The Mystic Marriage (9 page)

“I wish you had asked Charul to escort you. This isn’t just a party among friends. How will it look for you to come alone, with no
vizeino
, no chaperone?” Worry pinched her pleasant face.

“I won’t be alone. Barbara will be there, and Marken of course, though I know that’s not what you mean.”

“The baroness can’t be a proper escort,” she protested.

Margerit sighed. Bertrut had long since settled into a stiff formality with regard to Barbara, for all that they lived under the same roof for much of the year. It wasn’t even the scandalous nature of their relationship that bothered her aunt as much that Margerit had chosen it over the hope of a brilliant marriage. Neither she nor her aunt would ever push matters far enough to destroy the balance of the household. Bertrut’s presence—and more so Uncle Charul’s—gave a respectable foundation to her life, one that turned aside questions and suspicions. She, in turn, avoided reminding them that it was her fortune that paid the bills. But that was neither here nor there tonight.

“The invitation was for me alone, Aunt. This isn’t a social affair.” And that argument was unassailable. She wasn’t invited as an eligible young woman who needed a chaperone against any stain on her reputation. She would be there in her own right, as Annek’s thaumaturgist and the author of the mystery to be celebrated. It was intoxicating beyond anything she had imagined, and not even Bertrut’s fussing could dim the glow. She turned to Maitelen and held out her arms to begin dressing.

The next time the door opened, no knock preceded it, only Barbara sweeping in wearing a gown of cerulean blue, her hair pinned up in an old-fashioned braid but ornamented with an aigrette of sapphires and peacock feathers. Barbara dropped a kiss on her cheek without disturbing the finishing touches Maitelen was giving to her chestnut curls. “Dearest, it’s time to go. It won’t do to be tardy!”

They were announced into the hall, made their curtsey to Annek and were whisked off to be introduced to the Spanish ambassador, a fussy little man who seemed far more interested in shipping agreements than politics. Margerit had been tutored deeply on the subject of the shipping trade by her business manager, LeFevre. It was a source of no small part of her income. But she chose to forget what she had learned and tried to assemble an interested expression for the ambassador without the need to comment. When Mesner Felzin came up and entered into the debate with more enthusiasm, she took the opportunity to look around. Rotenek society was not so very large that she hadn’t met most members of the Royal Guild at some point. There were a few exceptions: Ehing never went out in society for mere pleasure and Solz had been traveling abroad until very recently. She had worked closely with those who would take the principal roles in the ceremony, but the ordinary members had simply been given the
expositulum
to learn and been rehearsed in the basics. There was little hope that this first celebration would go well enough to find the ear of the saints and draw the response it was meant for. Perhaps next year. For now, it was enough that it was celebrated at all.

The Spaniard had drifted on to another audience. Now Efriturik was approaching purposefully with yet another foreign stranger in tow. She had noticed them by the mantelpiece, discussing something with great interest. The other man’s gaze was never still, looking this way and that as they crossed the room, as if he would poke his sharp, narrow face into every conversation they passed.

“Mesnera Lumbeirt,” Efriturik began, addressing himself first to Barbara, “may I introduce Herr Kreiser…that is, Mesner Kreiser, an emissary from Emperor Franz’s court? Mesner Kreiser, Baroness Saveze, and Maisetra Sovitre, who presented my mother with tomorrow’s ceremony.”

He barely glanced at her and turned to Barbara, lifting her hand to his lips. “Saveze?” he asked in clipped tones. “I met your predecessor in that title once in Vienna.” He was all sharpness, from his long, narrow fingers to the thin sweep of his side whiskers.

Barbara looked surprised. “I hadn’t known Estefen had time to travel that far abroad. Or was this longer back? I recall there was a tour of some sort.”

The diplomat looked surprised in his turn. “Estefen? I thought his name was Marziel. He was there for the congress, of course. Who is this Estefen?”

“Ah, I see the confusion. A cousin who held the title briefly, Estefen Chazillen.”

A strange look came over the man’s face. Margerit thought it was like the moment when a falcon saw prey. As if he were sighting down his beak-like nose and gauging Barbara’s likely response. His next question was couched as mere curiosity. “Is Chazillen a common name in this land?”

Barbara answered dryly, “Not quite as common since his execution for treason.”

