The Fall of Ventaris (46 page)

Tremaine, however, never even blinked. “How kind of you to say. Of course it cannot compare to what you’re wearing this evening. How exceedingly clever.”

“Clever?” Artema’s brow furrowed.

“Indeed. Normally I can tell the cheap knock-offs from the originals at first glance, but yours stumped me. At first.” The guildmaster flashed another smile as the onlookers snorted laughter and Lady Artema reddened. Tremaine placed a hand on Duchess’ wrist. “Come help me find something decent to drink,” she said, leaving Artema to fume in her wake.

“That was...interesting,” Duchess whispered as they moved towards a table of refreshments.

Tremaine never glanced at her. “
That
,” she said with obvious distaste
,
“was the opening volley. Watch.” She nodded minutely to the guests clustered around the table. Among them a gray-haired man with a paunch that strained a yellow jacket trimmed in orange was holding forth. Clearly aware of their approach, he did not turn from his audience.

“...and I said
that
was a vote that just didn’t work out. Everyone in the guild knows that. I mean, really...no one knew where she came from or who her family was. She just didn’t fit in.” He turned and made a show of surprise. “Guildmaster Tremaine! What a pleasure.” He took a large bite of the sugar-pastry he held in one hand. “Do try one of these. They’re
appalling
.”

“No thank you, Lord Eltorel.” She cocked her head appraisingly. “I have my figure to think of, after all. Oh, but I envy you! It must be wonderful to never need worry about how one looks.” Duchess covered a smile by pouring a cup of apple wine. As she handed the goblet to Tremaine she had to admit that Lysander could scarcely have done better.

The onlookers tittered, and one elderly woman in a crimson gown let out a belly laugh larger than she was. Eltorel paused in his chewing, probably to prevent a fit of choking. He swallowed and said, “I’d forgotten just how charming you can be, my dear. We simply
must
have lunch. Somewhere you’d be comfortable. The Narrows, perhaps? Or would the Shallows suffice?”

And on it went, with Tremaine circulating amongst the guests, launching verbal attacks and parrying others. Duchess’ personal favorite was an exchange with a dark-eyed beauty by the name of Valera. “I think it positively
progressive
, being unmarried at your age,” she told the guildmaster. “I myself feel half-scandalized being unescorted tonight.” She smiled richly.

“Unescorted?” Tremaine shrugged. “Well, no doubt your gentlemen prefer to spend the Fall with their wives.” The lady’s dark eyes flashed anger but she was too flustered to riposte.
 

As the evening wore on, Duchess saw that the byplay was taking a toll on Tremaine. Although at first she seemed entirely composed, the fingers on her cup were tight as claws, and Duchess kept expecting that the next jibe would end with Tremaine crushing the crystal into powder. She was as clever with words as Lysander, but where the ganymede thrived on the give-and-take of social repartee, the guildmaster seemed to suffer with every verbal cut. Lysander knew who and what he was, making any jibe, no matter how cutting, powerless. Tremaine, however, seemed acutely aware how out of place she was, and so each reminder was yet another dash of salt in a wound that refused to close. Perhaps, Duchess thought, you were only susceptible to insults if part of you believed them.

Tremaine turned to her, and for a moment Duchess wondered guiltily if the elegant woman had read her mind. “There’s Lady Vorloi at last,” she said. Duchess craned her neck, but through the press of bodies she could make out only a violet gown, the wearer’s face obscured by a lacy black headdress. “I need a word with her before the night is out.” When Duchess moved to follow, Tremaine stopped her with an upraised hand. “No. Find something else to occupy yourself while the lady and I converse. She’s a bit too clever, that one, and I’d sooner she not start asking shrewd questions about my new attendant.” She moved off and Duchess felt a flash of disappointment. She’d have liked to take the measure of the much-talked-of Vorloi. She was just wondering if she might creep closer to sneak a glance when she spied the lone facet, moving languidly towards a stand of tall plants.
 

Moved by a sudden impulse, Duchess started after her. After many
excuse mes
and
pardon my lords
, she found herself in a small cranny of privacy created by the clever placement of plants and flowering urns. The facet stood silently, as if waiting for her, and Duchess reflected, not for the first time, that such complete stillness was uncanny. Sometimes the facets seemed less than human.

A long moment passed, and Duchess finally broke the silence. “Are you the same one I spoke with at the Sanctum?”

