Jane turned to the oldest of them. “Lucia, run to the river and tell Lord Byron to proceed, exactly as we have planned. Make sure you tell him to proceed exactly as we have planned.”
Eyes wide, the girl nodded and ran down the street, pigtails streaming behind her.
Signor Zancani appeared from behind the booth, still pulling a puppet off his hand. Jane spared him a glance and said, “Nothing changes.”
“What do you mean? If he is ill, everything changes.”
“I am going after him. I will need a distraction to get us out, and we already have one planned. Use it.” Without waiting for his inevitable protest, Jane ran across the street.
Behind her, she heard Sister Aquinata send another girl to tell the Abbess what was happening. Then the puppet play began again. Jane put them out of her mind. Her first objective—her only objective—was to get to Vincent and hope she was quick enough.
At the door, Jane sent up a prayer and shoved. It opened easily. Vincent’s calling card fell out of the latch, where he had blocked the lock. Lifting the robes of her habit, Jane ran up the stairs, two at a time.
Coppa sat in front of the water entrance with a book, apparently guarding it. He looked up with alarm as she bolted up the stairs. “Hey!”
Jane ignored him, gaining the top of the stairs before he started up them. His footsteps chased her to the parlour. She burst into the room. Her feet echoed on the marble floor. The rug had been removed from the room, so Vincent would have landed on the cold stone floor. The Verres had been removed from the room, but for the moment Jane did not care about them.
Spada spun around. His brow furrowed in confusion, seeing only the robes of her habit for the moment. Jane charged to where Vincent lay on the floor, drenched with sweat.
His neck was pulled back in a tight arc, and tremors shook his body. Even though she had expected this sight, Jane stopped breathing in distress. She pushed past Spada and knelt at Vincent’s side. “He must be cooled.”
The confusion cleared from Spada’s face. “Lady Vincent.”
From the door, Coppa charged through. “Sorry. She slipped past me.”
“I can see that.” Spada leaned on his cane and limped forward.
Bastone stepped out of the wall as Jane grabbed a fold of glamour and wove it into a bubble of cool in an effort to reduce Vincent’s temperature. She glared at Bastone, who halted by the strong room. “Help me. You know what is happening here. I need help with the cold weaves.”
“I—That’s really not my area.” He took a step back, as though Vincent’s condition were contagious.
Denaro stuck his head into the parlour. “What’s going on?”
“The Vincents were attempting to steal our Verres. I think that settles the question of whether they work.” Spada tapped his cane upon the floor. “Denaro, check the other entrances. I suspect that there will be another attempt to come inside. Likely the service entrance. That is how you came in before, is it not, Lady Vincent?”
“I need help.” She loosened Vincent’s cravat and pulled it free to help him breathe. If she thought overmuch about what was happening, she would lose her bearings. “Please. Overheating could kill him.”
Vincent’s colour was very high, but mottled red and white. Little bubbles of spit popped at the corners of his mouth. She kept her gaze fixed on her husband and let the sound of the swindlers’ conversation wash over her.
“She’s right. If he hasn’t fried himself already,” Bastone said.
She pulled another fold from the ether and laid it under the initial strand of cold. “Will you please, for the love of God, send for a surgeon.”
“Why?” Spada paced around her, cane tapping against the floor. “Is there a benefit to helping you?”
Jane lifted her head and let all the loathing she felt for this man fill her voice. “If you want to know how the Verre work, then help me keep him alive, because if he dies, I swear to God that I will hunt you down myself and kill you.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Brave words from a woman trapped in a room alone with four men who have no reason to let her live.”
“Of course you have a reason. Profit.” Jane turned her head back to Vincent, shaking with rage. They would let him die. After all that she knew about Spada, she had still put some faith in his essential humanity, that he would not willingly kill someone. It had been a mistake. “If he lives, I will teach you to work the Verres.”
“Not merely if we help you? But it is hardly our fault that he is in such a state.”
