Labyrinth Gate

  “Kate—” began Julian.

  “I’ve heard that magi with great powers can use the Gate to move, from place to place, over great distances. I’ve seen Master Cardspinner do it from one side of the street to the other. Perhaps you triggered these cards, without knowing it.”

  “Perhaps the cards, double-sided as they are, cast the Gate themselves,” suggested Aunt Laetitia.

  “Is that possible?” asked Julian.

  “Like a machine,” said Sanjay, considering.

  Julian chuckled. “Like one of the great factories of the Midlands?”

  “You’re too literal, Julian,” said Kate. “You know the Gates don’t work like that.” She frowned. Her short, dark hair framed a face made pale by late nights. “But could they really have brought you from as far as—”

  “As Vesputia?” Aunt Laetitia’s voice was firm. “They could.”

  Kate swore. Lady Trent rose, beckoning to Chryse and Sanjay. “There is a globe in the library. Let you and I go there. If you will excuse us, Miss Cathcart, Julian.” It was more command than request.

  The library was a room made dim by many books. Aunt Laetitia led Chryse and Sanjay to a tall, standing globe and spun it slowly. “We are here, in Anglia.” She pointed to a large island off the western coast of a continent. “And here—” She traced a line across the western ocean to a continent almost half a world away. “—is Vesputia. Of course, although I remember them as colonies, they are recently become a sovereign nation. That is where you are from.”

  “Well, it isn’t really—” began Chryse.

  “That you are from much farther away I have guessed,” said Aunt Laetitia kindly. “None of us, I fear, truly understands the full power of the Gates. But it is where you shall say you are from. It is fitting, and comprehensible.”

  “You don’t seem surprised.” Sanjay twirled the globe, studying the fall of land and water, strange, yet vaguely familiar.

  “At my age, one is rarely surprised. But I do confess to being curious. Later, when we are more settled, I shall expect to have a very long conversation with both of you. Now, shall we go back to the parlour?”

  “You’ll have to see Madame Sosostris,” said Kate as the three of them entered the room. “She is the most powerful mage in Heffield—”

  “The most powerful?” interrupted Julian. “Kate, you neglect such notables as the wicked earl and your Master Cardspinner, not to mention our beloved Regent.”

  “And while I am present,” said Aunt Laetitia, “that woman, princess of the blood though she be, will not be mentioned.”

  “But Lady Trent,” said Kate, “at breakfast we were discussing her proposal for—”

  “At breakfast, Miss Cathcart, we were not in mixed company. And neither will the Earl of Elen be a source of conversation in this house. Master Cardspinner I have never heard of, though I take leave to doubt if he is any more respectable.”

  “Strictly hedge,” agreed Kate, turning her attention back to a curious but bemused Chryse and Sanjay. “You must arrange to see Madame Sosostris. Perhaps she can help you.”

  “I will have one of the footmen take a message to Fenwych House immediately,” said Aunt Laetitia.

  “I didn’t know you knew Madame Sosostris, Lady Trent.”

  “One does not know Madame Sosostris, Miss Cathcart,” replied Aunt Laetitia with dignity, “but one does on occasion consult her. After all, she is quite the fashion these days.”

  “I think—” Sanjay looked at Chryse for confirmation. “—that perhaps we should go back to the place you found us last night. Surely there must be some—”

  “Yes,” said Chryse. “Some link that brought us there. Or some one. We were in a church, called—St. Cristobal’s.”

  Kate shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

  “Ah,” said Aunt Laetitia, as if something had just been confirmed for her.

  “Do you know where it is?” asked Chryse.

  “No. But I know of it.”

  “Kate?” asked Julian. “I don’t suppose you remember where we were?”

  “I doubt you do, besotted with drink as you were,” retorted Kate. “But doubt not that I can find it again. And Goblinside is a better place to be by day than by night.”

  “You will not,” said Aunt Laetitia abruptly, “go out of this house without proper dress. Julian, surely your sister Lucy’s gowns would fit Madame Lissagaray well enough, with a little lengthening. My dresser can see to it. And you and Monsieur Mukerji are much the same build. Miss Cathcart and I will frame a suitable missive to be sent to Madame Sosostris.”

