The Spirit Lens (51 page)

I straightened my doublet and set out for the terrace, where the Contessa Ruggiere waited beneath the walnut tree.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

9 CINQ 16 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

“
D
ivine grace shine upon thee and thy ancestors, my lady,” I said, bowing deeply and exposing my hand. “I am Portier de Duplais. My sincerest apologies for this intrusion.”

“You may choke on your apologies, sonjeur.” The contessa exposed her left hand in passing as she returned the king’s warrant to me. Voice and glare mimed flint and steel as Dante joined us under the walnut tree, Jacard ten steps away. “Only a cretin would believe you and your brethren have come merely to
locate Conte Ruggiere
. Not after a year. Not with an entire gardia camped round our home, choosing who will or will not enter our gates.”

I had not expected the contessa to be welcoming, but neither did I expect her to so clearly reflect the ferocity of her bandit ancestry. Cazar nobles held to clannish customs, so I had read, and kept their women . . . tame.

“As my message stated, we have come at the king’s behest to gather information. Master Dante, a mage of Queen Eugenie’s household, and his assistant, Adept Jacard”—I extended a hand toward each—“must necessarily examine your house and grounds. They will not interview your children, but will leave that to me . . . in your presence, as you have requested. If you would like to inform your children of these arrangements . . .”

“Our servants will see to that.”

“Lady—”

“Let me make this clear to you, sir. My husband has ever been Philippe de Savin-Journia’s friend, devoted subject, and loyal servant. I will not help you or your king brand him a traitor, even if it might soothe Philippe’s guilt at imprisoning poor, confused Eugenie. And if you make the least attempt to taint my children with this folly, or use this mage to seduce any of us into some confessional, your blood will feed our grapes for next year’s harvest.”

It had not escaped my notice that the sylphlike contessa wore a slim leather belt around her layered draperies of crinkled white gauze, nor that a sheathed zahkri hung from that belt. The angled Fassid knife was as suitable for gutting an enemy as for gouging a furrow in stony ground or harvesting a cluster of grapes. Nor had I failed to note that the contrast of the white garments with the lady’s dusky skin, dark eyes, and dark hair—not black but deepest brown, burnished with copper—was as breathtak ing as the view from her hilltop home. Wars had been fought over less treasure than Madeleine de Cazar y Vernase-Ruggiere.

Dante stepped forward, formidable in his shrouded mystery. He extended his hand—his healthy left—palm up, asking for a trust bond, an obsolete custom foreswearing use of magical coercion. “I swear to truth, lady. Will you?”

She did not quail at his forbidding appearance or at the unusual request, delivered as it was without shred of warmth or emotion, but readily laid her slender hand atop his wide, rough one. “That you would ask tells me that lies fester in your heart,” she said. “No finding of yours will alter my beliefs.”

Startled at Dante’s gesture, it took me a moment to register the surge of enchantment at the moment of their touch. By their very nature, trust bonds rarely involved magic, and never of a quality that left an
observer’s
fingers tingling. Yet I had felt this before, whenever Dante took the measure of something new—be it human, stone, or magical spyglass.

The contessa did not seem to notice. Her expression was all contempt as Dante departed the terrace in a swirl of robes, Jacard trailing behind. The lady’s fearless candor gave me heart in a way. I felt no need to soften what I’d come to say. She needed to comprehend the danger she faced.

“Madame, please believe that concern for the safety of one of your own children has brought me here. Your daughter Lianelle lives in mortal danger.”

“Lianelle? At school? What danger?” Her guards fell away instantly, to reveal a mother’s dismay.

“Reliable evidence has convinced me that the Conte Ruggiere has allied himself with a conspiracy of sorcerers who threaten to renew the Blood Wars. However impossible this alliance seems, you have already witnessed a measure of its gravity. Its merest suggestion has persuaded King Philippe, who staunchly refuses to believe his friend a betrayer, to send these soldiers to detain and question him. I believe your husband delved into this conspiracy in pursuit of knowledge and became enamored of immense and unholy magic.”

I ordered my phrases particularly, and observed her expression as I spoke. Curiously, it was not the mention of conspiracy, war, danger, betrayal, or even the king that transformed her yet again. It was instead the words
unholy magic
that caused her eyes to darken and her lips to compress hard enough to stifle an oath.

