“What?” Kristos said around a large bite of flatbread. “It made sense, given the circumstances. That is, you don’t have an official role any longer.”
I stared at him, involuntarily wavering between rage and weeping. “A lot of things made more sense a month ago,” I finally said, tears spilling over my cheeks.
“Damn it, Kristos,” Penny said, scooting her heavy chair closer to me. It made a terrible noise as the legs dragged on the floor, but she doggedly pulled herself close enough to grab my hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be insensitive.” Kristos stared at his food as though realizing it would be uncouth to continue wolfing down his pastry while his grieving sister sobbed into her skirts.
“But you are being insensitive,” Penny hissed. “Honestly. She can take as much time as she needs to—”
“No,” I half shouted. “No, I can’t. I can’t just sit here in my brother’s house for the rest of my life like some dotard aunt.”
“I was looking forward to having an auntie here,” Penny offered, a little too eagerly. “You’ll be such a help with Theodora!”
“The governor of Galitha can hire more help than you could ever need, I’m sure,” I said with a smile. I knew Penny was after the same thing her decorating projects had been aimed at—making me feel useful again. “You two will want to get married and make this a proper—what? Governor’s Mansion, is that what we’ll call them?”
“Who said anything about getting married?” Kristos said, blanching as he received the full extent of one of Penny’s worst glares. “What? It’s a joke, of course.”
“You are intolerable,” Penny said, glowering at him as he ducked his head and nibbled on his bread.
“You’re right, Kristos,” I finally said, wiping my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. “I don’t have an official role any longer, and I don’t have a shop to go back to, and I don’t have a house of my own to maintain. But I never said I was interested in being a government official, or even that I’m able to.”
Kristos groaned. “Not this shrinking violet stuff again, Sophie. You’re more than capable.”
I held back a torrent of anger I had done very well to bind up and put away—that Kristos had no right, ever, to criticize what I used my gifts for. “I need to think about this.” I cut him off from further argument, raising my hand and standing up. “I need some air.”
68
I STRODE DOWN THE STREET, NOT ENTIRELY SURE I KNEW WHAT direction I was walking until I found myself near Fountain Square. The cathedral had been restored to a place of worship and contemplation after having been pressed into the service of the Galatine Civil War. I still didn’t have any compulsion to seek solace in the meditation on the Galatine Divine and her Sacred Natures, but I did seek quiet. I tentatively opened the great front doors. No placard announced any services in progress, though a clutch of reverent women sat in an alcove filled with lit candles, praying, and several parishioners still sat in the pews.
I walked the perimeter ringed with stained glass depicting the Sacred Natures, the sea and sky and wide plains of Galitha rendered in colors more saturated than life. Carefully laid piecing of the glass suggested the movement of grain and waves in the images as though some divine breath washed over them, imbuing them with life. I sank onto a bench in front of a great sunburst of glass pierced with the light of the last of the sunset.
“I told him you would not like the idea.”
I started as Sianh sat down beside me.
“Did you follow me?” I hissed.
“No, I was observing a service in celebration of the Sacred Nature of the Galatine Fields. Agriculture, yes?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied, distracted. “Why were you watching that?”
“It is instructive, if I am to stay in this country. To know what its people believe.”
“Some of its people.” I sighed. The fractured light from the sunburst window scattered red and orange and gold on my hands. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I was preparing to leave when you entered. I am not surprised to see you distressed, no, though I did not realize you took to prayers in times of distress.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I just—it’s quiet here. Usually,” I said with a pointed glance at Sianh.
His smile was soft. “Yes, and you wish to have quiet, so I will take my leave.” He stood.
“Wait,” I said, impulsive, and he sat next to me again, close enough to speak in hushed tones that didn’t echo among the high arches of the cathedral. “Where are you going? I mean, now that your contract is over.”
“I was promised retirement, remember? A pension.”
“And I’m sure it’s been given to you.”
