The Spirit Lens (17 page)

“I’ve written to Ophelie’s family,” I said, setting aside my own cup. “I hope to find out if anyone from Collegia Seravain contacted them about her ‘illness.’
Someone
spread the lies about her leaving school. I need to go to the collegia soon, as well. Perhaps I can discover what Michel was looking for or what he might have uncovered that led to his disappearance. Why would someone risk taking such a prominent hostage, then not tell anyone what they want for him?”

Ilario wagged a long finger at my nose, his gold ring and its ruby-eyed phoenix flashing sunbeams in my eyes. “We must also begin arrangements for my exposition. I require it to be spectacular, splendors of science and magic displayed side by side for the entire court to witness.”

I leaned my elbows on the iron rail, pressing fingers to temples to stave off another headache before the world went gray. I had been ready to dismiss Ilario’s folly of an “exposition.” Yet preparations for such an event could give me reason to speak to a variety of people, and Dante needed to observe and analyze some large-scale work of the queen’s mages. If they did not accept him into their circle, such a ruse might be the only way.

Ilario rattled on. “Perhaps I could design a cloud and lightning display. Mage Orviene would certainly work the caelomancy for me, especially if Eugenie encouraged him. She has him tend the weather over her family’s vineyards—not to any beneficial effect that I’ve ever seen. But he’s a good sort of fellow. Congenial. Well mannered.”

“Lord Ilario, consider—” I clamped my lips before I lashed out at his thoughtlessness. Had he forgotten so soon that Mage Orviene might have bled a child to self-murder to fuel his weather-working?

Despite the day’s warmth, I shivered and rubbed the back of my left hand. Consideration of the Blood Wars chilled anyone of the blood. The very mark that identified us as potential sorcerers also identified us as potential mules.

“Very well,” I said. “But as I take care of these other matters, you must do all you can to watch for clues. Anything to do with the queen’s mages or their assistants. Anything sudden or surprising, because Ophelie’s escape must surely alter the villains’ plans. Even the smallest matters—those they speak to, those they dine with, what small magics they work, how they prepare for your exposition—might be important. That is the role you agreed to.”

I could not but hope that the sister Ilario so clearly adored was not stained with the foulness we had glimpsed. But neither could I forget her words:
I miss him, too. So very much. Someday . . .
She longed to speak to her dead parents. She had hired Dante to bring them back. The spyglass seemed to reach beyond death, linking assassination, unholy magic, and the queen’s unhealthy desires.

“I’ll do what’s needed,” said Ilario, who had drained his wine cup and moved indoors to flop on a couch. “Though I don’t like deception. If I’d not spoken out and asked Eugenie why she’d come to the temple, I’d never have remembered it was Soren’s deathday.”

The queen’s answer might explain the flowers and extra candles, but had addressed neither Gaetana’s presence nor the nouri’s wealth of jewels and silks, nor the wax built up so thickly on candlesticks and altar stone that one must conclude the attentive vigil had lasted years, not days. Did Philippe know?

Gratefully, I followed Ilario out of the sultry heat. “One more thing, Chevalier. We must pass this new information to His Majesty. Dante’s warning of violence, Ophelie and the possibility that Michel is alive and captive. Can you manage that without anyone’s remarking it?” I could not afford an audience with Philippe. I was too visible as yet, so soon after my introduction at court and Dante’s well-reported tirade.

“Oh, there’s a way.” Ilario’s face soured like that of a boy commanded to kiss an ill-favored aunt. “The king enjoys trouncing me at stratagems. Does anyone but mention the tedious game, he insists on a match, no matter that he knows how I detest it. Who dares refuse a king’s whim? But I oft insist on a private venue to deprive him of an audience for his triumph. None will remark it.”

“Excellent,” I said, unable to imagine flighty Ilario shifting knights, warriors, tetrarchs, and queens through the complex landscape of a stratagems board. “We’ll not take advantage too often.”

As if pricked by a hay fork, Ilario leapt from his couch, snatched up a feathered hat, and tucked his pale locks behind one ear to reveal a dangling earring of rainbow-colored stones. “Come along, Portier,” he said, charging across the carpet toward the door. “Enough of maudlin business. If it is Third-day, as I suspect, and midafternoon, as I notice, then it is time for my foster mother’s salon. I dare not shirk my duty, as I am charged to amuse the ladies especially. Today, I shall display my sober side. All shall marvel that I have myself a private secretary.”

