Garrett Investigates - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,53
door before Dyachenko could contradict him.
***
For the gala, Garrett dispensed with her lap-robe. She doubted she’d be cold within the expected press of bodies, and if it came to the worst her beaded gown was equipped with a convenient burnt-velvet shawl. She didn’t need it to keep her shoulders free of drafts—her dress had sleeves long enough to tuck her wand inside of, which incidentally concealed the ropy, striated flesh of her upper arms. She might be an old wreck but she wasn’t an old fool, though gone with her commission was her right to be armed in the presence of the king.
She couldn’t do anything about the fact that in her chair, her head was navel-height to most of the crowd, and she couldn’t see a damned thing around whoever she was talking with at the moment. And she wanted badly to get another long look at the queen, given what Sebastien had whispered in her ear as he sent her and Phoebe off to bed.
The queen is under a spell.
Sebastien had left her with an old—and unexpected—friend, the Russian police investigator for whom she’d often consulted when they lived in Moscow. Yuri Dyachenko was still spry enough to push her chair around on a flat floor, for which she was envious and grateful in equal measure, because the press of bodies and Garrett’s burgeoning deafness in noisy crowds made navigation difficult for her.
Dyachenko was pleased enough at her company to not complain too much when she asked him to find her a place near the dance floor, where she might observe the royal couple when they arrived. Fashionably late, of course, because it would be impolite in the extreme for anyone to arrive after them, and so they would give stragglers every chance to avoid embarrassment.
The queen is under a spell.
There was plenty of warning when the royal couple arrived. They could all hear the cheers from outside, where Phillip addressed his people one last time. They could hear the band strike up a processional. They arranged themselves in tidy lines, and footmen took hold of the handles on the great double doors.
Even Garrett, who considered herself entirely too old for this sort of theatrical nonsense, felt the thrill of tension in her chest. Dyachenko reached over her shoulder and put his hand against her collarbone. She reached up and squeezed—a feeble squeeze, but she hoped a comfort nonetheless.
The king would pension me off. He thinks nothing of me. But the queen is under a spell.
And then the doors swung wide, and Garrett saw Henry’s face over Phillip’s shoulders, his wife sturdy and smiling at his side. And she cursed herself for an old fool after all, and did not hear a word of the pretty speech King Phillip made.
***
Sean Cuan found her later, by the table where Dyachenko had parked her before going off to fetch champagne and pastries. He cleared his throat; she glanced up, surprised to find herself staring at a face that should have been familiar if it wasn’t so damned old, and framed by a neat white beard.
“DCI Garrett,” he said, and his voice was all the clue she needed.
“DCI Cuan,” she said. She would have started to her feet, but it was beyond her. So instead she waved to a chair beyond the one Dyachenko had claimed. “Sit. My god, it’s been a long time.”
He glanced over, but did not sit. He had never had what she thought of as a classically Irish face, and the years had stretched it long and gullied it with hard-work lines.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. “But it’s not DCI anymore.”
“Ah,” he said, distress creaking through every word. “I’m an idiot, ma’am.”
“You’re a man,” she said. “You came back with the king?”
He smiled. “Not exactly. I was in Africa, fighting the Prussians there. But I came back because of the king. You know we’re shy of Crown Investigators now.”
He’d been a skinny kid when she met him, a skinny knob-eared Detective Sergeant with the newly established Criminal Investigations Division. She had been the only woman among the Crown’s Own. He’d impressed her on a jointly-worked case, and she’d written him a letter of introduction to the Dean of Sorcery at Oxford University.
They’d remained fast friends until her flight to America. And this was their first reunion since.
She waved him impatiently at the chair until he relented and sat.
“I understand you saved some of the Library,” he said.
“The Enchancery still stands,” she said, not as tiredly