2.21. Estate

The first sign that they were drawing near to the Necropolis was the sky. In every corner of the United Territories, the deathspell dyed the air green, but Seth had spent all his life under pastel tones, of mint and sage and pale tea, enriched to deeper pine come the evenings. The most colorful sunsets of his youth hadn’t prepared him for the Necropolitan sky.

A vivid, electric green, the green of emeralds or of tourmaline, shot through with swirling pyroxene clouds, forming vast, unnatural rings that wreathed the sky in malachite ripples, as if some colossal stone had dropped into its mirror surface. As Seth beheld the alien sky, a filament flash snapped through the afternoon haze, a perfectly vertical line of light that carved, from the wavering distance, the stark lines of a cityscape.

Seth blinked against the brightness—it was gone as quickly as it had come. “The hell was that?”

“There’s this thing called the deathspell,” Ofelia said. “It’s rather a famous feature of our fair metropolis.”

Seth was so gobsmacked he forgot to be annoyed by the sarcasm. “That was the deathspell?”

“Yep.” Annalise grinned at Seth’s awe as if she’d been the one to bring it forth. “Your inaugural casting. And it is impressive, isn’t it, if you’re not a disaffected yoke like herself on the roof.”

“It looked like lime lightning,” Seth said. “I didn’t realize it was so… active.”

“Oh, aye,” Annalise said. “First cast is at eight in the morning, and then another every two hours till midnight. You can set your watch to it. They get brighter in the end of the year, when the seraphs are thickest at the dome’s threshold.”

A heavy see-sawing clunk tested the carriage’s shock springs as it departed the paved highway, onto a clattering cobblestone drive that bounced Seth in the driver’s box. “We’re not going in the front gate?”

“Not until tomorrow,” Annalise said. “We’ll cross Legionnaire’s Bridge in the morning, dolled up and deadly, and then it’s a few benumbing hours of ceremonies and speeches and a really bleeding delicious lunch with the Exarks, and then the city’s ours.”

“Don’t forget we need to hit the psychelith,” Tiago said. “To drop off the souls we’re carting in these animaxi.”

At the mention of the animaxi, Riccana il Teremi briefly glanced Tiago’s way. Then she fixed her dour black eyes back into the unearthly sky.

“So where are we going?” Seth asked.

“The officers’ estates are all scattered about South of the main gate checkpoints,” Annalise said. “Including mine.”

“Your—” Seth swept the horizon and saw the dark, elegant spires of distant manors dotting the hills. “Your estate?”

The carriage passed a checkpoint on its way through the estate-lands; the guards were not clanky Hermandati but Legionnaires, in sleek black longcoats over shining, fitted breastplates. There was a turnpike setup, but by the time Annalise’s horses reached it they’d already raised the gate and were standing by on the roadside in a line of smart salutes. Annalise returned the gesture with an appreciative whistle.

Then they turned along the crest of an emerald hillside, and before them was the al Ydris house.

It was smaller than Rohan il Agante’s big garish hall; that caught Seth by surprise. But it was many times older, and many times more expensive. He could tell within seconds. The tall A-frame center turret, ornamented with delicate blackstone roses. The clustered columns of metamorphic marble stone arch above the heavy wooden front door, with its tympanum displaying an image of a helmed and hauberked warrior standing boldly alone amidst a phantasmagoric host of seraphs. It was huge and beautiful and gothic and imposing, but somehow it was warm, too, outstretched and eager to welcome them. Something about it said home.

Just like its mistress, Seth realized, and the last of the shock faded. Suddenly he couldn’t imagine a woman like Annalise living anywhere else.

There were flowers growing wild and tall on the manor’s eaves, and lights on in the central circular window. They trooped inside, casting off their dusty boots. Tongue-and-groove paneling in rich blackstain mahogany wound its way at waist height down the corridor, sprouting upward at regular intervals in art deco arches to ensconce flylamps. Thick amber glass encased the bulbs, turning their pallid corpselight warm and caramel where it lay across the ivy-patterned sagebrush wallpaper. Seth had seen rich homes and sumptuously appointed hallways before—he’d run for his life through them. None of them had felt as cozy as Annalise’s.

