Fray

by Rowenna Miller

  Quickly, I tied off my thread, leaving the jacket half-charmed as curse magic hovered around my needle. My hand shook, the needle warbling between diffuse charmed light and dark sparkle. I couldn’t pull the light away from the dark, and began to panic.

  No, I told myself silently, forcing myself to set the needle down, stabbing it into the riding habit’s pale blue wool. I was shocked when a dark smudge embedded itself alongside the needle. I hadn’t meant to include charm or curse at all. Drawing on a skill I hadn’t touched in months, I removed the curse using the method I had learned for the queen’s shawl. It disappeared back into the ether.

  I set the jacket down carefully and stared at it. What was I going to do? We had a full slate of orders, a good number of which required my skills. If I couldn’t reliably charm cast, how could I finish them? The last thing I wanted to do was hand a business with a faltering reputation over to Alice.

  I wasn’t sure how I could find out what was wrong with my charm casting, either. None of the other charm casters I knew, Emmi included, cast curses. It was taboo. How could I explain the sudden, unwelcome presence of what only a curse caster would recognize to begin with? There was still only one person who knew I had cursed the queen’s shawl, and Theodor couldn’t help me with this problem.

  There was nothing to be done about it today, at any rate. Maybe I only needed time, a short break, some focus.

  Shouts outside foretold that focus was not going to be in great supply.

  I followed the noise to the front room, where Alice and Emmi were already pressed against a window.

  “Did I miss a holiday?” I asked, though I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive. Not after the riots the summer before or the revolt that started in the streets at Midwinter.

  “I think we all did,” Alice said, pointing at the crowd gathering, waving sticks with bright strips of cloth attached. To my relief, they looked happy.

  I opened the door, the bright afternoon sun baking the stones outside and painting a glistening sheen on the people I now saw clearly were revelers, not rioters. They waved colorful red banners, some brilliant scarlet and some a duller madder red—whatever their bearers had managed to find on short notice.

  “Hurrah for the Prince of Westland!” A coherent voice emerged from the joyful shouting. And another, “Reform is coming!”

  “It passed?” Emmi asked, incredulous.

  I shook my head—the bill had only just been drafted, and I knew contentious debate was still to come, not to mention the vote itself.

  A passerby pressed a broadside into Emmi’s hands. “The prince’s reforms were officially introduced to the floor today!” He brandished his banner, the vermilion cotton matching his red cap. “Read these—these will make for a better Galitha!”

  Emmi and Alice read the broadside, listing the high points of the Reform Bill I already knew like a well-worn book from hours talking with Theodor, but as the merry band paraded down the street, I couldn’t dissuade myself from worry. The people were in clear favor of a bill that would only pass after a fight. Would this merriment turn to violence in the wake of disappointment?

  “We should get back to work,” I said quietly, watching the brilliant scarlet fade as the crowd moved into the summer haze.

  6

  I THREW MY COMB DOWN, READY TO GIVE UP ON DRESSING MY hair for the formal dinner I had agreed to attend with Theodor. I knew how nobles managed elaborate hairstyles—they had their maids trained in hairdressing or hired professional hairdressers. I had no such luxury, but a formal dinner demanded a formal hairstyle nonetheless. Even more now, with the prince’s gold wrapped around my wrist, I had implicitly agreed to looking the part of royal consort. The rose scent from the powder wafted into my nose. I had liked it when I had selected it at the apothecary’s, but now it made me want to sneeze.

  The bells from Fountain Square warned me that it was six o’clock already, and Theodor’s coach would be at my door in half an hour. I hadn’t dressed yet, wanting to spare my new gown an unhealthy dose of powder from my hair. I shook a little more powder into the front, took a breath, and rolled it onto the wool pad again. This time the modest pompadour was smooth and at least reasonably even. I quickly pinned it in place and gave up on the idea of more elaborate curls on the sides, settling instead for a simple chignon and loop of hair at the nape of my neck.

