Chapter Twenty
The bright flare of Eliot’s coin pulled me from my slumber, like a pale sliver of rising sun.
Blinking, I sat up, rubbing at my eyes. The evening that had followed Anais’s message had been a sluggish one, the constant rain reducing the hours to a humid gray lurch.
All through dusk’s descent, I’d waited to see if Eliot would call for me.
Had stayed up long past dark in anticipation of his summons, staring at the tarnished metal piece in my hand through the purpling dark.
Preparing for it to awaken, to shiver with heat and light.
It never had. Until, it seemed, now.
What had changed, to prompt him to break our stalemate?
Eager to find out, I dressed quickly, removing the shroud over my mirror only briefly to pin my hair up in my caul and throwing a wink at my reflection for Marie-Louise’s benefit before covering it again. My tresses safely contained, I departed my room.
Only to narrowly avoid a collision with Bernard the butler, who was waiting just beyond my threshold, poised as if to knock.
Stumbling back, I drew in a breath. The stern-faced man looked uncharacteristically gleeful at the sight of me, an observation that immediately put me ill at ease.
Breakfast hour would not take place for a while yet; what was he doing outside my room so early?
“Forgive me if I frightened you, miss.” That the butler’s voice held none of its usual grumble was another disquieting sign. “The master is quite busy this morning. He requested that you be fetched as soon as possible.”
The master. I knitted my brow. “Mr.Noé wishes to see me again?”
Bernard smiled, thin-lipped and menacing. “He has not yet risen. His father, though, is eager to make your acquaintance.”
My nerves shriveled. Not Noé. Bastian. I resisted the urge to reach for Eliot’s coin, which I’d tucked into my waistband prior to exiting my room and which currently lay cold and flat against me. Had that been the meaning of his call just now? A warning?
If so, it had come too late.
The butler did not allow me much time to process his unwelcome news.
I hurried to keep up with him as he hastened down the corridor, passing by the stoic procession of the other maidens’ closed doors.
Were they to receive the same invitation as I was, I wondered—or was Bastian’s interest, whatever its origin, in me and me alone?
I received an answer only a few minutes later.
As we turned a corner, a hiccuping, breathy sort of sob reached my ears, restrained in volume as though the weeper were attempting to gain control over their emotions.
From the opposite end of the rain-lit hall, another girl was striding toward Bernard and me, accompanied by a servant and with a gloved hand clasped over her mouth.
Elspeth Winn. I studied the slight, dark-haired maiden out of the corner of my eye as she neared us, taking in the profusion of freckles pocking her brown skin, which seemed to glow when she laughed.
She was certainly not laughing now. A sick feeling thrashed in my gut.
“May I ask for what reason Mr.Alaire wishes to speak with me?” I inquired to Bernard cautiously once we’d passed Elspeth by.
The butler neither answered nor slowed his pace, only glanced back at me with a rabbit-eyed blankness before fixing his slippery gaze forward once more.
Around us, the house slid by, familiar corridors shedding back to reveal stranger, less-frequented halls.
There was a draft here, a mossy dampness, as if water had soaked the stone walls; buttressed ceilings soared high above me, spiked like ribs.
The atmosphere seemed to tremble as though with breath.
We came to a stop in front of an unmarked wooden door, inlaid with a single stained glass panel in its center. I could not make out anyone lingering on its other side, but when Bernard knocked, a voice rang out.
“Come in.”
As if compelled by the call, the door creaked open.
Across the threshold lay a study, similar to the one I’d last faced Noé and his judges in but more compact, designed for reflection rather than revelry.
Latticed windows overlooked the dreary sea beyond; the space was dominated by a large, oaken desk, scored with age and positioned atop a rug of rich saffron hues.
At its center sat a man. He was shuffling something idly in his hands—a deck of cards, I observed upon closer look, hand-painted and curling at their edges.
I took in first his tapered fingers, elegant and so pale they could have been wax-dipped; then his suit, plain black except for the emblem stitched above his left breast, marking his heart; then the burst of his yellow ascot like an exotic flower drooping from his throat.
