Fray

by Rowenna Miller

  Lieta nodded. “You know that you always have family here, too.”

  I quietly took her hand while the others talked. Lieta had been like an aunt or a granny many times, unassuming and gentle in her advice. Even when I had gone to her months before, knowing the risks inherent in a relationship with Theodor, to ask certain embarrassing questions about delaying starting a family. There were ways, I understood that much, but I had never known who to ask—certainly not my brother, who wouldn’t have known women’s methods anyway. So, shame-faced and stumbling over my words, I had gone to Lieta. I had a feeling I was the only adult woman she had ever enlightened regarding a woman’s cyclical fertility, but she was calm and kind and tried not to make me feel like a fool.

  And now, she didn’t make me feel foolish for joining myself in marriage to a Galatine and a noble whose family would never welcome me as a Pellian family would have, as her family would have. Whose customs felt cold and created to build boundaries rather than welcome newcomers. Whose mores might mean seeing far less of my Pellian friends in favor of duties to Crown and country instead of family, whether born of blood or choice.

  She poured me another glass of strong coffee. “When someday you are princess and then queen,” she said, “you will be the first royal lady, I wager, to cast charms in the palace.” She laughed. “I suppose you can’t begrudge an old Pellian for being proud enough of that.”

  10

  “I’D BE HAPPY TO MEET WITH HER,” ALICE SAID CAREFULLY. I’D explained Heda’s limited sewing experience and my hope that we could hire her. In truth, Alice had already selected several, far more proficient, candidates from the response to the advertisement.

  “I know she’s not going to be the most qualified, but as I said before, I would very much like to—” I stopped, noticing Alice’s dour countenance. “You can’t be worrying over her being Pellian, can you?”

  Alice’s grim stoicism broke into a heaved sigh. “Not at all! No,” she repeated, composing herself. “It’s that you’re—how can I explain this?” She pursed her lips, considering for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Do you want me to take over the shop, or no? Am I going to have my name on it, make the decisions, or are you going to—stay on? Directing from behind the screen?”

  I blinked, began to argue, and stopped. I had carefully mapped the practical steps to hand the shop over to Alice, but I had failed to actually untangle myself. In my mind, the shop was still mine.

  “I’m sorry, Alice.” Tears rimmed my eyes, and I swiftly wiped them away. “I should have—I should have made this your decision. You’ll have to manage the new employee, after all. Because I am stepping away. Completely. As soon as the transfer is finalized.” I bit back more tears—there would be time to mourn the loss of my shop later, not in front of Alice.

  “If you don’t want to—I mean, I wouldn’t be unsatisfied with a manager’s job instead of owner. If that’s what you wanted instead.”

  “I do want that, dearly. I want to hold on to this place until they pry the business license from my gnarled, liver-spotted old fingers.” Alice cracked a faint smile. “But I can’t. I can’t own a shop and be—Theodor’s wife.” I let a single tear slip and wend its way down my cheek. “And that’s the more important thing for me to be, now. I gave women a place to work, I started—too late—giving Pellian girls a chance to learn a trade that they could succeed in, here in Galitha.” I smiled. “Now? Now I can do much more than help a few women at a time.”

  Alice nodded. “I understand. You love this. The shop, the work.” She laughed. “You really love work. For what it’s worth, I would have hired your friend’s daughter-in-law anyway, if she wasn’t a louse. I wish you’d given me the chance to do it on my own.”

  “From now on, you will run this business on your own,” I promised.

  “Good. Because we wasted money on the advertisement in the Weekly if you were just going to trot someone in here anyway.” Alice hesitated, then patted my hand. “I’ll take care of the shop. On my honor,” she added with the closest thing to a grin I’d ever seen grace Alice’s face.

  Heda started within the week. She didn’t have any experience in a formal atelier, but she had made a quick business taking in mending and had even sewn a few sets of baby linens for sale, making her far more skilled with a needle than Emmi had been when I hired her. Knowing that she would have little enough chance at being hired by any other seamstress in Galitha City, I signed her wage contract.

