Only as I forced myself still did I recognize him.
“Duplais!” I craned my neck, looking back into the depths of the Rotunda. Retreating footsteps echoed through the emptiness.
“Have you seen something here? Tell me.” Insistent. Concerned.
I stumbled over words, unable to explain, not sure I should report such mad visions. “Nothing,” I blurted at last. “A servant . . . someone . . . startled me. That’s all.”
“Naturally.” His manner reverted to his usual brittle chill. “What brings you to the Rotunda on your first evening at court, damoselle? The queen’s household does not encompass this place.”
“Let me go. I’m late.” That was all I could say without my voice quavering. Stupid to be so wrecked by a few lights, a lurker, and a vivid, morbid imagination.
I wrenched my hands free and fled. Duplais’ gaze burned my back until I was inside the west wing, traversing a portrait gallery under the watchful eyes of Sabria’s last twenty monarchs.
Answer me this, householder
, I thought.
If the queen’s household does not include the Rotunda, then what business do
you
have there?
Meeting the mage with the white staff, I’d wager.
The bells struck the half hour as I turned into a modest passage painted the color of claret and halted before the second door. As I raised my hand to knock, the door opened.
A gentleman reared backward in surprise at seeing me so near with a raised fist—and surely a grim and violent aspect.
“Oh!” I said stupidly, straining to see that the birds carved on the lintel were indeed peacocks. “These are the Ducessa de Blasencourt’s rooms?”
“I d-doubt I should speak truly, d-damoselle. You’ve no intent t-to harm her?” His square-jawed face wore a severe expression, blunted by the trace of a stutter and belied by a spark in his eyes. Close-trimmed, white-threaded dark curls framed a strong, symmetrical visage, adorned by a meticulously groomed mustache. A pleasant, intelligent face. Mature, nearer fifty than thirty.
“No. Certainly not. I was summoned.” My heart’s thuttering slowed. He was a large man, both tall and broad. Trim, fit, but substantial.
“Then b-be of good cheer. You have arrived,” he said quietly, dropping his eyes. He bowed modestly and stepped aside to allow me through. “Ah, here is noble Slanie to c-carry you onward. Angels’ peace, damoselle.”
Cheeks afire, I dipped a knee, already marshaling my questions. A serving girl in a frilled bonnet showed me into a cluttered sitting room. Books and teacups sat atop tables and shelves, alongside fans, beadwork, painted clay pots, and other artifacts from the ducessa’s travels.
Lady Cecile rose in welcome, not for me, it appeared, but for a large woman wielding a cane, who marched in behind me like an invading legion. “Make yourself comfortable, Eleanor,” she said. “Anne, don’t hang back. Come in and join us.”
The serving girl vanished. Ensconced on the couches were the fair-haired Belinda and a tiny red-haired marquesa, who had lectured us for an hour that afternoon about petticoats.
I could have chewed the carpet.
“Eleanor, Patrice, this is Anne de Vernase,” said Lady Cecile. “And you know dear Belinda.”
“Divine grace, my ladies,” I croaked. My curtsy would have been better made by a bricklayer.
The ladies vouched me voiceless nods, while Belinda offered a smile that could have outshone a lighthouse. As if I could not feel her shrink away.
The four of them settled into a discussion of Hematian marriage protocols, including the necessity for a prospective bride to pen elaborate descriptions of her family, her childhood, and her education for each member of her betrothed’s family in the Hematian language. Belinda near fainted at the prospect. “I’ll never manage it!” she said.
“Perhaps I could be of some help,” I said, having spent the tedious hour reclaiming my equanimity.
The ladies stared, a bit shocked, as if they’d forgotten I had a voice and weren’t sure I should have one.
“I’ve studied Hematian and, though my pronunciation is merely passable, I’m quite proficient with the written language.” No sympathy or interest in Belinda’s betrothal prompted my offer. I merely craved some halfway intelligent occupation. All the better if it quieted their endless nattering.
