Anthea walked slowly through the manor. It was a strange place. It reminded her very much of the Big House at Last Farm. Although it was several stories tall, there was a low, wide quality to all the rooms and corridors, different from the high but narrow look of most Coronami houses. It wasn’t oppressive, though, and the windows were also wide, with clear panes that let in plenty of light, and there were plenty of lamps.
But the manor had an odd feel because it was somewhere between a house and a museum. Some rooms, like the library, were set up to be used, but others were crammed with things that had been arranged as best they could be in the limited space. The sitting room, for instance, had four long sofas wedged into it, among the small tables and high-backed chairs, and none of them matched. There were knickknacks on every surface, too: balls carved of solid wood or stone, some of them painted with scenes of gardens or fields, sitting in low wooden holders to keep them from rolling away. There were horseshoes that had been gilded or painted or were carved of wood, and garlands made of intricately braided hair from horses’ tails draped across mantels.
“We thought the horses were dead,” the MagTaran said, strolling along behind her. “When Josie got me the message, a few months ago, I couldn’t believe it. All my life, all my father’s and grandfather’s lives, we collected whatever artifacts we could.”
He waved a hand at the walls of the corridor they were walking along. Portraits were hung from the ceiling down to the floor, a mixture of styles, the frames practically touching, and none of the people looking remotely related. There were little plaques on the frames with the name of the sitter and the artist, though many of them were blank or had a question mark after the name.
“But we thought we’d never see a horse in the flesh. Many of our people were starting to think they never existed at all, that they were fabulous creatures like dragons. Or that we once worshipped them, instead of working with them.”
“I would think more people would come to see them, then,” Anthea said. She had had no message from Florian that he had seen another person, and there was no challenge from Constantine.
“Too many are ill,” the MagTaran said heavily. “The rest are ordered to stay at home at all costs. I have distributed the medicine, and the instructions for inoculating and taking samples, but …” He sighed. “It is so strange. We had heard only the vaguest rumors of illness, keeping to ourselves as we are. There have been only a handful of sick in the nearby villages, but still we cut off contact with them.
“And then suddenly one day, a dozen were sick.”
They stopped and peered into one of the bedrooms. It was the one Finn had slept in, the bed was a mess, his saddlebags were on the floor, and Anthea blushed to see some anonymous bit of boy underclothing straggling across the floor. There were three washbasins in the room, she noticed when she quickly raised her eyes, and four water pitchers. They moved along.
“You can stay here,” the MagTaran told her.
They opened the door to another bedroom. This one had a long, low padded bench running along the end of the bed, and two huge upholstered chairs crowded against the window. The bed was also enormous, bare except for the mattress, and there was a large chest between it and the far wall.
“The linens are in that chest,” the MagTaran said. “It might be a bit tricky getting the lid up to reach them,” he added ruefully.
“Thank you, but I think first I had better ride out of the village and see if my Florian can’t get a message to my cousin and her horses,” Anthea said, her eyes longingly on the bed. The mattress was very thick, and there was an enormous pile of pillows.
“That is so strange,” the MagTaran said. “We never knew the stones were anything special. Of course, we never knew if the Way was real or not, either, until Josie. And now Prince Finn, and you.”
It was odd to hear Finn called a prince. In the back of her head, Anthea was always aware that he was a king, but no one ever addressed him as such. At least, no humans did. But something else bothered her more.
“So Josie—Queen Josephine—has never come here with her horses?”
“Oh, naturally not,” the MagTaran said. “She hasn’t been back since she left us as a wee girl! Even getting a letter here directly is difficult. She has to send it through a network of those who have moved out of the village. Some of them keep in touch with family, and will pass on a letter that cannot be sent through the post.”
“Do a lot of people who leave come back?” Anthea asked. “I mean, to stay?”
They were continuing down the corridor and he was showing her other bedrooms. They were all tidy, and unlived in. Someone obviously dusted and swept regularly, though the MagTaran insisted that no one lived here.
“It’s rare,” he said sadly. “One of the few who have ever come back is our great lady,” he said, pointing to a room at the end of the corridor. “She’s the one who has brought many of the things here, especially the books.”
“Your … great lady?”
Something cold slithered down Anthea’s spine.
“Her mother left, very young. She had wandering ways,” the MagTaran said with faint distaste. “When her daughter came back to us, a fine lady, highly placed among the Coronami, well, we were very shocked. But also very grateful. She always brings us lost things: books, paintings, bits of information.” He gestured around the hallway. “The collection in the manor has doubled, if not tripled, thanks to her.”
