The House at Divoro

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

‘Interesting place,’ murmured Nuritov, his gaze fixed on the peculiar house with the same wide-eyed surprise that Konrad felt himself.

‘I don’t want to go in it,’ Tasha pronounced, and sat back with a frown.

‘It is even stranger inside,’ said Nanda brightly.

‘Wonderful,’ Konrad muttered.

‘Eino bought it about two years ago,’ she continued. ‘It used to belong to an Assevan family, name of Vasilescu.’

‘Why did they sell it?’

‘They didn’t.’

Konrad raised an eyebrow.

‘They were all murdered, about ten years ago. The house stood empty until Eino took it on.’

This disclosure was greeted with a thunderous silence, until Nanda broke it with a peal of laughter. ‘Only joking. They went bankrupt.’

Nuritov was generous enough to greet Nanda’s sally with a polite chuckle, though he looked a trifle pale. Konrad merely rolled his eyes and sank back in his seat. He agreed with Tasha: he did not really want to go inside, whether or not Nanda’s chilling story was true.

But he was the Malykant. If he did not shrink from facing down the vilest of murderers, he would not shrink from a mere house.

As the carriage came to a stop outside the vast, heavy wooden front door, a trio of neatly-uniformed footmen spilled forth and came to meet them. The carriage doors were opened and the luggage taken down and carried inside with impressive efficiency, and Konrad stood breathing the cold, crisp air and staring up at the house in silence. The late afternoon sun limned the turrets in wan, winter sunlight in a display of serene beauty which did… nothing whatsoever to reassure him.

Nanda swept up to the door, chin high, looking every inch a noblewoman. Konrad stumbled after her, feeling out of his depth and curiously out of place.

Master, said Eetapi in his mind, startling him, for she and her brother had maintained an unbroken silence for the past twelve hours or so.

Yes?

Pull yourself together.

Sage advice, if a trifle bluntly put. Doing his best to follow it, Konrad lifted his chin to a sharp ninety-degree angle and strode forth like the dauntless man he was.

On the other side of the enormous front door there proved to be an equally vast hallway, all tiled in coloured mosaics. In the centre of this stood a towering giant of a man with a trimmed black beard, bright black eyes and clothes as plain as the house around him was colourful.

‘Our host, I presume?’ murmured Konrad.

Nanda’s idea of an answer was to proclaim: ‘Eino!’ in ringing tones, and to envelop the giant in an embrace.

Konrad stood by, observing this while trying not to seem to and wondering what one had to do to merit a hug from Nanda.

‘My friends,’ she said, stepping back from the giant, and made gracious introduction of Konrad, Nuritov and Tasha. Eino Holt welcomed all three with a twinkling congeniality which made Konrad feel a tiny bit better about everything.

But then Eino looked long at Konrad and said, apparently to Nanda: ‘An excellent choice, my dear. He will make a fine Diederik.’

Konrad blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Nanda trod on his foot. ‘Won’t he, though? He’s positively dying to get started. Aren’t you, Konrad?’

‘Yes…?’ said Konrad.

Eino beamed hugely. ‘And Vidar, lovely! Not quite the right colouring, but it will pass. As for your little Synnove, charming! Very clever, my dear.’

He looked from Nuritov to Tasha as he spoke, and a horrible suspicion dawned in Konrad’s mind.

Nuritov wandered closer. ‘Do you have any idea what is meant by any of this?’ he whispered.

Konrad gritted his teeth. ‘I believe we are here for a theatrical party.’

Nuritov blinked and said with woolly comprehension: ‘Oh.’

‘A theatrical party,’ said Konrad a little later, ‘is a conceit sometimes adopted by the so-called elite, when they grow bored of every other conceivable leisure activity and develop a desire to torture each other instead.’

He was surrounded by several more of those conceits as he spoke, for he had been shown to a spectacularly luxurious room on the second floor by one of Eino Holt’s many maids. The girl had been dressed in an immaculate, dark blue dress with a cap that covered up her hair. Konrad had passed by another two such maids on the way up the house’s grand, carpeted staircases, and found he could not tell any of them apart. They appeared to be identical.

The room was large enough to accommodate at least ten people in comfort. A gigantic four-poster bed dominated the centre, draped in crimson velvet curtains, and the rest of the furniture was at least a couple of centuries old to Konrad’s eye — all exquisitely well-kept, and polished to a mirror shine. The windows were fantasies: long and light, composed of hundreds of tiny panes of glass. Some of the glass was coloured, casting shimmering rainbow hues over the cool, pale marble floor of the room.

It was all spectacularly overdone.

Nuritov had been given a rather more modest chamber, in keeping with his apparent status compared to Konrad’s. Absurd, considering that Konrad came from poverty; a fact of which nobody else (save Nanda) was aware, but which Konrad could not forget. The inspector had found his way to Konrad’s room pretty swiftly, and now stood marvelling at the exquisite stained glass.

‘So-called elite?’ Nuritov echoed. He looked Konrad over with an air of faint bemusement. ‘Are you not among them?’

Konrad paused to consider his reply. Once only an occasional colleague, Inspector Nuritov had graduated, by slow degrees, to something of a friend, and he was one of the very few who knew that Mr. Konrad Savast of Bakar House, gentleman of fortune, was also the Malykant. But he knew nothing of Konrad’s background, and upon reflection, Konrad found that he was not yet inclined to alter that circumstance. Secrets were comfortable. Secrets were safety.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘But I cannot altogether overlook our absurdities as a class. Theatricals! To act professionally is irrevocably lowering, and such a person could never be considered respectable. But to act out some triviality of a play in the privacy of one’s own castle, that is a different matter altogether! To make a prime cake of oneself for the amusement of one’s friends is in no way inappropriate.’