“I understood you grew up in the country, damoselle.” The red-haired marquesa, Lady Patrice, was sharp-tongued and trim of figure at an age no less than seventy. From her sour expression, one might have thought the country a sewer or a mine shaft, where such things as lessons were unknown.
“My family traveled widely when I was twelve and thirteen,” I said. “And my father believed women had quite as fine intelligence as men, thus the same need for education.”
At least two of the four women hissed when I mentioned Papa. Belinda’s great eyes rounded.
“And as Lady Cecile knows, my moth—”
“A most useful refinement, languages.” Lady Cecile snatched away the conversation with practiced larceny. “It would be most kind of you to help Belinda with her letters, Anne. You can set her to work in these evening sessions as we review your own deficiencies. Now, we’ve done for tonight. Divine grace, dear ladies.”
Lady Cecile rose, and though I watched carefully, her fingers did not signal me to stay behind. Yet as she swept me to the door with the others, she held my arm for one moment, her eye on Lady Patrice’s back. When the brisk little marquesa disappeared around a corner, Cecile whispered in my ear, almost spitting. “Do
not
mention my connection with your mother. Not to anyone. Do you understand?”
“Certainly, Your Grace,” I said, my cheeks heating. “I understand completely.”
So she was no better than the rest.
I departed, seething, having extracted only two scraps of information in the hour’s session. First, that Belinda de Mercier, a young woman who lit a room like a streak of sunlight and possessed an excruciatingly rich father, had an intellect the size of a pea. And second, that my expectation that I would detest this place was entirely correct.
The storm had passed. Mist hung thick in the courtyards and lightning danced in the starless heavens. Unwilling to visit the gloomy Rotunda, I set out through the dark, wet gardens.
As the damp air bathed my overheated face, I brought reason to the experience of the night. What I had seen in the Rotunda was no manifested spirit. Despite its movements and sounds, the body had projected no quality of humanity. Those fathomless eyes could project no personhood, no soul.
More likely I had witnessed a terrible trickery—a manipulation of lenses and prisms by the cloaked mage hiding near the pendulum. A camera obscura, perhaps. And it made sense they would project an image of the man who’d died there. But why would anyone do such a thing? To frighten serving girls and palace guards? Neither the mage nor Duplais could have imagined
I
would enter the Rotunda this night.
A touch on my sleeve and a glimpse of pale flesh near startled me out of my shoes—until my scrabbling fist caught a clump of wet leaves. The little grotto was choked with oleander. A pale marble statue of a naked javelin thrower hid behind the leathery leaves as if to protect his modesty.
Unfortunately, reason could not repair a good fit of the shakes. I bolted for the nearest door and took the long way through the palace to my bedchamber.
TO FIND MY ROOM DARK Surprised me, as Ella had promised to leave a light. I groped for the bellpull and sat on the bed to wait. The room felt odd and uncomfortable, the inky blackness squirming like the heat shimmer of summer afternoons. By the time Ella tapped on the door, I was trembling, as if thready lights might flood through the doorway and shape another agonized visage.
Ella’s candle illuminated only her round cheeks. “Damoselle?”
I felt ridiculous as Ella lit the lamp on the dressing table with her candle. “I asked to have a lamp burning when I’m out after dark.”
“But I—” She shut her mouth firmly and dipped her knee.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Ella. I don’t want to be unreasonable.”
“Sorry, damoselle. It’s just I came to light the lamp not an hour ago. But I saw the light under the door. As you didn’t say come when I knocked, I figured you’d no need.”
“But that’s imposs—Wait.” I spun around. The emptied letter packet lay on the dressing table exactly where I’d dropped it, but the string . . . One fold gaped, though I had tied the roll of red leather tight, ready to discard. And had I left the ivory case, filled with Lianelle’s mysterious powder, beside or behind my brush? I couldn’t recall. I glanced up quickly, but Ella’s wide-eyed confusion seemed innocent enough.
“That’s all right, then. I’m sure it was only another maidservant come to the wrong room.”
“Aye, damoselle.” Her gray eyes were wide as she dipped her knee and left.
