The Deepest Night

by Shana Abe

Was this some emerging drákon skill? I’d never heard him speak like this before. He was cool and calm and mesmerizing. He had all of us, including me, leaning forward in our seats, hanging on his words.

  Armand removed his hat and let the sun illuminate him entirely. Shining dark hair, intense blue eyes. The harsh light along his white shirt and skin cast him almost aglow.

  “Iverson is an ideal illustration of who and what we are. Of what we must defend. The welfare of your daughters is dear to every fighting man out there, I promise you. They risk their lives for them, for us. Such a sacrifice is overwhelming.

  “I was reminded of this recently by a student from this very school. A tenderhearted girl who came to me with an idea, one I hope you will all embrace as fervently as I did. Miss Jones? Miss Eleanore Jones? Where are you?”

  Oh, God. I shrank back in my chair. What was he doing?

  Armand pretended to search the crowd for a few seconds before spotting me cowering under my parasol. He gestured emphatically in my direction.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is due to this girl that a plan has been set into motion that I hope will benefit the lives of a good number of soldiers and their families. As many of you know, my home, Tranquility at Idylling, is large—and largely empty. With my father’s blessing, I intend to fill those empty rooms with heartbeats, with souls. I am going to transform Tranquility into a convalescent hospital for our own wounded soldiers.”

  Another pause, and a gradual, rumbling, swelling resonance from the crowd that I read as part approval, part disbelief. Armand spoke again, louder, before the sound could grow beyond him.

  “And I am delighted to inform you that this same kind girl, as true an example of the Iverson spirit of generosity and service as ever was, has volunteered to spend her summer there as our very first nurse!”

  Armand took a half step back from the podium, smiling again, allowing the swell of sound to crest into happy applause. Then he walked straight to me, bowing before me and lifting a hand in an invitation to take mine.

  What else could I do? I placed my fingers over his and he lowered his head to press a kiss upon my knuckles. The applause grew even louder.

  “Voilà,” he murmured, a word that only I could hear.

  Well, forget about my piano performance. There was no way I was going to try to follow that.

  One hour later, at the al fresco reception, beneath some anemic clouds and that unrelenting sun:

  “A moment, Miss Jones.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You are certainly full of surprises. Why did you not mention to me your conversation with Lord Armand regarding the hospital?”

  “Uh … I beg your pardon, ma’am. I assure you, I was as amazed as you when he spoke of it today.”

  “Had you bothered to tell me you’d volunteered as a nurse for the summer, you might have saved many of us a good deal of trouble. It is not an uncomplicated task to arrange a future, Eleanore. A good many people went to some effort on your behalf to secure your place at the Callander orphanage.”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”

  “Indeed. Had I any inkling of your interest in nursing, I might have arranged to send you to one of the many worthy hospitals already in existence.”

  “It—it was a very sudden interest, ma’am.”

  “Plainly. Is that champagne I smell on your breath?”

  “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t dream of—”

  “Good day to you, Miss Jones.”

  “Good day. Ma’am.”

  Chapter 8

  The next day was Saturday. Technically, only Sundays were marked as Visitors’ Day at Iverson, but since the school year had officially ended, it seemed that rule was done as well. The castle was filled with sounds of girls laughing and crying their goodbyes, of doors slamming and the heavy, plodding footsteps of the menservants carrying trunk after trunk down the main stairs to be loaded up in the line of automobiles along the drive.

  Mrs. Westcliffe had arranged for tea service in the front parlor, and that’s where most of the parents lingered, quenching their thirst and girding their loins for the coming months. Girls out of uniform—at last, out of uniform!—darted every which way, eager not to miss a single departure of a classmate they’d probably despised only yesterday.

  I, too, walked the halls out of uniform. Which meant that instead of wearing black or white, I was in brown: plain brown blouse, brown twill skirt, scuffed brown boots. Every single child at Blisshaven had worn this color. I wondered sometimes if it was to make us even more invisible than we already were.