  Though I couldn’t trust her with any fine sewing, another set of hands basting and cleaning caught us up within days; at least, it had caught up the non-charmed cutting and construction for our orders. I was still woefully behind on my charms, struggling to cast without the darkness creeping into my work. Fortunately, Alice and Emmi were so caught up in their work that they didn’t notice me falling behind, or that I took work home with me most nights, wrangling it mostly unsuccessfully.

  I found that I had only so much energy to cast in a day before the effort in keeping the light and dark from warring with one another in each seam became so taxing that I was fully wasting my time, so I felt only some guilt leaving Alice in charge of the shop one bright afternoon to meet Theodor. He waited for me in his study, papers strewn across his desk and his violin case propped open on top of them.

  “How were the debates?” I asked, not even giving him time to greet me with a kiss.

  “I think we’re making real progress,” he said. “That is, no one is happy with the state of the bill at the moment, yet no one is ready to walk out on it.”

  “What has your father said?” Theodor hadn’t said much about him, but the king had distanced himself from the reform efforts. I didn’t bring it up, but he still had not publicly acknowledged our betrothal. Theodor’s mother had sent me a kindly worded if rather perfunctory letter expressing her felicitations, apologizing that she would be unable to receive me before leaving the city for the family estate in Rock’s Ford, and suggesting a late fall wedding. Between the rote politeness of her words, I sensed her avoidance and her hesitation, almost as though she hoped that the passage of a few months would erase this aberration to the plans she had certainly held for her eldest son.

  Theodor’s slumped shoulders confirmed my suspicions. “He’s cowed by all of the nobles opposing the bill. Unfortunately, some of them are the richest, and their taxes fill the coffers.” I read what Theodor meant without further explanation—his father didn’t have the political capital to spend challenging them. But without his vocal support, plenty of nobles would continue their confident opposition. “Most of the nobles coming to session have taken to wearing blue-and-gold cockades to counter the reform red and gray.”

  “Brilliant blue?” I recalled the bright ribbons on Lady Sommerset and her friends at the croquet party.

  “Royal blue,” Theodor said with a wry smile. “They’re currying favor with my father, picking the color of the royal standard, and of course gold, for the crown, as their emblem.”

  “What do the students call that at schools—licking boots, I believe?”

  “One of the more polite terms,” he said, handing me a glass of iced citronade. “But I know this much—that your influence has been a positive one so far. More than once one of the lords has, in formal debate, insisted on the determination of the common people.”

  “Niko would be so pleased,” I said, smile brimming with taut sarcasm. “And we won’t ask how they feel about the little wasp of an upstart stinging everyone with threats at social functions.”

  Theodor pulled me to him. “It was never a role that would win you friends,” he conceded.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Let’s talk of something else. Not politics, not the infernal heat. I’ve been practicing with the violin and thought I might get your thoughts. I don’t want to boast, but I think I’ve gotten better,” he said. “I can hold the charm longer and draw it out more quickly.”

  “When have you had time to practice?” I asked.
Theodor’s ability to cast charms through music, golden light following the bow as he played, had surprised both of us. I hadn’t realized that the gift might strike outside my Pellian community, and he had no idea that he could manipulate magic at all until I showed him. “With the reforms and the council, I figured you wouldn’t work on casting for months.”

  “I probably shouldn’t,” he said, checking his tuning. “But it’s relaxing. I feel—I don’t know, happier when I’ve practiced an hour or so. It’s been like a tonic the past months.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said, recalling the veil of tranquility and contentment I felt after a long session of casting. Recalling, because that feeling had eluded me for weeks now.

  Theodor began to play a cheerful, bright melody. “New composition,” he said. “One of Marguerite’s.” Then he concentrated on his work and began to cast.