The man’s mouth twitched at one corner, the only sign of more than idle interest. “There was a woman of that name whose work came to my attention. I was hoping to gain an introduction to her. Antonia…Antoine—”

“Antuniet?” Margerit blurted hopefully before she could think better of it.

He fixed that falcon gaze on her. “A friend of yours?”

She had misstepped. Barbara came to her rescue with an air of affected disinterest. “The sister of the unfortunate previous baron. You’ll look far to find an introduction. She hasn’t been seen in Alpennia for quite some time.”

“You will forgive me for contradicting you,” he replied. “My sources tell me that she has been in Rotenek this past month and more.”

The talk moved on to other matters and Margerit tried to regain her composure.
It was her, that day in the Plaiz. I wasn’t seeing ghosts.
But why was her return not widely known?

* * *

When the signal eventually came to go in to dinner, Margerit waited as the majordomo sorted out seating partners. Guild members were being matched with the high-ranking guests and Barbara had gone on ahead, for Saveze carried membership as a right. Beyond the birthright members, other nobles might be invited as it suited the monarch’s purpose. When those had been seated, the rest of the guests would sort themselves out into the lower tables. Margerit expected that someone had been appointed to escort her in, but before that introduction could be made, the Austrian emissary came up beside her, offering his hand. “You must forgive my boldness but I only now recalled that Friedrich said you were the author of tomorrow’s mystery. What other chance will I have to learn so much about it?”

Margerit looked around to see if he were disrupting plans already in place. The majordomo nodded at her to indicate the pairing fell within his rules, and Margerit allowed herself to be led into the dining hall. “Not the only author,” she demurred, “but perhaps you might say the composer.”

Discussion of the mystery occupied the first course. Not a deep, technical analysis, though he seemed interested in far more detail than a light dinner conversation might call for. Margerit remembered that hawk look that had come over him. He was a foreigner and therefore, in theory at least, one of those the
castellum
might be protecting against. She wasn’t such a green girl not to know that diplomats and spies were one and the same. Over the second course he spoke for a while to the woman on his right and Margerit in turn answered the curiosity of her other neighbor. But when the pastries and fruits were brought in, the Austrian brought his attention back to her.

“This Antoinette—how is it you say it? Antuniet Chazillen? She is someone you know? A friend of yours?”

Margerit regretted her unguarded tongue, but she longed to hear news, to hear that she was well. “We studied together at the university.” She attempted a disinterested shrug. “One knows everyone in a place like that. Where did you meet her?”

He waved a hand as if to brush away the question. “I haven’t.”

An awkward silence stretched between them. Margerit sensed that he was waiting to see what she might reveal. She damped down her own curiosity and said, “Rotenek is not so large a city. No doubt you’ll meet her someplace.”

“But not in the sorts of places where my business for the emperor takes me, evidently.”

Margerit thought about that. “No, there are few houses where she would be received now.”

“Is she considered complicit in her brother’s crime, then?”

It was a question Margerit had long pondered for herself, but that went beyond what she cared to reveal. “It hardly matters what people think. The Chazillens were disenrolled.”

He stared at her blankly. “You will need to explain.”

“The family no longer carries noble rank. Barbara—Mesnera Lumbeirt— would be able to explain it better. She’s studied law. Those who bear the name can petition to join a collateral branch and retain their status, but if Antuniet is still going by Chazillen…”

“And yet one may move in society without noble rank,” he noted, gesturing toward her with a smile.

“But not without one of the three
f
’s
,
” Margerit responded. When he raised a brow, she elaborated. “Without family, it must be fortune or friends.”

His face took on a thoughtful expression: no longer the hunting hawk. “With none of those, one wonders why she returned to Alpennia at all.” He waved dismissively. “But as you say, Rotenek is not so large a place. I’m sure to encounter her somewhere.”

* * *

The cathedral was still chilly and nearly empty when Margerit arrived to prepare for the ceremony. There was little for her to do, in truth. The course of the mystery was out of her hands and all she could do would be to observe and take notes for later. She found the corner of the choir assigned to her and laid out her notebooks and sketching materials while Marken scouted out the least obtrusive place to stand guard over her. There was no more need for her to watch discreetly from shadows, striving to hold the visions in memory lest a sketchbook bring disapproving attention. No more warnings from Barbara to be careful who overheard her as she dissected and critiqued the structure of the rites. Barbara would arrive later, when the guild processed in. Despite the quiet movements of the priests and sacristans making their own preparations, the space felt empty. It wasn’t so much the absence of people as the absence of ritual. Even the private worshippers had been cleared in preparation. Having trained herself to notice even the faintest trace of
fluctus
, it was like sitting in a darkened room at midnight. The feeling was strangely restful. She closed her eyes and found herself praying—not for any response, only for worship.

