by C. L. Polk
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Miles said. “Maybe holding your meeting in front of Government House was going a bit far, but they didn’t have to tear-gas you. That’s a weapon of war.”
“But then the riot—”
“If it had been me, I would have rioted too.”
“What’s going to happen to the others who were arrested?” I asked.
“They’re all going before a magistrate for mischief hearings. Most of them will be fined.”
“Fines they can’t afford to pay.” My shoulders sank. I hung my head. I had allowed this to happen. My own pride had gotten us into this mess.
Miles patted my shoulder. “Now get some rest. We’re going sleuthing tomorrow.”
“Sleuthing?”
“I spoke to Amelia at Beauregard Veterans’. She wanted to tell it with you there, instead of having me repeat it back to you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Amelia knew all of the Quiet Ones. That’s what the Service called the women sharpshooters during the war. A great many of them write to her care of the hospital,” Miles said. “She said she’ll tell you anything you want to know, as soon as you come see her.”
* * *
Beauregard still hadn’t caged in a more secure area for the dozens of bicycles chained to the wrought-iron fence, even though they were ripe for theft. The sills around the windows hadn’t been painted—and that meant they were probably still drafty. We walked up the wide flagstone walk (the loose stones were repaired, at least) and inside the hospital’s front doors.
Music echoed in the main hall, and a crowd of young soldiers I didn’t know gathered around one man with a guitar. They shivered in the draft from the front door, but only looked at us with some curiosity. I searched for someone, anyone I recognized.
“Robin!” Nurse Harriet Baker rushed over to me, squeezing my shoulders in a hug. “Or should I say Right Honorable?”
I hugged Harriet. “Always Robin to you, Harry.”
“I feel selfish for saying it, but we need you so badly. Jenny keeps threatening to strike over the smallest things—we shouldn’t have put her in charge over you. That was a mistake.”
“Jenny will learn which battles to fight, and which to negotiate,” I said. “Miles and I are here to visit a patient,” I said. We’re here to see Amelia Summer.”
“It’s so kind of you to come again. Amelia hasn’t seen visitors in a while,” Harriet said. “I’ll take you over.”
Harriet told us all the news the nurses had—who was engaged, who was pregnant, who had left to other hospitals, and she didn’t leave us until we had escorted Amelia Summer to a small interview room, granting us privacy we wouldn’t have had in an eight-bed ward.
Amelia had a bag full of yarn scraps and a crochet hook, and she looked at the lace square in her hands more than she looked at us. “I’m glad you came,” she said.
“I wanted to see you,” I replied. “Miles said you didn’t want to tell it twice, or risk having Miles mis-repeat something to me.”
“You’re here because of the Clarke assassination,” she said. The hook flashed as she drew yarn around it, creating what would be a piece of a blanket or maybe a scarf. “You think it’s one of the Quiet Ones.”
“Possibly,” I said to her bowed head. “That’s the avenue we’re currently exploring. Miles found four other women living in Kingston who had training in the Service.”
Miles reached into his pocket. “I have their pictures.”
“Let’s see them.” Amelia set her hook down and put her hand out. She paged past the first one immediately. “I don’t know her,” she said. “Never seen her before. Did she go to Laneer?”
“That’s Millicent Roebuck, and no.”
Couldn’t tell you anything about her.” Amelia slipped the photo of Millicent to the back of the stack. “This one, though. That’s Evelyn Deadeye.”
She held up the portrait of Evelyn Plemmons.
“Deadeye?” Miles asked.
“Best shot I’ve ever seen,” Amelia said. “She could shoot the gasper right out of your mouth. And she did. She liked the distraction missions. The ones where you’d stalk a location, just to scare them.”
I glanced at Miles. Assassination was dangerous, wasn’t it? “She liked the excitement?”
“She craved it. The riskier, the more dangerous, the better she liked it. She did at least fifty successful missions, and most of those were incredibly dangerous, but she was part cat. She could sneak up on a hare.”
