by Beth Cato
“I could hear the cause and squelch it. The effort did take something out of me, but I’m feeling better now, really.” Worry crinkled his eyes. Before he could nag her, she continued, “Tell me about your sister. She’s how old, twelve?”
“Barely ten. I did not expect her to be here, though I know my mother has often sent her south in recent years. Tamaran schools are far superior to those of Caskentia. I last saw Tatiana two years ago, when I was on leave for my leg attachment. She has . . . come into her own.”
“That’s one way to put it. She’s managing this entire household. That’s impressive.” Ten years old. She was either a newborn or nearly born when Solomon Garret died, then.
His smile was apologetic. “Most all of Tatiana’s life, I have been away. To school, then war, then my time as a Dagger. When we are together, ’tis a special time.” He frowned as he sat up, a hand to his bandages. Octavia couldn’t help but admire the sight of his chest. He was an athletic man, and it showed. His skin possessed a creamy, warm undertone that simply begged to be touched.
She swallowed drily and tucked her hands beneath the ledge of the counter. “I’m just glad we’re together again. I know you said this flat was the place we shouldn’t go to, but I knew of nowhere else to possibly find you.” Bodies approached, their songs healthy and strong.
“Yes. We cannot stay here long. My surname is enough to bring danger upon this place. For us to be physically present draws even more danger.”
“What? You’re going to leave already?” Tatiana stood in the doorway. Her voice warbled. “You can’t go.”
“Tatiana. Come here.” Alonzo swung his legs to the side of the table. Tatiana leaned into his embrace, her forehead to his arm. Octavia couldn’t help a twinge of envy. “What has Mother told you of my employment?”
“That you were working for the Caskentian government. Every time I write her a letter, I ask if she’s heard from you. It’s been months and months since you contacted her.” She began to cry.
“Can you send the servant away?” he asked.
Tatiana nodded. The other woman departed with a formal curtsy.
“I have been on a special job this past while. I cannot share details, but ’tis vital that Miss Leander stay alive.”
Alonzo could not see the expression on Tatiana’s face, but Octavia could. The girl grimaced as if she had stepped in a fresh cow patty. “You’ve been hurt trying to keep her safe.”
“I have, and likely will endure more travails.” The siblings looked so alike, but Alonzo’s accent was lilting and pure Mercian. Tatiana spoke with the casual yet rushed accent of the city-states.
“I want you to stay here with me. I can hire more guards! You’ve never seen the islands before, Alonzo. There are the hydroponic gardens, and the port of entry—hundreds and hundreds of airships there! You’d love it! And tonight, Cook is going to make your very, very favorite, cardamom chicken with cashews, and there will be lemon curd with shortbread for dessert. Please, Alonzo.”
“We will stay tonight.” He grimaced, even as Tatiana clapped her hands in glee. “But we dare not linger. Tomorrow we must seek out the best libraries of the southern nations.”
“I know of many. I can write up a list.”
The servant returned to the doorway. Tatiana nodded her approval at the woman’s presence.
“Good.” He tweaked his little sister’s nose. “Do you have bolts of cloth here suitable for a grown woman’s dress?”
“Yes. Gigi sews mine,” said Tatiana, motioning to her dress and the servant behind her. The skirts swayed with grace. Many women had been wearing a similar cut in the plaza—no defined waist, but pleated cloth that fell straight from shoulder to knee.
“Alonzo, you’re thinking of a dress for me?” asked Octavia.
“Yes. That Percival white is too fine a target.”
If only he knew. “Considering everything we’ve been through, I’d like to keep my uniform on. Maybe a full coat would do.”
“Miss, pardon me, miss.” Gigi’s voice trembled. “Are you asking me to sew for the magus?” A pleading note crept in at the end.
“I’m not contagious,” Octavia muttered.
“Actually,” said Alonzo, “I can sew it. Simply provide the supplies and good light.”
