Alec looked remote. Tony grinned. “Except me.”
“Don’t you see it?” Beka asked. “You’ve been singing ‘Xanpia’s Wreath’ since you were little.”
“That? It’s a song about saints and good behavior.” Tony made a dismissive gesture.
“Some of it has changed over the centuries, but there’s evidence it’s far older, perhaps even older than the Roman Song of the Dawn. It’s simple, which makes it easy to remember, and some say that the magic is in the melody as well as the words. Anyway, the heart really is a metaphor. Try substituting the word ‘door.’”
“Sing?” Tony repeated skeptically. “We can’t just recite it?”
“This is new for me, too.” Beka spread her hands. “But everything we hear in every story corroborates how music has power.”
She then fell silent, and after a flickering glance at me, studied her hands intently as if something was written on them. Tony watched her just as intently. Alec lifted his head, and took in the view through the long window, though there was nothing to see but the white snow, and the fine gray and gold and white stone of the cathedral as he absently smoothed his hair back. There was a streak of mud or soot or moss along his cheekbone, and a smear of blood on his chin. I had never seen him grubby before. It was unexpectedly endearing.
He didn’t look my way . . . because he was waiting. He obviously didn’t want to pressure me or exert undue influence.
I sighed. “How do I get to Sedania?”
Tony gave me the old crooked smile. “I’ll take you myself.”
I pushed out my hands in No way!
Alec said, “No need. I’ll talk to Dmitros. We should be able to find someone to take Kim up there. You’ll want to guard your family.”
“My family is already under sufficient guard,” Tony returned dryly. “Not just your watchdogs, but Gilles is going to cover us as well, once he talks to Kilber. Is there a preliminary report on how many people those things attacked on their way to the inner city?”
“Surprisingly, no humans. Three missing cows, and several pigs.”
Tony said, “Bad sign.”
“Yes,” Alec agreed.
There was that vibe between them again. It wasn’t angry, more wary. To break the impasse, I said, “Why are those low numbers a bad thing?”
Tony gave me a distracted glance. “Because it suggests that someone, somewhere, made a covenant with them, which was to be fulfilled by the attack on the Council.” He made a slight, mocking bow toward Alec. “Whether Uncle Robert finished the treaty or not on the twenty-first—and I suspect he lost his bloody nerve, and it wasn’t mysterious drugs at all—it will need sorting again. I don’t know if the old plonker who customarily comes to the Eyrie is at the top of the vampire hierarchy or even if they have a hierarchy. I don’t even know if any of them will deign to show up other than on the longest night of the year. But if I can bring them to treaty I will.”
Beka said, “Why does it have to be you?” Her tone was odd. There were currents beneath her words that I could not perceive; perhaps of other, private conversations between them.
Tony’s tone also hid currents: “Until this year, I’ve been handling that ritual ever since I turned sixteen.” He spoke directly to Alec. “I’ll go to Sedania, you handle the vampires already here.” His expression was an angry, pained one, and I’d seen it before. Oh yes, right after our sword fight in London, which ended with his caustic words about Ruli’s coat: Keep it. She’ll never wear it again.
One of his motivations for this coup was to find out the truth about his sister, and he seemed to accept that Alec was not involved in her disappearance—or he wouldn’t have been standing there, making plans with us. And if we chose to believe Tony (I was sure Alec would ask Gilles some hard questions the second this conversation was over) he had been running an investigation parallel to ours.
Beka’s gaze shifted away. So she was determined not to speak. She left the decision to me.
Alec’s silence made it clear that he, too, was leaving the decision to me.
Tony turned a questioning gaze my way, his attitude reminding me of the night of the gala, when he stood there and held out his hands for the tango, like he would stand there for an eternity until he got what he wanted.
I didn’t care what he wanted. It had very little to do with what any of us wanted and more about what was needed. So though I’d sworn I would never get into any vehicle with him, ever again, things had changed. “When do we leave?” I asked.
Tony’s eyebrows lifted. “Niklos will take you back to the inn, Kim. In case any of them are still around. Shall we meet there in an hour?”
