Scholar of Decay

by Tanya Huff

  “He isn’t.” Dmitri returned her smile with such infatuation that Jacques thought he was going to be sick. The human had no idea Tante Louise was lying. Of course she’s very good at it, he reminded himself, remembering how she’d fooled even him once or twice. When he was much younger, of course.

  “Nevertheless,” Louise went on, lowering herself gracefully to the edge of the bed and resting one long-fingered hand on Dmitri’s bare shoulder, “I think he’s stayed long enough.” She glanced down at the sword with distaste and added, “Quite long enough. Jacques, go back to your rooms.”

  He didn’t like her tone. “Mama …”

  “Your mother isn’t here now.” Very slowly, Louise turned her head around to face him. When she lifted her lips off her teeth, it looked nothing like a smile. “I am.”

  The boy’s lower lip went out, but he’d been trained both to recognize power when he saw it and to survive it. He nodded curtly to his aunt and headed for the door.

  His movement distracted Dmitri, who’d been staring at the angle of Louise’s head. Surely it was impossible to turn one’s head so far around? He leaned past her. “Thanks again for my sword, Jacques. And the company.”

  Still a little piqued about being called a boy, Jacques shrugged. “Yeah, all right,” he muttered and pulled the door closed behind him.

  Tante Louise was right; his mama wasn’t here, so he’d have to deal with her himself. He had only a vague understanding of just how, exactly, grown-ups worked, but it seemed to him that Tante Louise wouldn’t much like it if Chantel, who seemed just as possessive as his aunt, came to visit Dmitri.

  Smiling in pleased anticipation, Jacques headed for his nightly rendezvous at the attic window.

  “You’re messing my hair.” Louise pulled back out of the heated embrace, one hand rising to fold an errant strand back over her notched ear, the other gripping Dmitri’s wrist.

  “Sorry.” He grinned foolishly up at her. “You make me forget everything. You make me believe there’s nothing I can’t do.”

  “Well, you can’t mess up my hair.” She laid his captured hand on his chest and sat back. “And, no matter how good you feel, you’re still wounded, and you should be resting.”

  “I am resting.”

  “You shouldn’t have had Jacques bring you your sword. If you open that shoulder wound again …”

  “I’ll bleed.” He laid his hand on her arm, took a moment to marvel at the play of warm flesh under his fingers, and added brightly, “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Good.” She sighed and refused to meet his eyes.

  Dmitri frowned and, placing a finger on her chin, turned her head to face him. “What’s wrong?”

  When this is over, if you’re still alive, you’re going to lose that finger, she thought, arranging her features into broad concern. “Aurek was here again. Making threats.”

  “Threatening you?” He sat up, groping for the hilt of his sword, eyes blazing. “That’s it. That does it. I’m going to do something about this right now!”

  “Do what?”

  “Something.”

  Telling herself sternly not to laugh, Louise widened her eyes and stood, backing away from the bed. This was as good an opportunity as any to see just how recovered her guest was—while she still had time to do something about it. “Dmitri, you can’t. You’ll get hurt.”

  “I can’t just lie here and do nothing.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and lurched up onto his feet. Linen drawers covered enough for modesty, so he concentrated on finding his balance. Toes splayed against the worn carpeting, he walked from the bed to the door to the bed to the door to the bed, swaying only a very little. Jaw set, he lifted the sword and swung it dramatically over his head. “I can protect you, and I will protect you. Even from my thrice-damned brother.”

  “Tante Louise comes and sees him all the time.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jacques watched Chantel’s tail snap from side to side. The fur had lifted off her spine, and her ears were laid back flat against her skull. Every time he mentioned his Tante Louise and Dmitri’s being together, she got more and more upset. So he mentioned it as often as he could.