  “Perhaps that won’t be necessary,” said Sanjay. “If we can find the church.”

  With a practiced gesture, Aunt Laetitia swept the cards into a neat deck. “The Gates brought you here without your willing it. I think it unlikely your unpracticed will can return you.” She slipped them into their pouch and handed it to Chryse. “And in any case, when one is dealing with these levels of power, it is always advisable to consult an expert.”

  Chapter 4:

  The Emperor Of Order

  “THERE IS PARLIAMENT,” said Julian as they rattled along in the carriage over the streets of Heffield. “Built originally as the fortress at the confluence of the Tens and the Bishop Rivers by Queen Caroline the First before she was beheaded. Converted to its current use as Parliament by Queen Jasmina the Second. The current heir’s great-grandmother,” he added, glancing at Chryse’s somewhat perplexed expression. “Of course, the Princess Georgiana is in a peculiar position, being the first undisputed heir to descend from the male line—from her father, brother to the previous queen. Am I confusing you?”

  “Not really,” said Chryse. “It just takes a moment for me to get my history straight. Bishop’s a funny name for a river, isn’t it?” Across from her, Kate lounged beside Julian, with a single booted foot braced carefully by the door to absorb shocks.

  “From my research,” replied Julian, “the name doesn’t actually come from bishop, the church title, but from some form of ‘bissoff,’ an archaic word whose meaning is now lost. Undoubtedly, in medieval times, devout city folk began to render it as bishop.” He clasped his hands together, as if warming them against the chill of winter that surrounded them. “Heffield itself is a shortening of the medieval name Hefenfelthe—Heaven’s Field. That is the name this city had in medieval times. And if there was an earlier city, it probably had an entirely different name, one we don’t now know.”

  “Bloody hell, Julian,” said Kate. “This is supposed to be a guided tour, not a lesson in languages. There’s St. John’s Palace. Princess Georgiana—the heir—lives there with a chaperone and her younger brother and sister, Prince William and Princess Jasmina. The Regent—that’s their aunt, you remember, the younger sister of the princess’ father—lives across the Tens in Blackstone Palace.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Chryse. “Queen Jasmina the Fourth died childless, leaving her younger brother next in line, but he had already died, leaving his three children, all underage, so Jasmina’s youngest sister, Blessa, was appointed Regent until Princess Georgiana turns sixteen. Which will happen in one year. Do I have that right?”

  “Very impressive,” said Julian appreciatively.

  “Blessed Lady,” swore Kate. “Took me years to figure it out. Of course, some say it shouldn’t pass down through the male line, that the crown should have gone to Princess Blessa, as the sworn daughter of Jasmina the Third, but—” She shrugged. “Politics. I’d rather drink.”

  “Kate,” said Julian, “you’d always rather drink.”

  “You slander me, Julian. I can think of at least two things I’d rather do than drink. Unfortunately, my parents—bless their noble and small-hearted souls, if a soul can have a heart—forbade me from studying to be a physician, and disowned me for indulging too openly in my taste for men. So what was left me but drink?”

  “Gambling,” offered Julian.

  “Easy for you to say, Julian. Yo
u have the devil’s own luck with cards. I wish you’d pass a bit of it on to me.”

  “You would have better luck if you didn’t play so impulsively.”

  Kate’s expression changed abruptly, and a certain tension sprang into being between her and Julian, charging the carriage air.

  Chryse glanced at Sanjay, but he was staring out the window, seemingly oblivious to the conversation. “Why would your parents forbid you from studying medicine?” she asked quickly.

  Kate waved a deprecating hand. “Why, our line can be traced back to the Conqueror’s. A daughter of an aristocratic house should not be engaged in a trade, a profession. No matter how impoverished.” Her voice, always a little raw, took on a deep bitterness.

  “I’m sorry,” said Chryse. “It’s terrible to have to give up something you’ve always wanted to do.”

  “Oh, I suppose I could have disowned myself and gone ahead and done it anyway, but they scared me off it. It was right at the time that the Earl of Elen became notorious—rumor had it he was raiding cemeteries for bodies and raising the dead and performing horrible rites on sick and injured people. Appalling things. Later I realized it was just to scare me that they told me such tales. And at my tender and innocent age, I was taken in.”

