Margerit set the letter aside on the table between them. “At least Maisetra Ionkil has been freeing me from quite so many trips to Urmai. I only go to see the progress for myself now, not because they need me for orders and decisions.”
“I envy you your new factotum! But are you suggesting you’ve been waiting here for me to have time for you?” Barbara teased.
Margerit smiled, knowing no answer was needed. “I thought you had your agents in Turinz well established.”
The answer was a sigh. “I have a man here in Rotenek who’s taken over the accounts and correspondence from LeFevre, but he hasn’t the skills to manage a working estate. There’s Akermen in Turinz—he does well enough—but I need a second to back him up. I think Akermen is too deeply entangled in village affairs, for all that he has wider ambitions. And I worry…well, no need to go into it all unless you care deeply about rust in the wheat and apple moths.” She laughed bitterly. “Akermen has been hinting around about curses and sorcery, but I can’t tell whether he thinks magic is to blame or he wants me to pull strings with the Royal Thaumaturgist for mystical assistance.”
“Do you plan to replace him?”
A wry smile quirked the corner of Barbara’s mouth. “No. He’s a bit of a revolutionary—a relic of his days at university—and eventually it will be good to unsettle things a bit in Turinz, but not until I’ve gotten the place back on its feet. You know I’ve set Brandel to studying accounting with LeFevre. I’ve thought—”
“I know what you’ve thought,” Margerit interrupted, “but is that fair to Brandel? I can’t see him content to spend his days over ledgers and letters.”
Barbara shook her head in agreement. “Not all his days, but it’s no bad thing to be able to oversee your own affairs, as you well know. And LeFevre…he needs to have people he’ll trust.”
The rest was left unspoken between them. It was still impossible to imagine anyone else in charge of their properties, but LeFevre had given up the pretense that his eyes would improve with rest. A detailed memory of the matters under his charge would serve for some time yet, but the day would come…
Margerit turned the subject away from that painful topic. “So what is the council up in arms about now?”
“Tolls on a dead horse.”
Barbara’s voice was so carefully even that Margerit suspected a joke.
“Truly?”
“If a horse drops dead while entering a toll gate but has not completely passed through, does the full toll accrue, or half or none?” Barbara’s slow, rolling declamation mimicked that of Lord Ehing. “When the horse was ridden by Peskil’s son and the toll accrues to Lord Seuz, it becomes a matter for serious debate. In truth, the practical business of governing only seems to come from the common council these days. Once they have a bill worked out, someone will take it up for debate among the nobles. Marzim bullied me into attending the sessions this spring because of the water rights question, but if it weren’t for this puzzle Kreiser set me I’d have quit in disgust.”
“Are you still working with him on that?” Margerit couldn’t help some uneasiness at that connection. Whatever concern the Austrian had in weather mysteries and other disasters, it was unlikely to be to Alpennia’s benefit.
“He’s still only teasing me with hints, but it isn’t just the frozen passes and river levels. You know that as well as I.”
One fire was bad luck. A bad winter season for the cough happened now and again. The histories spoke of tremors in the earth back in Domric’s day. Crops were known to fail for no reason. But taken all together it felt that the luck was draining out of Alpennia. It was maddening to think that the flaws in Mauriz’s protection might be to blame and no one had listened to her. More maddening still to know that some were blaming her own castellum.
“What hints has he let slip?”
“An unusual increase in letters between certain parties. A sudden interest in the esoteric among the clubs in Paris and London. Nothing that’s provided any answers yet, except that there may be more than one party in conspiracy. We need more of the pattern. Kreiser is gathering information outside Alpennia. My task is to collect it here, and the issues raised in council sessions provide a great deal.”
Barbara leaned forward and her eyes brightened as she gestured a map through the tangle. “Take just the water issues alone. You’d think the old guard would consider such matters beneath them, like Chalfin, pontificating that the Rotein will rise and fall as it always has and it makes no sense to try to pass laws on the river. But too many of the noble families rely on water, one way or another. As long as enough rain falls, those who rely on crops are happy, but what happens to the shipping families if the stretch down to Iser is full of shoals? Salun has asserted that all the new canals are holding up water that should flow to the Rotein, which is nonsense, of course. It all flows downstream eventually, but he’s proposed destroying the locks on anything connecting to the Tupe, the Esikon or the Trintun.”
That caught Margerit’s attention. “The Trintun? But that’s the one—”
“The one that Mazuk’s invested in. And he’s taken it as a personal attack. He can’t afford to lose that access for his ironworks. He’s not the only one, but he’s been very pointed about implying that the causes aren’t natural. And evidently I’m somehow to blame for that.”
“Has there been trouble?”
“No worse than anything before.” Barbara shifted uncomfortably in her chair, then leaned forward to squeeze Margerit’s hand briefly. “There are people who resent my presence in council. They always have, but at first I was only a novelty. Someone they thought they could ignore. The young baroness. Saveze’s bastard. If I’d kept my nose out of the debates and only shown up for the ceremonies, it wouldn’t have mattered. They can’t challenge my right to be there, so they try to find some other weakness. Like you. Like rumors of sorcery. Like that duel at the New Year’s court. Don’t fear that Princess Annek will let it come to anything. It’s tiring, that’s all.”
