by K. E. Mills
Lord Babcock lowered his cutlery and squinted up at him. “Really? That’s most thoughtful. My compliments to Her Highness.”
Leaning closer, Gerald captured his lordship’s gaze. Impressed his will upon the man, feeling again that thrilling surge of power. “I’ll pass them along. Tell me, my lord, have you any reason to wish ill upon the wedding?”
“What?” Babcock’s squint relaxed into a wide-eyed docility “No. Of course not.”
It was the truth. “What about Ferdie Goosen? Does that name ring a bell?”
“Goosen?” Dreamily, Babcock shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
And that was true too. Relieved, because the thought of corruption and treachery so close to home was a nightmare, Gerald released his grimoire hold on Babcock and stepped back.
“Thank you so much for your time, Your Lordship. I’ll be sure to tell Her Highness that you—”
A wave of etheretic unrest swamped him, strangling the rest of his platitude. Half-discarding, half-dropping his plate of herring on Babcock’s table, he slewed around to face the dining room’s grand entrance.
And there were the Lanruvians, spreading silence like warm blood dropped into water. Side by side with their Spirit Speaker walked a jovial Marquis of Harenstein, he of the vast paunch and lead-lined stomach. His child-bride wasn’t with him. Instead he’d been accompanied by two of his retainers. Both were unfamiliar. They’d not attended the Servants’ Ball. Older than the Harenstein minions who’d danced there, they were smiling, coldly polite. The taller one wore a ragged scar on his face.
Instinct had Gerald pouring power back into his shield before that unsettling Spirit Speaker could feel anything amiss. But in the split second before he was hidden completely, a random and terrible premonition stopped the air in his throat.
The fireworks. The fireworks. Something’s dreadfully wrong.
As Hartwig’s quintet rediscovered its harmonious voice, and conversations stuttered back to life, Gerald fumbled his way to the nearest food-laden sideboard where he could stand with his back to the newcomers and catch his rasping breath. His bones were still shaking with the force of his proofless conviction.
But I’m right. I know I’m right. Only … how do I know it?
More grimoire magic? Perhaps. Probably. But did it matter? No. All that mattered was the smothering sense of impending danger. After a moment, he risked a sneaking glance over his shoulder.
The Lanruvians, praise the pigs, hadn’t noticed him. Neither had the marquis or his minions. The old fool! Surely he knew Lanruvia’s reputation? After so much goodwill garnered by Harenstein’s brokering of the wedding, why would he sully his own by cultivating such men?
I’ve no idea. That’s a question for Sir Alec and Monk’s uncle. My job now is to see those fireworks safe.
Abandoning, for the moment, his plan to question Hartwig’s other luncheon guests, he ghosted his way out of the dining room and headed back upstairs to Melissande’s suite.
Bibbie only let him in after he’d spent several minutes grovelling through the front door in a whispered undertone.
“Where’s Melissande?” he demanded, following the wretched girl into the bedchamber, where she was packing ahead of their departure that evening on Hartwig’s sumptuous royal barge. “I hope she’s not off doing something inadvisable.”
“She’s visiting Crown Princess Brunelda,” said Bibbie, keeping her back firmly turned. “Who’s feeling very poorly with her gout. If that’s any of your business, Mister Rowbotham.”
“Actually, it is,” he said, frustrated. “There’s something I need her to do.”
Bibbie sniffed. “I won’t bother asking if I can be of assistance.”
“As it happens, no, you can’t help,” he said, retreating to the window, a safe distance. “But only because you’re not Melissande.”
“Oh.” Bibbie dropped a folded silk girlish underthing into the suitcase and turned. Then she frowned. “What’s wrong? You look spooked.”
“I am spooked,” he admitted, and rubbed a hand across his face. “Someone’s sabotaged the fireworks.”
“Tonight’s fireworks?” she said, her eyes widening behind Gladys Slack’s ridiculous horn-rimmed spectacles. “That’s dreadful! What are we going to do?”
Saint Snodgrass save him, did she never listen? “We’re not going to do anything. I need Melissande to pump Hartwig for pertinent information and then I’m going to unsabotage them. And please don’t argue with me about it, Gladys. We’ve argued enough for one day.”
