Stranger At The Wedding (21 page)

Oh, the poor man
, Kyra thought distractedly, but in the face of the sick dread in her heart that thought, too, blew aside like ash in chilly wind. Faintly from the drying room floated the gay strains of rondes and gavottes, begun, broken off, started again in a different key or, oddly changed but recognizable still, in a different modality or tempo. When she'd slipped quietly into the hall via the garden door, she'd seen Briory supervising the footmen in the hanging of new tapestries and curtains; the hall itself was redolent of fresh flowers, as it had been the night of her arrival.

Alix's wedding.

Alix's wedding night.

And now she was ill…

“Who is it?” Her sister's voice was muffled behind her door. A moment later she appeared, clothed in the pale green undergown she'd had on that morning, creased and flattened as if she'd lain down in it most of the afternoon, her hair a half-untwisted skein of newly wrought gold and fading flowers. Her eyes were a ruin of tears.

“Are you all right?” Kyra stepped quickly into the room and caught her younger sister in her arms.

Alix's breath came in a long intake, a shuddering release; she turned her face aside. “I'll be all right. It's just… I'm just very tired.”

Kyra stepped around quickly, took the cold hand in hers, and stared intently into her face. “How do you feel?”

Alix blinked at her, puzzled. “I said all right.”

“Father said you were ill.”

“Well…” The rueful echo of an old twinkle danced at the back of her eyes. “If necessary I'll eat soap or something and really be ill rather than go down to that drawing room. Did you see who appeared this afternoon just as Mother finally got that poisonous Lady Earthwygg settled in her carriage? And of course nothing will do but that they have to be invited to dinner, the whole pack of them. Aunt Sethwit and Plennin and their children are staying with Murdwym and his wife, so of course Murdwym is feeling put upon and thinks Papa owes him a dinner at least.”

Kyra's tense body relaxed, and she felt a rush of irritation. At the same time, it was very unlike Alix to malinger in the face of family duties—and even in the dim light from the bedroom, she could see that her sister's face was marked with strain and that she looked far from well. “Did you know Master Spenson is here also?”

Alix turned away, tears flooding her eyes.

Reaction to the fears that had driven her up the stairs at a run made Kyra's annoyance deeper. “So it's just love.”

The two candles burning on the dressing table picked out the burnish of her hair; the gleam changed a little as Alix nodded, but she did not look around. “Just,” she said.

Footsteps padded in the gallery, nearly soundless. Kyra looked around quickly as the doorway darkened. “Here's for you to wear tomorrow,” began the laundry maid's soft voice; then the woman paused, her arms filled with freshly-ironed linen, as she saw Kyra, and with a stammered, “Oh, I'm sorry,” she fled.

Kyra sighed. Another one who listened to the tales of what sorcerous masters kept hidden behind locked doors. “Twit,” she muttered savagely, and Alix glanced back at her.

“It's not her fault,” Alix said, and studied her sister's face for a moment in the doubled, flickering light. “I'm sorry—I shouldn't have told Papa I was ill.” She wiped quickly at her eyes. “It's just that—”

“So you're not really sick.”

“Kyra, what is it?” Alix picked the last bits of flowers out of her hair, a fumbling gesture that let them fall to the tufted rag rug beneath their feet. “I'll be fine in the morning, I promise you. I just don't want any dinner. What is it?” She pulled away from Kyra's testing fingers, which sought first the heat of her forehead, then the movement of the pulse in her wrist.

“It's just that I don't trust Lady Earthwygg,” Kyra said dryly. She caught Alix's wrist again; the pulse was normal. The deeper, secondary pulse, more guessed than felt, was normal, too. No trace of the imbalance that poison would bring.

“Lady—”

“Or Esmin. I wouldn't put it past either one of them to dose your tea cakes with something that would…” She hesitated fractionally, then went on, “would have you throwing up on your shoe buckles for two days so they could have one last try at getting Spenson away from you.” And when Alix stared at her incredulously, she went on, “Alix, Lady Earthwygg would do anything to get him for her daughter. Anything.”

Alix made a soft little sound, half a sob, half a chuckle, and sank onto the edge of the bed where her apple-green flowered overdress lay in a softly gleaming pile. At her movement shadow glistened and prickled on the rocaille beadwork of the crimson wedding dress in the corner, making it seem to move. In the candlelight the vivid silk looked black, like old blood. “No,” she said quietly. “No, it's… 'just love.' I'll get over it. Everybody does.”

