Chantress

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  “God forbid that I should hold you back, goddaughter,” she said one afternoon. “Not when the stakes are so high.” She fixed Nat with a penetrating stare. “But do not take advantage of my absence, young man. Not on any account.”

  As my face reddened, Nat said, “She’ll come to no harm with me, I promise you.”

  “I will hold you to that.” Lady Helaine wrapped her cloak tightly around her. “If she is not back within two hours, I shall come looking for you both.”

  As my godmother retreated back down the hallway, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  At long last, I was to have a taste of freedom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EXPLORATIONS

  Once Lady Helaine was safely out of sight, Nat said, “Look here: I think it’s time we went up to the attics.”

  That was six stories up from here. “So high?”

  “Yes. Most of the way is secret, so I don’t think we’ll run across anyone. But remember: Always stay in the shadows. And don’t let your nerves get the better of you.”

  As it happened, we did run across someone—a skinny maid hauling a coal scuttle up the stairs. But the scrape of the scuttle gave us some warning, and the light was so poor that we had no trouble keeping out of her sight.

  We mounted the remaining stairs in perfect silence, Nat keeping his distance from me, as usual. Whenever I looked at him, his face was all business.

  So much, I thought, for my godmother’s suspicions.

  Finally, after passing through a series of doorways and storerooms, we arrived at the westernmost end of the attics. The slanted ceiling rose well above my head, but to judge from the dusty jumble of crates and old furnishings, it wasn’t much used. On the other side of the room, small mullioned windows let in the late-afternoon light. I stopped for a moment, taking in the sight. After so many weeks of living in darkness, it felt as if I were standing in sunshine, even though the skies outside were gray and glowering.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Nat said behind me.

  I turned, expecting him to give me another tip about how to navigate the house. Instead, he withdrew a rumpled parcel from the recesses of his black coat. “Norrie sent you this.”

  “Norrie?” I looked at him blankly.

  “Yes.” A smile tugged at his lips. “She said it was your sixteenth birthday.”

  I’d been so overwhelmed by my new life as a Chantress-in-training that I hadn’t given the day much thought. Lady Helaine hadn’t made any mention of celebrating the occasion.

  Nat held out the parcel. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  I untied the string. A familiar smell of honey, ginger, and cinnamon wafted up to me. “Oh!” Nestled inside the cloth were a dozen sticky-sweet brown stars. “Norrie’s gingerbread.”

  I blinked back tears. When I was small and we were still living in England, gingerbread had been my favorite treat. Norrie had always let me choose the shapes: stars and moons and hearts and crowns. How I’d pined for them to come out of the oven! And how I’d missed gingerbread on the island, where spices were nowhere to be found.

  “Here.” I offered the stars to Nat. “Have a piece.”

  “Of your birthday treat?” Nat shook his head with mock indignation. “I should think not. I’m lucky enough to get Norrie’s cooking every day, remember. These are all yours.”

  I closed my eyes to savor the scent. “Is she all right? Norrie, I mean?”

  “Right as rain, except for missing you,” Nat said. “She talks about you all the time.”

  “She does?” Disconcerted, I met Nat’s eyes. “What does she say about me?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard all about you as a baby,” he said cheerfully. “And about the time you fell into the pond when you were four. And about the way you used to pretend to be a mermaid on the island shore—”

  “She told you all that?” I looked away, my cheeks flaming. “How embarrassing.”

  “No, not embarrassing,” he said seriously. “Nice. I don’t have anyone who remembers me that way.” He traced a spiral on the wall. “I’m not even sure what my real name is. My parents died when I was three, and my uncle—if that’s what he was—just called me ‘boy.’ I think my mother called me Nat, but I can’t be certain, not after all this time.”

  I took a deep breath. How silly to be sorry for myself because Norrie had told a few old stories.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I remember almost nothing about my own mother, and I know how that hurts. And what you’ve been through is much worse.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He shrugged. “Anyway, there’s no need for us to argue the point. I have a place and a name and a family now, and that’s what matters.”