He halted abruptly, pressing his back to the outer door, and examined me head to toe. “Do you have that journal you’re forever messing about with?”

“Always.”

“Get it out. It makes you look properly serious and secretarial. We’ll say your luggage has been lost and you’ve had to borrow clothes from your valet. La, we must get you to my tailor and my barber soon, else the entire court will guess you’re a spy. None will believe I’ve hired a shaggy-headed slip of a fellow who wears velvet in spring.”

I sighed and followed him. I would much rather have sought out Philippe’s disgraced guard captain or researched the meaning of
Altevierre—
the word scratched on the crypt wall and flown from Ophelie’s lips as she begged for death. But Antonia de Foucal had stood at the center of Castelle Escalon as queen, queen mother, and now as Eugenie and Ilario’s adoptive mother. She must know everyone and everything. What better resource for an investigator?

 

 

ILARIO SWEPT INTO LADY ANTONIA’S grand drawing room like a benevolent west wind, touching, ruffling, and tweaking every sleeve, cheek, and temper within view. A head taller than everyone else, and adorned in blazing scarlet, he could not vanish into any crowd. He wept over a deceased cat with a thready dowager and commiserated with a fellow dandy over the poor quality of Hematian brocades. He promptly threatened a duel with a local tetrarch when a weak-chinned marquesa reported that the clergyman had complained of Ilario juggling eggs on the temple lawn. Without noting scornful smirks or guests rolling their eyes, he declared his longing that one of the sainted Reborn could choose ridding the world of crocodiles as his heroic task.

I heeled like a well-trained hound. From time to time, Ilario would pause his conversation, spin around, and point at me, declaring, “Make a note that I must speak to Teb about the exposition,” or, “Pen a letter to my old swordmaster, Portier. I shall require practice before this duel.”

I would acknowledge with a half bow and scratch notes in my journal, all the while learning names, listening, observing.

Ilario’s sole temperate moment occurred when he encountered a man wearing the phoenix badge of the Cult of the Reborn. Cultists believed the saints to be souls who had willingly relinquished their hope of Heaven in order to serve the needs of humankind in this life, reborn time and again at the Pantokrator’s whim. I thought it nonsense.

“You must be the new secretary. Duplais, is it?
Savin
-Duplais?” Based on her unimposing height, unexceptional figure, and unguessable age, the mature woman who stood at my shoulder could have been any court lady. Yet she had shunned the heavy, smooth-woven coils of current fashion and organized her gray-streaked black hair into masses of small, stiff curls about her face—a style one saw only on thousand-year-old Fassid carvings. And just like those ancient figures, she had completely plucked out her eyebrows, giving herself a permanent look of ingenuous surprise. Such flagrant defiance of fashion demanded concentrated attention. No common courtier would be so bold.

“Indeed, my lady,” I said, making all proper deference. “I am Portier de Savin-Duplais, though it might serve me ill to emphasize the
Savin
at present.”

Her laugh rippled, pleasant and knowing. “Royal relations tread a more strenuous road than any outside our odd circle might suspect. You must join me for tea some afternoon. We shall exchange strategies for maintaining our equilibrium.”

“I would forever prize such an event.” I appreciated the absence of scorn in her good humor. Swallowing my usual inhibitions, I did not stop with politeness. “May I speak to your secretary to set a day?”

Her painted eyes widened. “What a bold young snippet! Not so craven as I was told.”

She patted me on the cheek with three jeweled fingers and swept onward without answering, instantly the center of each group she encountered. She could be none but the Lady Antonia.

When Ilario spied her, he spun in a whirl of silken cloak and dangling jewelry and dropped to one knee, spreading his arms as if awaiting a message from Heaven. “Divine grace, lady mother.”

Lady Antonia acknowledged this overeager obeisance with a touch to his shoulder and a pained expression. She moved on before he could rise or open his mouth again.

Sighing hugely, Ilario scrambled to his feet and took up the tale of his recent sojourn on the Aubine seacoast for two young ladies whose pasted smiles begged for escape. Perhaps they, as well as Lady Antonia, had heard the tales of crocodile charms and therapeutic mud bathing too often already.

