“You’re leaving the cardinal’s service?”
“No. It’s for my aunt. She’s a teacher. I’m supposed to find out if Toratessi has laid her egg yet. Please give him back. I have to go.”
“So you have an aunt.”
“Yes. Please.”
“Toratessi is heading a special class over Christmas break, I believe,” said Nanny, looking at Leanna. “What was it?”
“Wing strength and agility,” said Leanna.
“Yes. That’s it. Leanna take Mattie to the stunt training room to meet Toratessi and we will meet you in the kitchens afterwards.”
I grabbed her arm again, more gently than before. I sensed no evil intentions in Nanny, but what would Mom say if I let a stranger run off with Horc. “Give me my brother.”
“You are a good sister, but by the look of him, your brother could use breakfast. This is the palace. We excel at breakfast.”
“And lunch,” said Leanna.
“And dinner.”
Horc licked his lips and they both laughed.
“I can feed him,” I said. “I’ve been feeding him. He’s okay.”
Nanny took my hand and a strange warmth went up it and settled in my chest. It was the pleasantest thing I’d felt in a long, long time. Rather like being held in Mom’s arms and sung to, back when I could hear her voice.
“It’s fine, Mattie,” she said and I nodded. It would be fine. Nanny said so. “We’ll find some nice bacon for the young master.”
Horc’s eyes sprung open. “And some biting sticks. I need to bite.”
Leanna put her arm around mine and I got another surge of well-being though not as strong as the one from Nanny’s hand. “Don’t worry. She’s nanny.”
“I know her name,” I said.
Nanny smiled. “She means that I am the nanny.”
“Heh?”
“The imperial nanny,” said Leanna. “She raised the emperor and the archduke. She takes care of the most illustrious.”
Horc gathered up his considerable dignity. “Nanny may take me to the meat.”
I felt so good and content I didn’t protest again and Nanny went down the hall, disappearing between folds of the dress.
“This way,” said Leanna, hooking her arm through mine. She led me through a complicated set of passages and out from under the train of Sisi’s dress. We emerged in front of a tour group led by a willow dryad like Lonica from the cathedral, except this willow was twice as tall and his painted bark was darker. Several in the group pointed at us and a thrill of fear went down my spine. I didn’t want to be seen. If I was recognized…
Leanna waved at them as we left and flew above the group. “They think we’re part of the school. It’s a huge honor.”
“You aren’t?” I had assumed she was, since she looked about my age and should’ve been in school like I should’ve been.
“I was until my gift was known, then I was apprenticed to Nanny.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight. This way. We’ll go through the museum,” she said, flying beside me and I struggled to understand her. I could read the people I knew well easily, even from the side, but with others it was much more difficult.
“So you’re going to be a nanny, too?” I asked.
“It’s my gift.”
“What kind of gift is it exactly?”
“You’ve never met a nanny before?” Leanna asked.
“I don’t get out much.” That was an understatement.
“The nanny’s gift is extraordinary and rare,” she said proudly. “We have the ability to sooth emotional pain and turmoil. We are focusers of gifts and intelligence. It works best with infants and children.”
So that’s what Nanny had done. Soothed my turmoil. That was a pretty good gift, not that I would’ve exchanged healing or fire for it, but still it was good and there wasn’t a whole lot of blood involved.
“Have you been to the imperial apartments before?” she asked.
“I’ve never been to the palace at all.”
She hesitated in the air and pivoted toward me. “You’ve never been to Sisi’s museum before?” She said it like it was a sin and a really bad one at that.
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
Hiding. Chasing trolls.
“You have to go back and take a tour. Sisi was an amazing human. She was the best seer of all time.”
“How could she be the best seer?” I thought Tess and Judd were pretty great. Sisi had some competition.
“She was a seer from birth. It’s extremely rare. She campaigned for equal rights for the unwinged and unspeaking fae. Because of her the school is open to all fae. And she suffered so much for her goodness.” Leanna flew in close as we passed a display full of wigs. “Her views were controversial and there was a movement opposing her.” She got even closer. “It was led by mindbenders. They murdered her son. The humans think it was a suicide, but it was murder. Mindbenders are the only species not allowed in the school.” Leanna shuddered.
I managed to keep a sympathetic look on my face, although my heart was rebelling. Mindbenders weren’t evil. At least Easy and his family weren’t. I’d never be able to convince her of that though. Everything was different in Europe, except for the hatred of mindbenders. I wondered if they really did kill Sisi’s son. If they did, how would anyone know?
We left through the entrance of the museum and found the three green dragons I’d seen earlier running around on a bald tourist’s head. They were laughing and scratching up the poor man scalp with their claws. The man kept scratching and said to his companion. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Must be the shampoo,” said his friend, peering at his scalp and seeing nothing.
“I might have to go back to the hotel.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
Just then one of the dragons made a running start and then slid across the man’s head, leaving a red scrape behind him.
“Ovid!” yelled Leanna. “Get off of him right this instant!”
Ovid the scraper tossed his head back and forth at her and spouted a stream of fire at the man’s grey fringe over his ear. The man yelped, “Burning.”
