Chapter Four #3
“Marie-Louise is an odder case.” Continuing, Eliot shifted on the sofa, his leg drifting toward mine again—and again, I swiftly maneuvered myself farther away.
“Her gift…It is powerful, but there are also those who find it—and Marie herself—disturbing,” he said.
“Her Wit turns mirrors to windows, though only for her. Once she has marked one, she can peer through it from any other looking glass in her network, without anyone on the other side realizing she is watching.” Eliot smiled thinly.
“Growing up, Noé and I called her the All-Seeing Eye.”
The All-Seeing Eye. At the nickname, I leaned forward, flattening my palm alongside the edge of the paper. The list of names appeared challenging now, waiting like a platoon of soldiers in their squat, orderly rows, ready to combat me.
Ever since my arrival on the Isle d’Eylau, I had worked in isolation, removed from my fellow silkwitches.
Without others of my kind to compare myself against, it had been easy to rest in the strength of my Wit, to feel secure in its power.
Now, though, faced with a roster of other girls with gifts like mine, I had to wonder…
Perhaps I was not exceptional. Perhaps I had just been alone.
To distract myself, I selected another name from the row. “What about her? Sybil Dabos. Surely, she isn’t a relation—”
“Ah, but she is.” Eliot winced, a shallow tic of his cheek. “Lucie Dabos’s daughter.”
My brows lifted, partially in scandal, partially with surprise.
Lucie Dabos—now, there was a name I had heard before.
Like Reginald Lear, Eliot’s father, Lucie was a Councillor and member of Balmoore’s Virtuous Parliament—though in terms of politics, the Daboses and Lears could not be farther apart.
Reports of the former’s anti-Weaver rants featured frequently in the papers; nowhere amongst the extensive coverage of her family, however, had I glimpsed a mention of a daughter, much less a silkwitch one.
I was used to seeing the Dabos name standing in opposition to the Alaires’ own, not welcomed as a guest in their halls.
I racked my mind, collecting the few fragments of information on the Dabos family that I’d read in the news.
They were longtime politicians, dating back to Lucie’s maternal grandfather, I was fairly sure, and with every successive generation, their platform had remained the same.
Restrictions on Weavers: limitations on their power, their magic.
“Sybil is a girl best avoided.” Eliot interrupted my thoughts, his forehead creasing.
“I assume you are aware of her mother’s position in Parliament—the Daboses stand in opposition to the entire Weaver way of life.
The fact that their matriarch’s daughter participated in the Vainglory at all last year, much less agreed to return a second time, is…
unusual, to say the least.” He shook his head, a distracted glaze dewing over his features. “Noé thinks she is rebelling, but…”
I sat back, a crescent forming beneath Sybil’s name where my nail had driven into the paper. “What is her Wit?”
A hesitation, like a hitched breath. I glanced over just as Eliot exhaled, raking a hand through his curls.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted with a shake of his head.
“Since Sybil came into her blessing, Lucie has kept her like a secret—she is rarely discussed, seen even less frequently. My father, as well as half the eligible Weavers in Balmoore, have spent frankly ridiculous sums attempting to lure her out of hiding, but none succeeded prior to the competition last year.” His eyes darted toward me, alert under the black sweep of his lashes.
“I tried to get it out of Noé after his first Vainglory, but he wouldn’t budge—said it was Sybil’s blessing, to share as she wished.
We’ll find out during the game, though. Assisting Noé in judging, I’ll be privy to information I wasn’t last year. ”
“Is it only you and Noé who will be judging us?” I asked.
“And one other—Dorian Drake,” Eliot replied.
Was I imagining it, or did his mouth twitch briefly as he spoke his fellow judge’s name, tugging into a grimace?
“His father is Gerard Drake—though it is his uncle, Adélard, you’re more likely to be familiar with.
” He paused, clearing his throat. “Master of the Cloisters.”
