Entwined (30 page)

It took a moment for the blotches to clear. Azalea had to steady her breathing and calm her pain. Every part of her ached and stung. With shaking hands, she slowly untangled herself from the bushes. The horses, which had been shooed out the windows and into the front court, watched Azalea's valiant fight with the thornbushes with lazy horsey indifference. LadyFair even came to the bushes and nosed Azalea's hair, sniffing with great nostrils.

Azalea pushed LadyFair's nose out of the way with the same vigor she shoved the prickly, scratching branches aside. Her hand was smeared with blood. She managed to push herself back through the window, remembering the wraith cloak just in time, before Keeper could leap at her.

She threw the torn, ragged fabric over her shoulders.
A flickering shudder ran through her body, and her skirts disappeared. The world blurred in a glass weave.

She braced herself for Keeper's assault, but it did not come. Azalea looked about her.

The ballroom was empty.

The oath. He was going to use his last bit of strength on the King, and he already knew they had gone to the library. Gripping the cloak at her neck, Azalea gathered her skirts and
ran
.

I
nvisible, Azalea brushed past a forlorn-looking Fairweller at the library door. The warmth of the library engulfed her, burning her nose and cheeks. She took in the scene by the draped piano and walls of books. Sofas had been moved in front of the fire and were crowded with girls, their black dresses limp. They wore gentlemen's coats and suitcoats about their shoulders. They were still shaking with cold but their color had greatly improved.

And the King! Azalea exhaled slowly. He was all right. He stood by the desk, talking to the rest of the gentlemen with a low voice. Blood was smeared across his face, but he was all right. Keeper wasn't here.

Azalea breathed a sigh of relief. She made to fling off the cloak, until she saw Mother.

She stood among the girls at the stiff striped and
flowered sofas, her voice clipped and low. Mr. Bradford stood next to her, looking distracted and speaking to her in an equally low voice. Azalea slipped closer, and her heart yelped as she realized that the square jaw and the touseled, unpinned auburn hair wasn't Mother's—

It's me!
Azalea's mind screamed.

Keeper!

Azalea dove at herself—then pulled up so sharply her skirts engulfed the back of her legs. The slight gust of wind ruffled the girls' hair. Her copy image held a flash of steel in her hand. Mr. Bradford's pistol!

Gritting her teeth, she proceeded with caution. Her vision still blurred from the hood of the cloak, she neared Keeper carefully. It was odd, to walk without seeing her skirts in front of her. She pussyfooted to just by Mr. Bradford, next to the twins' sofa. They watched with wide eyes, whispering among themselves.

“…don't think I can?” Keeper clutched the pistol and held it to her—or rather,
his
, Azalea-like chest, keeping it from Mr. Bradford's outstretched hand. Azalea wondered if that really was her own, ghastly pale face—and if it was, she certainly didn't look a picture, all scratched up and bruised, trembling all over.

“No, nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Bradford. “I just didn't think you knew
how
to shoot.”

“She doesn't,” said Bramble, from the sofa behind him.

Azalea-Keeper flicked the pistol around her finger, spinning it so quickly it flashed in the lamplight, a circular blur of metal. She threw it into the air at a spin, snatched it with the other hand, spun it, and stopped it barrel up with a
smack
.

The girls' jaws dropped. Mr. Bradford blinked, looking Keeper over from skirt to tangled hair, with a slightly bewildered—then suspicious—expression.

“Only one shot?” said Keeper, fiddling with the pistol in shaking hands. His voice sounded strikingly like Mother's. “They haven't invented pistols with, say, thirteen shots yet? Ha! Joking! One is grand!”

“I think you're ill,” said Mr. Bradford, advancing on Keeper. He made to take the pistol. “Miss Azalea, the regiments will be here in hardly twenty minutes—you don't
need
it—”

“Yes, I
do
!” Keeper snarled, backing away toward the draped piano, green eyes looking wildly around the library. He raised the pistol away from Mr. Bradford's outstretched hand, above his own head.

A firm, stiff hand grasped Keeper's wrist from behind. Keeper blanched, which made the scratches on his—Azalea's—face stand out even more. Azalea could see how he tried to struggle against the King's grip, but he was either too weak or the King too firm. Possibly both.

Even so, Keeper did not drop the pistol. His dainty fingers wrapped around it so tightly the knuckles glowed white. The King sighed and made to pluck the pistol from Keeper's hand. When Keeper would not release it, the King's brows furrowed.

“Miss Azalea,” he said, in a clipped, impatient voice. “We are all frightened, but now is hardly the time. Give me the pistol.”

