Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella

by Megan Morrison

  The day after the fire, Nettie Belting’s story broke. Criers boxes across Tyme were filled and refilled as everyone in every nation devoured the story behind the whispered rumor.

  JACQUARD IN CINDERS

  PRINCE CHARMING AND 600 LABORERS TRAPPED

  IN DEADLY BLAZE;

  BLUE FAIRIES RACE TO THE RESCUE

  It was a story both substantial and scandalous. Little children trapped in a burning building, the horror of death and destruction, heroic fairies, Prince Dash courageous, corruption at Jacquard, the arrest of Ella Coach, and the return of Queen Maud.

  Dash read it, and his eyes jumped all over the page, afraid of what lies they might find. But along with the sensational details, Nettie had delivered all the depth he could have hoped. The conditions of the workshop were described — its locked doors and diseased quarters, its bound children and rotting stairs. No one who read the story could miss the truth: Lariat Jacquard was a monster, and nearly two hundred corpses lay at her feet.

  The House of Mortals called swiftly for a hearing to determine Ella’s role in the fire. Within a week, the hearing was organized. The day it began, thousands of laborers from all over the kingdom converged upon the government; they surrounded the walls, cursing and weeping, waving flags that read FREE ELLA COACH. The army forced them back to let the royal carriage through, and as it rolled along between their ragged bodies, the people chanted Dash’s name. Not his father’s.

  His mother pressed his hand.

  The Assembly Hall where the king presided was a great, round chamber with a vaulted ceiling made of pale blue glass that was cut like an enormous jewel. Tiers of box seats, silk-curtained and velvet-lined, ringed the curving walls: one seat for each member of the Assembly. At the top sat the House of Magic — fairies, Hipocraths, and a few Kisscrafters of unusually significant power. Immediately beneath them sat the most influential members of the House of Mortals: the Garters and Gussets, the Batiks and the Panniers, the Trusses and the Farthingales. Beneath these seats, in descending rings of boxes of decreasing size, were those whose wealth did not reach quite so far. In the center of the bottom rung sat Lady Shantung. Only the gallery benches were below her.

  Across from this theatre of power, raised up separately on an astonishingly high blue marble dais, three grand seats glimmered beneath a mist of magic light. On the left sat Exalted Nexus Maven, First Chair of the House of Magic. On the right sat Lariat Jacquard, First Chair of the House of Mortals. In the center shone the royal throne, ornate with jewels and silver, with a back that stretched up as high as three tall men. At the sides of this ostentatious display, two smaller thrones awaited the prince and queen.

  Dash took his place on the right, between his father and Lady Jacquard. His mother stood on the left, between her husband and Nexus Maven. The Exalted Nexus inclined her head to Queen Maud, but the queen neither looked at the woman nor returned her gesture.

  King Clement sat. So did the rest of the Assembly. The hall fell silent, but from outside, the ceaseless chanting of the labor class was clearly audible. Already, the Relay had begun to record the session: He sat in a trance at his table upon a small platform near the Nexus’s side of the dais, his Exalted amulet resting upon his doublet, his hand moving faster than humanly possible across sheets of special parchment as he communicated every detail of the hearing back to the Exalted Council.

  “Bring in the accused,” bellowed King Clement.

  From between the low gallery boxes across from the dais, the doors of the prison cellar opened. Dash’s heart lurched. Half a dozen unnecessary soldiers bullied Ella to the center of the floor, where two unadorned chairs waited, facing the dais. Dash was startled by the sight of her in prison clothes and chains, looking as much like a criminal as Lariat Jacquard could have wanted.

  Ella glanced back over her shoulder and up into the lofty gallery. She recoiled from the hundreds of hard faces that stared down at her. When she turned again, her eyes found Dash, and he thought he saw, just for a second, how frightened she was — and then the guards shoved her into her seat and bound her to it, as if she were any threat. Her stepmother, Lady Gourd-Coach, stepped forward from the gallery and took the seat beside Ella. Behind her, Ella’s father sat in the front row, visibly sweating. His stepchildren flanked him, grim-faced.

