When the light swept back over the hotel, Abel was gone.
Sneaking out of one’s own home was unnecessarily difficult, Yvienne grumbled. She couldn’t let herself out the front door, due to the crowd of gawkers and reporters. The kitchen door was likewise secured as Albero had set the bell to ring in his room if anyone tried to open it. It was a thoughtful detail, which proved what a good butler he was. No burglar would rob House Mederos under his watch. And she couldn’t leave by the parlor doors that led to the garden, because Uncle Samwell, with new-found purpose as guardian of the House, was sleeping in the parlor.
Yvienne resorted to the window in her parents’ lavish bedroom. It was down the hall at the other end of the house, with a balcony overlooking the back garden. The vast apartment occupied half of the second floor. It included an en suite bathroom and water closet. The first thing Alinesse had done when they returned to the house was sell the old furniture that had presumably been polluted by Trune’s soiled physical presence and character, and bought all new on advance. Yvienne couldn’t blame her, but the new pieces, an enormous bed, two massive wardrobes, a vast dressing table, and a variety of end tables and chairs, depressed her. She was nostalgic for the bedroom of her childhood, when she and Tesara had been allowed to jump on the bed, or sit with their mama while she dressed for an evening out, watching in awe at Alinesse’s transformation from formidable mother into an even more formidable and splendid stranger.
Yvienne threaded her way through the furniture, and only barked her knee once on a wayward end table. Rubbing it and cursing under her breath, she hobbled over to the portofinestra to the balcony. She slipped out between the doors, and even through her wool trousers and jacket, the cold slithered to her skin. She shivered and tugged the cap down tighter over her hair. Should she have worn a muffler? No – it would only get in her way. She resisted the urge to tug at the binding over her bosom. Even with its help, the shirt strained over her shape, but the jacket helped, and as it was dark, she had no doubt that, at first glance anyway, she could still pass for a boy.
There were no outside stairs. Yvienne would have to climb down the iron railing to the garden. It occurred to her that by leaving the window unsecured for her return, she was allowing an enterprising burglar – or reporter – entry. Conscientiously, she reached back inside and locked the window doors so that when she pulled them to, they latched behind her.
She took a deep breath and swung her leg over the railing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Yvienne was no longer shivering by the time she made it across the city to the Saint Frey mansion. The clocktower in Cathedral Plaza had rung the twelve o’clock chimes. The city slumbered under the blanket of fog. From her place in the shadows along the drive, she couldn’t even see the city, the fog had rolled in that thoroughly. The lighthouse searchlight swept over the top of the fog as along the top of a low-lying cloud. The only noise came from the ever-present drip drip drip of water on ornamental trees.
The mansion was dark. Yvienne’s night vision was hard-pressed to discern any distinguishing features of the house, such as a front door. Not that she would be going in that way. She darted across the drive and skirted the front of the house, making her way by guess and by feel along the rough stone walls.
When her fingers encountered a window that gave a bit to her probing, she pulled out a thin metal shim, and worked at the slit in between the sash and the sill. In seconds she had the latch undone. Yvienne paused, holding her breath, then pushed up the window. It groaned, but it gave. She squirmed inside.
It was utterly dark and utterly cold. Yvienne scratched a match and it flared against her fingertips. She lit the stub of candle she had brought, holding it high above her head. As the darkness gave way the room took shape. A parlor.
In a trice she had a candlestick and fixed her small light in it. It was time to find Tesara.
Fifteen minutes later, she found herself in a burned-out room, its doors having been forced open. The room had suffered a great conflagration. The furnishings and drapes were reduced to tatters and ash, and the smell was dreadful. The window had been smashed, no doubt to give trapped people a few minutes of air. Oh God, Tesara. Panic seized her, and she thrust it down. There was no time for that.
Yvienne looked around, trying to discover some evidence of Tesara being in the room, but her candlelight was too dull and the room far too destroyed to give up any clews.
She stepped on something soft and stifled a shriek, then looked closer, holding the candle at a better angle. What she first thought was a dead animal was a tangle of burned hair. A pet? She nudged it with her boot, and then all of a sudden recognized it. A wig. Yvienne shook her head, and with one last glance around, she left the room.
Another bedroom down the hall contained a bed recently occupied, and her interest increased. Yvienne replenished her candle with another, and the light had a bit more life to it. She set the candleholder on a bedside table. This was a masculine room. The bed was unmade but recently slept in, judging by the cleanliness of the sheets – no dust or clamminess as she had seen in the other bedrooms. She lifted up the blankets and sheets and looked under the mattress, and then under the bed for good measure, but found nothing.
The room held a measure of warmth, and she checked the fireplace. Sure enough, some coals still breathed. She took a poker and fished through the ashes, pulling out half-burned cloth. Blood and salve coated the bandages, and they stunk of soot and burned flesh. Whoever had been in the house fire was taken here to recuperate. When they changed the bandages, they just cut them off and tossed them aside. Because they were in a hurry to get away, she thought.
By the warmth of the fire, she had missed them by a few hours.
