The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry Page 10

  Delly and Winn exchanged a glance when they saw it and maneuvered themselves into a position where they followed after the Tothams as they walked ahead. Delly, for her own part, wasn’t remotely interested in allowing someone to be shoved into a gorge because she was lollygagging about and enjoying the view. Ainette Wexin certainly didn’t seem as if she was particularly inclined toward lollygaggery, either. She was hurrying her sister along, making vague protestations about how there was some particularly attractive bit of scenery up ahead, but Delly saw Ainette glance over her shoulder at Delly and Winn behind her and felt her stomach clench. There was calculation in that glance. It wasn’t the look of someone who simply wanted to see who was walking behind her. She wanted to know how far back they were for a reason. Maybe it was only because she wanted to gossip with her sister out of the reach of prying ears. The thought didn’t do anything to dejangle Delly’s nerves.

  There was a turn in the path up ahead. Delly tried to quicken her steps without drawing undue attention to herself. The sisters disappeared around the turn. Winn launched herself forward in a silent sprint and went around the turn, too. Then Delly rounded the corner herself to see several things happen in one instant. Ainette, her back to Winn, gave her sister a hard shove. Mayelle screamed and began to fall. And Winn, the great brave miracle that she was, dove forward and caught her with one strong arm, yanked her away from the precipice, then turned and punched Ainette in the face.

  Ainette hit the ground like a sack of wet clothes. For a long moment the only sound was a bird nearby taking off with a chittering cry, then silence.

  “Oh, dash it all, I hope I haven’t killed her,” Winn said.

  Mayelle burst into tears.

  There was, unsurprisingly, not very much pleasant chitchat over the course of the journey back to the manor, which commenced the instant that Miss Dok came running up demanding to know why Winn had violently assaulted Miss Ainette. Miss Mayelle was far too hysterical to properly explain the situation (reasonably enough, Delly thought, for someone whose sister had just attempted to murder her in broad daylight), which resulted in Delly being forced to act as the supposedly neutral party who was meant to confirm Winn’s account and soothe everyone’s anxieties and help Winn to frog-march Miss Ainette (Mrs. Totham had looked her over and apparently patched her up enough to be transportable) back toward the coach and dogcarts. She was refusing to answer any of their questions, which was what finally convinced Miss Dok of her guilt. That was something, at least: having to figure out what in the releft was going on, with Miss Dok still firmly convinced that Winn and Delly had plotted together to frame the blessed Ainette for the wicked deed, would have very sorely tried Delly’s already highly strained nerves.

  They finally arrived back at the manor after what felt to Delly like a journey of about twelve hours. Mayelle, now very calm and very sad, sat in a chair in the small parlor and asked to have her sister brought before her. “I don’t understand, Ainette,” she said. “It wasn’t money, surely? You know that I’ve promised to provide for you always. What possible need could you have for money that would merit this? Have I—offended you, somehow? You must know that I could never mean to hurt you. You’re my—my own little sister.” Her voice wavered. “Won’t you speak?”

  Ainette stared ahead of herself like a woman in the dock, which Delly supposed she was now, or was shortly to be. If someone had tried to shove Delly off of a cliff, the constabulary would probably toss her assailant into the cells for a night to sober up, give him a paternal talking-to in the morning, and then send him on his way, but Delly was fairly sure that attempting to murder a young lady of the second headmanship was a hanging offense. It would be if Mayelle wanted it to be, certainly, though Delly suspected Mayelle of being inclined toward begging for lenience on her own little sister’s behalf. In this moment, Delly found herself rather admiring both of the Wexin ladies: Mayelle, for her calm and compassion, and Ainette, for her stoic silence, her refusal to simper and plead and offer flimsy explanations as Delly would if she were in her place.

  It caused a bit of a ginny feeling, to compare oneself to someone who’d just made a failed attempt at sororicide and find oneself distinctly lacking.

  They locked Ainette up in what had been Mayelle’s room—they moved Mayelle in with Miss Dok, just in case—in that hall with the grim rows of suits of armor lining the walls. They posted the furious Miss Dok and a particularly strapping footman to watch the door. Then the low-class girls sat down for a late luncheon.

