Castle & Key, page 10
“Don’t be like that,” said Susan coaxingly. “You didn’t talk the other day. Why start talking to us now?”
“Don’t know,” it said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“All right,” Susan said. She wasn’t about to waste a good source of information, no matter how unconventional, and she had no way to know if the hall stand would speak again after tonight, moreover. “Well, now that you’re talking, how about telling us a bit about what goes on in this house?”
“Mist for days, and then someone plummets through the glasshouse roof,” said the hall stand promptly.
Emmett’s brows quirked. He asked, “Who went through the roof?”
“I don’t know. I’m just a hall stand.”
“How do you know someone did go through it, then?”
“Very loud, glasshouse rooves,” said the stand. “They carried him out through the front doors, too—against the rules, that is.”
Susan couldn’t help asking, “Did the body have on boots with green piping around the sole?”
“Oh no!” said the hall stand. “It’s against the rules to answer questions.”
Emmett flicked another look at it. “You’ve just been answering questions.”
“I have, haven’t I?” it said, in some surprise. “Why did I do that? Well, I’m not answering any more, and you can’t make me.”
“So I see,” said Susan, rather amused than otherwise. If the hall stand was still talking tomorrow, it could possibly be tricked into answering just a few more questions if she came back suddenly and it forgot again that it wasn’t to answer questions. “Well, if that’s the case, we’d best be on our way.”
“Must we?” asked Emmett, his eyes on her.
“This way, I think,” Susan said, jerking her head toward the front doors and laying her hand on the huge handle of one. “I’m quite sure I can fiddle this open.”
“No going outside at night,” said the hall stand. “That’s another rule.”
“A person should always be free to go outside,” Susan told it. “That’s my rule. Let’s go. I don’t want to lose Janet.”
“Just wait,” the hall stand said threateningly. “You’ll find yourself falling over the banisters or going through the glass roof out there. You won’t be the first.”
“I don’t really like being threatened,” Susan told it pleasantly, turning back briefly from the front doors.
“I’ll burn it in the garden furnace,” Emmett said, his voice very nearly as cold as the will-o-wisp. “It’ll be hard to make threats from there.”
The hall stand sounded distinctly unsettled. “You can’t do that!”
“Not alone,” said Emmett. “It’ll take two of us.”
“Lummox,” it said uncertainly. “Lummox, you’d better not.”
“I don’t particularly like people copying what I say,” Susan said warningly, but she didn’t remove the restraining hand on Emmett’s arm, and he didn’t try to either move or remove the hand.
Then it occurred to her that she hadn’t called Emmett lummox anywhere in the vicinity of the hall stand—or anywhere else but closed rooms, the closed-off hallway, and upstairs.
“Didn’t copy you,” it said. “Can’t be throwing people into fires, you know.”
“That’s the thing,” Susan said, with growing coldness. “You’re not a person. You’re a hall stand.”
“Yes. Well,” it said. “That’s rude, but I suppose it’s right. But I might have been a person if I’d tried a bit harder, mightn’t I?”
Susan asked, with a frozen heart, “Brenners? Is that you?”
“Oh,” he said, and seemed to sigh a deep, woody, creaking sigh. “So that’s my name. Think I was looking for that.”
Susan looked up somewhat blindly into Emmett’s face and met his eyes. “That’s torn it,” she said. “Brenners must have been too close when we went through.”
“What’s my name, Brennan?” Emmett asked the hall stand.
It would have been impossible to confirm that the hall stand focused on him, but there was a moment of tense tightening in the air before the hall stand said, “You’re Emmett. Ye gods, Su! Properly done it now, haven’t you?”
“Don’t worry, Brenners, we’ll fix this,” she said.
Brennan seemed to creak rather than say, “Can’t be fixed, only completed.”
Emmett’s eyes found Susan’s once again. “What do you mean?”
“Blest if I know, old thing. Just popped into my head. Whatever happens in this place gets into your head; I’ve spent half my days thinking I am a hall stand, you know.”
“I suppose that’s why you didn’t talk until now,” said Susan, remembering the ow! she had heard in the silence of the night as her flicker of magic touched the hall stand that was Brennan. Perhaps she’d done something for him after all. “Oh, by the way, Brenners—how do we turn you back?”
Brennan, as though without thinking, said readily, “Got to get the Perfect Result before I get out, old thing. Can’t fix anything without the Perfect Result.”
“Of course,” said Susan lightly, pinching Emmett’s arm to warn him to stop staring at the hall stand before he put Brennan off. “And what’s the Perfect Result?”
“Beggared if I know, old thing,” he said, after a pause. “Don’t even know why I said it.”
Susan met Emmett’s gaze. “It must be the curse,” she said softly. “This is more like it!”
“If it’s really a curse—”
“Yes, it will make things quite hard.”
“Wish you two wouldn’t speak in code,” Brennan said.
“I’m going to try something,” Emmett told him. “See if I can get a sense for the magic on you.”
Susan waited and watched in interest. She was better with locks, but Emmett was better with magic puzzles; he had a kind of sense about them, not unlike his sense for unravelling confusion spells. She saw his magic moving about him in subtle teal shades and even saw it shimmer along his hands for a brief moment, then there was a similar shimmer around the hall stand that was Brennan, though she couldn’t see what it was doing.
