The Voyage of the Minotaur Page 6

  “Just a moment,” said the wizard, placing his hand on Zeah’s shoulder. “I hear that your mistress is looking for a practitioner of the arts.”

  “The… the arts?” Zeah was puzzled. “I don’t think she… muh… my employer, is looking for an artist…”

  “The magic arts,” said the wizard.

  “My sister is, that is my sister and I, are looking for a wizard,” said Master Augie. “One of considerable talent. Are you putting yourself forward for consideration?”

  “Not me,” said the wizard. “Oh, I have gifts enough for my duties at Mernham Yard. But Miss Dechantagne is not looking for a gifted local journeyman. She’s looking for the magical equivalent of Pallaton the Elder.”

  “You know such a, what was it you said, a practitioner of the arts?” asked Master Augie.

  “I do.”

  “A wizard,” said Zeah. “What is his name?”

  “Zurfina,” said the wizard. “And she is a sorceress.”

  Chapter Four: The Sorceress

  Iolanthe Dechantagne walked slowly down the wide, sweeping staircase that led into the vast foyer of her home. She had expected to make a rather grand entrance, but was disappointed to find no visitor awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs. The room was peopled only by several members of the household staff: the doorman, one of the maids, and a young man on a ladder cleaning the wall behind one of the gas lamps. Iolanthe turned slowly to look at Yuah, who stood just behind and to her right. The dressing maid, in a gray and white dress that made her look rather more like a governess than a maid, shrank back slightly. She knew how disappointed Iolanthe was, especially when she had purchased the new evening gown for just this occasion. It was white, and the skirt featured seven layers, one upon the other, each trimmed with red and black, the hem creating a circle more than five feet wide as it swept the floor. The bodice featured matching red and black trim. It was of course so thin at the waist that no one could have worn it without a patented Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset and it featured, as was the style, a prominent bustle in back. It was strapless, leaving an unobstructed view of Iolanthe’s long, thin neck, her smooth shoulders and the top several inches of her chest. Instead of a hat, she wore an arrangement of red and white carnations atop her carefully curled hairdo, which matched the rest of her outfit perfectly.

  “She was here, Miss,” said Yuah.

  It had been two days since her brother had learned from a police inspector that a powerful sorceress was available for hire. She had arranged a meeting, carefully setting the precise date to give herself plenty of time to prepare. When one met a powerful magic user, especially when one intended to hire a powerful magic user, one had to make a good impression. If Iolanthe was going to hire this woman, if this woman really possessed the gifts that she and her brothers would need in their great enterprise, she intended to show the woman, right from the beginning, who was boss.

  Yuah scrambled down the steps of the sweeping staircase and whispered to the doorman. The doorman whispered back. Then Yuah ran back up the stairs to Iolanthe’s side.

  “Master Augie just took her to the library.”

  “Bloody hell, Augie, you idiot,” said Iolanthe.

  She stomped her way down the remaining steps of the staircase and through the foyer, stopping just outside the door to the library. Hyperventilating for a moment, she stepped through the door with a stately and unhastened grace. Yuah followed her, several steps behind. The library was a relatively small room, about thirty by thirty feet, but with a ceiling two stories high. All four walls were completely covered in bookcases to the ceiling. Two railed ladders allowed access to the books at the very top. The room made quite an impression—when full of books. Unfortunately, the books had been packed and loaded onto the H.M.S. Minotaur. The resulting room, empty except for the three overstuffed chairs, two small tables, two oil lamps, and a single volume—Baumgarten’s Brech Stories—was noticeably unimpressive. Along the far wall, Augie leaned against one of the ladders with practiced nonchalance. In the center of the room stood the woman—the sorceress.

  She looked like a demon or a deviant prostitute, or some combination of the two. Her shoulder length blond hair was styled as though it had been cut with garden shears and it stuck out in all directions. She had dropped charcoal dust into her large grey eyes, creating thick black borders around them like the ancient Argrathian queens, and she had framed them with green malachite eye shadow. Her lips were so dark that it was more the red of blood than that of the rose. Though her skin was alabaster white, as was Iolanthe’s own, she wore no rouge on her cheeks to give her that aura of health and vitality. She wore no hat, and to Iolanthe’s eyes, no clothing.

