“. . . but if she cannot hear ghosts, she suggests we approach Tania Waleska. That must be our next step,” Beka finished.
At that moment the pot began to whistle. Nat pulled the chain, and boiling water cascaded into the teapot she held out.
With her free hand she unhooked some waiting mugs from a shelf, and the three of us shuffled down the narrow hall again, to the living space. “I’m going to have to get me a house,” Nat said, as she set the teapot on her cluttered table. “But only if I find someone to clean up, or I’d fill a house with junk. I already know that junk expands infinitely, no matter how many rooms you have. So, tell me this. How many ghost speakers do you have, out of interest? Dude, if there is a maniac murderer on the loose, it seems harsh to be using Tania. I mean, she’s just a kid.”
Nat poured out the tea. Beka took her cup and cradled it in her hands to warm them. “Technically,” she said, “Tania is no longer a kid, having reached twenty, but yes, her youth disturbs me as well. There are only three besides Tania and Kim, that we know of. One is very old and infirm, another seems to only see family ghosts. The best one lives on Devil’s Mountain. In the circumstances, I think it better not to put anyone into a possible position of divided loyalties.”
“In other words,” Nat leaned forward to pass me the creamer, “you don’t trust those von M gangsters as far as you can throw ’em. Makes sense to me!”
“I do not distrust Ruli’s family,” Beka said, staring down into her coffee, a revealing flush along her cheekbones. She looked up, her expression bleak. “We don’t know if Ruli’s death and the attacks on Honoré are connected. It makes little sense to assume that they were, other than our private dislike of the duchess, and perhaps Count Robert.”
Nobody mentioned Tony—out loud.
“Then there’s this: Honoré was attacked in their house, yes, but he was also attacked in mine.”
“True. But I want to see the duchess blamed because she’s a total wanker,” Nat said cheerfully.
Beka smiled, then gave that little French shrug. “I hope that Gilles and his group finished with their filming today. We will have to postpone if we see them at the crash site tomorrow.”
Nat thumped her elbows on her knees. “Filming? What for?”
“They are making a documentary about Dobrenica they hope to sell to French television. Tchah! I am so angry with Gilles! I know that he took Honoré home from the Council meeting. If he’d stayed with his brother . . .”
“. . . then this murderer would have found another way to off him. Why murder him, anyway? Has he got the skinny on somebody?” Nat asked.
“We are going to find that out,” Beka promised, neatly evading the aura question while still telling the truth. “Will you help us if you are needed?”
“Count on it.” Nat smacked her fist into her palm. “You count on it.”
We finished up our tea and then left Nat to her meal. The snow was thicker than ever. Not ten paces away I could barely make out Nat’s building. Beka and I hustled into the car, shutting out the howling world of white. My lips still buzzed from Alec’s kiss.
Beka started the car, then eased it out, peering through the wind-shield as before. She kept the pace down to a crawl, then said, “Will you tell me exactly what happened with the ghost after my arrival at Alec’s?”
“Grandfather Armandros?”
“It was he?”
“Yes. For the zillionth time. He zapped out right after you said ‘poison.’ It was like a photographer’s flash going off, or lightning. Except instead of a bright light there he was, reflected in every surface that could reflect. For a second. Then he was gone.”
“No sound?”
“None. Oh. I was wrong, what I said before. Except for Ruli’s Help me, I did hear ghosts once before. It was last summer, up at the Roman church. I’m pretty sure it was ghosts. Children singing.”
“That place,” she said, “is haunted. More people have seen and heard ghosts there than anywhere else.”
“There were also a zillion of them at the cathedral the day of the funeral. Was that really only yesterday? It feels like a month ago.” I fought against a sudden, violent yawn.
“Are you sure you were not seeing displaced time?” She shot me a narrow glance. “Today, did you . . .” She paused.
When it was clear she was not going to continue her thought, I said, “I’m having trouble telling the difference between ghosts and ghostly times.”
