The Spirit Lens (55 page)

She drew her folded hands to her chin. “When the king sent my poor lady to the Spindle, I knew everything had gone wrong. I hoped, naturally. I’ve lived a year on faith alone—perhaps misplaced, as you assume—though I will not believe that until Michel himself tells me. But I am prepared to answer everything raised by these letters.”

Three-quarters of an hour had elapsed since my arrival at Castelle Escalon—much of that waiting until a break in the flow of Maura’s supplicants allowed me into her presence to lay out the questions she must prepare to face. Surely by now the king would know I was returned. Our remaining time could be measured in minutes, not hours.

“You should not have risked coming here. Saint’s mercy, Portier, you look so tired, so . . . harrowed. Bless you for your care.”

“What blessing do I deserve? All the way from Vernase, I tried to imagine some way to spirit you to safety, some way to discover the entirety of truth. I’ve no confidence the king will even listen to your explanations. But I swear to you, I will do everything—”

“No oaths, Portier. Once you hear what little I have to offer in the way of explanation, at best you’ll think me the world’s most pitiful gull. But you must understand: In one moment, I was facing Gaetana’s lancet four times in a day, certain I would die soulless before I turned sixteen. In the next moment, this great, strong, handsome man told me not to be afraid anymore, and he carried me off to his home and then to a friend’s haven by the sea, where I learned to eat and drink and smile again. Were he to walk in here at this moment and say,
Little girl, kiss your headsman for me
, I would do it gladly. Ten years ago, Michel de Vernase bought my soul and gave it back to me. He just—he never told me what he paid for it.”

Easy to understand the price: Michel had kept silent about an incident of transference—a mortal crime in Sabria. My fear was what the world might now pay for his silence. Saints sustain me, I held no blame to Maura. Despair was a disease that blighted reason. Yet I remained an
agente confide
, and thus had to ask, “When did you last receive orders from the conte?”

“Not since the fire on the
Swan
. This fourth letter answered his last. When I received no response, I—” She had begun to doubt, no matter what she said now. I had visited her office in those days, when we both heard the cries of the dead so distinctly in the night. “I waited, hoping for understanding, but none came. So I sent no more reports.”

She rose, came round the table, and kissed me on the forehead, suffusing me in her sweetness. Clasping my cold hand in her warm one, she drew me up and into a corner of her chamber. A key on her belt ring opened a narrow door to a servant’s passage. “None must see the kindest man in all the world leaving Damoselle Maura’s den. Go, dear Portier, and do your duty by our king.”

Leaving was not so simple. I kissed her quiet hands and stroked her shining hair, cherishing the weight of her head on my shoulder. “This is not over until I say. Remember that, dearest lady, whatever comes.”

 

 

I MEANDERED THROUGH THE DARKENING maze, reviewing the long afternoon spent with Philippe, trying to capture what details I might have left out of my report, or where I could have said this or that to be more persuasive, or how, in the Creator’s wide universe, I was to move forward. Night was creeping into the world again, and body and mind craved sleep. But it seemed like such a waste of precious hours.

Maura’s flimsy explanations had indeed failed to satisfy an angry king. Her implicit trust in Michel’s unexplained plan to expose the assassins, including, at the least Mage Gaetana, appeared ingenuous. Her unquestioning compliance with orders she swore were scripted in Michel’s hand, and dispatched in letters sealed with his signet—and conveniently burnt once she’d read them—displayed an unbelievable naivete. Philippe had declared her life forfeit.

Oh, he had listened to my arguments, agreed that we had evidence yet to hear, and expressed sympathy with her experience of despair and my own, offered to explain Maura’s unshakable devotion. He did not deny that Maura’s faith in Michel de Vernase mirrored his own. But he refused to reconsider his judgment, save in the timing of its inevitable conclusion.

“She has betrayed her queen, and by her own admission, her actions aided those who tortured a child in the royal crypt and set murderous fire to the
Swan
. Her faith cannot matter. If Michel issued the orders she so blindly obeyed, he will die with her.”