Nevertheless, Kyra descended two flights of dark and twisting back stairs to the kitchen quarters and found the sky-blue porcelain cups and plates used for “company” teas. They had been washed already and reposed on their usual shelf in the white-painted butler's pantry; even touching them, willing her mind deep into the delicate, fine-grained texture of the ceramic itself, Kyra could feel no trace of either poison or the magic of ill.

There's no help for it, Kyra thought despairingly. I'll have to search the place from top to bottom.

In the kitchen behind her the bustle of supper was commencing, the white and gold fish-shaped tureen being loaded with its attendant dishes into the dumbwaiter by Joblin while Algeron assembled new city walls and palace turrets of gingerbread for another wedding cake. He would, Kyra guessed, be most of the night in the construction of this marvel, for Joblin was never a man to duplicate his effort; he would feel his honor impugned if this second cake were not five times more splendid than the first. The long table down the center of the room was three-quarters taken with the shells of tartlets and pies, into which the two trembling scullions and Neb Wishrom's assistant cook were smoothing custards, scents of ginger and vanilla warring with the thicker smells of garlic, beef, and lime in the heavy air.

They'll be all night, Kyra thought, her heart sinking. And all day tomorrow… I'll never get the place searched. Whoever was paid to place a sign of evil in this house could have put it anywhere. And I'll still have to find who did the paying.

She fingered the papers in her pocket. Even knowing the names of the dog wizards who might have placed death-marks would help when she finally found the thing. If she found the thing.

Under the glare of a dozen whale-oil lamps she watched Algeron's profile, bent above the fragile pink fretwork of a turret cap, and thought of Alix weeping in her room two floors above. The golden light gleamed on a tear of his own; he put down the paper icing cone quickly but not quickly enough and had to fetch a sable brush, such as he would later use for the detailing of colors, to remove the drop from among the candy roses into which it had fallen like a bead of unlucky rain.

Kyra shook her head, collected two rolls and some cheese from the pantry, and stole out through the drying room, where only empty wine cups and the remains of stale cake showed where the musicians had been practicing. She tripped over the garlands piled there awaiting the departure of the supper guests, but no one in the kitchen noticed her in any case.

“Miss Peldyrin?”

At the sound of Spenson's voice she stopped on the second-floor gallery. He detached himself from the end of the group proceeding into the dining room and strode back to where she stood at the top of the stair, moving with the sure strength of a man walking the deck of his own ship.

“Is that for your sister?”

Kyra managed a wry grin and shook her head. It was very good to see him after the exhaustion of a frustrating afternoon. “For me, I'm afraid. Alix said she didn't want anything, though I expect Mother will send her up a tray later.” In the glow of the gallery lamps Spenson's sandy hair seemed almost golden; from the rough brown tweeds and regrettable catskin waistcoat he'd had on that morning he'd changed into his bottle-green suit again and looked uncomfortable and slightly untidy. Kyra fought the urge to set down her makeshift meal and repair his cravat.

“I think Father will be just as pleased with my absence from the dining room, and personally, I'm ecstatic about it.”

His eyes lost their stolidness and began to twinkle. “You didn't happen to bring enough of that for two, did you? We could sit on the back stairs. Would it be against your principles to put spells around us to keep us from being seen by that lot in there?”

Kyra shook her head with a grin. “I'm afraid it's your destiny to suffer. Though I'm sure Uncle Murdwym's advice on how to fit and command a trading fleet will be of inestimable value to you.”

“About as much value as your esteemed Cousin Wyrdlees' advice on how he cures his boils, which he gave me, gratis, without my asking him at all.”

“Generous of him,” Kyra approved with a gracious nod.

“Though Angelmuffin did finally bite your cousin Pinny. I'm pleased to say her mother told her it served her right.”

“I always did approve of Plennin's wife, whatever her name is. For one thing, she serves to make him visible, like a red bow tied round a sheep's neck to find him again in a herd. Do you have appalling relatives as well, Master Spenson?”

He laughed, the ruby in his cravat pin—absolutely the wrong thing to wear with that coat even if it was the size of a melon seed—glinting in the branched light of the candles nearby. “Battalions. Well, you've met my father. You'll see the rest of them at the church tomorrow morning.” He almost seemed to stumble on the words, and the old expression—or lack of expression—returned.