“Yes. And a land grant, for a bonus. A part of the Pommerly estate near Rock’s Ford.”
“You’re going to take up farming?” I laughed, a hard, bitter noise breaking on the muffled quiet of prayers. “Forgive me, but the thought of you trading a sword for a plow is…”
“It is an unlikely image, yes. I believe I will raise horses, not crops. I have also been asked to take a position at the Rock’s Ford Academy.”
“They’re keeping that open? I would have thought, with the abolishment of the nobility, that it would be closed.”
“It is a great resource for Galitha, and now it can serve her greatest resource—her people. Anyone may enter, if he has a will to work and the capacity to excel.”
“You sound like you’ve become an idealist all of a sudden.”
“A man cannot run against his own current forever,” Sianh murmured. “You have given me a second chance at a life with some meaning.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. You and whatever fate compelled our meeting. It was your word that gave me a place among this company. I am grateful.”
“No, we are grateful. We would never have succeeded without…” I shook my head.
“That,” Sianh said with a lilting grin, “is likely true. But now. I will be leaving for Rock’s Ford within the week. And you?”
“And me?” I stared at my hands, the shadow colors of the dying sunset fading swiftly away. “I don’t know. I loosed something on the world and now I suppose it’s my responsibility to wrangle it. But, Sianh, they don’t—they don’t know what they’re asking.”
“What do they ask?”
“They want me to train others to cast as I do. To bring that power under their control, to wield it—but they don’t understand.” I met his eyes, surprised to see them fixed steadily on me as I spoke. “But you do, don’t you? They want you to teach men to kill each other, and you will. Even though you know what that looks like.”
“I will. Even though I carry with me every life I have taken.” He said it simply, without pain, without pride. A fact only, though perhaps the most profound fact that defined him. “You do not need to do as I do. But they will learn, one way or another. Once humans know what is possible, they reach and pull and claw to get it for themselves. For my part, if I teach them to kill, I may also teach them duty and responsibility and respect. Another might not. But I will.” He didn’t press me further, but I took his meaning. I was a more responsible acolyte for the discoveries I had made than others would be.
“It’s this—this going forward,” I whispered. “Going forward alone. I miss—” I choked on his name and buried my face in my hands, words impossible.
Sianh didn’t speak, or even move, except to lay his calloused hand on my shoulder. I leaned against him until weeping had spent me and my eyes were dry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Why? Why do you apologize for the most natural thing, the most true thing that you might do? We do not respect grief as we should,” he said, “if you apologize for its presence.”
“He would have known what to do,” I said.
“It seems to me,” Sianh said slowly, “that very often, Theodor said he did not know what to do and you were the voice who spoke throug
h his confusion and doubt. I am not at all doubtful that you would know very well what to do if he were asking you for advice.”
“He said that?”
“Only every day.” Sianh handed me a white linen handkerchief. “If it were anyone else, what would you tell them?”
I wiped my eyes with the handkerchief and refolded it carefully. “I would remind them that Galitha needs all of us more than ever,” I said. “And that we all have our talents and knowledge that no one else has. But I also—I also would have rather this all stayed hidden.”
“Such things cannot stay hidden forever. I even suspect that, in the end, it will be for the best. No more subterfuge. No more hidden casting. Do you fear your own power in effecting that new world?”
I started—Polly had asked me the same thing, but I bristled at the question all the more, coming from a friend. “I don’t want it. I don’t deserve it.”
Now it was Sianh’s turn to break the silence with a snort of laughter. Several praying women turned and gave him sharp looks, but he didn’t seem to notice. “If you don’t deserve a place among the victors, no one does. It hounded me that you would be relegated to your brother’s house, forgotten.”
“I figured I was a cup with a hole in it.” I smiled wanly as Sianh started at the old reference. “My use was over. I suppose… I suppose maybe it isn’t.”
Sianh shook his head. “Far from it. I foresee your resonance in the world only just beginning.”
