by Lynn Vieh
“But you didn’t tell the mayor that,” I guessed.
“After I assured His Honor that I had dispelled the spirit from the premises, I discreetly arranged for the mayor’s opponent to withdraw from the election.” He sat back on his heels and watched the flames catch. “Directly after that, he and his aide left Rumsen.”
He hadn’t killed them, as everyone had believed. “You blackmailed him.”
“I persuaded him to relocate to a city in the east where he might enjoy more success in the political arena.” He rose and brushed some melting snow from his shoulders before regarding me. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”
“You don’t believe in magic any more than I do.” And now I had proof of it. “You’re an investigator like me. You only dress it up with spells and nonsense to hide your methods. So how did you disguise the blade you used on the snuffmage outside court? Was it some sort of trick, like the way you pretended to pop through the floors at Morehaven?”
“Come here, Charmian.” He removed a dust drape from a cushiony lady’s armchair by the fire and gestured for me to take a seat in it. When I did, he said, “I will answer your questions, but you must first do something for me.”
My first, automatic response was to refuse, but Dredmore had just diverted Walsh’s men from harming Rina and her gels, and had provided safe sanctuary for me. I owed him some cooperation, and we both knew it. “What do you want?”
“Take off your pendant and hand it to me.”
The moment I did, I knew Harry would appear, but at least Dredmore wouldn’t be able to see him. I reached up, unfastened the catch, and held out the chain to him.
The moment the pendant left my fingers, my grandfather’s misty form appeared. He didn’t say a word, but lunged at Dredmore, who quickly pocketed the pendant. As soon as he did, Harry turned semitransparent.
“Why on earth did you do that, you silly twit?” my grandfather shouted.
“Because I asked her to.” Dredmore looked directly at Harry. “Hello, Ehrich.”
“You know my grandfather?” I looked from Dredmore to Harry and back again. “Hang on. You can see him?”
“It’s a trick, Charm.” Harry solidified enough to cast a shadow on the faded but still colorful Turkish rug. “He’s only making a pretense so he can use you. You must leave here at once.”
“You’d rather send her out to die in the snow than tell her the truth?” Dredmore came to stand behind me, and I saw his angry expression reflected in the oval mirror above the mantel. “She’s your own flesh and blood, old man. She deserves to know more than the bits and pieces that you’ve been feeding her.”
“He seems to be able to see and hear you quite well,” I advised my grandfather. The thought of how he had possessed Connell at Morehaven, and the prospect of him doing the same to Dredmore, made me gesture at a cluster of brass-studded bronze leather armchairs. “Why don’t we all sit down and talk about this?”
“Sit down and talk. With him?” Harry uttered a bitter laugh. “You don’t know what spawned him, or what his sort can do.” He looked at Dredmore for the first time, and there was pure hatred in his eyes. “But I know, boy. I know exactly what you are.”
“Have you told her what you’ve done?” Dredmore asked this with exquisite courtesy. “Why don’t you explain that, Ehrich? Or are you leaving that for others to do, just as you did in France?”
“I know he was Houdini,” I told Dredmore, and watched the white puff of my breath float from my lips. “Why is it so cold in here now?”
“That is his doing.” He eyed my grandfather. “No more half-truths, Ehrich. Tell her who you were before you took possession of that Crown spy. Who you were when Harry White led his regiment into the Bréchéliant, and what you were when you came back out.” He waited, but Harry said nothing, and the ticking of the great clock by the door seemed to grow very loud. “I see. She’s good enough to torment, to use, to manipulate, but not worthy of the truth. Fortunately for you, Charmian is now under my protection.”
“I beg your pardon.” I stared at him. “Your what?”
“Your what?” Harry strode forward without looking, banged into an end table, and caught it before it toppled. When he took his hand from it he left an icy print of his palm and fingers. “Your father may have wanted recompense for being taken. Like the others, Jack deserved it. But his battle was never yours. You can bloody well do as you like, but you won’t drag my granddaughter into it.”
