The Breaker Queen Read online

  THE BREAKER QUEEN

  By

  C. S. E. Cooney

  Book One of Dark Breakers

  Dedicated to Julia Rios

  The Breaker Queen

  Copyright 2014 C. S. E. Cooney. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format without permission from the author.

  Cover Art by Jeremy Cooney & Rebecca Houston | 33o Studios & Heathen Ink

  Cover Photograph and Design by Jeremy Cooney | 33o Studios

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Part One: Elliot

  Part Two: Nyx

  Part Three: Unveiling

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Excerpt: The Two Paupers

  Excerpt: The Witch in the Almond Tree

  PART ONE: ELLIOT

  Elliot Howell considered the glittering company about to assemble for dinner below, and sighed.

  Even in his best jacket, a blue velvet smoking jacket that was the pride of his wardrobe, he would be shabby in comparison. His fair hair needed cutting and combing, and his trousers were shiny at the knees and showed his clumsy darning besides.

  Charles “Chaz” Mallister had already jostled him on his way downstairs, remarking, “Nice threads, Maestro. So very last century of you. You merely lack the lace on your cuffs. By the by, old boy, you’ve a bit of pigment on your nose.”

  With one of his odd winks that never failed to make Elliot feel both miserably complicit and oblivious to the source of his complicity, Chaz pushed forward and clattered on down the stairs. His shiny shoes rapped against the rosy marble like pistol shots. One end of his ascot, yellow polka dots on bright apricot silk, fluttered over his shoulder. It looked as though it wanted to fly off and float gently to the floor of the main hall far below, but a lurid emerald pin kept it firmly attached to Chaz’s person. Soon enough, bright ascot, black shoes, impossible emerald and the even more impossible Chaz Mallister were out of sight.

  “Braying jackass,” someone muttered.

  Elliot Howell thought it had been himself. He was shocked he’d had the courage to voice his thoughts out loud, especially in this echoing mansion, which had more rooms on one floor than his entire University dorm building. Or at least it seemed that way.

  But no—the voice belonged to Gideon Alderwood.

  Elliot’s mouth twitched. Gideon never had a problem making his opinion known.

  His friend slouched down the stairs, his narrow, ascetic face irritable as he shrugged himself into a handsome tuxedo jacket. Elliot leaned against the banister, watching.

  “I hate this devil monkey suit,” Gideon said. “Proposing we all dine in our bathing attire is the only sensible suggestion Charles Mallister ever made. How old were we then?”

  Elliot shrugged. “Before my time, I’m afraid. I never met you lot till Uni.”

  Gideon pushed the dark tangle of curls off his brow. “No matter. I think we were still in the single digits. Chaz was just about bearable back then. Or maybe it was before. . .” He trailed off, and shrugged. “But, as you say. Before your time. How can you be sure of anything I say? I could be lying. I could be dreaming. The Desdemonster has a better memory about childhood matters. Best ask her.”

  Elliot studied Gideon’s tails with an artist’s appreciative eye, preferring the simplicity of his attire to Chaz’s extravagant green pinstripes and apricot scarf. But upon closer inspection, he noticed a streak as white as pigeon soil marring the black lapel. He leaned closer, scraping at it with his finger. Gideon glanced down.

  “Alderwood, for the Gods’ sake!” Elliot cried, laughing a little. “Didn’t you wash your hands before coming down?”

  Gideon stared at his fingers, still coated in clay. He stared at his suit, smudged in several places with white prints. This seemed to tickle his odd sense of humor. One half of his thin mouth dragged itself up.

  “Damn it, Howell! If these people are going to interrupt my work with their little dinner parties, the least I can do is bring a bit of it down with me.”

  Elliot smiled back, because a half-smile from Gideon was about as resistible as a riptide.

  “Why did you accept Miss Mannering’s invitation if you’d prefer to be back in your garret, sculpting statues you’re only too happy to destroy upon completion?”

  Gideon winced slightly. “As to that.”