I held that recognition close, to use when the time seemed right. “Your dilemma, lady, is as difficult as the king’s.”

“What dilemma? What choice am I given?” Her zahkri could be no better honed than her scorn.

“Last year, near the time of the assassination attempt on the king, your younger daughter learned a terrible secret. These conspirators, who have left a trail of torture and murder across this kingdom, have every cause to silence her. One student from Seravain already lies dead, as does her family. If Michel de Vernase is innocent, then your daughter lives only at a villain’s whim. In order to protect her, we must discover what your husband learned of this plot before he vanished. On the other hand, if the conte works in concert with these people, then only his care for Lianelle keeps her safe—and you, of all people, must judge if that is enough. I have not come here seeking confirmation of your husband’s guilt, but evidence that can lead us to the truth. I ask you, in all sincerity, to assist me.”

Her lips parted, but, for a moment, no sound emerged.

I gestured to a wrought-iron bench. “Shall we sit?”

She shook her head. “We walk. I cannot take tea and chat about high treason and my child’s danger as if they were Pollamai’s new musicale. Explain to me what sorcerer could have lured my husband, who has deemed every collared mage either fool or fraud, to endanger his child and conspire against a friend he pledged to die for.” She struck out across the terrace, and I hurried after. Only when we left the paving for a well-worn footpath did I notice she wore no shoes.

The contessa’s every word rang like steel on bronze. Where was the weakness, the bruise I could pressure to break through her armor, the keystone to remove that the structure of her belief would fall open to me? Families were not impregnable fortresses, but human constructs riddled with grievance and secrets. Perhaps I’d caught a hint of one already—sorcery.

“I have no idea who did the luring,” I said. “Perhaps this unholy alliance grew out of some advance on the conte’s own part. Best we—”

“You think Michel approached a sorcerer to do what . . . work a spell to give him more than this?” She waved at the glorious prospect. “To give him fairer, cleverer children than these he dotes on, or a younger wife to dance with? Or do you suppose it was the hunger for greatness, the driver of all men, that urged him to make his life forfeit and his family outcast?”

This last sounded like old argument, not prompted by my presence. Perhaps Michel’s ambition was the bruise on this family’s body.

The path descended into a red-painted pergola, twined with blooming roses. “I would rather learn than speculate, Contessa, and I needs must learn one step at a time. Let me begin simply. When was the last time you saw your husband?”

She strolled a few steps, riffling the last year’s leaves with her toes, her arms folded tightly. “On the thirty-second day of Siece last, Michel received a letter from Lianelle, a letter he claimed private, though what business could be so private a child’s mother could not see? Within the hour he rode out without naming his destination or estimating his return. I’ve not seen him since.”

A bitter, angry parting, I judged, leaving resentments so deep that faith, fear, and anguish had not vanquished them after almost a year. The letter would have been Lianelle’s report that Ophelie had obtained the name Michel sought—
the place where it all began
. Eltevire.

“What does your daughter say of this letter and the circumstances that led to it?”

“She’s told me nothing, sonjeur. She does not write. She refuses to come home, as she knows I would not permit her to go back to that place. My daughter is . . . uncompromising.” The contessa’s odd display of conjoined exasperation and pride struck me as a marvel. My own parents had reacted quite differently to bald defiance.

“So, tell me your theory, lady. Surely in all these months you have put together some chain of events to explain your husband’s disappearance.”

She peered at me through leafy shadows, curious, as if of all questions in the world, she had not expected that one. “I’ve given it thought,” she said. “But I’ve no supporting evidence a royal investigator would approve.”

“My mind is ever open to change.”

She dipped her head. “I know Michel was investigating the attempt on Philippe’s life. I saw little of him in those two months. That was nothing extraordinary. We chose to raise our children in the countryside rather than in Merona. Thus his duties often kept him away. But for all these years, he has written faithfully—to me and to one of the children in turn almost every day. Rarely did he write of business. He was a diplomat, negotiating border agreements, modifications to treaties, property encroachments, agreements on trade, ports, and marriages, all manner of things, much of it private. This case was no different. But the world is filled with interesting topics, especially for a mind like his.” And hers, I thought, and those of three talented children.