Leanna shook her finger. “I will tell your superior! “Get off!”
Ovid and his friends snarled at Leanna.
She darted forward and yelled, “Anubis Anippe!”
That got their attention and the dragons shot some flames at us, and then darted through the archway.
“New recruits. They’re always a problem,” said Leanna.
“You recruit dragons. I thought they were untamable.”
“Some breeds can be taught. The Celtic Stoorworms are the best, not those three, but the others are good. They serve in the emperor’s guard when they prove themselves. Ovid will take a long time. It’s like we don’t speak his language.”
An anubis fairy marched in the exit and looked at Leanna inquiringly. She pointed to the tourist whose friend was examining his head. “Ovid’s at it again.”
The anubis nodded. “I will handle Ovid. You will take care of the human?”
Leanna agreed and the anubis went out after Ovid and his crew. Then Leanna darted over and landed on the distressed human’s shoulder. I landed next to her and followed to the human’s hairy neck.
“What did he mean by take care of the human?” I asked.
She shrugged like this was a perfectly normal exchange. “I just do what I do. I’m not as good as Nanny, but I’m working on that.”
Leanna walked over the collar of the man’s bright yellow shirt and placed her hands on his neck. She didn’t say anything that I could see. After a couple of seconds, his shoulders relaxed. “It’s better, John.”
“Are you sure?” asked John.
“I think so. Let’s go in. I’m ready for some royal regalia.”
The men went towards the Sisi museum and we flew off.
“Did you heal him?” I asked in awe. I couldn’t heal humans. I
didn’t think anyone could except the vermillion.
“No, silly. I soothed him. A lot of pain is fear. I took away the fear and he didn’t notice the scratches so much.”
“Oh, so it’s a kind of healing.”
She tilted her pretty head to the side. “I guess so. I never thought of it like that.”
“You should. That was amazing.”
“Thanks.” Leanna led me past a sign pointing the way to the imperial apartments. When we got to the first room I saw it was much like the rooms in the Louvre with tons of gilded woodwork. The Hofburg palace had light colored walls and lots of red carpet and upholstery instead of the dark, rich colors of the Louvre. We found a door in a baseboard and went inside. There was another hall inside the wall, plain and painted white.
“These spaces were built for the human servants, but we use them, too.” She flew down the hall, talking away and I couldn’t catch half of what she said. Something about stoves in the wall. We passed quite a few of them. It seemed like a lot of stoves for a narrow hall.
We made a bunch of turns and ended up at a concealed human-sized door. There was a fairy-sized door above the handle and we went through it into an unusual space with humans milling about in front of velvet ropes looking at a room.
Leanna held me back. “We don’t want to interrupt the lecture. Let’s wait until they start flying.”
We hovered beside the door and I got a chance to look around. Actually, it was more like a display of a strangely compact room. The walls and furniture were all upholstered in plush beige fabric and there were small windows that didn’t look out on anything, but instead had a sort of fake sky in them. There was a wide sofa that could’ve been a bed wedged into a corner next to a sink with a large mirror. The sink had swags of the same fabric around the edges.
On the sink was a group of fairies. There were wood fairies, some wzlots, a dripping wet ashray, and several species I didn’t recognize. They had translucent wings that looked like dragonfly wings. All the young fairies were quiet and looking with rapt attention at a statue on the sink. We were behind the statue, so I couldn’t see exactly what it was, except that it reminded me of statues I’d seen in St. Stephen's and Notre Dame with its small curvy wings and long robes. This one had a bit of gold floating above the head, which was interesting, but I couldn’t imagine why the students were staring at it.
“This is a replica of Sisi’s railway car,” said Leanna. “She traveled a lot, meeting with many species and negotiating for them. If she hadn’t been assassinated, I bet she would’ve ended the French revolution. That’s what she was doing in Switzerland, working for peace in France.”
“Did a mindbender kill her, too?” I asked, doing my best to keep the doubt out of my voice.
“It was a human, an Italian anarchist.” She hesitated. “There’s no proof that anyone in the fae had anything to do with it.”
“But?” I asked.
“But Sisi was politically unimportant in the human world, but she was immensely important to us. So you have to wonder if someone wanted the revolution to keep going. Mindbenders probably controlled the Italian.”
The fairies on the sofa formed a line and the first one, a little girl with tiny translucent wings and blue skin took off, doing a series of complicated spins in the air and then going to the back of the line. The humans walked by, not noticing a thing. They didn’t know what they were missing. The spinning was excellent and much more interesting than an old train car.
“Now’s a good time,” said Leanna, zipping around a tour group of human children.
I followed and we landed behind the statue on the sink as a wood fairy boy Gerald’s age took off and managed to mess up his first spin. He ran into a cushioned wall and tumbled down onto the sofa. Now I knew why they practiced in the train car.
“Toratessi,” said Leanna. Then she spoke in another language, maybe Italian. I wasn’t sure. I was mostly not sure who she was speaking to. There was only the statue and they weren’t usually inclined to speak.
“Toratessi?”
The statue turned around, slowly and without any hint of body movement. It just turned like a human had reached over and done it. The stone face of an angel was pointed in our direction. The eyes were blank with no pupils. It had a lovely female face and the hint of gold above the head was a halo.
