Sorcery of Thorns (16 page)

At first she couldn’t conceive that this was a bedroom. She felt as though she had walked into an ice sculpture. Everything
had been painted, upholstered, or embroidered in delicate shades of silver and white. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, reflected in the vanity mirror. The furniture was carved with elaborate flourishes and curlicues that reminded Elisabeth of the patterns that frost formed on windowpanes during Austermeer’s coldest months; the knobs were made of solid crystal.
Most astonishingly of all, a sapphire
gown had been laid across the bed, waiting for her. Amid all of the wintry colors, its deep, lustrous blue stood out like a gem against snow.

“There must be a mistake,” she said. Carefully, marvelingly, she touched the vanity table, half expecting it to vanish like an illusion in an enchanted castle. Next she eyed the gown askance, feeling as though it too might disappear if she looked at it
directly. “That dress doesn’t belong to me. I’ve never worn clothing so fine.”

“Nonsense. Master Ashcroft is entertaining company tonight, and you will be expected to look presentable. Just be grateful we were able to find something close to your size, miss. There was such a fuss this morning, such a terrible fuss. Fortunately Lady Victoria’s niece is traveling abroad, and she’s an awfully tall
young woman as well. We were able to borrow a few pieces of her wardrobe and make adjustments in the nick of time.”

Elisabeth’s attention had snagged on a single word. “Company?” she asked.

“You cannot expect such a great man to spend every evening at his leisure. Several members of Parliament, and their wives, are joining him for dinner.”

Her pulse quickened. “Are they sorcerers?”

Hannah
gave her an odd look. “No, dear. Master Ashcroft’s guests are from the
Parliament
, not the Magisterium—and a good thing, too. I haven’t the nerves for all those demons. I know they’re necessary, but they’re such unnatural creatures.” She shuddered, and didn’t notice the way Elisabeth relaxed. “Now, let’s get this old dress off you. . . . Just look at that scratch on your shoulder, you poor girl.
 . . .”

An eternity later, Elisabeth had been groomed within an
inch of her life. Her skin felt tender from Hannah’s scrubbing, and the long, hot bath in the claw-foot tub had left her fingertips as wrinkled as dried apricots. Her scalp alternately stung and throbbed from the torture Hannah had inflicted upon it with a comb. She smelled faintly, and unsettlingly, of gardenias.

Piles of sapphire
silk rustled around her body as Hannah fastened the gown in place. It was beautiful, but it had a great deal of extra fabric; Elisabeth felt as though she were swimming in her own miniature sea. Then Hannah began to lace the corset up the back, and Elisabeth’s breath hitched.

“I cannot breathe,” she said, scrabbling at her chest.

Hannah firmly took her hands and set them aside. “It’s the fashion,
miss.”

Elisabeth was deeply alarmed by the idea that not breathing was fashionable. “What if I have to run,” she said, “or fight something?”

“In the master’s house?” Hannah sounded shocked. “I know you’ve had some dreadful experiences lately, dear, but it’s best if you keep such thoughts to yourself. That kind of talk is quite irregular for a young lady. Why, just look at you.”

She wheeled
Elisabeth around to face the mirror. Elisabeth stared at the girl reflected there, barely recognizing herself. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in smooth, glossy chestnut waves, and she was cleaner than she had ever been before in her life. Her blue eyes contrasted vividly against her pink, scrubbed cheeks. While she had never possessed much in the way of curves, the sapphire gown made her figure
look proud and statuesque.
Just like the Director,
she thought, with a tightness in her throat. Even the gown’s color reminded her of a warden’s uniform. She didn’t understand why it was irregular to talk about fighting—not when she looked the way she did.

“How lovely,” Hannah sighed. “The blue brings out your eyes, doesn’t it?”

Elisabeth smoothed her hands wonderingly over the dress’s silky
fabric.

“I daresay it’s time to bring you down for dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll take you there. It’s awfully easy to get lost in this house—oh, dear, don’t trip! Just lift the gown up a bit if you have to. . . .”

Twilight now painted the grounds in shades of indigo and violet, but inside the manor remained as bright as day. Perfume wafted through the halls, mingling with the fragrance of lilies
arranged in vases on every table. When Hannah ushered Elisabeth into the dining room, its dazzle made spots bloom across her vision. Light shone from everything: the silver utensils, the jewels shivering like giant raindrops on the ladies’ ears, the rims of champagne glasses as guests turned to see who had just entered.

