Wylan found Lambert in the chapel.
He’d expected the chapel. Lambert, stripped of everything the Church had given him, would go to the one room in this house that still smelled of incense and old prayer. Whether that was devotion or habit or simply the need to sit somewhere that hadn’t changed, Wylan couldn’t say. He suspected Lambert couldn’t either.
His brother was sitting in the front pew, hands resting on his knees, not praying, not doing anything, just sitting in the quiet with the look of a man who’d been taking himself apart and wasn’t sure how to put the pieces back.
“Two things,” Wylan said from the doorway. “One family, one political.”
Lambert looked up. “Political first.”
“Family first.”
Something shifted in Lambert’s expression. “All right.”
Wylan came in and sat beside him. The pew was cold. The candles on the altar had burned low and nobody had replaced them, which was Lambert’s job, or had been. The chapel had heard a great many confessions and was bracing for another.
“I need to talk to you about Percival,” Wylan said.
Lambert’s attention sharpened. “Percival. What about him?”
“Do you remember Percival climbing out of Max’s window?”
“We shelved it. Aurora was the priority.”
“The suspicious behaviour was real. Just not what we thought.”
Lambert waited.
“He’d been in Max’s bed.”
The chapel was very quiet. Even the candles had the decency to gutter.
“How long?” Lambert said.
“Long enough that Percival calls him Max when they’re alone and Your Grace when anyone’s listening.”
“And you’ve known this since—”
“A few days ago. I overheard them. It wasn’t my secret to share.”
“But you’re sharing it now.”
“This family just got torn apart by secrets, Lambert. I’m not letting another one fester.”
Lambert leaned back in the pew and looked at the altar. The sun-disk of Invictus caught what was left of the candlelight and held it without warmth.
“Mirembe,” he said.
“I don’t know what she knew. It’s possible she found out. It’s possible she never knew.”
“That’s not a comfortable ambiguity.”
“No.”
“Does Laila know?” Lambert asked, after a moment.
“She knows enough. I spoke with her this morning. She’s arranged for Percival to meet us in my workshop.”
Lambert looked at him. “You’ve been planning this.”
“Since this morning.”
Something crossed his face that might have been gratitude.
“When did you get good at this?” Lambert said.
“I don’t know that I am. But you’ve all been so caught up in the crisis that the missteps were obvious even to me.” He paused. “Do you know what prolonged distress does to the nervous system? The adrenal organs flood the blood with stimulant compounds, which is useful if you’re fleeing a wolf, but sustained exposure suppresses the higher faculties. Judgement, planning, the ability to see past the immediate threat. Ma?tre Deschamps documented it rather elegantly with a series of experiments involving rats and increasingly frequent electrical shocks, the results of which suggest that the reasoning mind essentially surrenders command to the animal brain, which means everyone in this house has been making decisions with the part of themselves best suited to biting things—”
Lambert’s eyes glazed over, and Wylan recognised the expression from every sermon Lambert had ever inflicted on the family. It was oddly satisfying to see it from the other side.
“Show me what you’ve done,” Lambert said, with the haste of a man who recognised it too.
“One stop first. There’s something else you need to see.”
Wylan led him through the ground floor corridor toward the entrance hall and pushed open the side door. The Immolator-made chandelier overhead cast its steady phlogiston glow across the vaulted space, the same warmth it had offered for twelve years without fading or being asked to. He always took a moment.
“Are we stopping to admire the fixtures?” Lambert asked.
“No. Well, yes, actually.” He grabbed Lambert’s coat and pulled him across the marble floor to where Divina was perched on a stepladder beside one of the four stone statues flanking the main doors. She had a wrench in one hand and grease to her elbows.
“Morning, Monsi— apologies, Master Lambert!” She waved the wrench. “Be down in a tick, darling, just finishing Ganache’s shoulder.”
“Here,” Wylan said, practically shoving Lambert’s hand toward the stone. “Touch it.”
Lambert complied. “It’s warm?”
“It’s alive.” Wylan was aware he was grinning and didn’t care. “Well, animated. Not alive in any theological sense—”
“Wylan—”
“Divina and I had a demiurge in from the Académie last week. She spent a full day on them, at no modest cost. They’re not true constructs, they don’t have will or personality, but they don’t need to!” If Lambert had objections, Wylan was not in a mood to notice. “They respond to triggers, they track movement, and Divina’s fitted each one with—”
“With self-reticulating serrated blades,” Divina said, climbing down from the stepladder with the careful descent of someone wearing heels on a ladder. She patted the statue’s chest admiringly. “You can conceal so many weapons in these things. The proportions are just divine for it.”
