The Queen's Necklace (72 page)

The Chaos Machine and the other missing Jewels still had to be found and returned to their rightful places as soon as possible, but it was depressingly evident to Lili and her friends that it would be days or weeks before they were fit to travel. Will and Blaise had lost too much blood; Lili had swallowed too much smoke. Both men burned with a fever in their wounds, and Lili had a cough that left her almost too weak to walk. Luke was still disoriented at times, and when he recovered, he was likely to find plenty to occupy him working to rebuild his beloved city. Accordingly, Doctor Wildebaden and some of the other Specularii took up the search, though without Lili and her particular gift they did not expect their efforts to be rewarded with immediate success.

Meanwhile, the volcano had ceased to threaten, thanks to the king's timely intervention. Yet public outrage against the Crown remained strong. Jarred had been as much his queen's victim as anyone, but there was still a keen and widespread resentment against him, because of his imprudent marriage. Under the threat of further
mob violence, the Parliament met, voted, and deposed the king, putting his cousin, Lord Rupert, in his place. It was as an ordinary man, then, that Jarred was to be tried for the crime of High Treason.

When the day of that trial arrived, Luke had recovered enough to attend. He went to the courtroom along with old Doctor Purcell, found a seat in one of the high galleries, and watched with dismay and a growing sense of outrage as a thin figure all in black was hustled into the dock by some rough-looking constables, and “Mr. Jarred Sackville-Walburg” was accused, berated, and humiliated—by the judge, the prosecutor, and by the immense jeering crowd that had squeezed inside the courtroom to watch the trial.

When Luke's own turn came to speak, he took the long twisting staircase down to the floor and stepped into the witness box with deep misgiving, but the determination to do what he knew to be right.

He came straight back to the house afterward, bitterly disappointed. He had hoped that depriving the king of his crown would prove sufficient to satisfy the mob, but the mob and the court had not been so easily placated.

Luke described the proceedings later to Tremeur. “He said not a word in his own defense, but everyone who knew him spoke in his favor. We tried to remind the rabble what he was really like—how much he loved them always, how diligent he had been in securing their welfare—but people have suffered and they wanted someone that they could punish—someone, that is, besides the hundreds of innocent Padfoots and Ouphs they have already harried out of their homes. It was all that we could do, Jarred's remaining friends, to talk the jury out of imprisoning or executing him. A Bill of Attainder was drawn up. Not only has he been deposed, it is as though his reign had never occured. Every one of his edicts has been repealed, his name will be blotted or struck out from all the histories, and he is banished from Winterscar forever, on pain of death.”

Luke ran his hands over his face. “I think—I think in some ways his leaving the country may be for the best. He is a broken man, and it is better for him to lead a private life. He says he will go to Ottarsburg with Francis Purcell, where they will rent a house and set up a business making clocks together. Yes, for Jarred's own sake, this may be best—but the beastly unfairness! That they should heap punishment upon punishment, shame upon shame, when he never did anything but what was required of an honest and honorable man—”

Lucius choked on his own indignation and it was impossible for him to go on. He went upstairs and locked himself up alone in his bedchamber, and was not seen again for many hours.

Luke was calmer a few days later when he explained the situation to Lili. “The truly bizarre thing is that I actually benefit. Officially, there was never such a person as King Jarred of Winterscar, and as for our good King Rupert—who, as it develops, has been invisibly ruling for all of these years—he and I aren't even related. That means that Tremeur and I have been legally married from the moment that parson in Château-Rouge pronounced the words over us.

“Not,” he added with a wry glance, “that anyone is likely to give much thought to the ban anymore. Everything has changed too much. Still, I must be glad that my marriage has been regularized—and more so, because my wife shows signs just at the moment of becoming a Leveller.”

Lili expressed her surprise with a slight smile. They were in a tiny walled garden behind the house, where Lilliana was gathering roses which she meant to arrange in vases in the dining room and the front hall.

