“So I am assured, my lady Vorchenza, save for the tiny lights. The tower itself is spice cake; the turrets and terraces are jellied fruit. The buildings and carriages at the base of the tower are mostly chocolate; the heart of the tower is an apple brandy cream, and the windows-”
“Thank you, Gilles, that will do for an architectural synopsis. But spit out the lights when we’re finished, you say?”
“It would be more decorous, m’lady,” said the servant, a round, delicate-featured man with shoulder-length black ringlets, “to let me remove them for you prior to consumption…”
“Decorous? Gilles, you would deny us the fun of spitting them over the side of the terrace like little girls. I’ll thank you not to touch them. The tea?”
“Your will, Doña Vorchenza,” he said smoothly. “Tea of Light.” He lifted a silver teapot and poured a steaming line of pale brownish liquid into a tea glass; Doña Vorchenza’s etched glasses were shaped like large tulip buds with silver bases. As the tea settled into the container, it began to glow faintly, shedding an inviting orange radiance.
“Oh, very pretty,” said Doña Sofia. “I’ve heard of it… Verrari, is it?”
“Lashani.” Doña Vorchenza took the glass from Gilles and cradled it in both hands. “Quite the latest thing. Their tea masters are mad with the competitive spirit. This time next year we’ll have something even stranger to one-up one another with. But forgive me, my dear-I do hope you’re not averse to drinking the products of your art as well as working with them in your garden?”
“Not at all,” Sofia replied as the servant set her own glass before her and bowed. She took the cup into her hands and took a deep breath; the tea smelled of mingled vanilla and orange blossoms. When she sipped, the flavors ran warmly on her tongue and the scented steam rose into her nostrils. Gilles vanished back into the tower itself while the ladies commenced drinking. For a few moments they enjoyed their tea in appreciative silence, and for a few moments Sofia was almost content.
“Now we shall see,” said Doña Vorchenza as she set her half-empty glass down before her, “if it continues to glow when it comes out the other side.”
Doña Salvara giggled despite herself, and the lines on her hostess’ lean face drew upward as she smiled. “Now, what did you want to ask me about, my dear?”
“Doña Vorchenza,” Sofia began, then hesitated. “It is…it is commonly thought that you have some, ah, means to communicate with the…the duke’s secret constabulary.”
“The duke has a secret constabulary?” Doña Vorchenza placed a hand against her breast in an expression of polite disbelief.
“The Midnighters, Doña Vorchenza, the Midnighters, and their leader-”
“The duke’s Spider. Yes, yes. Forgive me, dear girl, I do know of what you speak. But this idea you have…‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”
“It is very curious,” said Sofia Salvara, “that when the doñas come to you with problems, on more than one occasion, their problems have…reached the ear of the Spider. Or seemed to, since the duke’s men became involved in assisting with those problems.”
“Oh, my dear Sofia. When gossip comes to me I pass it on in packets and parcels. I drop a word or two in the right ear, and the gossip acquires a life of its own. Sooner or later it must reach the notice of someone who will take action.”
“Doña Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “I hope I can say without intending or giving offense that you are dissembling.”
“I hope I can say without disappointing you, dear girl, that you have a very slender basis for making that suggestion.”
“Doña Vorchenza.” Sofia clutched at her edge of the table so hard that several of her finger joints popped. “Lorenzo and I are being robbed.”
“Robbed? Whatever do you mean?”
“And we have Midnighters involved. They’ve…made the most extraordinary claims, and made requests of us. But…Doña Vorchenza, there must be some way to confirm that they are what they say they are.”
“You say Midnighters are robbing you?”
“No,” said Sofia, biting her upper lip. “No, it’s not the Midnighters themselves. They are…supposedly watching the situation and waiting for a chance to act. But something…something is just wrong. Or they are not telling us everything they perhaps should.”
“My dear Sofia,” said Doña Vorchenza. “My poor troubled girl, you must tell me exactly what has happened, and leave out not one detail.”
“It is…difficult, Doña Vorchenza. The situation is rather…embarrassing. And complicated.”
“We are all alone up here on my terrace, my dear. You have done all the hard work already, in coming over to see me. Now you must tell me everything. Then I’ll see to it that this particular bit of gossip speeds on its way to the right ear, I promise you.”
Sofia took another small sip of tea, cleared her throat, and hunched down in her seat to look Doña Vorchenza directly in the eyes.
“Surely,” she began, “you’ve heard of Austershalin brandy, Doña Vorchenza?”
“More than heard of, my dear. I may even have a few bottles hidden away in my wine cabinets.”
“And you know how it is made? The secrets surrounding it?”
“Oh, I believe I understand the essence of the Austershalin mystique. The fussy black-coated vintners of Emberlain are, shall we say, well served by the stories surrounding their wares.”
“Then you can understand, Doña Vorchenza, how Lorenzo and I reacted as we did when the following opportunity supposedly fell into our laps by an act of the gods…”
2
THE CAGE containing Doña Salvara creaked and rattled toward the ground, growing ever smaller and fading into the background gray of the courtyard. Doña Vorchenza stood by the brass rails of the embarkation platform, staring into the night for many minutes, while her team of attendants pulled at the machinery of the capstan. Gilles wheeled the silver cart with the near-empty pot of tea and the half-eaten Amberglass cake past her, and she turned to him.
“No,” she said. “Send the cake up to the solarium. That’s where we’ll be.”
“Who, m’lady?”
“Reynart.” She was already striding back toward the door to her terrace-side apartments; her slippered feet made an echoing slap-slap-slap against the walkway. “Find Reynart. I don’t care what he’s doing. Find him and send him up to me, the moment you’ve seen to the cake.”
Inside the suite of apartments, through a locked door, up a curving stairway…Doña Vorchenza cursed under her breath. Her knees, her feet, her ankles. “Damn venerability,” she muttered. “I piss on the gods for the gift of rheumatism.” Her breathing was ragged. She undid the buttons on the front of her fur-trimmed coat as she continued to mount the steps.
At the top-the very peak of the inner tower-there was a heavy oaken door reinforced with iron joints and bands. She pulled forth a key that hung around her right wrist on a silk cord. This she inserted into the silver lockbox above the crystal knob while carefully pressing a certain decorative brass plate in a wall sconce. A series of clicks echoed within the walls and the door fell open, inward.
Forgetting the brass plate would be a poor idea; she’d specified a rather excessive pull for the concealed crossbow trap, when she’d had it installed three decades earlier.
This was the solarium, then, another eight stories up from the level of the terrace. The room took up the full diameter of the tower at its apex, fifty feet from edge to edge. The floor was thickly carpeted. A long curving brass-railed gallery, with stairs at either end, spread across the northern half of the space. This gallery held a row of tall witchwood shelves divided into thousands upon thousands of cubbyholes and compartments. The transparent hemispherical ceiling dome revealed the low clouds like a bubbling lake of smoke. Doña Vorchenza tapped alchemical globes to bring them to life as she mounted the stairs to her file gallery.