“Look, I’m putting the report away. I won’t read any more if you don’t.”
Jane was resolute. “Near the center of the city and between the main street and the castle, there are some pretty grounds called Montleret Gardens. At the heart of the grounds lies Montleret Water, a small but picturesque natural lake which is enhanced by fountains, the water supplied by the elaborate cisterns, a triumph of engineering, which have been carved into the living stone beneath the castle rock. To the north of Montleret Gardens—Did you say something?” Jane looked up. “Is anything the matter? You look dreadful. Are you going to be ill?”
Faris put her head in her hands. Her governess had taught her history and geography in which Galazon and Aravill were inextricably mixed. Yet now she realized just how little she knew of Aravis. The dry facts conspired to fog her mind. Even the crowded, noisy, smelly quay side they had left behind them at Shene became ephemeral as soon as Jane read the name aloud. She groaned softly. “What am I doing? I don’t know anything about protocol. I don’t know anything about cisterns. I don’t know anything about the Monarchists or the Conservative Royalists.”
Jane studied Faris for an instant, then clapped shut her red Baedeker and rummaged in the depths of her valise. She produced a flat silver flask, pulled the stopper, and handed it to Faris. “Drink this.”
Faris eyed the little flask mistrustfully. “Brandy won’t solve everything.”
“It’s cognac and it will solve what’s wrong with you. You’ve got stage fright, that’s what. Let me just remind you that you don’t have to know anything about protocol. That’s what I’m for. Nor cisterns, that’s what the Baedeker’s for. And as for the Monarchists—” Jane snapped her fingers. “They can look out for themselves.”
Faris took a cautious sip. Jane held out her hand. “That’s enough. Save a little for first-night jitters.”
Faris returned the flask. “Thank you. I think I’ll be fine now, if I don’t hear any more about the charming views.”
Jane stoppered the flask and put it away. “Too late. Here comes one now.” She nodded toward the window.
Faris turned to look. Their route had taken them south from Shene into gray hills, rocky and dry, then eastward along the brow of a ridge. Now from the right side of the carriage they could see the hills drop away into a vale of scattered houses, and far beyond rise again in a ridge as jagged and stark as a dragon’s spine.
The line of the ridge rose and fell and rose again, as if mocking the rise and fall of a dragon’s haunch and back and shoulder, a silhouette familiar to Faris from her first school books. At this distance, she could not make out the summit of the last rise. Plumes of cloud or smoke concealed it. But from those same books, she knew that the distant ridge, scaled with roof tops and scored with streets, was Aravis. The dragon’s head was crowned with the castle that gave the city its older name, Aravis Palatine.
Jane and Faris watched in silence until the route turned south again and the carriage windows showed them only trees and houses and featureless garden walls. “Perfectly charming. If only it were a clearer day, we might have been able to make out the castle itself from here.” Jane started to reach for her Baedeker but Faris’s glance of mute entreaty stilled her hand. “I expect we’ll see the castle soon enough.”
“At close quarters.” Faris shut her eyes. She badly wanted a cup of coffee.
The road took them down into the valley, across a bridge, and into an area closely built with houses, where it turned into a street. Gradually the houses came closer and closer together until they bumped into each other and ran in even rows, squashed shoulder to shoulder facing the street.
Faris regarded the cramped symmetry with dislike. As their route began to rise again, the street passed through a city gate and then climbed to the foot of the ridge. Here the streets were narrow and crooked. In places buildings had grown together overhead, leaving only a tunnel to let foot traffic continue.
Some of the sweating brick passages were hardly more than a flight of steps connecting two streets. Some were large enough to warrant a street sign set into the wall near the entrance. Faris savored the names: White Horse Close, Anchor Close, Hunter’s Tryst.
The main street (Castle Street, the signs said) rose and fell as it followed the dragon’s spine through the city. At the dragon’s shoulder, broad Castle Street widened still more. It became the Esplanade and swept up the dragon’s neck to the castle gates.
Faris and her party did not go so far. At a spot between the dragon’s shoulder blades, their carriages drew up before the imposing facade of the Hotel Metropol.
