The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (18 page)

Chapter Thirty One

‘I was purloining some garments and such for our stay here.’ Gallivant rubbed taut fingers over his forehead. ‘I found a little glove-maker amongst the glassmakers in the
Calle del Vetro
and who should I spy guarding the door of one such
fabbrica
but Luther, with a very sumptuous sedan-chair parked outside. I stayed concealed, it’s easy when you know how, and watched and before long a man came down the
calle
and tried to enter. I couldn’t see his face as he, like everyone else on this loathsome day, was hatted and garbed against the rain. But I heard his voice as he asked Luther to step aside and I felt a
frisson
drifting all around and I knew it was the fellow off the ferry. Anyway he and Luther got into a stiff discourse and he pushed past Luther and opened the door.’

Adelina chose not to interrupt for the hob was wound up like a clock spring and it was easier to let him run on.
But she worried, noting how tightly he clasped his hands together.

‘For a moment the fellow stood still
,’ he said. ‘But then he bowed and Severine, the bloody woman, swept out like some Sultana from the Raj and climbed into her chair. Now call me odd, call me anything you like, but sink me I’m beginning to see a connection with all these people appearing in the same place at the same time. And if that wasn’t enough, I raced across in my invisible way to listen as Severine stepped into the chair. She said, ‘Done, Luther. Now to my meetings at the Palazzo. By tonight I have no doubt I will have the location I require and then it will only be a matter of time.’

He jumped up and proceeded to track back and forth in front of Adelina, the parquet squeaking in
syncopation with his footsteps. ‘And you don’t have to be too clever to work it out, Threadlady. She’s after the location of the Gate - what else can it be? And by tonight, in her own miserable way she’ll have it.’

He lapsed into silence and Adelina allowed the pattering of the rain to fill the space left by his voice as she digested this latest revelation. She
began to fold the robe, resolving to have the hob clean it with a mesmer as soon as possible. Each turn of a sleeve or placement of a fold became deliberate as she thought carefully. At last she spoke. ‘Gallivant, I’ve no doubt you’re right. Of course she seeks the Gate, just as one would expect. And as there’s nothing we can do about it until we find the location ourselves, I propose we forget about it - no, don’t look like that - just forget about it for a minute. You revealed something of far greater important a moment ago and I think it is more like to help us than anything.’

‘I did
? Tell me!’ He threw himself down again. The little chaise shuddered and rocked.

‘You mentioned the other man, the stranger from the ferry. You also mentioned there was a
frisson
. Gallivant, I’m no ingénue; I know a
frisson
can only emanate from Others, especially the Faeran. I have felt it myself in the past. Indeed I swear I felt something similar from that man when he was at the Water Festival, as well as aboard the ferry. I chided myself that it was my overwrought imagination but it wasn’t, was it?’

‘No.’ Gallivant bit his lip.

‘Then let’s assume that he’s here because of Severine. After all, he did mention her name. Perhaps Jasper sent him to meet Lhiannon and convey her safely to the Gate. Is it not also entirely logical that he should know where the Gate is? After all he’s Faeran and they’re privy, all of them, to the secret. All we have to do is seek him out, talk to him, explain our predicament and I think he’ll help us. He seemed approachable, didn’t he?’

Gallivant’s heart sank and he cursed himself for his overenthusiastic tongue and his unguarded comments. Adelina was beginning the wild goose chase - this was the start.

‘Yes,’ he admitted half-heartedly. If only you knew how he’s already helped us
, he thought, and yes, he is the logical solution to our quandary. Hadn’t he thought so himself on the ferry? But he had hoped against all hope that she would give up on this ridiculous idea to seek out Lhiannon, so much so he had indeed placed a hob’s mesmer on her this morning just to keep her safe
.
His anxieties rattled his composure.
Sink me, I have no chance of getting her away before Carnivale.

‘Gallivant, did you mesmer me before you went out?’ She asked the question placidly, so different to the Adelina who would have bitten heads off and spat out the pieces. Events had indeed wrought some changes...