She prodded at the fireplace again and pulled out a half-smoked cigarillo. She went with renewed urgency back to the bed, shaking it out. She plucked at a few hairs on the pillow, and she lifted them up and held them to the meager light. They were sorrel with highlights of chestnut and gleaming gold. Tesara’s hair had the same striations of color.
And there was something else on the bedside table, a pencil. Yvienne began to look for paper. There it was, crumpled in the sheets and almost indistinguishable from them. She smoothed it out.
does my sister know?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Yvienne didn’t know what made her suddenly excruciatingly aware of the oppressive emptiness of the house, but all of a sudden she whirled around and stared at the doorway. Beyond it was darkness, and she and the room were illuminated in a pool of light. With great deliberation she pulled her pistol from the satchel at her side.
If she snuffed the candle, it would take crucial moments for her night vision to return. She had to place her trust that whoever watched her from beyond the doorway would be at the same disadvantage. She blew out the candle and dodged to the side.
From the moment Abel followed the burglar into the house through the window, he had taken the man’s measure. The burglar was slender, about his height, and armed with an old-fashioned pistol. He was good with a lockpick, for sure, but he was a talented amateur, no more. Self-taught, not trained by a dock gang or organized housebreakers. Abel knew better than to get cocky, though – many a professional had come to an embarrassing end because they had underestimated beginner’s luck. He followed at a safe distance as the bandit blundered through the house. If anyone had been home, he would have alerted them within five minutes of breaking in.
When the burglar snuffed the light, Abel moved in. He followed as silent as an owl on the wing. The man’s breathing and furtive movements were like shouts. He heard him cock the pistol, and he ducked and rolled, fetching up against the man’s legs.
The pistol went off harmlessly into the ceiling, and plaster rained down on them both. The struggle was brief. The burglar went down hard and Abel had him secured on his stomach, wrists captured in one hand and a knee in his back, bracing himself for the coming flood of insights.
Instantly images flashed – Miss Mederos in her office on the docks, in Elenor Charvantes’s parlor, her kissing someone. All of her secrets flooded through him in quick succession and, overwhelmed by the emotional maelstrom, Abel’s grip loosened in surprise.
Miss Mederos threw her body over, struggling to get her knee up at the most vulnerable portion of his anatomy, but though they were of a size, he was stronger. He held her down. They stared at each other in the darkness. He could feel her heart beating like a rabbit’s. She worked to control her breathing. She did not struggle for the sake of it; her muscles were taut, and she was ready to act if he gave her an opening, but she did not squander her strength. She spoke, her voice challenging and firm.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Where is my – where is Tesara Mederos?”
Abel didn’t answer. Yvienne Mederos would stop at nothing to rescue her sister. He could still see the world through her eyes, a residue of the effects of touching her for the first time. Oh, he thought. Oh. He was a fool – the answer had been right under his nose the entire time. Yvienne Mederos, a demure governess by day, a clever Gentleman Bandit by night. Of course the sisters were in it together. Of course the younger sister collected the money, misdirected the pursuers, and was duly rescued in the end. He got no sense of the same power in Yvienne Mederos as he had experienced with her younger sister and felt a curious relief. He did not have to bring her to Doc. Go, he thought. I’m giving you a gift. Save yourself.
He disguised his voice; or rather, he spoke in the dialect of one raised in the slums of Great Lake.
“Yer in grave danger. You don’t need to be comin’ round here no more.”
“Where. Is. Tesara. Mederos?” she growled, and he could feel fury and impotent rage radiating off her.
Time to go, Abel. He fumbled for the small flask at his belt. Still holding her down, he tilted the flask above her nose. She coughed and squirmed and twisted, but the clever stopper was engineered to leak a small bit of fluid when tilted. In less than a minute she was out.
He checked her breathing; it was even and deep. Satisfied she would wake up with no ill effects other than a pounding headache, he sprang away and melted into the darkness.
Yvienne moved slowly, chilled and disoriented. It took several minutes before she knew where she was – on the cold floor of the Saint Frey mansion – and why she was there – to rescue Tesara, but that she had been overcome and drugged. Her head ached like the devil, and she had a rotten taste in her mouth. The man had thrown her to the ground as if she were nothing to him, and she winced. She hadn’t even seen him. It had been like being hit by an invisible force. Only the very real sensation of hands on her wrists and a knee in her back, of sweat and the smell of garlic-beef stew on his breath, identified her attacker as human as she. And then he had drugged her. It was the final outrage.
She wanted nothing more than to go home, but she had not yet found her sister, and clearly she was not the only one looking for her. Tesara had been spirited away, but was she safe? She fumbled for the candle and with shaking hands relit it, taking several tries to light a match. She glanced at the dark hallway outside the candlelight. The darkness pressed on her, and she couldn’t tell if she was alone, or even how long she had been out.
If she found Tesara, so would he. The best thing she could do was to walk away for now. At any rate, it did not appear that Tesara was still here.
She said out loud, her voice trembling but startling in the silence, “If you harm her, if she is endangered in any way, I will find you. And I will kill you. I swear.”
She was ashamed by how weak she sounded, how impotent. Only silence answered.