  “A family?” I echoed.

  “Penebrygg. We don’t have the same surname—I go by Walbrook, the name of the street where he and I used to live—but he’s family all the same.” He nodded at the parcel of gingerbread, still open in my hands. “You’re going to eat some of that now, aren’t you? Norrie’ll want to know what you think of it.”

  “Tell her she’s the most amazing cook in the world.” I bit into a star. “Mmmmm . . .”

  Nat grinned at me, then walked over to the window. I wrapped up my gingerbread and joined him there. Peering out, I saw a vast, elaborate garden that swept down to the Thames, the diamonds and arabesques of its green hedges disappearing into swirls of fog.

  “It’s later than I thought,” Nat said, a note of worry in his voice. “Close to sunset, I should guess, though it’s hard to tell with all that mist.”

  Shadowgrims. He didn’t say the word, but I knew they were on his mind. While we’d talked, I’d almost forgotten about them.

  How careless of me.

  “How will you get back?” I asked.

  “Me? Oh, plenty of ways. And if worse comes to worst, I can always bed down here for the night.” He turned from the window. “It’s you I’m worried about. We need to get you back downstairs. But first I need to show you something.”

  I followed him back through the series of attic storerooms until we reached a vestibule with many doors but no windows. He lit a candle with the tinderbox he carried in his jacket and pointed to one of the doors. “There’s a lock like that in the Tower storerooms. See if you can open it.”

  He watched while I attacked the lock with the tools he had given me, and I worried my fingers would fumble. But when the lock yielded, he was swift to praise me. “You’re a quick study.”

  “At locks, maybe,” I said without thinking.

  He caught my meaning. “Not magic?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Those drills and scales getting on your nerves?”

  I looked at him in alarm. How did he know about the drills and scales? “Have you been eavesdropping?” My face went hot as I thought of him overhearing my mistakes and failures. “How dare you?”

  The pink left his face, leaving it stark white. “That’s rich, coming from you. Have you forgotten how you spied on me—on my mind, on my memories?”

  “That was quite different.”

  “Not to me.”

  His blunt words took the wind out of my sails. If I had reason to be angry, he had a thousand times more. I had ransacked his mind. And the fact that I’d done it with magic didn’t make it better. It made it worse.

  “I’m sorry,” I said slowly. “If it’s any help, I meant it when I said I wouldn’t do it again.”

  He searched my face, as if weighing my words for truth. The balance came down in my favor: I saw his tense jaw relax.

  “And I haven’t been spying on you,” he said. “Not anything that would count as spying, anyway. I just can’t help picking things up when I visit.”

  “Picking things up how?” It still unsettled me that he’d overheard so much.

  “When I’m right by the door, I hear things sometimes. And Lady Helaine mutters things under her breath when I’m there. She thinks I won’t hear, but I do. And then there
’s your face—”

  “My face?”

  He looked at me across the warm light of the candle. “You’re unhappy,” he said simply. “Anyone with eyes can see that.”

  The sudden kindness in his voice undid me. I knew I ought to change the subject and talk about something else—anything but the particulars of my magic lessons. That’s what Lady Helaine would expect. But the words burst out of me. “If I have to sing another scale for her, I think I’ll throttle myself.”

  “That bad?”

  I eyed the free and easy way he stood, the wind-chapped cheeks, the jacket that smelled of woodsmoke and the outdoors. “You cannot imagine.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He held my glance, and I remembered, with a prickle of shame, the terrible memories he carried. But he went on peaceably enough. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be chafing at the bit too. Penebrygg understands that I like to experiment, and he approves of me thinking for myself.” He looked at me, and there was empathy in his eyes. “But Lady Helaine is a very different sort.”

  I felt again that spark of understanding between us, that deep rapport that went beyond words. But to my confusion, this time it came coupled with a sudden awareness of his strength and grace—of the whole lean length of him beside me.

