Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  “Are you accusing Sophie of something?” Alba said.

  “As a matter of course,” he said, drawing something thin and square from his pocket, “yes.” He unfolded a length of wool and deposited a gray clay tablet on his knee.

  Tantia’s tablet.

  I maintained a neutral face, as best I could. Practice with the Galatine nobility and at the summit had trained me to hide my reactions. But how would we play this?

  To my relieved surprise, Alba laughed. “Kierk, really. The woman’s reputation precedes her—does she make clay tablets?” She had her strategy well in hand already.

  “I do not know what manner her perversion takes.”

  “She’s a seamstress, you old bear. A seamstress. Cloth and needle and thread.”

  “But this is a charm tablet. Or a curse tablet,” he added, the word darkening his voice.

  “Yes, it appears to be,” I said. “May I see it?” I asked, hedging. The thin clay was inscribed with Kvys lettering, the words for Joy and Felicity marked in letters marred by shaking hands. I looked up at Alba, making my play. “I’m afraid I can’t read it.”

  “Let me see that,” Alba said. “Of course you can’t—it’s written in Kvys. Kierk, she can barely speak Kvys.”

  “So you say.”

  “Try her,” Alba countered. “No—this must have been a cruel joke, someone sending you here on this pretense—”

  “No joke,” he said, taking the tablet back. “This came from your house, Alba. Someone here has been tampering with the dark arts.” I held back a derisive snort—the tablet was a charm, imbued with light, and a badly done one at that. The precise opposite of dark anything, and it sure as the sun wasn’t art.

  “I’ll make a full investigation. It is possible,” she said with a resigned sigh, “that Sophie’s presence here caused some… curiosity.” She pursed her lips. I wanted to ask the question, too, but I knew she was weighing the risk even as she voiced it. “How did you come by it?”

  “One of your servants loyal to the faith,” he said.

  “I would be remiss if I did not reward—”

  “Do I look a fool?” Kierk snapped.

  “I won’t answer that,” Alba said with a smile so sunny it cast a shadow. “Now you will stay for berry pudding, won’t you?”

  He blustered out of the study. I opened my mouth to speak, but Alba shook her head. Someone—many someones—might be listening. Loyal servants to the faith.

  While Kierk made free with the pudding in the common dining room, Alba led me to the kitchen gardens. Fragrant herbs in lush rows and tangles of squash and pumpkin vines filled the space between the kitchen and the wall bordering the convent.

  “What I would give to know who tattled to the Assembly Council,” she said, following florid Kvys cursing. “It couldn’t be one of the novices, one of the underlings. It must be someone who has access—pah.”

  “Does it matter who?”

  “No, it matters why. Some blind devotee, that’s not so dangerous. Not in the long-term, that is. Too late for us to get out of it so easily. Kierk has his eye on us now, we’ll have to leave for Fen sooner rather than later. I’d hoped to cement these agreements first, and for you to make more progress with—yes.” She pinched her mouth closed. “You’re getting your way after all, leaving sooner than I had planned.”

  “Will he try to prevent our leaving? Does he know, do you think? That we’re working with Fen?”

  “I’m sure he knows, or could guess, that Sophie Balstrade is in fact still working to help her beloved Rebel Prince of Galitha.” She sighed. “It’s not subtle. But he can’t prevent our leaving, even if he wanted to.”

  “Who would prefer a Royalist victory here? I thought Kvyset stood to gain from a new Galatine government.”

  “Kvyset does. But the individual houses—the individual houses are another story from the country as a whole. If Kierk suspects that my house would be more favored, that irks him. If he suspects that my house may be seeding power in high places to maneuver into a more influential position among the orders, that concerns him. And if Kierk thinks we may soon have a weapon he can’t match? He’s shitting himself.”

  “I thought you religious types would be more… pacific.”

  Alba snorted. “All to the glory of the Creator, but the Creator has been silenced by men like Kierk far too long.”

  And if your house rises, so do you, I thought.

