The Diminished

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  The line moved quickly, and soon there were only a few people in front of us. Beside me, Swinton drew in a sharp breath and grasped my wrist. I craned my neck and saw the woman on the couch, whispering into her husband’s ear. She turned, and I saw why Swinton had gasped. She was an amalgam. I hadn’t noticed the couple while they were dancing earlier, having been scanning the room for Vi. Never in my life had I imagined that I might come face-to-face with an amalgam.

  Her hair, parted in the middle, was copper on one side and golden on the other. Half of her pale skin was dappled with freckles, the other creamy and unblemished. Strangest of all, one of her eyes was green and one violet. Despite the terror that came with seeing an amalgam in the flesh, I had to admit Madame Laroche was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever encountered. Her features were delicate and well-defined. Her eyes were large and arresting, her lips full.

  Quill leaned close and hissed, “The husband is incredibly sensitive about her. You mustn’t react.”

  I nodded, and heard Mal whispering a similar warning to Swinton. He remained stiff at my side, but relaxed his grip on my wrist, and before long, we stood in front of our hosts.

  Mister Laroche rose, clapped Quill on the back and shook hands with Mal. “And who are these handsome gentlemen you’ve brought with you this evening?”

  Before Quill could say anything, I bowed and kissed Madame Laroche’s hand, allowing my cuff, the emblem of the royal house of Trousillion, to slip out of my sleeve. “Ambrose Oswin Trousillion Gyllen, madam. At your service.” I gestured to Swinton. “This is my esteemed companion, Swinton.”

  The Laroches gasped in unison, and I caught the barest hint of an approving smile on Swinton’s face as I straightened. Mal and Quill both looked astonished, as well. I hadn’t been sure that I should risk using my real name—most everyone in the Alskad Empire surely knew the name of the successor to the throne, and it could put me in a vulnerable position—but uttering it clearly had the intended effect.

  Mister Laroche folded at the waist and said, “Phineas Laroche, Aphra’s husband. Your Highness, you must allow me to welcome you to Plumleen Hall. I was unaware of your presence in the Ilor colonies.”

  Leaning in close to him, I whispered, “I haven’t made my presence well known, and would appreciate it if you kept the truth close to the vest. I have adopted a sobriquet for my travels, but I simply couldn’t lie to a man so prominent as yourself.” Aphra moved as if to stand, but I stepped back and motioned for her to stay seated. “I wouldn’t dream of taking you away from your guests any longer, but perhaps we could find some time to chat later in the evening? I was extremely impressed with the present you gave your wife. Only a bold man would have the nerve to allow one of the diminished to wait upon the person he loves the most in the world. I admire that kind of confidence.”

  “Please make yourself welcome in our home, Your Highness.” Aphra’s dazzling smile stopped at her mismatched eyes, which seemed to be weighing me and finding me inadequate.

  Phineas gestured at a servant in dark livery. “See that these gentlemen want for nothing this evening. Open a bottle from my private cellar for them—ask Hepsy to choose something appropriate for a prince.”

  After concluding our courtesies, we moved away from the Laroches and found a cluster of empty chairs in a corner of the room.

  “That seemed to go fairly well,” Swinton said.

  “A prince,” Quill breathed. “You didn’t tell us you were a bloody prince.”

  I blushed. “I didn’t tell much of anyone. This errand required a bit of secrecy on my part. The Queen would be furious if she found out about my father’s infidelity. I trust that you’ll honor my wishes to keep this under wraps?”

  Seeing the matching looks of calculation on the twins’ faces, I shot desperate eyes at Swinton.

  “He’ll pay, of course—”

  A scream cut through the din of the party. The musicians’ instruments squealed to a discordant stop. Like a herd of horses, our heads all snapped in the direction of the scream, and for the briefest moment, there was silence.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Swinton, but before the words had left my mouth, I caught the smell of something burning. Not a moment later, I saw a cloud of black, billowing smoke drift toward the ceiling, chased by flames. We were on our feet in a moment.

