Stranger At The Wedding (17 page)

“That was my idea,” Alix said, pushing a finger of toast around her plate and apparently thinking better of eating it. Briory appeared silently, bearing a plate of blintzes, which Kyra proceeded first to bury in blueberry preserves and then to demolish with starved speed.

“Aye,” came her father's voice from the doorway behind the butler's stolid back. “And a banner to carry behind it saying 'Here's the other daughter' perhaps?”

“ 'Here's the witch,' you mean, Father?” Kyra dropped three chunks of white sugar into her coffee cup and turned to regard him blandly. “You're quite right. I'll just walk, with the servants and clients, in the rear. Now, I wonder which of my dresses I should wear. This one is nice, but I've always been fond of the red silk.”

Her father shuddered, perhaps at the sheer magnitude of the yellow dress, perhaps at the thought of how it would stand out in any crowd, let alone one composed of soberly dressed servants. “You'll ride in a sedan chair and keep quiet about it,” he ordered. “Immediately after your Aunt Sethwit's coach. And belike we'll have the Witchfinders trailing along behind,” he added, his mouth setting grimly.

“Well, I'm quite sure the Bishop won't let them into the church without an invitation.” Kyra judiciously poured the remains of her cocoa into the coffee cup and stirred.

“Pah!” her father said in disgust. “You can count yourself lucky you'll not be left outside the door with them!”

While he was speaking, Kyra could hear from downstairs the sounds of the door opening, of voices in the great hall, and so was not surprised when Briory reentered the room a few moments later to announce, “Lady Earthwygg and her daughter are in the drawing room, madame.”

“Oh!” Binnie threw up her hands in exasperation. “That horrid woman! Yearning for a gossip, I suppose, or else going to complain about having to rebuy flowers for Esmin, as if the rest of us weren't in the same situation, only a hundred times worse. And that reminds me, darling, I've sent next door for Heckson and Fairbody again to help with weaving the garlands, since they have to go up tonight. Oh, and I'll have to tell Merrivale to arrange to have another sedan chair…” Fluttering details behind her like colored ribbons, she got to her feet and bustled past her husband and out onto the gallery. “Come along, Alix my dearest.”

Alix had risen to her feet, and Kyra, looking up from a second blintz, saw the white look on her face as if she were about to visit a bonesetter. Her cosmetics stood out harshly against the pallor of exhaustion and stress, and she hesitated for a moment, tearing unconsciously at her cuticles and looking at Kyra as if she would speak.

But their father stood in the doorway, waiting, and only after Alix departed did he, too, leave, following her along the gallery to the drawing room whence Lady Earthwygg's deep, commanding tones could already be heard, complaining about the cost of irises in the market.

Kyra sighed and leaned her forehead on her hands. She felt a little better for having eaten but knew that she had a full day's work ahead of her tracing the two dog wizards whom her father had wronged. And the house, she thought with weary frustration, still to search.

The wedding tomorrow…

The terrace of the House of Roses came back to her, last summer's heavy heat that made the Sykerst summers such a burden even without the mosquitoes that plagued the pond-riddled landscape. The smell of the roses had been sweet in the air, the slanting sunlight a nearly palpable golden haze. It had been close to eight at night—in the far north summer days were long. “I thought talismans of ill worked only if they were placed where the victim would come in contact with them daily,” Kyra had said, looking across the pitted oak worktable to where Nandiharrow the Nine Fingered had been patiently instructing one of the slower students—a hulking, kindly young man named Brunus—in the imbuing-spells that would charge powdered silver and bird bone to glow in the presence of certain types of magic.

“These talismans I've taught you this week, yes,” the elderly mage had replied, turning on his perch on the terrace's pink sandstone railing. “But like all magic, the magic of ill changes with the strength of its maker. For instance, even the simple eyes I've taught you to draw today—if you drew one in a house, it would be a matter of dropped stitches, losses at cards, the good china breaking, and a cat throwing up on your sister's bed. If Zake drew the same sign…” He nodded toward Zake Brighthand, who was sitting cross-legged on the pavement in the midst of a chalked Circle of Protection, and the solemn, quiet boy raised his head from the sigil he was practicing, startled at the sound of his name.