Ashcroft was deep in conversation on the other side of the room, but a beautiful,
frail-looking woman rushed over to Elisabeth and introduced herself as Ashcroft’s wife, Victoria. Her auburn curls were piled atop her head in an intricate sweep, and she had a habit of self-consciously touching the string of pearls around her neck, as if to reassure herself that it was still there. With her light, nervous movements and glistening silver gown, she reminded Elisabeth of the
dove that had nested in the stonework outside her and Katrien’s room one spring, warbling anxiously whenever one of them stuck their head outside.

“I’m afraid Oberon can’t get away from Lord and Lady Ingram,” she said, smiling warmly. “Why don’t I take you around and introduce you to some people before we take a seat? Everyone’s
so excited to have a look at you. They’ve read all about you in
the papers.”

Elisabeth spent the next several minutes being paraded around the room, learning the names of various important-looking people and attempting to curtsy at them, with mixed results. Eventually she gave up and explained that curtsying had not been included in her lectures at the Great Library, a statement that was, for some reason, met with peals of laughter. She smiled along, realizing
they thought she’d made a joke.

Soon Ashcroft rang a fork against his glass. Silence fell as he stepped to the head of the table, and a servant pressed a champagne flute into Elisabeth’s hand. She listened raptly as the Chancellor proceeded to give a speech on progress, comparing the new advances in coal, steam power, and natural gas to sorcery. “Like magic,” he said, “technology frightens those
to whom its inner workings remain a mystery, but for the sake of advancement, humanity must embrace change with open arms. I have always believed that sorcerers only hinder ourselves by living apart from commoners and conducting our affairs in secrecy. I consider it my goal as Chancellor to bring sorcery out of darkness, and into the light.”

Gasps rang out as a golden radiance filled the room,
far brighter than the candles. The sprays of lilies arranged across the tables had begun to glow, each delicate stamen blazing incandescently, bathing the guests’ faces in a twinkling, ethereal light.

Ashcroft spoke over the applause. “To progress,” he said, raising his glass.

Elisabeth copied the other guests and took a tentative sip of the champagne. It tasted sourer than she expected, but
its bubbles fizzed down her throat and fanned embers in her stomach. She smiled and clapped, swept along on a bright tide of
happiness that lasted through the dinner. Servants came in with trays of a fragrant green soup and white fish floating in an herb sauce, followed by platters of glazed pheasant and venison on beds of asparagus. She had never eaten anything so sublime. She polished off her
seconds and was working her way through thirds—“I suppose you
are
very tall, dear,” said Lady Ingram charitably—when someone mentioned Nathaniel’s name near the head of the table. Elisabeth stopped chewing to listen.

“He must consider marriage promptly, of course, for the sake of Austermeer,” one of the politicians was booming emphatically, slurred with drink. “Yes, yes, he is only eighteen—but
Her Majesty the Queen is growing apprehensive. What if we were to have another war, and no Thorn to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies?” He banged his fist on the table, making the silverware rattle.

“Lord Kicklighter, we are hardly in danger of a war,” someone else put in.

Lord Kicklighter’s mustache quivered indignantly. “A nation is always in danger of a war! If not now, then in fifty
years! And if Magister Thorn fails to produce an heir, what then? We haven’t the population to defend ourselves against Founderland.”

Elisabeth frowned and turned to Lady Ingram. “That man is speaking of Nathaniel as though he’s livestock.”

Lady Ingram sniffed. “Men like Magister Thorn have a responsibility to marry, especially now that he has no surviving relatives,” she replied. “Baltasar
Thorn’s grimoire of necromancy will only open for those of his line, which means that Nathaniel is presently the only sorcerer who can read it. His complete disinterest in courtship has put everyone in government on edge.”

“Unsavory, in my opinion,” another man was muttering. “To resort to undead hordes in place of good Austermeerish men—”

“—yet it is a
last
resort, you understand, and it has
kept the peace since the War of Bones—”

“But what about what happened to poor Alistair? Surely his fate is a sign that necromancy is a relic of the middle ages, not a weapon for the modern era.” A flurry of scandalized murmuring followed this pronouncement.

