Scarlet in the Snow (11 page)

They almost jumped out of their skins, and I couldn’t help laughing at the sight of their astonished faces. ‘Natasha?’ Liza said weakly, staring straight at me. ‘Mama told us about this.’

‘But we didn’t think it was possible,’ added Anya. ‘Hey,’ she went on, staring harder at me, ‘is that a new dress you’re wearing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s my . . . uniform. Everyone on staff here has to wear one.’

‘It’s not bad for a uniform,’ said Anya. ‘Simple but elegant.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell them that,’ I said dryly.

My mother, who had been listening to our banter with a smile, broke in at that point. ‘Good morning, my little Natashka. I am so glad to hear your voice.’

‘Oh, and I yours, Mama! Have you recovered from your cold?’

‘Yes, I am much better, thank you. Now, more importantly, how are you?’

‘I’m fine. But I’m sorry I haven’t written you a letter yet. I haven’t had time; I’ve been so busy working for the gentleman
kaldir
, that is, Professor . . . I improvised wildly, ‘Professor Ivan Feyovin.’

‘Feyovin,’ said my mother, sounding puzzled. ‘I have not heard that name before in these parts.’

‘No, he is only lately come to our region. He is from the – from the east, and has come here for his health, because the climate in the east did not agree with him.’

‘Tell us, Natashka, what’s he like? Is he old and rich?’ asked Liza.

‘Or young and handsome?’ added Anya.

‘Girls,’ said my mother sternly, ‘these are not suitable questions to ask your sister about her employer. I am sure he is a good and honourable gentleman, and that is all we need to know. Isn’t that right, Natasha?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ I said, ‘he is both good and honourable, just not a man who likes society very much. And his household have been very kind to me.’ I shot a glance at Luel. ‘Mama, I will soon be paid the first of my wages, so you will receive some money to ease . . .’

‘Well, as for money,’ my mother said, gently interrupting, ‘I have some news for you, my dearest girl.’ She held up the letter, and I saw now it wasn’t a standard letter, but one of those pale blue forms from the telegraph office. ‘This is from our lawyer in Byeloka and contains some very welcoming and surprising news, which not even your sisters know yet.’

‘What is it, Mama?’ all three of us sisters exclaimed at once.

‘It is a most wonderful coincidence, actually. You remember mentioning our Byeloka neighbour yesterday, Natasha? Dear old Dr ter Zhaber, who died a few years ago?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, perplexed. ‘What of it?’

‘He was from Faustina, originally, and had no family, and indeed everyone thought he had nothing to leave anyone, for he had spent everything he had on his research, even mortgaging his house. Anyway, it so
happens that many years ago, your father put up some money so Dr ter Zhaber could patent one of his magical inventions – do you remember the one he called the armchair traveller?’

I did remember. It was typical of Dr ter Zhaber’s charming but impractical ideas: an armchair which would transport you to your favourite settings in your favourite books, at the press of a button. It had never come to anything, but as a little girl I used to dream about sitting back in the armchair and flying across the world to all those places I’d read about.

My mother went on. ‘As you know, nothing came of it. Or so we thought. But this telegraph informs me otherwise. You see, what none of us knew was that kind Dr ter Zhaber made a stipulation that if the patent was bought, your father and his heirs should receive the proceeds. And now it appears that a company based in Faustina has bought the patent and is developing it. As Alexander’s heirs, we are due a good-sized sum immediately, which will pay all outstanding debts with enough left over to enable us to live comfortably for a while. There’ll be more to come too.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ shouted Liza. ‘Does this mean we are rich again?’

‘When do we move back to Byeloka?’ cried Anya.

‘Oh, Mama, I’m so glad,’ I said warmly.

‘So am I,’ said my mother, her radiant smile making her look ten years younger. ‘So glad, my darlings! No, we are not rich,’ she went on, ‘but we will be a good deal more comfortable, and though we cannot yet afford to maintain
a house in Byeloka, we may rent one for the ball season perhaps. What do you think?’