Brennan seemed to gasp a little and then groaned, and the groan sounded suspiciously like a creak. When he spoke again, that was a creak, too. “Ouch. Hurt.”
“I’ll try again,” Emmett said, his jaw flexing.
“I really wouldn’t, lummox,” Susan said thoughtfully. “I rather think Brenners finds it more difficult to talk when you do that.”
“Perishing difficult!” said Brennan, and she could hear the effort in his voice. “Don’t like it, old man. D’rather you wouldn’t.”
“I fancy we’d be far better off trying to find out more about the Perfect Result and get at the thing that way,” Susan recommended. “Curses don’t much like people trying to shorten the road with magic. We’ve got all the time in the world while we’re here, after all.”
“Shouldn’t stay in a place like this,” Brennan said, more seriously. “Best get going—take the bride with you before something happens. I’ll be all right.”
“Goodness me, no!” said Susan. “Once it’s known that one will put up with one’s friends being turned into household equipment, every man and his dog want to do it. Hold tight, Brenners; we’ll figure it out. Not today, probably, but we’ve got time.”
“All right,” he said. “But while you’re here, you should keep away from the master, at least.”
“I’ll look after the master,” Emmett said. “Susan will focus on the bride.”
“Good plan, old man,” said Brennan, and there was a creak that seemed to suggest he was yawning.
He didn’t speak again, even when Susan patted his side, and she said quietly, “I suppose we’ll be able to talk to him again tomorrow. I fancy the magic took a bit out of him.”
Emmett nodded, a line between his brows. “I’ll ask the master about the Perfect Result.”
“If he talks to you about it,” Susan said sceptically. “If he can talk to you about it. I’ll focus on the servants, then. Good night, lummox. I’d better find Janet before she has a chance to get winkled into someone’s idea of a Perfect Result.”
“I’ll walk with you as far as the wing.”
“No need,” Susan assured him. “I can find my own way in the dark, you know. Off you go; I’ll go up later.”
Emmett, his jaw mulish, made one more attempt. “I’ll wait.”
“No, no, lummox,” said Susan. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine. I have something else I want to get before I go back to our suite. Unless she’s gotten lost in the mist, Janet will be in bed by this time, I suspect. If not, we’re already too late.”
Emmett turned obediently toward one of the staircases, but he asked over his shoulder, “What if she has gotten lost in the mist?”
“Then what I have to fetch will be doubly useful, I should imagine,” said Susan cheerfully. “Goodnight! Mind the ghosties, and I’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast!”
She went back through the hall but didn’t go further than the door to the music room, which she eased open and slipped through, with an odd little hope lingering in her mind. And just as she had hoped, the master’s huge dog was there: a massive coil of shadows that took up nearly the entire length of the couch on which it was curled coalesced all of that darkness into two pools of inky, shiny blackness that were its eyes as it raised its head at her entrance.
“Good dog,” said Susan softly, hearing the faintest of growls.
The master, whether in pretence or in all seriousness, seemed to have taken to Janet. Susan was hoping that his dog would do the same. Even if it was just drawn to her because of the curse, the dog would likely keep Janet safe at those times when Susan herself couldn’t. Now that Brennan needed to be considered, her attention would necessarily be divided, and Susan had no intention of leaving the bride to die like other brides before her.
No, a guard dog would be the very thing. And just as Susan hoped that the dog being the master’s dog would incline it to be friendly with Janet, did she hope that it would make Janet more likely to accept such a companion.
She didn’t even have to call it: the dog rose in a smooth surge of fur and muscle and trotted toward her, then followed her straight out of the door as if it had been waiting for her to fetch it. Interesting and useful.
Much heartened, Susan strode swiftly up the hallway once again and said a quiet, “Night, Brenners!” in the direction of the hall stand as she loped up the stairs with the dog’s ears brushing against her fingers as she went.
She felt rather than heard the constant growling that vibrated quietly from the dog’s chest as they passed through the upstairs hall, and thought that the shadows and mist writhed more than they had earlier, though the ballroom doors didn’t shake as she passed them this time. Susan was surprised at how much safer it felt with a dog the size of a small horse by her side and was comforted that she had made the right decision.
She found a wide-awake and slightly green-stained Janet waiting for her with one single light-stick aglow beside her on the table there, her arms clutched around her knees and a worried line between her brows.
That line vanished in astonishment when the hound entered the room behind Susan and swung its massive head from side to side as if taking in the potential dangers of the suite.
“Good heavens!” said Janet, her eyes wide. “Did you…did you mean to bring that in?”
“Of course!” Susan said briskly. “If you’re going to be wandering about the manor or its grounds at all times of the night and day, you’d probably better have someone to take with you when you don’t want to wake me up.”
Janet blushed faintly and used the leap the hound made to her bed, and the subsequent padding and turning around and around to find a comfortable mess in which to rest, to recover her colour before she spoke again.
“You were downstairs, too?” she asked.
“Not at first,” said Susan. “But when I woke up, you were gone. I thought something might have happened.”