Nuritov sat awkwardly upon a darkwood chair which was, in all probability, worth more than his yearly salary as a police inspector. He looked like he knew it, too. In his plain, dark coat and soberly-cut waistcoat and trousers, he looked out of place in the ridiculously sumptuous room. He was a common songbird let loose in an exotic paradise.

Konrad, meanwhile, looked all too perfectly at home. His clothes were of exquisitely fine cloth and embroidered silk, his dark hair arranged to perfection by a valet. He felt like a painted imposter.

But such was his life, and as it held far more comforts and advantages than embarrassments or drawbacks, it behoved him to appreciate more than he condemned it. So he swallowed the rest of his complaints and said instead: ‘Where have they put Tasha?’

‘She has the room next to mine, but I have no idea where she has gone.’

The serpents had gone quiet again, too. This might mean they were behaving themselves impeccably, or it might mean that they had wandered off to make mischief in some other part of the castle. The latter was more likely.

Nanda had been given a room that was the equal of his own for splendour. Considering that she was only a working apothecary and not a noblewoman, that said a great deal about the heights of the esteem in which Eino Holt held her.

Konrad was not sure how to feel about that.

Nuritov wanted to say something, but apparently did not know how to begin. He opened his mouth, shifted restlessly in his seat and shut it again without uttering a syllable.

Konrad maintained his silence, and tried to look encouraging.

‘Irinanda did not… happen to mention why she brought us here, did she?’ Nuritov developed an apologetic look and added, ‘I refer to myself of course, and Tasha. Miss Falenia needs no special reason to invite you to such an event, but the rest of us? I am at a loss.’

‘As am I. If you are under the impression that Nanda is in the habit of confiding in me, I must relieve you of it at once. A confidence from Nanda tends to arrive with the sudden impact of a hurricane, and approximately as often.’

Nuritov accepted this with his usual placid equanimity, an attitude which Konrad sometimes envied. ‘No doubt we will soon find out.’

No doubt. Nanda at her most mysterious tended to make Konrad just a trifle nervous, so he hoped he would not have to wait long.

Nor did he, in the end.

Konrad and Nuritov were not suffered long to linger above-stairs alone, for tea was served in the drawing-room. Upon presenting themselves, they discovered that the rest of the company was already collected, and a motley assortment of folk they did make. Konrad observed Holt’s guests with keen interest as Nanda took it upon herself to ply him with tea, together with far more in the way of cakes and pastries than he could possibly expect to eat. He had noticed that she appeared to enjoy feeding him, and did not choose to interrupt her solicitude.

‘Are you trying to fatten me?’ The plate she handed to him towered with delicacies; they actually teetered, and threatened to topple onto the floor.

‘Perhaps I have overdone it,’ she conceded, fixing the offending plate with a swift, narrow-eyed look. She snatched it back, unloaded half of its contents and returned it to him with a dazzling smile. ‘Better?’

Konrad still failed to catch a glimpse of any of the plate’s fine porcelain beneath its burden of eatables, but at least the stack of pastries no longer leaned, unpromisingly, to the left. He watched surreptitiously as Nanda selected an array of sweets for herself, pleased to observe that she took plenty. ‘Do you know everybody here?’ he asked.

Nanda surveyed the sumptuous, velvet-furnished drawing-room and its complement of overdressed people. ‘Nearly enough.’

Her tone did not suggest that she was thrilled to find herself in their company, which struck Konrad as odd considering that she had insisted upon attending the party. Perhaps he had imagined her distaste; after all, she had spoken of some of these same guests with enthusiasm, in the carriage.

Then again, perhaps he had not imagined it. Nanda began to speak, and perhaps she intended to tell him more about the people crowded into the drawing-room. The youngish woman curled up in an oversized brocade arm chair, for one, her skin and hair as pale as Nanda’s. She was dressed in faded rose-pink satin, her gown covered in cheap lace ruffles: clearly trying to make a fair show on a small budget. Konrad might have sympathised with her apparent situation, had it not been for the expression of marked sourness that twisted her handsome features into a dark scowl. Or what about the man behind her, small and trim and neat in an emerald-green velvet coat, his pale hair worn rather longer than prevailing fashions recommended? He certainly did not lack for money, or for status either, if his air of arrogance was anything to judge by. He had his back slightly turned to the rest of the room, and he supped tea from a delicate porcelain cup with the kind of greedy satisfaction that led Konrad to suspect that the contents were not tea at all.

But Nanda only proceeded as far as to say, in a low, confidential tone, ‘Truly, they are such—’ before she was interrupted. A woman stepped smartly up, her posture both commanding and demanding attention. She was tiny, the top of her head only reaching as high as Nanda’s shoulder, and so ancient that Konrad could only marvel at the energy with which she moved. Her hair was a mass of thin, thready white wisps, and he could not imagine she had taken a comb to it for at least a decade. She was clad in a voluminous coat of thin, faded-blue cotton velvet, tightly buttoned up to the neck, and a pair of shabby, scuffed shoes after a fashion that had vanished about twenty years before. Not a trace of warmth did she display as she stared, hard, at Nanda.

‘You are a prize fool, girl,’ she said, so softly that Konrad almost failed to discern her words.