The Midnight Bargain

by C. L. Polk

  Harriet scoffed. “Finally, you understand how serious this is. You have to put away these notions that Father will let you indulge your fancies. You have to get married. If word gets out that you dabble in magic, you’ll be seen as difficult. Do you imagine Ianthe Lavan wants a difficult wife?”

  “He has a difficult sister,” Beatrice said. “Do you imagine she will appreciate me backing out of our bargain?”

  Harriet sighed. “You can’t. But why? Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

  “Don’t judge me. All you know are rhyming charms,” Beatrice said. “You’ve never cast a circle of power. You’ve never experienced what true magic feels like—”

  “And I won’t,” Harriet said. “You made a terrible mistake the first time you ever cast a working. Magic doesn’t belong to us. It can’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” Beatrice demanded. “We can raise the power, and the spirits flock around us—”

  “And you know why that is. Terrible things happen when women mix with magic. You know that. If you get caught playing with higher magic, you’ll bring disgrace to all of us. You’d be warded before your marriage! Everyone would think you a hoyden or worse, a rebel, and many gentlemen would never consider taking a difficult bride into their homes. And if you birthed a spiritborn—they’d make you watch the execution, Beatrice! Your own baby. And then you’d be next.”

  They would be burned, the ashes banished to the sea; Heaven would deny them entrance. Their families would be forever marked with disgrace. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I know you don’t.” Harriet let out her reins and urged Cloudburst to speed his pace to a jog, pulling ahead of Beatrice. “It gets in the way of what you want, so why should you?”

  “Are you saying I’m selfish?” Beatrice sat up in the saddle and Marian quickened her pace for a few steps. She tightened her thighs around the pommels but didn’t interfere. Where Cloudburst went, Marian followed.

  “You are selfish,” Harriet said, not looking back. “Only a selfish girl would put her family in such jeopardy without a moment’s thought. Only a selfish girl would grab for what she can’t have!”

  “But we should have it!” Beatrice retorted. “We should have the mysteries. They should belong to us! We should—”

  “Hush,” Harriet said. “Someone’s coming.”

  Hoofbeats and laughter drummed along the path ahead. Harriet sat up straight. Beatrice lifted her chin as three riders on black horses rounded the bend, causing an uproar as they sighted the sisters. The lead rider raised one hand to halt. Beatrice gasped as she recognized Ianthe Lavan riding with two gentlemen of Chasland.

  “Good morning,” Harriet said, the wide brim of her hat tilting as she nodded.

  “Good morning,” the lead man responded. “The Clayborn ladies, I presume.”

  “I am Harriet. My sister, Beatrice,” Harriet said, gesturing to her side. “We are determined to ride the full track this morning. Are you bound for the jumping course?”

  “Miss Clayborn.” Beatrice beheld Ianthe Lavan, severe and elegant in rose-trimmed gray. He smiled at her, and Beatrice sucked in a little breath before smiling back. If she opened her mouth, all the butterflies in her middle would fly out.

  Ianthe bowed at the waist in his saddle. “It is a pleasure to see you, Miss Clayborn. Did you enjoy your visit with my sister?”

  “I was happy to have Miss Lavan’s company,” Beatrice said. “I shall be calling on her to play hazards.”

  “I hope you enjoy our course,” Ianthe said, and Beatrice did not let herself gape. They had their own hazards course? At home?

  “I look forward to learning it,” Beatrice said. “I love to play hazards.”

  “Introduce us, Lavan,” a young gentleman in a ruby-colored riding suit said. “Oh, never mind. I will do it. Ellis Robicheaux. I humbly request to be of service, Miss Clayborn.”

  He did something with his knees and his horse, a gleaming black gelding with a white star between the eyes, bent his head and bowed, graceful as a king’s knight. Ellis swept off his hat and smiled as he and his mount returned to proper posture.

  “How do you do?” Beatrice asked. The Sir Ellis Robicheaux, the son of the exclusive dealer of automatons from the Eastern Protectorate. The Robicheaux family didn’t have sorcery in their line—but they could certainly change that, with the right bride. Father would dance in his chair if he knew of this meeting.

