by C. S. Pacat
They had chosen dusk because the dim light would further disguise their faces. Stewards guarded the gate against entry; they didn’t police those who left the Hall. Even with these precautions, she still felt her pulse racing. As they approached the gate, a thousand worries rushed in. Had she worn the Steward whites correctly? Was she tall enough to pass as a Steward? Would Leda take a second look at her face? Would they somehow guess what she was?
Lion, Lion, Lion …
Leda, on duty, raised her hand from high above on the walls. Will raised a hand in reply. Violet sat up straight and did her best to adopt Cyprian’s haughty manner: the perfect Steward, shoulders square, back straight, chin up.
Then to her astonishment they were through; she felt that lurch of crossing the threshold of the gate, and they were suddenly out on the marshes, breathing the fresh, crisp air and looking out at the world.
There was no sign of Simon’s men on the ride, just the splashes and sounds of insects and birds, and the darkening light of dusk on the marshes.
A single glance behind her as they rode showed the broken arch on the marsh, that lonely image set against the sky. It was as if the entire Hall had disappeared, or been nothing more than a dream. If it weren’t for her clothes and the white horses, she might have thought she had imagined all of it.
No going back now.
Not wanting to look like ancient knights in London, they stopped before the river to change their clothes. Expecting to feel like herself again, Violet was startled at how scratchy and uncomfortable Tom’s cast-offs felt after the light fabric of the Steward tunic. She squirmed and frowned, like they didn’t fit. Then she and Will rubbed mud into the white coats of the Steward horses, a determined blotting. The Steward horses looked utterly affronted, but at least they looked a little more like horses and a little less like two radiant beams of light.
Crossing the Lea at an upstream bridge, Violet let herself begin to look forward to seeing London again. Alongside the nerves, she thought of all the things she had missed. The taste of hot chestnuts in a cone of paper, or a buttery baked potato bought to keep her hands warm. The bright laughter of a puppet show on a corner. The grand carriages and top hats spilling out around a theatre or hall.
And then she saw it on the horizon.
London was a shock, an ugly, clumped scar upon the land. The closer they got, the uglier it was. The countryside turned into torn earth and dirty, squalid houses, streets clogged with people, donkey carts, stagecoaches, trudging drovers, boys, thieves, idlers, and every sort of person that could be squeezed into its confines. It was an assault on the senses after the tranquillity of the Hall.
When they dismounted, her foot sank into vile, squelching muck. A moment later she found herself coughing. A thick, choking miasma hung over the houses, woodsmoke and the smells of people and sewage from the river. She wanted to press her forearm to her nose to block out the stench, bile rising. Had it always smelled like this? And the noise: the clamour was so loud, voices shouting, drivers yelling, a discordant clutter that was too much for the ears. She was jostled, people pushing her out of the way, their shoulders slamming into hers, as though she couldn’t quite find the right pace to keep up with everyone, instead at odds with them.
They had returned to the White Hart, reasoning that if Justice had brought them here, it would be a safe place for Will to stay while Violet searched for Marcus. A boy took their horses with more deference than she had expected. Looking at Will, she was surprised to realise that he looked different. The Stewards had always had something otherworldly about them, and Will had that quality now too – the way he carried himself, his posture straight, his movements purposeful, as though the squalor of London didn’t touch him. She glimpsed herself in the inn window and was shocked to see that she looked just like him: knightly, even in her London clothes.
A woman threw a bucket of slops out of a window and Violet sidestepped, Steward-fast. Her stomach twisted as she realised what she had done – would instincts like that give her away to her family? Would they see a Steward when they looked at her? Would they know?
As she had hidden her Lion self from the Stewards, would she now have to hide her Steward self from her family?
New sounds and smells hit her as the inn door opened, a wave of shouts and bellowing laughter, and the smell of thick gravy, mouldering straw and stale beer. She walked into a loud, raucous scene, hard to make out in the dim haze of the interior.
