The Native Star (34 page)

Yes
, Emily struggled to speak.
I tasted it to make sure that Mr. Stanton wouldn’t be hurt
…

NO, CARISSIMA MIA. YOU NEVER TOUCH IT
.

Yes, I
…

NO
.

“No,” Emily said, haltingly. “Rose … Grimaldi … made it. She … fed it to Mr. Stanton. I never touched it.”

Miss Pendennis scrutinized Emily’s face. She knew that the woman did not believe her. She also knew that the woman could not be allowed to disbelieve her.

WE WILL MAKE HER BELIEVE
.

Emily felt hot, unbidden tears well up in her eyes, all the tears she’d been meaning to cry a moment ago. Her heart ached; she curled herself forward over her knees, sobbing wretchedly.

“Miss Edwards! Emily! My dear, what is the matter?”

“Mr. Stanton,” Emily said simply, through the hand that covered her face. “Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he … tell me?”

OR WILL THIS MANNISH FEMALE NO UNDERSTAND THE BROKEN HEART?

But understanding did dawn on Miss Pendennis slowly. She clucked her tongue, laid a heavy hand on Emily’s shoulder, sighing heavily.

“Oh, dear,” she said ruefully. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Emily sobbed harder. She was acutely aware of Miss Pendennis’ hand patting her back soothingly.

“Now, now,” Miss Pendennis said. “I was so surprised myself, I didn’t mean to go on and on about it. How stupid of me. I’m so sorry. You mustn’t worry yourself about it. We have so much to do.”

YES, CARISSIMA MIA, SO MUCH TO DO!

The thought struck Emily between the eyes. It made her sit up stock-straight and dash her tears away.

“You’re right,” she said. “So much to do.”

Throwing the sheet off herself she leaped out of bed and rushed to the pile of discarded clothing. She pulled on her undergarments and threw the chemise over her head, then held up the corset.

“I want to get dressed again.”

Miss Pendennis rose from the bed slowly, regarding Emily. Emily could see her own madness, her frantic incoherence reflected in Miss Pendennis’ eyes. But there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do.

Without a word, Miss Pendennis positioned the corset around Emily’s waist and tied her into it. When the woman reached down to retrieve the fawn-colored cashmere, Emily growled petulantly.

“No, not that one,” she said. “I never want to see that horrible dress again as long as I live.” She let her lips form into a sweet, soubrettish smile. “Isn’t there another? You have ever so many …”

“Of course, I’m sure I can find something …”

Miss Pendennis closed the door behind herself silently, and when the woman was gone, Emily found her fingers playing quickly over the clasps of the leather case that was bound with steel. Perhaps she snapped it open. Perhaps she ran her fingers over the beautiful blue velvet lining. If she did, each action was immediately forgotten.

GOOD
.

GOOD, CARISSIMA MIA
.

REST NOW
.

REST UNTIL IT IS TIME
.

The next thing Emily knew, Miss Pendennis was shaking her. Emily opened her eyes and found herself staring at the brightly colored carpet on which her head rested. She was entirely at a loss to explain how her head had come to rest on said carpet.

“Miss Edwards!” the woman was saying. “Miss Edwards!”

Emily blinked confusion.

“Miss Pendennis?” she said.

Fragmented memories tumbled through her head: the conservatory, steamy heat, a stalk through the park. She had been angry, terribly angry about something …

Stanton
.

That was it, Dreadnought Stanton, his checkered past and his circumscribed future. The memory closed around her oppressively, bitterness rising afresh. But a broken heart didn’t explain how she’d ended up facedown on the carpet.

“Come on, up with you.” Miss Pendennis put her hands under Emily’s arms and lifted. “I must say, for a robust California girl you’re as vaporous as any eastern female I’ve met. You can put on a new dress later. Now you’re getting back into bed.”

Back into bed? New dress? Emily looked down at herself, clad only in corset and chemise. When precisely had her clothing gone missing? She climbed into bed, confused, and Miss Pendennis tucked her under the covers.

“Now, does your head really hurt? Or did I simply fail to catch your clever way of indicating you wanted a good cry?”

“My head feels fine,” Emily said finally.

Miss Pendennis nodded briskly. She took the case from the bedside table.

“Unfortunately, I can’t mix up a nostrum that will help the real problem,” Miss Pendennis said. “Look, I’m terribly sorry about Dreadnought and all those careless things I said earlier. I had no way of knowing that you two …” She paused awkwardly. “I’m just never good at figuring those kinds of things out, I’m afraid.”