The mustachioed Captain de Segur had marched Maura through the crowds of shocked courtiers, her capable hands bound at her back. From the window gallery, I had watched the shallop bear her across the golden thread of the Ley and through the iron water gates to join her queen in the Spindle. The desolate image was scored into my heart.

No wild-eyed feat of arms or magic was going to free her. My only weapon was reason. And so I paced the garden maze, yanking my hair and clawing my arms to drive exhaustion away.
Think, Portier. The Spindle gates are warded by old magic not even its keepers can counter. . . .

As I rounded a thick wall of gorse and flowering broom, a raven fluttered the branches. Moments later, when hands gripped my shoulders and shoved me into the vine-covered bricks, I recognized the intruder as no bird, but a very tall, very strong, and very angry Ilario, draped in a black cloak.

“You sliming weasel! You scheming toad! How in the name of mercy could you persuade him to leave Geni in that place when she is
innocent
?” He wrenched me up from where I’d fallen and shoved me backward again, this time into a tangle of thorns. “I should wring your scrawny neck, but that would be too kind. By all the Saints Awaiting, I’ll see your bowels cut out and burnt do you not go right back and tell Philippe you have no
plan
that requires my sister to stay there another moment. Prisoning will
kill
her.”

Without regard to ripped skin or ruined garments, accompanied by a continuum of invective I had not imagined he knew, the chevalier hauled me up from wherever he’d last sent me and shoved me down again, tumbling me head over heels, tangling me in creeping vines, tree limbs, and thorny branches, rendering me incapable of protecting myself, much less providing any sensible answer.

“The
king’s
idea,” I babbled, “his counselors . . . subjects rabid for justice . . .”
Lord, I understand your anger . . . . It was the only way.

He batted my hands away whenever I fought to prevent the next uncomfortable segment of my journey through the maze. “To think I had begun to believe you a Saint Reborn. Do you know the Two Invariant Signs?” Another shove. “Refusal to die without meaningful purpose. Inerrant perception of righteousness.” And another. “Twice you survived what would have killed any other—on the
Swan
, at Eltevire—and I’ve never known a man whose honor and compassion grew so much from his bones. But, of course, I
am
a fool.”

When my head, still tender from my battering in Eltevire, encountered a much too solid tree trunk, livid lights and unreadable runes swirled behind my eyes. My knees lost all cohesion, and a whimsy stung my thoughts like an angry wasp. Dante . . . everyone would blame Dante for this. When my lifeless body was found, not the finest
agente confide
in Sabria would imagine Ilario de Sylvae had slain me. Me, a Saint Reborn. A most unlikely sensation burbled through my gut, climbing upward until it burst forth, sounding less like wild hilarity than a croaking screech.

The powerful hands gripped yet again and dragged me upright, but only shook me rather than sending me flying. “Blazes, Portier. Are you dead?”

My hands clutched my splitting head. Hilarity faded. “The queen’s only held till Edmond’s return,” I rasped, once he’d let me slump to an earth that wobbled unnervingly.

My stomach heaved bile, and a fit of coughing threatened to finish what Ilario’s hand had begun. But he forced a dribble from his silver flask down my throat. Valerian could set a legion puking.

“Try again,” he snapped, out of sympathy once the fit was eased. “Why is my sister yet confined when I hear you’ve brought letters that exonerate her? Her husband refused to address his decisions, and as the royal ass was about to tear down his own palace with his teeth, I chose to go to the source of the confusion. What have you told him, you pigeon-livered stick?”

“Let me tell you what I learned at Vernase,” I said, between hawking attempts to clear the nasty taste from my mouth. “Ten years ago, Michel de Vernase made a bargain with Gaetana to stop leeching a young girl. We don’t know the terms, or whether that was when he first became intrigued by the power of transference. . . .”

By the time I arrived at Maura’s letters, Ilario had settled on the ground beside me. Every time I paused in my recitation, he revisited his litany of swearing.

