Scholar of Decay

by Tanya Huff

  Together they slid Aurek facedown onto the bed.

  “Should we send one of house servants for a doctor?” Dmitri asked as Edik deftly peeled the shredded clothing from his brother’s torso. He vaguely thought that with Aurek injured, he should be taking over, making the decisions, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate.

  “No.” Edik’s contempt of the local practitioners rang clear in that single syllable. “I will take care of the master, as I always have.”

  “But …” Then he remembered some of the stories he’d heard about what happened around the sickbeds of Pont-a-Museau.

  “… so while the learned doctor is pouring medicines past this poor sot’s teeth,” Georges laughed, the fingers of one hand playing negligently with a strand of his sister’s hair, “the rats in the mattress have eaten off the toes and are working their way up to the ankles. The idiot couldn’t see the blood through a pile of filthy blankets, and he thought all the twitching had to do with his useless potions.”

  Most were probably exaggerations, some outright lies. But if any were true, then the loyal Edik’s care would be infinitely preferable. “What can I do to help?”

  Edik stared at him for a long moment, and Dmitri found himself feeling somehow wanting—as if the servant’s steady gaze saw into his heart and didn’t much like what it saw. He began to bridle. “Look, Aurek and I might not always get along, but he’s my brother.”

  Meeting his gaze, Edik weighed the emphasis, then nodded and said, “If you would go for the brandy, sir, while I get boiling water and clean cloths.”

  Outside in the hallway, Dmitri had to lean for a moment against the wall. All he could see was his brother’s pale and bloodstained body lying still and helpless on the bed. Aurek had never been much of a fighter—their sisters had often remarked on it. So what if he was a wizard? He’d still spent most of his life with his nose in a book. What kind of training was that for a fight? He had no business going into the Narrows by himself. If he’d taken me with him, I could’ve protected him.

  He doesn’t want you with him, murmured a voice in his head, a voice that took on the tones and cadences of Louise Renier’s. He never even told you he was a wizard. He’s been lying to you all along.

  He’s still my brother, Dmitri thought as his hands curled into fists. And for the first time in my life, he needs me.

  Aurek woke to pain—searing lines of it across his back, a hot ache in one hand, and dull throbbing over most of the rest of his body. He thought for one terrifying moment he was still in the workshop, that he had to move, to dive out of the way or the bone golem would tear him apart. He jerked, rolled onto his side, felt the rough familiarity of the blanket beneath him, and realized where he was.

  Home. He’d made it home.

  “Natalia …”

  His news—his glorious, magnificent news—couldn’t wait. Teeth clenched, he slid his lower body off the bed and allowed his knees to drop to the floor. He tried to rise, fell back; tried to rise, succeeded. With his left hand leaving bloody handprints against the wall, he staggered into his study one pain-filled step at a time. When he arrived at the alcove holding his Natalia, his naked torso dripped sweat the color of cheap red wine.

  “I found it, Lia,” he gasped. “I found your freedom.” He drew in a deep breath, ignoring the way it burned in his throat. “There’s a workshop in the catacombs, and a book, and the spell we need is in that book. I hadn’t strength enough to open it but I will, Lia, my love, my life. We are so close. I promise you, so close …”

  The fine hairs on the back of his neck—or, at least, those few not stuck down in a gory mat—lifted. Slowly, Aurek turned to see Dmitri standing little more than an arm’s length away. “What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

  “The door was open,” Dmitri began, but Aurek cut him off.

  “I told you never to come in here!” As he swayed, the bloody braid swept across his chest, leaving a pinkish red smear. “Never!”

  Dmitri fought against his immediate, defensive reaction. His brother was injured. Hurting. He didn’t know what he was saying. Gesturing toward the adjoining bedchamber with the bottle of brandy, he murmured, “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  “I should be exactly where I am!” Eyes rolling, voice sharp, Aurek felt as though he were on the edge of a precipice. For Natalia’s sake, he had to stop himself from toppling over. “I have work to do. Important work. Get out! Leave us alone!”

  “Us?” Dmitri glanced around the study. “There’s no one in here but you and I.”

