Fray Page 9

  “I didn’t read it past the first few pages—it was all dirty sex stuff. That she likes women, that she seduces nobles and maids and even princesses.” Clearly uncomfortable, Alice edged farther into the counter, as though it could swallow her.

  Of course—a piece exploiting the rumors that had always circulated about Viola, coupled with new ones about a long-standing affair with Annette. I was sure, if I read the piece, it would insinuate not only improprieties in her private behavior but dereliction of noble duty and languid indolence, as well.

  “I’ll dispose of this,” I said, more to myself than Alice. I plucked the book from the floor and glanced at the printer’s mark, recognizing it as one of the more upscale printers in Galitha City. Likely printing, I acknowledged, at the behest of nobles to suggest to the people that the champions of the Reform Bill were immoral, unhinged, and unduly influenced by Pellians. “Now. What about Heda?”

  Alice flushed deeper pink. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

  “Hardly. You’re quite close to being the mistress here, and in any case—it’s not proper to have such trash circulated here. Hopefully she’ll consider such propriety in the future. But—what about Heda?”

  “I… I don’t think it would be right to fire her over it,” Alice said carefully. “It was only a first mistake, even if it was a big one. And…” She stopped herself.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, she hasn’t worked in a fine shop before.” Implicit in her remark was Heda’s background, her upbringing, even her complexion.

  “Very few of the girls we hire here have,” I cautioned Alice. “Pellian or not. Get used to training them to be proper employees, not only to be seamstresses.”

  Alice nodded, chastised even though I had said nothing to scold her. We continued the day’s work quietly and she set off early, mouth in a taut line, to pay Heda a visit. I locked the shop door behind me an hour later and almost tripped over a boy in a red cap, perched on my doorstep like a sentry.

  “Can I help you?” I asked as he scurried to his feet.

  “I’m supposed to deliver this,” he said, presenting me with a folded and sealed letter. The paper was cheap; then again, so was the delivery method. Hiring a boy to run errands cost less than a pint of ale.

  I fished out a coin to tip him. He held up his hand. “Just doing my service for the cause, ma’am.”

  “The cause?” I raised an eyebrow at his earnest face, smudged with the red dust of the street. He was all of ten years old.

  “The Red Caps. I knew your brother,” he added, with confidence in the standing this gave him among the juvenile hangers-on of the Red Cap movement.

  “I see. Thank you,” I said as I opened the letter. He dashed away.

  I didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the letter was unsigned, but it was clearly from Niko. I wouldn’t dare intrude on your wedding planning and stitch counting, except that I’ve heard rumors that you’re so badly disliked by the exalted elite that there’s some talk of making you disappear. Talk only—but talk from the mouths of those in the king’s circle. Don’t ask my sources, I won’t name them.

  We aren’t the only ones who can foment violence, his note concluded. He’d included a clipping from the Gentlemen’s Monthly, which catered to nobles and the wealthy untitled, of a dark-haired woman clutching a cap—presumably red, despite the grayscale printing—with an oversize needle woven through it, thread waving in an imagined breeze. She was standing on a gallows.

  I folded the note and put it in my pocket, hands shaking. Of course there would be talk—talk of eliminating a loud voice in favor of the reform, a voice with the ear of the prince and his circle. Of eliminating an embarrassing interloper to the royal family. Surely it couldn’t pass beyond talk, not without driving distrust between members of the ruling elite, without breaking the laws that the nobles saw themselves duty bound to uphold?

  Surely it was just talk, and Niko had no right to frighten me with it. Still, I shivered as I walked home despite the lingering summer evening sun.

  13

  THE REFORM BILL HAD THE CITY BY THE NAPE OF THE NECK, with broadsides printed as rapidly as the debate on the floor of the council changed. Emmi said that Red Caps gathered under the windows to listen to the arguments, noting the proposed changes and each kink and bend in the logic of the nobles who debated each provision. They printed the broadsides on cheap paper at the end of each day and circulated them through the city by morning, fueling debates and speculation in every coffee shop and chocolate café in every quarter of the city.

