Chapter Six
I fled the carriage as soon as I could upon returning to Fortblanche.
Bernard, the Alaires’ butler, startled as I swept through the house’s grand front doors—since my win, he’d dropped the hostile attitude he’d adopted toward me during the Vainglory, replacing it with a pining subservience I found rather more disturbing—but I ignored his calls, carrying on toward my bedroom.
My fiancé caught up with me near the entrance to my quarters. I heard him pounding up the stone steps behind me and quickened my own pace, whipping open the door and slipping through as hastily as I could.
I cursed when the door caught as I attempted to pull it closed. Reluctantly, I turned and found Noé panting heavily in the threshold, his hand clutching the edge of the wood. Sweat dampened the collar of his shirt; his crimson jacket was nowhere to be seen.
Catching his breath, he lifted his head. There was a sour scent coming off him, a mix of alcohol and perspiration that turned my stomach. His gaze fell from my face to my left hand, which was tensed around the doorknob, preparing to give it another tug.
His jaw flexed. “Don’t you dare—Tamerlane, we need to talk—”
I averted my eyes before he could finish his sentence. “I have talked with you enough for one evening. Leave me be, or force your way in like a brute.”
In emphasis, I gave the door a mighty pull, relieved when he lost his grip and it snapped closed.
I wondered, as I locked it, whether he would take me up on my offer and beat the entrance down—but, possibly in an attempt to appear civilized, Noé only slapped the doorframe once, muttering a muffled word that sounded faintly like impossible, and retreated.
As soon as I detected the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, I turned and crossed to the standing mirror in the corner of my room.
My original quarters along the corridor where I and my fellow nine silkwitches had stayed during the Vainglory had been reverted back into guest lodgings following the end of the competition, meaning I’d been given a replacement.
The chamber the Alaires had chosen for me had originally belonged to Noé’s mother before her death.
There was an enormous bed pushed against the back wall, tasseled pillows piled high beneath a brocade canopy in a lavish shade of marigold; a fireplace with a mouth wide enough that I could have curled up and made a nest in the soot if I’d wished; and a powder-blue rug so thick, it was like a blanket, protecting me from the chill of the granite floor.
All of it was vastly more opulent than my previous room. Since I’d been installed here, I’d only made a single adjustment to the space: swapping out the gilt mirror which had originally been displayed for the relatively plainer one from my guest quarters.
A certain calmness came over me as I settled in front of the looking glass.
For a moment, I regarded myself: maskless, my skin still flushed from my confrontation with Noé and the skirt of my dress belling around me.
Then, letting my gaze slip past my reflection, I reached forward and knocked soundly on the surface of the mirror: once, twice, three times.
Of all eight surviving maidens who had competed against me for Noé’s hand, Marie-Louise Rochefort had fared particularly well in recent months.
Despite the fears she’d expressed to me during the Vainglory that the odd nature of her gift—the ability to peer through mirrors like windows—would keep her from attracting a suitor, she’d been courted by several Weavers following the tournament’s end, most notably Cyril de Lesseps of the wealthy de Lesseps Weaver line.
Their engagement had been announced shortly after the Vainglory’s conclusion; on the one hand, I’d been happy for the Owl when I’d heard the news, glad she’d managed to secure a future far away from the cloisters’ starving grasp.
On the other…I knew all too well what happened to silkwitches once they wed Weavers.
And while I had never met Cyril, picturing the waifish, wide-eyed girl I’d befriended during the Vainglory bound to him—her Wit stripped away to nothing, the mirrors she’d once relied on closing to her one by one, like doors shutting—it undid something inside me.
I supposed that was why I’d sent her the note.
Initially, I’d meant my missive only as a warning.
During the competition, I’d once summoned Marie-Louise by pressing a piece of paper up against a looking glass, so I’d employed the same tactic, writing out what I’d learned from Noé about the truth of the Weavers and passing it to her via the standing mirror from my old room.
I’d held nothing back; a small part of me had protested it was dangerous, revealing such a consequential secret to a girl whose acquaintance I’d made so recently, but I’d fought the hesitation down.
I’d betrayed Eliot so that I might stand a chance of taking down the Weaver King. I would not betray my own kind.
