Kyra realized she hadn't eaten anything since the tea sandwiches at Lady Earthwygg's. She'd meant to get something from the kitchens and avoid dining with the family—without the musicians to fill it, the silence in the dining room would have been unbearable even if Alix had not eloped—but her mother, and then the Inquisition, had forestalled that plan. Spens was looking askance at the white and yellow china plates of powdered tea balls, date bars, and lemon tarts, but Kyra ran her fingers lightly above them and sensed no magic in them beyond the magic of a skilled cook, no ill save those inherent in such a quantity of butter and sugar.
"Did you make a talisman of scry-ward for my sister?" She handed a comfit to the still-doubtful Spenson. "It's important that I know," she added, seeing Pinktrees hesitate. "I know she's eloped with that boy of hers."
"As who wouldn't?" the mage giggled.
"Who indeed? But I have reason to believe that a death-curse has been laid on her, a death-curse that will fall on her wedding night."
The fat woman sat up straighter, her rosy mouth suddenly losing its laughter, a lemon tart hanging unnoticed in her pudgy hand. In the tiled stove the fire hissed softly on the coals; the two butter-colored cats lay in the pool of the russet light that came through its barred grate, curled in on themselves like enormous slippers. Behind the swagged lace and velvet ribbons that decorated the windows, Kyra was ever more conscious of the denseness of the night.
"Pinktrees, we have to overtake them! We have to find them, and find them soon!"
"They won't be in danger tonight," Spenson said, and both women turned to look at him in surprise.
"Well, think. Even if they stop at the first big village outside of town—Underhythe to the south, or Mintrebbit to the north, or Glidden up along the river—by the time they get there, it'll be too late to find a priest. Whatever they're doing tonight—and they may be romantic enough to sleep apart at whatever inn they've sheltered at—they won't be married at least until tomorrow afternoon."
"Unless they've taken ship," Kyra said, her eyes dark with fear in the soft reflections of the candles. "If they were going to Senterwing or the colonies, the ship's priest could have wed them."
"In that case there is nothing we can do," Spens said quietly. "Not tonight, not tomorrow… Never." He looked across at the dog wizard in her lilac clouds of ruffles and lace. "Have they taken ship?"
"I don't know." She set her lemon tart on the tiny plate before her, regarding him with deep concern in those oddly wise hazel eyes. A cart went by on the road, filled with laborers on their way back from Little Harbor, drunk and singing in the darkness. The cats rolled luxuriantly over into undignified positions and settled themselves to serious slumber. The steam of the teapot sent soft whispers of chamomile and lemon grass into the still air.
"One of Lady Earthwygg's footmen came here about noon, asking me to go to her house immediately and telling me it would be well worth my while, which indeed it was. Your sister, my dear—and my! but she's a beautiful girl, and so sweet—was there, and that nice young man."
Pinktrees sighed reminiscently and helped herself to what remained of her tart and another one as well. "Her ladyship said that Alix, as she called her, and Algeron were going away and were afraid that Alix's sister, who was a wizard, was going to try to stop them, and would I give them a scry-ward so that the sister couldn't find them? I should have known there was something afoot, for I charge twenty crowns for a scry-ward, and Perdita Earthwygg has yet in her life to lay out twenty coppers for something that doesn't benefit her. Alix looked as if she'd been crying her eyes out, poor lamb, with the end of her nose all red under the powder, and holding onto Algeron's hand, though I noticed it was she who did all the talking. Such a handsome young man, but he didn't have two words to say for himself and was obviously terrified of Lady Earthwygg."
Kyra smiled, recalling Algeron's account of his brief career as Janson Milpott's secretary. Whatever volcanic outburst of passion and love had drawn Alix into realizing she couldn't live without Algeron, she had a fairly clear idea of who was in charge of the logistics of the flight.
The dog wizard sighed again. "She said her parents would never forgive her and that her father would send his men after them and would get you—although of course I didn't associate it with you, my dear Snow-Tear—to scry for them in your crystal so that they could be dragged back."
"Had Lady Earthwygg given them money?" Kyra asked.
