Company of Strangers, #1

by Melissa McShane

  The room beyond was a study, at least as far as Sienne’s experience went. To anyone not raised in a duke’s household, this might look like a library, but there weren’t enough bookcases and the desk occupying the far side of the room was far too large. Tall windows curtained in forest green velvet that matched the servant’s livery flanked the desk. An empty fireplace still smelling of ash sat opposite it. In the far corner, a white iron staircase spiraled up out of sight through a square hole in the ceiling, through which came a slightly brighter light than that of the candles illuminating the study. Though the room was sizable, it felt hot and close and stuffy, and Sienne wished she dared throw back the curtains and smash open a window, since she doubted the ground floor windows were made to open.

  Alaric went immediately to the staircase and began to climb. “You there,” he said to Perrin, “stop dawdling. I warned you what would happen if you crossed us, didn’t I?”

  “Sorry,” Perrin whined. Sienne mentally applauded.

  She once again took her place at the end of the procession, as there was room on the staircase for only one at a time. Her feet rang dully on the metal treads, and the sound echoed with her companions’ footsteps until it made her dizzy. She hoped it was the sound that caused her dizziness and not the frequent casting of spells. She hadn’t reached her limit, but four imitates and four voices was pushing it. Out in the cool evening air, she hadn’t felt it, but the warmth of the room and the echoing footsteps made her long for a place where she could sit down and put her head between her knees.

  The staircase went up a very long way, through a narrow space like a chimney, and Sienne tried not to think about all the ways in which this might be a trap. Kalanath’s legs filled her vision, and she noticed, to her chagrin, that his boots were featureless, lacking the creases actual boots might have. She prayed no one would notice the missing detail.

  Kalanath stepped off the stairs, and Sienne followed him. The air was cooler here, and it took her a moment to realize this was because the room was open to the outdoors. She looked up and suppressed a gasp. It was an observatory, its domed roof painted with a replica of the summer night sky at solstice. Faceted gemstones, blue, red, yellow, and white, took the places of the largest stars. The lines of the constellations were traced in gold paint that glimmered in the light of the candles placed on candle trees around the room. Some of the dome’s panels were missing, and the gaps were the sources of the cool, apple-scented breezes that brushed Sienne’s face.

  A grouping of four leather armchairs, their sides high and winged, stood between candle trees at the far side of the room. A strangely blocky table draped in blue silk sat at its center, like a focal point. Two men and two women occupied the chairs, their attention on Alaric and Perrin behind him. They sat stiffly, their hands gripping the armrests, as motionless as if they were mannequins posed for a still life. Sienne had to look carefully to determine whether they were living, noting finally the slow blinking of one, the measured breathing of another. It was unsettling.

  Something else odd about the room niggled at her. That was it. There was no telescope taking pride of place at the center of the room, or even poking through one of the many gaps through which Sienne could see the gardens and, beyond that, the rest of Fioretti. This would not be the best location for stargazing, what with the hills blocking the view to the north, but surely anyone with access to an observatory this beautiful would take advantage of it?

  One of the mannequins stood and moved forward, gliding as smoothly as if he were on wheels. “What took so long?” he said.

  “We had to wait for dusk so we wouldn’t be noticed,” Alaric said.

  “He’s not bound.”

  “That would be noticed, if we hauled a struggling body through the streets. Not even Fioretti is that blasé about kidnapping.”

  The man drew nearer, and Sienne got a good look at his face. It was unpleasantly fleshy, though his body wasn’t overly fat, with a thin brown mustache and beard outlining his mouth. His lips were large and pink and moist, making Sienne think of worms on a wet pavement. He was dressed finely in a velvet tunic too warm for the true summer weather and matching leggings, his dark-haired head was bare, and his shoes were an old-fashioned style with long, narrow toes and heels that gave him perhaps two inches in height.

  “So this is he,” the man said. Sienne guessed this was Lord Liurdi. She’d never heard of him, but there were a lot of nobles who didn’t move in the same circles as her family. “You’re certain?”

  “I wouldn’t try to pass off some stranger as the right man,” Alaric said.

