Page 49 of The False Vow

I lowered myself onto the seat next to him, settling my elbows on the bar top. “I don’t appreciate being mocked.”

His smile was quick, the flutter of wings. “Good choice, Tamerlane,” he followed more softly. Holding up his middle and index finger, he instructed the barman, “Two whiskeys.”

The man bustled away to fetch them before I could change the order to one. Watching him go, Noé stripped off his driving gloves and asked in a flat, lazy tone, “All right, then. Where shall we start?”

I felt a spark of alarm as the barman came ambling back toward us, a glass of whiskey in each hand, perfectly within earshot of our conversation. Following my gaze, Noé sighed.

Summoning the man, he accepted the drinks and set them on the bar top, leaning over to draw a billfold from his trouser pocket. My eyes bulged alongside our server’s when I caught sight of the number stamped in the top corner of the note he selected—a neat 500, the zeros seated next to one another like a pair of rounded opera glasses. Even after our betrothal, I’d never seen such a bill; they were status symbols as much as they were currency, five hundred twills being far too high an amount to be practical in most transactions. It was more than my brother, Markham, made in a month.

“Wait over there,” Noé said, nodding toward the far end of the bar, on the opposite side of the pub from where we were seated. “When we finish our drinks, supply us with fresh ones. If you hear anything while serving us which strikes you as odd, simply ask me to repeat myself—I will be sure to correct you.”

He smiled again as he said it, more vulpine than the grin he’d given me. There was an aloof chill about him, which I hadn’t seen him adopt before. It reminded me of his father—the implacable sense of distance which seemed always to surround the Weaver King, as if even when you were standing directly beside him, you were separated.

Divided by the awareness that you belonged to different kinds. A mortal—and a sorcerer.

I waited for the barman to protest Noé’s order—had someone spoken to me in such a demeaning fashion, I would have tossed them out for their impertinence—but after a second he merely nodded, swiped the bill, and sauntered away. I turned toward my fiancé as he left.

“You command him like a dog.”

Noé slouched against the bar. “Would you prefer that I take Lear’s approach? Play the common man to convince him we are equals, offer him a bargain, and then fill it with loopholes to ensure he trips?” His thumb and forefinger loosely encircled the base of his glass, though he did not lift it just yet. “I command him because I can afford to,” he finished. “Now—since you don’t seem inclined to start us off, I’ll begin.” Clearing his throat, he glanced over at me. “I spoke with Bernard yesterday.”

My interest was piqued. “And?” I asked, leaving my drink untouched. “What did he tell you?”

“I asked him about the moniker on the guest list—a friend,” Noé quoted. “He knew who I was referring to. I was right—Dorian did pass charge of the list over to him during the ball, around the time he disappeared with Anais.” He paused; my pulse picked up. “The person Bernard saw was a woman. He isn’t certain how, or when, she arrived, but she didn’t use the front doors. Bernard said it was as though she simply manifested partway through the party. Her face was covered by—”

“A red veil.” My heart was pounding in my ears as Noé nodded in confirmation. “Nathalie Moreau saw the same lady—or her mice did, rather. But how did she manage to go unnoticed? No one else was wearing a disguise—she should have stood out from the crowd.”

“Bernard said she didn’t stay long. She was leaving when he found her—and she was exiting through the servants’ quarters, out of sight of most of the partygoers,” Noé replied. “She wouldn’t give a name, and Bernard couldn’t make out her features through the veil, but she claimed to be a friend of the Weaver King.”

Interesting. “And Bernard believed her?” It seemed a weak excuse to me.

“The woman had an item in her possession which Bernard felt lent credence to her claims.” The look Noé gave me was laden with meaning. “A key.”

The key to the moonless door. Bastian’s missing key. I could scarcely believe it. After the thin leads we’d turned up thus far, here was one that felt real.

“Bernard recognized it as one which belonged to my father,” Noé went on, while I sat, frozen, beside him. “Knowing Father never would have shared the object with a stranger, he assumed the lady was telling the truth.”

“He didn’t worry the woman might have stolen it? What about after the party, once he’d learned the key had vanished—why didn’t he inform Bastian of what he’d seen?”

“Father did tell the servants that a key of his had gone missing—though not, of course, what it unlocked,” Noé said. “Bernard told me he relayed what he’d seen to him, but nothing more ever came of it. In time, he forgot all about the lady.” He shrugged. “To him, she was just a stranger with a key.”

I considered his statement. So the Weaver King was aware of this veiled lady—or, at least, his butler had spoken to him about her. I wondered why he hadn’t passed the lead on to me. Because he’d investigated and found it to be a dead end, or because he hoped that if he denied me information, I’d fail to solve his mystery and he could be rid of me by my wedding day?

Neither option was a good one. I hoped for the former, but feared the latter.

Still ignoring my drink—Noé hadn’t touched his, either, I noticed, despite being the one to place the order—I rapped my thumb against the bar top. “If the key Bernard glimpsed the lady with was the same one that unlocks the door to Bastian’s hidden room,” I asked, “which we can’t be sure of—do you think she was also the one to kill Sybil? Why, do you suppose?”

“The natural assumption is that she’s an enemy of my father’s—someone who wishes to expose the truth of the Weavers’ magic and bring them down,” Noé responded. “In that case, she would have taken the key from Sybil for what it accessed—the room behind the moonless door. The silkwitch hair my father stored there would be worthless to her, relatively speaking; it is the records that matter. The notes on extrapolations—other related documents—all of them would be far more damaging to my father if brought to light than some lost product. But then…”

I finished his thought. “Why not use the key, if she has it? The moonless door hasn’t been opened since the end of the Vainglory. Without the key, I’m the only one who could unlock it, and your father hasn’t asked me.”

Noé tipped his hand in acknowledgment of my question. “Perhaps our lady is waiting for the right time,” he replied. “You said Nathalie Moreau’s mice spotted her as well? What did they see?”

“Nothing much.” I bit at the corner of my lip. “She entered Fortblanche through the tunnels—that’s where the mice encountered her. If she encountered Sybil there, she could have killed her, taken the key off her body, and exited into the main house before anyone happened upon the corpse.” It was a sound theory. Though—

“Curious that she entered via the tunnels and left another way.” Noé articulated my concern before I could voice it. “Why wouldn’t she go out the way she came in? There would have been far less risk of her being spotted.” He paused. “Could she have been meeting with someone at the ball, do you think?”

It was the exact possibility I’d been reflecting on. The pair of us were getting along far too well. It unsettled me how easy it was to pass theories back and forth. Instinctive, almost, like we were quoting lines from a book.