There was no reply, and the facet remained as still as any statue.

Duchess frowned. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? What one of you hears, all of you know. Isn’t that how it works? I might as well be speaking to anyone who wears a facet’s mask.”
 

The facet turned, but the gaze from that one uncovered eye revealed nothing.

“What do you see, then, with your one eye? When you look at me? When you stand in the shadows — here, or that day on the Godswalk, or in Baron Eusbius’ art gallery?” There was no reply. Duchess stepped closer. “The day you gave me my prophecy, you asked for my name. I didn’t understand, then, why you asked. The facets know everything, so to find the name of a bread girl from the Shallows should be child’s play.” She bit her lip. “I told you only my first name, but you guessed the second.”
 

Nothing. The eye beneath the mask watched her, unblinking.
 

“But you shouldn’t
have
to guess. You should have
known
.” She thought of Jadis’ questions, his faith in uncertainty, and the part of her that was beyond justice. She thought of Dorian Eusbius’ face caught in a flash of light from the Delaying Glass, of crowds of people moving to a dance she did not know and that they had never learned. “You told me once that to name a thing is to have power over it. So what power did you have, not knowing mine? And what of yours? None of you have names.
I am called many things.
But I know you, and I can name you.
Marguerite
.”

For the first time, the facet broke her pose of icy stillness, reflexively raising one hand to her collar. She’d seen that nervous tic before, at the Sanctum last summer, and in her sister, long ago. Her stomach twisted at the confirmation of her wild guess. “It
is
you,” Duchess whispered, tears coming unbidden to her eyes. “
How
?” she whispered, “How can you...”

The facet’s fidgeting worsened. “They didn’t know what to do,” the woman whispered in the voice of a scared girl, a girl Duchess knew from long ago. “They. We. We were waiting that night. At the party.”

“For what?”

“For
Justin
. They. We knew. We thought. We couldn’t
see
.” Even masked, the woman’s — the
girl’s
— uncertainty was awful to watch.

 
“See?”

“Father. Justin.
You
. We were. I was. There. Here. Then. Now. All one.” The hand at her collar stopped its restless fidgeting and dropped to her side. “We saw nothing, and knew a pattern by the absence. We followed it by what we
did not see
. We knew where it would begin and end.
A thread is added, leading to unknown glories
. We knew what we did not know.”

Her heart clenched. “Knew what?”

“That Justin was not there, and that you were. That he had gifted you with what he once received.”

Duchess frowned. Only the night before she’d refused this...inheritance. “Justin never gave me anything,” she whispered.
 

The facet – Marguerite, there was no way to tell now — touched Duchess’ wrist with a tentative finger. “It is something you carry here” – she pointed to Duchess’ head — “and here” — she pointed to her heart.
 

Duchess shook her head sharply. “I don’t want it,” she spat. “I don’t want it, whatever the damned thing is.” She found herself repeating the words she’d told Terence. “That life is over. That girl is dead. And I am not Marina Kell.” She turned to leave.

The facet snatched her hands in her own, and in that moment Duchess’ fear and anger vanished.
 

And then that flesh cooled, as if the blood that ran beneath had changed to ice water. The facet drew back, no longer Marguerite, perhaps no longer human. Only a facet. She regarded Duchess with the inscrutable gaze of her kind and said nothing.

Duchess opened her mouth — in promise or protest, she was uncertain — but before she could speak, the bells began to ring. One, two, three...the bells of the city sounded through the imperial palace. Echoed by the dome they were nearly deafening. Each toll fell like stones between them, seeming endless, and yet no more than nine.

Nine strokes of the bell. She remembered the dress, and the Atropi, and the empress. She backed away from the sheltered green nook, into the noise and pageantry of the party. As she went she kept her eyes on the masked figure until it was out of sight behind a corner of the crowd. It never once moved.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The fall of Ventaris

The partygoers had split into two groups, flanking the flower-petal-strewn aisle that led to the stairs and the terrace where Violana sat in state. For once, social status had been forgotten, and the guests simply formed up as time and circumstance allowed. Duchess wandered numbly through the crowd, scanning for Tremaine, feeling shaky and near tears. She did not understand what she had just witnessed nor what she had been told, only that she’d found her sister, or what remained of her.