  Lord Liurdi glided forward and examined Perrin. Sienne held her breath. If Liurdi touched him, the confusion would fall apart, because Perrin was five inches taller than Padget and much slimmer. But Liurdi had the expression of one regarding an unpleasant insect, one that smelled of intestinal gas. “You needn’t fear,” he said. Sienne was pretty sure he was lying. “I have a simple task for you. Complete it, and you may leave.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me? You didn’t need to kidnap me!” Perrin whined.

  Liurdi shrugged and turned away without answering. Two of the others, male and female, rose from their chairs and came to join him. The woman was beautiful, her dark blonde hair contrasting nicely with her dusky skin, her gown a rich blue Chysegaran silk in the latest fashion. The man was nearly as tall as Alaric, but painfully thin, the skin drawn tightly across his face like a skull wearing a flesh mask. He held a spellbook loosely in one hand, its wooden cover painted matte black and adorned with a bas-relief of a pile of skulls. Sienne watched him closely. The wizards who decorated their spellbooks with overly dramatic images were usually poseurs, but she had a feeling, looking at his gaunt face, that it would be a mistake to underestimate him.

  The woman said, “Then what are you waiting for?” She turned back to address the other woman, still seated in her armchair. “Is there something we haven’t done yet? Some other clause of the prophecy?”

  The second woman crossed long, thin hands in her lap. “Delanie has given us all the help to which she is inclined,” she said. Her hair was nearly black, parted sharply in the middle to fall straight on both sides of her face. The stark look combined with the dark red of the lip rouge she wore made her look undead, though of course no undead creature would be so articulate.

  Liurdi walked past the armchairs to a cabinet under one of the missing panels. Wind blowing through it disordered his hair, but he didn’t bother pushing it back into place. He opened the cabinet and withdrew Neoma’s box, which flexed slightly under his hand. “You,” he said to Perrin, walking back toward him, “open it.”

  Perrin gave him a look of bewilderment. Really, Sienne’s friends had all missed their true calling on the stage. “Open it? I don’t have the key.”

  Liurdi rolled his eyes. “Callia, what was the prophecy?”

  The woman in the chair, the priest, tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

  “‘Let the blood of her blood

  speak with her living breath,

  his voice as her voice

  to open the chest,’”

  she intoned, sounding very bored.

  The gaunt wizard said, “That seems very straightforward. Have the man breathe on the lock.”

  “Is that what it means?” Liurdi said. He shrugged again. “Then breathe on it.”

  He held the box up to Perrin’s face. Sienne took a step back and, while all eyes were on Perrin, carefully extricated her spellbook. She held it close to the side of her leg and hoped no one cared enough about her to watch her. Perrin certainly wasn’t blood of Neoma’s blood, and even though his voice was Padget’s at the moment, that wasn’t going to be enough to open the box. When Liurdi and his friends discovered that, everything was going to fall apart. She watched the gaunt wizard. Disarming him of his spellbook would be her responsibility. She had a plan, a slightly ridiculous plan, but if it worked, it didn’t matter how ridiculous it was.

&nbs
p; Perrin swallowed and leaned in close to the box. He drew in a breath, then released it in a huff. Everyone tensed. Nothing happened. Perrin pursed his lips and blew hard, keeping his eyes on Liurdi. Liurdi said, “It’s not working. Why is it not working?”

  “If you people hadn’t been so careless, none of this would be necessary,” the wizard said to Alaric.

  “It said ‘blood of her blood,’” the elegant woman said. “Maybe we need blood.”

  “Maybe we do,” Liurdi said. He reached for Perrin, who sidled out of reach. “Hold still, you fool, we’re not going to kill you. We just want a little blood.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” Perrin said. “Let me try again.” He reached for the box.

  “You, cut him,” Liurdi said to Kalanath, who was still holding the knife. Kalanath hesitated. He couldn’t hold Perrin without breaking the confusion spell, and Sienne was sure he didn’t want to cut his companion.

  “Don’t be stupid, do as he asks,” Alaric said. “Just grab him, all right?”