They stopped by a door set into an A-framed archway, its crest topped with crossed pistols. A clawfooted seat was nuzzled into the hall’s opposite corner where a staircase led to the manor’s second floor, each step paneled on its front face with scenes of hunting hounds and foresters. Annalise tossed her coat onto the seat and hung her battered roadwarden hat on the globe atop the staircase’s banister. She swept into the pistol marked room. “Dalf!” came her ebullient cry. “You’ve made a menagerie of my drawing room.”

“Milady, I am mortified.” A man’s lacquered voice babbled beneath her rummaging. Seth followed her into the drawing room and came face-to-face with a painted badger, its beady stare surprisingly vivid from its canvas underpainted in dim chiaroscuro. In the midst of a veritable gallery of oil paintings and the lumpy shapes of cloth-concealed furniture, a balding fellow with pince-nez glasses perched on his broad nose was desperately tidying. Lit, Seth noted with surprise. his skin a ruddy lit pink and his eyes tawny brown, not black.

“Your arrival came as a surprise, milady.” The man scurried through the room, yanking down paint-stained shrouds, packing easels and canvases into corded bundles. “I would never have allowed the manor to be in such a state for your return had I only known.”

“Such a state, he says.” Annalise followed him, looking over his shoulder at the paintings he fussily hid. “It’s as lovely as ever, Ydalf. Don’t fret.”

“Your study—”

“My study’s exactly why I didn’t send ahead. It was the only way I could finally get a gander at your work. Look at this one.” Annalise pulled a landscape from the floor and propped it onto an easel. “Gorgeous, eh, Seth?”

“Very,” Seth said. His idea of good art depended mostly on the frame it was stored in—the quickest and trustiest way of judging the market value on the fencing circuit, according to his mentors.

Annalise gave a shake of her head. “And the bashful blighter hides these if you give him the chance.”

Ydalf sighed with exasperation and gave up his attempt at retrieving his painting from its jovial captor, to continue tidying the room. “It’s not ready, milady.”

“G’way, Dalf. It’s gorgeous.” Annalise took a step back from the canvas. Her black gaze swept admiringly across it. “You’d never think it’s ready. It’s better like this. A wee bit rough, here and there. Alive.”

Ydalf took the drafter’s pencil from his ear and pointed it at the rich darkness of his painted forest. “You see the trees aren’t rendered right. It’s all a soup.”

“It’s textural.” Annalise tapped a knuckle on the trellis-carved frame of the room’s voluminous picture window. “I don’t need to see every tree here when I can see every tree there.”

“You really do overflatter me, Madam.”

“You got three days to finish this yoke, then I’m buying it from you and stationing it up above the mantle.” Said mantle’s current occupant was a brass statuette of a scowling Saint Jordulf, bucknaked and bearded, with a battleaxe held strategically before his junk. Annalise slid it to one side. “Gotta get this bleeding exhibitionist outta here, anyway.”

Ydalf undid his apron and piled it into the bundle of furniture coverings. “Why would you want a painted landscape of the same thing you can see out your window?”

“Sure look it, Dalf.” Annalise looked out past her faint reflection to the rolling acres before her. “That’ll all be snow and bare branches soon enough. Me, I’m only ever here when the leaves are already drying and dying. I’ll never see this place bedecked as beautifully as you do. Let this lovely work be my consolation, yeah? That’s what I want. Not the real view. Your view. If you’ll sell it to me, I’ll be grateful.”

Seeking someplace less humiliatingly complimentary to bank his obedience, the balding man turned to Seth. “Welcome to the Manor al Ydris, goodman. I apologize for its current disorder. Who might you be?”

“Seth here’s my new man,” Annalise said. “He’ll be living with us from now on.”

Ydalf smiled, without malice (and Seth made sure to check), and bowed. “Ydalf il Destine. Your servant, milord.”

“Surely not my servant.” Seth stuck his hand out. “Pleasure all the same.”

“Uh—I please beg pardon, milord.” With embarrassment, Ydalf patted the pocket of his smock and produced a linen glove from within. He tugged it on over his paint-stained fingers.

Seth wasn’t expecting such a fast and firm reminder of his lost light, here at the unlit capital of the continent. It didn’t escape him that this sober moment wouldn’t have happened if he’d accepted a bow rather than insisting on a handshake. He followed through regardless and pumped the man’s hand with enthusiasm, and even managed to smother the urge to find out what was on the end of that lovely little silver chain trailing out of Ydalf’s pocket.

“Don’t take any offense, love,” Annalise said. “The lit of the Necropolis are a careful lot. Going through life with so many unlit crossing their paths—it’s not like the countryside where you’ll shake a colorless hand once a year. They have to be judicious.”