69
“DON’T EAT ALL OF THOSE PLUMS YOURSELF!” VIOLA SWOOPED between a basket of fruit and Kristos’s outstretched hand, earning a playful swat to her shoulder for her trouble.
“I was getting another one for Penny,” he countered, swiping three golden plums so ripe I expected them to burst. Penny laughed as he tossed her one, catching it with one hand as she let a squirming toddler down to run to her father.
“Thea, don’t play in the dirt,” Penny chastised her. “Auntie Sophie just finished that dress, don’t muss it all up.”
“There’s a reason I made it in white cotton,” I answered with a grin. “It might get dirty, but it can be laundered into the ground, too.”
“Now, don’t you take the rest of my plums!” Viola protested as Thea plucked a plum from the basket with her plump, sticky fingers. She looked like Kristos, with a mop of dark curls and a winning grin that she deployed on Viola at that moment, earning herself another plum.
“Where is Sianh with the lemonade?” Annette asked, scanning Fountain Square as though assessing the waves from the prow of a ship. The sun pelted down on all of us, heating the crowded square that pulsed as though alive with the press of people. Republic Day, celebrated to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill, had become a settled rite in Galitha in the three years since the Civil War. It was fitting that the Galatines should choose to celebrate, not a divisive war or its bloody battles, but the moment that it tried to effect change peacefully. Of course, that meant the national holiday was near Midsummer, and the heat was worse than it had been in years.
“He’s there,” Penny said. “Just past that big tree.” She sat down on one of the few chairs we’d set up, visibly relieved to be off swollen feet brought on by her second pregnancy. She fanned herself with a napkin so hard that the fat pearls hanging from her ears bobbed in the breeze.
“Aren’t you glad we’re in the shade?” Kristos asked, handing her a metal cup beading condensation. More than merely being in the shade, we had a reserved pavilion along with the rest of the Galatine government. “Being a governor has its perks.”
“Yes, but we have to listen to one of your speeches, don’t we?” Penny laughed. “I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“This one will be short, I promise.” Kristos handed me a cup of water as well, flavored, I saw with appreciation for Kristos’s ever-refining palate, with mint.
Sianh schlepped a keg of lemonade toward us, and Thea clapped her hands with delight. “She is not excited to see me, I know better,” Sianh said as he set the lemonade down on our table. “It is either the lemonade or that I promised her she might pat the horses I brought north for the races.”
“It’s the lemonade,” Kristos said, clasping his hand as if meeting again for the first time in years, though we had spent the last week together. The Republic Military School was closed for the weeks surrounding the national holiday, and he had come north to try his horses at the first annual National Races.
I poured myself a glass of lemonade and sat on a blanket in the shade of a sprawling flaxwood poplar. A strand of seeds settled in my cup, and I plucked it out. Thea dashed toward me, intent on the lemonade. Instead, I drew a charm from the ether and strung it in front of her. She laughed and grabbed at it, letting me twine it around my fingers and then swing it between them, dancing like a marionette of light.
Annette and Viola dealt a hand of Pepper with Artur Hysso, now a representative for Pellia in the Council of Country. Kristos and several councillors toasted with cups of lemonade some accomplishment I couldn’t hear. Sianh sat next to me, watching Thea tug at strings of light invisible to him.
“She is gifted as you are,” he said.
“Sometimes I wonder how many of us are, if only we trusted ourselves to see it.” I pulled the strands of light and crossed them as though playing cat’s cradle with string, and Thea giggled. “And these little ones trust what they see better than grown-ups do.”
“It may be. Or it may be you are still unwilling to accept the unique nature of your gifts. Even after—what? Teaching dozens of pupils, writing influential Galatine policy on magic, effecting international accords on the use of casting? And all in three years as special advisor to the council?”
“Three very long years,” I said. “Pass me a fig?”
Sianh obliged and took several for himself, as well. “I have much I want to discuss with you, on matters of teaching and pedagogy in our unusually utilitarian fields. And you must meet my horses—fine Galatine beasts.”