Emily felt a blush creep up her neck. There was only one thing worse than having a broken heart. It was a broken heart laid out on the table for everyone to cluck over. She gritted her teeth. “Mr. Stanton is the least of my worries.”

Miss Pendennis smiled wanly.

“Good girl,” she said. “Keep your chin up.”

Emily spent the rest of the day in bed—an occupation that was apparently ladylike, but that gave her far too much time to think about things she’d rather not have thought about. She was glad when Miss Pendennis came in with the purple moiré silk over her arm and said it was time to dress for the Grand Symposium.

Emily stared into the mirror as Miss Pendennis fussed around her, making the final touches to her costume. Swathed in shimmering silk, Emily looked as rich and unapproachable as a plate of gilded truffles. The dress had a tight bodice, cut low to reveal her shoulders and arms. The skirt billowed extravagantly from the waist, then twisted and looped and puffed in innumerable, fascinating ways. Her hair had been knotted at the back of her head and secured with the hair sticks; Miss Pendennis had secured a fluffy spray of ostrich feathers to camouflage the sparseness of the bun.

Emily extracted her mother’s amethyst earrings from her silk pouch and hung them in her ears.

“Those suit the dress perfectly!” Miss Pendennis touched one of the drops with a finger. “You are full of surprises, Miss Edwards.”

“A lady is supposed to be, isn’t she?” Emily said softly as she tucked her silk pouch down the side of the dress, nestling it next to her left breast.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Skycladdische and the Sangrimancer

The Grand Symposium was to be held at midnight, and was to be preceded by a late supper. Emily and Miss Pendennis went downstairs together, walking briskly to the mezzanine that overlooked the Institute’s magnificent great hall.

“Stay close to me,” Miss Pendennis whispered, looking side to side, as if they were going together into a jungle. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

They paused at the top of the wide marble staircase that led down to the floor of the hall. The room blazed with light reflected from dozens of mirrors and innumerable cut crystal prisms that dangled from the gilded gas fixtures. The ceiling was a series of stained-glass domes, their vivid colors muted against the dark evening sky. The air was rich with the scent of orchids—an exotic perfume wafting from masses of deep-red blooms arranged in huge ormolu vases.

At the far end of the room were two enormous black doors, highly polished, inlaid with channels of hammered gold as wide as Emily’s forearm. These channels outlined a large triangle. At each point of the triangle was an arcane symbol, and in the center of the triangle, where the doors met, was the sigil of a closed fist. Inscribed in gold beneath the triangle’s base, words in Latin:
Ex Fide Fortis
.

Miss Pendennis noticed the direction of Emily’s gaze. “Never mind the Great Trine Room—look over by the fireplace.”

Emily’s eyes found the fireplace, which was carved of white marble and had to be at least ten feet tall. Around it, a small group of men stood smoking and drinking brandy from large bubble-shaped snifters. Three of the faces were familiar: Mirabilis and Tarnham, with old Ben hovering nearby in formal pressed whites. The fourth man was of medium build, with a very self-satisfied air about him.

“That’s Addison Rocheblave,” Miss Pendennis said. “President of Rocheblave Consolidated Industries. Surely you’ve heard of him?”

Emily shook her head.

“He’s the richest sangrimancer in America, if not the world. He built his fortune on other people’s blood, operating asylums, poorhouses, whorehouses, orphanages, opium dens, gambling pits … anyplace where easily forgotten unfortunates could be lured and bled. By doing this, he’s addressed the greatest difficulty any sangrimancer faces—maintaining a ready supply of blood for their ghastly rites. Not that they usually mind harvesting it themselves, mind you. For them that’s part of the fun. But it’s rather hard to maintain a decent lifestyle if you have to wander from town to town, murdering randomly and hoping not to get caught.”

Miss Pendennis drew a deep breath.

“Anyway, he’s leveraged that blood money to cement business alliances with everyone who is anyone … the Astors, Rockefeller, Morgan, Gould, you name it.”

“A big bug,” Emily summarized.

“I’ll bet he paid Mirabilis a pretty penny for the privilege of attending,” Miss Pendennis mused. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your twenty thousand is coming out of his pocket.”

