A Hazardous Engagement (NewCon Press Novellas Set 6 Book 2)

by Gaie Sebold

  “But...” Pettigis sputtered. “The parade... the gifts...”

  The guests too murmured, glancing at each other. Putting the bride to bed before the gifts were paraded was simply not done. “Overeager, isn’t he?” Baron Guland said, in a voice intended to be overheard.

  “Well, really,” sniffed the Baroness. “So rude.”

  The Dowager leaned over and whispered something to Lord Baridine. He pouted like a sulky child, then put on a conciliatory smile. “Forgive my wife to be,” he called. “She is weary, and wishes to be at her best tomorrow. She will go, and I will stay, and witness your most kind generosity!”

  “Ah. Northern manners,” said a broad-shouldered man in a green satin jerkin, so heavily embellished with gold thread it was a wonder he could support its weight.

  “Well, I hope she learns how to behave,” said his companion, flicking her fan so vigorously one of the many crystals sewn to it flew off and landed in someone’s wine. “Very poor taste. Very poor.”

  Orrie took off her spectacles and cleaned them, returning them to her nose in time to see Lady Casillienne leaving the room, closely escorted by a twitchy-looking maid and two of the castle guards.

  Baridine settled himself back down, called for more wine, and ordered the musicians to play.

  The parade of gifts began. Some ugly silver goblets, a rather small hanging depicting the Siege (someone was currying favour but not trying very hard), a roll of silk that looked a little cracked and faded, possibly from being stored overlong. The name of each giver was announced, while Baridine tried to look pleased and smug, and succeeded mainly in looking sulkily constipated while sneaking constant glances at the clock.

  Since the only other mechanism was a singing bird designed by Pettigis that had been sold from his shop over a year ago, at a discount, due to its habit of sudden, unmusical squawks, there was nothing of interest to Orrie. She focussed on wheeling forward the box, and setting it carefully upright. There was a faint, silvery chiming noise as she did so.

  Pettigis swept forward and bowed deeply, his ribbons flickering. “A gift from Lady Tanisal,” he announced. “In memory of her beloved husband, Lord Tanisal, who passed from us fifteen years since, in the hope that this marriage will be as happy and as long as theirs, designed by Abianus Pettigis.”

  Orrie mentally rolled her eyes at the implication that Abianus Pettigis had designed Lady Tanisal’s marriage.

  The crowd peered, intrigued.

  Orrie caught the servant’s eye, and they both leaned down, and opened the cases.

  Inside, the Whirligigs gleamed softly. The elaborate clothes in which they had been dressed made them look not more human, but somehow less – the ruffles and lace emphasising the cold pure lines of their masks. The crowd gasped and murmured.

  Orrie allowed herself a small sigh. They really were rather good.

  With a faint whirr, the Whirligigs stepped out, faced each other, bowed.

  Each wore a long robe, which rendered Reel a little old-fashioned, but was necessary to hide its bell-shaped lower half.

  The crowd oohed and applauded.

  The Whirligigs danced. By the time they finished, the crowd was pressing in, reaching out to touch. “Ladies, Gentlemen, please!” Pettigis cried. “The mechanisms are very delicate! Lord Baridine? Lord Baridine, these were designed for you and your lady wife. Would you do my creation the great, the singular honour of dancing with the lady of the pair?”

  “Hah!” Baridine, his face flushed with wine and restored good humour, bounded down from the dais. “Why not? So long as I don’t make that metal fellow jealous, what?”

  There was a scatter of laughter at this sally, but out of Baridine’s earshot, there were sharper remarks about whether he would find his metal dance-partner any colder than his bride-to-be.

  While Baridine made his way towards them and Pettigis bowed and flattered, Orrie reached inside the back of Spin’s gown, where a vent had been left for just this purpose, and made a couple of swift adjustments, working blind.

  Then she stepped back, fading into the crowd.

  Milandree nodded to Loar as she took up her position outside Lady Casillienne’s chambers.

  “Got the duty, did you?” Loar jerked his head at the door. “Hope you weren’t expecting a present for it. She’s as tight as a mouse’s arse, that one. Can’t be bothered with a good morning, never mind silver.”

