Roger found the messenger studying an unlit cigar in the courtyard. He marched up and offered the envelope, but as the messenger reached for it, Roger wrenched off the man’s dust mask and goggles.
“Harrod.” Roger spat at the ground. “I thought it were you. You never told me you’d gotten the Order of the Kraken. And I thought you insufferable before, with your fancy schooling and navy togs. But now you’re an even more arrogant twit.”
“You never asked. Brother.”
“And I bowed to you. Twice!”
“You’ll bow again. When I leave.”
“I won’t make that mistake again.”
Harrod crossed his arms. “I had hoped on my return to find you’d overcome your youthful folly. You could have had a life of service, military or otherwise. Service of the domestic sort was good enough for our mother. And your father.” His voice had lost its previous hoarseness. He must have disguised it on purpose. “But you, Roger, respect nothing. Not laws, nor etiquette, nor your betters. And, I see, not even the sanctity of the dead goes undefiled at your hands. My own brother turns out to be a bodysnatcher and butcher of human flesh!”
Harrod had never said so many words to Roger at once. He’d been away since Roger was a boy, and the seven years between them in age made for awkward interactions during Harrod’s rare shore leave. Once, as a midshipman, Harrod had taken him for a row on the Mudtyne, hoping to entice him into the sailors’ life. But Roger, ten at the time, had turned green almost immediately and been sick all over himself. Harrod, always efficient, tossed him overboard for “disrespecting the ship.” Though he’d quickly hauled him up again, Roger refused to speak to his brother for the rest of his shore leave and hadn’t set foot on a boat since.
“I’m not–” Roger began, but his brother cut him off.
“You could have started off as I did, in the lowly yet respectable role of quarter-gunner.”
“Easily done when you’re the bastard son of a toff and learned to talk all posh-like at Donnellan.” Roger’s father certainly couldn’t afford such schooling.
“You might still make a decent footman, if you watch your tongue. I did my duty at sea, earned a commission, honors, a ship, and lately a much sought-after post alongside royalty.” Harrod’s lip curled. “And now I’ve returned to Caligo for the present, as naval liaison to the Ordnance Board. Good things come to those who know their place.”
Roger had stopped listening halfway through Harrod’s speech. “To think, all this time I thought you was off pickling yourself in the briny deeps. How long have you been working for Sibet? You’re her lettercarrier now? What kind of navy post is that?”
“Sibet? You still presume to address her highness by a nickname?” Harrod shook his head disapprovingly.
Roger gripped his letter so hard it crinkled. “I suppose your high opinion of me matches hers. Scrape me off your shoe with a stick, why don’t you?”
“You speak of her highness as if you considered yourself her peer.” Harrod expelled this last word like a bit of gristle. “A pity, that. I’d hoped to find you… contrite. I thought her letter might make you reconsider your future. It wasn’t easy, but I’ve arranged a footman’s position for you in a respectable household. You’ll have room, board, and work better suited to your–”
“These class differences you harp upon ain’t real!” Roger shouted. “No human is better than another. I’ve cut up enough of ’em, and we all look more or less the same on the inside. We all rot when we’re dead. A smart man may have a small brain, or the other way ’round. Royals claim their faerie magic, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. I grovel only so I don’t hang. Enjoy your golden chains and your charmed life, and leave me alone.”
“Look at yourself, Roger,” barked Harrod. “Your hands are stained with blood. You have Lady-knows-what all over your shirt. And do I smell gin on your breath? Have you bathed in a fortnight? If our mother were alive, you’d have killed her seven times over.”
“And maybe if I’d had surgeon’s training back then, she never would have died. My last shelling paid for the physician who arrived too late to treat her consumption, though he did all he could. If anyone killed her it was you, for having a jolly time at sea during her final weeks, though I must have sent a dozen letters. I fixed her tea, and plumped her pillows, and wiped the blood from her chin. You only paid for the funeral.”
Harrod’s expression softened, and his tone became that of an adult explaining to a child why treacle pudding was to be eaten only after supper. “And now that I’m stationed in Caligo, Roger, I mean to intercede as our mother would have wished. I want to help you divert your many energies toward a more… socially respectable end. But you are far beyond help. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in coming here.”
