by C. L. Polk
I could walk into the Circle and add my power to theirs. But I was only one witch. They needed a hundred.
And then the answer lit up my mind, bright and sudden as lightning.
I leaned against the chilly, hand-paneled wall and closed my eyes. I slowed my breath and stretched out my senses, cutting through the wind with a song of my own. I reached out through the wind and howling snow and found them—huddled in doorways, standing in the shelter of a stranger’s home, drifting and unfocused until my power touched them.
I pressed my back against the wall. I braced my feet. I pushed until blackness crept to the edge of my vision, singing, calling. My net spun a little wider. It touched two more souls. I had done all that I could.
The dead slid through solid walls and gathered around me, curious at my summoning. Dozens came to my call, and I held out my hands in appeal as they crowded around me.
“We have used you so terribly. But we need you.”
A ghost in a pin-striped college jacket scowled at me. “You never want us. Now you need us?”
“Most of us can’t hear you or talk to you. I can. And if you need me, I will try to help you.”
“All of us?” the ghost demanded.
“If I can help you, I will,” I said.
“Done,” he said. “What do you need from us?”
“This storm is too strong to fight alone. Will you join with the witches here? Will you help save our lives?”
“Because you asked,” a woman said. “Because you see us, and you hear us, and you asked. We will help.”
The ghosts took up stations next to this Storm-Singer or that, dressed in the fashions they had died in: narrowly cinched waistlines, short jackets with too much padding in the shoulder—and one little ghost gathered the drooping velvet hem of her mother’s bag-sleeved tea gown as she walked.
Outside, the wind faltered, as if it were capable of surprise.
Every ghost laid a spectral hand on a witch’s shoulder. The dead lent their strength to the Circle of weather-witches who sang their power into something greater than themselves, a force powerful enough to calm the whirling fury aimed directly for our shore.
Living witches and the unquiet dead poured their souls into the work until the wind stopped screaming past the rooftops. The Windweavers of Riverside unwound the weaving of their voices, dropped the threads of their magic, and slumped into chairs, thirsty and dizzy.
The medical crew tottered back to the restorative station and poured juice with shaky hands. The ghosts drifted around, pausing to stare at the living as often as they gazed at the huge murals of Samindan ships at sea, their white sails paunched with wind. The chandeliers swinging above us made everyone’s shadows slide dizzily. And just there, not quite in the center of the web of Storm-Singers, Grace Hensley collapsed to hands and knees, breathing hard.
I wove my path through the witches to crouch beside her, offering a cup of salted apple juice. “Drink this before you faint.”
“Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.” Grace lifted her head and gave me a pale smile. I laid my hand on her forehead, and she was clammy. My fingers slid to the pulse on her wrist. Thready.
I clucked my tongue before I could stop it. “You overdid it.”
A fine thing to say, when for me the room still tilted and I felt too hot, but Grace quaffed juice and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“We needed every scrap of power to avert that storm,” Grace said. “Bringing in the ghosts was genius. And your people, these witches, they’re … startling.”
“You didn’t expect them to be powerful.”
Grace shrugged. “I’m used to being the best. In this room, I’m not even in the top ten. And won’t the Royal Knights scream when they find out they’re middling to ordinary?”
“That kind of resentment could be dangerous,” I said. “You came to me to unite the witches with the Royal Knights. We’ve done that. Now it’s time to hear what it’s going to cost you.”
Grace nodded and plucked a lumpy, russeted apple from a passing attendant’s basket. “I’m ready.”
“You took the prorogue and convinced the King to abolish the Witchcraft Protection Act, and now we’re all free. Except there are hundreds of witches flung to the corners of Aeland and locked in asylums. I want you to get them out. Now.”
Grace stopped chewing. She watched one of my medics tending Loretta Green, who would faint in a stiff breeze if it meant being fussed over.
When she spoke, it was in careful, rehearsed tones. “It’s not that I want to say no. And I’m not saying no.” Grace swallowed the last mouthfuls of fortified apple juice and blotted her clammy forehead with the cuff of her sweater. “But saying yes is empty. I could say ‘Certainly! The witches are free to go as of this moment,’ and that would mean exactly nothing, because there’s nowhere for them to go.”
“They have somewhere to go,” I said. “There’s always room for one more in the clan house.”
Grace’s eyebrows rose. “For near on a thousand witches?”
“We’ll take them,” I said. “Next objection.”
“Aether’s still out. There’s no way to even get word to the asylums to tell them they’re free. How am I supposed to get them home?”
“On the trains,” I said.
Grace cocked her head. “How’s that, now?”
“We have a new king. The law dictates that a new monarch must call an election and name a new Cabinet within ninety days of his coronation. That means getting the word out. And with no telephones, no telegraphs, and no wireless, that means the proclamation must be spread in person.”
“The rail lines are snowed under,” Grace said.
“So King Severin calls for anyone in National Service to report in to clear snow. Send passenger trains. Staff them with Service workers and get to work. What choice do you have?”
“You’re right. That’s the only choice we have. But that will still leave the witches locked up for weeks.”
I huffed and shrugged at her criticism. “If you can think of a way to fetch them out faster than that, I want to know about it.”