  I hoped that the new gown, a brilliant turquoise silk with perfectly stitched pleats cascading down the back, courtesy of Alice, and trimmed with box-pleated strips of the same fabric, my own work, would distract anyone from the near travesty on my head. The prospect of accompanying Theodor to more public events had spurred me to remedy the severe lack of formal clothing in my own collection. I had made the turquoise gown, had begun another gown appropriate for a ball or dinner in a pale coral pink, and sitting in pieces in my bedroom were the beginnings of a court gown for the most formal occasions.

  New gowns could only prepare me in part for accompanying Theodor anywhere, however. Any public appearance with an heir to the throne was complexly coded, read by the nobility as a message of intention and, often, political machinations. When the son of a minor noble appeared at his aunt’s birthday dinner with a duchess above his station as his guest, Viola’s salon had buzzed for a week over the alliance growing between the families.

  Rumors had already circulated the city that the prince had bound hands with, depending on the source, a “heroic seamstress” or an “infernal doxy.” I had, of course, anticipated gossip. There had been intermarriages between commoners and minor nobility in my recollection. Accounts of the weddings made it into the better monthly magazines; salacious gossip filled the cheap rags. It had been clear that money, or a lack of it for the nobles, had motivated most of the marriages. Successful merchants, especially speculators who wagered well in the gamble of imports and shipping, could accrue more money than nobles whose estates were unlucky or mismanaged.

  No one would assume that Theodor was courting me for my money. I laughed at the thought, but the laugh was spiked with nerves. It caught in my throat. There was no turning back, not now that I’d begun to uncouple myself from the shop, not now that I was about to appear on Theodor’s arm wearing paired wristlets.

  I had a reason to be there, I told myself strictly, and that reason was the betterment of Galitha and her people. I repeated this little mantra to myself as I pinned my stomacher and then my gown into place, checking in the mirror that the robings covering the gown’s front edges were even and straight. The turquoise hue worked particularly well with my Pellian complexion—warm tones and dark hair that were unusual in the Galatine nobility. And that, I knew, meant that few other women would have a gown in this color. I consulted on enough gowns to have mastered the art of pairing silk hue to skin tone, complementing hair and eyes with the right touches of accent colors.

  I plucked jewelry from my modest collection, deciding between paste peridot and real pearls from Theodor, knowing that the imitation peridot worked better with the gown but that the pearls wouldn’t be sniffed out as inexpensive costume jewelry. Ultimately, I chose the peridot.

  I hovered by my door, watching anxiously for Theodor, not wanting to make him wait or come to my door. My neighbors were gossiping enough as it was, and I didn’t relish the attention. When the carriage maneuvered around the narrow corner, I was out the door in a flash.

  “It’s not the hippodrome,” Theodor said as I rushed to close the door. “We aren’t in the midst of a race. Though, speaking of races, there is a horse race I thought you might—”

  “One thing at a time,” I reminded him, though I couldn’t help but laugh. “Perhaps we’ll attend the dinner on your terms and the race on mine. Fancy a picnic on the general lawn?”

  He smiled at my joke. I wished the suggestion hadn’t been made in jest.

  The foreign minister’s house was on the outskirts of the city, in a relatively new district full of limestone façades and grand brickwork overlooking the bluff where t
he river began to widen into the harbor. I had rarely been here, save an occasional consultation with a newly moneyed merchant’s wife or shipbuilder’s daughter. Viola and Theodor both lived in older, though no less wealthy, districts.

  We were escorted down the long hall, wider and more full of echoes than either Viola’s or Theodor’s townhouse. Each footfall sounded louder than I intended, uncontrolled against the marble floor. I took in the dining room in one look—nothing intimate about this place, not like Viola’s salon. If I had thought myself at all prepared after spending afternoons and attending parties with Viola’s set, I was quickly disabused of that notion. This was a level of formality and presence I had not experienced since the Midwinter Ball—and my mission here was entirely different. I realized I was less prepared for it than I had been to remove the curse from the queen’s shawl.

