The footman brought Sibylla her aperitif, which she downed in one gulp.
“If you drink like that your cheeks will turn an uglier hue.” Edgar stole a glance at her thumb. A great deal could be gleaned by the age, depth, and quality of the thumb scar; whether, for example, the royal had bound a fresh Straybound or if they kept a long-faithful servant like Dorinda.
“That comb.” Edgar pinched his cigarette.
Looking about the room, Sibylla found the object of his disdain. Lady Brigitte had slipped into the drawing room. Her gown, white lace with daringly wide folds of blue satin, rustled over the crackle of the fireplace, and an ivory comb inlaid with doves corralled her hair into a loose bun. Sibylla would have preferred to spend the evening alone with her mother, speaking Ibnovan and listening to the gossip from Fillsbirth than suffering seven courses of the queen’s dinner evaluations.
“A foreign diplomat gave it to her,” Edgar added. “Only someone raised in Ibnovan excess would think to accept such a thing. I’m glad you didn’t suffer the misfortune of an upbringing abroad.”
Sibylla doubled her efforts at smiling when she wished only to swear at him in Ibnovan. Lady Brigitte’s parents came from the House of Cornin. Amongst the magicked nobility, Lady Brigitte’s position was neither as low as the Viscount of Highspits – Lieutenant Calloway’s father – nor as high as the Duchess of Guset, Edgar’s mother Lady Esther’s title before she married the crown prince. In fact, the Cornin family’s inking magic made them respectable matches for royalty, though a direct marriage into the Muir family had eluded them for several generations.
Prince Henry called Lady Brigitte’s parents travelers by trade. They spent more time in other countries than their own. On one of these holidays they took a house in the Ibnovan capital, where they settled for a decade before returning to Caligo in search of a suitable husband for young Brigitte. The effort had paid off handsomely, as Lady Brigitte’s more pragmatic Ibnovan upbringing allowed her to befriend Prince Henry when other ladies would have turned shyly away.
Sibylla suspected Lady Brigitte’s success at securing a royal union had to do with her tolerance of Prince Henry’s bastard son by a palace maid, but her parents would never share the sordid details of their early courting. As the outcome of their unusual pairing, the queen had insisted early on that Sibylla marry her cousin, to reinforce traditional betrothals.
Before Edgar could offer more unwelcome opinions, the queen mercifully arrived. She surveyed the family like a collie shepherding a flock, searching for sheep that intended to stray – most notably Prince Henry who skulked into the drawing room after her, and Lady Esther who seemed to emerge from the wallpaper in an ill-fitted bodice made of tasseled fringe and over-large buttons.
At the dinner chime, Sibylla straightened her shoulders and the royal family, nine in all, percolated into the Grand Dining Hall behind the queen. The room’s heavy drapes and long table had remained unchanged since Sibylla last took a meal there. She could name each of the portraits, and the china painted with tropical flowers reminded her of family functions. Even the silverware hadn’t lost its luster.
She waited for her grandmother to sit at the table’s head before she seated herself. The queen stared down the line of her relations, her expression full of discrimination. Like most of their family dinners, the courses were served in silent judgment. Crown Prince Elfred drank heavily. Prince Henry set his pocket watch on the table beside his plate and monitored it obsessively. Lady Brigitte, charming and talkative in most settings, took on a muted guise, while Lady Esther and Edgar sprinkled the queen with innocuous conversation.
Sibylla gnashed her teeth through a piece of lettuce in an effort to endure the company of her cousins, Edward and Edmund, seated on her left and right. They whispered behind her like an annoying crosswind. As Edward mouthed something to make Edmund titter, Sibylla set her fork down to prevent stabbing one or both of them.
“You’re looking well, Weed-eyes.” Edward jostled her chair.
“Isn’t she?” Edmund’s chortle rasped in her left ear. “Guess being locked up with a manservant did her nicely.”
“Maybe he undid her buttons for her.”
“Or maybe she undid his.”
“You think she would?”
“I know if I had a fetching warden attending to my every day functions, I definitely would.”
“You, dear sir, could unlace a lady with your hands tied behind your back.”
“Teeth are made for tugging.”
