Stranger At The Wedding by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page A

arms about Alix from behind. Alix leaned her head back against his shoulder, a gesture of absolute weariness and grief, and from the concealing darkness Kyra saw the man bend his head down over her, fair hair catching the kitchen window's suffused light. Silk petticoats rustled; then Alix made a noise in her throat, an unarticulated breath like that of an injured child who had learned that no one would pay attention to its pain.
    She whispered, “I don't know how I could stand this without you.”
    “Alix…” The name was barely to be heard against the flesh of her shoulder.
    Alix
    
     … Kyra's whole spirit was one jab of grief as she watched her sister turn in the man's arms and cling to him in a desperate embrace. Oh, Alix…
    “Don't leave me.”
    The mouths of the lovers met for one second. Then, from the direction of the front porch, came a horrible clatter and a spongy thud, followed at once by Briory's cry, “Your grace!” and the crash as the Bishop's chair men dropped their burden and went scrambling toward the steps.
    Inside the house everybody suddenly seemed to be shouting at once.
    Alix and her lover jerked apart, spun, and threw open the kitchen door, and Kyra took that opportunity to flee past the outflung bar of light and run with caught-up skirts and billowing cloak for the garden and its way into the house.
    The Bishop, descending to his waiting sedan chair, had slipped on the high front steps and broken his ankle.

Chapter III
    The doctor had scarcely departed—in the wake of his grace himself, borne back to the episcopal palace on Angel's Island and cursing his chair men with each jostle on the cobbled street—when every footman in the house went out with messages: The wedding of Blore Spenson and Miss Alix Peldyrin would not take place in the coming morning but on the one following.
    And Kyra breathed a shaky sigh of relief.
    While the doctor was with his patient in the book room, setting the broken bones and winding the swollen flesh in cold compresses brought posthaste from the kitchen, Kyra, wrapped once more in the borrowed cloak—Master Spenson's, she determined by its materials and lack of perfume—went out to the front steps to ritually disperse the invisible signs she had drawn there. A mage with sufficient power and training by the Council could call them back, but it was the consensus among her teachers that the Church's Magic Office had few genuinely high-powered wizards since the death of old Garm Ravenkin. This was fortunate, she thought, as she made her way once more through the foggy kitchen yard and around to the garden door, her slippers wet through now and her thick petticoats held up out of the way of her feet. A good mage could recognize the personality of a spell-mark's maker the way most people could recognize faces.
    She replaced Master Spenson's cloak and passed soundlessly along the little hallway, making for the kitchen quarters and the back stairs. Too many people were gathered in the hall, their voices echoing off the enormously tall ceiling. Her mother, with water dribbled all down the front of the linen apron tied incongruously over her expensive gown, was saying, “Oh, no, of course everything will keep until the day after tomorrow, dearest. All we need to do is carry it down to the ice cellar…”
    “Nonsense. Maybe people like the Brecksnifts and the Prouvets won't notice if the flans are a little crusty or the icing's stiff on the cake, but men who've been raised in the correct way of doing things will know. Merchants like Fyster Nyven will know. The members of great banking families like the Milpotts will know. Master Spenson will know.”
    “Really, Master Spenson is going to have other things on his mind on his wedding day than how fresh the cake is!”
    “I'm talking about Mayor Spenson.”
    “I can assure you, Master Peldyrin,” came the voice of Joblin the cook, “Mistress Binnie is quite correct. If everything is taken down to the ice room