The Queen's Necklace (18 page)

At half past seven the Volary was already stirring. Coachmen, grooms, chair-men, and link-boys swarmed in the courtyards nearest the stables. A line of wagons was rumbling through the back gate: greengrocers, butchers, bakers, and confectioners. Smaller tradesmen pushing wheel-barrows full of crayfish, oysters, cabbages, eels, and round yellow cheeses jockeyed for position by the kitchen door. Inside the palace proper, the halls resounded with the quick patter of running feet, as valets, hair-dressers, barbers, and maid-servants bearing pots of chocolate and plates of buttered eggs scurried from one bedchamber to another, trying to meet a hundred different demands at once.

The queen's maids-of-honor had gathered in a nervous group outside her bedchamber door. Ignoring their questions, since they were unable to answer his, Will impatiently pushed open the door and entered the candlelit room beyond.

Inside, the songbirds were ominously silent in their silver cages. Dionee was pacing, half frantic, still in her satin corset and ruffled petticoats, only partly concealed by a flowered silk shawl thrown carelessly over her shoulders. Apparently, she had been up all night without completely undressing or brushing the powder out of her hair.

At the sight of Wilrowan, she burst into tears, cast herself into his arms, and wept all over the shoulder of his riding cloak. He did his best to calm her: smoothing her tousled white curls, kissing her on both wet cheeks, whispering he knew not what words of comfort in one tiny ear.

“O Will, my Will, I have been so wicked—so wicked. And Rodaric will never forgive me when he learns the truth.”

“What have you done, Dionee? Tell me what it is, and I'll make it right if I possibly can.”

She heaved a tremulous sigh and tried to speak, but choked on
the words. Realizing that it would be impossible to get anything useful out of her until she calmed down, he gave her a little shake by the shoulders, then put her aside.

There was a silver flagon on a lacquer tea-table, and a pair of crystal goblets. Pouring poppy-water into one of the glasses, he sat Dionee down on a bamboo chair by one of the potted shrubs and instructed her to drink. When she seemed able to speak, he sank down to his knees on the floor at her feet. “I shouldn't even be here. Blast it, Dionee, you're only half-dressed. Tell me quickly what you have to say to me, before we cause a scandal between us.”

She leaned wearily back in her chair. “Non-nonsense. Everyone knows you are as near to being my brother as it's possible for anyone but a brother to be.”

“Yet for all that, I am
not
your brother.” The Mad King of Rijxland, so rumor had it, was cohabiting with his own great-niece, a scandal that had titillated the continent for almost a year. Will had no idea whether the story was true or not, but if even that fine old gentleman was vulnerable to gossip, what might the Hawkesbridge tittle-tattles make of this?

“But let us be calm, let us be sensible. Tell me why you sent for me and why two of my men are dead.”

The queen began to sob, so loudly he was obliged to shake her again. “It is too late to be calm or sensible. Or—no, perhaps it isn't. Providing you can get the Chaos Machine back again, before Rodaric learns it is missing.”

Will sat back on his heels. He sent a silent plea for patience up to the flaking painted sky twenty feet above. “You are not making any kind of sense. Recollect that I have no idea what you have done, and tell me your story from the very beginning.”

Dionee tried to compose herself. “You know, at least, what the Chaos Machine
is
?”

Wilrowan nodded. It was one of the curiosities in which the
Volary abounded: a miniature device much like a clockwork orrery, consisting of five tiny jeweled spheres and four figures of the elements which rotated around each other inside a rock crystal case in a complex and apparently random pattern.

“Well, I—I suppose it seems like a silly prank to you, but I smuggled the thing out of the palace the day that I went to the ambassador's fête. You may wonder why I chose to take such a childish toy with me, why I—”

“I wonder,” said Will, “why you dared to take anything half so rare, half so valuable. That ‘toy,' as you call it, is the only one of its kind in the world. Nobody knows when or how it was made, the metal is an unknown alloy, and as for the value of the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds—Darkness, Dionee! What were you thinking?”

“Lord Vault is a connoisseur—he collects these toys. And it was his birthday; I thought he would be amused.”

