Authors: James Alan Gardner
If any answer came, it was too quiet for me to hear. Nevertheless, Titania turned the knob and pushed the door open. "The mistress will see you now."
I nodded. Titania bowed once more, then silently brushed past me as she headed downstairs.
I'd never seen the bedroom so brilliantly lit: every flat surface held two or three shine-stones, beaming dollops of quartz I assumed had been enchanted by sorcerers working for Papa Kinnderboom in Feliss City. Usually Gretchen only kept one or two stones out in the open, and she often draped those with squares of thin cotton to mute the gleam; but tonight there were dozens all over the place, standing uncovered on the vanity, the dressers, the night stands, even scattered on the floor. My eyes ached from the brightness—I had to shield my gaze with my hand as I searched for Gretchen herself.
Despite the incessant remodeling in other parts of the house, Gretchen's bedroom hadn't changed in years—except for the darkening curtains, the place was always white, white, white, the walls, the bedding, the carpet. For variation, the furniture was painted in a range of bleached grays. There were also accents of color where Gretchen had thrown a sapphire blue dress over a chair, and left a crimson bra pooled on the floor; but the overall impression was still that eye-glaring white, illuminated now by several dozen shine-stones.
Quite bright enough to show that Gretchen was missing.
She'd recently been in the bed: the covers were thrown back and the sheets rumpled. The sight made me think of dead Rosalind, her covers wide open too. But Gretchen was not lying sprawled across the mattress... nor was she sitting at the vanity or lounging in the giant bathtub against the far wall. I peeked into the walk-in closet, but saw no sign of her. I didn't get down to look under the bed, but I glanced in that direction while staying on my feet, and decided it was unlikely Gretchen had managed to crawl out of sight. Since there was nowhere else she could hide (short of scrunching into a cedar chest or one of the trunks in the closet), I was on the verge of leaving; then a puff of breeze swirled the curtains in front of the balcony doors.
The doors were open. Despite the chill of the not-yet-spring night.
The hairs on the back of my neck bristled as I walked across the room. If she'd finally taken that last step into the open air... I kept picturing her throwing herself off the balcony in some fit of despondence. Or bid for attention. We were only one story up, so she'd almost certainly survive; but I didn't want to look over the railing and see Gretchen lying below. I had to force myself to push through the curtains, into the cold night breeze...
...where Gretchen stood quite alive, naked and hugging herself, rapidly puckering into one gigantic goose-pimple.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi yourself." Her teeth chattered. "Could you, uhh..." She lifted one arm to gesture back into the room, then quickly went back to hugging herself. It took me a moment to realize what she wanted.
"The lights?" I said.
"Please."
I hurried back into the bedroom and collected shine-stones, dropping them into the thick velvet sack where Gretchen usually kept them. As I worked, I couldn't help chuckling—imagining Gretchen as she heard the knock at her door. She must have realized she was surrounded by more light than a summer afternoon... so she scuttled to the balcony to keep me from seeing her in the unforgiving glare. All those times I'd tried to get her outdoors, I'd been using the wrong tactics.
I laughed again.
Soon I was carrying a bag full of shine: all the stones except one. I'd left that one on the night stand and covered it with a scarf of turquoise gossamer that had been balled up on the vanity. The resulting light tinted the room either sickly green or sea-mist blue, depending on your tolerance for turquoise... but it seemed to satisfy Gretchen, for she immediately came back inside, and closed the doors behind her. For a count of three she tried to bluff out the moment, letting her arms fall to her sides and striking a pose of regal nudity, pretending to be unfazed by cold. Then the shivers hit her and she stumbled forward, ripping a comforter off the bed and wrapping herself as her body shook.
