The Spirit Lens (54 page)

Woman?
The world paused. “
Who
, damoselle?”

Anne’s chin lifted sharply, her guard up again. “I don’t recall her name.”

I kept my voice even, trying to repair my slip. “So all these months, you’ve held faith that your father will come home, innocent of any wrongdoing.”

“Yes.”

“Then, naturally, you’ve kept all the incoming letters addressed to him.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ll see them. Now, if you please.”

“But you’ve no right to see his letters!”

“Ah, damoselle, I do. Your king has given it.”

No matter the girl’s soft-spoken ways; had she a dagger, it would have flown at that moment. As we returned to her father’s upended library, her eyes glinted with angry tears.

Michel de Vernase’s unread letters lay in the bottom drawer of the smallest desk in the room. Ten months of letters—letters from diplomats in Aroth, in Syan, one bearing the seal of the Military Governor of Kadr. The conte’s correspondence was wide and varied: personal notes about family and friends, minor business of meetings and visits, essays from scholars on a wide variety of topics, none of which interested me at the moment, but might on another day.

When I encountered the letters of importance, I knew. Four of them in a now-familiar hand. Three softened by a year’s aging, one crisp as new lettuce. My fingers trembled. My soul rebelled. The day’s triumphs fell to ash. But the
agente confide
inside me nodded.
She told you herself. Gave you the clue. “He is an honorable man. Compassionate. Your evidence cannot be credible. I owe him—”

“You may return to your mother now, damoselle.” I charged down the stair. What did Maura owe Michel de Vernase?

One more question for the housekeeper. Melusina busied herself about the terrace, setting a table for three. “A small inquiry before I go, mistress, a matter of curiosity. Damoselle Maura ney Billard, a good friend of the conte, visited Montclaire in the years before he vanished. She is of small stature, like the contessa and her daughter, but somewhat more . . . womanly . . . with smooth, earth-hued skin. Do you remember her?” This was merely a guess, but I scarce noted anymore whether what fell from my lips was truth or lie.

“Oh, aye, certain I do,” said the serving woman, each word a coin upon my eyelids. “Such a sweet, refined sort of person. Never comfortable in the country, but ’twas only twice or three times she came, all in that last year. She told me once that the conte had saved her life when she was a girl no older than Ani.”

A year ago Anne would have been fifteen or sixteen. The next question popped into my head as if the sky had cracked and revelations come tumbling down like hailstones.

“Melusina, do you think . . . Is it possible Maura ney Billard was the girl who accompanied the woman mage ten years ago?”

The serving woman’s thick hands fell still in the midst of spoons and saltcellars. “I’d never thought of it, but, indeed, such shining hair and skin she had, the color of dark honey. Certain and that would explain why she was familiar with the house and family, though she hadn’t been back here since she was so very ill that same year. . . .”

And though my mouth tasted of ashes, it was not so very difficult to draw out Melusina’s story of how the conte had brought the “pretty, spindly adept” to Montclaire for one night, when she was too ill to remain at Collegia Seravain, some year or so after her initial visit. Michel had whisked her away to relatives the next day, before Melusina could fatten her up with Montclaire’s bounty or provide her gammy’s remedies for the girl’s dulled hair or dry skin or weakness so profound the child could scarce lift her arm.

“Thank you, Melusina.” I could scarce speak for heartsickness. “I believe we are done here. I hope your mistress recovers swiftly. Terrible events, such matters as the king has set me to uncover, touch us all with pain and sorrow.”

All of us. Father Creator, forgive us all.

The woman raised her spread hands in helpless resignation. “I’ll not say I’m sorry to see you go, but the pain and trouble was here long before you. ’Tis the world’s way, not yours. I regret my rudeness this morning.”

Numb and weary, I walked away clutching Maura’s letters, clinging to a scrap of hope that they might exonerate, not condemn. I stopped under the walnut tree and opened them one by one. They had been encoded with an elementary cipher, not magic, easy to read, even without transcription.

AND THE MORE RECENT ONE:

 

 

 

“LADY,” I WHISPERED, “WHAT WERE you thinking to commit such words to paper? Spying on your queen for him? Aiding his plots? Even if he rescued you from bleeding, could you not see he was playing you?”

I found Bernard in the stableyard, told him we would be leaving within the hour, and asked if he had seen the mage.

“He’s up to some of his devilry behind the well house,” rumbled the steward. “When Saint Ianne returns, he’ll banish these demon mages for good. Mayhap he’ll banish you, too, for bringing such a one to this blessed house.”

I offered no apology to Bernard’s righteous fury, but walked the direction his trembling finger pointed, past a well house and into a juniper thicket. If the greatest of the Reborn ever returned to Sabria, I would gladly hand over all matters of justice to him.

The prickly juniper trees stretched across a dry slope before the land dropped away steeply toward the backside of the village. Jacard straddled a narrow footpath, maintaining the required ten paces from Dante. For the first time, the adept’s face held a trace of fear alongside awe. I halted at his side, no longer surprised to view wonders.

The heel of Dante’s ancille rested in a blackened groove in the dry earth. From its white shaft extended a flat film of silver light taller than a man and stretched two metres to either side. The mage shifted the staff along the charred groove, and the film of light shifted with it. When a shift positioned the translucent film across the footpath, a haloed purple shadow hinted at the shape of a person.

“Ah, the lackwit secretary. You’ve joined us just in time to discover that someone has crossed my little barrier here,” said Dante without even a glance over his shoulder. “Were you capable of the simplest disentanglement, Portier—which skill seems to be lacking in all those who study at Seravain—you might discover which of Montclaire’s denizens passed here and when.”

No magical disentangling was required. “Damnable, stupid boy,” I said, cursing idiot children, incautious, duplicitous women, and my own blindness. “He crossed approximately four hours ago, just before the contessa returned to the house.”

Bad enough we’d found implements of transference in the house, but the fool lad had heeded his mother’s direction and left her. No judge in the world would believe she had not sent him running to his father. And his elder sister, who had remonstrated with him at the top of the hill, knew very well what he planned. The fainting spells. Just enough answers. Stupid of me not to see it coming.

“I can’t be sure,” said Dante. “I didn’t have an opportunity to take an . . . impression of the boy.”

“Can you find him?”

“Unfortunately my lack of contact with the lad means I can’t trace him, especially with his four-hour head start on home ground.”

“Then our work here is done,” I said. “I’ll leave word with the guard commander to mount a search for the boy and tighten his watch on the rest of them. We must bring our findings to the king with all haste. Michel de Vernase expressed his intent to take down a ‘highly placed’ man he deemed corrupt, a man close to his family, a man who presents a face of reason and nobility to the world. His daughter, Anne, can testify to it.”

“Remarkable.” Gowned and hooded, Dante remained unreadable, the chill timbre of his voice unchanged. “And the magic?”

“He met Gaetana ten years ago, and was fully aware of her interest in transference. Along with the implements you found and my experience at Eltevire, I say we’ve enough.”

“As you will, then. I’ve no sorrow at putting this idiocy to rest.”

Dante hissed, and the silver film vanished. The spent magic showered me as Heaven’s light.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

11 CINQ 14 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

I
leaned back in the chair, forcing the raw knot that was my gut to relax. “I had to show you first,” I said. “There is no hiding them.” Maura laid the letters on her writing table and folded her hands. Her ringed fingers did not quiver. No tears rolled down the silken cheeks that my own fingers ached to touch. No frantic explanations burst forth, no fractured emotions, no demeaning denials or demands for loyalty. Each instance of her serenity served as an incitement to cherish and admire her. And no matter the preachment of reason, my heart yet did so.