Emily fought a wave of revulsion at the idea. Then motion at the other end of the room drew her attention. At first, Emily had the strange impression that a tramp had found his way into the Institute. But the man, in a high-collared black suit with frayed cuffs, was being respectfully escorted by Institute guards toward the fireplace. The man was so hugely fat that Emily wondered how he could stand up, much less walk—but he moved across the floor with surprising briskness.

“I don’t believe it!” Miss Pendennis grinned wolfishly. “This just gets better and better. If Caul could see this, he’d rip himself to bits.”

“Who is it?”

“Selig Heusler. The High Priest of the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui.” She lifted an eyebrow. “A pretty shabby specimen, if you ask me.”

“Itztlacoliuhqui?” Emily remembered Caul speaking the strange word. “The goddess with the half-baked doomsday?”

“Temamauhti.”
Miss Pendennis nodded. “I don’t know anyone who takes it seriously, except that lunatic Caul. Put two sangrimancers in a room and they’ll come up with some kind of harebrained scheme to take over the world, or destroy it. Temamauhti is a harebrained scheme of the latter sort. A blood apocalypse of unimaginable proportions.” She paused. “Mirabilis probably invited him just to tweak Caul’s ear. Oh, the old boy has brass, I’ll give him that!”

“Ah, Miss Edwards, Miss Pendennis!” Professor Mirabilis’ cheerful voice echoed in the hall’s vastness. “Gentlemen, please!”

Glasses of brandy were put down and cigars were hastily extinguished. Mirabilis gestured the women down the stairs. “Come, join us!”

When they had descended, Mirabilis took Emily’s arm and escorted her toward the fireplace. “Not everyone is here yet, but they shall be arriving shortly.”

“Who else is coming?” Emily asked warily.

“I have invited three representatives from each of the grand traditions,” Mirabilis said, not really answering.

“Credomancers and their trines,” Miss Pendennis, walking behind them, muttered. Mirabilis did not look back, but bent his head close to Emily’s to whisper. “Remember what I told you earlier.”

“Eyes open and mouth shut,” Emily whispered back, now understanding the reason Mirabilis had emphasized it. “Don’t worry, I got it.”

When they reached the group, Mirabilis stepped back and presented Emily with a flourishing bow, as if she were a life-size doll of his own design.

“Gentlemen, this is Miss Emily Edwards, of whom you have heard so much.” Mirabilis looked at each of the sangrimancers in turn. “Mr. Heusler. Mr. Rocheblave.”

Emily stared into the middle distance, trying to ignore the fact that the men were looking at her like a cupcake on a plate. Her carefully cultivated composure was rattled when Heusler grabbed her arm. He lifted the truncated appendage to his face so he could examine it with his small paste-diamond eyes. As he turned her arm this way and that, Emily caught a glimpse of dark patterns showing under his grimy cuffs. Black inked tattoos, the kind sailors wore, but heavier of line and strangely unsettling.

“Where’s the stone?” Heusler finally asked, after having apparently committed the exact lineaments of her arm to memory. “I didn’t come all this way to look at a stump.”

Mirabilis disengaged Emily’s arm from Heusler’s grasp, put his body between hers and the High Priest’s.

“Your questions will be answered when the Grand Symposium commences,” Mirabilis said.

“He’s got it locked up somehow,” Rocheblave said to Heusler. He had a high, querulous voice. “And here I thought credomancers put more store by trust.”

Mirabilis smiled noncommittally and gestured toward the end of the room where a table had been laid.

“The remaining colleagues will join us soon,” Mirabilis said cheerfully. “Shall we eat?”

At the table, which shone with silver and prismatic cut crystal, Emily was seated between Mirabilis and Miss Pendennis. She picked at a plate of something exotic that probably contained lobster. Miss Pendennis leaned across her, speaking to Mirabilis under her breath.

“So I’m dying to know—who have you invited from the animantic tradition? I know Mr. Saladin Buck is off in Europe somewhere, but surely you got ahold of Mrs. Amanda Haynes Reader … or maybe Townley Newgate? This symposium sure could use a little Townley Newgate right about now.”

Mirabilis buttered a small piece of bread with extravagant casualness, but said nothing.

“Well?” Miss Pendennis demanded.

“Miss Edwards and the Indian Holy Woman will serve as the other two animantic representatives,” Mirabilis said smoothly.

“Are you
insane?”
Miss Pendennis’ voice carried across the table, as did the sound of her fist pounding the damask. Mirabilis smiled apologetically as the gentlemen around the table looked up. Heusler seemed glad for the opportunity to let his piggy little eyes linger on Emily. “You’re telling me that spirit workers will be represented by—excuse me, Miss Edwards—a backcountry Witch with no experience of magical society and an
Indian in a nut?”

