Chapter Three #4
In the year since, the shadows surrounding the event had only deepened.
Accounts of the proceedings emerged from those who claimed to be in attendance and then were quickly contradicted by others, or revealed to be false.
The Weaver King’s guests, it seemed, had chosen to take the truth of the Vainglory to Ophelia’s grave; to this day, the identities of the nine surviving maidens remained anonymous, blank faces on blurred canvas despite the population’s attempts to paint them in.
Yet here I was now, being handed that very same invitation so many of my kind had longed for a year ago. An opportunity to experience for myself the mystery others would have lied, stolen—perhaps even killed—to solve.
But though I’d had only one conversation with him, Eliot Lear did not strike me as the charitable sort. So why was he offering it to me? And where, in all this, were the men at the source of the rumors—the Alaires?
I asked Eliot as much. When I did, he smirked, settling back in his armchair.
“Tell me what the papers told you,” he said with a commanding flick of his hand. “About how my sister died.”
Ophelia again. “They said she fell from the top of the Weaver King’s mansion, Fortblanche,” I replied. “It had been storming—she likely slipped and lost her balance. A few of the bolder tabloids claimed she was drunk.”
Eliot nodded thoughtfully. “It is true she fell,” he answered. “But she didn’t slip. Ophelia was killed.”
My eyes widened; outside, the storm raged on, as if in a fit of mourning. “Killed?” I repeated doubtfully. “By whom?”
“That is exactly what I’d like you to find out.
” Abruptly, Eliot leaned forward, clasping his hands together in his lap.
There was a new, frenetic energy to his manner, an eagerness, as if our entire conversation, up until this point, had been but a tedious precursor in his eyes, necessary to get to— this .
“My sister had a Wit—a gift, like yours,” he said briskly.
“She called it her intuition; my father marketed it to her suitors as the talent of prophecy. She could… feel when things were coming, the way another might sense rain in the air.” Twined together, his fingers flexed, as if pushing against a memory.
“The night before she left for Bastian’s competition, the two of them fought,” he went on.
“Ophelia told my father she’d had an intuition—that she knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, if she ventured into the Alaires’ halls, she would die there. ”
Outside, the sky briefly cracked with white: lightning, like the emphatic stroke of a pen underlining his words. When it retreated, the hotel room seemed darker than it had before.
“That is…inauspicious,” I said cautiously. Each word took a long time to come, as if thawing out of a winter freeze. “But death does not mean murder, necessarily. As I’ve stated, the papers said she fell—”
“I care nothing for what the papers said.” Eliot’s tone sharpened, and I flinched, steeling myself for his anger, or dismissal, or both. As swiftly as it had appeared, though, the emotion departed, the strain fading from his shoulders.
“I was there that night,” he said dully, a minute later. “At Fortblanche, when she…”
He fell silent, his eyes jumping away from mine. There was guilt in them, a tired sort of pain like a bone that had never properly set.
“I hadn’t attended any of the previous evenings, but my father had been badgering me to do so, and I—after the claims she’d made prior to leaving, I was worried for her,” he continued in that same flat tone.
“As soon as I was able, I pulled her aside to ask her about the feeling she’d had before the competition started—if she still believed it to be accurate. And shesaid…”
Another break in his speech, a road suddenly dead-ending.
I got the sense that touching this subject made him physically uncomfortable—that he was disturbed by it, like the memory was a raven seated on the sofa next to me, portending death.
“She told me her Wit had failed her,” he went on, his voice rough.
“That she could not have possibly predicted what she now understood to be true. She seemed so terribly scared .” He shook his head, his jaw tensing.
“Horribly frightened, and worse than that, uncertain in a way I hadn’t witnessed since she’d come into her gift.
We didn’t speak long—one of my father’s fellow Councillors pulled her away.
I tried to find her again later, but she was nowhere to be seen. And then—”
He stopped again; there was a finality to it this time, like the fall of a blade. Fingers of trepidation feathered over my neck, the hurl of the rain outside somehow menacing.
She told me her Wit had failed her…
Glancing sidelong at Eliot, I bridged the silence. “Even if what you suppose is true,” I said. “If your sister truly was killed, as you believe, then why approach me? Why trust me, above all others, to solve the riddle of her death?”
“Because,” he answered steadily, “it is as I said before—you, Miss Tamerlane, are a lyrebird. You resemble a lady, but beneath, you are an impostor, of the exact sort which I have been searching for these past twelve months. After Ophelia’s passing last year, the surviving maidens scattered back to their respective households.
Now, with the competition recommencing, they—along with Bastian’s other guests—will be drawn back to the scene of her death for the first time.
Besides,” he added, “it isn’t as if you’d be alone.
Noé has invited me to judge you girls alongside him this time around—a concession granted by his father to encourage his participation after the chaos of last summer.
I’ll be there for the whole of the Vainglory, at your complete disposal, but you can go places I can’t, figuratively and literally.
You can track down the person who killed my sister; I am convinced of it. ”
His eyes were trained on mine, unwavering and certain. Yet his previous words still hung, miasmic, in the air, the memory of them sitting like lead in my stomach. She knew…if she ventured into the Alaires’ halls, she would die there.
I pictured Ophelia’s broken body, washed up on the sea rocks. Whether it had been the drunkenness the tabloids claimed or a far more sinister force, something had driven her off the cliffs that night. Did I truly want to meet whatever it was?
