The Mystic Marriage (21 page)

Margerit sat up in bed and watched her dress, adding, “As long as you’re turning respectable at last, why not hire your own maid and stop stealing mine!”

“Now that would go too far!” Barbara returned. “How could you ask Maitelen to give up being lady’s maid to a baroness?”

The subject of their conversation made a noise something like a snort and said, “Never you mind about me, Mesnera. I knew the day I met you back in Chalanz that I’d do well to stick by you and you weren’t a baroness yet then!”

They were nearly dressed when Maitelen answered a tap on the door and returned to announce, “The Vicomtesse de Cherdillac is waiting for you in the front parlor. With a guest.” The faintest of frowns told what she thought of untimely visitors.

Margerit urged, “Go down and see what she wants, Barbara. I’m nearly done and likely it’s you she wants to see anyway.”

When Barbara entered the room, Jeanne turned to her with a strained cheerfulness, saying, “Look who turned up on my doorstep last night!” And then, with a smile that spoke of secret jokes, “That is, not the doorstep precisely.”

When the other woman also turned, Barbara’s face hardened into a scowl. Someone should have warned her! No. Who among the ordinary servants would have recognized her like this? And Jeanne…must have had her own reasons.

Antuniet curtseyed stiffly, murmuring, “Baroness!”

An awkward pause stretched out as Barbara fumbled through the possible salutations she could return. In the end she settled for nodding silently.

“Forgive me for the hour,” Antuniet continued. “I don’t mean to trouble you further. I’ve only come for my property.”

“It seems to me you’ve been trouble enough already. I—”

But Margerit came through the door in that moment and her glad cry of “Antuniet!” brushed away what would have been said.

Antuniet shrank into herself and Margerit paused at the rebuff. Antuniet repeated, “I’ve come to retrieve my property.”

“Of course,” Margerit said in a more subdued voice, looking back and forth between all of them as if sorting out the tension. “I’ll go fetch the book.”

Silence fell while they waited. Jeanne had stepped back and was watching closely but had said no word after the start. Barbara could hear voices out in the hallway: Bertrut questioning, Margerit answering. The last thing they needed was awkward interruptions. Margerit returned at last, carrying the book in the same satchel it had arrived in.

Barbara laid a hand on her arm when she would have offered it to Antuniet. “I’ve worked my way through a fair amount of that book,” she said. “An interesting text. Dangerous, in the wrong hands.”

“I’ve gone to some trouble to keep it out of the wrong hands,” Antuniet said evenly.

“I was wondering about yours,” Barbara countered. “What exactly are your plans for this work of yours?”

“That’s hardly your concern.” It was clear her veneer of patience was fraying to shreds, but Barbara’s own patience over the matter had worn out long ago.

“You made it my concern when you thrust my household into the middle of it willy-nilly. I still remember the last adventure your family led us into. Swear to me that you had no part in your brother’s plot and you can have your book.”

Antuniet’s chin went up in defiance. “If you need to ask, then you wouldn’t believe me no matter what oath I swore. Will you return my property to me or are you a thief?”

Barbara bristled, but whatever hot words she might have returned were cut short when Margerit shook off her hand and stepped forward. “You gave it into my keeping and I return it to you safe and sound. But what will you do now? Nothing is changed. Mesner Kreiser…yes, we know about him. You need to take someone’s protection. I could—”

“No!”

“Or you could go to the palace. Ask Annek—”

“No.” Antuniet opened the case and drew the book out just far enough to ascertain its identity. The gesture might have been meant as an insult but it had more the feel of reassurance.

“What will you do?” Margerit repeated. “Where will you go?”

Antuniet shrugged and unbent enough to answer. “I’ll see what can still be saved from my workshop and then I’ll flee Rotenek, like a thief in the night, before Kreiser can get word of me. It doesn’t much matter where I go. I’ve started from nothing before and I’ll do it again.”

Jeanne took a half step forward as if she would speak at last, but her silence held until Antuniet had strode from the room with no farewell and they heard the echoes of the heavy front door closing behind her. Then she turned with a look of fury, crying, “Damn you, Barbara! Damn the both of you for your stiff-necked pride! She needs help and you stood by and let her walk away.”