“Oh, yes, I assure you,” said Luke. “Her interest is quite sincere. She has always admired Raith, and the congregation here has most favorably impressed her! One of them even told her that this God of theirs can forgive
anything
—supposing that is, one truly repents. I
can't begin to tell you how truly taken she was with the notion that all of her sins might be washed away, with a single, heartfelt declaration.

“And really,” he added with a shrug, “they are the most extraordinary people. They've taken this whole disaster in stride, and have done more than anyone to relieve the general suffering. So it seems I must make up my mind to being married to—to an exceptionally virtuous woman, and eventually raising a family of exceptionally well-behaved children.”

Lili was restless. Her cough had ceased to trouble her, and she was feeling stronger. Will and Blaise, too, though far from recovered, were beginning to complain after nearly a fortnight of inactivity. The only thing that prevented them all from packing up immediately, and setting off in search of the Chaos Machine, was the fact that they had no clear idea where to begin looking. As one day followed the next, Lili continued to hope that some message would arrive from Doctor Wildebaden, but still there was no news, and still she lacked any sense of direction to send her on her way.

She was engaged, one day, in a listless attempt to mend one of her petticoats, in the tiny second-floor parlor which the bachelor physician had turned over to the ladies, when Tremeur came in with a look of intense excitement on her face and a slender parcel wrapped up in brown paper in one small hand.

“Only look how mysterious! A package has arrived with your name on it—but no indication at all where it might come from.”

Lili was naturally intrigued. Putting aside her mending, she quickly unwrapped the parcel, uncovering a slender marquetry box made with decorative woods—ebony, she guessed, and palisander. On opening the lid and lifting out the very frivolous object that she found inside, Lili turned to Tremeur with a bewildered smile.

“Now who on earth would want to send me a puzzle fan? It is extremely
pretty, of course, but—Oh, I see—there is a message after all.” She took out a folded slip of paper from the bottom of the box, and read the note out loud:
“‘Mrs. Blackheart. This should aid you in finding what you seek.'
Now how am I to interpret that?”

“Perhaps we should bring in Luke,” Tremeur suggested, taking the fan and spreading out the sticks, the better to observe the paintings. “He has a positive genius for deciphering things.”

So Luke was sent for and arrived soon after, accompanied by Blaise and Wilrowan. He examined the fan for several minutes, turning it over and over in the process. At last the light of comprehension dawned in his eyes. “It is very simple. On the one side you will find a series of rebuses drawn on the individual sticks, each one translating to the name of a city: as Tronstadt, Vallerhoven, Dahlmark, and so forth. The list itself is highly instructive, if you'll look at that map that you and Raith spent so much time poring over during our journey.” He turned the fan over again. “Then, on the reverse side, as you can see—where the pattern has not been completed—most of the sticks have been deeply engraved with a series of ancient characters. They appear—indeed, I am fairly certain—they look to be a series of street names and house numbers.” He paused dramatically before going on. “I would say, Lilliana, that someone has very kindly provided you with a key to finding all the missing Jewels.”

There were gasps of surprise and delight from the others. “But who has sent this—and can we trust them?” Trefallon asked, with a lift of his well-shaped eyebrows.

Luke passed Blaise the fan and took up the note; he stood looking down at the message it contained, with a smile beginning to form on his face. “It's impossible to be certain, but I think that we may. The writing here, while unfamiliar, should strike a chord with every one of us, so round as it is, so smooth and so legible. It is a pedagogue's hand, a schoolmaster's writing.

“Unless I am very much mistaken, the fan and the accompanying note come from—Raith.”

There were nine houses on nine streets in nine cities—houses of brick, and stone, and timber—all of them plain and unprepossessing, yet each of them held a hidden treasure.

Three long weeks after the arrival of the puzzle fan, Lili stood in a tiny entry hall inside the ninth house, with the crystal-tipped wand in her hand. The Jewels from Tholia, Nordfjall, Finghyll, Lichtenwald, and the rest had all been recovered; only the Mountfalcon Jewel was still missing.

It has to be here
, Lili told herself,
I am weary of travelling, weary of searching. I want to go home
.

