The Queen's Necklace (36 page)

“Now that you
are
here, perhaps you will tell me something of my grandson. He is a poor correspondent, as perhaps you know, and his letters to me are extremely sketchy.”

Trefallon took out a delicate cambric handkerchief and carefully polished his jeweled eyeglass. Examining the result, apparently dissatisfied, he blew off an almost invisible speck of dust. There was something he was very much inclined to say, but a gentlemanly restraint urged him not to say it.

At last, he cleared his throat. “I believe there is something we should establish at the outset. Three years ago, you asked if I might find it convenient to write to you here from time to time, in order to assure you of Will's well-being. This trifling favor I was pleased to grant you, as I might have done the same for any female relation of
any
of my friends. However—” He abandoned his show of diffidence and looked her straight in the eye. “However, I must make it very clear to you, Lady Krogan, that I am not and never shall be one of your spies.”

The dowager glared at him. “Spies, Mr. Trefallon? You seem to have mistaken me for somebody else. The days when I resided in the courts of power are long past. That being so, what reason could I possibly have for the employment of
spies
?”

“I beg your pardon if the term offends you.” Blaise suffered her displeasure with apparent composure. “But for all that, it is widely acknowledged that considering your family history, considering your patronage of half the shady characters on the continent, considering your—we will call them hobbies, for lack of a better word—it is hardly possible that you would live here unmolested, were it not for the fact that you possess information likely to prove damaging to half the royal houses in existence.”

Lady Krogan smiled. Perhaps she appreciated the fact he could not be intimidated, or perhaps by doing so she meant to disarm him. He was not disarmed. She had been known, in her time, as a woman who used both her beauty and her wit as potent weapons—even at her advanced age, he suspected, they were still sharp enough to cut. “Mr. Trefallon, I will confide in you. I hope you are suitably flattered, because generally speaking I am not of a confiding disposition.”

The dowager reached out, pulled a tall embroidery stand up to her chair, took out a needle, and began to thread it. “I have led a long and a very interesting life. Do not felicitate me. An interesting life is not always to be envied. As a young girl, I had the misfortune to see
a great many members of my family imprisoned or executed. Indeed, on my sixteenth birthday, I was arrested myself on charges so vague and mysterious I do not understand them even now. I spent the next two years in the vilest hole of a prison you can possibly imagine, awaiting my trial. But I happened—and this was entirely by chance—to know something that a certain powerful person wished to keep secret. Had I ever come to trial, I would have told what I knew. I could hardly do otherwise, being under oath. Because of this, I never
did
come to trial, and my arrest eventually became an embarrassment to those who had arranged it. When public opinion finally shifted, when the persecution of my family came to an end, I was the very first one to be released from prison. This entire experience, as you may imagine, taught me a valuable lesson: It is far better to know things, even if that knowledge should prove to be dangerous, than to live in ignorance.”

The silver needle flickered in her hand. “You mentioned, a moment ago, my hobbies. I can assure you they do not include gratuitous interference in other people's lives. Equally, I am determined that others shall not interfere in
my
life, nor in the lives of my children or grandchildren. So I prepare myself to discourage interference.” She smiled at him fiercely over her embroidery. “Let us just say—I do have my little ways of learning things, and I contrive to remain tolerably well informed for an elderly widow who spends ten months out of every year in an obscure watering place principally inhabited by fops and invalids!

“But allowing that you are not to be regarded in the same light as some of my other sources of information—what then, Mr. Trefallon?”

Blaise sat thoughtfully twirling his eyeglass at the end of its satin ribbon. “Lady Krogan, not even to oblige you, not even to set your mind at rest, would I ever tell you anything that Will said to me in confidence. And naturally I feel a very similar reluctance to speak to
you of matters that Wilrowan has not even chosen to confide to
me
, his closest friend.”

The silver needle ceased to move; Lady Krogan leaned forward in her chair. “Well, perhaps I can make it easier for you to ignore your—really quite admirable—scruples. What can you tell me about Wilobie Culpepper?”

