The Queen's Necklace (59 page)

“Charges of murder and—ridiculous!” said Will, sitting up and dusting himself off. “I've done nothing of the sort. And
who
asked you? You can't arrest me for crimes committed in Mountfalcon without—” Acting on a sudden twinge of doubt, he felt for the carte blanche he kept in an inner pocket of his riding coat and found it missing.

“The lady, she did have a warrant from t'King of Mountfalcon—all signed and sealed 'twas,” said the gravelly voice.

Will cursed softly under his breath. It was humiliating enough to be arrested—but with his own warrant? Leaning his back against the rough stone wall, he closed his eyes, struggling to remember. He had a dim impression of a soft pair of hands going lightly over him while he lay poisoned and semi-conscious on the floor of his room at the Cinque d'Or. Had that been
before
or
after
Lili entered the room?

“The ‘lady' you said—was it a small plump woman, or a lady of medium height, very composed and attractive?”

“'Tis not for me to say,” the constable replied with a coarse laugh. “You can speak t'magistrate when he do come next month. Mayhap he'll tell you what you wants to know—mayhap he won't.
In t'meantime, you can just sit right where you are and think on your own wickedness.”

The next few days went slowly by, as Wilrowan spent most of his time pacing his cell or staring out through the one grated window opening on the outside world, which offered a less than inspiring view of a barren stretch of yard and one twisted thorn tree. Meanwhile, the constable steadfastly refused to answer his questions, and the two bailiffs who took over at intervals proved equally uncooperative. When Will demanded paper and ink, these were grudgingly provided, but after he wrote a letter to Nick, no one would send it.

“And a fine thing 'twould be, you called in t'rest of your gang to bust you out of here!” said the village lawman.

“Very well,” answered Will, seething by now, yet rendered cunning by adversity. “Then let me write to King Rodaric at the Volary Palace.” This meant a much longer wait before help arrived, but it hardly seemed possible the constable could object. “Or do you imagine
he's
a member of my gang?”

After much urging, and the exchange of several small coins, the constable allowed that he saw no harm in it. “Though whether it happens he'll read your letter, I don't promise, Mr. Blackheart. But I'll find a man t'carry it, right enough, and you'll have to be satisfied wi' that.”

“
Captain
Blackheart. If your man gives my name correctly at the palace gate when he delivers my letter, it
will
get in to the king. And if I receive the reply I expect, there will be six gold guineas in it for you.”

With the letter sent on its way, there was nothing for Will to do but wait. He was likely to remain where he was for at least a fortnight: a week for his message to reach Rodaric, another for the letter securing his release to arrive in Hoile.

But one cold morning, just after dawn, as Wilrowan lay on his
bed of moldy straw, he was aroused from a half-doze by a loud tapping on the iron grating. He rose quickly and crossed to the window, before the noise could attract the bailiff's attention.

A raven had perched on the window ledge, a very old bird with ragged feathers.

It was not one of his own ravens, and the rapport was tenuous, the words very faint in his mind. Will was not even certain he had heard them correctly.
grandmother
?!>
Lady Krogan had never used this means to communicate with him before, and it had never occurred to him that she could.

Even when the raven had repeated his grandmother's message two times over, Will was not quite certain what to think of it. Could the words have been garbled along the way? That Lili was for some reason on the trail of the Chaos Machine, he had already guessed. But that she and her Aunt Allora could be Specularii magicians—?

Moving in the varied circles that he did, Will had heard vague rumors of the Specularii: a group of crackpots claiming descent from one of the ancient magical societies, a handful of misguided souls who actually believed that the Maglore were still in existence. How could Lili—his sweet, sensible, level-headed Lili—possibly associate herself with people like that?

