Dinner was finally served in the library. Bayne came down from his room, his face a bit less stormier than earlier. Truffler emerged from Syrus’s workshop, his hairy hands dirtier than Vespa would have liked.
Syrus, on the other hand, was so clean, he almost shone. Two baths in one day was a record for him. He had washed his hair again, for it hung to his shoulders in long, raven ropes. Vespa was surprised at the realization that in just a year he’d become a young man.
He still wasn’t the most polite eater, though. He slurped rice, greens, and mutton from his bowl with Tinker eating sticks so loudly that the noise echoed in the library. Vespa had tried to learn to use the eating sticks but found them nearly impossible. She’d dropped everything as soon as she’d managed to pick it up.
“What?” Syrus asked when he noticed Vespa staring at him.
“You’re a bit noisy.”
Evidently she wasn’t the only one who thought so, because Piskel floated in from the parlor, rubbing his eyes and grumbling. He plunked down on the table and fished a grain of rice out of Syrus’s bowl, shoving it in his mouth with an expression of utter annoyance.
Vespa ignored Bayne’s half smile as he pushed his mutton around with his fork.
“Just my way of complimenting the chef.” Syrus smiled and slurped some more. “But if you don’t want to hear it, talk. What happened at the meeting?”
Vespa was about to speak when Bayne said, “My erstwhile family have invited the Empress to join them in Scientia. They say there are urgent matters to discuss that can only be done in person.”
“Why didn’t they come here?” Syrus asked.
“Well, in point of fact, they did. They sent their envoy with gifts and an invitation. It would have been rude to just appear.”
“But Olivia has written to them many times inviting them to visit, and each time has received no word,” Vespa said. “They’ve known the invitation has been open for at least a year.”
“Perhaps those letters never reached them.”
“Wouldn’t there have been news of a lost courier, though?”
Syrus coughed softly into his sleeve.
“It’s likely a way of sparing the Empress embarrassment. She can barely lodge her staff and the envoy’s entourage as it is. A full contingent from Scientia would overwhelm her. This is a matter of etiquette.”
Bayne’s voice was taking on that entrenched, level tone that Vespa dreaded. But she couldn’t just let this go. The safety of the Empress and all they’d fought for might rest in the balance if Olivia went to Scientia.
“I still think it’s a trap,” Vespa said. “Especially considering what we saw this morning. It seems far too much of a coincidence, if you ask me.”
“I know. I’ll concede it’s possible. But after a year’s silence and no aggression from Scientia, I highly doubt that’s likely.”
Syrus quietly set the golden egg on the table. The Phoenix unfolded itself and glared at them with topaz eyes. Vespa remembered the envoy giving it to Olivia as a gift. She was still perplexed by the fact that it worked without magic and seemingly without recognizable gears.
She could see that Piskel was puzzled as well. He marched over with one of Syrus’s toothpicks under his tiny arm to where the Phoenix sat. The Phoenix snapped at him when he tried to approach it. Piskel jabbed at it, poking it beneath one of its wings.
“Piskel!” Vespa reached to scoop him off the table.
But Bayne held up his hand. For the Phoenix, instead of snapping at the sylph again, reached under its wing, where an apparently secret compartment had slid open. It withdrew a small scroll of paper and threw it on the table. Then it folded back into itself, a lifeless egg once again.
Bayne reached across and unrolled the paper.
Written across it in neat letters was a long series of zeros and ones that seemed to stretch forever.
CHAPTER 7
Bayne whistles long and low.
Vespa frowns. “What is it?”
“If I’m not mistaken, that is the sacred language of Saint Boole,” Bayne said.
“Saint Boole, who revealed the Doctrine of Logic?” Vespa asked.
“The same.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what you two are talking about.”
Bayne spreads the paper in front of me. “These groups of ones and zeros mean something in the language of Logic and Mathematics.”
“It’s a code,” I say.
“Yes. Someone is trying to send us a secret message.”