  “Back up, Ellis,” another rider—this one clad in green—said. Shouldering his way forward, he touched his hat. “Bard Sheldon, Lord Powles. I am delighted by the honor of your presence.”

  Not just heir to a dukedom. Lord Powles’s father was the minister of trade, one of the twenty-five men who ruled Chasland.

  “You are Mr. Lavan’s school friend,” Beatrice said.

  Mr. Sheldon smiled, and his handsomeness magnified. “You are the lady from the Assembly Dance. I’ve already heard so much about you.”

  Ianthe had spoken of her to a duke. The Sheldons owned a shipbuilder’s wharf up north and sailed a fleet of a dozen ships about the world gathering riches. There was no higher match than the son of a minister in the country—

  This must be Ysbeta’s intended match. Any girl would leap at such a union, and Ysbeta didn’t want him.

  “I hope the talk was pleasant, my lord.”

  “He sang your praises. He called you singular.” Bard extended a stiff card engraved with an invitation. Harriet, being closer, accepted it.

  “Please attend our little gathering, Miss Clayborn,” Lord Powles said. “I would be desolate if you weren’t there.”

  Harriet began with, “We—”

  “I would be glad to,” Beatrice said, but beside her, Harriet’s back went stiff. She ignored it and went on. “You may count on my presence.”

  “We will all be there,” Ellis declared, “and may the winner of our contest have the honor of partnering you at the tables.”

  “A contest?” Ianthe laughed. “What do you propose? I shall win, of course.”

  “Fastest one through the oblong,” Ellis said.

  “It won’t be you, on that fancy prancer. Come along and be beaten,” Bard said. “Good morning, Miss Clayborn, Miss Harriet.”

  “Good morning,” Beatrice and Harriet chorused.

  The gentlemen rode toward the racing oblong, and Harriet wasted no time in turning furiously in her saddle, a frown reddening her face. “You said yes?”

  “Harriet, why are you angry now? That was a minister’s son handing me an invitation. Will you never be pleased?”

  “Beatrice! You can’t go! It’s a card party! Why did you say yes?”

  “You said I had blundered at the Spring Assembly Dance. You wanted a pack of wealthy gentlemen at my heels, and you got your wish! How was I to know it was a card party? You had the invitation!”

  “You never gave me a chance to say! I had the perfect excuse, and you trampled right over it with your unthinking acceptance!” Harriet looked up at the sky, as if to beg one of the Skyborn to descend and save them. “What are you going to do? Father will give you the money, of course, he has no choice, but you can’t lose, Beatrice! Oh, what are we going to do?”

  Beatrice repressed the urge to shout. Harriet had the card, not her! How was she to know? Oh, she had walked straight into disaster. She knew how to play cards, and she was familiar with the rules, but she lost to Harriet as often as she won. She couldn’t depend on her middling skills to winthe day.

  Father would give her a purse without a murmur, no matter what it cost him. He’d never trouble his family with their uncertain situation—for him, Beatrice’s hunt for a well-placed husband was what mattered, and while the Lavan fortune was too vast to really understand, Ellis Robicheaux, while not a magician, commanded healthy sums. Father would be delighted by the potential match.

  She couldn’t attend a card party, but to fail to attend after promising she would? She didn’t need Harriet to tell her that it woul
d be terribly rude. She had to tell Father. She had to attend. There had to be a way out! There had to be a solution—

  All at once, calm and relief stole over her, easing her breath and unknotting her hands. There was a way to make all this come out safely.

  “Hush,” Beatrice said. “It will come out all right. I won’t lose Father’s money, Harriet. I promise you.”

  “You can’t promise that,” Harriet said.

  “Yes I can,” Beatrice said. “I already have a plan. Let’s hurry back, I have to prepare myself to visit Ysbeta.”

  CHAPTER V

  Ysbeta had sent her family’s plush turquoise landau to bring Beatrice to Lavan House, and she had never experienced so soft a ride in her life. The spring-steel padded white leather benches were shaped in a way that cradled the body. The dappled gray horses pulling the exquisitely sprung landau were gait-matched and speedy, and people gave way before the turquoise coat of the driver who led them to the Meryton Highway and out of town.