Janet wrapped her arms around the hound’s neck and rested her chin on its head. “Nothing happened.”
“Yes, I see that,” Susan said, nodding at the stains on Janet’s night gown. “We’d better wash that tonight so that no one else has to strain their belief muscles, if we’re going with that story. Did you get those climbing out the window?”
Janet looked down in confusion, caught sight of the staining, and audibly gasped. “Oh no! I didn’t think about that!”
“That’s the delight in having more than one nightgown,” Susan said bracingly. “Come along; we’d better take it off and get it washed. I’ll get you another one.”
Janet climbed meekly out of bed and allowed herself to be stripped of the nightgown, but when she was working her arms into a new one and Susan took the other over to the washstand, she said with an assumption of coldness, “I suppose you were very surprised to see me in the garden.”
“Not surprised,” said Susan, working a small bit of magic into the water and then into the stains as she rubbed the layers of fabric together. “A little worried, perhaps. Someone tried to kill you yesterday morning, and we still don’t know whether it was your husband or not. I thought you would have felt safer keeping to your suite for now.”
“He’s not trying to hurt me,” Janet said, putting her chin in the air. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“All right,” said Susan easily. “So he’s not trying to kill you. But there’s something or someone about the manor that is trying to kill you, and wandering around at night in your nightgown doesn’t seem like the most sensible idea.”
“I know,” Janet said, working her fingers in the folds of her new night dress. “But I don’t seem to be able to help it. How can I, Susan? I feel like I’m only seeing the outside of him, and I can see him in there trying to get out, but he can’t. Him playing the violin was the first time that I thought I could see him—really see him—and they wouldn’t let him do it during the day.”
Oh dear, thought Susan, turning back to the task at hand to hide her dismay. She really is in love with him.
It was far too soon for anyone to be in love with anyone, but it couldn’t be helped.
“All right,” she said once again, lifting the wet fabric to the light to check for remaining stains. “Just make sure that when you go out, you take me or the hound with you. Accidents might happen to one of us by ourselves, but the two of us together should be able to look after each other. The hound should be useful at a pinch.”
“I’ll be more careful,” said Janet.
It sounded like she was agreeing, but Susan was well aware that she hadn’t said she wouldn’t go off alone, and that both worried and interested her.
She tucked that thought away for further consideration later, and asked, “How did you hear the violin, by the way? I could only hear it because you left the window open.”
A happy flush came to Janet’s face. “I think he was playing for me: the window to the music room was open into the garden as well.”
“That doesn’t explain how the sound got through our windows,” pointed out Susan.
“I don’t know about that. I just know that I was dreaming about him, and then I woke and opened the windows for some fresh air. I heard it as clear as a bell.”
“Delightfully simple,” said Susan, nodding. “That’s very useful to know.”
Janet’s eyes widened a little. “Is it? Why?”
“I don’t know yet,” Susan said, wringing the nightgown out gently and hanging it beside the fireplace, which was burning low but still there.
She didn’t particularly want to stoke it up, given Janet’s unfortunate incident yesterday morning: the nightgown could dry at its own pace without anyone belowstairs being the wiser, and the two of them could avoid another fireplace incident.
* * *
Susan was a little later rising the next morning, but Janet was still asleep when she left the room despite that. All for the best, Susan was inclined to think. The hound raised its head as she exited the room but showed no signs of following Susan, which was very satisfactory, too; there might be time after breakfast for a chat with Brennan, if he was still talking by then.
Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. Oswald had already eaten and abandoned the kitchen when she got there, and though Regan and Helfer were still there, they were both in the last stages of their meal. To Susan’s satisfaction, Emmett was also at the breakfast table, though by no means so far advanced in his meal.
“You’re down early,” she said to him.
He sat beside Regan, methodically putting away enough bacon and eggs for a small platoon and patiently ignoring the way the housemaid frequently elbowed him, as well as the sardonic grin from across the table, where Helfer drank coffee.
“Isn’t he ridiculous?” asked Regan of Susan. “I didn’t know they made people this big.”
Susan grinned and sat down next to Helfer, aware of the shade of amusement in Emmett’s eyes across the table. “He does take up a bit of space, doesn’t he? I’ll have to remember not to sit across from him next time so that I’ll have enough space for my legs.”
“You’ll be lucky if there’s enough food for a next meal,” said Helfer, rising with his plate in one hand and his coffee in the other. “Move your bones, Regan; Mrs. Carmichael said we’re to do the rugs today.”
Regan grumbled but gulped down the last of her tea and followed him to the sink, and then out of the kitchen, a half slice of toast still in one hand. That left Susan and Emmett alone at the table together. She grinned at him, then rose and trod across the room to make sure that there really was no one around in a hidden corner, or an open window that could be conveniently used to eavesdrop.
When she dropped back down into her seat after double-checking the light sound-proofing spell on the doors that kept in the clatter of dishes and cutlery, Emmett looked up from his breakfast and said with a full mouth, “Well, stripling?”
“We’ve got the room to ourselves,” she said. “Isn’t it nice? If you don’t want more coffee, I’m going to finish it, by the way.”
