The Queen's Necklace (49 page)

He arrived at Brakeburn Hall, dirty and exhausted, an hour after daybreak. He left the mare in the capable hands of the head groom, and surprised Miss Allora Brakeburn just as she was sitting down to her breakfast.

“I want to see Lili,” he demanded at once.

“She is not here,” said Allora, glaring at him over the willow-pattern teapot. “Nor is there any reason for you to prolong your visit—which I trust will be brief. She may not return for a very long time.”

Will ground his teeth audibly. “From which I take it,” he said, in a tight voice, “that you know where she is but have no intention of telling me.”

“You are perfectly correct, I have no such intention,” Allora answered primly. “It is for Lili to notify you of her whereabouts, if she wishes you to know them.” She picked up her napkin and spread it across her lap. “You may close that door behind you on your way out.”

Will's hands began to itch, as he considered, for a moment, what pleasure might be gained by choking the information out of her—were she thirty years younger and a man.

But there was no use thinking of that; her age and her sex protected her. There was no way he could force her to tell him anything. Not any more than if she were his own—

At that thought, a dangerous gleam came into his eye. “Miss Brakeburn. Never, in all the years I have known you, have you ever let pass a single opportunity to do me an ill turn. But the truth is, I have finally run out of patience, and I will
not
brook your meddling interference in my marriage any more.”

Allora appeared unmoved. “And what,” she said tartly, “do you intend to do? Will you call me out, brave Captain Blackheart? Would you mishandle a weak old woman?”

“Not at all,” said Will, as he turned to leave the room. “I intend to fight fire with fire.”

From the dining room he went immediately into his father-in-law's study. Finding the room unoccupied, he went to the desk, cut himself a pen, and wrote out a quick but comprehensive letter on one side of a sheet of paper. Signing, blotting, and folding this missive, Will sealed it with Lord Brakeburn's wax and his own intaglio ring, then added the direction in a bold hand.

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of giving this message to one of the Brakeburn lackeys to post, but he rejected the notion almost immediately. He was going to have to stop in Fernbrake anyway, to get a fresh horse and to eat a quick meal. It would be easy enough, if he offered sufficient money, to find somebody there who was willing to carry the letter as far as Eaudaimanté.

Tarnburgh, Winterscar—Seven Months Earlier

18 Vindémia, 6537

W
inter had come again, all too soon, and the streets of Tarnburgh were drifted with snow, the pointed rooftops frosted with ice. At Lindenhoff, the nuptials of the king were celebrated with due solemnity. The death of Lord Hugo Sackville less than four months before—and his bad taste in actually collapsing and dying at the betrothal dinner—cast a shade over the proceedings. The visits, the balls, and the other events leading up to the wedding, were brief and colorless affairs.

The day itself dawned clear but cold, and the wedding party went to church in ermine and sables. In a quiet ceremony, attended by no more than two hundred guests, the bride in grey and the groom in black, each spoke the vows in a subdued voice, and the thing was done.

There was a cold supper afterward, which five hundred people attended. The food and the wine were excellent, and so was the music—provided by zither, violins, and virginal—but the guests looked strained and uneasy under their rouge and powder.

Perhaps it was because they had been forced to make their way through the sullen crowds gathered outside the palace. For nearly half a mile the mob filled the streets around Lindenhoff: carpenters,
bricklayers, and iron-founders; coopers, weavers, gunsmiths, and glaziers; members of every conceivable trade, all jostling each other in their efforts to gain a place near the palace gate. They were taking advantage of the declared holiday to express their contempt for the king's foreign bride. This was a new and unwelcome experience for Jarred, who had always before known the love of his people; he believed, however, that time would reconcile them to his marriage.

Had he listened to the rumors circulating in the streets, had someone handed him one of the newly inked broadsheets being passed around, he might have thought otherwise. The masses were whispering that Ys was closely connected with some foreign house of royalty—which would make her marriage to Jarred illegal. The handbills, on the other hand, satirized the sharp-faced bride and her questionable antecedents: she was the daughter of pirates—a trollop risen from the stews with the aid of some nameless wealthy protector—a lady's maid who had murdered her employer and usurped her identity. As yet, no one suspected the truth, which would have been rejected as too fantastic by even the most rabid of the gossip-mongers.

