Her vampire didn’t respond immediately, climbing the spiral stair. But he paused in the shade of the tower’s portico entrance and turned a measuring look on her. Rian was aware of her own heartbeat quickening, but ignored the memory of teeth, not allowing physical fear to keep her from meeting his gaze.
“No,” he said, eventually. “Only at the end. I came in through the grove, as I do here.”
“Grove? In Gwyn Lynn Palace?”
“Any collection of trees is a grove to Cernunnos.” Makepeace followed the edge of the portico around to a walkway heavily draped in vines, and strode on ahead, passing quickly through a section where the wind-burned leaves let through the hazy light of the afternoon sun.
Wondering how many of the design decisions of the palace had been made to accommodate the Wind’s Dog, Rian waited until the man had reached a shadier point, then said: “I was thinking that the Suleviae were demonstrating a remarkable trust in my ability to hold my tongue, but of course it’s simply that you’ve made it impossible for me to speak out of turn.”
“You were the one looking to put a collar around your throat.”
“The children weren’t.” The standard mesmeric abilities of vampires did not allow for nuanced commands, but she’d felt him lay an order to hold their tongues upon them. A control of minds, perception—what would that permit?
“Are you an open secret? Had I just not heard the gossip?”
He ignored her, leading the way into the Sulevia Leoth’s section of the royal residences, to an uncomfortably warm room thrumming with song. The children sprawled on cushions, and shifted as the two triskelion descended to whirl around Makepeace’s head.
“Go roast someone else,” he said, waving a hand as if shooing flies. “Tete, I hope you’ve something worthwhile to show me.”
The youngest of the Gwyn Lynn family jumped to her feet and took the dangling cuff of Makepeace’s sleeve in both her hands.
“She has a whole sequence done,” Princess Iona said, levering herself up on one elbow while the rest of the children clambered upright. “Tete makes lumiscope strips,” she added, her gaze now on Rian. “She won’t show them to us until Comfrey has sneered at them.”
The youngest princess was pulling Makepeace urgently toward one of the room’s three exits, but Griff had set himself up as a roadblock.
“Why don’t you talk old-fashioned?”
Makepeace sidestepped. “Why would I?”
“Because people talked differently back when you were growing up?”
“People talk differently in Lutèce as well, but I see no reason to speak French to you.” He glanced at Rian. “I’ll send one of the midges to see you out.”
“I’ll do that,” Prince Luc said.
“So obliging, Luc,” Princess Iona murmured from her cushions. “What are you up to?”
“Indulging my curiosity,” her brother said. “You never look properly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The princess began to sit up, but then lay back as if the effort was too great. “Ah, I’ll get it out of you later. Lovely to meet you all. Thanks for the excuse to skip lessons.”
Rian was pleased with her charges for responding with reasonable aplomb, particularly as one Gwyn Lynn was disappearing out the room, a second half-asleep, and the third’s attention almost entirely on the animal in her lap. The last quietly indicated an exit.
The twins seemed particularly subdued, but Griff’s spirits bounded as soon they were out of sight of the puppy, and he peered eagerly in every direction, keen to view as much of the palace as possible.
“I intended to ask our escort if we could visit the Stone Garden,” Rian said to the young prince, “but I suspect that’s where you’re taking us.”
“Then I was right,” Prince Luc said, looking pleased. “It took me an age to work out why your nephew seemed so familiar.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
Attention divided, Griff almost walked into the page who had been their initial guide, who had clearly been lurking ready to escort them back. She skipped nimbly aside, and at a word from the prince fell into step behind them.
“You look a great deal like your father when he was your age,” Rian explained.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Griff studied the prince suspiciously. “You never met my father, did you?”
“In a way, I grew up with him,” Prince Luc said. “You’ll see in a minute, we’re nearly there.”
They had reached the Crossing Gallery, and headed right, collecting numerous interested glances and a discreet escort of the guard who had been stationed at the entrance to the royal residences. The Stone Garden was only a short walk beyond the Gallery: a conservatory looking out over the western reach of Lake Gwyn Lynn, its glass and restrained plantings carefully designed to complement a work that had taken so many years of Charlotte Seaforth’s life.
“The Processional,” Eluned said, brightening. “I was hoping to see it.”
“One of the highlights of the palace,” Prince Luc said, and added to Griff: “Can you see what I meant now?”
The look Griff offered him was deeply suspicious, and the boy walked toward the centre of the room as if expecting some trick or trap. Rian watched his face anticipating the moment of recognition, but the unreality of the day combined with fragments of her own childhood and made it difficult to overlook that this was the first opportunity Rian herself had had to see her mother’s masterwork in full. She had become someone who counted, who received invitations, and could go to a palace as a guest not a servant, using the front entrance, even indulged with tours of its treasures. And this abrupt increase in her own value had so little to do with her determined effort to climb out of a well, but mere circumstance.
The Processional was not a single piece, but a circle of statues. The Sulevia Leoth, the Sulevia Sceadu, and the Sulevia Seolfor, each leading the creatures they, by Sulis’ grace, commanded. Every piece brought Rian’s mother back so strongly. Her cutting sarcasm when they discovered she’d been given the wrong measurements, and had had to rework her design. A technical discussion over the difficulty of depicting the triskelion. Laughter, warm as honey, at the vanity of a model she’d used for the entourage. One of the rare arguments between her parents, over nothing Rian had been able to guess, and her father’s immense contrition when a wild gesture had sent one of the stone hares crashing to the studio floor.
There had been long absences as well, when her mother had been working on the depictions of the Suleviae of the time—Queen Mennia, her sister Princess Nyroe, and Princess Ashwen. Whenever his wife was away, Rian’s father would rattle about the studio, starting new projects and then abandoning them half-done, frequently disappearing off to London and leaving Aedric and Rian to the care of neighbours, his latest student, and once even with a confused visitor. Each time her mother’s return had been spring after winter.
Griff had made his discovery. “Is this really Father?”
Rian nodded, and gathered together her composure to join the children crowded around the train of the Sulevia Leoth. Three dragons, miniatures of Nimelleth, Dulethar and Athian, each escorted by a child of twelve, one hand resting lightly on neck, or flank, or crested spine. This represented how the Sulevia Leoth could use people as vessels for the dragon’s fire, for it was an extreme rarity for the dragons themselves to rise from beneath the land. Aedric had modelled for the third of these pairs, fingers barely brushing Athian’s flank. The marble dragon looked back at him, to be met with a smile of solemn reassurance.