She clacked across to a wall panel, heels ringing on the marble. “Master Wylan, I also took the liberty of installing that barricade system we discussed.”
“You didn’t.” Wylan’s face lit up. “Oh, Divina, you don’t know how happy that makes me. Just think, if anyone intrudes again, the hall seals in four seconds, trapping them in here with the statues.”
“Three,” Divina corrected. “Three if you don’t stand there gawping and let me finish calibrating.”
“You named them?” Lambert said.
“They need designations, Lambert. You can’t just go around calling them Statue Thirteen. Science requires sentiment.”
? Wylan had named every piece of equipment in his laboratory. The equipment had not reciprocated, but he lived in hope.
“I rather think—”
“You think too much! Without the Church or the State to guarantee our security,” Wylan began, his grin growing, “I’ve taken matters into my own hands to stop this family falling apart.” He spread his hands to take in the hall: the statues at their posts, the hidden barricade, the chandelier burning with twelve years of someone else’s brilliance. “Where faith has failed us, science will find its footing!” He could hear himself ranting. “And that’s not theology. That’s just engineering!”
He stopped when he saw his brother flinch. His brother, who had stood stalwart under the imposing gazes of Laila, Seraphina, and Lydia in turn.
“The point is we’re not defenceless. Let me show you the barricade.”
Laila marched through the halls of the de Vaillant mansion, bearing down grimly upon Wylan’s workshop. Walking as best he could in her wake, encumbered by an overloaded crate, came young Percival.
Bring him to the workshop at one o’clock, Wylan had told her, in what he clearly believed was a conspiratorial whisper. She had complied. She allowed herself a moment before pushing into the workshop.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The room was too warm and filled with bubbling tubes and quietly clacking gears. The apparatus had the busy self-importance of equipment that did not require an audience but appreciated one. What practical purpose any of it served was beyond her.
Percival caught up a moment later, breathing hard. “Where do you want me to put this?”
“What?” Laila said, distracted. “Oh, just anywhere. It’s a box of junk.”
A loud thud as a heavy crate met the floor rather sooner than its contents would have preferred.
“But you said it was frag—”
The door swung shut, revealing Lambert and Wylan standing behind it with the expressions of men who believed themselves very clever.
Amateurs.
Percival’s gaze moved between them. The wariness settled into his posture like a chill in an unheated room.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said, polite and stiff, stepping delicately away from a hissing tube.
“Not at all,” Wylan said cheerfully. Something behind him popped. Percival flinched. “In fact, your timing is impeccable. There’s something we’ve been meaning to discuss.”
“I don’t know if I can stay. I’m quite busy.”
“This will only take a moment.”
“Sit down, Percival,” Lambert said.
Percival did not sit. He shuffled, which was worse. Laila watched him with the practised eye of a woman who had raised three boys and could distinguish twelve varieties of guilt at forty paces. The man was calculating exits.
“Please, take a seat,” she said. Her voice was the quietest of the three, and the least yielding, but Percival sat all the same.
Wylan, dressed in protective gear, chose that moment to grab a rather vitriolic looking substance from the shelf. It had no lid and continued to bubble.
“Percival, dear, we have a very important question for you.” Laila could see that Wylan’s enthusiasm was driving him now.
“Are you romantically involved with my brother?” Wylan asked, with feigned casualness.
Although Wylan had briefed her, and she had taken it calmly, hearing it aloud gave it an edge of discomfort. Especially with Lambert standing right there, who may or may not have been a by-blow of infidelity.
She had not agreed to the bubbling apparatus.
Percival’s back stiffened. “I serve Maximilian with great loyalty and fastidiousness.” The line had the sheen of rehearsal.
“Right,” Wylan said, meeting his eyes. “And dear Max has been in a rather vulnerable state since Mirembe’s departure. His emotions are volatile, heated even!” He held the beaker at arm’s length over a large white block. “Loyalty is a quality we admire in this house. We’ve heard a great many people proclaim their loyalty recently, only to reveal the worst kind of betrayal.”
He held the beaker up to the light with feigned concern. “Betrayal is like acid, Percival.” He tilted the beaker just enough to cause a trickle to splash onto the block. It fizzled offensively. “It eats away at the strongest bonds until there’s nothing left.”