Meanwhile, at the wedding supper, the fashionable guests ate, drank, danced, and made half-hearted attempts at flirtation, to the wailing accompaniment of the violins. Toasts were made, appointments within the new queen's household announced, then Jarred and Ys climbed into a gilded sleigh behind six white horses, and were carried off to a house in the country for a brief honeymoon. A large group of servants followed behind in a carriage.

When the newlyweds returned to Tarnburgh a fortnight later, Madame Solange was one of the first to call at Lindenhoff to pay her respects to the royal bride. Ys received her former governess in a suite of sumptuous redecorated rooms, which had been plastered, painted, and gilded during the honeymoon.

“You seem very pleased with yourself,” said Madame, looking Ys over.

Ys was flushed and excited, enjoying all of the fuss and attention, this first day back at the palace. If the wedding trip had been like one prolonged nightmare, she had already pushed the memory of that to the back of her mind. And like a true Maglore, she was much too absorbed in the present moment to give more than a passing thought to the future.

“Of course I am pleased. Why should I not be—with all this around me.” As she spoke, Ys played with a pair of dainty gold filigree bracelets, which Jarred had given her just that morning.

“That is all very well,” Madame retorted, “so long as you don't forget how you came to be here. So long as you don't forget how vital my aid and council will be in
keeping
you here.” Though Madame looked regal in lynx and black velvet, her voice was bitter, her manner dissatisfied. “I must say, when you tried to take charge of things for yourself, you bungled them badly. The death of Lord Hugo—such deplorable timing.”

“But you were the one who wanted him dead,” Ys replied, with an edge to her voice. “You are the one who said they must all be disposed of one way or the other: all of Jarred's relations, all of his friends and most trusted servants. Think how it would have looked if they had started dropping off
after
the wedding. And I think that I managed it beautifully,” she added smugly. “Just because it came at what seemed like a bad time for
me
, no one will suspect I had any hand in Lord Hugo's death.”

“No one suspects
as yet
; you may not have covered your tracks so well as you think.”

But Ys thought otherwise. In fact, she had chosen the timing of Lord Hugo's death very carefully. Firstly, of course, she had meant to impress Madame, who had poisoned Izek as a warning to Ys that she had best stop shilly-shallying when it came to the king, or Zmaj would be the next one to die. So Ys had determined to send a message of her own:
I can be ruthless, too
. Secondly, the delay had spared
her many long weeks with a husband whose attentions made her physically ill.

Thinking of this, her mood dimmed. Her child had not quickened—or else her symptoms had been deceptive, and she had never conceived at all. Either way, it seemed she was no more fertile than the rest of her kind.

Echoing her thoughts, Madame said: “It could take months, even years, before you conceive. Until you can announce the impending birth of an heir, our plans for Jarred must be held in abeyance. As for those others—a death here, a high-placed official discredited there, a trusted servant dismissed with a bad character—there is more than one way to accomplish our ends, and now that you are actually inside Lindenhoff, your opportunities will be that much greater.”

Ys sighed and wandered across the room to one of the high arched windows, where she stood looking down at the gardens below. A brief thaw followed by a sudden drop in temperature had encased each separate branch, twig, thorn, and trunk in a transparent coating of ice. The palace gardens looked like something created by a master craftsman out of spun glass. It was all very pretty, but Ys found it depressing. After almost a year in Tarnburgh she was learning to hate this northern climate: the short, bright, intense summers; the early onset of winter. The prospect of living in such a horrible place for the rest of her life was a hateful one.

Nor did she relish the idea of months, even years, as Jarred's wife.