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Mannering’s mama, Mrs. Mannering—or should I say, Mrs. Alderwood-Mannering, or perhaps, more appropriate in this case, ‘Dear Aunt Tracy’—told Cousin Desdemona that if she did not lure me down to Breaker House for this week-long natal fête of hers, she would furnish my address to the daughters of her five closest friends, inform them they had an open invitation to watch me work, and that I’m always looking for models.”

  His dark eyes, which had the tendency to leave anyone who fell under their scrutiny feeling as though they’d been struck by lightning, began narrowing as Elliot laughed outright.

  “So you’re determined to misbehave?”

  Gideon flapped a slender, clay-crusted hand. “I don’t care enough for that. As long as the Desdemonster doesn’t make me play tennis, and leaves me alone to sculpt in the afternoons, I will make an effort at mealtimes. At least,” he amended, “dinners. But I’ll be damned, Howell, and tithed to the King of Goblins on his ever-darkening throne, if I have to choke down port and cigars, and endure Uncle H. H.’s politics and Chaz Mallister’s ascot.”

  “No,” Elliot agreed, “let’s sneak out instead and drink summer ales at the pub. We’ll take Ana. She’ll be about ready to escape Miss Mannering by dessert, I’d imagine.”

  The remnants of Gideon’s half-smile vanished. It was as if a stony storm front slammed over his face.

  “Analise Field,” he growled, “should not be here.”

  “She’s your next door neighbor. You’re practically living in each other’s pockets. She brings you soup. You got her first novel published.”

  “She doesn’t belong at Breaker House.”

  “Deep Lords drown us, Alderwood.” Elliot shook his head. “You’re a worse snob than your cousin!”

  Gideon muttered something unintelligible and proceeded Elliot down the steps.

  ***

  Breaker House had so many branching corridors and doors that opened into halls with more doors, that Elliot, slow-footed with reluctance, lost sight of Gideon and then lost his way altogether. He found the billiard room, with its green-felted table the size of his entire living unit, and a monstrous clock on the mantel shaped to look like the Sacrifice of the Hunter God. He found the morning room, all done up in ivory brocade, ivory velvet, and enough ivory knickknacks to evince the doom of a thousand elephants. He found the music room, stuffed to the rafters with gilded harmonium, baby grand, concert harp, and delicate couches.

  And, eventually, he found the library. And a maid.

  “I’m so glad to see you!” Elliot blurted, then blushed.

  The maid looked up. The wine she had been decanting splashed onto the glass table. He had no clear sight of her face, for she glanced down again just as quickly. And yet, for some reason his feet immediately doubled in size, his tongue began to swell, sweat sprang to his forehead, and he worried he would burst into a rash of pimples like a teenager.

  “Damn!” he said. “Sorry! Miss.”

  He began to cross the room, tripped on the edge of a carpet, and righted himself, cursing. The maid looked over her shoulder again and made a gesture with her hand that was like a mother soothing a worried child. The anxiety in Elliot’s chest eased some.

  He managed to
say, with creditable fluency, “Sorry for the spill, I mean. And for saying damn. Oh. Sorry. Again.” He approached the table, leaned over, and sopped up the spilled wine with his blue velvet sleeve. “There you go! All better.”

  The maid laid her hand on his wet arm. “Boy. You should not have done so.”

  Her voice was deep. It was the color of his sleeve, and the color of the spilled wine. It was blue velvet wine and wine-dark brine and a horn blowing far out at sea.

  Despite her words, what Elliot could see of the curve of her cheekbone, the tip of her nose, the line of her chin seemed pleased rather than otherwise at his impulsive action.

  “No matter.” Elliot willed her to look up at him. “I bought this jacket for a dollar at the flea market by the University. It must be ancient, don’t you think? Smelled awful too. Mothballs. Mildew. You name it. But I’d fallen in love with the color, you see. I generally only encounter this color in my favorite paintings. So I wrote to my mother and she advised me to hang it out my window for as many sunny days as Seafall was willing to provide. And it worked!”

  “Yes,” said the maid, with a firm nod. “That is it exactly. I had wondered, but now I know. You smell like sunlight.”

  Her nostrils flared as she drew in a great inhalation.