She considered that, her gaze searching intently in the hypnotizing mass. Once, the wheels jolted, and she yanked the steering wheel to the left. Every so often the outline of a building, a statue, would emerge from the morass only to slide away again.
The pause stretched into a silence, then she said, “Ghosts are distinct. Time, though . . . When you see a past moment, you see the people in that moment. They are not ghosts, even if they seem ghostly. You are the one who is out of place and time.”
“I don’t get how the prism comes in.”
“It can aid, or help you control, the Sight. There is much about light, specifically the bending of light, or light in conjunction with what some are calling aether.”
“Why not Vrajhus, or is that a different thing?”
“Same thing.” She gave a quick shrug, the angle of her head expressing irony. “‘Vrajhus’ means magic, and some seem to feel that more precise terms are needed. I think that the veneer of science is more respectable than magic. Whatever we call it, we lost so much knowledge during those long years of occupation! There’s much that we do not understand, in particular because Vrajhus behaves differently in various locations.”
“I’m definitely getting the idea that it’s not consistent. Or if it is, we’re not seeing how. So you can’t clue me in about how to see in the past without my brains leaking out?”
Beka said carefully, “This is what I have been told. To see into another moment, you either have to have proximity to the person whose past you wish to see, or some other kind of connection. An object. A place. You also need your medium, the prism, which, when charmed, seems to separate the strands of light. Then the Vrajhus reforms them in such a way as to give glimpses into other times, and some say, even into the Nasdrafus.”
“You mean, like the old stories about crystal balls?”
“Exactly. Well, not completely. The limits are to a person or a location, from what I understand.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Every time I’ve flashed on the past, I’m pretty sure I saw different times at that same spot. Okay. So, what else about time? I get the sense you’re holding something back. I already know about the dangers. They made that, um, crystal clear.”
Her eyelashes lifted—they were even longer than Alec’s—her expression tense. “I wasn’t thinking about that. . . . You know mathematics?”
“I was a history major, mostly.”
“As was I. Well, then, I believe there is a mathematical concept that warns, or maybe hints, that the act of observation can affect the thing observed.”
“I may have heard of that and didn’t understand any of it.”
“Well, then, it could be, that there are . . . things that, once explained, may change.”
I struggled with that, and then got an idea. “You’re talking about time travel?”
“I do not know about travel,” she answered cautiously. “But you know about theories having to do with time?”
“I’ve seen the Back the Future movies.”
It was a crack, but she surprised me. “I remember, in the second film, how the danger of changing events in the past could lead to a changed present. Do you recall that?”
I shuddered. “Except for those movies, I really hate time travel conundrums. All right, if telling me more is going to pitchfork me into a weird timeline, I don’t want to know. Tell me instead what I should say about Tania.”
“Yes. I was coming to that. You know that she is twenty. Customarily that is the age the apprenticeship ends. Tania is exce
llent at making lenses, and she has also been trained in the faceting of crystals, though she has not worked with diamonds. But last September there was more than one marriage made that—”
Beka squinted out the windshield and jerked the wheel. A street lamp slid by very close to the car.
“For Tania, Domnu Petrov’s marriage was not a good thing. Madam is known for being stingy and would like nothing better than another year or two or three of unpaid labor from Tania, who should have received her certificate of training completion several months ago. You must understand that these certificates are like a graduation degree elsewhere. To the artisans they are more important than their school certificates. They can get jobs and join the guild.”
“So where do I come in?”
“You could hire her.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
We thumped over something, and Beka grimaced and yanked the wheel. “That was the rain gutter at the St. Marcos crossing. Just a few more streets. Hire her for anything. You do not need to say for what. The Petrovs would not ask. He would be glad to see her placed, I think. He knows that the two other lens makers in the city already have their apprentices, or she would have been hired out after her birthday. His wife would not dare to question a Dsaret, once it is brought home to her who you are.”