“Did she know about Last Farm?” Anthea kept her voice carefully neutral.
“She would have told us if she did,” the MagTaran said. “I cannot wait for her to return; she will be so delighted! She has traveled a great deal, but never beyond the Wall. A woman in her position cannot, you know. Not without the proper reasons, or a chaperone.” He shook his head at Anthea as though she should know this.
Anthea put one hand on the doorknob of the room. The MagTaran sucked in a breath.
“That’s the lady’s room,” he chided her. “It would be rude to disturb it.”
“I—I think I—I have to see,” Anthea stammered. “I think … I know her?”
Anthea’s heart was hammering. She was praying rapidly and silently that she didn’t know their great lady. She twisted the doorknob. It was locked.
“Only the lady has a key,” the MagTaran said. “And it’s quite impossible that you would know her: as I said, she has never been north of the Wall.”
“Oh, of course,” Anthea said. She turned away, putting her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I’m very sorry.
“But would you tell me: What is her name?”
“Lady Vivian,” he said at once, in reverent tones.
Anthea’s racing heart began to slow. The cold sweat stopped trickling down her back.
“Ah,” Anthea said. “You’re right. I don’t know her.”
“She could return at any time,” the MagTaran assured her. “I would like you to meet her. And I know she will be thrilled to meet you and your horses!”
Anthea followed him downstairs again, declining his offers to wash, to rest, to have help getting her room ready. She waved a hand through the door at Finn, but wasn’t sure he saw, he was so intent on the book he was reading.
“I must tell my cousin what’s happening,” Anthea said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She hurried down to the enclosure and climbed the wall. Florian came to meet her, and she stood atop the wall to more easily slide onto his back.
Beloved?
Something is wrong, my love, Anthea told him.
The Woman Who Smells of Dying Roses?
That was Florian’s name for her mother. He could see it in her mind, her fear that it was her mother whose room was at the end of the corridor. But Lady Vivian? And why would her mother gather these things, the Leanan books and furniture, and bring them to a safe place? No, it was irrational. This couldn’t be her mother.
But something was just wrong all the same.
Let’s go talk to Jilly, she told Florian. Or rather, let’s go talk to Caesar.
This time, passing through the village, they saw signs of life. People were coming out of their cottages to feed animals and do a few chores. They stopped to watch Anthea go by, and she raised a hand to them. She didn’t see any children, and the people she did see were thin and worn looking, even from a distance. They had clearly been ill, and she hoped that the vaccine had come in time.
Up on the hill, Anthea felt a ripple as she passed between the standing stones. There was definitely something about them. She pulled Florian to a halt as soon as they were through, and told him to send a message to Jilly via Caesar.
We’re already on our way to you, the reply came. All of us.
It seemed that Jilly had panicked when Anthea had suddenly gone silent and Caesar had been unable to get a response from Florian. She had gathered all the horses, sent a message to Caillin MacRennie, and was cautiously on her way to the village, trying to stay alert for ambush, and probably with her pistol cocked, Anthea thought with a sigh.
Tell Jilly not to shoot anyone, and to go straight to the manor, Anthea said.
She decided to head back and get something to eat with Finn, rather than wait in the cold for Jilly and the other horses. And speaking to Jilly had given her an idea about that locked room.
When Anthea had first arrived at Last Farm, she had decided to try and teach her cousin to be a proper young lady, to train her the way Anthea had been trained as a Rose Candidate. Some of this behavior had rubbed off on Jilly, it was true, but it was mostly by accident. But Anthea had learned far more from Jilly than Jilly had from her. Miss Miniver, Anthea’s former headmistress, would probably approve of some of these things, like the proper way to apply cosmetics, but would definitely not approve of some of them, like how to alter men’s trousers to fit a young lady.
And how to pick locks.
Anthea had tea with Finn and the MagTaran in the library. While they ate, Finn showed Anthea more things that he had found, and the MagTaran filled them in on other bits of the history of the village. Apparently, standing stones had been common around lords’ houses and their attendant villages, but most of the others had been pulled down and the stones used for new houses and churches by the Coronami.
“But what kind of stone is it?” Anthea asked. “It’s very slick and solid looking.”
“It’s stone,” Finn said. He laughed, but not unkindly.
