The Spirit Lens (14 page)

The name quickly erased my shock. My valet had spoken of a newly deceased waiting woman.

“Verger, is it true that a corrupt corpus lies in your deadhouse alongside my wife?”

“Indeed not,” said the verger, his back stiff and his eyes clearing. “That is, a corrupted body lies in the house, but we provide separate accommodation for the unsanctified. No harm shall come to your lamented lady.”

“I’ll not have it. Corrupt dead are to the Souleater’s minions as honey to flies. Rid this house of the unsanctified, or I shall carry my wife to the Temple Major in my arms. The tetrarchs will strip you of your office. You’ll be washing bodies and scrubbing floors.”

“Come, come, good lord . . .”

Dante had been right to press for a quick viewing. Saints grant, this uproar might cover his departure. There was no outside exit from the Chamber of the Dead.

Those hopes died quickly. The verger swept his arms toward the doorway. “Let us set your mind at rest. You’ll see that every care has been taken. Grief must not spur haste.”

As the conte stepped out, mumbling sentiments to the effect that proximity less than the moon’s distance would be too close, Rinaldo laid a hand on my shoulder. “Pardon this unfortunate interruption, Sonjeur de Duplais,” he whispered. “Were it anyone but a man who’s lost his wife of nine-and-forty years, I’d send him packing. In any case, your father’s reading seemed dreadfully confused. Come back another time, and we’ll try again.”

A slender, sharp-featured young man in adept’s robes lit the passage with a jeweled lamp. My blessing words trailed after the verger, as he, the conte, and the adept swept out. I scooped up my tessila and spall and hurried after, willing Dante to be up the stairs and out of the deadhouse before the conte reached the lower chamber. We must not have our interest—or our confederacy—exposed.

“Adept Jacard, would you please tend the stairway lamps?” asked Verger Rinaldo, gesturing the conte to wait before descending into the dark. As I held quiet at the end of the passage, the nimble young man used the verger’s long-handled brass taper to light a good third of the hanging lamps over the downward stair.
Blast!
No one would pass beneath them unseen.

Cursing Dante for leaving the entry door unlatched, I climbed the upward stair. I was nearing the main level when a clamor broke out both from above and below me. Conte Bianci shouted unintelligibly from below, while from the direction of the foyer, a ferocious baritone intoned, “Portier de Duplais, show yourself, you talentless maggot!”

I raced upward, unable to mistake Dante’s resonant tones. A handful of gentlemen cowered in front of the entry doors.

The mage stood in the center of the foyer, his staff belching flames and a thundering noise that rattled the hanging lamps and set them swaying, chains and pendants jangling as in a whirlwind. “Where is my
servant
?” he bellowed.

As my mouth opened and closed soundlessly, the mumbling conte boiled up the stair behind me. “Burn that cursed mule tonight, Verger!”

As if propelled forward by the nobleman’s wrath, I stumbled into the foyer, straight into Dante’s glare. “There you are, insect!”

The conte’s party halted at my back. “What in the infernal depths—?”

“Did I give you permission to pursue your own activities, apprentice?” Dante’s visage pulsed the purpled black of a stormy sunset. “Floors un-swept. Materials scattered. Accounts incomplete. Never . . .
never
. . . do you take it upon yourself to decide when to come or go. Return to my chambers and finish your work or I’ll encase your feet in lead before the next sunrise.”

He reversed direction and waved his flaming staff at the oaken entry doors. One of them flew open, crashing against the wall as if a battering ram had struck it. At least ten nearby lamps smashed into the tiled floor, sending the cringing gentlemen attendants scurrying to Conte Bianci’s side. The sharp features of Bianci’s adept glazed with awe. Mine likely did, as well.

As the mage swept into the thorny garden, one scheme, then another, careened through my head. For better or worse, I was left with the span of a moment to set my course. I had best trust my original plan.

I folded my arms around myself and set my shoulders shivering. “Witness, great lord, holy verger, good gentlemen,” I said with appropriately trembling voice, “that I resign my commission as Master Dante’s apprentice as of this hour. Should I fail to survive the night, I beg you invoke the Camarilla to avenge this affront.”