THIRTY-FOUR
A MINUTE LATER we’d split off into two pairs. As Tony spoke in an urgent undertone to Beka, punctuated by an occasional No from her, Alec faced me. I could feel the apology coming.
“Don’t,” I said. “As soon as I heard ‘Dsaret,’ I knew I had been picked out to be the Special Snowflake here. I wish I was better prepped, however, so I wouldn’t feel so flaky.”
I won a brief smile at the stupid pun, but then he was serious again. “All right. I won’t apologize for you being dragged into this.”
“I wasn’t dragged,” I said. “I’m part of it.”
His gaze left my face, his lashes shadowing the marks under his eyes, his expression somber.
It didn’t take any arcane powers to understand how badly he wanted to be going with me, and I was feeling exactly the same way. The unspoken truce I’d made with Tony at the gala was in force again—tentatively—but I so wanted to face this vampire thing with Alec, side by side. Then again, what I’d said to Cerisette was true—he was married to Dobrenica. And yes, Phaedra, I know what that means: Though he wants to be with me, the city and all its uncertainties and dangers are his responsibility.
I gazed into his steady blue eyes, seeing my own emotions mirrored back—two steps, and we locked together in a brief, fierce kiss. No words.
I can’t say I felt better when I walked out of there, but the memory of that kiss on my lips made it easier to get my feet moving.
An hour later, I sat beside Tony in a cut down, built-for-speed sleigh, drawn by four pairs of reindeer.
I had the rapier I’d taken from the Council building, which I put in a sword rack on the sleigh, next to Tony’s arsenal. Figures there were sword racks. At least I didn’t have to wear it. I’d performed a quick experiment in my room, thrusting it pirate-style through my belt. My first step nearly tripped me, so I’d wasted another twenty minutes on various methods, coming to the conclusion that wearing swords as part of your everyday couture is really annoying.
As I filled Tania in on everything that had happened (“Did Haru and his dad get back okay?” “Oh, yes. Though they didn’t have charms, we did, and they threw a lot of light.”), I emptied out my backpack and put in some overnight stuff, with the prism safely housed in the center.
The necklace, I wore.
On the way out, the entire family was gathered to watch me go.
Theresa and both her friends were there, with eager faces. Tania had reverted to Wednesday Addams, worried and clearly wanting to help. She whispered to me that they were making up new lanterns and building the charms directly into the cut glass, which would be readied for sunset.
As Tony and I rode together in silence, I saw that the sky was layered in thin clouds reminiscent of the beach at low tide. I was learning to distinguish between different values of cold. I’d always assumed that the air was coldest during snow, but actually that’s not true—the temperature when it’s very clear and dry can plunge far below zero until the light seems strange, as if from another world altogether.
When we got to the north road, just past the beekeeper’s, from behind trees and hedgerows swooped a bunch of sleighs. They drew up. Each sleigh was filled with several coated and hatted people more or less our age. Not all were men.
Tony stood and lifted his voice. “We will assume that the mou
ntains are full of hungry, pissed-off vampires. Lock and load.”
From under blankets, behind seats, and underfoot came shotguns and rifles, and for a short time there was no sound but the clicks and clacks of weapons being loaded. Then swords were tested for ease of grabbing.
When they were all ready, Tony lifted a hand. The drivers clucked or whistled to their animals. The sleighs circled us in formation, except for two riding ahead, far apart, as scouts. The rifles had come out, mostly shotguns and old carbines—the simpler the better. They also had swords.
The terrain appeared altogether different from summer. Distinctive rock formations were snow-shrouded, tree-lines altered by the lack of foliage, smaller waterways white-blanketed, or frozen in a hundred subtle variations of blue, gray, and brown. The white sunlight lit frozen ferns as if they were fragile glass, and turned the few remaining leaves to silver foil.