Anthea flushed all the same. “Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, resisting the urge to throw a biscuit at him as she would have at home. “You can’t see any little … grains … or bits of different rocks in there. I noticed it coming back just now. It almost looks like steel.”
“We don’t know where it was quarried,” the MagTaran said. “We don’t even know if the other estates had rings made of the same stones. None of the houses here are made of it. It never chips or shows much wear, even after all these years. I can’t imagine that they could have used the same stone to build houses.”
“So perhaps the other estates didn’t block the Way?” Finn said thoughtfully. “But if it was just this one, I wonder if some property of the stone also kept you from being discovered.” He began to flip through a book at his elbow.
“Over here, I think,” the MagTaran said, and reached an old book off the shelf next to the fireplace.
“I’m just going to go freshen up,” Anthea said, standing.
Finn and the MagTaran barely spared her a glance. Anthea didn’t waste time being offended. She hurried out of the library and up the worn stairs. She opened and closed the door of the room she had been assigned, loudly, without going in, and then tiptoed on down the passage to the locked room at the end.
Jilly kept her lock-picking tools stuck inside hats or used them as hairpins, but pins always slithered out of Anthea’s hair and she didn’t like hats. Instead she kept them in a thin leather wallet she always had in a pocket, along with a small photograph of her father Uncle Andrew had given her.
She slipped the metal picks out, taking just a moment to look at the picture of her father. He would have been beside himself with joy, as Finn was, to find an entire village of Leanans. The moment they were well enough, he would have been running them all through the manor garden to see if they had the Way. She had no doubt that Uncle Andrew would soon be on his way here, to do the same.
But first she had to find out if her suspicions were true. She had been relieved to hear that the MagTaran’s “great lady” was named Vivian. But at the same time … the queen herself did not dare to come and go from this village. So who was this Lady Vivian who was so free about it?
Anthea slipped the first pick into the lock and felt for it to catch. Then the next, then she twisted. The door swung open, creaking a little, and Anthea froze. When there was no sound from downstairs, she tucked her picks away and slipped into the room.
It was beautifully furnished and felt lived in, unlike the rest of the house. But there was nothing that Anthea could see that marked it as particularly distinct. The paintings, the linens, the furniture, were all the same as the rest of the house, though better arranged and not half as cramped. The desk was clear of any papers, the only book a Kronenhofer novel that had been all the rage two years ago.
Anthea went to the dressing table. There was face powder, but nothing fancy, and a crystal bottle of perfume with a gold stopper. Anthea picked it up to sniff it.
It smelled like roses. It was the signature scent of Rose Maidens and Matrons. Anthea put it down so fast that she almost tipped it over and only caught it at the last second. The stopper flew out and rolled across the table, falling to the floor with a small chime.
Anthea knelt down, the scent of the rose perfume filling her nostrils and making her feel strange. It reminded her both of her mother and of Queen Josephine, and brought a sudden sting of tears to her eyes. She groped under the table and found the stopper, causing something else to roll away. She picked them both up and put the stopper in the bottle before getting stiffly to her feet, still sore from her uncomfortable night in the hut.
She looked down at her hand. She was holding a narrow glass tube, exactly like the ones favored by Dr. Rosemary for her samples. This one was empty, and a bit dusty on the outside, with a dried streak of something yellow in the bottom.
Anthea’s heart shot into her throat. She dropped the tube, not caring when it broke on the tabletop, and began scrubbing her hand against her trousers as she backed away. Something touched her shoulder, and she spun around and let out a little scream, thinking there was someone in the room with her, but it was a wooden bust with a hat on it on a table by the wardrobe. Anthea’s heart didn’t stop racing, though. Instead it sped up.
The hat was as large as a cart wheel, with cream-colored veils draped artfully around it. And beneath the veiling the brim of the hat was thickly decorated with dozens of red silk roses.
Anthea knew that hat. She would never forget the first time she had seen that hat, terrified and wounded as she had been at the time.
Anthea slammed the door shut behind her and ran down the stairs, not even caring about the clatter she made. In the library, Finn and the MagTaran looked at her strangely when she came racketing in, panting and clutching her side as though to protect the long-healed wound.
“We have to go,” she said to Finn. “Right now. We have to get out of here.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Is it the horses?” the MagTaran asked with concern. “Did something happen to them?”
Anthea looked at Finn, trying to convey that she needed to speak to him privately, but he just blinked at her while the MagTaran asked again what was wrong.
“Lady Vivian is a lie,” Anthea announced. “Their great benefactress is my mother!”