Regency Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 5) (7 page)

She smiled, and blushed a little.  “There are greater beauties than I in court.  You oversell me.”

I really wasn’t overselling.  Anna was almost dangerously stunning.  We were entering an arena in which stealth was going to be important, and she had completely failed in the part where we were supposed to pass unnoticed.  Every man there was going to remember the moment they first saw her.

Anna was dressed in a style that was decidedly English, but with French influence— specifically in the waistline, which was typically higher in France than in England.  It was at its tightest just underneath her bosom.  Practically speaking, the style allowed for a looser corset, which was no doubt a huge relief to the wearer.  The rest of the dress was in a style I’d heard called Gothic, with lots of padding and ruffles, a paneled bodice, and ornate lace.  She continued to favor a powdered blue/turquoise—the base was white, but with blue lacing.  The dress was off the shoulder.  She would have been naked from the cleavage up except for the short Spencer jacket that took care of this.

Her hair, quite long when fully untethered, was up in a bun I think she must have had someone else help with.  I don’t know for certain if she did, but there did tend to be an interest, historically, in dressing as if you required other people’s help.  It meant you could afford to hire other people to dress you.  Anna couldn’t afford any such person, but she lived in a building full of women who no doubt had experience with the hair of other people.

The ensemble was designed to draw attention to her breasts and her face, both entirely worthy of that attention.  To that end, it might have been an effective espionage tool, because she could be carrying broadsword in her hands and nobody would notice.

It was difficult to believe she didn’t know how astonishing she looked.

“We’re here,” she said, as the gigantic marble edifice of Hofburg threw us into shadow.  The driver stopped us at the end of a long train of carriages.  We had arrived, but it would be some time before we could debark. 

We were staring up at the Chancellery Wing.  Each wing of the Palace could house the entire city in the event of a siege, which is the sort of thing you think about when you’ve lived through a siege or two. I didn’t fully understand the purpose of the party we were there to attend, which had no apparent connection to the negotiations.  But it was known that most of the important people in town—those abbreviated names in that letter—were going to be there.  All except for the T.  That was Talleyrand, and he was not expected.

I now knew a great deal about the Frenchman named Talleyrand, but didn’t really grasp most of what I knew.  This is how I am with politics.  Like in Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels
, most of the time political issues sound to me like disagreements over which end of a hard-boiled egg to crack in the morning.

Talleyrand wasn’t supposed to be in Vienna… for some reason or another.  It was a secret, and it meant the man was holding meetings with various people of varied import
in
secret, and these meetings had relevance to the congress that I really didn’t listen too carefully about when Anna explained the whole thing.  (I remember “lesser powers” and “Polish-Saxony” and “Marquis of Labrador”, but I couldn’t tell you how they all fit together.)

In order to keep these meetings secret, Talleyrand had hired a private security force of Swiss origin, and that—provided this time I had gotten the truth from her—was who Anna actually worked for.

Roughly half of what Anna had told me our first afternoon together was true.  She actually was a sleeper agent put up in the boarding house on someone else’s purse, and she really did receive a signal one day, but the part about the man in the carriage steering her around town was completely invented.  She also knew the people she was working for by name and by face.

“They’re meeting us inside?” I asked.

“Yes.  I’ll make contact, you don’t do anything except look for this… thing you think you can identify.  We’ll try to do this without Adrian knowing you exist.”

“What makes you think your target is here?”

“It’s the only gathering of its kind on the social calendar for the next two months.  If one wanted to destroy a negotiation, one would be better off doing it near the start of that negotiation.”

“And you’re sure that’s his intent?”

“Isn’t destruction the goal of all anarchists?”

“I believe the philosophy is slightly more nuanced.”

“Well don’t mention this opinion to anyone inside, whatever you do.”

Spies get information in ways that defy easy explanation.  I never bothered to ask how her Swiss company learned that the talks—and Talleyrand specifically—were the target of an anarchist group.  The likelihood was high that Anna didn’t even know the answer, and if she did she wouldn’t share it with me.  And if she
did
share it, I probably wouldn’t understand how the logical leap was made.  Information like this turns on the tiniest factoids imaginable.

So taking the anarchist story as a postulate, it was further determined (somehow) that a member of the Swiss team was directly involved. 

The letter delivered to Anna that afternoon in the garden served two purposes.  First, it notified her, an outside agent whose association with the Swiss was not known within the team, about the progress of the secret talks.  Second, it informed her that the man delivering the letter was working for the anarchists, if not the sole anarchist in a group of one.

She was supposed to kill him then, but when she drew a blade to do that very thing, he surprised her.  Those shark-teeth can be a shock, no matter how well trained you are.  He shoved her over—the matted flowers in the garden were from her body, not the body of an imaginary murder victim—and fled.  She gave chase, and that was when we met.

*   *   *

The carriage stopped at the main door, which was our cue to get out.  A footman was there to assist us, and then down a red carpet, up a set of stone stairs, down two corridors, past a set of double doors, and we were at the party.

I felt completely overwhelmed the instant we entered the main ballroom.  The noise of a hundred and more people talking over one another combined with music from the band at the far end of the hall to create an unsettling discordance.  Added to that was the heat all those bodies were making, the smell of sweat and powder and perfume, and the visual spectacle of Vienna’s finest guests in layers of colorful and incredibly restrictive clothing.

For large parts of my life I wore little to no clothing, lived and hunted alone or among small bands, and spoke by pointing and grunting, if at all.  Nearly every time I’m forced to attend a formal occasion I miss those days.  I can’t even imagine what that version of me would think of this version. 

