Stranger At The Wedding (26 page)

“Give me efficiency over heroics any day of the week.” He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her warmly on the lips, leaving her flustered, startled, and prey to a flood of unaccustomed delight.

“The man who's been watching the garden gate is on his way to Pennyroyal Commons as well.”

“Is that the usual dumping ground for the victims of footpads?”

Spenson shook his head. “Most bandits just leave them where they lie. Now and then some young sprig who goes whoring in the dives on Buttercup Hill ends up there.”

“Did you ever?” she asked curiously as they made their quiet way back down the lane to the alley and thence along the wall of her father's house toward the garden gate.

His eyebrows shot up. “Great heavens, no! I had more money—and better advice from my disreputable Uncle Drake—than to do my drinking in places like that. But I've gone there more than once looking for some of my stupider cousins who feel that the lower a place is, the more fun it's likely to be.” His hand on her waist had a light strength to it, as sure and as protective as if he, not she, could see in the dark. High above them a dim glow marked one of the attic windows; below that, the stronger radiance of many candles turned her mother's window and Alix's to squares of molten gold.

A pang of guilt pinched her like a bodice laced too tight. At Spenson's advice she had not gone anywhere near her parents, although, following their interview at the countinghouse, Spens had returned to Baynorth Square and had had what, through the scrying-stone, looked like an extremely stormy and trying talk with her father in the book room. She knew Spens was going to tell Gordam Peldyrin that in the face of such repeated misfortune he thought it better to postpone the wedding to his daughter indefinitely. As she had feared, her father had flown into a towering rage. In the crystal's silence she was unable to hear any of the bitter recriminations about supplies bought and rebought, the venomous blame for four days business utterly lost, the furious accusations of ruined reputation and the threats of lawsuit. She knew her father far too well to need to. She knew Spenson, too, and could only marvel at the tight-lipped silence in which he met all this. His face grew very red, but he didn't lash back with counter-threats and counteraccusations, didn't—clearly—try to throw blame back on his attacker, and in the end quieted his prospective father-in-law enough to make an appointment for the following day, bow, and take his departure.

And as Kyra had known he would, her father then proceeded to storm up the stairs and along the gallery to the yellow guest room, his long purple wedding robe fluttering behind him, and burst into the chamber to stare about him with the blind rage of a thwarted bull looking for something to charge.

What he had charged—and this was why, though the thought of it nauseated her in advance, she had wanted to be there to have the fight with him and get it over with—was Alix. Her mother, downstairs in what appeared to be an amicable chat with Lady Earthwygg, aunts Sethwit and Hoppina, Winetta Wishrom, and several other influential female merchants or merchants' wives, was too busy trying to stem the inevitable tide of gossip to be of any help, and Kyra knew absolutely that between keeping the servants from running about the town with a dozen distorted versions of the tale and remedying the tumult that the second cancellation of the wedding banquet would cause in the kitchen, no help could be expected from that quarter. So Alix was alone when her father came raging into her room.

When Kyra, nearly an hour later, slipped unseen through the Wishroms' cellar and the postern gate and up the back stairs to Alix's room—as she had suspected, her mother's voice could be heard from the direction of the kitchen, frantically trying to mollify a despairing Joblin—Alix had been nearly ill with weeping.

“He made it sound as if it were all my fault!” she sobbed. “I don't want this wedding—I never asked for it!—but he's going to be my husband and I'll be happy with him! And it isn't my fault all these things happened! Kyra, he—”

“It's all right.” Kyra tried to gather her into her arms, but Alix fought free of her, clutched her pillows again, and buried her face in them, golden hair tangling on the embroidered shams. The wedding dress's gold and ruby glory lay over a chair in a welter of stiffened linen petticoats; Kyra wondered whether it was considered bad luck to put it on a second time after the first, abortive attempt. She knew to the penny how much wedding gowns cost, particularly those designed and constructed by the redoubtable Hylette.

On the other hand, she reflected, Spenson wasn't going to marry her sister, anyway, and given everything that had happened so far and might yet happen, a little more bad luck connected with this particular wedding was laughably superfluous.

“I will marry him,” Alix whispered. “I will, and I will be happy, only… Damn it!” Her hand clenched convulsively and buried itself in the down of the pillows with a soft thump. “I wish it would just get over with! I can't stand this.”