“She’s in it to her ears.” Dredmore was sneering now. “You had your chance to do right by her, Ehrich. More than a thousand of them, I should think. But you sacrificed her, and her mother, and her grandmother on the altar of Queen and country and your own pathetic schemes.”
“So now you’ll cut her throat?” Harry’s eyes took on a strange purple glow. “I will end you first, boy.”
The mention of murder made it high time for me to intervene. “Whatever quarrel you two have with each other, it’s nothing to do with me. Lucien, I can look after myself, so stuff your protection. Harry, I’m not interested in carrying on whatever feud you have with Dredmore or his father.” I remembered Hedger’s strange reaction to learning that Harry was my grandfather. “Is there anyone who likes you?”
“His name isn’t—” that was all my grandfather got out before Lucien stepped between us. His broad back kept me from seeing what he did, but his back muscles shifted, and then Harry abruptly vanished.
“What did you do?” I asked, shuffling back a few steps.
“I banished him back to the netherside.” Dredmore turned to face me. “As long as you are with me, he cannot manifest or meddle with you.”
“Harry’s never meddled.” When he would have come closer I went round behind the chair. “You, on the other hand, have inflicted an excessive amount of damage to my reputation, my person, and my life.”
He didn’t like that. “How have I harmed you, Charmian? By wanting you? By taking what you freely offered me? Or by trying to shield you from Walsh and dark forces that you cannot even begin to fathom?” He extended his arms in a helpless fashion. “Please, enlighten me as to which it was.”
I did. “You abducted me and held me prisoner against my will. You raced about assassinating snuffmages, never mind that I might be blamed for the murders. Oh, and you also agreed to kill me for twenty thousand pounds.”
“I took that fool’s money to give to you,” he shouted. “It was to help you settle into a new life—”
“After I left Toriana with you for some secluded lovers’ nest overseas,” I tacked on, “ where I could nightly entertain you until you tired of me? I’d rather work for Rina.”
“You might as well.” He turned away. “I’ve tired of you already.”
That stung, more than I cared to admit. “Problem solved, then.”
I came round and sat in the armchair. “Before I’m forced to leave the country and flee for my life, perhaps you should tell me about this thing between you and Harry. Start with how you’re able to see his specter, and exactly how you sent him off.” I was particularly interested in the latter so that I might do the same if Harry became troublesome.
Dredmore went to the overly large secretary and opened the upper cabinet, sliding aside a panel. “He’s not a specter. He’s a manifesting spirit.”
“There’s a difference?” I frowned as he shifted and I saw the rows of switches that the panel had hidden. “What’s that for?”
Dredmore put his thumb beneath one switch and glanced back at me. “You.” He flipped the switch.
Two velvet-covered bars shot out from the ends of my chair’s arms, bending at hidden joints and locking together at the ends. Before I could get to my feet, they retracted, shoving me back against the cushions. A smaller pair of bars swung out beneath my skirts and did the same, trapping my ankles in place. When I pushed at the bars locked across my waist, two cuffs popped out of them and snapped round my wrists.
“Don’t bother struggling,” Dr
edmore told me. “You haven’t the strength.”
I tried but I couldn’t budge the chair’s automatic manacles. I’d never heard of such mech, but Dredmore could afford things other mortals could only have nightmares about.
I looked up at him. “When you’re finished,” I said pleasantly, “you’d better plan to sleep with one eye open for the rest of your bleeding life.”
“That I do already, Charmian.” He turned his attention to the panel, and I heard doors being bolted and window latches fastening, and then a white-painted board descended from the ceiling.
I had nothing to do but wait and plot his slow, painful death, but still I jumped when the table beside me sprouted a complicated pile of gears, pulleys, and lenses.
“Is it a torture device?” I asked, wondering if he meant to feed my hands to it.
