The Spirit Lens (53 page)

I suppressed a childish retort. Annoyed, not so much with Dante’s insulting address or peremptory instruction, but with losing progress to this interruption, I had come near wasting an opportunity. A trusted servant could know a great deal and might not be so carefully schooled as wife or children. “Lady Madeleine, may I speak to your housekeeper?”

The contessa looked up. “Is that necessary?” Evidently my posture spoke answer enough. “Melusina, please tell Sonjeur de Duplais whatever he wishes to know.”

“Mistress Melusina, I’ve only one question. A small thing. How are mages perceived in the village of Vernase? We faced an unfortunate incident on our travels here, and I’m concerned for my companion’s safety. He is quite ill mannered, as you’ve seen.”

Melusina flushed and wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, I don’t know. We’ve not had a mage visiting in Vernase in ever so long. My lady, can you recall when the last might have been? Long before the little one went off to school, I think.”

The contessa shifted her gaze to me. Despite a weary sadness that seemed to sap her strength more every moment, she understood very well what I was asking. “We’ve not entertained a mage at Montclaire since Lianelle was three and that woman came from Seravain to validate her handmark.”

A woman . . . “Was it Mage Eliana, perhaps, bright red cheeks, one foreshortened leg?”

“No, she was extremely tall,” said Melusina, “almost as tall as His Grace and sturdy as a smith. Our little one was but a mite in her hand. She brought that young adept with her—the pretty girl that was so spindly—and as far as I can recall, everyone in house or village treated them both most respectful.”

Gaetana and Michel de Vernase. Father Creator! Ten years past and tenuous, but I’d found a connection.

“I really must go.” The contessa made as if to get up, but sagged back into her chair.

“Mama, what’s wrong?” Anne dropped to her knees beside her mother’s chair, chafing her flaccid hands and patting her scarlet cheeks. “Look at me.”

The lady did not respond, and Melusina’s speedy provision of damp towels and smelling salts and extra cushions changed nothing.

“Has she been unwell?” I said, feeling entirely out of my experience. “Fevered?”

“Please leave us, sonjeur,” said Anne, tight-lipped. “You’ve clearly pushed my mother beyond all bounds of mercy.”

“Do whatever is necessary for your mother’s health and comfort, damoselle,” I said, bridling at the accusation. “But sometime before this day is out, we must take up this conversation again, whether the contessa is fit to supervise it or not.” It shamed me a bit to imagine the lady’s illness feigned, yet I could not discount the possibility. Beautiful women of good family were not exempt from conspiracy.

Though the desire to pursue my questions had trumped Dante’s summons, the contessa’s plight induced me to reverse course. “Melusina, please guide me to the conte’s library,” I said.

“I should stay—”

“Unfortunately, we are not always free to choose our roles in these matters, mistress. Please show me the way. Then you and your staff may attend the ladies. Later, when I resume my conversation with Damoselle Anne, perhaps you could sit as her mother’s surrogate.”

The grumbling Melusina led me up the stair and along a winding gallery into a library worthy of any collegia. Two walls of book-laden shelves so high as to need stepladders were only the beginning. More shelves held models of temples, bridges, towers. Another wall of shelves held stacked boxes of papers, labeled
POETRY
,
ANNE’S STORIES
,
MAMA’S WILDFLOWER SKETCHES
, and the like. More papers, books, and maps lay heaped on two long tables, or spread on one of three desks that crowded the room. Even the ceiling was in use, with a great star chart fixed to it at one end, and the largest map of the world I’d ever seen fixed to the other.

How could I not compare such a place to the library at Manor Duplais? We owned ten books of Sabrian genealogy bound in red leather, a general history of the kingdom, and a chart detailing the Savin family line back twenty generations—far enough to expose our flimsy connection to the reigning monarch. My blood yet stained that chart, as my father had pressed me against it after he pulled his knife, as if to make sure I would recognize my shame before he gutted me.

As always, my hand massaged my belly. A good thing my father had not studied anatomical charts like those propped on Michel’s easel stuck off in a corner.

“Here he is, Master,” said Jacard, popping up from behind one of the desks.