“I thought they were made for biting.”
“Or nibbling. What do you think, Weed-eyes? Which would you like us to do to you?” Edmund winked while licking his upper teeth.
Sibylla pulled her hand back from the butter knife. “You do realize we’re having dinner.”
“Don’t be stiff.”
“Ladies should never be stiff.”
“Although maybe she’d like him stiff.” Edmund pulled his napkin taut.
“All into the conquest, eh?”
“Ladies first and nations second. Poor brother Edgar’s about to lose his eel’s nest.”
“How quick do you think before he spreads her legs?”
They shared another awful snicker.
“No one will be spreading my legs any time soon,” Sibylla spat. She curled her tongue as if to whistle-click when she remembered the rest of her family sitting at the other end of the table. The queen clanked the side of her water goblet. Her cousins snapped their mouths shut. Edward flashed an adorable smile and Edmund blinked innocently.
The queen’s vexation had moved onto Sibylla, and she didn’t know how to be dainty or charming. Instead, she shoved a forkful of butternut squash into her mouth. Even though she was confident she could avoid causing irreparable damage to her cousins, the queen’s eyes narrowed as if waiting to see if she would dare use magic at the table.
When dessert came, she wanted to drown her sorrow in the silky folds of coconut custard. Sibylla hated to admit that sharing supper with Lieutenant Calloway, as he chattered on about sea birds off the coast of Ulmondstedt, had been preferable to the queen’s constant appraisal of her table manners. She finished her bowl before anyone else.
The queen retired for the evening, and Edmund and Edward beat a hasty retreat, murmuring about Dame Angeline’s newest coquette. Crown Prince Elfred wandered off soon after, while Lady Esther and Edgar continued their dinner discussion in the drawing room. Sibylla hurried to the end of the table where Prince Henry stood waiting. Her skirts tangled as she slipped behind a footman, and her father tapped the crown of her head when she stumbled to his side.
She’d waited all day to speak to him – searching the palace, sending coded messages through Lady Brigitte, and enduring dinner with her cousins. Now she fell silent. Unlike Lady Brigitte, Sibylla never knew how to address Prince Henry: Father, sir, or your highness. She awkwardly curtsied.
“No need to rush, Sibet.” Prince Henry brushed lint from his black as steel-spice dinner jacket.
Sibylla tugged his arm. “Didn’t you get word? About the sea shanty.” Her breath caught in her throat.
Prince Henry stroked his chin. “Come along.”
Sibylla followed him out of the Grand Dining Hall, down the corridor to the second wing’s private library. She’d collected her favorite books there over the years. The glossy leather spines bounced candlelight across the room. Her half-brother had once lifted her by the waist so she could hide a bottle of spruce liquor on one of the shelves, behind some Salston plays. Sibylla joined Prince Henry to stand at one of the windows.
“How do they know about Donnellan?” Sibylla exhaled, out of breath. She’d been walking on cracked ice ever since Dorinda came to Helmscliff, and now she rushed to speak. “And since when did the queen decide he was alive? By the Lady’s fins, she actually sent Dorinda to Tyanny Valley, as though I’d merrily give him up to be thrown down the bastards’ well.”
“Do lower your voice Sibet, dear.” Prince He
nry sheepishly tugged on his sleeves. “Several bottles of Blue Ogre and a cauldron of nutmeg soup may have loosened my tongue.” He looked to still be considering whether this made him the guilty party. Sibylla bit back a rebuke. She couldn’t reprimand her father any more than the queen.
Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she considered how to explain the seriousness of the situation. “I believe Dr Lundfrigg has a way to discover whether a person is related to us or not, and you’re not at all worried.”
“A man cannot open a vein and find a long-lost prince. There are limits to science, even for brilliant physicians. I do wonder if you haven’t been reading The Speculum and filling your head with fads and fancies. Besides, the queen has greater concerns with Emperor Timur’s visit. Imagine if he adds another import tax to our cheeses. A spark show won’t end that diplomatic fracas.”
“But–”
Prince Henry put his hand on her head. “Don’t worry, little cuttlefish. I’ll handle the doctor, you handle the queen.”