“It is completely your fault.” Jane pulled a third fold out and slid it beneath the others. Spreading it between her hands, Jane reached for Vincent’s forehead and began to stretch the glamour over him.
“Nonsense. I did not force you to do anything. At every step of the way, you had a choice. You chose to let me pay for your ransom. You chose to let me take you in. You chose to let me help pick a glassmaker.” Spada’s voice was bewitching and reasonable. “You chose to send your husband here, knowing that he was over-taxed. His collapse last week was not enough?”
Jane bit her lip, knowing that he was right. She was surprised not that he had an informant in their group but that he admitted it so readily. She kept her hands sliding over her husband’s form, under the layers of cooling threads atop him. As she passed down his chest, he convulsed and made a strangled grunt that alarmed her. She almost pulled her hands back, but kept laying the folds. The chill began to burn into her fingers as she worked. “And you are choosing to let him die. If you want working Verres, I would suggest that you make a different choice.”
“Do you swear with the same fervour that you swore to kill me that you will show Bastone how to make a working sphere?”
She bit back the hysterical laughter that threatened to rise. They had working Verres but did not know it. “If Vincent lives, and is unharmed. Yes.”
“I thought he had only to live?”
“Since I rather suspect that you will have no reason to keep either of us alive once you know the trick, then it seems prudent to stipulate.” Jane shifted so that she could run a hand down each of Vincent’s legs. The spasms were so strong that she could barely continue to work. Her own breath sped, as though to match his in tempo.
“Bastone. Help the lady.” Spada limped across the floor. “Coppa, go for a surgeon. Quickly, if you please.”
Jane suppressed her sigh of relief. This was only one obstacle surmounted, and it did nothing to lessen her concern for Vincent. Everything depended on how long it took Coppa to fetch a surgeon. She looked to Bastone. “Take these, if you please,” indicating the folds she was holding.
“I—” He stopped in the process of kneeling. “Spada, where are you going?”
“To guard the door. I do not want any more surprises.” He produced a key from his pocket. “You do not mind being locked in, do you?”
“Last time he set the room on fire.”
They thought that Vincent had snuck in and not her? Jane kept her gaze on Vincent.
“If their roles were reversed, perhaps there would be some concern, but I do not think that will be a risk, given Sir David’s condition … unless you are afraid of a woman?” Spada bowed, as if courtesy mattered, and stepped out of the room. He pulled the door shut behind him, and a moment later the lock clicked home.
Bastone gave a curse. “I always get left with the rubbish.”
“Sorry to trouble you.”
“What do you need.” He dropped to his knees beside her with an aggravated sigh.
The urge to slap him was very strong. “Take these and keep them steady.” She passed him the threads she had been working on in a sort of complicated cat’s cradle.
He shuddered. “These are freezing.”
“Well, we are trying to lower his temperature.” Jane let her vision expand deep into the second sight to make certain that everything was in place. This was a complicated tapestry she was trying to weave, and her anxiety did nothing to help
, but the lines of cold were clear. Jane pulled out another pair of folds, twisting them quickly around and expanded the bubble to contain the other threads. “I see that there is water on the sideboard. If you have the threads, I am going to dampen a cloth for his head before I lay in the next part.”
“Go ahead.”
Gathering her habit around her, Jane stood and walked behind Bastone as though she were going to the sideboard. She slid her hand into one of her voluminous sleeves to remove the truncheon she had hidden there. She had never been so glad to be undervalued because she was a woman.
Jane brought the club down on the back of Bastone’s head as hard as she could.
Standing with her head outside of the sphere of silence she had just woven, the club landed silently. He doubled over at the impact, but did not fall. She raised the club again.
Vincent opened his eyes.
He sat up and punched the man. Bastone sagged to the floor in utter silence. Where Vincent had lain, an image of him remained, so that her husband appeared to be conjoined with a twin who twitched and jerked on the floor. Jane dropped to her knees beside him, entering the silent sphere. “Are you all right? That spasm terrified me. It was nothing we had practised.”
