The king opened the door. Beyond was blackness. The draft of fresh air became a breeze. Faris felt it stir her veil and flutter at her sleeves. It was a cool night, not cold as a night in January ought to be. The king crossed the threshold.
“No light?” asked Faris, following.
“We won’t need one.”
Beyond, the sky was black and the ground was white. Overhead the gibbous moon hung, overpowering all but a handful of the winter stars. Underfoot, broken masonry cast puddles of shadow in the moonlight.
“Oh,” said Faris, so softly her breath did not stir her veil.
Across the broad expanse of shattered brick and stone, Faris saw white walls rising up from the heart of the wreckage, faultlessly beautiful, a tower as perfectly made as a unicorn’s horn. As Faris watched, the brilliance of the tower faded as utterly as if the moon had been obscured by a bank of clouds. In a moment, there was nothing before them but a flat area, perhaps forty or fifty feet across, of shattered brick and stone, ending at a precipice that dropped a thousand feet to the tangled streets of the city below. Beyond the precipice lay a spangle of light against the utter darkness, like dew caught in a spider web.
“Oh,” she said again, and walked forward into the moonlight.
“Mind the lions,” said the king behind her.
Faris looked around quickly but saw nothing. “Where?”
“They’re out there somewhere.” He put his hand under her elbow as if to steady her. “It’s beautiful here tonight, isn’t it?”
“Very beautiful.” Faris reached the edge of the precipice and stopped. The spangle of light belonged to the streets of the city below. She watched in silence, identifying the steady glow of gaslights along the Esplanade, the fugitive glint of the Twelfth Night bonfires in the steep, twisted streets of the poor quarter of Aravis.
“Too beautiful.” The king drew Faris away from the edge and into the circle of his arm. “One reason we brought you here was to show you this. And to assure you that with us your safety is paramount.”
“Was there some doubt about that?”
“We wish to apologize for any inconvenience our younger daughter has caused. Menary has taken you in some enmity.”
“Are you referring to your letter to the Dean?”
The king seemed puzzled at first. “Our letter? Oh, that. Certainly, that, too. When we received Menary’s news that she needed more money because she was a victim of extortion, we should have remembered her vivid imagination.”
Curiosity kept Faris from remarking on this description of Menary’s behavior. “That, too? Why? What else?”
“Menary took sufficient time away from her studies to engage a Parisian firm to execute a commission for her,” the king began, his stately tones ringing through the ruins.
To execute me, Faris thought.
The king continued. “When this came to our attention, we objected. The commission was canceled. Legal proceedings have been instituted to recover our fees. We have spoken sharply to Menary. She will be too involved in her studies at the Sorbonne to trouble you further. We resolved to apologize to you. We hope you view us as your friend. Your devoted friend.”
Faris’s heart sank. The king’s embrace tightened about her shoulders. She started dramatically. “Was that a lion?”
The king drew her closer still. “We dare them to disturb us. We would dare anything with you beside us. No, don’t tremble. We will protect you. Only give us the right.”
Faris was not trembling. She was shaking with combined amusement and outrage. She pulled away. “Someone is coming.” Wishful thinking.
“We are quite alone.” The king put his hands lightly on her shoulders. “We have discussed all this with your uncle, of course. We are not so old, however, that we don’t understand how you may view the matter. You are young. We know what it is like to be young. You make us remember—” The king broke off to yawn. Then, with no fuss, no warning, he sat down, put his head on his knees, and was silent.
Faris leaned over him. His eyes were shut. His breathing was deep and steady. She felt almost dizzy with relief.
“You’ve no notion how difficult it is to cast a spell in this place.” Jane joined Faris’s inspection of the king. “He’ll do. Sorry I’m late.”
Faris straightened and began to unpin her veil. “Thank goodness you stopped him. But couldn’t you have done it before he began to propose?”
“I wasn’t quite finished with the lions.” Jane took off her scarlet cloak and set it aside, then began to remove her hat. “It isn’t hard to put them to sleep. The problem is to keep them there. Just when I have things in hand, another bit of something blows past me out of the rift and it’s all to do again.”
