Entwined(12)

Bramble’s chin tightened at the door. She swallowed, then snapped to Lord Bradford.

“You!” she snarled, her yellow-green eyes flaring. “You!”

She dashed down the hall in a rustle of black skirts and deep red hair. Her footfalls echoed.

Only now Azalea realized she had been clenching her fists, hard. She slowly unclenched them, and in the dim light saw the crescent-moon marks her nails had dug into her palms. A bit of skin curled up around each mark, as though Azalea had dug into a bar of soap instead of her hand.

A polite cough sounded, and Azalea flushed, remembering Lord Bradford. She turned.

“I didn’t mean—” he said, in his rich voice. He kneaded his hat rim.

“Of course not,” said Azalea. “Things are a bit unstrung here. How is your hand?”

“Better,” he said solemnly. “Thank you.”

True to her word, though feeling wrung inside, Azalea led him up the main stairs of the palace. She didn’t say much. He spoke, filling the silence in a mellow baritone way, of how he owned the clock shop on Silver Street, and the King had sent for the clocksmith, but Mr. Grunnings was out, and that he himself knew quite a bit about clock mechanisms, so he came instead.

“I know it isn’t allowed to visit, in mourning,” he said haltingly. “But I thought if it was Royal Business…” He paused. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. About your mother. She had the nicest laugh, I think, of anyone I ever knew.”

Azalea wanted to burst into tears and throw her arms around his neck. Instead she turned, several stairs above him, feeling the polished banister beneath her hand. She considered his rumpled blond-brown hair and, in a quick movement, reached out and smoothed it down. She had wanted to do that since the Yuletide.

Bemusement passed over Lord Bradford’s face, and Azalea, face hot, led him up the rickety stairs to the tower attic.

The tower stood above the entrance hall, square and symmetrical and old. It smelled of sweet must, with a tang of metal. She had to shield her eyes when they reached the main platform. Sunlight streamed through the glass clockface, casting shadowed numbers across the floor. The gears and pulleys clanged and creaked.

Lord Bradford examined it all with fascination, touching each large carriage-wheel-sized gear, his eyes lighting with excitement.

“This is magic,” he said, pointing up to the main gear that turned the rod and hands. “I was wondering how the counterweights could propel themselves without any steam or force. Look.”

Azalea peered at the gear. Near the center, marked like a smithy’s brand, was a DE, identical to the tea set’s. The D’Eathe mark.

“It must be,” she said. “There are still pockets of magic about, from when the High King lived here.”

It should have frightened her, thinking of the palace as once evil and magicked, with the candelabras and ceiling murals alive, but it didn’t. It was hard to be frightened of a building that smelled of old toast. Once, Azalea guessed, it had been intimidating and grand, with magic walls you could walk through and flues that didn’t have birds nesting in them. When the High King was killed—first poisoned, several times, then shot with pistols, then his head cut off, then burned in the great palace fire…no one really liked to talk about it—Harold the First had somehow unmagicked the palace, rebuilt it, and made it a decent home to live in.

Only bits of magic remained. Like the tea set, and the tower.

“My father used to speak of the magic in the palace,” said Lord Bradford, walking to the tiny fireplace on the side of the platform. Azalea could feel the floorboards beneath her feet move with each of his steps. “He said when they were boys, he and your father used to play together in the magic passages.”

Azalea’s eyebrows rose.

How odd to think of the King playing. Or even as a boy. But as Lord Bradford took a small shovel from the hearth stand and walked back to her, the floorboards creaking again, Azalea said, “Magic passages? Here? In our palace?”

Lord Bradford smiled a small, crooked smile, and leaned to her conspiratorially, underneath the slow-turning rod. Azalea drew closer, and caught the scent of linen and a touch of pine.

“That mark, the D’Eathe mark, when it’s on brick, marks a hidden passage. Did you know that? You can open it by rubbing silver on it.”

“Really!” said Azalea.

“If I recall, though, he said they were only used as storage rooms now.” Lord Bradford shrugged apologetically. “Unexciting, I’m afraid.”

Azalea nodded but shelved this piece of information in the back of her mind.

With the task at hand and still holding the shovel, Lord Bradford slipped up a small set of ladder stairs to the bells-and-gears platform, just above her. The mass of machinery and creaking gears hid him, and Azalea bit her lip and curled her toes in her boots. Far too soon, a gritty, rusty squeaking seized the air. And then silence fell. The ticking halted. Azalea reached up and touched the clock-hand rod, feeling her stomach turn as the rod did not.

Lord Bradford emerged from the gears without the shovel, his face sober again. Azalea, eager to leave, led him down the stairs.

He seemed to sense she was not in the mood for conversation and kept a solemn silence between them.

Azalea stopped when a thump sounded and Lord Bradford gave a soft “Oo.”

“Are you all right?” said Azalea.