The Stockholm Octavo (41 page)

“An errant knave,” I said, shuffling the cards, “trumped by a treasonous queen.”

“But think how much worse life might be if The Uzanne had succeeded at the masked ball. Or what might have happened if she had lived. You, for one, would not have a life. Duke Karl would have an ambitious and evil adviser and quite possibly an heir.” She took the pipe from her mouth and pointed it at me. “You performed a great service to your nation.”

I peered at her. “What exactly do you mean?” I had told no one of my instructions to New Cook.

She held a perfect card face. “I mean exactly what I said.”

“But does any of it matter now? Gustav is gone,” I said sadly.

“Yes. It matters. He set many things in motion that cannot be stopped.” She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes. “I still see Gustav as a young prince in Paris, about to step upon the world stage, full of life and charm and intellect. Oh what he might have yet done. And Louis XVI is lost now, too.”

“A terrible beginning of this new year,” I said.

Mrs. Sparrow sighed. “They say the streets of Paris were utterly silent as the tumbrel drove him to the guillotine. It was as if the people knew they had chosen madness, and their choice would bring a different kind of rule than that mild and loving king's.”

“As we have seen in the Town as well, Mrs. Sparrow.” Stockholm had lost much of its charm and grace almost immediately following King Gustav's death and was sinking into a kind of provincial malaise. The new government under the regent, Duke Karl, leaned far more toward war than art, and Karl had found a new and even darker adviser in the mystic Baron Reuterholm. Gustav's son, King Gustav Adolf, was a strange and unstable child lacking his father's intellect or charm. “We could use a French king here,” I said, only half in jest, finally picking up my hand.

She left her cards facedown on the table. “I must tell you something. A vision.”

“No, please don't, Mrs. Sparrow.”

“This vision was for me, although it may in fact be for many.” She puffed her pipe, and the smell of apple-cured tobacco filled the room. “The night before the Parliament at Gefle ended, Gustav embraced me as his dearest friend and sent word to von Fersen to make that brave rescue attempt in Paris.” She drew a mouthful of smoke and blew out a perfect O. “It came then, the vision of a shield the color of a summer night, when the dome of the sky is almost violet and fades to a lighter blue toward the horizon. On the shield were the three crowns and the three fleurs-de-lis, the symbols of Sweden and France. They dissolved together and disappeared, leaving a blank white peace, like the morning after a blizzard. I slept through the night for the first time in months. The Sight has not visited me since.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means the Stockholm Octavo extends much further than we imagined. A French king will come,” she whispered.

THE SEEKER

Emil Larsson

Several hands later, I was down a large sum and stood to take some air at the window. Gray Friars Alley was quiet, and a light rain hissed in the dark. “Mrs. Sparrow, what became of Cassiopeia?”

“Do you want her?” Mrs. Sparrow asked.

I could not tell if she was joking, but I shook my head. “No, I have had enough of fans; they are far too dangerous for me.”

Mrs. Sparrow stood and went to the sideboard, pulling it carefully away from the wall. She opened a slender drawer hidden beneath the lip and took from it a blue fan box. Inside was Cassiopeia. She opened her carefully, guiding the broken sticks, and gazed at the tattered scene of the empty manor. She came to the window and handed me the fan. “I doubt that you could sell her now,” she said. I turned Cassiopeia starry side up, tracing the line of the
W
hanging upside down beneath the North Star. “But I am not sure she has lost the magic she possessed,” she added, holding her hand out to take her.

“The age of magic is ending, Mrs. Sparrow.”

Mrs. Sparrow took Cassiopeia and closed her slowly, careful of the folds, smoothing the rips and gashes until she was safe behind her ivory guards. “I sincerely hope not. We need both day and night, Emil. Where would we be without the renewal that sleep provides, the inspiration of dreams, the jolt of awakening? I would not want to live in a world where magicians are replaced by bureaucrats, whose only trick is to make time and money disappear. I prefer the old way; at least it gave one pause for wonder.”

“Did you really think The Uzanne would be stopped by changing a few sequins?” I asked.

“But she
was
stopped, at least long enough for you to push the event. That is the nature of such powerful objects.”

“But I didn't stop anything!” I said, slamming my fist against the wall. “The Octavo didn't save Gustav, and it certainly didn't save me.”

She sat down at the table again and fanned out her cards in one swift elegant gesture. “Perhaps the Stockholm Octavo has a time frame of its own and the true event at the center will manifest years from now. Or perhaps the larger pattern waits for you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You never finished. The golden path, Emil. Love and connection.”

I sat and picked up my own hand again. The cards promised an excellent game, but I could not concentrate, feeling the heat rise to my face. “Love and connection? I know love and connection now, but the path they make is treacherous and full of sorrow. I have lost much more than I have gained. I have lost everything.”

She folded her cards and studied me. “You are still a
sekretaire,
still making money at the tables. The threat of marriage has been removed, now that the Superior has moved to the Lottery Office. You have friends and colleagues in the Town and are welcome in many homes like family. You are still a young man and free to do exactly as you please. What have you lost?”

I arranged my cards, shifting the suits to match, then put them on the table faceup, a signal I was finished. “I have lost my way,” I said.

Mrs. Sparrow thought for a moment, then put her cards down as well. “You haven't lost your way—you have lost your momentum. Or someone has stolen it from you.” Her hands were quick, so I never saw the pickup. She walked to the corner and opened Cassiopeia. I rose from my chair and cried out in surprise and then, surprisingly, in sorrow, and watched as Mrs. Sparrow opened the stove door and threw the fan on the glowing coals. We watched her ivory guards blacken and dimple in the heat, and her face burst into sparks that rose up bright in the draft. Mrs. Sparrow rubbed her hands on her skirt as if she had just finished a messy chore. “Rebirth is a forward motion,” she said. “Now go and finish it, Emil. Go.”