Bibbie stared at him, her expressive face and eyes full of many shouted objections. Then she nodded. “Agreed. I’ll just save up the rest of my arguments for when we get home.”
Wonderful. He could hardly wait.
Whoever said the course of true love doesn’t run smooth never knew the half of it.
“And instead of simply standing there, laying down your high-and-mighty janitorial law,” Bibbie added, “you can give me a hand with the rest of Melissande’s boxes. Honestly, the way she packs you’d think the wedding tour was meant to last six months instead of a week or so.”
“Fine,” he said. “But first I need to contact Sir Alec.”
He gave it seven good tries, but with Splotze’s etheretics in an uncooperative mood he had to give up. He was in the middle of hauling Melissande’s ridiculously large and heavy shoe-case out of the wardrobe when she returned to the suite.
“Honestly!” she said crossly, tossing her fox-fur stole onto the bed. “How many times must I tell you, Algernon? You can’t be in here! You’re going to ruin my reputation!”
“Bugger your reputation,” he said, letting the shoe-case drop. “Someone’s fiddled with the fireworks.”
Elegant in her best green silk day dress and dainty heels, Melissande frowned. “What d’you mean, fiddled?”
“What d’you think I mean?”
“Oh.” Rallying, Melissande lifted her chin. “Are you sure? How d’you know? I thought you were going downstairs to luncheon.”
“I did. And when I saw the Lanruvians I came over with a very bad feeling. Melissande, I need to see Hartwig. Now.”
“Hartwig?” She was frowning again. “Are you sure? When you’ve no more proof than a bad feeling?”
“Yes.”
“But d’you really want to kick up a stink, throw the wedding plans into disarray, when this might only be indigestion?”
“Don’t be silly, Mel,” said Bibbie. “If Gerald says trouble’s brewing, then there’s probably trouble.”
Startled, Gerald looked at her. Even angry and hurt, she was defending him. So maybe there was a chance that …
But he mustn’t, mustn’t, let himself be sidetracked by hope.
“Trust me, Melissande, the last thing I want to do is cause a public kerfuffle,” he said. “The idea is to catch who’s behind this, not tip our hand and frighten them off. Please, just take me to see the Crown Prince. If we tell him we want to know about the fireworks for the Times, he likely won’t fuss about keeping the details under wraps. I need to know how many pontoons there are, where in the Canal they’re set up, that kind of thing. The more I know, the better chance I have of figuring out how the fireworks have been tampered with and how I’m going to prevent a disaster.”
“If they’ve been tampered with,” said Melissande, still dubious. Then she sighed. “Only you’re right, of course. You can’t afford not to fear the worst.”
And speaking of fearing the worst …
But before he could open his mouth, Bibbie’s hackles were up. “Oh, no,” she said, fists clenched by her slender hips. “We are not being left behind in this palace like children.”
“Left behind?” Melissande echoed. “Not attend the fireworks, you mean? Sorry Gerald, that’s out of the question. Hartwig’s barge departs on the tour as soon as the display is over. We have to be on board with the rest of the guests.”
“No, you don’t,” he protested weakly. “You could say
you’re feeling poorly, then catch up in a carriage first thing tomorrow.”
“No,” said Melissande. “If I try to stay behind, Hartwig will make a fuss and that’ll draw everyone’s attention. Hardly what I’d call being a secret agent.”
Feeling unfairly put upon, Gerald glared at the girls. If only between them they’d bloody well stop being right.
“Fine,” he snapped. “And for pity’s sake, it’s Algernon. Now, can we please go and interview Hartwig?”
“Actually …” Melissande pulled a face. “It might be best if you let me tackle Hartwig on my own. According to poor Brunelda he’s in rather a prickly mood after the tainted crab puff calamity. I might have to—” Blushing, she cleared her throat. “—sweet talk him into chatting with me. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not have an audience.”
As if he had a choice. Without Melissande’s help he was hobbled, and she knew it. “All right. But go now. And if Hartwig gets sticky, promise him his picture will appear next to the article. That way you probably won’t be able to shut him up.”
Melissande bit her lip. “D’you really think the Lanruvians are behind this plot to ruin the wedding?”