  Chantel’d had to change from full rat form in order to lie to the questions Jacques threw at her as they made their way to the east wing. Although she carried a dusty, moth-eaten robe they’d found in one of the attic’s trunks, she maintained the intermediate halfhuman, half-rat form for the trip through the halls of the Chateau. Should they, by chance, run into Louise, she wanted as much mobility as possible, as well as the use of tooth and claw.

  “You know, I think Dmitri really likes her,” Jacques continued with studied disinterest.

  “What do you know about it!” Chantel hissed.

  “Nothing much.” He stepped back and waved at a half open door. “This is his room.” Head cocked, he added, “Sounds like she’s in there now.”

  He was just a little too innocent. Chantel slowly turned and stared at him, sensing a trap. He met her gaze fearlessly, secure in the knowledge that the rest of the family held his mama in terror and awe and would never, because of that, lay a finger on him.

  She stepped back, away from the door, poised for flight.

  “Dmitri! Put the sword down!”

  Louise’s shrill command rising out of the murmur of voices jerked Chantel around. The robe fell forgotten to the floor. Two steps forward, and Chantel could peer through the wedge-shaped opening and into the room. She blinked, half blind in the sudden light—her eyes had always been more sensitive than the rest of the family’s. With tears marking the fur on her cheeks, she strained to see exactly what was happening.

  Dmitri stood with his back toward her, facing the just barely visible figure of Louise. Chantel could smell his sweat, his blood, his exhaustion. As she watched, he swung the bright line of a sword around his head.

  He was defending himself against Louise!

  He was hers!

  Louise would not have him!

  Bone and muscle moved beneath fur. In full rat form, shrieking with rage, Chantel launched herself into the air.

  Growing increasingly irritated with the stubbornness of human males, Louise opened her mouth to tell Dmitri for the last time to stop swinging the sword around before he cut off one of his own ears. She’d managed to get out the first letter of his name when a shrieking white fury flung itself into the room.

  Dmitri, reacting to the sudden terror on Louise’s face, whirled around, dropped to one knee, and thrust upward with the sword, locking his arms.

  The steel point drove deep into Chantel’s belly just below the sternum. The force of her leap dragged the blade the length of her body, spilling blood and intestines down over Dmitri’s head and shoulders. Her shriek changed timbre, from rage to pain, and she crashed to the floor.

  His grip on the sword pulled him over, and Dmitri found himself under a thrashing body, twisting frantically to keep claws from ripping open his bare chest. As he struggled to free himself, he worked the sword in deeper. All he could see was bloodstained fur; all he could smell was the stench of ruptured bowel; all he could hear was his own fear roaring in his ears. Finally, just as he thought the creature would never die, it jerked once and was still.

  Eyes wide, Jacques watched his aunt step away from Chantel’s body, breathing heavily and inspecting her hands for bloodstains. The snapping of Chantel’s neck at the end had been a bit of an anticlimax—Tante Louise must’ve wanted to keep Dmitri from getting in trouble with his Mama—but the whole sword thing had been terrific!

  I’m going to learn how to do that! I’ll make the human teach me!

  Jacques bounced a little in his excitement, then froze as a glittering jade-green gaze turned toward the door. When she finally looked away after what seemed like hours, he crept quietly down the hall, breaking into a run only when he’d safely cleared the first corner.

  She would take care of Jacques after she took care of his mother. For now, the boy was unimportant. Dra
wing in several deep, slow breaths, Louise fought to control her rage. How dare Chantel attack her in her own house! Had Dmitri not reacted so quickly, the incredible audacity of the attack might have worked!

  Dmitri …

  Her rage dissipated in the possibilities raised by Dmitri’s unexpected talents. Even injured and surprised, his skill with a blade was nothing short of amazing. She could use that, oh, yes, she could.

  “Louise?”

  As he pushed aside Chantel’s limp body, Louise rearranged her features into something approximating shock. “Dmitri! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He gained his feet, staggered, and would have fallen had he not used the dripping sword to prop himself up. “Are you all right?”