For a long time the only sound was the muffled thud of hooves and the sluicing of the rails through the snow. The animals kept a steady pace, the rise gradual, with many downward slopes to give the teams a breather. Sometimes one sled would glide near us, then it would swerve this way around a rock or that way to avoid a gnarled tree, while Tony guided his team the other way, so that they all had as wide a field of vision as possible. I hunkered down into my coat and scarf, my hat pulled down well over my ears.
Short on sleep, I drifted into a doze and woke with a snort when the rhythm of movement changed. Rubbing my gritty eyes, I took in the sky, which was covered with white cloud, the quality of the light like watery milk. The sun would set soon, though it couldn’t have been much past three. That, I hadn’t quite gotten used to yet.
Tony said with satisfaction, “The animals know they’re near home.”
“Home?” I repeated, surprised. I’d gained the impression during summer that Sedania was next thing to a museum—empty except when the duchess visited for an occasional weekend.
The sled whirred around a rocky outcropping, mica glinting coldly in those fading rays, as we glided between rows of denuded trees, framed by a lacework of familiar conifers.
We passed the last of them and there, sitting austerely in its plateau of snow, was the hunting lodge known as Sedania: a square limestone building whose tall windows had amaranth blossoms carved over them and corbels carved in overlapping hawthorn leaves at each corner.
The reindeer slowed as we pulled around to the back, which was partly screened from the road and the garden by thick hedges. There was a long annex, part garage, part barn, with limestone cottages scattered beyond.
As all the sleds came to a stop, half a dozen teenage boys and girls ran out under the direction of an old man, who carried two lanterns ready to be lit.
“Nobody out after sunset,” Tony said. “Make sure the animals are locked up. Lights posted around the barns.”
“With charms,” I said.
“As she says.” Tony gave a nod my way.
The kids hustled to the harnesses in pairs as the people in our cortège of sleighs leapt down. A few of the kids sent anxious looks at the blue shadows gathering under snow-loaded firs as Tony’s guys grabbed up baggage and weapons, and trooped inside.
Two more servants appeared to unload our sled, which included an old-fashioned hamper that looked like it had been insulated.
“Arch is over this way,” Tony said. “Let’s make it fast, shall we? Dark comes quickly.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and trudged after him through the shin-level snow. My jeans had dried out at the Dominicans’, but now they were getting wet again. I made a mental note to tuck them inside my boots, no matter how dorky that might look.
We slogged through the garden until we reached a row of bumps on the snow. The stone wall! I found a good square stone and swung my backpack down so that I could root out my prism.
With that in hand, I worked my way carefully past the wiry tangle of thin young birch and other trees, skeletal in their wintry bareness. I stood a few yards from the stone archway that I’d seen intermittently in dreams. It had once been part of a building. The stones outside the arch, laid in the familiar cross-hatch pattern, were jagged and mossy. Whatever had destroyed the building had happened centuries before.
The tangle of rose branches and brambles winding around this door, or archway, or portal, were also barren of leaves, affording a clear sight of the carvings worked into the framing stone, blurred by time and weather. A Roman cross surmounting a sun, blossoms of amaranth, hawthorn, and rowan were nearly indistinguishable. Here and there were traces of early Gothic lettering, too blurred by time and weather to read.
In the summer, my first glimpse through this doorway had given me faces, inhuman except for two strange eyes—not human, or not completely human.
This time, what did I see? Nothing. Only the snowy slope beyond. Why was this time different? Last time there had been music, played by that talented boy, Misha. Wondering if he’d been making magic—and if it was deliberate or accidental—I cradled the prism in my hands, holding it before the archway.
As I tipped it slowly, I concentrated fiercely on Esplumoir, Esplumoir, Esplumoir.
That sense of falling pulled at my mind. I shut my eyes—and toppled headfirst into the snow.
One, two steps, and Tony hauled me to my feet.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Let me try that again.”
“What happened? From here it looked like someone gave you a push.”
“It . . .” I gave up trying to find the words, braced myself, and glared down into the prism. My snowy mitten trembled, and my eyes blurred. I did relaxation breathing and began again. This time I got a sense of tunnel, or distance, or corridor, but not right in front of me. It pulled me to one side.
