MIDNIGHT WALTZ

They returned to Highmark in the gray afternoon, on a train that seemed to have grown slower and colder on the way back, and by the time the locomotive pulled into the private siding at Union Station, the Council had already met.

Tamsin did not hear the news from Soren. She heard it from a footman, in the servants' passage, in a low scandalized whisper that stopped abruptly when she came round the corner. Two housemaids with their arms full of linen had been standing close together by the laundry door, their heads bent, and they sprang apart like startled sparrows at the sight of her. One of them dropped a pillowcase. Neither of them could quite meet her eyes.

"I beg your pardon," Tamsin said. "I'm looking for Captain Pike."

"The Captain's with His Grace, miss, in the Emperor's chambers," said the elder girl, in a voice that quivered with a barely suppressed delight in her own importance. "It's all settled, you know. They say the Chancellor stood up in the Council this morning, with the Emperor not yet cold in his bed, begging your pardon, miss, he's not dead, only very ill, and he said that in the light of His Majesty's condition the realm could not afford any further delay. And the Council voted, miss, and it's done. The wedding's to be at Midwinter, in the Cathedral of the Founders, six weeks from today, and the Duke is to marry Lady Delphine whether he likes it or no."

Tamsin stood quite still. The corridor was cold, and smelled of damp linen and soap. A gas jet hissed in its bracket, and the sound of the washhouse mangle thumped steadily through the wall.

"I see," she said. "Thank you for telling me."

She walked away down the passage with her back straight and her face composed, and she did not realize until she reached the foot of the back stair that she had been digging her nails into her palm so hard that she had broken the skin.

…

The summons came at nine that evening, and it came by an unexpected route.

She was in her sitting room, trying without much success to prepare the next day's lesson, when a soft knock sounded at the door. She opened it on a small, bent woman in a gray nurse's apron, an elderly attendant whom she had seen only once or twice in the lower corridors. The woman held a candle in a tin holder, and her face, in the wavering light, was seamed and anxious.

"His Majesty asks for you, miss," she whispered. "He asks that you come now. And he asks that you tell no one, not even his son."

"Does the Duke know?"

"His Grace is at supper with the Chancellor. He has been summoned to it, and I think it will go on a good while." The old woman's eyes slid sideways, toward the dark end of the passage. "His Majesty has had a better hour this evening. The doctors have gone. He said, Fetch the girl from the Hollows, before I lose my wits again."

Tamsin wrapped her shawl about her shoulders and followed the candle.

…

The Emperor's bedchamber was dark and close, with the curtains drawn against the night and a single lamp burning low on the table beside the bed. The air was heavy with camphor and with the sickly sweet smell of an illness that had stopped pretending to be anything else. A coal fire glowed in the grate. The great carved bed loomed in the shadows like a ship in a harbor, and in the midst of it, propped on three pillows with a shawl about his shoulders, lay Augustin Aldridge.

He had shrunk since she had seen him at supper. His face was the color of old wax, with the bones standing out sharply under the skin, and the hand that lay on the quilt was almost transparent. But his eyes were clear. The dark amber gaze followed her across the room with a steady and painful lucidity, as though he had gathered every ounce of his strength into the effort of looking at her.

"Come closer, child," he said. His voice was a thread. "I have very little time, and a great deal that I should have said a long while ago."

She came to the bedside and sank to her knees on the carpet, so that her face was level with his. The old attendant withdrew to the door and stood there with her back turned, a silent sentinel.

"Your Majesty should be resting," Tamsin said.

"I shall rest enough soon." A dry whisper of a laugh stirred the covers. "You know what is happening, do you not? You are a clever girl. You have understood a good deal in a short time, and I imagine that you have guessed even more than you have understood."

"I have guessed that somebody is poisoning your daughter," Tamsin said, very quietly. "I have guessed that the Chancellor chose me for a reason that I have not yet discovered. And I have guessed that you know more about both than you have said."

The old man closed his eyes. For a moment she thought he had slipped away, and she half rose, but his fingers moved on the coverlet, and she sank down again.

"My son doesn't know what he is," said the Emperor. "Neither do you."

She stared at him.

"I have spent twenty-nine years being a coward, Miss Reed. I loved my wife with all my heart, and I let them kill her because I could not bring myself to overturn a table. I have lain here for eight years watching the same thing be done to my daughter, and I have not been able to lift a finger, because every servant in this house is the Chancellor's creature, and every physician reports to him, and my own hands shake too much to hold a pen." His eyes opened again, wet and burning. "I am not telling you this to be pitied. I am telling you because there is no one else."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to take this."