“You hit one of my ticklish spots.” He rolled Bastone over. “It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Did you bring the rope?”
“And everything else.” Jane hitched up the skirt of her habit, under which she wore a pair of borrowed breeches. She had a length of rope wrapped around her waist and proceeded to remove it. “Spada is outside.”
“I heard.” Vincent took the rope and bound Bastone’s hands. “I was able to watch Bastone open the strong room.”
“Good.” Though they had spent days planning for every variation they could think of, it was still a relief that this part of their scheme had worked. “I had hoped they would leave the Verres out, but did not think it likely.”
Vincent nodded and looked down at the glamour of himself. He blanched beneath the remnants of his disguise. “I look awful.”
“This is better than you were last week.” The red and white splotches on his face were a result of Signor Zancani’s craft. They had been hidden until Vincent dropped the glamour of the French officer. All that remained of that disguise was the white powder in Vincent’s hair. The figure on the floor, however, Jane could not look at without feeling ill. It was too true to life.
He grimaced. “No wonder you were worried.”
“I am only glad the lion technique worked.”
“As am I.” Vincent shoved a cloth into Bastone’s mouth and began wrestling him upright. “Help me sit him up?”
Together they managed to get him propped up, with a pillow from the couch and used more the rope to tie him into a passable sitting position with his back to the door. Anyone glancing in would see Vincent still twitching, with Bastone sitting in watch over him.
It took only a moment for the two of them to create a recording of Jane, because the habit hid most of her movement anyhow, so the loop did not need to be long. It would not gain them much time, but with luck it would create some confusion as well.
With that arranged, they stood and went to where the strong room opening was masked by glamour. Vincent rolled his neck and flexed his fingers in preparation. Jane threw the Sphère Obscurcie around them, adding a second sphere to control sound. It would not keep the alarms from sounding, but it did allow them to talk to one another. “How is your head?”
“It aches, but I think that is from my ‘seizure’ more than anything.” Vincent’s gaze went distant, and he reached into the web of glamour. Tempting though it was, Jane did not expand her vision to the second sight to watch him. She kept her view on the door, waiting for Spada to look in or Coppa to return with the surgeon. If all went as planned, the surgeon would be Signor Zancani in yet another of his disguises.
To her corporeal eye, Vincent appeared to have his hands sunk into the fabric of the wall. His face was tight with tension and his eyes followed the path of invisible strings. He hissed at one point. Shaking his head, he pulled his hand out, then reached in again. Jane stayed as still as possible so as not to distract him, though she doubted that he could see her. His gaze seemed deeply abstracted. While he worked, Jane undid the neck of her habit.
Vincent twisted something inside the glamour, and a metallic click sounded. He let his breath out with a sigh. “Done.”
“Thank heavens. I shall get the papers.”
Nodding, Vincent stepped through the door. From her bodice, Jane pulled the journal that Sister Franceschina had prepared. Her habit had a truly astonishing number of places to hide things.
Vincent cursed.
Jane stopped with the book in her hand. What had made her husband curse? There was no alarm sounding. He stuck his head back out of the wall, appearing only from the shoulders up. “Muse, I need your help. It is a dark room.”
“Shall I get a candle?” She tucked the book back into the belt of her habit.
He shook his head. “I was unclear. The room is glamoured to appear completely lightless.”
“Oh … oh, dear.” Even if they brought in a light source, their eyes would continue to perceive the illusion of darkness. “May I guess that there are additional alarms?”
“Almost certainly.” Vincent pulled his head back through, and Jane followed.
The darkness inside the wall was complete. It seemed to press around her as though she had been buried. Jane opened the collar of her habit, trying to let in more air. She paused with her fingers at its throat and let her vision expand to her second sight. Glowing lines of glamour filled the space. Some of the lines pulled together into complicated clusters. Others stretched through the air without seeming to attach to anything.