  King Clement opened a small, gilt-edged scroll and raised his voice above the sounds of the furious city outside. “In the case of the Jacquard fire, Elegant Herringbone Coach is charged with trespassing, sabotage, and the murder of one hundred and seventy-one citizens of the Blue Kingdom. If guilty, she will be sentenced to life imprisonment. Elegant Herringbone Coach, how do you answer the charges laid against you?”

  Ella’s eyes glittered as if they still reflected fire.

  “Not guilty, Your Majesty,” she said in a soft, subdued voice that was unlike anything Dash had ever heard from her. Even her southern accent had all but vanished.

  “She lies,” said Lady Jacquard, settling back in her chair. “Bring in Rolo Neats.”

  SHE sat bound to the chair as Neats was marched into the chamber. She tried not to feel the hundreds of eyes that glared down on her, or the ropes that cut into her arms, or the sweat that rolled down her neck. From outside, she heard the sound of Dash’s name being called by the people. She heard her own name too among the cries. No matter what lies Lady Jacquard told, the people of Blue knew the truth.

  But they couldn’t keep her out of prison.

  Sharlyn had been permitted to visit the prison as her advocate — just once, and very briefly. Before their time together expired, she made Ella swear to be composed. She was not to speak unless she was questioned, and then she was to speak properly, with not one breath of insolence.

  The guards released Neats’s arms and stepped back, leaving him so close to Ella’s chair that she could smell the filth of him.

  “Mr. Neats, you oversee my Quintessential workshop.”

  “S’right, ma’am.” He bowed low to Lady Jacquard. “Going on eight years now.”

  “During that time, has there been a single death there?”

  “Not one,” said Neats. “You take good care of your people. No one could be more grieved by the deaths of those laborers than you.”

  Lady Jacquard touched her heart. “Thank you,” she said, and Ella had to fight to hide the outrage she felt. “Please tell the Assembly what happened on the day of the fire.”

  “This girl said she needed a job,” said Neats. “Said she had experience unrolling cocoons, so I put her on the fifth floor. Then the fire started.”

  “How soon after she reached the fifth floor did the fire begin there?”

  “Within an hour, my lady.”

  “And you had no idea that this girl was Ella Coach?”

  “She lied, ma’am. Said her name was Kit.”

  Lady Jacquard raised her eyes to the Assembly. “It cannot be coincidence,” she said. “Ella Coach gives a false name, sneaks into my workshop, and in less than an hour a fire breaks out right beside her? Ella Coach set that fire. She despises me, as she despises us all. At the royal ball, she called us murderers. White-hearted witches. And why?” She lanced Ella with her eyes. “Because I gave her mother twelve years’ employment. A heinous crime indeed.”

  Ella clamped her teeth together hard and thought of Sharlyn’s warnings. She will bait you. Expect it. If you rise to it, she wins.

  “She trespassed on my property,” Lariat went on, passing pale fingers through her sharp fringe and smoothing it aside again. “She lied to gain access to a workshop where she knew that she would never be allowed if she gave her real name. Once inside, she set fire to it, purely to punish me. The lives of nearly two hundred people were nothing to her.” She turned to the king. “Sir, I am ready to call my next witness.”

  “Very well,” said King Clement. “Lady Gourd-Coach, have you any response before we proceed?”

  “I have, Your Majesty. Thank you.”

  How Sharlyn could sound
so calm, so nearly cheerful, Ella did not know. Her stepmother hefted a dense pile of parchment from the sleek bag she kept beside her, then stood and stepped forward. “Lady Jacquard, you claim that if Ella had given her real name, she could not have gained access to your workshop, yes?”

  Lariat barely inclined her head.

  Sharlyn arranged her pince-nez and consulted her stack of parchment. “But she did give her real name when she worked as your employee,” she said. “Here are the labor records filed in the year 1083. E. H. Coach, Fulcrum. She was eleven.”

  The Assembly murmured, and Ella’s breath quickened. She hadn’t known Sharlyn was going to tell them this. She permitted herself a brief look at Dash, who was staring at her.

  “Here is the file from 1082,” Sharlyn went on. “When Ella was ten. In fact, Garment Guild records show that you employed Ella Coach regularly starting in the year 1076. When she was four.”