Again Kyra had tried to hold her, and again she had fought free, as if determined to keep her own sorrow, her own decision, to herself. As if she feared that in surrendering even to that touch, all her other strengths would break down and she would wash away in a flood of emotion that she could no longer control. She curled up on her side, wrapping her arms around herself like someone naked in bitter cold.

After that Kyra had no stomach for confrontation with either her father or her mother. Climbing the back stairs to the attic, she had settled herself in one of the deserted rooms of the servants wing, surrounded its door with spells of There-Isn't-a-Door-Here and Don't-You-Have-Urgent-Business-Elsewhere? had curled up on the floor in her old cloak, and had fallen asleep.

“They'll be up till all hours, won't they?”

Spenson's voice in her ear brought her back, startled, to the present. She nodded. “I suspect Mother's been all day receiving callers, serving up tea and cakes, and trying to act as if everything's all right, and betweentimes trying to sort things out in the kitchen. Joblin must be ready to commit suicide—that cake was his masterpiece. His latest project is always his masterpiece. I've seen him in tears over a fallen shrimp soufflé. God knows what Father's been up to, and of course the servants are running around like chickens.”

“The whole town must know what happened,” Spens remarked, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make out something other than the indistinct shape of the roof against the sky. His cool aplomb seemed worlds distant from the stiff silence of the man in the awful red suit— surely it hadn't been just three days ago!—the night of that disastrous dinner with the Bishop. “Are we going to wait till everyone goes to sleep?”

Kyra shook her head. “I don't know how long this will take.” Three streets away, the clock in the tower in front of St. Farinox chimed ten. This close to the equinox of spring, she translated mentally, that was roughly the fourth hour of the night, old-style. She'd slipped out of the house at around sunset to meet Spens in a tavern, where they'd supped. She was surprised to find herself ravenously hungry again. “I only hope that having started out to the wedding, this isn't technically Alix's wedding night.”

“Could it be?” Spens asked, startled.

“Depending on how the curse is written, yes.” She was silent for a time, struggling with another thought, then said slowly, “Depending on how the curse is written, I could be the… the curse.”

Spenson smiled. “Well, your father would say so.”

No
! I mean… The wedding's been destroyed. Having this kind of scandal break, this kind of pressure put on her, could be what drives Alix to… to do something foolish." The memory of her sister's tears returned to her, the brittle, desperate note in her voice. I can't stand this ... Joblin wasn't the only one in the household who was reacting to pressure. Curses had been used to provoke suicides before this. Nandiharrow had instructed them in several that were designed to do just that.

He put a warm, powerful arm around her shoulder and drew her close. “You mean that what I feel for you—and what I hope you feel for me—is a result of the curse? Like those dreams about Esmin?”

“No,” Kyra said, and though a part of her mind had toyed with the idea, the moment he spoke it aloud she knew that what she felt was no illusion. Whatever it was—madness or disaster or some random jest of fate—it was as true and as much a part of her as the bones within her flesh. “No.”

“No,” Spenson echoed quietly. Turning her face to him, he kissed her again, gently, on the lips. “Come,” he said. “The night's going to be long enough.”

In the blackness of her mother's table-size rose garden, hemmed by the cliffs of the houses all around them, Kyra wrought her spells.

Spenson stood guard by the door that led to the rear hall of the house, a powerful figure in his coffee-colored leather and concealing mask. She closed her mind off swiftly from all but the most superficial awareness of his presence. It was more distracting than she had thought, and she was novice enough, even after six years of formal training, to fear for the disruption of her magic that such a distraction could cause.