Ofelia pulled at the corner of a lumpen white shroud and revealed a richly red leather armchair, its back stitched into a precise conch-shell crescent. “Where’s Miniara?”

“She, uh…” Ydalf’s lips pursed. Something about Ofelia’s attention discomfited him. “She’s upstairs.”

Ofelia stepped from the drawing room, to the curved foot of the manor’s wide, sunlit stairwell. “Miniara, dear,” she called. “Your lady is in residence. Come on your own time, but do come.”

Ydalf seemed to put his employer’s daughter out of his mind. “Shall I show your guests to their rooms, Madam Verdugo?”

“Seth’s staying in mine.” Annalise steered their stray Shaheilli guest by the shoulder to stand before Ydalf’s bespectacled eye. “Riccana has her pick of the lot. Will you go with Ydalf?”

Riccana nodded. She was still maintaining her stony silence, but as she followed Ydalf down the first floor hallway, her finger traced along the geometric banding carved into the wainscot at her waist. The wonder of being within all this Necropolitan wealth, showing through.

There was movement at the top of the staircase. A girl, in her late teens or early twenties, stood framed in the dramatic green of the second-floor circle window.

“Here she is.” Ofelia leaned against the staircase’s heavy banister.

“Mistress Ofelia.” The girl swallowed against her high, lacy collar. “Good—good afternoon, milady.”

“Come down here, Miniara.” Ofelia’s voice brooked no resistance, and the girl offered none. She descended the stairs with a tread trained in unobtrusiveness. Not a thief’s stance, though with a few adjustments she could passably get there. This was a servant—if the drawn-in, hesitant gait didn’t give it away, the primly pressed ankle-length onyx dress, with its high lacy collar and its silvery trim, did. Her downcast fawn eyes were large and framed with long, delicate lashes.

She wore lacy black gloves, so Seth couldn’t see her fingers—but the tips of her ears were pearly white. And her ringlets of chestnut hair darkened to jet at their edges. Here was a girl whose light was slowly, softly going out.

Ofelia’s gaze made the same trek his did, lingering on the girl’s hair, and the places it was out of place. “You were napping, weren’t you?”

“Your pardon, Mistress.” The girl swallowed against her lacy collar. “I—we did not know you were coming.”

“Your quarters are on this floor,” Ofelia said. “You’ve been sleeping in my room, haven’t you?”

“I—I—”

“Don’t stutter, Miniara.” Ofelia stepped closer to her maid. She was at least a head taller—the height difference reminded Seth of Seth. “Never think you can hide a thing from me, or that you have need to.”

Annalise rolled her eyes as she retrieved her heavy black boots from the corner she’d kicked them into. “Don’t terrorize the poor thing, Feeli.”

Ofelia acknowledged her mother with an absentminded wave. She remained razor-focused on the maid. “Have you been reading my books?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“And which was your favorite?”

“Moskava’s Arboretum, Mistress.”

”A lovely choice,” Ofelia murmured. Her gloved thumb found a strand of Miniara’s chestnut-to-black hair and tucked it behind the girl’s ear. “Do you have it with you?”

“I put them back on the shelves as soon as I’m done with them. Right where they were, I promise.”

“I don’t mean the book, Mini. You know I don’t.” Ofelia’s touch departed Miniara’s cheek; her palm hovered close and open. “Do you have it.”

Miniara’s breath was held too tightly in her throat to reply. She produced, from the breast pocket of her uniform, a folded square of black silk. A handkerchief. With painstaking slowness, Ofelia took the cloth from the quivering girl and brought it to her nose. She took a long, deep inhale. Her heavy eyelids fluttered.

“Kept by your heart, all this harvest season,” she murmured. Her fingers flexed into the silk. “What a splendid servant you have been for me.”

Miniara looked on the verge of fainting. “Thank you, Mistress,” she whispered.

“I think we must have a salon tonight,” Ofelia said. “Don’t you?”

“Anything you like, Mistress.”

“No.” Ofelia tsked. “No, dear Mini. That’s no answer to my question. Would you like it?”

A vivid blush colored Miniara’s face. “Very much.”

Ofelia’s eyes lidded further. “Very much, Mistress.”

“Yes, Mistress. Sorry, Mistress.”

