Had Moreau run through these halls? Had he chosen a dream to live in? What dream was it? She suspected that he might have wanted Keris, but in the end all he had was poisoned hope and murder.
The next chamber contained her own mother, who had died when Anne was small. She told Anne that she loved her and would never leave her.
Anne turned her back on this apparition too, but she was breathing hard, her hip beginning to spasm.
Think.
Louis was here somewhere. So was Moreau. Perhaps each walked as she did, in a gallery of his own dreams. She must leave her own behind and find theirs.
Anne left the peaceful room with her mother’s voice calling plaintively that her daughter’s heart had grown cold. Carefully, Anne began to retrace her steps.
She paused in the grand hall in which they had crowned her empress and stood swaying, thinking,Oh, yes, this is my day and my hour.Then she shook the thought off, frightened, and kept walking, limping badly.
Finally she found her way back, trembling, to the simple room, round as though in a tower, where Louis again waited with sharp teeth and a great bed behind him and yellow eyes that promised joy.
He smiled. “Have you chosen me, lady?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Anne.
In the courtyard of doors, there had been a barrier of thorns in her mind when she sought to travel by shadows. But this time she did not seek her sister. Instead, she thought,This would be one of Louis’s rooms too. Or near enough.
How near?
She looked for his shadow on the floor.
It was there, unmistakable.
She reached for it, saw the korrigan’s eyes widen, saw his long-nailed hand go out. But it was too late; she caught the hand attached to that shadow and pulled herself into the never-was of Louis of Orléans.
She was in the same tower room. But somewhat to Anne’s surprise, she did not catch Orléans in wild license with a korrigan wearing her face.
No, the korrigan was sitting by a fire, turning a piece of embroidery delicately in her hands. She did look like Anne, except that her long lashes veiled yellow eyes. Louis sat by the fire opposite her, watching her.
Anne said, “My lord of Orléans.”
He startled to his feet. He stared at her as though she was anaon and not Anne at all. It was him: his own eyes and hands and teeth. But when Anne appeared, the girl by the fire dropped her embroidery and bared fangs that were as long as a wolf’s. Her eyes were wider and rounder than a woman’s.
Anne said to this lady, politely, “Madame, I wish you would not wear my face.”
The lady blinked and the last humanity left her; her taut skin wasdull ivory in clothes like cobweb, her gaze speculative. She said, “It is my task.”
Louis held back from Anne, a long arm’s reach away. “Are you real?”
“Yes, wretch.” Anne wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. “I cannot believe you thought she was I. She hasfox ears.”
Louis looked. “I suppose she does.” He bowed to the korrigan and swallowed. “Forgive me, lady, for my mistake.”
The korrigan merely barked with laughter and stepped casually into the shadows and disappeared.
“God preserve us,” said Louis, fervently. He pulled Anne to him, his hands tentative in her hair as though to prove her to himself.
Anne was distracted. “Thatwas your Never-Was? Not some mad passion, but—?” She pulled back to see his face.
He looked embarrassed. “The whole court would smile when you were happy, in Nantes.”
She laughed at him, then turned her face upward and kissed him. “Come,” she said, sobering. “We must find my sister. And Julien Moreau.”
Isabeau, with Moreau’s hand gripping hard to her hair, stepped from the brightly lit feasting hall in Rennes into the place with leaf-litter and all the doors. Elesbed had seized hold of Isabeau’s skirt with two clinging hands, and stepped with them, from firelight into damp shadow. There, she instantly lunged like a ferret, biting the hand that was clutching Isabeau’s hair. She bit it as hard as she could, so that he shouted and let go.