Grace bit into her apple. She weighed the question in her mind, as if there were a way. “Actually, I might.”
Grace surveyed the room, her gaze settling on the witches quietly replenishing themselves with salted apple juice. Grace pushed herself out of her chair, swaying only a little.
Of course. It was perfect. “Come with me,” I said. “I might as well ask them while they’re irritated.”
TWO
The Greystars
When Grace gave her word, she didn’t dally. I hovered in the drafty front parlor the next morning, clad in my best daytime suit. I hadn’t brought the smart gray jacket and pleated skirt out of my closet since the day I signed the nurses of Beauregard into a fair labor agreement with Dr. Matheson. My shiny black heeled shoes pinched at my toes.
We had done well. Only a foot of snow had fallen, and that was soon cleared off the sidewalks and tamped on the street. Marlon had called it an astonishing success. He had praised me as Aeland’s savior.
It wasn’t actually me. It had been the dead acting to save the people they loved. All I’d done was ask their help. Grace had gone home talking of reorganizing the Royal Knights to coordinate the efforts of both Circles, promising to bring me to the King the next morning.
Grace’s flashy orange sleigh and gait-matched horses pulled up to the clan house, and I threw my cloak over my shoulders and dashed outside, the cold seeping up through the frozen sidewalk.
Grace sat cozy and snug under a blanket woven from the downy undercoat of northern longhair goats on one side, and lined with the skins of sheared beavers on the other. She shared the blanket and the foot warmer as the horses trotted back up the hill and up Main Street to the King’s Way and Mountrose Palace. We smoked. Joy set herself on the bench beside us. Grace nodded to her as if she was there in the flesh.
I rode with one of th
e wealthiest Royal Knights of Aeland, the one who held the most power as Chancellor to the new king. That didn’t stop me from raising my fist in the air for the knot of people gathered in the square in protest. Some of them returned the gesture. Some turned their backs.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “This blasted sled.”
“Some people don’t think we should consort with the likes of you. You’re a corrupting influence.”
Grace smiled. “Is that so?”
“They’re right to worry,” I said. “I could wind up in your pocket financially, and then the next thing you know I’m preaching meaningless displays of incrementalism I’m calling compromise.”
“But compromise is how politics works.”
“Politics works on compromise. We want transformation.”
“Severin has a plan,” Grace said, leaning into me as the sled turned a corner. “He’s going to announce it at the coronation. I want you to come and hear it for yourself.”
“Do you have an opinion of this plan?”
Grace gave one curt nod. “I think it’s too cautious. I want bolder action. That’s why I need you—I need to be able to present what you truly want, couched in the art of my persuasion.”
A flock of birds took wing, the sound of their flight agitated. “When I come work for you as your consultant. For eighteen thousand a year.”
Grace sat up in surprise. “I said twelve, but I can see you to fourteen.”
I was worth more, I told my leaping stomach. She knew it. “Sixteen, plus paid vacation.”
“You’ll have weeks of downtime between sessions.”
“Which I will use to gather wisdom from my community. Sixteen, plus paid vacation. And I quit on Frostmonth one. I’m going back to medical school.”
“Do you honestly think you can get enough done that you can stop after less than one year?”
“If I’m not satisfied after Frostmonth one, we will have wasted our time,” I said. “I don’t mean to chat over tea while I work for you. I’m going to leverage my position into as much change as I can move.”
“With my office as the fulcrum,” Grace said. “All right. Sixteen. Paid vacation. I’ll even throw in a travel allowance, so you can go in-country if it suits your needs.”
“When do I formally accept the offer?”
“After you’ve convinced your people that it’s smart,” Grace said. “The day after the celebration for the freed witches? That will give our advocates weeks to fight over the contract.”
An advocate. Oh, dear. Was this something Cousin Orlena could negotiate? I’d have to ask her at dinner, and if she couldn’t, I’d need a referral. I papered a smile over my face. “Three days after. We’ll be busy getting ready for the celebration, and I will want a rest.”
“Very well. Three days,” Grace agreed. “I have a feeling we’re going to do excellent work together.”
“Done.” I slipped my hand out from under the luxurious sled blanket and shook on it.
I had been to Government House before. But Grace’s driver George took us around to the empty square and wide stone steps where Queensguards—well, they were the King’s now—stood in the cold with scarlet cloaks over their dress uniforms. The guards at the door took down the particulars of my identity card, compared the photo of my face to my living countenance, and finally allowed me inside.
I had been inside the Royal Gallery when I was a schoolgirl, but this entranceway outstripped it. Marble tile, from wall to wall. Gold on the aether-powered chandelier hanging dimly from the soaring ceiling, while portable gas lamps did the actual work of lighting the vast, chilly foyer. A collection of marble statues stood in a circle in the center of the room—seventeen of them, all veiled, identifiable by what they carried.
Menas the Just carried his scroll and quill. Halian the Maker, with a sculptor’s chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other. Grace sailed past them with the carelessness of one who had seen the devotional statues so many times they were just people to her.