Chapter Last
The Century's End

Sources: E. L., Hinken

“YOU AGREE, THEN,
that the century died a few years ahead of schedule?” I asked.

Hinken nodded solemnly, his lips pursed. “I would agree: it is dead.”

We sat hunched over a scrubbed plank table, set with a plate of hard biscuits and two mugs of strong, sweet coffee. A candle beaming through the thick, bubbled glass of a lantern made a swollen rectangle of yellow light across Hinken's face. The rocking waves and creaking lines were a relief from the pounding storms we had endured for what seemed an eternity. It was my first visit to the galley in nearly ten days and I was weak from the ordeal but happy to be among the living.

“To be precise, the death certificate would read March of 1792,” I added.

“In Sweden perhaps. But given the dominant position of France, I would argue for the January just past. 1793.” Hinken made an airy whistling sound, meant to recall a sharp blade cutting through the winter chill to meet the neck of Louis XVI. “Or even go back to '89, when Versailles was stormed and the Bastille taken. Perhaps that was the end.”

I stood and opened the tiny window a crack, the sea air fresh in the cramped space that smelled of bacon, sweat, and pitch. It was the first time in ten days that the smell of anything did not make me sick. “1789 was the
beginning
of the end,” I said. “It was the year I met Mrs. Sparrow. All the Octavos of all the assassins were set in motion that year. I could not see it coming then, any more than King Gustav could see the bullet, or King Louis the blade.”

Hinken sipped at his coffee. “You look only partially dead to me.”

“This voyage may finish me yet,” I said.

He slammed the mug down hard. “And so what if it does? You might be truly dead already, or in prison, or alone in your miserable rooms—an aging, fearful bureaucrat watching the slow pass of the century grind you and the Town to naught.”

“I am not yet thirty, Hinken,” I said.

Hinken snorted, the lines around his eyes creasing deeper with his smile. “You have some time, then, to finish this Octavo of yours.” He took out his white clay pipe and filled it, and just that small gesture made me homesick for the Town and Mrs. Sparrow, for Master Fredrik and Mrs. Lind, Margot and the baby, Mrs. Murbeck, even Lars Nordén. “If there really is such a thing,” Hinken added.

“Oh, there is,” I said, feeling the breeze pouring in through the porthole. “If you learn the cards and pay attention, you can see it take shape around you. Master Fredrik has mapped it out. Mrs. Sparrow says if you live long enough, you can trace it back in time. I think the Octavo exists in a dimension all its own: defining the here and now, reaching back into the past, and influencing the future—like some great edifice eternally rising. If you decide to enter, you will indeed be reborn. The Octavo is the architecture of relationships that we build ourselves, and with which we build the world.” I fingered the Nordén fan box I kept with me always, feeling the smooth hard stone of the North Star set over rounding forms meant to be distant clouds. Inside was the Butterfly, waiting. “Through the Octavo, I have done some measure of good. I am connected. I love.”

We sat in silence for some time, our legs and feet deep in blue shadows. The forward motion of the ship pushed water to either side of the hull, making hissing waves that broke as if on shore. It was a rhythmic taunt, reminding me that in time we would leave this empty, infinite circle of ocean and close the form of my eight at last. Hinken stood and took up his pipe. “Come up and see the moon,
Sekretaire
. It is a sight that will make the journey that much more worth your while”

“Oh, I am quite happy to stay here,” I said, fearful that even a glimpse of rolling ocean would bring misery again.

“Come, Emil, we are in warmer, calmer waters now, and you have been locked long enough in your cabin.”

We climbed the steep wooden ladder to the deck. All was quiet but for the ship's bell sounding eight chimes—the midnight watch. The indigo sky was soft and deep, the stars a breathtaking scatter of sequins, the water silk beyond the ship's foamy wake. The mountains of clouds behind us, black with the storms that had plagued our journey nearly all the way from Denmark, were swallowed up by the night. I turned then in the direction we traveled; a waxing gibbous moon had risen from the depths and cast a glittering reflection that stretched out westward before the ship. My lungs filled with the fresh air of a new century, and I traveled the golden path at last.

Mrs. Sparrow's Vision

DUKE KARL SERVED AS REGENT
for four years, but Sweden was in fact ruled by his adviser Baron Reuterholm—a bizarre figure often called the Swedish Robespierre. In 1796 Gustav III's son, Gustav IV Adolf, became king upon reaching majority, and Duke Karl stepped aside. A strange and isolated ruler, Gustav IV Adolf was forced to abdicate in 1809 after disastrous wars with France and Russia led the nation to the brink of ruin. Duke Karl at last became the king of Sweden, and took the name Charles XIII.

The decrepit and childless Duke Karl/King Charles needed a successor. Parliament named a Danish prince as heir apparent, but he died unexpectedly (inciting the murder of Axel von Fersen, but that is another story). So Lieutenant Carl Mörner approached another candidate—without the Parliament's consent. His name was Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, born in Pau, and a grand marshal in Napoleon's army. Mörner offered Bernadotte the position of heir to the Swedish throne. Bernadotte accepted. Seeing the benefits of a new French alliance (given Napoleon's unstoppable advance through Europe), the government eventually agreed. In 1810 Bernadotte arrived in Stockholm and in time began running the country with great skill.

In 1814, Duke Karl got his second crown when he became the king of Norway. He died in 1818, and Bernadotte became King Charles XIV Johan of Sweden. The Bernadottes rule Sweden to this day, and Mrs. Sparrow's voice echoes through the ages:
Vive le roi!