“No.”

“Azalea, let go of the pistol.”

“No.”

“Azalea—”

“I
won't
!” said Keeper, writhing against the King's steel grip. He kicked back against the King's legs, driving the boots' heels into him, but the King showed no signs of feeling it. He was the most solid gentleman Azalea knew. Azalea slipped closer.

From the sofas, the girls watched, both fascinated and ducking behind them, eyes peeking above the backs of the chairs. If the pistol went off now, it would hit the ceiling.

“Miss Azalea,” said the King. “Let go. If your mother were here—”

“
Don't
tell me what Mother would or would not do!” Keeper snarled. “She's
dead
!”

Azalea winced. For a moment, the King's hand
gripping Keeper's faltered. Then it was back to a steel clamp.

“Azalea—”

“She's
dead
!” said Keeper, the green in his eyes blazing, intense. “Dead,
dead
—”

Azalea gripped the cloak at her neck. It was like she was being slapped.

On the sofas by the fireplace, Kale and Jessamine curled up into little balls and began to cry. Jessamine in her delicate, crystalline wails, and Kale in her piercing sobs. Lily, in Clover's arms, sensed discord and began to cry, too.

“Lea, stop,” said Clover.

“Miss Azalea,” said the King, who kept his hand firmly around Azalea's wrist. “I think we are all aware of that. For now we will have to bear up—”

“What the devil for?” said Keeper. Her voice rang through the room. “It won't be the same. Not with
you
.”

The King's hand at Azalea's wrist shook. There was an odd, awkward moment, a hiccup of time, as though the air were being turned inside out. The King's face seemed far more lined, and as Azalea drew close to him, she saw how old he suddenly looked. Azalea was reminded of the uncomfortable moment, last summer, when his internal thread twisted so; and now it seemed twisted so much, it made all his features taut and strained.

“We must do what we can, Miss Azalea,” he managed to say. “In this family we—”

“You are
not
,” Keeper spat, “a part of this family.”

The King released Keeper's hand, sharply, and Azalea realized, with a flash of memory like a slap across her face, those had been
her
words.

“How
dare
you!” Azalea screamed. She threw herself at herself, the wraith cloak fluttering to the ground behind her, and pummeled Keeper to the ground, before he even had a chance to raise the pistol. It clattered across the floor. “How
dare
you!
I'll tear your eyes out
!”

“Oh—oh—” Keeper cried. “Oh—ow!”

Azalea had punched him across his dainty scratched face.

Instantly the gentlemen pried them apart, gripping their arms behind their backs, looking both horrified and slightly fascinated. Both Azalea and Keeper didn't need much binding—they shook from both weakness and anger.

The King, whose features still were twisted with tightness, took charge.

“What
is
all this?” he said.

Both Azaleas broke into yelling, Azalea furious and Azalea-Keeper defensive, and both of them wincing at the gentlemen's grips over their sore wrists. The girls behind them broke into cries. The King held up his hand for silence.

“Miss Azalea,” he said.

Both Azaleas broke into cries again.

“Sir, can't you see, I'm the real Azalea—that's Keeper! He's using magic!”

“You rotter!” said Azalea. “You ghastly—He's trying to kill you!”

“You sound
nothing
like me!”

“Enough!” said the King.

“Oh, sir!” Lord Teddie bounced on his feet. “Sir, I read about this sort of thing once, sir! The only way to solve it is to kill both of them. It was in the Bible!”

The silence rung. Lord Teddie cowered at the King's look.

“Ah, never mind,” he said.

“Sir, here is evidence,” said Keeper, writhing weakly against Mr. Bradford's hold. “Keeper took the wraith cloak, and he has it
now
!”

“Sir, here is evidence,” said Azalea. She raked her mind for the object of hers that Keeper had taken and was using now. But then, another thought arrived, and Azalea lifted her chin.

“The handkerchief,” she said. “You
know
about the magic.”

The King turned to her, as though seeing her for the first time. His eyebrows rose.

“Yes,” said the King. “Yes.”

And from his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the wadded silver handkerchief. Azalea remembered now, seeing him pluck it from the end of the fire poker. In the stained-glass lamplight of the library, the silver shone. Keeper's green eyes flashed at it.

“Fold this for me, will you?” said the King, crisply, to Keeper.

Azalea found it oddly delightful to watch the color drain completely from his already drawn face. His eyes flitted from the door to the pistol on the ground in front of him, then back to the handkerchief.

“Him first,” he said in Azalea's voice, jutting his chin at Azalea.