I had always been fond of Lilia the Compassionate, as her teachings governed the ways of healers. I touched her toes, smooth from the fingertips of visitors with enough faith or superstition to make such a gesture, and gripped the knotty stave of Amael the Traveler, the Lady at the Gates of the Solace, the Shepherd of the Dead.
She was my clan’s patron. And mine, since I carried her sight. I had to hurry to catch up to Grace, who was halfway to the exit she meant to take.
Mountrose Palace would have been more beautiful if I could stop thinking about those who tried to outrun starvation and homelessness, but I wasn’t about to forget. I laid my eyes on every alabaster figurine, every deftly cut crystal vase filled with fragrant herbs and evergreen boughs, every painting ignored by the guards stationed in the hall. They watched me go past as we took ourselves to a wing of the palace that stepped backward in time, decorated and furnished in the ornately carved wood of a hundred years ago.
The guards here were Amaranthines, garbed in short-hemmed voluminous trousers, their tunics belted by tooled leather. They wore swords at their hips and carried curving, powerful bows, their hair braided away from their faces and silver-decorated ears. Only a few of them were white. Grace nodded greetings to these guards, and they all smiled, not at all the stoic, half-scowling expressions of the Kingsguard.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“You guested Grand Duchess Aife for lunch,” Grace said. “We’re here for refreshments.”
“With the Daughter of the Gates?” I swiped at the front of my cloak, trying to bat away lint that wasn’t there.
“And Severin Mountrose,” Grace said, and I swallowed just as she stopped before a set of double doors carved in concentric rings.
They opened on a light-filled jewel box of a room, an ornate latticed cage of crystal and iron. I gawked as butterflies, bright and impossible, danced to the luminous music of the tawny brown-skinned woman perched on a guitar stool. No one sang an accompaniment.
She lifted her gaze from her fingers on the fretboard and stopped playing. The butterflies winked out of existence, diminishing to a single firework spark and then gone. The Grand Duchess rested the beautiful guitar on a stand and—splendid in a layered gown of the most delicate shades of blue—set her slippered feet on the floor to approach us.
I hadn’t been especially religious. I knew the stories; I had attended temple for the important services. I had seen the stories of the makers and the tales of the Amaranthines as allegory.
But Grand Duchess Aife was no story. She was so tall I had to look up at her the way I craned my neck to look Grace in the eye. She had the sort of lovingly sculpted face and deep night eyes that could have been beautiful and terrible, but instead were kind and inquisitive. Her golden hair curled loosely, each coiling lock stretched under the weight of hanging down to her hips. My scalp hurt imagining what it took to comb all that hair free of tangles, how long it would take to put up and wrap in silk before she slept. A Samindan’s hair was their glory—and from the impressive styles I had seen on all the Amaranthines, they agreed.
“I thank you again for the excellent meal,” Grand Duchess Aife said. “I hear you are the one who saved Aeland from terrible destruction.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “The dead did that.”
“You were the one who thought to ask them,” Grand Duchess Aife said. “Their additional protection will see you through the winter, and it took your ingenuity to make it happen.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” I said, because while you can deflect praise once, twice is throwing someone’s respect back in their face.
“I’m happy to assist you in your endeavors today,” Aife said. “Between the three of us, I have every confidence Aeland’s new king will see reason—ah. Here he comes.”
The doors opened and King Severin Mountrose walked in. I bowed my head, but he came straight to me, stopping at a distance. Joy swooped closer, and Severin’s lips curled in revulsion before he
turned a stern look at me.
“So you are the person responsible for the protesters outside the palace,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “I and the rest of the Solidarity Collective.”
“That’s not an apology for disrupting the flow of visitors to the palace,” the King said.
“Your Majesty, it is not,” I agreed. “You are currently suffering an inconvenience. We’re doing it to ask you to build a better Aeland.”
“Robin’s quick thinking saved us from the storm,” Grace said. “As I told you when I asked you to meet her.”
“You did.” The King looked me straight in the face. He would have been handsome enough for the stage if he hadn’t been a king, dressed in the height of fashion, though the deep, nearly black violet wool suit couldn’t have been donned by anyone but a king. Not even the barely suppressed scowl smirched his handsomeness. “Aeland thanks you. And my friend Chancellor Hensley tells me you have a plan you’d like my help with.”
Oh, blast! I had prepared myself to answer questions, not pitch the idea, and so I scrambled for words. “I did what I did because Chancellor Hensley promised that she would do everything in her power to help me with what I want.”
“And you wished to ask me to help you.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. You have abolished the law that my comrades have fought for decades. For that you have our sincerest gratitude.”
“But you won’t call off your protestors.”
“The work is not yet done, Your Majesty,” I said. “The witches are free on paper, but they fester in asylums waiting for the snow to thaw. I want them truly freed, as quickly as possible.”
“That is also my wish,” Grand Duchess Aife said. “I know you understand my position on the imprisonment of these innocents, and how I condemn the motives of those responsible for this outrage. Miss Thorpe has proven to be a woman of great ideas.”
“How can I withstand you both?” Severin asked, his smile more charming for the Grand Duchess. “But the rail lines are buried so deeply that we probably wouldn’t finish digging them out before the Firstgreen thaw.”