Spens looked startled for a moment at the very idea. Then, as he thought about it, his homely face broke into a grin. "That little vixen…"
Pinktrees nodded. "After I'd given them the talisman—a very nice bit of silver and rabbit skin, with two chips of opal worked in…" She ticked the ingredients off on her fingers around the comfit she held. "Lady Earthwygg even provided the opal, which was tremendously good of her, since, gimcrack as the stones were, they were far better than anything I can afford, and the footman brought them their cloaks; Alix clasped her ladyship's hand and said how she'd always thank her for giving them the money to take a proper start of their life together."
"Of course." Spenson chuckled with pure delight. "Lady Earthwygg would give her whatever money she asked for just to get her out of town."
"Well, her ladyship certainly did look like Saffron does when he thinks I haven't noticed him licking out of the butter icing spoon. Isn't that right, my tiny cream cake?"
One of the cats on the hearth—twenty pounds of "tiny cream cake" at the lowest possible computation—twitched a fluffy tail in sleepy response.
"I thought she might have," Kyra said slowly, "from what Alix said in her letter about starting in respectable trades. The only thing preventing her from marrying Algeron was money to get them set up in business."
"Well, it isn't surprising, considering the amount Lady Earthwygg has paid me for love-philters and to put marks on your house, Master Spenson, to make you desire that rat-faced daughter of hers." Pinktrees poured out another cup of tea for herself and judiciously selected a date bar. "Not that the poor girl's looks have anything to do with it, because actually the girl's quite pretty, and my own niece has a face like a door scraper and it didn't stop the kindest young man in the world from taking to her—but that Earthwygg girl has eyes like a shrike. But as to where they were bound, truly, I don't know. Her ladyship kept me afterward to make up another love-philter—'now that troublesome chit is out of the way,' I believe she put it. But she did serve me some truly excellent raspberry tartlets, and with the cost of raspberries at this time of year, that was generous of her."
"How did she pay you?" Kyra broke in, leaning forward.
The dog wizard looked startled. "Well, in flimsies, naturally."
"I mean, did she send a servant out of the room for the money, or was it there in the room with her when you entered?"
"Ah!" Pinktrees rose and rustled her way to the exquisite cherrywood sideboard near the window. She withdrew a small purse of stamped leather from whose top protruded the edges of a substantial roll of yellow bank notes. "How extremely clever of you, my dear."
"What?" Spenson looked from one wizard to the other, completely lost, as Kyra moved her chair closer to the stove and bowed her head over the purse, which she held cradled between her hands. Their hostess dimpled and came back to the table to hand him another tart.
"Now, this is just a little wizardry, dear," she said in a motherly voice. "Sit quiet and have some more tea."
He retreated, discomfited, to the depths of his overstuffed chair, and the fluffier of the two cats, having risen and stretched from claw tip to the last ostrich-feather curl of her tail, sprang into his lap and confidently made herself at home.
Kyra closed her eyes and sank her perceptions into the soft fabric of the leather and the money.
For some time she was aware only of its touch and its smell: the faint camphory perfume of the bag, the scents of the leather mingling with the dim potpourri that had been in the sideboard's secret compartment, the ambergris t
hat clung to Lady Earthwygg's clothing and hands, the gray filthy smell that any money would pick up in handling. She was conscious of the warmth of the stove against her knuckles, her cheeks, and her knees through her gown, conscious of Pinktrees' jasmine perfume and the slightly rotted scent of the paper-whites in the swirled vase of Kymil glass on the sideboard, of the lemony scent of the tarts and the resinous fragrance of the fire, of the leather and orris root and the smell of Spenson's flesh.
Then, deeper, pictures began to form in her thoughts. The vision of Lady Earthwygg's drawing room came easily, for she had been there herself that day. It was earlier than she had seen it, the sunlight lying strong against the red silk of the wallpapers, gleaming on the variously colored marbles of hearth and window seat and floor. Her ladyship was dressed not in the stiff white and rose gown she had worn that afternoon but in a wrapper of bronze-green silk frothing with lace and a lace cap on her storm-colored hair. Alix and Algeron sat, looking stiff and anxious and a little embarrassed, on the curly-legged love seat where Esmin had been seated that afternoon. Alix wore the plain dark gown of one of the maids, Lily, perhaps, quite possibly the one Kyra had borrowed for her expedition to the Cheevy Street Baths. Had that only been the day before yesterday?