  The woman’s ensemble was bizarre and lewd in the extreme. It was clearly meant to frighten and baffle at the same time. It was a collection of women’s undergarments transformed into outer clothing. Her arms were covered in fishnet gloves, though they couldn’t really be called gloves, because they didn’t cover her fingers. They simply attached to rings around her thumbs and her pinkies and then ran up almost to her shoulders, where they were held on tight with silken bows. She wore a corset made of black leather with a series of five belt-like straps with buckles running up the front, which Iolanthe suddenly realized would allow the woman to don and doff the device without the aid of anyone else. The low-cut brassier portion of the corset left much of the woman’s chest bared and exposed two tattoos, each a five pointed star, two and a half inches across, outlined in black but filled in with red ink. She wore a kind of leather skirt over the corset, but it reached down only about fourteen inches from her waist, leaving the tops of her stockings and the twelve suspenders connecting them to the corset, completely exposed. The stockings were fishnet mesh, matching the gloves. They were mostly unseen however, as the woman’s leather boots reached all the way past her knees to mid-thigh. These boots each had seven of the same belt like straps with buckles that her corset had, as though they were made to match, which they probably were. The boots had thick square four-inch heels. This last detail was the least striking, as high heels were the fashion. Iolanthe’s own shoes had similar heels, and owing to the fact that she could look the woman directly in the eye, the two women must have been of about the same height, with or without heels.

  “Zurfina, I presume,” said Iolanthe.

  “Zurfina the Magnificent.” The woman had a husky voice that put Iolanthe in mind of a teen-aged boy.

  “Am I supposed to call you Zurfina the Magnificent?” asked Iolanthe. “Do I say ‘good morning Zurfina the Magnificent’ or ‘meet me for tea, Zurfina the Magnificent’ or ‘look out for that falling boulder, Zurfina the Magnificent’?”

  “You are of course quite right, Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne,” said the woman. “We shall be on a first name basis, Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne.”

  Iolanthe heard a small sound coming from behind her and to her right and suspected that Yuah was suppressing a laugh, or perhaps, worse, a smirk. She didn’t turn to look at the dressing maid, just aimed evil thoughts in her direction.

  “Show us some magic, then,” she said. “I feel the need to be impressed. I know my brother is already.”

  Augie, who had been so engrossed in the woman’s posterior, that he had not even noticed that his sister had entered the room, suddenly startled to awareness and stood up straight. The blond woman favored him with a sly smile over her shoulder. Then she raised her arm out straight in front of her, palm down. Turning her hand over, a flame sprang up in her palm. Within two or three seconds, the flame had coalesced into a humanoid figure, eight or nine inches tall, which immediately began pirouetting and spinning in a miniature ballet, all without leaving Zurfina’s hand.

  “That’s it?” asked Iolanthe. “That’s your great magic?”

  “Well I thought it was smashing,” said Augie.

  “You don’t like fire?” said Zurfina. “How about ice?”

  The tiny figure turned from fire to ice, but continued dancing,
breaking off little pieces of itself as it did so, to fall to the floor like tiny snowflakes. Iolanthe pursed her lips.

  “My brothers and I are preparing to embark on a great expedition,” she said.

  “I know all about it,” said the sorceress.

  “Then you know I need a magic user with real power. Just dressing like a necromantic whore doesn’t make you a powerful witch.”

  “Oh, you are so right,” said the sorceress. “Clothes do not make the woman.”

  She waved her hands in front of her own body, and her clothing became an exact match for Iolanthe’s own evening gown, right down to the red and black trim.

  “Or does it?” Zurfina said.

  She waved her left hand in front of her face and it became an exact match of Iolanthe’s. She even had the red and white carnations atop her head. The false Iolanthe gave a very flouncy and very un-Iolanthe-like curtsy, then raised her chin and said in a very Iolanthe-like voice. “Yuah, fetch me a white wine!” Yuah took several steps forward before remembering herself and stopping.