There were shrieks of joy from my sisters and a wary smile from me. ‘Now we have this windfall, Natasha,’ my mother continued, ‘we do not need the income from Professor Feyovin’s job, and you can come home.’

I felt a pang as I said, ‘Oh, Mama, I would like to come home, but I cannot let the professor down. I made a promise to stay till the job was finished. I must honour it.’

Mama sighed. ‘I understand. Of course you must, but I miss you.’

My throat thickened. ‘I miss you too, Mama. I miss you very much. I shall be home soon.’ Luel made a sign and I knew my time was almost up. ‘Mama, I have to go, but I will speak to you again tomorrow.’

‘Till tomorrow then, my little one,’ said my mother, her voice growing fainter with every word as the image flickered out and then disappeared altogether. As Luel covered the mirror again in its velvet, I stood there silently. ‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’ she replied tartly. ‘I promised you could use the mirror. I always keep my promises.’

‘Including the one where you said my family would be well provided for. Because that was your doing, wasn’t it, Luel?’

‘Well,’ she shrugged, looking a little sheepish. ‘I had to do something.’

If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have imagined she’d have a basket of gold sent to our house, or some other splashy
feya
extravagance. But she’d listened and watched
and come up with the perfect solution, so that my throw-away line about our old neighbour had become the key to the perfect way to provide for my family: a way guaranteed not to make them uneasy or cause gossip that might get to the wrong ears. It would seem lucky, but not unnaturally so.

‘Thank you,’ I repeated, ‘from the bottom of my heart. That was very cleverly and kindly done.’

Luel’s eyes twinkled. ‘It was a pleasure, my dear. I haven’t had so much fun in years.’

‘I had heard of Dr ter Zhaber’s armchair traveller,’ I said. ‘And I know it exists on paper at least. But then he had thought up so many things, none of which came to anything. And his legacy to my father – and the company in Faustina – that doesn’t exist in reality, does it?’

‘Dr ter Zhaber was a good old man from all I was able to learn of him,’ said Luel calmly, as we went up the stairs, ‘and I’m sure if he’d thought about it, it was exactly what he would have done. As to the Faustina Armchair Traveller Company, well, it exists in a manner of speaking, even if it is only as a fine letterhead on good notepaper. And it will pay out exactly what was promised to your family. Just as Dr ter Zhaber would have wished it.’

Evasive answers as always with Luel, but still with a grain of truth in them. And a further clue that my first thought had been right, and Luel and Ivan hailed originally from the Faustine Empire. That must mean that the sorcerer also came from there, or at least lived there. Did that mean, then, that he was one of the dreaded Mancers? That was most likely, given that Luel had said
he was a powerful and dangerous man. And the Mancers were both. But Luel was a
feya
, and
feyas
didn’t live there, surely, where magic was forbidden? I didn’t know enough about the Faustinians to know for sure. And I knew that if I asked Luel, she’d just evade the question.

There was the encyclopedia. I didn’t expect much from it, for I’d seen nothing of any use when I’d leafed through its volumes. But it was worth taking a look, just in case. There had to be some reason that these particular books were in the room. Unless, I thought a little dispiritedly, Luel had just plucked them at random from some distant dusty library, to make the bookshelf look well stocked.

Back in my room, after telling Luel I was a little tired and in need of rest, I soon came to the conclusion that my dispirited theory was most likely correct. In one of the volumes, in the F section, there was a long entry on the Faustine Empire, true, but without the kind of information I needed.

There was also a general entry on magic, but somehow the editors of these distressingly dull volumes managed to make a fascinating subject sound about as interesting as a discussion of the weight of a Faustinian coin compared to a Ruvenyan coin, which, God help us, was a subject that covered an entire three pages. There was a brief and unilluminating entry on
feyas
, which read:
Non-human beings with certain magical powers, found all over the world. Populations are small, as
feyas
are essentially solitary. It is reported that there have been less
feya
sightings in our day than in earlier times. Examples of
feyas
range from the fearsome forest witch Old Bony, from Ruvenya, to Almeric,
mountain wanderer of Almain
. Feyas
should be approached with caution as they are considered to be unpredictable
.