“The Empress must be told of this,” I say, rising from my rickety stool. I lean forward to scoop the egg and the scroll off the table, but Bayne stops me.
“Leave it here, if you please. I’d like to examine it further. Perhaps there are other compartments with more hints as to this note’s origin. We may even be able to detect who wrote it.” He glances sidelong at Vespa in challenge, and she raises her chin a bit. There will be a competition when I leave.
“Hao hao,” I say.
Piskel refuses to go along this time, yawning and crawling into his little basket without so much as a “good night.” I would go as a hound, but the embarrassing circumstances it leaves me in after transformation are less than desirable for talking to an Empress. So I run. Back through the dusk, with Truffler at my heels. As long as we won’t be touching iron, he’s fine with a bit of night air.
When I arrive at the warehouse, the guards recognize me, but they still cross pikes over the front door.
I pretend I’m Bayne with all his lordly ways. “I’m here to see Her Majesty on a most urgent matter!” Perhaps if I’m more businesslike, they won’t question further.
And they don’t.
They nod and slide the pikes aside. A satyr chamberlain leads me up to the Empress’s receiving room, the one we saw her in just yesterday. It’s chilly in here, and I feel chagrined. I need to get that boiler up and running.
When the Empress enters accompanied by one of her maids, I have the distinct feeling that she had already been undressed for the night. Her hair, usually pinned up in some fashion, is down across her shoulders. Her gown is very simple—at first I think it’s a nightgown—and she walks without the stiffness of a woman in stays.
She notices me watching her. “It’s a new fashion I’m trying, do you like it?”
I blush. “I suppose so, Your Majesty.” I don’t know what to say. All the girls in the Forest wore patched skirts and checkered headbands, the symbols of their clans. The old ladies wore hats with the white chicken feather to symbolize the day we escaped marauding shadowspiders, because of the white rooster who crowed at dawn. Our women have been wearing that without variation since we can remember. I do not understand this thing called fashion.
She purses her lips, and I have a feeling I was meant to say something else. “I would guess you didn’t return here for viewing gowns, though. What’s so urgent, Mr. Reed?”
I tell her about the note that Piskel found.
“May I see it?”
“Vespa and Bayne wanted to try to find out more about its origins, but they thought you should know immediately.”
She begins to pace, the white gown swirling around her like moonlight on leaves. Perhaps I do care a little for fashion after all. She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, and I’m unsure whether she even remembers I’m here.
Then she turns to me, her gaze deadlier than any of my darts. “I’m going back with you.”
“But Majesty . . .” I can’t tell her what I want to say. That there may be dangerous xiren walking our streets even now. Bayne forbade me to mention it, and I must hold to that. Perhaps I can convince him to tell her the truth once she’s in the townhouse.
Under that gaze I fall silent. Truffler clutches my trouser leg.
“I’m going along, Mr. Reed. I need to see this for myself.” After a breath she asks, “May I call you Syrus?”
You may call me anything you like, I want to say. But I nod instead.
She comes closer. There
is again that light, clean, almost metallic scent. She smiles and says, “And you may call me Olivia when we are alone like this.”
When we are alone like this. It echoes in my head until I can feel it radiating out through the blush in my cheeks. Will we be alone like this often? It is only for her to say.
She seems to be waiting for me to say something.
“Thank you, M—Olivia.”
The smile lights her eyes as she nods. “I’ll just get them to fetch my cloak and alert the guard to escort us,” she says. “Meet me by the doors.”
A contingent of faun sentries escorts us from the building. I’m glad of them. Even if I can’t tell her why.
It’s full night. The moon is obscured by webs of cloud, and a stiff breeze nearly puts out the torches the guards are carrying in addition to their pikes. I turn to the Empress and almost tell her to go back inside, so filled am I with foreboding, but she has already gestured the guard forward.
Truffler is clutching my trouser leg again and muttering. “All will be well,” I say, but it really comes out as more of a question than a statement.
He looks up at me, and I don’t like the fear in his eyes.
