Labyrinth Gate (42 page)

Chryse chuckled. “Are you raising your voice so that he can hear you? It’s no use, he’s gone back to looking outside.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Of course. For the last seven weeks I’ve had Sanjay on one side, being stoic about how long it’s taking his leg to heal, the earl on another, speaking two words a day if we’re lucky, Thomas Southern being stiff and worried about Charity and the baby back north, Julian doing his imitation of Thomas and the earl combined, and you being annoyed about Julian. The only fit company around here is Maretha, probably because everyone is afraid to annoy her. And you know very well, Kate, that you wouldn’t be angry if you didn’t care.”

“Sometimes,” said Kate ominously, “I don’t like you.”

Chryse smiled. “You’re just like me, you know. Contrary. As soon as someone tells you to do something, you immediately decide not to.”

“And furthermore,” added Maretha. “You haven’t been such fit company either, Chryse, brooding over music most evenings and breaking off in the middle of conversations to scribble down pieces of compositions.”

“There!” Kate grinned. “Have some of your own back.”

“This is unfair,” protested Chryse.

“And you’ve been fussy about food the last couple of weeks,” continued Maretha with a wink at Kate.

“That’s true.” Kate nodded wisely. “Usually you eat like a horse.”

“Thank you,” said Chryse. “It’s such an—evocative phrase. I guess I’m simply not used to riding all day, every day, whether in or out of a carriage. It’s caught up to me. I get tired so easily.”

“Sweetheart,” said a sleepy voice from the couch. “Could you hand me some tea?” He yawned as Chryse brought him a cup.

“Had a good nap?” she asked, enough concern in her voice that she sounded worried. “How is your leg?”

“Fine,” he answered. “A little sore today, but I think that’s the rain. I was dreaming that I was back in the forest.”

“No wonder you looked content.”

He shrugged, looking over at Kate. “Have you—” He hesitated, took a sip of tea, looked at Maretha, at Julian across the room, back at Kate. “Have you ever seen a dragon?”

Kate laughed. “Have I? Lady, no. Only saints, simpletons, and madmen can see dragons.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Sanjay softly. Chryse took his hand in hers, but said nothing.

“It strikes me,” said Maretha slowly, looking thoughtful, “that none of us left that place unchanged.” She stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see if John would like tea.” She left the parlor.

“John.”
Kate dwelled expressively on the syllable. “How very familiar of our Maretha. Do you suppose—but no. He’s been so reclusive since we left, as much to her as to anyone. But I’ve long suspected she harbors a certain affection for him. Much good it will do her.”

“How unfortunate for her,” said Julian from the window.

Kate blushed, but managed to ignore him.

“I have wondered,” said Chryse quickly, filling the breach, “why you never noticed that Charity was pregnant. You did share a tent with her.”

“She always dressed behind a screen. And like everyone else, it simply never occurred to me.”

In the lull generated by this remark, Julian walked over from the window and sat down in the chair Maretha had vacated, helping himself to some tea. Chryse left Sanjay and went back to her chair. The lull stretched into an uncomfortable silence.

“It certainly seems that we’ve seen a large number of people on the road today,” said Sanjay. “Going away from Heffield. You would think folk would be going
in,
to see the coronation.”

This remark fared no better. Julian sipped his tea, looking, as he lounged in the chair, elegant and disdainful. Kate looked as though she was about to say something everyone would regret.

“Perhaps there are some celebrations out in the country tonight,” said Chryse valiantly, exchanging an exasperated glance with Sanjay. “Isn’t this New Year’s Eve? And the Festival of Lights is the first day of the new year, but there’s a day in between, tomorrow. What’s it called?”

“St. Austin’s Day,” said Julian. “The day all your sins are forgiven.” He looked pointedly at Kate. She was examining the chipped rim of her teacup as if it were a great work of art. “It isn’t in one year or the other, just—out of time, as it were. It used to be a solemn holiday. Now it’s rather characterized by more—all—energetic activities.”

“Bloody riots,” said Kate. “Once a year the lower classes combine to trumpet their grievances. That’s how we met you, last year. It had spilled over onto Lightsmass.”

