“Ugh.” I hope she died at once. I didn’t quite want to say it.
“I didn’t see any of them until Tony showed up at the airstrip the day you came in on the train. He was with Danilov. Came straight to the palace, demanding to know where I was keeping his sister’s body.”
“That must have been grim.”
Alec set down his fork and pressed his fingers between his brows. “I told him what I knew.”
“And then?”
“And then he left. Didn’t hear another word until I saw him last night.”
“He showed up with Morvil Danilov?”
Alec almost smiled. “Don’t use his given name. He really hates it.” “They didn’t tell me that last summer. But then he and I scarcely exchanged two words. Can’t say I blame him. Dorky name, Morvil.”
“Morvil Ilyich, to be more precise. Even Phaedra calls him Danilov.”
“Phaedra . . . Ilyichna, right?”
“She kept that patronymic a deep secret when we were all teens.”
Below, the first group of performers started tuning up. At first I took them to be a Romanian taraf, but the men wore the vaguely Cossacklike, long belted shirts of the Dobreni, and there were three women, two old and one young, all wearing long fringed scarves to hold their hair back, that were crisscrossed and tied at their waists over contrasting colored layered skirts. The instruments were balanced, three woodwinds—panflute, clarinet, and recorder—and three stringed—violin, viola, and codza. The oldest woman, the braid dangling from her mourning-gray scarf set a tambourine on her stand, and softly sang scales, major key, minor. Major, minor.
I sipped the warm, rich wine. In the deceptive quiet, I leaned toward Alec. “Last night, Grandfather Armandros appeared in my—”
The word room was lost as a wild, wind-driven ribbon of music snapped more strongly than any mere magic spell around every person in that room. The strings carried the difficult melody under the singer, the winds cascading in counterpoint. By the time they’d played the melody through, feet and hands tapped and bodies swayed or bounced gently to the beat. On the second verse, the winds braided the melody as the lute-like codza and the violin dueled in cascading cadenzas. A third round, half a chord higher, a little faster, caused people to clap and stamp. The musicians faced one another for the last verse, improving wild counterpoints as the entire audience joined in on the chorus.
A huge cheer rang off the walls as the musicians bowed, flushed and sweaty.
“What was that song about? I couldn’t understand a word.”
“It’s a Russian dialect. The song—what else? Love and war.”
“What else?” I echoed, thinking, We’re almost back to where we were last summer . . .
Alec’s smile was brief, but genuine, and the tension seemed to ease as he asked, “Did Grandfather Armandros say anything?”
“No. He was there in my mirror, then faded out. Why was the duchess going on about her cook, anyway? Oh yeah, didn’t you take the famous Pedro away from her last summer?”
“It became official when Ruli moved into the palace. It was what Pedro had wanted all along. His ambition extended to state dinners and diplomatic affairs.”
“Don’t send him back.”
“I won’t. Though if he wants to return to the von Mecklundburgs, I won’t try to stop him. But I don’t think he will.”
“You treat him better?”
“She treated him like a king, except the duchess only permitted him to cook for her and her chosen few. After he came to us and realized that state affairs and diplomatic dinners would seldom be on the scale of the Ancien Régime, I gave him his second dearest wish, to hire his services to a fine restaurant.”
I thought, fine restaurant? Here?
Alec must have seen it in my face, because he flashed his rare grin. “We have two. La Maison, which is mainly French cuisine, and Hanging Gardens, which is kosher, its cuisine chosen from Jewish communities all over the world. Hanging Gardens has the edge on popularity—it was one of the few places Ruli liked in this city. And Pedro, who was born in the south of France, sees it as a patriotic imperative to improve La Maison.” When Alec mentioned Ruli, his voice dropped a note, and there was the tension again.
Okay, one step back, try another step in a different direction. I looked down at the stage, where the first group was busy collecting their things. “You’d think music would be part of Vrajhus, if anything works.”
“It is, I’m told,” Alec said—like anyone else would say, Summer is warm, or I need new toothpaste. “Problem is, that same power to stir emotion makes it exponentially more difficult to control.”
The second group came out. These were younger, two of the guys in jeans, though they too wore the long belted shirts, but these were brightly colored, one with a falcon embroidered in piratical detail, the other with a gryphon on his. The third guy, also young, wore the traditional loose trousers stuffed into low boots, and a plumed hat. They had one female, a teenager who carried a panflute.
The first group had brought the audience together. This second group got them rollicking. Two boys played strings—violin and codza—improvising in round as the girl on the panflute set the melodic line. The other two boys played tambourine and hand drums.
When the song had finished, I said, “I was only in London a couple of days and scarcely saw your dad. Why is he still there?”
Alec gazed down at the stage. “You understand how nebulous our government has been.”
Government. I shifted in my chair, trying to hide my impatience. Last summer, the night before I left, when Alec and I were alone on a hillside above the city, he’d said that he could never really get away—that was both the joy and the pain of his position. I wanted to get to the personal, and then I remembered what Gran had said. For Alec, government was personal.
