Antuniet let out her breath in a sigh of relief. The past week it had seemed so simple. No, it had never been simple. But the difficulties were only now parading through her imagination. How long before Feldin figured it all out? How long before her life was common gossip all along the entire street? How long before she would hear whispers and coarse words behind her back as she passed? And Maistir Monterrez would hear eventually. And yet…and yet she wouldn’t take back a minute of it.
Antuniet followed Anna out into the street and took a moment to still her shaking hands before she could lock the door behind her. She climbed into the seat beside Jeanne and sat silently as the carriage set forth.
“Toneke, what’s wrong? What did she say?”
Antuniet shook her head silently. She couldn’t bring herself to speak openly with Jeanne’s maid sitting across from them, even knowing that Marien must know all her mistress’s secrets. And then, when they were alone at last, with dinner served and Tomric shooed away until called, her fears had faded and there were better things to speak of.
But those first innocent days were past. Now when Jeanne brushed against her in the workroom, or touched her on the cheek as they took leave of each other in the street, she would freeze and check to think who might be watching before she leaned into the caress. And that night, the nightmares came back, overwhelming the power of her amulet to dispel them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Margerit
“Well, that was quite a success.” Bertrut sighed happily as she settled herself on the cushions.
Margerit moved over to make room in the carriage and it swayed on its springs as Uncle Charul stepped up to sit opposite. She was content for Bertrut to claim her share of the credit for Sofi’s coming out. They had closed the summer, as had become custom, by gathering in Chalanz and entertaining their old acquaintances with a grand ball at Fonten House. This year it had been in honor of her cousin’s entrance into society. Soon enough, it would be Iulien’s turn as well, though as yet that was hard to imagine. Now Fonten House was closed up again, the ballroom swathed in covers after its brief moment of glory, and a few days’ travel would see them in Rotenek.
Barbara had left before the ball and returned to the city ahead of them. For an ordinary soirée it would have been quite the coup to have a titled baroness in attendance, but Barbara hadn’t wanted to outshine Sofi in importance and had pleaded the press of business as an acceptable excuse.
“What’s that in your hand?” Bertrut asked as the coach gave a lurch, her question almost swallowed up in the sudden clatter of iron shoes on cobbles.
Margerit looked down. “It’s only a copybook that Iulien gave me—a story, I think. She writes poetry too, you know, but you mustn’t tell the Fulpis; I’m sworn to secrecy.”
Iuli had been on her best behavior all summer to be allowed to attend Sofi’s ball—only watching from the corner of the musicians’ gallery, of course. Margerit had slipped away to bring her cakes and punch before it was time for her to be sent home. They had sat talking on a corner of the stair long enough to be missed down below. Iuli had said she’d been writing something special to show her. But Margerit had forgotten and hadn’t made time to visit Chaturik Square again. Iuli hadn’t forgotten. She came knocking on the door at Fonten House amid the bustle of the morning’s packing, willing to provoke yet another scolding for running off to deliver it into her hand. Margerit opened it and leafed through a few pages, but the jouncing of the coach made reading impossible. She tucked it under the cushion to keep it safe.
* * *
The household barely had a chance to settle into the rhythms of Tiporsel House, when the feast of Saint Mauriz hit like the crack of thunder that began a storm. The start of the season and the university term followed like wind and rain, and in that first week, Margerit was hard-pressed to do more than meet her most important obligations. On top of that, there were Akezze’s lectures to promote. Jeanne had promised to assist her in that, but Jeanne never seemed to be at home to visitors. It wasn’t until they found themselves at the same concert that Margerit could guess why.
“Barbara,” she said quietly, touching her on the arm for attention while continuing to stare across the narrow salle to where the other two women were sitting together, their heads close in conversation. “Were you planning to let me in on the secret?” There was nothing one could have pointed to for certain, no unmistakable outward sign. But knowing Jeanne and knowing Antuniet…
“Ah,” Barbara said, following her gaze. “So the pursuit was successful.” Her voice held a slight tinge of disapproval, but Margerit couldn’t sort out the cause.