“I should like that.” A wadded napkin pelted the side of my face, expertly lobbed to fly under the brim of my hat, and I looked to Annette, who jerked her thumb toward the podium.
“I take that to mean we are to silence ourselves and pay attention to the speeches,” Sianh said.
“I believe so,” I said, passing the napkin to Sianh with a narrow-eyed nod suggesting its next target: Annette’s feather-trimmed hat. He nodded and tucked it carefully away, saving it for an opportune moment.
The governors faced away from us toward the open expanse of Fountain Square, crowded with people whose voices dimmed and silenced as the first of the three governors took the podium. Hamish Oglethorpe, tired of criticizing the missteps of political function, had run for a vacant governor’s seat. He and Kristos butted heads nearly daily, as Hamish had an uncanny habit of pinpointing the precise weaknesses in Kristos’s ideology-rich and pragmatism-poor proposals, but Kristos respected him. They balanced one another, in some of the same ways Kristos and Theodor had.
Sitting behind the governors meant that we couldn’t hear most of what they said. I sat politely, the sun growing stronger as it traced its arc over the city and the shade of the flaxwood poplar next to me shifted. I watched Thea play with her doll, carved of wood and named, inexplicably, Florence. I had made the poppet a complete ensemble out of remnants from Alice’s shop, and anticipated teaching Thea to sew by helping her make more miniature gowns and petticoats.
There was a burst of applause and cheers from the crowd, and Hamish paused. Even if I couldn’t hear his speech, I knew it was a summation of our successes in the past three years since the conclusion of the Civil War and an optimistic view toward addressing the challenges we still faced. The government was secure, between the regional councils and elected mayors throughout the Republic of Galitha, and the national Council of Country in Galitha City and its three governors. Though we had been plagued by practical challenges to voting policy, resulting in riots during the first elections aft
er the war, the subsequent elections had run smoothly. After long arguments, that right was extended to women, as well, and I had cast my first ballot alongside Emmi and Alice.
More, international trade and relations were nearly restored to prewar confidence, even with West Serafe, which had grudgingly committed to treaties on the use of magic that I had taken no small part in writing. Fen’s workers’ strikes continued, but we tactfully threw our support in the form of trade agreements behind those rylkfen who had come to amenable terms with their workers. Money spoke clearly, and more and more mill owners and factory investors pressured the government to codify workers’ rights.
More applause for Hamish, and I caught snatches of what he said—discussing the sewer system of Galitha City. I laughed—improving the health and sanitation of Galitha City had been his pet project, and it was well underway. Already there were fewer outbreaks of ague and dysentery, which he insisted had to do entirely with improved flow of water. Commerce continued to progress in the city, with renewed energy and democratic efficiency for opening new businesses. I allowed myself a contented sigh. So much destruction and death, but it had made way for this—a country with a bright future.
Sianh mistook my sigh for boredom and raised an eyebrow. “Kristos said that the speeches would be short.”
“He said his speech would be short,” I said. “Hamish made no such promise.”
Sianh laughed quietly. “Apparently not. He is—what does one say in Galatine? Long-winded. Though to be honest, I could appreciate some breeze right about now.”
I passed him a glass of cool lemonade as Hamish finally concluded his speech to cheers and shouts from the crowd. Emmi, Parit, Venia, and my other Pellian friends were likely there somewhere, folded into the crowd. With the too-familiar pang of loss, I remembered Lieta, absent in our gatherings since early spring, when she had passed on peacefully in her sleep. I still met with the others, now inviting them to my too-large offices at the university. I had expected Emmi to want to keep working for Alice, but she had come to me to be included in tutelage in casting alongside the Kvys sisters and others from Galitha, and eventually, West Serafe as well. She was not as gifted as some of the others—Tantia had a remarkable ability for casting strong magic into solid material, and the nuance of some of the Serafans was extraordinary. Still, Emmi was eager to learn and now held an assistantship under me in my post at the university.
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