Chapter 22 The Memory #2
My guilt transformed into a healthy dose of irritation. “I did not need you. It is an experiment to determine the effect of draca essence on crawlers. I read that—”
Georgiana interrupted with a snort. Something sharp lodged beneath my sternum.
I took a breath, trying to settle a surge of hurt and anger. “Are you going to scold me for reading, like Mamma does?”
“I am scolding you for taking risks.” She pointed at the caged crawler. Her finger was shaking. “That is a monster. What if you were stung?”
“I have treated crawler stings. I would treat myself as best I could. Soldiers are dying from these. They need defenses. This is not a time to shy from risk.”
She was silent for a breath, then, “What if Thomas were stung?”
“You are angry about me, not Thomas.” That much I was sure of. Thomas was witnessing this, which must be unpleasant, so I said to him, “You did nothing wrong. Will you excuse us? Georgiana and I will discuss this privately.”
“Of course.” He bowed, suddenly mature and channeling his father’s calm assurance. He left at a measured pace. The gardeners fled in his wake.
Georgiana’s arms were folded in disapproval.
Frustration and confusion swirled in me, but I had discovered a pattern in the last few days. “What is bothering you? I hear it in your voice when I talk about the great song. When I describe the power that I touch. When I confess that it makes me strong.”
Something I said struck home. She unfolded her arms, a gangly unwinding for such a graceful woman.
I was struggling to imagine an explanation for her anger. “Are you jealous?”
“Oh,” she gasped, a sobbing half-laugh. “Never, Mary. You know that I love you.” Her sapphire irises filled with tears.
Memory flickered—the lost memory, vivid as life:
I held a sheaf of paper in my left hand. A book? My throat stung. Georgiana faced me, her hair disarranged, a lock hanging by her cheek, tears streaming—
The memory shuttered as she resumed speaking. “I have not known how to—”
“Stop!” I threw out a hand, blocking my sight of her eyes, blocking her words, grasping at that edge of recollection, but the memory folded to nothing. I looked around wildly, as if it might have lodged on a clod of dirt or a fence post. “I almost had it…”
Georgiana had drawn back, stricken. Some combative corner of me notched that as revenge for her snickering at my reading, then remorse overwhelmed me. I lowered my hand. “I am sorry. But we did this before. This is the memory I lost! About music…”
I closed my eyes to concentrate. It was gone.
“Music?” Georgiana’s voice said uncertainly.
“Madams,” called Mrs. Reynolds. I opened my eyes and saw her trotting across the grass. “A messenger has arrived, an aide-de-camp of Lord Wellington. He says it is urgent.”
Georgiana sniffed and wiped each wet eye, then we exchanged cautious nods—agreement to defer—and hurried for the house.
Inside, and with Georgiana’s hair swiftly pinned by Lucy—Mrs. Reynolds stated that even military messengers could wait two minutes for a lady to be presentable—we entered the front drawing room.
The aide-de-camp was a uniformed officer in his early twenties. His coat was smudged with soot, his left forearm bandaged and bloodstained. He was flushed and smelled of horse, his trousers sprayed with mud from riding at a gallop.
He rose the instant we entered. “Ladies. Your pardon for my appearance. I am Lieutenant Colonel John Fremantle. Lord Wellington dispatched me from battle. I am to deliver this letter to the hand of a lady of Pemberley House and wait for a reply.”
He held out an envelope. I recognized Lord Wellington’s slanted script.
“To whom are you to deliver it?” Georgiana asked, her eyes on the envelope. It was addressed: The Great Wyves, Pemberley House.
The colonel recited, “To Mrs. Darcy, or to Miss Darcy, or to Miss Bennet, or to Miss Woodhouse.”
Georgiana’s lips thinned when my name was included, reawakening my mystification at her reactions. But she took the letter, broke the seal, and unfolded it between us where we could read together:
“Ladies, I write this letter in haste and with hope that it will reach Mrs. Darcy, but I cast this plea to you all.
Our soldiers in Surrey have been overmatched by a vile force. The enemy has marshaled hundreds of monstrous crawlers, and their perfumer strikes from the air. I cannot judge if such evil is natural or supernatural, but it is an assault beyond what brave soldiers and cavalry can withstand.
By the time you receive this, Surrey will likely be ceded to the enemy. I send this plea because the heart of London is but twenty miles farther, and the enemy drives toward it like they are possessed. We have no weapon to halt this foul tide.
If London falls, England falls. I will say simply that we require a miracle.
Wellington”
“How does the perfumer strike from the air?” Georgiana asked.
The colonel shifted uneasily. “I have only heard her in the distance, a roaring whir like the winds of hell.” He had a Hertfordshire accent; it reminded me of home.
“I have seen the crawlers, though. They are controlled by enslaved English wyves, who are driven and beaten by Overseers. That is bad enough, but”—his voice caught—“in the worst of it, when soldiers were dying, some of the men tried to shoot the wyves. Shoot Englishwomen. Lord Wellington forbade it when he heard. And now, the French conceal the wyves where even cannons cannot reach while the crawlers advance.”
“That is abhorrent,” I said. I was not even sure which part. All of it.
Georgiana said softly, “The miracle he seeks is a dragon.”
That was evident. Also impossible. “We do not even know where Lizzy is. And she must not use Yuánchi to fight. Violence attracts the black dragon. Fènnù’s madness would consume Lizzy and Yuánchi.”
Georgiana was rereading the letter. “What if Fènnù fought?”