  “Natalia …”

  “Is dead! She died over a year ago! Her body was completely destroyed!” Concern and irritation combined to override sense. Dmitri strode across the room and snatched up the figurine before Aurek could stop him. “This,” he declared, waving it in the air, “is a piece of morbid statuary. It’s not your wife!”

  Moving faster than his wounds should’ve allowed, Aurek grabbed the figurine. Eyes blazing, he straightened to his full height and, in his rage, towered over Dmitri. “Get out!”

  Raising the bottle of brandy like a shield, Dmitri stepped back and shook his head in hurt disbelief. “You-you need help.”

  “Get! Out!” Each word was a separate, barely controlled explosion of rage.

  Dmitri stared at his brother, saw nothing in his expression that acknowledged either him or their relationship in any way, turned on his heel, and nearly ran from the study. By the time he met Edik in the bedchamber, his hurt confusion had merged with the emotions of a lifetime of injustice, of not ever being quite good enough, and turned to anger. “Apparently,” he informed the frowning servant bitterly, “I am of less importance to my brother than a bad depiction of his dead wife.”

  “Young sir …”

  “Forget it.” Throwing the bottle on the bed, Dmitri stomped out of the room. “You’re on your own. If he dies, don’t imagine I’ll care.”

  Slumped on the plank floor of the study, Natalia cradled protectively on his lap, Aurek jerked as the bedchamber door slammed. He had the strangest feeling that he’d just pushed his younger brother across a bridge into a dark and violent place—that he’d made a very grave mistake. His thoughts spun round and round and round.

  “Too tired,” he murmured to the auburn braids wrapped around the top of his wife’s porcelain head. “And too close to success. I’ll deal with him when you are free, my love.” With his right thumb, he rubbed at a drop of blood rolling down the full folds of her skirts. No matter how much he rubbed, he couldn’t seem to rub it off.

  “Once you are free,” he repeated, wondering how one drop of blood could spread so far, “I’ll make everything right with Dmitri. I promise.”

  “You’re looking very cheerful tonight.”

  Louise draped an artistically disheveled curl over the notch in her ear and smiled at her sister’s reflection in the mirror. “I guess I am pretty cheerful tonight at that.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  Skirts swirling, Louise spun around on the leather stool and faced Jacqueline. “It’s a wonderful world.”

  “Isn’t it,” Jacqueline agreed dryly. “You were out all day in it; you couldn’t have gotten much sleep.”

  “I’m fine.” Does she suspect? Pulse beating a little faster, Louise studied her sister’s face but saw only ennui and no sign of suspicion. “But thank you for your concern. I take it you’re not going to be attending the evening’s festivities?”

  Jacqueline glanced down at the loose robe she wore and then at Louise’s gilded finery. One angled brow angled higher. “No,” she said, “I won’t. I’ll be having a private party of my own.”

  Pursing glistening lips, Louise looked arch. “Anyone I know?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” The Lord of Richemulot turned out of the doorway, throwing a disinterested “Have a good time” back over a slender shoulder.

  Louise slipped a golden bangle over her wrist and began to hum. She had a weapon to use against her sist
er—sooner or later she’d discover the best way to use it—and now she’d just been handed the one thing she needed to make her evening perfect. There would be no Jacqueline at the party to take the shine off the evening. No Jacqueline to outshine her.

  “Stop eating the candles, Georges, you look ridiculous!”

  “No one noticed,” Georges murmured around a mouthful of beeswax.

  “I noticed!” Snatching the taper from his cousin’s hand, Yves savagely threw it into a corner. When a townsman turned to protest the violent appearance of a half-eaten candle in the midst of his conversation, Yves bared his teeth, and the man hastily changed his mind.

  Georges hunched his shoulders and slid farther down the wall. “I’ve seen you gnaw on a candle or two,” he protested sullenly.

  “Not in a drawing room, not in skin form, and so what?” The last three words carried a ring of challenge.

  Resigned to the inevitable, Georges straightened.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Chantel snapped, stepping between them. “If you want to fight, at least find something less childish to fight over.” If she’d intended to say anything else, it was forgotten as a sudden commotion drew everyone’s attention to the entrance.