‘This way, good sirs,’ the innsman said, and she had never had a ‘good sir’ or ‘good miss’ before. She and Will ordered two mutton joints with gravy and received a little bob of the head from the innswoman. It wasn’t just her reflexes; it was a difference in bearing. Something in her was changing the behaviour of others.
She chose an out-of-the-way table where she and Will could sit without being seen, and kept one eye on the door, alert for the possibility of danger.
‘People never call me sir,’ said Will, leaning in to whisper across the stained wooden table. In the dimly lit corner of the inn, they were seated across from one another.
‘Me neither. They call me boy, or scamp.’
‘Wastrel.’
‘Wretch.’
‘You there.’
Or worse. ‘London – it’s … different than I remember.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say what gnawed at her: I’m the one who’s different. London hasn’t changed. It had been three months in the Hall. Only three months? How could three months have turned her into a stranger in her own city?
‘Louder and more crowded, with no morning chants,’ said Will. She managed a weak smile.
Two mutton joints were plopped down onto the rough wooden table in front of them. She looked down into the greasy, congealing mess and felt sick. It smelled rank, grey and brown, the plate encrusted with grime. She forced herself to take a bite and it was thickly tasteless, its different textures unpleasant, this part gluggy, this part chewy, this part rough. She forced the swallow down. She didn’t feel the wondrous revitalisation that came after a bite of Steward food, the crunch of a fresh pea pod, or the sweet tang of an orange plucked from the tree. It just made her stomach heavy.
A burst of raucous laughter to her left made her head jerk around, a group of men slamming their tin mugs down on the table. Behind them two men jostled each other, unwashed, unshaven figures slopping beer onto the blackened straw. Her eyes darted from them to the figure near the door, shouting for the innsman. She felt jumpy, on edge. She looked back at Will uneasily.
‘We haven’t been recognised,’ he said.
‘It’s not that. It’s—’ She struggled to put it into words.
‘They don’t know,’ said Will, and she nodded slowly as he cut to the heart of it. ‘They don’t know about the old world, about the shadows, about any of it. They don’t know what’s coming.’
Her skin prickled, because that was it: the unnerving part, all this chaotic life, it was unknowing, and therefore vulnerable. ‘No one’s warned them,’ she said. ‘No one’s told them a fight’s coming.’ They were just living their ordinary lives. But worse than that: ‘Even if someone told them—’
‘They wouldn’t believe it,’ said Will.
She nodded. These people – there was a battle raging and these people didn’t even know it. They didn’t know the truth, just like she hadn’t known it. In the whole inn, only she and Will knew about the Dark King’s threat.
She felt the loneliness of the Steward mission for the first time: to be the only watchers, the only ones who remembered the past, who knew the dangers of what was coming …
More than that. The Stewards had always seemed so detached – so separate from the world. They kept to the ancient ways in the Hall, and it kept them in the ancient world, as if they had never really left it. Year by year, the world outside changed, but they stayed the same, growing more and more apart from people’s lives beyond the Hall.
If she stayed with them, would there be a time when she
couldn’t return to the outside world either?
She already felt it. A separation from the people around her, based on a knowledge of what was coming, as though she had one foot in the ancient world.
Will said, ‘What are you going to tell your family?’
She pulled her gaze from the squabbling patrons. Her family weren’t naive or unknowing, like the men and women sitting in this tavern. They knew the fight that lay ahead. And they had arrayed themselves on the Dark King’s side.
‘I used to sneak out at night all the time,’ Violet found herself saying. ‘Come back at breakfast. Just plonk myself down at the table and ask for some toast. My father would pretend he didn’t know I’d been gone.’
‘Part of you wants to go back to them.’ Will said it in a quiet voice.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said.
Will looked down at his scarred palm. ‘My mother and I, we moved around a lot. I never really got to know people. She kept us to ourselves.’ He looked up and smiled, a wry expression. ‘I’ve never lived somewhere like the Hall of the Stewards. I’ve never had somewhere that was safe, to depend on, and to protect.’ She couldn’t look away from his straightforward words. ‘But there’s a part of me … My mother and I didn’t have much, but we had each other. We were family.’