“You ought to temper your language, Kate,” said Julian.

“With what?” cried Kate, jumping to her feet. “Your damned officiousness? I’m going out to the stables to see how Mr. Southern is getting on. At least if he reads me sermons they’ll be from the scriptures.” She slammed the door behind her. A moment later the innkeeper appeared, enquiring anxiously if all was well. Chryse assured him that it was, and he left.

“You know, Julian,” said Sanjay finally, “it isn’t any of my business, but—ah—that isn’t usually considered the most successful method of courtship.”

Julian stood up as abruptly as Kate. “I know it. I know it.” He paced to the window, returned. “I knew it would be a disaster if I ever admitted my—my feelings. I don’t know what got into me.”

“I do,” said Sanjay softly. “The same thing that got into the rest of us.”

“But you can’t simply have been willing to go on forever like you were, could you?” asked Chryse.

“Kate was living in my house, wasn’t she? Now what can I expect? I’ve lost her.”

“Julian.” Something in Sanjay’s tone caught Julian’s attention, and he halted at one end of the couch and waited. “I suspect the direct approach is the very worst tack to take with Kate. She’s a little like Chryse.”

Julian looked at Chryse with the barest of smiles, back at Sanjay. “Then what do you suggest, since you have had, I presume, a certain degree of success?”

“Be patient,” Sanjay replied. “And be subtle.”

“I’ll try.” He gave them both a sketch of a bow. “If you will excuse me.” He left quietly.

“I don’t know about subtle,” said Chryse.

“Of course you don’t. If you’d noticed, it wouldn’t have been subtle.”

Chryse laughed and, sitting on the rug beside the couch, kissed him. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been here an entire year.”

He put a hand on her hair and stroked it gently. “I feel as though we found things out about ourselves that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” He shook his head. “That does sound trite.”

“It reminds me of a quote I read once—about the real treasure being in your own home—that is, yourself—but that you have to go to a new land to understand it, that it can only be revealed to you by a stranger of … of another belief and race. Only said much better than that, of course.”

“What are you going to do, Chryse? If we get home.”

She laid her head against his. “When. We have to. I love this place, just like I loved the year we met, when we studied in Scotland, but there’s so much unfinished business at home right now. I’ve got to go back to school. I need more tools to compose—there’s just so much music waiting there.”

“Going to make me rich?”

She laughed again. “I doubt it. What will you do, Sanjay?”

“Quit school,” he said, decided. His hand, stroking her, paused on her neck. “I don’t know. I guess I have to work at seeing the truth. I’ve always had a fancy to—I don’t know—save the world.”

“Oh, Sanjay.” She got on her knees in order to embrace him. “I do love you.”

Maretha pushed open the connecting door that led from her room into her husband’s. They had chosen to stop at this inn a little early in the afternoon for the same reason they had chosen most of the others: it had a suite that the earl and his wife could share. He had insisted on it, as if to advertise some fiction about their marriage to a world which he refused to tell the truth. Even so, he had become so remote from her, from the others, that it was as if he was not traveling with them at all.

He treated her with aloof courtesy. That flash of what
he
did not choose to call kindness which he had shown in solving the matter of Charity had come and gone. She doubted if he regretted his original intent to kill her, but there was a quality to his studious avoidance of her that made her believe he was ashamed of the act, having been shown to be so bitterly and incontrovertibly wrong. At those times when she was feeling hopeful, she thought there might be another emotion behind his avoidance. She had not dreamed that brief time of passion, back in the labyrinth, and because he had since then not attempted by the least word or action to remind her of it, she wondered if perhaps he felt he had no right to approach her. Or even if, she sometimes thought with a wild touch of fancy, after his lifetime of abstinence, he did not know how to.

She stopped just inside his room. Her step was silent; he did not look up. Only a single dim candle lit the chamber. He sat brooding in a chair in the darkest corner, but as she watched, she realized that he could as well have been a statue. Not even his lips moved, or his eyes.

He stared at his right hand, extended before him. His palpable effort was like a third presence in the room. As she watched, the barest nimbus of light, a tiny, tiny flame, appeared at his fingertips. He seemed almost to shudder with the exertion.