The walk across the city was colder and harder this time; Yvienne shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, alternating with blowing on her hands. She strove for alertness but was so tired and demoralized it took all of her energy to creep along steadily, sticking to cover whenever she could. The Clock Tower chimed three in the morning, and here and there an early rising tradesman – a baker or a blacksmith – had begun stoking their ovens, the red glow and bit of heat emanating out of the gloom.
The crowd outside the Mederos gates had cleared at last, vanquished by the cold and, gauging by the bottles scattered carelessly under the fence, the last of the gin. Yvienne fumbled with the key to the small side gate, but she had no strength to climb back up the wrought-iron balcony to her parents’ bedroom. Yvienne stood sick and shivering at her own kitchen door and rang the bell. It took a long time, but finally she heard the door being unlocked and it opened a crack, a candle shining light over the front portico. When Albero saw who it was, he opened the door and pulled her in. He was in a tattered nightrobe, his hair stuck up all over his head, and his chin was stubbled.
“Miss Vivi! You surprised the dickens out of me!”
She couldn’t speak. She just nodded at him. He took off his robe and put it around her – he wore a long nightshirt and his ankles were hairy. His robe was still warm. It barely dented her chill.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” he whispered, and with one arm around her shoulders he guided her, holding the candle high to lead the way. “Quick now, into your room. I’ll light a fire for you and you change into your night things – I won’t look, don’t be foolish. I’d call Mrs Francini, but I don’t think you want her to know about this.”
“Not really,” Yvienne managed through chattering teeth. He knelt in front of the fireplace and soon had a blaze going. The chill retreated somewhat. With shaking hands Yvienne unbuttoned her shirt and her trousers and got into her nightgown. She laid her wet clothes out to dry, and shoved the gun under the bed with a quick glance over her shoulder. Albero was still poking at the fire, giving her time. She got into bed, pulling the covers over her, and said, “I’m ready.”
He turned around then, and took his robe, belting it over his nightshirt. When he had regained some semblance of butlerhood, Albero said, “Miss Vivi, you know you can tell me what’s going on.”
She nodded and gestured at him and he sat down on the edge of the bed, his presence comforting.
“I went to find Tesara at the Saint Frey mansion. She’s not there and the place is empty. There was the fire, too, and evidence that she was there, possibly hurt. There were bandages and they were thrown into the fireplace as if they had to leave in a great hurry. But someone else was there – he overcame me, and drugged me, and I was out for hours.”
“Overcame! Did he…?” Albero’s voice was low with anger. She shook her head.
“Only my pride and a few bruises,” she said. “I don’t know why he was there, but he told me I was in great danger and not to come back.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
She shook her head, and then all the pain, the exhaustion, and the fear overwhelmed her and she began to cry. She wept into her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’m half-dead, Albero, and you are so good to me. To us. To this House. I don’t know where she is, and I don’t know what to do.”
He lifted his hand as if to pat her leg, but settled for patting the coverlet instead.
“Send for the constables,” he said. “Miss Vivi, you must see now that it’s the best course.”
“No!” For a thousand and one reasons, she thought, involving Tesara’s gift, her own extracurricular activities, the dead man found in their walls, and the Harrier.
He didn’t protest. “You need to sleep now, that’s what you have to do. We’ll find her. If they bandaged her, they can’t want harm to come to her, can they?”
It heartened her as it was meant to, even as she knew that whoever had her sister could still mean her great harm. He rose from the bed, and said, “Good night, Miss Yvienne.”
“Good night. Albero. Thank you – for everything.”
It was a long time before she ceased shivering and could stop castigating herself for her failure. She had been cocky; she had been outgunned and out-ma
neuvered, not just by the dangerous man but by Miss Depressis. Finally she warmed enough to lose herself in sleep. As her eyes closed and she was lulled by the crackling of the fire, she remembered that there was only one restaurant in town that specialized in garlic-beef stew.
The Bailet, on the Esplanade.
Chapter Twenty-Five
What happened at the Saint Frey mansion last night? The Gazette has learned that the high mansion, the seat of the founding family of our fair city, suffered a great conflagration that afternoon, but the Fire Guild insists it knows little of the disaster.
“We were alerted and sent out trucks,” the Fire Marechal said in an official dispatch. “However, the fire was out before we arrived, and representatives of the household said that they had no need of our services.”
Eagle-eyed gents o’ the city, who ask not to be identified, say that in their perambulations around our fair metropolis they saw a strange red glow coming from the mansion and wondered that it might be a devilish apparition.
Could the fire be related to the ghastly discovery at House Mederos? Or does it have aught to do with that other scourge of the city, the Gentleman Bandit? Did someone try to cover his tracks?
No one answered at the Saint Frey mansion when an intrepid reporter knocked on the door to ascertain the truth. The Gazette will continue its investigation and report back.
The Gazette
“Miss Yvienne, the chief constable is here,” Albero said through her bedroom door. Yvienne stifled a groan. Of course he was. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and she ached from head to toe. Her eyes had dark circles and her face sagged. She had an abominable headache. She sat at her dressing table and pushed at her cheeks, trying to raise a smile. All she achieved was a ghastly grimace.
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