His face, I examined last. His angular features were familiar, his gray eyes a bit stonier than those of his son, as if he had confronted age and broken it against him, leaving him sharper than before.
On his right hand, he wore a ring: silver, the gem in its center ridged like a tooth and glinting meanly, as if possessed of its own interior light.
Shifting, Bastian Alaire gathered his deck in one hand and smiled cordially up at me. “Good morning, Miss Lovett. I hope my butler did not wake you too early. Please, do sit down.”
He gestured loosely to the chair positioned opposite him: wooden, with a hard-looking seat cushion.
From my position just past the door, I eyed it suspiciously, hesitant to sink into its stiff embrace.
The Weaver King seemed to register my reluctance, letting out a low chortle and straightening in hisseat.
“Has my furniture offended you? Tell me its wrongs, and I shall berate it.”
Why so anxious, little lamb?
My limbs grew rigid as though with frost. Layered beneath Bastian Alaire’s spoken words, I’d heard another voice—more sensation than speech, trickling through my mind like groundwater.
I shuddered at its dark coolness, more so at the pressure intruding at the back of my skull, a deliberate press like a cat’s testing paw.
“I…” Whatever my intended response had been, it had abandoned me at the Weaver King’s second question.
He is inside my head. It was an intensely personal feeling, far worse than when he’d spoken to the crowd my first night at Fortblanche.
I could sense him there, an obstruction in my thoughts like a clot of food lodged in the back of my throat. Lurking.
To my front, Bastian clucked his tongue.
“Bernard, you fool, you’ve paralyzed her,” he said reprovingly.
Craning his neck to glare at the butler still waiting behind me, he gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
“What sort of dire proclamations have you been whispering in her ear? Be on your way, before you do any more harm.”
Forgive my butler, Miss Lovett. He is unused to contending with such delicate creatures as you.
Again, the entreaty came smoothly, an obsidian blink like an eclipse, my thoughts briefly crowded out by his own. I remained stock-still as Bernard bowed and, with a mutter of farewell, departed; then, in wordless obedience, I approached the chair in front of the desk and sat.
For a minute after the butler’s retreat, there was silence, the only sound the gentle plink of the rain. Then Bastian tilted his head. “You are wondering why I’ve summoned you.”
His tone was friendly, his expression, keen.
In my head, his influence over my mind had waned, but I could still feel the jut of his consciousness at the base of my own, like a hand waiting to reach back up and grab me.
I cleared my throat. “Is that a question, sir, or are you simply reading aloud?”
He chuckled when I motioned to my temple. “Neither,” he replied. “It is an introduction. To your second test, which I will conduct personally.”
A test. This was the second trial. After seeing Elspeth sobbing in the hall earlier, I’d begun to wonder as much, but still—the confirmation was sobering, the revelation that this challenge would be extended directly from the Weaver King to me even more so.
“I am afraid I am all out of secrets,” I said carefully. “Your son took my last one.”
“No secrets,” Bastian countered. There was something odd about his manner of conversing, and it took me a moment to place it: He spoke without any measure of hesitation, like an actor—well versed in his script and confident of his cue.
“My son endeavored to test your Wits; I prefer to test your mind. I ask only that you play a game with me.”
He flexed his wrist, flashing the deck of cards held in his hand.
I recognized the design of the topmost one, an elderly lady bearing a crown of thorned roses: the Crone, one of thirteen such personas that comprised a standard Seer Deck.
Sets such as this were primarily used in two ways throughout Balmoore; enchanted versions, those Woven with magesilk, were associated with divination and vastly rarer, while common decks were employed in play.
The version in Bastian’s hand looked to be the latter. I tracked it warily, unnerved. “A game, sir?”
The Weaver King sighed. “Too simple? The girl prior to you thought so as well.” Cutting the deck, he formed a bridge and let the cards fall together again, his ring flashing as he did.
“We shall have to raise the stakes, then. How does this suit? If you win, you may remain here in Fortblanche for another test. If you lose, you will go.” At my stricken expression, his gray eyes crinkled.
“Oh, do not look so glum. Hope is not yet lost—I will even let you pick the game.”