Amelia slid Evelyn’s portrait to the back. “Caitrin! She played the violin. Took that thing with her everywhere. Not on missions, but she used to play it for the boys. Wireless tunes, singalongs—everyone liked Caitrin. I think most of them never really thought of all the murder she did.”
“Do you think she’d be likely for the assassination?”
Amelia shook her head. “Caitrin fell in love with an army captain. She got married and is probably busy making babies right now.”
That matched what we knew. “She’s pregnant.”
“She is?” Amelia’s smile stole over her face. “That’s lovely. I should make her something.”
She turned to the last photo. “Ah. Laura.”
I tilted my head. “That’s an interesting reaction.”
“Laura was far too good for the rest of us,” Amelia said. “She didn’t waste her time on anyone who wasn’t an officer. Did she marry Major Briggs? She really liked him.”
“She’s still Debenham.”
“Oh? Too bad,” Amelia said. “Though it’s rare to meet an unmarried major, wouldn’t you say? What’s she doing now?”
“She’s in the royal guard,” I said. “Personal protection for King Severin.”
“Oh. She’s flown very high, indeed,” Amelia said. “I hope she hasn’t broken her heart, trying to charm a king.”
“These are all the women trained by the army in long-distance sharpshooting who still live in Kingston,” Miles said. “You knew them. In your opinion, who would become a contract assassin? If you read an article in the paper about her capture, which one of these women would surprise you the least?”
Amelia handed the photos back. “You have this image in your mind of the Quiet Ones. We were legends. What the Quiet Ones see, dies. Some of the men feared us on sight.”
Miles shifted his weight and shrugged. “I’ve heard the stories.”
“Those stories made it hard to mix with anyone who wasn’t our team or each other,” Amelia said. “I know a bit about how you men were trained to kill. And it’s hard to imagine a woman going through that, isn’t it? All that shouting and aggression. But it wasn’t like that, for us. They didn’t teach us that way.”
Miles leaned a little closer. “How?”
“I didn’t go from national Under Twenty champion target archer to halfway up a tree hoping intelligence was right, that my scouts were safe, and that my target was really inside the structure because I stood in a line with a rifle and shouted ‘destroy them.’” Amelia said. “We penetrated enemy ground and risked our lives without wireless backup to creep up to a location and wait hours for our target, and then we had to escape back to safety. I had to trust my scouts. We had to trust our commander to be there when we made it back. We learned to be quiet, efficient, unseen.”
“They trained you differently,” Miles said. “They used more sophisticated methods.”
“They gave us thought experiments where the right answer, the moral answer, was to sacrifice one for the safety of the rest. We learned that murdering one would save a thousand, that one of our assignments could win a battle without any of the boys ever seeing danger.”
Miles nodded. “You were protectors.”
“That’s what they told us,” Amelia said. “And when we came back, when we made it back from shooting whoever was key to the enemy’s plans, they would hug us. They would praise us. They would tell us who we saved from the fighting, that we were saving Aeland, and
freedom, and everything it stands for.”
“They used your love,” I said. “They used your love to make you kill for them.”
Amelia stared at the empty space between us—not at me, but at something only she could see. “I never felt more worthy than when my commander would gather me up and shower me with praise, ordering a hot bath and a good meal and the best liquor in the camp. My team—they were my brothers. And then they would pack up, and we’d go to the next camp. The next mission. The next murder.”
“And you were all protectors. You were all saving the boys from having to fight a battle, or from having to fight tooth and nail to occupy a town. You kept them safe,” Miles said.
“That’s what we were taught. We were never cynical enough, uncaring enough, cold enough to kill for money. We were trained to kill for Aeland,” Amelia said. “Aeland and all it stands for.”
I went cold. “And if Jacob Clarke dying meant saving the country?”
Amelia looked at me. “Then you are in grave danger.”
I sat back, stomach writhing. “Me.”
“If I’m right, and the shooter is a patriot, I’d be very careful if I were you,” Amelia said. “But if you’re right, and the killer is working on contract, then you’re looking for the coldest woman I ever met.”