  Dash’s face slackened.

  “You’re confused,” said Lady Jacquard. “That’s her mother’s name listed in the files.”

  “Her mother never took the Coach name. Here it is: E. Herringbone, listed separately, also at the Fulcrum location.”

  “And how do we know these records are legitimate?” Lady Jacquard demanded.

  A flush rose in Dash’s cheeks, and Ella knew at once how Sharlyn had gotten the labor files. He glanced up to his left, and she followed his gaze to the top of the chamber, even above the House of Magic’s high seats. There, perched in a ring around the cut-glass ceiling, were a host of Blue fairies, including one with a plume of white-blond hair that waved perfectly over one eye and a wing with its top charred black.

  Beneath her collar, against her skin, the charm on her necklace grew warm.

  “I assure you, these are official records.” Sharlyn handed the files to a page, who ran them up the steps to the royal seat for the king to review. King Clement flicked through the evidence, then turned furious eyes upon his son.

  “For seven years,” said Sharlyn, her voice as even as a blade, cutting through the noise in the chamber, “Ella Coach unrolled cocoons in a Jacquard workshop. She spent much of her childhood bound to her chair by people such as Rolo Neats, just as she sits bound before you now.”

  The noise in the Assembly Hall redoubled. Snatches of conversation could be heard, some sympathetic, others unpleasant. Disbelieving. Amused. In the highest mortal tier of the chamber, someone laughed.

  “Thank you for further proving my point, Lady Gourd-Coach,” said Lady Jacquard. She wasn’t as good as Sharlyn at hiding her real feelings; her smile was too sharp to be genuine. “It is now clear that Ella Coach’s grudge against me is far longer and more personal than I previously knew. The fire was her vengeance.”

  “Rolo Neats,” said Sharlyn. “How did the fire begin?”

  “I was on the stairs,” he said. “And I heard —”

  “Did the fire start on the stairs?”

  “Well, no —”

  “So you don’t know how it began.”

  “I heard screams,” he insisted. “From the fifth floor, where Ella Coach —”

  “You saw nothing,” said Sharlyn. “Correct?”

  The man looked nervously up at Lariat. “She’s in Jacquard one hour, and a fire starts,” he said. “S’proof enough, isn’t it? What are the odds?”

  “They are twelve thousand to one,” said Sharlyn. “Ella Coach has spent nearly twelve thousand hours of her life in a Jacquard workshop. That is twelve thousand opportunities to set fires — and yet, somehow, no fires were ever set. Still, you would swear that she set this fire, although you did not see it and although she was locked in the same room with it, unable to escape, on the fifth floor of the building?”

  “I’m just telling you what I know!”

  “Where did you go when the fire broke out, Mr. Neats?”

  “I ran from it like anyone would.”

  “His Royal Highness did not run.”

  The Assembly Hall went quiet. Neats’s chin trembled. Dash gazed straight ahead, face flushed. On the other side of the king, Queen Maud stared at Rolo Neats as though she would have preferred him dead.

  “Did you unlock any doors before you ran?” Sharlyn demanded.

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “And yet there was time for His Royal Highness to return to the fifth floor without you, risking his life to free those who were trapped there, although he had no key. Because when you ran, you took your keys and left your prince behind. Didn’t you?”

  The queen made a low noise of fury. Neats looked to be on the verge of blubbering.

  “Why were those doors locked, Mr. Neats?”

  “To prevent theft!”

  “Are there no floor managers to oversee that?”

  Neats glanced at Lariat in terror. “There have been, in the past. But they’ve gone off and left me on my own, see, and I’ve had to make do by myself.”

  “For how long?”

  “Going on a year,” whispered Neats.

  “A year?” Lariat Jacquard leaned forward. She looked genuinely surprised. “Neats, it is your duty to hire a full staff. You have been given adequate funds with which to do so.”

  Neats squirmed, still blinking back tears. “I tried,” he whined.

  “I would venture a guess,” said Sharlyn to Lariat, “that rather than hiring an appropriate number of supervisors, your Mr. Neats has been pocketing two or three salaries in addition to his own, and locking the doors to make sure he wouldn’t get into trouble for it.”