“It is called an illuminator. Let’s hope it lives up to its name.” He left the secretary, going round to all the lamps and turning them down until the room became shrouded in darkness. He pulled the chair to the other side of the table machine, and popped a matchit.
The bizarre rituals confused me, but the matchit didn’t. Surely he wouldn’t set me on fire, trapped as I was. “Lucien, perhaps I’ve been too harsh. You and I should talk more—”
“Do shut up, Charmian.” He used the flame to light a small row of candles inserted in the back of the device. As soon as their wicks caught, he adjusted a row of small mirrors, and several shafts of light merged and formed a glowing circle on the hanging board.
“There is a difference between spirits and specters,” Dredmore said as he placed a cylinder lined with tiny, silverblack-etched glasses in front of the rows of candles. “We didn’t know what it was, not until after the war.” He switched on the machine.
My eyes widened as a flickering picture appeared on the white board. In it tiny figures of soldiers marched across a field toward a forest, and they moved just as if I were standing there behind them, watching.
“The illuminator uses a zoopraxiscope to show many images in succession,” I heard Dredmore say.
“Then it needs a shorter name.” Angry as I was, I couldn’t stop watching the moving pictures. “Who are they?”
“A regiment in the North country.” Dredmore left the machine running, picked up a fire iron, and poked at the logs in the hearth, creating an updraft of orange and yellow sparks. “Your grandfather and my father were among them. They were friends once.”
“Lucien, your father is titled,” I said. “I know he’s exempt from service. Think of a better lie.”
“Lady Travallian was my mother, and her husband recognized me as his heir, but Jack, the man who sired me, was a commoner.” Dredmore came to sit on the floor beside me. “He was also a tintest, attached to your grandfather’s regiment.”
Having such a large, dignified figure at my feet seemed ridiculous, especially when I couldn’t kick him in the head, but it wasn’t as if I could change seats. “Is that why Lord Travallian disowned you and left the title to his nephew? Because you’re a bastard in truth?”
“No.” He curled a hand round my calf. “After I discovered that Jack was my father, and what he could do, I told my mother’s husband to disown me, and I cut all ties to my family.”
The rub of his thumb against the bare back of my knee made me grit my teeth. It also made my shoulders turn to pudding. “How noble of you.”
“Before I reached my majority, Jack came to see me. He told me how he and my mother had met, and why she married Travallian. He explained what had happened to him during the war.” He glanced up at me. “My father was a Lost Timer. So was your grandfather.”
Chapter Six
For all his obsession with sciences and mech, my father had dearly loved history. Each night, when he came to tuck me in, he’d tell me a story about strange people and their forgotten worlds, as if they were faeriestales. He particularly loved the mysterious and unexplained, like how the Nile people had built such enormous pyramids, or why four hundred Norders had vanished overnight from their first Torian settlement.
Da had mentioned the Lost Timers to me once, too, and now I searched my memory until I recalled something of what he had said. “That was what they called those soldiers who went missing in Britanny during the war. They got lost in some forest and weren’t seen for months.”
“That is how it began.” Little prisms, cast off by the glass cylinder as it turned, slid down Dredmore’s face and chest. “Ordinarily the regiment’s tintest remained behind the lines to protect their equipment, so my father wasn’t even supposed to be with them. The depth and breadth of the Bréchéliant made it impossible for Jack to capture the fighting from a safe distance, and he was obliged to follow the regiment into the forest. He thought he would be safe if he stayed in the trees.” His voice went hollow. “He didn’t know what was waiting for him . . . for all of them.”
A deep suspicion began to gather inside me as I looked at the moving picture again. It had started over from the beginning and was showing the men crossing the field. “Is this your father’s work, then?” I asked, nodding toward the board.
“The original ambrotints were his. I had copies made smaller to fit the device.” He glanced at it and then got up to change out the glass cylinder, replacing it with another.
This time, the moving picture showed the soldiers creeping through the trees, sometimes looking back as if they sensed we were following them.