Jane lowered her veil and gathered up her bag. Faris sat motionless, eyes shut again. “More cognac?”
“Coffee,” said Faris plaintively.
“Soon, I promise. You’ll have to come inside, though.”
Faris sighed and opened her eyes. “You English. You’re so strict.”
The door of the carriage opened and Reed joined them. “Slight delay.” At their inquiring looks, he explained. “Change of plans. The hotelier must reorganize the available suites to accommodate Lord and Lady Brinker, too. They’ll be in your suite, Faris. Be patient. They’re doing their best to make room for you somewhere.”
Jane looked surprised. “Why can’t they stay at the castle as they planned?”
“The official reason is that Lord Brinker has decided he cannot allow his niece to stay alone in a hotel, even a first-class hotel. He must stay and add to her consequence. The embassy is Galazon territory, even if it’s only a hotel suite. He’s here to help make it more so.”
“And the real reason?” Faris asked.
Reed smirked. “In fact, I can give you a fairly authentic answer, since I caught a snatch of the argument. It has come to Lady Brinker that she does not wish her infant daughter to stay in the castle. She will have it brought there, when the time is right, for her father to look at. But she won’t stay there herself and she won’t let the child stay there under any circumstances.”
“Why not?” Faris asked.
“I gather it’s bad for children. I didn’t catch enough of the quarrel to follow the reasoning. Something to do with her baby sister.”
Jane looked concerned. “Menary’s not here, is she?”
“God, no. At least, I don’t think so. I’ll ask, if you like.”
Faris raised her eyebrows. “Ask whom?”
“Oh, I’ll just ask around.” Reed opened the carriage door and prepared to descend. “It’s the only way to find out anything, you know. Even Tyrian stoops to it occasionally.”
The suite assigned to Faris was enormous. The task of rendering it secure kept Tyrian and Reed fully occupied. Despite Agnes’s arrival taking precedence, Jane humbled the hotel staff in short order. Luggage began to arrive.
Without quite realizing how it happened, Faris found herself with nothing to do but sit in a comfortable chair near a window. For a while she simply stared blankly out at the bustle of traffic on the Esplanade. Then it began to rain steadily, sleet-edged rain that would certainly have fallen as snow in Galazon.
She watched the traffic thin. It was as close to winter as Aravis ever saw, this steady rain that scrubbed the gutters of the street clean. It stained the stone buildings black, and polished the slate roofs until they gleamed like pewter. The wind blew rain against the glass and the street became mere shapeless gray beneath the lighter gray of the sky.
Faris dozed. She dreamed that she was on the landing of a staircase. The light was poor. She couldn’t tell where she was. She only knew she was supposed to go down and she was afraid to. It was safe to go up, but she wasn’t meant to do that. She was poised on the landing, perfectly balanced between alternatives.
“Wake up. It’s only a dream, whatever it is. Wake up.” Jane released her shoulder and stepped back. “I thought for a moment you were having a heart attack. What on earth were you dreaming?”
“Nothing. It was nothing.” Faris rose and looked around at the hot
el suite, miraculously orderly, blessedly peaceful. “What have you done?”
The daylight was gone. Twilight made the window a dark lookingglass until Jane closed the velvet drapes.
Jane looked pleased. “Very little. It is nice to sit still at last, isn’t it? No carriages, no boats, no trains.”
Faris nodded. The suite, the second best the Hotel Metropol could offer, was very different from her rooms at the Hotel de Crillon. Larger, though not so high-ceilinged, it held less furniture. What furniture there was had none of the overbred delicacy that she remembered in Paris. This was heavy stuff, solidly made of dark oak. There were no paintings with gold encrusted frames, no chaises longues, only deep carpets and comfortable chairs. Faris felt she had gone from iced champagne to cellar-cooled ale and was a little surprised that she found the change so welcome.
“The rain’s stopped. You must be feeling better.”
Faris frowned a little. “What do you mean? I feel fine.”
