Living With Ghosts (3 page)

Thiercelin of Sannazar woke late, with a hangover, and found his household proceeding quite comfortably without him. He felt too ill to ride or practice fencing, but left to his own devices could find nothing else to do. His sister-in-law was entertaining a particularly rowdy group of friends in the green salon. His wife was deep in governmental paperwork in her study. There were bags under his eyes, and, dressing, he had found three gray strands in his untidy hair.

It was not a satisfactory start to the day.

He prowled the corridors, glowering at passing servants and chewing the ends of his mustache. His wife, encountering him in the long gallery, smiled and asked, “When does the ax fall, Thierry?”

He turned the glower on her. “Yesterday. At least my head thinks so.”

Yvelliane d’Illandre of the Far Blays gave his cheek an affectionate pat. “Poor love. Take a powder and consult me in the morning.”

He snarled. She reached up to kiss his cheek and made to pass on. He caught her arm. “Yviane, wait.”

“Yes?” Her face was quizzical. He slid his hand down to take hers. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He wished he knew what to say to her.
I saw Valdin. I saw your brother, who is dead.
He had no idea at all how she might react to such a statement. Perhaps she would be angry. Perhaps she would think he had taken to deep drinking. Perhaps, if he was lucky, she would worry about him.

Beside him, she was restless. Her hand wriggled within his. “What is it? I have work.”

There was always work. He looked down at her hem. “It’s just . . . You look nice.”

She snorted. “In this dress? You’re tired. Go back to bed.” And pulling her hand free, she kissed him and went on down the hall. He watched her go with a wistful expression. She was right, of course. Her medium-gray dress drained the color from her skin and did no favors for her dark hair and eyes. He was, as ever, a fool.

Their marriage had been a court wonder, coming as it had only a handful of weeks after Valdarrien’s death.
Confused by grief
, said the gossips, for why else would the Queen’s First Councillor marry a penniless younger son whose only claim to status was his friendship with her late brother? Thiercelin himself had never been sure if that was true: he had taken care not to ask. He knew only that he had loved Yvelliane for all his adult life, and he would accept whatever fragments of her attention she could spare for him.

The portraits in the gallery regarded him with inscrutable gazes. He resumed pacing. At the gallery end, he stopped, and looked back.

Gray eyes met his. A figure stood partway up the main stair, posed before a mirror . . .
ghosts can’t possibly have reflections
. . . Thiercelin, held in the reflected gaze, took a step forward, put a hand out in greeting . . .
Valdin was always vain,I never saw him pass that way without looking in that mirror
. . . Another step. Gray eyes flickered, and were gone.

There was a settle close to where Thiercelin stood. Breathing hard, he sank down upon it, put his head in his hands. Valdin, his ten-year friend and ally, rakehell, troublemaker, and duelist. Living perpetually on the edge of exile and disgrace, his very name a byword for scandal, much feared, much loved, and dead at the age of twenty-five. Six years dead. Memories chased one another. Two youths, still almost boys, racing, fighting, playing. Older, promenading arm in arm, courting the same ladies, espousing the same violent causes. Older yet, and play grown serious, Valdin stocking-footed in the chill dawn, infuriating his cautious sister Yvelliane, and smiling as he killed . . . Valdin, Valdin, Valdin . . .

The family pictures included one of the late Valdarrien d’Illandre of the Far Blays—Valdin to his family and intimates. Raising his head, Thiercelin stared at it, and sighed. Dark hair and cynical gray eyes, smile polite in boredom—Valdin, caught by some fashionable artist a year or two before his death. Before a stranger broke his heart and left him to find his cheap death in an inn yard. Thiercelin’s throat contracted. He swallowed. “You fool,” he said to the portrait, “you thrice-damned bloody fool.”

There was no reply, now as ever. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. They were brown, perhaps two shades darker than his collar-length hair. He was a slender man and tall with it, and not quite handsome. He was not given to superstition. Yet he could not come to terms with the impossible evidence of his eyes. “I saw him die,” he whispered, now, into his hands. A trick of the light, Gracielis had said, and part of Thiercelin wanted to believe him. A trick of the light, or a trick of the tongue . . . Perhaps he could have believed that explanation, if it were not for that sudden discomfort in the man whose aid he had sought. Gracielis de Varnaq saw ghosts. Yvelliane would think Thiercelin mad, if he told her that, suddenly, he also saw them. Yvelliane could not be told. She was far too busy. He could not disturb her with something as unlikely as this. It would, in all probability, only make her think less of him.