“Was that what you guessed, back at the beginning of summer?”
“Guessed, yes. But there was nothing to tell yet, even when I visited Jeanne during my travels. Shall we go join them?”
Margerit thought that if her first suspicions had been uncertain, the proof was the guilty look in Antuniet’s eyes as she rose and they all exchanged courtesies. And seeing that, she said nothing except the usual sorts of things one said on meeting old friends again at the beginning of the season. The start of the concerto gave them all a chance to compose themselves and by the interval before the singers began, Margerit had found her way to safe topics for conversation.
“How has the work progressed? I want to hear everything. Perhaps you could come for a little dinner on Thursday? My aunt and uncle will be off at the Marzims’, so we needn’t worry about boring them.” She glanced over at Jeanne, implicitly including her in the invitation. “And Jeanne, I’ve been trying to get a word with you about my lectures. You had such clever ideas in the spring and I need your help to make it a success. Akezze has promised to stay through the end of the year at the least and I’m determined to set her up properly.”
Whatever awkwardness there might have been was smoothed away by the time Margerit first ventured down to the workshop on Trez Cherfis to see the summer’s bounty for herself. “And are you ready to present them to Her Grace?” she asked, running her fingers lightly over the stones displayed before her.
“Not yet,” Antuniet answered. “I still need to apply the techniques we worked out over the summer to the recipes with the more complicated roles. I need someone for the male roles—do you suppose Baron Razik would still be available? I’d rather not try to fit in someone new.”
“Yes, of course,” Margerit said, making a note to pass word to Efriturik by the complex pathways that protocol demanded. No doubt they would soon settle again into the comfortable ways of working that had grown in the spring, but there was always that first awkwardness between the worlds of men and women and the worlds of the court and city. Uncle Charul could drop a word. They frequented the same club.
And there was mystery work to do. Not for Princess Annek on this occasion, though soon it would be time to begin rehearsing the new version of the All Saints castellum. No, this project came to her in her own drawing room on the heels of Amiz Waldimen, soon to be Amiz Luzien.
“So you’ve caught your beau,” Margerit said as they settled together on the damask-covered settee. She abandoned all attempts to fit a face to the name Amiz had so proudly announced. “Who is he? I thought I remembered all the men who were buzzing around you last spring.”
Amiz’s eyes held their usual sparkle of humor and excitement, but there was something deeper now. “You know how we always hire a place up near Eskor for the summer because Mama was told the mountain air is good for her health. Well, this year Papa had some tedious business that kept him traveling back and forth to Rotenek, so we went to stay with Mama’s cousins near Akolbin instead. Not in the town itself, of course. That’s such a crush, especially when the court is stopping by. No, they have a very pretty little estate outside of town but close enough that Mama could drive in to take the waters every week. And of course there were dances when the court was there, besides the country balls that Mama’s cousins were invited to.” She barely paused for breath before plunging on. “Wel
l, that was where I met him. He was one of the neighbors. I’m sure we must have met before when we were both children, but of course he would have been a rude little boy like all the rest.”
And no doubt you were a silly little girl. But fresh eyes see deeper. “And you fell in love?” she asked. Margerit expected her to dismiss the question with a laugh. She’d always been so cynical about the place of love in the marriage market.
But Amiz blushed and looked down at the teacup cradled in her hands. “I…I think so. That is, I feel that I must be. What else could make me want to leave Rotenek?” She laughed uncertainly. “His family never takes a house in the city for the season. I’ll become quite countrified! But the way he makes me feel…it won’t matter. Mama says—well, Mama hadn’t quite abandoned the dream that one of us would marry up. But I think Papa is pleased with my choice.”
