Not long after my arrival, word arrived of a servant who had succumbed in the night to a virulent flux. Tales had already linked the red-haired girl’s death with the physician’s illness. The kitchen servants were in terror of an epidemic, examining one another’s tongues and dosing themselves with saffron and teas made from pomegranate, sage, and white oak bark. The world seemed mantled in dread.
I could not force myself to conversation. Could not settle. Not even reading could tempt me on such a day. Though I grieved for the dead girl and hoped the best for the kind physician, it was fear for my brother had me pacing.
My goodfather was no tyrant, but a strong, pragmatic, and enlightened king. Thus, like a fool, I had believed my brother safe in the Spindle. Agitated by confinement and restriction, yes, but never deprived of the most basic comforts. Never in physical danger. For certain, never so ignominiously, so vilely, abused. What in the name of all saints was I to do?
I considered another appeal to Lord Ilario, or perhaps directly to Eugenie herself, who had been willing to dispatch her servant to succor my mother. But Eugenie and Philippe were estranged, and no one but the king himself could set Ambrose free or, at the least, commit him to less odious confinement. Logic insisted I must appeal to the king yet again.
An ornate writing table sat in a remote corner of the room, set with jade inkpots cleverly carved in the shapes of elephants, and an ivory monkey embracing a brass pot of quills. But a quick investigation determined the desk and its charming accoutrements entirely decorative. What I would have given for a hammer to smash the useless thing!
“. . . claimed it was a couchine!” The word snatched at my attention, as two women strolling the perimeters of the salon arm in arm passed within range of my hearing. “So like a doctor to share food with a servant. Do you know the disgusting things physicians do?”
A shared
couchine
. . . a red-haired serving girl . . . Physician Roussel . . .
My skin broke into a fevered sweat. As if it hovered in the air before me, I could see the steaming couchine on its flowered plate. Intended for
me
. But I had sent it back:
Return it to Physician Roussel or have it yourself.
And so the girl must have done. And they had shared it. And she had died. Truth glared at me like a skull and bones. Poison.
Roussel, sick himself, could not have been the poisoner. Yet he had sent me the pastry . . . or had he? A gentleman had sent it, the red-haired girl had said, and I had assumed that person to be the amiable physician. But others could have witnessed our exchange about the pastries. And now the girl was dead, unable to say if I had returned the plate to the same gentleman who intended it for me.
Hand pressed to my lips, I fled the room, caring naught for protocol, for duty, or for Duplais, perched on a stool next to the door, absorbed in his journal. Any man or woman in that chamber could have dispensed poison in the couchine.
Here, child. Leave that plate for a moment and fetch me a cup of tea
. Or,
Trade me that little pastry for this larger one, girl. I’ve not touched it; none will mind. Tell her a gentleman sent it.
The child would have obeyed the villain, just as she had me. And now she was dead. Like my sister. Like Cecile. Like Ophelie de Marangel and all those other victims four years ago and who knew how many since.
“Ah, Damoselle Anne!” Chevalier Ilario’s chirruping greeting as I entered the passage struck my clamorous spirit as the scrape of steel on glass. His mustard-striped taffeta scorched my eyes. “Your felicitous family reunion, was it satisfactory?”
“I must beg your indulgence, lord chevalier. Please excuse me.”
“Certainly. I only wondered—”
Rudely, I left him gaping. I owed him every courtesy. Of everyone in this horrid place, he had shown a willingness to aid me. But to thread the needles of conversation was beyond me just now. Someone wanted me dead.
Grieving for the red-haired child and praying the Pantokrator’s angels to succor the kind physician, I sped through the east wing, unable to still my shaking no matter how tight I wrapped my arms.
So distraught. So afraid . . .
It’s nothing.
Clearly not. Is it the voices in your head?
Only then did I realize what was happening. The intruder had joined me again, nudged me gently, and without thought I had responded.
“No, no, no, no!” My hands gripped my temples. “Go away!”