  His casting was stronger. The golden light bloomed more quickly and steadily and grew comfortably, without the hesitation of his earlier casting.

  “Let me try something,” I said. As I had done as the dome collapsed at the Midwinter Ball and as we’d practiced a dozen times since, I caught threads of his charm casting and drew them together. This time, instead of weaving a net or manipulating the charmed light in the air around us, I pulled a thin strand toward me. Thinking of the way that a spinning wheel or drop spindle twisted and bound fibers of wool, I pulled the disparate golden light taut and fine. It spooled as I twisted it.

  Could I use this charm thread, drawn from the ether by someone else, in my own work? I directed the end of the spooled thread—thicker and less smooth than sewing thread, but visible only to a charm caster—toward the hem of a curtain. Concentrating, I drove it between the weave of the silk. It resisted; without my physical motions of a needle, it wanted to remain on the surface of the silk. I pushed it harder, and to my shock, it began to meld with the silk fabric itself, a thin gold line permeating the gray fabric, embedded like a slim line of dye.

  “Well, what exactly did you do?” Theodor asked as he set his violin down. “Aside from—charm my curtains?”

  “The curtains were just convenient,” I apologized. “I used the charm that you cast to imbue a physical item with a charm—what I usually do with my own casting.”

  “Interesting. I mean, as an experiment. Hardly useful if you can cast yourself, though,” he said with a laugh. I forced a smile. It would be hardly useful if my work wasn’t somehow tainted.

  “Unless,” I said, thinking out loud, “you could double a charm’s potency, or relieve a tired charm caster, or—I don’t know, I haven’t really thought it out.” Not to mention, I realized, I had bypassed any physical process to embedding the charm. No sewing, no inscribing in clay, no mixing herbs. I had simply pressed my plan upon the golden light, and it had complied. “I’ll have to check for its durability, though,” I added, mostly to myself. Still, I thought as I examined the golden light now a part of the fabric itself, it was possible I had opened the door to something new and potentially very practical.

  11

  I SAW VERY LITTLE OF THEODOR IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED our casting experiment in his study. The debates over the Reform Bill sapped his time, hours extending past the official council meetings and into the evenings, where every noble seemed to demand some fraction of his attention. Every one of them believed he had some brilliant insight that the council couldn’t move forward without, and even the pro-reformists became a nuisance as each wanted to finagle their personal touches into the final resolution.

  For my part, as summer grew hotter, our orders of formal gowns for the winter social season grew. We opened every window in the atelier, thankful for the iceman who pulled his wagon of dirty ice blocks down the street once a day. Alice made a delightful citron tea that we cooled with carefully washed chips of ice, and Heda taught us a brilliant Pellian trick of wearing neckerchiefs dampened with cool water. It left wet marks on our gown necks and our kerchiefs dried stiff and wrinkled, which was why I imagined my mother had never suggested trying it. I didn’t even care that it might not be properly Galatine, and neither did Alice. Our only respite from the heat came when thick gray thunderheads rolled in, showering the streets with torrents of rain and turning the wheel ruts and gutters into rushing streams.

  One of those storms had just cleared the thickness from the air as I joined Theodor to attend what was set to be the first of a series of horse races showcasing Galitha’s finest equines. We rode to the racetrack, just outside the city proper, passing landmarks I knew from making the same trip on foot.

  “We’re being hosted by the Pommerly family—well, the troupe of them that’s here in the city.”

  “Troupe? Like acrobats? Or monkeys?”

  “Yes, very much like monkeys. The Duke of Pommerly has enough brothers and children and cousins to fairly well fill the primate house in the West Serafan menagerie, and I’ve doubt they’d behave better than the yellow-crested langurs and bluenose macaques.” He paused. “They have a tendency toward lewd jokes. And rump slapping.”

  “What?” I choked.