“And was he amused?” asked Will, in ominous tones.

“N-no. He was as shocked as you are. Though really, it's not as though the thing were actually,
useful
, or that Rodaric hadn't a thousand such knick-knacks and curios besides. Why
this
one should be locked up year after year, in a secret cabinet, so that nobody ever sees or plays with it—”

Will experienced a sinking sensation. “That is hardly for you or I to say, since the object in question isn't ours. Or Rodaric's either. Like everything else of value in the palace, the Chaos Machine belongs to the people of Mountfalcon.”

Dionee heaved another tremulous sigh. “It doesn't belong to them now.”

Will passed a hand over his face. “Are you trying to tell me that you mislaid the jewel?”

Dionee stiffened. “Do you think I would be so stupidly careless?” Will forbore to answer that question. “I kept it safe inside my muff the whole time—” He groaned inwardly. Ladies were always hiding
their money and jewelry inside their muffs, a trick known only too well to thieves.“—and I never let it out of my hands. But on the way back from the fête, my carriage was stopped by disgusting f-footpads, who took the muff, the little orrery, and my diamonds as well.”

Will frowned. Though he supposed some such disaster had been practically inevitable the moment Dionee decided to borrow the little jeweled engine without permission, he did not understand how anything like this could happen with a crowd of his men surrounding the queen. “But your guards? I hope you don't mean to say they did nothing to defend you?”

“They tried to defend me, but there were only the four of them. And the coachman—he was very brave, but the thieves took his musket and beat him over the head until the blood ran down into his eyes.” She wrung her hands and began to weep again.

This time, however, Will was unmoved by her distress.

“I begin to understand,” he said coldly. “You went out wearing a fortune in jewels, carrying with you one of the palace heirlooms, and you went with only a minimal escort. As a result, two of my men are dead, your coachman is likely to die of a cracked skull, and the heirloom is missing. I congratulate you, Dionee. You have surpassed all your previous follies and have finally achieved something it will be difficult ever to match.”

“But Wilrowan,” she whispered, “I never left the city the whole time—and who would have thought that footpads would—would do anything so bold?”

Wilrowan blinked at her, much struck by that idea. “Now that I think of it, I've never heard of footpads holding up a coach—nor of highwaymen waylaying anyone
inside
the town. Yes, and four armed men should have been enough to discourage ordinary thieves. The whole thing is incredible.”

He rose to his feet, began to pace the floor. “But you said that Rodaric doesn't know what happened. How could he
not
know that you
were robbed—particularly with half your escort murdered right there in the street?”

“Well, of course he knows I was robbed, but he doesn't know about the little orrery. I made certain that no one told him.”

Will stopped walking. “If you tell me you bribed the two surviving men—
my
men—to keep silent, I don't know, Dionee, what I am likely to do to you.”

“No, no, it was nothing like that. I begged them to keep my secret for a few days. They said it was a troublesome question of—of conflicting loyalties, and agreed to keep silent until they spoke to you. With your two lieutenants dead, that was the proper thing, wasn't it? It—it never occurred to me they might be bribed.”

“You astonish me,” he said, beginning to pace again. “I should have thought that suborning guardsmen—” He decided not to pursue it. “What of your maids-of-honor? There must have been one or two in the coach with you.”

“Luisa was with me. She shrieked and fell into a dead faint before the robbers even entered the coach.” Dionee gazed up at Will hopefully. “I thought you could go to some of your low friends, your pickpockets and highwaymen, and find out who is responsible.” She wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of one hand. “If you did that—if we found a way to buy it back again, Rodaric might never need to know that his precious heirloom was missing.”

Will stopped in his tracks. “Eternal darkness, Dionee! I won't be a party to any such thing.”

She began to cry again. “You won't help me to recover the little engine?”

“That, most certainly, if I am able. But I will not allow you to go on deceiving Rodaric. He will have to be told at once. No, I mean it, Dionee, you can go on weeping as much as you like, but on this point I will not be moved.”

Then, relenting just a little, he went and stood over her, lifted one of her hands and dropped a kiss on it.

