Suddenly, as if from far away, she hears a low, faint rattling. She frowns. Such a noise has no place in a ballroom—but no, it is definitely there, and not only that but growing steadily louder. She flushes. “Are you quite sure you’re well?” says Davenant.
“The room is somewhat close, don’t you think?” she says, snapping open her fan. The rattling grows louder, and louder still, then resolves itself finally, inexplicably, into the sound of a carriage hurrying down a country road, closer, closer. She glances around, but she seems to be the only one in the room to hear it. It grows louder and louder, rumbling, advancing, thundering, until it crowds all other sound out of her ears. The room darkens, and in place of the supremely elegant gathering there are two girls, a maid and a mistress, riding in a traveling coach, giggling about the possibilities they believe the future holds, and then all of a sudden rearing horses, the shouts of men, the clash of swords, the scent of fear, rage, opportunity, and blood, blood, oh, blood, and she thinks she will faint, and she sinks toward the ground—
—and Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, wakes with a gasp, her heart wild to escape her breast, her mind whirling, spinning, clanging, and she sees after a moment’s disorientation that she is not in her ballroom after all, she is in her bedchamber, because the ball has yet to take place, the ball is tonight, and Karleigh, Karleigh will be there, and if he offends the Kinwiinik deeply enough that they refuse her proposal, then she will have rescued herself from the fire only to be cast into the sea.
And now, reader, let us take advantage of our position outside the tale, first to allow a span of hours to pass unremarked (unremarked by us, that is; to be sure, the men and women with whom we concern ourselves are about their business, bemoaning their woes, cherishing their secret hopes) and then, once we return, to flit rather than to linger, to glance rather than to gaze, to visit our heroes—for who among us is not the hero of his own story?—unseen and undetected as they ready themselves for the ball.
Here we see Ixkaab, first daughter of a first daughter of the Balam, a thousand and a thousand miles from her home, as with a thrill of transgression and pride she places in her ears the silver earplugs her uncle has lent her, of a quality and craftsmanship denied her on her native shores, where to appear in greater luxury than members of the royal house is punishable by exile. She adds golden bracelets studded with precious stones and a circlet of jade and pearl upon her brow, one such as might be donned for a solemn occasion by the daughter of the Batab, Ruler of the Territories, and finally knots a headdress of stiff cloth, modest in comparison with that of her aunt Ixsaabim but nonetheless resplendent with a shower of green quetzal feathers surrounded by the brilliant red of the macaw. She and the members of the household wear these adornments tonight to show the strength and power of their people, the honor of the Traders’ House of Balam of the Kinwiinik, but she herself finds an additional inner comfort in the pomp. She is terrified, as she has been for some time, that she will be discovered to have revealed the secret she has been told she must not give away, but this fear has just been overshadowed by an even greater one: They have had news this day of a disaster at home that could spell their doom and the doom of their entire people. Her aunt steps up behind her, and they regard each other in the glass, each thinking of danger and of Ixmoe, sister to one, mother to the other, who awaits them both, if their understanding of the cosmos is correct—and who is to say it is not?—in the houses beneath the earth.
Here we have Rafe Fenton, son of a different sort of trader, a City merchant’s reluctant heir, sorely vexed; we shall see the cause soon enough, but let it be enough for now to say that, of two things he desires with equally burning fervor, each seems to put the other out of his grasp, and vexed more sorely still because, at least at present, he is making what he feels is the coward’s choice. He too regards himself in the glass, splendid in claret velvet, and his face clouds like the sky before a storm that does not intend all it touches to survive. With an oath and a cry he tears open the soft doublet, slashed with black, and casts it to the floor along with the new stockings and the breeches; should you harbor any faith that the red silk ribbon for the hair flowing down his back is to be spared a similar fate, I advise you to gird yourself for disappointment. Now he attires himself, though he knows it will offend—or perhaps because he knows it will offend—in a manner much more befitting the man he wishes to be. The sight that confronts him when he turns back to the glass, though far less comely, pleases him far more.
