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  Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Because . . . because I think that we can get out of here safely and go back home, and there will be a home to fight for.”

  She wasn’t sure that he understood, but that didn’t matter.

  She kissed him fleetingly on the lips before going out the door.

  In the wardrobe room, she found Nellie going through the dresses and Loesie standing in front of the window. Nellie made every effort not to look at Loesie, and Loesie had her arms crossed over her chest.

  “I told her that she needs to change out of that filthy dress, mistress, but she just makes filthy noises at me.”

  Loesie said, “Ghghghghghgh!” She turned back to the window.

  Something in the tone of her voice made Johanna feel cold. The duke sensed her magic. He said there was something odd going on with Loesie, that her own magic had clashed with the magic of the person who had tried to put a spell on her. Did she believe him, that he wasn’t that person?

  “Yes, well, let’s worry about you first, Nellie.”

  She asked Nellie to do up the back of her dress and then went through the wardrobes in search of a dress for Nellie to wear.

  Nellie was both embarrassed and delighted to choose.

  “These clothes are much too nice for me. I’m only a maid.”

  “When we get back to Saardam, you’ll have to wear much nicer dresses than this one.”

  “How so, Mistress Johanna?”

  “You don’t think I’m going to leave you behind? If I move into the palace, you’ll come. You can be my Lady-in-Waiting.”

  Nellie’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yes, Really.” Nellie was not, and had never been, “only a maid”. Then Johanna had an odd thought. Her own ambitions had been to run the Brouwer Company. What about Nellie’s ambitions? Maybe they were intertwined with hers. Unable to work for herself, with an unsupportive and religious family, Nellie’s future depended on Johanna’s.

  Nellie had chosen a dark red dress that looked too severe on her.

  “I don’t like that dress. It makes you look old.”

  “I agree. It’s not the kind of thing I should be wearing. These clothes are all so expensive—”

  “Cowpats, Nellie. The duke wants a dress-up party with pretty young girls. He doesn’t care about who you are or who I am. I don’t even know if he’s got any maids himself or if that sour man is the only other person in the house.”

  “Don’t forget the son. He’s quite handsome.”

  “Handsome?” With all the will in the world, she couldn’t call Sylvan and his tattoos and ugly scar handsome. “Don’t you feel his magic?”

  Nellie frowned. “Magic?”

  “He’s a dark magician. He may be young or handsome to you, but don’t underestimate him. He’s dangerous.”

  Nellie had to settle for the red dress, because there wasn’t anything more modern that would fit her slender frame. Johanna combed out Nellie’s hair. It was full of knots, but she managed to do it up in a bun. A brooch and necklace completed the ensemble.

  Nellie stood in front of the mirrored glass, twisting and turning this way and that.

  “You look good, Nellie, stop worrying.”

  “I’m not sure, Mistress Johanna. What about . . .” Her gaze went to the bonnet that she had left on the arm of a chair.

  “No, it’s filthy.”

  Nellie didn’t protest, but continued to look at her reflection, as if checking that it was really her.

  Now it was Loesie’s turn. She stood in front of the window, looking into the garden. Pale light fell on her face.

  Johanna took two dresses from the cupboard that looked like they might fit and were of the dour and black type that Loesie favoured. One had no lace at all, but the other had a little bit, and might look quite good.

  Then she called, “Loesie?”

  She turned around. Her eyes were wide, but no longer clouded over. Johanna wondered if that only happened when there was strong magic in the air.

  “We need to get you dressed for dinner.”

  “Gghghghghgh!” She shook her head so violently that her hair danced around her head.

  “Why, what’s wrong?” Nellie said. “Look, Mistress Johanna has even chosen a dress for you that looks like that horrible thing you’re wearing now used to, before it got so disgusting. Why don’t you for once do what she says? You know that she’s—”

  “Never mind, Nellie.” She probably had been about to say that Johanna was the princess now, but that should remain unsaid. There was yet no evidence that the duke knew who Roald was.

  Johanna held up the dress with the lace. “See, this one is not so bad—”

  “Ghghghghghghgh!” Loesie backed away.

  “What’s going on, Loesie? It’s only a dress. You can’t go to a dinner with a duke looking like this.”

  “Hmmmmmm!”

  “You don’t want to come?”

  Loesie shook her head.

  “If you don’t want to go to dinner, then what are you going to eat?”

  Loesie shrugged.

  “Well, you may not care but I do. Try this dress on.” She undid the laces at the back.

  But Loesie’s behaviour made Johanna feel uneasy.

  Johanna didn’t like any of these clothes and the reason they might be here any better than Loesie did, but the fact was, she had no evidence whatsoever that the duke even knew about the dead people in the ice cellar, or that the cellar was on his land. These clothes might be here legitimately. They were old enough to have belonged to old family members who once lived here and died—

  More dead bodies. She shuddered.

  She whispered close to Loesie’s ear, “Is the duke the person who put this spell on you?”

  Loesie shook her head again.