  Chaos erupted through the great room. Men and women shrieked and bolted for the doors. Mal and Quill exchanged significant glances, and each drew a knife from sheathes hidden in their boots.

  “The Laroches,” Swinton said, pointing. “They’re heading this way.”

  Aphra had pulled Phineas to his feet, and they were moving toward us.

  “What are they doing? We’re nowhere near a door. They should be leaving. We should be leaving,” I said.

  “Keep in mind that they’ve got Vi’s papers,” Mal said.

  “So?”

  “So, even if the house burns to the ground, Vi’s contract will still be theirs. You need them to sign over her contract to you.”

  I grimaced. “Then they’re coming with us. It’s time to drop the subtlety. We’re going to have to make him sell Vi’s contract to me.”

  The moment they reached us, Swinton grabbed Phineas by the collar.

  “Unhand me, sir!” Phineas’s voice was pitched high.

  Smoke curled around the solar lamps, dimming the room. Servants and guests rushed past us, bright silks flying behind them. I bit the inside of my cheek and looked at Swinton. “What do we do?”

  “Something’s blocking the doors. I say we take this one and get the hell out of here.” He eyed Aphra. “The lady can come, too, I suppose.”

  He was right. There were masses of people around the doors, but the crowds were growing, not shrinking. Phineas moaned, burying his face in his hands. Aphra’s jaw tightened, and she gave her husband a hard look. The screams at the eastern door grew louder by measurable degrees, and the people at the back of the crowd turned and ran back into the great room, looking for another way to escape.

  Aphra narrowed her eyes at her struggling husband. “We’ll go. Careful, now. Panic’s setting in quickly, and a mob like this can be unpredictable. No telling what’s started the fire.”

  Mal and his brother exchanged a series of indecipherable looks before Quill nodded and took off his jacket. “It’s the rebels. They’ve been doing this all over the region. Look sharp—this promises to get ugly.”

  The air was thickening with smoke, and sweat pricked at my neck. I took a deep breath, trying to focus on the people in front of me rather than the terrified chorus of voices swimming around us. This was all happening far too fast.

  Mal and Quill positioned themselves on either side of Phineas, and Swinton came to stand by me, giving my arm a reassuring squeeze. It looked like it was taking all of the twins’ strength to keep Phineas on his feet. Quill jerked the man upright and slapped him hard across the face. “Where do you keep your servants’ contracts?” he demanded.

  Phineas snorted and spat, missing Quill’s face by a hair’s breadth. “That’s none of your concern.”

  Swinton glanced over his shoulder at the door. I followed his gaze and saw a number of silk-clad guests staggering away with shocked looks on their faces and hands pressed against bloody gashes.

  Aphra’s unsettling eyes landed on me. “Swear on the future of the Alskad Empire and in the name of your chosen god that you’ll get us out of this room.”

  Jaw tight, I held her gaze and nodded. “I swear. On my honor as the heir to the throne of the Alskad Empire, I’ll do everything in my power to get you out alive. Your husband, too. You’ll sign over Vi Abernathy’s contract to me in exchange.”

  “What do you want with the dimmy girl?” Phineas asked, looking confused.

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  Aphra offered me her hand. “It�
��s a deal. The papers are in my husband’s study on the other side of the house. Second desk drawer on the left. Mal and Quill know where it is.”

  Mal nodded and said, “We’ll have to split up. Go out a window, and get to the barn quick as you can. I’ll get Vi’s papers.”

  “I’m going with him,” Swinton said. “Get the Laroches out of here.”

  “The papers won’t do anyone any good if Vi’s locked in a room somewhere. We have to get her out,” I said.

  “I’ll find her for you, Bo.”

  It broke my heart to admit it to myself, but I knew he’d be faster, stealthier. He’d see her out in one piece. “Where should we go?”

  “Do you think you can find my mother’s place?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Go there. She’ll see you taken care of.” Swinton cupped my cheek. “Watch your back. I’ll bring Vi to you safely.”

  I took his face in both my hands and kissed him, quickly, before he slid into the crowd.