She frowned, trying to sort out some order. “He was not inside very long.”
“So they are close.” Vincent sounded nearer than she expected.
Jane reached out until she found the fabric of his uniform, then followed it down the line of his arm and took his hand. “Perhaps we should not worry about setting off an alarm? We will be setting it off later, anyhow.”
Vincent squeezed her hand. “But only after we have exchanged the Verres, to get Spada to open the door.”
Gnawing on her lower lip, Jane considered the threads around them. “There must be a slip-knot close to the door, or he would not have been able to come in and set them down so quickly.”
“So, perhaps these?” Fabric rustled.
“I cannot see what you are pointing at, love.”
“Sorry.” Vincent’s hand dipped into the ether, and he wrapped a fold around his fingers so that they appeared to glow in the darkness. He pointed again at a set of threads close to where they stood.
She had only taken one step into the strong room, so these should be easy to reach from just inside the door. There was, in fact, a slip-knot. “Where does this … hm.” Jane traced the line to a point where it snarled around some other fibres of glamour. It took her awhile to tease apart which one of the threads was the one that she wanted. It was sound. “No. It is an alarm.”
“Should I exchange the journals? You are better at detail work than I am.” Jane nodded. Then, remembering that he could not see her, she said, “Yes. Please.” She pulled out the book she had slipped into her belt, then used Vincent’s trick of wrapping unformed glamour around her hand so that he could see where to reach. “Here. Bring me the real one?”
His hand brushed hers and then found the journal. The shape of his glowing hand showed that he was gripping something, but not what. The book shifted in her hand as Vincent strengthened his grip. “I have it.”
There was no need to keep him in the room now, no matter how much she wanted him close. Jane let go of the book. “I will be as quick as I can.”
Cloth rustled as he turned. Two footsteps, then silence. All Jane could hear was the sound of her own breath and the rustle of cloth as she moved. Even swallowing was overloud.
Jane crouched where she stood to examine a cluster of threads. One of them swayed a little apart from the others. Though not a slip-knot itself, it was tied to one. That thread traced back to … light. Good. She traced the line again to make certain that it was not tangled into something else, but saw nothing to trip her up.
As Jane reached for the thread, her fingers brushed something stiff, like a harp string. She stopped. Drawing her hand back, she strained to see what she had run into. It was so frustrating to know that there was light coming through the open door, but that glamour fooled her senses into believing the darkness. Did it matter, though? She knew that something were there. It seemed likely that if she pulled the thread of glamour, then the corporal string would trigger … something. An alarm. Or a trap.
But she was also quite certain that the line she had traced was designed to undo the darkness glamour. There must be a direction that one could pull the thread without running into an obstacle. Someone who knew the room would know that route. It was a cunning mixture of the tangible and the illusory.
Of course. Tangible and illusory. Jane chuckled as she stood and ran a strand of her own glamour out to the thread in question. Looping it through, she braced herself for an alarm and pulled.
Light flooded the room. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut against the sudden brightness. It was not that the room itself was bright, it was merely the contrast. Standing, Jane opened her eyes. The room was still only lit from the door, but that was more than enough to see the pitfalls that lay there.
Jane shivered at the lengths someone had gone to to protect the contents of the room. Had she pulled the strand of glamour and tripped the piano wire, she would have set off a small guillotine. A thief who did not know the safe path would likely have their hand cut off. There were bear traps on the floor, blades, and even a bucket of tar.
Wiping her face, Jane leaned back out of the strong room, and then stuck her head out of the Sphère Obscurcie. She waved to Vincent to let him know she was finished.
Vincent turned from the writing desk with a grin. Papers lay on the desk, where he had been sorting them. He hefted the book to show her that he had made the swap. Lifting the sleeve of faux glass spheres that Jane had given him, he crossed the room.
Valour and Vanity Page 27
