Page 86 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
No, wait. Is that…? Cordelia strained her senses and caught the faintest vibration, the shadow of a note that should have been rich. She could feel Evermore like the other two, but he was made of earth and stone and the wine-note was being washed away and the inside of his heart was a great hopeless love and she read his loyalty and his courage and that he was a good and decent man but his soul did not taste of wine at all.
Two notes rang against each other, but without their third, they died away finally into silence.
Falada stilled. He lay on the ground, his hind leg suspended in the air by the rope, and his flanks heaved. He closed his eyes, and then the familiar began to laugh.
CHAPTER 31
“It almost worked,” said Hester.
“But it didn’t work,” said Imogene.
Cordelia said nothing. The sound of Falada’s eerie, whining laughter still rang inside her skull, going on and on, long after they had left the circle. She hunched her shoulders against the memory of the sound.
Willard had dropped his jacket over her as they went inside. The smell of camphor and starch clung to it, but it was warm and Cordelia hadn’t realized that she was cold until he did. Then she realized that her gown was torn and dirty and that both her gown and her skin were crusted with drying blood, and then everything began to seem like too much.
She didn’t quite swoon, but she had no real memory of coming inside the house, or of entering the parlor, or of anything until a mug of tea was thrust into her hands. She wrapped her fingers around it and let the heat leach into her skin.
Willard and Lord Evermore and the stablehands were still outside. Killing Falada, she thought, and then amended it to Trying to kill Falada.
“Hang it all,” said Hester. “I could feel it working. Why didn’t it take?”
“Because Richard wasn’t the right person,” said Imogene. “It’s in the damn book, except the author didn’t feel obligated to do something useful, like underline it in red ink a few times. Let he who invokes the reagent be he who is best suited to the task, water to water, wine to wine, salt to salt.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hester said. “We’re people, not elements. It’s not like if you cut me, I’ll bleed water. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Imogene unscrewed her flask and dumped a glug of something into her tea. “It doesn’t have to make normal sense, it just has to make magic sense. And it does, sort of. We got two out of the three elements right, but Richard wasn’t supposed to be wine. Couldn’t you feel it?”
Hester pressed her lips together. “I felt something,” she admitted. “Everything seemed to vibrate. But then it fell apart.”
“I got a bit more than that. Cordelia?” Imogene nudged her shoulder. “Did you feel it too?”
Cordelia nodded. “I did,” she croaked. Her throat was dry and she took a swallow of tea and nearly burned the roof of her mouth. “It was working, until Lord Evermore joined. And then it felt like the wrong note.”
“He had the wine,” said Hester obstinately.
Imogene rolled her eyes. “Nobody’s saying it was your precious Richard’s fault. You or I couldn’t have done it either. We needed a different person for that reagent.”
Hester grunted. After a minute she said, “Would it work, do you think? If we got someone who was actually like wine, whatever that means?”
“I think it might,” said Cordelia. There was a buzzing in her head, but she couldn’t quite focus on it. “Whatever we were doing, Falada was scared of it. At least at first.”
“That damned horse,” muttered Hester. “Or whatever it is.”
The parlor door opened. Evermore and Willard came in, both exhausted. “It’s dead,” Evermore said. “They’re burying it now.” He paused, looking both triumphant and slightly sheepish. “I don’t know if it was necessary, but we burned the head. It seemed… wise.”
Cordelia felt something in her chest unknot. “Thank you,” she whispered. Falada was dead. Relief crashed over her, so deep and sweet that she thought she was probably crying, but she didn’t care. He was dead and he would never lie to her again. “Thank you.”
She climbed to her feet and stood, swaying slightly. “I think,” she said, “that I am very tired.”
“You were amazing out there,” said Evermore. “You saved Bernard’s life. The doctor’s with him now. If you hadn’t jumped in…” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m in your debt,” he said. “Really and truly in your debt.”
Cordelia could not think of any response to that, so she smiled vaguely, and let Willard take her arm and lead her up the stairs. “Alice is waiting for you,” he said. “I took the liberty of ordering a bath sent up for you as well.”
She squeezed his arm. A few minutes later, Alice opened the door and said, “Mary’s tits, what happened to you?,” and Cordelia heard Willard say something over her head, but she couldn’t focus on it. Whatever it was, Alice asked her no more questions.
She must have taken the bath because when she slid into bed, she was distantly aware that her hair was damp, but that was the last thing she knew until morning.
Cordelia? Cordelia, can you hear me?