“I think they’re sneaky, devious bastards with something nefarious shoved up their silk sleeves,” he said. “Possibly hexes to turn Hartwig’s fireworks into a conflagration. Now, please, Melissande, would you go? The clock is ticking.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, reaching for her fox-fur stole. “But until I get back just you stay in the bathroom. There’ll be a maid along any minute and you’ve no idea how their tongues wag.”
Nearly five hours later, almost halfway across the Canal in a stolen boat scarcely bigger than a bathtub, Gerald paused his rowing through the late autumn’s swiftly falling dusk to catch his breath and mop the sweat of exertion from his brow.
Saint Snodgrass save me. If it turns out I am imagining things I’ll never hear the end of it.
But he wasn’t. He knew he wasn’t. And once he’d saved the day, surely no-one would care how he’d done it, or why he’d been so certain the night’s fireworks were in danger. Besides, even if he’d not been so bone-shakingly sure, still he’d have acted. Because if he failed to trust his instincts, let the chance of humiliation stay his hand, and his instincts were proven right? If people were hurt, or worse, if they were killed? Sir Alec really would clap him in irons then throw away the key.
And I’d never forgive myself.
So now here he was, dangerously shrouded in a no-see-’em hex, cultivating blisters as he rowed a purloined, barely Canal-worthy wooden box out to the nearest tethered firework-laden pontoon, while eager crowds of sightseers thronged both sides of the Canal and the wedding party with its glittering comet’s tail of guests was boarding Crown Prince Hartwig’s royal barge in eager anticipation of the imminent fireworks display.
Watching over his shoulder, Gerald felt a nasty sizzle of nerves. Damn. If only the barge wasn’t anchored quite so close to those burdened, possibly lethal pontoons.
Because the evening’s entertainment was intended as a warm up to the big celebration slated to take place on the night of the wedding, there were only three fireworks pontoons for him to investigate. Thanks to Melissande’s clever questioning of the Crown Prince, he knew that each configuration of fireworks was thaumaturgically sequenced and controlled by Radley Blayling, the Ottish wizard who’d designed the display. And since Melissande had managed to wangle herself a last-minute introduction to the man, with himself as her faithful scribe, taking copious notes, he was confident—well, as confident as he could be, anyway—that Blayling was an innocent pawn in the plot.
Which meant the Lanruvians—if it was the Lanruvians— had somehow, whether by bribery, corruption, serendipity, illegal thaumaturgics or a wicked combination thereof, managed to tamper with the fireworks themselves. And if he failed to uncover the mischief in time …
Sweating anew, but not from exertion, Gerald started rowing again. Such a bugger he couldn’t use a speed-’em-up hex as well. But with the chance of compromised fireworks’ thaumaturgics close by, he didn’t dare risk it. The speed-’em-up was too volatile to risk.
Off to the right, Hartwig’s imposing royal barge glittered and twinkled, bedecked like a queen. Lamps like vividly coloured jewels were strung stem to stern, and across the placid waters of the Canal floated strains of bright music and laughter as the wedding revellers kicked up their heels, sublimely unaware that in the light-flickered shadows danger and death crouched with bared teeth, waiting.
He tried not to imagine the barge exploding in flames.Tried not to hear the screams of the injured and dying. To see Bibbie and Melissande, dying.
It can’t happen. It won’t happen. I’m not going to let it.
The dreadful sense of danger that had swamped him in the palace dining room, that haunted him now, drove him to forget the sweat stinging his eyes, the blisters stinging his palms and fingers, the fire burning in his shoulders and back. He rowed and rowed, knowing countless lives depended on him. That Bibbie depended on him. That he was the only thing standing between her and cruel murder.
Don’t worry, Bibs. I’ll protect you.
He nearly fell headfirst out of the stupid little boat, trying to climb onto the first tethered fireworks pontoon. Panting, heart scudding, he knelt precariously on the unsteady platform, unfurled his magnified potentia and touched it to the wards set to safeguard the complicated thaumaturgics bound up in the bundles of gunpowder and assorted chemicals. They surrendered to him without protest. Ha. Blayling might be a genius with fireworks, but he was rubbish at protective hexes. And wasn’t that a worry? Tampering made simple.
