“Lyle asked me to pass on his considerable distress and to request the honour of taking you to lunch,” Evelyn said. “Since this Makepeace fellow apparently resides in London, and Prince Gustav is in residence at Alba Place, Lyle will at least be on hand if you find yourself in need of assistance.”
“What do you know of Makepeace?” Rian asked, slitting an envelope to distract from her surprise at what he plainly didn’t know. Then she frowned at her first telegram, attention stolen almost completely from Evelyn’s response.
HEARD GOOD NEWS STOP, it read. TEMPORARILY RETURNING ALBA BUT INSIST LUNCH SOONEST STOP HAVE EVELYN PASS ON ADDRESS STOP UNTIL RETURN LYNSEY LOVE TO HELP STOP LYLE
“…been down several times before,” Evelyn was saying. “My mother remembers him showing up early in her service, so he’s at least a century-passed vampire. A sun-seeker too, from what I’ve seen of him, which tends to suggest age, though it apparently can come on quite early in some of the strains.”
“All vampires do that then?” Rian asked, handing him the telegram in order to stop herself from reacting to a sought-after name. “Lord Msrah was telling me a little about it.”
“Relatively rare behaviour, from what I understand. While the rept state is several steps up from mortal decay, most stone-blood don’t seek it prematurely.” He smiled down at the telegram. “Prince Gustav must have whirled himself back to Din Eidyn and dragged poor Lyle in his wake. But Lynsey will definitely be glad to do anything she can for you. She lives for rescues and grand causes.”
“I have no idea who Lynsey is,” Rian said, quite as if she hadn’t come to Sheerside House specifically to find a ‘Lyndsey’ somehow connected to the place.
“Lyle’s little sister. Very active in the United Albion League, and thoroughly redoubtable. I’ll give you her London address, and pass on yours. And, if you permit, come to visit myself, when I’m free to do so. Currently our usual schedules are completely disarranged.”
“Of course,” Rian said, the warmth of her response not simply because she had found a breadcrumb to lead her through the maze around Aedric’s death. “I’ll have to apologise to Dama Hackett. I suppose this will delay all her plans until another replacement is found.”
He looked away. “Delia…her room was opposite Princess Leodhild’s. The sphinx crashed right through it.”
“She—? I didn’t know. How awful.” For a moment Rian felt a distress disproportionate to the death of a kind stranger, a jolt to make the room swim. Realising she’d put her hand to her throat yet again, she forced it down and added: “I’m sorry Evelyn.”
“I was teasing her only a week ago, about her long list of frivolous things to do. And now the most I can do is rationalise death, tell myself Delia had lived a long and comfortable life, that it was quick, and she wouldn’t have known or suffered. She is seeing Annwn now, and is surely a strong enough soul to travel on a grand tour of the Twilight Islands. But that is what my head says, while my heart shouts ‘unfair’ and tells me I failed her.”
“Dance in the snow.” In response to his startled glanced Rian went on: “It’s what Dama Hackett told me she planned to do. You can’t undo what happened, but you can dance in the snow for her.”
Evelyn shook his head, but then his lips shifted to a reluctant curve. “That sounds like Delia. And she would enjoy the idea, very much. She always made fun of my attempts at dignity. Will you dance for her with me? Some time after Midwinter?”
Rian agreed readily to this, and watched a part of Evelyn ease as he told several fond anecdotes of a woman who had been part of the extended family he’d known growing up, and who had obviously been an early crush, words never spoken making her loss doubly regretted.
Sampling breakfast, she tried a segment of peach, then opened her second telegram and read it in silence.
“It’s Wednesday at the moment, yes?” she asked.
“Thursday morning.”
Rian read the telegram over, and said: “Then I need to check some train schedules. A late afternoon express to London would be ideal, to minimise the amount of sunlight I have to deal with, and also to leave after meeting a train arriving at four.”
“And you need to do that—?”
“To collect an express delivery from Retwold School. My nephew and both nieces have managed to get themselves expelled.”
FIVE
Nine hours. A thousand stations. A window that opened a bare few inches, and only let in Saharan gusts and an excess of smuts. Long before the final approach to Sheerside Station, Eluned, Eleri and Griff Tenning had been reduced to puddles on the seats.
“Nothing Aunt Arianne can do to us will match the trip here,” Eluned said, easing a finger beneath the sweaty itch of straps holding on her right arm.
“Could stand us in the sun another hour,” Eleri replied, tilting her head back as she considered the possibilities. “Give us more liver paste sandwiches.”
“Don’t talk about those sandwiches.” Eluned swallowed a bubble of oily gas, and checked on Griff, lying on the opposite seat. He never travelled well.
“She should be glad,” Griff said. “And she doesn’t get to punish us.”
He’d said the same thing, hours earlier, but the defiance had been worn down by the long day, and he sounded half his thirteen years.
Aunt Arianne didn’t seem the type to hand out strict punishments, but it was hard to be sure. They knew so little about her, and Eluned hadn’t been in a state to pay much attention in the first days after their Aunt had brought the news, or during the funeral. Since then, one of the few things Eluned had been able to remember from before had been her mother’s reaction to one of Aunt Arianne’s rare letters: pure exasperation. “Your sister flits around the Continent as if the world was arranged for her entertainment. Never doing anything of value, or caring to take a true interest.”
And Aunt Arianne hadn’t seemed to care, not deeply and properly. She hadn’t cried at all, or even hugged them more than once—not that they would have welcomed it if she’d pretended they were close, like real family.
Her endless calm was infuriating, but finding the truth too important for Eluned to jeopardise by giving in to anger. And at least Aunt Arianne had believed them when they’d insisted it couldn’t be an accident, had become an ally, and not drawn back on finding a way to get into Sheerside.
“Suppose they have monster attacks very often?” Eleri asked, fanning Griff with the newspaper they’d spent their last hoarded coin on that morning. “Only make a fuss about them if Princess Leodhild is involved?”
Griff didn’t even respond.
“I can see the Nomal House pyramid.” Eluned pressed her face to the compartment window to improve the angle of her view. Vampires used pyramids to intensify their powers, and since Shu vampires controlled the weather, the home of the Southern Nomarch was sure to need one as large as this.
Eleri paused in fanning. “The Aquae Sulis one in the distance again?”
“The capping stone is a different colour. It’s very close. We must be right on the station.”
As if in response, the train commenced the series of clanks that signalled a halt, and Eleri joined Eluned at the window. Griff put his arms over his face and breathed deeply. Not a good sign. Griff, for all the enormous energy he could expend, was not robust or resilient, and the past few months had strained his nerves to a high pitch. Too much upset produced fevers, and Eluned couldn’t guess how the hot day and uncertainty would mix with the more ordinary travel sickness.