  Alongside the news and the commentary written, published, and posted on a near-daily basis were cartoons and satire printed in the cheap weeklies and even in some of the better magazines, celebrating or lampooning one side or the other, as their editors’ opinions lay. I was featured more than once, including an unflattering portrait of an ugly Pellian in a chemise gown like a sack, with knitting needles and a jug of rat poison.

  I showed this particular offense to Theodor one evening as we retreated from the war of words that ignited taverns and concert halls and noble salons, secreting ourselves away in the peace of Theodor’s house.

  “Do you even know how to knit?” he asked, scrutinizing the clipping.

  “Not well,” I replied. “This is how the educated populace believes casting works, I guess?”

  Theodor shrugged. “It’s not worth getting upset over, I hope,” he said, wadding the paper up.

  He tossed it into a bin by the empty fireplace, kindling to save for autumn. But he couldn’t burn every copy of every broadside and novel, every cartoon and column. They flowed through the city like runoff after a rainstorm, staining every block and corner and tainting the honest efforts of reform.

  I tugged at the circlet of gold on my wrist. It was delicate but strong; it would have taken strength I didn’t have to break it.

  “Are we doing the right thing?” I asked quietly. “Your parents aside—are we causing more harm than good, marrying each other?”

  “Sophie!” He pulled my hands into his with a laugh, then sobered when he saw my face. “By the Galatine Divine, you’re serious.”

  “I can’t keep dragging you down with me. You can’t pull me up to where you are. They keep pushing me back down.”

  “No!” He held my hand, fiercely, so that his nails dug into my skin without his meaning to. “No. They drag down what threatens them, and they do it to one another, too.”

  “This is different than that, and you know it.” I raised my hand, stopping the protests he was ready to levy. “I love you. I will always love you. But what if…” I choked a little on the words. “You know as well as I do that the country needs the reforms, needs them or we crack open and rot like overripe fruit. What if I’m only an obstacle to that?”

  “You’re a good part of how they came to be!”

  “What if my part is over now? What if we’re being selfish?” I disentangled my hand from his.

  “Nothing is more important to me than you,” he said, reaching for my hand again.

  I pulled away. “And that is selfish!” I snapped. He started, and then pressed his mouth into a hard line.

  “I’m tied into knots over getting this bill passed, and I’m selfish?”

  “Yes!” I half shouted. “You keep thinking of me, of the country, of the reform—all as neat pieces you can put together into a tidy finished puzzle. But they don’t fit nicely. They haven’t fit all along, no matter how much you wish they did. This won’t be easy, Theodor. It’s as though you can’t understand that.”

  He stopped, growing very quiet. “Maybe I can’t. Maybe… maybe I expected that everything would fall into place.”

  “Because you’re a prince, because everything has always worked before?” I forced myself to speak more gently. “This… this is only the start. Maybe in ten years people would talk less. Maybe in twenty they would trust me more. But the rumors, the exclusion, using me to call you into question—it’s not going aw
ay.” I didn’t stop, even though I wanted to. “And if my presence is detrimental to the Reform Bill, if the rumors are worse because I’m here, and there are nobles who will cast their vote against it because of me, I shouldn’t be here anymore.”

  “If I didn’t believe it was right, marrying you, I wouldn’t do it. The risks from the elite having their noses tweaked is outweighed by the benefit in the trust of my people. We need that trust.”

  I fell silent. The rumors, the shunning by his family, the cold receptions and scalding gossip behind people’s hands—I could bear it for the country, but I was tired of seeing it alone. They didn’t speak of Theodor like this, not really, and he could go on believing it wasn’t so bad. “If you’ve chosen your people over the nobility, if you’ve chosen me—this isn’t going away. And I can’t keep bearing the burden of that reality for both of us.”

  “I can’t stop them!” he protested.

  “Yes, but you can stop telling me it’s not as bad as all that.” I sighed and took his hand. “It is that bad. Please—put aside your optimism and see how difficult this is for me.”