Gracielis had known that Thiercelin spoke the truth and refused him aid. Thiercelin looked again at Valdarrien’s picture, and this time his fist slammed into his opposite hand.

“Thierry?” The touch on his shoulder made him jump.

His sister-in-law Miraude stood at his elbow, regarding him quizzically. “Is something wrong?”

Briefly, he considered confiding in her, Valdarrien’s widow who had never been a wife. Instead, he smiled and said, “I was counting my blessings. It always depresses me.”

“I’m not surprised.” She pulled a face and sat down beside him. “It always makes me feel small.”

“I think it’s supposed to be character-building.”

“Hmm. Well, my character must be unusually flimsy.” She looked down at herself, half-mocking, half-admiring. “I’d stop, if I were you.”

“I think I will.” He considered her, not without some amusement. Yvelliane had once remarked that it was a good thing that Miraude had independent means, for otherwise it was unlikely that even the Far Blays’ revenues could support her. Her present gown was an exotic confection of embroidery and pearl-strewn lace. She intercepted his gaze and smiled.

“Do you like it?”

“Very smart. New?”

“Yes.”

“It’s charming.”

“It’s for the masquerade in the Winter Gardens, the queen of the peacocks.” Her eyes laughed, acknowledging his amusement at her choice of costume.

“Very appropriate.” Thiercelin sobered. “You’re going to that? I’d have thought it would be rather rowdy.”

She favored him with a sardonic gaze. “You, of course, would never have done such a thing in your youth.”

He was thirty-three. Controlling a smile, he said, “In my youth, I committed all sorts of follies. Of, course, I’m too incapacitated by age now to do anything at all.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know.” He let the smile escape. “And I wasn’t criticizing. I was just worrying.”

“You could come with me if you like. I’m due to meet up with friends, but they won’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t I be in the way?”

“I don’t see why. And anyway, you look like you need cheering up. Masquerades are much more cheering than blessings.”

“Valdin would’ve agreed with you.” His eyes flickered again to Valdarrien’s portrait.

She followed the look. Her expression was curious. She said, “You still miss him.” It was not a question.

“He was my best friend.”

“Yes.” There was a dryness to her voice. “I wonder about him, sometimes. I suppose I didn’t know him very well.”

Into Thiercelin’s mind came again the memory of a narrow, cobbled yard, strewn with straw and blood. Miraude had been barely sixteen. He said, “He was fond of you, I think.”

“Yes. But fonder of you.”

There was no answer to that.

The lieutenant’s ghost sprawled on the daybed, occluding the brocade covers with misty distaste, eyes enviously on a crystal decanter. Drinking water, Gracielis raised his glass to it and turned to look in the mirror. Meeting his gaze, Amalie Viron said, “I shall look ridiculous. I’m too old for masquerades, love.”

She was forty-six. Of all his patrons, she was the only one to have told him her true age at once, as if expecting it to be a cause of rejection. It had not been. Her business provided her with funds enough to afford most things she wanted, and he had known it. That in itself was reason enough to become her lover, but her honesty had touched and surprised him. He did not expect to be trusted by his patrons, only paid.

He had been her lover for five years, and of all those who bought and sold his body, she was the only one for whom he felt anything, at least that he admitted to himself. He tried to acknowledge nothing of his feelings where Quenfrida was concerned. Now, he put down his glass and rose. “That’s heresy, Ladyheart. I won’t hear it.”

“Oh, won’t you?” She laughed, and, unexpectedly, the ghost laughed with her.

“Indeed not.” Coming to stand behind her, he dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder. “And more. I won’t let you say it, or feel you have reason to.”

“If only. I can give you twenty years.”

“The twenty fairest years in Merafi.” He took the comb from her, lace cuff trailing across her skin. “Let me do this.”

“Not even you can make me young again.” She sounded sad. He lifted her hand and kissed it. She squeezed his fingers.

“I wouldn’t want to,” he said. “For if you were, I’d have to go in fear of your husband. I’d have to duel him for you, and I have the most lowering suspicion that I’d lose.”

“Poor love.” She turned his hand over and kissed the palm. “Well, then, I’ll guard my years.” She drew a finger along the vein in his wrist, pushing back the cuff. Beneath the lace was a bruise. Touching it, she said, “You don’t look after yourself.”

Sometimes, Quenfrida liked to mark her property. He said, “Forgive me.”

“I worry about you.”

He took his hand away and began to brush her hair. The lieutenant’s ghost had moved to stand in the window, back turned. “Do not, I beg you. You mustn’t worry.”

