A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 6

6

My dear Violet,

I write this note in a moment of impulse. Perhaps I will change my mind. Perhaps in a fortnight or a decade I will consign this to the fire and amend my will and you will never read these words. But my best decisions have been made impulsively, and I have regretted none of them.

Let us assume the matter stands unaltered. Therefore: if you read this, then I am dead, and I am leaving Spinet House and all my worldly goods to you.

The more tedious members of this family will never believe that I am acting out of anything but petty spite. If any lawyers are engaged to contest the issue, on the basis that far closer blood relatives than you exist, you may wave this letter in their faces, but the fact remains that I have sealed the latest version of my will with runes and with wax, and imbued the ink with my intent. The house will recognise you when you come to it.

They will be correct, of course, about the spite.

This society of ours is obsessed with blood, and magicians are worse than most. Yes—by blood our connection is very thin. But I have always considered us kindred of the spirit, and hearing of your recent bold escape to the Americas has only confirmed this. I would like to think that I would have named you my heir even if there was nothing of blood to link us at all.

So. The money is yours. Save it. Waste it. Invest it. Devour it. Use it to live your life only and exactly on your own terms, as I was fortunate enough to be able to do.

Your fond cousin,

Mrs. James Taverner

The first time Violet had opened the letter, breaking the seal with a fingernail and a nudge of an opening-spell, the paper had been blank but for a small inked star in one corner. Memory had come flooding back: afternoons spent visiting her eccentric elderly cousin in the even more eccentric Spinet House, which was full of hidden nooks and secret passageways and puzzles of magic responding to music before all else.

Violet had hummed the tune a few times to be sure she had it, then sung the final verse of Dufay’s rhyme. Old paths we walk anew—The near ones and the far—Burning bright as stars—To pay the dusk its due.

The fluid handwriting had appeared beneath her gaze.

By now she’d read it enough times that she could recite it. She read it again this morning, sitting with knees curled up on her bed aboard the Lyric, as one read the script in the interval on closing night: for comfort more than necessity.

Violet carefully put the letter away. Her body clung both to theatre hours and to the unaccustomed softness of the bed; she’d slept through breakfast, and still had a little time before her planned meeting with Miss Blyth. She washed her face, threw a dressing gown over her nightdress, and was interrupted by Aunt Caroline. Her aunt rapped anxiously on the door to Violet’s cabin and, when admitted, proved to have been drinking from the fountain of Violet’s rejuvenated scandal while taking breakfast in the dining saloon.

Miss Blyth had been right. The story had gone from one end of first class to the other and was now making its leisurely way back again, growing new details like daisies. The notorious Lord Hawthorn had entertained both Miss Violet Debenham and Miss Maud Cutler in his stateroom last night.

“I can’t see why you insist on making things worse .” Aunt Caroline’s eyes were even more prominent than usual, and she vibrated like a struck fork. “You’ve been away from England long enough that the initial—incident—”

“Ruination,” said Violet obligingly.

“Had begun to fade from memory! This was your chance to turn over a new leaf! To show yourself a reformed character, a truly refined lady—”

“Or at least one with enough money to buy good reviews if I perform like one?”

Aunt Caroline made a face. Violet thought longingly of coffee. She was sick of having this conversation.

The door was rapped at again, and Clarence opened it before Violet could answer. He looked irritated and was holding his mother’s shawl.

“Clarence!” cried Violet, edging sideways on her chair to better display herself to the open doorway. “I’m not decent!”

Her cousin scowled and shut the door hastily behind him.

Violet was waiting, with a sort of dreary fatalism, for Clarence to propose marriage to her. Or rather, to her money. The only question was on which day of the voyage Aunt Caroline’s unsubtle bullying of her only son would triumph over Clarence’s tendency to eye Violet as though she were a particularly unattractive vegetable that had uprooted itself from the garden and learned to talk.

Given that Clarence bore more than a passing resemblance to a weedy parsnip himself, this was equal parts relieving and insulting. It wasn’t as though he was incapable of normal human lust, or of recognising an attractive woman when he saw one. He’d cast more than enough yearning looks at Maud Blyth’s breasts last night.