My spirits rose when I spied Damoselle Maura poised in the doorway. Yet before I captured her notice, she set course for two wind-scoured gentlemen. Sober blue jackets, trimmed in gold, and broad-brimmed hats pinned up on one side suggested naval connections. Maura smoothed their path around the refreshment and card tables to an elaborately draped corner where Lady Antonia now bantered with a cluster of admiring ladies and gentlemen.

Though Maura lacked the dainty perfection of Ilario’s bejeweled ladies or the languid elegance of the ingenue who enthralled five gallants in the garden doorway, I found the softer curves of her body and the spare authority of her movements quite pleasing. When she glanced up and caught me watching her, I’d have sworn a smile crinkled the corners of her eyes, though she continued to participate fully in her conversation with Sabria’s dowager queen.

Not wishing to be rude, I shifted my attention to the refreshment table, browsing the quails’ eggs and pickled leeks, the sweetmeats and lemon tarts, while observing the comings and goings. My interest focused sharply when a tidy, wide-browed mage entered from a side chamber. His gray-threaded locks were sleekly dressed, his doublet as elegantly skirted as Ilario’s. His mage’s collar gleamed amid his starched shirt ruffles. On the occasion of my ignominious debut in court society, he had stood behind Gaetana. Orviene, certainly.

Was it possible that this newcomer who floated from one group to the next, extending a quiet greeting or a smile, touching a young woman’s hand, laughing, and offering referrals to magical practitioners who could help with every condition from limp hair to lingering curses, had hacked off Ophelie’s fingers and prisoned her in a crypt next to fifty dead men? It struck me as a fearful thing that such depravity might be couched in so ordinary a figure. Surely a monster should wear a horned cap and blood-soaked black, reeking of brimstone, and not peacock blue brocade and hair pomade.

“The demonish mage has not wreaked vengeance on you, has he?”

My head snapped around, and I near bit my tongue. Maura had somehow got across the room without my noticing it. Her round cheeks glowed with her smile, as terror constricted my throat. Had I somehow voiced my thoughts?

“I’ve promised to find him a new assistant.” Dante. She referred to Dante.

“No vengeance,” I said. “But then I’ve not yet encountered the devil again. Will he be here?”

The administrator clasped her hands modestly at her waist and knotted her brow in mock sobriety. “I doubt anyone has thought to invite him. I’m not sure even Mage Orviene’s generosity would extend so far.”

Generosity?
Only a considered breath kept me from choking. “I’m not sure I’m ready to meet Mage Orviene, either,” I said. “I would like to establish some solid reputation at court before greeting its most formidable figures.”

Maura’s eyes livened with amusement. Some might call her stiff, but she seemed to me a well-contained person, her feelings clear to anyone who took the time to observe her closely. Even before her descent into permanent genteel hysteria, my mother had lived in a constant state of fractured emotions, liberally shared with anyone within reach, and the female students at Seravain seemed forever thrashing about between the overexcited activity of squirrels and the argumentative despondency of hibernating bears.

“Mage Orviene is anything but formidable,” she said. “He ever has a kind word for those who seek his help. You should speak to him. That’s the purpose of a lady’s salon.”

“My mother hosted such events when I was a boy. Awful, awkward afternoons. I am wholly out of practice. Lord Ilario insisted I accompany him today, else I’d have spent a happy hour on his latest whim. He intends to sponsor a scientific exhibition in the coming months.”

“Indeed.” She ducked her head, and her finger pressed a smile from her lips. “I’ve heard rumor of this . . . uh . . . fancy. If you need advice . . .”

I bowed. “An accomplished administrator who knows everyone at court and most of the tradesmen in Merona could save my life. Again.”

Her laughter bubbled just beneath the surface, a pleasing animation of mouth and eyes that was at once unembarrassed and quite private. Warmth flooded through my limbs and . . . everywhere. Gracious angels, it had been so long.

Of a sudden Maura’s brows lifted and she tilted her head as if to see better beyond my shoulder. Then she leaned forward slightly and spoke directly into my chest, “On your guard, good sir. Thy nemesis doth approach.”

I shifted around slowly, as if adrift in the sea of conversation. Framed in the doorway to the outer passage stood Dante. Clean shaven, dressed in black knee breeches and hose with an elegant short cloak swept over his right arm, he cut a fine, if sober, figure. A plain, silver earring adorned one ear. I offered fervid thanks to young Edmond de Roble and his tailor, and, foolishly, felt quite proud. Relieved, too; Dante did not carry his staff.