Chapter Forty-Five
The Weaver King was in his study, bent over a stack of writing paper when I found him.
As I entered, he glanced up. It was deep into evening now, night fogging up the room, but Bastian had yet to light any of the gas sconces which were mounted on the walls.
Rather, a single candle on his desk provided the room’s sole illumination, the plain orange flame jittering as though unnerved by the enormity of its task.
Bastian’s eyes fastened to mine through the dimness.
I could not sense any of his feelers in my head; still, as he regarded me, I felt certain he was detecting—something.
His expression shifted, the initial intrigue which had colored it replaced by a low-bellied wariness, like a cat hiding itself in the grass.
He spoke. “You’ve solved it, then?”
I could not tell whether he was pleased or disturbed by the sentiment. Before I could answer, he sat back and waved a hand.
“Well, go on. Present your findings.”
I steeled myself. “You killed Sybil,” I said. “Or rather, you and Adélard Drake, who is at your command.”
His eyes gleamed. Setting his elbows on his desktop, Bastian pitched forward, his black hair falling about his face like ribbons in the gloom. “A fascinating theory,” he murmured. “Expand, please.”
Between us, the candle continued its unsteady flicker.
Though I knew he was not, in that moment I could have sworn he was controlling the flame—that the entire room, that this house and all its contents, were set pieces cupped in his hand, and I was just another puppet at the mercy of his strange and infinite power.
I swallowed, and the sensation passed. Perhaps he was the one who had installed it within me in the first place.
“When you set me the task of uncovering the truth behind Sybil’s death, you were careful to plant the notion of a murderer in my mind,” I began.
“Some person—some malevolent figure—who struck her down in the tunnels and ran off with your key.
Yet the pivotal question has never been who killed Miss Dabos, but what.
“The same evening you assigned me Sybil’s mystery, you confessed to me another secret—that of the killing curse you have your artisans apply to a select number of your Woven goods,” I told Bastian.
“Perhaps you were handing me a clue, though at the time, I failed to catch it. Until recently, when Dorian Drake pointed out what should have been an obvious assumption: that your key to the moonless door was, in fact, Woven. Which led me to wonder—if the key was enchanted, did that also mean it was cursed?”
Bastian looked amused. “And what did you determine?”
“I think it was,” I answered him. “I think, in fact, Sybil sealed her own death as soon as she touched it—though of course, she wouldn’t have realized it at the time.
There was never any murderer. Sybil was killed by the very same object she risked her life to steal, after that item sensed her ill intent toward you and unleashed its magic against her. ”
My pulse was racing. In front of me, the Weaver King tilted his head. “An interesting story,” he said. “And yet there is a hole in it.” He arched a brow. “Sybil was strangled.”
So she had been. It was a wrinkle which had thrown me off for a long while; thanks to Anais, however, I finally had an answer for it.
“She was,” I admitted. “Once you discovered that your key was missing the evening of the Midway Ball, you must have guessed that the enchantment Woven into it would kill the thief before they got too far, but you were worried. Would it kill them quickly enough? You couldn’t risk anyone getting access to the records in the spinning room behind the moonless door, yet neither could you abandon the ball you were meant to be hosting without raising suspicion.
Which is why you contacted Adélard Drake. ”
For the first time, a reaction: Bastian sat forward. I sensed his presence slink into my head and gritted my teeth against the invasion.
“He dispatched a veiled woman,” I went on.
“One of his own witches who entered Fortblanche via an underground tunnel which connects it to the cloisters. The rest is pure hypothesis, but my guess is that this veiled lady tracked Sybil through the passages and found her—likely half dead from the key’s curse already.
Then she finished the job and exited into Fortblanche, key in hand, to notify you of her success. ”
“A passageway between this estate and the cloisters would be expensive to fund, and difficult to maintain,” Bastian replied.
His tone was steady; I could not tell whether he was refuting me or testing me.
“What use would I have for such a tunnel? And why would Adélard send one of his witches to aid me?”
“Because,” I answered, “he is not the true head of the cloisters. You are.”
I paused.