But Sibylla did worry. Prince Henry made things simple for himself, but they didn’t always remain that way for anyone else.
Long after he retired, Sibylla paced the library, flicking ink-bees into the air. She’d been five the first time she saw Prince Henry place his hand on a young man’s head at the annual Founders’ Banquet for the Donnellan School for boys. Only years later did she understand the relationship when the same young man rescued her after she became lost on a trip to the Caligo docks. In the corner of a gambling den he discovered her sopping with tears and offered her a winkle to stop crying. Once she composed herself, he let her bet the winkle on a game of dice before returning her to the palace.
When Prince Henry returned from Haupentaup he was furious. He knew all about how she’d gone missing, as well as the man who found her. She hadn’t told anyone. Even an eight year-old could tell something was terribly strange, and Prince Henry reluctantly had her kneel beside the fireplace in his apartment and swear to never speak of the young man: her half-brother. Part of her hated Prince Henry for having to keep this secret, but the rest of her felt sorry for them both.
Pulling a ladder to one of the shelves, she climbed to the top. There, her fingers reached behind the collection of Salston’s works – first editions of The Barnmaid of Bareth, The Whipping Mistress of Whipperton, and The Housewench of the Haunted Hearth – until she felt a smooth glass bottle. Apparently, no one else in the palace had a taste for great works of theater. She took the three volumes and liquor back to her bedroom where she threw herself on the bed and reached underneath the mattress. Thankfully, her silver corkscrew was still stuffed between two wooden slats. Uncorking the bottle of decades-old spruce liquor, she swilled it straight from the neck. After two years of tepid teas and lemon water, the heavy spirits were a burning philter in her chest.
Prince Henry may not think his bastard needed swift rescue from the queen, but Sibylla had read enough tragedies to know how illegitimate offspring fared on their own. Propped on her side, she alternated between drinking and flipping through her favorite bits in The Housewench of the Haunted Hearth. An easier solution than installing her half-brother at a foreign embassy might yet present itself.
The sound of shoes in the quiet hallway provoked her to hide the half-empty bottle between the nightstand and the bed for fear the queen might make another unannounced visit. After a knock, Lady Brigitte entered her bedroom. Sibylla’s mother wore a nightgown and her hair hung loose around her neck.
“Aren’t you tired of those books?” Lady Brigitte sat beside Sibylla on the bed.
“You can’t tire of Salston.”
“Seeing as you only mildly annoyed your grandmother, I brought you that little something from my trip to Fillsbirth, as promised.” Lady Brigitte set a brass nautical sundial on the bed. “I know how you love the ocean.”
Sibylla hefted the sundial, delighted by the serious weight of it in the palm of her hand. She loved practical objects crafted with an artistic eye, and the sundial reminded her of all the voyages she might still take in life. If only she could escape her day-to-day obligations. “I’ve been wondering,” she said. “Do you know why the queen is having me participate in place of Edgar at the emperor’s reception ceremony? He should be the one forced to glow for the masses.”
“Why are ladies ever presented? To be seen, of course.” Lady Brigitte took up a lock of Sibylla’s hair and braided it through her fingers. “She’s more willing to woo the emperor than I imagined.” Lady Brigitte’s smile brightened. “You never thought you’d pick your own husband, did you?”
It sunk in all at once: her cousins’ dubious dinner conversation, the preparations around the palace, the queen’s inspection, the seamstress and her swatches, and a Khalishkan delegation set to arrive in two days. She’d been so focused on Dorinda and her own plans for the emperor, she’d overlooked that the queen might have designs on him, too.
“The Emperor of Khalishka can’t possibly look here for a wife.” Sibylla tilted the nautical sundial on its side. “We haven’t married outside Myrcnia in over three centuries. I was sent to Helmscliff for two long years because I wouldn’t agree to Edgar. Now this. She’s mad.”
“You’ve always enjoyed studying statecraft,” Lady Brigitte chided, spying the bottle tucked between the bed and side table. “Your grandmother’s been corresponding for months, planting the seeds of this vibrant scheme. She’s hoping the emperor won’t focus on our uncomfortable alliance with Ulmondstedt when he has such a shiny jewel in front of him.”