“Making me feel like a total poser again,” I said. “But I can deal with that if it’ll help Tania. Am I supposed to pay her a salary to sit around, or what? Would Tania even want that?”
Beka said, “There is something else.” She slowed even more. “The day you came to the palace. You walked into Alec’s office, and what did you see?”
Alec’s arms around you. “Alec said later that you were demonstrating something.”
She addressed the windshield. “What you saw was . . . two things. One was a demonstration. The other was the shared comfort of conversation.”
“Okay. You’re talking about comforting him because of how I complicated his life, and he comforted you, what, because of Tony?”
She gripped the wheel, the knuckles of her gloves pulled against the seams to the straining point. “Tony is . . . never serious.”
“He sure was at the Council meeting,” I said. When she winced, I added quickly, “I know what you mean. His radar is definitely stuck in broadcast mode. So Alec needed comfort because I turned up in Dobrenica?”
“He was glad,” Beka said quickly. “He was very glad to hear that you were here, and yet your arrival, I think, sharpened the sense of guilt that has troubled him since the day of the accident.”
“And there was also all the gossip. I get it. So what were you demonstrating?”
“Something that I have been working on, with some of the other Salfmattas and Salfpatras. You must understand this is very secret. As yet.” She took a breath. “In the past, there was no electricity.”
“Right,” I said.
“You know that we make the crystal charms during sunlight hours, do you not? Diamonds are charmed only at noon.”
“Tania told me that,” I said.
“What we are doing is trapping electricity in stones in the form of sunlight. Only a few of the Salfmattas and Salfpatras are able to do this effectively, but a well-made charm can run small things that require very little electricity.”
“Whoa.”
“So when you walked in I was showing Alec how to run my Palm Pilot off a charm, and he was attempting it.”
A flaw in the wind revealed the inn’s familiar door, not fifteen feet away.
“How this works, why this works, we do not yet know. It is too new. But Tania would be the very person to hire to experiment, do you see?”
“That’s a cool idea. So why don’t I call her my . . . what did they call that Magda? Personal assistant. I gather that is not merely a fancy name for maid.”
Beka was amused. “Ruli had at least a dozen domestic servants. Her wardrobe was substantial.”
“Oh, I remember.”
“Good. Are we agreed, then?”
“Sure. I’ll take care of Tania, but hey, aren’t the roads going to be impassable? I mean, if this storm ever ends?”
“This storm is supposed to be gone by midnight. See? It is already breaking, over the north. I see stars. I’ll come by after an early breakfast, and we shall have to stop by Madame Celine for your fitting. I would be very, very surprised if the Vigilzhi do not see to it that the south road is cleared by mid-morning.”
TWENTY-THREE
AT BREAKFAST THE NEXT DAY, I found Tania and Theresa together, setting the tables. Because I knew the sisters shared everything, I broached my offer.
“Oh, I would like that so very much,” Tania said longingly. “But—”
“So you shall,” Theresa said with a ferocious grin. “I shall come with you to see you take leave!”
We left at once, Theresa holding her sister’s hand tightly.
Halfway down the steep street behind the inn, Tania pulled away from us and stooped. A skinny cat emerged from a crack between the inn wall and the foundation of the stone house next to it. It sniffed Tania’s hand, and its tail lifted high. Tania took something out of her pocket, gave it to the cat, who chomped on what looked like a bit of dried fish, and with a twitch of the tail, vanished.
We continued on to the shop. As soon as we got in the door, Madam Petrov began scolding in that high, shrill voice, “Taaania! Why have you brought company? Do you expect them to watch you sweeping?”
“We have come to inform you that Tania has been offered a paying position,” I said.
“Who is this?” Madam asked, flicking her fingers in my direction, though she looked back uncertainly when she saw me without a smothering hat or scarf. For the first time ever, I reveled in my resemblance to Ruli.
“This,” Theresa said in a portentous voice, with a relishing grin, “is the granddaughter of the Princess Royal, Aurelia Dsaret, daughter of the last king!”
