. “What I want is—”
They both startled at the loud knocking on the guest suite’s front door.
“Gerald, for pity’s sake, where have you been?” Bibbie demanded, as he pushed past her into the antechamber. “Mel and I are—”
“Shut the door, shut the door,” said Gerald, glaring. “D’you want some passing housemaid to hear us?”
As Bibbie pushed the door closed, biting her lip, Melissande shook her head at him. “Gerald, I’m glad you’re all right, but really, you can’t be in here. What if—”
“I need your small green dressing case, Mel,” he said, riding roughshod. His Algernon hair was all over the place, and there was dirt on his sleeves and hands and the knees of his tweed trousers. “Where is it?”
She stared. “My small green—Gerald Dunwoody, what is going on?”
“Dammit, Melissande!” he said, turning on her. “Just give me the bloody case!”
“It’s in the bedchamber,” Bibbie said, eyeing him warily. “I’ll fetch it.”
“Hurry,” said Gerald.
Melissande folded her arms. “Whatever’s happened, Gerald, snapping and snarling at us isn’t going to help.”
A fraught moment, and then his shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“So, what have you hidden in my dressing case? I hope it’s not that scaled-down First Grade staff Monk arranged for you. I haven’t forgotten what it did to your ties.”
He started to pace. “No. I was going to bring it but I changed my mind. Bibbie! Come on, I have to—”
“All right, all right,” said Bibbie, hurrying back. “Honestly, Gerald, you’re starting to sound like—”
Ignoring her, he snatched the dressing case from her grasp, undid its clasps and upended its contents onto the floor. A small, unfamiliar crystal ball rolled out of the embarrassing tumble of sensible camisoles.
Gerald snatched it up then turned. “Sorry, Mel, but I couldn’t risk carrying it with me. There’s always a chance of someone searching my things.”
“It’s all right,” she said, completely unnerved by the look in Gerald’s hexed eyes. “It’s a direct link to Sir Alec, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said curtly, putting the ball on the antechamber’s occasional table. “Now, if I thought there was any point trying to keep you two out of this I would, but since there’s not, just stay still and quiet. What Sir Alec doesn’t know won’t hurt him or us.”
A shared look with Bibbie, then Melissande nodded. “Fine.”
“We’ll be church mice, Gerald,” Bibbie added, coming to stand with her. “Cross our hearts.”
“You’d better,” said Gerald, then activated the crystal ball. It fogged, then swirled a muddy, unpromising brown. He cursed. “Bloody Splotzeish etheretics. Come on, come on …”
Melissande chewed her thumb. “What’s the matter?”
“The vibration won’t settle.”
“Can’t you fix it?” said Bibbie.
“No,” Gerald snapped. “Not even I’m strong enough to realign the etheretics of half a bloody continent. And what part of be quiet didn’t you two understand?”
Oh, dear.
A few more moments and the etheretics settled enough, barely, for the crystal ball to establish a tenuous connection with Sir Alec.
“Mister Dunwoody. Report.”
“Sir Alec,” said Gerald, his voice tight and oddly formal. “Bestwick’s not in his lodging, and he didn’t leave anything helpful behind. But I’m afraid that whoever attacked him did. When they left 45b, they were tracking him. With blood magic.”
Bibbie stiffened, swallowing a gasp.
In the small crystal ball, Sir Alec’s face blurred and wavered.
“Blood magic? Mister Dunwoody, are you sure?”
“I threw up four times following the blood trail Bestwick left behind him,” said Gerald. “And I’ve still got a splitting headache. So, yes. I’m pretty sure.”
“I take it you’ve no idea of Bestwick’s current location?”
“No, sir. The trail went cold a mile or so from Voblinz Lane. Either he managed to stop the bleeding or he found transport out of the area.”
“Or his attackers caught up with him. Or—”
“Yes,” Gerald said heavily. “Or he died, and his body’s either not been disc
overed or it’s lying unclaimed in the Grande Splotze morgue. But if he is still alive, sir, then he could be anywhere by now. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” said Sir Alec. “By the time I—”
The rest of his reply was lost in a sparkly etheretic snowstorm. When it cleared a few moments later, Sir Alec’s voice was uncharacteristically alarmed.
“—hear me, Mister Dunwoody?”
“Yes, sir, you’re back,” said Gerald. “But I don’t know for how long.”
“When do you leave on the wedding tour?”
“The day after tomorrow. I’ll keep looking for Bestwick between now and then.”
“Without raising suspicions?” said Sir Alec, skeptical. “Algernon Rowbotham has no good reason to be poking about the Grande Splotze morgue.”
“I have to do something. I can’t just—”
“Yes, you can, Mister Dunwoody. Right now we’re playing a waiting game. Overplay your hand and this will end in tears.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gerald came to terms with harsh reality. “Yes, sir. Sir, blood magic hexery isn’t what you’d call common—or legal. Have you got someone who can start nosing out any wizards capable of supplying it?”
In the crystal ball, Sir Alec’s face broke apart, then reformed. “I’ll task Mister Dalby. It’s not like he has anything better to do.”
His weary scorn was hurtful to hear.
“Ask Monk,” Gerald suggested. “He’s a dab hand at solving thaumaturgical puzzles.”
“I’ll see,” said Sir Alec, unenthusiastic. “At the moment Mister Markham is—”
Another burst of etheretic static. It took longer to clear this time.
“Sir, this connection’s about to clap out for good,” Gerald said quickly, then tugged a small square of bloodstained carpet from his inside coat pocket. “I’ve got a sample of the hex. I’ll send it to Uncle Frederick tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Sir Alec. “And in the meantime, keep me informed
of—”
“Uncle Frederick?” said Bibbie, once they’d given up hoping the connection to Sir Alec would re-establish. “That’s a secret Department address, I suppose?”