"That’s not your concern," Octave said, then he smiled, giving the impression of a man trying to settle a silly argument with a little cool reason. "I didn’t realize your presence in Mondollot’s cellars was due to the family jewels. I apologize, and we can consider the matter between us closed."
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. He tasted the liqueur. The bitter flavor was still intense, even watered down and sweetened. Drinking the stuff at strength or in quantity caused hallucinations and madness. He said, "It’s too late for that, Doctor. I told you, I’ve seen Valent House. You seem to have left the place alive, which apparently isn’t a feat that many people managed to accomplish."
"Then what do you want?" Octave leaned forward intently, his pose forgotten.
"I want him. The man who filled that house with corpses. His name, and his present location. I’ll do the rest."
Octave looked away. For a moment, the expression in his protuberant eyes was hunted. "That may be more difficult than you think."
Nicholas didn’t react. He had suspected that Octave had a more powerful partner and now the good doctor had confirmed it. "But that’s not all I want. I must also know how you obtained enough access to Doctor Edouard Viller’s work to enable you to construct one of his devices." Mustn’t place too much emphasis on that. He didn’t want Octave to realize how angry he was over that theft of knowledge. If he realizes that, he’ll know I can’t possibly mean to let him escape. "I must know that, and I must know that you will stop using it to fleece people out of their dearly departed’s lost treasures."
Octave eyed him resentfully. He took the folded square of notepaper out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. On it was written "Marita Sun, carrying gold coins for deposit with the Bank of Vienne from the Sultan of Tambarta." Octave said, "So this was not a bluff."
Nicholas lifted a brow, annoyed. "I don’t bluff, Doctor." He picked up the note. "This ship sank last year. The fateful result of a complicated and rather dull transaction, involving an attempt to secure a loan from the Crown of Ile-Rien for the disadvantaged little nation of Tambarta. One lifeboat full of confused passengers and some debris survived. Only a crewman who went down with the ship could give an accurate enough description of her position to make salvage possible." He crumbled the note and met Octave’s eyes. "You should have asked for longitude and latitude. The instructions he gave you were still too vague. It was too ambitious a project for you, Doctor. Better stick to Madame Bienardo’s silver chests, stuck behind the old wine vault in the cellar, or the Viscount of Vencein’s stock of gold plate buried in the garden by a mad grandfather—"
Octave struck the table with his fist, making the glasses jump and the silver spoons rattle on their tray. "So you know that much—"
"I know it all, Doctor." Nicholas allowed his disgust to show. "Edouard Viller found a way to meld machinery and magic, to create devices that would actually initiate spells on demand. His creations were so complex that no one has been able to duplicate them since he was framed for necromantic murder and hung. No one except you, that is." His lip curled. "And you use them to ask the dead where they’ve buried the family silver, so you can come sneaking back and dig it up—"
Octave stood abruptly, knocking his chair back, breathing hard. His white face was shiny with sweat. "What do you care? You’re nothing but a common thief."
"Oh, there’s nothing common about me, Doctor." The words were out before Nicholas could stop them. He plunged on, knowing that to try to cover it would only draw more attention to his slip. "What of the ghouls? Are they a byproduct of the process you use to communicate with the dead? And what of the man who needs to murder the way other men need this filth?" He set the absinthe down on the table, hard enough for a little of the green liqueur to slosh out and stain the cloth. "Is he a byproduct, too, or was he drawn to you by it? Can you get rid of him even if you want to?"
Octave drew back stiffly. "If you want to live, you’ll stay out of my affairs, Donatien."
Nicholas rested his elbows on the table, smiling to himself. He waited until Octave’s hand was on the doorknob before he said, "Perhaps I don’t want to live as badly as you do, Doctor. Think on that."
Octave hesitated, then thrust open the door and stepped out.
Nicholas gave him a few moments head start, sitting at the table and tapping the arm of his chair impatiently, then stood and slipped out the door.
