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Synopsis
Antuniet Chazillen lost everything the night her brother was executed. In exile, she swore that treason would not be the final chapter of the Chazillen legacy in Alpennia’s history. A long-hidden book of alchemical secrets provides the first hope of success, but her return to the capital is haunted by an enemy who wants those secrets for himself.
Jeanne, Vicomtesse de Cherdillac is bored. The Rotenek season is flat, her latest lover has grown tediously jealous and her usual crowd of friends fails to amuse. When Antuniet turns up on her doorstep seeking patronage for her alchemy experiments, what begins as amusement turns to interest, then something deeper. But Antuniet’s work draws danger that threatens even the crown of Alpennia.
The alchemy of precious gems throws two women into a crucible of adversity, but it is the alchemy of the human heart that transforms them both in this breathtaking follow-up to the widely acclaimed Daughter of Mystery.
Table of Contents
Cover
Synopsis
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by Heather Rose Jones
Author's Note on Pronunciation
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bella Books
Copyright © 2015 by Heather Rose Jones
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
First Bella Books Edition 2015
eBook released 2015
Editor: Katherine V. Forrest
Cover Designer: Kiaro Creative
ISBN: 978-1-59493-441-4
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Other Books by Heather Rose Jones
Daughter of Mystery
Author’s Note on Pronunciation
For interested readers, there are three basic rules for Alpennian pronunciation. Names are stressed on the first syllable. The letter “z” is pronounced “ts” as in German. The combination “ch” is pronounced “k.” Non-Alpennian names follow the rules for their language of origin. So, for example, Antuniet Chazillen’s surname is pronounced “katz-ill-en” (hence Gustav’s joke about calling her Kätzlein “kitten”) while Jeanne de Cherdillac’s surname follows French rules and is pronouned “share-dill-ack.”
About the Author
Heather Rose Jones is the author of the “Skin Singer” stories in the Sword and Sorceress anthology series, as well as non-fiction publications on topics ranging from biotech to historic costumes to naming practices.
Visitors to her social media will find the Lesbian Historic Motif Project she began to change the unexamined assumptions about the place and nature of lesbian-like characters in historic fact, literature, art and imaginations. She has a PhD from U.C. Berkeley in Linguistics, specializing in the semantics of Medieval Welsh prepositions, and works as an industrial discrepancy investigator for a major Bay Area pharmaceutical company.
Chapter One
Antuniet
Heidelberg (July, 1821)
Antuniet looked up from the ruined crucible on the workbench and swore softly. Dawn had come and gone while the delicate mixture cooled from a glowing slurry to a glassy, charred lump. Another failure. She checked the astronomical alignment on her zodiacal watch—rather, her mentor Vitali’s watch that he’d lent her in Prague. She felt guilty every time she looked at it. It was twelve hours since the firing began and the watch showed Virgo just rising. The instrument was still accurate; the process had begun according to the instructions. Altmann should have been here to tend to the furnace, but she was too honest to lay the blame on her absent assistant. The cause was impurities in the materials; it had to be. In Prague she’d had reliable sources for the best, but here in Heidelberg it was buyer beware. She’d need to start refining her own ingredients and that would add weeks to every step of the process.
She looked out at the gray sky and tried to judge the time—Vitali’s watch was no use for ordinary hours. She slipped it back in the pocket of her skirts, stilling the twinge of guilt. Someday she must return it to him. Someday when she dared return to Prague. The loan of it hadn’t been meant to last this long. Had the bells rung the hour yet? She couldn’t remember. No, there they were, echoing over the distant market calls and the clopping of the cart horses crossing the Old Bridge. Still another hour before there would be students expecting her. And since it was the tutoring that paid for the equipment and supplies, it was sleep that must wait. Antuniet closed her eyes just for a moment. The weariness swept through her and she felt herself sway dangerously. What would it be like to let it all go? To leave her past entirely in the hands of the dead? To change her name from Chazillen and never return to Rotenek? But then what would be left to live for? Everything else had been cut away by the executioner’s sword.
The memory of her brother Estefen’s betrayal could still leave her shaking with rage. Not his treason against the prince, but his betrayal of the family. His stupid, selfish, greedy, shortsighted… She slammed her fist against the tabletop to pull her mind back from that dark path. One thing remained: the oath she’d sworn after the night of his execution. Estefen would not be the Chazillens’ final legacy. She would find a way to restore their honor in spite of everything.