  Sienne held her breath. Alaric wouldn’t have forgotten, would he? This must be part of the plan.

  Kalanath switched the knife to his left hand and reached for Perrin with his right. He took firm hold of Perrin’s collar, and the image of Padget shivered and dissolved, followed a second later by Milo Giorda’s figure disappearing to reveal Kalanath.

  There was a moment in which no one moved. Liurdi’s fleshy lips hung slack with astonishment. The elegant woman drew in a sharp breath. The wizard looked confused, as if he’d just heard something he couldn’t comprehend. He showed no signs of going for his spellbook.

  Sienne brought her spellbook up and willed it open. “Conn” moved toward Liurdi, reaching over his shoulder for the sword that became visible as he grasped it. Alaric seemed to explode upward out of Conn’s smaller form.

  The wizard’s stunned incomprehension began to fade. Before he could react, Sienne spat out the short, curt, painful words of the summoning slick.

  21

  A silver, jelly-like substance glimmering with oily rainbows oozed from the surface of the wizard’s spellbook. As he raised it swiftly to eye level, it shot out of his hand with momentum that carried it three feet away. The wizard shouted in alarm and dove after it, fumbling and trying to get a grip on its greasy surface. Sienne spat blood and grinned. That put him out of commission for a while.

  She looked around and saw, to her astonishment, that the fight was over. Alaric had Liurdi backed against a wall. Kalanath stood threatening the beautiful woman, who stared at him disdainfully but made no movement. And Dianthe—wait, where had Dianthe come from?—had her knife against the throat of the priest as Perrin removed a riffle of bright blue rice paper squares from her hand. Sienne walked over to the wizard, still scrabbling at his spellbook trying to make it open, and used her invisible fingers to lift it away from him and toss it out one of the open panels. The man stared up at her, his fine linen shirt stained with silvery grease. “You bitch,” he snarled.

  “Watch it,” Alaric said. “She’s got no sense of humor and an excellent grasp of transformations. So unless you feel like being a frog—”

  “Not possible,” the man said, but he looked uncertain. Sienne made a show of opening her spellbook, and he sat back, mulishly silent.

  Alaric picked up Neoma’s box from where Liurdi had dropped it in the scuffle. “This doesn’t belong to you,” he said. “But you know that.”

  “You have no need of it,” Liurdi said. “Who hired you to steal it? Was it Fontanna? Mossino? They have no idea what it is.”

  “You utter bastards,” Dianthe said. “Why didn’t you just buy it from Neoma? You didn’t have to kill her.”

  Liurdi didn’t look away from Alaric and his enormous sword, so very close to his heart. “That was a mistake. The Giordas are—were—overenthusiastic in their zeal to retrieve it. I don’t suppose you killed them?”

  Sienne spared a glance for Dianthe. She was crying. Alaric said, “Do you care?”

  “Not really. They were hired help, and not very good at that. But you…I’m impressed. We were all completely taken in, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Come now, let’s be reasonable people. We just want the key. You can have everything else in the box. Just bring us the man to open it—I swear we won’t hurt him.”

  “The box isn’t yours to trade away,” Alaric said. “As for the key…no, I don’t think so.”

  “It does you no good without the trunk. You know that.” Liurdi smiled. “Very well. You can have an equal share in its contents.”

  “Gregor, stop talking,” the elegant woman said urgently. “You’re giving everything away.”

  “Raene, it’s past time we acknowledge we’ve been defeated. It’s only fair.” Liurdi’s smile was like a snake’s, narrow and mirthless. Sienne hoped it was as obvious to Alaric that he was lying as it was to her.

  “Not interested,” Alaric said. He glanced at Dianthe, who widened her eyes and shrugged in a gesture that to Sienne meant she was out of ideas.

  “If I may,” Perrin said, tossing the blue riffle of blessings out the window after the wizard’s spellbook, “I have an idea for preventing them from making our retreat an unpleasant one. If you would all gather here in the center of the room, and sit with your backs to one another? Yes, exactly, thank you.”

