Chapter 22
Nic’s headache got worse. It was, he knew, the natural trajectory of headaches, yet despite having had quite a few he still hoped every time that it would go the other way.
After helping Hedgeley gather the echoes and get them back to their cages, Nic had spent the rest of the day lying on the settee in the old den.
It had always been his retreat when beset by Brilliance headaches, for even with the curtains drawn his own rooms were too bright and too loud with old sigilwork.
His grandfather’s old den, on the other hand, had no windows and was entirely full of soft chairs, card tables, and hunting trophies. And a faint scent of old pipe smoke.
Sometime in the afternoon, Ambrose had fetched Dr. Fanshaw, who had come bearing his medical bag and a collection of elixirs.
With the way his head had been thumping—every single ghostly trail of magic in the house becoming a scream—Nic had not been optimistic.
Yet the doctor had offered him a draught of buckthorn and another of karan myrrh and somehow, miraculously, the pressure and pain had begun to subside.
It took time, however, time in which he had nothing to do but lie in the dark and breathe ancient air, trying and failing not to wish Dashiell were sitting with him as he had sometimes done when they’d been boys.
Instead only his father had come by, trailing in complaints rather than sympathy.
First he complained about the number of staff who had given their notice, then about guests who blamed their own untidy habits on ransacking ghosts, before returning to the ever-fruitful topic of his son’s inequities.
“I had hoped you had grown out of these childish headaches, Nicholas,” the duke said, slowly pacing the room with a rhythm that seemed to hammer against Nic’s skull. “It is hardly commensurate with your dignity to be hiding away in the dark.”
Nic’s head ached too much to argue or attempt explanation, especially when not a single word of his remonstration was new. It seemed to have a fresh bite, however, and Nic couldn’t but wonder if he was being deliberately punished for his recent offences.
“Well,” the duke said, scuffing to a stop beside the settee with a dissatisfied air.
“At least since the Serral party are refusing to come down to dinner until the contract is complete, I will be spared the need to explain your absence at the dinner table. Now would not be a good time to have them begin questioning the soundness of your mind.”
Thankfully, his father had departed after that, leaving Nic with a new thought to occupy his mind—a fierce desire to inflict his next headache upon the duke instead.
Whether thanks to such malicious imaginings or the doctor’s elixirs, the pain had subsided into mere fragility by the time Ambrose brought his food. “Dinner, my lord,” the young man whispered, the sound rasping across Nic’s senses. “Would you like it here, or…?”
“Here is fine,” Nic said, pulling into a sitting position with a wince. “Thank you, Ambrose.”
“And Master sa Vare is asking if you are well enough for him to step in, my lord.”
“Oh.”
Before Nic could think of a more eloquent reply, Dashiell appeared in the doorway. “Only if you can stomach my presence,” he said, voice low.
“When you put it like that, it sounds as though I find you disgusting,” Nic said, managing a faint smile.
“Not what I meant.”
“I know. But yes, I think I can stomach your presence for a little while.”
Dashiell stepped in and took the nearby armchair while Ambrose fussed with the dinner tray, the small clinks of glass and ceramic like flicks upon raw nerves.
The worst of the headache had subsided, but it would still take a few hours—and likely another of the doctor’s draughts—before Nic could face the world without cringing.
“I heard from the doctor that you had one of your headaches,” Dashiell said. “I am glad to find it hasn’t laid you out as completely as they used to.”
“I think that is more due to the doctor’s elixirs than any sudden fortitude on my part, however much my father continues to insist I should be able to determinedly Monterris my way out of having them, like I choose to suffer merely to be interesting.”
Dashiell grimaced. “Ah, he’s still at that, is he?”
“Always.”
Having finally finished arranging Nic’s dinner to his satisfaction, Ambrose stepped back. “Is there anything else you need, my lord?” he whispered, the extra sibilant whistle making Nic wince.
“Please don’t do that,” Nic said, causing consternation to twist the young man’s face.
“Do what, my lord?”
Nic tried to swallow his annoyance—an annoyance that had more to do with a lingering grief that he would never have had to remind Rowerre.
When Nic didn’t immediately answer, the valet looked wideeyed to Dashiell in a silent plea for assistance.
“It’s the whispering,” Dashiell said, his voice a low murmur. “It makes a whistling that is worse than just speaking normally, even when you try not to. Just pitch your voice down and keep it as monotonous as you can.”
Because of course Dashiell had remembered.