  The ends of my sleeves cut short just above the bones of my wrist. Only three months ago, they’d been the right length. My boots pinched smaller, too, and the top buttons of my skirt strained to pop free. The only thing that fit well at all any longer was the cuff of golden flowers I wore.

  The cuff that Jesse had made for me out of real, living flowers transformed into gold.

  I might have sold it, instead of the pinecone. But I was as likely do that as to chop off my arm.

  I was approaching the open doorway of the parlor, trying to ignore the inviting aromas of spice cake and tea and cucumber sandwiches wafting through, when voices reached me. A cluster of people, stationed near the door.

  “Mamá, I told you—she’s a very little nobody from nowhere. She has no money, no family, and no friends.”

  Aha. Lady Chloe, sounding petulant.

  “Excuse me,” countered a new someone. “But I am her friend.”

  Sophia! My feet slowed.

  “Very charitable of you, my pet, very charitable.” A man this time. Lord Pemington, perhaps? “I have always admired your generous nature.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  “Yes, yes.” A woman now, impatient. “But how did this scholarship girl manage to wrangle an invitation to Tranquility for the entire summer?”

  “Armand is in love with her,” said Sophia.

  “He certainly is not,” hissed Chloe. “She’s connived her way in, that’s all. She’s a scheming little chit! Anyone can see that!”

  “Anyone but Lord Armand, it would appear,” said the woman. “And no wonder, what with this unfortunate business about his father! The poor boy, his head must be muddled. This won’t do. This won’t do in the least.”

  I whipped past the open doorway, but no one was looking at me, anyway.

  Invisible, remember?

  The castle kept any number of secrets locked within its stony heart. Among my favorites—and the most useful—were the hidden passageways that tunneled behind the walls, connecting different floors and chambers from the rooftop all the way down past the dungeons. Some of them had been sealed up or filled in with rubble; those that were left intact seemed to have been forgotten, lost to generations of memories gone to dust.

  Certainly Westcliffe didn’t know about the tunnels, nor did the other students or staff. But Jesse had. And now I did.

  I stood alone on the cold, flat slab that was the floor of another fine secret: Iverson’s grotto. It was a cavern, really, a natural bubble in the bedrock of the island that had been reinforced with man-made pillars and this smooth embankment of limestone. Seawater lapped at the edges of the embankment, making the softest, softest of sounds. It entered and exited through another significant hole in the rock at the far end of the cavern. The only way in or out of this place was through that hole—or else the secret tunnel that had led me here.

  The grotto had been designed as a refuge for the medieval castle folk. As a place of escape should invaders come and Iverson fall. The tide came in, and rowboats could steal away out the hole. The tide went out, and all other boats would be stranded, unable to pursue.

  It was a place of refuge for me, too. It was here that Jesse had first explained to me about who I was. W
hat my Gifts would mean.

  Where we had broken bread together and kissed, and wrapped ourselves in blankets and laughed at fate.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, warding off the chill; it was always much cooler here than anywhere else. I gazed down at the seawater, a strange silvery radiance at my feet, dancing its subtle silvery dance.

  His hair had been blond. His eyes had been green. If I closed my own I could still see them, the summer storms behind them when he looked at me, and I wondered how much longer they’d remain so clear in my memory. It was already getting harder to summon the exact pitch of his voice.

  I squatted down and touched my fingertips to the water, then brought them to my lips. The salt water tasted like tears.

  “I miss you,” I said. The grotto took my words and bounced them back at me: you-you-you …

  No one else answered.

  “I have to go soon,” I said.

  … soon-soon-soon …

  “And I don’t know if I’ll be back. I—I’ll try, though. I’ll try.”

  … try-try-try …

  “Damn you,” I whispered. “I hate you for leaving me behind.”

  … hind-hind-hind …

  “Lora.”