Faris freed her veil and handed it to Jane.
Jane stepped under it and began to pin it into place with Faris’s help. “Working magic this close to the rift is like trying to light a cigarette in the rain, while standing with your feet in a bucket of kerosene.”
“Sounds uncomfortable,” Reed said. Tyrian pushed past him impatiently and joined Jane and Faris. He took off his wolf’s-head mask and put it down beside Jane’s hat. Reluctantly, Reed came nearer, keeping well away from the edge of the precipice. “Shall I stay here and guard the king?”
“Oh, I’ll keep the king with me,” Jane replied. Her voice was a little deeper than usual, clearer and softer. She seemed taller, much taller than before, and the height had turned her graceful figure awkward. Beneath the veil, the scarlet of her gown had turned to black, worked with shifting patterns of embroidery. The moonlight made all the embroidery look silver and the veil made all the silver look tarnished. “But I’ll have to wake him and the lions soon. I can’t keep them sleeping safely and control the veil. Not here, at least.”
“Promise me, no matter what happens, you won’t dance with Uncle Brinker.”
“We must go.” Tyrian was watching Faris. In the moonlight, he might still have been wearing a mask.
Reed looked anxiously around. “Go where?”
“To the tower.” Faris drew the key to the warden’s stair from around her neck. By moonlight the greenish glass looked dark in her hand. She grasped the key tightly, her fingers tangled in the chain, and started toward the spot where the tower had been. If there was a door, it was her duty to find it.
“If I can’t manage all the magic, I’ll try to give you a signal before I let the lions wake.” Jane bent to touch the king’s shoulder. He rose without opening his eyes and let her lead him away. The door closed almost soundlessly behind them.
The moonlight on the broken ground was bright enough to cast shadows. As Faris made her way toward the center of the ruins, the slow return of the tower shifted the shadows around her. Yet she saw no white walls, no surrounding darkness.
Instead, her attention was on the ground before her, where light and shadow shifted into something she had never seen before. Sometimes like the silken play of light on water, sometimes like the embroidery on her dress, sometimes like the stars over Greenlaw on the night of her vigil, the black and silver pattern fascinated her.
Faris could not quite make sense of it, yet she knew there was sense somewhere inside the shifting contrasts. It reminded her of the labyrinth at Sevenfold. It reminded her of the play of color on a starling’s feather. It reminded her of the pattern of the rug in the library at Galazon Chase. She followed the pattern haltingly, searching for some center that she could not perceive.
Something behind the pattern shifted. Faris felt something break loose and drift past her. As she watched the contrasts fade, she knew the tower had gone again. And as she watched, the remnants of the pattern shifted one last time and became the pattern of gaslight and bonfires in the dark streets far below. She was at the edge of the precipice. On either side, Reed and Tyrian were poised to pull her back. Blinking as if awakening from sleep, Faris looked around at them, and her voice was ragged. “I can’t do it. I can’t even find my way to the rift.”
&nbs
p; “Good,” said Reed. “Then we can go home.”
“Come back,” said Tyrian. “Come away from the edge.”
As they stepped to safer ground, Jane’s hats exploded. The blast threw them down, deafened them briefly, and dusted them with sand and pebbles, but did them no other harm. Faris spat out sand and rubbed a bruised knee. “I think I knocked something out of the rift.”
“Jane said she’d give us a signal,” Reed said. “I think she overdid things.”
“Back to the doorway,” said Tyrian.
They achieved the door before there was any sign of lions but as Reed swung the door shut, Faris glanced back out into the darkness and glimpsed eyes reflecting the light from the corridor. Then it was down the corridor as fast as they could go.
As they ran, they thumped and brushed briskly at themselves and each other to get the worst of the dust off their hair and clothing. To Faris, the twisting passages seemed endless. The pattern of light and shadow still troubled her vision. She misjudged steps and caught corners with her shoulder. Reed and Tyrian slowed to let her clumsiness keep pace with them.