“Sì, Leanna,” said the angel and I gasped.
Toratessi smiled and it was completely bizarre. Fidelé looked like stone, but his eyes were regular eyes with whites and dark brown irises. The angel was completely indistinguishable from stone. Miss Penrose was right. You couldn’t miss her. She said something I couldn’t understand and then Leanna gestured to me, switching to English.
“This is Mattie. She wants to know about a job.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be a teacher?” asked Toratessi.
“It’s not for me. My Aunt Penny is interested.”
Toratessi nodded and her halo bobbed around on her head. “Ah, yes. I remember her well. She has excellent qualities, but as you see I haven’t laid my egg yet.” She spread her arms wide and revealed a round lump under her robes.
“I’m sorry to bother you then,” I said.
“I thought you were due to lay last week,” said Leanna.
“I was, but this little devil doesn’t agree. I will be seeing Healer Gruber later.” Toratessi looked at me again. “I do think it would be a good idea if Penny came in for a meeting tomorrow, so I can decide if she can take over my classes when school resumes. I will have laid my egg by then. Would that be good for Penny?”
What could I say? The answer was no. Miss Penrose was too sick to see anyone, unless I found a good treatment. Maybe I could try Ibn’s spell and take her illness into myself. That might get her through the meeting. “Yes. That would be fine.”
“You don’t seem sure.”
“I don’t know her schedule, but I’m sure she’ll find the time.”
Toratessi nodded vigorously and her halo went crazy, bobbing around in circles around her head. I couldn’t stop looking at it. Was she born with the halo? Was it a spell?
“You’ve never seen an angelo di pietra before?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry. I don’t mean to stare.”
“I get a lot of that. There aren’t many of us in Austria, although all the angels on the cathedrals and churches are designed after my species.”
“That’s how you look so much like the statues.”
“Indeed.”
The little ashray flew over and approached cautiously. “Signora Toratessi, possiamo—”
“In English, my little porco,” said Toratessi.
The little porco said slowly, “Can we have snack now? We’re finished with spins.”
“It’s not time for snack. We will work on collision avoidance for a while first.
His damp shoulders slumped, but he said, “Yes, Signora.”
Toratessi turned back to me. “Is there anything else? I have to get back or they will decide it’s time to nap.”
“What time should my aunt be here?” I asked.
“Ten o’clock is our break. That would be good.”
I thanked her and we left through the human entrance flying through a grand room covered in gilt. Then we went through a door in the woodwork above a portrait of a stern human man in uniform and we were back in the human servant hall. Leanna turned so many times, I had no clue where we were. I used to think I had a great sense of direction but that was back at Whipplethorn Manor where there weren’t many ways to get lost, unless you counted theft by humans. It was pretty easy to get lost that way.
Leanna stopped and hovered over an enormous stove jutting out from the wall. There was a little door next to the stove pipe and she led me through it. Inside was the biggest fairy kitchen I’d ever seen. Stoves lined an entire wall and they were all working, unlike the cathedral stoves. There were tables down the center of the room. Some were covered in marble, others with metal, and still ot
hers were scarred wood. The other walls were covered in shelves with every kind of pot and dish.
There were thirty fairies working at the tables, rolling out dough or measuring out ingredients into big ceramic bowls. They looked up briefly and then went right back to their work. I guess I wasn’t very interesting, but they sure were. Not a single one was winged. There were dryads of several different species, a few bird’s-eye maples and ponderosa, but mostly trees I didn’t know. A troll larger than even Lrag lifted a large casserole out of one of the ovens. Not only was he larger but also more fierce. He had red diamond-patterned skin like Lrag, but instead of two horns, he had a dozen twisting out of his head and down his spine.
We passed by and he gave Leanna a pat that nearly sent her tumbling across the room.
“Tut mir leid,” he said, his deep voice rumbling around the room. I could feel the vibrations in my chest.
A ponderosa gave the troll a stern look and he looked crestfallen. Leanna patted his massive red forearm and hurried me out into another room. A set of five willow dryads greeted Leanna as we hurried through. I so wanted to stay and watch. They were making flowers out of sugar. They looked so real, they could’ve been plucked out of a garden. Mom would’ve loved being in there. Gardening was her gift. She would’ve known the flowers and been able to say if they were perfect.
But Leanna wasn’t waiting. She took me through several more rooms with more fairies making soups or breads until she got to what she called the servants’ hall. It looked like a dining room to me. It was empty, except for Horc and Nanny. She sat in a fat armchair covered in pink- flowered chintz and Horc was beside her, sitting in an ornate gilt cradle. It had a canopy with a gold eagle at the top and luxurious fabric pooling on the floor. It was a cradle for a future emperor and Horc was completely comfortable in it as Nanny read from a book called Human tales: A world of large adventure. Horc listened intently while managing to stuff a chunk of raw bacon into his cheek. This was no mean feat, considering both his cheeks were ballooned out to the extreme.
“Ah, there you are,” said Nanny. “Has your aunt got the job?”
Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four) Page 9