  “Rather this than drunk guests.”

  “Oh, yeah, you had one last night, din’t you? Lady Thingummy. Give you a ‘present’, did she?” He smirked.

  Milandree stared ahead. “I don’t tell tales.”

  “Hah. Too right. Least she’s got no husband to make a fuss.” Loar scratched his ear. “No such luck for me, haven’t got your looks.” He peered at her. “Mind, you’re not looking your best. Up too late, were we?” He chuckled.

  Milandree scowled, and rubbed at her eyes – carefully, so as not to disturb the shadows Alina had painted under them. “Feeling a bit off.”

  “Get some of the party leftovers, if they leave you any. Bit of cold goose, goes down a treat with some cabbage and taters, that. Where the hell’s Badri and Chun, I want some beer before those bastards drink the lot.”

  The two new guards appeared moments later, wiping their mouths and looking sulky.

  “There you are, you lazy fuckers,” Loar said. “Right, well, you should have a quiet night, unless Herself decides to do a runner, eh? See you in the morning.”

  Chun made a crude joke. Badri barely acknowledged either Loar or Milandree, but slumped against the wall, and belched loudly.

  Neither were drunk. That would have made things easier. They weren’t particularly pleasant, but that didn’t mean she wanted to damage them unnecessarily.

  It felt close to midnight. A salty breeze whipped through the arrow-slits, making the torches flicker and dance. The castle thrummed with the wind. Milandree frowned. Alina could sail all right, but crossing the bay in this weather was going to be no fun at all.

  Even assuming that everything else went to plan.

  The wind hid the sound of footsteps, so Alina seemed to manifest at the end of the corridor silent as a ghost. Badri straightened.

  “Oh, oh,” Alina said, “please, sirs, I’m lost, I don’t know where I am, and my mistress is so sick, it’s Thunder Fever, I’m sure of it...”

  “What?” Both guards turned towards Alina, and Milandree moved.

  Chun went down swiftly, the noise of his fall making Badri turn – too late to avoid Milandree’s hold.

  But he proved to have a thick and sturdy neck. It was also sweaty. Milandree cursed silently as Badri writhed in her grip, and barked out a cry. She tightened her hold, and he fell to his knees, bringing her down with him. She kept her knee in his spine, while Alina ran up to them, dropped to the floor, tore open a waxed parcel and clamped a pungent-smelling cloth over his nose.

  He went rigid, then limp.

  Milandree’s vision blurred, and the floor of the corridor tilted under her. She saw, mistily, Alina apply the cloth to Chun, shove it back into its parcel and wrap it.

  “Ooops. No you don’t,” Alina whispered, grabbing her arm. “Up with you.”

  Milandree scrambled to her feet, leaning on the wall. “Could have warned me.”

  “I could have said ‘hold your breath’ without him getting the idea?” Alina pressed her ear to the chamber door, and straightened. “Nothing.” She looked at Badris. “That won’t last long, we need to get him away out of sight. Where the fuck is Orrie?”

  “Should have drawn her a map,” Milandree said.

  “Oh, never mind. I’ll get on with the wards anyway.” Alina drew a deep breath, and began a series of complex, somehow lacy gestures, muttering under her breath. Gritty smoke started to curl up around the doorframe.

  “Orrivine! Orrivine!” Pettigis screamed.

  “Let go! Let go of me!” Baridine roared.

  Spin twirled gracefully about the floor
, Lord Baridine held firmly, indeed inescapably, in its arms. He clutched at its waist to stay upright, his boots skidded and scraped as he tried to get purchase on the stones. The crowd moved in surges, trying to stay out of the way, but unwilling to leave such an astonishing spectacle. Among the shocked cries and helpful suggestions were unmistakable snickerings.

  Word had spread, and the majority of the servants had gathered to witness this turn of events. There was a certain satisfaction on not a few faces, but others looked horrified. “It’s a demon!” Someone shrieked.

  “It’s the goddess’s vengeance, is what it is,” someone muttered at the back of the crowd.

  “Artisan!” Dowager Lady Baridine yelled. “Control that thing!”

  Pettigis, swallowing, edged closer, and made vague gestures at the whirling couple.

