The Time Weaver

Chapter Fifteen

The hell of Versailles, Zane judged, wasn't just that Lia wasn't there with him to laugh and gasp at this feverish fantasia of a royal abode—although, all things considered, that was probably the worst of it. But the other hell, the constant, day-to-day ordinary hell that nipped at his heels here like a mangy, friendless dog was simply the food.

All the lovely, lovely food.

The residence of the king and queen of France seemed to be the center of the universe of flaky, buttery, savory, sauce-dripping grande cuisine .

The fact that he was meeting the leader of a sadistically murderous gang at one of most bedazzling locations on earth did not make the grounds any less spectacular, or the absinthe in his glass less heady with licorice, or the pate de foie gras on the plate set before him less enticingly creamy.

Murderers, as Zane knew very well, enjoyed a fine meal just the same as kings.

Certainly Versailles was a most elegant place to meet a killer, just as it was a most elegant prison for all the preening lords and ladies forced to dwell here. None of them looked too terribly miserable about it, despite the heat of the day and the fact that they were all seated outside in the Grand Garden awaiting the leisure of His Majesty, who was, naturally, late returning from yet another hunt. No one could dine before Louis, not even the queen, whom Zane had heard whispered was sequestered at her make-believe peasant village anyway, playing at being a shepherdess.

The notion of it gave him no little secret amusement. Marie Antoinette shedding her diamonds and satin to mingle with sheep, and Zane the thief donning the same to mingle with her courtiers.

None of whom, at the moment, were allowed to eat or even walk away from the banquet table because the king. Would . Arrive.

So the thirty-two roasted suckling pigs remained uncarved. The forty mauve-and-white iced cakes with their garlands of sugar roses and violets gleamed pristine. All the cheese platters were sweating. Seven of the fifty-five asparagus-and-truffle salads that he could see were beginning to attract flies, but royal pages in turbans had been stationed over them, fanning the insects away as best they could with giant ostrich feathers.

There was nothing to be done, however, about the ice sculptures. The one nearest Zane resembled a thinning, listing heart more than the pair of swans it had been an hour past.

He imagined that somewhere back in the kitchens of the palace was a gaggle of chefs near to weeping with fury.

It was a blinding autumn day, one of those days that had been so rare back in dear old London-town, with a sky like crisp blue linen, white clouds that never amounted to more than a few coy wisps. A company of acrobats was tumbling on the grass before the vast stretch of the table, the gilded horses of the Fountain of Apollo shining so brightly behind them the gold seemed to melt into the water.

At least alcohol was being poured. The trapped nobles surrounding him seemed content enough with that. And surely at least some of them realized how much safer they were here, at this feast they were not yet permitted to touch, than anywhere else in France these days.

Zane, who had been placed near the western end of it all, was pretending to be just as content. He was very good at pretending.

It was doubtful anyone but the murderer would have noticed how he never truly relaxed in his seat, how his eyes never ceased to take in his surroundings. How he'd refused wine entirely, or how the absinthe he'd accepted in its stead remained practically untouched.

As far as the lumbering machinery of Versailles was concerned, the closed-lipped gentleman in the second-to-last chair was a visiting Hungarian vicomte , wealthy enough to dine at the table of the king, unknown enough to be seated nowhere near his fat royal arse.

It suited him well. He'd been stewing here two months already, establishing his persona. Anticipating this day.

The marquise to Zane's right had spilled her claret twice so far. She was giggling about it, red-cheeked, the stuffed canaries decorating her enormous wig trembling in an alarming fashion. The dandy on her other side kept up a constant patter of droll wit, which made the lady laugh harder, which forced the birds to quake more. She hardly seemed to notice how the fellow was running an envious finger up and down the strand of rubies resting upon her ample bosom.

They were top-notch, Zane had to admit. Under other circumstances, he'd give the dandy a run for it, and win.

But the chair to Zane's left, the very last chair of the king's majestic table, remained empty, and that was what occupied most of his thoughts.

He was very much looking forward to discovering who would fill it.

This morning, the sixty-sixth morning of awakening in the cramped little cell he'd been assigned at Versailles, had at last delivered to him what he'd been trawling for. A discreet note slipped under his doorway, anonymous, informing the vicomte that He Whom He Most Desired to Greet would be awaiting the vicomte 's pleasure at the king's Garden Luncheon this afternoon. And to kindly wear the new lemon-satin garments the vicomte had commissioned in Paris three months past.

Merci beaucoup.

Zane was not astonished that they knew about the new clothes. He was not astonished by much in general, or by the sanf inimicus in particular. He'd spent too many years learning their ways, and he had, after all, gone to some rather extreme lengths to be noticed.