  Alba ran her hand through some waist-high rosemary. “Have to get this in soon, before the frost nips it.” She snapped the tip of one stalk off and rolled it between her fingers. “And we shan’t be here. We must leave before Kierk can make any move to detain us. We will leave tomorrow for Fen.”

  5

  I HELD MY HAND BY MY SIDE, FINGERS STRETCHED TOWARD THE Fenian looms clacking and whirring in industrious cacophony as they produced yards of gray wool. I clutched delicate threads of charm magic, spooling them into the fibers on the looms below. Already golden light shimmered in the drab fabric.

  “Lady Sophie.” My fingers constricted, nearly cutting off the charm, but I relaxed and kept the bright thread intact.

  “Yes?” I smiled politely for Abus Hyrothe, the mill owner, a corpulent Fenian with a nose like a radish. He tolerated my presence here, and that of Sastra-set Alba, with the terse courtesy of a businessman who would have preferred to be left alone. That we were foreigners, and that I was rumored even here to be a witch, didn’t help. Still, throughout the week since we arrived he had been patient with our persistence.

  “Have you concluded your observation?” He pursed his lips, gazing out over his small empire of new looms and thinly clad workers. “We’re nearly ready to shut down. This run is complete.”

  “Certainly,” I said. I drew the gold threads thinner until they broke and embedded their ends in the weft of the woolen fibers. I had grown so comfortable with the casting that it looked as though I was merely watching the lift and fall of the looms through the thin haze of lint. If, of course, one didn’t pay too much attention to the tension in my right hand.

  Abus Hyrothe did not pay attention to much of anything aside from his sparkling new machines and their potential for earning.

  “We’ll bundle these up for shipment,” he said. “Same place?”

  “The same,” I replied. To the port at Hazelwhite, still held by the tenacious grip of the Reformist army. There it would be cut and sewn into uniforms.

  As I left the looms, I passed the stark mill offices. Alba debated the finer points of Fenian currency exchange with the cipher clerk in charge of our account. I had nothing to contribute to that discussion, and so I slipped outside, immediately drawing my pelisse around my shoulders to ward against a damp and determined wind. Galitha stayed warm well into autumn, sometimes slipping back into summer’s cloying heat, and the trees took on a golden cast before losing their leaves. Here, the few trees that clung to life inland were thin and bent, their needles the same dark gray cast as the rocky cliffs. The northern ocean sapped the warmth from the rock, and the wind painted the coast with cold salt spray. Our crossing from Kvyset, in a tenacious ship whose captain pushed her into the waves like a tailor gliding a needle through coarse wool, had taken three miserably cold weeks, pushing all the while against that dogged wind.

  “Miss.” The voice, a hushed hiss. “Miss.” I jumped and whirled around.

  The mill worker was a short, skinny Fenian, a scab of beard crusting an angular face. “Yes?” I said, stepping toward him, uncertain. It was clear to me that trusting anyone in Fen was a risky endeavor. They all knew I was a charm caster, if they knew who I was at all.

  “You are Galitha?”

  I almost laughed—in a symbolic way, in this strange little delegation to Fen, I did represent Galitha. But I knew a good-faith attempt at my language when I heard it. “I am Galatine, yes.”

  “No. Yes, I mean that, you are the Galatine woman? The Sophie?”

  “Yes,” I replied carefully. “I am Sophi
e Balstrade.”

  “Good! Yes. You will—for minute?” He beckoned with his fingers, folding them back over his hand, the terse Fenian motion for come here.

  “What is your name?” I asked, out of politeness more than anything, but also ready to file it away in case of trouble later.

  “Beryk Olber.” He was nervous, glancing over his shoulder, and he made me nervous, too, even though I stood a head taller than him. “My friends waiting.” My nerves ratcheted up, and then calmed. He wouldn’t announce a mob ready to maul me, would he?

  He led me past the benches and through the low doorway that opened into a workers’ cloakroom. Several other mill workers waited, all in nondescript gray wool trousers and jackets. One reached into a pocket, then another, and pulled something out. I backed up, fearful of hidden weapons, but they each drew out something more dangerous than a knife or pistol.