  “Thanks to you, she never touched me.” She threw herself into his arms, careful not to knock him over, glorying in the smell of death that hung around him. “You saved my life!” That, at least, was the complete truth, and her sincerity, undeniable.

  “I would die for you,” he murmured ardently into her hair.

  “Not now.” She caught him as he swayed and steered him toward the bed. “You’ve got to lie down. You’re hurt again.”

  He stared stupidly down at the red streaks on his torso, suddenly more tired than he could remember ever being, then his gaze slid sideways to the body of the giant rat. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was. Blood matted the white fur, and one dark red eye stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He had the strangest feeling he’d seen that eye before. “Not mine; the blood’s not mine.”

  “Good.” Prying the sword out of his grip, she let it fall to the floor and pushed him down onto the mattress. “Rest, my love. You need your strength.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she added. “I need your strength.” He smiled up at her, and she was suddenly reminded of a puppy she’d drowned as a girl. It had looked up at her much the same way just before she shoved it underwater. Turning to hide her smile, she waved a hand at the stiffening body in the center of the room. “I’ll send servants in to bathe you and to remove that.”

  “You want me to poison him, mistress?” The old man’s grip tightened on the bowl of warm water he carried in both hands, and he looked vaguely pleased to have been asked.

  “I don’t care what you call it,” Louise snapped. Servants came to the chateau for two reasons—they wanted to know that humped shapes of tooth and claw would never climb through their windows at night, or they needed a sanctuary and therefore placed what skills they had at the service of the house. This servant had arrived just in front of an angry lynch mob. “Just don’t kill him, and remember that I need him up and functional the night of the ball. I don’t want him wandering around before then.” She stepped aside as a pair of burly servants carried out the stained carpet with Chantel’s body wrapped inside. “At the very least,” she added dryly, “he’s inconveniently messy.”

  “Yes, mistress.” His eyes tracked the dripping bundle as it was carried down the hall. “What if he asks about … that?”

  Louise showed her teeth. “Isn’t it terrible how giant rats can get into even the best houses?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  Turning over the new pieces of the plan, examining each for flaws she couldn’t find, Louise followed Chantel’s body as far as the central hall.

  “Dump it in the usual place, mistress?”

  “Of course. Use extra weights—she’s family.”

  It had been some time since one of the younger members of the family had tried to kill her and, upon reflection, Louise felt almost sorry for the girl. Given time and patience, Chantel might have amounted to something, but she’d made her power play with the lack of subtlety so prevalent in the young, and she’d died learning the one lesson that would have ensured her survival:

  Never do your own dirty work.

  I Hear We Have a Visitor at the Chateau.”

  Louise lifted an ebony brow. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Should I?” Jacqueline finished removing her gloves and stared levelly at her twin. “I also hear that Lucien and Jean and Chantel are dead.”

  The brow lowered, and the other joined it as Louise frowned. Although it wasn’t surprising that Jacqueline, as Lord of Richemulot, knew of the deaths in the family, there were few things she hated more than her sister’s little displays of power. “Lucien killed himself,” she said tersely. “Jean fell into a spiderweb. Chantel attacked me, and I broke her neck.”

  “Lucien killed himself?”

  If the trap on the figurine had thrown him back into his own mind and killed him there, then, technically, Lucien had killed himself. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know?”

  Jacqueline smiled. “Indeed. How should you know?” Lifting her skirts in one hand, she started up the stairs to the west wing.

  “And was your trip a success?” Louise asked, falling into step beside her.

  “No.” Jacqueline’s tone gave clear warning that she would not expand on her answer.

  Louise hid a satisfied smile at the thought of Jacqueline chasing phantom rumors of Henri Dubois and finding only greater heartache and pain. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jacqueline paused at the door to her suite and glanced over at her sister. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Louise,” she said wearily, one hand resting on the latch. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “It doesn’t?” Louise stared at her in such astonishment that Jacqueline had to laugh.

  “You’re right; I’m wrong. Hypocrisy suits you very well.”