Trefallon dropped his eyeglass. “You know about Culpepper? But that—” Recovering swiftly from his surprise, he laughed and shook his head. “Lady Krogan, that is just nothing. It was a hoax of Will's when we were students. He set out to establish a false identity, to see how many people he might fool. A great many people
were
fooled, but once he realized his joke had succeeded, he typically lost interest and very soon abandoned it.”

“And what if I told you that Mr. Culpepper had been recalled from obscurity, that he is, at this time, quite active in and around the city of Hawkesbridge? What would you say to that, Mr. Trefallon?”

Blaise took up his jeweled eyeglass, began to play with it again. “I would say that your information is better than my own. And that there is probably very little I could tell you about Will—or about Willie Culpepper—that you don't know already.”

Lady Krogan took up her needle and set several more stitches. “That is entirely likely. Yet I think the information I have may be seriously flawed, coming as it does from those not intimately acquainted with my grandson. I had hoped that you might help me to put a more accurate interpretation on things that I already know.”

Abruptly, Blaise abandoned all attempts at concealment. They seemed, in any case, to be remarkably futile. “I've had an idea for a long time that there was something seriously amiss with Will. Some secret grief, some sickness or trouble—which makes him do reckless things, which makes him court his own destruction. But in the last few months I've seen him behave in a way that is far beyond anything I had ever seen before.”

Rising from his seat, Trefallon began to pace the floor. “He attends but rarely to his duties at the Volary—how Dionee continues to tolerate this, I really don't know—and he seems to spend at least twenty hours a day in the very worst company possible. Naturally, I fear for his health, since he rarely sleeps, but it's much worse than that.”

Lady Krogan tied off her thread in a knot, then picked up a pair of silver scissors and snipped it off. “In what way worse?”

“Will's principle failings have always been his love of danger and an almost insatiable sexual appetite. But as for any other vices: he has always practiced them in strictest moderation or not at all. Yet, in the fortnight before I quit Hawkesbridge, he would have gambled away a fortune had the luck not remained so remarkably even, and though I have known him from a boy I have never seen him consume such quantities of wine and spirits as he has recently. Moreover, he frequents opium dens and—and worse places besides. And what is particularly inexplicable, he's been taking Nick Brakeburn with him, on these expeditions into the stews.” Blaise threw himself down in a chair by the fireplace. “Whatever anyone might say about Will, he has never been a—a corrupter of youth, or a despoiler of maidens, and so I consider his recent behavior completely unlike him.”

In the act of measuring out a new length of silk thread, Lady Krogan paused. “I admit what you tell me is most disquieting. Well, Mr. Trefallon, is there anything more?”

“Surely all this is more than enough. And the timing, of course, is so particularly bad. Because why would Will choose to behave so disgracefully, now of all times?”

Lady Krogan leaned forward over her needlework. “You speak as though this were a time of particular significance.”

“It is partly because Will has invited Lili to visit him; she is supposed to arrive in about a month. He is looking forward to her visit with such painful intensity—and yet at the same time dreading
it—I have an idea he intends something more than an ordinary visit. But I ask you, what will Lili think—and say and do—when she arrives in Hawkesbridge only to find her young cousin absolutely
wallowing
in dissipation, and learns that Will is the one who is leading him astray?”

“That is a problem indeed,” the Dowager admitted.

“But there is more. And if you have not heard this already—though I expect you have—let me be the first to felicitate you.” Blaise stood up, made a quick bow, and resumed his seat. “It has recently been announced that the queen is in an interesting condition. And I simply don't understand why Will should go out of his way to distress Dionee at a time like this!”

The dowager sat frowning down at the emerging pattern on her embroidery frame. “And
is
my step-granddaughter distressed?”

“She is distressed about something. I couldn't positively say that Wilrowan is the cause. And while I understand that she might well grow faint and ill, on account of her condition, is it natural she should also be so nervous and ill-tempered?”