  Theodor leaned against the sun-warmed wall. I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes and knew he finally understood. I felt hollow, but strangely relieved. I couldn’t keep living a fairy tale built out of soap bubbles—iridescent and light, but ready to collapse at any moment. If we were going to continue, those bubbles had to break, settle like film on the hard edges of the life we would have together.

  “There’s something I want to show you,” he said softly.

  I followed Theodor into the parlor, where we had cast the charm together, his music and my manipulation of the magic working in tandem.

  The charm still glowed, embedded in the fibers of the curtain. We had made it together, that indelible light sunk into the velvet. I took a shaky breath.

  “It’s lasted this long, at least. Any likelihood it will fade?”

  I gripped his hand tightly. “My charms don’t fade until the stitching itself wears out and the fabric frays away. So I doubt this will.”

  “The life we make together won’t, either. That’s not selfishness on my part. That’s faith in you.”

  I paused, questioning whether I could, whether I should ask Theodor for help. “I’m in a bit of a bind,” I said. “I’m to go with you to the summit, yes?” Theodor nodded. “And after that, well—there isn’t a terrible lot of time to finish all the charmed commissions I have on my docket, is there?”

  “I don’t suppose I can ask you to delay those deadlines, or put anyone off.”

  “You most certainly cannot,” I replied crisply. For all Theodor understood of the duty of a noble, he had difficulty translating it into my own work ethic. Sometimes I feared he would never quite take seriously the pacts I kept with my customers, my employees, and myself. “I have a responsibility to give a shop with a good reputation over to Alice. But you could help me. I’ve been having some… difficulty with casting, and it seems easier for me to use the charm you create with your violin than to craft and embed my own.”

  “Difficulty?” His brow constricted with worry.

  “It’s nothing, I’m sure.” I was not at all sure, but Theodor’s neophyte understanding of charm magic couldn’t help me unpick the problem. “I’m having a hard time… sort of holding on to the charm. I didn’t want to burden you with it, not with the Reform Bill and the summit.”

  “You do realize what a marriage is, don’t you?” I shook my head, taken aback by the question. “It’s the state in which you’re legally, morally, and ethically invited to share your problems with someone else.”

  “You know what I meant,” I argued. “The timing of everything—there are more important things at stake.”

  Theodor assessed me with a long, uncomfortable scrutiny. I knew he wanted to say more, but he decided against it. I knew what he left unsaid, and he was probably right—years of independence had left its mark. I could certainly take care of myself, but I was rubbish at letting anyone help.

  I put this aside. “At any rate. If you cast, and I pull threads into the already-stitched work, the piece is charmed, and from what I can tell, it’s as effective and permanent as if I’d sewn the charm in.”

  “I’m game,” he said. “It will be good practice for me.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I replied, surprised. “I hadn’t realized you were so invested. Of course, I have no idea how to train you in that, so it’s going to be stabbing in the dark for both of us.”

  “I think we can manage. When shall I report to your shop? The council recesses every day quite promptly. Leaving that stuffy hall is the one thing they all agree on.”

  “I thought I’d just bring things here.”

  “Make you schlep all of that silk and bustle here, when I need carry only a violin? Seems impractical.”

  “Well, it seems improper to have you come to my shop,” I answered. “A prince, fiddling in an atelier?” I laughed. “What kind of rumors would that start?”

  “Nothing that isn’t already circulating,” he joked. “Besides,” he added with sly grin, “we’ve not seen enough of each other lately.”

  I slid closer to him, happy to close out thoughts of angry reformists and anti-reformists. “What, social engagements and discussions of reforms isn’t seeing enough of each other?”

  “I meant seeing more of you quite literally,” he said with a teasing laugh, tugging my kerchief away from the neckline of my gown.

  He leaned forward, the scent of his clove pomatum washing over me as he kissed me, hot and thick and with the abandon of a man with far fewer responsibilities. I twined my arms around him, and he surprised me by drawing me up, cradling me in his arms, and making for the stairs. I laughed and kicked as he peppered my collarbone and shoulders with kisses.

