Chapter 2: The Lantern Walk

PROJECT: KEEP HEAD
Risk 1. Tea. Mitigation: never touch tea again. Switch to water. Possibly forever.
Risk 2. Poison. Location unknown. Mitigation: find it. Throw it in the river. Throw the river in a bigger river.
Risk 3. The Saint said "this time."
Mitigation:

The mitigation for item three had been blank for two days.

I'd written the list on the back pages of Seraphine's diary, which was the only paper in the room that wasn't monogrammed. The front pages were a problem of their own. I'd read about six of them before I had to stop. Seraphine wrote in a tall, furious hand that tore the paper on the downstrokes, and most of what she wrote was about the Saint, and none of it was fit to read out at a christening.

She smiles at me like I'm a dog that might bite.

She smiles at everyone. It means nothing. I will make it mean something.

I'd shut the diary and put it under the mattress, which was where people in books always found things, so then I took it out again and put it in a hatbox.

On the mirror, tucked into the frame where I'd see it every morning, was a much smaller piece of paper. It had come up with the second pot of mint salve, on the tray with my breakfast, folded once.

Twice a day. Don't skip the evening.
— E.

Small, upright letters, very even, every t crossed exactly in the middle. The E had a long tail that curled back under itself like something sleeping.

I had not skipped the evening. I wanted that on record.

· · ·

"You're staring, my lady," said the Saint.

We were at breakfast. It turned out we had breakfast together every day, at a table built for twenty-two, one of us at each end, like a pair of bookends that had fallen out. It was also in the decree. A great deal of my life, I was learning, was in the decree.

"I'm not staring."

"You've been holding that spoon over the same piece of melon since the clock struck."

I put the spoon down.

Elodie was eating porridge. The kitchen sent her porridge every morning because, Pim said, she'd asked for it on her first day and the cook had been so offended he'd made it with cream and honey and nutmeg ever since, out of revenge. She ate it with complete attention, small spoonfuls, as if each one needed to be thanked individually.

She looked up. Grey-green. Calm all the way to the bottom.

I'd spent two days avoiding this. I'd spent two days walking the long way round the gallery, eating in my room, developing a sudden and passionate interest in the conservatory. It had not worked, because wherever I went, at some point she would simply be there, sitting in a window with a book or walking past with an armful of linen for the Temple's sick-house, and she'd incline her head and say my lady and move on, and I'd stand there like a coat stand.

So. Fine. Project management. You don't fix a risk by not looking at it.

"On the first night," I said, "you said something."

"I said several things, my lady. Most of them were about mint."

"At the door. You said, be more careful with yourself this time."

She set her spoon down beside the bowl. Lined it up with the edge.

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"Then I meant this time you burn yourself." She smiled. It was the smile from the book, the one the comments called serene and radiant and, in one case, genuinely terrifying, is she ok. "You should let a physician see it, next time. Instead of Pim and a feather."

"That's not what it sounded like."

"What did it sound like?"

It sounded like you've watched me die before.

"It sounded," I said, "a bit ominous."

"Ah." She picked up her spoon again. "I'm sorry, my lady. I'm told I do that."

And that was the end of that. She went back to her porridge. I went back to my melon. Down the long table between us, a footman refilled the water jug with the expression of a man who had been told to see nothing and was finding it very hard.

· · ·

The Lantern Walk was the problem I hadn't seen coming, which, to be fair, described most of my problems now.

"It is tradition," said Master Orrin, the dancing master, for the third time. He was a thin, upright man with a silver-topped cane he never leaned on, only pointed with. "The newest betrothal of the court opens the Lantern Ball. Lady Seraphine and Her Holiness will walk the first measure alone. Before His Majesty. Before everyone."

"Couldn't the second-newest betrothal do it?"

He looked at me as if I'd suggested opening the ball by setting fire to a goat.

So here we were in the long gallery, with my painted ancestors down both walls, all of them looking down their identical noses at me as if they'd seen this coming. Somebody had rolled the rugs back. The floor was pale wood, polished until it showed the windows.

Then Master Orrin showed me the lantern, and my stomach dropped.

It was small, the size of an apple, made of oiled paper over a cage of split cane, with a stub of candle inside. It hung from a loop of silk ribbon. The two dancers pressed their palms together at shoulder height, the ribbon looped over their joined fingers, and then they turned. Circled. Changed hands. Turned again. The lantern was meant to hang perfectly still the whole time, a little steady light between two people moving round it.

"If the flame touches the paper," Master Orrin said, "it is considered an ill omen for the marriage."

"How ill?"

"In the reign of the third King Aldric, a lantern caught during the opening measure, and the bride fled to a convent before the cake was cut."

Honestly, I thought, that sounds ideal.

"Shall we, my lady?" said the Saint.

She was standing in the middle of the floor with her right hand raised, palm out, waiting. She'd put her hair up for this, a plain knot. Somebody had lit the candle in the lantern, and it hung from Master Orrin's cane, and he lowered it carefully onto her fingers.

I went over and put my hand against hers.

Her palm was cool. Mine was not. I'd hoped she wouldn't notice, and she looked at our hands for a moment and then at me, and I knew she had.

"Begin," said Master Orrin, and tapped the floor with his cane. "And one, and turn."

I turned. Elodie turned. The lantern swung like a church bell.

"Gently, Lady Seraphine!"

"I'm being gentle!"

"You are being a windmill."

We went round again. The trick, I gathered, was to move from the waist and keep your arm completely still, as if it belonged to someone else, which was ironic, given the last time I'd been in that situation. My feet didn't know where to go. Every time I looked down to check them, my shoulder dropped and the lantern lurched and Master Orrin made a noise like a man stepping on a tack.