I could understand immediately why Anna was so valuable to a spy organization, though, because she took to the room as if she owned it.  She greeted dozens of people by name, curtsied and extended her hand, exchanged girlish bits of gossip and politely declined offers to dance—as she had only
just
gotten there and surely must give the first dance to me, her charming and nearly silent escort. 

I was nearly silent because I am no good at these things, and because I knew nobody’s name.  We had decided in advance that I was to play the part of an Englishman who spoke no German.  It meant I had to communicate from time to time with people who also spoke English, but that didn’t happen too terribly often.

“You need to look as if you’re enjoying yourself,” she said at one point.  She was on my arm and speaking through a thoroughly brilliant smile.  “People will notice.”

“I can’t believe anybody here is noticing anything about anybody.  It’s too busy.”

“Have you spied our friend?”

“I don’t think I have, but it would be difficult to tell.  What would an anarchist want in a situation such as this?”

She turned us toward one side of the room.  “Do you see the man near the doors at the back?  Red sash, balding, tapered face.”

I saw.  He had several men around him, one or two self-evidently in his employ.  “Who is it?”

“That’s Prince Metternich of Austria.  This is his party.  Now look to his right about five paces.  Military red coat.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.  Rumor has it he’s to replace Castlereagh as Britain’s representative here.  He’s speaking to King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia.  Behind them both, near the band, is Tsar Alexander of Russia.  A moment ago, King Frederick of Denmark arrived.  He’s behind us near the door still, engaging Count Lowenheilm of Sweden in conversation.  I can keep going, but do you understand?”

“Your anarchist isn’t just a threat to
the
crown, he’s a threat to all of them.”

“Yes.”  She looked past me, over my shoulder, at someone halfway across the room.  “Stay here, keep your eyes open.  I see someone I need to talk to.”

“One of your Swiss coworkers?”

“It’s Adrian.  It’s his team, and he’s a very dangerous man.  I’d rather stand by you, but I’d also rather not introduce you to him, and I need to somehow make him understand what we’re up against.”

“Good luck.  I’ll try not to be jealous.”

She kissed me on the cheek.  “You are far more handsome.  And I think he may be a homosexual.  Now, put on a smile and find someone to make small-talk with so you don’t look quite so awkward.”

I watched her glide away.  I couldn’t see her feet due to the length of her dress, so it was easy to imagine she wasn’t actually touching the ground.  She moved so smoothly, it wasn’t a stretch.

I realized I was sort of staring, so I forced myself to look around the room for someone to engage, but this was the kind of party where everyone knew everyone else or knew
of
everyone else, and I wasn’t on either side of that spectrum.  I’d already looked around to see if the Saxon duke I knew was there, but he didn’t appear to be in attendance.  So instead, I held my ground, alone, near an empty buffet table, and wondered what kind of food might eventually show up on it.

Anna was wrong.  There were plenty of really lovely women at the party, but none of them held up compared to her.  I had checked.  And I wished she were next to me so I could tell her that. 

That was when I decided I was probably in a huge amount of trouble, because I was thinking like a lovesick child.

I could just leave
, I thought.  I’d told her everything I knew about her anarchist; there was really no reason for me to be there.  Considering how rarely I involved myself in affairs of state, I no doubt already
would
have left, had the person asking me to attend not had deep brown eyes and a way of saying my name that made me think I had to change names immediately because I never wanted to hear anybody else say it.

As I said, I was in bad shape.

It was while I was dealing with this
loves me/loves me not
foolishness running through my head that I took note of a low murmur trickling through the crowd.  Up to that point the ambient noise had been unfocused, the product of a hundred conversations happening out of order.  But something had happened near the doors that shut down some of those conversations and introduced a new topic to the rest.  I caught a name in the buzz.

Talleyrand
.

Evidently, the Frenchman who wasn’t supposed to be in Vienna had gone from attending secret meetings to making a grand entrance in front of everyone.  Points for drama, but possibly not a great negotiating tactic.  But what did I know, I barely understood the issues being debated, and had no particular desire to learn more.

The crowd opened for the man, who I saw clearly for the first time only once he’d made it halfway to his apparent destination—Prince Metternich.  Metternich looked not at all surprised to learn of Talleyrand’s arrival, but that might have been the only way to play the moment, politically and socially.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was a pale man with a shock of long grey-white hair that didn’t entirely compensate for a creeping hairline.  Despite a reputation as one of the shrewdest men in Europe, he looked neither wise nor formidable, although there was a determination to him that I could read very clearly, and perhaps that was enough for an effective negotiator.

He walked with a limp.

This bothered me, a little at first and more when I got close enough to
hear
his footsteps, because it was a familiar cadence.

I looked around, but Anna was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t know who else I could turn to, to ask: does Talleyrand have a limp?  But I couldn’t ask a stranger this, for one obvious reason—supposedly the man himself was walking before me, and clearly he
did
. 

I could have also asked Anna if his appearance was a surprise to her.  She’d said nothing about Talleyrand coming to the party, but it was possible she didn’t know it was going to happen any more than I did.  Surely Adrian, the man tasked with guarding the Frenchman, should have known to expect him here. 

At any rate, the limp was identical to the one the anarchist had, and this seemed important.  Either the Prime Minister of France was also a monster who tried to murder me in an alley, or that monster was impersonating Talleyrand, both on the streets a few nights earlier and at this very moment in front of a hundred of the most important people in Europe.