My stomach flipped. The enigmatic Cloister Master was as much of a mystery as the purgatorial prison he presided over—but all the same, I did know of him.
In my mind’s eye, images of the cloisters leapt urgently forth from their hiding places, their blank gray stares filling my vision once again.
Whatever happened to the girls trapped behind those walls, Adélard Drake was, if not the person carrying out the doing, the one who ordered it done.
And I was preparing to consent myself to the judgment of his nephew.
“Dorian’s been engaged to the silkwitch Lou Martin for the better part of two years, though that has done little to stop him from exploring…
other interests.” Eliot coughed shallowly, his nose wrinkling with derision.
“He is relentless in pursuing what he wants, and clever enough to understand the cleansing powers of loyalty, once he gets it. The Alaires have covered up a multitude of sins for him, and they will not hesitate to do so again—though whatever, or whom ever, he touches becomes stained in Noé’s eyes. ”
His stare, which had fallen back toward the paper as he’d been speaking, raised to meet mine.
“If you want to stay in the Alaires’ good graces, do your best to ensure that Dorian does not want you,” he finished.
I nodded once, pushing down the anxiety that had risen up suddenly at his warning. “And Noé?” I ventured. “What is he like?”
Eliot’s expression turned thoughtful. “Noé is…slippery,” he answered after a moment. “He has to be, in his position. Being Bastian’s son means he is desired by most everyone, and so he shows his true self to few. He has a good heart, though,” Eliot continued. “You will be safe with him.”
He’d angled himself back toward me as he spoke, his gaze raking slowly over my figure as if assuring himself of the fact.
At its methodical trace, and at the blunt simplicity of his statement, I felt hairs lift along the back of my neck.
Safe. It was, I couldn’t help but reflect, an odd word to choose.
Even in my limited dealings with Weavers, I’d come to understand that they rarely considered the goodness of their peers—or the danger that might come to the silkwitches in their hold.
We could be stolen, of course, we could be lured, but a silkwitch given freely in marriage…
Well, did one consider the safety of a string of pearls, when passing it off to a happy customer?
It had been bought. It was a belonging—it belonged .
You will be safe with him. Such an easy promise to make, so meaningless, and yet…
And yet for a half second, I believed him.
Straightening, Eliot began speaking again, pulling my attention back to him.
“Along with Noé and Dorian, I’ve been tasked with overseeing the trials for you maidens—a series of tests, five in total, designed to measure the strength of your Wits, and your minds.
The majority of the rules will be explained in detail once the competition commences, but for now, all you need to know is that at the end of ten days, the silkwitch found to be most worthy will be named the winner—and Noé’s wife. ”
He stood, snatching up the paper and tucking it back into his pocket as he did so.
The sudden motion was like the swing of a gavel, cutting off any further discussion of the topic.
“I’ll do my best to feed you information as it comes to me, once we’re inside Fortblanche,” Eliot said from above me.
“We’ll need to be subtle about it, though.
The other maidens—and my fellow judges, for that matter—will already be watching you closely, as the sole new horse in the race.
They will not take kindly to displays of favoritism. ”
Shifting aside a couple of the tomes that littered the floor, Eliot made his way around the coffee table, back toward the center of the sitting room.
The evening had turned plummy as we’d been speaking and now cast his figure in purpling light, his reflection in the mirror against the wall reduced to an indigo shadow.
“I trust your family will not create any undue complications once you have entered the race?” he inquired, stooping to better examine himself in the looking glass.
“What about your brother—is he the type to make a scene if he gets wind of your selection?”
The mention of my brother soured the air, vinegar through wine, but I kept my face neutral.
“He won’t pose any issues,” I replied simply.
“Most of his daylight hours are taken up by his work, and I have already told him that I’ve been invited to spend the next fortnight at a friend’s summer home up the coast.” Biting my lip, I glanced down and picked at the skirt of my dress.
“That’s who he believes funds my expensive tastes—friends. ”
Markham despises thievery , I left unsaid.