“If she wants help, then she needs to ask for it.”

“Ask you? Ask the person who represents everything she’s lost?” Barbara couldn’t remember ever seeing Jeanne this angry. “Do you know why she wouldn’t go to Annek for help with Kreiser? Aside from no longer having the right? Because the work was meant to be her gift to Alpennia…her gift to redeem the honor of the Chazillens.”

That rang true, but Jeanne’s fierce defense did not. “Why do you care so much?”

“Why do you care so little?” Jeanne countered. “Does it mean nothing to you that Antuniet is the nearest kin you have still living? And that you stand the same to her?”

Barbara had never gotten used to thinking of Antuniet as family. Fate had conspired against there ever being goodwill between them.

Jeanne must have seen some softening, for her voice dropped to a more coaxing tone. “You cared enough to have men watching my house for the last month in case she returned, so why not—”

Barbara felt a cold shiver. “I never set anyone to watch you.”

The same realization crossed all three minds at once.

“Dear God!” Margerit exclaimed. “Kreiser. He knows she’s back.”

There were reflexes trained into Barbara’s body that time would never entirely erase. She was moving toward the door before a plan had fully formed in her mind. It was one thing to leave Antuniet to her own folly and another to help betray her to her enemy. She called out to the footmen in the hall as she passed: “Marzo, Sikipirt!” Not the men she necessarily would have chosen to have behind her in a fight, but young and strong and
here
. And if her foreboding were true, time meant everything.

Crossing the yard at a run, she added one of the grooms. If Antuniet were heading for her old workshop, she’d have gone down the Vezenaf to Pont Ruip. The bridge was the worst place to be trapped; she knew that lesson well. Barbara ran as if before the hounds and heard the footsteps of the others falling behind. What would Marken say now! Traffic was sparse on the road but still too crowded to see whether Antuniet had made the turn yet. It wasn’t until she turned onto the bridge herself and began the rise that Barbara saw the struggling knot of people she’d been searching for. No one figure could be discerned as they surged against the parapet, but all of a sudden a dark object arced over the rail and hung suspended against the sky before falling into the river below with a splash.

Every actor in the scene stood frozen watching it fly, released at last by a harsh shout, “You stupid bitch!” as the knot convulsed inward again. Hearing footsteps and panting breaths close at her back again, Barbara surged forward with her own shout and waded into the fray. There were fewer of the others than it had seemed at the first and they had no stomach when it turned to a true fight. Even so, when they fled they left Sikipirt nursing a bruised head and Marzo sporting a bloodied nose and a triumphant grin. Antuniet had sunk to a huddled ball close up against the bridge parapet. When Barbara crouched down beside her, the only word she could make out was, “Gone.”

“Yes, they’re gone,” she echoed reassuringly.

Antuniet raised her head at the familiar voice. Her eyes stared blank and hollow. “Gone. It’s all gone.” With a sudden motion she rose and scrambled onto the low stone wall. Barbara grabbed for her, barely dragging her from the brink by the skirts of her dress. “Don’t be a fool! It’s sunk into the mud by now. You’d never find it.”

Antuniet twisted wildly in her hands, shouting, “Let me go! Let me go!” as Barbara took a stronger hold and pulled her back. “You don’t understand. It’s gone! It’s all gone. There’s nothing left. Nothing.”

With a shock, Barbara realized she hadn’t meant to go after the book but to be lost beside it. She pushed Antuniet down onto the pavement and held her in a grip of iron as she called out to the men, “Go find us a carriage, a wagon…anything! No need to be a spectacle for all the city!”

As they scattered to obey, she took Antuniet’s face in her hands and forced their eyes to meet. “You told Margerit to keep it safe,” she said in a tone that pierced through the despair. “What is the surest way to keep a book safe?” She saw the faintest spark kindle in that darkness.

By the time they returned to Tiporsel, Antuniet had left behind her frenzy. Indeed, she seemed to have left behind everything but mute obedience. Barbara ushered her past the curious eyes in the front hall and nodded at Margerit and Jeanne to follow as she led the way back to the privacy of the library. Jeanne had been crying. Margerit, more practically, had initiated preparations for all possible outcomes of the chase. With a few brief words Barbara told them what had occurred.

