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and every chamber symbolizing a different stage of the great work, like interconnected vessels in an alchemist’s laboratory.
    Tintinetto, the famous halfling muralist, had painted frescoes. A wizard had then placed magic upon the figures’ mouths, creating as he called them “philosophic eggs”—a pun on the actual egg of the philosophers, an ovoid glass vessel—such that they would speak when certain actions were taken or certain words said, but it was up to the wedding guests to divine what triggered each, and there would be a prize for the one who discovered the most!
    This amusing party game explained why the chateau was now haunted by indistinct mumblings, since when the Revolution came to Dabril, the priestess of Shelyn, faced with the displeasure of her goddess if she allowed the destruction of priceless works of art and the even greater displeasure of the Red Council if she did not, was inspired to a divine solution. Specifically, a solution of slake lime and water, commonly known as whitewash.
    Of course, Norret had his own solution: concentrated champagne vinegar mixed with his last drops of the universal solvent. He got out of the bed and got his clothes back on, now mostly dry. The Liberty Hostel was abandoned by every resident save himself, and if he wanted to hear what the frescoes were muttering about beneath the whitewash, the Night of the Pale was the safest night for it, ironic as that might be.
    Norret moved the changing maiden’s mirror so that his lantern illuminated the blank wall of the boudoir, then picked up one of the duchess’s perfume atomizers that had somehow survived the years. He squeezed the bulb.
    The slake lime hissed and bubbled away, revealing Anais dressed as a royal bride facing a regal young man. In her right hand she bore a spiraled ivory horn, but was using it like a fencing foil, spearing the youth through the back of his left hand and causing a gout of blood to well up like a jewel on the white glove he wore. To be fair, he had already unlaced the front of her gown, but instead of grabbing a bit of flesh like any normal groom, he was instead holding up a large toad to nurse. Either milk or poison flew from the suckling toad, spattering the back of the green glove his bride wore on her left hand, glittering like a crazed diamond.
    It was an allegorical illustration of the exchange of the Carbuncle for the Crapaudine, but Norret was certain the priestess of Shelyn had understood none of that, only that it appeared monstrous, perhaps related to Lamashtu. As such, she would have had no qualms about covering any of it up.
    A few more spritzes revealed an old king pointing at the younger man’s back, his left hand wearing a white glove fringed with unicorn mane, the back adorned with a ruby cabochon—clearly the Carbuncle again. Norret was certain he was looking at Duke Arjan Devore.
    Norret took the perfume atomizer and set it deliberately on the maiden’s tray. The figure then spoke:
    Though I seem age and he seems youth
    Both he and I are one in truth.
    A nice reminder from an old duke to his young bride, but as Norret knew from reading the masque, it possessed a great deal more significance.
    Norret recorded the rhyme and confirmation of its trigger in his formulary, then picked up the atomizer and hung his lantern from its belt clip. A soldier was nothing without gear fasteners, and an alchemist doubly so. Being lame made the necessity triple.
    He opened the door of his room and glanced out. The hall was deserted save for a magical light drifting lazily along to the tune of the phantom minstrels. So far, the Night of the Pale was turning out somewhat less than horrifying. While a ball of blue witchfire might frighten some, Norret had read Jubannich’s masque and so knew that a long-forgotten illusionist had placed dancing lights in the gallery—lights which would be less frightening if there were actual dancers—and occasionally one spun off and went drifting down the