  Dianthe guided the undead-looking woman to join the other three, who glared at Perrin. Perrin was unmoved by their hostility. He shooed his companions toward the stairs, then tore a blessing from his own riffle of paper and placed it on the floor near where the four sat. “We should go with alacrity, nonetheless,” he said, then murmured an invocation. A glimmering gray dome sprang up around the four, through which Sienne saw the blessing paper go up in flame. Liurdi and the elegant woman, Raene, leaped up and began pounding on the dome. The other two, Sienne saw, looked too despondent to move. Then Dianthe took her arm and guided her down the first steps.

  They pounded down the stairs as quickly as possible and ran, not trying to be silent, down the long hall to the front door. As they neared it, the servant woman emerged from the left-hand door. “What in Delanie’s name—” she began, but Sienne didn’t hear the rest of it, because she was through the door and pelting across the gravel paths toward the gate. Ahead of her, Alaric ran with sword in hand, a terrifying juggernaut bearing down on the gate guard. The guard, turning at the sound of their approach, barely had time to bring his weapon up before Alaric swept it aside and punched him hard enough to knock him back a few paces. Perrin was already opening the gate, Kalanath leaped at it and bore it open under his momentum, and Dianthe and Sienne raced through.

  It was a beautiful, clear night, and the stars shone more brightly than had the gemstone ones in Liurdi’s observatory. Sienne threw back her head and laughed in sheer relief. They’d done it, no one had been hurt, they hadn’t had to kill anyone. Dizziness aside, she felt as if she could run forever.

  “How did you find us?” she gasped to Dianthe, running nearby.

  “I saw the lights in the dome and decided to try there first,” Dianthe said. “Got lucky.”

  “You make that kind of luck,” Alaric said. “Keep running. I want us all off the hill and mingling with the crowds, just in case.”

  The celebrations were still going strong when they reached the city center. The cacophony of half a dozen musicians playing half a dozen different songs became unexpectedly melodious in Sienne’s ears. A handsome young man danced past, extending a hand to Sienne, and she almost took it before remembering the job wasn’t finished yet. She smiled and ran on.

  Finally, pain stabbing through her side, her lungs aching, the world whizzing past her face, she slowed and bent over, gasping. “Give me a minute,” she said to Alaric, who stopped beside her.

  “We can walk from here,” he said. “It’s only a few more streets.” His voice, somber and deep, quelled her high spirits.

  “Why sound so despondent? We won,” Perrin said, sweeping Alaric a deep
noble’s bow.

  “It was too easy,” Alaric said.

  “You had the advantage of surprise,” Dianthe pointed out, “and someone on the outside. I don’t see how that qualifies as too easy.”

  Alaric shook his head and walked on in silence. Sienne and the others followed him. He was right, Sienne thought—it had been too easy. True, Sienne was fast, but the wizard had been unexpectedly slow to react, and so had the priest. And their disguises had caught the conspirators off guard, but surely Liurdi and his friends weren’t so confident that they weren’t at least a little paranoid? Sienne didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed Alaric had some idea, and he wasn’t happy about it.

  The lights were on in the ground floor of Master Tersus’s house when they arrived, tired and footsore. Sienne had wondered if they would detour to see if the Giordas were still trapped, but Alaric hadn’t deviated from his path at all, and she supposed it didn’t really matter. Would they dare return to Liurdi’s manor after failing so spectacularly? Again, not something that mattered, but part of her wished she could be a fly on the wall for that conversation. She followed Alaric and Dianthe to the side door and into the kitchen, where Padget and Leofus were having an animated conversation over a pot of soup.

  Leofus paused long enough to acknowledge them with a nod. “Food’s cold,” he said, “but the soup is still hot. Even if this fool thinks I’m wrong in using chicken stock.”

  “Fool? I’m the fool? I’ve been cooking for twenty years and I say chicken stock—” Padget began.

  “Just give me a bowl, I’m starving,” Alaric said.

  “What about the box?” Dianthe said. “We should open it immediately.”

  “I admit to some curiosity as to the efficacy of Delanie’s prophecy,” Perrin said.

  “So…Padget just has to breathe on the lock?” Dianthe approached Padget with the box.