The Queen's Necklace (13 page)

“I meant that I'll go to visit Lili at Brakeburn,” said Will, with icy dignity. Dionee was beginning to bore him. Worse, he was beginning to despise her, and that always meant that he despised himself, for they were much alike.

But Dionee failed to recognize, or perhaps just ignored, the dangerous note in his voice. “Wilrowan, you are just too amazingly funny. Now why should you say ‘home' when you mean Brakeburn Hall? You're practically never there and you
hate
your in-laws.” She gave a trill of laughter.

He shook his head, not certain what impulse had prompted him. Except that he somehow
needed
to see Lili, and that he would not feel comfortable again until he had done so.

“At least you should give her fair warning. Send a messenger ahead, so she can prepare for your visit. Why—she might not even be there.”

Will was astonished. “Where else would Lili be, if not at Brakeburn? If she wanted to go anywhere else, she could visit me here.”

Dionee gave him a roguish glance over one shoulder. “You're
mighty possessive for so careless, so wayward a husband. I wonder how Lili endures you, how she accepts your infrequent visits with such complaisance—if she really
is
complaisant.”

He returned her smile with a bewildered frown. In her words, he had detected a faint echo of Macquay's insinuations, three days earlier. “Lili is always happy to see me. What have you heard to make you think otherwise?”

“I've heard nothing,” said the queen with a shrug. “I've heard nothing, but just like anyone else, I can speculate.”

She turned back to her mirror. “And really, Wilrowan, it would serve you right, you wicked boy, if you dropped in at Brakeburn some day and found Lili not waiting, but off having romantic adventures of her own!”

On a Ship Sailing the Northern Seas—Eight Weeks Earlier

29 Vindémia, 6537

D
awn was just breaking as the
Pagan Queen
sailed out of Zutlingen harbor. A cold, sleety rain had fallen during the night, freezing on the shrouds and the bulwarks, casing the ancient vessel in ice, but a dim red glow that began at the horizon and spread across the sky like wildfire promised a day that would be cold but clear.

The captain stood on the forecastle: a rugged, white-haired old salt, no less weather beaten than his ship, with a scarred face and one false hand, which had been marvelously carved and articulated out of sea ivory, then strung on silver wires—a relic of more adventurous but also more prosperous days.

It would be difficult to imagine a wilder, more damaged-looking craft than the
Pagan Queen
. She had never been a beauty, and a life of hard knocks and rough seas had not improved her. Under her patchy armor of ice she was as battered and worn to splinters as a bit of old bone. An unlikely choice, it would seem, for a voyage on wintery seas, she was, quite simply, the only merchant ship willing to leave this northern port so late in autumn; those who had managed to secure a passage counted themselves lucky.

She was not long underweigh before the wind rose, shrill and
biting, and another icy rain began to fall. The gale increasing hour by hour, the ship forged onward through an ugly head sea, with her timbers creaking and her decks awash.

Alone in his tiny cabin, Lucius Sackville-Guilian tried to shut out the noise of the storm. It was a forlorn effort. Throwing down his goose-quill pen, putting aside the paper on which he had been diligently scribbling for the past half hour, he pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet.

The damp little cabin, already oppressive, had been made even closer by a mountain of luggage that took up most of the floor space not already occupied by the scanty furnishings. Luke knew that somewhere in that baggage, perhaps buried in one of the horsehide trunks—along with the books, coins, and other curiosities he had picked up during his travels; his clothes; and, of course, the two thousand six hundred and eight blotted, crossed-out, and amended manuscript pages of Luke's
History of the World, Refuting Everything
, which was still very much in progress, and which Perys, his valet, had been obliged to find room for by cramming into every available corner of the two trunks and miscellaneous baggage—somewhere at the bottom of all this, there was a dog-eared pack of playing cards, and also a flask of brandy. But having no mind for a game of Patience, feeling too queasy to hunt out the brandy, Luke resigned himself to a long morning and a weary afternoon.

But Rijxland and a thousand amazing discoveries beckoned to him. During almost a year of adventure and travel—a year spent thrusting himself into places and situations a wiser man might have avoided—Luke had escaped the worst consequences of his own impulsive behavior again and again. Taking all things into account, he would consider himself fortunate if a day, a week, even a fortnight of tedium was the worst that he had to suffer—if Rijxland lived up to his expectations.