  Each had a red cap that he solemnly pulled on over tow-bright queue or shorn dark hair.

  “You are Miss Balstrade?” A taller man with cheeks scoured red by the bitter Fenian wind held out an honest hand. “I am Hyrd Golingstrid, and am the leader of our group.”

  “Your group?” I asked, keeping my tone as polite as possible as I took his massive calloused hand in greeting.

  “We are inspired by revolt in Galitha,” Beryk said. “That a man will stand up to his overlord, there, means we can stand here, too.” He pulled something else from his pocket—a thin, very worn pamphlet, and handed that volatile weapon to me.

  It was a new title, one I had not yet seen, but it clearly bore my brother’s name across the bottom in confident, block-printed ink.

  “Oh,” I said, very softly. Tenacity and the Breaking of Chains, the title traipsed across the page. I flipped it open, quickly, and read a few lines, falling swiftly into the familiar cadence of my brother’s writing. A date on the inner cover confirmed that it had been printed only shortly before I had left Kvyset for Fen. Kristos was still writing—it was reassuring in its bittersweet familiarity.

  Of course, I hadn’t expected his work to reach Fenian factory workers. I forced myself to hand the pamphlet, clearly prized by these men even if few of them could read it, back to Beryk. “I had no idea, that is—I know very little about Fenian politics. I… forgive me, but I thought that your government was elected.”

  “Fenian politics, Miss Balstrade, is money.” Hyrd shook his head. “We elect governance, yes, but it is only those willing to—how to say?—to stand on the back of his fellow Fenian who have the money to be elected. And meanwhile, our work is danger, our pay is poor, and our families go hungry when the mills shut down.”

  I swallowed, not sure what to say. Our fight in Galitha felt quite different, for a change in governance, for representation. Still, it stemmed from the same place—from a disrespect for the common people.

  “We mean not to give alarm,” Beryk continued, misreading my reticence.

  “I’m not afraid—certainly not of you,” I said with a reassuring smile. “But I’m not sure I understand—that is, why did you bring me here?”

  “We know that our work for your cause is of great import, though it lines the pockets of the rylkfen—that is, the factory and mill owners, there is not a good translation.” Hyrd leaned toward me. “We will finish our assignments to the best of our ability, but do not be surprised to hear of trouble.”

  I stepped back, almost involuntarily. “What sort of trouble?”

  “The rylkfen care for profit. We will deny them their profit,” Hyrd said. “We know the balance of task and time that produces their gold; we will upset that balance.”

  “Couldn’t you simply… quit?” I asked.

  “Yes, but then they would replace us. No, we will cut them where they bleed and they will not know—who is the beetle in the salt cod?” I suppressed a laugh at an expression that didn’t work well in Galatine. “They know we are discontent. How discontent, they will learn.”

  “But our order will be unaffected.”

  “That is my hope.” Hyrd smiled. “As soon as your run is finished, the looms may break.”

  “I see.” I considered this. They weren’t asking my participation or even blessing in their endeavor. In pragmatic Fenian custom, they were alerting me to a problem, or at least the potential I would perceive one.

  “You should return to your companion.”

  “You told me and not her,” I said.

  “You are Galatine, you are part of the Reform.” Hyrd shrugged. “She may be, or she may be angling for profit herself.”

  “One never can tell.” The quip fell flat. “I trust her,” I clarified.

  “That is well. But do not reveal anything to her that might compromise us, out of courtesy. Our names, that sort of thing.”

  “Of course,” I murmured.

  “And one other thing.” Hyrd cleared his throat. “There may come a time your new government can come to the aid of the Fenian worker. I hope you will remember our courtesy then.”

  I nodded, agreeing to a tenuous alliance as the unofficial delegate of an as-yet-unfounded government.

  6

  I RETURNED OUTSIDE, SOBERED EVEN MORE THAN USUAL BY THE conversation with Hyrd, Beryk, and their silent but earnest comrades. Alba waited in the square yard bordering the front of the mill. The dark stone and scoured wood of the buildings made for a stark backdrop, but her strictly starched veil and dour gray gown provided little contrast. “He says that run is finished,” she said.

