“Step to your right, dama,” the guard said, as Eluned caught an echo of Griff’s voice, and headed along the narrow corridor to their compartment.
“First class, Ned!” Griff cried, from his position perched on the curving back of one of the benches lining the walls, so sumptuous they looked like rows of winged-back chairs. “And see this?”
He reached up to not quite touch the waving woven triangle in the upper corner of the wide compartment.
“Simple automation,” Eleri commented, pointing out another in the opposite corner. “Electric lighting, too. Whole train’s been designed to take advantage of the fulgite.”
A shudder and a jolt warned of departure and their Aunt, standing at the window, lifted a hand in farewell. A roll of thunder accompanied the response from Dem Carstairs, and heavy drops struck the glass as the train pulled away.
“That should cool matters down considerably,” Aunt Arianne said, not sounding as if she’d been recently attacked by anything more than mild curiosity.
Their mother had once said their aunt lacked any form of sensibility, so perhaps nearly dying was the kind of thing she could simply take in her stride. But whatever the case, Eluned doubted she was immune to heat.
“You must be boiling under all that, Aunt Arianne. If we pull the blinds and turn out the lights, will it be dark enough for you?”
The veil swayed ambiguously, and the subsequent: “It’s worth a try,” came in the same tone, but even so Eluned was suddenly certain that she’d surprised their aunt. And that was not a nice realisation.
Resolving to do better, she jabbed Griff to get him to come down, and double-checked their belongings were sufficiently stable as the train picked up speed. The guard passed, but merely tipped his hat rather than asking for tickets, and then showed Eluned the trick to blocking the windows and damping the lights. The result was so effective it was clear the compartment had been modified with vampires in mind.
“The Nomarch must use it,” Eluned said, finishing her thought aloud as she plumped into one of the seats and contemplated in the half-light the basket containing the remains of their picnic, ensconced on the seat opposite. A carpet bag was tucked beside it, and she could make out the shape of her own wooden fingers curling shyly over the top.
“Griff, please check the compartments to either side of us,” Aunt Arianne said, stripping off her gloves, then lifting hat and veil together.
“Right.”
Griff banged the door open carelessly, and even though it wasn’t bright out in the storm-gloomed corridor, their aunt still flinched and threw up a hand. But then dropped it as the door bounced shut once again, remarking: “Not as bad as before.”
“You—” Eluned reached out and pushed the corridor door wider again, so the light fell across their aunt’s face.
“This Makepeace person a Thoth-den?” Eleri asked.
“No, one of the rarer lines, but all vampires and Bound enjoy some level of preservation.” Aunt Arianne touched her cheek, then her fingers strayed down to her throat before dropping. “I foresee some highly entertaining conversations thanks to this, but probably a few annoying misunderstandings as well.”
Aunt Arianne was four years younger than Father, which made her quite old, almost thirty-seven. She shared Griff and Father’s honey-brown hair, and wore a certain air of authority and sophistication, but now lacked the faint imperfections of skin, and minute sagging that came along with years. It was already difficult to call this woman ‘Aunt’, but it would be doubly so now.
“Barely look seventeen,” Eleri said.
“Oh, it’s not that bad, surely? I was thinking twenty, or at least nineteen. Seventeen, and I’ll get lectures when I go out dancing.” Aunt Arianne touched her throat again, then shook her head. “Not a development I can justly complain about. What’s the situation, Griff?”
Griff, ducking under Eluned’s arm, said: “There’s a lady in the very end compartment. The other two are empty.”
“Good. The noise of the rain should mean even a Bound would have trouble from that distance. Close the door. I want to get back to the subject at hand.”
“This Lynsey person?” Eluned asked, sitting down.
“No, Monsieur Doré. You fitted him out to test the haunted automaton stories?”
“Yes. No set routines, merely as wide a range of possible movement as I could manage.” Eleri bounced her heel absently. “No response. In other devices, the fulgite releases a charge, but often stops unexpectedly.”
“How long did you test the automaton’s response?”
“Finished the modifications ten days ago.”
“It never did anything.” The motion of the train was having its usual effect on Griff’s mood.
“Null result, not proof of the negative.”
“Not entirely null, either,” Aunt Arianne said. “He didn’t move a great deal, but Monsieur Doré most certainly gave me a passing acquaintance with a ‘haunted’ automaton. My response was to remove the fulgite, and now that I’ve had time to think it over, it brings with it a possible reason for why a large and very dangerous living statue would come bounding through a ceiling into my room.”
Eluned had wondered about that, ever since Aunt Arianne had told them she’d been attacked. “That thing was after the fulgite?”
“Perhaps. And if that proves to be the case, then what did the other one want…”
Eluned and Eleri finished her sentence in chorus: “…with Princess Leodhild?”
SIX
Eluned had never stayed in a hotel before, and a year ago would have enjoyed the luxurious Ketterley enormously. Everywhere she looked there was a wealth of patterns and decorative touches, and even a few vases of flowers, despite the winds. And yet they woke no response in her. She simply looked, instead of adding them to her sketchbooks.
Like the train compartment, the hotel had been arranged by Lord Msrah’s staff, and underlined how rapidly their circumstances had changed. The arrangements that would have given them a home had completely fallen apart, and all Aunt Arianne would say about Dem Makepeace was that she had no idea of his finances, and didn’t have a formal bonding agreement with him.
Nor would their aunt speculate further about the fulgite or Princess Leodhild, only adding that not becoming a vampire was at the top of her list of priorities for the moment, and whisking them through a breakfast and departure at an uncomfortably early hour.
“She’s a trompe l’oeil.”
“A what?” Griff tore his attention from the hotel foyer’s ceiling, puzzled, but Eleri nodded.
“Especially now.”
Gathered together at the top of the Ketterley’s sweeping foyer stairs, they watched a little constellation of hotel staff orbit their aunt. Eluned had noticed before that Aunt Arianne had a knack for getting people to want to help her, but it had become much more marked now that she was deceptively young. And it surely didn’t hurt that, despite her tight purse strings, she was dressed in a very elegant and modern version of traditional Prytennian daywear: her white shirt had decorative laces down the arms, the hunter green outer panels of her knee-length doubled skirt flared to reveal the patterned ivory layer beneath, and a day belt of sage cloth hugged and emphasised the curve of her waist. Matching sage undertrousers were cut close to the line of her legs and it was all fashioned from the lightest of cloth: an outfit chosen to cover skin while managing the summer heat.
“It means a trick of the eye, Griff. An object painted to look like it’s something else.” Eluned, dressed in her uniform of shirt and summer shendy because all her other clothing was too hot or too small, started down the stair. “Aunt Arianne acts very open, but it’s all an illusion.”