  Figures in gray, their faces covered, darted into the room. They brandished the long, peculiarly curved knives used to harvest kaffe, but as one of them passed, I saw the tattoos streaked across his fingers and the paint blackening the skin around his eyes.

  These weren’t rebels. They were the Shriven. I steeled myself against the panic and started searching for a way out. They’d surely come to collect Vi, and I had no intention of letting that happen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  VI

  Hepsy kept her trap firm shut as she pulled me up a back staircase and through a rich suite of rooms I barely had time to see. We paused in a closet as big as my bedroom in the stable, its walls lined with shelves of clothing and racks of gowns hanging in shimmering waves to the floor. My mind raced. I needed to get back to the party. To Bo. If the Shriven were looking for me, if they knew where I was, they’d waste no time. Bo wasn’t safe, and neither was I.

  Hepsy pulled back a curtain to reveal a small door and riffled through the ring of keys she kept on her belt. I reached out to touch a dress made from gold cloth, thinking. I needed to find a way to escape from Hepsy and get the people I cared about out of that room.

  Hepsy smacked my hand away. “Don’t you touch that. Not with your filthy, sweat-soaked hands.”

  Her reprimand snapped me out of the riptide that threatened to drown me in my own head, and I quipped, “Oh, so you do remember how to speak.”

  Glowering, Hepsy fumbled open the door and shoved me in, ducking to follow. Inside the room, moonlight streamed in through a small, round window, a hair bigger than a serving platter. The washed-out moonlight shone on a small, oak-framed bed covered in a ratty quilt. The only other furniture in the room was my trunk. It would serve double duty as storage and bedside table.

  “Don’t think you can be wandering off while we’re all busy downstairs. This door here’ll be locked until Madame comes up tonight, hear me?”

  Before I’d time to squeeze in another word, Hepsy bustled out of the room and closed the door behind her with a heavy thunk. The key scraped in the lock, and like that, I was alone. I slumped onto the bed. It felt good to be off my feet, but I was more than ready to be out of this sweaty dress. I couldn’t afford to waste any time.

  I needed a plan. And I needed to find a way out of this locked room.

  The dress, though unwieldy to get into, dropped to the floor as soon as I tossed the belt onto the bed and untied the knots at my shoulders. I pulled the pins out of my hair, letting it fall in a heavy tangle down my back. Basking in the relief that came with shrugging out of those uncomfortable clothes, I bent to pull a more practical getup from my trunk. Determination flooded my veins, steeling me against the exhaustion and anxiety that hounded me. I would be ready to face whatever the night held in store for me.

  I pulled the knives Myrna had given me from their hidden sheathes in my belt. Last, I touched the pouch of pearls hanging around my neck. I didn’t know how this night would end, and if Bo managed to buy my contract from Phineas, there might not be time to come back for my things. Bo’d told me plain there’d be money for me, and plenty of it, but I planned to keep the rest of my own meager stash. No matter how small it was next to the inheritance from Bo’s—our—father, what was left of the wealth I’d made beneath Penby’s waves would stay with me.

  Once again clad in my everyday breeches, blouse and boots, I made slits in the double-thick crown of leather around the tops of my boots so that I could safely carry the two blades. Twisting my hair into a thick braid, I climbed on top of the trunk to peer out the window. The halves of the moon lit the sky, and though it was nearly as bright as day outside, the world was washed in gray. A mountain range of roofs crowded my view, but I could just make out the skylights in the great room, twinkling with solar lamps. Something about the light looked strange to me. I peered through the window, doing my best to get a closer look, but the wavy glass made it difficult.

  The window was fitted with a lock, like the door. Lucky for me, two of my hairpins, bent straight, made short work of the lock. For a few uncomfortable breaths, the window tight around my hips, I was sure that Aphra was going to walk in after the celebration later and find me wedged half in, half out of the window. But I wiggled, cursed and finally crashed out onto the roof tiles.

  I’d never been good at staying in locked rooms.