  A sharp rap on the front door interrupted us before he could leave the room carrying me. “Let the maid get it,” Theodor mumbled, kicking at the parlor door, trying to close it without putting me down.

  The front door swung wide and he set me down abruptly. I tugged my kerchief back around my shoulder, and Theodor sprang forward. “Ambrose, what in the world?”

  “You should answer your door quicker,” he snapped. “Evening, Sophie. Sorry for the… intrusion.” He glanced at my hair, blushing. My cap was askew and several tendrils had escaped.

  “What could possibly warrant barging in like this?” Theodor said. “We’re not both kids sharing the nursery, you know, there are certain—”

  “There’s a riot in the square,” Ambrose replied, voice stern and face taut. “It’s bad.”

  14

  AMBROSE CLOSED THE DOOR WITH A WORRIED GLANCE OUT ONTO Theodor’s still-placid street. “The Fourth Regiment has already been assembled, and Father gave the order to use violence if it was warranted.”

  “What?” I gasped. “No, this can’t be right.” Niko had promised that the people wouldn’t rise up until we’d been given a chance to address their concerns through the bill.

  Before Ambrose could answer, the report of rifles echoed through the stone corridors of the city. Faint but clear, shattering the evening quiet.

  “Shit,” Theodor said, rushing toward the door and shouting to the servants for a carriage. “Ambrose, where was Father? Palace or Stone Castle?”

  “He’s at the Stone Castle, but Theodor, honestly. What are you going to do?” Ambrose countered. “It’s going to be over before you even get down the street. Riflemen and soldiers with bayonets, against a riot? It will be a rout.” The reports of gunfire and shouting peppered the conversation, distant voices raised in support of Ambrose’s argument.

  Theodor paused. “That’s true enough. But it’s what comes next that I worry about,” he answered. “I need to talk to Father.”

  Ambrose sighed. “I don’t know that it will do any good. He’s like a cuckold husband with the conservative nobles playing the role of tyrant wife. He knows the danger of ignoring the common people, but it’s not enough to
jar him out of a lifetime of playing upper-crust politics, where the nobles with the most money and influence have the power.”

  “Maybe this did the trick,” Theodor argued. He plucked his hat from the chair beside the door. “At the very least, someone needs to be there to counterbalance whatever draconian suggestions Pommerly and the other old bats are probably making regarding punitive measures for those caught.”

  He was out of the door before Ambrose could answer. I found I didn’t have anything to say in any case. “What do we do now?” I wondered out loud. Already the gunfire had ceased. Fears that the bill was dead before it could be voted on, that someone I knew was lying bleeding in the square, that this was only the start of a true civil war all ran together.

  “I’m going to follow that idiot brother of mine to the Stone Castle and see if there’s anything we can do.” Ambrose sighed. “It’s probably not safe to send you home alone. I’ll take you. Unless you’d rather stay here?” I shook my head. Ambrose’s legal training gave him the dry, deductive rationale of a barrister, which was strangely comforting in a moment like this one.

  We took his carriage toward the center of the city. The streets were clear, but knots of people crowded in doorways and corners, under the eaves of side-street taverns. We skirted Fountain Square, but I could see past a unit of the Fourth Regiment onto the cobblestones beyond. I saw blood.

  “I wish—” I clamped my mouth shut. It didn’t do any good to voice it out loud, that I wished there was something I could do. There wasn’t, not here, not now. I would only be in the way of the medical corps, the regimental surgeons and nurses surely already setting up a makeshift hospital in the Stone Castle or the cathedral. If only I had time to sew charms into their bandages, or embed one of Theodor’s musically summoned charms into the linen strips. Of course there wasn’t time for sewing, and Theodor was busy wrestling with the politics of a potentially disastrous blow to the Reform Bill.

  Ambrose didn’t wait for me to open the door of my row house—the modest, quiet home I had shared with Kristos. It wouldn’t be mine much longer; the lease expired in several months and then I wouldn’t have an inconspicuous home of my own. Everyone knew where the Prince of Westland lived. I fumbled with my key.