“And a very pushy women’s reform crusader,” Mirabilis said mildly, sipping his wine. “You’ve summarized it perfectly, Miss Pendennis.”

Emily looked down at her plate, trying to ignore that horrible High Priest. He just kept looking at her, his tiny eyes appraising and disgustingly suggestive. To make matters worse, he was seated next to Tarnham; when the fat man leaned his head over and said something under his breath, Tarnham laughed in not a nice way and reached up to stroke his ferret. Emily thought of black knives and blood. The images made her flush suddenly.

“I’m going for some air,” Emily murmured.

But Miss Pendennis didn’t seem to hear. She was leaning toward Mirabilis again, her cheeks pink with indignation.

“Come to mention it, you’ve hardly outdone yourself in your selection of credomantic talent either.
Tarnham
, for mercy’s sake? Your
secretary?
Why not Rex Fortissimus, or one of your own magisters? And where’s Dreadnought, anyway? You promised Miss Edwards that you’d allow him to participate!”

Emily pushed herself away from the table without waiting to hear Mirabilis’ response.

Along one side of the great hall was a line of tall French glass doors that opened onto a broad veranda overlooking the Institute’s gardens. One of the doors had been left ajar to admit fresh air. She snuck out through it, her skirts rustling. She came to stand by the mossy stone railing, looking down over it at the smooth green grass below.

She shivered a little; the night air was cold, and the veranda was dark. She had only been away from the table for a few minutes when she heard footsteps coming up behind her.

“Well,” a voice drawled lazily. “If it isn’t the guest of honor.”

Emily didn’t need to turn to know that it was Tarnham. She pretended as if she hadn’t heard him, but it didn’t help. He sidled up to her, a greasy grin on his face. His ferret peered at her.

“Parted from the stalwart protector of her virtue?” Tarnham smirked as he rolled the last word around in his mouth. “Don’t tell me you’ve already been routed! Dinner isn’t even over yet.”

“I haven’t been ‘routed’ Mr. Tarnham,” Emily said flatly. “I came out for some air.”

“Yes, I suppose girls like you need cooling off every now and again,” Tarnham said. “By the way, Heusler is quite taken with you. Says he’ll pay good money. I could hardly discourage him, since I hear money’s what you’re mostly interested in.”

He stared down at her décolletage and made a little reproachful
tsk tsk
.

“Why, you’ve got a loose thread, just there.” His hand came up to where her dress dipped to reveal the cleft of her breasts. “Why don’t you let me …”

Without a second thought, Emily hauled back and slapped him across the face, putting her whole shoulder into it. Tarnham went reeling, staggering a step. He rubbed his cheek and stared at her with wide eyes.

“I won’t be squinked, Mr. Tarnham,” she said. “I don’t care what kind of woman you think I am, but skycladdische or not, I’m someone you’d better not trifle with!”

Tarnham stared at her. “You struck me!”

“I’ll do it again, you slimy, smirking hoodlum,” she hissed, balling her hand into a fist. “I don’t know how women do things in New York, but in California we settle matters like this with six-shooters. Now take that ugly rat of yours and leave me alone.”

Tarnham drew himself up, tugged his coat down, and retreated in a hurry. Emily turned away. Anger and indignation burned in her cheeks. Yes, she would be heartily glad to never see another Warlock again!

She was surprised by a soft ripple of laughter drifting up from the shadows, where the stairs led down to the garden. Someone thought that was funny, did they? She stormed over to see who it was.

It was Stanton.

“Well done.” He grinned. He was wearing dark evening clothes and an overcoat, and he looked well. Better than he had a right to. “I have always wanted to see Tarnham get the kind of female attention he deserves.”

“I’m glad I could oblige,” Emily said coolly, turning away.

“Emily? Are you all right?” Miss Pendennis ducked her head out of the door. “I heard a blow, and then that Tarnham came scurrying through ever so …”

When Stanton saw Miss Pendennis, he gave her a little salute. “Hello, Pen.”

“Hello, Dreadnought.” She smiled at him. “Thank the goddess you made it. It’s downright ugly in there!”

Miss Pendennis looked between Emily and Stanton. She scratched the back of her head, cleared her throat.

“Yes. Well. I’ll just go back in, then.” She looked at Emily. “As long as you’re … all right?”