The Devil's Last Wife

ed her so thoroughly that Elowen began to suspect he ha

ove had unfurled a single speckled bell. He did not come to breakfast. His chair at the head of the Long Table stayed empty, and she ate

ry until her eyes ached, and she said nothing to anyone about silver light, or about a name s

appeared on her pillow, in a hand she

at dusk. Attendance is requ

, which was twice more than a plain instruction deserved, and then she pu

looked like frost on a window. It was the most beautiful thing Elowen had ever worn. It had been cut, Mire

relle, and laughed, a little too brightly. "I'm s

re the draped mirror. "But i

re trembling very slightly. "It's only that the Feast is a great night. The who

as she pinned the last curl, and when she had finished she s

onight, my la

wh

, and went to fetch her c

s dressed for it in grey, and the candles were grey, and the ash that fell from the high dark ceiling was thick as snow, drifting into the wine and the s

ad of it. Every year, for three hundred years, the court of Ashfall had gathered to eat and drink in fr

survival who had long since stopped finding it any kind of gift. He looked at her once, when she took her seat at

e black,

anything

ooked away. "

she could not be sure it had been a compliment. She was

r smile, and on his far side the old Duchess Voss in her crow-feather cloak, eating roast pigeon with great concentration. Across from them s

ced and merry in a wig of pale curls lik

ly a fool, in the sense that he laughed at his own jokes and cried at the pigeon, but she found, to her mild surprise

his goblet in his fist and tappe

a particular occasion. It is a plum wine from the year of the Third Siege, and I have kept it unopened for a hundred and fifty years, waiting for a seve

kitchen door, as if she had been waiting for the cue, a servant ca

s Mir

lowen with a small curtsy, and her fingers did not tremble at all. That was what

compliments, my l

dark, clear red of old plums. Elowen lifted it to the level

o faint that nobody else in that hall would ever have caught it, a thi

days, with her hands in the soil of

ksh

and she was grateful for it, in an abstract way, as she was g

hand dropped to the hairpin at her nape and drew it out. The steel point was dusted with grey

rned

ter all this time, set along the Devil's table in memory of six women who had not lived to see a feast like this one, and sh

night to be cleverer. She could drink it, and die. Or she could do something her grandmother would h

st

d her, grey with the falling ash, and the Duke

e is an old custom. The giver of a cup drinks from the cup of the re

e black glass

course." He lumbered around the table and exchanged his silver goblet for

it off in

r lips and held it there, for the look of the

t a hand that has just been caught will always tell the truth. And as the Duke of Varn

is eyes were on the cup, not on the

either. She was looking at Elowen, with the bright, dry attention of

a black dress had put out one hand and cau

of Varn, with a puzzled la

wn like a

toppled sideways into the roast pigeon and slid from his chair to the floor. Somebody screamed. A dozen chairs crashed

as alrea

. Her grandmother had called belladonna a lady's poison, for ladies who wished to be beautiful and doctors who wished to look wise, but

aid, without lookin

?" Dorian was beside h

ingers at the Duke's throat. His pulse was a thin, stum

nd absolutely steady, counting his pulse aloud. Forty. Thirty-eight. Thirty. The Duke's lips had gone blue. She presse

se steadied. At fort

hroat and tipped him onto his side, and he heaved, and heaved again, and drew in

Duke of Varn, faintly. "

gh the hall. It wa

she noticed distantly, were shaking again

lders and his hands flat on the table, and he was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. It

hall," said

m speaks in a voice that quiet. Dorian carried the Duke of Varn out over his shoulder, protesting feebly about his wig. T

h, falling, and the cold c

lowly and stopped a yard from her, and she got to her

son that cup

N

now it was

er throat like a

ow

t. And then

gave it

es

hy

was true. She could have said because I had nowhere else to put it. But he had a

said Elowen, "who watched t

anded on her wrist, and l

intend hi

rried the

t have known

ave known how much more there was." She lifted her chin. "

he had ever said aloud, and sh

d the cup?"

a blade to fall when one has already seen the rope

. The Duchess Voss was watching me, not th

h ser

t hall and she could have named any of them. She could have said I do

e," sai

e one to say it. Lucan's face did not change, but something behind it went

eve she did

t was true, and she could not s

t of what." He said it

ent r

time he had eve

though I am bound to answer. You gave up your friend to me tonight, though you did not choose to. That

in her sleeve for a week, folded sma

never sleep?

e did not look away, though something in his face seemed to

g," said Lucan, "on the night your c

and grey. The neare

e once before, three hundred years ago, in the hour before I died, and I did not think I would ever hear it a

e is it?" s

g I cannot bear to tell you." His gaze held hers, burning an