Dead leaves crunched beneath her feet as Beatrice reached the sloping ground at last. Success! And now what? She rubbed at her scratched hands and peered up and around, catching her breath as she considered. In her moment of stillness, she caught a hint of music in the air which at first she supposed was a natural one—the wind in the trees, a nearby waterfall. But through all of that wove a complex, plucking melody that grew clearer the longer she listened. Hints of a human voice, singing in refrain alongside the birds. It was sad, even a bit eery, that voice issuing through the mists…but beautiful, none of its words quite decipherable.
Taking a deep breath, she tasted only the earthen scents of the forest. The wind was blowing the wrong way to give her any hint of the voice’s owner. Closing her eyes, she did as she was trained—imagining herself on four legs, fleet of foot and furred. She felt the change in the air this time, rather than saw it—an effervescent tingling that burst across her skin and then spread through her veins.
In a heartbeat she was a fox again, unencumbered by the heavy tedium of skirts and petticoats. The mountain blossomed to vivid new life as her senses changed and intensified, and she took a few moments to adjust. Then Beatrice did what she’d been dying to do in shifted form for as long as she could remember, something she could still enjoy even though she’d been Blessed by the most reviled of spirits.
She burst into a run.
It was like flying, almost, even going uphill at such a steep angle. Her body was just so light and it moved so freely, her muscles like coiled springs. She lept and scrabbled her way through dense ferns, over boulders and fallen firs. As she delved deeper into the climbing forest, the song grew clearer at times and was lost to her at others, swallowed up by the moss and the trees.
Slowing to crouch before a particularly steep rise of stone, Beatrice sprang upward to clear it…but something snagged around her rear ankles. As she was yanked backwards she released a strangled yelp, writhing against the grip now tightening around her. At first, absurdly, she thought of trees roots coming to life, snagging her up like a rat in the coils of a snake. But as she twisted around, snarling and barking—not ladylike, a voice piped up at the back of her head—she had her first glimpse of what it was that had hold of her.
It was a human skeleton.
Beatrice emitted a shrill cry, a scream so human-sounding that it was startling in itself. The muffled music came to an abrupt halt, the creatures of the forest going silent a beat later. Dragging its lower half up from the dirt and undergrowth, the skeleton hefted her squirming form beneath its arm and, turning, made its way down the mountain in the direction from which she’d come. The birds began to sing again, but the unseen siren did not.
Beatrice quickly found that the more she writhed, the harder the thrall’s bony arms constricted around her. So she went still, focusing her efforts instead on returning to human form.
But it was no use.
The wind blew up the mountain, carrying with it all the scents of a freshly dug and decorated grave. Her eyes snapped open and she twisted around to see Dame Stagston, stalking up the hill with shadows trailing in her wake like hungry eels. Darkness pooled in her eyes, too—her sockets appearing as empty as those of the dead she commanded.
As thrall and mage came within three paces of the other, the skeleton dropped her—letting Beatrice roll through the leaves until she slowed to a scrambling halt at Stagston’s feet. Though the knight’s fury burned the air around her with its intensity, her tone this time was cold. Measured.
“I ordered you to stay in your suite. Not to leave without my permission.” Her scent surged, perfuming the air with her disapproval, her Silver authority. Beatrice cowered, shrinking back from her. Trying not to breathe her in.
Then Dame Stagston bent at the waist, her gloved hand darting out in a blur of black leather. A dull sort of pain pulled at Beatrice’s neck, and she gasped in spite of herself, dragging in a heady lungful. The ground fell away as Darcy lifted her up by the scruff and proceeded down the mountain with Beatrice dangling limply at her side. But her immobility was not a byproduct of the scruffing and the way it made her body feel numb and strange, though it did. It was because something had just happened within her that was so unexpected that it struck her to stillness.
The scent…Darcy’s scent…it took.
For the first time ever, Beatrice felt the Call. Not the Wander Call but the true one, that which she and all her sisters had romanticized and fantasized about all their lives.
And it absolutely terrified her.
The nearest manor door flew open, courtesy of another Suit waiting inside. Given recent experience, Beatrice had a new and growing suspicion as to the occupants of all that armor. But there wasn’t much time to ponder the matter just then, as Dame Stagston—or Darcy, as corrected that same lunatic inner voice from before—flung her down onto a dark, oily couch in her dark, oily study.
“Resume human form. Now.”
And Beatrice did. It was an almost immediate thing—though whether by the power of fear or distraction or the compulsion of a called-to Silver’s command, she didn’t know. But there was one thing she was certain of: no matter how much her instinct might drive her to, she wouldn’t grovel before this woman. She would not allow herself to make some great show of submission. No. This was someone whose good regard could be won only by respect. And, as of a few moments ago, there was nothing in the world Beatrice felt she needed more than Darcy Stagston’s good regard.
“Explain yourself,” ordered the Silver in question, turning from Beatrice’s newly human gaze before their eyes could meet. Hands clasping behind her back, she seemed to peer up at the oil painting over the hearth, a ghastly-beautiful still life of flowers and fruit spilling from between the jaws of a horse’s skull.
