As Haidée finished lacing up her bodice, she heard a tapping on the window. Quickly, she tied a bow and went over to open the pane. The marten chirped and dashed inside and headed toward the door to wait for her.
The previous day, meeting at the Cormorant’s tavern had taken up the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. She and Renaud had ended up eating lunch there while Maurice Ducos and his friends expounded on ways to help Napoleon Bonaparte gain control of the country’s governing body once his campaign in Italy was over.
“Do you really think that Monsieur Ducos and the others are actually serious?” Haidée had asked him when the meeting had adjourned and they were on their way back to the observatory. The sun was already dipping into the horizon and it made her glad that she was walking with someone in the graying darkness. “I know that there are always some people dissatisfied how things are being run, but why would they come all the way out here to make such plans?”
“They’re serious as far as I can tell,” Renaud had replied. “There were some of the locals at the gathering, but I think they came because they were more curious than actual supporters. No, the ones you have to pay attention to are the visitors to the island. The major players are Maurice Ducos and his friends.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Maurice Ducos is the brother of Roger Ducos,” he had said as if that explained everything.
Haidée had frowned and had tried to hunch a little over in her coat to get warm. The temperature as well as the light had been dropping. Sensing her discomfort, Renaud had put his arm around her shoulder. “Who’s Roger Ducos?”
“You’re not up on politics, are you?”
“I can quote plays, yes. But I don’t follow much on politics unless it affects my livelihood. I think politicians focus too much on the petty power struggles.”
“You may be right.” He paused for a moment as they had walked past the cemetery. The marten had not reappeared by then and Haidée had assumed that the creature had finally decided to go back into the wild. Finally, Renaud continued, “Roger Ducos, or Pierre-Roger Ducos as he is known more formally, is a member of the council of the Five Hundred. Unlike many of the other four hundred and ninety-nine members, he wields considerable influence over the rest of the Five Hundred and the members of the Directoire.”
“So Maurice Ducos is intimately connected to the government. Did you come here following him?”
“No. My initial directives was to follow up on Danton Neville’s odd communication with my superiors. Having Maurice Ducos traveling to Mount Saint Filan with us on the same day was coincidence. But it appears it won’t be a completely useless bit of coincidence. It’s no secret that Roger Ducos’s sympathies lie with Napoleon Bonaparte. My superiors will be interested that his brother was here trying to gather support.”
“Is Bonaparte really that much of a threat?”
“Maybe. I met him once. He was a short, energetic man. And extremely ambitious.”
They had fallen into silence for most of the walk as Haidée had tried to turn over this new information. It was interesting, surely, but at the moment, she didn’t think it would apply much to the current situation unless she also took in the other comments she had heard during that meeting. “What do you think of Monsieur Galliard?” she said suddenly.
“The magistrate, Merle Galliard?” His tone had sounded mild. “What about him? He seemed a bit like a fop to me. He was probably just going along with Ducos because it seemed fashionable. Or perhaps he’s a bit more ambitious than he first appears—perhaps he wants to ingrate himself with Ducos to gain contacts with certain powerful politicos.”
“There is that,” she had replied. “But he kept making all these comments about the uses of supernatural powers. And I don’t think he was talking about God and divine interventions. Do you think he actually knows about such things?”
“Everard once told me that Galliard went to the Sorbonne and had done a little study with astronomy—that is why he is such an enthusiastic amateur,” Renaud had said. “But to be a good astronomer, you also have to be a bit of a sorcerer as well. It’s not inconceivable that Galliard learned some of the basics of sorcery while he was there.”
“If that’s possible, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible for him to learn death magic. It is somewhat suspicious that he is talking about it yet he isn’t even coming to the observatory to even make a pretense of investigating what happened to Legard, D’Aubigne, and now even Roland. Maybe Everard didn’t even ask him to stay away. Maybe he’s staying away because he himself had something to do with it.”
“Hm.”
“You think I’m just talking without proof.”
“Frankly, yes. I’ve never seen Galliard actually do anything astronomical—not even look at charts or telescopes or even doing calculations. He just talks about his interests and praises Everard whenever the two are together. He hangs on to people, just as he tries to hang on to you.”
“The way you say it, he sounds like a disgusting sycophant.”
“He is a sycophant.”
Haidée grabbed her coat from her clothing trunk just as the marten mewled in impatience. She scowled at the little creature. “You expect me to do everything for you, even after you disappeared yesterday doing whatever it was you were doing? Be grateful that you were running around outside as free as bird while I was stuck inside listening to political ranting!”
The marten didn’t give a fig about her arguments. It wanted out.
She opened the door and it ran out before her. Haidée went down to the kitchen where the marten, again, was waiting at the door.
“Oh no, you’re not going in there. Stay. Out here.”
She edged toward the edge of the door and stuck her foot out to bar the way. The marten just cocked its head and looked at her as if it thought she was being abnormally silly. Haidée opened the door a crack and prepared to dash in without letting the marten through. She opened the door another inch.
The marten saw its chance and with a mischievous chitter, it ran over her boot, through the crack in the door, and into the kitchen.