There was also an entry on
abartyens
and in particular a slightly fuller description of the werewolf clan, the Ironhearts, which had an honoured place in Ruvenyan history. Even a plodding publication such as this could not entirely ignore the stirring story of how once, long ago, a werewolf of the Ironheart clan had braved the greatest dangers to rescue a Ruvenyan prince from certain death at the hands of a bandit chieftain. Still, the encyclopedia managed to turn the wonderful tale, which I, like every other Ruvenyan, had heard from the youngest age, into a dull procession of tedious words, none of which was of the slightest assistance to me.

In disgust, but unwilling to give up, I cast aside the encyclopedia and picked up the dictionary. I leafed through each page carefully, just in case there was something I’d missed. And that was how I found, jammed between two pages, the small stub of a first-class train ticket on the Golden Express, a luxury train that ran between Faustina, the capital of the empire, and Palume, the capital of the Republic of Champaine, a country to the west of the Faustine Empire. Glittering, elegant, artistic Palume was the playground of aristocrats and the wealthy from all over the world, and if Ivan came from a great Faustinian family, then it was quite likely he’d been there. I couldn’t prove the ticket was his; there was no passenger name, and no date of travel visible either, only the well-known symbol of the Golden Express with its decorated gilded locomotive.

But in all that weary and fruitless searching, it was the first real nugget of information I’d unearthed. Perhaps, I thought excitedly, that was how Ivan and Luel had come across the Master of Crows. Not in Faustina but in Palume. It could mean the sorcerer was either a Champainian native or else a foreign exile from the Faustine Empire!

Pulling out the notebook, I opened it to a fresh page. I took out the small pot of stamp-glue from the desk, carefully stuck the Golden Express ticket down on the page, picked up my pen and wrote:

Is Sorcerer based in Palume?

1(a) If from Champaine, could he be a
kaldir
like Dr ter Zhaber, except evil of course?
Kaldiring
is a more common form of magic in Champaine than any other country, and as I remember it, Dr ter Zhaber himself had been partly trained in Palume. 1(b) Is that why Luel gave me that odd look yesterday when I told Mama that my supposed employer was a
kaldir
? Did she think I guessed something? 1(c) Why would Ivan be in touch with a Champainian
kaldir
? Was there something he had come to Palume for?

2(a) If sorcerer is from Faustina, he may have come to Champaine to be safe from persecution as an illegal magician, and Ivan might have met him by chance. 2(b) He could be a Mancer in the diplomatic service, keeping an eye on the Faustinian Ambassador and others? 2(c) If the latter, did Ivan discover something that the sorcerer was up to, which caused him to be silenced in this monstrous way?

I put down my pen and looked at what I had written. Yes, I was sure there was something in it. But it was no good asking Luel; she’d only evade my questions. I had to speak to Ivan himself. But I could not wait until he was ready to see me. I had to go in search of him. Right now.

All the time I’d been here, I’d not explored the first floor beyond my room. I didn’t even know if Luel and Ivan had their rooms on this floor. Now, clutching the notebook, I set off nervously down the long corridor that led away from my room and the stairs.

Luel had said I needed patience. Time. But not only is it not my nature to wait, I had the strong feeling that we had little time – that something was getting closer and closer all the time, and that if all we did was hide behind the wall, sooner or later it would get in . . .

I came to a door and knocked quietly. No answer. I tried the handle and found it to be unlocked. I opened the door and peered in. It was obviously Luel’s room, for I could see her black coat lying on the bed. For a moment I thought about going in and poking around to see what I could find. But I thought better of it and, closing the door behind me, continued down the corridor.