  Julian coughed.

  “Then the tales weren’t true?” asked Chryse.

  “Who knows. They probably were. Probably still are, from what I hear. But there are good and decent physicians, even surgeons. It shouldn’t have stopped me.” She lapsed into silence.

  “The Earl of Elen.” Chryse felt again that it was up to her to change the subject. “He’s one of the people you said might be able to help us, if we can’t find anything on our own today.”

  Julian shook his head. “Even if you could interest the Earl in your predicament, which I doubt, I can assure you that you would not want to pay the price he would demand.”

  “Which would be?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Julian, face somber, “but whatever it would be, you would not want to pay it.”

  “Is he so awful?”

  “Only,” said Kate out of her silence, “if you think slaughtering infants in bloody rituals in order to add the power of their innocent souls to his sorcery is awful. Or raising the dead. Or buying an entire brothel for his—ah—pleasures, and then personally dismembering everyone afterwards, while they were still alive, so they could never speak of his—ah—” she coughed, “—unnatural tastes. Although it is also said that one young girl escaped, almost dead from whipping and cuts, and that underneath the fresh scars were uncounted numbers of healed-over scars.”

  “Surely those stories aren’t true.” Chryse felt an impulse to laugh at the absurdity of such tales. “Surely there are laws protecting people from—” She halted. Now it was Kate and Julian’s turn to look perplexed. Chryse looked out the carriage windows. They had moved out of the more fashionable areas and into a neighborhood whose dilapidated housefronts and rag-tag of street loiterers betrayed slow decay and the first descent towards those slums where the simple struggle for survival might overwhelm any better and more abstract goals. “No, I don’t suppose there are,” she murmured.

  “Chryse!” Sanjay’s hissed exclamation and his hand gripping her arm startled her. “Look at that carriage!”

  Her gaze followed his. Kate and Julian turned as well Their carriage had slowed and now stopped, caught in some flux of traffic, and for a moment they had a full view of a black carriage drawn by four splendid bay horses that also sat at a standstill, impeded by a cart piled high with vegetables being pulled by an emaciated cart horse.

  Chryse looked at the carriage, black and blank, windows shuttered, not even a crest to mark it. The horses, true beauties, were more interesting. But Sanjay continued to stare in some combination of awe and horror at the vehicle, so rapt a stare that the two hard-faced, armored men seated in front both turned suddenly and began to look towards him.

  Julian jerked forward and slammed close the shutters.

  “Bloody hell,” swore Kate. “Holy Lady damn me to the pits of the underworld.”

  “Sanjay—” began Chryse.

  “What was it?” he asked, and it was not a rhetorical question. “It was a—” He examined Chryse as if she could provide the answer.

  She shrugged. The carriage jolted and started forward again. “It was a carriage and four beautiful horses.”

  “It was one of the Regent’s carriages,” snapped Julian, exchanging a sharp glance with Kate, “if I don’t miss my guess. I’ve seen those horses before. Let’s hope those two drivers didn’t recognize my crest.”

  “A griffin!” said Sanjay triumphantly. “That’s what it was.” There was a brief silence while the other three merely gazed at him. “On top of the carriage.” He hesitated. “That’s what the creature sitting on top of the carriage was.” Another pause. “A griffin.”

  No one replied.

  “But you must have—” He faltered. “Chryse, even you couldn’t have failed to notice something that big.”

  “Sanjay,” she said quietly. “I didn’t see anything on top of that carriage.”

  “Lady bless us,” muttered Kate.

  “Did you see it?” Sanjay asked, very tentative now.

  “I don’t have that kind of sight,” said Kate.

  Chryse realized, watching Kate and Julian, that, like her, they had seen nothing, but that, unlike her, they both believed and were impressed by Sanjay’s vision.

  “You don’t suppose it was the Regent herself?” Julian leaned forward and pushed the window shutter open slowly, but any sight of the black carriage was lost to a turn in the street.