‘Yes I did,’ he answered. ‘So? It was only a little one and I did it for you and the babe because imagine if you’d seen Severine, you’d have been in a right state.’ Righteousness had never been something he thought he would feel, but in this instance…

She smiled at him, patting his arm and standing. ‘I think you were right, the baby and I do need to rest.’ She put a hand on her belly. ‘This child of Kholi’s is the most important thing in the world now and I’ll try not to jeopardise its safety more than I really have to.’ As she walked to the mirror, she began twisting her hair into a tight plait.

‘What are you doing?’

‘We need to find the Faeran and I also need threads to finish the robe - a hank of cream silk and a hank of burgundy silk, I’m sure one of the haberdashers will have what I need.’

‘Adelina, you can’t possibly go out into t
he rain. We’ll do it tomorrow. And besides you can’t wear those pale clothes. I purloined black clothes for each of us,’ he reached for the parcels on the floor. ‘There is a pair of breeches and another knitted tunic. I thought something a little bigger may be comfortable over your expanding bump. And there’s a weathercoat and gloves.’

‘You have thought of everything...’

‘No, not quite.’ He looked exceedingly glum, a fitting reflection of the gloomy conditions outside. ‘I remembered how abundantly colourful your hair is and no matter how subdued you think your clothes are, when anyone sees your hair, it’ll be like a flaming beacon to everyone, marking your presence in the town for Severine and Luther. I have no hat or scarf and the headgear I did buy won’t fit over the top.’

‘And what is it that you purloined?’

He rattled around and found the last parcel on the floor. ‘This, he said,’ thrusting it into her hands.

She stripped off the damp paper in a second and was confronted with something that could have been Ajax’s tail. ‘It’s a wig, a
black wig.’

‘And
it won’t fit over your own hair.’ Gallivant picked up the torn paper and threw it into a woven basket near the door.

Adelina let the fall of black hair sift through her fingers.
‘Do you really think I’m in that much danger, Gallivant?’

‘Y
es, I’m afraid so, Stitch Lady - more than ever. By escaping from her lair, you’ve rubbed Severine’s nose fairly and squarely in her doings.’

A cold shiver rippled across Adelina’s skin. She could feel Luther’s grasp on her wrist, feel her hair pulled hard as Severine expressed anger. She gathered her plaited hair, holding its fiery fall, thinking on its thickness and how Kholi had loved it, running his hands back and forth through its weight. ‘Then you had best cut it off,
’ she said. She reached for her dressmaking scissors. ‘Now, before I think on it. Just grab the plait and cut and then tomorrow we’re going hunting, you and I, and I don’t want a word in argument.

’

As Gallivant forced the blades of the scissors down, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was a bizarre sort of symbolism. Was the hair symptomatic of Adelina’s life? Was it going to be cut as short as her hair.

With a dull thud, the thick copper plait fell to the floor.

***

And so my crowning glory became a piece of waste to be consigned to the rubbish. But you know, I didn’t care. I had
quite a few things to accomplish and if it must be done in disguise then so be it. Besides, perhaps the hob’s mesmer blunted the loss of my hair a little.

That whole day had passed like a dream because of the hob’s charm. Sometimes his intuition surprised me. I think he understood my babe’s and my o
wn needs more than I did, because until Gallivant so wisely put me to rest, I had no idea just how much I had been on tenterhooks.

This day I had been content to lie amongst the feathered pillows on my bed in a somnolent state or to drift to the chaise and calmly embroider another part of that final piece: a stab stitch here, a Veniche
se knot there. Time took on a different meaning; time to recoup my energies and to work in a calm, almost disconnected fashion. Time for the babe as well too, to hear my heartbeat at a soothing pace rather than the stormy stampede that had been its accompaniment from conception. My body and mind had felt the pressure of those two promises - one to the Others and one to Aine - diametric opposites that caused my heart to beat forever in a state of acute anxiety and my head to rattle like bees in a bottle. But Gallivant’s gentle mesmer had induced such a tranquil state. I viewed all things from a safe place, almost with ambivalence.

As to the robe -
did it have to be in the Museo by Carnivale? No, of course not - because it would have been incomplete. It would not have the final book, the one destined to bring my story to its inevitable conclusion.

I am sure you think you know what the conclusion will be. Then let me tell you this... you would know more than me at t
his time! For even on this day - so close to the Gate and to Severine, I couldn’t envisage how it would end. I knew how I wanted it to end but Fate often has other ideas.