“Says the high and mighty postman.” Roger’s hands had curled into fists. Now his eyes, to his profound horror, blurred with tears. “I could just hit you.”
“Remember what happened last time. When you were, what, fifteen?” Harrod tapped his medal. “May I suggest you see me off with a bow instead? It’s for your own good.”
Roger swung. He’d built up his arms during his midnight cemetery raids and had confidence in his own strength. He should have knocked Harrod’s mouth clean of teeth, but his brother dodged nimbly aside. Harrod grabbed Roger by the collar and retaliated with a cross-jab of his own. His knuckles struck below Roger’s left eye. Sparks burst across his vision. He fought to keep his balance, but Harrod swept his legs out from under him with a well-timed kick. He slammed Roger facedown on the ground and held him there.
“Don’t tell her about this,” Roger gasped when he could breathe again. “Please.”
“Give me the letter.”
Roger blinked. The letter lay between the ground and his face. His hat, now dented, had rolled to one side. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the paper.
“No. I need to rewrite it…”
“Absolutely not. I’m not waiting another two hours for you to decide which end of the pen to dip into the ink.” Harrod snatched up the letter. With a grimace, he tucked it inside his leather satchel.
“I won’t bow.”
Harrod glanced down his nose at Roger. “As long as you’re down there, it’s close enough for me.”
4
Your Most Royal Highness,
Were I a gentleman, Id have returned your letter unread. You called me that dire nickname from long ago. It would take both my hands to count the years since I were a scruffy lad with a headcold. But I were just one of many running about Malmouth Palace, and Im certain all us sickly lads got struck with your same insults, and your kisses, like we was one and the same. Could you even pick out my face from the others after all this time?
I laugh at your suggestion that I had aught to do with a Mistress Dorinda Deer. If you was of lower birth, Id think you was jealous. Werent she the queens almighty maid back then? All I know is I only spoke to her when she had me take washing to the line. Has boredom driven you to fits?
Yes, I am a Professional now, and my own man. Through my medical work I lay eyes and hands on all matter of Curious, Morbid things. This week a woman who suffered premature burial lay upon our hospital slab. Some poor Miss Smith she were, and had a most unhappy look about her as I dare not further describe to a lady. But imagine the thoughts one would have upon waking in a dark box, ones friends and family thinking one dead! Her face looked somewhat like that Dorinda you seem so jealous of.
Pray tell, your Majesticness, is my own brother Harrod back in Caligo for good? I saw him last eight years ago. He were always the lapdog around you royal lot. A decade at sea has made him a right pickled pilchard. Still after me to take a job licking some toff’s boots, I expect. If he returns with a plum eye and no teeth, it were me. I shall take the hangmans noose afore I let him run my life.
My hand hurts from this awful writing. Beg pardon if I havent kept in touch, Your Imenint Majesty, as my betters wont allow it. Mayhap your not as priggish as you pre
tend. Id have visited, but theyd bash my head in even if I wore clean socks. By the sound of it, you would, too. Please accept the enclosed token as befits your Generous Condescension.
Your most Humble and Obedient Servant,
Roger X. Weathersby, a Man of Science
Harrod. Sibylla took a deep breath to calm herself as she set her empty teacup aside. She’d thrown that letter she’d inked to Roger into the fire. Somehow the captain had rescued and delivered it, crumpled like rubbish as it had been.
She flipped over Roger’s reply. She didn’t want to see any more of it. Reading his handwriting felt like divining wax drippings. She’d expected his penmanship to improve after so many years. It hadn’t. Harrod had always warned her if she ever sought Roger again she’d soon regret her sentimentality, and oh, how he loved a good object lesson.
Whether she liked it or not, Roger had turned into one of the most ostentatious writers she’d ever had the displeasure to come across, as in love with his own words as he was with his transgressions. Sighing, she flexed her fingers. Black ink-bees flew from her fingertips, a habit of idle pondering, weaving through the air like insects until her mind wandered and they diffused in inky puffs.
