As Miss Dancy, my remedial potions instructor put it, I had “all of the finesse of a painter trying to produce a masterpiece with a pitchfork.”
The only subject in which I excelled remotely was medicinal botany with Madame Greenway, and that was only due to growing up as a gardener’s child. I knew all of the proper Latin names for the plants, the appropriate temperatures and water and shade for their care. And thanks to Mrs. Winter’s tutoring, I could parrot that Balm of Eirin could mend broken hearts and a troublesome cough. Leaving bloodroot on a witch’s doorstep could reverse her spells. Garlic had many uses, both magical and medicinal. My display had merited a specimen of Blushing Orchid, a white tropical flower that flushed pink when one spoke to it in a soft, sweet voice. But then, Callista dropped a bottle of sticky, red dragon’s blood tree sap down the front of my gown, cooing, “So sorry, darling” after I identified ten plant extracts by their smell. Even Hannah’s most dedicated scrubbing couldn’t help me get the sap stain from the gown. So I learned that if I wanted to stay off Callista’s list of targets, I couldn’t excel, even if it was the one area where I showed promise.
By the time I fell into bed each night, it felt like every fiber of my body was strained. I smiled through Callista’s discourtesy. I barely had enough energy to clean my face and take my hair down for bed, much less study the Mother Book. But at least I didn’t have any more nightmare-daydreams about corpses and owls lurking outside my bedroom. I missed my family. I missed my home. I missed the simplicity of my old life. I even missed the Winters.
My sanctuary was the library, a place Callista avoided at all costs because being unable to speak prevented her precious “socializing.” So I would plead a headache or some other acceptable symptom of delicate ladyhood and retreat to the bookstacks. I’d never had enough time to study at the Warren school, but I’d always made good grades. I’d hoped that if I applied myself and read everything I could about the Principals of Magic, chemistry and the histories of the magical houses, that it would just come to me, like osmosis.
But it didn’t.
And neither did more information about the strange owl sigil that had appeared to me in the Mother Book. There had to be a reason that book was showing me the owl – and only the owl, no matter how many times I asked to be shown something more. Every day for almost a week, I had no luck with the answers, until one night I woke up to the midnight bell clanging in the bell tower and my face pillowed against a page that had been blank when I started that afternoon.
And despite my exhaustive search of the genealogy section, I couldn’t find any mother house that used owls in their sigils. Miss Morton even helped me look through books listing the off-shoot branches in Asia, Europe, and the prison colonies in Australia, but nothing.
Miss Morton was glad of the company though, tempting me to stay past the younger grades’ usual retirement hours with offers of soothing chamomile tea and ginger biscuits. She gave me a few books on meditation, which I barely understood, but from what I could gather Miss Morton wanted me to stop thinking so much when I was studying the book. I was supposed to leave my mind blank, to open my magic up to the possibilities the Mother Book could offer.
Miss Morton also found wonderful botany books for me, full of specimens I’d never even heard of – snapdragons that posed a real danger to the cultivator’s fingers, humming dahlias that could lull bystanders to sleep with their song before strangling them with tentacles they kept hidden underground, and roses with scents so sweet that the gardener would swear they never wanted to smell any other aroma. But Miss Morton said I had to be careful not to focus too much on one area, so she also plied me with volumes of folk stories, history, anatomy of magical creatures. She even found me a book on proper dancing technique when I confessed my (carefully edited) fears about the social.
Though many of the faculty members were friendly, despite my many classroom failings, Miss Morton was becoming my friend. She offered me advice about the Mother Book, recommending that I sit at a table with the book open, surrounded by all of the genealogy books the library had to offer. She left me to concentrate on my work. I took Wit from the exquisitely tooled leather holster that secured it under my sleeve, and held it over the open Mother Book, begging it to either show me more information on the owl sigil or some other bit of information that would drive me less insane.
I closed my eyes and imagined all of my hope and curiosity focusing on the tip of Wit’s point.
I held the knife over the books and was startled enough to send it flying across the study area when I heard a small voice whisper, “That won’t work.”
I yelped and was immediately shushed by Miss Morton, even while Wit embedded itself through a copy of Levesque’s Guide to Ladylike Broom Use. The intruder was as small as her voice, pale and delicate as a new reed. She had to be one of the youngest students here, nine or ten maybe? She might have been quite a beauty if not for the hollow cheeks and dark circles under her wide green eyes.
Something in those eyes reminded me of myself, before the Spinning Vase Incident, when I was still on the suppressors. Undersized and underestimated. Too quiet for my own good.
“Has anyone ever told you not to sneak up on people holding sharp objects?” I asked her quietly as I retrieved my wayward knife from where it was embedded in the very expensive-looking book. The girl ducked back behind a shelf as Miss Morton approached to take the damaged book from me with a lift of her greying eyebrow. She pulled her own athame from a holster in her sleeve – dark metal with a rounded, grooved handle-end – and muttered something I couldn’t make out while dragging the tip over the hole Wit had punched through the book. The pages knit themselves together without a mark left behind.
“I’m sorry, Miss Morton,” I’d murmured through pursed lips.
