Johanna de Mathieu woke before dawn. She had a few aching bruises from the other day; after watching the duke take apart a pell, she’d decided to practice her jumps. A solid week cooped up in the tower had weakened her seat, and she’d felt those landings, not that the duke had taken notice. She drew the curtains back, planting her feet next to a pile of shredded lace she’d cut from her favorite riding vest.
If lavender and lace rendered her invisible to the duke even when practicing riding tricks, she would have no more of it. The vest could be recolored an emerald-green to match her eyes and her new favorite gown. She yawned, nudging the pile of lace with her toe before daintily stepping over to her wardrobe and pulling out the dress she’d worn the first time she’d been introduced to the duke.
It was a very pale shade of lavender, positively festooned with elaborate lace, with ribbons that trailed nearly down to the floor. The front was modest and demure in its cut, and the back—well, the bustle and the ribbons were certainly attention-getting. If baroque decoration was to the viewer’s taste, that is.
If she cut away all the decorations, she would be left with either a ragged mess or, at best, a daringly backless gown, and while her leather riding vest had been simply coated with an alchemical dye that could be easily enough done over, the pale lavender velvet of the dress in her hands was enspelled to hold its color against stains, an enchantment that also served the cause of repelling debris and holding a permanent lavender perfume.
If she simply had it redyed, the dress would eventually shed the new dye and restore itself to its former lavender color. No, it would need to be completely disenchanted and then either mundanely dyed or re-enchanted, and that was more fuss than the dress was worth. It’s not even that flattering, she thought to herself as she held it up against herself. Best to simply get rid of it. Someone else will want it, maybe one of the other brides or perhaps Isolde—there’s a woman who has no need for concern about being overlooked by Avery; he’s her foster brother.
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“Giles, what exactly happened yesterday?” Elizabeth asked. The castle being shorthanded on servants had its silver linings, one of which was that her brother had brought her breakfast up personally. “All I know is that the duke was away most of the day and took a late dinner in his office, and nobody will tell me more.”
Her brother frowned, setting the breakfast tray down next to his petite blonde sister on her bed. “Promise you won’t tell Father I told you this?”
Elizabeth nodded vigorously. “I promise! But I need to know.”
“There was another attack,” Sir Giles said, looking down at his little sister. “An alchemical poison, like at the Golden Fleece, but in the daytime and a hundred times as big. Many dozens of people died, and many hundreds were harmed—when I went into the city yestereve, it seemed every third man I passed had a terrible cough. The duke himself was in the middle of it.”
“Oh, no!” Elizabeth frowned. “Is he alright? Is the wedding still happening?”
Sir Giles nodded. “I spoke to him myself—he was deeply troubled but determined to carry on. That the attacker disapproves of his marriage is all the more reason to press forward.” A nervous look crossed Giles’s face as the very large man looked down at his tiny sister.
Elizabeth forced a small smile onto her face. “Don’t worry, Giles, I will still marry the duke.”
“You’re not afraid?” Sir Giles asked.
“I am,” Elizabeth said. “Which is why I shan’t set foot outside of the castle until I am properly wedded and bedded and the whole matter is settled. The attackers have not gotten their way into the castle, and if they could have attacked the duke here, they would have already.”
Sir Giles let out a sigh of relief. “Well, now you understand why Father and I will be scarce today—I will be walking shifts with the guards, and he will be doing what he can. I hope you are not too bored.”
“If I am bored, Sabine owes me a chess game,” Elizabeth said. “I can find ways to entertain myself.”
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Sabine flattened the lavender and lace confection of a garment over her body, staring in the mirror. I may not need to salvage my father’s pride, she thought to herself, but I still have pride of my own. Perhaps I can salvage it in my own way.
“Thanks for bringing this on the way back down,” she said, looking at the wall. A smile cracked the corners of her mouth, the first to do so since the duke’s frightful missive the previous day. “I believe I have a use for this. In the future, of course, I hope the duke’s servants will know better than to redirect you when you are about my business, especially when it is another one of the duke’s wives ringing—but you have done well, even if you did not intend to.”
The maidservant blushed as she bobbed in a deep curtsy.
“I no longer require breakfast, however.” Sabine said. Not that I had any appetite this morning in any event. “Whichever of you is the better seamstress, fetch the sewing kit and get everything set up at the table; the other of you, help me redress.” Her voice trailed off as one of the maids began to tug at the lacing of her gown. Less than two minutes later, she was standing in front of the mirror, dressed as fully in the lavender gown as its fit would allow, the maid holding the laces.
“As I suspected, the bodice is tight.” Sabine breathed shallowly. The maid let go of the lacing, and Sabine shrugged out of the bodice, the top of the dress sliding down her arms as the laces loosened. “Too tight to go without alteration. Fits well on the hips, though, to my surprise. I had assumed the bustle had fuller padding.”