Her other hand fiddled with the pin he’d sent, a peach-blossom hatpin she knew from somewhere. Perhaps she’d seen it on a baronetess, or in a shop. As she tried to recall the memory, another bee took flight, and then another, creating a swarm that threatened to engulf the room. Just then, a cluster of bees careened into the windowpane, leaving a slur of ink that reminded Sibylla of a scene in The Reluctant Milliner where the titular character was tarred and feathered on stage.
As a child, she’d attended a holiday production of that black-hearted comedy where a then-ingénue Angeline had performed as Madam Barstowe. The hatpin was a piece of her costume. Sibylla studied it up close when her mother took her to meet the actors backstage. Now the self-styled Dame Angeline had a different reputation. She was as well known for her charities as for her salon, where she played matchmaker between lonely noblemen and her curated collection of beautiful yet desperate young women. Sibylla dropped the pin onto the table, and the bees above her left hand scattered and dispersed into the air.
Why had Roger sent her such a thing, and how should she respond? In a fit of bitterness, Sibylla smashed the teacup on the table. The porcelain shattered, and a sliver of blood appeared on her thumb where a piece had nicked her skin.
Lieutenant Calloway, always a breath outside her door, burst into her room. His cheery eyes narrowed on the broken teacup as Sibylla shifted her skirts to hide the pin.
“My dear highness, you mustn’t budge.” Lieutenant Calloway dashed across the room and swept up the broken teacup with meticulous speed.
Unlike Harrod, who addressed her out of an ingrained respect for formality, Lieutenant Calloway relished her title like a sugar cube melting on his tongue. As sixth in line to inherit the crown, Sibylla had grown accustomed to the phrase “your highness,” her title a cold barrier to the people and things she wanted. She’d had the unique pleasure of forgetting she was the daughter of a duke while at Helmscliff – until this lieutenant had arrived to remind her in the most irritating manner.
After he’d wrapped the teacup shards in his handkerchief, Lieutenant Calloway reached for Sibylla’s hands to check for cuts. Fearful of the fuss he’d make over a mere nick, she hastily retreated her hands to her lap. His cheeks blushed in response. Perhaps he mistook her reaction for coquetry.
“The teacup slipped,” she explained.
“Your highness must feel nervous.”
“Why would I be nervous?” Sibylla checked whether, if by some mishap of her mind, she’d left Roger’s letter in plain sight. Slowly, she released a relieved breath. The correspondence lay hidden beneath a stack of music sheets for the concertina.
“I know of no respectable gentleman or lady who enjoys the company of doctors,” said Lieutenant Calloway matter-of-factly. “And with the new royal physician visiting tomorrow, you must be in a state.”
Sibylla’s brow crinkled. “I wasn’t aware of a new royal physician.”
Lieutenant Calloway beamed. He loved to gossip, but Helmscliff provided him few opportunities. Lady Wayfeather was of no interest to him and most of the soldiers stationed at the estate were on the verge of retirement. That left only the footmen, housemaids, and chef, each as dull to him as a Glaskin Street clockmaker.
“Apparently, during her royal majesty the queen’s royal tour of the sloping moors, she suffered a terrible malady, and this country doctor saved her life. However, no one seems to be able to account for his family or place of birth. I assure you I would never be so presumptuous as to question her royal majesty, but to knight a man of such profession, and from such low stock…” Lieutenant Calloway clucked and shook his head disapprovingly, then added, “If it were within my power, I wouldn’t allow him within a breath of you.”
“I imagine it would be difficult to treat one’s patients without seeing them.”
Sibylla tugged her sleeve’s carnation ruffle. True to his word, Lieutenant Calloway had “rectified” her wardrobe by replacing her charcoal and brown dresses with enough frilly, pastel frocks that she couldn’t look at a macaron without shuddering. At least today, the numerous folds of her sugary gown were useful in hiding a certain insulting hatpin.
Sibylla glanced at the lieutenant. If he wanted to continue idling here, he could at least assuage her curiosity over how Roger might have come to possess Angeline’s costume trinket. “Have you ever been to Dame Angeline’s salon?” she asked.