  It was an uncomfortable, fluttery sensation, and I was determined to shake myself out of it. I blew out the candle and darted toward the door that led downstairs. “Let’s go.”

  As I thrust at the handle, Nat leaped toward me. “No, not that door—”

  I was already halfway out of it. My foot hit the slick slate tiles of the Gadding House roof, and a hot black fog wrapped around me. I pulled back, but before I could close the door, something screeched and flared like flame in the darkness. I froze as a sudden burning terror seized me, and I heard the fluttering of wings through the mist.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A BAD TURN

  I was on fire, being burned at the stake. The Shadowgrims had found me. They were coming to devour me . . . .

  An impossibly long moment later, the door swung shut. The terror released me, and I sagged against the sill.

  “It didn’t see you,” Nat said in the quiet darkness. “Not with the fog so thick and no light to draw it. If it knew you were there, you can bet it would have come closer—and it didn’t. It kept flying in the other direction.”

  I had felt uneasy and awkward with him, I remembered. When I had gone to open that door, I had been only too happy to escape him. And no doubt I would be glad to get away again as soon as I was able to think more clearly. But just at the moment, what I felt was gratitude. He had shut the door. He had kept me safe.

  Nat lit the candle again and scanned my face. “Gave you a bad turn, did it?”

  “Y-yes,” I managed to clack out. “Worse than ever.”

  “Maybe what happened with the mind-reading makes it worse for you.”

  “Maybe.” It was not a comforting thought. I shivered. “I can’t believe they don’t bother you.”

  “That’s not quite how it is,” Nat said. “It’s not as if I don’t notice them. Or that I don’t feel afraid. It just doesn’t overwhelm me. I don’t know why.”

  “But you hate fire—” I stopped. I hadn’t meant to remind him of how I’d read his mind. Had I undone all the good of my apology?

  His eyes stayed level and calm. “Hate it? No. I wouldn’t say that. But I do have more experience of it than most. And perhaps that’s a help.”

  “You mean, it protects you from the Shadowgrims?”

  “Oh, I’d go down fast enough if they actually attacked. I expect I’m like everyone else that way. But having them fly close by—I can handle that. It’s part of why the Invisible College asked me to spy for them.”

  “I wish I were made the same way.”

  “Never mind,” Nat said. “The important thing is that you’re safe. There’s nothing to worry about now.”

  Not true, I thought. There were a thousand things to worry about—starting with the fact that I had yet to learn a single note of magic that would protect me from Scargrave or his ravens. But at least my heart was no longer racing.

  “It’s time we got back,” Nat said. “Lady Helaine will have my head.”

  My legs were so wobbly I didn’t think I could move. But Nat was right: Lady Helaine would be beside herself. So I stood up, stepped away from him, and made the long journey back downstairs.

  † † †

  By the time we returned, Lady Helaine had worked herself into a frenzy of anger and anxiety, and my stumbling, much-abridged account of what had happened did not soothe her.

  “No more of these exploits,” she told us. “Not until Lucy’s magic is more advanced and she can defend herself.”

  I thought Nat might argue, but he didn’t. “I’ll be away anyway, as it happens,” he said. “Look for me in a few weeks, and not before.”

  “The Invisible College is sending you somewhere?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I wanted to know more, but I doubted he would tell me, especially not with my godmother standing by. Under her watchful eye, I said stiff words of parting. He replied every bit as stiffly and went away.

  Over the next weeks, I missed his company more than I would ever have expected. In his absence, another member of the Invisible College—usually Sir Barnaby or Oldville—came to check on us each week, but these visits were brief and perfunctory, nothing like Nat’s.