  I was relieved to be seated next to Viola. “I convinced Lady Juline to swap my seat for the Duchess of Pommerly,” she whispered, nodding toward a bird-slender woman with a pompadour of pure white hair, surrounded by other octogenarians at the far end of the table. “I think they’ll all be more comfortable if they’re allowed to nod off during the sorbet course, don’t you?”

  “Thank you,” I replied. With Viola beside me, at least I had an ally.

  She sat, smoothing her delicate lavender gown. Amethysts bobbed in her ears, catching the candlelight, and a brilliant scarlet cockade winked at the edge of her neckline. “Your gown is delicious,” she said as I took my seat next to her.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I haven’t sewn for myself in ages.”

  The woman across the table from us glanced at me. I wasn’t sure if she had heard me, but I flushed anyway. Sewing for myself—no other woman here did that, save embroidered trifles and beadwork that they gave one another as gifts. I felt my cheeks growing red, but after all, this was what gave me the clout to speak for the common people, wasn’t it? My calloused hands and long days of work?

  “The color is superb,” Viola continued. “I suppose you went to the Silk Fair this year?”

  I swallowed against a dry mouth. “Yes, it was well attended.”

  “I hear that the Serafan silk production has suffered a bit from the droughts—the worms are overwarm or something,” she said. “But that their dyes are as brilliant as ever.”

  I couldn’t help discussing fabric. “They’ve dealt with the quality issues by producing some silks with larger slubs in them—rougher texture—and thinner, so it won’t do for formal gowns, in my opinion. But it could make interesting wraps or dressing gowns. Dyed just so, the texture looks as though they even intended it.”

  “So cheap silk becomes the new fashion.” Viola laughed.

  “I think so,” I said.

  The woman across the table didn’t seem interested in our conversation; no one did. Next to me, Theodor chatted amiably with a man with a graying mustache wearing full military uniform. Viola’s tactic was immediately clear—she had made me seem completely at ease, discussing any old topic, knowing full well no one else was listening to what I was actually talking about.

  “Speaking of silk,” Viola said, digging into her pocket. “I nearly forgot. I know I should leave the sewing to you, but I made up a few of these.” She pressed a cockade of scarlet and gray silk into my palm. “To support the Reform Bill. Red for obvious reasons, gray for the granite most of Galitha City is built on. Like building on a good foundation. Clever, no?”

  I turned the silk cockade over in my hand. The gray reminded me of ink, and of winter, too, of the Midwinter Revolt. “It’s perfect,” I said.

  “I know it doesn’t exactly match your gown, but here,” she said, handing me a pin. I affixed the cockade like a breast knot at the center of my gown.

  “And I was looking forward to sitting next to Lady Juline!” I looked up—the speaker was Theodor’s brother Ambrose. He grinned as he sat next to Viola.

  “You can see if one of the prune and porridge set would like to trade.” Viola laughed.

  “Then I couldn’t sit by Sophie,” he said with a half-serious seated bow. “Congratulations are in order, I understand. Welcome to the family, and my apologies.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a nervous laugh. The woman across the table was staring now, at the gold bracelet, and abruptly caught herself and turned away.

  Ambrose took a quick swig of wine. “Did you finagle a date for the wedding? Autumn, I suppose? But then again—Mother hasn’t been well lately, and she’ll certainly want to take the helm.” In truth, I hadn’t even begun to consider the multi-layered machinations of a noble wedding.

  “Her migraines?” Viola asked. “Is she leaving for Rock’s Ford for the summer soon, then?”

  “Mother’s trying to hold out until the council recesses, but Polly’s working on her to go now. She even started flirting with that entirely reprehensible rake of a man Duke Tye of Underhill, just to convince her to leave the city earlier rather than later. Or too late, when she’s late.” He laughed.

  “You’re terrible,” Viola said, “and your jokes are worse. Ah, the salad—tomatoes? Who plates a tomato and calls it a salad?” She prodded the runny crimson and gold disks on her plate with some disdain, but I enjoyed them, enhanced with salt and a dash of vinegar.

