Thornbound

by Stephanie Burgis

  “Isn’t this her naptime?”

  “So you might think.” Amy rolled her eyes as she held out the wriggling, gurgling evidence. “But this little girl has decided she has no need of naps today after all, with so much excitement going on. So I thought I’d let her visit her aunt for a minute or two, as an excuse to catch up on all the gossip between classes.”

  “Oh, I know alllll about troublesome girls who just won’t follow the rules!” I scooped Miranda from her mother’s arms and snuggled her soft warmth into my chest as she cooed with delight, her bright gaze fixed on my face. The sight made my vision blur—so I hastily buried my face against her warm, soft brown curls to hide my expression from my sister-in-law. “We’re the best kind, aren’t we, little one?” I whispered to my niece.

  Amy had always been far too astute at reading other people’s feelings. It was what had made her such an excellent politician...at least until I had scuppered her career.

  At the sound of my voice now, her own voice sharpened. “What’s amiss? If Annabel Renwick has—”

  “No!” I said. “I can manage her malice.” I inhaled a long, sustaining breath of sweet baby-scent from my niece’s warm neck. Then I jiggled her around in my arms so she could view the rest of the room as I forced a smile for her mother. “I don’t need you or Jonathan to protect me from her anymore, I promise.”

  “Hmm.” Amy settled into the chair across from my desk. “What is it, then?”

  “Don’t you have a daughter of your own to worry about? You needn’t—”

  “Cassandra.” Her brown eyes narrowed. Her long brown fingers tapped ominously against my desk. “Don’t waste my time!”

  “Oh, fine!” I blew out a sigh. “I just...”

  What was there to say? The raw truth was that I wouldn’t take back any of my choices even if I could. What exactly did that make me as a sister, as a wife, and as a woman in our world?

  I said, abruptly, “Wrexham made me promise not to give up this school for him.”

  “Well, I should certainly think not!” She let out a startled laugh. “After all the work you’ve put into it...”

  “All the work we’ve put into it,” I corrected her. “That’s...” I stopped and took a deep breath.

  Amy cocked her head to one side, expectantly.

  But there were no words to express exactly how I felt, so I dropped my gaze to where baby Miranda clung to my right forefinger with one tiny fist. I let out my breath in a helpless sigh. “You do know how much I love you both, don’t you?”

  “Mm,” said Amy thoughtfully. “And?”

  I shrugged, and Miranda let out a gurgle of delight at the inadvertent bounce. “I just...don’t want to ruin her prospects.” I brushed my cheek gently against Miranda’s hair. “That’s all.”

  “A-ha!” said my sister-in-law, and straightened in her seat. “You’ve been talking to Honoria. That’s what’s sparked all this!”

  I winced. “You really needn’t—”

  “Oh, I can speak her name perfectly well,” said Amy, “whether or not she deigns to speak to me anymore. But if she’s been threatening my daughter through you—!”

  “Not specifically,” I said hastily. “Only in the general sense of all the young women in Angland now doomed to lose their futures and end up locked up by their husbands and kept voiceless forever, only because I opened this school. You know.”

  “I certainly do.” Amy settled back in her seat. “Trust me, I’ve heard that speech from her before.”

  I eyed her warily. “But it didn’t stop you from supporting me?”

  Everyone in the nation seemed in unanimous agreement that my own motivations could only be selfish, no matter how they felt to me—but no one could ever claim such a thing about Amy. My sister-in-law cared fiercely and undeniably for the good of other people. That was the motivation that had driven her entire career, from her fight to allow more refugees from the continental wars into Angland to the speech she’d given the Boudiccate only three months ago on the need for more common land in the countryside. Yes, she was loyal to our family above all, but still...

  “Oh, Cassandra,” said Amy, “have you never paid any attention to the politics of the Boudiccate? Yes, Honoria and I were friends for many, many years, but that hardly means that we’ve always—or even usually—been in agreement.”