We emerged from the pergola into a grassy bowl dotted with willows. Old stone walls followed the contours of the hillside, harboring rock roses, yellow flax, and stonecrop. A small lake, afloat with ducks and swans, graced the heart of the meadow. Lady Madeleine paused and inhaled deeply, like a prisoner newly released, then continued on the path of brown earth and wood chips that wound down to the lake. I followed. Silent. Listening.

“From the day he took on this task for Philippe, Michel’s letters changed in character,” said the lady after we’d hiked twenty or thirty metres. “You would say he became secretive. I would say he was consumed, preoccupied. His mind had engaged with something extraordinary—something that intrigued as well as absorbed. My husband does nothing by halves. Since the evening he rode out—”

“Mama! Don’t speak to him!” A young man burst from the end of the pergola and cut straight down the hillside, a blur of gangling limbs, red-brown hair, and a voice not yet certain of its timbre. He slid to a breathless halt three metres from us, rapier in one hand, poniard in the other. “Greville de Grouenn says he’s but a sniveling poor relation of the king who spreads lies about Papa to gain royal favor. He’s brought a
mage
to spy on us.”

The youth, a reflection of his mother’s beauty on a frame that promised a warrior’s stature, quivered in all the righteous fury of fifteen summers.

“Put away your weapons, Ambrose, and behave as a civilized man. Sonjeur de Duplais is here at your goodfather’s behest, inquiring into your father’s fate. We shall judge his motives for ourselves, not heed soldiers’ gossip.” The lady glanced back to me, her brows raised, and the sunlight probing her eyes to reveal a hint of lavender in their depths. “Are you indeed Philippe’s kinsman? You don’t resemble him.”

“Fifteenth cousin. Scrawny, yes, and poor, as librarians are wont to be, but I snivel only rarely. My beliefs have granted me no favor with my liege.” I swiveled crisply and bowed to the flustered youth as his rapier wavered between sheath and ready. “Divine grace, young sir.”

“You’re the librarian from Seravain,” said the lady, some understanding awaked in her mind. Perhaps I’d been correct in my guess that her husband had acted as Philippe’s eyes on me these several years. “So you
do
know Lianelle.”

“Indeed, my lady. Three years I lived subject to your daughter’s intellectual whims and frank assessments.”

Amusement glanced across the contessa’s sorrows like a beam of sunlight on storm water.

Young Ambrose scowled, fiercer than ever. “Mama, how can you tolerate him? He’s persuaded the king that Papa’s a
traitor
. All these months we’ve waited for someone to give a rat’s ear that Papa’s gone missing, and all we’ve got for it is house arrest and this liar, worming scraps from you to twist into a hangman’s noose. He likely wants Montclaire for himself. I’ll see him—”

“Ambrose!” snapped the contessa. “Your insults demean
me
, not Sonjeur de Duplais. Heed my word: Take yourself away from here. Now!”

The lad glared at his mother in disbelief. But he slammed his weapons into enfolding leather and raced up the path. Only then did I notice a young woman standing at the mouth of the pergola, watching this display. At such a distance I could judge naught but an unremarkable stature and a fairer complexion than the contessa or her son. Yet the rare shade of indigo that colored her skirt hinted she was no servant.

“Though I may reprimand my son, I will not apologize for him,” said Lady Madeleine, following the direction of my gaze. “He but expresses the frustration we’ve felt these months. Ambrose was squired to an honorable knight, but gave up his place to companion Anne and me. Yet every morn I must apply a mighty tether of duty and guilt to prevent his setting out to search for his father on his own. For my elder daughter, the ordeal has perhaps been worse. Waiting is the slimmest of stilettos, Sonjeur de Duplais, tormenting with wounds that cannot be seen, save in the blood that flows after.”

“Indeed so, my lady.” So the watcher at the top of the hill was Damoselle Anne, at seventeen the eldest of Michel de Vernase’s children, a young woman who could argue the movement of the planets with her father in three languages at once, according to the admiring Edmond de Roble. “I am not alone in sympathy for these months you have endured. All the more reason to seek the truth, be it good or ill.”