Here is a girl named Micah, nervous about the evening ahead—as it happens, not nearly as nervous as she would be if she truly understood its character—rehearsing the words and phrases her friends have taught her to say should she be confronted with the need to speak. She is irked by the fit of the clothes she has consented to put on for the evening, more constricting than the scholar’s robe to which she has grown accustomed, but that is nothing compared with the madness to which she feels she is being driven by the mathematical mystery that evades her indefatigable efforts to solve it. In the meanwhile, she looks forward to the evening ahead as an opportunity to assuage the guilt she feels at having abandoned her family for so long by doing them, perhaps, a great service involving a humble vegetable.
Here are Tess, known to some as the Hand, and Vincent Applethorpe—we may speak of them together in Riverside rather than individually, as they are, while vital to their own tales, ancillary to ours. The one is attempting, without much success, to stave off a feeling of dread that has been growing in her since the death of her former protector, a fear that whatever malevolent force led him to his end has not yet abandoned its machinations in her life; I am sorry to inform you, reader, that events to come will prove that fear warranted. The other, who has arranged to attach himself to the large train of one of the brightly glittering families who will soon sweep up the Tremontaine House steps, buckles on a sword that he hopes will remain undrawn by the time he sees his bed. Whether that hope is to be met or dashed—well, you must permit the storyteller to retain a modicum of mystery; it is, weak though it be, the only power he has.
Here we see William Alexander Tielman, Duke Tremontaine, bedecked in a red deeper than the great ruby that shines among a circle of diamonds on his hand, feeling for the first time in years—and who, if the duke believes it to be the first time ever, could withhold forgiveness?—the thrill that renders men children in the face of love, if love indeed it be, that leaves them helpless and jolly even as all they have built threatens, whether they know it or not, to topple around them and leave them standing amid the wreckage of their lives.
And here, at last, we see, wide awake, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, architect of the evening that is to come. Unlike her husband, she is all too aware of the destruction that looms over them, and perhaps by nightfall she will have come a great deal closer to averting it. There is another doom, however, far worse and more grim, that hangs over her head. She believes she has dispatched it, but she is mistaken, and whether she will escape it or be reduced to ashes in its conflagration is not at the moment within my ken.
These, then, are some of the men and women who may cross one another’s paths this night. Who is to say which of them will be hero to another, which villain, and which—
Ah, but the guests have begun to arrive.
In pairs they come, for the most part, over the course of an hour or two, borne in gilded carriages that bespeak opulence more than comfort, preceded down the dark cobblestone avenue by the clacking hooves of their high-necked horses, bay and chestnut and dapple gray. Some come alone and some in families, for such an opportunity to show marriageable girls to their advantage is not to be wasted. Some come beset by envy, others by spite; some come determined to find the furnishings ostentatious and the food inferior, some dreading the degree by which their own houses and entertainments will fail to shine as brightly as those that await them tonight. Some even come, curious as it is, to enjoy themselves for the evening.
But they all come.
&
nbsp; For their hostess is an intriguing woman, a woman with a gift for mystery, and no one wants to wake up tomorrow morning to be informed by someone else what wonders the Duchess Tremontaine wrought at this year’s Swan Ball.
Rafe descended the imposing Tremontaine stairs, his black, wrinkled scholar’s robe brushing each dark step resentfully as he went, his face like doom.
The visiting Doctor Hugh McDonough was even now holding forth in the Great Lecture Hall on the properties of angles in irregular solids. Rafe’s friend Joshua was there, sitting under the high vaulted ceiling and the stained glass representations of the hunting of the royal stag in the windows, growing more enlightened by the sentence. Henry and Thaddeus too. And he, Rafe Fenton, so very noble in his aspirations, so pure in his love of scholarship, so single-minded in his impassioned pursuit of the truth, where was he?
He was going to a party.