At first, the alchemical Great Work had been no more than a distraction from what she’d lost. A turn of fate had transformed it into her first true hope of redemption. No, she would start again b
ecause to let go of the work would be to let go of all reason to live.
She banked the coals and methodically put things in order, setting the crucible aside to finish cooling before it went into the rubbish heap. Just before leaving, she took out the stub of a candle—carefully hoarded since she’d obtained it from the altar at Saint Leonhard’s in Prague—and lit it from the remains of the fire. With the door closed behind her, she worked a brief mystery over the heavy iron lock. Saint Leonhard was the patron saint of prisoners, but the curious logic of patronage gave him responsibility for locks and locksmiths as well. The brief prayer, sealed with a drop of the consecrated wax, would keep out the ordinary run of lock picks. A faint, flickering light ran across the iron telling her that the saint had answered.
She glanced up and down the street to see if anyone had noticed. Heidelberg had worked free of the worst of the religious battles of the last centuries, but her Lutheran neighbors still looked askance if one worked the saints’ mysteries in public. She pinched the wick out. She had only one more of the candles when this one was used up. Experiments with remelting it into ordinary wax to extend the effectiveness had proven useless. For the thousandth time she wished she could master the more powerful version that would allow her to sense when the lock was being meddled with. The apparatus for that was harder to obtain, calling for a true relic of the saint and a text written in the presence of his altar. She hadn’t the time to experiment and see if substitutions could be made. But if she’d had just that much warning, she could have brought more possessions away with her from Prague. At every move she left more behind. She gave a mental shrug. She’d saved everything that mattered.
As she worked her way up from the riverside and along the Hauptstrasse toward the heart of the students’ quarter, the streets were beginning to fill and Antuniet elbowed her way through the tide, heading for a narrow alley off the Heumarkt.
If she had at least three students today she could purchase a new crucible. If she could hold off the landlady until next week. And if she didn’t eat. It was tempting to accept Gustav’s persistent offer to take her for dinner at the Golden Falcon. Most of the students who came to her for tutoring were there to be drilled in Greek and Latin. Gustav von Lindenbeck also used it as an opportunity to lay siege to her virtue. She’d known so many young men like him back in Rotenek: rich, privileged, accustomed to being granted whatever their whim of the moment might be. When she’d been Mesnera Antuniet, niece and then sister to a baron, she’d found his sort merely tedious. Now it was a delicate balancing act. Not so rude as to drive him away, but not the slightest hint that she would bend to his will. For him it was a game to greet her with ever escalating offers of gifts and luxuries. It was clear he doubted her claims to virtue—virtuous young noblewomen did not traipse about Europe on their own, earning their bread by tutoring—but her refusals were no game. If just once she stepped across the line that lay between her and Gustav, it would be impossible to redraw it. No, she could put off the new crucible until next week and spend the time trying the alternate method of calcination.
She could recall when tight budgeting meant cutting your guest list from eighty to fifty, and when utter poverty was remaking last season’s gown rather than buying new. Now, last season’s gown could pay for two months’ rent and outfit her workshop from scratch. That’s what they had gone for, one by one, in Prague. The last of her finery had set her up here in Heidelberg. The letter of introduction from Vitali had been meant to do the rest. Since then, it had been hand to mouth. Alchemy couldn’t pay the rent or put food on the table. Even if she’d been willing to waste her time transmuting metals, that drew exactly the sort of attention she needed to avoid. Without the protection of a powerful patron it was too dangerous to be known for practicing the esoteric arts. In Alpennia, name and rank had protected her; that and the license that Rotenek society allowed to known eccentrics. But she was a stranger here. Invisibility was her only ally.
The rooming house stood hunched between two taller and more modern buildings, and the plaster was peeling in places to show the brickwork underneath, but the rent was cheap. More importantly, it stood not a hundred paces from the heart of the university and her tutoring there enabled her to scrape together the coins to pay that rent. And, if she were lucky, to pay for new equipment sometime soon.
Her students would be waiting in the coffee room below, but she headed around to climb the rickety back stairs for a chance to wash up and collect her books. Frau Schongau saw her pass by and leaned out the window to rail at her incomprehensibly. Antuniet’s German could manage Goethe and Kant but fell short of Frau Schongau’s Swabian when she was in an agitated mood. All she could decipher was Out! Out! That meant it was the usual empty threats over the lateness of the rent. She shrugged and answered back in Alpennian just to annoy the woman.
