“The righteous prefects lashed him as a lesson to all—and a favor to their noble friends—and branded him on the face, and hung him in a cage in the square. A delicate lady could likely not imagine what vermin and diseases a flayed fat man in a cage attracts over the space of three months, especially in Sabrian summer. Autumn was no relief, as he was blind and gibbering by then. Dead before the season’s turn.”
My stomach recoiled at the imagining. Did Dante’s comrades know this story? And why had he told me?
As suddenly as he’d faced it, he abandoned the window and snatched up his staff left propped beside the door. A green storm had risen under his black brows. “Do not imagine I would trade a rat’s tail for a nobleman’s life, whether he was born to his name or raised from dirt. Nor will I weep for his woman or his whelps, not even if he be this Divine Aspirant whose altered world might better suit my taste.”
Nor would he weep for pawners or moneylenders, I guessed, nor, most especially, for the Camarilla. The room rumbled with his hate. The city suffered for it.
“When your student friend Portier returns from his crumb sweeping, tell him the time for games and secrets is ended. I will see him in Ixtador. Together we shall await the Souleater and the last day of the world.” He crossed the room in ten strides and vanished through the doorway.
Though the candlelight seemed brighter after Dante’s leaving, a bitter taint lingered on my tongue and in my soul. My head hammered unmercifully, and surely every muscle detailed in Vendanni’s
Catalogue Anatomie Humanae
ached. But it was my spirit fared worst, pulsing with burgeoning dread. Dante and his masters believed their altered world would come to pass.
I checked on Eugenie again. Smoothed her tangled hair, apologizing for my feeble efforts that necessitated Dante’s touch. I eased the edge of the sheet from her clenched hands, only to be startled out of mind when her fingers curled about my wrist and her eyes blinked wide open.
“Don’t let me sleep, Anne,” she whispered, her dark eyes pooled with terror. Her skin pulsed as if the thready veins were covered with naught but thin-stretched silk. “Please, no more.”
“Indeed, let’s keep you awake for a while,” I said, hopes rising. “But we’ll not go walking just yet.”
I stuffed extra pillows under her back and head. Laved her hands and patted her cheeks, yet her chin still drooped. Looking around for some other means of keeping her awake, my eye fell on the smelling salts the other ladies relied on so heavily. I snatched up the etched-glass vial half filled with brown crystals, uncorked it, and waved it under her nose.
“No!” She jerked her head aside and wailed softly. “Please, no! He’ll come here again. . . .”
“Who, lady? Is it King Soren who comes?”
Her huge dark eyes filled with terror. “So beautiful, so commanding, so desirable. But he leads me to that awful place. I
saw
him once without the mask . . . hungry . . .”
Her heavy lids sagged. Her shoulders slumped.
“Lady! Eugenie! Stay awake! Who did you see? Where did he take you?” I held the vial under her nose yet again. “Who?”
Her response came in a thick-tongued whisper: “The Fallen. The Souleater. In my dreams he lies with me, rousing me until I burn. He says we’ll rule Heaven together. Anne, help me. . . .”
Then she was asleep again, as if she had never stirred.
Confused, I corked the vial of smelling salts and set it on the bedside table. The candlelight set the wardstone on my finger gleaming—no longer benign silver, but the color of lapis. Not the color of poison, but of dangerous enchantment.
CHAPTER 33
25 OCET, NIGHT
“O
nly for an hour or two until Patrice arrives, Arabella,
caeri
,” said Antonia, sweeping into the room with a stout woman of fifty-odd summers, whose outlandish wig resembled the rag-mop hair of Syan idols. “You’ve naught to do but supervise Anne; she is so new at this.”
Heart galloping, I drifted away from the medicine box, as Antonia established the ample Contessa Arabella on a settee.
Antonia’s patter flowed like cream. “Just make sure the nursemaid tastes anything brought, whether food, drink, or medicine. And if Eugenie stirs, keep her abed and use her salts, lest she faint and start the dreadful bleeding again. Anne,
caeri
, where are Her Majesty’s smelling salts? The vial should be right here.” Her jeweled fingers tapped the bedside table.
