“Easy life! The woman’s a fiend. She wants me to give up dreamsmoke. And the theatre. And she wants sex all the time. She believes in only mating with mages.” He shuddered. “Can we pretend to be having an affair, please? Where’s your flower? Quick, pin it on me.”
“I haven’t got one,” I giggled; the smoke must be going to my head. “No one’s going to look at me.”
“Oh, poor little Shiney,” cooed Lucient, grabbing my cheeks and wobbling them just as Scintillant and Illuminus’s sister, Lady Chatoyant, sailed into the room in a swirl of green silks. She was tall and thin and looked like a hawk. An attractive hawk, of course. All mages were as attractive as money could make them. She shot me the sort of look that would melt glass. Oh, Lady, what had I let myself in for? She was followed by a tall magnificent mage with masses of grey hair.
“Hmmm, Great Aunt Glisten. I wonder what she wants,” murmured Lucient, enfolding me in a warm smoky embrace and rubbing his head against mine. Suddenly he stopped and hissed in my ear, “That prick. Blazeann has told on Mother. That’s why Glisten’s here.”
“What?”
“There was an unfortunate incident at Plains-of-gold. Cursed Blazeann, she’s so frothing to be Matriarch, she must have sent to the Council and complained that Mother’s unfit. Prick, prick, prick.”
Another teacup tornado among the mages. The distinctly cold undercurrent in the greeting Splendance and Impavidus gave the new arrivals seemed to support Lucient’s story. The moment she dropped Lady Glisten’s hand, Lady Splendance rose and announced that it was time to dress for dinner. The crystal in her forehead lit up and she floated upwards, passing through the gap between the silken canopy and the staircase full of scampering servants towards her room at the top of the tower. This was the signal for the rest of the visitors to follow, which gave our household the chance to clear all the divans to the side of the room and bring out the long trestle tables for the meal.
“Come on up to my room and have some fun, sweetheart,” said Lucient, as loudly as possible. He put his arm round my waist and his forehead crystal shone as we rose into the air together.
I adore flying.
The new dreamsmoke must have been strong. It took me several attempts to remember that I wanted to ask Lucient the details of what happened at Plainsofgold.
“Oh, nothing very terrible,” he whispered in my ear. “Mother hasn’t quite got the hang of this new dreamsmoke’s strength. Had some in the night, was still completely smoked in the morning. Could have happened to anyone. And anyway, Blazeann covered up, and the mundanes never noticed.”
“Auntie Splendance smoked dreamsmoke the night before a Blessing?” I hissed. I didn’t share Lucient’s relaxed attitude to the Blessing ceremony.
“Oh, don’t be such a prude. There’s no rule against smoking before the Blessing. And Mother’s not used to sobriety. She gets horribly depressed. Sweetheart, a little frolic?” he added loudly, as we floated past Toy. “Give us an appetite.”
He peppered my cheek and neck with kisses.
From the look Toy gave us, I suspected she wasn’t fooled.
“Lucient, no offence but I hope you don’t seriously want to do anything,” I whispered as we floated over the fifth floor balcony rail and in through the doorway.
“Oh, no! Heavens, sweet thing, I mean, pardon me, I love you madly of course, but as a friend only. Anything more—”
“It’d feel like incest, wouldn’t it?” I whispered.
“Indeed,” he said. “I wish everyone was as sensible as you.”
LUCIENT’S ROOM HAD already been decorated with his own linen, carpets and wall hangings, and a little maid called Sharlee had his dreamsmoke bowl all mixed and ready for him. That ghost dreamsmoke was strong. I didn’t have any more, but Lucient did, and the smoke in the room seemed to scramble my brain completely.
I lay on Lucient’s bed and giggled. Lucient’s maid bounced up and down beside me, making the springs creak suggestively while Lucient read bits from his favourite books to me. Time passed without my noticing it. Lucient’s valet, Busy, found a pretty little cloth rose for me to pin to Lucient and dressed me in a set of Lucient’s dinner robes, which added to the fiction that we’d been ‘treading the Blessing path’ together. The sleeves of the robe were quickly folded and sewn back so that I could eat without trailing them into my food. Such lovely fussing.
Somehow, I found myself seated back at the dinner table with no clear memory of how I had got there. Busy had told Thomas to ensure I sat next to Lucient, and on my other side was Great-Uncle Igniate. At least he was an easy dinner companion, belching and rumbling happily away about his main obsessions—food and gambling. Since Blessing food was all meaty baby-making food, the fare could be lean for those avoiding fertility. But dear Hilly seemed to have made all my favourite vegetarian nibbles this year and brought them to my side herself. I started having the sort of good time a person is supposed to have during the Blessing festival.
There was no sign of Scintillant, so I couldn’t torment myself by counting the flowers pinned to his robe. Best of all, Impi was picking on Cousin Illuminus, who apparently had joined the party yesterday without any warning, “expecting poor Marm Effulgentia to accommodate your whims with typical thoughtlessness. And after all the disappointments she’s had to suffer.”
Impi’s further inevitable snide remarks about Bright cleared my head. The meal also helped. By the time we rose from the table and drifted into the drawing room for smoke and liqueurs, I’d remembered how much I hated the people who controlled my life.
Toy was no real danger to Lucient tonight—the women mages of the family spent the Blessing nights in chastity and prayer in order to preserve their powers—so I was able to slip away without his protesting. But as I was scurrying back to my room to check on the ghost, Thomas caught my arm.
“Bright’s in trouble,” he hissed.
CHAPTER FIVE
NOTHING COULD HAVE got my attention quicker.
“Bright’s still in the village. He was too exhausted to go far tonight. The innkeeper waived the Blessing rule and said he might stay at the inn. News has got about and Grumpy’s come to complain to Lady Splendance.”
Thomas dragged me down the passageway towards the entrance hall of the house as he spoke.
“Oh, Lady! Where are they? Does Impi know?”
“Look out,” hissed Thomas, pulling me into a nearby room as the door of the drawing room opened back along the passage. Katti was snoozing by the banked-up fire. She lifted her head and gave a brief mew of enquiry before deciding our human business wasn’t interesting.
Through the half-open door, I saw Impi floating past along the passageway and into the great hall of the Eyrie. Most mages walked when they were on the level, but Impi had to make a show for the peasants. Silly rooster.
We crept down behind him to see what was going on.
“Good evening, good fellows. Blessings upon you.” Impi was at his most urbane. He landed and strutted forward, shoulders back, hips square, all in blue and red and gold like some cheap village cock. He shouldn’t even have been there; this sort of thing was the duty of the Matriarch, or failing her, the Avunculus, Great Uncle Igniate.