The door from the stairs to the narrow hallway stood ajar, but that wasn’t unusual. The first sign of disaster came farther in when she saw the splintered joist where the extra iron hasp had been installed. She pushed it open with no thought for what might lie within. The sight that met her held no immediate meaning. Every stick of furniture had been upended and torn apart. The bedding—or was that clothing?—lay in heaps of rags. Her books…oh, her books! They were drifts of scattered pages. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, overtaken by dizziness. Slowly she sank down to the floor, staring blankly at the ruin.
Who…? Had he followed her all the way here? The man she’d fled Prague to escape? Eight months and she figured she was safe. If he’d tracked her down anew then she was dealing with more powerful opponents than she’d thought. Or was it ordinary thieves? Or fanatics who’d learned of her work…but then why here and not the workshop? No, this wasn’t merely a search; this was fury at not finding what they sought. If she’d been here… Her heart began racing. They’d expected her to be here. She would have been, except that her assistant hadn’t turned up and the working couldn’t wait. Was Altmann in league—? Had they—? No, it was too complex to untangle at the moment. She scrambled back to her feet, leaning against the wall at another wave of dizziness. There was only one possession of hers that could inspire this zeal. She knew he wanted it, but not that he had the connections to reach this far or the desperation to move this ruthlessly. Each attempt to wrest it from her only confirmed its value.
She rushed to kneel in front of the hearth. The andirons had been tossed aside—one had been thrown into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster. But the stones themselves were still in place. She traced a complex figure across the mortar lines and the charm that held the largest stone in place gave way. The satchel was still there behind it, and the book within.
Panic could only be conquered by action. Her thoughts turned to practicalities. The jar that collected her earnings was smashed with no sign of the contents. That was to be expected. So all she had was the handful of coins sewn into the hem of her jacket. The ones she successfully pretended did not exist every time Frau Schongau came knocking or the coal bin was low again. And that was all she had to get her away from Heidelberg to somewhere safe. It wasn’t enough. It could buy a seat on the common stage but that would be too public. If he were here and watching for her at all she’d never make it out of the city. A private carriage would be safer but she might as well wish for the moon. Perhaps she could slip out into the countryside on foot and then…
She flinched, thinking she heard a step on the stairs. He’d be coming back. Soon. They might be ransacking her workshop even now. She needed to leave and—
A knock sounded like the crack of doom. Her heart stopped, but then a familiar voice called out, “Madame Kätzlein? Are you there? We waited for you but you never came.”
Gustav! She’d forgotten about the waiting students. She cracked open the door and peered through, preventing him from seeing the chaos within. His long, cheerful face was an incongruous invasion of the present disaster. He lifted his beaver hat briefly in salute and returned it to tho
se perfectly coifed yellow locks. Antuniet blinked and returned to the present. “I was just about to come down.”
“Bah! Don’t bother,” he said. “The others are gone. We could be so much more cozy up here.”
“No,” she said.
“I could take you to a private room at the Falke and we could practice our amo, amas.” He assumed her refusal but played the game out. “Or I could sweep you away to my cousin’s hunting lodge at Uhlenbad and make wild love to you under the gaze of every stag the Lindenbecks have ever killed.”
The moment seemed frozen in time. Antuniet thought over all her options one more time but nothing else offered. “Yes,” she said.
He gaped at her as if she had answered in Chinese. “Pardon?”
Antuniet imbued her shrug with every scrap of world-weary boredom she could pretend to. “My experiments have all gone sour and I’m sick to death of this place. I want to go somewhere else—anywhere. Now. This minute.”
She could see the hope leap in his eyes and hated what she was doing.
“But, my Kätzlein, I would need to send word ahead, and you need to pack your things. Perhaps a pleasant dinner and then we set out tomorrow…”
Antuniet shook her head. “Now. This very minute or not at all.” She ducked back inside just long enough to throw on her cloak and grab the book satchel. “Well?” she demanded on finding him still frozen in place.
A slow grin spread over his face. “If you would, Madame,” he said, offering her his arm.
He led her down the inner stairs and through the coffee room. His company took her past Frau Schongau unscathed but the landlady had shrunk to a very minor demon in her hell.
It took all her self-control not to start at each strange face between the rooming house and the livery stable where Gustav hired a phaeton for their excursion. A phaeton…well, at least it wasn’t an open curricle and he didn’t quibble when she insisted on raising the hood to give some protection from curious glances.
The Mystic Marriage Page 1