  “You’ve been warned.” He was genuinely embarrassed. There were nobles less educated than Viola’s salon set, less ethical and motivated than Theodor—why shouldn’t some be rude and uncouth? “At any rate, the Pommerly estate produces some of the finest racehorses in Galitha. So we all best act impressed or they’ll be offended.”

  “You really dislike these people.” I laughed.

  “I really do. The Pommerly family is one of the oldest and most distinguished noble houses in Galitha, related to our house somewhere along the line, so of course we had to see quite a bit of them growing up. I always—always!—ended up locked in a closet or dumped in a pond during one of their games.”

  I held back a laugh. Growing up, I had been quiet and not terribly outgoing, but Kristos had been one of the most popular boys in our quarter, gathering groups of fellow Pellian ruffians for games of tag or charades or marbles. I was protected from any bullying by his popularity. Theodor, more interested in the gardens than in hunts or horse races, had likely been an easy target as a child.

  “And of course they’re vociferous opponents of the bill.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” I said.

  “No, and to make this more complicated, the Pommerly family has been boasting to anything with ears that they’re hosting the king of Galitha. So Father and Mother and the whole family will be there.”

  “Oh.” I let my fingers fret the trim on my sleeve ruffle. “The first time we’ll see them since—”

  “Yes. I had hoped to have a private dinner with just the family, but with the debates in council I’ve been so wretched busy and Mother hasn’t replied to my note yet—” He stopped. “I’m not sure how to play this one, Sophie. Between the bill and the betrothal, those box seats are going to be a damned hornets’ nest.”

  “We could pretend it’s merely a social event,” I said. “Just watch the races, sip some wine—please tell me the Pommerlys are not such boors that they don’t at least serve wine?”

  “Pommerly grown and bottled, I’m sure.” Theodor tapped the side of the carriage, a nervous tic that made me want to slap his hand. “Even if I wanted to, someone will bring up the bill, corner me into debating it. We will have to discuss the Reform Bill, like it or not.”

  “What’s so different, then? I’m well versed at this point with the amendments to the bill, the adjustments to the election procedures—”

  “I know you are,” he snapped. “But my father—”

  Ice sharpened my voice despite the heat. “Your father. You don’t want me to embarrass myself in front of your father.”

  “No! I don’t mean that.”

  I waited. And grew exasperated at the silence. “What did you mean?”

  He heaved a sigh. “I don’t need his blessing for this marriage, but I’d rather not be the reason it causes any disagreements.”

  “You wouldn’t be the
reason. I would be. You know you can’t marry me and keep everyone happy.” My voice rose. “You dropped me in this damned boat, insisting it was watertight, and now you’re upset that I’m rocking it just by sitting here.”

  “I just don’t want to give him a reason to disapprove.” He avoided my eyes.

  “You mean confirm his suspicions that I’m a lowborn churl, or that I’m a pitchfork-wielding revolutionary?”

  “He doesn’t think either one of those things.”

  “How do you know? Have you talked with him about me recently?” I snapped.

  We both knew that he hadn’t. “Forget I said anything. It’s like any other event.” He turned his face toward the window, away from me.

  “Except it isn’t.” There was no avoiding that the reforms and our impending marriage were inextricably linked, two parts of the same whole just as our betrothal bands were forged of the same chain. Neither was a comfortable reality for the king and queen.

  “No, it’s not.” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re supportive, you know. Legally. Or, to my mind, ethically.”

  “But it does matter. It’s your family.”

  “We didn’t ask Kristos what he thought of you marrying me,” Theodor reminded me with a saucy grin.

  “It really is a good thing Galatine law doesn’t require consent from anyone’s family,” I said in agreement.

  I focused my gaze out the window, watching happier commoners walking toward the racetrack, swinging baskets of bread and wine and carrying blankets for the lawn. We would be trapped in a box, high above the ring, with paid seats filled by merchants and shipbuilders and mill owners below us, and the general lawn below that. It struck me that each tier had more comfortable seats and less comfortable company than the one below it.