There was so much she didn’t need to say. Margerit had heard it all in Amiz’s dissections of other people’s courtships. If Amiz had been the eldest daughter, then her looks and vivacity would have been worth investing with a larger portion to win a higher prize. And if she had caught the hand of a well-born man, then her less-favored sisters could have benefitted enough from the connection to make up for some loss of dowry. But she came third, and her sisters had needed their equal shares to make ordinarily respectable matches. Beauty might have secured the heart of some younger son of an aristocratic family, but most likely he would bring tastes in excess of her resources. Men married down more often for money than for beauty. “When is it to be?” she asked. “Will you be married here or in Akolbin?”
“Here,” Amiz said, “and before the end of the year. Late in November, I think, but Mama wants to have the betrothal party as soon as may be and she wondered…that is, I wondered if you…?”
The question wasn’t of the betrothal party itself, of course, but the formal mystery that would precede it: asking the blessing of God and the saints on the expected union. The Waldimens belonged to several mystery guilds and no doubt one of them would be the sponsor with its own established forms. “But perhaps you could devise something more…more personal?” Amiz asked. “Nothing too elaborate,” she hastened to add. “We’ll only be at Saint Churhis, not the cathedral.”
Again, she heard all the parts that need not be said. For a brilliant match, only the cathedral would have done, but the parish church that covered Plaiz Nof would be sufficient to impress country cousins. And a personal ceremony designed by… Margerit tried not to feel that she would be paraded as a prize, though that was likely what Maisetra Waldimen intended. “Of course I’ll do it,” she said quickly, cutting through Amiz’s embarrassed fumbling. “I’ll come to call tomorrow and perhaps your mother can have someone from your guild there to answer questions? And then I can spend the afternoon at Saint Churhis to draw it up.”
Something far simpler would have filled the need, but the next day Margerit took her sketchbook to the church to lay out a true mystery, noting the dedications of the side altars and questioning the sexton on the history of the building and its key features. She built the structure in her mind and jotted it down in rough notes, speaking aloud the key phrases that would call the attention of the saints and lay out the intent of the ceremony so that she could see how the fluctus would respond. Amiz would stand there and her mother there. Her fiancé and whoever he brought would be there by the triptych of the crucifixion. The guild had their own favored prayers and structures for the markein and missio and she made no changes there. But the heart of the petition was tailored to what she knew of Amiz’s hopes and expectations for the marriage. Yet it was hard to stay within those lines and not weave in a thread of her own hopes for her friend.
At last she came out of her reverie and felt the cold of the stones beneath her feet and the unexpectedly close presence of Marken beside her. She came suddenly alert and turned to him, a question on her lips. With the barest nod of his head, he directed her attention toward the back of the church, where a man leaned with artful casualness against a pillar. For a moment she thought she must be mistaken, misled by a trick of the light.
“Mesner Kreiser? What are you doing here?” She chided herself for her bluntness. She never could learn diplomacy.
“Oh, satisfying idle curiosity for the most part,” he replied, strolling a few steps closer, then perching on the armrest of a pew just far enough away not to provoke Marken’s protective impulses. “I had business in the neighborhood and recognized the crest on your carriage outside. I confess I thought to find Saveze instead.”
Not here in Saint Churhis, she had meant. Here in Rotenek. In Alpennia at all. But he knew that, so there was no point to clarifying.
“One might ask the same of you,” he continued. “What a marvelous time of peace and prosperity for Alpennia when the royal thaumaturgist has little better to do than plan betrothal parties. Quite a waste of your talents, I should think.”
Margerit didn’t mind that he had divined the nature of the ceremony so easily from the fragments she’d spoken aloud, but she minded the eavesdropping. And she was frightened by the casual nature of his presence. “If you think that Princess Anna would disapprove, perhaps you should speak to her about it,” she said boldly. “I’m sure she’d be interested to know you’re here in Rotenek.”