I took her into my arms. She was a tall woman, almost exactly my height, long-legged and lean... but at that moment she seemed much smaller, shrinking into me as she opened the comforter and wrapped it around the two of us. Her bare body pressed against my clothes. Milky skin, green eyes, russet hair—all of which seemed entirely natural, but when a woman's daddy has sorcerers on his payroll, one can never tell how much cosmetic help she had in her formative years. Kaylan's Chameleon isn't the only beauty spell cast on developing girls—sorcerers have plenty of "tuck 'n' tweak" enchantments, making eye color more vivid, hair more lush, and adolescent body development more in keeping with local fashion. There was a reason my cousin Hafsah had such memorable loveliness: my grandma the governor paid for it. For the same reason, Gretchen's creamy complexion showed no hint of the usual freckles, moles, and other punctuations that flesh is normally heir to.
Yet sorcery has its limitations—it can correct imperfections, but it can't stop time. Removing a mole just means banishing pigments from a specific area of tissue; removing a wrinkle from a forty-ish woman's face means fighting the whole course of physical development, all the ongoing changes that lead to dry skin, slowing hormones and declining glands. Aging isn't one thing, it's
everything...
and neither science nor sorcery has identified all the body's clocks, let alone figured out how to turn them back in unison. There are too many proteins and enzymes and secretions that have to be balanced: if you stop the formation of crow's feet by changing the quantity of a particular body chemical, other body chemicals shift too.
Lots
of chemicals. Next thing you know, there might be a rash, or sores, or an epileptic fit.
Aging isn't an aberration that can be set back on track... it's the track itself.
I looked at the woman in my arms, and despite the dimness of the light, I could see everything she didn't admit was there: the wrinkles, the crinkles, the lines. A puffiness around the jaw; lapses in the sleekness of her neck. All very subtle, what most of us would consider insignificant—anyone standing back a few steps would see a woman at the peak of her beauty. But that wasn't enough for Gretchen. When she invited a man to her boudoir, she had no intention of keeping him at arm's length.
"I'm glad you're here," she whispered. Her breath caressed my neck; a moment later, her lips did too.
"Gretchen," I said, "I can't stay."
"Don't be a silly billy." She kissed my neck again. "You just got here."
"I have some friends outside. There's been trouble at the school, and we need to borrow your boat."
"What?" She blinked as if I'd just pinched her.
"One of our students has run off. People are after him—dangerous people. We need a fast boat so we can find him before they do."
"You're just here to take my boat?" Her voice had an edge of outrage.
"It's important, Gretchen. A girl is dead. Murdered. And other people are dead too, thanks to a Spark Lord who—"
"A Spark Lord? Which Spark Lord?"
"The female Sorcery-Lord. Called Dreamsinger. She showed up at a tavern and—"
"You met a Spark Lord? When?"
"Tonight," I said. "Just a while ago. Now she's gone to Niagara Falls, and we need your boat to—"
"So this Sorcery-Lord is in Niagara Falls?"
"That's where she said she was going."
"And you want my boat to go there too?"
"Yes."
She drew away from me—not abruptly, but in typical Gretchen fashion: a squeeze of mock affection, then an ooze of regretful detachment, and finally a playful flash of her naked body before she closed the comforter around herself. "All right," she said, "we'll head for Niagara Falls."
"We?"
"Yes:
we."
She threw off the comforter and began to get dressed.
She'd probably claim that she dressed in a hurry... and she
did
abbreviate her usual routine of trying on half her wardrobe before deciding what suited her mood. But Gretchen was not one of those heroines from fiction who can switch instantly from pampered beauty to rugged adventurer. If her bedroom caught fire, she wouldn't leave until she'd tried on half a dozen outfits to see which matched the flames. As for being seen in public without rouge, mascara, perfume, et cetera—silly billy, what
are
you thinking?
So I sat on the bed and waited as patiently as I could. Trying to rush Gretchen was worse than useless—if you annoyed her, she slowed down to punish you. The woman had a knack for petty vindictiveness: entirely unconscious too. She'd be genuinely shocked if you suggested she was deliberately taking longer than necessary to redden her lips, pluck her eyebrows, and choose which garters went with which stockings inside which boots to wear on a muddy night in late thaw; and then she'd slow down even more.
Gretchen could drive a man mad in so many ways.
"Now tell me," she called as she rummaged through boxes in her closet, "what did this Dreamsinger look like?"
"Don't know," I answered. "She was hidden in Kaylan's Chameleon."