That shocked a laugh from me. “That is worse. When the black dragon is unleashed, history itself fractures. Entire civilizations vanish. Fènnù is not a weapon. She is an apocalypse.” Georgiana was watching me with a brilliant, focused intensity, like I was a keyboard score thick with accidentals, so I argued on, “If Lizzy commands Fènnù, if their minds connect, Lizzy’s mind would be consumed.
Since the song was broken, every wyfe who ties herself to Fènnù has become a vessel for her fury.
” Georgiana said nothing. Did she not understand?
“Besides, which dragon is irrelevant. We cannot contact Lizzy.”
“I can do it,” Georgiana said.
That surprised me. “You can speak to Lizzy?”
Georgiana shook her head. “No. But I can summon Fènnù. I could command her to fight.”
That was so preposterous, I should have laughed louder. Instead, dread infused my veins. Fear for Georgiana.
I blinked and held fast to logic. “You have no way to summon Fènnù. Lizzy has the dagger. The wyfe of war has the gift of command, not you.”
“I am the wyfe of song.” Georgiana spoke slowly, testing each word. “After you remembered Fènnù’s song, we sang it together. Fènnù heard us.”
The dread in my veins chilled colder. “But her power was monstrous. It crushed us.”
“It crushed the tower you built. That tower of music.”
Georgiana’s voice, always melodic, was toneless. She was hiding something. My dread congealed, hard as ice. “We built that tower together.”
“I know,” she whispered. “That is why it fell.”
The pieces of an ugly puzzle were assembling in my mind, but I refused to see it. “You cannot command Fènnù. She is beyond human strength. Even Lizzy cannot command a dragon against its will. Fènnù would consume you.”
“That is how it will end. But England might be saved first.”
“No.” I shook my head like a child. “No. I refuse it. I will not allow it.”
“Mary—”
“No! I will not give you the music. I will burn it!”
Georgiana smiled a pitying smile. She had sung it. The wyfe of song remembered every note she sang.
In a flash, I was on a different path. “Even if you could summon her, you could not control her. Together, you would wreak senseless destruction. We would all be consumed.”
“Not at first. Not for a time. I am stronger than you know.”
“No one is that strong!”
She took my hands in hers. “Do you remember the power in the hills when we summoned the song draca? The strength when we sang together and you built that crystal palace of music? Mary, you are not feeling some ancient force or mystical song. You are feeling me.” The puzzle in my mind snapped into unforgiving clarity as she continued, “I did not know how to tell you. The strength you have been celebrating, the power that makes you so proud… it is mine.” Tears brightened her eyes.
Her fingers clutched mine. “I should have told you. Can you forgive me?”
All my nascent pride, all the selfish importance I had collected, collapsed. It had been delusion, alms from this woman whom I loved and could never equal. Who occupied a realm I could barely perceive, let alone enter. I had only been too ignorant to understand.
“There is nothing to forgive,” I grated out. “I was a fool.”
“Mary, I swear that you have your own power—”
“Please do not.” I managed that with a steady voice, but it was hard. Being comforted, whether from love or guilt, hurt more than the truth.
Finally, a pooled tear penetrated Georgiana’s lashes and sped down her cheek.
The lost memory woke:
Georgiana, crying. A sheaf of papers in my hand. Smoke, raw in my throat. A panicked crowd surged around us, but earlier, there had been music and dance. This was the ball, the London ball where the dagger was stolen, and Jane’s wyvern killed Miss Rees, and Fènnù woke from centuries of sleep.
I ratcheted the memory back through time:
The papers I held were not a book; they were scholarly notes for a lecture on the dagger. The museum researcher had found me, sent by Mr. Darcy. Mystified, I had leafed through the sheets, and amid the flutter of words, glimpsed an illustration…
I blinked, leaving memory to fall into Georgiana’s tear-filled, sapphire gaze.
“The British Museum has the flute,” I said. “It has a catalog number. It is in London!” A city that would soon fall to Napoleon and the invading slavers.
It took seconds before Georgiana’s throat worked and she said, “I do not understand.”
“I found my lost memory of the flute. It was… overwhelmed by the chaos of the London ball.” Overwhelmed by grief. Joane Rees had just been killed.
Georgiana had a wondering expression, but skeptical, too. “If it is in London, why did Lizzy fly north?”
I dismissed that with a flick of my hand.
“She only knew it had been in the north.” The implications were locking into place, a fortress of logic to defeat this deadly spiral.
Relief overwhelmed me. Georgiana did not need to be brave.
She did not need to sacrifice herself. “Lizzy has the dagger, and Emma will find the amulet, and the flute is in London. That is all three items. I will get the flute, and you can heal the song. This madness—the corruption of crawlers—will end. This war will end.”
“We will go together,” Georgiana said immediately.
I shook my head. “London could be captured at any moment. The great wyves must stay safe to heal the song. Lizzy will return when she does not find the flute. Keep her here at Pemberley. You and she cannot risk being taken.”
Georgiana grabbed my hand. “Then you cannot go!”
I stretched my mouth into a semblance of a smile. “Of course I can.” The conundrum had resolved itself, like a problem in composition where the right chord bridges two passages that appear irreconcilable. “I am not important. You are.”
“Mary, that is not true—”
Clumsily, I pressed my fingers to her lips, stopping her words and reveling in her tender skin. It was madness to show intimacy with strangers present, but I no longer cared.
“Promise me that you will not summon Fènnù,” I said.
She tangled my fingers in hers and pulled them to her cheek. “I will not if you stay safe.”
“Calling Fènnù would not save me. If she had your power, she would destroy us all.”
Georgiana drew a stubborn breath, then let it out reluctantly. “If we are to heal the song, we will need Emma, too.”
I had considered that problem, but there was nothing to do about it.
“Perhaps she has found the amulet. Perhaps she is already returning.”