“You can sew something of that complexity, that quickly?” asked Octavia.
Tatiana smiled smugly. “He’s always had a good hand for sewing. He used to make dolls for me. Whatever you need, Alonzo. Just ask!” Her tone made it clear that she wanted him to need other things, too. “Now we have to get out of here so that Cook can get to work. I imagine you both want to bathe.” She gave Octavia a pointed look.
“That would be lovely.” Octavia smiled in the face of the insult.
While Gigi showed Alonzo the sewing supplies, another servant emerged to guide Octavia. Almost wordless, the girl pointed out a guest room and neighboring lavatory, and then dashed away.
Alone in her room, Octavia marveled at the space and luxury. She yearned to throw herself down on the honest-to-goodness bed, but knowing the filth of her body and coat, she didn’t dare. Her wand sanitized things, but it couldn’t match the sensation of being cleansed by water. She glanced in the mirror—she looked like she had spent a week in the wilderness. She stuck out her tongue at herself, just because.
Someone tapped on the door. Octavia opened it to find Tatiana. The child stared up at her, hands primly clasped at her waist.
“I want you to know that I hate you.” Her tone was casual, her eyes like venom.
Octavia recoiled slightly. “I gathered that you weren’t that fond of me.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t. I learned to read and write by sending letters to my brother at the front, always afraid that he would die there. When Mother decided I needed to stay in Tamarania for tutoring, I didn’t want to do it. I knew Alonzo would never come here. Father loved Caskentia, so Alonzo has to love it, too.” She almost spat the words. “Now Alonzo finally comes and he’s not going to stay.”
“I’m sorry you’re not going to—”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to take him away. He won’t let me help after tonight.”
“He’s trying to protect you.”
“That’s what Alonzo does. It’s what he’s always done. But he only feels he has to protect me because he’s in danger because of you.”
Octavia gnawed on her lip and had no idea what to say.
“I saw how you were looking at him,” Tatiana continued. “You think he’s yours. Well, he’s my brother. No matter what happens to you, if you live or die, he’ll always be my brother. I love him.” Her fists clenched at her narrow hips, and she turned away with a flounce of skirts. A short distance away, she stopped. “Dinner will be ready in an hour.”
It was a threat, not an invitation. With that, Tatiana stalked away without looking back.
Her father dead. Alonzo absent. Her mother has practically abandoned her. So young to be filled with such hate.
Octavia closed the door again to compose herself. In truth, it was a shame Alonzo couldn’t be with Tatiana longer. His gentleness, his logic, would be a great positive influence on her. Maybe that time would come later, after they survived this, after Caskentia and the Waste focused on other things. Unfortunately, the only way they distract themselves is by seeking their mutual obliteration.
In the meantime, she would take care when Alonzo’s little sister offered any drinks, in case they contained as much poison as her words.
The nearby lavatory was as sumptuous as the bedroom. Octavia turned the bathtub tap and gasped at the immediate flow of hot water. It had only been a week and a half since her stay at the lush Hotel Nennia in Leffen, but it felt like months. Lifetimes. A bath, hot water and all. Oh, what a sweet blessing. Maybe afterward she could mend the edges of her medici
an blanket—and perhaps even grind that bag of dried pampria.
She stripped and loosened her hair as the tub filled. Steam clouded the room. She pulled the knife from her satchel’s kit and set it on the ledge beside the claw-footed tub.
I certainly hope I don’t need to use it, and certainly not against a ten-year-old girl.
Octavia sank into the water and sighed in bliss. Water flowed to her chest, her pale breasts buoyant, arms propped on the edges of the tub. Halfway down her left forearm, a small bandage covered the incision she used for bloodletting. The compulsion to bloodlet came directly from the Lady, usually every three or four days. Pressure would build up in her arm until she bled a few drops into the soil. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t had the need to bloodlet since they escaped from the Wasters—since her blood had temporarily caused that tree to grow.