“I…I felt trapped,” said Beatrice, pausing to compose herself. She would not stammer before Darcy again. “I just needed to really see where I was.”
At that, the other woman turned on her heel to face her, and she could swear the room grew colder. Fighting back her instincts, she raised her chin. But as Darcy took one long step forward, it was everything Beatrice could do not to cower in her shadow.
“I ordered you to stay in your suite,” repeated Darcy, darkness still dancing in her eyes. “I. Ordered. You.”
Beatrice swallowed, forcing herself to peer straight up into the twin pools of shadow.
“Forgive me, my lady, but you are not my Silver.” You rejected me.
“I am the Silver in the house in which you currently reside, at my charity.”
“You are a Silver in this house.” Inwardly, Beatrice reeled in terror at her own defiance, but somehow, she went on. “It was Lord Charles Stagston’s charity which first brought me here, and as far as I am aware, he did not agree to my confinement. Where is he, by the way?”
The shadows twisting about Darcy’s figure flared as her brows flew up, teeth bared in what could have been the beginnings of a snarl. But then her jaws parted and she doubled forward. The tendrils of darkness writhed, and she began to laugh.
Beatrice had never heard such a terrifying sound in all her life. It was frigid and wild and pierced her to the bone with its chill. The shadows in the room—the ordinary ones under the furniture and in the corners—began to twist and change. For a few delirious heartbeats, it was as if all of the darkness had come to life to join its mistress in laughter.
“I think I’m beginning to understand,” said Darcy when at last the horrible barking died away, wiping at one eye as she fought for breath. This, of course, made no sense whatsoever to Beatrice, and she was just considering saying so when there was a light, rapid knocking at the door. It was followed immediately by a tremulous voice calling from the other side. A child’s voice.
“Papa Darcy! Papa Jemison said to tell you—”
“A moment, darling,” Darcy called back. “I’ll be right there.” Her face regained its stone-carved composure as her attendant shadows dissipated—though she smirked a bit at Beatrice’s look of shock.
“Charles didn’t tell you?” She tsked, waving the question off before Beatrice could answer it. “Ah, well. You were quite right that I am not your Silver. I will keep my orders to my own, save this one—don’t enter anyone else’s bedroom. Ever. Go wherever you want, otherwise. Do what you want. I don’t care. So as long as you’re gone in three months.”
“That’s almost two orders, isn’t it?” said Beatrice before she could stop herself. Well take that, Can’t Recall Her Name. Darcy paused on her way to the door, hand extended towards the monster-faced door latch. At least I won’t die meek and forgettable.
But the mage just shook her head, emitting a sort of sneering huff. P’shah. Then she opened the door and a riot of lace and strawberry curls flew into her arms. As though the arrival of the red-headed bundle had triggered some alchemical process, Darcy’s expression transformed yet again. From gargoyle granite to angel-sculpture crystal, lit from within.
“Papa Jemison said to tell you that, that…” the tiny girl leaned back in Darcy’s grip, scrunching her nose in concentration. “That our daughter is possessed by some manner of overly-energetic demon, and as such, falls under your purview until such a time as she may be exercised.”
“That’s Exorcized, my darling. And your papa only said that because he thinks himself funny. Now, do you see this young woman here?”
The girl twisted in Darcy’s arms to face Beatrice, gray-green eyes going wide. She nodded.
“She has an awful sickness which is very contagious if you get too close to her or speak with her. She has nowhere else to go and so we’re letting her stay here for a time because we feel badly for her. But everyone in the pack must stay away from her, no matter where she goes. Do you understand?”
Her eyes wide with fear and lips set into a grim little line, the girl nodded emphatically, curls bouncing.
“Very good. Now let us go and give your Papa Jemison a lesson in proper demon identification, shall we?”
With much emphatic agreement from her daughter and not another glance back at Beatrice, Darcy swept from the study, leaving the door open. Outside, one of the Suits lingered in waiting, and she was quite sure—judging by the scuff over the left side of his breastplate—that it was one of the same who’d accompanied her before. There was a lavender ribbon tied around its neck now, and some sticky, child-sized handprints around the gorget and pauldrons. Its visor, also thoroughly fingerprinted, had been shoved halfway up, revealing the grin of a well-polished skull over which a pair of crooked lips had been scrawled in purple pigment.
Catching her stare, the Suit brought up a massive gauntlet to slam the visor down. Almost as if embarrassed, it dipped its head and tilted it away from her. But caught up in the Call as she breathed in another hit of her scent, Beatrice’s gaze turned to fix on Darcy’s retreating figure instead.
To the far end of the hall, where the mage was headed, opened up the main foyer which adjoined the manor’s two wings. And there, when she leaned just so, Beatrice could just make out the now-familiar figure of Charles Stagston, who stood engaged and partially obscured in what seemed like an argument with the skeleton of a very large horse.