“Spenson,” Kyra said hesitantly, and he held up a hand.

“Spens,” he said. “We're going to be related.”

“Spens… this marriage isn't easy on her, you know. I mean, it never is. I mean, she barely knows you.” She floundered, feeling suddenly like a complete fool, not knowing what she wanted to say, something that had rarely happened to her in her entire sharp-tongued life. And what, she wondered, could she say? That Alix was crying her eyes out upstairs and there was an absolutely penniless and unsuitable young man baking his heart like a carnival coin into the wedding cake down below? That she still harbored, deep in the back of her mind, the fear that her sister would cut her own wrists in a fit of incomprehensible eighteen-year-old despair?

Spenson was silent for some time. Two days earlier Kyra would have thought that that silence betokened either rejection or complete incomprehension of what she had said; now she understood that this man was a man who chose his words carefully to make sure they truly expressed his thoughts. He just used fewer than Algeron did.

“No,” he said at last. “She barely knows me. I've been at sea since she learned to walk.” He stood for a time, looking aside and down, the lights from the hall below casting upside-down shadows on the sudden harshness of his face.

“We'll both be learning a new thing,” he went on slowly. “I can't stay a ship's captain all my life; it's high time I returned to learn the land side of the business, to take an interest in what will be mine. To find a wife and set up a household. To father heirs to follow me. I know that.”

His breath came in a hard sigh, and the bright blue eyes returned to hers. “Are you asking if I'll be kind?”

She wasn't but could not phrase into words all that she wanted to ask. For a time she only stood, looking across into his face, her own habitual glibness defeating her. She could say anything and everything, she realized, except what she truly felt. In that, this quiet man seemed to have the better of her.

“Yes,” he said. “I'll be kind.”

Kyra looked away, fumbled at the bread she carried, and managed to drop one roll; he caught it neatly, one-handed, and the acrobatic deftness seemed to break the tension between them. She smiled. “You're getting very good at that.”

“I'm getting plenty of practice.” He smiled back. Then, with a sudden resurgence of his old awkwardness, he went on. “If you'll be speaking with Alix…”

“She'll not be speaking with Alix.”

Kyra's head came up; beyond Spenson's shoulder she could see her father, framed in the lamplit brightness of the dining-room door. The brown velvet coat skirts belled behind him as he strode down the gallery, and his mouth had a grim set to it. “Master Spenson.” He inclined his head to his guest in a clear gesture of dismissal. “I'll see you in a few moments in the dining room.”

Spenson looked as if he would speak, his temper flaring like blue fire in his eyes. Then he inclined his head in return and strode quickly away. In another man's house there was little he could do.

“And what's that?” Gordam nodded at the rolls and cheese in Kyra's hands. “Don't you dine among your family like a civilized woman?”

“I was simply endeavoring to respect your oft-repeated wish to have people forget me,” Kyra replied silkily. “I'm sure you wouldn't wish me to impose myself on dear Uncle Murdwym and Cousin Wyrdlees.”

Balked, he hesitated a moment, then went on. “And just as well. Not only do you have the Witchfinders watching this house as if we're harboring a criminal, but now your mother tells me she's heard the rumor running around that I paid you—paid you like a dog wizard!—to cast a glamour on Spenson in the first place to get him to consent to this match!”

“Heavens,” Kyra murmured, and pushed a stray tendril of hair back into place. “My guess is that rumor is only 'running around' Lady Earthwygg's elegant patrician mouth. Considering that she offered me money only this morning to do exactly that in favor of her daughter, the story can't have gotten far.”

“Don't you understand?” Shadow outlined with sudden sharpness the bulge of a vein in his temple, just beneath the thinning wisps of his reddish hair. “It doesn't matter how many people are saying it! From that rumor it's a short step to saying that you and I have been in communication for years, that you've been aiding and assisting me in all my business ventures.”

“Oh, don't be silly. Any of your business friends will know exactly how long it takes to get a letter as far as Lastower, let alone out to the Citadel, if and when they can find a messenger willing to go. If it's the Witchfinders you're worried about, their own Magic Office could tell them the impossibility of communication by scrying-crystal with a nonmage like you.”