Chapter 10 #2
Leaf squeezed his arm. “All right, well, you take all the time you need, and when you’re feeling up to it—” She pointed at the sigil tape bundled in the crook of his arm like a strange, slithery baby.
“And maybe you could talk to your servants and find out whether anyone came in to clean after the session concluded, or whether the room was empty the whole time. And where that ladder came from too. The more we know, the easier it will be to narrow down possible suspects.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to search Gillingham’s room and see if I can find anything that might tell us why. It’s probably a long shot, but in Mary Mallowan’s books the strangest, smallest detail is often the key to the whole mystery.”
Nic agreed to the plan readily enough, yet couldn’t but wonder whether Mary Mallowan had ever had to worry about cold darkness sliding down her throat.
Despite Leaf’s plan, Nic found himself standing outside the new negotiation chamber as the Court’s many clocks sounded the lunch hour. Inside, a babble of voices rose as chairs were pushed back, and upon a tide of approaching steps the door swung open.
Two scribes emerged first, both starting at the sight of their principal. With awkward bows they quickly walked on, throwing back curious glances. He should have waited elsewhere, he knew, but the morning had left him on edge and he needed to talk to Master Everel now.
Once the lesser members of the negotiation teams had walked past with murmurs of “my lord,” Nic strode in.
The new negotiation room was much smaller than the previous one had been, but what it lacked in grandeur it made up for in cosiness.
The teams had used every available surface to pile their papers upon, pushing aside vases and ornaments, and their chairs sat clustered around the shorter table in a companionable fashion.
At the far end stood the two easels with their letters patent, and two master vowsmiths, who both turned as Nic approached.
Master Everel’s brows rose. Dashiell just watched him, something in his expression reminding Nic of how they had last parted.
“Master Everel,” Nic said, determined to show no such consciousness. “A word, if I may?”
The older man’s brows rose still further. “As you wish, my lord.”
Dashiell, all black clad and smart with his gold epaulettes, nodded in a businesslike manner and started gathering his things. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Determined not to watch him leave, Nic turned to look at the letters patent instead. Beside him, Master Everel said, “What can I do for you?”
Not wanting to explain until Dashiell departed, Nic said, “I’m always impressed by how well-preserved this document is, given it was written over a hundred years ago.”
“One hundred and thirty-three years to be precise, but vellum is quite a remarkable material. And your father looks after it well.”
With a last swish of papers behind them, Dashiell’s steps started for the door.
“It must be difficult to store,” Nic said, listening to the departing footsteps. “Especially since ours seems to be twice as long. The merry monarch must have been a wordy man.”
“Doubtful. It is merely that a marquess is just a peer, while a duke is expected—nay, required—to protect the realm against all dangers. Thus, a ducal letters patent contains many extra lines of sigils stipulating requisite holdings, finances, and Brilliance. But I do not think you came here to ask me about our letters patent.”
“No.” A glance around the room assured Nic that Dashiell was gone, yet for all his earlier impatience, his question stuck on his tongue. “The automata, from the grotto, what exactly did they do?”
Master Everel’s thick grey brows rose, wrinkling his forehead.
“Do? Very little. In the old days, I believe they performed a play in the grotto, with conjured backdrops and other such fripperies. Lord Francis made them do more interesting things. Conjured on them. Made them reels.” The old vowsmith gave a derisive little snort. “Although much good it did him.”
“Conjured on them?”
“On them. With them. I don’t understand the specifics, only that he should have left them well alone.”
Not in all his years had Nic heard anyone speak of his uncle without immediately changing the subject, and emboldened, he said, “How did he die?”
“That, you do not wish to know.”
“I am not a child, Everel. I’m asking because I do wish to know.”
The old vowsmith sighed, settling his weight on the edge of the long table. “I don’t know the details, only the outcome. It was after one of Lord Francis and Her Grace’s nasty fights.”
“Mama and Lord Francis?”
“Yes, they fought a lot—two different temperaments, you know, made for quite a fractious house. Well, this time he had gone and made one of those wretched automata for her, smithed its reel to speak to her and conjure faces, things like that.”
Shall I make you one, Georgie? You wouldn’t have to be so alone.
“It was quite impressive what it was capable of,” Master Everel went on. “Though I don’t imagine he expected your mother to turn it on him.”
“Are you saying my mother killed Uncle Francis?”
“No, I am saying it was her automaton and he is the one who smithed its reel. God only knows what was on it. They were all broken up after that, as you know, and that is the end of the story.”
Except that it wasn’t, because in the style wing they’d found a walking, talking, totally complete automaton and it had called to him. Almost Nic said so, but this honesty from the vowsmith who had always been his father’s right hand was new and strange, and he wasn’t ready to return the gesture.
Instead, he turned back to the letters patent—the smithed law of a long-dead king far safer. “You have to make the contract connect to all of that?” He gestured at the seemingly endless lines of sigil-inscribed law.
“And to all that,” Master Everel replied, pointing to the far shorter letters patent of House Serral. “And every other even vaguely related document that exists, because you are the heir to a dukedom. There can be no holes. No mistakes. The net must hold.”
The net must hold. Nic had always found the old vowsmith saying painfully apt.
For them the net was how they referred to the interlaced and connected strings of magic that held contract to contract, maintaining order and rank and magical control, but for Nic it was more literal—the net that kept him trapped within his life.
“Well, you have my sympathies,” Nic said. “That cannot be easy with my father breathing down your neck.”
“Indeed. Was there anything else you needed?”
Plenty, but Nic shook his head. What he needed was to escape, to think, to clear his head of the troubled thoughts digging deep roots into his mind.
Because with two dead bodies, the lock-in that had started as an annoyance had become a threat.
And all too easily could he imagine an automaton reel containing instructions to murder.
Nic spent the afternoon talking to the servants—not to Castor or Mrs. Podmarsh, who were the duke’s creatures, but to the housemaids going about their work, to the footman who had let down the chandelier, and to the group of new laundry maids hired for the lock-in.
Once he’d finished with the house staff, he headed out into the gardens to speak to the groundskeeper.
He learned a lot about what it took to keep so large a house running, but no momentous details about either death.
As the sun set, Nic returned to the house through the old forecourt near his father’s rooms—the forecourt where King John’s carriage would once have stood, the duke had informed them all during his tedious tour.
Unfortunately, being the oldest part of the house also made it the coldest, and Nic shivered as he paused on the threshold to check his boots.