“Even the leeching tools did not seal his belief about Michel,” I said, Philippe’s stubbornness maddening me yet again. “He demands more evidence. Yet his heart also demands he free your sister, lord. You know it does. The root of his rage is this dissonance between duty to Sabria and his love and fear for his wife. He believes he must produce the true criminal before he sets her free. If he cannot relieve the suspicions of his counselors and reassure his subjects that this woman is worthy of his love and theirs, whether or not she can bear him an heir, then his reign is cracked—perhaps the very breach these purveyors of chaos desire. Jousting for position will replace scholarly concords. Demesne wars and assassinations will replace exploration for new trade routes. News of Gaetana’s execution has already spread like plague. Without confirmation that she was truly rogue, fear and defensive maneuvering will grow between blood and nonblood families. And in whatever case, he must demonstrate his commitment to justice without prejudice of rank. So he leaves his wife imprisoned. He orders Michel’s arrest. And he waits fourteen days for Edmond de Roble to bring him Michel’s evidence, praying it will solve the mystery, exonerating both of those he loves.”

“And if it does not?”

Such was the likely outcome. “He’ll not leave her there an hour more than necessary. Think, lord—if he proclaims Queen Eugenie’s innocence today, he must reveal the letters, one of the few cards in his hand that Michel cannot suspect he has.”

Ilario scraped his fingers through his hair. “She’ll die in the Spindle, Portier. They allow only one family member to visit her, and Antonia has precedence, naturally. Antonia is good-hearted, but she talks of nothing but the way the world should be ordered, and she’s never understood Geni. As a child, my sister brought nothing but delight to everyone around her. Now she believes she is Death’s handmaiden. If she hears that Maura has betrayed her . . . another friend dead . . .”

“Maura lives until the matter of Michel is decided,” I said. “Philippe recognizes that he needs her testimony, no matter whether Michel or someone else is guilty.”

“Sweet angels, Maura a traitor.” Ilario’s shudder rattled the dark. “She’s always treated me equably, never whispered behind my back, never gained advantage at my expense, and I can tell you that is rare enough in this court. But to deliver those vile banners to the
Swan. . . .”

“She had them made months ago and stored them in the temple, as one of Michel’s letters ordered her to do. The phosphorus was certainly added in that time, no doubt along with some clue that would link them to Ophelie, and ultimately, through Maura, to your sister. On the morning of the launch, Maura merely had them collected and delivered to the barge.”

“What a demon-blasted confusion.” Ilario sighed. “I’d likely serve as dupe for anyone who rescued
me
from soul death.”

“As would I,” I said, glancing at him sidewise. “Though I might ask my own brave rescuer yet two more favors.”

A stillness enfolded Ilario like his black cloak. Had he even realized how thin his mask had become in the last hour? “And what would those be?”

“You must convince Philippe to proceed with your Grand Exposition—and to expose himself to the crowd by his attendance. Prince Desmond’s deathday has been somehow significant to the conspirators. Perhaps merely to lay suspicion at the queen’s feet. But Michel has purposefully set Edmond’s return for that day. If we can lure the villain into some move while the queen is yet imprisoned, we’ve put a public face on her claim of innocence, while at the same time granting ourselves an opportunity to catch the real criminals as they act. If the villains don’t play, we’ve lost nothing.”

“And the second favor?”

“Once we’ve set the exposition arrangements in motion, Lady Antonia needs must fall ill or be otherwise incapable of visiting the queen, so that you can get me inside the Spindle.”

Ilario puffed and spluttered. “Saints Awaiting, Portier, I didn’t hurt you all that awfully! If Philippe doesn’t chew my bones to rags, my foster mother surely will.”

 

 

ILARIO, AS IN EVERY TASK I had set him and so many I hadn’t, proved faithful. On the morning after Maura’s arrest, Philippe issued a proclamation that Ilario de Sylvae’s Grand Exposition of Natural Sciences and Magical Phenomena Honoring Prince Desmond’s Deathday had his blessing to go forward.