“I’m sure I saw it earlier,” I said, spinning, my fingers wrapped tight around the very vial she wanted. “Ah, over here, my lady!”
I darted toward Eugenie’s dressing table, and with an obscuring sweep of my shawl and a twist of my hand, sent the crystal bottle flying. “Oh no!”
“You stupid, clumsy wretch!” Antonia’s screech must surely have waked half the palace.
“I’m so sorry, Your Grace! Where can I find more of the compound? From the physician? From the mage?”
“Cursed was the day you came here!” she said. “Cursed be your family, your ancestors.” Her venom scalded the sickroom air.
Lady Arabella, shocked speechless at such blasphemy, waved her embroidery needles at me in some message to do with sweeping. Comprehending, I offered to fetch a servant to clean up the splintered glass and salts.
“Yes, yes.” Antonia’s strangled agreement spoke more of fear than anger. Her trembling hands rattled through the medicine box.
I would have worried more about the sweeping girl or Arabella, who had set her embroidery frame and a large basket of spooled silks in the vicinity, save that the original contents of the vial were wrapped tightly and stowed in my pocket. The scattered crystals were some more benign formula I’d retrieved from the medicine box.
Clever villains, to use smelling salts as a vehicle for their enchantments. Who would think to have a taster take a whiff each time such a thing was used, more common among court ladies than swatting flies? And with so many vials at hand, they could be switched easily. Was there some aromatic compound that could cause a hemorrhage, as this one bound Eugenie in unnatural sleep? Perhaps Roussel could tell me.
Not long after Antonia and the sweeping girl had departed, Lord Ilario tiptoed through the door. After proper greetings, he flung himself on the settee beside Arabella, wrapping his long arm around her shoulder and his confidences about her ear. “Dearest Lady Arabella, a most distressing matter. Your son, the Baronet Montmorency, such a charming boy, so delicate in his choices of fabrics. Honestly, I adore his rose stripes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he loves his wine and his delicate health causes it to affect him so dreadfully. I’ve just had a report of a youth . . . rose stripes and ostrich plumes . . . uh, let us say . . . discharging . . . his dinner in the Faun Fountains or perhaps it was the Troll Regarde Fountain. Thought you should know.”
Mumbled commiseration soon popped Ilario to his feet. He hauled the distressed Arabella up and into his arms. “Certainly I can escort you, dear lady! We’ll borrow a footman or two. Dreadful frights in the courtyards . . .”
With handiwork as neat and quick as the contessa’s own, Ilario whisked Arabella and her embroidery frame away. Only a few spools of rose silk remained behind. I presumed he had a reason for removing her, and remained alert.
Sure enough, shortly after ninth hour, a soft click signaled a visitor. Yet the noise didn’t come from the outer passage, but from the wall to the left of Eugenie’s bed. A rectangular wall panel opened a few centimetres. Either the door to the servants’ stair had shifted its position or there was a second concealed access to her bedchamber.
My hand slipped into the fitchet in my skirt. I didn’t draw my knife, but neither was I inclined to step up and shift the stool that blocked the door from opening further. Would a revenant need a doorway?
When a long arm clad in scarlet and trailing a year’s output of a lace maker’s art at the wrist reached through and dragged the stool aside, I relaxed my guard. Not ghostly Soren, but Ilario poked his fair head cautiously around the blue panel.
“None’s here but me,” I said.
“Good. Thank the saints for Arabella’s easily seduced brat. I needed to speak with you alone.” He joined me at the bedside, his eyes all for his sister. “How is she, truly?”
“Restless and dreadfully weak. But she doesn’t seem to be in pain. I might have found the cause for all this . . .” I told him of Eugenie’s brief waking, Dante’s visit, and the smelling salts.
