Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia

by Jones, Heather Rose

  “A…homunculus.” Barbara remembered listening to Antuniet’s lectures on the topic but she’d thought it an idle game of philosophy. An amusement, using the sort of spiritual symbolism that alchemists delighted in. “A homunculus,” she repeated.

  “Why yes,” Antuniet said briskly. “The principles are quite similar to that of transmuting metal. A more traditional path than my gemstone work. Different materials, of course, and the processes use entirely different symbolism than that for the Philosopher’s Stone. But—”

  “You can’t be serious,” Barbara interrupted.

  “I’m quite serious. The proof is in the result, isn’t it?”

  For a moment—only a moment—Barbara believed it might be possible. She had seen wondrous things come out of this workshop. And it was clear that alchemists of the past had known the secret. But…

  Her gaze returned to Antuniet’s face. It held a challenge that was just a hair to the side of smug certainty. If anyone could convince the elite of Rotenek that she’d gotten a child without resorting to a man, her cousin could do it. All it would take would be enough sincere believers and the silent acceptance of the rest. Princess Annek might well see the advantage to such a proof of skill. And yet…

  Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps I will accept that, in time, you could accomplish this. But I saw how long it took to develop the formulas for your talismans. What I don’t accept is that you could master the skills in a single summer. There are far easier ways to get with child in that span of time. So let us return to my first question. Whose is it?”

  “Mine,” Antuniet said simply. “And I fail to see what business it is of yours.”

  Barbara gaped at her. “I think I might be forgiven for having some interest in what sort of man fathered the next Baron Saveze!”

  A wave of confusion passed over Antuniet’s face. “What are you talking about?” Her expression seemed genuinely bewildered. “The next…” Abruptly, her mouth fell open. She drew up a chair and sat heavily. “I…dear God, Barbara. I swear, I don’t care to be thought slow-witted, but it had never occurred to me…”

  Her shock was almost believable.

  “But…Barbara,” Antuniet continued. “It isn’t possible. The Chazillen line was cut off from the title when Estefen…when we were disenrolled.”

  When Estefen was executed for treason. They had never spoken of that—not in so many words. And now was not the time.

  “The direct family claim, yes. But you’re still my cousin and my closest kin by the Lumbeirt line. From the moment your rank was restored you’ve been my heir-default.”

  “I thought…” she began. “I assumed that Brandel…”

  Barbara shook her head. In the face of Antuniet’s confusion, her anger was draining away and leaving only exasperation. “I won’t deny that I have ambitions for him, but not Saveze. He has no claim there. And there’s no one else.” She laughed grimly. “And unlike you—or my father for that matter—I have qualms about getting myself an heir without benefit of marriage. So let me ask again, who was he?”

  The silence stretched out between them. Antuniet broke it at last. “He’s of good birth. And he lives very far away. He won’t cause trouble and you needn’t be concerned about his bloodlines.”

  She mentioned a name, but it meant nothing to Barbara.

  “And Jeanne knows?”

  “Jeanne was there.”

  Something in the tenor of Antuniet’s answer made Barbara tilt her head quizzically. Antuniet nodded, her gaze steady, confirming what hadn’t been asked aloud. Barbara felt an unaccustomed warmth creep over her face.

  “I see it’s still possible for me to shock you,” Antuniet said. “I am sorry—”

  Barbara waved the protest away. “And what is my role in this meant to be?”

  Antuniet sighed. “I hadn’t intended you to have any role at all. You may disown me if you think it necessary.”

  The idea was tempting, but if she rejected her cousin’s story, that would be a sign for others to do the same. “I doubt that would serve any purpose,” Barbara said. “Best to see it through. I shall be seen to be proud of your alchemical triumph.”

  Antuniet rose slowly from her chair. She looked more tired than the early hour might explain. “I was hoping that perhaps you might consent to stand as godmother.”

  Barbara found the request strangely pleasing. “I’ll consider it.” And then, just before turning to leave, she asked, “Tell me: could you produce a child by alchemy?”

