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‘You tell me.’
Orestes stands, turning elegantly on one foot to observe Leander face-to-face. His other foot remains suspended in the air. Leander still recalls the fundamentals of human form. His height remains the same; he knows how to struggle with his balance and grow tired in difficult positions. Not so for Orestes, who is as much magic as man. He remains on one foot in this ballet pose, and comments, ‘You have no secrets to bid with.’
‘I am aware.’
‘So, then, you must steal one from someone else.’ He smiles. ‘Who shall it be? The Ottoman woman, so mired in grief? The scholar who demands belief—’
‘You’re rhyming again.’
‘—or Genevieve de Vienne, perhaps? As long as you keep your position at the Company secret, she will continue to trust you. She seems a trusting sort, that girl. Poor thing.’
‘Genevieve would be the obvious choice,’ Leander says. ‘But that’s probably just what Mother wants me to think.’
‘Perhaps Mother has been generous in bringing her here.’
‘Or perhaps Mother has been cruel,’ Leander returns. ‘You’ve known her longer than I have. Which is more likely?’
Orestes blinks at him. A beetle emerges from his jacket collar and scuttles up his neck, into his mouth. He bites down, a filament of jewel-tone wing falling from his lips. After swallowing, he puts his raised foot down on the ground.
‘Leander,’ Orestes says, ‘it grieves me that you are so unhappy here.’
‘Why would it grieve you, Orestes? I am not your brother, not really. I am only someone who the Lady stole, years ago, perhaps even centuries ago, and who she’ll throw aside once bored.’
Orestes gives him another smile. At the corners, his mouth stretches impossibly wide. ‘Our memories are like jewels and noble rot, more precious for their rarity. That I can remember you at all, at any point, has made me fond of you. And our mother is fond of you, too—fonder than she has been of other mortals she has taken.’
‘Why?’ Leander asks, because that is not a privilege. It is horrifying, and he would do anything to change it. ‘I despise her. She disgusts me.’
‘That is why, Leander,’ Orestes says. ‘There is nothing Lady Reverie finds more fascinating than defiance. Though it is wiser to concede. You know that, and I know it, too.’
‘If I don’t have defiance, what do I have left?’
‘The Company, and the auction, and the safety they provide.’ Orestes offers him an elaborate bow, one arm windmilling outwards; a breeze plays at his dark hair, ruffling it with affection.
‘Safety,’ Leander echoes with distaste. ‘What is safety without freedom?’
‘Life, for most,’ Orestes says. ‘No matter. Here.’ He reaches out and offers him something: a miniature porcelain figure of a woman with dark hair, dressed in a blue dress and straw bonnet.
‘Genevieve’s figurine?’
‘The Château wants me to hide it with you.’
Leander closes his hand around the figurine. It is cold at first, but it soon warms with the heat of his palm, as if it is living.
He doesn’t thank Orestes. He isn’t expected to.
‘Step carefully, brother mine,’ Orestes says. He turns away, then comments over his shoulder—an afterthought—‘Only one person has ever successfully won the auction. It would be extraordinary if you became the second.’
Genevieve feels Leander Sterne’s rejection like a splinter beneath the skin; when she thinks of it, presses upon it, the pain is sharp and raw. And so she does not press upon it. She puts it aside, folds it neatly away. For now, she will focus on the treasure hunt instead. She will win this challenge, and so she will work methodically in her sweep of the Château, from the lowest floors to the highest.
She takes the left hand corridor, the one she knows ought to bring her to the courtyard. Instead, it leads her somewhere unexpected—a corner of the Château she has not visited before, a corridor so narrow both her elbows brush the walls. Did she misremember? It is warm here, uncomfortably so, and the air is humid. Beneath her feet, marble has become carpet so plush her shoes sink into it like sand. She turns around to look back in the direction she came, but instead it is still the same corridor, endlessly, walls leafed gold and floors flesh red. Genevieve spins a few more times, hoping that some change will emerge, but none does. Dizzy and confused, she can no longer tell which way she is facing.
How odd. Onwards, then. In a distant room, there is a sound she recognises: two girls laughing together. Soft laughter, intimate. They are in bed and they are giggling at a joke—but soon one will pull the other closer, pressing a hand between her thighs. Your smile, she will say. It drives me to madness, my love. It always does. Her blue eyes, the golden hair, the soft, sweet parting of her lips. The earnestness of her desire, the intensity of it. Like standing in a patch of sunlight in the summer, bright and burning.
Genevieve is seeing things again, hearing things again. She is beginning to panic, and the creature within her is starting to awake, growling and snapping at her heels. She closes her eyes. Help me, she thinks, appealing to some higher power, to herself, to the Château that surrounds her. I am lost. I do not know where to go.
She steps forward, and the carpet beneath her feet becomes solid and firm as stone. Another step, another—the darkness behind her lids changes character, warming and lightening. Genevieve opens her eyes.
She is in a curious room, its marble floor laid out in a convoluted pattern of pale peach and white, forming many-sided shapes that tesselate in a way that ought to be impossible; Genevieve’s head hurts as her vision tries to make sense of it. There are two grand windows, beaming in light from the southerly side of the gardens, and between the two windows a life-size portrait of a man. He is perhaps Genevieve’s age, fair-haired and bright-eyed, in simple workman’s clothing: shirt and trousers, buckled shoes. He holds a sheaf of papers in one hand, and his skin there is stained with ink. The backdrop is blurry, as if seen through a misty window, but it vaguely resembles a city. The man is standing on a cobblestone street that winds uphill, and behind him are the faint spires of a distant cathedral.