“Sante Ianne,” he said, anguished, “I’ve offered her the vial myself. When she was so dizzy in the carriage, I may have given her the very dose that felled her. If there was a child . . .” He did not hammer his fists on the wall, but I would not wish to be the first of these conspirators who ventured within reach of Ilario de Sylvae’s sword.
“For what comfort it might give, Roussel does not believe there was a child.” The good knight’s pain but hardened my resolve. “Chevalier, where has Duplais gone? He told me he had important business outside the palace, but he should have returned hours ago.”
Ilario wrenched his attention from poison and murder. “I knew nothing but what you told us, until his man brought me this a short time ago. Portier charged Heurot to deliver it if he’d not returned by the middle-night. The lad was too anxious to wait longer.” He passed me a smudged scrap of paper—a handbill for a play given years ago in the town of Archenase. A message had been scribed in a neat, even script.
To the kindest man in the world from the world’s most pitiful gull: Though I forbade you oath swearing, hope tells me that your promise of aid remains sealed in your heart. I am desperate. Judgment for my folly looms like a headsman’s ax. I’ll wait at the crossroads at Voilline until sunset tomorrow.
Two additional lines, written in Duplais’ bolder hand, appeared below.
Matters must have gotten more complicated. Forgive me for not confiding in you.
Keep to your path, friend. Trust the girl.
“The idiot!” I said. “
This
is what took him away? Look at this last; he suspected it was a trap!”
“The writer is surely Maura ney Billard,” said Ilario, as he perched on the edge of Eugenie’s bed, absently stroking her temple. “Portier claims he knew her too short a time to truly love her, but I observed otherwise. The lady reflected the sentiment, even before he risked his life and Geni’s to get her out of the Spindle.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I presume
you’re
the girl to trust.”
“Stupid, stupid,” I murmured, holding the paper close to the lamp, as if I might see additional information squeezed amid the spare prose. Was Maura dupe, victim, or traitor? And Voilline . . . something nagged about it.
“I never thought the woman fool enough—or so careless of
his
safety—to return to Sabria,” said Ilario. “She’s dead if Philippe finds her. And our librarian friend will be, as well, if he’s found with her. If Portier’s damnable holy righteousness fails again . . .”
I snorted. Ilario must truly be an innocent as his sister believed, an idealist at the least. “I’ve always considered Duplais’ righteousness more daemonish than holy.”
“You’re not a Cultist.” The quiet comment drew my attention from the page.
“You subscribe to the Cult of the Reborn?” I’d forgotten he wore the phoenix ring.
“Four years ago, I was sure I witnessed the two Invariant Signs made manifest. Certainly the refusal to die without meaningful purpose.”
His earnest sobriety . . . reverence . . . from a person who personified irreverence banished all inclination to amusement. “You believed
Duplais
to be a Saint Reborn?”
“I saw him step out of a holocaust as the
Swan
burned and men died around him. And none but a Saint Reborn could have survived the battering he took at Eltevire. Then, but a few months ago, Portier told me about the night his father tried to murder him because he’d failed at his study of magic—because he could not elevate their family to their ‘rightful rank’ as royal kin. Portier believes he actually died that night and was returned from Ixtador. Kajetan was there and coddled him back to health, but conveniently forgot ever to mention the dying part.”
Threads of connection knotted themselves into a lacework. “You don’t suppose
Kajetan
believes this about him?”
Ilario shrugged. “The second Invariant Sign is an inerrant perception of righteousness, and anyone who knows Portier for more than an hour can see that honor and compassion are rooted in his bones. So I always assumed he saw something in Maura worth saving, the same as he did with Captain de Santo. I feared he had the same conviction about Dante, but he didn’t defend the mad mage for smashing me to smithereens. I appreciated that.”
“He doesn’t defend Kajetan, either,” I said, “though he wants to very badly. But that doesn’t make him a reborn soul.”
“Certainly not. Portier himself certainly doesn’t believe it. It was the matter of his dreams had me convinced. He recounted a few of them on the road to Eltevire. Vivid dreams of extraordinary deeds . . . every one of which I could pull straight out of Cult texts.”