Dante had already risen. Though his eyes remained shadowed by his hood, I felt their heat, as always.

“What is it?” I shook off my maudlin history and glanced over my shoulder to make sure Melusina had gone. “I could ill afford interruption.”

“Over here,” said Dante. “Can you use your senses, student, or must I hold your hand as usual?”

A dozen or more wooden storage boxes seemed to have vomited their contents across the floor. Mostly letters, it appeared. Drawings, scribbles, a litter of broken jewelry, buckles, and pen knives. Opening myself to the touch of magic, I stepped through the jumbled heaps. I assumed I searched for bound enchantment. In the ordinary way, I could detect magical residue only for an hour or two after its expenditure—Dante’s for much longer.

In the end, this was easy. When I touched a cube-shaped tin box that sat amid the conte’s relics, a sensation of steel nails scraping glass set my teeth aching. I crouched and flipped its lid open.

My breath near left me entirely. A jumble of cloudy glass and tarnished brass and steel filled the box. I pulled out the thin tubes first, and then three small rusted knives and the smooth-rimmed glass cups, nested one within the other. Last came the stained brass blocks, one small, one large, with levers cocked, ready to pop out the lancet blades.

“Blessed angels,” I breathed. “We have him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

9 CINQ 16 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

N
o one in the manse, meaning Damoselle Anne, Melusina, Bernard—the balding steward from the stableyard—the house- maids, the gardener or his daughter, the cook or cook’s help, or even Drafi, the Arothi stable hand, admitted to having seen the tin box before. None but Anne had ever heard a whisper of transference, save in the same unsavory context as necromancy or death curses or spirit slaves. None knew what a scarificator might be used for.

When I showed her how the little blades snapped out to nick the skin, Damoselle Anne looked as if she might collapse. I told her that even a man with no talent himself could collect blood to infuse a mage. The needed spells could be affixed to blades and vessels—as they were with these artifacts. But the girl squared her chin and said again, “I’ve never seen such a horrid thing. I can’t say why my father would have one, save that he had an interest in learning.” She ventured no guess as to whose blood yet crusted the instruments.

Young Ambrose could not be found anywhere in the house, stables, or gardens. Dante did not object when I dispatched Jacard to query the young officer we’d left at the gate. The mage had observed the afternoon’s interrogations in silence.

The contessa, rebounded from her faint, wandered into the kitchen as I finished questioning the cook. “Forgive me, sonjeur,” she said, puzzling over my simple question. “Transference? Ask Michel. I’ve told him I’ve no head for business. Ani”—she waved at her daughter—“dearest, we have guests. Where is Melusina? Why have we not set out refreshments? You must pay more attention to hospitality, Ani. You’re almost eighteen.”

The lady began to hum a Fassid love song, closing her eyes and smiling as if lost in dreaming. But her voice soon faltered, tears coursing down her feverish cheeks.

“Mama!” Anne grabbed the contessa as the lady swayed and stumbled. “Melusina, help me!”

Daughter and servant coaxed the lady to her feet. The three of them vanished up the nearby servant’s stair.

“I doubt her condition feigned,” said Dante from the doorway. “Secrets always break those who believe themselves unbreakable.”

That could certainly be true. But Lady Madeleine had impressed me as an open heart, not welcoming to secrets. Perhaps that’s why Michel did not confide in his wife. The daughter, though . . . Anne’s secrets preyed on her.

Jacard tramped into the kitchen, winded from his run up the hill. “The boy’s not ridden out.”

“Ah! Then it’s time to examine my perimeter,” said Dante, planting his staff firmly on the slate floor. “Come, Adept!” He vanished through the kitchen door Jacard had just entered.

“Perimeter?” I said.

“The man moves like a greyhound,” said Jacard, sagged against a kitchen cupboard, still puffing. “First thing this morning, he raced around the lawns and gardens, dragging that blasted stick in the dirt to create this ‘perimeter.’ I’ll swear he never bound a spell, spoke a key, touched a particle . . . anything, but the dirt turned black behind him. Next he drew a binding circle on the terrace and did some actual spellcasting with silver nuggets and hair and bits of those blasted roots and powders he had me chasing down, but the particles fit no formula I’ve ever read. I’ll swear he’s got me twisted end around trying to figure it all out. At least he’s let me do his dog work for once: rifling the kitchen pots, examining the ladies’ closets, and dragging out every book and box in that damnable library. Naturally, he himself discovered the only useful bit.” He sighed heavily. “I’d best go. He doesn’t yell quite so much if I keep running, and I’ve hopes to graduate from dog work before I die. Someday, you must tell me how to figure out what he’s doing.”