  “I doubt it,” said Kate. “It seems to me that if she were going somewhere secretly she’d use neither the bays nor one of her own carriages, and if she were going openly, she’d go in more state.”

  “Then there must be something valuable in that carriage, or she wouldn’t have protected it in that way.” Julian fingered the buttons on his waistcoat. “I wonder—” he mused. “It could be headed Westside, or across the Tens—”

  “Or there’s the toll road for the Midlands, past Keep Bridge,” said Kate.

  “Sanjay,” said Chryse, almost accusing. “You really did see something on top of that carriage, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head. “You never believe me. Let me see the cards a minute.”

  She handed them to him mutely. As he flipped through them, examining both sides, she regarded Julian and Kate skeptically. “And you believe him,” she finished.

  “Why shouldn’t we believe him?” asked Kate, now regarding Chryse with the disbelief that Chryse felt should be reserved for Sanjay. “Neither of you told us Monsieur Mukerji is a seer.”

  “A seer!”

  Sanjay, still flipping through the cards, grinned at the tone of his wife’s voice. “You never appreciate me,” he said, not looking up from the images.

  “He isn’t a seer.”

  Kate shrugged.

  “This one.” Sanjay handed a card to Kate, who looked at it together with Julian. Chryse craned forward to look as well.

  Julian whistled.

  “Whatever is in that carriage must be very valuable,” added Kate, “if she’s protecting it with a summoning of this power.”

  “It was as big as one of the horses,” said Sanjay, speaking now mostly to Chryse. “With gold headfeathers and a gold beak, and golden wings folded in on its back. And it was crouched, like a lion waiting to spring. And brilliant eyes.”

  “It saw you?” asked Julian.

  Sanjay blinked. “That’s funny,” he said. “Of course it saw me. It seemed natural that it would look at me since I was looking at it.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” asked Kate.

  “No. Should I have been? We just looked at each other.”

  Julian whistled again, shaking his head.

  “What’s the figure on the other side?” asked Chryse, taking the card from an unresisting Ka
te and examining first the stylized beast on one side, then the person backing it.

  “The Emperor,” answered Kate automatically. “Seated on his throne. The most powerful of the kings, but also the most conservative.”

  “But my real question,” said Chryse, frowning first at the card and then lifting her eyes to examine her husband, “is why could you see this, and we couldn’t? Since I have no reason to believe you’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not, sweetheart. And I have absolutely no idea. It was there.”

  Three quick raps sounded on the roof of the carriage. All four started. Julian laughed self-consciously.

  “Coachman needs your directions, Kate. You’d better get up with him.”

  Kate got out, and now they watched as the streets around them took on an even poorer cast. The inhabitants stared at the carriage. Children, some of their faces imprinted with features not wholly human, raced along behind and beside it. Kate’s voice could be heard now and then, sometimes cursing, sometimes directing. They passed through a square, a dilapidated, moss-encrusted fountain gracing its center, a mass of indeterminate litter strewn across it as though a tearing wind had swept through. Julian leaned forward.

  “We must be coming close,” he said as the carriage veered sharply down a narrow street.

  “There!” said Chryse after a few minutes. “This must be—” The carriage pulled up sharply, throwing her forward. Julian caught her, one hand on her shoulder, one hand on her waist, and after a brief pause, she pulled away from him. “‘Master Bitterbrew’s,” she finished, reaching out to touch Sanjay’s arm. “I remember the name. We came out of the alley somewhere here.”

  The carriage door opened to reveal Kate. Several children crouched a safe distance away from her, eyeing these unfamiliar visitors.

  “Goblinside.” Kate swept an elaborate bow. “At your service.” As the other three clambered out she tossed a coin to the largest of the waiting children, a hollow-faced girl. “Another if you keep good watch,” she said.

  They were greeted with passing stares, but no one accosted them. It was the same mix of folk they had seen the night before—but in the daylight the shabbiness of their dress and the gauntness of their faces showed more clearly. A child stood huddled against a lamp post; with a strange feeling of familiarity in a land completely removed from her own, Chryse recognized the skewed cap and pointed face of the child who had stood there last night. Two bright eyes met her own across the narrow expanse of street. A cart blocked her view. When it had paused, the child was gone.