  “I do think,” I said cautiously, “that Annabel Renwick is holding some sort of threat over her right now. Miss Fennell thinks so, too. So that might explain—”

  “Oh, Honoria doesn’t need any special explanations for her feelings on this matter,” said Amy briskly. “When it comes to any question of change, you must know she’s one of the most conservative members of the Boudiccate and always has been, despite all the forward-looking fashions that she wears. She cares deeply and sincerely for the safety of Angland and for our rights as women—and I respect her passion on both subjects—but that does not make her the final authority on what may or may not happen in the future.”

  She shook her head, reaching across the desk to scoop Miranda back from me as my niece’s gurgles turned into wordless grumbles about the unforgivable lack of milk to be found on my chest. Two months ago, both Amy and I would have panicked at her sudden distress; now, after nine weeks of practice, Amy casually unbuttoned her bodice and attached her daughter without even glancing away from my face.

  “Trust me,” she said firmly. “If I thought Thornfell would be the downfall of our nation, I would have told you so in no uncertain terms. Did I?”

  “No,” I said, “but you might have privately felt—”

  “I didn’t enter politics,” said Amy, “with the aim of keeping Angland exactly as it always has been. I came to make changes for the better, and that is what we’re doing right now, here at Thornfell.”

  She waved her free hand sweepingly at the room around us as her daughter nursed. “Yes, of course the current situation is exceedingly comfortable for women like Honoria and I, who were born into just the right families and the right positions for what we wished to do with our lives. But what about you? What about your brother? And what about every man or woman in the nation who grew up without all of your manifold advantages?”

  She shook her head vigorously as she adjusted Miranda’s position. “It’s not good enough for things to be easy for us. They have to be fair for everyone in Angland. And no, we won’t achieve true parity this year, with this particular school, or even in our own lifetimes. But we must do what we can to move forward as a nation—and give our descendants the chance to do better.”

  “You wild radical, you!” I couldn’t help smiling as I gazed across the desk at my sister-in-law, taking in the ferocity and love that emanated from her in equal measure as she cradled my niece in her arms. “Has anyone in the Boudiccate ever realized what a rebel you truly are at heart?”

  “Not until this year, apparently.” Her own smile was rueful. “But if I gave up my principles and my family only to achieve personal power for myself...then what kind of politician would that make me?”

  “Annabel Renwick’s kind,” I said. “Obviously! She’d give up anyone and anything for power...and she has, too.” I sighed as I thought back to Miss Fennell’s frozen expression the night before, under Annabel’s insinuating pressure. “Is there anyone in the political realm whom she isn’t either blackmailing or trying to blackmail?”

  “She certainly enjoys being in control,” Amy said judiciously. “And you must know this particular mission is personal for her. She never forgave your mother for sacking her; me for taking up her former position; or Jonathan for persuading your mother to drop her in the first place.”

  “Or me,” I finished heavily, “for being my mother’s daughter without wanting the legacy that came with it. Besides, I was the real reason she was sacked, and she knows it.”

  “Regardless...” Amy shrugged. “We can safely say that she would be delighted to strike a blow to our whole family. The only question now is: how do we
stop the other members of the inspection team from voting with her?”

  After the two lectures I’d endured in the past twenty-four hours, it wasn’t a particularly hopeful question.

  I tapped my quill pen restlessly against my notes as I thought, leaving new droplets of green ink across the pages. “I would say that you should talk to Honoria,” I said, “but as she’s been blackmailed into cutting you off completely... What do you think Annabel is holding over her, anyway? She doesn’t have any private scandals that you know of, does she?”

  Amy’s face tightened. “If she did, it would have happened during her time as ambassadress to the Elven court, years ago. I always wondered...” She paused, pursing her lips, then gave her head a sharp shake. “No. I won’t gossip about her private history, even if she isn’t speaking to me at the moment. It wouldn’t be kind or fair to our old friendship—and unlike Annabel, we don’t engage in personal blackmail to achieve our ends.”