When the raven was gone, Will returned to his bed of straw. He sat with his head bowed in thought, trying to make sense of this unexpected information. For some reason, his thoughts kept turning back to what the other raven had said to him on the road to Fencaster.
Not if she was a Gobline
. If the woman he was following was not an Ouph or a Padfoot, could not be a Wryneck or Grant, yet she
was
a Gobline, that meant—

Wilrowan felt suddenly dizzy and disoriented, as his whole conception of the world turned upside down and inside out. What if the Specularii were right after all? What if the Maglore
did
still exist and
were behind the plot to steal the Jewels? What if, unknowingly, he had actually been pursuing one of the creatures all of this time?

The answer to that question made him beat his fists in impotent fury against the wall until his knuckles bled. If all this was true, then right at this moment Lili might be in pursuit of the Maglore woman. She and the man she was with might be moving inexorably toward a confrontation with one of the most dangerous and ruthless creatures ever to exist.

And he, Wilrowan, was absolutely helpless to do anything about it, absolutely incapable of coming to her aid, so long as he remained locked up in this cursed cell.

Tarnburgh, Winterscar—Three Months Earlier

27 Pluviôse, 6538

I
t was a respectable house where gentlemen took lodgings, a sedate old house on a quiet street. Ys sat outside in her glass coach, staring at the prim facade and shuttered windows, unable to make up her mind. More and more, she was learning to ignore the conventions, but she was not yet dead to all sense of propriety. Young ladies, even young married ladies, did not visit young men at their rented rooms.

But she had not seen Zmaj in more than ten days; he had not responded to any of her increasingly frantic letters. No one had heard of him leaving the town; no one had spotted him anywhere in Tarnburgh. Ys felt a growing certainty that something dreadful had happened to him.

Coming to a abrupt decision, she left the coach, instructing two of the footmen to follow her inside the house. She had to know the truth, no matter how awful.

Zmaj's rooms were on the second floor (more shabby-genteel than the first) on a short corridor with a worn carpet and a dingy skylight. Ys hesitated outside his door, then clenched one hand into a hard little fist and knocked softly.

The sound echoed dully in the empty corridor, but there was no
response. After a minute, she knocked again, this time with more force. Still no answer, no slightest rumor of movement on the other side. Ys was considering that she might tell her lackeys to break down the door, when she suddenly thought to try the handle.

At her touch, the catch slid aside, and the door swung open on a dark interior. Ys felt a sharp twinge of panic. Surely if Zmaj had taken a trip out of town, he would never have left his door unlocked.

“Stay here,” she ordered the footmen, and with a dry mouth and a leaping pulse, she entered the flat alone.

The sitting room was cold and stale. Feeling her way in the dim light, Ys moved toward the long window and unlatched the shutters. A shaft of golden sunlight pierced the gloom, turned the threadbare carpet the color of blood. Ys looked around her cautiously, but there was nothing amiss—only a room full of cheap old furniture, and a cloud of dust motes spinning in the air.

She moved on to the bedchamber. Again, the room was in perfect order, his bed made up, his clothes stored neatly inside a pine clothes-press, his other things tidied away in drawers. It was only when she approached the fireplace that she cried out.

There was a mound of silvery-grey ashes upon the hearth, spilling over on the crimson carpet. A pile so small, so fine, you would hardly imagine it was all that remained of so tall a youth. But the Maglore burned exceedingly hot, and much was vaporized when they did, including most of their clothing.

Ys dropped to her knees beside the sooty hearth, heedless of the damage to her silken skirts. Her heart beat painfully hard against her ribs, the blood roared in her ears. Slowly, she put out a hand to touch the ashes, then drew back with a deep, racking shudder. This was no accident, it had been done deliberately. No suicide, either. Zmaj was far too young, and the usual method was the ingestion of poison or ground glass. It was the usual method of assassination, too—death by fire was far too horrifying for even the most vengeful
to contemplate. Ys drew in a long, slow breath in order to steady herself. She knew only one Goblin cruel enough, ruthless enough, to burn another Goblin to death.

Her gaze hardened and her back stiffened; all in an instant, she formed an unshakeable resolution. Madame Solange deserved to
suffer
for this, and Ys intended to see that she did.