He had no need to examine himself again in a glass to be aware of the sneering contempt on his own face. Well, he deserved that sneer. Only a short time since, he’d been a man ablaze with the fire of discovery, a man on the threshold of proving his most deeply held convictions about the cosmos. What was he now? A fribble, a mincing girl aflutter with her first love, or what she believed was love. And being ordered around by his lover’s wife, spending his time writing her party invitations. Invitations! When there was an unfinished book on his desk the pages of which would revolutionize natural science as nobody had done since Rastin! And instead he had reduced himself to this.
But he was hardly the only one to blame. Who did Will think he was, so casually to require Rafe to disregard the ambition toward which he had bent himself for years? Rafe was no tenant farmer, no jerking marionette to dance at the pleasure of his master, no—
And then, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw Will walking through the entrance hall from the library to the ballroom, pale against the red velvet he wore and the richly wooded rooms through which he passed.
Rafe inhaled sharply, stopped short. Will turned, and at the sight of his face, Rafe felt the roiling inside him grow inexplicably more violent. He wanted to strike the man, he wanted to kiss him, to wrap him in his embrace, to tangle his fingers in his yellow hair, to caress every part of him not covered by clothing, to spit in his face.
Will’s deep blue eyes, bright when first he turned, clouded as they traveled from Rafe’s face to his body, taking in the rumpled, frayed University robe his secretary had chosen to wear to such a sparkling event. His voice was damask over steel. “Did the clothes I sent you not suit you?”
“No,” said Rafe, just as quiet but cold, as cold as the snows of Arkenvelt, “they did not. I found they were cut to fit your dog better than me.”
Will actually had the gall to look confused. “What?”
And in that moment, Rafe was pierced by the undeniable truth: his belief that the duke valued the same things as he did had been a gross error. Here was a dilettante, a coxcomb to whom fashion was so important he’d given Rafe clothing that matched exactly the color of his own jacket and the damned ruby on his finger. And his promise to urge the University Board of Governors to reconsider its vote on the matter of Masters’ examinations—no doubt worth less than the breath it had cost him to make. Rafe would never found his school, and it was Will’s fault.
Well, then. Will had snatched Rafe’s dream from him. Rafe would pay him back in kind.
“The reason I have allowed you to toy with me as if I were your plaything eludes me.” Should he leave the ball entirely, go to hear McDonough? His stomach twisted at the thought. No; better to make the duke suffer. “I have said I would attend this event as your secretary, and I am not a man to break my word. But rest assured, sir, that after this I will trouble your house no longer. You will not see me again.”
There.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said the duke. God, he was maddening! Why did he refuse to comprehend?
“William.” Diane’s voice as she approached was cool as chased silver. “Have our guests incurred your displeasure, that you neglect them so?”
Rafe looked up at the stream of aristocrats flowing by, each more foolish and plumped up than the last, all bedizened in useless frippery that mocked every principle he held dear. An elegant man under a mop of red hair gave him a languorous smile that implied volumes. Good. Lithe, the man was, of an age with Will, and handsome in emerald green slashed with silver. Rafe raised a careful eyebrow that implied volumes of its own.
“I’ll attend to our guests,” said Will, and there was a note of distance in his voice, “the very instant I understand why Rafe is wearing his scholar’s rags when perfectly suitable clothing was provided him.”
Diane’s eyes, veiled, gave away nothing.
“Don’t worry, Fenton,” she said, and even through his fury her voice sounded to him like a blade all the more dangerous for its beauty. She turned to Will. “Darling,” she said, “we ourselves can barely keep up with all the ridiculous rules by which we order our lives here on the Hill. You can hardly expect your secretary to understand them.” She smiled at Rafe, a generous smile, compassionate, and oh, how he hated her.
He schooled his expression to utter blankness. “Forgive me my intrusion, madam.” He turned and stalked toward the ballroom, Will’s pursuing footsteps echoing in his ear.
The redhead would be more interesting company tonight.
Diane permitted herself, as her husband went off, a very small smile; after all, neither he nor his snake of a lover could see it.