So he was wearing the lemon-satin rig. He did not mind the wig of expensive human hair that curled down to his shoulders, although it itched. He didn't mind the rouge on his cheeks and lips, or the kohl he'd applied with a practiced hand around his eyes—in fact, he rather liked the kohl. It sent his amber irises to yellow; he fancied it made him look a bit more exotically unhinged, just the sort of chap who would arrange a meeting like the one that was—surely—about to begin.

He didn't mind the heavy damask coat and waistcoat embroidered with so much silver thread he positively glittered, or the high Italian heels that pinched his feet, or the ridiculously ornamental grip of the rapier slung to his hip, which of course he'd made certain was as lethal as a plain one.

He didn't even mind the waiting.

He minded the damned food.

All his years he'd been starving. He'd been born into starvation, he'd nursed from its teat, and the constant, dull ache in his stomach was such an eternal companion to him now it was more friend than not. It reminded him that no matter what else, he was alive, when so many others he'd bumped shoulders with were not.

Aye, hunger was good. Hunger kept him keen.

He ignored the foie gras with a mixture of envy and disdain, and sipped instead the sugary green absinthe, which he despised so it never got him drunk.

The empty chair at his side remained that way, its tapestry cushions showing every knot and tuft of silk under the unrelenting sun.

He'd previously observed the head of the sanf inimicus only once. It had been in Lyons, years past, and the fellow had been hooded and cloaked and surrounded by his minions. He'd been leaving a tavern, stepping up into a carriage before heading off to God knew where next. He'd never noticed Zane. Yet just that single encounter had been enough to chill Zane's blood.

He was not a superstitious man. He could not afford to be. But he would've sworn there was an air of what he could only describe asmalevolence about that hooded figure, even without seeing his face.

Zane toyed with the stem of his absinthe glass, watching the acrobats through slitted eyes.

It had taken him years to reach this table, this moment. The sanf weren't a group known precisely for either their cohesion or their sense of trust. He'd been a loyal crony, had wormed his way in and in with absolute patience, and every time he wished to slam his fist through the face of one of these unwashed Frenchmen who thought they knew the secret heart of dragons, who thought they were so extraordinary because they believed in the myth, they believed they'd been chosen by God or the devil or some ruddy peasant out in the provinces casting runes and mumbling over chicken guts—every time he reached that point of smiling and unleashing his fury and blowing it all to hell, Zane thought of Amalia.

Of She Who Always Expected Him Home Again, however far he roamed.

Amalia, who was actual myth transformed. Who could soar and scrape the heavens with wings and who still could have been the better Helen, commanding armies to the fore with just her jaw-dropping, staggering beauty.

And who had used her quiet magic to peer past the famished child who still rattled inside Zane and seen something else, something Zane himself had never even guessed was there: a man who could love.

She loved him.

All the world could be scorched and ashed. Lia Langford loved him. She had no armies, his enchanted wife. She had him.

He sat in this chair, in this garden, awaiting the one who wanted her dead, because of that.

A pair of footmen approached from behind. He did not stiffen at their arrival, only managed a casual, upward glance at the closest one, his right hand not on the hilt of the rapier but instead the hidden dirk at his waist.

"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur."The footman was pulling back the empty chair, shifting again to guide closer the person Zane had not yet seen, the person who shuffled slowly forward between both men.

It was a woman. An old woman, at that. He felt a harsh burn of disappointment, also skillfully hidden, as she eased with her wide, quilted skirts into the chair. The footmen were angling her carefully nearer the table; Zane glimpsed a withered forearm poking out from a pink-embroidered sleeve, frail, spotted hands gripping the wooden arms for support.

The servants backed away, bowing. The woman lifted a hand to ensure her wig had not slipped awry, then turned her head and smiled at Zane.

His body went to ice. With a peculiar sense of inner shrinkage, of horror, he was aware that for the first time in his adult life he couldn't move at all, not even to save himself.

"Hello, Father," the old woman said.

Every guest of the king's feast had a personal attendant to serve them, with a beverage maid for every three and a carver for every seven. But damned Jerome had taken ill not ten minutes past; no doubt he'd been nipping from the cognac cart again. He'd fallen unconscious and was snoring behind the statue of Aphrodite in the labyrinth nearby.

"Fucking asshole," grumbled monsieur le maitre d'hotel, eyeing Dimitri balefully, as if it were somehow his fault. "There's no help of it, boy. You'll have to serve both Madame and the Hungarian vicomte until we can get someone else in his livery."

"Yes, sir."