  “You’re afraid of him?”

  Loesie nodded. She made some hand signs that Johanna didn’t understand.

  Whatever magic had passed between them when the duke examined Loesie downstairs had been strong enough that Johanna could feel it.

  “We’re all afraid. We can’t let them find out who we are. We must make it look like we’re just ordinary travellers. Please, put it on, Loesie.”

  Johanna pulled Loesie’s black dress over her head. The fabric felt greasy to the touch, and it smelled terrible. Loesie’s underclothes weren’t much better, so she had to find a clean chemise and drawers. Loesie’s skin was pale and reminded Johanna uncomfortably of bodies, except the near-translucent skin showed blue veins underneath. Her ribs stuck out, and her stomach was hollow.

  It was eerie, really. “You’re much too thin, Loesie.”

  She helped Loesie into the dress. It turned out to be dark green instead of black. Nellie fussed over the colour, because Roald also wore green and Johanna should wear the same colour—

  “Nellie, it’s a game the duke wants to play with us. We’re not guests and it isn’t the royal ball.”

  “Just making sure he doesn’t get any wrong impressions about who belongs with who. . . .”

  “Ghghghgh!” Loesie hissed at her.

  Johanna said, “Stand still. How am I supposed to do up your corset if you keep moving?”

  Wasn’t tonight going to be fun with those two sleeping in the same room?

  Roald had come into the room and waited patiently at the door. He looked surprisingly regal in the green jacket and shirt with ruffles.

  Finally they were all done and ready for playing dress-ups with a mass-murderer.

  ‎

  Chapter 10

  * * *
r />   BY NOW the light outside had faded to deep orange and the gloomy hallway had become even darker. Johanna walked first, followed by Nellie and Roald with Loesie bringing up the rear.

  In the huge entrance hall, their footsteps echoed against the ceiling. The huge crystal chandelier hung on a chain suspended on a pulley mechanism, so that the household staff could light the few candles up there. The ceiling was painted in dark colours with scenes depicting destruction and a man pointing towards a light.

  “Who is that?” Nellie whispered to Johanna, because talking aloud didn’t seem appropriate in the intense silence.

  “It’s the True God from the Belaman Church, I think.”

  “I thought the Belaman Church was even stricter on magic than the Church of the Triune.”

  “The fact that the duke’s ceiling bears religious scenes doesn’t mean that he adheres to the teachings.”

  Nellie swallowed visibly.

  The Belaman Church had many branches, and the Church of the Triune was sometimes considered part of it, but their stance against magic united them all. Instead of believing in the Lord of Fire, they believed in Doom. It was a place without leader, a place where voices were not heard because there was no sound.

  In fact, she imagined Doom to be a bit like this hall: abandoned and dusty.

  When coming in, she had not noticed the draughtiness of the hall and the dust on the chandelier. Candle wax had dripped onto the stairs in several places, and it was blackened and worn with people having walked across it for some time.

  The house was quiet except for a few chinks of porcelain that had to come from the kitchen.

  They found the dining room through a door under the stairs. Inside stood a long table with a dark blue velvet cover, gold-rimmed plates and crystal glasses. There were two standing chandeliers, and a lusty fire burned in the hearth. Since it had now started to go dark outside, the drapes were closed, and the room was bathed in a warm yellow glow.

  The duke sat at the head of the table. He had changed into a velvet coat which was a rather garish dark purple, and the shirt he wore underneath was excessively ruffled. He indicated the other chairs with an exaggerated gesture of his hand.

  “Sit down, friends.”

  Johanna battled the impulse to say We’re not your friends, but she didn’t. No doubt this man was using his henchmen or his magic to keep his “guests” here.

  Sylvan came out of the shadows and took his place at the other end of the table. He had changed into an equally severe blue jacket that made him look more brooding.

  Johanna eyed him. Handsome? Seriously?

  They sat down, Johanna and Roald on one side of the table, Nellie and Loesie on the other.

  The duke asked for a moment’s silence. “True God, we pray that our weary travellers may enjoy our meagre hospitality and that they may continue their journey safely.”

  Johanna was getting very irritated with these people’s insistence on ignoring the fact that they had been captured.

  Nellie was eying Sylvan.

  Loesie looked oddly elegant in the dress, and her thin arms and long, spider-like fingers gave her an ethereal presence. Her hair was darker than that of typical Saarlanders. Johanna remembered Loesie telling her that she had only a mother on the farm. Who was her father? She had never given it much thought. Loesie had told her once that he had died of illness while working at a neighbour’s farm. Johanna had never considered that he might have been a foreign guest worker, or even that her mother and father might never have been married. He had probably been Estlander, because there was only one thing that Saarlanders with magic abilities had in common: eastern blood.

  A dour-faced woman came in and brought a tray with a silver lid which she placed in the middle of the table. The thin man brought several gold-rimmed terrines with cooked vegetables.

  “Time to have the cook’s specialty,” the duke said. “Roast venison from the forest.”