“Such a tragedy, the loss of the younger brother,” a woman sighed from the other end of the table. “We do not even know if Magister Thorn
possesses an
interest
in ladies. He has never danced with a girl at the Royal Ball. If only Maximilian were still alive, there would be less of a fuss about carrying on the family name.”

Elisabeth gritted her teeth. “But—”

Another woman, Lady Childress, had been watching Elisabeth keenly for some time now. “You call him by his first name, dear,” she interrupted. “That’s quite familiar.” At once,
every head turned in Elisabeth’s direction.

She had never felt self-conscious about her height before, but now she wished she were shorter, so that she wasn’t within view of every guest seated up and down the table. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She had not been aware that there was a rule against referring to a person one’s own age by their first name. Truthfully, she’d thought
Nathaniel called her “Scrivener” because he didn’t like her. She had the curdling realization that if she aired any of those realizations out loud, they’d all think she was an idiot.

“Does he possess an interest in young ladies, then, Miss Scrivener?” Lady Childress prompted.

“I do not know,” Elisabeth replied, bristling. “He hasn’t told me. I suppose that means it isn’t any of my business.”

The arrival of the desserts allowed everyone to pretend
that they hadn’t heard Elisabeth’s remark. She frowned as she accepted a heaping plateful of plum dumplings. Nathaniel’s cynical air was beginning to make more sense. She didn’t like to imagine how it must feel to have the private details of one’s life under constant scrutiny, knowing every facet of your existence was gossiped about at dinner
parties across Austermeer.

She was grateful when Ashcroft steered the conversation away to a discussion about steam power, which she didn’t understand but found deeply fascinating. As her good mood returned, she polished off a custard and a pair of plum dumplings. Before she knew it everyone was leaving, tottering a bit and smelling strongly of liquor while the servants helped them back into
their coats. Elisabeth had had two glasses of champagne herself, and the manor wore a glittery sheen, as if tinsel had been draped around the windows and chandeliers.

She followed the guests to the foyer, but no one was paying attention to her any longer. Ashcroft stood outside, trying to extricate his digits from Lord Kicklighter’s enthusiastic handshake, and Victoria was deep in conversation
with Lady Childress. Hannah was supposed to come collect her, yet the servant was nowhere in sight. A nearby clock indicated that it was almost one thirty in the morning. After a few minutes of waiting, Elisabeth caught a glimpse of Hannah’s wispy bonnet bobbing down a hallway. She hurried after it, certain she would get lost in the manor if left to her own devices.

Hannah had a considerable
head start, and Elisabeth soon discovered that she couldn’t run on the slick floors while wearing satin slippers. After a few turns, she lost sight of her quarry and found herself stranded in an unfamiliar hallway. The manor’s grandeur enfolded her in a shimmering world of marble, gold, and mirror-glass. With the champagne glowing inside her
stomach like a newborn star, she felt as though she
had wandered into a dream.

She paused to examine a filigreed sconce dripping with candle wax, then to trail her fingers over the features of a marble bust. The statue’s subject had been young and handsome, and she found herself wondering what Nathaniel was doing at that very moment. Was he alone in his cheerless mausoleum of a house, unable to sleep, with only a demon for company? Perhaps she
would see him again one day when she was a warden. But if she did, they wouldn’t be able to talk about the time they’d fought off the fiends or watched the moss spirit in the Blackwald. They would exchange a handful of perfunctory words as she escorted him to a reading room, no better than strangers.

A strain of music reached her ears, and she snatched her hand from the bust. Somewhere nearby,
someone had begun to sing. The sound unspooled through the halls like a silver thread, achingly beautiful, its melody wordless and strange. It lodged a hook in Elisabeth’s heart, somehow seeming to express precisely the emotion of inarticulate longing that filled her. Helpless to resist its pull, she set off in search of the source, drifting past parlors, a ballroom, a conservatory brimming with
palms and orchids.

Finally, she stepped into a music room. An elegant woman stood beside a pianoforte, her face shadowed, turning a lily between her slender, lace-gloved fingers. Elisabeth hadn’t seen her at the dinner. She would have remembered. The woman had a fall of gleaming black hair that reached her waist, and she was dressed in an exquisite black gown against which her pale, perfect skin
looked as white as candle wax. She stopped singing when Elisabeth entered; her fingers stilled, and the lily dropped to the carpet, forgotten.