  “What are you doing, you useless creature? Help him!” Lady Baridine stepped down from the dais, cutting a swathe through the crowd. “You! Thing! Unhand my son!” Spin span on. Reel simply stood, its head slightly cocked, as though admiring the spectacle. Lord Baridine’s face was now a disturbing shade of scarlet. A medal pinned to his coat flew off, gleaming in the light.

  Members of the guard poured into the room, fighting their way through the crowd, to see their lord waltzing helplessly. One hefted an axe, but a look from the Lady Dowager froze him where he stood.

  “Form a ring!” The captain ordered. “Keep it contained!”

  The guard linked arms, and created a circle that gradually closed about the spinning pair.

  Orrie hurried along another corridor, cursing. She was thoroughly lost. West wing, west wing...where the hells was the west wing? Looking out of the window was no help, the sun was long set and all that could be seen was howling darkness and the occasional flurry of white foam.

  “Here, you! Ain’t you the artisan? Your master’s calling you!”

  Bollocks. Orrie blinked at the guard. “What?”

  “Your master wants you! Get to the ballroom before that uncanny piece of fuckery breaks his Lordship’s neck!”

  “Well where is the ballroom?” Orrie wailed.

  “Oh for... that way, end of the passage, left, then right.”

  “Towards the West Wing?”

  “The West Wing’s the other side of the ballroom. Move yer arse, woman!”

  Orrie ducked past him, muttering bollocks bollocks bollocks as she scuttled out of sight. She didn’t dare go back through the ballroom, and obviously she was too recognisable anyway. She looked around frantically. A tapestry hung against one wall, shifting in the breeze, but even if she could get it down it would be too heavy and thick to wrap around her.

  She could hear the shrieks and curses coming from the ballroom, and edged closer.

  Every door was packed with servants, all trying to see what was going on. Orrie crept past them.

  One woman had a savoury smelling basket over her arm, draped with a cloth. Orrie whipped the cloth away and wrapped it over her head.

  A shawl made a makeshift skirt. If she kept to the shadows, it would have to do.

  Bollocks, the ballroom was huge. Why did the gentry build such stupidly big rooms? What was the point of it, just to flounce about in overcomplicated clothes, chattering about inanities?

  Orrie turned a corner and belted along an empty corridor she hoped led in the right direction. At the end was another passageway running crosswise. She peered about desperately, taking her spectacles off and cleaning them and putting them back on as though that might help. The wind whistled along the corridors, making the torches stream and smoke. She had almost given up when the wind dropped briefly. Orrie stood still, tilting her head.

  A faint light, a low rhythmic chanting and a whiff of metal and spice – the smell of a magic working – drifted down the corridor. Orrie bolted towards it.

  “Oh thank fuck,” Alina said, her voice slightly muffled by her mask. “Did you get lost again?”

  Orrie did not deign to answer, instead pulling on her own mask and whipping out her roll of tools. “Is the ward off?”

  “Yes.”

  Orrie knelt in front of the lock. “Then get out of the light.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Milandree neatly tied and gagged both guards, and propped them against the wall, before pulling her scarf up over her face.

  As Orrie still muttered over the lock, Madis, no longer looking so deathly and dressed in the plain gear of a lower servant, appeared around the corner. “How are we doing?”

  “It’s...” There was a clank. “Open,” Orrie said.

  Madis pulled a cloth over her mouth and nose.

  “Careful,” Alina whispered... “careful...”

  They all stepped away from the door. Milandree picked up one of the guards’ polearms and used the butt end to ease the door open.

  The torch in the corridor cast a low, dancing light through the doorway. There was no lamp alight in the room, and of the fire, only the smell of smoke remained. A draught hissed through a broken corner of the shutters. Alina edged forward into the room, and jerked back with a hiss of surprise.

  Lady Casillienne, lying propped against the pillows, stared at them, her pale blue eyes wide open. Madis was at the bed in an instant, a hand over the woman’s mouth.

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Alina said. “Just need something of yours. ’Scuse me.” She folded down the covers.

  There was no visible reaction on the face of the lady except for a slight expansion of her pupils.