She held up the defiant, belligerent photo of Evelyn Plemmons. “Check her trail. You remember I said she liked the distraction missions?”
My insides were still shivering. “Yes.”
“She would shoot people so they hurt. So they screamed. And she’d drop a few stone-dead on the spot, just to make it worse.”
I exchanged a glance with Miles. “She liked it.”
“Yes. Deadeye liked risks. She liked people being afraid of her. She loved to see fear.” Amelia studied the photograph, and then looked at Miles. “I don’t know if I helped.”
“I think you have,” Miles said. “I’m going to tread lightly while I look into Miss Plemmons.”
“Be very careful,” Amelia said. “Both of you.”
NINETEEN
A Step Ahead of the Rest
FREE WITCHES: WAS IT A MISTAKE?
I was more than tired of headlines. I should have been washing dishes, but instead I was standing in the corner with the Herald, reading an article placed above the fold about the riot on the steps of Government House, and a story about Zelind’s disciplinary reports related to violence while khe was imprisoned at Clarity House. ALLEGED INVENTOR A DANGEROUS PATIENT—OVER 300 INFRACTIONS RECORDED, that headline read.
“What garbage,” I muttered, and beside me, Zelind shivered.
“They’d write you up for anything,” khe said. “I’m not saying I didn’t stir things up sometimes, but they wrote me up for dropping a cup, because it landed on my toe and I swore.”
That was more than ridiculous. It was small, petty, and exactly the sort of thing that would break a person’s spirit over time. “The papers make it sound like you regularly attempted murder.”
“I should have attempted murder,” Zelind muttered. “What were they going to do, imprison me again?”
“You can’t regret your instinct for survival.” I folded the paper and dropped it in the bin.
“Well, if they’re smearing me, that means they’re not smearing you, at least.” Zelind picked up a drying towel and handed it to me. “I was getting tired of riot coverage.”
The papers had savaged us, calling the Government House mass arrest an act of thuggish violence. They had called for the imprisonment of the four hundred people arrested. But when Grace stepped out to apologize to us for the intemperate actions of an overly anxious guard, and dissolved all pending mischief charges, the papers reacted in confusion, their inflated story popped by a pin.
But it hadn’t taken them long to find a new target. Zelind was handling the smear with a shrug, but I was ready to storm the Herald and demand they take it back.
“It doesn’t matter. Your turbines will save Aeland. We’ll drag this country into fairness and justice.” I nodded at the mail on the table, where an opened invitation to gather at Winnie and Duke’s sat among letters to the People’s Prime Minister. “The work goes on. But today, we have a hotel to save.”
Zelind’s expression soured. “I know I have to give in a little. But I’m not going to like it.”
“I didn’t expect you would,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to write to her and arrange a time to meet?”
“I’d prefer her to have no warning,” Zelind said.
This meeting made kher nervous enough to line kher eyes and powder kher cheeks. Zelind changed clothes three times, finally settling on wide-legged cuffed trousers, shiny wine-colored brogues, and a burgundy silk blouse with a ribbon bow at the neck. Khe put on perfume that smelled of woods and herbs, grabbed a surplus Service coat from the closet, and topped kher springy short hair with a pinch-fronted gray hat with a wide brim. Khe still carried that elegance that transformed kher fashion choices into ensembles that gathered admiring glances as khe pedaled down the streets.
We took Water Street to Main and walked our bicycles up the steep grade of King Philip Hill, all the way to Bayview, the house that looked down on all of Riverside.
We rode Bay Crescent in silence. My stomach writhed, remembering my other journeys to this house, this redbrick castle. It was large enough to house three clans but only held a handful, the servants outnumbering the family five to one. We wound around the street that housed those servants, and Zelind turned kher head and stared at a line of beech trees planted on the curving road.
“Right there,” khe said, and we pedaled past the place where khe had been arrested without looking back.