Family. Tom was still there in her heart, underneath all the painful fears and doubts. The Tom who she looked up to, the Tom she had striven to emulate, before she knew about Lions.
She knew what Will meant because she had felt it herself, the devotion to one person who she had believed would always be there for her, and the safety of that feeling.
‘Would you go back to that?’ Violet looked again at the others in the inn and tried to imagine being one of them again. ‘To not knowing?’
‘I can’t.’ Will pressed his thumb into his palm. ‘I thought my life was normal, but I know now that it wasn’t.’ He looked up, his eyes very dark. ‘My mother was scared. Always on edge, always looking over her shoulder … She was trying to protect me from the truth. The truth about who I was and what was happening.’ The scar that ran along the fate line of his palm was mirrored on the back of his hand, as if it had been run right through. ‘I can see why she did it, and a part of me might even want to go back to it, but I can’t. Not now that I know what she knew.’
I thought my life was normal, but I know now that it wasn’t. Violet thought about her childhood, indulged by her father, doing as she pleased, without rules or schooling.
She’d thought that was normal too. But something had been wrong the whole time.
‘I’m glad I know,’ she said, making the decision suddenly and with stubborn pride. Better a Lion than a lamb to the slaughter.
‘We both get to choose our family,’ said Will. She flushed slowly. She felt suddenly, fiercely protective of him, remembering his strange determination and his loyalty. He’d come back for her when no one else had, and he was here with her now, despite the danger.
‘I should go soon,’ she said gruffly. ‘I don’t know how long it will take.’ She had to find out the information they needed either from Tom or her father.
‘I’ll be here waiting.’
‘Don’t get into any trouble.’
‘What trouble could I get into?’ said Will.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KATHERINE WAS PUSHING her toe back into her shoe at Martin’s as the strange man entered, strode over to Mrs Dupont, and whispered something in her ear.
She had just been fitted for the most perfect pair of slippers, white silk each with a tiny pink embroidered rose. They would match exquisitely with the gifts that Lord Crenshaw had sent: beautiful day dresses of sprig muslin with high, tapered waists and delicate puffed sleeves; white silk gloves with six embroidered buttons; a necklace of pearls that was just the right accompaniment.
Now, however, Mrs Dupont was approaching with a small frown on her face. The man who had whispered in her ear was waiting by the door. Katherine hadn’t heard what he had said, except maybe she had seen him mouth the words the boy.
The boy?
‘If you’d wait here, milady,’ said Mrs Dupont. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
‘But what—’ Katherine began, but Mrs Dupont had already left, striding out of the door of the shop.
It left Katherine standing awkwardly. She remembered Mr Prescott saying something about a boy. What was it? I’m sure Mrs Dupont will be back shortly. Moments ticked past. She could see the curious looks of the shop owner and his assistant. She flushed, imagining their disapproval. No young lady should be seen in public without a chaperone. Especially not the young fiancée of a man like Lord Crenshaw. Even the idea could ruin a reputation, and Katherine knew that she was watched by many who were prone to gossip.
Lord Crenshaw was spending a great deal of time in London recently – for business, but rumours of his beautiful fiancée were everywhere, Mrs Dupont said, and everyone knew Katherine was part of the reason.
Katherine had liked the idea that she was talked about, that she would be glimpsed on this outing. Already invitations had begun to arrive at the house, though of course any social engagements were heavily curated by her aunt. A shopping trip had been allowed because she would be chaperoned by Mrs Dupont and a valet, with their driver waiting with the carriage outside.
But now she was alone.
Uneasy thoughts of scandal and impropriety made her clasp her hands inside her sable muff. She wasn’t supposed to be seen in town alone. How long until people started talking? She couldn’t wait here; people were staring. She would wait in the carriage, out of sight of prying eyes, and safely accompanied by Lord Crenshaw’s valet and driver.
She stepped out of the shop onto the crowded pavement, and her stomach sank, pulled down by the first tendrils of panic.
