Labyrinth Gate (45 page)

Felt, instead of annihilation, a new force gathering in the hands that held her, skill unlocking the neat mental shelves of books that were her only means of controlling the power of the labyrinth. Recognized
his
touch, somehow, clean and cold.

And unleashed it, sending the force of the Regent’s attack back on her, twice over.

The shock of its impact was as much explosion as earthquake, as much hurricane as inferno, and it was followed hard upon by utter silence as absolute as death.

She knew that her body still existed, felt a second presence embracing her, a face pressed against the back of her neck. Emboldened by this knowledge, she opened her eyes.

At first she could see no more than her companions surrounding her: Chryse to her north, Sanjay above, Julian to the east and Lady Trent to the west, Kate to the south—

The sight of Kate clasping the ceramic pot that held Princess Georgiana restored her perspective. The princess was slumped over like one dead, but her chest rose and fell in the slow regularity of sleep. For an instant, panicking, she thought she had lost her husband, until she realized that he was the person holding on to her.

She took a deep breath. Gently disengaging the earl, she stood up. The others, all but the princess, followed suit.

Blackstone Palace no longer existed. They stood alone in a flattened ruin of smoke and a scattering of small fires that blazed at intermittent intervals amongst the rubble. Beside Maretha the shattered and blackened remains of a couch were littered with ash, fragmented bones, and a jumble of burnt objects.

A tremor shook the ground beneath their feet. The doorway behind, still intact, swayed and cracked and collapsed into a heap of dust and debris. A mist of rain swept over them like damp spray and went on, blown before a brisk wind that smelled of sea wrack.

“Julian.” Kate’s voice rang distinct in the hollow silence. “Help me get her highness free of this. How in bloody hell did we end up here on the ground from the upper stories?”

Julian did not answer. He was already moving over to his aunt. He lifted her gently, surprised at her lightness. Her eyelids fluttered and opened.

“I am quite tired, Julian,” she said in a faint voice. Her eyes shut again, sunken in an aged, lined face.

Chryse and Sanjay walked, shaky, across to assist Kate, untying the princess and lowering her carefully to the ground. She looked a little pale but otherwise unharmed, and still breathed as if asleep.

“The cards!” said Chryse suddenly.

Sanjay rose and returned to the devastated couch to dig among the ashes. His hands covered with more and more fine gray dust, he unearthed first the chalice, dull in color now and cracked, then the hornpipe, broken into three pieces, the obsidian knife, split in two as if by a single, precise tapping blow, and last the spear, shaft burnt away and point melted into slag. Only the monogrammed pouch he had found by the northern entrance remained intact and, scattered throughout, their cards, unmarked, undamaged.

He counted them out with painstaking thoroughness as the earth trembled again and distant rumblings marked the further disintegration of the palace.

“Fifty-one.” He leaned back onto his heels in his relief, glanced at all the others before meeting Chryse’s gaze directly. “And the pouch. The one I found in the labyrinth.”

She nodded.

“Gracious,” said a slight, low voice. Princess Georgiana’s eyes had opened. They widened as she saw first Kate, then Chryse, and then the devastation surrounding her.

No one spoke for a moment. A flood of emotions crossed the princess’s face, controlled at last into the disinterested mask most often worn by a judicious ruler.

“Perhaps you would assist me to rise,” she said softly but regally.

Kate and Chryse helped her up. A tremor passed under their feet. Fires blazed up to consume the last remains of walls and great piles of fallen tapestries and curtains. More stone archways buckled and crumpled, sending up clouds of dust and steam. An army ten thousand strong might have passed through the palace and not left such total destruction.

“I might suggest,” said the princess in a calm and practical voice, “that we remove ourselves from this place. I will be happy to wait until later for an explanation.”

T
HEY DISCOVERED THE MAGNITUDE
of the devastation as they picked their way through the ruins of the palace. The edifice had collapsed to become a field of stone and debris. Only a few doorways and arches still stood, but nothing above ground level. They skirted the odd fires that flared up and scrambled for solid ground when the occasional tremor shook the rubble. Here and there marble statues or suits of medieval armor had melted into slag. Steam hissed and rose to create small pockets of fog. Now and again, in chasms produced by parallel heaps of fallen stone, one could see corpses. Some were bloody with wounds sustained in the fighting, but most were crushed and mangled by the palace’s fall. Once they found a single, limp hand stretching out of a pile of debris like a drowning man reaches for help out of water; they passed with averted eyes. Chryse felt ill with the sight of it, of so much destruction.