  It wasn’t a very cheery luncheon, but as they hadn’t had their planned picnic lunch at the Renowned Local Beauty Spot, it seemed the thing to do, Delly supposed. The sandwiches were very nice. After the sandwiches, the Tothams relieved Miss Dok at the door, and the rest of them went up to Ainette’s room to look through her things, thinking that maybe there’d be a bit more of a clue in them as to what in the releft she’d been thinking.

  Ainette didn’t seem to own as many things as Delly would have expected, for a clanner. Maybe it was because she’d been traveling, though Miss Mayelle certainly didn’t lack for trunks. Delly expressed her surprise aloud to Winn, and Miss Dok snapped out, “Ainette is a householded second daughter who was brought into the family as a favor to a friend of Lady Wexin who got herself into trouble. She’s never had the luxury of demanding more than her lot.”

  They looked through what had been her lot. It wasn’t an array to lift the spirits. A few dresses and overcoats. Some books—nice, improving magical theory and history books, nothing interesting. Hats and shoes and jewelry that looked fine enough to Delly. Then, finally, at the bottom of a chest with a lock that Winn smashed open with the heel of one of those nice shoes, a pretty little wooden box. That one had a lock on it, too. Winn looked to still be in a frame of mind for smashing things, but Delly waved her off. “Let me,” she said, and did her usual work with the lock: just enough of a melt of the inside to jiggle it open without warping it. Not that there was any reason for her to want to avoid anyone seeing that the lock had been disturbed in this instance, but she wanted to show off for Winn. Winn made gratifyingly impressed noises when the lock popped open—undoing mechanical locks with magic was one of those feats that deeply irritated mediocre academic wizards by being far harder than they really thought it ought to be—and Delly suppressed a smug grin and opened the box with a very restrained flourish.

  It was nothing but papers in the box—looked like correspondence—which would have been very disappointing to Delly in the ancient many days ago of her more disreputable past. At the moment, however, she was rather intrigued: maybe they would be scandalous letters between Ainette and some ill-intended rake of a lover who goaded her into murdering her sister for their mutual profit. “Shall we read them, then?” she asked, with perhaps a shade too much good cheer.

  Miss Dok gave her a fairly withering look, as if she was disgusted by the very notion. Then she started handing out the letters. “It will go more quickly if we divide them up,” she said. Then she stopped. “What’s that?”

  It was a little bottle, filled halfway with a dark reddish brown liquid. They all leaned in to peer at it.

  “It looks like blood,” Winn said.

  “It looks like some sort of chemical,” Miss Dok said.

  “It’s drip,” Delly said. “Red drip. I’d put five on it, at least. What the f—fruitcake does she have that for?”

  Miss Dok was scowling at her. “I beg your pardon, Miss Wells. What is it?”

  “Drip,” Delly said. “They call it manufactured laudanum, but that seems a hair polite to me. You wouldn’t take this stuff for a headache. Easy way to be sure of what it is, though.” She uncorked the bottle, moistened her fingertip with the barest bit of the red—even a small drop would be enough to knock her off her feet, if it was the expensive stuff—and licked her finger. There was a faint unpleasant taste of sour sweat. Her face went numb. A few downy moments drifted
by. Winn nudged her. “Delly?”

  “Yeah,” Delly said, after a pause. “That’s the stuff.”

  “But—why on earth would Ainette be carrying about a bottle of that stuff?” Miss Dok asked, sounding genuinely puzzled by the idea.

  “Well,” Delly said, “not to be rude, miss, and begging your pardon if I drive my cart before the horse to the slender end of a limb, miss, but I expect that she brought it along because she uses it.”

  Miss Dok’s expression went a bit stormy. Then she gave a quick nod and handed Delly the last bundle of letters. “Maybe these will help to clarify the situation a bit,” she said, as if she thought that the letters were likely to contain information that would absolve Ainette entirely of being a drip-sick murderess.