We stopped at the gate, and the guards in the gatehouse ran into the driveway to pull the iron gates open, their faces stunned. Zelind pedaled past with scarcely more than a tight smile, but khe nodded to the stone lions who guarded the driveway leading to the house.
I still couldn’t believe the size of it. I hadn’t accustomed myself to this kind of wealth belonging to people. I helped the maid. I looked for slippers before I remembered that the Bays just wore their shoes all over the house. I reached for Zelind’s hand and khe took it, leading me past parlors and receiving rooms and the empty ballroom I had stared at the first time I had come.
Khe led me to a breakfast room, where Birdie waited for a maid to finish preparing her tea. A cellist played music and it made me think of Ramona; it was just that little bit like home.
Birdie Bay dismissed the maid with a little wave. She gazed at Zelind, and her mouth flattened as she studied our clasped hands.
I didn’t let go. Neither did khe. But Birdie inspected us both, not saying a word. She picked up her painted glass teacup and sipped at a brew that smelled malty and strong. I don’t think we dared even breathe until she set down the cup and laced her fingers together, displaying a portrait ring on one finger.
“So. My child has come home at last.”
“I’m here, Mother,” Zelind said. “I thought we could eat breakfast.”
“Spare me. You want something,” Birdie said, one corner of her mouth curved down. “You’re too stubborn to be here otherwise.”
“Miss Minerva Brown’s hotel is under threat,” Zelind said. “I think you arranged it.”
“And I think your wife was the one who guessed,” Birdie said. “I would have expected you to grab a pipe wrench and try to beat the clock.”
Zelind shrugged. “She did.”
Her gaze bored through me. “You’ve always been clever, Miss Robin. Clever and proud. Do you realize,” Birdie said, picking up her teacup, “that I never thought you had attached yourself to my child for the money?”
“I hadn’t, ma’am,” I said. “But you’re right. I didn’t.”
“It wasn’t that I disliked you,” she went on. “Nor was it because I expected my child to take up with someone wealthy. My sole objection was that you were a null. And I was mistaken.”
&nbs
p; “I appreciate you telling me this, ma’am.”
“But I dislike you now,” Mrs. Bay said. “There was a right way and a wrong way to handle the situation when Zelind came back. Humiliating me in public was not the right way.”
“Mother.”
“She isn’t welcome here,” Birdie said. “She’s only staying because she may as well hear what I have to say. I want you to come home.”
“This isn’t my home anymore,” Zelind said. “I came to tell you that I would pay you a visit once a week. For dinner. Alone, if you wish.”
“Ah. And in exchange, I call off my dogs and leave the Princess Mary Hotel to those children playing at clanship?”
Zelind nodded, kher jaw tight. “Yes.”
She tilted her head and studied her child, her expression going sharp. “No.”
“If you don’t agree, then we have no choice but to appeal to Aeland Heritage and Preservation about naming the Princess Mary a site of social and historical significance, and then you will never see me again. I will cut you in the street.”
Birdie gazed at Zelind through the ribbon of steam rising from her tea. “You have it all thought out.”
Zelind shrugged one shoulder. “I had to think ahead, if I was dealing with you.”
“A compliment. I’ll take it,” Birdie said. “But you didn’t think far enough ahead, my dear.”
My jaw dropped open. I went cold. She hadn’t. She was way ahead of us, miles ahead, but—who would do such a thing?
The woman who’d never learned how to live without getting exactly what she wanted, that’s who.
She flicked a glance at me, and her smile widened. “Run to the Heritage and Preservation office and do a little research. Take the day. And take tomorrow. And then come home, and I will withdraw my complaint to the Health and Safety inspectors.”
My hand hurt. Zelind squeezed harder. “What did you do?”
“Go, and see.”
I knew. I could feel it, as if my bones had turned to cold water. If we went and delved into the files, we’d find the documents there, in triplicate, coated in a fine layer of dust. The money, paid into some clerk’s pocket and spent possibly years ago, patiently waiting for the moment when Birdie Bay would get everything she wanted.