Stepsister(31)

And yet, when Isabelle got outside, and felt how the sword’s hilt fit so perfectly in her hand, how the blade was so finely weighted, she couldn’t help but take a swipe at a rosebush, then smile as several pink flowers fell to the ground. She decapitated two lilies as she walked, then whacked a blowsy blue hydrangea off its stalk.

“The marquis told me to practice,” she said aloud, almost guiltily, as if some unseen person had accused her of enjoying herself.

Dangerous characters were afoot. She was making sure she could defend herself, that’s all.

It was magical, the sword. Incredible. Breathtaking. She couldn’t deny it.

But it wasn’t her heart.

And it never would be.

She wouldn’t let it.





Thirty-Five


As Isabelle fenced in the darkness, Chance, comfortably installed in the Chateau Rigolade, peered down at the flask of silvery liquid he’d concocted.

All around him, his retinue busied themselves. Only the magician was nowhere to be seen.

His attention focused on the flask, Chance was barely aware of the people around him. The silver liquid was simmering on a burner in the centre of a diabolically complex distilling system. Its color was shimmering and rich, but Chance was not satisfied.

His scientist had set up the apparatus on the enormous table in the centre of the chateau’s dining room just after they’d arrived. It was surrounded by brass scales, presses and expellers, a mortar and pestle, and apothecary jars containing all manner of ingredients.

Chance reached for one of the jars now. He removed its stopper, extracted a piece of yellowed lace, and dropped it into the flask. A spoonful of dried violets was added next, followed by a cobweb, a scrap of sheet music, a crumbled madeleine, and numbers pried off a clock face.

The liquid bubbled and swirled after each addition, but Chance was still not happy. He combed through the jars, searching for one last ingredient. With a triumphant Aha! he found it—a pair of shimmering moth wings. As he dropped them into the flask, the liquid transformed into a beautiful faded mauve.

“Perfect!” he declared. With a pair of tongs, he carefully lifted the flask off the flames and set it on a marble slab to cool.

“I need a name for this ink,” he said to the scientist, who was working across from him. “A name for the feeling you get when you see someone again. After many years. Someone lost to you. Or so you thought. And you remember them a certain way. In your mind, they never age. But then suddenly, there they are. Older. Changed by time. Different, but exactly the same.”

The scientist looked up from his work. He peered at Chance over the top of his glasses.

“This person meant something to you?” he asked.

“Could have. Might have. Almost did. Would have,” Chance said. “If the timing had been right. If you’d been wiser. Bolder. Better.”

The scientist, spare and rigorous, not a man given to flights of fancy, put a hand over his heart. He closed his eyes. A wistful smile played across his lips.

“Wonderfulness,” he said. “That’s the name.”

Chance smiled. He wrote Wonderfulness on a paper label, stuck it on the bottle, and carried it to the far end of the table. The map of Isabelle de la Paumé’s life lay rolled up there. One never knew when a reunion might be called for. It was important to be prepared for any contingency.

Other inks he’d created were scattered around the map. There was Defiance, a swirling red-orange ink made from ground lion’s teeth mixed with bull’s blood. Inspiration was pale gold, made from black tea mixed with cocoa, a pinch of dirt from a poet’s grave, and four drops of a lunatic’s tears left to ferment in the light of a full moon. And Stealth, the color of midnight, was composed of owl’s breath, hawk feathers, and the powdered finger bones of a pickpocket.

Are the pigments bold enough, the formulas strong enough, to draw new paths? he wondered as he set the bottle of Wonderfulness down. He’d tried to make ink before, many times, but had never been able to devise tints powerful enough to undo the crone’s work.

Dread jabbered at the edges of his mind now. He poured himself a generous glass of cognac from a crystal decanter to silence it. After draining it in one gulp, he sat down in front of the map. As he unrolled it, smoothing it flat, he couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of the Fates’ work. Their parchment was the finest he’d ever seen, their inks exquisite, the quality of their drawing unparalleled.

Isabelle’s full name was at the top of the map, hand-lettered in Greek, the Fates’ native tongue. Covering the rest of the parchment was the richly colored landscape of her life. Chance saw her birthplace, other towns she’d lived in, Saint-Michel. He saw the peaks and valleys, the sunny plains and the dark woods through which she had crossed. He saw her path, a thick black line, and the dotted, dashed, and hatched lines of lives that intersected hers.

But it was what Chance could not see that so unnerved him.





Thirty-Six


“Are they ready?” he called out impatiently.

The scientist, polishing a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses with a soft cloth, nodded. He brought them to Chance.

“They’re powerful?” asked Chance, taking them.

“Very. I ground the lenses myself. The left gives you hindsight; the right, foresight.”

Chance held them up to the light. “Pink?” he said as he looked through the lenses. It was not his favorite color.