She concentrated instead on the Circle of Protection she sketched about herself in the soft spring earth; on the ritual gateposts outside it, to establish the field of clarity around her; on the Circles of Light, and Earth and Air. Within their wall she closed her eyes, sank into meditation, and built within her mind the house she had known since babyhood: the slate of the roofs and the angles of their slopes, the smell of the moss on the chimneys, the bird droppings, the soot. Stone by dirty stone she formed the outer walls in her mind, differing textures, Angelshand granite and Halite brownstone, ornamental marble, plaster, brick, and glass. Room by warm room she touched it inside: the dust smells and dimness of the attics where the musicians celebrated among flute songs, champagne, and the salty sweetness of sex; each bedroom as she recalled it, down to the pattern of her mother's violet satin comforter and her father's yellow and white china shaving things; the plaster garlands on the ceilings, the flittering painted cherubs and trompe l'oeil fruit. The rugs in the empty parlors, the books in the library, the smells of dried herbs and dust in the schoolroom where Tibbeth of Hale had taught her… The heat and bustle of the kitchen, smelling of tomorrow's bread and today's staling syrups and creams. The hall with its silent chandeliers and smells of cooling wax, cellars with their musty coals and flowers heaped on ice, browning in the darkness…

Sleep
, she thought.

Sleep fill this house.

Sleep fill this house.

She heard the clock chiming again, unable to believe that an hour had gone by. Settling back on her heels, she listened to the house before her.

Where before her wizard's senses had brought to her the hivelike drone of voices and movement, a blended murmur of anxiety and trivial concerns, she now heard only deep breathing and a snore or two. To her inner perception of magic, the spell felt hard and smooth, like blown glass cooled perfectly to its final shape; if she'd tapped it with her nail, it would have rung like a bell.

It was, she realized, the first great magic she had done in truth, not as an experiment, not under the guidance of some other mage, not in concert with others who had more experience than she. At the Citadel she had done magic under pressure; indeed, during the previous spring's troubles she had performed spells that had saved lives, including her own. But there had been others around her.

This was completely hers.

And completely illegal, too. Nevertheless, the joy of it swept her, a golden exultation that sponged from her mind the last daydreams about Blore Spenson's kisses.

This was beauty. This was warmth. This was delight.

This was also, she realized, the beginning of what could be an extremely long and dangerous night. There was little chance either the Church wizards or the Council members were listening for her, particularly at this hour, but the fear added a shaky edge to her emotions, a sense of danger and risk.

Quickly—though her head was aching and she had a terrible craving again for sweets—she formed in her mind and cast out around the house the same spells with which she had surrounded the attic room where she'd slept: less an unwillingness to enter than a sort of spiritual laziness, the sense that whatever business needed to be done in that house would be better done tomorrow; the sense that there were more important things to do. The image she conjured in her mind was that of getting out of bed on a very cold morning—unpleasantness that could just as easily be put off.

Carefully, so as not to unravel the spell itself, she took back the circles and the gateposts she had drawn, ritually confirming their actual existence while erasing all physical traces. This was magic at a higher level than she'd ever practiced, but it would make them safer from discovery. It was, she realized, cold in the garden, and the moon had vanished for good. Even its silver stains on the clouds were fading. Spenson was hunkered on his heels by the door, but he rose in one smooth movement as she came toward him, the gravel scrunching softly beneath her feet.

“Done?” he whispered, and she nodded.

“We can whisper all we want, though I shouldn't like to shout.” She took his hand and led the way along the house wall toward the brightly lit windows of the kitchen. “Oh, wait a minute. Do you have two pieces of silver you can loan me?”

A little startled, Spens opened again the wash-leather bag from which he'd paid his bravos. Kyra drew her thoughts about her again and with careful precision drew upon each coin a Limitation, exempting her and Spens from the effects of the spells of sleep that now filled the house like curling, invisible smoke. “There. Put that in your pocket—I'll need it back at the end of the evening. What I should like is something sweet. I feel like I've just come out of sword training and having the stuffing whacked out of me by Cylin and Mick.”

“Cylin and Mick?”

“Friends of mine at the college.” She climbed the high brick steps and pushed open the kitchen doors, the warmth and sweetness of its atmosphere drenching her like a summer afternoon. “Cylin's one of those men who'll stay up till dawn, memorizing his lists and spells and theories, and then spend the rest of the day worrying that he hasn't learned enough, or that they won't work, or that the laws of the universe have changed overnight and nobody told him. Mick's so scatterbrained, he'll start to memorize a list and then go off digging through seven or eight encyclopedias or bestiaries if he finds a reference to something that interests him. Or he'll go hunt for it in the gardens, if it's a flower or an insect, and spend the rest of the day chatting to Tom the gardener about caterpillars. Like two big kittens, both of them.”