The carriage was gone.
The street looked cold and anonymous. She looked desperately around for any sign of the carriage, but it was nowhere to be seen. Its absence was strange and frightening. Where was Mrs Dupont? The carriage couldn’t really have left her here, could it?
But it had. They had all left her. The reality that she was alone on the streets of London made her skin chill. A terrible sense of being abandoned swept over her. Worse than the threat to her safety was the threat to her reputation. If anyone knew she had been out without a chaperone … Katherine was starting to panic, all the stories of young girls ruined by foolish indiscretions rushing into her mind.
As if enacting her worst nightmare, the shop owner emerged from the shop, and she realised that gossip was about to fly from here to the homes of every client he had in London—
‘Cousin,’ said a voice, a hand in hers steadying her.
She didn’t have a cousin. She didn’t know that voice. She looked up in confusion.
The boy who had taken her hand had a striking, high-cheekboned face, dark eyes and a tumble of dark hair. It was the sort of face you couldn’t drag your eyes away from, that would have been startling even if you saw it across a room. He was attractive in a breath-catching, Byronic way, like the electric feeling of clouds gathering in a storm.
She felt a startling, instant connection, her eyes meeting his. He raised his brows, asking silently if she would play along. He was offering to provide her with the perfect chaperone: a male relative. He had even said the word cousin loudly enough that passersby could hear.
She felt herself flush at the thought that this young gentleman – for he was a gentleman, surely – had seen her predicament and come to her rescue.
‘Thank you, cousin,’ she answered, just as loudly.
Looking back at the shopfront, she saw the owner relax and retreat inside, as though a minor mystery had been solved.
‘“Cousin”?’ she whispered, once the shopkeeper had gone. ‘We don’t look a thing alike!’
‘I wasn’t sure I could pass as your brother.’
Who is he? She was gazing at him. She couldn’t shake that feeling of connection. H
is actions in coming to her rescue were both impudent and chivalrous, of which she was meltingly aware.
She could feel the warmth of his hand beneath hers. Except for the one or two scrupulously respectable acquaintances selected for her by her aunt, she had not met anyone in London, certainly not any attractive young men. Her heartbeat was behaving oddly. What would Lord Crenshaw think if he knew a young man had taken my hand?
‘Where is it we’re going?’ he whispered back conspiratorially.
‘My fiancé’s carriage was supposed to be waiting for me.’ She said the word fiancé very intentionally. He didn’t ask, And where is your chaperone? He didn’t ask any questions about her situation, which was a sign of his gentlemanly manners, she thought. ‘We were returning home right away.’
‘And it’s gone?’
‘Yes, I – it’s – yes.’
‘Then I’ll find you a coach, Miss—’
‘Kent,’ she offered.
‘Miss Kent,’ he said.
The weather, which just that morning Annabel had described as ‘chancy’, chose that moment to change from chilly into cold wet drops that fell from the sky. The young man was perfectly gallant. He immediately stripped off his jacket for her to hold over her head, so that she was shivering but dry as he stepped out into the busy road to hail a hackney.
As she watched, he procured a coach while the rain utterly soaked him, the passing wheels of a carriage splashing mud across his boots and trousers. The hackney coach pulled up with its mismatched horses, one dull brown, one a dirty white colour. Escorting her to it, he quickly gave up his jacket altogether, laying it down so she could sit on its dry lining to preserve her dress from the muddy seat. They clambered in together. The coach driver gave a flick of his whip, calling, ‘Walk on!’
Inside, she felt safe at last. She was on her way home, and the threat to her reputation was over. The rain had turned the carriage windows into a blur of liquid. Enclosed inside its bubble, she was dry and warm. The young man opposite her was soaked, his wet shirt transparent and clinging, his trousers ruined with mud. His garments were secondhand, but had been repaired so exquisitely the eye barely noticed. He looked like an aristocratic young suitor, his obvious breeding belying the clothes. She was struck again by his vivid good looks, the fall of his dark hair like the subject of a romantic painting.