They came at last to the edge of the great park surrounding the palace. At a considerable distance from the ruins a small crowd had gathered, perhaps what was left of the rioters, perhaps simply those curious enough and brave enough to come so close.

Once out of the palace the air took on a cooler, crisper bite. The sun had lowered near to the horizon, and a few wise souls were lighting torches or lanterns.

A carriage detached itself from the crowd and was driven toward them. At the same time, the characteristic rumble of a new tremor began to sound, and they all braced themselves, Julian even kneeling on the grass as he held his aunt. It was no tremor, however, but a troop of cavalry approaching from the left at a gallop. A man in captain’s gear gestured to the riders to pull up, and he came forward alone and dismounted and knelt before the princess.

“Your highness. Captain Malroy, Queen’s Lancers.”

“Very good, Captain Malroy,” she replied, composed despite the torn hem of her gown and the dirt patching her face and hands. “If you will lend me one of your horses, I can ride, and you and your men will escort me to St. John’s Palace. Once I am arrived safely there, you will send out a picked group to summon my Council of Ministers to the Palace. There is a great deal to do if I am to be crowned tomorrow.”

“Your highness.”

The breeze played havoc with the loosening coil of her hair, but she maintained her air of placid command as though the smoking ruins behind her were a typical feature of her life. “You may rise, Captain. We had best make haste. There is little left of the day.”

She turned to survey her companions with a clear gaze, pausing longest on the earl. “What I wish to say to you, as my rescuers, must wait until I am crowned and wed and in full possession of my throne. I trust that my lord Elen—” Here she paused to consider him with a gaze both curious and slightly apprehensive. He bowed, brief but respectful. “—and his lady wife—” There was another pause as she looked at Kate, Chryse, and Maretha in turn, as if she was not quite sure which was the countess. “—will be able to assemble your companions when that time comes. And that you—” She turned to Julian.

“Lord Vole,” he supplied quickly, unable to bow because of his aunt.

“Of course.” Her face, though plain, was a wonderfully transparent conduit of emotion. It was obvious she had at last connected faces to names. “—that you, Lord Vole, will keep me informed as to Lady Trent’s condition. Now, I must go. Will you be able to find conveyance home?”

The carriage that had pulled away from the crowd drove up next to them. It was filthy, but the Elen crest could be discerned on the door. Thomas Southern swung down from the seat beside the coachman. He was bloodstained and dirty, coat torn, but he seemed unhurt. When he saw the princess, he dropped to one knee.

“Yes, your highness.” Maretha dipped a brief curtsy. “As you see.”

Georgiana nodded and walked away to the troop of soldiers. The captain signaled and one of the men quickly dismounted and led his horse forward for the princess. She mounted, and the entire troop wheeled around and rode away.

“You’re safe, Thomas?” Maretha asked.

He nodded. “It was a great inferno, my lady. Those of us who escaped it were sure all the others must have perished. It is a blessing you still live.”

“Indeed.” She glanced at her husband, but he looked away from her.

“Most of the crowd dispersed, those who were not killed outright,” Southern continued. “Frightened of Our Lady’s righteous wrath. My sister collected the rest and drew them away to a safe distance.”

“You had best return to her, then,” said Maretha. “And see to your family tomorrow. Day after next come to Elen House and we shall see to your and Charity’s future. Be sure, Thomas, that the queen will know of your part in saving her.”

“My lady.” He bowed to her, inclined his head to the earl and Julian and, with a brief nod to the rest, set off on foot back across the park towards the crowd.

Lady Trent stirred in her nephew’s arms and opened her eyes. “I see we succeeded.” Her voice was weak, but her gaze, scanning the wreckage, was keen. “Might we go home now, Julian?”

He blinked back tears. “Yes, aunt. Of course.”