Alix was saying, "I've computed what we'll need to set myself up in a good shop in a good street in Kymil. Algeron can easily find employment as a pastry chef either with one of the established pastry shops or in a private mansion. Five hundred crowns would keep us well until business starts coming my way."
"Five hundred," Lady Earthwygg began, aghast either at the sum or at Alix's temerity in asking it.
"How much did you offer my sister to make Master Spenson fall in love with Esmin?" The doelike brown eyes, red-rimmed though they were with spent tears, met the bulging black ones with cold steadiness. "That's got to be easier once I'm out of the way."
"I always said you were an outrageous hussy, girl!"
"As long as I'm an outrageous hussy in Kymil, you shouldn't have complaints," returned Alix. Algeron gazed at his beloved with awe at such courage. "Besides…" And here Alix smiled and looked for a moment like her usual teasing self. "I'm not, really. Kyra's the outrageous one. Though I suppose I am a hussy now. I just… want to be happy. I want to be free." And her hand closed around the slim, muscular ink-stained one that it held.
"My pearls didn't bring very much," she went on after a moment. "You know girls my age don't get real jewelry, and besides, the best of them were given to me by my mother, and I wouldn't sell them were I starving. You're our only chance, my lady."
Kyra opened her eyes, slowly drawing her mind back from the images that clung to the pouch, the pouch that throughout the interview had been on that little table at her ladyship's side where Kyra had later found the packet of Hestie Pinktrees' herbs. Pinktrees was nibbling yet another tartlet and talking quietly to Spenson, who was stroking the cat.
"I must say I was rather proud of myself, getting into your house to mark it for the love-spells. At my size, you must admit it's quite a trick to go unseen." The dog wizard sighed regretfully. "I suppose your lady's going to go through now and take all the marks away."
She looked around quickly, though Kyra had made no sound, and Spenson followed the direction of her eyes.
Kyra set the pouch down, feeling a vast tiredness within her. "Kymil," she said. "They're headed for Kymil."
Spenson guessed that the lovers had made for the village of Underhythe, on the main Kymil road. But to Kyra's urgent demands for immediate pursuit he responded, incontrovertibly, that not only would all the city gates be closed at this hour, they would certainly be watched by the Witchfinders. Anyone attempting to leave before the gates opened at dawn for the market carts would be stopped and questioned at the very least, and there were enough Church dogs in the Magic Office to make Kyra put the thought of cloaking-spells out of her mind.
"I'll be back here before sunup with a couple of horses and some clothes for you." Spens latched the door of the countinghouse on Salt Hill Lane behind them and led the way through to the inner storeroom whence the ladder ascended to the loft. He moved with calm and efficient briskness, a man long used to getting out of tight places. "I'll bring breeches and a jacket—you can put your hair up under a hat."
"Nonsense, there's nothing more obvious than a girl with her hair pinned up to look like a boy." Kyra flipped open the coal box beside the little iron stove; her voice and Spens' footfalls echoed hollowly in the long, bare-walled attic room where in times past the clerks had slept. "You must have a pair of scissors here somewhere. Thank God you're not one of those stingy employers who ration the coal." She emptied what little kindling was left in the box onto the grate and arranged two or three chunks of coal over it. The room was large, but if she took the bed nearest the stove, she thought, she would be warm enough through the night. The blankets Spenson took out of the cupboard were fusty-smelling but clean and fairly thick; even her best These-Blankets-Stink spells failed to bring a single flea to the surface.
"I never thought to be thankful for my face, but life is full of surprises; it looks far more like a boy's, anyway."
"No." Spenson eased down to his knees behind her, where she sat before the open hatch of the stove's black belly; half turning, she saw the coin-bright gold of the new flames glint on the buttons of his garishly striped gold and crimson waistcoat. "That mouth could never be mistaken for a boy's." His hands slid under the rufous chaos of her hair; very gently, his lips sought hers.