But the fireworks hadn’t been altered. Not these ones, at least.
Daunted only by the knowledge that time was fast running out, he clambered back in the little boat and rowed hard for the second pontoon. Took the risk of staying put, this time, and looking for imminent danger from slightly afar. Still nothing. Pouring sweat now, come on, Dunnywood, row faster, he headed for the third and final pontoon. Stretched out his senses with a desperate gasp, knowing this had to be it, knowing the danger was here, had to be here—
With a deafening whoosh and an eye-searing flash of light, the floating pontoon of fireworks ignited in a brilliant ball of kaleidoscope colour. He heard the crowd’s full-throated roar of delight and wonder. Heard his own shout of angry despair.
And then, for Gerald Dunwoody, the fireworks ended.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Ow! Melissande, d’you mind?”
“Not at all, Mister Rowbotham,” said Melissande, cheerfully dabbing a disgusting green ointment on his blistered chin. “Now stop being such a baby. You’re hardly scorched at all.”
“Actually,” Gerald retorted, “I’m scorched quite a bit!”
Not to mention embarrassed, stripped down to his still-damp long underwear with his bare torso all exposed. Melissande, bless her, was turning a blind eye, paying him no more attention than if he’d been a horse. She’d even quashed Bibbie, whose utter lack of maidenly modesty had threatened to take full flight.
“And whose fault is that?” said Monk’s incorrigible sister, the fiendishly unsympathetic love of his life, perched on the edge of the bed in Melissande’s magnificent stateroom aboard Hartwig’s royal barge. “I told you to be careful, didn’t I?”
Melissande scooped more noxious green ointment onto the tip of her finger. “She did. You should’ve listened. Now do be quiet. After the lies I told Hartwig about you not attending the fireworks because you were indisposed, I can’t have the entire barge listening to you bellow like a banshee.”
“Why not?” he said, backing away from her. “You could tell them I was in the throes of agony, and you wouldn’t be far wrong!”
Melissande smeared the fresh dollop of ointment back into its pot, then held the pot out. “Suit yourself. And while you’re at it, treat yourself. But when you’re in the throes of a terrible fever, becau
se that frequently happens with burns, I suggest you dive overboard. Maybe a dip in the Canal will save you.”
Bumped against a cupboard, trapped, Gerald looked at the smelly ointment, then at Melissande, who was glaring. His scorched bits sang a loud chorus of complaint.
Bugger. “Please finish.”
“If you insist,” said Melissande, and resumed her questionable doctoring.
Beyond the stateroom’s main porthole, Splotze’s starlit countryside glided by as Hartwig’s enormous and lavishly outfitted barge made its ponderous way down the Canal towards the next day’s first official stop at Little Grande Splotze, where they were to partake of a specially prepared luncheon and festive celebration. What a prospect. By the time this assignment was done with he’d almost certainly not fit into a single pair of his trousers.
“Mind you,” said Bibbie, idly swinging her legs, “I still can’t believe you were wrong about the fireworks.”
He glowered at her. “I wasn’t wrong.”
“Oh?” She feigned surprise. “So that wasn’t me and Melissande and those aristocratic whathaveyous and thousands of tourists ooohing and aaahing at all the pretty sparkly lights in the sky?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Miss Slack, there are more fireworks planned,” he retorted. “I might’ve been wrong about the timing, granted, but I am not wrong about the danger.”
“Oh,” said Bibbie, and frowned. “You sound awfully definite.”
“Miss Slack, I’d bet my life on it.”
Bibbie looked at Melissande. “You’ll have to warn Hartwig. Get him to cancel the wedding fireworks. He’ll listen to you.”
Wincing as Melissande dabbed ointment on his blistered midriff, Gerald nodded. “She’s right, Melissande. The fireworks must be called off. Talk to him tonight, or at the latest first thing in the morning.”
“Well … I can try, but I doubt he’ll listen,” said Melissande. “Hartwig’s spent so much money on this wedding, you’ve no idea. Not to mention its political importance. To convince him there’s danger I’d have to give our whole game away. Sir Alec would fall in a foaming heap.”