“Right.” I counted on my fingers. “When you came in as Statthalter, the Soviets controlled things, but you were building a government under their noses.” Another finger. “The last ten years, you’ve been slowly getting rid of the Soviet governmental controls and restoring the old ways.”
“Not all the old ways,” he said. “Right before the war, your great-grandfather had seated the first Great Council, which included elected officials through the guilds. When I came in as Statthalter, the election was Soviet controlled but instituted on our old model. We’re still using that model now, with emendations.”
His voice eased incrementally, and I felt that as a victory: There was the rhythm again, beckoning. If you want him, you have to take the whole deal, and that includes the Council, the offices, the millions of meetings, and how, with even trivial moments, history intersects.
Like car wheels slipping on ice?
I shut down that train of thought hard, and gave Alec my best smile. “Old ways and new. Got it.”
Alec sat back, his hands loose for the first time that evening. “If my father comes back, even as a symbolic king, then whatever government he comes back to gains legitimacy.”
“So?”
“So before you arrived last summer with the news that your grandmother was alive, the biggest conflict remaining was Dsaret mountain, our oldest and most important mines.” Alec idly turned the wine cup around and around in his fingers. “You know that there’s a Russian consortium claiming those mines. I’ve been negotiating on behalf of the country. Since we believed the Dsarets were dead, my father and I thought: when we recover those mines from the consortium, we want the mountain to belong to the country. And I think we’re going to regain control, whatever the von Mecklundburgs think. We’ve steadily been decreasing production there, and it’s costing the consortium too much to maintain the mines.”
“I remember. But does Tony still want to send his guys to take them over by force?”
“Well, the von Mecklundburgs have lost a great deal of revenue, because the consortium also controls roughly half their territory. And the von Mecklundburgs felt that they should inherit the Dsaret hol
dings through Rose and her daughter, the duchess.”
“Uh oh, I think I see what was coming. Your marriage with Ruli was supposed to settle that, right?”
“Since they seemed, at the time, to be the only surviving Dsaret descendants, half for them, and half for the country.”
“And then I showed up, with the news that my grandmother is still alive, right?”
“Right.”
“So Tony tried to capture the government last summer because if Gran was really alive, they would lose that half?”
“Something like that. I don’t think he really expected to become Statthalter and mire himself in council meetings and bureaucracy. And to give him his due, I don’t think he wants to strut around as a tin king. His plan was to ram through a treaty in favor of his family, once he regained control of the mines by a fast attack. A plan which had the enthusiastic support of his people.”
“Yeah, I remember that much.”
Third up was a single player, a short round geeky-looking kid with dark hair. The buzz of conversation dropped dramatically to a few whispers as the boy took his time checking his taragot, which was a sort of clarinet.
“Is that thing ancient?” I asked.
Alec smiled, shook his head, and leaned toward me. “Modern. Descended by way of politics from the Hungarian tárogató, which was forbidden by the Hapsburgs two or three centuries ago.”
“An underground instrument,” I whispered. “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“The old version was loud and not very musical, in fact. I think it was primarily used as a battle horn—”
The boy lifted the instrument to his lips, and the audience hushed in expectation. The only sound was the quiet tread of servers moving about, then they, too, stilled.
The sound of the taragot was reedy yet mellow; the melody catchy and compelling in the way of folk music. When the player reached some of the higher flourishes in that compelling tritone sequence once called the Forbidden Chord, I flashed back to the mountain picnic with Tony last summer, and a talented young flautist. This had to be the same kid.
Questions piled up as the song appeared to ascend by changing keys, a half-step at a time as voices joined in ones and twos until there was a powerful chorus. The player then let loose, brilliant flourishes dancing around the melodic line like larks braiding heavenward.
“. . . open the door to my heart,
Love and laughter, mercy and justice,
Honor and peace, solace for grief . . .”
The boy bobbed, eyes closed, as he bound them together with a scroll-work of splendor.
“Misha’s father wanted him to become a carpenter,” Alec observed. “Until Tony offered to fund an apprenticeship.”
Tony again. Time for a change of subject.
“. . . close the door to my heart,
Hatred and sorrow, malice and perfidy,
Greed and strife, the weak betrayed . . .”
“Someone at the inn said there’s a music school. Connected to the synagogue—is that right?” I asked.
“Yes. Mainly involves teaching the students to read and write music. Most of them come already trained by ear, with enormous repertoires in their heads, and years of experience improvising.”
The chorus rose to a crescendo:” . . . light the way, Xanpia, share us your wre-e-e-e-e-ath!”
The long last word dissolved in pounding, foot-stomping applause that resonated through the wooden gallery. The boy bowed, grinned at the audience, then walked off.
As the next band walked on playing a Greek ballad, Alec fell silent, his profile lit by the lamp on the next table. Fine strands of his dark hair drifted down onto his forehead, and I sensed that the wall of tension between us was melting at last, shifting us to the intimate space I so cherished.
I said, “Have you recovered your memory yet?”
“No.” Alec stared down into the lights winking in the dark ruby liquid, then suddenly lifted it and drank half. He sat back, eyes closed, and let his breath trickle out, and the tension in his voice was back, the words wrung out of him, “No, I have not. Kim, how could I not remember driving her to her death?”