Would that I knew!

As a bellow from outside set Jacard running, a blur of indigo in the passage drew my eye. I set off after it. “Damoselle!” I caught up to the girl in a small yard, walled by red brick service buildings. “Do not think to run away.”

She halted immediately. “I am not running away. I just . . .” She tugged her wayward curls behind her ear again. “Why don’t you leave? You have what you want. You’ve pushed my mother to exhaustion. I’ve never seen her so . . . overthrown.”

“Where is your brother, lady?”

“I don’t know.” Every strained line of her body said otherwise.

“He is not accused. But matters will look very ill if he runs away. Does he know where your father is?”

“How could he know?” she cried, impatience bursting through her reserve. “How could any of us know? Papa has not written in a year. He’s sent no message. I’ve not heard his voice since the hour—” She near swallowed her tongue.

“Since what hour, damoselle?” I said softly. And when she did not answer, I pushed ever so slightly, recalling my lost question at last. “Did your father speak to you in the hour he left Montclaire?”

“Yes.” I could scarce hear her answer. “Just ordinary cautions. He asked me to comfort my mother. That’s all.” I didn’t believe her.

“Lianelle would not wish to worry your mother, but I’d guess she confides in her elder sister. She wrote you about Ophelie, didn’t she? About the bleeding?”

“Yes. Those vile instruments . . .”

She pressed her lips together for a moment, her hands plucking at her skirt. She was so controlled for a young woman, so inward, so blank a page when one considered the knowledge and intelligence contained within. The daughter of a worldly man, she could not be so naive as she seemed. If ever a child could be lured into conspiracy, would it not be one like this?

“Lianelle pretends Papa is hiding from those who hurt her friend,” she went on. “But
you
think—Sonjeur, my father could not do that to anyone. Ever.”

“He spoke with you about transference at some time. Mentioned it.”

The sun dropped below the red tile roof, shadowing the girl’s pale face. “He spoke of it when we studied Sabrian history. He refuses to hide the world’s horrors from us.”

Her words fell cold and dry, as if she had focused her good intellect on being a better liar. I cursed the obscuring shadow. “But he
did
hide horrors. Why would he have the leeching implements here? Why would he not show them to you, if they were merely for education?”

“I don’t know.” She folded her arms and turned halfway round away from me. Fear had tied the girl in knots. Not fear of me, I deemed; Anne de Vernase feared the truth.

“Damoselle, King Philippe cannot ignore the evidence we’ve gathered, and for right or wrong, innocent or guilty, he will judge your father’s fate. And yours. You
must
speak those things you know—for your own future, for the future of your family. I am skilled only in guessing, but you, an intelligent young scholar, must know there are spells to detect lies. Believe me, you are not good enough to evade them. Tell me what your father said about his journey on the morning he left Montclaire.”

As from a septic wound touched by a blade, the words burst forth. “He said that some men present a face of such reason and nobility to the world that the world cannot conceive the cruelty and corruption behind it. He said it was his duty to take down such a person, no matter—no matter how highly placed or how close to our family. No matter consequences. And he said someone at Seravain had given him the means to do so.”

Father Creator . . . the last link in the chain. “Who, damoselle? Who was your father planning to take down?”

“He said it was better for us not to know such terrible secrets,” she said, all fever drained away, along with hope and self-deception. “Because we would have to live on if his plan went awry.”

Better, indeed! His children had to face Philippe’s wrath.

“And it all went awry, didn’t it?” she said. “My mother believes he’s dead. My sister now believes it, too. Our servants, his soldiers . . . even his friend in Merona has stopped writing. So he must be dead.”

“What friend?”

She waved her hand in dismissal. “Some woman at court.”