Sabine shimmied, and the maid assisted by loosening the dress further; then Sabine stepped out of the dress. The maid picked it up, and Sabine pointed at the bodice. “Add a panel here—the ribbons will cover it—and here, where the lace will cover the gap. The same on the other side. I think an inch apiece will do, tight but not unbearable.”
As the maid scurried off, Sabine muttered under her breath, running her hands through her hair as she stared in the mirror, blonde strands darkening to the light brown shade of Johanna’s hair. “Makeup case,” she said, holding out her hand. When one of her maids placed a red-laquered box in her hand, she nodded. “Someone shall go down and tell Isolde that I am mourning my father in solitude and wish to remain undisturbed until the morrow, that I may cry all my tears out and regain my face before the wedding tomorrow.”
Sabine opened the case, unfolding its shelves and pulling a brush out of the side. Case in one hand and brush in the other, she cleared her throat. “I need my easel and a fresh canvas—no, a fresh sheet of parchment.”
The remaining maid set down her sewing needle to fetch her mistress’s easel, setting it next to the mirror and hanging a clean parchment on it. Then she hurried back to the sewing table.
Sabine stared in the mirror and then began to dab makeup on the parchment with the brush as she pictured Johanna’s face, glancing at the mirror every so often.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
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“Tomorrow we are wed together to the duke,” Althea said, long legs folded and pulled under her chin as she sat on the bed, brunette hair hanging like a curtain in front of her face. “In truth, not just in jest.”
“And tomorrow night, then, is our wedding night—in truth and not just in jest. I’m glad I will have you as my bride for three whole nights before you begin your torrid affair with Duke Avery,” Helen said, blue eyes twinkling wickedly under a disheveled mop of strawberry-blonde hair.
Althea giggled. “You’re so funny, Helen,” she said. “But… please, no more jests. If I am to change my mind, today is the last—”
“No, no, no,” Helen said. “I need you, Althea. You’re my best friend. I don’t want to marry John, you don’t want to marry John, and the only way we could stay home together is if one of us marries John and the other stays an old maid. Have I been poor company this last fortnight?”
“No, of course not,” Althea said, lifting her head and shaking her hair away from her face. “But I hardly know the duke, and I hardly know how to be a duke’s wife. What if—what if when my turn comes, the duke decides he does not like me? I don’t know what I am to do. My mother told me simply that I should kiss him well and then bend whichever way I am put.”
“I hardly know either,” Helen said. “But it can’t be hard. We’ve four more nights to figure it out—and three other brides we can ask beforehand. Or, rather,” she corrected, looking at Althea’s mortified expression, “that I can ask.”
Althea sighed. “I suppose so.”
“Don’t be so glum. What, are you worried that the duke will tickle you?” Helen lunged at Althea, fingers outstretched; surprised laughter burst out of Althea’s mouth before the attack could even arrive, anticipation mattering more than reality.
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“Awake! I come bearing breakfast, oh gentle maidens fair,” Rose intoned. Then her expression broke into a smile as she carried the heavy tray into the room, setting it down on a low table. “Also, I have news—the duke is out of the castle dealing with some kind of urgent matter, and you have strict orders to stay within the tower until the wedding tomorrow. Sir Marcus said you are not to even risk visiting the castle bailey—whatever you might wish, I can fetch it for you or have it fetched.”
Merilda yawned sleepily and sat up, the motion of the large woman tumbling the dainty Fiona up and out of bed. The redheaded quarter-elf landed on her feet with both eyes wide open, suddenly fully awake.
From the drawn curtains of the other bed, Anna chuckled. “And now I am doubly glad to have my own bed, rather than sharing with the two of you,” she said to her roommates, then turned to Rose. “What sort of matter is it?”
As Rose shrugged, Fiona cut in with her own answer. “London is burning. Master Warin sent me a dream last night—Aurelius Ambrosius is not dead, and he mislikes what imperial rule has made of the place.”
Merilda rubbed her eyes sleepily. “I dreamed there was a cute little fox sitting on my chest. But then someone brought breakfast, and I had to wake up. So I did.” She looked over at Fiona, already standing next to the table. “You must be very hungry to decide to get out of bed so quickly.”
“London is burning?” Rose asked, then shook her head. “Nobody told me anything, but I thought the duke was concerned with some matter in town.”
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The rosy fingers of dawn peered through the buildings on the opposite side of the Ouse, gleaming off the river. A great heap of lumber and broken wood sat in the middle of the muddy depression of the manufactory construction site. Ten shrouded lumps lay on top of the wood.
