The Stranger at the Wedding Read online

  Unhappiness at seeing how Spenson kept glancing over at Esmin Earthwygg? Kyra wondered. Or unhappiness with the idea of marriage at all? Particularly, she thought, to a blocky merchant nearly twice her age whose red suit and lace neck cloth made him look like a bull in hair ribbons.

  “And now I’ve gotten wine on my dress.” Kyra straightened up. “No, I’ll be all right,” she added as Alix showed signs of getting up to help her.

  Their father, suspicion gleaming in his eye, added gruffly, “Keep your seat, miss; your sister will do well enough. That’s why we’ve servants.”

  Kyra’s curtsy took in the entire table. “If you will excuse me, Mother, Father, Master Spenson...”

  The elder Spenson and the Bishop were too deep in their increasingly heated discussion of the cost of the strict-form wedding ceremony and the possible dark dealings between the Prophets and traders in silk and gems to take note of her departure. Spenson, who in her opinion hardly resembled the fearless adventurer his father fondly painted, bowed to her as she left.

  Once out of the dining room, Kyra did not ascend the stairs to the bedrooms. Instead, and with the silent swiftness they all learned in the Citadel of Wizards, she gathered her black and primrose skirts in her hands and hurried down the long flight into the lamplit well of the hall.

  As she passed through the hall toward the inconspicuous archway beneath the gallery at its rear, she deepened her concentration, probing with the hyperacute senses of wizardry at the voices beyond the closed door of the kitchen wing. She heard Imper Joblin, the cook, shouting instructions to the scullions about preparing the delicate creams and fruit tarts to be served at tomorrow’s feast: “Algeron, I’ve told you a dozen times the sugar roses on top of the cake are to be pink!” The voices of the footmen came dimly from the drying room, where they and the housemaids had all been pressed into service frenziedly weaving festal garlands, waiting for the last guests to leave so they could bring in the gardenias for the night and hang the new banners on the walls and galleries to impress tomorrow’s guests. She heard Merrivale the housekeeper’s soft Mellidane drawl and the muted thump-thump as a laundry maid ironed one of Alix’s fine linen chemises.

  Tomorrow, she thought again, and the dread she had felt earlier congealed once more behind her breastbone. The wedding would be tomorrow.

  From her newly gilt shrine on the wall, the Holy Widow Wortle seemed to frown disapprovingly at her, as if that virtuous champion of the status quo knew exactly what she was up to. Kyra breathed the words that would wrap about herself a gauze of illusion, words that would cause a chance maidservant, if encountered in the rear hall, to mistake her for another maid, or to have her mind on something else, or simply to assume that whatever movement she saw out of the corner of her eye must be one of the kitchen cats. Earlier that evening, up in the yellow guest room, Kyra had wrought the necessary weather-spells while waiting for the maid to come in and lace her. Now, when she opened the door at the end of the passage that led out to her mother’s garden, she smiled to see that an unseasonably thick fog, like a spilled basketful of dirty wool, had risen from the River Glidden to shroud the city.

  The narrow garden passage was where the footmen hung visitors’ cloaks. Kyra caught one at random from its peg, throwing it around her shoulders as she stepped outside.

  Though her years in the Sykerst had inured her to cold, the damp rawness of the fog took her by the throat, the smell of turned earth in the garden mingling with the ghastly harshness of the coal smoke that hung forever over the city. She had forgotten, in her years in the Citadel’s isolation, the stench of Angelshand: the sewery stink of its river and streets, the smells of wet stone, of cooking, of all the humanity packed cheek by jowl in these few square miles of territory. The salt smell of the harbor, less than a mile away, which carried startlingly on the fog, vied with the fragile scents of her mother’s sweet peas and the overpowering perfume of lilac. Wizards might be able to see in the dark, but fog was another matter; Kyra stuck close to the rear wall of the house, following it around to the arm’s-width gap between the main house and the stables, where she turned the comer to the long, cobbled yard.