  Delly herself was less optimistic on that score, but she began to read the first letter in her stack at once in any case. She was rather disappointed by the contents. It was a light, chatty letter from a friend of Ainette’s, full of nothing on the whole crowded first page but gossip about various parties where she’d encountered mutual friends and acquaintances. Then, on the second page, something that Delly thought a bit more telling:

  As to the matter of the loan, I’m afraid that it’s entirely impossible, my sweet. You know that I would gladly move mountains for you, but moving my father to loan money to you, me, or any other living being that doesn’t guarantee his interest on the loan would be a greater feat of persuasion than any you could see at a traveling Hesendi mind-healing show. I know that you’ll understand, darling, and won’t think me too mean for not being able to help you. I do so look forward to seeing you again when we all go back to Leiscourt . . .

  “She was hard up,” Delly said aloud. “Asking her friends for money and getting turned down.”

  “Not everyone turned her down,” Miss Dok said, with a little wave of her own letter. “She owed one of our old school friends thirty tocats.” Miss Dok looked pale. “But what on earth could she have needed such an awful amount of money for? Surely not—that stuff.”

  “Could be,” Delly said. “Miss Dok, you’re the one who knows her. Has she been acting strangely at all, recently?”

  Miss Dok hesitated for a moment before she responded. “I’d put it down to her anxieties over her sister’s betrothal,” she said eventually. “As I’ve said, she’s dependent on Mayelle for her allowance and a place to stay, and she wouldn’t be the first person to lose everything because their elder sibling was married or householded to someone who took a disliking to them. She hasn’t met her soon-to-be brother-in-law yet, so I thought that it must only be nerves. We did have an argument a few weeks ago when I told her that she had been uncivil to Mayelle’s other guests at a dinner party. She’s been much moodier than usual, and prone to slipping off and sulking alone in her room, which isn’t like her at all. It seemed the sort of thing that one ought to make allowances for, though, considering the circumstances, so I didn’t think much of it.”

  She was a tough thing, Miss Dok. Tough but good to her friends, at least, which Delly thought spoke well of her. Not that it was Delly’s place to be having opinions about a woman like Miss Dok, especially when she clearly didn’t have much use for Delly.

  “Look at this,” Winn said suddenly, and handed over the letter that she was holding.

  It was a nasty old letter, that was for certain. There was a bit of blathering at the beginning and end, but the real crux of the thing was this:

  I gave you your goods on advans becoss I thought you was a respectibal lady but now I see you are a sly bitch like the rest of them you get me my money by the end of this formonth or there will be all of the releft for you you mark my words.

  Delly raised her eyebrows and handed the thing over to Miss Dok, who hissed at it like a cat. “How dare the creature! And what goods could she possibly be—” She cut herself off, looking like she’d managed to put bones and peas together to make a soup. “Ah.”

  “I suppose that solves the mystery, then,” Winn said cheerfully. “She got into that red stuff, she got into debt, and some nasty blighters threatened her until she lost her head a bit. Understandable, given that I expect that the red stuff might make the processes of the logical organ go a bit fruity, when the old thing was already under a strain. Saw her sister on the ledge and decided in the moment to give her a shove. Let her sober up downstairs and explain to her sister about her needing a bit of cash and she’ll be right as brown toast in time for the wedding.”

  Delly tried and failed not to grimace. “That would be a lovely thing to think,” she said, “if it weren’t for those spider-things.”

  Winn looked a bit defeated at that. “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

  “And,” Delly said, “using drip doesn’t turn you into a murderer if you weren’t murderously inclined from the start.” Her mam had never murdered a person in her life, to Delly’s knowledge, unless she’d actually succeeded at some point in annoying someone to death. Then she added swiftly, “Not that I’d know, uh, as to myself. But I know a few drippers, and none of ’em have ever murdered anyone. Done things they wouldn’t otherwise do, sure, but not murder.”

  “She killed a dog,” Miss Dok said suddenly.

  Delly frowned. “Huh?”