“Do try to be more careful, dear,” Miss Morton sighed, before returning to her spot at the reference desk.
“So, why won’t it work?” I asked the smaller girl, who’d popped back up from behind the bookshelf like a little jack-in-the-box. Honestly, this girl was so petite, that she made me look like a lumbering giant.
“It won’t work, because the book has shown you what it thinks you need to see for now,” she said. “When you’re ready to see more, it will reveal more. For now, you should keep learning everything else you can until you’re ready to see.”
“That is very helpful, but at the same time, exhausting.”
“Being the Translator is often a thankless task,” she said, her tone wiser than it should have been at such a young age.
“I’m beginning to understand that,” I’d said, turning to slide Wit back into my sleeve holster. “What’s your name?”
But by the time I turned around, my small advisor had disappeared. Again. I searched the stacks on the study level, but couldn’t find her anywhere. Miss Morton claimed not to have seen any other girl in the library at the time I’d been studying. Had I just been instructed by a ghost? Was Miss Castwell’s haunted? Surely, ghosts had better things to do than hang about in the library, teasing students with unhelpful hints.
I didn’t see the girl in any of my classes, either. Or seated at the younger girls’ tables at meals. Those times were particularly difficult, because I did see Ivy sitting at one of the central tables by herself, while I sat there with Callista, pretending to listen to her endless stories of shopping trips with her mother, of her flirtations with the highest-flying scions of Guardian society.
I tried focus on my own safety, afforded by keeping a relatively low profile at the school and being a member of Callista’s clique. I tried to think of my family at home, and my need to protect them. I even tried thinking about the Winters and how I didn’t want to repay their trust and effort with losing my composure in a public manner (most likely in the dining hall with a large shrimp fork) and exposing us all. While my first week at school had been relatively easy, I was becoming tired of “easy,” if it meant feeling this way.
9
T
he Strange and the Familiar
One afternoon, Headmistress Lockwood arrived just as my remedial symbology class was ending to inform me I was excused from independent study as I had a visitor. She led me to the entryway, where I found Owen Winter, examining the portraits of the school’s foreboding founder, Emmeline Castwell. He held his hat in one hand and a prettily wrapped round box in the other, both behind his back. Fortunately, the lobby was empty of other students, so this incident would rate very low on the dinner gossip scale.
I tried not to let my confusion show on my face as he turned to greet us. I curtsied and held my hands out to accept the gift box. In doing so, my hands were outstretched, pinkies touching. Now that he could see my mark, in full light, for the first time, Owen’s eyes went wide with alarm and something akin to respect.
There, I thought, let the boy who called it a ridiculous and embarrassing idea to send me to school stew in that for a while.
“Cousin! How are you? Faring well here in your new home? Mother didn’t want you to know that she was worried – you know how she hates to be seen as a hoverer – so I told her I would come and see for myself that you’re settling in.”
“Your mother?” Headmistress Lockwood said, lifting a dark brow. “Hovering? I can’t imagine.”
“She is the most doting and loving of mothers,” Owen assured her.
“Miss Reed, you may take your guest to the gardens for thirty minutes and then escort him directly to his carriage. There’s no reason to cause distraction by bringing him back into the building.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Headmistress Lockwood gave Owen one last knowing look before turning on her heel and walking toward her office. Owen turned his gaze back to Miss Castwell’s portrait. “So is there some sort of requirement that to be the headmistress of this school, you must have your sense of humor removed?”
I shushed him. “Please don’t get me in trouble.”
“Oh, dearest Cassie, I mean to do no such thing,” he assured me as we walked out a side exit to the gardens. “I only meant to bring you my mother’s love and this package.”
He tossed the purple box at me, which I caught, much to my surprise. I waited for us to be far from the school building, past the flower beds and the gazebo, even the small reflecting pond. I smiled at Tom, the groundskeeper, as he passed by. He was a sturdy sort of boy, who kept his distance while he cheerfully did his work. Like my father, he whistled old Irish tunes while he raked, which endeared him to me. I didn’t speak to him. We girls were discouraged from being at all familiar with any male staff members at Miss Castwell’s. Headmistress Lockwood said it caused “unpleasant confusion.” Owen wasn’t confused at all. He barely looked at Tom as we sat on an ivy-wreathed bench near the treeline.
“Do you practice being awful or does this come naturally?” I asked him.
“It’s a talent,” he said, preening, even as he flopped onto the granite bench. He paused to take his own dagger, Sapientem, from the holster he kept at his hip. He drew the rune for “silence” in the air and a shower of blue sparks arced up from the tip, forming a sort of dome around us before fizzling away. “Now, we don’t have to worry about being overheard. So, how is mother’s little political pawn this afternoon? No trouble tricking every girl from every Guardian family in Lightbourne, I hope?”
“How is my family, Owen?” I asked, ignoring his jibe. “Are they all right? Is there any trouble? Did your mother send you to warn me?”
Seeing the honest panic on my face seemed to shake Owen out of his teasing. He straightened on the bench and the mocking smirk all but disappeared from his face. “No, nothing like that. Mother honestly sent me to check on your progress. She thought it would look good for the whole family to be seen as concerned about your welfare, since you’re supposed to be grieving and you’re our beloved cousin and all. Father would have come if he wasn’t so busy in the Capitol at the moment. Your family is fine. I wouldn’t have teased you like that if something was honestly wrong.”