“I don’t mean your health. I mean your frame of mind. I think it’s been asserting itself again.” At Faris’s clear lack of comprehension, she prompted, “Remember Hilarion said you made it snow at Greenlaw?”
Faris nodded.
“Well, is it a coincidence that the bad weather we had at Galazon Chase started immediately after Brinker upset you? And is it a coincidence that it began to rain after you started feeling nervous today?”
“It’s winter, Jane. It often snows in the winter. If it doesn’t snow, it rains. You’re being fanciful.”
“You are feeling better. I knew it. Oh, don’t bother to contradict. Now, I’ve arranged something that will cheer you up completely.”
“The rift mended itself while I slept and we can go home.”
“Well, perhaps not completely,” Jane conceded. “There are supposed to be suitable places to dine somewhere in Aravis but I haven’t had time to find out which they are. Instead, I’ve arranged a meal to be served here. We are to have a distinguished guest—traveling incognito, no less—who will be more comfortable speaking to us in private.”
“How distinguished? It isn’t the king, is it?”
“Oh, dear, no. No, he’s firmly ensconced at his country house. Trust me. It’s someone you’ll be glad to see.” With that, Jane crossed to the door of the outer room and opened it. Through the doorway, smiling, came Eve-Marie.
Faris sprang up to greet her. “What brings you, of all people, here, of all places? Why aren’t you back in Paris, laboring ever so cannily on behalf of the government?”
Eve-Marie’s clear blue eyes shone with amusement. “Because for the past fortnight, I have been laboring ever so cannily here. I finished yesterday. Now, mind, that’s confidential. I start for home in the morning. Train most of the way, but first I have to catch one of those rickety little steamships to Varna. I’m dreading the journey. Water makes me so sick. What are you doing here? Last news I had, you’d finally given Menary her comeuppance and the Dean gave you both your congé. Was it worth it?”
“Oh, absolutely. Jane, you genius, they’ve already laid the table. How do you manage these things?”
Dinner conversation was merry and far-ranging. Eve-Marie had news of Odile, who had worked with her recently in Rocamadour. Four times Eve-Marie turned aside inquiries about her doings. Faris and Jane were candid about their activities, and welcomed Eve-Marie’s advice. Eve-Marie grew more and more animated. Finally, over coffee and cognac, she surrendered.
“This is all completely confidential, mind.”
Jane and Faris eagerly concurred.
“The government sent me here as a favor to Aravill. They’re rather entwined with the royal family over this and that, you know. When the king expressed a need for, um, a technical adviser, my employers were glad to oblige.”
“What sort of advice was the king looking for from a witch of Greenlaw?” Jane asked. “Magical?”
“Something like that,” Eve-Marie replied. “You’ve heard of the gardens at Sevenfold, I imagine?”
“Sevenfold? That’s the king’s country house?” Faris asked.
“You might call it a country house,” Jane said dryly. “According to my Baedeker, the house is three times the size of Galazon Chase. Gardens designed by Le Nôtre and restored to their original splendor at least twice. Two rivers diverted to make the fountains splash nicely. You could call it a country house.”
Eve-Marie looked a little disdainful. “It’s no Vaux-le-Vicomte, but I suppose it is fairly grand—in a rather obvious way. Hardly Le Nôtre’s best work. I was to appraise the labyrinth in particular, the rest of the grounds in general, and find out if it all still worked properly.”
Jane toyed with her cognac glass. “Let me guess. Le Nôtre’s efforts at Versailles and Kensington Gardens were not his only essays into our field of expertise.”
Eve-Marie nodded. “How nicely you put it.”
“Wait. You mean to say, Versailles and Kensington Gardens are enchanted?” Faris asked.
“Oh, yes. As if his genius for design were not enough, Le Nôtre was quite a talented magician, in a purely experimental way. He did some very interesting things with the Tuileries, too,” Eve-Marie replied. “I think Vaux was his best, though I must confess he had more to work with there. Really, the perfect setting. And a good patron makes all the difference.”
“How is Versailles enchanted?” Faris persisted.