  “I think so,” Antuniet said. “At least, I think it would be possible. But I don’t know that I’d have the heart to work through the failures to success.”

  Barbara remembered batch after batch of flawed gemstones, lying cracked and shattered on the workbench before being returned to the fire. No. Antuniet had made some cold-blooded choices in her time, but surely that would be beyond her.

  * * *

  At the ball, Albori had passed on several observations on the French situation, prefaced by the comment, “Her Grace thought you might be interested.” It was permission, not a command, and the encounter with Antuniet had swept them from Barbara’s mind for a few days.

  Albori covered the official channels of diplomatic communication. But if Princess Annek thought the death of the French king might relate in some way to the matters she was investigating with Kreiser, those channels would be inadequate. Not for the first time, Barbara wondered just how much of the Austrian’s mission was reported to his own embassy, and whether the answers received through those different channels bore any resemblance to each other. Barbara’s blood quickened at the thought of matching wits once more.

  Having prepared the way with a request to meet Kreiser at his club, Barbara dressed once more in that mix of male and female garments she had chosen previously for passage into the halls of Sainkall’s. As the weather looked unusually promising for the season, she sent word down to Tavit that they would be walking.

  Tavit met her in the foyer, but Brandel was close at his heels asking, “Cousin Barbara? I have no lessons at the palace today. Might I attend you?”

  He glanced briefly over at Tavit for permission. Tavit’s expression gave nothing away. He was grudgingly generous about sharing duties with Brandel when there was no chance of trouble. Council sessions did not fall within that category. But this? Barbara recalled that Baron Mazuk was another habitué of Sainkall’s and shook her head. And not for that reason alone.

  “Brandel, as I recall, Maisetra Fulpi is also free of lessons today. Have you asked her whether she might want your attendance?”

  “Oh, Iuli,” he said dismissively.

  Barbara’s mouth hardened. “Did you think I was investing in all this training so you could follow around at my heels for your own pride? You have far to go to convince me you have the skills and experience to attend on a person of rank and title. And you could make up a great deal of that distance by showing me you can watch over a ‘nothing of a country girl with few expectations and a modest dowry.’”

  Brandel stiffened. He hadn’t meant her to overhear that comment.

  When Barbara was certain she had his attention, she added more patiently, “It was never my plan or my intention for you to replace Tavit. Put that out of your mind. Having Maisetra Fulpi in your charge is training, just as much as your time at Perret’s fencing salle. Prove yourself and then we can discuss taking on more responsibility.”

  * * *

  The porter at Sainkall’s had ceased to be startled at her visits, but held to the strict rule that she be met and escorted by one of the members. Kreiser had taken the liberty of ordering wine for them—a sweet dark vintage that encouraged lingering sips.

  Barbara opened the match with, “Interesting news from France.”

  “I suppose the death of a king is always interesting,” Kreiser replied, “or were you thinking of fresher news than that?”

  “Tell me something fresher and I’ll tell you whether I had it in mind,” B
arbara countered.

  He waggled a finger at her. “That’s not how the game is played.”

  Barbara laughed. “I haven’t come for games today. Yes, the death of King Louis. Do you think—?”

  “Why has your Archbishop Fereir changed his mind about the structure of the cathedral mysteries?” Kreiser interrupted. “What does he know?”

  “I doubt he knows more than anyone else,” Barbara said. “He’s simply decided to listen at last.” Though not, apparently, to listen to Margerit.

  “Indeed,” Kreiser replied. “One of the people he’s listening to is that Talarico woman.”

  Barbara hid her surprise. Margerit hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, but Margerit was quite distracted these days. “I hadn’t realized you were familiar with Maisetra Talarico.”

  Kreiser gave one of his taunting half smiles. “I try to be acquainted with everyone who has useful talents.”

  “And what do you think of her observations?” Barbara asked. A probe, as she had no idea what those observations had been.