Nandiharrow smiled. “If Zake drew it, very likely the house would burn down.”

“But can you, like, draw them heavy or light?” the boy asked in the slurry drawl of the Angelshand slums. “I mean, if I didn't much care about hurtin' the folks in the house, could I just make the cat throw up?”

“Of course. And if you drew the signs in a house of strangers whom you were being paid to ill-wish, even with your greater strength, the signs would be weaker and cause less grief, than, for instance, if Cylin—” His gloved left hand gestured toward the solemn, nervous-looking young man at the far end of the table. “—were to draw those selfsame signs in the house of those who had wronged him, those who had hurt him, those whom he hated with all his soul.”

The sunlight slipped over the black leather of the glove, making odd creases where two fingers had been sewn back to accommodate the twisted stumps within. Kyra felt a strange, sick catch in her stomach, hearing in the mild voice none of the hatred of which he spoke.

“There are many ways of accomplishing this,” he went on, as if speaking of cures for conjunctivitis or alternative means of summoning birds. “One can use the blood of rabbits and chickens, or the moon's dark, or the conjunctions of certain stars. Some wizards will conjure a ghost to be bound to the spell, to hold to it the cold power of death. And an eye marked with a sufficiency of hatred, a talisman wrought in pain and anger, can poison all the atmosphere of a house, even if it be hidden in the bottommost cellar. The tendrils of its power will reach out through the very fabric of the stones until they can kill those who never go into the portions of the house where the ill is situated… Which makes tracking them down an extremely lengthy and tedious process.”

Was it that, Kyra wondered, which had communicated itself to her unconsciously in the paper of Alix's letter? Had some talisman hidden deep within the house sent its poisoned aura forth so strongly that her fingers had picked it up from the very paper, like the lingering smell of musk, which only in sleep had her mind finally interpreted?

An extremely lengthy and tedious process
. It meant each wall of cellar and room would have to be gone over, every floor, every dish in the kitchen and shelf in the library, as she had already gone over Alix's room and the old schoolroom where Tibbeth of Hale had taught her magic. It would take hours… And meanwhile the whole house was alive with servants weaving garlands in the drying room and making tarts in the kitchen, guests coming agog for gossip in the drawing rooms and musicians tumbling the maids in the attics, Merrivale counting plates for tomorrow's wedding banquet, and the laundry maid ironing Alix's chemises in preparation for the night.

Kyra whispered “Damn” and then was washed with an expensive wave of ambergis perfume.

Looking up, she saw—as she knew she would, mages being trained to recognize and remember scents—Lady Earthwygg standing in the breakfast-room door.

Impeccable in eggplant taffeta over an undergown of lilac silk, a spray of silk pansies in her powdered hair, her ladyship regarded Kyra's brilliant and unfashionable garment with a slight, startled compression of her full lips and, after a moment of fishily silent politeness, averted her eyes from it as from a beggar's verminous rags.

“Your turquoises are perhaps a bit bright for that gown,” the Lady said in her smoky voice.

“Are they?” Kyra lifted the string of them around her neck, huge chucks of the brilliant stone alternating with filigreed silver beads. “Well, perhaps, but at least they're real. What might I do for you?”

Lady Earthwygg's hand moved to cover the splendid necklace of diamonds that glittered at her throat, but she stopped herself before completing the gesture. Wizards worked with gems a great deal, and Kyra had spent nearly two years learning to distinguish true crystal from even the most expert fakes. The knowledge was in her eyes as they met the noblewoman's gaze.

“I understand that you're a wizard, Miss Peldyrin.” She was a slender woman of medium height and widely famed bosom whose beauty had a rigidly preserved look under a heavy coating of rice powder and rouge, and her air of effortless command and the assurance in her deep voice gave observers the impression that she was both taller and heavier than was in fact the case. “Given your father's attitudes about magic and its practitioners, I don't imagine you've had a chance to see much of real jewelry these last six years.” The black eyes narrowed, and she raised her lorgnette on its violet ribbon to study the young woman through it. “Or has that been a sham?”

“If it has, it's certainly one he's practiced on me.” Kyra poured herself another cup of coffee and a moment later poured one out for her guest. “I repeat, Lady Earthwygg: What might I do for you?”