As the white flames vanished beyond the hedges, I tucked my chin into my chest and fled, leaving the gentlemen attendants jabbering like magpies and young Adept Jacard laughing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

12 QAT 49 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

O
n the next morning, Lord Ilario perched atop a waist-high wall in a private courtyard, feet dangling in the yellow wall fllowers. His mouth gaped with a horror grown throughout my recounting of the deadhouse venture.

“Honestly, lord chevalier, the venture itself could not have worked out better,” I said, attempting to ease his concern before he toppled backward into the fishpond. “Damoselle Maura placated Dante by assuring him that she would have me fetch his books from Seravain until she could assign him a new assistant. Then she offered me the position as your secretary, as we’ve planned all along.”

My appreciation for the lady had increased yet again after I had burst in upon her the previous night, begging her to release me from Dante’s service. I had not needed to feign awe at his magics, and my outrage at Ophelie’s fate had sufficed for trembling.

“But, Portier, encased in lead!” He stretched his long legs straight out and gawked at his elegant boots. “You would be crippled forever! Well, I suppose you might drag your feet one by one, unless”—a sharp inhale signaled a new imagining—“he might encase them both in one block. You would have to be hauled about in a barrow!”

“He never would have done it, lord,” I said, halfway between exasperation and amusement. “Dante wanted to make Conte Bianci’s men forget that he had not entered through the outer door. The story of his outburst has spread throughout the palace and everyone is terrified and in awe of his magic. Just as we wish.”

Certainly my spirit yet stung with the memory of Dante’s enchantment. The thrill of power had raged through the deadhouse foyer like untamed lightning, filling the emptiness that gaped inside me as the ocean fills a sea cave.

“Truly, he did well. I’ve been freed to serve you, yet I’ve a perfect excuse to come and go in his chambers.”

“Bless the Saints Awaiting, I did not see the poor girl.” Ilario shuddered dramatically. “I would surely dream of it over and again.”

After a sleepless night hearkening to Ophelie’s pleas for vengeance, I could not argue. “Dante needs the weapon that killed her. But I’ve no idea what might have been done with it and no excuse to inquire. You do understand the questions surrounding the girl’s death, Chevalier?”

“Certainly I understand,” he said, springing from the wall as gracefully as a dancer. “I have a mind, after all, Portier.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Indeed you did. I’m not wholly unaware of what’s said. No one credits that a gentleman who understands fashion and proper manners and refuses to dwell on upsetting matters in the presence of ladies can also be quite serious and scholarly.” He dabbed at his hands and dusted the grit from his white hose with a lace kerchief, before tucking it into his sleeve. “The orchard, you say? I suggest that if we wish to know about the weapon, we speak to Audric de Neville. Would the present moment suit, or must you hurry off to attend to my trivial concerns or your own more sober ones?”

He strutted across the flower-filled yard toward an open gate without waiting for my answer, waving one hand as if he were an orator in the public forum. “I believe I shall enjoy having a private secretary. I have decided to host an exposition. How I love that word!
Exposition
. It sounds delightfully modern and studious. I daresay such a display shall reverse this canard that has been spread about my sobriety. You shall make all the arrangements. . . .”

“But we’ve more pressing—?” As he vanished into the larger garden beyond the gate, my thoughts gummed like feathers in pine sap. I hurried after him.

Only after we had traversed the flower garden, innumerable courtyards and corridors, three kitchens and a vast kitchen garden, and descended a short slope toward a forested bend of the great palace wall did Ilario’s long legs slow enough to allow me to ask who was Audric de Neville. Yet by then the pungent scents of lemon and almond blossoms rising from ordered ranks of trees left the question unnecessary. A house knight had found Ophelie dead in an orchard.

The red-liveried chevalier was sleeping, back against the sun-drenched wall, jaw dropped in the way of the very old. His perfectly shined black boots stuck out in front of him as if he’d folded in the middle and sat straight down from standing guard. A pink almond blossom petal had settled on his white hair.

“He’s the only knight in Castelle Escalon posted in an orchard,” Ilario confided. “A noble spirit and proper chevalier. Philippe assigned him to guard this corner of the wall for as long as he chooses to serve. Lamentably, his attention doesn’t last so long as it once did.”

Ilario waved me forward and propped his knee on an empty crate left among the unbloomed pomegranate trees.

“Divine grace, Chevalier Audric,” I said as I crossed the grassy strip paralleling the wall.