“How much do you remember?”
His eyes stayed closed. When he opened them, Mr. Darcy was back: the shuttered face of good breeding, the cultured voice. But I was beginning to sense the terrible cost he paid for that appearance of cool and elegant detachment. “Ruli was going off to Paris for the holidays. We had . . . a disagreement.” His voice was so low I had to bend close to hear him. “This is what few know. Her boyfriend, Marzio di Peretti, came up here. She said she’d arranged it with him so she wouldn’t have to make that long journey alone, but I suspect she wanted to introduce him around, maybe to test the possibility of moving him in. I told her he had no place in our society, not the way things are now.”
“Because it would look bad?”
“I can hear you trying not to say hypocrite. Which she said outright. Not that I blame her. The marriage was based on appearances. But there is too much strife, and I don’t think Marzio di Peretti would have been content to lounge around in the background, pouring wine at Ruli’s parties and sitting next to widowed baronesses in order to make up the table. He has ambitions.”
“Oh.”
“So I told her what she did in Paris was her business, but here, in Dobrenica, where people still talk about two hundred year old gossip as if it happened yesterday, he would have to cool his heels in one of the guest rooms until she was ready to leave—if I had to assign a Vigilzhi to sit on him until she’d packed her bag.”
“Okay. I’m not passing judgment, by the way.”
“I did. Marzio is an ass.” Alec’s smile was brief, and ironic. “He’s never had a job. Or rather his job seems to be leeching off of rich, titled women, while gassing on about his great plans for internet publishing, once he gets enough funding. He’s been gathering funding for ten years. Not even a website to show for it.” He stared at the mulled wine, then he sighed abruptly. “Ruli and I shared a drink to seal our agreement. We must have had more than one. I don’t remember. In fact, that’s all I remember.”
Must have had more than one. I remembered how much liquor we’d slapped back the summer before and wondered if they’d had more like six. But I kept my lip zipped, because I also remembered that when he’d been drinking over a certain amount, Alec didn’t drive. He’d have Emilio or Kilber take the wheel.
He went on. “According to what Magda Stos told the staff, as soon as Marzio heard Ruli and me clinking glasses, he got pissed off. Ordered Magda to take him to the nearest civilized city so he could fly to Paris. That much is corroborated by the fact that one of the service vehicles was gone as well as di Peretti and Magda.”
“So then what happened?”
“Apparently Ruli insisted that we go after him. I don’t remember offering to drive her myself, but I must have. She always did prefer me to drive. And that’s my car down at the bottom of the gully, with no one in the driver’s seat.”
He looked down, his face so tense and unhappy I felt sick. “I don’t remember it,” he whispered. “I don’t remember any of it. All I remember is waking up with the world’s worst headache, bruised from tumbling down a cliff, the contents of Ruli’s purse scattered underneath me. I probably would have frozen to death but for my usual outriders’ discovering the Daimler gone and coming after us. They saw the smoke of the burning car.” He glanced away, at the stage, but I had a feeling what he was seeing was that horrible smoke. He made a quick gesture, as if pushing something away. “There is no use talking further about it until I remember.”
“Of course,” I said, with another worried glance at his tense face. It was clear that dragging out the story again was not helping. Time to change the subject. “Tell me instead how are things going in the country otherwise?”
He took a deep breath, like someone had lifted a boulder off his chest. “Incremental progress.” But his fingers were still turning that
mug around and around. “You know I want to get wind turbines up in the mountain passes where there is always wind.”
“That’s clean energy. Who objects to that? Or rather, why? Is it the cost?”
“The cost is one factor.” Now he was back in territory where he was sure of himself. “There is a solid phalanx of old-fashioned people who feel that we don’t need such frivolities as electricity. We did fine without it for centuries. I think I told you how long it took to get the hydroelectric dam built. That was partly the cost, partly because we used its power to run the city’s waste management system, which is also new, and partly because there was so much resistance to these innovations, which are relatively benign.”
“Water power is considered green,” I said, thinking, Keep him going on hydroelectricity, if it eases that burden. “Is the resistance fear of flooding or environmental damage?”
His smile was brief, automatic rather than warm. “No. We’re not that sophisticated, here. It was resistance to change. The underlying worry is that should we need the Blessing, we won’t be able to reach the Nasdrafus if we’re riddled with the poisons of electricity.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.” He lifted his head as, below, another group began to strum a minor key fanfaronade. “The mountain people are difficult to get to, and even more difficult to convince. I can tell you this, however: Magic, or whatever it is, is not destroyed by electricity. Yesterday when you walked in, Beka was demonstrating magicor-whatever-it-is on a tablet computer.”
“She knows magic?”
Alec looked away, then back. Again he was turning his mug around and around. “I’ll leave Beka to answer that question for herself. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, though I see no danger in it. If you stay here, Kim, you’re going to get mired as deeply as the rest of us. You’d better consider what that means for you.”
Blood Spirits Page 12