From their hidden vantage point behind the hedges, they viewed together the unlikely couple, who faced each other without speaking. The sparkling fountain beyond them forced tears to Dimitri's eyes.

"God grant His Majesty comes soon," muttered the maitre d'hotel. "That Hungarian looks greener than Jerome."

One word engulfed him. One word, the only one that now mattered. Lia.

Oh God, and he'd left her alone with this creature, left her alone in Spain with her, the younger her—

"You'll be thinking of Mother, I expect," said the woman, nodding. She leaned back in the chair and crooked a finger for the attendant, who bobbed forward in an instant. "Un verre de vin blanc."

"Oui, madame."

She glanced back at Zane. The same eyes, dragon-blue, in a face so fine and wrinkled he might have walked past her a hundred times and not noticed the truth.

Honor. Honor in this elderly thing before him, a shadow of Honor's unnatural splendor still apparent in the cheekbones, in the lips.

Honor Carlisle, that skinny blasted snip of a drakon child, that girl Lia had dreamed about and fished from the shire to save—she was sanf—she was the sodding lead of the snake —and no sodding wonder the tribe wanted her dead and he'd left them alone —

Zane shoved back from the table. He stood and the inebriated marauise ceased her tittering, and the footmen behind him surged forward, murmuring concern.

"Please," the elderly woman said, staring straight ahead. "I could Weave to Barcelona in an instant and kill her. You must realize that."

He glared down at her, frantic, his jaw clenched so tight he was unable to speak.

"I won't," she said gently, and sent him a sidelong look. "And I'll tell you why I won't. But first, I'd very much appreciate your help with a riddle. Do sit," she added, when Zane didn't move, not even when the king's men had resettled his chair, urging him back to the table.

"Don't you want to hear my mystery, Vicomte? It's to your advantage, I promise you that." Everyone was staring. And she could leave in a blink of an eye anyway, he knew that. Zane resumed his seat.

"I want you to know," said Honor quietly, in her unfamiliar, elderly voice, "that I never despised you, or your wife. Even now, I can appreciate the risks you both took to save my life. So understand that what I say next is not motivated by any sort of intimate passion. I want you to help me to find a way to destroy the English drakon . All of them, save your wife."

He couldn't help it; a huffing choke of laughter escaped him. "You must be mad."

She gazed at him flatly. A serving maid in powder and an apron and gray-frizzed wig brought the wine, then slipped back into the shadows of the box hedges behind them. Zane waited until she was gone.

"You are mad," he said. "I wouldn't, even if I could. Which I can't."

"If you don't, I will execute Amalia. Without delay."

"Honor—"

"No," the woman interrupted. "I'm Rez now. Pray call me that."

He paused to breathe, to truly take her in. He'd seen all manner of wickedness before. It had been the meat and bread of his entire life, really, starting from his very first memories, that cutpurse gang of urchins who'd plied him with gin and taught him to sob on demand; Dirty Clem, the picklock who'd fed and tutored him and then stabbed him near to death. The streets of London held iniquity aplenty for a child with no protection but his own wits. Zane could full tell when a bloke was confident enough to play at being vicious and when he was cold enough to be sincere.

Rez, with her stylish tall wig draped with feathers and pearls, her embroidered gown of salmon-pink with curling mint leaves, her withered shoulders and her straight blue gaze ... Rez was sincere.

"Why?" he asked, blunt.

"Because." She tasted the wine.

"That's a bloody big venture, just for 'because.'"

She shrugged.

"Why don't you have your hired hacks do it?" he demanded, reckless. "All those poor bastards who think they're doing God's work, ripping out the hearts of your kind. Sanf inimicus," he sneered. "Did you make that up or just dead steal it from history?"

Rez spread open her fan, peering down the table. "Wherever do you suppose Louis is? Probably diddling about with his horse. I do wish he'd hurry, don't you? I'm quite famished."

A great wave of emotion swept over him then: hatred, mingled with nauseated desperation. Zane made himself very still until it passed. He picked up his absinthe, set it down again. The light from the fountain flashed and flashed in his head.

The old woman sighed, tapping the lace fan against her mouth. "All right. I had a plan like that, if you must know, not too long ago. It didn't work out. A great many of my hired hacks, as you say, perished underground, all thanks to a single dragon. Imagine it—one dragon, forty-five hand-picked assassins destroyed. Such a pity. It's taken longer than I thought to rebuild their ranks. I find I grow impatient. I find that . time is short."

He closed his eyes against the light.

"You are the only living being who knows the shire of Darkfrith as well as any drakon. I daresay you know it better than I. Plus, you have all those useful years of surviving as a criminal. I can't Weave back there undetected. I can't even walk to its borders. I'm ninety-one years old, Vicomte. I don't desire to walk. That makes you the ideal candidate for my proposition."