It’s when we turn down an alley not far from the townhouse that I know something is very wrong. The moon disappears entirely. A nasty, skipping breeze blows out all the torches. The fauns sense the same wrongness I do, and the Captain calls for them to drop torches and ready pikes. Olivia looks over at me, and her eyes shine eerily despite the lack of light, like I imagine mine do when I’m in houndshape.
“We’re nearly there,” I say, trying to be encouraging. But I’m cut off by the whisper-sound of things dropping to the ground, the stuttered cries of fauns as their throats are cut. I drag Olivia with me against the wall so that our backs are against something. I look up and see eyes for just a moment. Spider-eyes. And the golden markings of the shadowspider glimmering on its forehead. Xiren.
“They’ve crossed the River.” I hear myself say it as if from a distance. I can just about hear Nainai saying, “You can bet sure as sure that Ximu has something up her silk sleeves. She’ll be back, have no doubt.”
How right she had been.
“What’s happening?” Olivia asks, huddling close.
I don’t answer her. “Truffler . . .” I start to tell him to take Olivia and run as I draw my knife. But there’s no time. The xiren falls upon her, and I hear her gasp.
I leap onto the back of the thing, trying to stab through its heavy cloak.
Truffler moans and wrings his hands behind us. There is nothing he can do.
The xiren has Olivia by the throat. It tries to throw me off its back but can’t quite manage it. Finally it lets go of her to deal with me.
“Truffler,” I shout, “take her and run!”
That at least the hob can do. I see him help her to her feet, and then the xiren takes up all my vision. The moon escapes the web of cloud then, and I am left gasping.
The xiren who has turned to face me stops.
Everything stops.
I’d know that face anywhere. It’s engraved in my dreams. I still see it, telling me to go right before I dive through the window and the thunderbuss blast shatters behind me. Even despite the golden markings and the blackened skin, I know that face.
Uncle Gen.
“Syrus.”
I can’t speak. All I can do is gape at him. I am a fish slung from water to stone, desperately trying to breathe.
“You must come with me.”
I flex my fingers on the dagger hilt. I don’t want to kill him—not that nightmare again—but I also am fairly certain that I should.
I finally find my voice. “Why?”
“Because our Queen commands it.”
“And my Empress forbids it.”
He takes a step toward me, and I raise my dagger, stepping back. Uncle Gen makes a slight nod, and I realize my mistake as the arms enfold me from behind.
“Why?” I manage to choke out.
But the fangs descend into my neck, and all dissolves into darkness.
CHAPTER 8
A wild thumping and muffled shouts brought Vespa to the door. She unlocked the warding charm to find Truffler hovering over someone slumped against the doorframe. Someone in a gown and a hood.
“Athena’s Girdle!” Bayne breathed behind her. “Get them in here!”
Together they dragged Olivia over the threshold until Bayne could lift her up and carry her. Vespa locked the door behind them, setting the strongest charm on it she knew, her fingers trembling as she did so.
She returned to the parlor, where Bayne had propped Olivia up on the couch. Truffler was shuddering over by the hearth, and Piskel, woken by the commotion, was patting his friend’s hairy head with one hand and yawning behind the other.
“What happened?” Vespa asked.
Bayne peeled back the Empress’s hooded cloak from her throat.
Vespa’s hands flew to her mouth at the sight of Olivia’s hair and clothes matted with blood. She wanted to swear by St. Darwin but knew it wouldn’t help in the least. Air seemed impossible to breathe, as if she’d just been plunged underwater or punched in the stomach.
“Is she . . . ?” She couldn’t finish the question.
Bayne was feeling Olivia’s pulses, delicately examining the wound. “No,” he said finally. “But she isn’t conscious.”
Vespa looked around. And then there was another punch. “Where is Syrus?” she asked.
Truffler was crying on the hearth, big, fat tears that sizzled with blue light when they fell on the hot stones.
“Truffler, what happened?”
In fits and starts he tried to tell them, but the words were nearly impossible to understand.