  She sat perfectly upright, her cartwheel hat shading her face. She hoped she didn’t look too absurd, dressed in pale cream cotton printed with swirling, fanciful flowering vines and long-tailed show-birds. The cloth had come all the way from Kerada, her underskirt a more sedate sister to the extravagance of her mantua. It was her best day gown. She’d have to step down in quality after this.

  A shallow bowl full of gin-infused fruit intended as refreshment tempted Beatrice as she rode under a mercilessly cloudless blue sky. The fruit rested on a mound of ice, an expense so astronomical Beatrice had trouble believing Ysbeta would offer it if Beatrice hadn’t possessed something she desperately wanted.

  She bit into a plump berry as the carriage veered to the north side of the road, continuing down a drive that led to a gate guarded by men in turquoise coats. They rushed to open the way, and the carriage sailed through without pausing.

  No one could see her sitting on the landau bench, staring at the spectacle of Lavan House. Even from this beech-lined distance, the sheer size and symmetry of this modern country house stunned her. Red bricked, black-roofed, perfectly balanced—doors and windows meant for convenience and light that disregarded the additional tax expense calculated each year—it was the finest house Beatrice had ever seen outside of an illustration.

  In the center of the house’s circular drive, a fountain trickled crystal-clear water from the ewers of burnished bronze statues representing three tall, slender, and distinctly Llanandari women with draping, textured robes and hairstyles she could never imitate.

  She stared at the water-bearing women until a footman helped her from the carriage and ushered her inside a cool marble foyer dominated by another bronze woman, pouring trickling water into a basin.

  She knew what this one was for. She allowed the maid to peel her out of her gloves so she could ritually wash her hands. What was she doing here? She thought she had understood wealth. Now following the maid through the damask-lined halls to an enormous conservatory, she knew she had no idea how the best families in the world lived.

  The maid took her to a sunny terrace, where Ysbeta sat overlooking a garden with a twisting, labyrinthine path in the center. She drank sweet lemonade and sampled tidbits from a small mound of the same gin-laced fruit Beatrice had been served in the landau. Colorful wooden balls and long-handled mallets rested on the table, waiting for their players. A hand fan floated impossibly on threads of magic, wafting air over the table.

  “The maid saw that,” Beatrice said. “She saw you using magic.”

  “It’s just a charm.” Ysbeta shrugged. “We don’t frown on women using their gifts in Llanandras. It’s a lovely day, though. I’m glad it never really gets hot in Chasland.”

  Beatrice smiled her way through the sun trying to bake her into the stones. “Thank you for sending your carriage. The ride was pleasant.”

  “Excellent. I shall send it again the next time I bring you to visit. I have just finished walking the bending path, asking for clarity of action.”

  She waved at the labyrinth in the garden below.

  “That’s the road of right action, correct?”

  “It is,” Ysbeta said. “It clears the mind wonderfully to walk the bending path. If you have a dilemma, you ought to try it.”

  Perhaps she should, but it seemed disrespectful to use part of Llanandari faith simply because she wanted the benefits for herself. “I think I should stick to asking for guidance through stillness and meditation.”

  “As you will,” Ysbeta said. She pinched her eyebrows together, staring at Beatrice. “You are the strongest sorceress I have ever met. I’ve never seen an aura so dazzling.”

  “Thank you,” Beatrice said, for want of any other response. “You shine too.”

  “But not nearly as much. Sit for a moment. I’m not finished with this fruit.”

  Beatrice gazed at the waving fan. “How are you doing that?”

  Ysbeta lifted her hand, all the fingers spread wide. “Fan me,” she said, and the fan waved a little faster. “Imagine what you want, wrap your fan in it, and then tell it what to do.”

  “In Llanandari?”

  Ysbeta shook her head. “Your first tongue. It’s only a charm. It works because you understand what you want your power to do.”

  Beatrice imagined the fan floating before her, wafting air on her face. She pushed the vision through her spread fingers, wrapping it around the tines.

  “Open.”

  The fan snapped open, showing her the swallows painted on its silk fabric.