  I stood and flicked the water from my hand, composed myself, then turned and faced the concealed door in the cavern wall behind me.

  Armand, of course. Iverson Castle had been his home once upon a time. He knew about the tunnels, too.

  “I thought I might find you here.”

  “Looks like you were right. Why aren’t you upstairs bidding adieu to all the schoolgirls in love with you?”

  “All those heaving bosoms and soggy pledges of eternal devotion,” he said, reaching my side. “Who can bear it?”

  The walls of the cavern were studded with minute crystals. They blinked in time with the shifting sea, framing him in sparkles.

  I returned to regarding the seawater at my feet. This close to the end of the embankment, my boots were getting wet. “I was going to tell you that I’m being sent to Scotland. But it seems you’re rather more crafty than the rest of us.”

  “One of my finer attributes, if I do say so myself.”

  I thought of the packet of never-to-be-redeemed train tickets upstairs on my dresser, and my threadbare Blisshaven clothing still tucked in its drawers. I thought of Mrs. Westcliffe’s face in the audience after Armand’s announcement, how she had looked as if she’d swallowed a toad.

  “I wasn’t actually going to go,” I said.

  Armand bent his head, lower, lower, until he invaded my line of vision and I had no choice but to meet his eyes. “You’re welcome, waif.”

  “Thank you.”

  He straightened into a stretch, both arms out. “How about that? You uttered the words and lightning didn’t strike you dead.”

  “Is it true, though? Are you really going to make Tranquility into a hospital?”

  “Convalescent hospital, and yes, it’s true. I’ve already been in contact with the minister of defense, who’s assigned all the correct people to the project and assures me I’m a damned fine lad who’s doing a damned fine thing.”

  A hint of something in his voice. Not irony, but something veiled and biting like it.

  “Not just for me, then,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Aubrey,” I realized.

  He looked full at me again. “I can’t join up. You know that. After Aubrey left for the Royal Flying Corps my father pulled every string possible to keep me out the fight and stuck in England, so sod him. I’ll stay here—at least for now—but on my terms. Putting those wounded men in Tranquility will be the best thing that’s ever happened to it. Perhaps it’ll even give the place a soul.”

  “I’m glad,” I said simply.

  “Good.”

  … ood-ood-ood …

  “Listen,” he said. “You should learn how to swim.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ll have to cross the Channel on the way to East Prussia. It’s not an insignificant distance. We don’t know what might happen.”

  I raised my brows and cocked my head. “ ‘We’?”

  “Yes, we,” he replied, irritated. “Of course we. And I’d appreciate it if you refrained from looking at me like that all the time.”

  “Like what?” I snapped.

  “Like I’m an irksome fly orbiting about your oh-so-marvelous self. Whether you like it or not, Miss Jones, this is a team endeavor, and you and I together make up the team. We can count Jesse in, too, if you like. If that makes it all so much better for you. Oh, and the mad duke as well, of course! Couldn’t do any of this bloody nonsense without him.”

  He walked away from me before I could think of a response. He didn’t just leave me alone there in the cavern, though. He placed his hand on the concealed lever that would open the hidden door, but he didn’t leave.

  “You’re not a fly,” I muttered.

  “A mosquito, then.”

  “Mandy, you’re the only person in the world who’s like me.” I spoke quietly, to defeat the echo. “Perhaps a little too like me. And I—I don’t care to learn how to swim. The sea is cold.”

  “Tranquility,” he said, without turning around. “There’s a heated swimming bath inside.”

  I paused, astonished. “There is?”

  “Yes. And a bowling alley. And a gymnasium. Didn’t you know? Nothing but the wildest extravagances for the mad duke.”

  “I never called him that.” Out loud.

  “You don’t have to. Everyone else does.”

  “What do they know? He’s the only one of us gifted with the future by the stars. The only one Jesse talks to.”

  “Yes,” said Armand. “The only one.” He sent me a look. “We should go back up.”