When I tried to force my concentration into the tunnel, that creepy inward freefall made my head spin. I shut my eyes, and my hands dropped in defeat. “This archway is not the portal to Esplumoir, or at least, we’re not going to be able to use it. The prism keeps pulling me somewhere that way,” I said, flapping a hand. “The Esplumoir has to be there.”
“South,” Tony said. “At the heart of Dsaret Mountain. I thought this was too easy. We’ll get an early start in the morning and find it tomorrow.” He looked around. “The sun is just vanishing. We’d better get inside. No telling how many of those damn things are coming through each night.”
My neck tightened. “Let’s go.”
We started toward the house, me blinking to get rid of the blur and slight dizziness as I struggled to keep up with his long strides. He flicked a glance my way. “How much do you trust that prism?”
I fought a sudden yawn, so huge it felt like my jaw would unhinge. “I don’t know. If I see something distinct I think I can trust it’s real. For certain definitions of ‘real.’”
“So what have you seen that you trust?”
I blew out a cloud of vapor as I considered my answer. Tired as I was, I knew the question was not idle. “We went to the crash site. I saw the Daimler just before it went over the cliff. Before you waste your breath saying I saw what I wanted to, Beka and Phaedra tested me as much as they could.”
“Beka,” he breathed. “She never said anything at all about this.”
“Yes, well. I saw Alec asleep in the back, and a woman whose description Phaedra and Beka said fit Magda Stos. They recognized the way I described her chin. They called her Barbe.” Another yawn hit me on the last word.
“You met Magda last summer.”
“No, I didn’t. But if you’re expecting me to prove a negative, we can drop this subject right now.” He lifted a hand in a gesture that I interpreted as go on, I won’t argue. “In the front seat was that Marzio guy, asleep. Like Alec. I mean, out cold, mouth hanging open.”
“Magda was driving, with Alec in the back seat?” Tony’s expression had gone grim in the gathering shadows. “How do you know when it was? Oh. Marzio in the car—in Riev only a day, according what Gilles found out from the Vigilzhi.”
<
br /> The last light was fading, and already the stars were popping out, twinkling like diamonds. Several of Tony’s guys appeared, each carrying a lantern, and my worry eased. To hide how scared I’d been, I tipped my head back and looked at the sky. “’The types and symbols of eternity,’” I quoted, but got no flash of recognition, only a glance of inquiry. “From Wordsworth’s ‘Simplon Pass.’” I pointed upward. “These mountains remind me of it.”
“I’ve probably heard it,” Tony admitted. “Alec and Honoré used to spout poetry by the yard until the rest of us threatened to chuck them down one of their poetic passes.”
“What have you got against poetry?”
“Nothing, as long as I don’t have to listen to it when I’m on the watch for Russians, or wild animals. Or it’s being declaimed in that bloody moo that schoolboys seem to think appropriate for verse.”
An unexpected spurt of sympathy made me laugh. It seemed disloyal to imagine Alec reciting poetry badly, but who is any good at fifteen? He certainly wasn’t bad at it now—hoo-ee, far from it—but I was not going to discuss Alec with Tony.
We’d reached the door, walking past two guys with shotguns aimed out into the dark as someone hung up lanterns, each with a crystal inside. Tiny glints of rainbow lights twinkled.
Then the door was shut and barred, and I let out a sigh of relief.
We left our wraps in the coat room off the small hall. It smelled like wet wool in there. I leaned against the wall to steady myself. That session with the prism, on top of the long and incredible day, had tired me so much I felt as if I was floating gently at sea as I blinked around in the brightness of electrical light.
People came and went in the fine eighteenth century rooms with a purpose and familiarity that suggested—along with the stacks of ammunition, weapons, horse and reindeer gear, and other stuff—that this place had a whole lot more inhabitants than I’d been led to believe during summer.
“Through that door is the ladies.” Tony pointed. “Meet you out here.” He pushed a door open through which came men’s voices.
Blood Spirits Page 43