  Sharlyn turned her back on the royal dais to address the full Assembly.

  “Look at him,” she said. “Here is Lady Jacquard’s great witness to Ella Coach’s guilt. A man who did not see the fire start. A cheat who embezzled from his employer. A beast, who, to save his own skin, left Prince Dash to act as foreman and unlock those rooms. Rolo Neats abandoned six hundred people in a burning building, and near two hundred of them died the most gruesome deaths that I have ever seen.”

  “And that,” said Lariat Jacquard, looking relieved, “is entirely on his head. I had no idea that he was locking those doors!”

  “If you did not know for a year that your foreman was placing your employees in danger, then that is very much on your head, Lady Jacquard,” said Sharlyn. “You own Jacquard Silks, and you hired Mr. Neats. Your neglect made his abuses possible.”

  Lady Jacquard’s expression was smooth as wax, except for her eyes. They gleamed with hate.

  “I am ready for the next witness.” Sharlyn took her seat beside Ella and removed her pince-nez. Her hands were steady, her face implacable, and if Ella had not been bound to the chair, she would have flung herself at her stepmother and hugged her tight.

  EVERY Blue fairy who had witnessed the Jacquard fire had been summoned to the hearing by the House of Mortals. They perched at the height of the chamber, looking down on the proceedings in silence. Serge watched as Lavaliere was brought forward as the next witness.

  “Where’s Jasper?” whispered Carvel, beside him. “I thought you said he’d be back.”

  Serge could only shake his head. It had been a week, and Jasper had not returned from wherever he was.

  “Where’s Jules?” whispered Thimble on his other side. “She’s never missed anything this sensational. Do you think she’s afraid to show her face?”

  Serge thought exactly that.

  “She attacked me in the changing room at school,” Lavaliere was saying now, in a voice that trembled for effect.

  “Show the Assembly the injury that Ella Coach inflicted,” said Lariat.

  Lavaliere held out her forearm and pushed up her silk sleeve. Four long, red scabs glared from her skin. The Assembly gasped, and she swayed on her feet. A guard caught her elbow.

  “My poor darling,” said Lariat. “Please tell the Assembly what happened next.”

  “She pushed me down and I went unconscious,” said Lavaliere, leaning against the guard for support. “I’ve always been afra
id of her, but …” She paused.

  “Yes?” her mother prodded.

  “I tried to be kind. Because … Ella is so new here. Now I wish I’d spoken sooner. If only I … If only I had shared my fears …” Her eyes closed. “All those people might still be alive,” she managed, and then her voice broke, and she began to weep.

  “Ella Coach uses violence and intimidation to achieve her goals,” said Lady Jacquard, gesturing toward her daughter. “She targeted Lavaliere, who was alone and vulnerable. She attacked the laborers in my workshop, who were unaware of a trespasser in their midst. She is a bully who takes advantage of those who are weaker and cannot defend themselves.”

  Serge’s lungs constricted suddenly with fury that did not belong to him. It was Ella’s emotion: She was close to bursting with anger. In reply, his heart grew warm within his chest. It filled him with a bittersweet gladness he could hardly contain.

  I’m here with you, he thought. Be calm. Take one deep breath, and then another.

  He saw her shoulders relax. Saw her fists uncurl. He only wished he could as easily soothe Prince Dash, whose face was mottled with all the fury that Ella could not betray.

  “Lady Gourd-Coach,” said the king. “Have you any reply?”

  “Indeed, Your Majesty. Thank you.” Sharlyn rose, and the Assembly leaned forward in their boxes — hoping, Serge was sure, for another sensational interrogation.

  “Miss Jacquard,” said Sharlyn. “Who witnessed the scene between you and Ella Coach?”

  “Dimity Gusset found me bleeding on the floor.”

  “But who witnessed the attack itself?”

  “Ella caught me alone,” said Lavaliere. “She didn’t want witnesses.”

  “I ask you again: Who witnessed the scene between you and Ella Coach?”

  Lavaliere glowered at her. “No one,” she murmured, holding out her arm again for a moment before it fell limply to her side. “The proof is here.”