She looked at the skin of her arm for the first time since then. An odd brown tinge framed the bandage.
Frowning, Octavia sat up. It couldn’t be dirt. The enchantment on her uniform wouldn’t have allowed it. She pried the bandage from the cantham wax beneath. The opaque wax showed the brown going all the way up to the fresh red of the incision; the wax prevented it from healing. She touched the colored skin. It was mottled and tough like a callus.
“How strange,” she murmured, and sank into the water again.
“MAYBE THE CLOCKWORK DAGGERS succeeded, and did it so quickly that we don’t even know we’re dead,” Octavia whispered.
“Why do you say such a thing, Miss Leander?” asked Alonzo.
“Because I am in the happy beyond.”
The library occupied a rotunda that probably could have held the entire clapboard structure of Miss Percival’s academy within its walls. Shelves towered a hundred feet, curved like a ship’s hull, stairs and lifts leading up to exposed walkways of riveted copper. Octavia breathed in the divinity of thousands of leather-bound books.
Alonzo’s grin was bold in contrast to his skin. “Holiness may be found by being in the mere presence of books, without even parting the pages.”
Octavia loved it when Alonzo’s poetic nature emerged—it always made her think of Father, how he muttered and cursed while he unfolded the rhythms of words as he sat by glowstone lamplight.
“It reminds me of how much Caskentia has really lost in the past half century. Not simply the men in the wars, but the books.”
The greatest libraries in Caskentia had burned in the infernal attack on Mercia soon after the princess’s kidnapping, and more had been lost in smaller attacks since. It was a rare delight to find a collection of old hardbound books in a single place.
“Remember our plan,” Alonzo murmured as he entered the labyrinth of metal shelves. She ventured down a parallel aisle; their separation the day before made her anxious about being apart, though Alonzo had counseled that they not stay too close. Flashes of his new black coat showed through gaps in the shelves.
Alonzo had provided a veritable list of tips on searching inconspicuously for information in public. Foremost, she was not to attract attention or be especially memorable. Yellow was a color currently in fashion here, so he had styled for her a simple overcoat to cover her medician robes. He hadn’t been pleased at her continued insistence on carrying her satchel—it had spoiled her previous effort to travel incognito—but he hadn’t pressed the point too much. He knew it would be a losing battle. A yellow ribbon overlapped her headband and had been accented by an enormous white silk flower that could practically double as an umbrella.
Certainly, I could buy new clothes here, but these robes are one of the few things I can still claim as my own. If I had a few days to devote to meditation, maybe I could enchant a new dress that wasn’t in Percival white, but that’ll need to wait until assassins stop pursuing us like hungry mosquitoes.
Alonzo’s other advice had been to move around often, even if she found a section of particular interest; never to ask librarians for help; and most importantly, not to save anyone with magic. The latter had been accompanied by a particularly severe look.
He stopped moving among the shelves. She stopped as well and scanned the books around her. Such a glorious perfume, these old books. This section focused on nationalities. She spied books on Mendalian dagger fighting, a multivolume set on the history of Warriors, biographies of the augusts, and a history of cocoa importation in the southern nations. She was glad to skim through this last as a decoy book, but was quickly disappointed to see the delights of cocoa reduced to soporific tax ratios, tonnages, and the woes of pod rot.
Alonzo circled behind her. “A few books on religion in Caskentia over there,” he murmured. “Take a look and see if anything on the Lady seems new. Look for five books in red.” His brow was lowered in consternation.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“I expected more. I must make some delicate inquiries.” He walked down the aisle, a new tweed hat tucked under his arm. Delicate inquiries. Meaning he’s going to do things he told me not to do.
She studied the shelves he had pointed her to. The section labeled RELIGION consisted of some twenty books. The red books addressed all world religions by country and regional quirk. The Lady earned a few sentences in Caskentia’s section.