Ofelia finally allowed a smile to creep across her face. “And would you read for us? From Arboretum, perhaps?”

“I—I would like to, Mistress. If you will allow me.”

“I do not allow it; I require it.” Ofelia fished a fistful of score coins from her purse and handed them over. “Off to the city with you, Miniara il Destine. To fetch the other ladies. And some wine, I think. Dark and dry. And something beautiful to wear tonight. Golden, to match your eyes.”

“I’ll give you a lift,” Annalise said, with cheery heedlessness at the moonfaced apprehension the offer summoned in Miniara. “Take you as far as the gate garrison. Need to let everyone know that I’m back. Get the parade ready, y’know.”

Seth chuckled. “Sure. Get me a sash to wear. Something like Chief Exark of Balloon Crashing.”

”I will, yeah.” She leaned forward expectantly. “Give us a kiss.”

He stood on tiptoes and laid a peck on her cheek. She tutted, held him still, and gave him a real kiss, one long enough that heat tinged his calves where they held him up to his statuesque lover’s lips. Heat tingled his face, too, when Annalise’s son cleared his throat pointedly.

“Are you kissing, or are you feeding him like a baby bird?” Ofelia asked.

Annalise tugged her tongue out of Seth’s mouth and shot a look down the sharp edge of her nose. “You just played out some sort’ve upstairs/downstairs maid fantasy in front of us.” She pointed at Tiago. “And you I sacrificed a soul for, so that the girl you’re crushing on could keep her ribs caged. So you can both houl yer whist while I give my perfectly normal boyfriend a perfectly normal kiss.”

“The perfectly normal boyfriend who’s our age,” Tiago observed.

“We’re in the Necropolis now, you wee dose.” Annalise laced her heavy black boots. “Age ain’t even a number here. C’mon then, Miss Miniara.” She held the door open for the trembly little maid. “I promise I’m far less scary than my daughter.”

“You should bring the head, if you can,” Seth said. “Get it somewhere secure before the damn thing causes another problem.”

Annalise sucked air through her gapped front teeth. “Ah, sure, that’s a good call. Gotta get it ready for Alice.”

“What does that entail?”

“Stripping the flesh, to start with,” she said. “And it’s a devil to do by hand or knife. I know someone with bugs that’ll get the job done. Manky little beetles.” She blew them a parting kiss. “Back sharpish, my beloveds.”

Miniara il Destine looked as though she was seeking a hole in the floorboards to crawl into. None presented itself, and the nervous maid accompanied the jolly Verdugo to the carriage.

The departing draft horses and ironshod wheels plumed the dark dust from Annalise’s road—her road, her house, her carriage, her horses, her land. Seth had been so swept up in his lover’s strength and beauty and kindness that he hadn’t even considered the wealth her solemn occupation brought with it. Here was a perverse nugget of pride: he’d fallen in love with Annalise before realizing how filthy fucking rich Verdugos were.

He turned from the window. “What’s the big deal that needs a delay, anyway? Where’s she going?”

“To sort the parade.” Ofelia was pivoting in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, examining the cut of her cape. “Like Mother said. What if I wore a fascinator? I think this is the year I start wearing fascinators. What do you think, T?”

“I think you need to stop calling me that,” Tiago said.

Seth’s mouth hung ajar. “The parade is real?”

“Oh, yes,” Tiago said. “And real annoying. The first entry into the Necropolis by a Verdugo is all pomp. We need to give them time to shred up the confetti and tune the bassoons.”

“I’d sooner sneak into the city smuggled in Mini’s petticoat,” Ofelia said. “But needs must, I suppose. As the air bites harsher the people wish to hail the heroes of the summer months. And if they can’t make an appearance, at least there’s us.”

“We’re making appearances?”

Tiago and Ofelia shared a look of gleeful revelation at Seth’s mortified question. “What’s the matter, Chief Exark of Balloon Crashing?” Tiago asked. “Not ready to pose heroically atop the carriage while the flower petals fall and the city sings its welome?”

“We should make him sing, too,” Ofelia said. “With that golden voice.”

“We should,” Tiago agreed. “We’ll be the talk of the Necropolis. The al Ydris family and their blooming bard.”

“The fearless Verdugo,” Ofelia said. “And the three deadly warriors who’ve sucked her nipples.”

“Fucking saints, Ofelia,” Seth said.

“I change sides,” Tiago said. “Seth, let’s beat her to death with rocks.”