His fingers slid under the pillow, groped, and drew out a small object that he pressed into her palm. It was cold and heavy, and she turned it to the lamplight. It was a key, no longer than her finger, made of dull copper, with a head cast in the shape of a sunburst and a shaft stamped with a row of minute symbols that she could not read. The metal was warm from his body.

"It is the key to the place where the water sleeps," Augustin whispered. "The Ledger is there. Everything is in it. I could not take it myself. I am too closely watched, and I would not have lived to carry it out. But you may be able to find it, if you are clever, and if you are brave." His grasp tightened on her wrist with a feeble, desperate strength. "You must protect Lila, whatever else happens, for she is all that is left of her mother, and she is very like her. They will use her if they can."

"Your Majesty, I don't understand..."

He sank back against the pillows, and the light seemed to go out of his face. "No, I know that you do not, and that was my cowardice. But when the time comes, you will understand, and my son will understand, and I pray God that it will not be too late." A long shudder ran through his body. "You must go now, and go quickly, and put it somewhere safe, where nobody will ever think to look."

She closed her fingers around the key. As she rose, a rasping whisper followed her. "Sing it again for her, Miss Reed, when she cannot sleep. The song of the green things. It was Adeline's. It is the only part of her I have left."

…

She was crossing the long gallery outside the Emperor's rooms when she heard the rustle of silk.

It was a very soft sound, the whisper of a heavy skirt over polished parquet, and it came from the shadows at the end of the passage, where the tall windows threw long pale rectangles of moonlight across the floor. She stopped walking at once. The key was clenched in her fist. She had time to push it up her sleeve before a figure stepped out of the dark, and the moonlight touched a coil of platinum braids and a gown of midnight-blue velvet.

"Why, Miss Reed," said Delphine. "What a surprise."

She stood with her hands folded before her and her head tilted, in the pose of a woman who has been waiting for a long time and has enjoyed every minute of it. Her face was composed and lovely, and she smiled. And behind the smile, Tamsin saw, with the clairvoyance of fear, that she had been crying.

"Good evening, Lady Delphine," said Tamsin.

"I was just on my way to enquire after the dear Emperor. It's so sad, isn't it, to see him fail." Her gaze traveled slowly over Tamsin's face, to the door she had left, and back again. "How very kind of you to sit with him. I had no idea that tutors were permitted in the royal apartments at this hour. Perhaps you have a special dispensation."

"His Majesty was restless," said Tamsin evenly. "He asked for someone to read to him."

"How thoughtful of him. And of you." Delphine took a step nearer, so that the scent of jasmine rose between them. "I do hope he was not too tiring. A man in his condition says such strange things. He imagines that he sees ghosts. I should hate for you to be troubled by anything he might have said."

"I assure you, my lady, that he said nothing of any consequence."

"I'm so relieved." The golden-brown eyes, clouded and oddly bright, rested on her face for a long, measuring moment. Then Delphine smiled again, a smile that did not move her eyes at all. "Good night, Miss Reed. Do give my love to the Princess. It's such a shame, isn't it, that one never knows what is going to happen next."

She swept past in a susurrus of velvet. Tamsin stood where she was until the footsteps died away, and then she realized that she was shaking from head to foot.

She knows, she thought. She saw me come out. She'll tell her father within the hour.

…

The doll was the only place she could think of.

She went straight to the nursery, since the Princess was long asleep, and Nurse Crowe's replacement, a mild young woman of nineteen, had been sent to bed with a headache by a footman bearing the Duke's compliments. In the dim lamplight, Lila lay curled on her side in the great yellow bed with one arm flung out. On the pillow beside her lay a rag doll in a faded blue dress, with a stitched smile and button eyes and a mop of yellow wool for hair. She had carried it everywhere since the age of three. It had no name. It had only ever been called Doll.

Tamsin knelt on the floor beside the bed, drew a needle and thread from the pocket of her apron, and carefully picked a seam open along the doll's back. The stuffing, soft gray wool, bulged out in a puff. She pushed her fingers into it, made a small hollow among the fibers, and slid the copper key inside. Then she began to sew the seam closed again with fine neat stitches, the way Granny had taught her, so that the join was almost invisible. Her hands shook. She had to stop twice and start again.

When it was done, she laid the doll back on the pillow in exactly the same position. She smoothed the quilt. Lila stirred and sighed and mumbled something, and her small hand crept out and closed over the doll's, and Tamsin held her breath until the child had settled.

