The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty Seven

The lute filled the afternoon air with its delicate melodies. The fine plucking, joined by the descant of the maids, produced a harmony that warmed the people’s cockles and the afternoon passed with soft and beguiling entertainment. As the maids danced dainty steps, Phelim’s attention drifted again and again to the full-flowering beauty of the Traveller. There was something about her and interest stirred.

The lute notes faded on the breeze and a harp filled the space with soothing cords, the maids stepping with their baskets of flowers to colour the canvas and its surface of sand. A picture took shape; the magnificent face and naked body of a sprite depicted with leaf and petal. She could have been the Lady of the Marshes, a veela - any sprite who must be appealed to in her watery home, for this was a gift to the water, a dressing of great beauty, and if all the spirits were satisfied then the Marshes would be a safe haven for another year.

Finally to the fading notes of the harp, one maid with silver hair whom Phelim recognized, lifted the canvas and carefully laid it on the water. The Marshers placed small floating candles alongside and the picture floated on the ebb tide as a silence ensued, albeit with the inevitable frog and cricket chorus.

Eventually the waters conspired to pull the whole masterpiece below the surface and the Marshers cheered, for truly did the sprites not take it for their own? Clapping burst forth and the crowd began to make their way to the foodstalls before heading to the water square where they would spend the night watching the acrobatic show.

A voice at his side caused Phelim to turn. ‘What did you think?’ the patron of his inn enquired politely.

‘Haunting and beautiful, the water spirits would be churlish to think otherwise. I’m grateful your wife told me of the festival. It would have been disappointing to miss it.’

‘Come with us now to the water square and have some food.’

‘You’re very kind but I must make my way. I’m late for my business in Veniche. Tell me, when does the next ferry leave?’

‘During the acrobatic display. Must you go?’

‘Sadly, but once again I’m grateful and have left a bag of gelt on my bed.’

He shook the hand of his host and as he turned away, seeing the man’s surprise at the
frisson
surging up his arm, Phelim wafted a gentle mesmer so that by the time he was lost in the crowd the fellow had forgotten who he was or that he had even stayed at the Inn.

The Palazzo di Accia stood umber and candle-lit in its position amongst the homes of the rich and infamous of Veniche. At its feet the Grand Canal lapped delicately, like a cat with a bowl of very rich cream. The water traffic drifted back and forth although at this hour when dark had truly settled and a cold mist had wound across the laguna to fill the alleyways and smaller canals, it was dwindling to the doughty few; gondolas ferrying people to and from dinner or the opera, the theatre or some government reception. Women stepped into and out of the boats wrapped in stoles of taffeta and satin and men merged with shadow in tailcoats, the light of a flambeau catching the bright white of frilled shirt and silk scarf.

Severine felt a huge surge of relief as she surveyed her home, the epicentre of her power. Here she felt confident, strong, in control. Somehow over the last few days that omnipresent sense of infallibility had teetered. It started when Luther had told her Adelina must have had Other help to escape and her ego, her confidence in her ability to achieve her goals had cracked ever so slightly.

Surely this was why she needed to be immortal. To never feel insecure again, to know that nothing could ever harm or that one’s plans and dreams could never be foiled. This was the fundamental reason for her desire for Adelina’s murder. Because she, Adelina, would appear to have the aid and support of Others by being nothing but herself - no force, no bribery, no blackmail. Just herself. Whereas she, Severine, had needed to claw her way into the consciousness of the Others and the thought was as bitter as gall. For one tiny moment, the idea that she was a Faeran changeling suddenly seemed improbable. Her heart skipped a beat and she paled.

She stalked back and forth in the salon, hands clasped tightly in front, muttering to herself. Did they laugh, these Others? Did they think her fatuous? By Behir, if they did not live in fear of her perhaps they should. Gertus had been killed for far less, Huon had been diminished by her threats. She pushed the battered ring up and down on her finger.

The ring, the soul-syphon.
She had forgotten.

‘
Others, if you laugh, if you think I am not serious, then,’ she sneered, ‘know you are so very wrong. And a message for you Adelina - I always intended for you to die but now your death shall be full of such exquisite pain. I want you to beg me, BEG ME, to allow you to die.’

She threw herself down on a chaise and looked around the elegant room. It radiated wealth and largesse. An ormulu clock g
raced a marble mantle and delicate tables displayed Raji enamel work. A desk stood against the wall between windows as high as the gilded and fretted ceiling and the paper strips lay on its inlaid surface, drawing her towards them. As she handled them they rustled, reminding her she must conceal them with speed.

Luther had unpacked in the rooms that were his apartments on the second floor. The windows opened onto one of the canals and he stood on his balcony watching the gondolas poling back and forth. The craft drifted under small bridges that joined one side of the moonlit canal to the other and people strode in various directions over the paths in his view. On a table between the open doors he had laid the tools of his trade; rapiers, a whip, pistols, powder and shot, and the silent and deadly arsenal he loved most - daggers, poniards, stilettos and the garotte.