The mood was broken soon enough, attendants bringing in the assorted apparatus for the mystery, cushions and kneeling pillows being arranged at the seats for the royal family, and then singers practicing phrases out of sight somewhere in the inner rooms. There was no music in the
castellum
itself but, as with all of the cathedral-sponsored guilds, the lay ceremony would be followed by Mass. It sometimes felt, Margerit thought, as if it were meant to reclaim the space for the church. She took up her sketchpad and charcoal and traced outlines of the nave and choir on the first few sheets, ready for scribbled notes should anything unexpected happen.

She had only ever seen the full ceremony in her mind’s eye. Rehearsals in bits and pieces were no substitute. As the attendants opened the doors and the priest welcomed the princess, followed by the guild processing through in pairs, it was hard to know what to expect. It seemed like only another rehearsal. There was a gap in the line as they came in and Margerit tried to remember who should fill it. Not one of the principals, she hoped. That would make it no more than a rehearsal indeed. As the guild members took their assigned places, the gap resolved itself, leaving the seat at Annek’s left empty. Efriturik. No wonder Annek looked troubled. He wasn’t a member of the guild proper, but it was customary for all members of the royal family to participate. Elisebet was there and Aukustin at her side; that was part of the careful balance. Margerit tried to read the faces but she was far less skilled than Barbara would have been. Then Annek’s eyes flicked toward the doors and Margerit saw a figure slipping past the carefully ordered rows and around the back of the chairs on the dais to take his place. Efriturik looked the worse for a hard evening and it must not have begun until after the guild dinner was complete. Whatever had possessed him to go carousing last night of all nights?

The ceremony began out of balance but the rhythms of the repetitions slowly pulled it into alignment. As each of the themes built up—each of the “towers” that defined a particular protection for the land—the patterns of the
fluctus
became more clearly defined. They were pale and weak compared to the visions evoked by an old, established mystery, but the drifts of light and sound followed their intended courses for the most part. The pattern held; it would do for now. Margerit’s hands worked deftly to sketch and note the flaws and errors. Some were in the execution, some in the design. She longed to have another set of eyes on the work. Antuniet would have had useful things to say, despite her lesser sensitivity. How long had it been since the Royal Guild had taken up a new mystery? Not in this generation, certainly. It had been a long time since there had been any reason to allow an outsider to witness.

By the time the towers were complete, there was more chaos in the structure. It was too long, Margerit thought. Too complex. Not too much for the band of eager young scholars it had been designed for, but for the Royal Guild? The focus had been lost. She would need to think on that. At the
concrescatio
she watched the
charis
wax throughout the nave and pour through the walls to seek the borders of the land—the circuit defined in the
markein
. That much succeeded. It was enough.

Chapter Seven

Jeanne

It wasn’t easy to discover where Antuniet had been keeping herself. There was no overlap in their orbits—no hope of a chance meeting unless perhaps in the streets around the Plaiz. Anyone else might have let her be. It was what one did when an acquaintance fell from grace. But Jeanne was bored. The brief thrill she’d felt when Antuniet mentioned her work still haunted her. The passion of an artist was a blaze of fire, but passions of the mind ran deeper and burned longer. Alchemy: it had been out of fashion for quite some time in this modern age. The wheels and devices that drove industry required a more consistent approach. One person in a thousand might be able to produce reliable results from the esoteric arts, the way that people like Margerit Sovitre did with the mysteries. But if the rewards for charlatans in the realm of thaumaturgy were mixed, those for alchemy had destroyed the reputation of the field. It had become the refuge of mystics and upper-class dabblers who would disdain turning their curiosity on anything that smacked of trade. Those who lacked the protections of rank for their dabbling found the old prejudices against the art daunting. One couldn’t pass it off as worship in the way one could for even the most practical of mysteries. For every alchemist accused publicly of fraud, there were three whispers of devils and sorcery.