* * *
In time for the last lecture of the season, Antuniet had finally agreed to present a talk on the basics of her alchemical art and the spectacle of the Great Works. They could claim the Salle Chapil, thanks to Lent putting the usual damper on balls and more frivolous uses. It had taken a year’s worth of coaxing to convince Antuniet and, at the last, agreement had come too swiftly for Margerit to be comfortable with claiming it as a personal victory.
Returning from securing those arrangements, Margerit found Tavit sitting on the bare wooden waiting bench to one side of the entryway. He rose hurriedly at her entrance.
“I thought there were sessions today,” Margerit said to him as she pulled off her gloves and laid them on the sideboard to look through the letters displayed there.
“No, Maisetra,” he replied. “The baroness had an errand east of town. Her cousin attends on her. She thought both boys would enjoy the ride. ”
Both boys? Ah yes, Aukustin. His name was regularly on Brandel’s lips now that they shared a tutor. The Dowager Princess Elisebet had relaxed her worried grasp on her son enough to let him run more loose than ever before, though Barbara’s company scarcely counted as loose.
But if Barbara had no need of Tavit, why was he waiting at the door? She glanced over at him where he waited expectantly and nodded permission to continue.
“Maisetra,” he began and licked his lips nervously. “Maisetra, I was wondering if I might have a word with you. Privately.”
The last was said so very precisely that her attention was seized.
“Yes, of course,” she said, setting the letters down. There was nothing in them that couldn’t wait.
She nodded down the hallway toward the office and led the way, closing the door behind them. She sensed the library would be too informal for this discussion. She pulled a chair out from the desk and sat but didn’t waste the effort to invite Tavit to do the same.
The silence drew out uncomfortably until at last he b
egan, “Maisetra, how much do you know of what passed after the duel at the New Year?”
“After the duel? I know…” She considered carefully what he might mean, but only one topic seemed a likely explanation for the hesitation: the question of his—even in her mind she stumbled over the word—his past. “I know that you have not always been what you are now,” she said slowly.
It was an awkwardly delicate way of phrasing it and even as she spoke, it seemed false. The Tavit who stood before her was the one she had always known: tall, slender and wiry, with close-clipped, curly dark hair and the sort of intense expression that Barbara had cultivated in her own days as an armin. The sort of look that warned off trouble before it could start, especially when one didn’t have the intimidating bulk that someone like Marken could wield. She might have expected there to be a curious double vision: the Tavit she knew and the Tavit she knew of. But in the end there was only one.
“The baroness and I do not keep secrets from each other,” she added as the silence stretched out, wondering if that would spur him to reveal whatever concern he had.
He nodded briefly, taking her full meaning, and said, “Then you know there has been trouble at the council sessions.”
The leap to more recent affairs confused Margerit at first. “Yes, Barbara told me something of it.”
“I’m not speaking of the substance of the nobles’ debates,” Tavit said, waving his hand in dismissal. “The details aren’t important.” His brows were drawn together in a frown. In a sudden explosion of intensity he said, “I can’t do my job if she doesn’t trust me!”
Margerit blinked in confusion. “Do your job?”
Tavit moved restlessly about the room. Whatever had driven him this far still struggled to find expression. Discretion was an armin’s second most important skill, and to break it even this far…
“The baroness…there are those on the council who find her presence unwelcome. I’m sure you know that.”
It was much the same as what Barbara had explained. For her youth and her sex, yes definitely. For her opinions and alliances, perhaps. Margerit nodded to encourage Tavit to continue.
“If it were only the subjects under debate, it would be no matter. But debates are duels like any other, always looking for a weakness, a stumble.”
Now that Tavit had begun, the words came in a flood. And it was clear he’d been studying the dynamics of the council as if it did, indeed, involve blades. “There have been insinuations, remarks in passing. Her friendship with that Austrian spy has been thrown in her face. You…your name has not been mentioned in specific, but when people speak of ‘meddling in the mysteries’ there are knowing looks.”
“None of that would matter,” Tavit continued. “But Baron Mazuk has never forgiven her for the loss of his investor, and he was there at the New Year’s duel. He heard everything. And Feizin has some old grudge that I’ve yet to untangle. Something dating from the old baron’s time. And there are others.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly to gather courage. “It started when Feizin asked the baroness just what it was she was plotting with the Austrians. When she said they were looking into the unnatural weather patterns in the Alps, someone in the back rows said, ‘You’d know unnatural; like calls to like.’”
Margerit couldn’t prevent a little gasp. Gossip was one thing, but to voice such a thing in open session?
“I don’t know who said it first, but it was Feizin who pressed the point when debate was closed for the day. I tried—” He shrugged helplessly.
That was how such things went, Margerit knew. A provocation, an insult or slight that couldn’t be ignored. It was an armin’s duty to see if it could be turned aside. To distract or prevent it before it happened, if possible. To give the offender opportunity to back down and, if that failed, to see the matter through. Nothing said in council itself was actionable, but afterward…
“If Feizin was determined to push it to a confrontation—” Margerit began.