So the first Day of the Dark ended without me placing a toe outside of the Orologio. Of course tomorrow would be different and as I lay my head once again on the pillows and cupped my hands over my moving belly, I directed my voice at my friend on the other bed as he lay staring distractedly at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his head.

‘Gallivant, promise me on your life - tomorrow no more mesmers. I need to finish my tasks, for my own wellbeing and that of the babe. As I promised the Others to avenge them, so you must promise me you will let me do what I must. Please?’

There was a short silence and then the hob’s voice answered. ‘On
my life Adelina, I swear.’

Chapter Thirty Two

An old man sat in a winged red armchair far away in the Barrow Hills in a house sequest
ered in the Ymp Tree orchard, the Trevallyn gate to the Faeran world. For weeks he had been frail and depressed, more so as young Lhiannon began her travail. Jasper of the Faeran, wise healer, chafed to be the avenging angel, to secure the souls himself, to raise the sword of punishment. Instead he was consigned to a chair like some feeble-minded elder in his dotage.

Destiny had snatched the task away, allowing youth and energy to take the place of superio
r wisdom and experience. Worse - discovering fair Lhiannon’s bane had been a bitter pill indeed because he could do nothing, forcing himself to leave the prophecy to continue its run unimpeded.

Staring at his scrying mirror daily, dug new furrows across his brow, but when he glimpsed Phelim for the first time
he knew, the minute he saw the carved face, that Liam’s brother had been found and that Phelim must see the prophecy through to its end.

His thoughts rested for a moment with Ebba th
e Carlin. He could not deny it - Ebba was wise beyond expectation. To have concealed the babe so well and be bold enough to invite him into groups of infants, even into her home! What had she used, what charm? Amber? Calendula? Carlin-tongue? He was impressed - a mortal no less…

But
since Phelim’s departure with the souls, Jasper could scry nothing in the mirror or the spheres. Nor had there been visions, despite all manner of incantations. It was as if he were blind and deaf. For days he had existed between his scrying tools, pacing from one to the other. Sleeping in one room or another, pacing endlessly, briefly visiting the walled garden for mystic plants to add to his repertoire, leaving tray after tray of food merely nibbled at.

Already ascetic, he grew thin and haggard, obsessed with the redemption of the souls and the resolution of the prophecy... so much hung in the balance. Margriet
, his housekeeper and Folko, his ostler, could do little else but keep the fire banked, the decanter full and trays of bread, cheese and fruit alongside in the vague hope he would eat more.

Tonight he sat in the red ch
air, head tilted back, bloodshot eyes fixed on the mirror which appeared black and uninteresting. Sighing, he leaned over to fill his goblet and grab a fig and a crust. The taste of the food clung to his palate like ashes.

Ashes…

He recalled Ana’s funeral and by bitter association, the death of Kholi Khatoun and most importantly to Jasper, the deaths of Elriade the Faeran silk seller and of Liam, all in the space of a week, so much grief. So much to be avenged…

He tipped up his head as a flickering of light disturbed him. The mirror!

The ebony vastness contained by the silver frame cleared to reveal a
calle
edged by Venichese shops - a glove-maker’s, a glassmaker’s. Outside the latter stood a splendidly gilded sedan chair and against the door leaned a brutish fellow whom Jasper recognized - the man by the lake, the day of Ana’s cremation!

He leaned forward. Rain smeared the colours of the
calle
and the lout held an umbrella over his bald head, scowling at his environs. Jasper’s hands gripped the stem of his goblet as he stared at the fellow, knowing instinctively that this was Kholi’s murderer.

A tall, darkly clad man approached through the veil of rain and Luther stepped across the doorway of the
fabbrica
. But the new customer would not be dissuaded, exchanging terse words, pushing the thug aside with a crafty waft of his hand across his chest. A mesmer!

Jasper stood up, every sense alert, breath sucking in. The stranger stopped inside the door, bowed a
nd the diabolical bane of all Faeran stepped past, grasping folds of her coat with disdain. In that instant, relief and anticipation flooded through Jasper, titillating him, whispering of the fight to come.

