Masque (The Two Monarchies Sequence)

by W. R. Gingell

  He gave me a last, mischievous, crinkly grin that beetled his eyebrows, and when I looked up again, he was gone.

  “That makes six!” I called out through the shelves, and fancied I heard the ghost of a laugh. “Come, Vadim; we have a busy afternoon ahead of us.”

  We were halfway home before Vadim, tracing the curlicues on the front of the book and trailing behind, said curiously: “What did you mean, tricks?”

  I gave her a half smile over my shoulder. “You told me about one yourself.”

  Vadim frowned. “The way people get lost, you mean?”

  “Of course. It’s part of the trade. The first trick is the glimpse but never a sight; if you follow the shopkeeper you’re sure to get lost. The second is that there’s always an easy solution to avoid being lost. In this case, ringing the bell. Once you get past the first two tricks, the rest is easy.”

  “And the shopkeeper always knows what book you want!” Vadim said, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Then was it just tricks? Not real magic?”

  I shrugged one shoulder elegantly. “You tell me. I have no aptitude for magic. What did you think?”

  “It was stuffed with magic!” Vadim said fervently. “But how did you know about the tricks, then?”

  “I have a few tricks of my own, my child. Besides, magic is like everything else: it has its set rules and regulations. Once one knows the easier rules, one can extrapolate.”

  “The third trick was his appearing behind the counter!” continued Vadim gleefully, ticking off tricks on her fingers to the imminent danger of my new book. “And the fourth-”

  “Vadim!” I said firmly, relieving her of the book; “Tell it all to Keenan. We are home, and I have entirely too much to do for one afternoon. I will expect you in my room at four o’clock, and my green-striped walking dress- but no! Will it rain this afternoon?”

  “Oh yes!” Vadim said absently. She was still counting off tricks on her fingers. “But not until after dinner, I think.”

  “Then lay out my blue and ivory calling dress,” I decided, with great fortitude. It would be a sacrifice to lose it to the rain, but less than to lose my green-striped muslin; and with any luck, my sacrifice would not be in vain. “Four o’clock, mind!”

  Once in my suite, I changed into a comfortable gauze wrapper of many floating layers that was light and cool in the noticeably muggier afternoon, then waved cheerfully at the watchman in the window opposite before curling up in the windowseat to peruse my new book. To my malicious amusement, the man ducked his head and pretended that he hadn’t seen. I found myself wondering what Lord Pecus would have done in the same situation, and grinned as I settled the book more comfortably in my lap.

  “Hello again!”

  I’m not programmed for greetings, the book wrote cautiously.

  “Well, we all have our failings. What shall I call you?”

  Now you’re just being difficult.

  “I am, aren’t I? Never mind. Would you show me the fragments relating to Lord Pecus’ curse again, please?”

  The information appeared more quickly this time, staining through the pages in blue and gold, and as I read, my fingers worked absently to unpin the snood, tumbling my hair down my back in a frothy mass. I combed it out idly with my fingers, frowning over the text; and then sat back with a sigh as I came to the last piece, which seemed to be an inventory of items required for a facial spell.

  “Well now,” I said thoughtfully. “This puts a rather different slant on things.”

  Indeed.

  “Just how recent are these excerpts?”

  My spell parameters are set to collect excerpts from the latest complete day.

  My eyebrows rose. “I can find any written records up until yesterday?”

  Yes.

  “Any and all excerpts, or merely important ones?”

  I have access to any and all written material: my parameters have never been sounded.

  “Indeed? How useful! Do you have anything in reference to the latest Ambassadorial Ball?”

  Guest lists. A series of communiques to and from the queen of New Civet. A more secret communique between persons styling themselves Angel and Left Hand. Newspaper articles on clothing and famous attendees. Speaking of balls, shouldn’t you be finishing your dress for Lord Pecus’ ball?

  “I shall ignore that. Show me any excerpts from the last two days concerning Lady Farrah.”

  A paragraph materialised in green and gold, and I read it with my brows raised.

  “This is not what I asked for,” I told the book pointedly.

