Chapter 24 Wyverns
WYVERNS
LIZZY
London’s social set swarmed us after Darcy and I greeted the prince. When that became overwhelming, we ducked and hid behind a battered suit of armor.
“I never expected the Prince would attend,” I said, feeling overheated. The crush had been intense.
“Hopefully he merely wished to fill a dull evening,” Darcy said.
“What else could it be?”
Darcy’s lips pursed uncertainly, the closest to a shrug he allowed himself in public. Then he turned to me. “Would you remove your gloves?”
“What?”
Darcy waited, earnest and intent, so I did. In one swift motion, he removed his right glove and took my hand, then stared at our folded fingers.
“What on earth are you doing?” I said.
“I am recalling the times when ladies tricked me into touching them.”
“Goodness. Does that happen often?”
“More than I knew.” He bent, and his kiss brushed my skin. He restored his glove.
While I tugged my own gloves on, I noticed something familiar in the next room’s collection. I made my way there, trailed by Darcy.
This room held Egyptian artifacts. The Rosetta stone was prominent, four feet tall and covered with engraved symbols. Some claimed it would decipher the mystery of hieroglyphics. But that was not what caught my eye.
I stopped in front of a multistranded, turquoise necklace. A menit. “This is like my vision in the boathouse. I was a bound wyfe. A queen.”
Darcy frowned. “I do not question what you saw. But there is no record of Egyptians binding draca.”
“We cannot read their hieroglyphics.”
“True. But the Romans wrote histories of Egypt.”
“Mary regularly points out that rulers erase the achievements of those they rule.” I was reading an explanatory panel titled Egyptian Death and Afterlife. “This describes what I believed. What I felt.”
A modern painting hung with the exhibit: a beautiful young woman slumped in a chair surrounded by a half-dozen grieving maids. Inexplicably, they had chosen to grieve while mostly undressed. A small snake curled around the dead woman’s arm.
The painting was labeled The Death of Cleopatra, Guido Cagnacci, 1658. There was an explanation of her despair over the loss of Mark Antony.
For a few seconds, I was fooled by the milky skin and light hair. Then I saw the truth. “What were the names of Cleopatra’s advisors? The ones who died with her.” Darcy would know. Shakespeare had written a play.
“Charmion and Iras,” he said.
The image of loyal Charmion, ebony haired and dark skinned, leaped into my mind.
“I journeyed. I found the god. I had the strength to defeat Rome!” I reached out and pried at the sign below the painting.
The thin wood splintered, and it broke from the wall.
I waved it at Darcy like a blade. “This is lies. I drove poison into my arm with a dead asp’s fangs.
I dared the underworld for vengeance. But Imhotep drove the god mad.
If he had not, I would have crushed Rome. ” I thought of Yuánchi. “I still can!”
“Rome fell a thousand years ago,” Darcy said quietly but firmly. “This is England, and you are Elizabeth.”
I blinked up at him, untangling memory from reality.
My anger faded. “Yes. That… I am sorry. The vision was intense. Dying is intense.” I took a settling breath and looked again at that ridiculous painting of pink-cheeked maids.
“Cleopatra was a bound queen who summoned a dragon. Imhotep promised she would return from the underworld. He lied.”
I dropped the broken sign on the table and turned away. That denigration of history revolted me.
Beyond the strolling crowd, I glimpsed Lord Wellington speaking urgently to a guard. Darcy had begun an involved observation about Cleopatra, so I plucked his sleeve to get his attention, and we hurried over.
Lord Wellington saw me and skipped niceties. “We baited our trap with the dagger, but I did not intend the Prince to be present as well. What do you see?”
I closed my eyes. The perspectives of draca throughout the building filled me—all of them at once.
That was unexpected, a peculiar synthesis less direct than sight, more like the unconscious awareness of a familiar room where sounds and shadows can reveal even a person out of view.
There were colors, though, spanning the vibrant spectrum of draca vision, and hyper-detailed textures.
The guests’ strolling steps and motioning hands appeared slowed and clumsy.
“It is more crowded. More excited. People are heated with emotion. There is passion.” I saw the gold aura of great wyves among the surge of people, but…. My eyes snapped open in shock. “There are four great wyves.”
Lord Wellington’s urgency sharpened to a steel edge. “Who?”
“I… do not know. Individuals are difficult to recognize through draca eyes. And I was aware of everything. They were scattered through the rooms.”
“Impossible,” Darcy said. “There are only three great wyves.”