After Vole House, where Julian and his aunt, Kate, Chryse, and Sanjay all disembarked, the carriage seemed quite empty. The two of them rode in silence to Elen House. Around them, the city lay in a hush of mingled shock and anticipation.

Elen House, too, was quiet. The earl opened the front door for Maretha himself. The act, so inconsequential, reminded her with bitter clarity of her first entrance into this house. Now, standing in the huge entry hall, she felt a strange lack in the walls, in the air, surrounding her.

She had grown used to having no human servants—or if not used to it, at least resigned. But the absence of spells, the damped-down aura of magic which once had filled the house, disturbed her. She could hear the coachman outside calling round for the groom at the attached stables.

It was dark indoors. None of the lamps were lit.

“Do you have any matches?” she asked in a low voice.

“No.” His reply was curt. “You must be tired. I will escort you up.”

He offered his arm. The gesture so astonished her that she hesitated, and when she did put her hand on his sleeve, she laid it there so lightly that it was almost no touch at all. His expression was shuttered and distant.

They mounted the side stairway in silence. He had to open the door into her chamber for her, left her there, abrupt, without a word. She sighed and went in. It was cold. The hearth sat with cold ash and empty grate.

She had to let herself into her bedchamber. The bed, at least, was neatly made, everything tidy and in its place, but she had to go to her dressing room for a nightgown, had to reach for all the buttons herself. She gave up halfway down her back, went over to the window that looked out over the garden.

Over rooftops, the moon rose low and full. Nothing moved along the neat paths laid out through the garden. Her dress slipped a little on her shoulder, and she had to hitch it up once, twice, before she finally turned and regarded the door that led into his rooms. The key still sat in the lock.

She unbound her hair and shook it out. Walked with deliberate steps to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.

His dressing room, lined with dark suits and white shirts, lay beyond. She passed through the narrow room, opened a second door, and found herself in his bedchamber.

It was starkly furnished: a four-posted bed, a small table with pitcher and basin, and a chair in front of the hearth. It was also quite dark, lit by neither fire nor lamp, and it took her a moment to realize that the dark figure brooding in the chair was the earl. Only his hair and face and hands showed like lighter shadow in the gloom.

“John.” Her voice was so soft that the word barely stirred the air, but his head jerked around and he stood up as abruptly as if she had screamed.

She flushed, in darkness, but forced herself nevertheless to take three more steps towards him. “I can’t reach all the buttons on my back.” Her voice sounded false even to her own ears.

He started to lift a hand in a gesture clearly meant to summon, stopped, and turned his back on her to stare at the dead fire.

“What were you going to use the power for?” she asked, emboldened by his rejection. “To gain more wealth? To gain worldly power? A dukedom? The throne?”

His voice spoke out of darkness. “What use do I have for such things? With such power I could have uncovered deeper mysteries, found a new understanding of my art.”

“Is it too late?”

In the silence, she knew he was thinking of that moment when the full force of her power had been unleashed onto the Regent—her power, it had been, but his knowledge.

“I don’t know,’ he said.

“I’m pregnant.” Her voice shook on the word. What impelled her to tell him she did not know, but the effect was electrifying. He spun to face her, came six steps across the room to stand before her. Even in the dimness she could read amazement on his face.

“Is it true?” he breathed. “I never imagined. All those years, pulling the source of my power out of myself.” He shook his head. “I thought I must be sterile. But perhaps that is part of the mystery.”

She felt suddenly colder. “Then it
was
never, not at any time, your intention to have an heir?”

“Never. I won’t lie to you, Maretha. I always intended to sacrifice you. That I am sorry for it now does not change the fact.” In the half-light the pallor of his face made him resemble a statue carved of hardest stone, etched with chisel into one fixed, unchangeable shape. “I turned away from such—desires long ago. They have no place in my life.”

“Could they now?”

She put out her hand, found that he stood just at the limit of her reach. Her fingers brushed his pale hand.

A hiss, a breath of warmth, and the fire lit in the hearth. Looking past him, she saw a red-gold creature stir in its depths, sparks of eyes unblinking. Lamps lit the room. A hush descended, separating them as if with a great blanket from the world outside.