A smile twitched across his narrow, fox-like face. “Who do you think it was that invited me to return? You might tell your friend the baroness that I’m pleased with her efficiency in delivering my messages. Both of them.” He straightened up and turned to go, but paused for one last question. “How is your little alchemist friend doing? That Chazillen woman? You might have saved us all some trouble if I’d known she had such friends at court.”
Margerit didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until his silhouette disappeared through the doorway to the porch and she let it go. “Marken, do you know where Barbara is?”
“I think she had business with LeFevre this morning.”
Her mind raced. Had it been a threat? Would he dare? Had Annek changed her mind about protecting Antuniet’s work? It didn’t matter at the moment. Antuniet needed to know he was back and be given whatever reassurance she needed. “Can you find someone to take a message to her? Tell her to meet us at Trez Cherfis.” She began gathering together her notes and sketches. “Go! I’ll be fine for the two minutes it will take. If anything happens I promise to scream.”
“Yes, Maisetra,” he said in a tone that assured her that if he thought there was any true risk, the answer would have been no.
* * *
Antuniet heard the news with little emotion beyond a shadow at the back of her eyes and a moment’s pause with a hand on the doorway as if to keep herself from swaying. But then her eyes went wider and she said, “Anna,” and turned quickly toward the workroom.
“There’s no need to fear,” Barbara assured her. She had arrived at the workshop hard on their heels, for a rider could negotiate the city streets more nimbly than a carriage. “I don’t think he’d be foolish enough to bother you, but just to make certain, we can arrange for a watch again. And see that your apprentice goes by carriage between here and her father’s house. Just until we’re certain. But what could Kreiser hope for, in any event? We have enough copies of your book that he couldn’t hope to prevent your success by theft again.”
“He could create his own stones. And if he could lay hands on my notes—”
“You still have Princess Annek’s protection,” Margerit protested.
“Do I? When it was she who invited him back?”
Margerit saw Barbara shoot her a warning glance. She would have stepped carefully even without it. “There could be many reasons for that. Why should it have anything to do with you? But perhaps it’s time to show the princess your work. He wouldn’t dare make trouble if she gives you some official recognition—not when he hopes to…” She hesitated. “Not when he has other plans that need her assent.”
“I can’t,” Antuniet protested
. “They’re not ready. The ruby process is still unreliable and I’ve only just worked out how to differentiate the fixations for chrysolite. The key is—”
“The key,” Margerit interrupted gently, “is to show Her Grace that her interest in your work will be rewarded. It’s enough, what you have. If you wait for perfection, you’ll never be ready. Shall I ask for an audience in your name?”
Antuniet closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. “Yes,” she said at last.
The door to the inner workroom creaked and Anna’s pale face looked out. Margerit could tell from her expression that there had been little in the conversation that had escaped her ears.
“Maisetra—” she began.
Antuniet said briskly, “You needn’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping. Better that you should know everything and be safe this time.” As if for the girl’s benefit, she turned to Barbara and said, “I never did learn what happened to Kreiser’s hirelings, the ones who broke in here.” She didn’t speak aloud the other things they’d done.
Barbara’s answer was careful and precise. “I hear they met with misfortune. An accident on the river. The water is cold and swift in January.”
Their eyes met and Antuniet gave the slightest of nods. I never wondered, Margerit thought. Did she—? She had seen Barbara kill a man before her eyes, but that had been in the heat of an attack. No secrets…but I never thought to ask. And she was uncertain whether she wanted to ask now.
It was dusk before they could return to Tiporsel House. Two guards had once more been installed, taking shifts out of a hastily improvised barracks in the workshop’s basement, and Anna had been sent home in the carriage with strict instructions to hire a ride for all future trips. Antuniet had balked at the suggestion that the guards be augmented with more personal protection. “No, everything that needs protection is here in the building. I won’t have an armin poking into my comings and goings.” And then, as if that thought led naturally to the next, “Jeanne. She should be warned.”
The Mystic Marriage Page 34