“Three?” Lord Wellington exclaimed. “I understood there were two.” He did not know about Emma. His eyes swung between Darcy and me, and his jaw corded. “You have withheld information.”
“I will address that later,” Darcy said. “Elizabeth, there cannot be a fourth wyfe.”
“I know what I saw.”
Lord Wellington made his decisions. “I will move the Prince to safety. You”—his gaze pinned me—“guard the dagger.” He vanished into the crowd.
“I can find her,” I said to Darcy as we returned to the room with the dagger exhibit. “If we go room by room.”
“You are supposed to guard the dagger.”
“With what, my wit? This is why I brought draca.”
I had already called for help, and the result was apparent as the crowd made way. Jane’s golden wyvern stalked from a widening corridor of amazed faces on our right, and a lindworm and tykeworm from the left.
The tyke scrambled excitedly to nuzzle my hems. I knelt, closed my eyes, and flicked into his perspective.
I saw myself, stooped and shining golden bright, but the rest was a forest of trousers and skirts.
I scooped him into my arms and stood—a marginal improvement—then placed my hands under his chest, hoisted him over my head, and turned a circle to scan the room. No shining auras.
I placed him back on the floor and opened my eyes to see a thin-shouldered, academic man bouncing toward me waving a handful of handwritten papers—the museum researcher who first showed us the dagger. “Mrs. Darcy!”
“I am rather busy.” I tugged Darcy’s wrist and headed to the Egypt room.
The museum researcher caught up on my other side, his stack of papers held in front of us like a fluttering figurehead. “When shall I give my lecture on the dagger?”
“We had planned that before the dancing—” I began, then I noticed the thickness of his sheaf of paper. Social self-preservation stopped me in my tracks. “Is that your lecture?”
He smiled modestly. “I am afraid that the last pages are mere bibliography. For those who wish additional study? But the lecture should fill an hour.”
“An hour!” The room would be glazed stares in minutes. For one irrational moment, this seemed more important than chasing great wyves.
Then a chill like filthy, dripping slush ran down my back. The skin on my arms pebbled. I knew this sensation—from the wyfe on the frozen pier, and from fighting Lydia. I grabbed Darcy’s arm and whispered, “There is danger,” then closed my eyes.
This time, I held my awareness within, resisting the beacons of nearby draca minds.
To my senses, the draca were scattered shining presences throughout the building, but a room away, oily darkness was seething.
Blind to my surroundings, I turned in that direction, then opened my eyes.
I was facing the wall separating us from the dagger’s exhibit room.
Darcy had managed to send the museum researcher away. To find Mary, apparently. She would probably advise adding a chapter. As Darcy turned back, I said, “A wyfe has been dosed with crawler venom. Tell Lord Wellington.”
“I must remain with you—” he protested.
“No! Lord Wellington and I have planned for this. He must be told. Go!”
Without waiting, I bumped and squeezed back the way we came.
Every fine coat seemed to block me. Every smiling face smirked at my delay.
I fought to the middle of the exhibit room, the rough location I had sensed, then slowly spun.
I saw polite conversation. Lace and tailored coats.
Cups of punch and brandy balanced in poised fingers.
Frustrated, I closed my eyes, opened my mind, and turned toward a towering fountain of black filth.
Unwelcome memories of my final battle with Lydia stirred, dragging up shreds of buried guilt.
Aligned, I opened my eyes and faced the back of a well-dressed lady five paces away. She was approaching the ropes surrounding the dagger. I rushed after her and shouted, “Stop!”
She turned. This was not a filthy face like at the river, just a modestly pretty young woman with nicely styled light brunette hair and classic white muslin ball attire. Only her eyes showed the effect of the venom, her pupils stretched into huge, coal-black pools.
A man’s voice shouted commands in the foyer. Heavy doors slammed—the museum’s entrances. Lord Wellington had received my message. Every exit was being locked and guarded.
The woman’s heart-shaped face and bony nose were familiar… a sketch… the pamphlets Mary had shown me. Although the face had changed. Her happy plumpness was thinned and gaunt.
“You are Miss Rees,” I said. Her eyes pinched oddly.
I closed the distance between us. She waited passively. Cautiously, I took her hand. Her arm lifted bonelessly.
“You have been missing for weeks,” I said. “Were you abducted?” An empty stare. “I am Mrs. Darcy.”
A spasm climbed her spine, jarring her head and clicking her teeth. Her fingers clenched mine with manic strength, grinding my knuckles.
Her blank stare became a mindless grin. “I have you.”