Madame was preparing to go out when Ys walked in. Handsome in midnight velvet and grey squirrel, but restless and discontented as to her expression, there was a familiar dangerous gleam in her eye which
ought
to have warned her former pupil, had Ys not been so far beyond reading the signs.

“How
dare
you,” said Ys, trembling with the intensity of her indignation. “First Izek and now Zmaj. Who are you to shed such quantities of Imperial Maglore blood?”

“I am the one who has guarded and protected you all of your life. The boy had become a danger to you—in some sense, a danger to every one of us. Particularly after your abominable behavior the night of the Midwinter Ball. I urge you to put aside your childish passion, and for once in your life
think
.”

Ys stamped one tiny foot. “I
won't
think, it makes me sick to think. My head aches when I'm so angry. How could you do this to me? I loved Zmaj, I—”

“Exactly. Your affair with him had gone on too long, was becoming too obvious.” Madame picked up her velvet hat, placed it carefully atop the sleek, dark coils of her hair, and skewered it in place with a long glittering hat-pin. “Besides,” she added with a knowing smile, as she examined the result in a small hand mirror, “he had already served his purpose, hadn't he?”

Ys drew in her breath sharply, astonished anew by such uncanny omniscience. “You
knew
that? But I never told anyone; I was hardly sure of it myself. How could you know?”

Her governess shrugged, put aside the mirror. “There are certain signs. Unmistakable to those of us who know them. And when the day finally comes that you announce your condition to the world, there must be no breath of scandal, no slightest suspicion in anyone's mind that the child you carry is not King Jarred's. By your own thoughtless behavior,
you
were the one who forced me to take such drastic measures.”

Ys sat down very suddenly on a chair by the door. Her sense of injury was still very strong, but her anger was ebbing. She was beginning to suspect that Madame was right, that she had brought this grief on herself. “But why did he have to die?” she said softly. “Couldn't we just send him away?”

“We?” said Madame, spinning around to face her. “But you told me yourself he was
yours
to command. Had you possessed the good sense to send him away of your own accord, this would not have been necessary. As it was, you left me no choice.” On a table by her elbow, there was a pair of scented gloves; she caught up the right one and pulled it on, then repeated the process with the left. “It is time, Ys, that you accepted responsibility for your own actions. You are, as you recently pointed out, no longer a chit in the schoolroom. If you make a threat, no one is going to mistake it for childish bravado—least of all me. You must learn to guard your tongue, to display a little discretion. Otherwise, even
I
won't be able to save you.”

Ys put her hands to her head, which was aching intolerably. “You should have explained this to me. Why did you not even try to explain before taking such a drastic step?”

Again came that savage light in Madame's eyes. “I have always found that an object lesson—be it sufficiently sharp—is far more effective than an explanation. That was the only way with your mother, and I knew from the very beginning it would be the only way with you.”

“But I'm not Chimena,” Ys answered pitifully. “You might have
tried
to teach me more gently. You might have at least tried.”

The red lips parted in a scornful smile. “You don't even know what you were when I first took charge of you, do you? You don't remember—or you
won't
remember—what a miserable life you led before I rescued you?”

Ys passed a hand over her eyes. “I have nightmares—sometimes the briefest glimpses of people and places. But no clear memories.”

“Then I think,” said Madame, “it is long past time that you were reminded.”

The houses were old and dilapidated, the streets of Ottarsburg were muddy, dirty, and depressing. The damp was everywhere—as a clammy sweat on all the houses, in filthy puddles down in the streets, in the chests of invalids, in dreary attics and moldy cellars, anywhere and everywhere but where it belonged.

A hackney coach came rattling down a rutted lane and stopped in one of the dismal little squares. Two women, dressed all in black and discreetly veiled, climbed down out of the coach. The taller of the two commanded the driver to wait, as they did not expect to be long about their business.

They walked for two blocks through the mud and filth, holding up their heavy skirts to keep them out of the muck. Then the ground fell away under their feet, and they found they were standing on a high bluff, overlooking a vast network of piers and boardwalks, which stretched as far as the River Scar. A faint breeze from the river bottoms lifted their veils.