Hotel Magnifique(63)

Alastair went silent as he took me through a hall where three liveried men sat hunched over desks like tannery workers.

One tossed a set of carved sticks, watching as they fell into a complex configuration. Another sat motionless over a scarab-shaped bowl filled with water. The third grazed bandaged fingers over a table of sharp metal chips etched with letters. They looked up as we passed by and I noticed they each had one eye slightly lighter than the other, no doubt glass.

I tried to see what the three suminaires were doing, but Alastair gripped my arm and jerked me along.

We climbed a circular set of stairs and arrived inside the small map room from a doorway opposite the main door, a doorway that wasn’t there the last time I was in this room.

“How do you do it?” I asked, mystified.

“How do you think?” He patted the pocket that held the inkwell. “All the enchantments inside are written down in ink. Most are enacted with a command. As long as I’m holding the inkwell and say the correct words, I can enact whatever enchantment I wish.”

He muttered a command and waved a hand. The doorway disappeared, melting into the wallpaper. But the wall didn’t stop moving. It pushed back. The floor creaked. A tiny bed and tinier dressing table billowed up from nothing, turning the small map room into a modest suite.

He spoke another command and the cold hearth burst into colorless flames, lighting up the painting of the woman above it. The woman’s eyes welled with tears. One dripped down the wall, sizzling when it hit the flames.

I realized where I’d seen the cosmolabe before; the woman in the painting wore it around her neck. “Who is she?”

“A suminaire who was able to use many powerful artéfacts,” he said, his voice clipped.

She was someone important, that much was certain.

In that ripped page in the society’s handbook, she had clutched the wolf-capped inkwell. Alastair had just admitted this woman could use other powerful artéfacts. She clearly used the inkwell and probably knew what magic went into voiding contracts.

“Where is she now?” I asked as innocently as possible.

“She died,” Alastair said, his voice sharp. Well, that discussion wasn’t going anywhere.

He opened the giant atlas. “Before she died, however, she used your artéfact to draw each of these maps. We haven’t been able to add any since she passed away.” He looked from my face to the cosmolabe. “Until now.”

He wanted me to draw a map? “But I’ve never drawn in my life.”

Alastair’s eyes flicked to the painting. More tears tumbled down the woman’s face. “She hadn’t either, but with the cosmolabe, she could scribble maps to anything, so long as she had something to reference. She could pinpoint the geographical origin of an object that we already had, or track down the exact location of an object itself. She drew me a map to the jade-needled compass using nothing but a crude sketch in an ancient journal. I do hope you’ll figure it out as quickly as she did.”

“Are you threatening me?”

He didn’t answer. He placed the page of catalogued artéfacts on the table and tapped the entry for the signet ring. Then I understood exactly what the cosmolabe did, how I would be useful.

“I won’t help you,” I said.

He ignored me. “There’s a market at tonight’s destination. It’s open late.” He dumped a stack of silver disks on the table. They were curiously blank. “These coins should work for supplies. Purchase coal, ink, parchment, or vellum. Whatever you wish. I’m granting you the ability to come and go as you please, should you need more. Of course you’ll have an escort waiting in the hall at all times.”

Right. “A guard, you mean?”

“Semantics,” he said, and smiled.

He didn’t care about the black bird who flew out before midnight, or Sazerat, or Bel, or anyone else inside. Now he expected me to be his pawn.

I refused to help him have more power. In one swoop, I picked up the catalogue page and stalked toward the fire with the intent to burn it.

Alastair snatched my wrist and pried the page from my hand. “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you.”

He muttered another command. A bell appeared in the wall beside the door, like the service bells in some of the fancier guest suites. He snapped his fingers and it chimed.

“What’s happening?”

He didn’t answer me. A few seconds later, the doorknob jiggled. “Jani? Jani, are you in there?”

My heart nearly sailed from my chest.

Zosa.

“I’m here!” I ran over and pulled on the doorknob while she beat her fists on the other side. The door wouldn’t budge. “Open it,” I begged.

I managed to get the knob to turn. A click. The door opened half an inch. Enough for her slim fingers to push through the opening and nothing more. They scrabbled along the seam. No feathers or wings; they were real and human, and they reached for me. I touched them—I touched her. Felt her. For the first time in weeks.

Alastair brushed me aside.

“Let her in,” I choked.

He didn’t. With one swift movement, he pulled Zosa’s fingers through to above the knuckle. The seam of the door grew teeth.

No!

It slammed shut in a sickening bite, leaving behind a smudge of red and four slim fingers in Alastair’s palm.