Back in the present, I stiffened as the surface of my looking glass suddenly dimmed. In the center of the mirror, a small black mark had appeared: circular, about the size of a coin, and charred-looking, as though someone had held a candle too close to the glass’s opposite side.
As I watched, the blemish expanded. It burned rapidly outward, advancing with an uneven, liquid quickness like flame through paper until eventually the entire looking glass had been rendered opaque. Blackened, as thoroughly as bread left in the oven.
Then there was a flicker—a shiver in the depths of the mirror, like an eye stirring beneath its lid—and the darkness vanished as abruptly as it had risen. When the glass cleared again, I was no longer alone.
Marie-Louise stood gazing out of my bedroom window, her face turned away from me so that only her back was displayed in the mirror’s reflection.
She was dressed formally, in a gray satin gown with a large bow cinched around her middle, her white-blond hair gathered in a netted silver caul.
I flinched when I saw her but did not scream.
It was a vast improvement from the first time she’d visited, when I’d discovered her staring out of the depths of my mirror once I’d pulled the coverings off in the morning to dress.
If I turned and glanced away from the looking glass, toward the spot where she stood in its reflection, I knew from experience that I would not find her.
The Owl existed only within the mirror itself—thrown, like light is thrown, from the far place she occupied to the corner of my bedroom.
Only a few months ago, I would have thought such a feat impossible for a girl of our kind, the magic too big for a mere silkwitch; now I knew that the ability was no more than an extrapolation of her Wit, such as that which Noé had described to me at the end of the Vainglory.
Mirror traveling, she called it. Apparently, it had taken Marie-Louise only a few weeks to discover the skill after I’d revealed the truth about our gifts to her, a fact which never failed to make me feel inadequate.
I quieted my thoughts as, in the reflection, Marie-Louise turned. Her eyes found me over the curve of her shoulder, as large as ever, her gaze curious and unblinking like a fish surfacing from the deep. “I heard you knocking,” she said.
She avoided all niceties. It was one of the qualities which I enjoyed most about her.
“Yes,” I answered. Appraising her outfit, the meticulous arrangement of her hair, I added, “You look quite pretty. I do hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
The Owl’s stare drifted. “Cyril has requested that I accompany him on an excursion tonight,” she replied. “We are to visit the estate of his family friend. It seems they have a hall of mirrors on the premises, which he thinks I will enjoy.”
She spoke with a dreamy nonchalance, as though she were merely repeating a story which she’d heard secondhand.
At her words, I smiled in spite of myself.
According to Noé, the de Lesseps Weavers were a notoriously reclusive bunch.
I’d been concerned over the idea of the Owl shut up in her fiancé’s drafty country house and was glad to hear he’d arranged for her to have some fun.
“And will you?” I asked.
She tilted her head, considering. “I suppose it shall depend on what I see.”
By her tone, I understood that she was referring to the contents of the mirrors, rather than the hall itself. The remark reminded me of my original purpose in summoning her. “Well, I will endeavor not to keep you for long,” I said. “I called only to ask you a question.”
The Owl blinked guilelessly at me. “A question?”
I nodded. “During the Vainglory, you told me that you saw a figure in my room the evening of the Midway Ball, prior to Miss Dabos’s death. I wish to know whether you observed anything else curious that night.”
The inquiry intrigued her, as I’d guessed it would.
“I was apart from my mirrors for most of that evening,” she answered a moment later.
“I noticed the disturbance in your chamber only in passing, through one of the looking glasses in the Alaires’ ballroom.
It was likely that I should have missed it altogether, but I was paying special attention to you. ”
My brow creased. “Why?”
The Owl’s lips pursed. “Because I found you fascinating,” she replied, as though it were obvious.
A shiver went down my back at her words.
It was uncomfortable, realizing that all the while I’d been investigating Ophelia Lear’s murder, the very subjects I’d been studying had been, in turn, observing me.
Relatively speaking, the Owl was a friendly force; even if she had spied on me in secret, how closely had my enemies been watching?
I set the unpleasant question aside for now. “And after Miss Dabos had passed?” I asked. “The party broke up once she was discovered to be missing. Did you see anything later that night, after we’d all returned to our rooms?”