  That is your most probable future, the book said, and added smugly: I am also able to cross-reference and extrapolate.

  “Hm. With dubious accuracy, if you’ll pardon me. Besides, my dress is already finished.”

  The gold one isn’t.

  “That ensemble is purely experimental,” I said. “Besides, I have Delysia’s dress to finish, and I absolutely refuse to discuss matters of dress with a book.”

  Well, there’s no need to be insulting. I was only trying to help.

  “I think I shall see the Earl of Horn’s last month of written history, if you please. Anything by him or to him.”

  I am still not entirely sure how a book manages to sulk; but for the rest of the afternoon, the book undoubtedly did sulk. It might have had something to do with the sombre colours in which it wrote, or the studied slowness with which it complied with my requests. At all events, by the time Vadim arrived to lay out my afternoon dress, I was feeling the kind of exasperation that is usually only wrung from me by vapour-prone ladies and small, noisy dogs.

  I put the book down with a grateful sigh, and approached the ivory dressing table to re-braid my hair.

  “I will wear the cream hat with blue ribbons, Vadim.”

  I made short work of dressing. The Earl of Horn, if the Book of Interesting Excerpts was accurate, had an appointment this afternoon, leaving his wife and daughter at home to receive my call. I wished to make the best possible use of that time. Lady Louisa was pert and talkative, a positive boon to anyone seeking information; and as for the Countess, provided her poppy syrup was at hand, I should be able to turn the conversation whichever way I chose without her noticing any prompting.

  It’s unbecoming in a lady to be smug – or at least to appear smug – and one is usually setting oneself up for a fall just when one thinks oneself terribly clever. Nevertheless, when I stepped over the Earl’s doorstep that afternoon, my ensemble unsullied by rain, I was feeling that I had managed things very well. Let that be a lesson to all.

  It started out quite well, to be fair. The Earl was from home- perhaps attending the Charles Black meeting, I thought darkly, feeling again the sting of my grievance with Lord Pecus. The countess was in what the butler chose to call the green room. In the gloom caused by stormy skies it looked more akin to bilious wattle, and Lady Louisa, who was in somewhat bored attendance, did not benefit by the shade.

  She brightened when she saw me, but her smile lost a little of its brilliance when it became evident that I was unaccompanied.

  “Oh! I thought Curran might be with you, or Lord Pecus,” she sighed. “We weren’t expecting visitors, you know.”

  I ignored her languorous rudeness since I intended to push the boundaries of politeness myself, and seated myself without waiting for an invitation that would most likely have been given grudgingly.

  “Are you very much fatigued after the ball?” I enquired, rescuing the tail of my braid from the countess. She had picked it up with a childlike fascination and was using it to dust imaginary powder onto her face.

  “Oh, immensely!” Louisa let herself recline languidly, and gestured with one hand. “The last guests didn’t leave until well after midnight. I expected Lord Pecus today, actually: he was so attentive last night. What a pity you twisted your ankle in the waterfall room, you looked quite pale and drawn!”

  “It’s the red hair,” I said, smiling at her affably. I sincerely hop
e I was never so transparently young. “All we redheads look drawn and pale. Your father is out, I believe?”

  Louisa’s nose wrinkled fastidiously. “Oh yes, father is at his anti-magic meeting.”

  “No, dear,” the countess said in her high, girlish voice, surprising both myself and Lady Louisa, “Not anti-magic! Science!” She let her voice trail away dreamily, and then added vaguely: “Dynamos and things.”

  My mind flashed back to the metallic oblong I had fished out of the earl’s pebble pond, and I felt my interest quicken.

  “Dynamos?”

  Louisa waved her hand dismissively. “Power sources, or something. Papa gets quite boring about them, actually.”

  “Fascinating!”

  “Don’t let Papa hear you say that!” warned Louisa, her languid demeanour vanishing in sudden alarm. “He’ll bore on for hours, absolute hours! And all for little boxes that look like pebbles!”

  “So useful!” trilled the countess, becoming animated once more with a glaze-eyed fanaticism. “Commlinks without magic and talking boxes!”

