Page 2 of The False Vow

“Have some wine, Tamerlane,” he muttered. His voice had shed all of its sly cynicism; I had the sudden feeling that the barbs he’d hurled at me earlier had been nothing but a windup to get to—this. “My father is watching.”

My pulse picked up as he pushed his glass toward me—not because of his use of my name this time, but the reminder which had followed after. Meeting his eyes, I raised it to my lips and took a measured sip.

He watched me. His gaze fixed on my mouth, studying it as I set the cup back down again, then turned away once I’d swallowed.

We didn’t speak after that. The wine was tart as it slid down my throat—he always chose the sweetest reds, the ones with a sticky darkness to them like treacle—settling uneasily in my stomach. Still, I didn’t dare make any movements. There was a presence in my skull, so light I hadn’t noticed it until Noé had called my attention to it just now. It lingered where it was for another minute, then—as if sensing I’d identified it—slipped quietly away.

I followed the path of its retreat. Noé’s father was seated in the box next to ours, his focus seemingly on the brunette man in a bear mask hunched over in the chair beside him, and yet—I knew it had been his magic which I’d felt monitoring me. Sorcerers’ powers, like silkwitches’ Wits, were distinct to every man, and the mind was Bastian’s domain. It was what made him such a valuable ally to the many other Weavers who’d tethered their fortunes to his, and such a formidable foe to girls like me.

The Weaver King and his seatmate appeared deep in discussion. Through the dimness of the opera house, I made out the dull pink of a stack of fifty-twill notes as the bear-faced man pulled them from his suit jacket, then a white flash of brightness from within Bastian’s.

My interest sparked. Like that of all Weavers—or sorcerers—in our nation, the Alaire family fortune was derived primarily from the crafting and selling of enchanted objects, those imbued with magesilk Woven from their silkwitch wives’ hair. Yet while the rest of Balmoore’s sorcerer lines hewed close to the restrictions on magicked items which our nation’s governing body, the Virtuous Parliament, had set, Bastian’s products were…different.

He specialized in the strange and the violent. A clock which prompted visions in anyone who heard it chime midnight. A dagger magicked to search for its victim’s heart. I’d experienced the effects of one of his products—a pair of enchanted chain-link gloves—myself during the Vainglory’s third trial, though since being crowned its victor, I’d not been subjected to any others.

I craned my head closer, eager to catch the source of the light which had been emitted from inside Bastian’s jacket pocket. Sorcerers required silkwitch hair in order to create their product—it was one of their primary reasons for marrying us. But Bastian’s wife had died years ago. And while there were other ways a sorcerer desperate enough could acquire fresh hair—my fellow competitors and I had been forced to illegally tithe some of ours upon entrance to the Alaire estate during the Vainglory—since the end of the competition, the Weaver King hadn’t attempted to take any more.

Balmoorish law forbade anyone from lifting so much as a single strand from a silkwitch’s head until she was wed. So how was it that in the months since my betrothal, I’d witnessed the Weaver King engaging in multiple deals like this? Hawking new Woven products without a witch giving her locks to enchant them?

And that wasn’t the only issue which bothered me. Turning away from Bastian, I leaned to check on Noé. Past the slits of his mask, his eyelids had closed; he’d downed the rest of his wine while we’d been silent and now held the empty glass loosely against his lap. Asleep.

Satisfied, I reached for my reticule, retrieving the newspaper clipping stuffed at its bottom. I’d cut it out myself before we’d left for the theater and stowed it away for later examination. Now I narrowed my eyes, reading it over.

INDEPENDENT AUTOPSY RAISES NEW QUESTIONS IN SILKWITCH’S DEATH

The family of the late silkwitch Miss Sybil Dabos, daughter of the Honorable Mme. Lucie Dabos, claim to have obtained startling new evidence that the death of their daughter at Weaver tradesman M. Bastian Alaire’s estate this past summer was not the result of an accidental tunnel collapse, as originally stated, but rather a deliberate homicide, through a recently concluded independent autopsy. While the report concedes that Miss Dabos’s corpse exhibited a number of wounds consistent with a rockfall, the Daboses’ coroner states, “Our examination suggests the bruising was incurred posthumously, in an effort to obscure the true cause of death,” which the report lists as strangulation. A chambermaid present at the scene, who requested to remain anonymous, expanded on the disturbing findings: “She looked alive. Even beaten as she was…when the doctor opened her eyes, I swear they were glowing.”

Mme. Lucie Dabos, Councillor to Balmoore’s Fourth District and prominent member of the anti-Weaver Laborer’s Party, has promised to raise the issue at the next session of Parliament, where she is expected to request a full criminal investigation into M. Alaire’s activities.

On the back of the clipping was nothing but a pen-and-ink advertisement of a woman, her head entirely covered by a veil, holding a monocle sightlessly up to her face. Block letters spelled out a slogan along the paper’s bottom: Seek and Find. I studied the message for a moment, curious, then set the clipping down.

I’d thought of Sybil often in the months following the Vainglory. She’d died, after all, in pursuit of the same secret I had: the truth behind Ophelia Lear’s passing in the competition the year prior. I’d been sent into the Alaires’ estate to untangle the mystery of her death by Ophelia’s brother, Eliot; Sybil had been working with him, too, though her primary loyalties lay with her mother, Lucie, who’d enlisted her in the Vainglory with instructions to unearth a scandal shocking enough that it stood a chance of bringing down her longtime political nemesis, Bastian.

Still, neither of us had anticipated the breadth of the conspiracy we’d discovered. Sorcerers’ powers—long proclaimed to be vastly stronger than silkwitches’ Wits—were, in reality, stolen from their brides via a binding ritual hidden within Weaver marriage ceremonies. The proof was kept in an underground room, part of the extensive tunnel network located deep below the Alaires’ estate, Fortblanche. There, Bastian had tested the samples of hair he’d taken from me and my fellow competitors at the start of the Vainglory, searching for the most promising magic to thieve for his son.

Sybil had died before she’d ever been able to enter that room. I’d accessed it using my Wit, but after her passing, the key to it had gone missing. Presumably stolen by Sybil herself, then vanished from her corpse once someone, or something, had killed her.

During the Vainglory, Bastian had been desperate to retrieve the key before an enemy of his latched on to it and used it to uncover the very secret I’d learned. As far as I knew, he had yet to do so, and now Sybil’s mother was digging into the cause of her daughter’s death.

Objectively, the Weaver King’s situation was dire. But rather than hunting for his key, he was here, drinking and dealmaking as if nothing at all was the matter. He hadn’t even attempted to force me to open the door to his hidden room for him since my engagement to his son, nor to destroy its contents.

In my mind, there were two options. Either Bastian had a lead on the key, or he had another plan.

I didn’t know which possibility I disliked more.

Shaking my head, I went to stow my newspaper clipping back in my reticule, my thoughts clouded. It was then that I noticed it.

There was an absence in the box across from me. The cat-faced stranger was gone.

No sooner had I registered the fact than another sensation distracted me—a pulse of heat beneath my right heel. For a half second, I was overtaken by surprise; then I remembered my purpose, and all fell back into order.

Collecting myself, I gave Noé a light nudge. “I need to visit the powder room.”

My fiancé started. He’d slumped even farther down in his seat while dozing, his neck lolling back and his fox disguise balanced loosely over the bridge of his nose. Aside from the pant of his breathing, the periodic flare of his nostrils was the only sign that he was alive.

Straightening, he frowned, setting aside his empty wineglass. “Why?”

I scowled. “You wish me to tell you why I must go to the powder room? Can you not guess?”