The Gates of Sleep

“I don’t know yet,” Arachne admitted, with a frown. “I don’t know why my curse has gone dormant, for one thing, and I don’t intend to do anything until I know the answer to that. She looks perfectly ordinary, magically speaking, with little more power than Mary Anne, so it can’t be her doing.”

“Your brother?” Reggie suggested, with a nod at the painting above the fireplace of the former owner of Oakhurst—a painting that Arachne intended to remove as soon as she could find something else that would fit there. Perhaps that landscape painting of a Roman ruin that was in the gallery. It would do until she could have a view of one of her manufactories commissioned.

“Hugh and Alanna were Earth Masters, but no more, and not outstandingly powerful. I think not. Whatever the cause, it must have been something that Hugh and Alanna had done to her.” She rested both elbows on the desktop, and propped her chin on one slender hand, watching him thoughtfully. “That, in itself, is interesting. I didn’t think they’d know anyone who’d even guess what I’d done, much less find a counter to it. I confess, I’m intrigued… it’s a pretty puzzle.”

Reggie laughed again. “Perhaps that was why they sent her away in the first place. You know, you were right—it was useful to get that university degree in a science. Applying principles of science to magic, I can think of any number of theoretical things that could have been done to your curse. It occurred to me, for instance, that some sort of dampening or draining effect could account for the failure of the curse, and it might affect everything around her. You know, she might actually function as a kind of grounding wire draining the magic of those around her.”

Arachne studied him for a moment; sometimes he threw things out as a red herring, just to see if she pursued them into dead ends he’d already foreseen, but this time she thought he was offering something genuine. “An interesting thought. But then, why would other Elemental Masters be willing to take her in, if she’d be a drain on their power?”

“It depends entirely on how much they used their magic,” he replied, steepling his fingers over his chest. “Not every Elemental Master cares about magic; some seem to be content to be merely the custodians of it.”

She tapped her cheek with one long finger. “True. And the more deeply buried in rustication, the less they seem to care.”

“Such as the artists in question,” Reggie nodded. “My guess is, they used magic very little, not enough to miss its loss, considering that their real energy goes into art.” He looked sideways at her, shrewdly. “And it also depends on how powerful they were to begin with. If the answer is, ‘not very,’ then they were losing very little to gain a great deal. I have no doubt that Hugh compensated them well to care for his daughter.”

“Not as well as I would have thought,” Arachne replied, thoughtfully. “Not nearly as well as I would have thought, according to the accounts. Unless he disguised extra payments in some way.”

“Perhaps he did—or perhaps it was paid in gifts, or in favors, instead—clients for paintings, for instance. Or perhaps the Tarrants are merely good Christians.” The sneer in his voice made her smile—”And they considered it their Christian duty to raise the poor child, afflicted as she was with a terrible curse.”

“Considering that the girl and the Tarrant woman were out on a Boxing Day delivery to the local padre when my men came for her, that may well be the case,” Arachne admitted. “Until we’re sure, though, that there is no such effect around her, we had better do our work well away from her.”

That, of course, was so easily done that Reggie didn’t even trouble to comment on it. They hadn’t even begun to set up a workspace here at Oakhurst, and at the moment, it was probably wiser not to bother.

“I liked that little speech about your properties, by the way, mater,” Reggie continued, watching her with hooded eyes. “It was all the better for having the ring of sincerity.”

She had to laugh herself at that. “Well of course, it was sincere. I don’t want or need Oakhurst. But you —”

“Which brings me to the next question, Mother Dear. Are we taking the marriage option?” There was a gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes that indicated he didn’t find this at all displeasing.

“I think we should pursue it,” she replied firmly. “There is nothing in any of our other plans that would interfere with it, or be interfered with by it. But it does depend on you exerting yourself to be charming, my sweet.” She reached out to touch his hand with one extended index finger. He caught the hand and pressed a kiss on the back of it.

“Now that I’ve seen the wench, I’m not averse,” he responded readily enough. “She’s not a bad looking little filly, and as I said, once your people have trained her, she’ll be quite comely. So long as there’s nothing going on with her in that area of magic that physical congress could complicate, once wedded and bedded, we’ll have absolute control over her.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which—”

“Indeed,” Arachne said warmly. “It is your turn, isn’t it? Well, run along, dear; take the gig and the fast horses, and try to be back by dawn.”

Reggie stood up, kissed his mother’s hand again, and saluted her as he straightened. “I go, but to return. This little play, I fancy, is going to prove utterly fascinating.”

Arachne studied the graceful line of his back as he strode away, and felt her lips curve in a slight smile. He was so very like her—it was a good thing he was her son, and not her mate.

Because if she had been married to him or had been his lover—well, he was so like her that she would have felt forced, eventually to kill him. And that would have been a great pity.

Marina had never felt so lost and alone in her life. Nor so utterly off balance. Luncheon was an ordeal. And it was just as well that Marina had no appetite at all, because she would have been half sick before she actually got to eat anything.

The maid—or rather, keeper—led her to a huge room with a long, polished table in it that would easily have seated a hundred. It was covered at a single place with a snowy linen tablecloth, and she saw as she neared that there was a single place setting laid out there.

But such a place setting! There was so much silverware that she could have furnished everyone at a meal at Blackbird Cottage with a knife, fork, and spoon! There were six differently shaped glasses, and many different sizes of plates, some of which were stacked three high immediately in front of the chair. With the maid standing over her, and a manservant to pull out the chair, she seated herself carefully, finding the corset binding under her breasts and under her arms as she did so.

And the first thing the footman did when she was seated was to take away the plates that had been immediately in front of her.

After some fussing at a sideboard behind her—and she only surmised it was a sideboard, because she thought she heard some subdued china—and—cutlery sounds—he returned, and placed a shallow bowl of broth resting on a larger plate in front of her. At least, she thought it was broth. There was no discernible aroma, and it looked like water that oak leaves had been steeping in for a very short time.

If this is what rich people eat—I’m not impressed. She picked up a spoon at random.

But before she could even get it near the bowl, the maid coughed in clear disapproval. Marina winced.

Arachne had hammered her with questions about “could she properly eat” all manner of things that she had never heard of. It seemed that meals were going to be part of her education.

She picked up another spoon. Another cough.

At this rate, she thought, looking at the other five spoons beside the plated soup, I’ll never get any of this into my mouth…

The third try, though, was evidently the right one. Her triumph was short-lived, however. She leaned forward.

Another cough sent her bolt upright, as if she’d had a board strapped to her back. The cough warned her that a full spoon was also de trap. Evidently only a few drops in the bottom of the bowl of the spoon were appropriate, which was just as well, since she was evidently required to sit straight-spined and look directly ahead and not at what she was doing, as she raised the nearly empty spoon to her lips to sip—not drink— the soup. The spoon was not to go into the mouth; only the rim was to touch the lips. The broth, by now cold, tasted faintly of the spirit of the beef that had made it. And it was going to take forever to finish it.

Except that after only six or seven spoonfuls, the footman took it away, and returned with something else—

She blinked at it. Was it a salad? Perhaps—there seemed to be beet root involved in it somehow.