“But she’d never allow the marriage.”
“That remains to be seen. Things are rather… tense.”
“Enough to break a bloodline?” Prince Henry was right. The queen did have greater concerns.
Lady Brigitte flexed a finger and painted an ink dot in the air. “Marriage is something all ladies endure. I also thought marrying your father an impossible feat. His reputation for foolheartedness may have been worse than yours, but every branch grows in different directions.” She flicked her hand, and black tendrils spiraled out from the tiny seed of ink. “Besides, I’ve heard the emperor is pleasing on the eyes – once you grow accustomed to the whole foreign look. And he’s young. There will be time for you to take root in his heart.” An ink flower bloomed before Sibylla’s eyes to illustrate her mother’s point.
Sibylla tapped on the compass set beneath the sundial. “Our two nations have so little to do with one another. Not to mention the sentiments within his own country. Khalishkans gather Myrcnian dolls for bonfires, thinking them bewitched.” Marriage seemed like a reach, even more so than an ambassadorial position.
“You’d do well to keep those imaginations to yourself.”
“And if I don’t? I shall be sent packing back to Helmscliff.” She flopped backward onto the bed. “Thank you for attending and goodbye forever.”
“Theatricality can, on the rarest occasions, be quite pretty in a lady, but between a mother and daughter, it is not.”
“As much as Grandmother wants security or a distraction or whatever she is thinking, no one can make a man fall in love.”
Lady Brigitte smoothed Sibylla’s hair. “You’ve read enough books to know not all marriages are about love.”
“The happy ones are.”
“That’s simply what impoverished authors would have you believe.”
“And are you happy with Father?”
“No amount of hysteria will change the next few days. Perhaps the emperor won’t like you. After all, your charms are particular. And if the emperor does like you, would it be such a dire turn of events? Unless you’d like to see Edgar in your bed after all.”
Sibylla didn’t wish to marry Edgar, but she didn’t wish to marry the emperor either. “So I’m to behave.”
“I want you to be smart. I want you to do as you did this morning when your grandmother measured you for dresses, and you bowed and said nothing. There is a time for small rebellions, but now is not on
e of them.” Lady Brigitte touched her daughter’s cheek. “Be who you want afterward.”
Lady Brigitte kissed Sibylla’s brow before leaving. As the door shut behind her, Sibylla propped herself against the headboard. She watched the arrow on the compass wiggle north each time she turned it. She’d always believed she’d marry Edgar, no matter her efforts. If struck by some strange fortune, a Calloway or a Tittlebury. But a betrothal to the Emperor of Khalishka was as impossible as being with her first love.
“Timur.”
Speaking his name aloud made her uncomfortable, as though she’d recited a foreign curse.
“Your imperial majesty.” Better, but not quite right.
Sibylla huffed, exchanging the nautical sundial for the half-empty bottle of spruce liquor. In little more than a day, this Khalishkan emperor would arrive with his company of guards and advisors. She hadn’t any idea of how to protect Myrcnia. If the queen was depending on her to distract him, then she’d sorely misjudged her granddaughter’s inherent charm. Still, if the queen assumed Sibylla was actively courting the emperor, she could follow her own plan with regards to the royal bastard. Winning over Timur might provide her the ally necessary to thwart the queen. Through guile or luck, she’d do everything she could to gain a foreign embassy in which to safely hide her half-brother.
17
The following afternoon, Sibylla wandered the gardens while the household prepared for the emperor’s forthcoming arrival. All her attempts to subdue her anxiety over the next day’s festivities – reading Salston, inking fancy calling cards, stuffing olives in her cheeks – had failed. And now that Lady Brigitte had unveiled the queen’s idea of foreign diplomacy, Sibylla had more to consider than securing an embassy and protecting her brother: might she break marriage traditions older than Queen Mildred?
The only calm she felt was in learning the Greyanchor Strangler had been caught, and without her personal intervention. She’d have liked to contribute something toward his apprehension, but at least Mabel’s shopgirl friend would soon satisfy herself by spitting upon his visage.
The Resurrectionist of Caligo Page 17