  The wind bit my cheeks and made my eyes water. “The sooner we can leave Fen,” I added, “the better.”

  “For your constitution or for the continuation of this war?” Alba led us out of the mill yard and onto the road.

  “Both,” I replied.

  “We will leave Rylke for the Pygmik shipyards once the cloth is all milled, and then onward to Galitha in good time. I’ve written to several contacts in the Allied States to see if they wish to invest, but I doubt they will reply before we have to finalize our finances with the shipyards.”

  “I thought the Equatorials were stalwartly neutral in all this?”

  “Perhaps they still are. I did not want to assume, given that the entrance of the West Serafans as at least tacit political allies of the Royalists may have changed their minds.” She raised an eyebrow—we both anticipated Serafan magical support even if they did not commit troops. “The latest news,” she continued, pulling a creased Fenian newspaper from her cloak. It was printed with cheap, smudging ink and was devoid of the flourishes and illustrations that spattered Galatine newspapers. “The Fenians care for foreign affairs enough to note that the harbor of Galitha City remains blockaded by the Royalist navy, interfering with regular trade.”

  “I suppose that gives them all the more motivation to work with us,” I said. “Have we enough… motivation to keep them happy?”

  “Quite sure.” She smiled. “The Order of the Golden Sphere is well-known for, well, gold.” She paused. “Which was never actually the intention of the nomenclature.”

  “I think I understand the naming convention a bit more now,” I replied drily.

  “You do, indeed.” Alba slowed her walk as we approached a curve in the narrow road that took us close to a sheer drop-off, gray stone plummeting to cold sea below. I thought at first she was slowing for caution’s sake, but no—she threw back her shoulders and inhaled the bracing salt wind. “All is going so well, but I would feel better, I admit, if we had some more recent word from Hazelwhite. I can’t imagine it’s easy for you to be away from your brother and Theodor.”

  I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut again. Of course separation from Theodor was difficult. There was, however, a strange relief being apart from Kristos. I had never expected to see him again, not after his betrayal during the Midwinter Revolt. In the mess of emotions that seeing him again brought on, I had not found forgiveness among the relief, anger, joy, and continued grief at losing our once-close relationship.

  “I don’t know
how to feel about my brother,” I finally said. I could still see his name on the pamphlet Beryk had shown me, could almost hear his voice reading it. I could also see his face framed by firelight in Pyord’s study, fully committed to betraying me.

  “Who would?” Alba said bluntly. “If my understanding of your relationship is correct.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said with wry assessment of Alba’s observations of my spats with Kristos. She gazed out over the gray cliffs, not at me. I was grateful she couldn’t see my reddening face. “He did try to kill me.”

  “To be fair, he never did try to kill you, precisely.”

  “Allow me some hyperbole,” I retorted. “His actions could very well have gotten me killed—and worse, he made me compromise my ethics.”

  “Ah, well. Pyord had a good hand in that, too, didn’t he?”

  At the mention of her cousin, I felt the blood rush from my face. “Yes, he did.”

  “I do not quite know how to feel about my cousin, if we are being honest,” Alba said. “To play at politics, one need not deal in blackmail and extortion.”

  “Well, good to know those are optional.”

  “He died without any chance of my forgiving him,” Alba continued, ignoring me. “And, of course, without any remorse from him. And I suppose that is a significant difference between Kristos as I read him and Pyord—I do not believe I ever saw my cousin admit he was wrong.”

  I swallowed. “Kristos does,” I said. “But still. What he feels and what I am willing to do aren’t the same thing.”

  “Of course not. But you do have to put up with him for the time being. As an ally if nothing else.”

  “Sianh said something similar,” I acknowledged, not adding that he had said it about Alba. “That we needn’t be friends to be allies.”

  “Quite so.” Alba clasped her hands and gazed out over the choppy sea fighting with the cliff face below us. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  “If you like watching birds,” I replied, watching a teal-breasted cormorant dive for the waves.