House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(59)

“Our coach is waiting,” Jannik says.



*



I wake in an unfamiliar room with pale yellow bedding and walls of ivory. Despite the warm colour, the room feels unwelcoming and the smell of it is wrong. I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirrored wardrobe. “I need a bath. Dear Gris.” I must be particularly ripe by now. A hand basin in an office is no substitute. There are marks of dried blood on my pillow. I barely remember the journey here; it shifts, slippery and fractured.

“I’ve already had the servants arrange everything.”

I look up at Jannik. He’s dressed, neat and perfectly turned out. It’s like nothing happened at all to ruffle him. Maybe it didn’t.

“How are you so . . . .”

“So what?” He frowns. A knock sounds at the door. “Enter.”

The familiar face of my lady’s maid, Cornelia, appears. She’s wide-eyed, holding a tea tray in front of her and just the smell of it almost makes me cry from joy. Mrs. Winterborn must have made a speedy recovery, if the maids are already nervous as cats.

“So bloody chipper.” I am going to drink that entire pot dry and still ask for more, I can already tell.

Jannik laughs. “I’m not the one whose head got rearranged. I’ll see you at breakfast. We’ve nefarious deeds to discuss.”

After he’s gone I drink tea and listen to the household sounds of normality. Cornelia is arranging my bath and, presumably, new clothes for me. I have no idea what she’s found, as almost everything I had is currently drifting in the smoke over MallenIve.

My poor little Riona is dead because of me, I have no home, my marriage has been completely rearranged, and I am about to go into a sphynx’s nest armed only with my name, to save a man I hate. And yet I am oddly content. Languorous, even. I finish my tea and lie back, wondering what has become of my world.

After my bath, I find Cornelia has laid out a dark sage dress I last wore more than a year ago. It is distinctly Pelimburg in fashion, with a severity that is in stark contrast with the frivolous colours and patterns House Mata has made so fashionable here. There is glass beading, to be sure, but the designs are subtle, the beads merely a darker green than the dress.

I touch the silk, smooth it out. “Where did this come from?”

“Lord Pelim had your old wardrobe in storage, ma’am.”

Did he, indeed? I had thought these relics long since handed on. I smile thinly. It seems I am going to don Pelimburg armour when I face the MallenIve princes. How fitting.



*



“What are your plans?” I ask Jannik. We’re in the breakfast room, and the front door bell is ringing non-stop, as parcels and orders are delivered. Distantly, the sound of voices, the papery crumple as servants unwrap our replacements for our old life.

Even in this stranger’s apartments we will temporarily call our own, Jannik is engaged in reading the Courant. He seems unflappable. He sets the paper down. “Harun first.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps to see if he is still alive.” Jannik raises one eyebrow. “Or are you ready to abandon them now?”

“Go on.” If I have to deal with that bully of a House son, I will be well fed. Eggs and bacon and grilled tomatoes and salt-fish. I’m ravenous. The past few days have caught up with me. It all seems a nightmarish blur of fire and ash and blood. And skin, and sweetness. I smile, tight and small as a new secret, before I look up again.

“While I make arrangements there, I’ll need you to set up a meeting with Carien.” He frowns. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re planning to say to her when you offer me over.”

“Ah, I have thought on it,” I say. “She still wants to paint you, as far as I know.”

“Oh, that.” His shakes his head in bitter amusement. “It seems that I shall finally have my portrait done. You can put it up in the Pelimburg University along with the rest of your family’s. That should stir a fire under them.”

“My mother may well have an apoplexy.”

“She probably deserves to have one.”

We skirt around the edges of what we are planning, blunting the reality of it with banter. We say nothing about what we have done, and what we plan to do with it. Jannik’s insecurity and uncertainty tug at me, faintly, like a butterfly-fish pulling on a line, and I wonder what I am giving away to him. It’s not as if I am so sure of my own plans that Jannik could not sense the fear beneath my bravado.

Whatever he knows, he is polite enough not to tell me, and I begin to relax. We can do this. Together, we will find out what we need to bring Isidro back.

The curious tightening around my heart as I think of his name could be from either of us.



*



By the time we reach House Guyin, however, my nerves are back. The house is too cold and stark and forbidding to let me forget what we’re planning to do.

We find Harun drunk in the front lounge, stinking higher than a Lam heap out in the warren of the Hoblands.

“Dear Gris!” I pull all the curtains open and bright sunlight comes flooding in, illuminating the dust hanging in the air. The room is neglected and has a thick sour misery rubbed into the walls and the furniture. “Pull yourself together, Harun.”

Jannik hangs back, watching me rampage through Harun’s property.