"Spens…"
Slowly, like a collapsing silk pavilion settling over the air trapped within it, they sank to the floor, mouths taking warmth from one another, hands buried in each other's hair. As the firelight flared, it threw their shadows over rafter and wall; the smell of burnt dust from the rarely used stove filled Kyra's nostrils, and the reminiscence of Hestie Pinktrees' lemon tarts on Spenson's breath.
"We should be—"
"There's nothing further we can do for them tonight," he murmured. "There's nothing further you can do."
She raised her head, her hair hanging down over the lace of her collar. "They could be dying."
He only looked up at her, not contradicting; his eyes were somber. He was right, she knew. There was nothing further she could do, not even search for them in her crystal to see if they were dying or not. For the first time the sense of her own complete helplessness washed over her, the sense that even had they somehow gotten out of the city without being seen, they would still not have made it to Underhythe before morning. The helplessness was followed almost immediately by rage, by the desire to spring to her feet, to pace, to kick, to curse, to smash her fists against the lathe of the walls; and that rage, by a wave of trembling and the inchoate, infuriating, nearly overwhelming desire to cry.
She dropped back down on him, clinging to him for a long time in a kind of fever, while his arm closed around her, and through the rustling stiffness of her skirts and petticoats she felt against her legs and thighs the unfamiliar strength and bulk of him. In time her trembling stopped, as if the solid calm of him had come slowly to be absorbed into her flesh.
When the clock on some nearby chapel chimed midnight, Spenson stirred a little; Kyra whispered, "Don't go." The fire had sunk, though the smoldering coals gave forth a nearly lightless heat. For the first time since she could remember—perhaps, she thought, for the first time in her life—the thought of lying alone in the darkness filled her with dread. By his breathing, by the occasional movements of his hands over the stiff fabric of her back and sides, she knew that he had slept no more than she. He settled again and drew her close. She wasn't sure what she feared in the darkness, the thought of Alix or that last vision of Tibbeth of Hale, eyes popping out, mouth stretched, screams drowned out by the roaring of the fire as the flesh of his legs and feet sizzled and fell away. She pressed her face to the smooth satin of the waistcoat beneath her cheek, breathing its smoky odor and trying to will herself to sleep without dreams.
When the clock chimed three, Spenson rose quietly and departed. Kyra occupied herself with cutting her hair until she heard the muffled clunk of the latch that announced his return.
"There." She ruffled the coarse brush of what was left. "How's that?"
"Absolutely horrible." He dropped the bundle of clothes he was carrying and picked his way across the room to her, moving with the clumsy caution of a nonmage in the dark. "It looks like it was cut without the aid of a lamp."
"Well, I couldn't see around the back with the mirror."
"Here." He found a couple of candle ends in a drawer, flipped open the stove to kindle them, and took the scissors. It surprised her how conscious she was of his hand when he touched the side of her face to steady her head, how every finger movement in her hair and the thin flick and whine of the blades seemed to have a tremendous significance.
It's ridiculous, she thought, that all those silly songs those musicians sang and all Algeron's absurd poems should be so true. If everything in the world did not precisely speak his name, all things seemed to relate to him in some fashion or other, an effect that, when she had read of it in novels, had previously seemed affected and ridiculous. She supposed she would be saner again presently.
"I didn't hear any horses," she remarked, turning her head a little to glance back at him.
"Hold still or I'll take your ear off. I sent one of my clerks to leave them at the Pelican Inn on the Kymil road; I thought we'd be less conspicuous getting out of the city without them. There." He handed her the scissors back and gathered the cuttings from the floor. "You'll look like a respectable footman out for a day's errands in the country."
He crossed to the bundle of clothing and drew out a shirt, a pair of breeches and a coat of the dark, severe cut common to servants, and a pair of stout shoes. He himself had changed out of the bottle-green suit he'd worn the previous day into a countrified short tweed jacket and top boots. Kyra retreated out of the candlelight to the farther end of the attic, shivering a little in the cold as she stripped off her heavy taffeta gown and layers of petticoats, and pulled on the masculine attire. It was only when she had transferred the contents of her dress's pockets to her coat pockets and turned back for the mirror's assistance in tying her neck cloth that she saw Spenson struggling gamely into a voluminous black dress he had to have borrowed from his cook or housekeeper and barely stopped herself from bursting into laughter.
Stranger at the Wedding Page 27