  If Nat confused and challenged me, he was also a breath of fresh air in my cloistered existence. Sometimes I paged through the drawings and maps he’d made for me, not because I needed to learn them by heart (I already had) but because the very sight of his confident hand reminded me of the world outside this one. I even found myself studying the jottings he’d made on the backs of some of the papers: equations and questions and sketches of new inventions. To me, the very vigor of his writing—the bold lines, the underlined queries—revealed his love of new ideas and experiments.

  Most of my hours, however, were spent working with Lady Helaine.

  After my moments of terror on the rooftop, I had redoubled my efforts to master each new lesson, no matter how tedious. I did not want to be caught at such a disadvantage again.

  All day long, I practiced, and sometimes well into the night—a punishing schedule not only for me, but also for my godmother. Although she still held herself absolutely upright, her face became ever paler and more drawn, and her critiques became ever more biting.

  At last, thoroughly worn-out, Lady Helaine took to stealing naps in the afternoons, leaving me to practice in solitude. This, I found, was infinitely preferable to practicing while she was around.

  † † †

  For a full week, I was diligent even when Lady Helaine was asleep. On the eighth day, however, I reconsidered. Lady Helaine was snoring away in the back bedchamber, with two closed doors between us, and I knew from experience that nothing would wake her for at least another half hour. She would never know if I, too, took a break from our crushing regimen.

  I decided I was entitled to a rest.

  It was only when I sat down before the firebox, however, that I truly realized how tired I was. Tired and lonely and discouraged. It was early January; Nat had been gone for almost a month. And what progress had I made in all that time? I was better at scales, better at trills, better at breathing and sustaining a tone. But I did not seem to be one jot closer to magic.

  A soft knock at the door made me leap to my feet. Wrapping my mantle close, I stepped forward as the door swung open. To my disappointment, however, it wasn’t Nat who stood on the other side but Samuel Deeps, his lace in disarray, his buttons done up wrong.

  “Chantress, a favor, I beg of you.” Deeps’s hands shook as he bowed to me; he was all entreaty. “One of our men is lost. A cousin of mine by the name of Josiah Quicke. He left the city a fortnight ago, bearing important news for our allies in the North. He was supposed to return on Thursday, but we have heard
nothing from him. We think he may be in hiding, but we have no idea where. Can you find him?”

  “Me?” Did the IC want me to go out in the open and search for him? “I’m not supposed to leave Gadding House—”

  “I would not dream of asking you to,” Deeps said quickly. “I ask only that you use your magic.”

  “My magic?”

  “Your mind-reading powers. Unless you have discovered better magic since then?”

  “No, I haven’t.” It made me blush to admit how little I’d learned. “But—”

  “Never fear,” Deeps said. “The mind-reading is enough. That should tell us where Josiah is.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I can’t do that. I can’t read minds.”

  “That’s what the Council said—that it’s not allowed anymore. But what’s the point of having a Chantress if she doesn’t do magic? Josiah needs you, madam. We all need you. And I’ve brought everything you require: hair from his own brush, and one of his handkerchiefs.” He ran agitated hands along the fastenings of his cloak, and pulled out a vial he’d secreted in its lining. “And moonbriar, of course.”

  Put that away. That’s what I ought to have said. But when I saw that glass vial and the shadowy outline of the seeds within it, a strange silence came over me—a silence borne not only of fear but also of longing, I realized with a shock. After weeks and weeks of nothing but tones and scales, something at the very core of me raged to feel the power of magic—and almost any magic would do. Even Wild Magic. Even moonbriar magic.

  “Well, Chantress?” Deeps said, his eyes pleading. “Will you sing the moonbriar song?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  AN OLD SONG AND A NEW ONE

  As I stared at the vial, the door swung open again. I reeled around. “Nat!”

  He still had his traveling cloak on, and his boots were muddy; he was glaring at both of us equally. Yet whatever hold the moonbriar seeds had over me, it broke at the sight of him.

  “You’re back,” I said.

  “And none too soon, it seems.” His voice was dangerously level as he pointed to the vial. “Is that what I think it is?”