  Kreiser either missed her bluff or was willing to divulge the information freely. “She thinks our weather mystery has gone entirely mad. That whoever devised it has lost all control and that accounts for the disasters plaguing Alpennia and her neighbors.”

  “We suspected that,” Barbara offered.

  “No, we knew it had gone beyond the original intent. I don’t think even the people who created it could pull it back or dismantle it now.”

  “Isn’t the termination usually built into the mystery itself?” Barbara asked. The ceremonies of the formal mystery guilds were rarely meant to come to an end. They added layer on layer to previous workings, like fresh plaster on a wall. It was only lesser mysteries—private ceremonies and the ones dismissively called market charms—that had a closely defined scope. “Had they meant this to stand in place for all eternity?”

  Kreiser leaned forward and dropped his voice as if even the servants passing in the corridor might be spies. “A zauberwerk of this scale, of this power—it takes a great deal from those who devise it. Maisetra Sovitre will tell you that’s why great mysteries are celebrated only by guilds. It takes a great deal of skill and…and essence to create a working of this size. You can’t build it on the talents of one or two thaumaturgists alone, no matter how dedicated.”

  Barbara considered him skeptically. “So you don’t hold that mysteries work through the grace of God?”

  He gave a soft snort. “I won’t deny the grace of God and I wouldn’t say even this much in certain places. I won’t claim that skill alone can explain the outcome of a mystery. But the world is more complex than that. I once saw a man burned to a shriveled husk because he called on powers greater than he knew. Was that God’s grace? And this…this thing we face,” he said, waving vaguely toward the east. “I think the more it grew beyond their intent, the less they could control it and the more it ate at them. Something has changed within the last two months. Two months ago it was like a vicious dog that could no longer be called to heel. Now it’s gone frothing mad and I think we may conclude that it’s savaged its former masters. And what else has happened within that span of time?”

  Barbara’s heart quickened. Had his mind turned the same place that Princess Annek’s had? “I can think of several things,” she said cautiously.

  “Leave off the games, Saveze,” he said. “We know approximately when this…thing was created. And we know when King Louis’s health took a sudden turn for the worse. And now he has died and the mystery has fractured entirely. That’s proof enough for me.”

  “You think the French king would sacrifice his life for this?”

  “You Alpennians!” Kreiser said with unaccustomed impatience. “For all your famed scholastic tradition, you think miracles come in tidy little boxes. Let us be plain. This is sorcery. And sorcery is ugly. It’s ugly for those who work it and for those they work against. And you—you’ve worked so hard to unlock the secrets of power and then tied them up again in formal rituals and mysticism. Your Gaudericus might have been a genius but he squandered it all for fear of angering the church. Guilds provide a safe source of power but they make innovation nearly impossible. So every sorcerer tries to adapt the rules of thaumaturgy to a smaller scale in secret, and when they fail, they fail like this. If men like Gaudericus had had half as much ambition as talent—”

  “Then we might not have the results of his work at all,” Barbara finished. Kreiser’s complaint put a different light on the treatment of Gaudericus’s work over the centuries. Perhaps fear of heresy was not the only reason to suppress his publications.

  Kreiser sighed. “I think there’s a circle—a mystery guild, if you will—in France that found a way to tie the royal person into the structure of their mystery to enforce France’s interests in Spain. Such symbols have power. But they lost control. And the ambit of the mystery grew until at last it killed him. Whether you call it the grace of God or something else, no one directs the forces currently at play to lock the Alps in winter. And no one can predict what further damage it may do.”

  Barbara stared at him in horror as the consequences expanded in her mind. “You can prove this?”

  “I can prove nothing yet, but I’d stake my life on it. Indeed, I have done so.” Kreiser sat back, his expression now as mild as if they’d been discussing the merits of a pair of coach horses. “And I must say, it’s a great relief to me.”