Madam’s mouth opened, round as her eyes. But as she took me in from top to toe, her forehead wrinkles altered from annoyance to perplexity. I felt an unexpected spurt of sympathy, irritating as she was. Here was yet another change in a lifetime of sudden changes.
“I would like to hire Tania,” I said politely, then turned to the lens maker. “Domnu Petrov. I hope that you will declare her apprenticeship finished.”
Domnu Petrov gave me a dignified nod, almost a bow, then turned to Tania. “Tania, you will have your certificate by day’s end. In fact, I will walk it to the guild myself, if you are required by your new employer to begin your duties now.”
“But I—the sweeping! The windows! The snow!” Madam’s voice got more shrill with each word. “Can it not wait a day?”
“Thank you, Domnu Petrov. Here is my key,” Tania said with her pensive smile, and laid the key down on the counter. “God be with you.”
Her gentle voice was drowned out by Theresa’s crisp, “God with you!” And she closed the door with a snap. “I would kick the snow, except that I think Madam must sweep it, and I would not help her a bit.” Theresa stamped down the enormous drifts, saying to me, “I never liked her when she was at the bakery, and she would scold her brother if he gave us day-old buns when we walked to school. She would rather throw them to the pigs. Tchah!”
On the walk back up the steep street, even while we were slipping and sliding in the enormous drifts, Tania seemed to expand inwardly. By the time we reached the inn, Wednesday Addams had vanished, leaving a tall, grave young woman with her head up.
Beka was there at the inn, drinking coffee. Madam Waleska hovered. Beka was saying in a patient tone that made me wonder how many times she’d had to repeat it, “No, thank you. I really did eat breakfast right before I set out.”
“But you could say my rolls are kosher. I know your laws! No meat touches my good rolls, and you must know we buy our meats from your own butchers!”
“Thank you, thank you, but I am truly not hungry. I
am only waiting for—ah. Here they are.”
“Mama,” Tania said, her chin up. “I am now employed. I am to be Mademoiselle’s assistant.”
Madam W. threw her hands up, then turned to me. “You need the spectacles?” She made circles of her thumbs and forefingers, holding them before her eyes.
“Tania will have many duties,” I said. “Beginning with accompanying me on my shopping expedition today.”
Madam went off to the kitchens to share the news. I said to Beka, “What first? The fittings for my ball gown?” Listen to me, I thought, laughing inside.
Beka obviously didn’t find anything amusing in that. She had been studying Tania’s usual shirtwaist dress. This one was a dull dun, instead of gray, or murky blue. “We might have to climb,” she said slowly. “There is a shop around the corner from Madame Celine’s. Very comfortable, Persian-style loose clothes.”
“Lead on!”
Beka drove, bumping slowly over the streets that hadn’t been cleared yet, as sleighs jingled by us. The fitting went fast, as I wanted to get in and out. I found the other two in the shop Beka had mentioned, Tania having been drawn to linsey-woolsey outfits of loose trousers under a long belted tunic.
“Must I wear a certain color?” she asked me, as soon as I appeared.
I felt weird about this invisible money. My instincts kept sending off alarm bells. From everything I’d ever heard or read, big money always comes with big trouble. No one is able to be neutral about it. But for now? Why not enjoy the Lady Bountiful role! “Get what you want.”
With a little of her younger sister’s ferocity, Tania said, “Then I shall have violet.”
Within a short time we were on the street again, Tania with the ugly dun shirtwaist in a bag, wearing a warm outfit of deep violet that turned her slightly sallow complexion golden. It was embroidered with patterns of leafed rowan berries. She’d chosen another of deep midnight blue, embroidered with tiny blood roses.
“One more stop,” Beka said. “Any questions before we do? Phaedra Danilov is going to drive—she is much better behind the wheel than I am. She can be trusted to keep silent, whether we are successful or not.”