Finally, Bayne interrupted him. “Look, Truffler, is Syrus alive or dead?”
“Alive when we leave him,” Truffler said. “Must be still alive. Would know in here”—he touched his chest—“if not.”
“You would know if he died?”
Truffler nodded.
“Who did this?” Bayne asked. But Vespa was fairly certain she already knew the answer.
“Xiren.”
“By the Ineffable Watchmaker . . . ,” Bayne began.
Vespa stared in shock.
“But how—” Now it was Bayne who couldn’t force out the words.
“Many of them kill the faun guard. They take Syrus,” Truffler said.
Olivia groaned and stirred a little, and they turned back to the task at hand.
“I’ll get hot water and cloths,” Bayne said. “We’ll figure the rest out in a bit.”
Vespa nodded, too numb to say more. She was thinking of the shriveled exoskeleton of the shadowspider back in the Museum, and Lucy Virulen’s bridal gown, spun entirely of the finest scarlet shadowspider silk. She contrasted all that she had once known with the scarlet-robed figure silently watching them that morning. And there was the spider-figure who had lurked behind the webs of dark energy that had nearly ensnared them before they were dumped into the River. She shook her head. Nothing could be stranger than this.
She held Olivia’s hand, and the Empress shuddered at her touch. Her eyes were rolling under their lids. Her skin was clammy and gray.
Bayne returned with a pan of water and clean cloths. Vespa dipped one in and wrung it out with shaking hands. “There must be something we can do against this,” she said. “Some charm or spell.” She couldn’t bear to think of the potential repercussions of the bite. And she couldn’t bear to think of Syrus, somewhere behind that dark field of energy, suffering the same.
“I know of a tonic for when people are bitten by other werebeasts,” Bayne said. “But whether it will work on a shadowspider bite . . .” He shook his head.
Though the cloths came away bloody, it was soon apparent that Olivia hadn’t lost as much blood as it had at first seemed. The bite, however, was disturbing—an angry purple knot with a red ring around it. It was hot to the touch and swelling quic
kly.
“This must be what Syrus saw on the kinnon,” Vespa said.
“We should call Doctor Parnassus,” Bayne said. “Truffler, Piskel, do either of you know how to find him in the Forest? He received a letter from me to call Council, so he should be aware that there are problems.”
“Though I doubt he’s expecting these kinds of problems,” Vespa muttered.
Truffler nodded. “I find him,” he said. Between one breath and the next, Truffler was gone. Piskel floated over to Olivia. He checked under her eyelids and looked up her nose. He listened to her breathing and cooed sadly as he fluttered near her. He looked at Vespa and shook his head.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“Piskel,” Bayne said, “can you go alert the Imperial household? Let them know what’s happened to the guard and that the Empress is safe here for the moment.”
Piskel nodded, his eyes like lanterns in the low light. He fled up the chimney and out into the night.
“Let’s get her somewhere more comfortable,” Bayne said. He scooped Olivia up again and carried her upstairs.
Vespa looked around her before following him up. The house was quiet, almost too quiet. She realized she had no idea what the shadowspiders could actually do. Could they crawl down a chimney or under a door? Was their magic strong enough to break the wards? If so, the house could be overwhelmed with them before they knew it.
She shivered and prayed to the false saints under her breath that the wards would hold.
After they’d settled Olivia in as best they could, Bayne said, “I’ll brew the tonic. It may not help and it may make her feel a bit worse, but it can’t ultimately hurt.”
“I don’t see how it could get much worse,” Vespa whispered. Now, as the lantern flickered over Olivia’s pale hair and paler skin, Vespa allowed herself to fully feel the tenuousness of their situation. Unknown Elementals had wounded the Empress and taken Syrus. And someone in Scientia had sent them a secret message that she was sure had no better news than this.
She looked at Bayne, seeking solace. Tentatively he put an arm around her. Just this morning he had saved her life. Now Olivia’s life hung in the balance, and possibly Syrus’s, too.
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