  Squares of raveled apricot light showed where the kitchen windows were nearly obscured by steam heat within. Behind her, another glowing rectangle marked the tack room, where the Earthwygg and Spenson coachmen were drinking smoke-flavored tea laced with rum and trading horse talk and gossip with old Sam while he shined up his boots to drive Alix’s carriage to the wedding tomorrow. Kyra knew from a glance at her father’s daybooks that he’d rented the requisite team of white mares that had to pull the carriage of a strict-form bride. With the Spenson and Earthwygg teams—the carriages loomed like ships run aground in the fog of the cobbled yard—the stables must be crowded to capacity tonight.

  Her cloak held close around her, taking great care not to trip on the round, slippery stones, she moved along the house wall toward the wide gate in front.

  Her breath was coming fast. Weather-magic was low-level—even if they were looking for her, listening for her, the Council of Wizards would never know that she had summoned fog. The small illusions that cloaked her were likewise undetectable at a great distance, though face to face another wizard could have seen her through them.

  I swear by the power within my veins, I swear by the heart of my spirit, that I will never use the powers of magic to meddle in the affairs of humankind, neither for ill nor for that which seems to me to be good.

  As she had told Lord Mayor Spenson, she had spoken those vows six years ago, upon entering the Citadel of Wizards. If she was detected at this, the Council might very well repudiate her.

  She paused for a moment near the wide carriage gates, closing her eyes and trying forcibly to eject from her mind the thought of not being able to return to the Citadel to finish her education. Not being allowed to learn any more of the secrets the Council mages had in their keeping. Not being allowed to taste the great powers of which, in six years, she had only begun to sip.

  Angelshand was full of dog wizards, self-taught freelance mages who had refused to take the Council vows. Some of them, like the renowned Magister Magus, made a fair living from such members of the Court as were willing to risk disgrace by consulting them about love affairs and gambling talismans. Most, she knew too well, occupied small shops or cheap lodgings and eked out their livings peddling passion potions and abortifacients, luck charms and cut-rate horoscopes, half-educated, frustrated, dodging by turns their creditors and the Inquisition, from whom the Council would do nothing to protect them.

  Kyra shivered and hurried on through the gate. I just can’t let myself be caught, that’s all, she thought as she slipped out onto the flagway that circled Baynorth Square.

  Shrouded by fog, the great square lay quiet before her. From over the wall that separated the kitchen yard from that of the Wishroms’ nearly identical granite mansion, she heard a serving girl’s shrill laugh and smelled stewing meat and coffee as someone there opened a door. Out of sight in the misty darkness, a man’s voice chanted, “Meat pies, meat pies, jolly, jolly meat pies...” and, farther off, came the iron-wheeled clatter of a cab going somewhere fast. Unseen in the gloom, the bronze fountain trickled a mournful music, and from far off the droning of a hurdy-gurdy drifted like a spiral of colored smoke in the dark.

  Kyra took a deep breath. The fog was very thick now.

  Before her the high porch of the house loomed like a trading ship’s stern castle, the scents of tubbed gardenias and field lilies thick as music in the air around it. Gathering her heavy skirts, she climbed the tall steps, wet now and slippery with the moisture in the air. Her mind laid a little spell toward the house—Briory, on her way to the front door to summon the Bishop’s sedan chair, stopped by the entry of the kitchen wing to chide the laundry maid, and the chair carriers, on their way through the dense fog from the other side of the square, thought they saw the glint of a coin on the pavement and put down their chair to go back and look.<
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  The signs Kyra drew on the front steps with her forefinger shone briefly against the scrubbed marble, then settled into the fabric of the stone and brick, sinking out of sight like glowing ribbons laid on still water. It took less than five minutes, counting the faint haze of protective wards Kyra set up that would serve to keep lower-level wizards from noticing that anything had been done there.

  Then Kyra gathered her borrowed cloak about her and hurried down the steps so quickly that she tripped at the bottom and, under her voluminous petticoats, skinned her knees. Cursing, she scrambled to her feet and hurried on. Her hands were shaking.

  Supper, she thought, should be over. She paused by the yard gate and cast her mageborn senses into the house and, sure enough, heard voices in the book room. “Surely you aren’t going to let her ride with the family to the Church?” Woolmat demanded, scandalized, and Kyra knew they were speaking of her.