The King, without taking his eyes from Keeper, gave the handkerchief to Azalea. She folded it smartly, pressing the seams at each fold, and raised it for the King to see. The King's voice was hard.

“Captain Bradford,” he said.

Keeper writhed against Mr. Bradford's hold and shoved back. In a hard glissade, Keeper broke free, hitting the piano before crumpling to the ground. Before Mr. Bradford could help Azalea-Keeper up, she stumbled to her feet and raised her chin.

“Of all the silly—” she said. She thrust out her hand to Azalea. “Give me the handkerchief.”

Her hand quavered. In the other, hidden by the
folds of her skirt, Azalea caught a glimpse of steel.

The pistol!

Azalea did not even think. She lunged at Keeper before he had a chance to raise it. They fell on the rug together, and the pistol skittered out of reach underneath the piano. Azalea grasped at Azalea-Keeper's black skirts, pulling her back.

Keeper twisted around and lashed at Azalea's arm. Drops of blood smattered across her cheek, and she lost her grip. He stumbled to his feet and leaped for the door.

“After him!” the King commanded. He swept the pistol from the ground and lunged after Keeper through the sliding door. “No—the
gentlemen
! Ladies stay here!”

“The devil we're staying!” Bramble cried.

As they took off in a mass of skirts, Azalea ran after them, clutching her arm. By all rights, her feet shouldn't have carried her up the stairs in sleek, dancelike steps. But her temper seared, the heat in her veins overpowering the ache. She passed the girls, the gentlemen, and even the King, taking a great lead and leaving them behind. She ran through the unfamiliar palace of white gilded walls and haunted portraits.

At the end of the hall, she paused, breathless. A timid light clicked out from underneath a white silk sofa. It pointed a stubby leg toward the stairs. “Many
thanks!” said Azalea, leaping up. Keeper was headed for the tower.

Several minutes later, a fizz in her blood, Azalea leaped onto the creaking tower platform, heaving for air. Everything felt stifled, as though the tower held its breath. The gray-blue of the snowstorm through the clockface cast shadows of numbers across the floor. Smaller shadows whorled past them in pinpricks.

A sharp clang sounded, along with a wretched
eeEeeErrEEEuh
. The clock, a waking giant, creaked to life. Azalea had a moment to realize that Mr. Bradford's clock stopping had been undone before skirts rustled behind her; Azalea ducked. The hearth shovel brushed past her head and smashed against the clockface.

The glass showered Azalea in prickles, tinkling against the wood. The blizzard billowed onto the platform. Azalea pulled away as Keeper yanked the shovel from the broken clockface and slammed it where her form used to be. She ran, leaping up the spindly stairs of the bells platform at the side, retreating into carriage-wheel-sized gears. Keeper sprang after her in graceful bounds, shovel raised.

Grasping her skirts to keep them from getting tangled, Azalea picked her way among the gears and dangling counterweights, squeezing between the dusty, metallic-smelling bells. A click sounded, and Azalea sensed the impending strike of the clock's quarter-to
peal. She threw herself to the gritty floor, pressing her skirts down as the bells creaked and swung above her in a rain of dust. The
dong
was so loud it seemed to pierce through her mind.

Scrambling to her feet, streaked with dust, Azalea had a moment to twist out of the way of Keeper's swing, stumbling backward into the grinding mass of gears.

The clock creaked to a halt. Azalea tried to get to her feet, but they slipped from under her. She craned her neck at the gears behind her, and saw her skirts wedged in the teeth, a mess of crinolines and hoops. Azalea clawed at the caught fabric, twisting for a better grip. Keeper appeared above her, smiling a sweet Azalea-smile. His teeth glinted in the dim light. He raised the shovel.

“Azalea—”

Both Azaleas whipped their attention to the lower platform, visible in pieces through the gears. The King!

Keeper's emerald eyes flashed. He dropped the hearth shovel with a clang and squeezed through the tangle of machinery.

“Sir!” Azalea cried. “Look out!”

The King whipped about, holding the pistol. His eyes caught Keeper, rushing to him, skirts snapping behind.

“Sir!” he said, breathless and panting. “Shoot him! Shoot him! Hurry!”

He pointed a delicate, shaking hand at Azalea. The
King peered through the mechanisms to see Azalea, caught on her knees. Their eyes met. The King's face lined.

Azalea held up the handkerchief.

Whap.

The King threw Azalea-Keeper against the floor and held him down, pistol pointed at his pretty head. His auburn hair tendriled over the dusty wood. Snow swirled over them through the broken clockface.