Honovi got behind the steering wheel of the motor carriage and started the engine. He drove away before Blaine, the other vehicle disappearing in his rearview mirror once he turned the corner.
“Where am I taking you?” Honovi asked.
Lore slouched deeper in her seat. “Your accent has gotten better. I noticed that at the ball.”
“My accent has no bearing on my driving. Where are we going?”
Lore sighed quietly, the sound barely distinguishable over the thrum of the engine. “The Auclair estate.”
Honovi kept to the speed limit, kept off the main roads until they made it to Hollows Bridge. They were the only vehicle to cross the Serpentine River past midnight, and Honovi took a winding route to where he knew the Auclair estate was located on the eastern side of the city.
He’d been a guest there twice before since coming to Amari as his people’s ambassador. The formal dinners had been a way to introduce Honovi, his fellow ambassadors, and other important members of society to each other. Since Ashion had no queen and no court, despite the palace, Meleri Auclair, the Duchess of Auclair, had been a decent stand-in. She’d been kind and charming, Honovi recalled. She was less so tonight when she greeted them from the top of the stairs in the foyer.
“What happened?” the duchess demanded.
Lore reached for her throat, deft fingers undoing the clasp there. “We ran into a Blade, Mother.”
Honovi hefted Caris higher in his arms as he watched Lore remove her veil. The face she’d worn shimmered, peeling away into true flesh and bone. The features there were the same as the ones that had stared back at him during the meeting with theComhairle nan Cinnidheanseveral years ago. He hadn’t seen her at the dinners he’d shared with the duchess, nor in parliament, or anywhere else where politics grew here, until the ball. Honovi wondered if that had been deliberate.
“Caris needs to lie down. Where shall I put her?” Honovi asked, attention on the duchess.
The older woman leaned heavily against the railing for support. Her dressing gown was definitely not proper attire for greeting anyone outside of family, but she didn’t seem to care.
“A Blade?” the duchess asked, voice trembling slightly.
Lore stepped forward, her feet making no sound on the plush rug covering the hardwood floor. “Princess Eimarille’s lady-in-waiting, to be precise.”
Even in the low lighting, Honovi saw the way the duchess flinched. Her face paled, but she rallied well enough after a moment. With how open Lore was with her mother, Honovi had his suspicions about the duchess’ place within the Clockwork Brigade.
He carried Caris up the stairs, following Lore to a bedroom that had some engineering tools scattered around and picked-apart clockwork pieces covering a desk. Lore switched the gas lamp on, and Honovi went to lay Caris on the bed. Then he stepped back and let Lore get the young woman’s boots off, as well as the veil she wore.
The face, once revealed, was pale from overuse of magic. The skin beneath her eyes was bruised a faint purple, and her shoulder-length brown hair spread over the pillow in loose waves.
“You should call for a magician,” Honovi said.
“We can’t. No one can know she uses magic,” Lore said.
“Lore,” the duchess said in a sharp voice.
Lore retrieved the throw blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it over Caris’ sleeping form. “He’s Blaine’s husband, Mother. He already knows.”
“I am aware, but he doesn’t need to know everything.”
Lore smoothed her hand over Caris’ forehead, pushing back some hair, before turning around to face her mother. “I don’t know why you think Blaine hasn’t broken confidence with him about everything that matters. They meet every couple of weeks at the embassy and have since the ambassador arrived in Amari.”
The duchess studied her daughter before that piercing gaze turned Honovi’s way. “We should speak frankly, Ambassador.”
Honovi nodded in agreement. “I think it’s time we had such a conversation.”
Lore settled in the desk chair. “I’ll keep watch.”
The duchess left the bedroom. Honovi followed her out and found himself led upstairs through the private family floor he’d never been privy to during the dinners he’d attended. They arrived in a study with no window that didn’t appear as if it held a country’s secrets, even if it did.
The duchess settled behind her desk, drawing her dressing gown tighter over her shoulders. “Apologies for my lack of proper dress, Ambassador.”
Honovi waved off the apology as he took a seat. “I’ve captained an airship in nothing but my underclothes before. Emergencies never announce themselves, Your Grace.”
“An apt observation. I’m curious about what else you might have observed tonight.”