“I say, Vi, you’re really taking this too far.” Clarence had been hit by the scandal fountain, too, then. “One fellow asked me if my cousin’s likely to be open to disgracing herself with anyone, or only with titles.”

“Clarence, I’m going to dress,” said Violet. “You may stand facing the corner and lecture me from there.”

He did. Violet tuned him out after the first two sentences. Over underthings, stockings, corset, and petticoat went one of the new outfits she’d bought with the money that Aunt Caroline, reluctantly, had handed over as an advance on Violet’s inheritance, so that Violet wouldn’t disgrace them on the voyage. It was a travelling suit: a dark-pink-and-white-striped skirt, with a jacket of the same pink that opened to show the exuberant layers of her shirtwaist’s bodice. The fabric was heavy with quality.

Violet dug out her ring pouch and went through her morning routine. Glass was good for combining the elements: she could cradle a warm steam and run her hands down the length of her jacket and skirt, removing any creases.

Then she replaced the glass ring on her finger with the precious ivory one bought from an old man who sold out of his top-floor Brooklyn apartment and took only spells in barter, not dollars.

Ivory held memory. Violet had dressed her hair over and over again, wearing this ring, sinking her magic into it, singing to it, because Claudette swore by song and half the Bowery was in love with Claudette. Everyone sang to their rings eventually.

Now Violet cradled a spell that shone as yellow pinpricks in her cupped hands, then swept those hands up the nape of her neck, gathering the nighttime plait of her hair. When she straightened, her hair was in its neat everyday style, piled atop her head with no need for hair pads to create its rounded shape or pins to keep it in place.

Aunt Caroline sniffed her disapproval of this untidy, un-English way of doing magic. Violet thought of the ring boxes kept in the manager’s lockbox at the Penumbra, carried backstage each night and guarded with superstitious fervour by every performer and stagehand.

The wooden rings went on her thumbs, again, and stayed there. One maple and one pine. Wood enhanced illusion, which was Violet’s primary skill. And… Jerry had turned these rings for her. She wore them so that every time she even thought about letting her guard down, she could give one of them a twist, and remember.

Clarence, unbelievably, was still talking.

“Thank you, Clarence,” said Violet, pulling on her gloves. “Shall we pause the lecture there? I’m sure you have better things to do on this fine day. I certainly do. I’m meeting my new partner in sin at the Café Marseille.”

On impulse she cradled a single illusion, a cluster of fresh violets nestled at the band of the trim straw hat that she set atop her hair with two large pins. She felt frothy and satisfied. If everyone was going to stare at you anyway, you damn well gave them something to stare at.

Clarence turned around. No appreciation for the suit or the hat, of course. Just a look of constipated misery.

“ Why do you insist on being so outrageous? What do you possibly have to gain, apart from making us all a laughingstock and yourself a pariah?”

Because if I try hard enough, Clarence, you might not propose to me at all.

She didn’t say it. It was only a quarter of the truth; and besides, he’d never understand. He wasn’t born a girl, let alone one of five. He’d never grown out of childhood feeling himself get taller and taller as the life expected of him grew smaller and smaller, until he could barely breathe for the confines of it.

“I am doing it,” said Violet, “in honour of Mrs. Taverner.”

“Is that what that letter said?” Clarence shot back. “Do show us, then. I’m agog to see where Lady Enid asked you to tread the family’s reputation into the mud.”

He held out his hand as if he thought she would produce it on his demand. Almost tempting. She could use her finger to underline the words petty spite .

But—“Mrs. Taverner’s words,” Violet said sweetly, “are for my eyes alone.”

The name was a bit of needling. Clarence and Aunt Caroline insisted on referring to their deceased relative only by her title, as if by doing so they could reverse the years and pretend that the young Lady Enid Blackwood had never disgraced her birth by eloping with a tradesman-magician.