Elodie, meanwhile, moved as if the floor had been laid specifically for her. Her arm didn't waver. The paper lantern hung from our fingers like it had been nailed to the air, at least on her side.

"Your Holiness," said Master Orrin, sounding puzzled, "where did you learn the Walk? The Temple doesn't dance."

"I've watched it done," said Elodie.

"Watched it where?"

She didn't answer. She was looking at me.

I missed the next turn completely. My heel caught the edge of a rolled rug, my hand slid off hers, the lantern swung out on its ribbon and the candle kissed the paper. A small orange flame jumped up the side.

I did what any sensible person would do. I grabbed it.

Not the ribbon. The lantern. With my bandaged hand, because it was closest. There was a crunch of cane and a hiss and a smell of burnt oil, and then I was standing in the middle of the floor holding a crushed, smoking ball of paper, and Master Orrin had both hands over his heart like a man in a tragedy.

"Ill omen," I said. "Got it. Noted."

Elodie stepped in close.

She took the wreck out of my hand and dropped it on the floor and put her foot on it, neatly, without looking. Then she took my wrist, the bandaged one, and turned it over to check the linen. Unburnt. She let out a breath I hadn't known she was holding.

"You have soot on your face," she said.

"Where?"

She didn't tell me. She lifted her other hand and wiped it off with her thumb, one slow stroke along my cheekbone, from near my ear down towards my mouth.

And then she didn't take her hand away.

It stayed there, cupped along my jaw, light enough that I could have stepped out of it without even meaning to. Her thumb rested at the corner of my mouth. I could smell the green, snapped-stem smell of her and, under it, burnt paper. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. That had never happened to me before, not even in performance reviews.

"Seraphine," she said quietly.

No my lady. Just the name. It went through me like cold water down a sleeve.

"Look at me," she said. "Not at your feet. Your feet already know the way. You only have to stop telling them."

I looked at her.

I stepped backwards so fast I nearly went over the rug again.

"Right," I said. "Yes. Good tip. Very— helpful, that's a very helpful tip, Saint Elodie, thank you, I'll take that on board." On board. Who says on board in a gallery full of dead dukes. "Shall we— another lantern? Have we got another lantern?"

Master Orrin looked at me with deep suspicion. "On... board, my lady?"

"It's a sailing expression."

"Vauclair has never had a navy."

"Then it's a new one."

· · ·

Halfway through the second lantern, the Crown Prince arrived.

I recognised him before the footman announced him, because the book had described him on every third page. Tall, dark-gold hair, a face built for staring at rivers. Prince Lucan was twenty-seven and spent most of Thorns for the Saint standing in doorways with his arms folded, and he was doing it now.

"His Majesty asked me to see how the opening measure was coming," he said. He was looking at me. Not warmly. "I heard about the garden party, Seraphine."

"Everyone heard about the garden party."

"I heard you burned yourself instead of her." His eyes went to my bandage and back. "Is that a new game?"

This was it. My chance. In the book, the Prince and the Saint got their first proper moment at the Lantern Ball, a dance on a terrace, while I was being dragged away in chains. If I could move that up a few days and skip the chains, everyone would be happier.

"No game, Your Highness. In fact." I let go of Elodie's hand. The lantern swayed. "You should take a turn. Her Holiness is much better at this than I am, and I'm sure she'd far rather practise with someone who doesn't set fire to things."

Master Orrin looked scandalised. The Prince looked startled, and then, briefly, hopeful.

Elodie looked at me.

It was perfectly pleasant. It was the pond on a still day. And yet I had the strong, distinct sense of having put my foot through a floor I'd thought was solid.

"Thank you, Your Highness," she said. "But I'm promised to Lady Seraphine."

"For a practice?" said Lucan.

"For all of them."

She held her palm up again, towards me, and waited. Master Orrin lowered the lantern onto it with a shaking hand. There was nothing else to do. I put my hand back against hers.

I didn't look at my feet. I looked at her. And somewhere in the second circle Seraphine's body took over the way it had in the garden, only now it wasn't trying to hurt anybody. It simply knew the way. Turn, and change, and turn. The lantern hung between us as still as a held breath, the little flame upright, and Elodie's eyes never left my face.

When it was over, the Prince said nothing for a while. Then he came and stood next to me by the window, while Elodie spoke to Master Orrin at the far end of the gallery.

"I've asked her to dance four times this season," he said, low. "She's refused me every time. Very kindly."

"She's very kind."

"She is. To everyone." He watched her across the room. "You're the only person I've ever seen her refuse nothing to. I'd like to know why."

So would I, I thought. So would I, mate.

"Charm," I said.

He gave me a long, flat look, bowed exactly as deeply as protocol required, and left.

· · ·

Pim was waiting in my room with something on a silver tray.

She held it out the way people hold out spiders they've caught in a cup. A stiff card, edged in gold, with a seal on the back the size of a saucer, the crown pressed deep into red wax.

His Majesty requests the honour of the presence of
Lady Seraphine Vauclair and Her Holiness the Saint Elodie
to open the Lantern Ball
on the evening of the seventeenth day of Harvestmonth.

"It's early this year," Pim said. "The harvest came in fast, they're saying. Isn't it lovely? You'll be the first pair on the floor. Everyone'll be looking."

I turned the card over and back. The paper was thick and creamy and very expensive and smelled faintly of somebody else's perfume.

"Pim," I said. "What's today?"

"The eleventh, my lady."

Six days.