Finally, in a room off the ballroom, where tables covered with white linen held splendid silver trays of crab puffs and lobster patties, they paused to collect themselves.
“I’ll go first,” said Reed, adjusting the lace at his cuffs. “I’m the only one who still has a disguise.”
“You have three minutes to find her,” said Tyrian. “No longer. If you aren’t back, we leave without you.”
Reed grinned, bowed to Faris with a flourish, and left them.
It was quiet in the refreshment room and oddly deserted, considering the excellence of the food set forth. Faris could not hear the orchestra but she thought she heard voices from the ballroom. It was maddening not to be able to make out the words. With or without Jane, Reed would be back in three minutes.
Faris tried to ignore her rising sense of dread. Jane had promised a signal. But her beloved hat? For all Jane could have known, Faris and the others might have been standing right beside it, waiting for Tyrian to put his wolf’s head back on, just at the moment it went off. And just before the blast, there had been that sickening slow shift behind the pattern as something had brushed past Faris. Past her but not past Jane? Surely three minutes could not take so long. Where was Reed? Faris began to pace.
Tyrian, Faris noticed, had unfolded a white linen napkin and arranged it carefully over his arm. The fierce cheerfulness he’d shown in the Boulevard Saint Germain gleamed behind his calm demeanor. As Faris watched, he made minute adjustments to the silver trays, looking as if he had spent all his life in the study of the proper presentation of crab puffs. Finally, he selected a tray and lifted it easily into position. He nodded politely to Faris. “It’s been three minutes. I want to reconnoiter. If I’m not back in one minute more, leave for the hotel without us.”
Faris started to speak. Tyrian held up his hand to stop her. “Count sixty. Then go.” He turned on his heel and walked smartly toward the ballroom, crab puffs on high.
Faris started to pace again.
Before she had counted twenty, Tyrian was back, crab puffs intact. “We must go.” Only his wide blue eyes betrayed his excitement. “Jane looks like herself again. I think the king wants to know if she was you all along or if you’re both to blame—” Tyrian broke off.
Head held high, dusty shoulders back, Faris walked past him into the ballroom. With a quick, exasperated sigh, Tyrian ran in the opposite direction, as fast as the tray of crab puffs permitted.
In the ballroom, the dancers were drawn up into a gawking crowd just in front of the orchestra, but the musicians were not the source of interest. In a little clearing at the heart of the crowd stood the king, shouting at someone at his feet. “We ask you again. Where is Paris Nallaneen?”
If there was an answer, it did not carry beyond the crowd of costumed onlookers.
Faris crossed most of the chessboard before anyone noticed she was there. When she reached the crowd, she hesitated, wishing for Reed’s court sword. She edged and elbowed her way forward on a steady chant of “Pardon me, excuse me, so very sorry.”
The ring of onlookers began to yield, whispering. Faris could not help but catch a few of the words. Witch was one, bastard another. She winced. The whispers rose to a buzz and the crowd melted away before her. Faris found herself within the little clearing.
The king was scarlet with rage. Drawn up to his full height, he made a formidable figure, despite his simple costume. Faris noticed that he no longer wore the stuffed lark on his shoulder. She could not help feeling glad it was gone.
Jane lay at the king’s feet, her hands pressed hard to her temples, her youthful face ashen behind the crumpled veil that was now only fabric. Reed knelt beside her, cradling her head on his shoulder. He might have made a picture of eighteenth-century gallantry, but his attention was centered on the king, not on Jane. He looked worried.
Two guards, in full scrub-brush splendor, stood close by. The guests they had elbowed aside in their haste to reach the king were still complaining. Across the clearing, the British ambassador and her husband had stepped toward the king as if to protest. Beside them, Brinker stood, his gauntleted hand protectively on Agnes’s shoulder.
Faris walked out into the heart of the clearing and felt the ring of onlookers close behind her. She dared a glance back. No sign of Tyrian. Faris knelt beside Jane and spoke as calmly as she could. “Are you all right?”
Everyone stared at her. For a moment there was no sound in the great room, not a murmur, not a rustle of fabric.