He
turned from his idle perusal and picking up the latter he held it to the light of the lamps in his room. He fingered the wooden handles and took a twist of wire around each knuckle, stretching the wire a little and listening to the faint ‘ting’ it made as the ruckles and twists from where it had been curled in his saddlebag gave way to the tension.

An image of Adelina filled his mind. He had seen her at the Crossing, he swore it was her. He would recognise that hair anywhere. The price he could get from the wig makers for a fall of such vivid hue would be stupendous, the colour so rare.

He had kept the sighting secret. He couldn’t stand more vituperation from Severine. He had his own ideas of how he would entrap Adelina, no need to involve the Contessa. No, that red-coated bitch would surely require threads and other tools of her trade and so he would position spies at each of the six haberdashers of Veniche and she’d appear, he had no doubt. And when he found her he knew exactly what he would do and there was an end to it, he didn’t need the madwoman downstairs telling him what and how.

He’
d been an assassin long before he came to her employ. Working throughout Eirie, always for large amounts of gelt, dispatching targets like an unseelie shadow. He smirked. He was better at his job than any he knew of, the best. There were plenty of sad souls flying across the land who could attest to the fact.

As to Adelina? She had refused his advances, ridiculed him, emasculated him
. He tightened the garotte. He had a livid scar down his cheek from the
bicce’
s nails, he had a cut chin from his chase in Ferry Crossing and his groin hadn’t stopped aching since she was spirited away. No one had ever injured Luther the Assassin. Ever. And no one would again. He thrust his fists apart and the garotte straightened with a musical ‘twang.’

‘This, my pet’, he told the room at large, but really he was talking to Adelina. ‘This is for you.’

Chapter Twenty Eight

Adelina would not sit quietly and rest. Agitated, eager to get to Veniche, she harried Gallivant to the ferry wharf where they paid fare and sat, two lone passengers, waiting for the appointed time of departure. They could hear the appreciative crowd at the water square watching the acrobats and just like the Fire Festival so long ago, Adelina could hear the
tabla
with its pulsating rhythm, reminding her of Kholi and the Raj. She wondered what the acrobats wore. Somehow the thought of black and gold from the mountainous fire celebration didn’t sit well with her creative mind. The silver sparkle of the water and the
chiaroscuro
of the Marsh trees in the background required an entirely different palette. In her imagination, they tumbled and turned with silver sequins and strobes of pale green and blue, maquillage in soft marine colours of celadon and ice - a liquid fantasy as they swung and balanced and flipped like flying fish jumping or drops of water sparkling.

Lost in her dream, only the ferry
boat rocking disturbed her. Another passenger walked down the gangplank to take his seat in the small galliot. The rowers sat in pairs deeper in the hull on either side and chatting quietly, inviting each other to drink at an oarsmens’ tavern in Veniche to celebrate the end of their shift and a long muscle-bound day. They fingered their calloused hands, flexing their prodigious muscles and rolling wide shoulders. The rowers of the Eirish seas were highly regarded and earned good money, for theirs was the strength that kept the maritime coasts afloat.

A small whistle blew once and Adelina could see t
here were only three passengers - herself, Gallivant and the stranger. The rowers on the port side sat waiting whilst the starboard side feathered and swept gently to bring the bow of the boat around and then with another short burst of the whistle and a command from the ferrymaster, the rowers pulled, the keel cutting through the water.

The passengers turned and watched Ferry Crossing recede. Above the skillion rooves of the buildings, they could see the high wires at the water square and hear the roar of an appreciative audience punctuated by laughter at the clowns who no doubt sought to wrest attention from the aerial troupe. Gallivant stood to stretch his legs and walked to the stern, keeping clear of the rowers’ deck as they pulled rhythmically but silently through the water. He thought how much more pleasant it was than the shrill and constant whistle of Severine’s galliot which had torn the mellow Marsh sounds apart.

He leaned with his hands on the taffrail, watching the phosphorescence froth and cream as the ferry coursed across the laguna. He was sure he saw faces under the surfa
ce, luminous and pale green, with sharp teeth that grimaced at their earthly Other brother.

‘Merrows?’

He turned, a fractious hand to his chest. ‘Pardon sir? You startled me.’

‘Merrows?’ The fellow indicated with a tip of his handsome head to the water beneath.

‘It would seem so, yes. Sir, I believe we owe you thanks...’

Phelim shrugged. ‘It’s of no account. I didn’t like the ruffian. Tell me, you’re a Goodfellow, aren’t you?’

‘I am and you are a Faeran.’ Gallivant replied politely.

‘It appears so. Strange there should be two Others travelling on the same boat to Veniche at the same time.’