Lieutenant Calloway sucked in his breath. “Some gentlemen might enjoy the company of a questionable lady from time to time, but I would never attend that kind of salon. I’ve heard, of course, that nothing too shameful happens there, and you shouldn’t worry over any comparisons.”
“Comparisons?”
“I mean to say comparisons between a proper lady and one who might be found in such a place. You’re more beautiful than even the least clothed of women. While they may be of measured caliber, they are not noble-blooded, like you and I.”
“You said you’d never been there,” Sibylla reminded him. “Do you know whether Dame Angeline still wears her old theater costumes? I remember she had a certain floral hatpin that was quite exquisite. I may have noticed someone carrying it recently and wondered whether she gave such trinkets to all her admirers these days.”
Lieutenant Calloway fidgeted and averted his eyes. “Her salon’s ladies have been known to give certain hatpins as promise gifts to handsome men who win their hearts, but such pins are hardly awarded to any old jacksnipe. However if you’ve happened to glimpse a few, say, tucked inside a distinguished gentleman’s upturned hat, there’s no need to be concerned. Many loves are one-sided, so rest assured your highness, that simply because a man collects such pins, it doesn’t mean his heart is taken.”
“So these pins are produced en masse, and men who frequent Dame Angeline’s establishment are known to collect them.” Sibylla continued to fuss with her sleeve. She didn’t know whether to feel better or worse that Roger had given her a common trinket. “Wouldn’t a man who visits need to be wealthy?”
“Considerably so. Only the best gentlemen are allowed through that salon’s front door. People of means. People of birth.”
“Or at least people who can talk their way in.” Roger had always been able to talk his way into her room, and apparently plenty of others. Inwardly she fumed. If he intended to crow about his conquests by attaching a disreputable pin to his letter, then he was a bigger fool than she remembered. An object lesson indeed.
“Even then, one would have to show considerable charm to receive such a gift.” Lieutenant Calloway smoothed the ends of his mustache. “Should I take it jewels are the way to your highness’ heart?”
Sibylla sighed, but cut off a sharp retort. The lieutenant might be annoying, but aside from Lady Wayfeather, no one at Helmscliff said more than
“yes, ma’am” or “no, ma’am” to her. At least Lieutenant Calloway provided her a connection to the city she missed – lurid tales of the Greyanchor Strangler’s latest victim, descriptions of the plaid bonnets popular in the capital, the latest beau of Earl Granden’s winsome niece. And for that, she could swallow some bitter tea.
“I prefer sweets actually. Didn’t you say the latest Greyanchor victim was a purveyor of chocolates?”
Lieutenant Calloway’s eyes brightened at the chance to relay some scandal. “I heard the man had one hand about her throat with the other stuffed in a box of truffles.”
“One wonders, then,” Sibylla mused, “why the constables haven’t caught him in the act.”
If she’d been in the city, she’d have arranged a reward for information leading to this monster’s capture. With access to the palace’s paper stores, she’d ink posters warning women to lock their doors and kick suspicious strangers in the shin. After all, her inking magic and skill at reproductions rivaled a printing press. She might even convince the queen she had more to offer Myrcnia than becoming her cousin’s wife.
Later that night, she sat on the edge of her bed, Roger’s letter in hand. The candlewick had long since burnt out, and now she had no light save her own. As she concentrated, prickles of energy flickered through her, turning her fair skin a translucent blue. Her veins bled a purple-violet glow, and her hair and eyelashes turned white. Every part of her radiated like a human jellyfish.
Sibylla’s glow, shared by her father, grandmother, and greatgrandfather, had been part of the royal family bloodline since Saint-Queen Ingrid. After a snowstorm stranded an expedition of miners in the mountain pass between Myrcnia and neighboring Haupentaup, Queen Ingrid alone rode into the night to find them, radiating light from her veins, and thus earned the title of Saint-Queen. Sibylla stared at her own purple-violet glow. She’d done nothing more heroic than light her way to the palace kitchens without wasting a candle.
The Resurrectionist of Caligo Page 4