  She has a wide nose, Elliot observed, with a wide bridge. Like a fawn’s. No, he corrected himself, like a lion’s. A lioness’s. No, like a hare’s. No, like a mare’s. A wolf. A wildcat. A fawn.

  Something wild, he thought. Something wary.

  But she did not seem wary when she cocked her head and finally looked up at him through the lace of her eyelashes. She was tiny, but also bristlingly full somehow, like wool sparking with static. Her hair was hidden beneath her mobcap, but her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark.

  Black. Like her eyes.

  No, blue, like her eyes. Dark blue.

  Blue-black. Except, eyebrows couldn’t be dark blue, Elliot reminded himself. She wasn’t a raven or a crow.

  No—and there his thoughts spun off into a second kaleidoscope tumble of animal images—she was a grackle. A grackle in a woman’s shape. A girl’s.

  No, Elliot told himself, more firmly. Definitely a woman’s shape.

  The maid’s hand still grasped his sodden cuff. She was rubbing the wet nap between her fingers, studying the stain. Elliot suddenly knew what a kitten felt when a mother cat had him by the nape of the neck. What the warriors of Damahrash felt when their women took hold of their pricks and demanded an end to the endless war. He would have given her anything she asked.

  “What is your name, boy?” the maid inquired.

  “Elliot Howell.” Elliot heard his voice as though someone else had shouted the words down his throat. It echoed in his bones. “My friends call me Howell. Mostly. I mean, Ana calls me Elliot. But Gideon calls me Howell. Mallister calls me Maestro, but he’s not my friend.”

  The maid’s blue-black, black-blue, shiny-dark, no-white eyes stared up at him.

  “What are you, that even your enemies call you Master?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m just. . .I’m a painter. They know my name, a little, in Seafall. I’ve begun to teach classes, take commissions. But there’s no reason you should have heard of me. Maybe in ten years. Who knows?”

  “A painter?”

  The maid’s whole face lit up with a smile. For the first time, Elliot understood what the word “beaming” meant. Her smile is a moonbeam, he thought. She has a mouth made of moonlight. I would paint her, and call the painting, “Woman with the Moon in her Mouth.”

  As if she had read his mind, the maid cried, “Yes! You shall paint me! And by your work you shall be remembered forever. You, Elliot Howell.”

  Her tiny hands, which were tipped with tiny, sharp, blue-black nails, lifted to cup his face.

  “Midnight is the breaking hour,” she said, in her voice that was like the moving sea floor. “Any door will do, but you must pass through it if you would follow me.”

  Elliot noticed, for the first time, that the maid had small blue-black marks—tattoos, he realized—scattered across her cheekbones like freckles. The sight of them shocked him to his belly. Did more than shock him. Drained his head of blood and sent it pounding elsewhere.

  Her tattoos looked like calligraphy. Like hieroglyphics. Like bird beaks and bird bones, dancing sharply across her face. Like fangs. Or stars. Or scars.

  Elliot didn’t know what they were like. He’d never seen anything like them.

  “Mistress,” he gasped, “I think I’m lost.”

  The maid stepped back. She turned from him and continued to refill the cut crystal decanter from her dark bottle. He could no longer see her face, her strange eyes, her winging eyebrows, her markings. He just saw a white cap, a white apron over a black dress, a slender brown neck.

  “Just through there, Mr. Elliot,” said the maid, in a voice so meek and squeaky he could hardly believe the same woman spoke. “Miss Mannering and the Countess will be down shortly, but the rest await you inside.”

  “Thank you. . .Thank you—I. . .” Elliot found himself at the door, without remembering that he moved. He paused but did not turn back to look at her. “And. . .What’s your name, miss?”

  “Nixie, sir.” He could practically hear the bob of curtsy in her intonation. “That’s what they call me here at Breaker House. Nixie. At your service, sir.”

  “Thank you. . .Nixie.”

  ***

  The dining room was dark polished wood, gilded cherubs wherever a gilded cherub could conceivably be stuck, red velvet draperies, fine china and crystal. Each of the four walls sported a different portrait of a Mannering ancestor, which Elliot, despite the bizarre buzzing in his head, stopped to scan with a critical eye.

