Chapter 1

The Lady Reaper

On the day of the sixth funeral it had been raining since morning, and the black marble floor of Lumière Cathedral, streaked with the rainwater and mud the mourners had tracked in, gleamed faintly beneath the candles.

People in black veils and black gloves, holding black umbrellas, bowed their heads before the coffin, and every one of them, at the very moment they turned away, let their eyes slide to the same place: the far left end of the front pew, where the grey light falling from the high windows barely reached, and where a young woman sat.

Adelaide Crowell could count the weight of each of those glances without lifting her head. By the sixth time, one learns that glances have a grain to them. Curiosity grazes the nape of the neck lightly and moves on; fear settles on the shoulders and lingers; contempt drives straight into the middle of the back.

"...That's her, they say."

"The sixth, they say. Heavens, the sixth."

"Sir Noah Bertel was a scholar, wasn't he? Known for being a good man."

"What good is being a good man? Get engaged to the girl from that house and you die. Everyone knows it."

"The Lady Reaper."

The whispers rose to the domed ceiling, mingled with the sound of the rain, and sank down again. Adel looked at the two hands folded in her lap. Beneath the damp lace of her glove, the ring finger of her left hand felt a little loose, for until three days ago a ring had sat there. The ring Noah had chosen was a plain band of silver, and as he held it out to her, he had flushed and confessed that he was far more confident choosing books than jewelry.

"My lady."

A small, warm voice spoke at her side. It was the same voice that, long ago, had taken turns reading a single book of fairy tales with her as they lay on one bed in her nurse's room, and Bibi was the only person in this entire cathedral who called Adel by a name other than reaper.

"You must be cold. Shall I fetch you another shawl?"

"Ah, n-no. I'm all right."

Her voice trembled thinly. It always did, in front of people. Bibi squeezed the back of Adel's hand once, firmly, then let go; the warmth that came through the glove was brief, but unmistakable.

A middle-aged man in a grey frock coat finished paying his respects and turned away from the coffin. He had been introduced as a distant relation of the Bertel family. With her head still bowed, Adel followed his shoes with her eyes as they crossed the marble. They were black leather, polished to a high shine, and only on the inner edge of the heels had a thin film of red mud dried.

There is no red earth in Lumière. Except at the southern canal works.

Why would a relative stop by a construction site on his way to a funeral?

Adel did not voice the question. Over six funerals, the questions she had swallowed this way had piled up enough to fill several pages of a notebook.

When the requiem ended, people opened their umbrellas and hurried down the cathedral steps. Adel kept her seat until the very last of them had gone out the door. That way no one had to take the long way around to avoid her, and if six funerals had taught her anything, it was that this arrangement was less trouble for everyone.

In the middle of the emptied cathedral, beside the coffin, Noah's mother stood alone. Adel cut slowly through the air heavy with the smell of candle wax and approached her. The old woman turned her head, and her raw, reddened eyes caught the candlelight.

"Mrs. Bertel, I, I..."

"I know."

The old woman's answer was short, but it had no edge to it. It was the voice of someone so worn out she no longer had the strength even for blame.

"I know it isn't your fault, my lady. My Noah told me. He said you only ever look up when you're talking about books."

Adel could not say a word. The old woman held out a black-gloved hand, and on her palm lay a small leather book with worn corners. On the cover, its gilt half flaked away, the title A Herbal of the North was just barely legible.

"He'd promised to lend it to you, he said. The night before he took to his bed, he set it out on his desk."

The book was lighter than she had expected. Adel held it quietly against her chest and bowed her head.

"...Thank you."

Without ever managing to meet the old woman's eyes, she turned and walked toward the heavy cathedral doors, and as she went, other sentences were already lining up neatly in her head.

A twenty-six-year-old researcher who did nothing at the Royal Academy but pore over herbs took to his bed, and twenty-two days later died of consumption.

With that very herbal set out on his desk.

Under the eaves outside the cathedral doors, Bibi was holding up an umbrella and stamping her feet. Every time the rain-soaked hem of her apron flapped in the wind, she pressed it down firmly with one hand.

"My lady, the carriage is ready! Ah, but they say the wheel's stuck in the mud, hehe. The coachman's pushing it right now and swearing his head off."

"Th-that's fine."

"Oh, my lady, your hands are like ice. Get in, quick, I've laid a blanket out inside."

Bibi tilted the umbrella as far toward Adel as it would go, and her own shoulder was soaked through for it. When Adel pushed the handle back to return it, Bibi laughed.

"A maid's dress is made for getting wet."

Then she tilted the umbrella back again, walked Adel to the carriage step, and tucked the lap blanket carefully around her all the way down to her ankles.

At that same hour, at the end of the long gallery in the west annex of the palace, Sion Arden stood facing the heavy oak door of the king's study and counted to three in his head. Only after one, two, three did he knock with his gloved hand.

"Come in."

Leopold III stood by a tall window streaming with rain, his back to the room. With his silver hair of sixty years and his hands clasped leisurely behind him, he looked like an old man admiring a garden in the rain, but Sion knew that back was calculating everything in the room.

"Special Knight Sion Arden, reporting as summoned..."

"I know. Sit."