Faris kept her voice prosaic. “Jane, are you feeling all right?”
Jane squinted up at Faris as if the light hurt her eyes. She kept her fingers to her forehead. Her knuckles whitened. Her voice was almost a whisper. “All my cigarettes went out at once. Sorry.”
The king’s voice was loud and cold. “So—you acknowledge one another.”
Faris looked up. “You were looking for me?
“Guard, arrest these women.”
“What are we supposed to have done?”
“Treason.” He nearly spat at Jane. “She used magic against our person. No doubt you would have done so yourself, had you the aptitude. Instead you set her on. You have conspired to endanger our person.”
Faris fixed the king with an icy stare. “Perhaps,” she said softly, “you have confused me with one of your subjects. I am the ambassador of Galazon. As such I enjoy diplomatic immunity. So do the members of my staff.”
The king’s mouth twisted. “You are ambassador of nothing. Your uncle could think of no better lure to fetch you from Galazon. You might with as much right call yourself ambassador of the farmyard. At least that has the ring of truth.”
All around them, whispers became murmurs.
Faris kept her voice steady. “Do you think I came to Aravis without looking at my credentials? Whatever your intentions were, my embassy is legitimate.” She glanced at Brinker, who looked away.
The king laughed abruptly. “Which is more than you can say for yourself.”
Faris began to feel annoyed. It was an emotion she was familiar with. As a relief from her other concerns, she welcomed it. “An old jibe from an old man. I confess I prefer it to your stale flirtations.”
The king, ominously calm, stared at Faris, then at the guards. “We have given an order. Why don’t you obey it?”
“Protocol, perhaps,” said the British ambassador, with icy courtesy. “The Congress of Vienna established certain principles of diplomatic behavior. You cannot set aside the entire apparatus on a whim.”
“Very well, if we must continue this farce, we hereby rescind this ambassador’s credentials. Guards, do your duty.”
As the guards started forward, Faris rose and turned to the British ambassador. She pitched her voice to carry over the rising noise of the onlookers. “Jane is a British subject. I depend upon you, your excellency, to see that she comes to no harm.”
&n
bsp; Across the chessboard, the outer door was filling up with guards. At their approach the onlookers began to melt away.
The British ambassador gave Faris a crisp nod. The nearest guards faltered before her disapproval. “Steps will be taken,” she promised.
Faris found her stern expression oddly reassuring. “Reed, stay with her.” Reed nodded as he helped Jane to her feet. Then, to the king, Faris called, “Where do you keep your arrested ambassadors? In the labyrinth at Sevenfold—with Menary?”
The room went still. In the sudden silence, the king stepped close to Faris, trembling with suppressed emotion. He reached out his hand and drew his fingertips very gently across her lips. When he spoke, his voice carried to the farthest corner of the ballroom. “You have a beautiful mouth, when it is closed. If you could have kept it so, we might have done very well together. But as things are, even your dowry cannot excuse you.”
For a slow moment, Faris looked into his face. Then she looked past the king to Brinker. Her lips parted, but it took her a moment to find words. “So that’s what the taxes were for.”
This time, Brinker met her gaze. “You needed a large dowry to compensate for your reputation. Blame yourself, not me. I was simply doing my duty.”
“You robbed Galazon to sell me.” Her eyes blazed. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
Brinker smiled. “Probably. Such is the peril of family sentiment. It’s a luxury I seldom permit myself.”
Beside Brinker, Agnes screamed and pointed. It was a fine, full, operatic scream that ended in the word lion! Involuntarily, everyone looked where Agnes was pointing. The silence in the ballroom became pandemonium.
The press of bodies parted for an instant and Faris was able to glimpse the refreshment room. On a linen-draped table, a lioness stood in a ruin of silver trays. Her attention was entirely on crab puffs and lobster patties.
Agnes was still screaming. Someone shoved Faris aside. She caught her balance, and saw that Reed and Jane had nearly reached the door. The king, oblivious of the crowd’s panic, moved swiftly toward them. In two steps, the British ambassador had intercepted him.
A College of Magics Page 30