Severine, Phelim, Luther, the souls!
He thrust a fist in the air, a declaration that the glove had been thrown down. But wait, what was that! A movement of something near the sedan-chair, almost but not quite invisible. A hob? Is it
the
hob - the one that had been directed by he and Lhiannon to care for a mortal woman? If it is then one could deduce readily that Adelina must be in Veniche.

Jasper shoved the goblet on the mantle as the mirror faded. He flung himself to the door, the frailty and angst of past weeks slipping from his shoulders like a cloak. Relief that the souls had provided the nece
ssary bait to lure Severine energized him like a prick from a buckthorn.

‘Margriet,’ he called, his voice bouncing along the hall walls. ‘Margriet, I need food! Folko, pack for Veniche!’

Next morning, the rain continued its rhythmic patter on the shoulders of their coats and hats as Adelina and the hob traipsed down alley after alley. There were few folk about and the town had an atmosphere at once shady and fearful where everyone walked with eyes downcast and purposefully in order to vacate the streets as soon as possible. No wonder, muttered Gallivant, it’s morbidly depressing.
The sky hangs on my very shoulders and makes my head muzzy, as if it isn’t tired enough.
Just before Adelina went to sleep the previous night, she had extracted a promise from him, damn it. And she had said something else. She had sat up excitedly. ‘Gallivant! I know what’s happening.’

He had groaned a response back, something that sounded like ‘g’sleep’.

She ignored him. ‘Bait, Gallivant, that’s what it is. Bait. Jasper’s using the souls for bait.’

He had refused to be drawn, just humphed and rolled over, but had hardly slept all night as he gave thought to her revelation. She could be right. The souls could indeed be bait. There was no doubt J
asper wanted them returned to Faeran where they belonged. But as a trap as well?

He realised Adelina was talking as they walked along the next morning and turned to her, still surprised at the change in her appearance. Gone was the golden Traveller with the russet locks. In her place, a woman with black hair caught up behind her head in a swinging fall. Even her skintones appeared to have altered with the new hair. Now she was almost as pale as Seve
rine and with the black clothes she could almost have been the woman’s sister but he forebore to mention anything like that to her.

‘Gallivant, are you listening? I said when you purloin as you so charmingly put it, are you stealing?’

‘Sink me Adelina,’ the hob looked mortally offended. ‘No. I always leave a bag of payment behind. If the purveyor is honest then the bag will contain gelt. If he or she is not, then the bag will contain leaves and twigs and such.’

‘How oft
en has it been a twig payment?’

‘Oh, about half.’

Adelina chuckled. ‘Hob, I love you... I truly do. You make my sun shine every day and that’s no mean feat. Now look, no Other yet but there is a haberdasher’s.’ She dragged the hob into a cupboard of a shop, the smell of silks, threads and wools exciting her as it always had.

Outside the door, leaning against the wall with a collar up against the rain and a seaman’s tricorn protecting his head, one of Luther’s spies watched them enter. He glanced through the window and examined the woman bending over the counter to examine the threads for sale. Huh!
No red hair, and no Traveller’s garb - but then she was the only woman to come near the shop all day.
He studied her face.
Perhaps I’d best tell the boss anyway. Afterwards, I can go and grab an ale.

‘Well, boss. She were pale in the face, quite pale like Madame. An’ her hair were black, a great long tail at the back like a pony. An’ she were with a shortish skinny fella. An’ it looked to me like they bought some cream and red threads.’

Damn.
Luther crunched his fists into balls. ‘Describe her features to me. Her eyes, her mouth.’

The spy watched his dream of an early drink fading faster than the foam on a mug of ale.

‘Cor boss, I dunno. She had nice big eyes, sort of brownish, I think. An’ her face were oval and she had a luscious mouth like a peach... kissable like. Her voice were throaty, I heard her speaking to the haberdasher. An’ cor, what else? She were dressed in black, but I guess that don’t mean much. Oh, an’ this here lass were with child. About three or four months gone I reckon.’

With child?
Well, it can’t be Adelina, can it? It was just the way the chap described her mouth... kissable. And her voice... throaty.

‘Did you follow her?’