Sion did not sit. A knight of common birth did not draw up a chair first in the presence of the king, and the king knew it perfectly well when he offered. Sion did not care for tests that measured a man this way.

"Do you know the daughter of House Crowell?"

"I know that she is called the Lady Reaper in society, Your Majesty."

"Today was the funeral of her sixth fiancé."

The king turned and, with his fingertips, slid a thick dossier across the desk. When Sion opened it, a small portrait pinned to the first page came into view under the candlelight. Jet-black hair, a bloodless face, eyes lowered to the floor. It called to mind a rabbit huddled before a hound.

"A fall from a horse, poison, fire, a fall from a height, a duel, illness. Six men, dead in six different ways. The City Guard says coincidence, and society says curse. What do you think?"

"There is no such thing as six coincidences. Nor is there any such thing as a curse."

"Then?"

"A person."

Lines of satisfaction gathered at the corners of the king's mouth. It was the look of a man who had picked out a hound to his liking on the hunting field.

"Duke Crowell is seeking a seventh match for her, but no one has come forward. Naturally. So I have decided to recommend someone."

Sion raised his head from the dossier. The rain beating against the window suddenly sounded very loud.

"...Your Majesty."

"You, Arden. The seventh fiancé."

The king turned back to the window.

"Stay at the lady's side. Find out who killed the six, and if the lady herself is the killer, bring me the evidence to arrest her. That is the whole of your mission."

"And if she is not the killer?"

The king did not so much as turn around.

"Then you need only not be the seventh to die."

Sion closed the dossier. The instant the portrait with its lowered eyes vanished beneath the leather cover, he remembered the face of a certain nobleman he had let slip some years ago for want of evidence. That man, too, had worn such meek eyes in the courtroom, and when the verdict was read, he had walked out smiling.

Sion tucked the dossier under his arm, bowed, and withdrew from the study, and all the way down the long gallery his gloved fingers kept pressing at the corner of its leather cover, folding it down again and again.

On the second floor of the east wing of the Crowell manor, in a room where logs crackled low in the hearth, Adel locked the door and peeled off her wet gloves slowly, one finger at a time. Bibi must have lit the fire in advance, for the air in the room was pleasantly warm.

When she lifted the bottom board of the lowest desk drawer with the tip of her fingernail, a black leather notebook hidden beneath it came into view. On the first page, five lines ran on in her small, neat hand.

1. Count Edwin Harold — fall from horse; horse bolted for no reason.
2. Luca Felici — poison; said to be the wine, but no poison detected in the glass.
3. Viscount Owen Stone — fire in the study; point of origin irregular.
4. Raphael Desmond — fall from the clock tower; clock tower key unaccounted for that day.
5. Baron Julian Crane — duel; opponent's blade discolored green.

Adel dipped her pen nib in the inkwell and added one more line beneath the fifth.

6. Noah Bertel — illness (consumption); twenty-two days after onset; herbalist; canal-works mud on the shoes of a man claiming to be a relative.

She looked down for some time at the page with its six lines set side by side. For the first two, even I truly believed it was a curse.

Leaving the notebook open, she opened Noah's book, and a single dried petal that had been tucked between its pages fell into her lap. On the page where the petal had rested, a fine line was drawn in pencil.

Whitenight herb. Prolonged ingestion in small doses causes fluid to collect in the lungs. Difficult to distinguish from consumption.

Adel gazed at that one line for a long while. Noah had known why he was ill. And on the night before he died, he had gone out of his way to set out the book he had promised to lend her.

To tell me.

There was a knock at the door. Adel put the notebook in the drawer and replaced the board, slid Noah's book into an empty space on the shelf, and returned to her chair with her hands folded in her lap. It took her the space of three breaths.

"My lady, it's me! You have to get out of those wet clothes."

Bibi came in with an armful of dry towels and a fresh house dress, and set down on the table a bowl of hot potato soup she said she had begged from the kitchen. Then, pressing Adel's wet hair firmly with a towel, she lowered her voice. Her eyes had the sparkle they always did whenever she brought back gossip from somewhere in the manor.

"I was passing His Grace's study just now, and they say the seventh match has been decided. A royal knight! His Majesty the King recommended him personally. And, and, they say Her Grace the Duchess looked ever so pleased when she heard. Saying now perhaps Lady Céline's marriage prospects might open up a little..."

Having got that far, Bibi seemed to realize her slip and closed her mouth. Adel shook her head slightly, as if to say it was all right. She did not need to hear it to know where her stepmother's joy was directed. There were more than a few people even within this house who wished the Lady Reaper would leave it as soon as possible, and Duchess Isolde stood at the very front of that line.

While the towel moved through her hair, Adel cupped the warmth of the soup bowl in her palms and turned over the name she had just heard. The king never spared this house a single glance while six men died, and yet he chose the seventh himself.

Then that knight isn't coming to marry me. He's coming to catch me.

"Wh-what sort of man... do you suppose he is?"

"Handsome, they say. Terribly!"

Bibi giggled, towel still in hand, and Adel smiled faintly along with her.

When Bibi had gathered up the empty soup bowl and her footsteps had faded down the stairs, Adel locked the door again and lifted the bottom board of the drawer. Beneath the sixth line she wrote only "7.", and she held the pen there, the rest of the line left blank, until the ink was dry.

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