The door inside me closed, and he was gone. But it was not silent inside my skull. Saints’ mercy, the voices were still there, potion or no.
Choking down a cry, I broke into a run, passing the turn to my own room. I needed to escape these poisonous walls and this growing strangeness in my head. I sped down the broad stair and into the window gallery.
A movement just ahead of me. A startled face whipped round—a pale and dark smear. “Hold up—ungh!”
The collision was unavoidable. A hard, solid point struck just beneath my breastbone.
Objects went flying. The world blurred. The pain in my middle bent me in two. I could not cry out. Could not breathe. Could. Not. Breathe.
The face swam before my own. Words. A laugh aborted. Hands fumbled at me as I crumpled. Awkward . . . slipping . . . dying . . . The solid collision of head and the hard ground scarce registered.
“Damoselle Anne . . . hold on . . . easy . . . easy.” As if from the bottom of a well.
Cold marble held my back.
Dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . stupid girl . . .
With a painful whoop, my lungs sucked in air; then I was coughing and curling up to soothe my bruised middle.
Cold fingers tapped nervously at my cheek, and an arm slipped tentatively around my shoulders. “Damoselle, forgive me. I just stepped out. Wasn’t watching. Do tell me you’re all right.”
He helped me sit up. Crossing my arms tight across my breast, I blinked away the blur and looked up. Mage Dante’s mournful assistant knelt before me, aghast.
“Saints Awaiting! What’s happened?” a second man called from behind me.
“Only a small collision, lord chevalier. Knocked the wind out of her. I’ll see to her.”
The sorcerer helped me to standing. Too busy inflating my burning chest to speak, too shaken to repudiate his attentions, I allowed him to lead me down a passage and sit me on a stool behind a writing table littered with books and papers. “Stay here. I’ll fetch something. Only a moment. You’re not going to topple off?”
I managed a positive finger wag, confident of remaining upright only because he’d propped my hands on the table. He wrenched at the latch on a lower pane of a tall window. Damp air bathed my face as he scurried off in the direction we’d come. Concentrating on moving air in and out, I dared not turn my aching head to see where he’d gone.
He was back in moments with a cold wet cloth that he dabbed at my forehead.
“Does this help? I’ve always heard
damp cloths
, but I’m thinking perhaps you should be lying down.”
“One. Moment,” I whispered. Gradually the world was coming back into focus and the cramping behind my ribs was easing. I straightened my back a little and kneaded my midsection. He wore a gray academic gown, not spiked armor, and he carried no pike or bludgeon. “Don’t know what hit me so hard.”
He blanched and stuffed the wet towel into my hand. “Oh, daemon spawn! I’ll be back!” And he raced off again.
Holding the towel to my somewhat clearer head, I glanced around at where he’d brought me. The writing table sat along the wall of a passage, lit and cooled by the great window bay in its end wall. Odd, a desk in a passage.
A rush of realization tinged with fear spurred me off the stool. I knew exactly where I was. This was the same corridor I’d visited two nights previous to spy on the murderous Lady Antonia.
The panting young man reappeared and dumped eight or ten books onto the desk atop the rest. “Ah, you’re up. Most excellent. It was these injured you, I’m afraid,” he said, stacking his volumes more carefully. “You slammed into—Well, my studies take up a great deal of time I’d rather spend with ladies, but I’ve never had books come between a lady and me in so dire a fashion. I was on my way to the palace library to return this hodge-podge.”
“My fault entirely.” I passed him the towel and began a retreat. “You’ve been very kind, Adept—”
“Jacard,” he said, grinning and sweeping a bow, exposing a handmark in the shape of a winged lion. “Jacard de Viole. And you, of course, are Anne de Vernase, the queen’s racing maid of honor. Are you always in such a hurry?”
“It must seem like it.” I glanced at the door behind him. A murderer’s door. Dante’s door, I believed. Could I make some advantage of this? Learn something? “Tell me, is your master truly so terrifying as he appears? When he looks at me, I feel . . . sullied.”