He took the back stairs, passing a couple of heavily veiled women on their way up to assignations, and went down the narrow hall, past doors into the kitchen that disgorged fragrant steam and harried staff. He paused in the alcove near the rear entrance, to collect his coat and deliver a generous payment to his attentive waiter, then stepped into the back alley. The lightest possible rain was falling out of the cloud-covered, nearly pitch dark sky, and with any luck the fog was already rising.
The dark cabriolet was waiting near the mouth of the alley and one of the horses stamped impatiently as he approached. Crack was on the box with Devis and Nicholas knew part of their plan, at least, had already gone awry. He tore open the swing door and leaned inside. "Well?"
Madeline was within, wrapped up in a dark cloak. "Octave’s coach is under a lamp, right next to the front entrance of Serduni’s. There’s such a crowd there that if we take the driver now we might as well do it on the stage at the Grand Opera during the third act of Iragone," she reported, sounding annoyed. "But I did get a good look at him."
Nicholas swore. I knew that was going to be a problem on this street. There was no help for it. "You’ll do it at the hotel then, if he goes there," he said, and swung inside the cramped cab, pulling the little door closed. The windows had no glass, as was common on this type of conveyance, and it also made it far easier to see out in the dark streets.
"It will be easier there," Madeline admitted. She began to readjust her costume for the next part of the plan, removing the dowdy hat she wore and stuffing it into the bag at her feet. Her cloak fell open, revealing that she was already dressed in a man’s dark suit. The cloak had completely concealed it and the large hat had allowed her to scout out the spiritualist’s coach without anyone being the wiser. "Did you frighten Octave?" she asked, pulling a folded greatcoat out of her bag.
"He was already frightened." Nicholas scrunched over as far as he could to give her room and looked out the window, though the alley wall cut off any view of the front entrance of Lusaude’s. Crack and Devis would be watching for a signal from the man posted across the street. "Where do you keep family jewelry?"
"In a strongbox in that little cupboard under the third floor stairs. Why?"
"Not you personally, Madeline, but in general."
"Oh. In a safe, of course." Upstairs.
"Of course. In my dressing room, I should think. At least, that’s where most of the ladies I know keep theirs." Madeline fell back on the seat, a little breathless from wrestling with the voluminous cloak and the heavy coat in the confined space.
Nicholas glanced back at her. In the darkened coach, it was difficult to see how well the disguise worked, but she had done this before and he knew how convincing she could be. "Octave inferred we were in Mondollot House’s cellars to steal the Mondollot jewels."
"That’s ridiculous. Can you see the Duchess’s lady’s maid trooping down to those dank cellars every time the woman wants to wear her emeralds to dinner? Why, she goes to formal court at least seven times a month and she has to wear the presentation pieces then or the Queen would be terribly offended. . . ." She tapped her lower lip, thoughtfully. "He didn’t know about the gold she was hiding, did he?"
"No, I don’t think so. He hadn’t even tried to persuade the Duchess to let him contact the late Duke yet, so he didn’t find out about any hidden wealth that way. He was searching for something he already knew was there."
"Did he find it, I wonder?"
"Someone found something. There was that empty room that had been broken into, with the plinth that had been recently occupied. It
was originally part of the cellar of Ventarin House, whose only claim on history is that it was once the home of Gabard Ventarin, who was court sorcerer two hundred years ago, give or take a decade or two."
"So he was after something buried under the house of a long-dead sorcerer?" Madeline’s voice was worried. "That sounds rather . . . dangerous."
"It does, indeed." Nicholas leaned out the window, unable to contain his impatience. There was still no sign of Octave. "If he calmly sits down to dinner with the Dompeller party—"
"We’ll feel very foolish."
Crack leaned down toward the window then and whispered, "He’s out front, waving at his man."
Nicholas sat back against the cushions. "At last. He must have stopped to make his excuses to Madame Dompeller. It means he’s not exactly panic-stricken."
"Then I don’t suppose he’s going to run straight to his accomplices."