Gretchen stuck her head out of the closet. "Now I
really
want to know what she looked like. Me perhaps?"
"If you were my ideal sexual object, do you think I'd admit it?"
She laughed and disappeared back into the closet—no doubt convinced I couldn't possibly desire any woman besides herself.
I said, "You realize this trip might get dangerous? We aren't the only ones going to Niagara. Have you heard of the Ring of Knives?"
"God, those people? I swear, that dreadful Warwick Xavier spies on me with a telescope."
"He's a smuggler; he watches the lake for customs agents."
"He watches my windows for a glimpse of my booboos."
"Do you ever give him one?"
Gretchen laughed. "Of course. Every girl needs someone to torture."
"In addition to herself."
Gretchen didn't dignify that with an answer. For a while, the only sound from the closet was the squeal of metal hangers scraping sharply along clothes-rods.
"So," I finally said, "why so many shine-stones tonight?"
"Nothing, darling, just a whim."
"What kind of whim?"
"An idle one."
Since she couldn't see me, I rolled my eyes. "You weren't, for example, afraid of the dark and wanted as much light as possible? Or feeling so depressed, you thought the light would cheer you up?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I feel fine."
"Really? Titania was worried about you."
"What did she say?"
"She didn't say anything. But she has a way of twitching her whiskers..."
"Titania should keep her whiskers to herself." Gretchen stuck her head out of the closet again. For some reason, she was wearing a green felt hat shaped like an iguana. The rest of her was still naked. "Really, darling, I'm fine. Honestly."
"Good."
"Good."
She vanished once more into the closet. I could hear boxes being shoved around... or possibly being kicked. Under all that racket, she murmured something so softly I couldn't make it out.
"Beg pardon?" I said.
Gretchen didn't answer right away. Then she spoke in a manner intended to sound airy and offhanded. "I suppose Titania thought I was upset because the Earl of Brant canceled his visit yesterday. But why should that bother me? He's a busy man; he said he had pressing affairs of state."
I winced. For centuries, the phrase "affairs of state" has meant hopping into bed with some trollop. The expression is so universally associated with sex that people in government avoid it when referring to legitimate activities—if you truly spend your time on official duties, you don't say you're dealing with affairs of state. That only makes folks snicker.
Besides, I
knew
the Earl of Brant: a rake in his mid-twenties, far too good-looking and rich. Brought up by a doting aunt whose only means of discipline was telling the boy how much better he was than anyone else. "So don't you think you should act better too?" I couldn't picture the earl spending a nanosecond on real administrative chores; if he'd wriggled out of a date with Gretchen, it was only because he'd found someone younger, prettier, and/or double-jointed.
Gretchen must have known that too: she was blind about many things, but astute in detecting the lies of unfaithful lovers—she had extensive knowledge of such lies, having used them all herself. No callow pup like the Earl of Brant could deceive Gretchen Kinnderboom, especially with such a transparent excuse. Affairs of state indeed! The earl was thumbing his nose at her, as if she wasn't worth inventing a better story.
I knew it. Gretchen knew it.
Gretchen must also have known I'd see through the earl's lie... yet she told me anyway. Almost as if she were
confiding
in me. As close as she could come to sharing her pain. My eyes stung with tears, and guilt. If Gretchen had ever reached out to me before this, rather than toying with me, dangling me on the hook, never admitting she might need me for anything more than scratching a sexual itch—if she'd ever acknowledged the slightest crack in her armor—perhaps I would have been thinking,
I hope Gretchen doesn't get jealous over Annah.
But I was thinking,
I hope Annah doesn't get jealous over Gretchen.
That was the way things were. I cared what Annah thought, but all I had left for Gretchen was pity: that the earl's cruel brush-off had shaken her so badly she was finally seeking an emotional connection with me.
Just a few hours too late.
"So you must have been bored," I said, trying to keep my voice light, "sitting here without company. Why didn't you send me a note?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't bored." The rummaging in the closet had gone silent. "Besides, what would you think if I
had
invited you? The gentleman must petition the lady, never the other way around. Otherwise, it looks like she's groveling."