  “Good God, no!” her father answered. “If that’s why she showed up here...”

  “Why has she shown up here?”

  “The saints only know.”

  Muffled by fog as by a damp blanket, the chimes of St. Farinox Church struck their treble note. Ten o’clock—Kyra mentally recalculated to the older style of hours that the wizards used. The fourth hour of the night, or just about, given the difference between daylight hours and dark at this time of the year. Some duke, out of gratitude for a forgotten favor, had paid for a clock tower to be built at the Citadel of Wizards, complete with a handsome horologe to which most mages paid scant attention. It was correct, Daurannon the Handsome had once remarked, exactly twice a day, at noon and midnight, but its sound served to remind city-bred juniors of the rhythms of their homes.

  Elsewhere in the house she heard Lady Earthwygg’s voice and her mother’s, somewhat laboriously discussing the laying out of formal gardens. Esmin’s sweet little mew reached her—“Oh, Master Spenson, I did so wish to have a word with you...”—and a servant’s: “Gyvinna, get on with them shifts; we need a hand on these festerin’ flowers!”

  Ahead of her, over the wet stone and horse smells of the yard, daffodil light stained the fog and threw slick yellow gleams on the cobbles as the kitchen door was opened. A fragrance of sugared comfits, cakes, and fancy breads breathed forth. Dimly, Kyra discerned a dark, slim form hurrying across the narrow width of the cobbles toward the little doorway into the Wishroms’ kitchen yard. Alix’s voice called out softly, “Watch out for the puddles, Tellie! I’ll see you at dawn.”

  The sound of a closing door. Kyra started forward, hoping to duck around the corner of the house and back through the garden before the stablemen began hitching the Earthwyggs’ carriage team.

  She had advanced a dozen strides along the house wall when she smelled on the fog the fragile scent of lilies of the valley, whose dried petals made the pomanders scenting Alix’s clothes. She stopped, her heart lurching, and, squinting through the roils of mist, saw that Alix still stood on the kitchen porch, her arms wrapped about herself for warmth.

  With her was a man.

  Young, Kyra thought, though she was too far and the mist was too thick to make out his face clearly. The springy movement of his shoulders and back in their white blur of shirt said youth to her as he folded his arms about Alix from behind. Alix leaned her head back against his shoulder, a gesture of absolute weariness and grief, and from the concealing darkness Kyra saw the man bend his head down over her, fair hair catching the kitchen window’s suffused light. Silk petticoats rustled; then Alix made a noise in her throat, an unarticulated breath like that of an injured child who had learned that no one would pay attention to its pain.

  She whispered, “I don’t know how I could stand this without you.”

  “Alix...” The name was barely to be heard against the flesh of her shoulder.

  Alix... Kyra’s whole spirit was one jab of grief as she watched her sister turn in the man’s arms and cling to him in a desperate embrace. Oh, Alix...

  “Don’t leave me.”

  The mouths of the lovers met for one second. Then, from the direction of the front porch, came a horrible clatter and a spongy thud, followed at once by Briory’s cry, “Your grace!” and the crash as the Bishop’s chair men dropped their burden and went scrambling toward the steps.

  Inside the house everybody suddenly seemed to be shouting at once.

  Alix and her lover jerked apart, spun, and threw open the kitchen door, and Kyra took that opportunity to flee past the outflung bar of light and run with caught-up skirts and billowing cloak for the garden and its way into the house.

  The Bishop, descending to his waiting sedan chair, had slipped on the high front steps and broken his ankle.

  Chapter III

  THE DOCTOR HAD SCARECELY departed—in the wake of his grace himself, borne back to the episcopal palace on Angel’s Island and cursing his chair men with each jostle on the cobbled street—when every footman in the house went out with messages: The wedding of Blore Spenson and Miss Alix Peldyrin would not take place in the coming morning but on the one following.