  Yes, it would be. It meant he needn’t watch his back against his own masters. “So Fereir has been convinced to restore and strengthen the old Mauriz mystery. We put the All Saints’ Castellum in the hands of a guild chosen for something other than the length of their pedigrees, and—”

  “Alpennians!” Kreiser muttered once more. “You can’t just build a wall around your pretty little country and keep the wider world out. You’ve tried doing that for centuries and this is what comes of it!”

  In a way, it was an echo of what Princess Annek had once said. An echo of what Margerit had complained of with regard to the Mauriz mystery. The time was past for looking inward. Alliances might shore up the present, but as Antuniet was wont to say, no way out but forward.

  Kreiser turned the conversation sharply around a corner once more. “Will your Princess be sending her son back to Paris do you think?”

  Barbara answered carefully, “Mesner Albori didn’t say.”

  “Mesner Atilliet has spent a startling amount of time in France in the last year, but perhaps there are…attractions there.”

  “It’s a good place to learn statesmanship,” Barbara offered.

  “But a poor place to seek alliances, at least of that sort. French royal blood has grown thin.”

  Barbara declined to take that bait. The little she knew of Annek’s thoughts on her son’s eventual marriage were not ones she felt at liberty to share. “I haven’t heard that there is any thought of a French marriage.”

  Kreiser looked at her narrowly and returned to a previous topic. “It’s time for me to make plans for my own visit to Paris, though I’d like to know more of what I face. I wonder if you might introduce me to someone who has been with the Alpennian delegation there? Perhaps Mesner Atilliet himself?”

  “I doubt I could manage that,” Barbara replied. “We meet socially, but it would be awkward for me to extend him a private invitation. And Albori himself would be too obvious for your purpose, I think.” Though, she thought, he would definitely need to be apprised of Kreiser’s plans. “I might arrange a dinner that included the Perzins. Iohen Perzin is in line to take over the delegation to Paris and his wife is close to an old friend.” Now that was a very delicate way to describe Tionez’s relationship to Jeanne and Jeanne’s to her. “Now that I think of it…”

  Barbara’s mind spun off in possibilities. Jeanne’s salons. Jeanne had the standing to invite Efriturik as well as the Perzins. But no, it would be impossible to suggest that Kreiser be welcome in her house. Not simply because of Antuniet’s co
ntinued enmity for the man. Kreiser had given the orders behind the attack on Anna Monterrez, and Anna was at the heart of Jeanne’s salons. No, that wouldn’t do at all. But perhaps…The complexities stirred her blood.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she concluded. “Expect an invitation.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Luzie

  Mid-December, 1824

  The students drifted in, one by one, and set out their pens and paints on the table. It was an odd sort of music lesson; only one of the girls played an instrument at all. That is, only one of the thaumaturgy students. Maisetra Sovitre’s cousin Iulien would be joining them today. Luzie moved restlessly around the room tidying up as they waited for that most important straggler.

  The music room at the Tanfrit Academy had once been a small side parlor. With its red-flocked wallpaper and marble fireplace it might have been a room in the house of any of her students’ parents, except that few of those would have boasted both a fortepiano and a double-manual harpsichord. There was talk of adding more instruments in future years. Luzie rattled around in the space as the sole instructor, brought in—as Maisetra Sovitre had noted—as a lure to parents concerned that their daughters be accomplished and not simply learned.

  Mornings were individual lessons. After lunch the room filled with girls eager to learn music theory—not the principles of composition yet, but the basics of the science of sound. Luzie had felt out of her depth at first. She’d taught brief snippets of such things around keyboard lessons, but never anything so formal. As that first month passed—as November turned to December—she and the students came to an agreement of exploration rather than instruction. When the lesson was over, instead of musical notation the chalkboard might hint of mathematics or physics or some other subject brought in slantwise.

  Once, in the first weeks, she’d gone to apologize to Maisetra Mainus for the chaos and lack of direction, but the headmistress had nodded gravely and said, “If there’s love of learning, the rest will come. We’re all feeling our way down this path. Do you have what you need? Are there any books or supplies lacking?”