“It's what you might do for yourself, child.” She settled herself at the table and accepted the fragile porcelain cup, drinking the liquid black, in the fashionable manner. “Oh, I realize wizards aren't supposed to crave such things as jewelry and decent dresses, but you're a woman, after all. I could see to it that you never lack for them again.”

“That's very altruistic of you, Lady Earthwygg. Should I ring for more blitzes? Some truly excellent day-old cake? No? Considered in the light of my Council vows, which make it impossible for me to return the favor by slipping Blore Spenson a love-philter to make him jilt my sister in favor of your daughter, your generosity borders on true kindliness.”

Her ladyship reddened and set her coffee cup quickly aside. “Don't be ridiculous.”

“The cook assures me he used fifteen eggs in the cake.”

The older woman's eyes narrowed again. “Or am I behind the fair?” she asked softly. “Was that your father's price for taking you back into his graces? That you'd work your spells on Spenson and make him cast his eyes on that sister of yours?”

Through the door, Kyra could catch Esmin Earthwygg's rather shrill voice from the drawing room at the other end of the gallery: “Well, of course Daddy's going to get me a diamond parure for my Court presentation… I suppose yours is, too? Not that you'll ever be presented at Court, which you should be thankful for—it's such a nuisance!—but surely the guilds have something of the kind.”

“If you really think so,” Kyra said, “I suppose we could ask the Witchfinders in to thaumaturgically examine the Spenson house for marks. On the other hand, mine might not be the marks they'd find, and think how embarrassing that would be.”

Lady Earthwygg's eyes shifted quickly. “Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply… It's just that these are suspicious times.” Her gesture was eloquent of seven centuries of breeding and years of deportment lessons. “Your father has a reputation among the—” She barely bit back the word “vulgar.”

“—businessmen of the city as a 'warm man.' And I'm told that before you fell from his graces you were quite an acute businesswoman yourself. Surely you can see the advantages in patronage. Indeed, if you are on the outs with your father, my husband may help you with that situation as well.”

“Always provided Father doesn't learn that I've scuppered the match he's been working for years to bring about.”

“Oh, my dear.” She smiled silkily. “I'm sure you're cleverer than that. What would you say to a thousand crowns?”

Kyra sighed and pushed her empty coffee cup from her. “I would say no.”

“And four hundred a year.”

“Was that what you offered what's his name? The one you bought the passion philters from that you've been slipping Spenson?”

The recollection of his face as he'd spoken of them in the gig—the recollection of what he'd gone through—made her voice flare with sudden anger. She forced it steady again. “It does, as I say, border on kindliness, especially considering that they don't seem to have worked. But then, you can scarcely sue your supplier, can you?”

The noblewoman gave a deep and wholly faked chuckle and brought from her capacious pannier pocket a painted lavender fan. “My dear girl, what are you talking about? And considering the size of your sister's dowry, not to speak of the inheritance, you can't pretend she'd go begging long. Think about it. I know wizardry is an expensive proposition. They're always seeking good-quality gems, proper incense, pure silver and gold. For four hundred a year you'd be able to purchase a house in town and have enough left over to pursue your studies in peace.”

“Unless the Witchfinders decide to come after me.” Kyra rose from her chair. “Or someone tries to kidnap me in a cab. I'm afraid the answer is still no.”

“Five hundred a year.”

“Is that your final offer?”

The Lady snapped her fan shut and got to her feet. “Don't be a fool, girl. If you're cast out by your father, what choice have you? To starve and beg your bread like those raggedy mumblers over in the Mages' Yard? To sell weeds and abortions like that wretched man they burned a few years ago? If he'd had friends in high places—what was his name?”

“Tibbeth,” Kyra said quietly.

“Tibbeth. If he'd had friends in high places, they'd never have been able to touch him.”

“No,” Kyra said softly. “No, he did have friends in high places, as it happens.”

“Then why won't you accept my offer?”

Kyra regarded her for a moment in silence. Then she said, quite simply, “Because I'm not a whore.”

Lady Earthwygg's nostrils flared. With slow deliberation she lifted her lorgnette again and surveyed Kyra's dress. “No,” she said. “Only a frump.”

Kyra curtsied. “But quite a well-jeweled one, you must admit. And one other thing—”