The dowager shook her head. “Not so soon. No, not so soon.” One white hand strayed to the ambergris necklace at her throat. She passed the dark, rose-cut beads slowly between her fingers as she sat considering the facts for several minutes. “But putting aside our concern for Dionee, to what—if anything—do you ascribe Wilrowan's remarkable behavior?”

“I think that it has something to do with Lili. From things he has said, things he has let slip, I think Will has recently learned something that has—broken his heart, broken his spirit—” Trefallon shrugged. “I don't know what it has done, but it has certainly changed him.”

“Do you think that Lilliana has taken a lover?”

“No.” Blaise shook his head emphatically. “And pardon me, Lady Krogan, but I think you are playing with me. I do
not
think that Lili
has taken a lover—and neither do you. If that were the case and Will suspected it, Wilrowan would simply have called the fellow out—put a bullet through him, cut him to pieces—and that would be an end to it.”

“But supposing,” said Wilrowan's grandmother, “my grandson did not know, or was not certain, who Lili's lover might be?”

Trefallon shook his head again. “If he did not know, or was not certain, that would hardly prevent him from murdering half the young men of her acquaintance. As no such slaughter has occurred, I think we can safely acquit Lilliana of adultery.”

“And yet you still think my grandson suffers from a broken heart?” the dowager persisted.

“I do. It may be however, that he was wounded long ago, and this recent injury, whatever it is, has only started the bleeding again.”

The old woman sat quietly over her work for several minutes, setting stitch after stitch, apparently deep in thought. “Well, Mr. Trefallon,” she said at last. “I think you are right. It has always seemed to me that Will
does
care for Lilliana, more than he admits, and that there was something or someone coming between them. Out of respect for his feelings, I thought it best not to inquire too closely, but it may be time to discard that policy.”

Lady Krogan gave Trefallon one of her sharp, dangerous smiles. “It might be to my grandson's advantage, for instance, if I were to learn just how Lilliana spends her time at Brakeburn—particularly during the long weeks and months between Wilrowan's visits.”

Hawkesbridge, Mountfalcon
—
10 Boréal, 6538

O
ne Mr. Silas Gant kept a discreet gaming-house down by the River Zule. In three luxurious rooms, it was possible to find games of chance in progress at any time of the day or night—possible, when the fever burned very hot, to find gentlemen in satin coats and powdered wigs, or in the raffish togs of the “palace” set, thoroughly engrossed in the mysteries of Hazard, Faro, and Deep Basset, for twenty or even thirty hours at a sitting.

But to enter these rooms, which were located at the top of the house, it was necessary to ascend many long flights of ill-lit stairs, climbing past a fencing school and an academy of music along the way, to pass muster with the keen-eyed lookout loitering on a landing below, and to slip a coin into the calloused palm of the daunting individual who answered the door at the top.

The visitor seeking admittance, on this particular day, was a
very
young gentleman in the scarlet uniform of the City Guard. But the lookout suffered him to pass without demure, and the hulking porter was more than willing to accept his offering of silver. At length, the young officer was ushered into a very bright room entirely draped in crimson satin, with crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

Large as it was, the chamber was still very crowded, and the visitor was several minutes locating his quarry—slumped in a wing-chair with a much-battered hat drawn over his eyes, either sodden with drink, or dozing after a long spell at the tables.

With a determined stride, the youth crossed the room. He bent low to speak in the sleeper's ear. “Captain Blackheart! Sir—if you please!” Will yawned and stretched, pushed back the old black hat, and stared muzzily up at a half-familiar face. “Captain Blackheart, I don't know if you remember me, but—”

“Young Dagget, isn't it?” said Will with another yawn. “It
is
still Corporal Dagget?”

“Yes, sir. Thanks to your forbearance it is. Sir, I have something to report but—if you don't mind my asking, are you drunk or merely exhausted?”

“A little of both, I think,” said Will, rubbing his eyes. He had come straight to Gant's place after a flying visit to one of the mining towns, following up what now appeared to be a false clue as to the whereabouts of the Chaos Machine. “Something to re—Shades of Darkness! Have you found the Wryneck? Then wait just a moment.”