They still stood a little below the surface of the wharf, not that it would protect them much. Deven gave her a frank appraisal. “And if you go there now, tired as you are, will I be any safer? Weariness can drive any man to error.” His mouth quirked wryly. “Or any woman. Or faerie.”
Lune did not want to hear of the risk. She had measured it herself, time and again, even before she fell out of favor. It was the way of the Onyx Court. One mistake, one wrong word… she was so very tired of that world.
“Come,” Deven said, and took her by the hand.
She followed him in a daze, too tired to ask questions. He led her through the streets, and it seemed like they walked forever before they arrived at a house. Lune knew she should protest — her absence might raise suspicion — but pathetic as it was, the thought of spending even one night outside the Onyx Hall was enough to make her weep with relief.
A single candle lit their way, kindled from one by the door; up the stairs they went, and then something made an appalling amount of noise as Deven dragged it from under the bed and out the chamber door. “Sleep here for tonight,” he said, before he left her. “I’ll keep near.”
That was not safe. But Lune was well past the point of arguing. She collapsed onto the bed, barely pausing to pull a blanket over herself, and slept.
When morning came, she found herself in a small, moderately appointed bedchamber. On the floor beside her was a large, empty box; the noise must have been Deven dragging a mattress free of the truckle bed.
Her glamour had faded while she slept. It had been too long since she ate from that loaf of bread. Lune closed her eyes and rebuilt it, far better this time, making herself into an auburn-haired young woman with work-roughened hands, then pinched off another bite from the lump she carried with her. She dared not leave it behind in the Onyx Hall.
In the neighboring chamber, the mattress lay on the floor; Deven she found downstairs. Pausing at the door, Lune looked around at the modest pewter plate on the sideboard, the cittern in one corner, with two of its strings broken. She had thought briefly last night that the place might belong to some former agent of Walsingham, and had been both right and wrong. “This is your house.”
He’d glanced up at her approach. “Yes.” After a pause, he added, “I know. I should not have brought you here. But I was tired, too, and did not know where else to go; it seemed unkind to put my father in danger. We shall not do it again.”
It was too late to undo. Lune came forward a few steps, smoothing the apron over her skirt. She looked like a maidservant for the house. “I’ll take my leave, then.”
“They know about me, do they not?” The room was dim, even though it was morning; Deven had kept the windows shuttered, and only a few lights burned. They accentuated the hollows in his face. He had not been sleeping well.
“Yes,” Lune said. Taking a deep breath, she added with sincerity, “I am sorry for it. I cannot play the part of a man, and Walsingham would not take a woman into his confidence. The only course open to me was to attach myself to someone in his employ.” That skirted too close to the wound between them. “They knew you were my contact in his service.”
He was dressed once again as a gentleman, though not completely; his servants were nowhere in evidence. The sleeves of his doublet lay across his knees, and the aglets of his points dangled loose from his shoulders. “Would I still be in danger, had it ended at that?”
“Yes.” He deserved honesty. “They would kill you, to make themselves safe.”
“Well.” Deven’s fingers brushed over the vines embroidered on one sleeve, then stilled. “My Queen has commanded me to break her pact with yours. Even if that is a separate thing from this other one we are chasing, we need each other’s aid. But I do not know how one might escape a curse.”
The door was behind Lune, a silent reminder that she should leave. Doing so would only slow their progress, though; the only true safety lay in completing their task. Hoping she was not making a terrible mistake, Lune sat.
“Nor I. A curse may only be ended on its own terms. But Suspiria tried that, and failed. I do not think anyone could absolve her of it. The man who laid it might have lifted it, but he is long dead. And Tiresias — Francis — believed it still bound her.”
“He had some vision, the Goodemeades said. Did he never speak of it to anyone else?”
Lune shook her head, more in bafflement than confident denial. “If ’twere part of the binding she laid on him — she has this jewel, that she can use to place commands on others, so they must obey or die. She might have bound him not to speak of that vision. But even if she did not… he died before he could tell me.”
“And he never mentioned it at other times.”
“How could I know?” Frustration welled up; Lune forced herself not to turn it on him. “You must understand. Dwell among fae for long enough, drink our wine, eat our food… it changes a man. And he had been there for years. He raved, he lived in dreams; nine-tenths of what he said was madness, and the other tenth too obscure to understand. He might have told a dozen people the content of his vision, and we would never know.”
“Did he never say anything else?” Deven leaned forward, elbows on knees, face earnest and alert. “Not of the vision specifically. Anything touching on Suspiria, or curses, or the Onyx Hall… he would not speak entirely at random. Even madmen follow a logic of their own.”
It might be true of ordinary madmen, but Tiresias? Under Deven’s patience gaze, Lune disciplined her mind. When else had he spoken to her of the past?
When he told her to find him.
“He remembered his name,” she murmured, recalling it. “Before I came to Elizabeth’s court. He bade me find Francis Merriman; not until later did I realize he had forgotten who he was.”
“Begin with that,” Deven said. They had not worked together like this, piecing together an image from fragments, in months. And this time she was on his side. “He wanted you to find him. When you did…”
“He died.” Deven had never known Francis; she could tell him what she could not tell the Goodemeades, who had loved the mad seer. “I forced him. He was afraid to speak, but I would not let him back away; I thought finding him would better my position in the Onyx Court.” Quite the opposite, and the memory left a bitter taste in her mouth. “I demanded he tell me what he knew. And so he died.”
She could not look away from his intent blue eyes. Speaking softly, Deven said, “Did you rack him? Put him to the question? Of course not. You kept him from fleeing at the last, perhaps, but unless there is something you have not told me, he chose to speak.”
She would not cry. Lune turned her head away, by sheer force of will, and studied the linen-fold paneling of the wall until she had her composure again.
Deven granted her that space, then spoke again. “Go back to when he bade you find him. What precisely did he say?”
What had he said? Lune tried to think back. She had been wondering how to regain Invidiana’s favor. Tiresias had been in her chamber. She had mortal bread….
“He spoke of Lyonesse,” she said. “The lost kingdom. Rather, he looked at my tapestry of Lyonesse, and spoke of errors made after it sank.” Or had he been speaking of other things? The Onyx Hall, perhaps? She could see him in her mind’s eye now, a slender, trembling ghost. “He did not want to dream. I know he thought of his visions as dreams… then he said something about time having stopped.”
This made both of them sit more sharply upright. “So it had, for Suspiria,” Deven said. Excitement hummed in his voice, held carefully in check.
But there had been something before that. If I should find this Francis Merriman, what then?