Page 57 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“There now,” said Granny Liesl. “All ready to go to the ball.”
I batted away an insistent raven that was trying to lower a powdered wig onto my head. “It isn’t a ball; it’s a train. And we are now even less appropriately dressed to fight a vampire.”
“Oh, Captain.” Ms. Haas extended her arms, allowing a small swarm of spiders to drag a pair of long gloves up her arms. “What is the point of doing battle against dark forces if you can’t look your best while you’re doing it?”
“And,” added the old woman, “if you really think that a gift from a witch does nothing you can’t see it doing, then you are a very stupid little boy.”
I was, needless to say, quite affronted at this, since when people insult me they usually do so less directly, but I refrained from defending myself, if for no other reason than that the lady had a point and I was not entirely certain what power she might hold over me or my companion.
“There’s just one thing missing.” Granny tapped her talons together excitedly. “Two such pretty young creatures can hardly arrive in town in an old woman’s cart.”
She led us outside to a lone yew tree that stood a short way from the cottage. Stretching out a hand, she scratched the trunk, which oozed something that I was certain could not have been blood. Then the tree cracked, bent, and twisted, its bark distending and its branches distorting until it resolved itself into the shape of a dark-hued and ominous carriage, detailed with curling vines and death’s heads. I was about to ask what manner of creature would pull it but then realised that I under no circumstances wanted to know the answer.
The door swung silently open and Ms. Haas entered without hesitation. And, first making certain to reassure myself that my clothes still housed my pistol and its ammunition, I followed her.
“Goodbye, dearies,” called out Granny, as the carriage began to pull away under some mysterious power of its own. “And take heed, Shaharazad. My other gifts are yours to keep, but the potion will wear off at the stroke of midnight. And it wouldn’t kill you to write occasionally.”
Ms. Haas carefully leaned out of the window, her jackdaw flapping to keep its balance. “I thought you were dead. Also I hated you.”
“You always were an ungrateful girl.”
“And you were always a grasping, covetous, manipulative, iron-hearted...” My companion continued to hurl an increasingly inventivestream of pejoratives at Granny Liesl until she vanished out of sight. At which juncture she pulled her head back into the carriage, adjusted her gown, and said in quite a different tone, “You know, I did miss the dear old thing in a way.”
I blinked. “She was flagrantly a monster.”
“Aren’t we all, Mr. Wyndham? Aren’t we all?”
Then she settled back in her seat and closed her eyes contentedly. The jackdaw continued to stare at me in a manner I continued to find disturbing.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Vedunia
After some minutes,the carriage emerged onto the road and set a course that I fervently hoped would take us down the valley towards Vedunia. We would not, on this occasion, have a great deal of time in which to explore the many sites of historical and cultural interest that fine city has to offer. Readers who are interested in visiting Vedunia themselves may wish to purchase Ms. Zheng’s excellentSouthern Aurwald and Nivale, including Guienne and Lothringar, which, like all of the Zheng Guides, is a gold mine of practical advice for the commercial traveller.
For the purposes of this narrative, you need know only that it is a picturesque city of cobbled streets and golden spires with a spectacular cathedral in the architecturally lavish style of the Insular Church. It is renowned for its contributions to the worlds of patisserie and music, although its civic character took a turn for the melancholy after the strange and tragic fate of Crown Prince Florian, who, on his seventeenth birthday, ate of a poisoned apple and fell at once into a deathlike slumber from which he has yet to stir. This unfortunate sequence of events has led to the rather peculiar local tradition of Kissing the Prince, popular amongst natives and tourists alike. Prince Florian’s body lies in state in a glass coffin before the palace, where legend holds he may be awakened by a kiss from his true love. It is considered bothgood luck and a mark of respect for visitors to attempt to arouse the prince, although to date none have been successful. A fascinating peculiarity of Prince Florian’s unusual condition is that, since he has not technically died, he remains crown prince of Nivale and, given that the enchantment under which he slumbers seems to have preserved his body from either age or decay, it is like that he will remain so in perpetuity. The consequence of this is that the Kaiserin of the Hundred Kingdoms now rules Nivale as queen regent, amongst her other titles.
It was late afternoon by the time we arrived in the city proper. And, while I was eager to start out at once in pursuit of Miss Viola and Miss Beck, my companion insisted that we had little to no hope of locating them by simply roaming the streets. The Austral Express included ample time for its passengers to experience the locations in which it stopped; we could be certain that the two ladies were currently loose in Vedunia but equally certain that they would return to the station in the evening, which would undoubtedly be the most efficacious way to intercept them. Therefore, Ms. Haas concluded with the triumphant air of one declaring mate in five moves, we had nothing to lose by going to dinner.
Thus, we repaired to a tiny restaurant in a somewhat obscure part of town, whose owner Ms. Haas had assisted with a matter of considerable personal delicacy some twenty-five years earlier. This left us somewhat overdressed for our environs, although, in truth, I felt far more comfortable with stripped wooden tables and rough benches than I did with my crushed velvet and silk hose. We dined on a local dish of thinly sliced veal coated in breadcrumbs, which, in the moment, seemed quite the finest meal I had ever taken, a reaction which may have owed something to my having subsisted on dried fruit and bottled water since leaving Khelathra-Ven some two days past. Ms. Haas ordered dessert before I had the chance to intervene.
“Are you honestly telling me,” she said, when I questioned the necessity of the indulgence, “that your god took time out of its mightyworks and divine labours in order to specifically prohibit its followers against eating chocolate desserts?”
“Oh yes, there are large sections of scripture devoted to the subject. We call it tort law.”
She stared at me for a while, with her head quizzically cocked. “Was that a deliberate joke, Mr. Wyndham?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“Well, since you’ve clearly committed yourself to a path of madcap frivolity, you might as have well have some cake.”
“I’m not sure it’s philosophically supportable to make one lapse excuse another.”
“Were I inclined to take this debate seriously”—she plonked her elbows on the table—“I might advance the argument that if one violates an essentially arbitrary rule and in so doing finds it has precisely no negative consequences for oneself or for others, one might be not only justified but wise to conclude that there can be no harm in doing so again.”
“I do not think,” I replied, “that it is always correct to conclude that a thing which has been done safely once may safely be done with impunity.”
“And that is why my life will always be far more interesting than yours. Now eat the dashed cake, man.”