  “About a week before we left,” Miss Dok said. “Mayelle was worried over one of her father’s dogs having gone missing. It was a bit of a doddering old thing, not the sort to run off on a spree. She must have killed it and used it to make that first horrible spider.”

  Winn looked uncomfortable. “Hurting dogs is really a bit past the mark, isn’t it? But one doesn’t like to think it of a gull one knows, dash it.”

  “Well,” Delly said. “Someone knows everyone who’s ever murdered anybody. Might as well be us.”

  “I suppose,” Winn said. Then she sighed and squared her shoulders. “What now, then? Bit of—interrogation of the suspect?”

  “I believe that the police will take charge of that,” Miss Dok said. “The family has sent word that they’re needed. There isn’t a real detective in Crosward Village, though, so I imagine that they’ll arrive in the morning, at the earliest.”

  Delly tried not to wince. The cops weren’t coming here after her, Dellaria Wells. Not this time, at least. “Isn’t there a jail in the village that we could put her in?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Miss Dok said. “Not that I’ve ever had occasion to inquire, but there isn’t in most of these country places. They generally keep prisoners at the constable’s house. She’d probably have a far greater chance of escape there than she would here, when the house here is packed full of wizards.”

  “And fire witches,” Delly added, unnecessarily.

  “We ought to knock together a schedule for watching her door,” Winn said. “Including everyone, I mean.”

  Miss Dok raised her eyebrows. “Including everyone? Why shouldn’t everyone be included? I’m sure that we’re all prepared to do our part.”

  “Ah,” Winn said. “Well. Miss Wells and I had been watching Miss Mayelle’s door on our own over the past few evenings. We’d rather suspected that Miss Ainette might have been the guilty party, which would make Miss Mayelle wretchedly vulnerable in her bed at night, what? Servants wouldn’t think twice about seeing Miss Ainette in the hall in the evening.” Then she explained about Delly having found the dead cat.

  “Good God,” Miss Dok said. “And it didn’t occur to either of you to inform Mayelle or myself? I could have stayed in her room with her at night.”

  Winn and Delly exchanged a guilty glance. “We were worried that you might have balked a bit at a pair of strange gulls accusing your friend of being a murderess,” Winn said.

  “Or suspecting that you were in on it,” Delly said. Winn gave her a quelling look.

  “Oh, for—” Miss Dok began, and then quelled herself. “I was not in on it, thank you,” she said. “Is th
ere any other information that you’ve concealed that I ought to be made aware of? If not, we might as well work out that schedule.”

  They worked out the schedule, then went downstairs to inform the Tothams. They’d decided to leave Mrs. Totham out of it out of deference to her age, and because her healing capabilities would be of little use should Miss Ainette make a bolt for freedom.

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Totham said with a soft sigh. “I do feel so dreadfully foolish. I ought to have compared the magical signature I found in that spider construct to those of all of our company. It simply didn’t occur to me that it could possibly be the work of one of you lovely young ladies.”

  “None of us would blame you for a minute, Mrs. Totham,” Winn said, at her very heartiest. “Would we, gulls?”

  The assembled gulls murmured their agreement. Then it was Delly’s turn to guard the door, and the rest of them dispersed, leaving Delly to enjoy the company of her own thoughts, such as they were.

  The time dragged like a brick at the end of a leash until Winn appeared with a novel and a tray of tea and cakes for them to share. Having such a nice afternoon tea on the floor in a hallway was unusual enough to have a bit of entertainment value, at least, and Winn did her best to make Delly laugh the whole time. Then she left—off for a walk to clear her head before her own shift at the door, she said—and Delly rolled the time along pretty well with the novel and the rest of the tea until Winn arrived to relieve her.

  Her instinct was to go look for Jok. She didn’t, though. She’d made a promise to Winn, and he was busy working at this hour, anyway. Instead, she took herself out on her own walk, striding across the lawn and up the hill until she finally reached the folly that she’d been wondering about for days. It had looked like a real authentic old ruin, from the house, and she’d embarrassed herself by asking Winn what she thought it might be. Then Winn had explained about follies, and Delly had gotten it into her head that she’d like to see it for herself.