“Jack told me that from the moment he crossed over into the forest, he felt as if something was watching them,” Dredmore said. “When it grew dark, he began packing up his tinter to wait to shoot until he had morning light, but then there was light. Strange light that came out of nowhere.”
Strange indeed. On the board I watched bizarre glowing streaks darting behind the trees, and while the silverblack on the glass ambrotints rendered all of the light gray, the faster the streaks moved, the brighter they seemed to flash.
“Lampflies,” I murmured to myself as the soldiers came upon a dense grove of old oaks and more lights began filling the moving picture. “A swarm might look like that.”
“I thought the same,” Dredmore said, “until Jack told me the frost a month before the battle had already killed off all the insects.”
I felt impatient. “Then what were they? More specters? Leg-sprouting candles? Dancing Yuletide trees?”
The moving picture stopped as Dredmore changed cylinders again. New images appeared that showed the soldiers taking firing positions behind the oaks’ immense trunks.
“Your grandfather assumed, not entirely incorrectly, that the lights were torches being waved by the Talian forces. As you see, he ordered his men to take up defensive positions in an old oak grove. He had no way of knowing that the lieutenant leading the enemy troops toward the grove from the other side thought the English were doing the exact same thing, and had put his men in identical positions. Which is all they wanted.”
The moving picture started again from the beginning, showing the soldiers following the lights and then taking cover from them. Dredmore said nothing until I prompted, “They?”
“The trees.” He switched off the machine and blew out the candles. “They took them.”
“The trees took them.” I was right; he was mad.
“They seized every soldier on both sides of that grove. They pulled their bodies into their trunks. They swallowed them whole.” Dredmore went to the mantel, bracing one arm against the carved, polished wood to look down into the merrily crackling flames. “The men had to become part of the trees so that the Aramanthan trapped inside could possess them and escape.”
And for this he had trussed me to an armchair? He couldn’t be drunk; he’d barely touched the gin at Rina’s. Harry’s sudden appearance certainly hadn’t frightened him out of his wits. No, whatever had addled his brain must be more serious than grumpy ghosts and the blue ruin. “Lucien, I’m sure your father saw some terrible things during the war, but really. Man-eating trees?�
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“The oaks had been bespelled long ago. No,” he added when I looked away, and came to loom over me. “You will listen to me this time.”
“Very well.” I was annoyed, but he was an unbalanced deathmage, and if regaining my freedom and preserving my ability to breathe meant catering to his insanity, then I’d make a decent show of it. I glanced up. “I’m listening. Tell me the rest of this faeriestale.”
“Faeries didn’t build the Bréchéliant,” he said. “It was the haven of the Druuds, the old high priests who protected humanity. A thousand years ago, they saved the world by putting an end to a civil war being fought by the Aramanthan. They combined their powers to lure all of the warring immortals and their minions into the forest, where they bound their spirits to enchanted stones and cast their bodies into the oaks. They then warded the forest itself to prevent anyone from entering it.”
“Using magic that, oh, didn’t work.” I controlled an impulse to begin tapping my slipper by nudging the edge of the Turkish rug with one toe. “How awful for them.”
“The spells didn’t fail.” He walked over to an antique standing globe displayed beside the heavy tapestry window curtains, and with a nudge of his thumb set the little sphere to spinning. “The world changed. Over the centuries, weather, floods, and earthquakes created new paths round the old wards into the Bréchéliant. The soldiers on both sides simply stumbled onto them.”
I again marveled at how magic always seemed to evaporate at the most convenient moments. “Tragic.”
Dredmore stopped the globe. “Time had changed the immortal prisoners of the grove as well. Nothing remained of their bodies except dust. Their immortal spirits endured, however, trapped as they were in stones used by the Druuds to imprison them. By that time they had learned what they needed to escape.” He came to me, and absently tucked a stray piece of my hair behind my ear. “Can you guess what it was?”
“A woodman’s ax?” I guessed. “Lightning? Termites?”