  Johanna shivered, thinking of the ice cellar.

  They were silent while Hans came forward and took the lid off the tray. He cut a piece which he offered to the duke who tasted it and nodded his approval.

  Then he proceeded to carve the meat, doling out steaming portions to all around the table. It smelled heavenly.

  Then he poured something that looked like cider.

  In Saardam, only the church used wine, and then not much of it. Grapes grew on hillsides further to the south.

  When they finished serving, the maid and Hans retreated. The duke lifted his glass. “We drink to this memorable occasion.” The candlelight made deep shadows over his old face.

  What was so memorable about being a prisoner here, Johanna didn’t know.

  Roald lifted his glass in turn. “To this occasion.” He took a sip of the cider and set the glass on the table. His face remained blank. Someone must have spent a lot of time drilling him in these exchanges.

  She thought of the unguarded smile on his face when they were cavorting over the bed in the room upstairs. The man who hid behind this impersonal mask was not dumb at all. Just very, very awkward.

  Nellie sat straight-backed, staring at Loesie, who was trying to work out in which hand to hold the spoon.

  Johanna could no longer contain her desire for answers. “Can I ask what your interest is in us?”

  “Is it improper to offer a meal and a dry bed to travellers?”

  “We’re not travellers. Those men captured us. We were minding our own business and they took us from our ship.” He glared at Sylvan, who glared back at her.

  “My men found you wandering on our land.”

  “We were in an orchard along the river. Do you have land that far away from here?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you do the same to all river traders who stop off?”

  “True river traders keep going. They don’t stop off at places where no people live.”

  True.

  “We are not river traders. We’re refugees with no place to go.”

  She gave Loesie a sideways glance. Isolated as this estate was, did he know about the devastation of Saardam and Aroden? If he treated all his visitors to a meal, people might have told him in this room.

  She put down her spoon and carefully wormed her hand under the table. The moment her fingertips contacted the wooden underside of the table, a rush of cold went through her. Images flowed unbidden through her mind: a fire-lit sky, someone jumping off the quay, Roald, wet and pale, in the cabin of the Lady Sara, the skulls and bones in the ash of the burnt farm, the children yelling at the Lady Sara at Aroden, Roald looking at her. Somewhere in the background, Nellie prompted, “Say: I do.”

  And he said, “I do,” and slid his ring over Johanna’s finger, where it dangled loose because it was much too big.

  Johanna gasped and withdrew her hand.

  What in all of heaven’s name was this? She stared at her plate, her heart thudding. She had expected the wood to show her things, not invoke her own memories. Wait—did that mean the wood sucked out her memories? Did that mean the duke would now know for certain who they were—if he didn’t know already?

  The duke had asked Nellie a question. She was stammering something about a farm and selling baskets and cheese. Presumably the question had been about Loesie.

  Then another thought: not since they had set foot in his house had the duke asked for their names.

  That’s because he already knows.

  “And what is your relationship to this strange possessed girl?” the duke asked.

  “I . . . um,” Nellie said, and met Johanna’s eyes in a kind of help me out look.

  “She is my friend,” Johanna said.

  “It’s ver
y odd for a daughter of a rich merchant to have a friend who comes from a farm.”

  So he knew her father. Well, he might have recognised the Lady Sara.

  “Yes, well, my mother is no longer alive as you might know, and I help my father, so I go to the markets to buy and sell things. That’s where I’ve met her.”

  “Hmm, is that so?” He stroked his beard. “Could it also be that both of you share a certain ability?”

  “What do you mean?” She was trying to sound as innocent as possible.

  “You know very well what I mean. Magic is rare in Saarlanders.”

  “It is not so rare amongst the river traders.”

  “Ha, most of them are peddlers. They buy small trinkets: talismans or mistwood. They may have a tiny bit of magic and the wood shows them things. Then they fancy themselves magicians. Ha!”

  He put a piece of meat in his mouth.

  “Both of you are different. My son says that he could feel your magic quite strongly.”

  Sylvan nodded.

  “Is that a reason to take us prisoner?”

  He had been cutting his meat and put knife down. “You do not know anything about magic, do you, child?”

  She wanted to say, I’m not a child, I’m a married woman, but didn’t. Her heart was thudding against her ribs.

  “I guess I can’t blame you, coming from that ignorant place, full of priests who live in constant denial of what they could see before their very eyes if only they opened them.”

  Roald protested, “Hey, you don’t call—”

  “Shhh.” Johanna put a hand on his arm, careful not to touch the table.

  “Yes, tell him to be quiet. Keep pretending that magic doesn’t exist, and my half-brother will overrun the entire coastal plain. You don’t believe that I brought you here for your protection, because you need to know about magic, and you need this situation . . .” He flapped his hand at Loesie. “. . . solved. She is leaking so much magic in the substream that all of us can feel her. That’s why you’re here. She will attract my half-brother. He will use her, and you have no idea what his court magicians can do.”