  Seven Heavens help him—the one on the western wall was a Quraishi original from the middle of last century. Each brush stroke was like a fingernail dragged lightly down his scalp, like a fine razor opening his belly, like thorns and roses blooming just under his skin. He felt his body sway toward the portrait. Stopped himself. Clenched his fists. Willed himself to be calm.

  Shivering, still agitated from his encounter with the maid, and sick in the pit of his stomach, Elliot tore his eyes away from the dark-skinned lady in her pale sea-foam dress, who leaned against a balcony and looked out upon the stormy waters. “Eloise at the Edge of the World,” read the brass plaque affixed to the bottom of the ornate frame.

  He’d studied that painting in University, and now he taught it to his students. He’d written a paper about Quraishi’s uncanny use of chiaroscuro. And here it was, like a living thing, right before him.

  Elliot wanted to fling himself out of the room, flee upstairs, scrape his current canvas clean. Perhaps set fire to it. He was unworthy to paint a portrait of another Mannering woman, as she looked out over that same balcony. He was unworthy to hold a brush. He should go back home and paint houses and repair roofs, like his father before him.

  “Get a grip, Howell,” he muttered to himself.

  Fixing the notion of next month’s rent in his head, Elliot rose to his tip-toes, peered over the edge of a tall chair and studied the white-clothed dining room table, its monstrous silver epergne and equally elaborate place settings.

  “Horned Lord,” he swore to himself. “Which is which?”

  “Where I come from,” Analise’s whisper tickled his ear, “we have one fork, one spoon, one knife. Well, maybe two if we’re eating steak. Otherwise, it’s your basic butter knife. You?”

  “Where I come from,” Elliot snorted, “we just dive in head-first like hogs. Unless we’re being very civilized for company. Then we eat with our hands. But we don’t bother to wash them first.”

  “Are you sure we aren’t related?” Analise asked him. “Because you sound like my brothers. We never could break them to cutlery.”

  “It’s cruel work,” Elliot agreed. “Best let the feral be, Ana.”

  Analise smiled wryly at him. In the three years they had known each oth
er, the alchemy of friendship had transformed her plain features, rounded shoulders, and worried forehead into one of the kindest, most comforting sights his eyes beheld.

  She’d sat for her portrait once, on his request. Elliot had called it “Writer at Work.” In it, she was barefoot, dressed in flannel pajamas and the bright red scarf her mother had knitted, which unfurled all the way to the floor and went on for a few feet more. He’d asked her to assume whatever position she found most conducive to page count, so Analise had curled up in a windowsill with her feet propped against the wall, set her notebook on her knees, and clamped her pen in her mouth. The sun shone through the window glass, touching her curly red hair to wild spirals of flame. Elliot had taken painstaking care to render a ghostly reflection of that flaming hair in the glass.

  The painting was currently on display in the Seafall Museum of New Century Art, by far his most celebrated accomplishment. The minor fame it had brought him was how he’d met Desdemona Mannering, his “most ardent and devoted follower,” as she’d put it, when she came to him begging that he paint her portrait too.

  He’d accepted, and for a sum so obscene he’d lived off it for six months. Now she wanted a second portrait done, in the Quraishi style, as her twenty-fifth birthday present to herself.

  “For, my dear boy genius,” Desdemona Mannering had written in her initial invitation to Elliot, “we must celebrate our quarter centuries, or else perish in alarm of them. Come stay at my summer cottage, and attend my birthday party, and paint me beautiful ere I grow old and cracked. Then paint me again when I am fifty, and make even my crone’s wrinkles beautiful.”

  “Why are we here again?” Analise asked him, breaking into his thoughts.

  Elliot took her hand and stroked one of the ink stains there.

  “You’re here because your bestselling novel launched you into the arms of the New Century Glitterati, thus making you Miss Mannering’s new best friend. I’m here because I’m a sellout, who’d very much like to survive the winter with the estival proceeds of his so-called art. And Gideon is here. . .”