“Oh, mustn’t I?”

“Indeed.” He smiled at her in the mirror. “For two reasons.” She looked inquiring. “Firstly, because I’m telling you the truth. And secondly, because anxiety makes you frown, and destroys your peace; and if I find myself a cause of distress to you, I’ll weep.”

“Oh, well, we can’t have that,” said Amalie. Reflected palely in the glass, the lieutenant’s ghost demurred. Even with his hands safe upon Amalie’s vital flesh, Gracielis was still chill with this knowledge of his own ill-marked boundaries.

Quenfrida would have him cross them, for the sake of Thiercelin of Sannazar, whom she had no cause to love. For Thiercelin’s sake or, more likely, her own.

Gracielis had no desire to obey. He had no choice. On Amalie’s rosewood secretaire, beside his gloves and serpent mask, lay a note in his neat hand addressed to Thiercelin. Amalie’s housekeeper would see it was delivered.

And he would do as he had been bid. His fingers combed through Amalie’s hair, and his reflected eyes caressed hers in the mirror, but he was apart behind his painted face. There was some question of history between Quenfrida and Thiercelin’s clever wife Yvelliane, a half-healed wound, rooted in the years that Quenfrida had spent in exile in the northern principality of Lunedith. Quenfrida’s presence there had been, he suspected, a punishment for her failure with himself. Yet she had returned from Lunedith creamily satisfied. She would use him for the slow unraveling of Yvelliane d’Illandre, if she could. If he was weak enough.

He didn’t want to think about it. Pulling away from his thoughts, he smiled at Amalie. “There,” he said, “it’s done.” She looked at herself, then up at him. “Well?” He made his eyes huge. “You do like it?” She hesitated. His expression played anxiety. “Ladyheart . . .”

“I like it.” She shook her head at him. “Perhaps I should employ you full time.”

He let his eyes slide sideways to the daybed. “I don’t deserve it.” The ghost signed scornful agreement.

“You’ll do,” said Amalie.

“Whoops,” said Thiercelin, sidestepping. And then, “Shall I diet, do you think?”

Miraude looked sidelong at him from the almond slits in her mask. “Probably not. Oh, look out behind you!”

“How?” said Thiercelin, twisting. The ground was still damp after a day of intermittent rain. The air showed a tendency to mistiness, not helped by the damply smoking torches. Both moons had risen, but neither provided much light. Clouds hid Handmoon; Mothmoon showed only in crescent. “I’ll only knock off somebody’s hat,” Thiercelin continued, “That was your foot again, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not sure.” Miraude said, “Oh, Thierry, do give it up!”

“Is my dancing that bad?”

“No. But this crush!”

“I warned you.”

“I know, I know. It’ll be better in a bit, when they finish erecting the covers.”

“Hmm.” Leading his partner carefully through the crowd in the dance arena, Thiercelin was unconvinced. He couldn’t recall a public masquerade that had not been overpopulated and frantic, but this one was surely worse than average. It was the inclement weather, perhaps, or some obscure side effect of the strike in the docks. Even so, the administration of the event seemed to have dissolved. Too many tickets sold, too many small disasters . . .

Held in the Winter Gardens, the ball was open to anyone who could afford the admission price. Masked in satin, in cotton, in buckram and canvas and figured brocade, the bourgeoisie picked their way through the artisans and laborers, and the nobility flirted with the playful children of innkeepers and shop owners. An insufficient number of pavilions had been pitched, supplying (in theory at least) refreshment and shelter. Torches burned in tree-mounted sconces, smokily lighting the dance floor and the promenades. The music of two orchestras vied for attention with the shrieks of food vendors and the thunderous small talk of the pressing throng.

It was a great pity that it kept raining. The discreet back alleys and bowers were discouragingly damp and the footing uncertain. There was going to be a great deal of work for Merafi’s laundries and a great number of body servants honored with gifts of mud-stained finery. Thiercelin, who had never minded sacrificing elegance to comfort, had thoughtfully dressed
en chevalier
and, moreover, rolled his bucket boots up to their highest limit. He had been rather startled when, in the carriage, Miraude had untied the points on her long bodice; but his surprise had turned to amused admiration when she stepped out of her skirt to reveal matching breeches beneath. “In this rain,” she had said, laughing, “being my height will be disadvantage enough without having petticoats everywhere.” He had conceded the point readily. Her dark head did not quite reach his shoulder: in the milling press of masqueraders, she might easily be trampled.