  “She’s got that razored look tonight,” Yves muttered, thinking that the blast of cold air accompanying Cousin Louise into the room had little to do with the falling temperatures outside. He could see the emerald glitter in her eyes from where he stood, and that meant someone was in a lot of trouble. Considering their last conversation, he only hoped it wasn’t him.

  Chantel took a step forward, breasts heaving under the thin silk of her gown. “I’d like to notch her other ear,” she growled.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Yves deftly placed himself in Chantel’s line of sight. “If you want to die young, you go right ahead and challenge her, but don’t do it when we’re around. She’ll never believe we had nothing to do with it, and I, at least, have no intention of dying with you.”

  Chantel scowled up at him, her eyes within their fringe of pale lashes appearing even redder than usual. “Move.”

  He ignored the command. “You can’t still be annoyed about the little Nuikin?”

  “She took control of him weeks ago,” Georges added.

  “So?” Her tone made it quite clear she was, indeed, still annoyed.

  Yves jerked his head at his cousin, and they each clamped a hand around one of Chantel’s slender arms and began to lead her toward the ballroom at the back of the house, where they could reinforce their numbers with Annette and the twins and, if nothing else, the music would make it harder to be overheard.

  “I wonder why females are so competitive,” Georges mused.

  “Go chew on a candle,” Chantel snarled.

  Tossing his coat and hat to a footman in faded, mismatched livery, Dmitri jerked at a tangle in one of his streaming ribbons and yanked the ribbon right off the shoulder of his vest. Snarling a curse, he threw the narrow satin streamer aside and stomped toward the sound of conversation. Yves and the others would probably be in the ballroom, but the last thing he felt like doing was dancing.

  A number of faces turned his way when he entered the drawing room but, all at once, their welcoming expressions seemed false. He’d been attending their parties, fêtes, balls, for weeks now, but he didn’t really know any of them. They don’t really care that I’m here, he muttered to himself as he scowled his way past a number of cheerful greetings.

  As it happened, he was right, but there wasn’t a person in the room who could afford to ignore Louise Renier’s current favorite.

  He got himself a glass of punch, downed it, and got another, even though it tasted as if its principle ingredient was a close cousin to turpentine.

  Too close to the fire and this stuff’ll ignite, he thought woozily. Contrary to popular opinion, it tasted no better by the bottom of his third glass. His tongue didn’t feel numb; it felt flayed.

  The end of the room holding the grated fireplace was too hot. The far end, too cold. Between, there were too many people he didn’t like, most of whom smelled sweaty and unwashed under a masking splash of cheap scent. Just for a moment he saw the rags and tatters not as fashion but as decay; saw the crumbling plaster, the moldy corners, the filthy floor. He rubbed watering eyes, shook his head, and it became just another townhouse in Pont-a-Museau.

  He was thinking about moving on into the cardroom, if only because Aurek despised gambling, when he heard the unmistakable trill of Louise’s laughter.

  At least she’d be glad to see him.

  “I have heard that both the sestra Renier know everything that occurs in the city.”

  Savagely repressing the memory, he made his way toward the ballroom. He would not have Edik’s suspicions—a servant’s suspicions—taint what he had with Louise. Louise was all he had left.

  Her smile when she saw him was everything he could have asked for. You are important to me, it said. Now that you are here, the night is complete.

  In its light, Dmitri dropped to one knee, athletically graceful in spite of the punch he’d imbibed, and raised her fingers to the soft caress of his lips.

  “You look unhappy,” Louise murmured, false sympathy masking pleased satisfaction. Unhappy young men were so much easier to manipulate. She drew him to his feet and tucked his hand into the heated crook of her elbow. “Let’s find someplace quiet,” her voice rose slightly, “and private, to talk.”

  Her circle of sycophants, who had reluctantly dropped back when Dmitri approached, took their dismissal with ill-grace. One elderly swain went so far as to voice a faint protest. Human ears might have missed it; Louise’s did not. She turned just enough to sweep the edge of her glittering gaze over the offender; then she permitted Dmitri to lead her from the ballroom. Behind them, the man who’d spoken stood alone, as though the others were afraid his fate might be contagious.