  And Kyra breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

  While the doctor was with his patient in the book room, setting the broken bones and winding the swollen flesh in cold compresses brought posthaste from the kitchen, Kyra, wrapped once more in the borrowed cloak—Master Spenson’s, she determined by its materials and lack of perfume—went out to the front steps to ritually disperse the invisible signs she had drawn there. A mage with sufficient power and training by the Council could call them back, but it was the consensus among her teachers that the Church’s Magic Office had few genuinely high-powered wizards since the death of old Garm Ravenkin. This was fortunate, she thought, as she made her way once more through the foggy kitchen yard and around to the garden door, her slippers wet through now and her thick petticoats held up out of the way of her feet. A good mage could recognize the personality of a spell-mark’s maker the way most people could recognize faces.

  She replaced Master Spenson’s cloak and passed soundlessly along the little hallway, making for the kitchen quarters and the back stairs. Too many people were gathered in the hall, their voices echoing off the enormously tall ceiling. Her mother, with water dribbled all down the front of the linen apron tied incongruously over her expensive gown, was saying, “Oh, no, of course everything will keep until the day after tomorrow, dearest. All we need to do is carry it down to the ice cellar...”

  “Nonsense. Maybe people like the Brecksnifts and the Prouvets won’t notice if the flans are a little crusty or the icing’s stiff on the cake, but men who’ve been raised in the correct way of doing things will know. Merchants like Fyster Nyven will know. The members of great banking families like the Milpotts will know. Master Spenson will know.”

  “Really, Master Spenson is going to have other things on his mind on his wedding day than how fresh the cake is!”

  “I’m talking about Mayor Spenson.”

  “I can assure you, Master Peldyrin,” came the voice of Joblin the cook, “Mistress Binnie is quite correct. If everything is taken down to the ice room immediately... Algeron!” he bellowed, turning, and, framed in the amber lamplight at the end of the passage, Kyra saw the young man who had been on the kitchen steps with Alix. His white shirt, daubed here and there with triple-refined flour and stains of vanilla and milk, was unmistakable, as was his fair, shoulder-length hair. Seen clearly now, he had the appearance of a youthful angel, the more so because his gentle, dreamy face completely lacked awareness of its own beauty. He nodded obediently to the cook’s blustered commands, now and then making a suggestion, such as that the garlands of blossoms that had been in preparation all evening in the drying room ought to be moved down to the ice cellar as well.

  “Good heavens, who’s to do all this?” Gordam demanded furiously. “Bill, Lerp, and Paskus are going to be out all night taking messages to everyone we’ve invited... Sam and Trobe, too, once they’ve done getting his lordship’s horses put to—”<
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  “I’m sure Neb Wishrom will send over Heckson and Fairbody,” his wife said, always practical, naming, Kyra presumed, two of their neighbor’s footmen, and Master Peldyrin threw up his hands in annoyance at all these small machinations. The gesture affected Kyra curiously, for she knew it from her tiniest childhood—knew, too, that it was her father’s way of surrendering to her mother’s judgment without admitting that she was better able to cope with domestic matters than he.

  Beyond him, in the lighted body of the hallway, Kyra could see the little knot of departing guests: Esmin Earthwygg pouting under her mother’s irritated glare, Master Spenson helping his father into his cloak and making awkward small talk with Alix. Alix was nodding and rattling on in her usual magpie fashion, but Kyra could see her eyes follow Algeron’s straight shoulders as he crossed to the kitchen quarters.

  “You could at least have tried to catch him alone!” Lady Earthwygg snapped in an undervoice to her daughter as Briory conducted them to the outer door. “Good heavens, girl, I spent fifty crowns on that potion.” There was a stir of farewells, and Kyra, seeing her chance, slipped through to the kitchen and heard no more of what went on.

  Surrounded by Who-Me? spells, she crossed the corner of the kitchen between the door and the narrow entrance to the back stairs. The three chambermaids—blond, brunet, and redhead—who’d been sitting at the big table helping the musicians finish off dinner leftovers were too busy clamoring with protest at Algeron’s news to notice Kyra. “All those tartlets and roulades to the ice cellar? It’ll take us all night!” “You mean the wedding’s been put off?” asked the laundry maid, a thin, colorless woman with her arms full of folded shifts and petticoats—undoubtedly, Kyra thought as she ghosted around the door and into the steep well of the back stairs, the elaborately lace-trimmed garments suited to Alix’s crimson wedding gown.