No magician could turn back time. History and death were absolutes unconquered by magic.

Besides: if Lady Enid hadn’t married James Taverner, then the fortune he earned would never have led her impoverished family to come trickling hopefully back into her life. And the fortune would never have landed in Violet’s hands.

Violet kept her head high, playing at Cleopatra, as she made her way through the ship. At one point she slipped into the confident stride of one of her trouser roles, and nearly tripped over climbing into the elevator when that persona came into conflict with her fashionably narrow skirt.

The Café Marseille was set along the edge of the ship on C Deck. Walking into it made Violet blink hard against the glare. It was extremely white . White wall panels, white patterned plasterwork on the ceiling, and white wooden trellises through which real ivy climbed from blue-glazed pots. The wicker chairs had been painted white as well. Lace curtains framed the huge windows along one wall, which looked directly out onto the expanse of the sea and a sky dusted with cottony clouds.

The café smelled of coffee and butter—and was that chocolate? Violet was starving—and the throb of the Lyric ’s engines played counterpoint to high musical notes of glass and china and conversation. The waitstaff danced between tables, trays held aloft, dodging newspapers and elbows and parasols and the stuck-out legs of small bored boys trying to cause a traffic accident.

Maud Blyth was drinking coffee at a corner table. She looked as though, like the sky, she’d sent down to inquire about the décor and then chosen her outfit to match. Her own white shirt waist was ruched, with an amber brooch settled in the front of the high lace collar, and instead of a jacket she wore a warm brown waistcoat buttoned snugly around her corseted waist. Her skirt was blue with white trim and her hat matched it, a wide brim of blue-dyed straw trimmed with white feathers and white silk flowers.

When she lifted her face to greet Violet, those extraordinary large eyes turned the exact colour of the sea outside the window and shone just as beautifully in the May sunlight.

Remember, murmured the hot core of Violet’s body, how we didn’t get what we wanted last night?

Violet told her body to be quiet and remember the existence of bedroom aides. She softened Cleopatra into something friendlier as she seated herself at the table and ordered coffee and toast. With her back to the wall, she was aware of the occasional glance thrown in their direction; the occasional head bent and murmuring.

“You were right about the speed of gossip. We are officially the first-class strumpets, it would seem.”

“Yes.” Miss Blyth added a lump of sugar to her coffee and stirred for longer than necessary. Her manner was polite and subdued compared to the previous evening.

Ah.

“We can let it be known that it was only me being debauched,” Violet said. “Perhaps you were only in the stateroom because you were trying to rescue me from my own folly, by giving myself and Lord Hawthorn an earnest lecture on morality.”

“Oh, can you imagine ?” Miss Blyth broke into giggles. “He really would have dragged me out by the ear. No, I’m simply—not accustomed to being stared at. But I’m sure I’ll adapt.”

“Truly? We could stage a great disagreement right now, if you wished.” Violet gestured around the café. “You could break into a storm of angry weeping for the state of my selfish soul, and—oh, thank you. Yes, with milk.”

The coffee smelled rich and good, and the toast came with a selection of jams and marmalades in tiny pots. Violet ate two slices immediately and then moved another two onto her plate while she debated luxuriously between more of the fig jam or cracking open the blackberry. When she looked up, Miss Blyth was watching her over the rim of her coffee cup, sea-green eyes creased in amusement.

“Help yourself, Miss—Cutler. There’s enough here for an army.”

The girl shook her head. “You called me Maud, last night.”

“Did I? I needn’t, if you’d prefer us to be businesslike.”

“No, I meant, I didn’t mind.” She coloured.

“Oh, good . I didn’t think you were stuffy.” Violet brushed crumbs from her cuff and held out her hand. “Violet.”

Two dimples tucked themselves into Maud’s cheeks. They shook solemnly over the jams.

“I don’t know if I could carry off a storm of angry weeping anyway,” said Maud. “I haven’t spent years in a theatre, like you. It does sound wonderful. Did you miss England at all while you were there? Your family?”