“But he wasn’t,” Tavit said. “It was only a feint, anyone could see that. A test to see where her defenses were weak. It was the baroness who pushed it to the drawing of steel. And it was all I could do to keep her from bloodying her own sword.”
“Another duel?” Margerit asked anxiously. The question gave the lie to her claim that Barbara kept no secrets between them. Or…no, there had been something in what she’d said the other day. “Did you—?”
Tavit shook his head. “To a touch only; his man took a scratch, that was all. Enough to put the matter to rest for now. But it should never have come to steel!” he insisted. “She won’t let me do my job. She no longer trusts me, yet she refuses to release my contract.”
Margerit shifted in her chair as a picture began to form. The discomfort came not from the confidences that Tavit was sharing, but from the need to share Barbara’s own inner thoughts, as best she could guess them. It didn’t feel quite proper. What were the rules for this sort of thing? Who would one even ask?
“I think,” she said slowly. “I think it isn’t that the baroness doesn’t trust you, but that she doesn’t trust herself.”
Tavit frowned slightly and waited as she struggled to explain.
“You must remember,” Margerit said, “that Barbara was an armin herself. Think how much depended on her ability to keep track of everyone and everything about her. It…it worries her that she’s ceased to notice such details. That she’s felt safe enough—secure enough—that no one’s life depends on what she sees or fails to see. She didn’t notice that Maistir LeFevre’s eyesight was failing until he told her. That pained her, I know. And though she knew that you had secrets in your past—who doesn’t have secrets? She hadn’t guessed at the shape of them. That made her vulnerable.”
“No,” Tavit said harshly. “I make her vulnerable. I should be her shield and instead I’ve become a breach in her walls.”
“She must not think so.” Margerit struggled for an explanation he might accept. “The baroness has always been very fierce in protecting those she is responsible for.”
“Protecting?” It was a view he hadn’t considered. “I don’t need her protection!” Now he sounded exasperated.
“Don’t we all need it?” Margerit asked. Protection was a tightly woven web: Barbara’s rank, her own money, the Pertineks’ veil of respectability, the formal dance of the armins. “No, it’s not what she’s supposed to do, but it’s a habit she has a hard time discarding. She doubts herself. And she blames herself for that man you killed at New Year’s.” Barbara had said as much in private in the days that followed.
The idea slowly settled into Tavit’s understanding. He laughed bitterly. “I’d forgotten the first piece of advice that Marken gave me when I was hired.”
“What was that?”
“He told me not to let the baroness do my job for me. But that she’d try.”
Yes, Margerit thought. Marken would have seen that from the beginning. “Would you like me to speak to her?” she asked.
A violent shake of the head. “No. No, this is between the two of us.”
Between him and Barbara, yes. She had already stepped beyond what was proper.
* * *
The Salle Chapil was nearly full for Antuniet’s talk, but with a different mixture of people than usual. Were there truly so many interested in transmutations? Or were people merely unsettled and looking for distraction? The city felt uneasily on edge as it hadn’t since the days, six years past, when Prince Aukustin’s health had begun to fail. Tonight’s audience wasn’t only those who wanted a glimpse of the Royal Alchemist—one they rarely got in more social venues. Margerit recognized a few older faces from the university faculty. And there was Mesnera Farin, the mathematician, and several of her friends. Now there was a prize to have captured! Margerit’s own following had largely been drawn from the younger set—the women who still thought of themselves as students. But the eccentrics of the older generation—the scholarly on
es, that is—had largely kept away. This might be Jeanne’s doing, though the vicomtesse herself hadn’t come. Was that by Antuniet’s request or Jeanne’s own decision?
Those who hoped for the story of the famous alchemical gemstones were disappointed. Not that the lecture wasn’t entertaining. Antuniet had a crisp, dry delivery that hovered at the edges of wit. The occasional nervous titter from the audience was rewarded with a brief pause that could have been either appreciation or impatience. She knew her subject well, and knew how to make the quest for physical and spiritual transformation sound as exciting as a heroic novel. A willing audience brought out Antuniet’s hidden dramatic talents.
Tonight she spoke of the Great Works, the ones that could set the seal of triumph on an alchemist’s career. The distillation of elixir, the stone of transmutation, the growing of a homunculus. Margerit was surprised to hear Antuniet discuss philosophy more than science. She always seemed concerned with results above reasons. But tonight she touched on the spiritual motivations of the scientist. On the aspirations and changes that the art worked on the practitioner. On the perfection of the soul that went with the purification of matter. The echo of divine creation. It was a better choice for this audience than a more technical lecture would have been, but so very different from Antuniet’s usual style!
Antuniet was more gracious to those who stayed after the lecture than Margerit might have expected. She usually had no time for idle conversation. But perhaps, like Anna, she had been practicing at Jeanne’s salons. Anna was certainly growing more confident and assured in company. But Antuniet had never lacked in confidence, only in patience.
Margerit glanced over the remaining attendees and left her post by the main doors. Those who might expect a personal farewell had left. Antuniet had only a few people around her now and Margerit extracted her tactfully with an offer of a carriage ride home.
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 24