He returned the beaker to the table, where the stability reassured her.
“Did you know that some acids can make bodies disappear entirely?”
Lambert, not missing a beat: “I suppose cleanliness is the purview of divinity.”
Laila sighed. She could not help it. She had watched these two grow up, and the years had refined their methods without noticeably improving their subtlety.
“Boys,” she said. “There’s no need to be quite so theatrical about this.”
She turned to Percival and brought the only weapon that had never once failed her: disappointment.
? 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' works rather differently in households with a luminary.
“We’re not here to accuse you, Percival. We’re here to understand. There have been troubling events within this house. Events none of us fully understand.” Her voice was gentle, but her fingers were already in her satchel, grabbing a pinch of red pigment which she dashed across his face. “Perhaps you can help us make sense of them.”
The enchantment settled over him, pressing down objections before they could form. Resistance flickered across his face, but the spell brooked no denial.
“What are your intentions with my son Maximilian?” she asked. And then, almost as an afterthought: “And with this house?”
When he spoke, the words came with effort, each syllable dragging itself into existence. “My actions have always been in the best interest of the house.”
Lambert placed a hand on Percival’s shoulder with the gentle weight of a subtle threat. “We need to address a particular incident. A conversation you had on the morning of the d’Amboise fire. Who were you speaking to?”
“It was my father,” he managed. “Gawain.”
All three of them exchanged a glance.
Well, I was not expecting that.
“Your father?” Lambert’s disbelief sharpened his words. “As in the same Gawain of the Eclipse Society?”
“Yes.”
Laila brought matters back. “And what did you discuss with him?”
Percival opened his mouth. His hands shot to his throat. His face went red, then darker, his fingers clawing at his neck as he gasped for air that could not find him. Something was fighting her enchantment, and the man caught between was paying the price.
Laila dismissed the spell immediately. The competing forces collapsed, and Percival went with them, sliding from the chair to the floor, gasping.
The workshop was very quiet except for the bubbling of Wylan’s apparatus, which continued with cheerful indifference.
When he could breathe easily again, he pulled himself upright and straightened his waistcoat. His hands were still shaking.
“What I can tell you,” he said, his voice raw, “without violating my oath, is that my duty is to remain by your son’s side. For better or worse.”
He reached into his pocket, retrieved an open envelope, and placed it on the bench.
“Gawain said you should have this,” he managed, “when the time was right.”
Then he stood, brushed himself off, and walked past all three of them into the corridor.
None of them thought to stop him.
Laila watched the door close and was content to hold with the silence for a moment, but it was Wylan who broke first.
“What the hell was that?”
“My best guess is some kind of oath or other compulsion,” she said. “Two forces were acting upon him: one to speak, the other binding him to silence. The choking was the physical symptom.” She picked up the envelope and turned it over. “Whatever he’s under, it is not trivial.”
Lambert was staring at the door. “So, Gawain is not so absent after all.”
“Soraya said he was the most elusive of the Eclipse Society,” Wylan said. “Even she didn’t know where he’d wound up. But a son? Planted in our household?”
Laila turned the envelope over. “I imagine it was arranged between Gawain and your father. Though I doubt either of them expected anything more than a protective servant for the heir apparent.” She paused. “The romantic complication would not have been in the original brief.”
“It was certainly in someone’s briefs,” Wylan said.
The envelope was addressed to Alexios, in a hand Laila did not recognise. She drew out the letter within.
Lambert read over her shoulder. His breath caught.
“It’s from Esteban,” he said. “Ramirez Esteban. Dated...” He trailed off. “Just before he disappeared.”
The letter was brief. Laila read it aloud.
“‘Alexios. I have found the entrance to the Sepulchre and will brave what I must within. If you do not hear from me again, you can find me with the enclosed. Yours in faith and fellowship, Ramirez.’”
Something shifted inside the envelope. Laila tipped it, and a small coin dropped into her palm. Tarnished silver, old beyond reckoning. On one face, a figure she did not recognise. On the other, a symbol that might have been a gate or a door.
“An obol,” Lambert said. His voice had changed.
“A coin for the dead,” Wylan said. “Passage money. The old stories say you place one on the tongue of the departed to pay their way into the afterlife.”
“Not just stories.” Lambert took the coin from Laila’s palm and held it to the light. “The Sepulchre. He went into the Sepulchre ten years ago, and this is how we follow.”