  “You first. We don’t want to be caught alone together in some deserted dark hall. Westcliffe’ll use any excuse to keep me from you.”

  “She can try,” he said.

  We weren’t caught, though. Armand vanished into the warren of tunnels, and about five minutes later I did, too, and I didn’t see him again.

  The flood of families exiting the castle had slowed to a trickle. There would be a few girls like me who stayed on another night or so, but most of the student population was already gone. The air was choked with the pong of diesel and perfume and sweat, stale beer (from the servants?) underneath. I stepped outside to escape it, walking past the final few automobiles idling on the drive.

  Bored chauffeurs puffing on cigarettes looked me up and down. A seagull slung a high, leisurely loop overhead, wings open wide, a hard white chip against the blue.

  The motorcar at the front of the line was bright yellow and huge. It needed to be, I presumed, to hold all the stylish Pemingtons and their liveried driver, who was struggling to tie off the last cord binding the trunks in back.

  “There you are!”

  Sophia crunched across the gravel to me, holding out both hands to take mine like we were the most devoted of confidantes. Chloe and her mother, already seated inside the auto, eyed me suspiciously, probably expecting me to pick her pockets.

  “Smile,” she whispered. “They’re watching, aren’t they? Smile like you’ve just won all my money at whist.”

  I did, and Sophia smiled in return, laughing, and drew me into a hug.

  “How do they look?” she breathed into my ear.

  “Like you’ve shamed them for all eternity.”

  “Wonderful!” She made a show of touching her lips to my cheek.

  “Time to go, pet.” Lord Pemington ambled up from behind, placing a meaty hand on Sophia’s shoulder.

  “Yes, Papa. Oh, have you met Miss Jones? Eleanore, my father, Lord Maurice Pemington, Earl of Shot. Papa, Mis
s Eleanore Jones. She’s the one who’s going to be with Armand all summer.”

  “At the hospital,” I added hastily.

  “Of course.” Lord Pemington granted me a cursory nod; clearly he had other things to do besides be introduced to a girl from the ghetto, even with Lord Armand’s name invoked. “How do you do, Miss—er—miss. I’m afraid we really must be going, Sophia. You know how your mother dislikes to travel after sundown.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Much softer, as he walked to the auto: “And she’s not my mother.”

  Sophia glanced back at me, unsmiling now, her blue eyes pale as glaciers.

  “Have a grand summer,” I said, because she’d called me friend before, even if it wasn’t true.

  “I hope to,” she replied. “I suppose we’ll just have to see.”

  She went to rejoin to her family without another look.

  Chapter 9

  Three lives shine below me. Of the nearly two billion mortal souls churning and sowing and reaping atop the curve of the planet below, most are muddy, lost to me. Only three shine up this far and high, tenuous as candle flames, bright as stars … which is funny, if you think about it.

  I do. Think about it, that is.

  I can’t deny that I’m lonely without her. I can’t deny, even a little bit, that I wish we were still together, me there below or her up high here, at my side. I never knew that mortal love could be so binding. That having her blocked from me would be so painful.

  I try whispering to her, but she doesn’t hear. I try shouting, but that doesn’t work, either. Her dreams remain closed to me, and I don’t know why.

  The other two dragons in my care, males who haven’t even mastered the Turn yet, who’ve come nowhere near her glory or power—they hear me. Even their sire does.

  Lora doesn’t.

  It breaks my heart. It would, I mean, had I a heart still.

  But I’m not going to stop singing to her. I can’t. It would be like ceasing to be myself, or plain ceasing to be.

  I tell myself that someday she’ll hear.

  Gods grant me this prayer, this one hope beyond our celestial realm: Lora-of-the-moon, stop looking down. Lift your eyes skyward. Turn your ears to me. With all the magic I can summon, I command you to hear this serenade. Feel my love, falling rose petals, white-hot tears, comet-tail sparks. All for you.