Nic waved something of an apology at Ambrose. “Not your fault I’m a finicky bastard to take care of. I will be all right in a few hours, but I shall have to find out what the doctor puts in his elixirs, because they were far more effective than the ones old Dr. Palmerston mixes up.”
“He is certainly a handy man to have around,” Dashiell agreed. “Though he gave me strict instructions not to trouble you for long, so now that I have assured myself you are well, I should probably leave you to an evening of much deserved rest.”
“Ah, but you should know there is no rest for the wicked,” Nic said, because he didn’t want Dashiell to go but couldn’t ask him to stay.
“When I head back to my rooms it will be to work on that sigil tape. That is once I’m sure that touching it won’t feel like getting hit repeatedly over the head with a harp. ”
Dashiell’s laugh owned an edge of grimace. “I would say just leave it to me, but I’m afraid I’ve had no epiphany about it. The more I look at my notes, the more I fear it’s just gibberish. All those half-complete ba met commands and repeated conjurings of firelight.”
“Ba met commands don’t work when they’re only half-complete.”
“I know, that’s why I said it was gibberish. And more likely to induce a headache than help one.”
Nic gave him a piercing look. “Are you just telling me its gibberish so that I’ll rest instead of working on it? If it mollifies you at all, I was only going to work on it for a short time anyway, since I need to go down to the archives tonight.”
“The archives? Dare I ask why?”
“Truthfully? Because I want to find my mother’s marriage contract.”
“Her marriage contract?” Dashiell glanced around the den as though he expected one of the stuffed stag’s heads to solve his confusion. “But why? What do you hope to find?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Nic said, because he couldn’t say “because maybe these murders aren’t about this contract,” or “because Uncle Francis was my father,” or “because I don’t understand what happened to her money” or any of the other thoughts that tangled in his mind.
Dashiell’s brow furrowed. “Given the circumstances, wandering around at night on your own for an ‘I don’t know exactly’ seems unwise. Would you like company?”
Nic examined his face and found it devastatingly earnest. The answer was yes, but Nic shook his head. “No one knows I mean to go, and I’ll go late enough that everyone is asleep anyway. So, you see, you needn’t worry about me.”
“Not worry about you when four people are already dead?”
A deep boom like a distant gong filled the room with the scratch of sigils, their accent familiar and unmistakable.
Nic pressed a hand to his head, turning an accusatory look Dashiell’s way.
But the vowsmith had not moved his fingers and had no quill in hand, the magic his and yet lacking the stickiness of fresh work.
Dashiell’s gaze snapped toward the door.
“That’s the alarm.”
“The what?
“The alarm on the doors.” Dashiell leapt to his feet. “A Brilliant is trying to get out of the house.”
The vowsmith was gone on the words, dashing out into the hallway, his warning shout swallowed by yet another resonant boom. Nic pushed away his dinner tray and got to his feet, hating the feeling his head was shaking loose. He followed anyway, hurrying out in Dashiell’s wake.
Nic arrived in the entrance hall to find Lady Lisbeth dressed in a warm pelisse with a small bandbox on the floor by her feet. Fingers curved to desperate claws, she scratched at the sigils covering the doors of Monterris Court, sending sparks of fracturing magic spitting into the air.
“Stop!” Dashiell shouted as he sped in, only to pull up short when she seemed not to hear him.
Footsteps sped along the hallway like a storm, and in a breath of soft muslin and rose oil Leaf brushed passed Nic in the doorway. “Lizzy!”
Where Dashiell’s voice had not registered, Leaf’s collapsed Lady Lisbeth’s knees beneath her. The young woman dropped in a billow of green velvet, and pressed shimmering ink-smeared hands to her face.
“I want to go home, Leaf. I want to go home,” she cried. “I don’t want to die. Please let me go home!”
As Leaf knelt on the floor beside her sobbing friend, Nic slowed his approach, uncomfortable with having come to stare at the lady’s distress—a distress he felt in his soul, as he felt the powerlessness of her desperate bid for freedom.
“I’m sorry, Lisbeth, you know I cannot,” Leaf said, the look she threw her father as he appeared all glare.
Lisbeth, hunting the slowly arriving company, fixed her gaze on Dashiell then. “Oh, Master sa Vare, please! Please let me go. You can do it, can’t you? Please?”
A flicker of pain crossed Dashiell’s face as he shook his head. “I cannot, my lady. To open the doors for any Brilliant would void the contract, and so is something only His Grace and Lord Charborough can do.”