“Duchess!”
The smile vanished as if it had never been. Karleigh had arrived.
She turned to the door and swept toward him and his wife in a thoroughly convincing transport of joy. “Frederick! Helena!” She took their hands, Helena’s white as milk and Karleigh’s whiter, and her voice was the softest thick wool on a cold day. “Thank the good gods you’ve come! I can’t tell you how utterly dreary the evening has been without you!”
“Who’s been blathering such nonsense?” said the duke. “Any man who could describe an evening spent at Tremontaine House as dreary ought to be apprehended at once and packed off to the madhouse. Now: Tell us what the Swan is to be this year.”
“I would,” said the duchess, “but I’ve quite forgotten myself.” The duke harrumphed.
“Diane, you are stunning.” Helena adjusted the lace at her pink taffeta sleeves. “With anyone else I would apologize for such a cliché, but in your presence I absolve myself, as you long ago rendered any other response impossible.”
“Pish,” said Diane. “Helena, it is you who put stunning to shame. Those exquisite puffs at the neckline, and that pearl! It is heaven.” She regarded the duke. “And you, Frederick. I’m shocked my way to you wasn’t blocked by a crowd of pretty young things vying for your favors. That doublet puts Helena and me both to shame.” It was a hideous object, white with black braiding at the shoulders and sleeves embroidered in a blue that reminded her of something out of the sickroom. It would have looked foolish on a man half Karleigh’s age—had he been old-fashioned enough as to wear it. What had Helena had been thinking, letting him out of the house in it?
“You see, Helena?” said Karleigh, his tone so gruff with victory it bordered on the uncivil. “I told you it flattered me.” Ah, so Helena had done her best. “Now, Diane, where do you think I got it?”
By the Seven Hells. He was going to make her guess. “Frederick, I’m hopeless at such games, so I believe I’ll avoid your trap altogether and simply insist that your wife tell me.”
“We’re quite proud of it,” said Helena quickly. “People think he must have had it from—”
“People think I must have had it from Wickers,” said Karleigh—really, he had always been a boor, but to interrupt one’s wife!—“when in fact I had it from the hand of a crone who traced her lineage all the way back to one of Queen Amelia’s ladies! The woman died shortly thereafter, childless, friendless, and alone, b
ut what does that matter when she was able to do this before she went?” He stepped back and spread his arms wide to offer an unhappily full view of the garment.
“Her joy in having provided you with such perfection,” said Diane, unable to help herself, “was, I’m quite certain, more than comfort enough for her in her final hours.” Helena failed to keep from appearing wounded, but honestly, what could she expect?
Karleigh, appraising the crowd, gave a gasp that would have done him credit on the stage. “Good gods,” he said. “Is that Latimer? I shall have to spend the evening avoiding him.”
“He will be disconsolate,” said Diane. “What crime has he committed, so to fall from your favor?”
“He told me last week he couldn’t join me for a simple game of Constellations because he had to entertain some sort of foreign grandee from Erland—I don’t know, someplace ridiculous like that. How humiliating for him. I’d rather serve chocolate to a good, honest local charwoman any day than to the king of a nothing country with no blood. He may wear linen and lace, but I guarantee you, go back far enough in Latimer’s line and you’ll find a haberdasher.”
Diane harbored no doubt in her breast whatsoever that Karleigh would keel over in a fit of apoplexy before he served chocolate to a charwoman, but on the subject of foreigners and their failings the duke was not to be gainsaid. She glanced around. The Kinwiinik had yet to arrive. She was safe for now, at least. “What punishment,” she said, “could be worse than to be cast out of your good graces? Now, both of you, come with me. If you stray from my side at any point during the evening, I vow I shall take to my bed at once and perish before sunrise.” And, pulling gaily at the ducal pair, she wafted into the ballroom.
Micah froze.
A lot of people, Rafe had said.
She had assumed that meant twelve, or even twenty!
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 29