She walked across the room to him. He did not look up or even seem to notice her. She stopped beside him, and on an impulse she could not resist she leaned down to kiss his cheek. He started just as she touched his face, turning his head, and their lips met.

The shock was like a flash, a flare, of lightning. She grabbed hold of him to stop herself from falling, knelt, but that only prolonged the kiss. His hand settled, tightened, on her waist. She knew then that she would forgive him, if they could replace everything that had gone before with this.

He broke away from her abruptly, stumbled up, and flung himself forward to the window, opening it with the fumbling desperation of a suffocating man.

There were four lamps hung from the walls; all of them were lit, and the hearth fire burned fiercely, that had been cold ashes before.

“We
did that,” breathed Maretha, wondering. She followed him, halting three steps behind.

“Leave me alone.” His voice was hoarse, his back to her as he leaned outside. “I never wanted this.”

Torches from the stables illuminated his face, giving it a phantom’s gleam. His eyes were shut, so he did not see the gathering of men at the stable entrance, did not see Thomas Southern, and then Kate, speaking with them. Maretha saw it, saw first Kate, and after her Southern, break away from the group and hurry back to the inn, meeting Julian on the way. From the way they moved, she could tell it was urgent. She left the room quickly and soundlessly.

A moment after, the earl relaxed his grip on the windowsill, seeming to come to some momentous decision. “Maretha,” he whispered, and he opened his eyes and turned, but she was gone.

He followed her trail through her room and to the top of the stairs, stood watching what transpired below with an inner tumult that at last, by dint of sheer cold will, resolved itself into detachment.

Below, the scene was not so composed.

“What is it, Thomas?” Maretha asked as she came down the stairs. The door to the parlor opened to reveal a puzzled Chryse and Sanjay.

“Riot in Heffield,” said Southern. “The Regent has issued a proclamation that Princess Georgiana is seriously ill and cannot be expected to live. The coronation has been postponed indefinitely.”

“Why is there riot?” asked Chryse.

“We have never trusted Princess Blessa,” he replied. “She would as soon we were serfs again, or slaves. They’re crying ‘murder’ in the streets, and demanding to see Princess Georgiana in person. The army has been called out. It will be bloody tomorrow.”

“Well have to ride on tonight,” said Maretha. “If we wait until morning we won’t be there until afternoon, and that may be too late.”

“You would be fools to go now,” said the earl from the top of the stairs. His coolness hit the group below like a blast of winter wind. “Whatever the Regent does, she will wait until St. Austin’s Day to begin it. Being a day out of time, as it were, it is particularly auspicious for sorcery. And she will necessarily have to spend the morning setting her bounds, if the spell is to be powerful—which it must be, given the trouble she has gone to. She will have the advantage of rest and stillness. We will have to ride nevertheless; if we ride half the night we will be exhausted on top of all else.” In the silence that followed, he turned and went back down the hall.

Supper was a subdued occasion that evening. By a kind of mutual unspoken assent they afterwards filtered away to their rooms without further conversation. Maretha walked slowly upstairs to her chamber and sat on her bed.

Then, as she had done every night for the last seven weeks, she tried the only way she knew to calm the wild forces that now permeated her entire being. Her father had taught her how to catalog and order things; she sat with as much stillness as she could find within herself and used all her concentration to channel the power into what she imagined as a library full of journals, each neatly numbered and labeled. Whether it worked to contain and to control she did not know, only that far fewer earth tremors and unnatural fires, hard rains and sudden winds had manifested along their road in recent days.

When she grew tired, she rose, quiet, and pushed open the connecting door a crack. The earl sat in his chair, completely concentrated on his right hand. The barest nimbus of light shone around it. He seemed oblivious to her.

She let the door shut, sighed, and went to bed.

T
HE MORNING OF ST
. Austin’s Day dawned clear and unseasonably warm. Outside Blackstone Palace, a mob ranged restlessly over the grounds, more gathering as each hour passed. A troop of horse soldiers stood at alert at every entrance. Inside it was far too quiet. The halls and rooms were empty. There might have been no one there at all, except for a hush of activity in the very depths of the palace, in the Regent’s most private suite.