A hand reached around a clump of blue silk and ruffles and clamped on her arm like iron. She turned to see Gloria Tremaine, eyes bright with tension. She pulled Duchess close. “Where have you been? The first gifts have already been presented,” she hissed. Moving with hurried elegance, she glided through the guests with Duchess in tow, muttering excuses through a frozen smile, until they stood at the border of the crowd. They watched as Violana was presented with a traditional gift from the Farmers’ Fellowship: rare fruits from across the sea, imported at great cost and unaffordable to any but the wealthiest Rodaasi. The blunt-faced man she’d seen at the guildmasters’ table backed away from the imperial presence, as Violana favored him with a tight smile and her attendants whisked the gift away. At the foot of the stairs he made a hasty obeisance and stepped back into the crowd.

From the top of the dais, Her Majesty’s herald, a young man dressed in imperial livery, raised his voice. “From the Magnificent Order of Tailors, Seamstresses, Weavers, Dyers and Haberdashers, the sisters of House Atropi!” The women emerged from the crowd, accompanied by a White carrying the cask Duchess had seen in the tower at Meadowmere Manse. All three were dressed sumptuously, in gowns of green and gold and ivory, with matching embroidery, and as one they mounted the steps to stand before the empress. The White followed and placed his burden before Violana’s tiny, slipper-clad feet.

Still shaken from her encounter with the facet, Duchess felt sudden doubt clutch at her heart. This mad scheme could upend the imperial court, and for nothing more than her fear for her reputation. What had she been thinking? But Tremaine’s eyes were upon her, and even if she had been able to elude the guildmaster she could not escape her responsibility. She’d gone too far to stop now. Surrounded by innumerable nobles and noteworthies, there was nothing to do but watch the unfolding of the play she’d helped to write.

One of the players stood out, there across the aisle. Keeper Jadis had a place at the front of the throng watching the imperial dais. She didn’t want to think what that meant.

The Atropi curtsied, which Violana acknowledged with a polite nod. Then Green, which Duchess thought had been Brown the previous night, spoke. “Your Imperial Majesty,” she intoned, in a voice stronger than Duchess would have expected. “It is a great honor for us to stand before you, on this day of all days. As Ventaris — ”

Tick
.

The sound rang out loudly in the quiet chamber, the clack of wood on wood, and Green hesitated, looking confused. Then she composed herself. “As Ventaris begins — ”

Tick
.

“ — His long twilight struggle against the darkness, we His children wish nothing more than — ”

Tick, tick
.

Now Green’s speech trailed off, and she turned to look at the cask, clearly the origin of that strange clacking noise. Her sisters exchanged glances, the herald looked mortified, and even Violana blinked and leaned forward in her chair to see what was the matter. Two of the Whites on the dais stepped to her side, hands on sword-hilts, cat-like in readiness.

Tick, tick
.
Tick, tick tick
.
 

The sounds from the cask increased in frequency and tempo, while Violana’s brow furrowed and the Atropi drew back in alarm. The gathered crowd pressed closer to see, the High Lambent and his attendants first among them, and the Whites pulled their steel as one. Duchess shot another glance at Jadis, but he continued to watch the dais as if nothing else existed. Tremaine clutched her arm. “What did you...?” Duchess shook her head, at a loss. What in Mayu’s name had Jadis given her, that day in the Gardens?

The ticking from the cask came now like the drumming of rain, and a woman in the crowd shrieked, while a tall gentleman in a red jacket called upon the gods to protect them all. One of the Whites strode forward and, with a mighty kick, sent the cask tumbling down the stairs. It clattered end over end to the white marble floor, where the lid broke open and spilled out a pile of black and red cloth, riddled with holes. With the cloth came a small cloud of flying black beetles, tick-ticking away. One of them alighted on the stairs, and Duchess could clearly see the white spot on its back. A deathwatch beetle.

With no clear enemy to strike the Whites hesitated while the Atropi wailed in horror, and those in the fore of the crowd drew back, stumbling into those behind. Tremaine’s face was white as milk, and her grip on Duchess’ arm tightened painfully. Only Jadis smiled, and now his gaze moved to settle triumphantly upon Duchess. She felt dull shock mingled with understanding. Minette had warned her that the First Keeper played at least two games at once. The man had helped further Duchess’ revenge while at the same time preparing his own final, devastating move. A master player, indeed.