  “Really?” I turned my gaze on her, but the moment of lucidity was already passing.

  “And moving pictures on glass,” she said, smiling sweetly up at me. Her eyes blinked gracefully closed, and a moment later, she emitted a faint snore.

  “I’m afraid my wife is not herself this morning,” said the earl’s voice. I turned my head to find him standing in the doorway. “The excitement of last night’s ball was rather too much for her.”

  I was conscious of a flash of irritation mixed with a wholly unexpected embarrassment. In a tone as surprising as it was unwelcome, the earl had managed to infuse a degree of polite puzzlement I had not considered him capable of. I did not blush, however: I am by far too sophisticated to blush unless it is on purpose.

  “I wasn’t expecting to find you engaged, Louisa,” the earl said pleasantly, dropping a fatherly kiss on his daughter’s head. His shrew eyes came to rest on me with a suggestion of mockery, but he bowed slightly with punctilious politeness.

  “Lady Isabella! How can we account for the pleasure of seeing you twice in two days?”

  I launched into my excuse without pausing. I had hoped to avoid giving an excuse, and if it had been only Louisa and the countess, I would have done so: it was rather regrettably slim.

  “Lady Quorn gave me a recipe for the countess,” I said, looking up at him innocently. “She’s been meaning to send it over ever since the countess asked for it, but what with one thing and another, it never got sent. I thought it best to bring it over myself and make sure it arrived.”

  I gave the sheet of paper to Louisa, glad that my story, though thin, was true. It was fortunate that I had remembered to bring the recipe with me.

  “How thoughtful of you,” said the earl, smiling urbanely at me. He sat beside his wife and clasped her hand in one of his. She woke for long enough to smile sweetly up at him and pronounce his name, then dropped back into a gentle doze.

  Seizing the opportunity, I announced with great solicitude that I was sorry to have tired the countess, and would take my leave. Louisa, hastily jumping to her feet, followed me to the door and said that she would show me out. I was amused, but willing, and unsurprised on the whole when she confided in me some way down the hall: “I didn’t really think you needed showing out, Isabella, but Papa will talk about his horrid dynamos for hours on end. Mama just nods and smiles, but I have to listen.”

  She didn’t walk me all the way to the front door, which was perhaps fortunate, since I found Lord Pecus on the steps. He looked resigned but unsurprised to see me there.

  “I suppose it would be expecting too much to ask you not to interfere in Watch business?”

  “Oh, I’m not interfering,” I assured him, looking up with my best air of sincerity. “Delysia gave me a recipe that the countess asked for.”

  Lord Pecus grunted. “I’m sure she did.” He managed to make it sound like an accusation, to my fascination.

  “Smile at me and offer me your arm,” I said, smiling saucily and dropping a curtsey. “The earl is watching us from the window of the green room. He might be persuaded that you came here merely to escort me.”

  Lord Pecus did so with an air of exasperation, but admitted: “Two visits would look a trifle odd. Lady Farrah, you have ruined my afternoon’s investigation.”

  “But think of the fresh air you’re getting!” I smiled up at him sunnily, linking my fingers around his arm, and fancied I caught the glimmer of a smile beginning in the porcelain lips of his mask. “Besides, if you wish to know what that metal pebble is, I believe I can tell you.”

  “I spent all morning testing that rock,” said Lord Pecus, looking down at me narrowly: “And I’m no closer now to discovering its use than when I began. I was beginning to think that your instincts were at fault, my lady.”

  “But?”

  This time the smile was more than a glimmer. “Nothing is this impenetrable. It’s dense, metallic, and gives off a force that isn’t magic.”

  “In the earl’s waterfall room,” I began, pursuing an interesting thought; “Was it magic you sensed? Certainly and absolutely?”

  He hesitated. “I couldn’t swear to it. I would have said so at a pinch, but the resonance was slightly off. Does it have some connection to the pebble?”

  “I believe so. Louisa mentioned an anti-magic meeting that the earl attends, and the countess mentioned dynamos; commlinks without magic and talking boxes, that sort of thing. I thought at first that the pebble was a burnt out commshell, but I’m beginning to think it might be a dynamo. Louisa did say they look like rocks.”