He shook his head. "How long have you been planning this?"

She sighed again, a quavering sound. "Questions regarding time are always so tricky. Allow me merely to say, since I was a much younger woman. Since long before I realized it was you who has been stalking me these past few years, the wild-eyed Englishman everyone spoke of, who already knew about dragons, who could control them with his magical spells." Now she laughed; he heard the young girl in it, the girl he knew. "You used your ring, didn't you? You used those fragments of Draumr you once used upon me. But now your ring is gone. Yes, I took it. Are you surprised? It was never meant to belong to an Other, you know. I promise you I've made good use of it."

"Bloody hell, Rez. If you have Draumr, why not just use it to have them destroy themselves? Set them to fighting?"

"I do wonder if you're attempting to be devious or are merely that ignorant. Surely you realize that the chips from the ring work most effectively on one dragon at a time, perchance two. Had I the whole stone, unbroken, perhaps it would be feasible to take on the entire tribe. But as things are . no. Believe me, I've considered it."

"Go back in time. Steal it before it's broken."

"I've tried. Apparently as a whole it's untouchable. A few things are. The Weaves won't take me to it."

Zane twisted in his seat to address her squarely. The curls of his wig slid heavily along his shoulders. "I can't kill them all. It's not possible."

"No. You mean that you won't. I confess myself disappointed. I really rather thought you loved your wife."

Blood rushed to his cheeks; he struggled to keep his voice in check. "Damn you. I can't kill them because there's no clear way about it! They're fortified in there, they've an array of defenses. There've got to be close to a thousand—at least!—who can Turn, and that's just the males! Think about it. And in any case, there's—"

"What?"

Rue, he'd nearly said. Rue, amazing Rue. The one who'd begun this whole wretched, remarkable game that amounted to his new found life. Rue, who had saved him from those London gutters as a lad, and taken him in, and eventually had had the grace to give birth to the woman he would wed.

"Langford," Zane said. "The marquess. He's a wily old bugger, believe you me, even if he has given over the title of Alpha to his eldest son. I've dealt with that son of a bitch since I was a child."

"Ah," said Rez softly. "Ah, yes. You have in mind the marchioness, of course. Rue Langford. I'd heard you loved her. And not just as the mother of your wife."

"Shut up," Zane snarled.

"It's not really my concern. The Marquess and Marchioness of Langford abandoned the shire years ago."

"That's a lie."

"It's not. I swear. What have I to gain with a lie? You'll go there, you'll find out for yourself anyway. I suppose you truly haven't been in touch with any of the English, or you'd know. They left, oh, around eight years ago. In your time."

To say that he was staggered would have been a pitiful underestimation. Rue leaving the shire, fleeing with her husband, that by-the-book stickler of a leader with all his rules—

"Off in search of their youngest daughter," continued Rez evenly. "Who, apparently, they've never found. So all that's left in Darkfrith are those you don't love. Those you've hidden Lia from, who would harm her still if they could." She spread her palms, reasonable. "They're the ones I want."

One of the smaller acrobats ended a flip just in front of them, a boy in tight clothing and a sweaty, panting face. Rez and the rubied marauise offered a smattering of applause.

"Envision it," she said under her breath. "No more hiding, no more threats. Just you and she, free to live as you wish, where you wish. You have my word that I'll leave you both alone forever. But I need your help first, Father. I need your cunning, and your knowledge of the shire."

He picked up the absinthe, drained the glass in one shot. "I'm not a lunatic."

"I am," she said, simple. "I didn't choose this path, but here I am on it. Consequences of my Gift, consequences of my very birth. And I'll tell you something else, something I think you already know: Love is a demon that destroys your soul. It eats and eats inside you, it hollows you out, and you'll do anything to keep feeding it. That's all I'm doing."

"Hon—Rez. I've no notion what you're talking about."

"Don't you?" she said, smiling her old lady's smile.

From the other end of the garden came a flicker of silver and blue: royal bunting on poles, followed by a blare of trumpets. Louis had arrived.

Everyone at the table began to stir, but Zane never looked away from Honor's face.

"You do love," she whispered, nodding. "And if you wish her to live, you'll do as I request. The one thing I ever understood about you, Zane, was that you would be ruthless in the protection of your heart. Your heart is Lia. I merely expect," her smile grew wider, wrinkled, old and young, "you to be ruthless. It's what you're best at, after all."

She leaned over, gave his sleeve a motherly pat.

"I'm glad you wore the lemon satin. I've always admired you in yellow."