Chapter Nine
I went to bed in a sour mood and woke up feeling worse.
My ankle twisted as I stumbled my way through Fortblanche, making for the library—the meeting place Noé had designated for the first of our ridiculous detective sessions.
It was midmorning, the estate still drowsy, tucked in behind a thin veil of sea fog which nuzzled against the stained glass windows.
Bastian himself was absent, gone to attend to some business in town, and though it could have been my imagination, all the servants seemed easier without his presence.
Their shoulders un-bunched, as if they no longer had to guard their heads from his prying.
The section of the house where I stood currently was not the section I wanted to be in.
Despite my best efforts, I’d gotten lost again—taken a wrong turn to glance behind some door which had caught my notice and then been swept away into Fortblanche’s sea of passages.
After a series of missteps, I finally seemed to have gotten on the right path, but I knew I had to hurry.
I didn’t want to keep my fiancé waiting.
A gentle whooshing sound from one of the rooms to my left drew my attention.
The noise was hollow, rhythmic, like the drone of an insect swarm, whisking under the closed door so that I could not help but overhear it.
It was peculiar enough that I paused, glancing toward the entrance with my skirt bundled in my arms.
The plain face of the wooden door stared back at me. I know this door. It was one I’d utilized quite often during the Vainglory. Behind it lay a disused spinning room, at the back of which sat a hidden entrance to Fortblanche’s tunnel network, where Sybil had died.
Was it still disused?
Unable to resist, I summoned my Wit and cracked the door open. There was a click as the lock undid itself, betraying a peek at the room inside.
A group of a half dozen men peered up at me.
All six of them were clad in Alaire yellow, and all were seated at one of the enormous spinning wheels which dominated the space.
Abandoned the last time I’d seen them—but now they’d sprung to life.
I spotted small sacks of hair placed on stools beside every man’s workstation, and draped over hooks on the walls, the refined product.
Magesilk. It shone like liquid, glimmering a milky, ethereal white whenever the weak sunlight touched it.
Taking in the scene, I observed the men for a second longer, then closed the door and backed away.
—
Noé was sitting in an armchair on the library’s main level when I entered, waiting for me with a book in his lap.
He was dressed casually, in a starched shirt, suspenders, and trousers, his dark hair curling gently over his forehead.
One of his legs, he’d tossed over the knee of his other; when he noticed me, he shifted, planting both feet on the ground.
“There you are.” He shut his book, then hesitated. His mouth twitched. “What have you done to yourself?”
I refused to blush. One clasp of my caul had come loose in my haste to reach the library, allowing half my hair to spill messily over my shoulder. The strands were frizzing, dampened with sweat; hurriedly, I tucked them back into their netting. “Mia did not have much time to dress me this morning.”
“If Mia did that, I daresay she’s more of a harm then help.” Noé gestured to the brass cart positioned to the left of his armchair, piled high with—I breathed a sigh of relief—coffee, cups, and a pot of tea. “Coffee?” he asked. “There is cream and sugar as well.”
Grateful, I approached him and filled a cup, dropping a generous spoonful of sugar in afterward. As I stirred it in, I glanced over at him. “Your father’s workrooms are active again.”
“Are they? No.” Noé waved away the pot of cream I offered him, reaching past me for a cup instead. “Thank you. I take it black.”
I paused. There were several types of sugar laid out on the service cart, as well as a jug of milk in addition to the little vessel of cream which I held. Following my gaze, Noé scratched stiffly at his neck. “I wasn’t sure of your preferences,” he said.
Ah. My cheeks warmed. Turning away, I slotted the cream back in its place on the cart and found my own armchair, opposite my fiancé.
“There was far too much hair on those wheels to have all come from your mother—especially so many years after her death,” I said, pivoting back to the subject at hand. “Is he buying from the cloisters?”
“From Adélard Drake? I doubt it.” Noé frowned thoughtfully.
“Father has always said cloister product is substandard, and he isn’t wrong.
I’ve seen some of the items which come from Drake’s workshops.
The enchantment in them is there, but weak—more chaff than wheat, as if someone has shaved off all the best bits and left only the scraps behind.
” Taking a sip from his teacup, he examined me over the rim.
“You’re really concerned about this, aren’t you? ”
I scowled. “Dismiss me if you’d like,” I replied shortly. “I know you wish to do so.”