When she came to the fate of the prize that had set it all in motion, Margerit looked quickly at Antuniet’s bleak expression and went to retrieve a thick bundle from her working desk. She placed it in Antuniet’s lap, saying, “I had two done separately, as a check on errors because of the ciphers. I haven’t had a chance to have them bound yet.” Antuniet touched the ribbon that bound the pages together but made no move to untie it.

“Not a gift,” Barbara said, quickly forestalling any impulsive generosity Margerit might feel. “For use. If you accept my conditions.”

Chapter Seventeen

Antuniet

Antuniet woke to the pale winter sun filtering through the shutters and spent long minutes untangling true memories from fever dreams.

For the last week, every day had begun the same. It was the voices drifting up from below that sorted out truth from phantasm—that and the numb absence of terror. Left in its place was a deep weariness. She was back… No, she could hardly think of this place as home. It wasn’t hers now, if it ever had been. She had a new patron. And a staff—to watch over her as much as to watch out for her—but they answered to Margerit, not to her. The voices below weren’t Anna and Iakup beginning the day. Her mind shied away from that path.

No. She had always hated cowardice. Iakup was dead because of her. Because she had thought only of her own danger and not that others might fall defending her. He had been defending Anna, not her, but it came to the same end. And Anna—her message there had gone unanswered and no blame to Monterrez for that. Disaster came to everything she touched.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs and a knock rang on the door. Mefro Feldin. Not quite a housekeeper—there wasn’t much house to keep—but here to keep things in order, along with Petro to do the man’s work that Iakup used to cover and the two rough men whose names she hadn’t sorted out yet but whose sole purpose was to advertise that Antuniet Chazillen had a patron who would see to her protection. None of them lived in—there wasn’t room for that and Feldin, at least, had starkly refused—but she was never left alone.

The knock came again and she realized she hadn’t answered it. “Enter.”

The woman looked her over with a silent sniff. Margerit had gone to some trouble to find a housekeeper willing to dare the uncertain peril of an alchemist’s house. There had been emphatic assurances that she wouldn’t be asked to touch any of the equipment. And beyond that, it wasn’t any part of her duties to play lady’s maid. She sniffed again. “I was going to the market, Maisetra, and wondered if there was anything in particular you wanted.”

“No.” Was there anything she wanted? What good had it ever done to want things? She wanted her old life back: the house on Modul Street, to own more than a single garment, to have the company of minds worth talking to. She wanted her work back. She wanted her book: that mystical talisman that her hands remembered like a lover’s touch, the scent of years rising from its pages like incense. It had meant more than the text inscribed on the pages; it had been
hers
, the proof of her talent and the promise of her success. Now there were only marks on a page and even that came from someone else’s charity. In those last weeks, when fear had haunted every step, at least the work had been all hers. The hope of triumph had been there, drawing her on. There would be no triumph now, only the failure even to fail.

She turned restlessly. Mefro Feldin had left some time ago. Hunger finally bored deeply enough to drive her up to dress. No one would be bringing dainties on a tray to coax her appetite. She found bread in the small pantry, fresh from the bakery across the street. That was enough for now.

Two hours later she had gone no farther than to move jars around on the bench in the workroom. There was a handful of notes in a stack, retrieved from the concealed room where they had lain hidden the last month. She could begin again on the last experiment without needing to go beg entrance at Tiporsel house to review DeBoodt. Someone had consulted the chemist for what supplies she needed when no list had been forthcoming from her own hand. She hadn’t had a chance to see what remained from before and what had been spoiled or lost in the attack. There was the trace of a bloodstain still on the floor next to the furnace. She stared at it until the outlines shifted into monstrous visions.

That was where Jeanne found her later, bustling in with her maid in tow just as if nothing had happened in the last month. “I dropped by because I was thinking about your appointment at the palace tomorrow and I was wondering—”

“Is that tomorrow?” Antuniet asked, rousing herself to the present. “I’d lost track.” That had been one of the conditions. Margerit could hardly be blamed for insisting that she couldn’t sponsor work such as this secretly, not in her position. But whatever Annek had been told, she’d wanted more. An invitation—a summons, really—to attend on her with explanations. This wasn’t how it had been meant to be.