  “It’s certainly not a commshell,” Lord Pecus agreed. He was frowning. “If it’s a dynamo, I’d like to know exactly what it was powering.”

  I felt a flash of dismayed understanding. “You think the earl will notice it’s missing.”

  “Let’s just say I have a sinking suspicion that he might.” Lord Pecus absently covered my linked fingers with one huge hand. “You’ve already taken some precautions, I believe?”

  I allowed myself a smile at the tacit confession of surveillance as we mounted the steps to the ambassadorial residence, and released Lord Pecus’ arm.

  “I have, my lord.”

  “Double them,” he said.

  *

  This time when the crash came, both Keenan and Vadim dashed into the room to witness the disturbance. I had only just come to bed from the sewing room, where Delysia’s almost-finished dress was draped on a dummy, so I had not had time to fall asleep. I watched their glee with an indulgent eye.

  “Well done, Keenan,” I said.

  “I fink the awning’s cut him in half!” Keenan said, with indecently ghoulish enjoyment. “Right down the middle! His legs are twitchin’, though, lady: he might still be alive. I loosed all them screws right out!”

  “You did, Keenan; and very well, too! I don’t know what I ever did without you.”

  “Slept in peace, I reckon!” said Vadim, grinning. “Who did you annoy this time?”

  “The Earl of Horn, I rather think,” I said thoughtfully. “Make sure your doors are locked tonight, my children.”

  Chapter Eight

  I had time to complete Delysia’s gown before my young watchman of yesterday was ushered into the room with his rounded hat tucked bashfully under one arm. He scrubbed up very nicely, but in spite of his excellence in uniform he was looking rather sheepish.

  “Do sit down!” I said invitingly. “I’ve ordered tea for us.”

  He looked at me beseechingly. “Lady-!”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Oh, very well! There is your badge: take it and be comfortable. I have ordered tea, however, and I wish to have someone with whom to share it.”

  “I would be honoured, lady.”

  “Besides,” I added agreeably, “I have some-”

  “-questions to ask me!” finished the watchman, nodding. He was grinning. “I thought you might.”r />
  “Of course, I realise that as an officer of the Watch it is your duty to take all such questions in stoic silence and not give away a thing, but I was hoping that Delysia’s very fine chocolate cake would be enough to test your stoical reserve.”

  The teatray arrived as I spoke, and it was clear from the gleam in his eye that the chocolate cake was already having an effect.

  “I trust it doesn’t count as a bribe if I am terribly obvious about it.”

  “Lady, you know the way to a man’s heart!” said the watchman ruefully, gazing at the cake with longing.

  I poured him a strong cup of tea and briskly passed him an enormous serving of the cake, reserving one just as generous for myself.

  This time the look the watchman cast me was as respectful as it was admiring.

  “You have a hearty appetite, lady.”

  “Yes, Melchior says it’s a wonder I’m not as fat as a carthorse!” I said cheerfully, causing him to choke on his tea. “Now, it’s all very well for you to know who I am, but I’ve not the least idea who you are. Since we’ve no one to introduce us, I’m afraid I shall have to be terribly indelicate and ask you for your name outright.”

  “With pleasure, lady. Lieutenant Trophimus Holt at your service!”

  I tilted my head, considering this, and came to the conclusion that I knew the name. “Is it the fashion in Glause for Earls to join the Watch, Lieutenant?”

  The Lieutenant grinned. “Those of us without any money to speak of, yes. Besides, any man would be proud to serve under Lord Pecus, lady. The king tried to set him up as a Commander in the Glausian army, you know.”

  “Lord Pecus didn’t care for the idea?” I stored this fact away for later consideration, and offered the Lieutenant another slice of cake.

  He shrugged, but accepted the cake. “He says the worst enemies we have to face come from within.”

  “How very philosophical of him! Poetic, too. Do you agree?”

  “A country can crumble from within just as disastrously as it can be over-run from without,” he said bluntly. “Charles Black is only one group among dozens that threaten to do so.”