Hotel Magnifique(72)
“You brought me to Aligney?”
“A lackluster apology,” he said, repeating my own words. “I had hoped . . .” His eyes searched mine for a moment, then dropped to the ground. He shook his head. “Forget it.”
I stood openmouthed as the man who had a witty remark for everything kicked up a clod of soil and stalked into the rain without another word.
* * *
Back in the room, I forced all the tangling thoughts of Bel from my mind and returned to drawing. I touched the entry for the signet ring. Still nothing. I hurled the catalogue page on the ground and paced, coming to a stop at the painting.
“Tell me where the ring is.” When the woman refused to say a thing, my palm hit the wall. The painting jumped in its frame. “Tell me your secrets!” I screamed. “Tell me!”
More tears welled and dripped down the canvas. One caught on her lashes.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. I brought a finger up to brush it away and inhaled.
It will come to you like breathing, Bel had said. One breath was all it took. One intake of salt air. Had I not lived in the muck and stink of Durc for years, I never would have discerned that single breath from the air around me.
I took the painting off the wall. The frame made a heavy thump when it landed on the table. Lifting the cosmolabe, I took a few deeper breaths. With each one, my senses came alive with tastes and scents that could never occupy this small room. This woman was supposed to be dead, but I tasted her perfume along with wrought iron and brine. I closed my eyes and pictured a shop with a purple scalloped awning. When I opened my eyes, flowers bloomed in heaps around the woman’s face. Silky black petals gathered along the wooden frame, raining in a waterfall to the floor. I ran a finger over the woman’s mouth and a voice spoke clearly in my mind.
“Leave me be, Fabricant!”
Charcoal flew from my fingers. I backed away from the painting, eyes wide. It was the woman’s voice—the same effervescent voice from the itineraries—and she was furious.
When I touched her mouth again, the same words echoed. It wasn’t the ring, but it was something.
I lifted the charcoal and concentrated. Sure enough, I could picture a map—a map to this woman, the former Fabricant.
A new sheath of parchment crackled as I began to sketch. My senses ignited and my mind painted avenues and buildings faster than my fingers could draw them. When I was finished, my chest swelled at what lay on the page, what it meant.
It took too long to scrub the coal from my fingers and my face, but I made sure to get every last smudge. I pinned up my hair. Then I folded the map in two and shoved it deep in my pocket where it would remain until I found Bel.
Outside the room, Sido was gone. A new liveried guard stood against the wall.
“Got something for me?” he asked, a greedy look on his face.
I gave him a feline grin and fanned myself with a folded map I’d quickly scribbled from touching the rug. “I drew the ma?tre’s map.”
He itched his pink, hairy ear. “That’s the thing he’s looking for?”
“It is. Oh, Alastair will be so pleased.” I folded the map in two, then slowly trailed my fingers down the parchment. “He promised me a reward when I brought it to him.” I moved to step around the guard, but he stopped me and peeled the map away.
“Give it back,” I demanded.
He didn’t. The guard stuffed it in his pocket. “You stay in your room. I’ll deliver it myself.”
“You can’t,” I said. “It’s mine.”
“It’s not yours. It’s the ma?tre’s. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what he says.” He then took off down the hall. I waited until he was out of sight before running in the opposite direction.
I tried Bel’s room first, pounding a fist on his door. But the only thing that seemed to hear me were the candles. Lilac flames stretched toward where I stood, nipping at my shoulders.
“Stop it now!” I roared. Every last one of them fizzled back, shrinking from me as I raced for the lift.
Downstairs, a lobby soirée had commenced and the theme was an autumn forest, probably the same forest Bel was supposed to take us to instead of Aligney. The smell of various spices filled the air. Great gilded beasts decorated the room: wood stags, deer, and a huge bronzed bear with rubies for eyes.
Each animal was stuck through with golden arrows that held foraged fruit. Macarons dripped down like ornaments, pressed with spun sugar leaves. Everywhere, leaves were falling from high above, like snow from the heavens, turning to wisps of colored smoke as they landed across the noses of giddy guests.
The color scheme shifted between ochers and burnt oranges; fitting that Madame des Rêves would show up in a brocade gown, her enormous wig-of-the-hour shining the palest hue of plum. Her curls bounced as she spat orders at a row of waitstaff, fingering the silver talon at her bosom.
I jumped back when more performers twirled by, clothed in fabrics embroidered with vestiges of fall: berries, pinecones, and coppery cornucopias.
Bel should be inside by now. Standing on my tiptoes, I looked around, but couldn’t spot him anywhere.
“There you are.” I flinched when Alastair came up beside me. He pressed a cool flute of champagne between my fingers. In his other hand he held the scribbled map I’d just given away. “Your guard delivered this.” He held up the map. “Where does it lead?” he asked.