“When you took me to visit the cloisters, the attendant who spotted us called out, ‘Master.’ In my distraction, I assumed he was referring to Adélard—but earlier, you’d stated that Mr. Drake was away from the institution that day.
You only revised your claim after the man recognized you, likely in an attempt to prevent me from realizing the truth.
“Anais and Adélard’s marriage was arranged by you,” I went on.
“She claimed, when I questioned her, that the union was an incentive to keep her from speaking out about her involvement with Dorian during the Vainglory, but I think that explanation was a lie.” I leaned closer to him across the desk.
“You commanded Adélard to propose to Anais because she had seen something dangerous—something which she had not been meant to see. On the night of the Midway Ball, Anais and Dorian were interrupted midway through their rendezvous by the sound of a door opening. Both of them told me as much, though their narratives differed slightly: Anais claimed she’d only heard the door, while Dorian mentioned she’d glimpsed something, as well.
“My guess is that she glimpsed the veiled woman Adélard dispatched—the cloister witch—as she was attempting to exit the tunnels after killing Sybil,” I said.
My thoughts were moving fast now. A strange fever had gripped me, like the urgency of a cat with a mouse between its jaws.
I just wanted to make my kill. “Anais had visited the cloisters before. She remarked to me how it was apparent that the girls there were miserable, even though she could not see their eyes.” I emphasized the words, letting their meaning sink in.
“When she spotted the woman through the cracked-open door the night of the Midway Ball, she must have recognized her uniform—the veil—as the same kind Adélard makes his girls wear. The same uniform which his nephew Dorian adopted upon the opening of his own establishment after the competition’s conclusion.
“All the threads come back to you,” I finished.
“I’ve long wondered how your artisans are continuing to produce magesilk, despite the fact that your wife’s stores of hair have run out, and you can’t have collected enough from my and the other maidens’ tithes during the Vainglory to make up the gap.
You are taking it from the cloisters, which is why their remaining product is reputed to be so weak.
And, more recently, from Dorian Drake’s girls, whose new business I believe you helped to fund.
He was the special buyer you spoke of on the drive back from the opera house.
I saw him wearing the ring you were selling when I visited him the other evening, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.
You even magicked his invitations—the Woven monocles—with a variation of your killing curse, so that anyone who wished Dorian or his establishment ill would die upon touching them. ”
It wasn’t until I’d reread the newspaper clipping that I’d put it all together.
What was it Noé had said in the alleyway, just after we’d left Dorian’s club?
I really dislike the way he speaks to you.
And then, minutes later, he’d collapsed to the ground.
Sickened by an enchantment which made his eyes glow, just as the maid in the paper had described Sybil’s doing.
It hadn’t been a silkwitch who’d hurt him. It had been his own father, through that damned monocle.
Bastian blew out an exhale. His presence, I was aware, had yet to retreat from my mind—all while I’d been speaking, I could sense him there, lurking like mold at the bottom of a jug—but I didn’t bother attempting to defend myself against his prying.
I had nothing to hide from him any longer. He could see whatever he wished.
“Well?” I asked after a moment had passed in silence. “Am I right?”
The Weaver King looked up at me. I gave an involuntary grunt as, without warning, his power pulled back, the sensation like a plug abruptly unstopped from my skull. “Quite right, my dear,” he replied in a mild tone. “Even about Dorian. I do so appreciate an entrepreneur.”
He laced his fingers together, Mariéprix glaring at me from atop his knuckle.
“The cloisters have been under Alaire control for generations,” he said.
“Decades back, Parliament began making noise about our amassing too much power. So an arrangement was made between my grandfather and the Drakes. My father was still quite young at the time, around my own son’s age.
” He tapped one of his thumbs against the other.
“The new Cloister Master agreed to sell his stock at a discounted price to the public, to appease the Parliamentary hawks—while in secret, the best of the cloister product was reserved for the Alaire line. A tunnel network was dug to connect the institution with Fortblanche, under the guise of renovations.”
A chill slid down my spine. It mattered not that I’d guessed at much of what he’d admitted—that my entire argument relied on my assumptions being right. Hearing it all spoken aloud still made me feel rancid, spoiled to my core.