‘Aye. She an’ the fella just ambled everywhere. Over alley and bridge, until they came to the Grand Canal an’ then they sat in one of them coffee-houses an’ ate and drank. I thought then I should report what I knew cos there ‘asn’t been no other woman. One thing, sir - I couldn’t make out much of what they said but I heard ‘em mention Madame’s name and I heard ‘em mention the Others.’

Yes?’ Luther’s attention pricked up like a dog’s ears.

‘Just that if they found ‘em, the Others yeah, then all their problems’d be solved. I’m tellin’ you, the fella didn’t look too happy at that.’

Luther threw a handful of coins to his man and sent him off to the nearest inn and then sat at the window of Madame’s drawing room. Yesterday had
been such a mixed bag of a day - five of the six architects had called, been received and sent packing, the useless idiots, with fleas in their ears. The sixth had spent much longer with Madame and there had been no shouting.

He ran a hand over the shining dome. The scar stood white and ridged on his cheek and the scab on his chin stood proud and he winced as his fingers t
ouched it. ‘Black hair, with child, pale, and with a thin male friend, it can’t be her. Others, Madame’s name, a haberdasher’s, oval face and kissable lips... could it be?’ He muttered and ground his teeth together, striding around the room. ‘Yes or no?’

In his wily way, despite the unlikely description from his man, he knew he couldn’t afford to ignore the woman. Something in his gut warned him Adelina was close by in the town. He resolved not to disclose this latest information to Madame. She had been so excited yesterday and it put her in such an amenable mood. He sat recollecting the previous day...

Muffled voices had drifted into the drawing room as the major-domo ushered Madam’s guest out through the palazzo entrance and Severine came whirling into the room, slamming the door behind her. ‘Oh Luther!’ She rushed to the sideboard and poured herself a large white wine from a decanter, drank it off rapidly and poured another. Luther noticed her hands shaking and the bottle made little tink-tink sounds as one edge collided with another. She turned around. ‘I’ve done it Luther, I know!’

He had never, in all his time with her, seen her truly happy. Now the starkness softened and radiance flushed her narrow face, the storm grey eyes becoming dove-coloured. Even her mouth, so habitually pinched, seemed to become plump as it curved, actually curved, up to her cheeks. Normally she was striking, now she was beautiful.

‘The architect recognised the flakes of paint. Isn’t that uncanny? And do you know how, and tell me this isn’t the Fates working in my favour - he has just finished the renovation of the building. Had you and I searched on our own we would never have found it because it is now a completely different colour. But he knew it, he knew it.’ She sipped some more wine and her hand became steadier. As always, Luther just listened. ‘The Museo owns the building. But better still, I have been invited to the Museo ball, to be held there on the night of Carnivale to open the building. By the Fates, things just drop into my lap! Now I can find the Gate amongst the crowd of revelers and then I will wait and snap Lhiannon up as she walks through.’ She squirmed like a gleeful child with a toy. ‘Luther, I can’t believe it! By Carnivale, I will have the souls, maybe more than I need and I will have the Gate to Faeran. It’s truly wonderful.’ She had smiled in his direction and he gave a small tilt to his own lips. ‘I need you to get formal attire and a mask because you shall be my escort. I need you by my side for this, to do what you have to do.’

Luther, man of few words, knew exactly what she meant and responded. ‘Yes, Madame.’ And so now here he was about to be consort for the Contessa Di Accia and even better, Adelina was in town. He smiled a thin smile. Life was peculiar sometimes.

The previous evening Phelim sat in the room in the Esperia, the
drapes pulled. Such a lost day. He chafed with the uselessness of his journey around the city. Except for the glassmaker’s, of course. That had yielded a thing or two of interest. He had purchased Ebba’s coveted paperweight

with the millefiori
, the many flowers, under the glass dome. As he pulled it from his pocket, he could hear Ebba’s voice. ‘If ever I did go to Veniche there are only two places I would really want to see. One is the Museo and easy enough to visit. The other is the Ca’ Specchio, the Mirror Palace. They say it is the oldest and most elegant palace in Veniche but it is in private hands and so I should never gain access.’

He sat on the edge of the bed reca
lling another item of interest - that arrogant woman who had pushed past at the
fabbrica
was Severine, the glassmaker had said ‘Goodbye Contessa!’ And he had seen her at Ferry Crossing, and the hob’s lady had cursed her with vehemence and fear.