  Beatrice licked her lips. She raised her hand, and the fan rose in the air.

  “Fan me.”

  It fluttered, and the soft breeze cooled her face. “But it didn’t rhyme.”

  “Rhyming makes it seem special,” Ysbeta said. “Rhymes have more power because we believe that they do.”

  “That makes sense,” Beatrice said. “I believed the rhymes were important. I think we all did.”

  “Belief matters,” Ysbeta said. “I suspect the same thing is true of Mizunh. The chapterhouse uses the tongue to hide their secrets, and all the ceremony and pomp surrounding Mizunh made the language itself magic, not anything inherent to it.”

  “What a wonderful convenience this charm is.” Beatrice turned around to let the charmed fan waft air over the back of her neck. “Do all Llanandari use the lesser magics like this?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Well, only children play with lesser magic. Small spells they play in games. Then boys go to the chapterhouse or take on an apprenticeship if they’re not gentlemen. Girls stop doing charms when they start their courses.”

  Ysbeta sniffed. “With all the ways charms are useful? That seems a waste. Shall we play hazards?”

  Beatrice took a mallet, and then considered the fan still floating before her seat. She beckoned to it. “Follow me.”

  The fan darted forward, and the breeze from its flapping cooled her neck.

  Ysbeta smiled. “You learn fast. Come on.”

  Beyond the formal, restrained garden lay a rolling, perfectly groomed lawn where a planned and designed wicket course wound all the way to a controlled bit of wilderness, which was honestly no such thing. Safe from forest manxes, wolves, and boar this far south, it was a pleasant, shady refuge.

  Ysbeta was a fierce player. She huffed the first time Beatrice ignored an opportunity to knock her lead ball into a hazards trap. “If you can beat me at this game, then do it. I need a partner for mixed hazards, and I need someone who will cut throats.”

  She could cut throats. So could Ysbeta. They battled all the way down the course, playing just short of committing fouls.

  “Much better,” Ysbeta said. “Tell me what you know how to do.”

  “The most difficult thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have bargained with a lesser spirit of fortune.”

  “I have never seen anything come even close to conjuring a lesser spirit outside of the chapterhouse metho
ds, in all my travel and learning. Did you carry it?”

  “Once,” Beatrice said. “It’s like minding a child who knows how to run toward danger and throw fits when it doesn’t get what it wants.”

  “Like a child,” Ysbeta mused. “A dangerous, demanding child. What did you want from it?”

  “The chance to meet you again, so I could regain my book.”

  “My book,” Ysbeta corrected.

  “I’ll be happy to copy what I need from it.”

  “Not yet. First, tell me how the grimoires work.”

  “Have you ever broken a language code? Word Puzzles to Delight and Distract, by Eliza Charlotte Jenkins?”

  “Yes.” Ysbeta shrugged. “Children’s rainy-day distractions. I preferred to draw. Wait. Did you say Eliza Charlotte Jenkins?”

  “Correct,” Beatrice said. “I learned to decode from the activity books. My mother bought them for me. She made me learn them.”

  “She made you?”

  Beatrice watched the breeze play in the trees before launching her ball over the course. “When I solved an entire book, she’d give me something special.”

  “So she wanted you to learn them.”

  “Yes.” It had never occurred to Beatrice to wonder why Mother had wanted her to learn code breaking beyond a girl’s usual amusement. Mother had put her on the path to learning about the grimoires—had she done that on purpose?

  Ysbeta took a practice swing. She sighted along the course and launched her ball toward the wicket. Or—no. Beatrice’s shoulders slumped as Ysbeta’s ball collided with hers. “How did you go from word puzzles to a spell?”

  “I’m getting to that. The books became more difficult. But the more advanced books had typesetting errors.”

  Ysbeta set her foot on her wooden ball, and hammered Beatrice’s ball into a grass trap. “That must have been irritating.”

  “It was, until I imagined that the typesetting errors were actually a code within the book.”

  “A second code?”

  “Yes. And those ones taught magic beyond the rhyming charms children learn. Like the spell to seek the secret grimoires, and the spell to read them without decoding by hand.”