  Madis let out a gasp of relief. There was the belt, cinched tightly over the woman’s plain linen shift, the material bunching above and below. It was engraved with symbols that seemed, in the uncertain light, to shift and squirm.

  The wind rose to a howl, rattling the shutters.

  Alina’s bag bulged and sloshed. The jar was rocking back and forth violently.

  “Someone please give that thing some water, I can’t afford to be distracted while I do this,” Alina snapped.

  Milandree looked around. “There’s no ewer.”

  “There’s a jug on the sill, use that,” Madis said.

  Orrie, ignoring them all, was studying the belt, muttering to herself. She shook out a soft leather roll onto the coverlet, and a dozen different picks and fine tools gleamed in their pockets.

  Lady Casillienne’s breathing sped up. “We’re not here to hurt you,” Madis said. “We’re just going to take the belt.”

  A faint whine came from the back of the Lady’s throat.

  Milandree grabbed the jar, unscrewed the lid and splashed in some water from the jug.

  There was a foof, and a crack. Milandree swore.

  The jar fell to the boards, and split. Lying in the remnants was a glistening creature of eyes and gills and feelers, gasping, and slightly larger than the thing that had been in the jar. Milandree scooped it up, dropped it in the jug, put it on the chest at the foot of the bed, then left the room.

  “Now can we get on?” Alina snapped.

  “Wait.”

  “What?” They looked at each other. The voice had not come from any of them; it hissed like a wave dying on the sand.

  Except for Orrie, who was examining the lock on the belt, and Lady Casillienne, who had moved nothing but her eyes, they turned to look at the jug. A faint greenish glow bloomed above it.

  “Seriously?” Alina said. “Now?”

  The voice had ripples in it, a breeze on a lake. “A little sea-water in the jug, a little worship from the servant’s hall. Not enough. I need the sea. Return me to the sea.”

  “You’re not a river god, are you?” Alina said. “Wait, you said, the servants...”

  “This is not the time!” Madis said.

  Milandree, meanwhile, dragged in both unconscious guards.

  “Mil, check the window,” Alina said.

  She did. “The shutters are nailed over.”

  “We’ll return you to the sea when we get out of here,” Alina said. “Promise.”

>   “Oh great,” Madis said. “Well that’s fifty gold I’ll never see again.”

  Alina took up a position by the bed, ready to recite the spell.

  “Wait,” Orrie said, “we have a problem.”

  “What now?” Madis said.

  Orrie sat back. “This is a deathlock.”

  “A what?”

  “A deathlock. I’ve only ever seen one. It was taken off a woman who tried to escape from a harem. If it’s not opened exactly right, it will send a knife into the lady’s guts.”

  Lady Casillienne whined again. Madis lifted her hand from the woman’s mouth.

  “Was that what you were trying to tell us?”

  There was no answer but that faint breathy sound.

  “You can’t speak?” Madis said.

  “No,” said a voice. “She cannot. She is bound. Like me. I know the stink of such things, it spreads like blood in the water.”

  Alina looked at the jar, and then at the belt. “You... what?”

  “That thing around her, it binds her will. As mine was bound, when I was trapped.”

  “Oh,” Alina said. “Oh, no.” Her hands were clasped in front of her face, as though she were praying. “Oh, bollockry and arsecake.”

  “What is it?” Madis said.

  “I should have guessed, I should have guessed from the spell structure, and from her, except it’s only a theory, and it’s completely... No one’s...”

  “Alina,” Madis said. “Calm down. Talk.”

  “This belt – it’s not a focus. It’s a lock. It’s a lock on her Adeptcy – on her entire will. That’s why she can’t speak, why she’s... fuck.”

  “Well now,” Madis said, after a moment’s appalled silence. “There’s a pretty engagement gift. That whirlwind romance... It wasn’t a romance at all, was it? It was a kidnapping. Lord Baridine gets a bride, and her dowry, and control of her lands, and anyone who knows her well and might get suspicious is safely tucked away in the North until the passes open. That would explain the new priest, too. Maybe the old one wouldn’t have been prepared to wed them under these circumstances. I expect he’s been retired.”

  “Never mind that,” Alina said. “Do you know what this means?”