With that thought, the wand turned in her hand. “This way,” she said to Wilrowan and Blaise, the only two who had come this far with her. Doctor Wildebaden and his Specularii friends had each claimed responsibility for returning one of the other Jewels to its rightful place, and all had departed before reaching this red brick house in Starkhavn.

Lili threw open a door and stepped through to the very odd room on the other side. It had been furnished as a bedchamber, but there were no less than seven great glasses in ornate frames arranged on the walls. Overcome by a wave of dizziness, she put the tips of her fingers to the side of her head. “It almost seems as though there must be more than one of the Jewels here—they seem to be on every side of us at once.”

Trefallon and Will began a swift but thorough search of the room: pulling out drawers, tapping on wall panels, rummaging through the clothes-press. But Lili stood staring down at her hands, which were inexplicably shaking, and wondered what had happened to make her feel so ill and disoriented.

She heard Will catch his breath sharply. “No one move. There is a trap here somewhere, I'm sure of it.”

Blaise froze in place. Lili swallowed her rising nausea and glanced around her. What could Will mean? If he had actually seen something, then why not say so? Then, all in an instant, she knew the source of the danger. “The mirrors. Break all of the mirrors!”

There was a crashing and a tinkling of broken glass as Will and Trefallon each took up something heavy and struck at the mirrors again and again. As the last silvery shards fell to the floor, Lili realized that the pain in her head had vanished, her sickness had passed. “In another five minutes, we would have been mad—or dead.”

Now the wand pointed unerringly toward a cupboard near the fireplace. Will crossed the room in two long strides, opened the cupboard, and drew out a small rosewood box that he found inside. Then he opened the lid so that Lili and Blaise could see what the casket contained. All three gave a deep sigh of relief at once.

“But how did you know the room was trapped?” Lili asked, fifteen minutes later, when she, Wilrowan, and Blaise had returned to their coach. “There was nothing like that before, when we found the other Jewels.”

The driver spoke to the horses and the coach began to move. “Queen Ys is either dead or the Leveller's prisoner,” said Will. “But our own nemesis, Lady Sophronispa, is still at large. I think she arranged that trap as a parting gift—though perhaps not her last.”

Lili regarded him with a puzzled frown. “Why should you think so? The plot to steal the Jewels has not only been exposed but foiled. I should think she would want nothing so much, right now, as a safe place to hide herself.”

“For all that,” said Will, raising his voice as the coach began to rattle over a series of bumps, “she remained one step ahead of us every inch of the way. She eluded us again and again—and only consider how many, many deaths she caused in Mountfalcon and elsewhere.”
He gave a rueful shake of the head. “I can't help thinking that she was the most dangerous of all the conspirators.”

“She might well consider
you
dangerous, and elusive, too,” suggested Blaise from the opposite seat. “And therefore to be avoided. How many times did she try to kill? And yet you survived.”

Lili reached out with one hand and gave her husband a reassuring touch on the shoulder. “More than that, the Maglore waited for fifteen hundred years to make an attempt to win back their Empire. Who knows how long it may be before they feel ready to try again? And really, why should this Sophronispa be in any hurry? She can expect to live two hundred, three hundred years. She can afford to wait until people like you and I are dead, and nobody else remembers anything about her.”

Wilrowan nodded thoughtfully. How could he ever hope to comprehend the motives of this creature who might live for centuries? He had certainly failed to guess what she might do every single time that he had tried it before.

Nevertheless, he had an uneasy suspicion they had not heard the last of Lady Sophronispa.

I
t was a sad homecoming on a bleak autumn day. The city of Hawkesbridge looked more battered and ugly than ever. Wilrowan wondered if she had slipped further into dissolution during his absence, or whether he was returning with newly sharpened vision after his long absence. The streets were filled with beggars, ragged and weary-looking, and that was one certain difference—but was that all?

“They come, I suppose, from the mining towns,” he said to Lili. “Let us hope that as soon as we turn the Chaos Machine over to Rodaric he can begin to set things right again.”