Nodding, I smiled and let some of the tension drain from my shoulders. “So I’m a political pawn?” I sighed. “I think I liked it better when I was just your mother’s potential social weapon.”
“Well, mother does love her little surprises,” he said, smiling as he rubbed the back of his neck. “My father’s term is coming to an end, and he’s about to lose his seat in the Guild. He’s failed to vote for measures that would impose stricter sanctions against the Snipes.”
I frowned. “What sort of sanctions?”
“Some in my class feel that Snipes are getting a little comfortable with their positions in Guardian households, too confident, so the new laws would impose fines and other punishments on Snipes who show disrespect for their employers or disregard for the laws.”
“So they’re creating laws to punish Snipes for not appreciating those laws?”
He nodded. “Yes. And from the disdain in your voice, I can tell that your feelings about those laws reflect my father’s. He has been quite vocal about his opposition to the proposal. Our friends and neighbors think that he’s getting too soft, which brings us to your sudden addition to our ‘family.’ A young woman in his household making a social sensation in local circles, could only help his public image, change the perception of him as a weak legislator to one of a doting father figure to a fascinating, though tragic, young woman of some power.”
I shivered, clutching my shawl even tighter to my shoulders, ignoring the way Owen’s voice dropped when he said, “power.”
“And how do you feel about stricter sanctions against the Snipes?” I asked.
He frowned. “I can see why some people might think that the Snipes are becoming a bit… confident.”
“Because of girls like my sister?” I asked, feeling an odd mix of resentment and resignation. Mary did go too far in her doomed pursuit of Owen, but I couldn’t help but want to defend her. She’d always done so much for me, put up with so much from me, the weak little sister who couldn’t carry her own weight. As much as it embarrassed me, there were times I wished she did get her happily-ever-after with her handsome prince, because it was the only thing that would make her happy. But that was madness, and as much as I loved her, I didn’t put Mary’s happiness above our whole family’s safety.
He ignored the question about my sister. “I don’t think the laws are appropriate. It seems as though my class would rather legislate their way to respect rather than building a solid relationship with your kind. Perhaps the answer is a change in behavior on our part rather than a change in yours.”
I couldn’t help but note that despite my change in residence, Owen still grouped me in with the Snipe class.
“Have you spoken to your father about possible alternatives to the laws? He could help with education programs, literature, town hall meetings, something.”
“My father wouldn’t take my suggestions seriously. He doesn’t take himself seriously,” Owen sighed.
“Still, I don’t understand why your mother would go to all this trouble. Even if your father did lose his seat, it isn’t as if that would ruin your family financially.”
“No, but it would embarrass my mother considerably, losing a family seat. And of course, there is the small matter of her expectation that I run for the seat when my father retires it. And she could lose face with the Demeter Society, which would crush her. My father would be content to be known as the world’s foremost ornithologist. But Mother’s from Brandywine stock. She knows the value of power. It’s fine for him to putter around his lab, after all, she’s a pioneer in botany research. She would never begrudge him his hobbies. However, she’s a Senator’s wife, and she expects to be a Senator’s mother. She will accept nothing less.” After a long moment, he added, “An ornithologist is a scientist who studies birds.”
“I know what an ornithologist is,” I shot back, surprised by the acid in my voice. “I’ve read a good portion of the contents of your father’s library. I’m not stupid.”
>
Owen’s brows rose. “I never said you were stupid.”
“No, but your expression said it all,” I told him. “In fact, it would help if you lowered your eyebrows right now, considering that they’ve been hanging there since I mentioned my extensive reading.”
He burst out laughing, but he ran a hand over his brow, very deliberately relaxing his forehead into a less surprised state. He dropped into the wrought iron chair next to mine. “I’m getting lectured on proper facial expressions by the kitchen maid. This is ridiculous.”
“Why are you bothering to talk to me, right now?” I asked, studiously ignoring the “kitchen maid” comment. “We haven’t had a proper conversation since you were nine years old and you knocked me off your tree swing.”
He looked deeply affronted. “I most certainly did not knock you off of a tree swing.”
“You snatched my book out of my hands, pulled my pigtails and shoved me off of your tree swing. I landed on my rump in the dirt,” I exclaimed. When he continued to shake his head in disbelief, I lifted my hair to show him the tiny scar at my temple, near my hairline. “I hit my head on the way down. I had to get three stitches!”
He moved closer, and I tilted my scarred side toward him. Recognition passed over his face, and his mouth dropped open. “I remember that. You were in my swing. And it was my book, by the way. A copy of Bartleman’s Digest of Magical Fungi. I left it on the swing when I went inside for some water!” he protested. “And as I remember it, you sprang up from the dirt, grabbed the book and hit me over the head with it.”
“I did not!” I scoffed.
“You did!” he protested. “You busted my nose! It gushed blood, the sight of which made you hyper-ventilate, pass out and whack your head on the swing.” My eyes narrowed and he scooted his chair closer to mine.
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