Ys fingered the white stones encircling her throat. While exploring the properties of the necklace, she had learned to induce an intense and unhealthy state of excitement, bordering on delirium. There was an ugly fascination to observing Jarred in the grip of her spell, and he was always abjectly eager to please her afterward. It also exacted such a pitiless physical toll, she believed it might, if prolonged, lead to apoplexy or heart failure. Indeed, the temptation to
kill him grew stronger and stronger. She had already brought him dangerously close to the edge several times during their honeymoon.

Ys turned away from the window, tried to rally her failing spirits. By remaining barren, she extended her idyll with Zmaj, protected her lover from Madame Solange. Having been so reckless as to dispense with Izek, Madame would not be so profligate with Zmaj and Jmel. Not unless she could dredge up another youth of Imperial Maglore blood—and so far as Ys knew, there were none living.

Nevertheless, it was clear that Madame intended to keep the upper hand. “Don't allow all the comforts and flattery of your present position to go to your head,” she said sharply, as she arranged her furs and prepared to depart. “There is still a great deal of work to be done—and a single misstep could cost you a good deal more than you seem to realize.”

Jarred's first act on returning home was to send for Doctor Purcell. He received the old man in the trompe l'oeil council chamber, with its dozens of imaginary painted doors and windows, its pedimented arches leading absolutely nowhere. In the council chamber, they could speak alone without fear of interruption.

Purcell could not help noticing how pale and thin the king had grown in two short weeks, how his hand shook as he motioned the philosopher to take a seat beside him, in Zelene's old chair. “Have you been ill, sir?” he asked bluntly.

“Ill? But why should you ask?” Jarred smiled, but the smile did not extend to his eyes. “The truth is, I've never felt better in my life. If I don't look entirely myself, no doubt it is simply the result of too much pleasure. Now that I am home, I will slow the pace.” The smile became a half-humorous grimace. “Really, what choice do I have? There is far too much to occupy me here, to allow much time for—dissipation.”

Doctor Purcell adjusted his spectacles and continued to stare at him with troubled eyes. “Dissipation, Your Majesty?”

The king moved uneasily in his gilded chair. “My wife has strange tastes for one so young. And I have learned, Francis, that I am not the man I always thought I was. There is a dark side that seems to crave the most exotic pleasures.” He rubbed one wrist as he spoke. “All of my life, I have made every effort to avoid giving or receiving pain. Yet, there is a thrill that passes along the nerves—”

Jarred gave a short, false laugh, and blushed to the roots of his hair. “But really, I don't know why I should say any of this to you. I do beg your pardon.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “It was an interesting diversion, but I assure you, I
assure
you, it is all in the past.”

“So I must hope,” said the old man. “If these exotic pleasures of which you speak leave you looking so weak and depleted.”

Luden, Rijxland—Four Months Later

15 Pluviôse, 6538

W
inter had nearly lost her grip on Luden. Though the wind from the sea was still tinged with ice, the sun shone all day long, and the marshes beyond the city turned grey and hazy. The city itself was undergoing a swift transformation. The redbrick streets had been swept clear of snow; skating parties on the Grand Canal had been declared too dangerous; in every garden there was the
drip-drip-drip
of icicles melting off of wych-elms and horse chestnuts.

Luke had grown restless with the changing season. He set out one morning from his rented rooms, with no clear idea where he meant to go. He had not proceeded more than twenty yards from the house, when he heard someone call out his name.

“Mr. Guilian. A moment, if you please, sir.” At the sound of that pleasantly modulated voice, Luke stopped and turned. Spotting a vaguely familiar figure striding in his direction, he politely waited for the man to catch up.

Mr. Varian Dou was a fresh-faced member of the Rijxlander parliament, three or four years younger than Luke was himself, with a calm and sensible air about him. Being but slightly acquainted, Lucius thought well of young Mr. Dou—when he chanced to think of him at all.

He and Luke exchanged civil bows, and fell into step together. “I could not help noticing, the last time we met, that you do not seem to approve of Lord Flinx.”

“Pardon me. As Lord Polyphant was kind enough to remind me, I don't even live here. It is not for me to either approve or disapprove of your new Prime Minister.”