William Taylor was not one of them. Thanks to the protective enchantments he’d attached to the hood of his robes after the death of his student Gwen, he had been unharmed by the gas; however, when the enhanced skeleton had emerged from the storage crypt, he’d placed himself in a suspended state, feigning death in a manner that any undead creation would find convincing to its most magical senses.
As far as non-magical faculties went, William knew very well that whichever edition of Professor Vaux’s work had been inscribed on the skeleton’s arms, it would have no faculty of reason and was unlikely to have any but the crudest of senses. Without significant and carefully calculated adjustments to the skull during the enlargement process, focal length mismatches would ensure its visual senses were poor.
In his lectures at Cambridge, Vaux had explained that a giant fireball-flinging skeleton didn’t need to be terribly precise in aiming its movements, and the integral life sense was more reliable for martial purposes in any event given the theoretical cheapness of illusory soldiers. The professor had then gone on to say that he could, in principle, correct the growth matrix to recalibrate the focal lengths dynamically, but it would easily double the complexity of the spell, increasing preparation time, activation time, and inevitably also the rate of errors by the end users of the necromantic ritual.
William had woken up next to the body of his less-fortunate (and now deceased) brother Edward in the morgue as soon as the coroner attempted a preservation spell, which backfired badly. As busy as the coroner was, the man was grateful for his offer of assistance and didn’t linger to chat or supervise the master necromancer’s work. William was able to rifle through his brother’s pockets unseen before carrying out the basic cleansing and preservation work. Then his sister-in-law had shown up; he’d helped carry Edward’s body out to her carriage before returning to the manufactory site, wondering what he might be able to salvage there.
When he returned with the news that the coroner was too busy to take on more bodies, the ducal guards had promptly put him to work helping with the dead—a bountiful supply of fresh corpses that William had never seen the likes of before. It was sadly ironic to realize that the price of high-quality intact bodies in York would drop precipitously just as the York Textile Company was dissolved, especially given the fear and concern that the common people showed over the strange alchemical scent that lingered on the bodies of the fallen.
No, as fearful as the townsfolk were of the lingering scent of alchemical toxin, few of them would want to indulge their sentimentality by keeping the bodies of the dead.
Still, even if the York Textile Company’s urgent commercial needs were suddenly irrelevant, William was still a practicing necromancer. And as a necromancer, it was a fine time for bargain shopping, especially as he was performing freelance necromantic preservations on the spot, so many that he’d needed to send a runner to fetch more myrrh paste.
He kept what coin he collected but traded away the jewelry he’d collected from Edward on the spot in quiet negotiations with bereaved relatives who came to identify and collect their dead. Best to get rid of it quickly; even if it was family jewelry, his sister-in-law might question how it had passed into his hands.
The night had passed quickly, the duke arriving in the pre-dawn gray. He looked well, though William dared not ask how he had survived both the poison gas and the enhanced skeleton. Such a question might have the air of guilt, and William felt as if he’d only barely survived the duke’s suspicion the day before. Instead, he hovered nervously near the edge of the manufactory site, mixed in with a clump of other curious onlookers.
He’d watched as the duke and an old wolfhound walked slowly and stiffly, looking over the last of the bodies left behind, talking with the guards who had been there through the latter part of the night. The pyre had been built quite quickly afterwards.
“Your Grace, are you sure the bodies should be burned?” The guard who had spoken glanced over in William’s direction, shifting uneasily as he held a lit torch, the flames dancing. “Might not more families come forward to claim their own? Or perhaps the corpses could be donated to the city?”
William wanted to speak up, shouting about the waste of burning perfectly intact bodies, but held his tongue, stepping backwards in the hopes that the guard had not been looking at him in particular.
“Sabine told me to burn her father,” Avery said. “For the rest—today, I do not think highly of recycling them for industrial purposes, regardless of what it might earn the duchy in revenue. Philip had no family, or none he was close to, and that leaves him in my charge as his liege lord. Anselm and Gunter—their mother couldn’t stand to see them dead. Little Timothy was an orphan; Old Roana, a widow with but one son, lost at sea;and the man in the yellow cloak with the green boots was a traveler with no identity papers. And the hounds—well, the bodies smell wrong, Manfred says, so we shouldn’t bury them in the gardens like usual. Fire is cleansing.”
At Avery’s side, the old hound sat solemnly. It was the first time in more than a year that Manfred, forty-eighth of his name, had left the castle grounds. Start fire, Manfred sent to the guard.
Obediently, the guard stepped forward, holding the torch against the kindling stuffed underneath the larger pieces of lumber, then tossed the torch on top of the makeshift platform. The pyre caught slowly at first, then more quickly once the first flames reached the shrouds, racing across the oil-drizzled cloth.
“Rest in peace,” Avery said, then listed off the names of the fallen. “May your deaths be avenged.”
Old Manfred howled as the flames rose higher.