Keep it safe, she whispered silently to the rag doll. Keep her safe.

…

He was waiting for her in the Winter Garden at midnight.

She had not agreed to come. She had not agreed to anything, since she had spent the evening in her room sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark. But a folded note had been pushed under her door at eleven, in a hand she knew, and it had said only The orange trees. Midnight, and when the clock struck, her feet had taken her down the back stair and across the courtyard and through the glass door before she had decided anything at all.

The lamps had been put out. The only light was the moon, which hung large and white above the glass roof and poured a cold silver radiance over the whole long pavilion. It made a forest of shadows among the camellias. It lay in pale pools on the black and ivory tiles and glittered on the dark water of the fountain. The air was warm and humid and thick with the smell of orange blossom, and a drop of condensation fell from the rafters, now and then, with a musical plink.

He stood in the middle of the central path, in his shirtsleeves, without his coat. His black hair was damp. He had washed, she thought, or walked in the courtyard, and his face in the moonlight was pale and set and haggard. He did not move as she came toward him. He only watched her approach, with his bare hands hanging at his sides, and she saw that he was trembling.

"It is done," he said. "The wedding is to be in six weeks, in the Cathedral at Midwinter. I could not refuse in the Council. My father is dying, and the vote was nine to eight, and if I had said no in front of them, the Chancellor would have called it a breach of the succession, and he would have taken the guardianship of Lila by morning." His voice was flat. "I said nothing. I sat there like a stone, and I let them do it."

"I know that already," said Tamsin. "I heard it from the housemaids."

"I will not go through with it."

"You may have no choice."

"There is always a choice." He took a step toward her. "I do not yet know what it is. But I will find it, Tamsin, I swear to you. I will find a way, if I have to burn the Cathedral to the ground."

"Soren," she said gently. "Come over here and put your hand on my waist."

He stood motionless for a moment. Then he crossed the space between them in three strides, and she put one hand on his shoulder and took the other in hers, and in the moonlight, in the warm green silence, she began to move.

It was not a proper waltz. There was no music. She had learned the steps in a dusty schoolroom at Ashby, from a dancing mistress who despised her, and had never danced since. But she counted softly under her breath, one, two, three, one, two, three, and after a moment he caught the rhythm and followed. They turned slowly down the long path between the camellias, with the silver light sliding over their faces and the orange blossoms falling like snow. His hand was warm at her back. Her skirt brushed the tiles. He held her carefully, as though she were made of spun glass, and watched her face with an expression of such naked longing that her throat ached.

"I would rather lose an empire," said Soren, very low, "than live one more day without you."

She laughed unsteadily, and the sound broke in the middle. "Then be careful what you wish for, Your Grace," she whispered. "The world has a way of listening."

…

They stopped at the end of the path.

The fountain whispered. The moon rode high. He bent his head and rested his forehead against hers, and for a long moment they stood quite still, breathing the same warm air, with her hand curled against his chest and his heart pounding beneath her palm.

"We must be careful," she said. "In public, we must be a duke and a tutor. There can be no more kneeling on ballroom floors. They are watching us, Soren. Delphine saw me tonight, and she will tell her father, and he will find some way to use it."

"I know the risk as well as you do."

"I am quite serious. If we are seen together in any way that looks like what it is, they will say that I seduced you, and they will have me in the Wards by morning. And Lila will be left with no one." Her voice cracked. "I won't let that happen."

"Then we shall be careful," he said. "In public, I shall be a stranger. I will not look at you in the corridors. I will address you as Miss Reed and nothing else." His lips brushed her temple. "And in the dark, in the Archive, in the Winter Garden, in any room where no one is watching, I shall be exactly what I am."

"Promise me that you will be careful."

"I promise it on my life."

She lifted her face and kissed him, once, fiercely, and then stepped back with her hands trembling. She wished the night to go on forever. She knew that it could not.

It was then, as she turned to go, that she saw the shape beyond the glass.

It stood on the terrace outside, a dark figure against the moon, quite still, with its face turned toward the pavilion. The light behind it touched the edge of a gown and a coil of pale braids. At that distance, through the clouded panes, she could not see features, only a pale smudge where a face should be, but she saw the smile. It was small and exquisite and cold as a sliver of ice, and it stayed there for a long moment, shining in the dark like the curve of a blade.

Then Delphine Sterling turned and walked away across the frosted lawn.