  Louise returned her smile, feeling fonder of her sister at that moment than she had in some time. “Sleep well, Jacqueline. I’ll see you this evening.”

  When I’ll kill you, she added silently as the door closed between them.

  “Mama?”

  Jacqueline set her hairbrush down and turned to face her son. “Were you given permission to come in here?” she asked sternly.

  His face fell. “No, Mama.”

  “We’ll excuse it this once.” She opened her arms, and he ran into her embrace. “Did you miss me?”

  “Oh, yes, Mama!”

  “Were you a good boy while I was gone?” When he paused before answering, she held him out at arm’s length. “Well?”

  “What exactly would you call good?” he wondered, looking worried.

  Jacqueline laughed. “Let’s make it simpler then. Did you break any of Mama’s rules?” He looked so relieved that she laughed again and swept him into another hug, muffling his answering, “No, Mama.” against her breast.

  When she released him, he brushed a shock of dark hair back off his face and gazed up at her seriously. “Mama, I have things to tell you.”

  “Not now, Jacques. I’ve been traveling all night, and I’m very tired.”

  “But, Mama,” he protested as she stood, “Chantel is dead.”

  “I know.”

  His face fell. “Oh.”

  Jacqueline placed one finger under her son’s chin and tilted his head up until she stared into his eyes. “I always know, Jacques. Never forget that.”

  “No, Mama.” He sighed deeply. “I mean yes, Mama.”

  She smiled down at him. He looked so much like her and so little like his father, he was easy to love. “Later, I’ll want to hear everything you know.”

  His face brightened. “I was taking her to see Dmitri when it happened.”

  “Jacques, I said later. It’s nearly dawn, and I need to sleep. I expect that the ball tonight will be very tiring.”

  “Yes, Mama. Sleep well, Mama.”

  She watched him dance out of the room, waited until she heard the outer door close behind him, and made her way to the bed. “I always know,” she repeated as she slid between perfumed sheets, wondering why Louise hadn’t bothered to lie about the recent and frequent visits death had made to the family. Perhaps it was because she knew a lie would be discovered. “Or perhaps she’s smarter than I give her cr
edit for.”

  Pont-a-Museau’s best musicians arrived at dusk and began setting up in the gallery that stretched across one end of the chateau’s ballroom. As the sound of strings being carefully tuned floated out from behind the pillars, servants bustled about tending to last-minute details. All three of the massive chandeliers held new candles of hard white beeswax, bleached for purity and guaranteed with the candlemaker’s life not to drip on the dancers below. Piles of wood had been stacked ready in both fireplaces behind iron screens designed to protect against accidental immolation. Purposeful immolation was another problem altogether. Not a crack, not a smut marred the tall windows that glittered along the length of the south wall, and if there were dark stains that would not come out of the hardwood floor, they, too, had been polished until they gleamed.

  Outside, the night was clear and cold with the promise of the coming winter in the bite of the wind. The moon, burnished bronze, hung low in the east, and as the sky darkened, a thousand stars, bright enough to draw blood, appeared to join it. The river ran fast and high, and on its banks society prepared for the last entertainment of the season.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “I always do.” Jacqueline rose, steaming, from the bath and slid her arms into the offered robe. “But I doubt you came here so early to ask me that. What do you want, Louise?”

  “I had an idea that might make tonight’s party more … interesting.”

  “Interesting.” Jacqueline repeated both the word and the emphasis as she walked into her bedchamber. “In what way?”

  Louise swept her arm toward her sister’s bed, where a crimson silk gown lay spread out over the coverlet. “I thought you might wear this tonight.”

  “I always wear black.”

  “I know. And so does everyone else.” Her eyes glittered in the candlelight as she leaned toward her twin. “I’ll be wearing a dress exactly like this—I had the seamstress make two, then I killed her. Half our guests will be in a panic trying to figure out which of us is which, and the family will be going crazy trying to figure out what we’re up to.”