Finding it impossible to continue writing, having no idea when Perys would return, Luke cast himself down on his narrow bunk and fell into a restless doze, lulled by the sound of the pumps in the hold below.

That day crept by slowly, and so did the next. The fourth and fifth days proved so interminable, he stopped taking note of the time altogether. The storm raged on. Every so often, Perys would come in with a plate of greasy unappetizing food that Luke was obliged to eat, or with a cracked basin full of soapy water. When this occurred, Lucius eyed the valet warily. The man's face had acquired a greenish tinge and his hands shook so that the shaving water danced in the bowl. Luke decided against trusting Perys with the gleaming two-edged razor and proceeded to shave himself.

While Luke scraped away at his face, Perys relayed all that he had learned about the other passengers. There were three other gentlemen on board.

“Not
real
gentlemen like yourself, Master Luke, but quite decent looking tradesmen, all going south on important business.” Perys folded his hands primly across his drab waistcoat. “And a small party of Goblins,
if
you'll believe me. Two or three of those nasty little Ouphs, and another one, very like a man they say, but with his limbs all anyhow.”

Luke turned away from the shaving mirror, his eyes alight with sudden interest. The higher sorts of Goblins, the Grants and the Wrynecks, were said to be highly intelligent—not to mention the fact that they sometimes lived practically forever. To speak with a creature who had already existed for six or seven centuries had long been Luke's ambition. “Is it a Grant, do you think?”

The valet sniffed audibly and managed to look haughty in spite of his interesting color. “I wouldn't know, Master Luke. I haven't seen the creature myself; nor do I want to. And they do say the whole lot of them have hidden themselves away in a compartment even
smaller than this one, and haven't been seen since they came on board.”

Luke felt his hopes plummet. It was unlikely, then, that the Grant would emerge. On the rare occasions when Goblins did embark on a voyage they were known to spend the entire time holed up in the most waterproof cabin available.

“A pity,” he said with a sigh, as he rinsed the razor in the bowl of soapy water. “An opportunity to exchange views with a Grant might have served very well to while away some part of this interminable voyage.”

One day, Luke woke uncertain of the time, and all was strangely quiet around him. The ship had ceased to buck and pitch; she was rolling gently; the pumps had ceased to labor. There was no sound louder than a muffled creaking, a gentle slap of waves on the other side of the wall, and the slow drip, drip, drip of water from the beams overhead to the deck below.

With a yawn and a stretch, he sat up. Reaching into a pocket of his ribbed-satin waistcoat, he consulted his watch. Noon or midnight? He tried to remember when he had first stretched out on the bunk. Noon, he decided, with another gaping yawn. Either way, he was weary to death of the damp little cabin, eager for a chance to go up on deck.

Unassisted, he struggled into his coat, straightened his lace-edged neckcloth, and retied the ribbon in his hair. Examining the result in the shaving mirror, he was far from satisfied. The neckcloth was looking a little wilted, and a deep crease marred one velvet sleeve. No doubt Perys would be scandalized. But the valet had no business wandering off when he was needed, and Luke was determined to catch a glimpse of the sky, a breath of fresh air.

As soon as he ventured out into the dim passageway he was up to his ankles in seawater. More came pouring down from a hatchway
above the ladder leading to the upper decks. Hailing a passing sailor, he asked about the weather.

“Wind and sea do grow quieter, sir, but it still be raining fit to bust t'skies open. All t'gentleman been invited into t'captain's cabin for a bit of refreshment. Mayhap you'd care to join 'em?”

“Perhaps I would,” said Luke. The sailor directed him to a door at the far end of the passageway, then continued on about his business, somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

Halfway down the passage, Lucius saw the cabin door open, yielding a brief glimpse of light and color. A dark figure in a long cloak and a black hat with a high crown and a wide stiff brim stepped through, heading in Luke's direction. As the passage was narrow, Luke stepped aside to make room, and the stranger nodded his appreciation as he slipped on past.