‘Indeed.’

‘My name is Phelim. I haven’t been to Veniche before.’ He smiled as he admitted this to the hob.

‘Neither have I,’ Gallivant could not prevent a rueful note slipping into his voice Such ignorance about the place worried him fit to bursting. How could he protect Adelina in such ignorance? His companion’s voice broke in upon his anxieties.

‘I know nothing of the city at all and confess
it readily. Does your friend?’ Phelim looked across at Adelina whose eyes were still on the shrinking sight of Ferry Crossing.

‘No. She has never been
there. She’s a Traveller and wishes to peruse the markets and such. I am her Goodfellow so I must accompany her.’
Must I really. If I am Other, I owe mortals nothing at all. I am a free spirit and yet Adelina draws me like a bee to nectar...

As he spoke, he saw his charge t
urn her head and look for him, watched her eyes open wide as they fixed on the tall Other next to him and as the flare of the lamp lit the man’s face, he saw her blanch and he stepped back. ‘Excuse me, milady needs me.’ He turned quickly and returned to the passenger seats to forestall any drama as he could see emotion beginning to brim. ‘By the way,’ he said as he left the man’s side. ‘My name is Gallivant.’

In the dark of night, the further they moved away from the flickering torches of Ferry Crossing, the more the laguna glistened like beaten metal. Adelina’s hand crushed the hob’s in her own, occasioning a visible wince. ‘Adelina,’ he whispered, ‘everybody in the world has a match somewhere. Please calm down. Think of the babe if you can’t think of yourself. Sink me, think of me
if
that
doesn’t work.’

She looked at her friend and realised she was being ridiculously overwrought, for what did it matter if there was someone who looked lik
e Liam. It only mattered to her surely. It was
her
equilibrium that was upset, no one else’s. And what could the poor man do about it anyway? He couldn’t help his most perfect face. She felt her child wriggle and slide in the dark of its nest and she slid her hand under her coat to smooth and soothe, the very act calming her as well.

Gallivant watched the stranger walk back to his seat, an air of loneliness hovering about. He would like to have invited him to sit with them but the irrational outbursts from Adelina put paid to that. Besides, the fellow
was
Faeran.

The ferrymaster’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Did you realise the Days of the Dark will begin in Veniche at midnight.’

‘You say?’ Gallivant asked. ‘And that is?’

‘You will have a brief time to find lodgings
,’ answered the ferrymaster. ‘Then at the stroke of the hour, you will see the lights go out and for three days and nights the city will be dark. During the daylight hours it is clothed in black and immensely serious and at night nothing will light the way. If one has to travel the canals in the evening it is dangerous, mark my words. Finally at midnight on the third day, at the final stroke of the town bells, the city is lit up and Carnivale begins.’ The man grinned. ‘And then one drinks and parties furiously.’ He moved away to watch his oarsmen, balancing against the sway of the boat as the oars dragged through the water.

Adelina had heard him.
Damn the heavens above.
It would be hard enough with light let alone without. She asked herself once again - did she really have to do this? Go to the Gate and make sure Lhiannon was safe
? Oh Aine yes. Yes
I do!
She wanted to know not everyone connected with her was tainted with death. Otherwise what future for her babe? And what of the robe? Would it not be a wonderful thing for the child to grow up knowing its mother’s artistry hung in the gallery amongst the Masters’ works? It was all she had to give her baby. After all, there was no father.

Then there was ‘the promise’. But did she mean the promise to exact revenge or the promise to Aine? This uneasy thought circled round and round in her head until it ached and until the stranger’s mellow tones filled the watery silence. He spoke to the ferrymaster and Adelina’s thoughts hauled to a halt as his words reverberated in her ears.

‘Tell me sir, presumably you know Veniche well. Can you tell me where the Countess Severine di Accia lives?’

The lights of the canal city danced along a yellow road of wavelets toward the bow of the ferry. In the moonlit night, the shapes of cupolas and campaniles covered in brass and copper roofing filled the space above the horizon. As the craft drew closer, vast walls winked their windowed eyes at the approaching visitors and balconies with latticed balustrades in the Raji style, legacy of a history long past, jutted out from rendered walls. Striped poles leaned drunkenly whilst others stood in sober lines marking the deeper channels.

As the evening progressed toward midnight, late gondolas slid past carrying passengers home in a race to beat the Dark. Water lapped fractiously at the walls of the buildings, eating away with each fretful slap at the fabric and structure, and here and there was a chunk missing or a crack creeping web-like across the aged facades.

But there was such beauty.

As the ferry negotiated carefully between channel markers and other cr
aft, the passengers sat quietly, even Adelina. As each stared in awe at the floating city that surrounded them, they were uneasily aware that the surface beauty cloaked a realm of dreams and maybe even nightmares.