She liked when she flustered him. It seemed to be happening more and more of late.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what you mean. What a charmer you are after all, Preston Héloury.”
He laughed, cheeks still flushed. “Not in the slightest.”
“I don’t know about that. I find you very charming, underneath all the smugness.”
“You think I’m smug?”
Effy had to laugh at that. “You aren’t exactly the most approachable person I’ve ever met. But I suppose that’s because you’re also the smartest, most eloquent person I’ve ever met.”
Preston just shook his head. He was silent for a moment, staring through the window as the scenery passed by slowly. At last, he said, “There’s a lot to compensate for, when you’re the only Argantian in Llyr’s most prestigious literary program.”
All at once Effy was suffused with sympathy—and with guilt. She remembered how she had berated him on the cliffside, and then again in the pub, pricking at him, questioning his loyalties. “I’m sorry if people have treated you cruelly. I’m sorry for the things I said, when we first met.”
“It’s really all right,” he said, turning to look at her. “It’s just whispers and looks in the hall, mostly. I’m sure you’ve gotten your fair share as the only woman in the architecture college.”
Effy tensed. She realized that, unintentionally, she’d created the perfect opportunity for him to ask about Master Corbenic. She still didn’t know if that particular piece of gossip had reached the literature college.
“It’s not so bad,” she said. A lie. “I knew what I was signing up for.”
Preston inhaled, and it seemed as though he wanted to say something more. In the end, though, he just snapped his mouth shut and turned back toward the road. They lapsed into a slightly uneasy silence as the green hills rolled past, looking as huge as waves at high tide.
Penrhos, Blackmar’s estate, was not technically in the Bottom Hundred. It was still south of Laleston, and the nearest landmark was a busy market town, Syfaddon, where the lamplight pooled on damp cobblestones and storefront awnings flapped in the wind like dresses hung on clotheslines.
Preston’s car inched through the crowded streets, jerking to a halt every few minutes so that a merchant could drag his cart across, or an errant child could escape her mother. The windows of the pubs and shops were bright with the glow of gas lamps.
“It’s not far from here,” Preston murmured. His knuckles were white around the steering wheel, brow furrowed with the immense concentration it required not to flatten an oblivious pedestrian. “Just up the road. Much less remote than Hiraeth.”
Effy watched a fishmonger adjust one of his carp, mouth open so she could see its tongue and teeth. His fish were aligned perfectly on their bed of ice, as neat as bodies in crematory drawers. “Is Blackmar from Syfaddon?”
“No, he’s from Draefen, actually. I think he’s descended from one of those post-Drowning industrialists. Oil or railroads or something like that. Enough money he never had to work a day in his life, which doesn’t make for a very interesting author profile.”
“At least, not as interesting as an upstart provincial genius,” Effy said, as Syfaddon’s market shrank in the rearview mirror. “So you think the publisher—Greenebough—arranged for Blackmar to write Angharad, but publish it under Myrddin’s name?”
“That’s my working theory, yes. Blackmar had the best education money could buy, naturally—he studied literature at the university in Caer-Isel. There’s even a scholarship named after him, or maybe his father?”
“But no one there is studying ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King,’” she said. “It’s ironic, isn’t it—that his best-known work is commercial tripe, but Angharad is beloved. I mean, why would Blackmar agree to it? It’s not like Greenebough could have swayed him with money—you said he was rich enough already. And if he could write something like Angharad, why is his other work so . . . so middling?”
Preston was quiet for a moment, considering. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s still plenty that doesn’t add up. But that’s why we’re here.”
With that, he turned onto a narrower road, more poorly paved, and lined closely with a fleet of enormous elms. The shadows between the trees looked dense and oily, like the dark itself was moving. It was evening now; the sun listing gently to the line of the horizon, the clouds a bruised violet. It was several more minutes down that dim, craggy road before the turrets of a house rose above the trees in the distance.
The black wrought-iron gates came into view, cutting the house behind them into slivers. House seemed insufficient, discourteous even—what stood before them was a mammoth construction of brickwork and groin vaults, marble columns and sash windows.
Effy hardly considered herself a real architect, but she could calculate the cost of each feature, each balcony and balustrade, and it amounted to a sum that made her dizzy.
Preston stopped the car in front of the gates and they looked at each other, the same unspoken question on their lips, before the gates began to slowly creak open.
He drove up the circular driveway, around an island of immaculately landscaped grass and a marble fountain in the shape of a maiden. Her arms were at her sides, hands turned out and fingers splayed, and water spurted from her open palms.
For a moment, Effy could swear she saw the woman’s face change, sightless eyes shifting under marble lashes, but when she blinked, the statue was still again. It had never been a woman, had never been alive at all.
She dug her fingernails into her palm, and for some reason, found it appropriate to whisper, “This can’t all be from writing, can it?”
“That’s the family money, I’m guessing.”
It was so different from Hiraeth, and that, more than anything, was what shocked her. Why did Myrddin’s descendants live in such decaying squalor, all their once lovely things waterlogged and rotted and covered in a layer of sea salt and grime?
The bushes at Penrhos were groomed like equestrian steeds, no ragged leaves or split branches. Even without a family inheritance, the Myrddins must have had money—there was no good reason for Ianto and his mother to have been living like that unless they were doing it out of some misguided, superstitious deference to their dead husband and father.
Preston parked, and they got out. The air was cold enough that Effy’s breath floated out in front of her. She squinted in the evening light: there was a large stone staircase, and wooden double doors at the top of them.
In another moment, with a loud groan, the doors heaved open.
She couldn’t see Blackmar very well; she could only hear the clacking of his cane against the stone as he came down toward them. When he was close enough that Effy could pick out details, she saw the flash of his red velvet dressing gown, the sharp ebony of his cane, and, when he smiled at them, the gleam of a gold tooth in his mouth. His feet were ensconced in matching red velvet slippers.
His face was like a rusted mirror, stippled with a million cracks. He was the most ancient-looking person Effy had ever seen.
“Euphemia!” he said, with a rattling, excited gasp. “I’m so glad you took me up on my invitation.”
And then he seized her around the middle in a zealous but creaky embrace. Effy stiffened, unsure what to do, waiting for it to be over.
At last Blackmar let go, knifepoint eyes shining out of his shriveled-walnut face.
“Oh,” Effy said as he released her, feeling breathless. “Thank you very much for having us.”
“I’m always happy to entertain my admirers.” Blackmar smiled. From that close, Effy could see that nearly a third of his teeth were missing, and that they had all been replaced with gold imitations. “Is this your . . . compatriot?”