“Compose yourself, my dear. I can't condone any such dangerous deception, but if you feel you need me there at your side when you tell the king, I remind you that I am yours to command.”

A
s Dionee needed time to dress and compose herself, Will made haste to his own rooms, in order to clean up after his journey and render himself presentable for a meeting with the king.

The barracks were located in an old brick pile at the back of the palace, where the clatter of men coming and going at all hours, the carousing that sometimes went on far into the night, would not disturb the king and the queen at their rest. The chambers were small, drafty, and dark, and the building was largely ruinous—doves nested in the rafters, winds whistled in the lower corridors, rain came hissing down the chimneys and put the fires out—but the men were content. With no wives, sisters, or mothers on hand to air out the rooms or tidy their things away, they were able to lead a rakish, rollicking bachelor existence and maintain an atmosphere made up in equal parts of tobacco, old boots, brandy, and gunpowder.

In his tiny bedchamber under the roof tiles, Will pulled on a worn velvet bell-cord, summoning the very junior guardsman who served as his valet. That worthy youth presenting himself several minutes later, Will demanded to be dressed in as little time as possible.

Young Swallow rose to the occasion. In half an hour, Will was washed and shaved, his hair immaculately dressed and powdered. In forty-five minutes he was in uniform—green coat, white waistcoat and breeches, black leather boots reaching past the knee—arranging the deep rows of Chêneboix lace at his wrists and throat. In two minutes more, he had strapped on a sword with a silver hilt, tucked a black three-cornered hat with a feather panache under one arm.

It was thus a supremely elegant Captain Blackheart, the very picture of a gallant young officer, who escorted the queen into King Rodaric's walnut-panelled study and set a chair for her beside the king's desk.

If Rodaric was somewhat taken aback by the sight of Wilrowan after hearing that Will had forsaken Hawkesbridge for at least a fortnight, Will and Dionee were totally unprepared for the explosion that followed her stammering confession. Sweeping aside the papers, pens, and silver inkstand on his desk with an uncharacteristic oath, Rodaric rose from his big oak armchair and began to pace the floor in an agitated manner.

A careful man of five-and-thirty, King Rodaric always had an eye toward appearances, and though his ire was easily aroused his rages were generally cold, controlled, and distinguished by sarcasm rather than by cursing or physical violence. He looked capable of violence now, however. Seeing this, Dionee grew agitated, too, and dropped her lace handkerchief. Will picked it up, handed it back without a word, and stationed himself behind her chair.

“But after all, I know that the Chaos Machine is very, very old and very, very valuable, but if it can't be recovered, it
can
be replaced,” she protested. “If I sell everything I own: all of my jewels, both of my carriages—”

Rodaric continued to pace. In the clear light of a crystal oil lamp burning on his desk, his face was grim. “Not if you sold the Volary and everything in it. Dionee, you have lost the one thing in the
palace, in Hawkesbridge, in all Mountfalcon—which—cannot—possibly—be—replaced.” He bit off the words one by one for emphasis. “You have lost one of the Goblin Jewels.”

Dionee clasped her hands in front of her face, shook her head in denial. “But, sir, how could I—how
could
I? It is the Orb of Mountfalcon, not some absurd toy—”

“It is the Orb of Mountfalcon that is a sham, a bauble, a toy. It has one purpose only: to serve as a decoy for traitors and thieves, and so keep the Chaos Machine safe.”

Dionee continued to shake her head. “But I have seen—
everyone
has seen you open the little golden globe and display the intricate machinery inside.”

“Ordinary clockwork, the merest counterfeit. How clumsy a counterfeit you would know if you had ever compared it with the infinitely more delicate machinery, the exquisite tiny gemstones inside the Chaos Machine.”

Dionee sat with her head bowed. “But how can this be? And why—
why
was I never told?”

Rodaric ignored her question. “It is the same with all the other so-called Maglore treasures—the Silver Nef, the Blue Glass Swan—all of them. They were all created for the same purpose: to protect the real Jewels from ordinary thieves and to discourage any royal house with Ambitions from stealing the Jewels of the other houses and consolidating all of that power in one place.”