"No, but that was a forlorn hope, anyway. If he was that incautious, he wouldn’t have abandoned Valent House last night when he realized someone was following him." He heard the harness jingle and the cabriolet jerked into motion, moving out of the alley into the crowded street. He had reasoned that if Octave didn’t immediately panic and head for his accomplices’ hiding place, he would return to his hotel, leave his coach and driver, and go on foot.
Devis was adept at this game and his team quicker and more responsive than the nags that usually drove hire carriages. He kept one or two other vehicles between the cab and Octave’s coach while always keeping the quarry in sight.
Nicholas had no trouble recognizing the streets they were on tonight. "So it is to be the hotel." If his accusations had failed to panic the good doctor, what they were about to do would not.
Octave’s coach reined in at the walk in front of the Hotel Galvaz’s impressive gaslit facade. Devis followed his instructions, driving on by. Nicholas, shielding his face with a hand on his hat brim, caught sight of Octave hurrying between the dancing caryatids on either side of the entrance.
The cab turned the corner, drove past the hire stables the hotel used and took the next corner into an alley. There it rolled to a stop and Madeline fished a top hat out of the bag at her feet and said, "I’m on. Wish me luck."
Nicholas caught her hand, pulled her to him, and kissed her far more briefly than he wanted to. "Luck."
Madeline slipped out of the cab and hurried back down the alley, Crack jumping down from the box to follow her.
Madeline adjusted her cravat, tipped her hat back at a jaunty angle, and lengthened her stride as she walked to the head of the alley. Her hair was bound up tightly around her head, under a short wig and her hat. Subtle application of theatrical makeup coarsened her features and changed the line of her brows, and pouches in her cheeks thickened her face. Padding helped conceal her figure under the vest, coat, and trousers, and the bulky greatcoat capped the disguise. As long as she didn’t remove her gloves, she would be fine.
It was important that the coachman be removed without any sort of attention being drawn to the act. Octave might have accomplices within the hotel and they didn’t want to alert them. She walked past the open stable doors, lamplight and loud talk spilling out onto the muddy stones. Behind her, she knew Crack would be taking up a position at the head of the alley.
She rounded the corner, passing under the weathered arabesques and curlicues of the building’s carved facade. A large group was exiting a line of carriages in the street. She mingled with them as she climbed the steps and entered the hotel.
She made her way across the brightly lit foyer and up the stairs to the Grand Salem. The room was decorated with the usual profusion of carved and gilded panelling, with large mirrors rising to the swagged cornice. An enormous arrangement of plants and flowers dominated the center and reached almost to the bottom dangles of the chandelier. There were a number of men in evening dress scattered about the room in conversational groups. None of them was Octave.
Madeline made her way to the back wall, which was open to a view of the rear foyer below and the grand staircase. She had to make sure Octave left before she proceeded with her part of the plan.
Leaning on the carved balustrade, she didn’t spot Reynard until he stepped up beside her. "He’s gone up to his rooms," Reynard murmured. "If this is to work, he should be down again in a moment."
"It’ll work," Madeline said. "He’ll want to tell his friends that they’ve been found out." If Octave saw Reynard after the experience at the Eversets’ circle, the doctor would surely become suspicious, but no one else in their organization was as well qualified to idle in the salons of an expensive hotel as Reynard was. Madeline, even in her respectable dark suit, was drawing some attention from a porter who was crossing the salon. It was because she hadn’t given up her greatcoat to the cloakroom and so obviously wasn’t a guest. She swore under her breath as the porter approached. This hotel had enough trouble with its reputation, it couldn’t afford to allow in a possible pickpocket or sneakthief.
Reynard spotted the man approaching and put a hand on Madeline’s shoulder, drawing her to him. The porter veered away.
"Thank you, I—" She tensed. "There he is."
Octave was hurrying down the grand staircase, having changed his evening dress for a plainer suit and cloak.
Reynard didn’t turn to look. He was pretending to straighten Madeline’s cravat. "We have all the entrances covered, but I suspect he’ll go for the back. He doesn’t strike me as being overly endowed with imagination."