Eve-Marie’s brow furrowed slightly with the effort it took to find simple words for a technical explanation. “All Le Nôtre’s work was variation upon the same themes: harmony of proportion, tricks of perspective, perception of time. He’s particularly good at evoking a negative response to time and the perceived passage of time.”
“Visitors to his gardens are reluctant to leave,” Jane explained.
“Well, yes. That is putting it rather bluntly,” Eve-Marie said. “He balanced his gardens so perfectly in a few places that it was theoretically possible to see through time. I’ve never spoken to anyone who experienced it first-hand. I have been told that the proportions were so precisely arranged that at Versailles a hundred years ago you could conceivably meet Le Nôtre himself, out for a little air, a century or so after his own death.”
Faris glanced mistrustfully from Eve-Marie to Jane. “You are joking.”
“I said theoretically.” Eve-Marie smiled. “That’s the thing about gardens. They grow. Gradually the perspectives change, the proportions alter. Now, you might see him walking ankle-deep in the turf. Or hear him, without being able to see him. And the wonderful thing is, that even if Le Nôtre himself were really there, he would not wish to leave.”
“Even after a century?” Faris asked, thinking of Hilarion.
“It wouldn’t seem like a century. You can walk your feet bloody in a Le Nôtre garden and never notice until you leave the grounds,” said Eve-Marie. “Now, the interesting thing about Sevenfold is the labyrinth.”
“A maze? Like Hampton Court?” asked Jane.
“Well, more like the Troytown mazes you find in England, built of raised turf. The pattern is very like La Lieue, the pattern of stones laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral. Le Nôtre achieved some of his effects with shrubbery, that much is like Hampton Court. But it is called the labyrinth, and even though it is not Le Nôtre at his best, it is still impressive.”
“So it passed your inspection?” Jane inquired.
“I had to make some minor adjustments the king wished.”
Faris smirked. “Don’t tell me. He brought a witch of Greenlaw all the way from Paris to trim his topiary. How like a Paganell.”
Eve-Marie looked serious. “All I did was restore the labyrinth to its original working condition. The proportions had changed, but now it is almost as Le Nôtre intended it.” She hesitated. “This is not my secret to betray, you understand? Yet I will abuse the trust put in me and tell you this much. If you find yourself a guest of the king at Sevenfold, do not enter the labyrinth. For if you do, you will not leave it
until the king wishes you to.”
The next morning, Brinker invited Faris to breakfast. She accepted, not without a pang or two of suspicion, and after Eve-Marie’s departure, she joined him in the grand suite he and Agnes shared. Agnes, indisposed, did not appear, so Faris was alone with her uncle.
“Brave of me, isn’t it, to entertain without a bodyguard?” Brinker remarked, as Faris was being served. “But then, my courage has always been a byword.”
“You won’t get an apology out of me, so save your hints. Anyway, I’m not a bit sorry I did it. You provoked me.”
“I know. Of course, it bodes rather poorly for your diplomatic career, I imagine.”
“Just as well I display no aptitude. My career will come to an abrupt close once I come of age. Three weeks left.”
“Twenty days.”
“So you count them too. I’m touched.”
“I’m looking forward to the day. Believe me. In the meantime, I am anxious for you to make the best show you can as Galazon’s ambassador. Do you plan to resign the moment you come of age, no matter what negotiations are in hand?”
“Of course not. But do you honestly suppose there will be any negotiations? I can’t even begin until I’ve presented my credentials and the king is off lurking in the countryside.”
“I’ve received word. He returns tomorrow. You may make your curtsy to him as soon after that as I can gain you audience.”
“There’s a bit more to it than a curtsy.”
“Of course.” A sudden thought appeared to strike Brinker. “Would you feel more confident with a little coaching? Perhaps I might prevail on Agnes to recommend someone.”
“Thank you, no. If I make an idiot of myself, I’d prefer it to be my own fault.”
Brinker gave her a patronizing smile. “Admirable philosophy for a private person. Once you come of age, however, I think you’ll find it more practical to blame as many people as you conveniently can.”
Faris smiled back sardonically. “What need of that, as long as I have you to blame?”
A College of Magics Page 25