However little he thought of my moral character already, I was too proud to reveal that detail to Eliot, to display the fullness of how low I’d sunk during my brief time on the Isle d’Eylau.
How I was so stained that my own brother would hesitate to pull me out of the muck, should he glimpse the truth.
“Good.” Satisfied, Eliot nodded. “It is better that you won’t be distracted by his worrying after you. If we are to have any hope of discovering what happened to my sister, we’ll need you as focused as possible during the competition.”
I set down the hem I was fiddling with. “You haven’t considered that it could be Noé, then, who bears responsibility for her death?
Or his father—Bastian?” I ventured cautiously.
It was a question I’d harbored since our first meeting; tonight, though, wrapped in the intimate quiet of the dusk, was the first time I’d felt bold enough to voice it.
“If Ophelia was frightened of someone within Fortblanche, they would be the natural assumptions, no?”
In the darkening glass of the mirror, Eliot’s form stiffened—yet when he moved, it was toward the windows, not me.
“I have, but…my sister fell from Fortblanche’s White Terrace, on the estate’s western side,” he said.
His finger rose, tinked against the slick windowpane, as if he were marking the spot on an invisible map.
“It was storming—there was no one else on the terrace to witness her slipping—but several guests wandering along the lower battlements saw her plunge past them, and they raised the alarm. Bastian was speaking with my father at the time, and Noé arrived at the scene from the far side of the house—multiple witnesses placed him in the eastern ballroom when news began to spread about Ophelia’s fall.
” Eliot’s finger slid to the side in a straight line, stopped short.
“It would have been impossible for him to have traveled from one side of the castle to the other in such a short time, never mind without being seen by anyone along the way.”
Dropping his arm, he glanced past his shoulder at me.
“Along with the Alaires’ other guests, the maidens who had been eliminated earlier in the competition were invited back to Fortblanche for the affair’s climactic event.
With the recommencing of the Vainglory, it will be the first time in a year that all those who were present will be rounded up again.
” His throat bobbed, his manner turning grave.
“It is our only chance to discover the truth.”
There was a viciousness to his words—to his tone—and they fell over me like a shadow.
Of all the bargains I could have struck, I had to remember that this was an intensely personal one, and all the more volatile for it.
Eliot’s vendetta was as deep and lasting as a scar; it would not fade easily.
If needed, I could already tell, he would go over the cliffside to bring his sister’s killer to justice.
He would drag me down with him.
As if sensing my reservations, Eliot softened. “Miss Tamerlane…are you sure that you wish to do this?” he ventured, drawing closer. “Once we arrive at Fortblanche, there is no turning back.”
I closed my eyes, shutting out his advancing figure.
Since the arrival of my blessing, the nature of my Wit meant that I always had an escape route—a back entrance I could slip out of, should a situation I found myself in become too dire.
Yet, if I followed through with this alliance, if I entered the Weaver King’s halls…
there, I feared, was a danger I could not outrun. A door I could not open.
Until my magic died and I aged out of my Wit, there would always be more anxious mamas eager to pay for my services, more guileless men I could deceive.
I could survive without a ring on my finger, at least temporarily.
But as every silkwitch was forced to learn, even I could not outwit time.
Eighteen meant three more years until twenty-one, and the cloisters.
I was certain they would go by in a blink.
“I’m sure,” I answered Eliot.
I felt his relief like a window thrown open, sweeping away the stale interior air. “Good,” Eliot said. “In that case…”
He reached into the pocket of his trousers, withdrawing a square white envelope, which he tossed onto the table with a jerk of his wrist. I eyed it suspiciously, my gaze tracing the unfamiliar inscription inked on it: Miss Cecilia Lovett .
“Your invitation.” Eliot nodded. “You didn’t think you could keep calling yourself Lovett Tamerlane, did you?” Crossing back to where I sat, he flicked the envelope, then winked at me. “Get some rest, Cecilia,” he purred. “The games begin next week.”