When she had gone, I unlocked the hidden drawer in the armoire. My mother’s jewelry appeared undisturbed and Lianelle’s ring and lockets intact, exactly where I had put them. I debated whether to hide the packet and case in the drawer. But the damage was done. Better to leave them out and pretend I didn’t know someone had been here.
As the night waxed I lay abed, practicing the strict mental disciplines my mother’s family had taught me. If Duplais and his mage could bend my mother’s mind to breaking, I needed every tool I could muster to fight them.
CHAPTER 8
10 OCET, AFTERNOON
S
unbeams arrowed through the tall, narrow windows of the Royal Presence Chamber, striking the gold-crusted coats and jeweled turbans of the Arothi delegation. The resulting spits of light rivaled the sparkling showers of red and green fire launched from the balconies flanking the hall. Jugglers’ balls of faceted silver flew through the shimmering air, while leaves and rose petals drifted into carpets on the floor.
The Arothi fireworks were not magic, as they claimed; my father had shown us the explosive power of powdered sulfur, nitre powder, and charcoal packed in paper cylinders. The display was breathtaking nonetheless.
On my seventh morning at Castelle Escalon, Eugenie de Sylvae sat on a cushioned velvet throne beneath the glittering dome at one end of the Presence Chamber. With the king away, it fell to his wife to receive the annual tribute delegation from the kingdom of Aroth.
As the maids of honor had not yet been officially presented at court, we stood near the back of the hall. From so far away, the queen’s elaborate court gown, robes, and jewels masked any semblance of a real woman. I’d grown up thinking of Eugenie as an angel—tall, lovely, and soft-spoken. But those were an impressionable girl’s fantasies. At best she was a weak-minded woman who had allowed herself to be deceived by conspiratorial advisors plotting her husband’s overthrow. Even now she sponsored this mage Dante, encouraging his wickedness in some unhealthy hope of clinging to her dead.
The mage would be the sapphire-robed man at Eugenie’s right hand. The white staff and the silver collar were unmistakable. I could see no more than that.
A spray of green fireworks announced a parade of half-naked bearers. To the bone-thudding rhythm of tree drums, they paraded a fascinating array of exotic gifts through the hall: painted casks of Arothi brandy, porcelain masks as tall as a man, gold cages occupied by multihued birds and small furred creatures, nasty-looking things with intelligent eyes, sharp teeth, and jeweled collars. The Arothi ambassador, a slender man with a stiff mustache, described the trials and prosperity of his homeland for the past year, while the bearers laid the symbolic gifts at the queen’s feet. No doubt the bulk of the tribute payment was already safe in the Sabrian treasury.
The event was a welcome change from the household routine. Every morning began in the sitting room with lessons on precedence and the peerage, Her Majesty’s preferences in dress, and every sort of trivia. Afternoons I spent in the queen’s salons with some fifty household ladies, who played cards, embroidered, recited turgid poetry, and gossiped. Infinitely tedious afternoons. The queen had not joined us even once.
A few steps away from me a gentleman bent down to retrieve a few of the rose petals magically “transformed” from the fireworks. The close-trimmed curls named him the mature, fine-featured gentleman I’d met leaving Lady Cecile’s apartments. Twice since then I’d passed him in the east-wing corridors. Twice he had stood aside and bowed with a sober gallantry. Upon a third encounter, in the Kings’ Portrait Gallery, he’d seemed on the verge of addressing me, but had withdrawn with a wry smile when the doughty Lady Eleanor had hobbled around the corner.
“Dianne”—I edged closer to the most unrepentant gossip among the maids of honor—“who is the gentleman standing on the other side of Marie-Claire?”
She squinted, crinkling her nose and exposing dreadful teeth that left her status, if not her actual rank, as low as my own. “That’s Roussel, the queen’s new physician. A commoner, I’ve heard, a cobbler’s son or some such. Of course, even if he’d a fine demesne and was rid of his speech affliction, who’d care to be touched by a man who puts his fingers in wet noses and bloody pustules? Not even a royal appointment’s going to make him a decent match.”