As though he could sense my reservations, Eliot shifted closer, the citrus scent of his cologne catching in my nostrils. “How old are you, Miss Tamerlane?”
His words were hushed; I felt myself stiffen at the sound of them. In my ears the phantom sound of a clock, never entirely absent, grew louder: tick, tick . Its accusing hand sweeping ever closer to twenty-one.
“I should think,” I replied, just as softly, “you would know better than to raise such a delicate subject with a lady.”
He didn’t blink, his eyes like a cat’s, yellow-gold and glittering. “You must at least be eighteen,” he went on, ignoring me. “Three years left, then. Are you not frightened of what awaits you at the end of them?”
I hardened my gaze, unwilling to let him glimpse my unease. “Three years is a long time still.”
“Ah.” He smiled wanly, the motion catching me by surprise—like the abrupt flick of a lash. “But is it time enough?”
My skin pricked, as if with a chill. Dropping his stare, Eliot leaned back in his armchair.
“I have heard the tales about the silkwitches sent to the cloisters.” Eliot spoke again, and my thoughts faded.
“I know that those entrusted to their care never escape it again.” He inclined his head, his expression subdued—like a storyteller’s, giving away nothing. “I can ensure you don’t become one.”
The question left my lips before I could stop it. “How?”
Disgust coiled in me at his triumphant smirk, like a fisherman who’d just felt their line catch. Once more, he shifted forward, his movements slow with an oiled, muscular grace.
“Join the competition,” he said. “Come with me to Fortblanche. Help me find the person who killed my sister, and regardless of whether you are crowned the victor or not, I will see to it that you are welcomed into every circle that has ever disgraced you. Once this affair is over with, I will pull every string at my family’s disposal in order to find you a husband—and there are, I assure you, a great many strings to choosefrom. ”
His gaze tightened on mine, the drum of the rain a chorus behind him, filling in the silence.
“You are playing a good game, but it is not one you can win,” he continued lowly.
“Either you will be caught thieving and taken to the cloisters before you reach twenty-one, or you will age and they will claim you regardless. My sister was a silkwitch, Miss Tamerlane—I have witnessed, firsthand, the path assigned to your kind, and I know there are but two destinations. Unless…” He hesitated, as if debating.
“Well, one never knows. Perhaps you have a relative of vast political importance who may spare you. A brother, perhaps?”
When I flinched, his eyes flashed with satisfaction.
“I said you were difficult to track down, not that I hadn’t managed it,” Eliot went on.
“Markham, isn’t your brother called? I’m assuming he doesn’t know about your…
” His hand drifted toward his waistcoat, where I knew his pocket watch was hiding.
“…Extracurriculars.” He clicked his tongue in disapproval.
“Still, maybe he could plead your case, whenever it is that the authorities inevitably apprehend you. Remind me, what is the nature of his employment again?”
I hated him then. Hated him with a hot-centered rage for the admission he was forcing out of me, more so for the knowledge I heard in his question. He was already aware, I was positive, of my brother’s occupation. He only wanted me to roll over for him; he wanted to hear me say it.
To admit, to myself and him both, just how desperate my situation truly was.
“Markham is employed by the workhouses,” I spat. “He signed a ten-year contract. I rarely see him before dark.”
Pleased, Eliot shifted away. “What a pity,” he drawled. “If we were friends, you and I, I’d be happy to see about getting him out of that.” His chin tilted to the right, a single dark brow arching. “You’ll find I can be most generous, Miss Tamerlane, when my sympathies are struck.”
I despise you , I thought. I wish you, and not your sister, had fallen from Bastian Alaire’s terrace last year. I wish the ocean had swallowed you whole. “Fine.”
Eliot went rigid, his smirking cruelty vanishing in an instant. “Fine?”
My jaw was stiff. “I’ll do it,” I hissed. “I’ll be your tenth maiden.”
He did not vocalize his relief, but I registered it all the same—an unclenching like an exhalation, a crack in his stoic facade.
I forcibly batted away the pulse of sympathy that rose within me at the sensation of it.
Even tyrants cared for their siblings, I reminded myself.
It meant nothing, the impulse to stanch the flow of your own blood.
In the end, “wonderful” was all he said in response, his speech barely above a murmur.
I didn’t offer him an additional word of reply.
For a moment longer, we watched one another; then, pulling his pocket watch out, he glanced at its polished face.
“Well then,” Eliot continued more steadily.
“I’m afraid I must excuse myself—dinner obligations, unfortunately—but rest assured, I will be in touch soon. We have much to discuss.”
He leaned down, grasping my hand before I could retract it and giving it a shake.
His skin was cool and dry; I blinked in astonishment as, when he pulled away, there was an object pressed into the hollow of my palm, its circular face glinting in the stormlight.
The watch. Its chain draped over my fingers like a tail.
“You earned it,” Eliot said from above me. “Your con was good, but you rely too much on your looks. Every girl selected for the Vainglory will be as pretty as you, Miss Tamerlane. You will need to learn to differentiate yourself.”
He extended his arm toward the entrance, signaling an end to our conversation.
Throwing him a glare, I rose, then paused to glance back over my shoulder.
“I am not the only unlucky silkwitch in this city, Mr.Lear, and yet you came looking for me,” I replied curtly.
“Does that not make me different enough?”
His feline eyes narrowed at my response, but I turned away before he could voice a retort, making for the exit.
I dropped the watch by the door on my way out.