It must have been some trick of those eyes, green like the truth-candle’s flame, which brought an unexpected lump to Violet’s throat; and a half-started admission with it. She firmly swallowed them both. The worldly and scandalous Miss Debenham had brushed her girlhood from her skirts like crumbs, with no regrets.

She donned one of her most uncaring smiles.

“I missed the English weather during my first summer—I thought I would absolutely dissolve .” Violet launched into some anecdotes about the summer of 1907, when the magicians of the Penumbra had celebrated the successful opening of a new show by climbing onto the roof of the building and going to ludicrous lengths to cool themselves down in a heat that clung to the limbs like wet fabric, slathering them in the grime of city sweat. Maud laughed when Violet described Claudette’s ice-spell that would follow a person around, seeking the gaps in their clothes, and how Thom had yowled so loudly when struck with it that stray cats in the alley beneath had raised their voices in harmony.

Maud poured more coffee for them both. In between stories Violet sampled all the jams on the table and had a brief, passionate affair with the ginger marmalade.

“So,” she said when she was pleasantly full. “What’s your plan of attack for today?”

“I’ve been thinking about that for hours already.” Maud drummed her fingers absently against the tablecloth. “In the detective stories in the Strand, the murderers always have the decency to leave a clue at the scene. And the detectives use the identity of the victim himself—or herself—to discover the possible why, and that leads to the who, but the problem is… I know the why, and it doesn’t seem likely to help.”

“Not given the vast pool of possible whos, ” Violet agreed.

“I don’t suppose you know any convenient magical ways to identify other magicians in a large crowd?”

Violet shook her head. Outnumbered as they were, it was second nature for magicians to keep themselves hidden. There were ways of testing the water one-on-one, and subtle signals that could be sent. American magicians might wear rings of substances other than metal, but it was a practice more of the working classes than the sort of society likely to be found among the Lyric ’s first-class passengers.

It was a marvellous coincidence that Maud had found herself at dinner with Violet and the Blackwoods, honestly. And if they hadn’t shared a connection in Lord Hawthorn, then Maud might have spent the voyage entirely ignorant of Violet’s own magical nature.

“Given all that,” said Maud, “I think the best way to start narrowing down who might be sorting out the where .” She pulled some paper from a deep pocket of her skirt and unfolded it between them, nudging the empty toast rack aside. “This is the only map of the Lyric I could find—there’s a stand of them in one of the foyers—and it’s not very large, or thorough.”

Violet leaned over and inspected the pamphlet, which contained a cramped representation of every level, from the sun deck down to the cargo hold and boiler rooms on E Deck. It was clearly designed for first-class passengers; it focused on proclaiming the many attractions available to them, such as the Turkish baths and the Grand Reception. Plenty of the aftmost regions of B and C Decks, and almost all of D Deck, were simply white spaces. Not worth bothering with, or labelling. Areas of the ship clearly allotted to the lower classes.

“We’ll need the second- and third-class versions of this,” Violet said. “If they exist.”

“Whomever killed Mrs. Navenby both knew where to find her and had access to the first-class staterooms.” Maud’s finger indicated what must be the cabin in question, close to the foot of the Grand Staircase on C Deck.

“First-class passenger or crew, then?” Violet raised her eyebrows.

“Most likely. But I think we should start by finding out more about who can go where, exactly, and who might see them doing it.”

“There are plenty of security officers wandering around.”

Maud brightened. “Good thought. I’m sure one of them would be happy to talk to us. And”—with another flick of her fingertips over the map—“keep your eyes peeled for anything that would look like a good hiding place, if you had some stolen items you wanted to keep hidden away until arriving back in England.”

An ocean liner was nothing except hiding places. This wasn’t a haystack—it was a small floating town. But the hook of interest was lodged fatally within Violet. She loved secrets, loved being in on the trick, loved moving in a crowd working to a purpose that they didn’t know. She loved the backstage of things.

She said only, “This is a very large ship, Maud.”

“I know.” Maud gathered her map and stood. “We’d better get started, hadn’t we?”