  “I suppose not,” I said glumly, “although if there were anything we could hold over Annabel...” At Amy’s meaningful look, I groaned and tossed down my pen. “Oh, come now! You can’t blame me for wanting to serve her some of her own medicine.”

  “Blackmail,” said Amy primly, “is highly illegal. Which means, of course...” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “If we could only prove, without a doubt, that she is blackmailing anyone for her own political gain, then the Boudiccate would be forced to dismiss her. They wouldn’t have any choice—in fact, she’d be lucky to escape a prison sentence. But in order to prove that case—”

  “We’d need someone to admit that they’d been blackmailed,” I finished for her. “What politician would ever confess to such a thing?”

  “Whoever it was would lose her career as well,” Amy said. “Not only for whatever secrets she’d been blackmailed with in the first place but for the fact that she’d allowed blackmail to affect her political decisions.”

  “So it’s useless,” I concluded grimly.

  “Is it?” Amy looked with unhidden satisfaction at baby Miranda, who had finally fallen fast asleep and flopped, apparently bonelessly, against her mother’s chest, snoring softly. “I seem to recall,” Amy murmured as she re-buttoned her bodice one-handed, “a certain young woman of my acquaintance being told many times—by some of the highest authorities in our nation!—that it was useless for any woman to dream of becoming a magician. And yet...”

  “That’s true enough.” The weight of exhaustion pushed down on my shoulders, pulling my smile into a wry curve as I braced myself for the next great battle. “I never heard it from you, though. Not even in the very beginning.”

  “Of course not. I know you, Cassandra Harwood,” said my sister-in-law drily. “Telling you that something is impossible is a guaranteed method to make you throw yourself at it with all your heart within a day.”

  “Ha!” I rolled my eyes at her. “As if you were any different? You’re only more subtle about your methods.”

  “Which is why we work so well together.” Amy smiled serenely as she rose from her chair, balancing my sleeping niece in her arms. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Wait.” As little as I wanted to bring up dark magic and forbidden fey altars with my innocent niece in the room, this conversation had been the reminder I needed: no one was more sharply observant than my sister-in-law. It would be foolish not to ask if she had seen that silver ring. “I wanted to—”

  The door opened without a knock. “I’m sorry to interrupt you ladies,” Miss Birch said, “but I thought you’d better know: that good-for-nothing weather wizard never showed up for the class he was meant to teach this morning. So the back courtyard’s swarming with young ladies, all of them milling about without a thing to do—and those inspectors of yours are telling them all exactly what to think of it.”

  I hadn’t even realized I could run so swiftly through the green-and-bronze rooms of Thornfell. I emerged into the courtyard less than two minutes later, my pulse hammering against my throat, to find the time-weathered flagstones covered with pacing and fidgeting young women in various stages of irritation and distress—and Annabel Renwick’s voice rising authoritatively above all of them.

  “Of course one never likes to speak ill of such an old and well-respected family—”

  “And so, of course, one would never be so crass as to do so, particularly in their own home,” I finished firmly as I swept through the crowd at a far more dignified pace than I had used to reach it. Nothing could be done about the fact that my hair was mussed and my skin flushed and perspiring—but I kept my smile bright and my stride confident as I strode through my gathered students and pointedly focused on them rather than on my inspectors.

  “I do beg your pardon for the inconvenience,” I told them, “but unfortunately, Mr. Luton’s message to me went astray. I was only just alerted to the crisis that called him away this morning.”

  “‘Called him away?’” Lionel Westgate’s eyebrows rose as he turned to me from where he’d been frowning in the direction of Luton’s staff cottage. “But the man’s right there, at home. He’s simply refusing to answer his door.”

  Curse it! The bulk of the crowd stood between me and the small stone building, but when I slipped a quick glance in that direction, even I could make out a thin stream of smoke twisting and curling from its tall chimney.

  I couldn’t march over there to bang on the door myself in front of all of these onlookers—or tell Luton yet what I thought of his behavior, no matter how many viciously accurate phrases boiled within me. But...