  I scrambled, trying to balance as I slid toward the open air at the edge of the roof. I finally found my footing, then froze. A rumble of voices arguing in quiet whispers and the scrape of boots on gravel several stories below drifted up toward me. If I could hear them, they could hear me, whoever they were. For the first time, I found myself glad I’d spent so much time hiding from miserable brats bent on bloodying my face. Long experience treading lightly in soft-soled boots’d made me quieter than a seal slipping through the water.

  I crept to the edge of the roof and lay flat on my belly, peering over the edge. Shadowy figures in head-to-toe gray swarmed the garden below. The black paint bisecting their faces and their shaved heads made it all too clear who these people were.

  The Shriven. They’d found me.

  The house was surrounded by them. Fifty or sixty folks at least snaked through hedges and across the lawn. The Shriven, their dark clothing blending into the shadows, slid into place all around the house, pulling knitted caps low over their brows, hiding the telltale signs of who they were. They had disguised themselves, but why? They wouldn’t be punished for anything they did. That was what it was to be Shriven. They could do no wrong. There was nothing to forgive. Nothing to hide from.

  One person, stout and short, stood on the marble mounting block in the center of the garden. It was carved in the shape of an aurochs, head down and horns forward, as if about to charge. “Take your positions. The great room will catch at any minute, and I don’t want to see a single person come through the doors.”

  It was a woman’s voice, and though it was familiar, I couldn’t place it. What did she mean, “catch”? What were they planning? The gray figures below raced toward the great room at her direction, and I wriggled back from the roof’s edge. I got to my feet and flattened myself in a shadow against a wall.

  I took a deep breath. The perfume of the night-blooming flowers filled my nose, along with the green of new-cut grass and pit smoke. The air in the Ilor colonies was cleaner by a league than the rot and smoke that we breathed in my neighborhood in Alskad.

  The End. Something in the air brought the End rushing back to me.

  I sniffed again. It was the smoke. The smoke tickling my nose—it wasn’t the clean branches of green wood or slow burning knots of a pit roast. It smelled like burning trash. Rot and wood and the tangy smell of hot metal. It smelled like the End in the desperate part of winter before the thaw, when folks got low on tinder.

  Blood like ice water racing through my veins, I looked out over the moun
tain range of the roof. There, behind the great room’s glass ceiling, a pale gray cloud drifted up in a slow dance toward the moonlit sky.

  I watched the trickle of smoke billow upward, taking with it all the careful planning that’d been done to set me free. This was a tide far stronger than me and my plans. And then I remembered—the resistance had targeted wealthy landowners with large numbers of contract workers. Estates burned to the ground. No survivors among the owners or guests.

  The Shriven were going to burn Plumleen to the ground and blame it on the resistance.

  I felt sick. I had to do something, but I couldn’t very well rush in against fifty of the Shriven out for blood. Even as I tried to worm my way out of getting involved, the cold realization gripped my throat like a fist.

  Bo. Bo was in the great room, with Mal and Quill.

  I took off across the tiles, racing toward the great room, where the skylights were clouded with smoke. The roof was nearly flat, which made it easy to dash from one peak to the other. Long instinct and practice kept me balanced, and a good thing, too, because my mind was spinning. As I got close to the great room, the panicked screams of the Laroches’ guests pierced the air. Flames licked up the side of the building, and the fiery glow was garish in the washed-out landscape of the moonlit estate.

  By the time I knelt next to the nearest skylight, the view into the great room was totally obscured with thick, black smoke, and the glass was hot to the touch.

  “Dzallie’s teeth,” I cursed, slamming my fist against the roof’s cool tiles. I had to get down there. I couldn’t let all those people fend for themselves, and me twiddling my thumbs like a half-drunk bear.

  Two choices loomed up in front of me. Either I’d sprint back across the roof, through the tiny window and pick the bedroom’s lock before sneaking through a house full of vigilant and possibly rebellious servants—or I’d take the easy route, and shimmy down three stories of drain pipe, praying to whatever goddess, real or not, who’d listen, that I’d make it down in one piece.