Madeline leaned one elbow on the balustrade, standing as if coyly enjoying Reynard’s attentions, watching Octave until he disappeared below her level of view. A moment or two, and the spiritualist appeared in the marble-floored chamber below them, moving briskly toward the doors that led to the back street entrance. "Right again," she said.
"I’ll walk you out."
There was a crowd around the front entrance now and they drew several curious looks. "You must tell me who your tailor is," Reynard said to her, as if continuing a conversation, with just the right amount of amused condescension in his tone.
Madeline kept her expression innocently flattered and then they were out on the street.
Madeline stopped at the stable door and Reynard kept walking. Nicholas’s cabriolet, with Devis at the reins, was already at the mouth of the alley. Madeline waited until Reynard had stepped inside and the cab turned up the street before she casually strolled into the stables. She made her way past the carriage stalls to the wooden stairs that led up to the second floor. The liveried hotel servants ignored her, assuming she was someone’s coachman or servant.
The stairs opened onto a low-ceilinged chamber that seemed to serve as a common room for the men quartered here. It was crowded and the air was warm and damp and smelled strongly of horse from the stalls below. There was a dice game in progress on the straw-strewn floorboards and Madeline circled it, scanning the participants for Octave’s coachman. She had gotten a good look at him in the street outside Lusaude’s. He was a short, square-built man with coarse, heavy features and dead eyes.
He wasn’t among the dice players. Well, he didn’t look the sociable sort. No, there he was, standing against the far wall, alone. Madeline edged her way through the crowd, catching snatches of conversation in a variety of different accents, until she was near enough to her quarry for a few private words.
Much to Nicholas’s consternation, she hadn’t planned exactly how to lure the coachman into their clutches. She liked carefully planned schemes as much as he did, but with no prior knowledge of what the man might be doing, it was impossible to tell how best to proceed.
Besides, she did some of her finest acting under the pressure of desperation. "I have a message," she said, pitching her voice low and giving herself a faint Aderassi accent.
He eyed her, a sulky expression on his broad face. "From who?" he asked, suspicious.
Madeline realized she could say "From the doctor," but so could anyone else and she had no
corroborating detail to give him. Nicholas had postulated the involvement of a powerful sorcerer, and Arisilde had confirmed it when he had found the enspelled mirror in Octave’s hotel room. Taking a stab in the dark, she said, "The doctor’s friend."
The man blinked and actually went white around the mouth. He pushed away from the wall and she led the way back across the room to the stairs.
She lengthened her stride as they reached the street, glancing back at him to motion him along, keeping her head down as if she feared pursuit. He quickened his steps to keep up with her.
She rounded the corner into the alley, passing a shadow hunched against the wall that she hoped was Crack. Blocking the alley was the back end of Cusard’s ostler’s wagon.
She turned, gesturing to it as if about to speak, saw the man’s brows lower in suspicion. Then Crack moved, silent and quick, getting a forearm around the larger man’s throat before he could cry out.
The coachman tried to throw his attacker off, then tried to slam him against the alley wall, but Crack held on grimly and the struggling was only making the stranglehold work faster. The only sound was wheezing grunts from the coachman and the scrape of their feet on the muddy stones.
Madeline kept an eye on the mouth of the alley, but no one passed by. Finally the coachman slumped limply to the ground and she hurried forward to help Crack haul him to the wagon.
Following a nervous man on foot wasn’t as easy as following a nervous man in a coach and four. Nicholas had Devis keep the cabriolet hanging back as far as possible. He had chosen it specifically with this in mind, since it was an unobtrusive vehicle and tended to blend in to the city streets.
It didn’t make waiting any easier.
"Really," Reynard said finally. "I’d rather you fidget than sit there like a bomb about to explode."
"Sorry," Nicholas said. The neighborhood they were entering was not quite what he had expected. The buildings were dark on either side of the wide street, the infrequent gas lamps wreathed in night mist, but this was a business district, heavily populated during the day. The traffic was light and they might have to get out and follow Octave on foot. "There’s something wrong here."