  “Called away from his teaching duties,” I said through my teeth. “The downside of having Angland’s greatest weather wizard on-staff...” I almost gagged on the words, but I forced them out regardless. “...Is that he may sometimes be called upon to assist other wizards in their times of urgent need.”

  “Really?” Westgate’s brow knotted. “Which ones?”

  “I don’t know the particulars of this case,” I said tightly. “But he made his needs perfectly clear when I first hired him.”

  And I would make my feelings even more clear when I sacked him at the first possible opportunity. For now, though, I turned my back on Mr. Westgate to smile warmly at my students.

  There was a wariness in more than one answering expression that I hadn’t glimpsed in any of them before. Annabel’s words had dealt their intended poison. I saw several of them dart questioning glances at her, looking for her assessment of the situation. I would have given a great deal to have Amy with me to defuse matters now, but I’d told her not to wake Miranda by coming with me.

  She had trusted me to deal with this matter myself.

  “I can’t offer you a course in weather wizardry today,” I said, “but we can take a brisk walk around the Aelfen Mere to clear our minds before we dive into our next lesson. As the breeze isn’t too strong this morning, the lake might just be clear enough for us to glimpse the remnants of my father’s famous ballroom underneath. Can anyone guess exactly where the greatest challenge lies in creating such an underwater structure through purely magical means?”

  There was no simpler way to distract a magician of any level than to set them a magical puzzle. Even Mr. Westgate’s brow crinkled in sudden, sharp interest, exactly as I’d hoped. Mother had never allowed him to read Father’s groundbreaking spell—a gift to her on their wedding day—despite all of his increasingly crotchety demands to view the particulars after Father’s death.

  But he wasn’t too distracted by that question now to cast a final, speculative look backward as we all started up the hill toward Harwood House and the Aelfen Mere beyond, with Annabel and Lady Cosgrave murmuring ominously to each other at the back of our rustling group.

  I’d wager anything that Mr. Westgate would be making a trip back to young Luton’s cottage later that day to interrogate my wayward staff member himself. I would simply have to terrify Luton into good behavior beforehand. That part, I might actually enjoy.

  But
when I cast a vengeful look back at the cottage from the top of the hill, an unexpected sight stopped my breath.

  I’d passed that cottage fifty times or more in the last few weeks. I knew it from every angle, and I could swear that no ivy or other spreading plant had ever come within ten feet of its sturdy stone walls since my new gardener had beaten back the woods’ overgrowth. It should have been a plain gold block, neat and uniform on every side.

  But from this angle, I could just catch a glimpse of the wall that faced the woods...and it was now colored a deep, dark green. Something was covering all those stones—something that hadn’t been there the evening before, when I’d walked outside with Lionel Westgate.

  Nothing could grow that quickly—nothing natural, at least. At the sight of that rich green, my stomach gave a convulsive lurch and my throat tightened uncontrollably...because it was a shade that I knew all too well.

  It was exactly the color that had haunted my dreams every night for the past week and a half.

  “Miss Harwood?” Miss Rao—a tall, elegant nineteen-year-old with light brown skin, a fashionable burgundy gown, and elaborately arranged, glossy black hair—spoke beside me, frowning. “Is something amiss?”

  “I...beg your pardon?” With a blink, I forced myself back into the present moment—where I found myself surrounded by my entire, waiting class and inspectors.

  How long had I stood, staring, silent, and unmoving? From the smirk on Annabel Renwick’s face, I knew the answer had to be: too long.

  “Forgive me!” I said hastily to the group as a whole. “I was only...thinking through an opportunity for our next lesson.”

  “Oh?” Annabel raised one mocking eyebrow. “Do enlighten us, please.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to simply wait and see.” Shaking out my skirts, I stalked forward. “There’s no more time to be lost if we don’t want to fall behind with our schedule for the day!”

  “Any further behind, she means,” muttered a low voice behind me. I didn’t recognize the speaker—but then, it hardly mattered. Whoever she was, she could only be saying what everyone else thought by that point.