“The Lady’s Tree is a variation on the Lord’s Tree, as found elsewhere [SEE Grant, Vernon, Cashmere]. In recent centuries, numbers of faithful have declined; devotees are almost exclusively magi of the healing arts, known here as medicians. Medician schools indoctrinate their students in the faith of an avatar of God, a Tree who was once a grieving woman who wandered the Dallows. By invoking the Lady through a bound circle, miracles are achieved.”
Faith has declined, indeed. I knew almost nothing of the Lady until I met Miss Percival, and my parents were both teachers and well read. If they had known of an explanation for my need to bloodlet, they would have let me know. Instead, they watched me and worried. No parent, no child, should have to endure that painful ignorance.
She checked the other nations referenced. Those listings didn’t elaborate, instead forming an endless cross-referential loop. Sighing, Octavia slid the book back onto the shelf. A strange man approached. Young, heart murmur, still suffering from the lingering effects of inebriation. She looked up with a slight smile, even as a self-conscious flush traveled up her neck.
He wore a trim gray suit. Black kohl lined his eyes and thickened his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”
“Ah yes. I was just skimming books. On religion.” Blast it, Alonzo, I act about as incognito as a gremlin in a jewelry shop.
The librarian’s brows drew together. “You’re Caskentian?”
Balderdash. “Ah yes.”
“I’m surprised, that’s all. Most Caskentians can’t read. They don’t come in here.”
She wished she could argue with him but he was quite right. She had written letters home for hundreds of soldiers, which were likely received by families that were equally illiterate.
“I’m trying to explore matters of faith. Are there more books?”
“You could check the academic studies of mythology, but no, religion isn’t a relevant topic these days. If a book isn’t checked out in a decade, it’s sent to the basement, and after another decade without requests, it’s sold.” He shrugged.
“I see,” she said slowly. Alonzo approached; he paused to pull a book off the shelf, more cool and casual than she could ever hope to be. “My thanks.”
It took several more minutes for Alonzo to work his way down to her. “I’m rotten at this,” she muttered. “He was shocked a Caskentian could read.”
“I am sorry.” He turned his back to her as he skimmed a volume on regional variations within the folk art of making bread boxes. “In Caskentia, my skin sets me apart. Here, there is greater variety in coloration, but your accent will label you in an instant.”
“And my literacy,” she muttered. “But if I pretend to be mute, that makes me memorable as well.”
“Did you find anything of interest in the books?”
“Mention of other Trees around the world, including male ones. That was new. He also said they get rid of books that aren’t checked out in a long time.”
“The librarian I spoke with said much the same. I had hoped that religion would retain an academic interest here.”
“What do we do now?”
“Try other libraries. Await me by the gargoyle statue outside.”
And so it went, library after library. If the Lady and Tree were mentioned at all, it was to rehash what Octavia had already learned from Miss Percival.
“There must be something more,” Octavia muttered as they rode a tenth-level tram to yet another library. They sat side by side in an almost empty car. Afternoon sun failed to penetrate the constant clouds, though at least they were true clouds and not the persistent pollution said to smother Mercia. She rubbed her arm against her torso and sighed.
“Such books must exist. ’Tis a matter of finding them.” Alonzo stared out the window.
Octavia avoided the view and kept her satchel clutched tight on her lap. Her headband helped her tolerate the number of people, but the sheer density of the city bothered her. I’m a country girl at heart, even if it means a lack of libraries.
“So far, it feels like hunting for a cat’s whisker in a haystack. No one here is interested in magic or hokey religions, but someone must be buying the books since nothing has been remaindered in any of their storage rooms.”
“An interesting observation. Perhaps ’tis time for a change of tack at our next library.”
“Our last library, at least on your sister’s list.”
Tatiana had sobbed and wailed at Alonzo’s departure that morning, pleading for him to return. Alonzo vowed he would send word somehow. After this next stop, their priority was to find a doss house in which to spend the night.
“There are other, smaller libraries on the other isles, but I fear the reception would be much the same.”