“No.” Noé’s counter was mild, the reflectiveness in it taking the wind out of me. “If you’re worried, I’ll look into it.” He swallowed another mouthful of his drink, eyes distant, then glanced back at me. I startled at the sudden snap of his gaze, the cold gray of river ice.
“Come here,” he said. “I have a present for you.”
Reluctantly, I allowed him to beckon me closer. From his trouser pocket, Noé produced a folded sheet of paper, spreading it over his thigh. My breath caught when I took in the neatly ordered list of names running down it, each one penned precisely in black ink. “A guest list.”
“For the Midway Ball, yes.” Noé nodded, flicking the top corner of the paper.
“I took it off Bernard last night—figured it was as good a place to start as any.” Setting his coffee aside, he ran a finger down the list. “If you remember, the party was small, around fifty people. Representatives from most of the Weaver lines were present. The Tremblays—Anais was, of course, in the competition; the Moreaus. Even the Hugos.” He tapped a name toward the bottom of the paper, then looked up.
“And, naturally, you maidens were present as well. Elspeth Winn, Mireille Laurent, Nathalie Moreau, and Delphine Barbier had been eliminated by that point, leaving you, Sybil, Manon, Anais, Marie-Louise, and Clio in the running.”
So many. Seeing the collection of names gathered on the paper was overwhelming. How was I ever to get through them all? “Were there any notable incidents, or absences, during the course of the evening that you recall?” I asked.
Noé shook his head. “Aside from the matter of Anais’s gloves you mentioned?
Nothing stands out. Anais herself was gone for a while, I remember,” he offered.
“Looking back on it, I assume she was with Dorian—I couldn’t find him, either.
Perhaps she misplaced the gloves while they were together.
Aside from her, Sybil never showed at all. Otherwise…”
He trailed off just as my attention caught on something. Snapping my arm out, I pointed to a name at the bottom of the list. “Who is that?”
Noé followed the path of my finger. Penned below Arnaud Moreau was another entry, shorter and more hastily written than those above it, as if it had been added as an afterthought.
A friend.
He frowned. “I…have no idea.”
A familiar surge of adrenaline kicked through me. “It is the last name on the list, and—look—the penmanship varies slightly, too. The person it references may have been added late, perhaps even the night of the ball.” I raised my eyes to his. “Who was in charge of managing the guest list?”
Noé’s mouth was still fixed in its downward curve. “Broadly speaking, my father,” he replied, leaning over the paper. “Practically, I believe he tasked Dorian with minding it once the ball had begun.”
Dorian Drake. Eliot’s fellow judge during the Vainglory, and nephew of Adélard Drake, the Weaver known as the Cloister Master.
I disliked the tall, striking boy intensely—and not only because he’d once attempted to push me from a window to prevent me from uncovering Bastian’s secrets.
Dorian had the vicious temperament and brutality of a perpetual second-in-command.
He could not direct his ire toward his masters—in his case, the Alaires—so he rained it down on those beneath him instead.
Of all the men I’d met, he hated silkwitches the most, despite his frequent romances with them. Like a fisherman who reeled in his catch, only to find he was disgusted with the creature for taking his bait. “Where is he now?” I asked.
Noé sat back in his chair. “I’m not sure,” he replied.
“No one is, to tell you the truth. After I had him tossed from the Vainglory, he all but vanished from good society. The scandal sheets haven’t been kind about his entanglement with Anais, particularly as it occurred while he was engaged to the silkwitch Lou Martin.
I tried to keep word from getting round, but…
” He released a breath. “I assume he ran off someplace dark and depraved, to lick his wounds.”
If that was true, it seemed high time to haul him back into the light. “Can you find him?” I asked.
Noé nodded. “I’ll try.”
“Good.” Kneeling down, I took the paper from his lap and flattened it against the armrest of his seat.
“What of Sybil’s enemies?” I inquired, skimming the rest of the entries.
That strange moniker—a friend—kept leering out at me, a scowl in the dimness.
“You courted all of us silkwitches during the Vainglory. Did any of them speak to you about a grudge?”
“Sybil disliked you—or at least, you intrigued her. She asked me about you multiple times during our talks,” Noé replied.
“The society witches all despised her, due to who her mother was. Anais in particular had some very choice words, but then again, she has those for nearly everyone.” He paused. “Lear and Sybil’s partnership.”