  “Outstanding!” shouted Augie, clapping his hands.

  Iolanthe took a deep breath. “Not bad, I do admit. But show me something that I won’t see one of our journeyman wizards do.”

  The sorceress pointed her arm at Yuah, fingers splayed. “Uuthanum uastus corakathum paj.” There was a grinding sound, as though someone were walking upon gravel, and suddenly Yuah froze in place. She, her grey and white dress, and everything else she wore had been turned into a stone statue. She looked like one of the apostles that lined the nave in the Great Church of the Holy Savior. It was as though Pallaton the Elder had been brought from his time into the present to capture the essence of a Zaeri dressing maid.

  “My God!” said Augie, absent-mindedly crossing himself.

  “Now that is most impressive,” said Iolanthe. “We have to sit down and discuss your terms and my conditions.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Zurfina, waving her arms and returning to her original appearance. Then she raised both her arms above her head, and not with a flash, not with a puff of flame or smoke, but with the smallest of pops, she was gone. Vanished. Augustus Dechantagne crossed himself again.

  “Knock it off, Augie,” said Iolanthe. “You don’t even attend church.”

  Then she turned and breezed out of the room.

  The rest of Iolanthe’s evening was ruined. She had to find another staff member to help her undress, and the girl was so unskilled that she pinched Iolanthe’s skin several times as she helped remove her corset. Her tea was cold. Her dinner was cold. Her bath water was cold. It was if the entire household staff had simply forgotten how to do their jobs. And Zeah was no help. He would not tear himself away from the frozen form of Yuah in the library. Augie was just as bad, walking around, wringing his hands. Why didn’t they understand that Iolanthe would take care of everything on the morrow? After all, someone who knew how to turn flesh to stone would know how to turn stone to flesh.

  The next morning proved to be no better at all for Iolanthe. Finally she sent Augie in her steam carriage to fetch Zurfina the Magnificent. Even though it took him several hours to return with the woman, Iolanthe was still in her dressing gown, unable to find skilled help to don her day dress. The sorceress arrived in her same bizarre black leather ensemble that she had worn the day before. It took her scant seconds to transform Yuah back to her original, flesh and blood form. Then Iolanthe and Zurfina sat down in the parlor.

  “Two percent,” said the blond sorceress.

  “Two percent of what?”

  “Two percent of everything: the land, the resources, the trade.”

  “All right,” said Iolanthe. “Assuming that real world application of your magic is at the same level.”

  “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “See that I’m not.”

  “You are a remarkably confident woman, Miss Dechantagne. Make no mistake, I have great power. Remember that when you speak to me.”

  “There are all kinds of power, Zurfina,” replied Iolanthe. “Remember that when I speak to you.”

  The sorceress left once again, this time by conventional means. One of the staff drove her home. Yuah helped Iolanthe get dressed before going off to bed mid-day. Apparently from Yuah’s point of view, no time had passed between her being turned to stone and her being turned back again, so she was ready for bed as though night—last night in this case—had come. Iolanthe had chosen to wear a striking violet dress festooned with black bows. She mated it with a black boater, identical to the one she had worn with her chantilly dress, though that hat and the chantilly dress had both been burned after the ruffian in the alley had befouled it with his blood.

  Augie met Iolanthe in the hallway outside of her boudoir.

  “I have Zeah and young Saba getting the steam carriage ready,” he said. “They’ll go with us to the station.”

  “You still seem out of sorts, Augie. Why?”

  “Kafira’s blood, Iolanthe!”

  Iolanthe pursed her lips.

  “It was Yuah. Don’t you even care?”

  “Yes, I know it was Yuah. And of course I care.”

  “It didn’t seem like it. God, Iolanthe. I grew up with Yuah. We used to play together. She’s like our sister.”

  “I know,” said Iolanthe. “I know and I care. I care just as much for her as I do for you.”

  Augie looked her in the eye for a moment. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” He turned and started to walk away.

