The False Vow

Chapter One

I set my booklet in my lap and leaned forward in my seat. There was no doubt about it: The cat-­faced man had returned.

Around me, the lights of the opera house were dimming, the crowd settling like a group of eager children told to hush. There was a collective shift of attention as, onstage, the curtains parted, drawing back to expose a hidden world within—­yet rather than explore it, I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead, on the stranger seated in the box opposite me.

I’d first noticed him in the lobby, about a half hour prior. Like most of the theater’s attendees, myself included, he’d been wearing a mask when I’d spotted him—­a dark satin shell, molded to resemble a cat’s head. Protruding from the top of the accessory, a pair of ears extended above his hairline like stiff fabric tongues. They’d turned this way and that as I observed him, his movements careful, as though he were not simply seeking a path through the entering crowd but deliberately searching out a target out—­and then, while I watched, they’d shifted toward me.

He had not approached me—­had not given any indication, in fact, that he recognized me at all. It had not mattered.

I’d known him as soon as I’d sighted him. More importantly, I’d known why he’d come.

“Face forward, darling. You’ll miss the play.”

I startled at the sound of a voice from beside me. My fiancé was sprawled in his chair, his shoulders slouched forward and his legs spread wide so that he could have almost been sleeping, were it not for the intelligent glint of his eyes behind the narrow slits of the tufted fox mask he wore. His suit was a deep burgundy, chosen to complement his disguise; set against it, his skin—­always pale and cold-­looking—­appeared almost milky, his hair curling and dark above his mask as if he were some night creature, wrapped in another’s hide.

Easily, as though it were a dance which we’d practiced, he slid nearer, draping an arm around my shoulders. “I know my mask can be frightening, but really, there is no need to turn away.”

The scent of him washed over me then: sour and fragrant, an uncorked jug of wine. Without shifting my attention from the stranger in the opposite box—­I’d lost him during the journey from the lobby to my seat, and refused to do so a second time—­I shrugged him off. “I find your breath vastly more disturbing than any disguise. Drunk already, dear?”

He chuckled. Where his left hand gripped my shoulder, something cold bit into the exposed patch of skin below my dress sleeve: the silvered band of his engagement ring, a cousin to the more ostentatious one which graced my finger. As was customary in Balmoore, he’d adopted it shortly after the announcement of our betrothal, following the conclusion of the Vainglory—­the bridal competition his father, the so-­called Weaver King, Bastian Alaire, had devised—­almost three months ago now. Of the nine silkwitches who had been chosen to compete alongside me for the honor of my fiancé’s hand, only eight remained alive. I’d seen none since I’d clinched the prize all of us had sought, but still, I thought of them often. Felt them: the jerk of Clio Lavoie’s knife as it slid over my throat in the tunnels of Fortblanche; the itch of Marie-­Louise’s eyes on my back, watching me through her mirrors when I thought myself alone.

All of them, hurtling pointlessly onward, like puppets on strings, in a race whose victor had already been decided. Vying for a prize—­a husband—­I hadn’t intended to win, but did.

“Jealous, darling?” Noé Alaire answered. His tone was light; it took me a moment to recall the subject of which we were speaking. Reluctantly, I glanced over at him, leaving my quarry behind. “You are more than welcome to join me if you like.”

In emphasis, he lifted his glass of wine, which he’d procured at the opera-­house bar earlier and had since hoarded with the protective wariness of a man gripping his pistol. Sipping from it, he leaned closer. “What were you looking at just now?”

My skin froze. Like his father, Bastian, Noé cut a severe figure with his thin, smirking mouth and prominent aquiline nose—­but where the Weaver King carried himself with an assurance befitting of his nickname, his only son exuded a perpetual, almost biting sarcasm, as if his appearance had been crafted in deliberate mockery of the man whom he resembled.

That mirthfulness had all but vanished now. Noé’s eyes were intent, sober despite the alcoholic stench leaching from him. Without my consciously willing it to, I felt my stare drift in the direction of the cat-­faced man—­observing us, I was sure, through the darkness.

A moment passed in stillness. Then I remembered myself and snapped into our game.

“Was I looking at something?” I returned. “I wasn’t aware.”

Noé’s attention never ­wavered. “Indeed?” he asked. He sounded doubtful.

“Indeed,” I confirmed in a steady tone. “I’m so sorry to disappoint.” I gave him an innocent smile as I said it.

Noé scoffed. “My dear Tamerlane,” he replied around a generous draw from his wineglass. “Don’t fret. You could never disappoint me.”

His grin flicked out again, wine-­stained and wry, as he lowered his cup. Seated in the chair beside him, I flinched. Tamerlane. It had been a long while since I’d been called by that name. Not Cecilia Lovett, the country debutante, whisked out of obscurity to enter—­and win—­the Vainglory, but Tamerlane. As in Lovett Tamerlane.

Liar, witch, and thief.

I’d taken great pains to bury my past self since Eliot Lear had given me my new moniker—Cecilia—­months ago at the start of the Alaires’ competition. Technically, my participating in the Vainglory under a false name wasn’t illegal, except for the fact that my real one was connected to dozens of petty crimes. If anyone pieced together that Noé Alaire’s dainty orphan fiancée with the Wit which allowed her to open any door was the same street witch responsible for a number of unsolved break-­ins in our capital . . .