  As we finished the salad course and moved on to the fish, conversations percolated from observations about the weather, the meal, conspicuous or absent guests. It was almost as though any topic of potential contentiousness was neatly avoided, the woman across the table from me even steering discourse nimbly away from summer weddings with a pointed glance at my wrist. This continued until the meal was nearly finished. Viola had been correct—the clutch of older guests at the end of the table had grown very quiet. I nudged her and we both laughed behind our hands.

  “I don’t think there’s anything going for it,” the man next to Theodor said, too loudly for the room, breaking the quiet hum of conversation. “Enough with reforms already. There’s been enough concession as it is.” Ambrose glanced at me and rolled his eyes with a subtle shake of his head. A keen student of law, he had supported Theodor’s bill from the first, helping him draft and revise the nuanced codes and regulations that would provide legal structure to a new system.

  “So I suppose you’d favor a return to last fall’s riots and last winter’s coup, then?” The woman across the table from me had a high, piercing voice. “General Whiteacre, perhaps you have the benefit of having missed this particular engagement, but I assure you, none of us wishes to repeat it.”

  “I didn’t miss anything,” General Whiteacre bellowed. I assumed she had touched a sore point. “I’m not afraid of rabble with pitchforks, but you lot can’t see what you should be afraid of, and that’s their grand ideas—not only stuff and nonsense, but dangerous poppycock. Impossible for a government to put into practice.”

  “How so?” Ambrose asked, the careful control in his tone making even more plain Whiteacre’s histrionics. “Are there particular legal theories or comparable government frameworks one could reference?”

  Whiteacre avoided the request for a scholar’s specifics. “The common man can never be expected to govern himself. That’s what they want, at the end of it—you’ll concede yourselves right out of governance. And when you’re gone, what will the country have? Anarchy.”

  “Not a government of elected men?” Theodor said. “Hypothetically. That is what most of their writings aim at—elected representation.”

  “Commoners electing each other—yes, let’s allow the pigs to rule the sty.”

  Viola glanced at me, her wide brown eyes taking in the entire scene at once, scanning the players and the setting as though arranging a painting. I could see it laid out on canvas, in a classic style, the quarreling statesmen-nobles arrayed on either side, the opulent setting, the remnants of the meal laid out like a still life, and me at the center, turquoise gown drawing the eyes to an unwilling focal point.

  “I thought I was coming to dinner, n
ot the hall at the council,” Viola said. “I’ve avoided sitting in the gallery there long enough and now you’re bringing it to me!”

  There was some polite laughter, but General Whiteacre would not be quieted. “The common people don’t have the gumption to sustain a revolution,” he said.

  I took a hesitant breath. “I believe, sir, that you would find yourself on the losing end if you laid stakes on that bet.”

  Viola’s eyes widened, surprised that I’d spoken, and Theodor pressed his lips together until they turned white, clearly nervous on my behalf. Ambrose gave me an encouraging lopsided smile. I straightened my shoulders. “They were quite capable of fomenting one insurrection and will be all the more motivated if their patience is rewarded with inaction.”

  Whiteacre’s bulbous nose turned a shade of crimson that the best dyes would have difficulty reproducing. Before he could reply, the woman across the table who had dealt him a swift retort turned her shrewd eyes on me. “Is this to be read, I wonder, as a threat from the insatiable masses?”

  If I had thought her an ally in the cause of the reform, I had been mistaken. “I hardly think so,” I stammered. “Merely a comment on their dedication.”

  “And I think it important,” Theodor rushed to add, “that they are being very patient, given the circumstances. Why, half of the broadsides circulated are celebrations of the legal process and exhortations to patience, patience, more patience.” His laugh was nervous, but I noted that several nobles, silent in this debate, were nodding.

  “Speaking of wagers, I understand we’re to be given quite a treat with the series of horse races this summer,” Viola said, prompting several voices to fill the silence with chatter centering on the summer social events in the city. Even this topic, however, was tinged with conflict—the only reason so many nobles were staying in the city this summer was the Reform Bill. Most of them, in a peaceable kingdom, would be spending the summer away from the city, on their estates.