It was several hours later, and the three of them had moved into Laila’s study. The last light from the Pendulum was fading. The mahogany desk, which had hosted a great many difficult conversations in its career, had cleared its surface for one more. The bronze obol sat at its centre, taking up far too little space.
“If the letter is genuine,” Laila said carefully, “then Esteban has been in the Sepulchre for ten years.”
“If he’s still alive,” Wylan said.
“If he’s still alive,” she agreed.
Lambert had been quiet since they’d moved upstairs, turning the obol over in his fingers with the meditative focus of a man at prayer. Now he set it down and reached into his coat.
“There’s something else.” He produced a folded paper and spread it on the desk beside the obol. Dock routes. Shipping schedules. A company logo Laila recognised. “I recovered this from the Inquisitorial archives and from a scrap Alexisoix tried to hide. Together they confirm that Captain Alarico moved the egg out of Pharelle on the Salvation’s Promise, contracted through Guillaume’s company. I believe Esteban orchestrated the second theft and sent the egg to sea with Alarico before he entered the Sepulchre.”
“So the egg, Esteban, and Alarico all disappeared at roughly the same time,” Wylan said.
“Within months of each other. Which means if we find one—”
“—we might find all three.”
She watched them leaning toward each other across the desk, voices quickening, eyes bright. Two boys who had found an adventure and were already halfway out the door.
“Boys.” They looked at her. “Stop for a moment. There’s something else we should speak about first.”
“What?”
“Isabella.”
The brightness dimmed. Good. It should.
“I’m worried I’ve lost her.” The words cost more than she expected. “She left with Isadora and I don’t know if she’s coming back.”
Wylan leaned forward. “If Isadora sent a letter, I doubt she’s lost to us. Isadora wouldn’t have written otherwise.”
“You think so?”
“I think Isadora is many things, but wasteful with words isn’t one of them. She wrote because there’s still a bridge. We should visit the embassy first thing tomorrow.” He paused. “Isabella is our priority.”
Laila nodded. The relief was small but real. “But then what?”
Lambert spoke. “I don’t think we can trust Prelate Vaziri.”
“That’s rather a strong claim.”
“Someone has been pulling strings against this family within the Church for years. Calderon’s investigation. The Inquisition’s withdrawal of support. The speed with which our institutional allies evaporated after the trial.” Lambert’s voice was steady, building.
“Vaziri had the means and the motive for all of it. Esteban was her only rival for the Pontifarchy, and he conveniently vanished. Now she arrives at our door with a retinue that includes a man who watches more than he talks, and she lets slip that she knows our grandmother is alive.” He looked at Laila. “That’s not pastoral concern. That’s leverage.”
“Others share this suspicion?”
“Calderon, for all his complaints, has said as much privately, though I don’t know he realised what he let slip.”
Wylan cut in. “Speaking of people who watch more than they talk. I have something else, and it’s a bit disturbing.”
Laila turned to him.
“Espérant. During the audience, the way he positioned himself behind Vaziri rather than among the retinue. Weight even, hands still.” He glanced at Lambert. “Like you on a watchful day. And his eyes kept drifting toward the corridor. Toward my workshop.”
“He’s not an attaché,” Lambert said.
“Attachés talk. This one watches.” Wylan paused. “And there’s something else. Seraphina. Vaziri used the present tense. ‘My sister and I are like night and day.’ Not were. Are.”
“That could be a slip of the tongue,” Laila said. “It’s an easy mistake.”
“Possibly. But I’m entertaining the idea that she knows something about Seraphina. Think about it. They’re sisters.”
The obol glinted on the desk. The Pendulum’s light had gone entirely now, and the study was lit only by the fire and a single lamp, both of which were doing their best.
“What do you think Espérant wants?” Laila asked.
“I don’t know,” Wylan said. “He seems to know something about this house, and that hasn’t boded well for us before.” He sat forward, and the grin was back. The same grin from the entry hall, from the staged laboratory, from the coffee at dawn. “But I’ll tell you two things I’m sure of. We’re going to get Isabella back.”
“Yes,” Lambert said. “We are.”
“And we’re going to stop Great-Aunt Lydia taking the Pontifarchy.”
Lambert nodded slowly. “Yes. We are going to do that too.”
Wylan looked satisfied. Lambert did not. Lambert looked like a man who had been waiting for the right moment, and the right moment had arrived.
“And we’re going to find Esteban,” Lambert said, picking up the obol, “and make him the next Pontifex instead.”
The study suddenly went very quiet.