He was a tall man with a lean, impassive countenance and something grim about the unrelieved black of his clothes. Luke watched curiously as the man mounted the dripping ladder, his large sinewy hands gripping the sides as he ascended swiftly and fearlessly toward the stormy regions above.

Once the stranger had disappeared from sight, Luke headed on to the cabin. There he found three other men, answering the valet's description of “decent tradesmen,” gathered around a small round table, drinking the captain's wine. At the others' invitation, Luke filled a glass from the dusty green bottle. Taking a cautious sip, he pronounced the wine tolerable.

Yet, though he entered into easy conversation with the other passengers, his thoughts still ran on the dark stranger. Not one of the sailors, not one of the officers, nor manservant to any of these men in the cabin. For all his somber attire, the cut of his coat and the cloth it was made of were much too good for that. Perys had failed to mention that any such person existed. And why had he chosen to brave the storm when there was warmth and company here below?

Finally, Luke's curiosity could no longer be denied; he asked if anyone knew the man who had just been leaving the cabin when he arrived.

“The Leveller, do you mean?” said a stout goldsmith in a sap-green coat and a scarlet waistcoat. “He came on at Ottarsburg. I know nothing else about him. They are a dour set of fellows, the Anti-demonists, and not so courteous as they might be, though this one seems well enough.”

A religious fanatic
, thought Luke. Which explained the cropped hair, the black garments devoid of lace or other trimming, the stern set of the stranger's features. Yet despite his distaste, Lucius was intrigued. He had never been acquainted with any member of the Anti-demonist sect—commonly known as Levellers—but he had listened to a number of open-air sermons and those had piqued his curiosity.

“His manners are certainly better than most,” offered another passenger, who had previously identified himself as a linen-draper with a thriving business in Luden. “Yet I have also heard this particular Leveller can be dangerous to know.”

Luke turned to stare at him. “Dangerous—how? Unless by that you mean his politics, which may agree with my own rather better than you think!”

The cloth-merchant hesitated, playing nervously with his nickel-plated watch fob. “When you reach Rijxland, you expect to make a long stay in Luden, I believe you said, and you mean to present letters of introduction at the embassy?”

Luke bowed the affirmative.

“Then you might find the Leveller a useful acquaintance. There is very little that happens in Luden that he doesn't know of it, and you could spend your time most profitably listening to what he might tell you. But as for anything you might say to
him
—I would advise you to weigh your words carefully, for they
might be repeated in places where you never meant them to be heard at all.”

Far from being daunted by this, Luke gave a shout of laughter. “My dear sir, I have no secrets. If the truth were told, I am generally considered a little too ready to share my opinions, and I tend to be crushed if the things that I say fail to be memorized and passed on to others.”

At this, the linen-draper bowed, and he and Luke parted company. But those words of warning continued to echo at the back of Luke's mind. Eventually, he grew so curious, he took the other man aside for a few private words.

“I beg your pardon. I should not have made light of what was undoubtedly sincere and well-meant advice. I wish you would tell me exactly what you meant.”

But now the merchant seemed reluctant to explain himself. He gave an uneasy glance in the direction of the cabin door. “It is I who must beg your pardon, for passing on what is probably only an idle rumor. I am only slightly acquainted with the man myself.” Then he gave an embarrassed laugh. “And it occurs to me, Mr. Guilian, that I don't know
you
. It is possible that I've said too much already.”

Naturally, having been strongly cautioned against doing so, Luke's first impulse must be to scrape up an acquaintance with the mysterious stranger and learn all his secrets.

What—he asked himself as he prowled the lower decks in search of the Leveller—had brought the fanatic on board to begin with? He could not have urgent business as the three tradesmen did, to justify a voyage on rough autumn seas. When Levellers engaged in trade, it was only in a modest way; they had no interest in accumulating worldly goods. And what had the cloth-merchant meant by his mysterious hints? Luke, who had a passion for plots and a penchant for detecting them whether they actually existed or not, found his mind
pleasantly awhirl with Leveller conspiracies and other pleasing fancies. Members of the Anti-demonist sect did have a history of radical politics and were inclined to preach such revolutionary doctrines as Universal Equality.