  “Now then …” In a small room on the second floor, Louise sank down on a red velvet sofa and pulled Dmitri down beside her. “Tell me what’s wrong. It hurts me to see you so unhappy.”

  Dmitri shrugged, suddenly uncertain how much of what had occurred between himself and his brother he should tell her. “Servants hear things, sir. And I have heard that both the sestra Renier know everything that occurs in the city.” He couldn’t seem to get past the combination of Aurek’s wounds and Edik’s words. He opened his mouth to ask her if she knew what had torn up his brother’s back and closed it again, lost in the depths of her eyes.

  This is ridiculous. Look at her. He drank in her delicate beauty, blinded, as he was meant to be, by the surface luster. She could no more know what attacked Aurek than she could’ve struck the blow herself.

  “Dmitri …”

  He jerked as she called his name.

  “… let me help.”

  “Yes.”

  A short while later, Louise stroked Dmitri’s hair back off his face and smiled triumphantly—not bothering to mask her expression, for the besotted young fool she planned to make such lovely use of was sitting on the floor with his head resting on her knee.

  So her wizard had a figurine of his dear, departed wife that he deeply loved. Loved to the point of stupidity from the sound of it—even accounting for her informant’s bias. What would he do if he lost that little statue? she wondered. Fall apart? How nice. And what would he be willing to do for the person who could put him back together? Almost anything, I expect. How pathetic.

  Should Aurek Nuikin prove to be not quite so pathetic as she anticipated, she would still come out ahead. The loss of the statue would, at the very least, make Aurek unhappy, and unhappy young men—she gave Dmitri’s golden curls a vicious, triumphant little tug—were so much easier to manipulate.

  “I feel like dancing,” she said suddenly. “Dmitri, take me back to the ballroom.”

  Confused by the abrupt change of subject, Dmitri scrambled to his feet and held out his hand. “But what about Aurek?”

  Wrapping her fi
ngers around his, Louise allowed him to pull her to her feet. “Aurek clearly doesn’t care about you,” she said, the words sticky with sincerity. “You’ve got to stop caring so much about him. You’ll only keep getting hurt, and that hurts me.” She caught his gaze and held it. “You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

  “No.” Lost in the emerald depths of her eyes, that was the one thing he was sure of. “I’d do anything to keep you from being hurt.”

  “I know you would.” Louise pressed the warm length of her body against him for a moment and rested her head on the broad strength of his shoulder. Her voice quavered slightly. “I know I can depend on you.” She felt him tremble and hid a toothy smile against his vest. At that instant, he would have done anything for her—all she had to do was ask. Letting the instant go—there’d be plenty more where it came from—she pulled back.

  “Take me down to the ballroom,” she declared, “and we’ll dance all over Aurek’s inflated opinion of his own importance.”

  Dmitri blinked as the room spun a half turn to the right. The taste of the punch clung like an oily film to the inside of his mouth. “Aurek’s not here, Louise. He’s injured, remember.”

  “It was a metaphor, my blond darling.” She reached up and patted his cheek a little harder than was absolutely necessary. “Just take me dancing.”

  Swirling around the floor in Dmitri’s arms, other dancers moving carefully from their path, Louise couldn’t remember when she’d had a better evening. Her plans were falling into place, her dancing partner was tall and beautiful and nowhere near smart enough to survive the relationship, and, best of all, she stood second to no one. Without Jacqueline, she was the center of everyone’s attention.

  And someday soon, it’ll be like this all the time. Eyes half closed, she built a pleasant fantasy of her life as Lord of Richemulot. Jacqueline allowed the townspeople too much autonomy and the younger members of the family too much room for ambition—that would most definitely change. The silly masquerade; a pretense of humanity because of a hunted past? As much as Louise hated to admit it, Jacqueline was right; it was amusing to watch the clever ones deny the evidence, and there was nothing funnier than the look on the face of the more irritating social climbers when they found themselves at the estate for an evening’s private entertainment.