Well, it wouldn’t matter whether the city guard or my fellow Vainglory competitors—­the society silkwitches—­reached me first. I’d still be carted to the same place all witches went, if they failed to marry prior to reaching twenty-­one.

The cloisters.

My jaw clenched. Outside of Eliot and me, my fiancé and his father were the only people who knew my true identity. The bargain I’d struck with Noé at the end of his Vainglory meant his breaking my cover would be as unbeneficial to him as it would to me, but he could let the truth slip if he wished. Employing my surname was a reminder of that reality.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve warned you not to call me that.”

“Ah, warned.” Noé chuckled. “I should be wary, then.”

Before I could prepare for it, he leaned closer. I tensed as his shoulder knocked against mine, his flesh chilly even through the protective layer of my dress, like the sharp bite of winter iron.

“Have some wine, Tamerlane,” he muttered. His voice had shed all of its sly cynicism; I had the sudden feeling that the barbs he’d hurled at me earlier had been nothing but a windup to get to—­this. “My father is watching.”

My pulse picked up as he pushed his glass toward me—­not because of his use of my name this time, but the reminder which had followed after. Meeting his eyes, I raised it to my lips and took a measured sip.

He watched me. His gaze fixed on my mouth, studying it as I set the cup back down again, then turned away once I’d swallowed.

We didn’t speak after that. The wine was tart as it slid down my throat—­he always chose the sweetest reds, the ones with a sticky darkness to them like treacle—­settling uneasily in my stomach. Still, I didn’t dare make any movements. There was a presence in my skull, so light I hadn’t noticed it until Noé had called my attention to it just now. It lingered where it was for another minute, then—­as if sensing I’d identified it—­slipped quietly away.

I followed the path of its retreat. Noé’s father was seated in the box next to ours, his focus seemingly on the brunette man in a bear mask hunched over in the chair beside him, and yet—­I knew it had been his magic which I’d felt monitoring me. Sorcerers’ powers, like silkwitches’ Wits, were distinct to every man, and the mind was Bastian’s domain. It was what made him such a valuable ally to the many other Weavers who’d tethered their fortunes to his, and such a formidable foe to girls like me.

The Weaver King and his seatmate appeared deep in discussion. Through the dimness of the opera house, I made out the dull pink of a stack of fifty-­twill notes as the bear-­faced man pulled them from his suit jacket, then a white flash of brightness from within Bastian’s.

My interest sparked. Like that of all Weavers—­or ­sorcerers—­ in our nation, the Alaire family fortune was derived primarily from the crafting and selling of enchanted objects, those imbued with magesilk Woven from their silkwitch wives’ hair. Yet while the rest of Balmoore’s sorcerer lines hewed close to the restrictions on magicked items which our nation’s governing body, the Virtuous Parliament, had set, Bastian’s products were . . . different.

He specialized in the strange and the violent. A clock which prompted visions in anyone who heard it chime midnight. A dagger magicked to search for its victim’s heart. I’d experienced the effects of one of his products—­a pair of enchanted chain-­link gloves—­myself during the Vainglory’s third trial, though since being crowned its victor, I’d not been subjected to any others.

I craned my head closer, eager to catch the source of the light which had been emitted from inside Bastian’s jacket pocket. Sorcerers required silkwitch hair in order to create their product—­it was one of their primary reasons for marrying us. But Bastian’s wife had died years ago. And while there were other ways a sorcerer desperate enough could acquire fresh hair—­my fellow competitors and I had been forced to illegally tithe some of ours upon entrance to the Alaire estate during the Vainglory—­since the end of the competition, the Weaver King hadn’t attempted to take any more.

Balmoorish law forbade anyone from lifting so much as a single strand from a silkwitch’s head until she was wed. So how was it that in the months since my betrothal, I’d witnessed the Weaver King engaging in multiple deals like this? Hawking new Woven products without a witch giving her locks to enchant them?

And that wasn’t the only issue which bothered me. Turning away from Bastian, I leaned to check on Noé. Past the slits of his mask, his eyelids had closed; he’d downed the rest of his wine while we’d been silent and now held the empty glass loosely against his lap. Asleep.

Satisfied, I reached for my reticule, retrieving the newspaper clipping stuffed at its bottom. I’d cut it out myself before we’d left for the theater and stowed it away for later examination. Now I narrowed my eyes, reading it over.

INDEPENDENT AUTOPSY RAISES NEW QUESTIONS IN SILKWITCH’S DEATH

The family of the late silkwitch Miss Sybil Dabos, daughter of the Honorable Mme. Lucie Dabos, claim to have obtained startling new evidence that the death of their daughter at Weaver tradesman M. Bastian Alaire’s estate this past summer was not the result of an accidental tunnel collapse, as originally stated, but rather a deliberate homicide, through a recently concluded independent autopsy. While the report concedes that Miss Dabos’s corpse exhibited a number of wounds consistent with a rockfall, the Daboses’ coroner states, “Our examination suggests the bruising was incurred posthumously, in an effort to obscure the true cause of death,” which the report lists as strangulation. A chambermaid present at the scene, who requested to remain anonymous, expanded on the disturbing findings: “She looked alive. Even beaten as she was . . . when the doctor opened her eyes, I swear they were glowing.”

Mme. Lucie Dabos, Councillor to Balmoore’s Fourth District and prominent member of the anti-Weaver Laborer’s Party, has promised to raise the issue at the next session of Parliament, where she is expected to request a full criminal investigation into M. Alaire’s activities.