The old knight jerked and snorted and struggled to his feet, watery yellow eyes blinking rapidly. “Who comes?”

I exposed my hand and bowed. “Portier de Duplais. I’ve come about the dead girl found here. The mule.”

“Demon hand! Souleater’s servant!” His rapier was in hand with a speed entirely unlikely for a man his age, and his face wore the wrath of the Pantokrator casting out Dimios at the founding of the world. “I’ll see you dead—I’ll—Ah!”

Breathing hard as if he’d run the length and breadth of his orchard post, the old man choked back the sentiments that sudden waking had startled out of him.

“I am the girl’s friend,” I said, “her mourner, rather. My employer, a kindly man horrified by this tale, has ordered me to identify the girl and contact her family.”

“Don’t know aught. How could I? Found her dead.” His hands trembled so violently, his blade hummed. As the emotion trying to escape him so belied this mumbled answer, I did not believe him in the least.

“We must tell her family how she died, what weapon finished her, so they might speed her way through Ixtador’s gates.” My bare hand stilled his blade. “ ’Twill be a mercy to all. Tell us, Chevalier.”

As quickly as he’d drawn his weapon, the old man sagged to his knees. Sword dropped to the emerald grass, he crossed his arms and gripped his shoulders as if to keep his heart from flying out of his breast. “She begged me. Soon as she found the wall too steep to climb. Wild, she was. Could scarce speak and most of it babbling nonsense. But she shed no tears. Not a one. I’m damned forever to have done it, though she promised to carry word to the saints to defend me.”

“Damned? But
you
didn’t—” I shook off a grotesque image of the old man leeching her. It wasn’t leeching he spoke of. “You found her
alive
. What did she tell you?”

“Claimed a devil woman bled her. Claimed the two forced her to terrible sin. To treason and murder. To the betrayal of a good man. Yet she’d no strength to save herself. She pawed at me. Tore at me. Begged on her knees and pressed the tip to her breast. Mad, as if the Souleater himself had gnawed her reason. I couldna refuse her. Do ye see that? I had to save her.”

Dread truth stared me in the face yet again, as Audric uncrossed his arms and lifted his rapier on open palms.

Suicide. The old chevalier’s rapier might have pierced her breast, but the Pantokrator, the all-seeing Judge, would know she had driven him to it. What sin could frighten her more than traversing the Veil corrupt—a mule who had sought her own death? Ixtador’s gates would be barred to her.

I swallowed bile and accusation. “A name, Chevalier. In all this, did she speak a name?”

“Only near the end. She held my hand and spake it over and over in the midst of her weeping, so’s I didn’t know what to make of it.
Michel . . . captured . . . betrayed . . . Altevierre . . . save me . . .
Over and over.
Michel . . . captured . . . betrayed . . . Altevierre . . . save me . . . Michel . .
.”

Michel de Vernase . . . Our first word of Philippe’s lost investigator. My blood raced.

Half-crazed with shame and guilt too long suppressed, the old knight poured out his story. It illumined little. He could provide no clue to assassination plots; no hint as to Michel de Vernase’s fate; no identification of Ophelie’s captors beyond the
devil woman
and the vague
two
; no idea what the word
Altevierre
referred to, and yes, it might have been something other, but his hearing was so cursed feeble. . . .

The Guard Royale had not questioned the bloodied poniard Audric had left with the girl as if she’d fallen on it. Audric had told no one that he’d found Ophelie living. The deception had likely saved his life.

We plied the old knight with valerian tea from the opaline flask Ilario carried for his digestion. Now that the boil of his shame had been lanced, Audric vowed to perpetuate his silence. To soothe his conscience, I suggested he sanctify a tessila for the mysterious girl. “If she sought to avoid forced sin, then perhaps her soul was not entirely expended in unholy magic. Though you’re not blood kin, your deed, for good or ill, has surely bound you to her fate.”

Audric, eased by that consideration or the valerian or both, insisted on remaining at his post.

I was near dancing with urgency. We were closing on information of importance. Michel de Vernase had vanished nigh a year ago and nothing had been heard of him, so Philippe had told me. No sightings. No demands. Everything had pointed to his death. And Ophelie had come to Audric from
inside
the castle walls, as Dante had surmised.