  “Let me ask you something,” said Iolanthe. Augie turned back to her.

  “Were you so upset about Yuah that you did not stop to bed our magnificent Zurfina before bringing her over?”

  Augie looked at her unsteadily for a moment before turning and walking the rest of the way down the hallway, and then down the long sweeping staircase to the foyer.

  The trip to the great train station was a quiet one. Augie drove the steam carriage with Iolanthe in the passenger seat. Zeah and Saba sat hunched in the pull down auxiliary seats behind them. It was a relatively short drive, though once at the station, finding a place to park the carriage took a great deal of time. Given the large number of steam carriages, along with those few vehicles that were still pulled by horses, Iolanthe reasoned that it might behoove the government to set aside a plot of land strictly for the temporary storage of such conveyances.

  The great station, or the Princess Aarya Boulevard Station as it was officially known, was not particularly impressive from the front. It appeared to be, like many other buildings in the neighborhood, a large two story, columned edifice. One could not tell from the front that it stretched out hundreds of yards in the back to house the many loading platforms and track changes that were required of a central hub on the nation’s primary line. Once inside, one passed from one massive hall to another, moving through ticket offices, baggage storage areas, and boarding lounges. The four members of the Dechantagne household stopped near the information board outside one of the lounges. A workman on a ladder was using a long pole with a hook on the end of it to change the arrival times for some of the inbound trains.

  “The B320 arrives at 11:15 from Shopton,” said Iolanthe. “Augie, you and Zeah locate the train. The teamsters that I hired should be there waiting. Make sure that all of our things have arrived, supervise the loading, and see that everything is taken directly to the ship and is put aboard.

  “The G417 arrives at 11:05 from Ponte-a-Verne. I’ll go meet it and collect Professor Calliere.

  “Boy, you come with me,” she said, addressing Saba Colbshallow.

  Like many members of the Dechantagne household, Saba Colbshallow’s family had been among the family’s servants for generations. His mother was Miss Dechantagne’s cook, and his grandmother had been the dressing maid of Miss Dechantagne’s grandmother. Saba was a happy young man of sixteen, tall and lanky, with short blond hair and happy green eyes. Though his official position in the household was rather vague, he often per
formed duties as a runner and a step-n-fetchit.

  Iolanthe started off in the direction of the loading platform, with Saba following quickly behind. She had gone thirty yards and was preparing to turn down a long corridor, when something made her turn around and look back at the point from which she had just come. Augie and Zeah were still standing where she had left them and seemed to be having some kind of heated debate. Augie was gesticulating wildly with both hands while saying something to Zeah. A moment later, Zeah was saying something back, pressing his right index finger to Augie’s chest. It seemed that they were shouting and Iolanthe expected to hear their words even over the noise of the crowds streaming through the station, but she didn’t hear either one of them.

  “What could they be arguing about?” she wondered.

  “Miss?”

  “Come on,” she said absent-mindedly.

  At the end of the long corridor was boarding platform eleven and the G417 already stood next to it, blowing billowing clouds of steam to the annoyance of the throngs of passengers disembarking, and the parties waiting to greet them. The train had four passenger cars, a baggage car, and a dining car, and an indeterminate number of boxcars. And sandwiched between the foremost passenger car and the coal tender, was a flatbed freight car. It immediately caught Iolanthe’s attention. Sitting upon it was a very large piece of equipment, covered by a canvas. She attempted to make out the shape of the object under the canvas, but was distracted by someone calling her name.

  “Miss Dechantagne!”

  She looked to see Professor Merced Calliere stepping down from the second passenger car, waving in her direction. She raised her hand in a return wave. The professor would have been easily spotted even had he not called out to her. At six foot four, he was almost a head above most of the travelers. He was a distinguished and handsome man, with blond hair and grey eyes and wore no facial hair. As he stepped onto the platform and made his way in her direction, Iolanthe noted with appreciation the perfectly tailored cut of his grey suit. He carried his white straw boater in his left hand. When he had reached her, she held out her hand, and he bent over at the waist to press it to his lips.