“Everyone does.” Jacard bobbed his head, keeping his voice low. “But truth is, he’s mostly bluster and bald arrogance.”
“But I’ve heard he’s responsible for inexplicable horrors—bird storms, fires, ruin.” Artifice could mask strength as well as weakness. It would take the Pantokrator himself to convince me Dante was not the most dangerous man I’d ever met.
“Oh, he’s talented, no doubt. But he’s like a racing horse that shows all he’s got in the first half kilometre, then keels over.”
“He’s despicable”—the memory of Eugenie’s dreams and my brother’s despair set fire racing through my veins, scalding limbs, cheeks, tongue—“cruel and vicious, abusing his servants, tormenting our queen, torturing helpless prisoners—” I clamped my mouth shut, cursing my incautious tongue.
But Jacard heard exactly what I never should have spoken. He edged closer, his back to the mage’s door. “I heard you visited the Spindle yesterday.” Quiet. Eager. “Has my master done something awful there?”
I near choked on my idiocy. Never could I allow anyone to believe Ambrose had identified his middle-night visitors. “I’ve certainly no evidence. My brother seems very confused. Cowed. But it’s clear that he has been . . . disciplined . . . with magic. Indeed, he is covered with scars and bruises, and I recalled that terrible incident at the Arothi reception where Master Dante beat—Well, it sounded something the same.”
Jacard’s scarlet brow could have lit a cellar.
I babbled on as if I hadn’t noticed. “I asked my brother if Master Dante had done it, and the stubborn boy said he didn’t know, that he’d been told to keep his face to the wall. But the mage is the most frightening person I know and I attribute everything despicable to him. Why would a kind gentleman like you stay on? I understand Collegia Seravain has fine tutors and a library filled with magical texts. Surely you’d be welcome there.” Let Jacard think me a dimwit maiden.
“Tedious schoolbooks and mediocre masters don’t suit me,” he said, purring like a barn cat at a saucer of milk. “But Dante . . .” He leaned close and dropped his voice. “I’ve a theory he possesses some source or device that makes his work more potent than other magic. There are tales of daemon-wrought jewels that can give a man power beyond imagining. Dante does his best to obscure it with this show he puts on.”
“You don’t think—He’s not involved in this despicable practice my wretched father perpetrated?” Let feigned horror mask my own hunger for information.
“Blood transference? He could be, though none will ever prove it. He’s wickedly clever at covering his tracks.” Jacard lifted a thin little volume from the desk, smoothing its crackled cover absently with his thumb. “You see, the puzzle is not just the power he uses to bind spellwork, but the nature of the work itself. His magic demonstrates complexities unknown in current practice.
Someone
needs to pay attention.”
“So that’s why you stay?”
“More than four years I’ve put up with him, despite the insults, the petty errands, the demeaning gossip. But every moment, I edge a little closer to uncovering his secrets. Soon, now, I’ll show them all that he’s not what he claims.”
He forced a sheepish grin, seeming to realize he’d displayed more than he intended. He’d twisted the slender book so hard a binding stitch snapped.
“I get a bit hot about the man, of course,” he said, tossing the volume back onto the heap of books. “Takes a bit of convincing not to take the next ship bound for Syanar. Instead, I’d best be off and get these back to the library. The mage has been on a rampage about history and symbols and blood-family genealogy of late. He devours more books than food, and with the same ferocity that he devours his servants. I’d like to throw the man and his precious books into a mine shaft. That would unnerve him right enough.”
“My position here seems entirely to be sent on errands,” I said, ideas bumping and crowding one another.
History . . . symbols . . . blood-family genealogy.
The very things I needed to understand the scraps of evidence I held from Lianelle and Cecile. “Indeed, my duties take me to the library this morning. Could I express apologies for my heedlessness by delivering these for you?”
“Honestly, I’d welcome the relief,” he said, astonished and pleased. “I’ve a tenday’s work he’s expecting done by this evening. But are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”