“Perhaps it will come later . . .”
She said her tearful goodbyes to the child and then left Rose Herm. In the seasons to come, she would always listen for gossip and news of her amethyst-eyed baby, though for a long time there would be none.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Nanny
As a baby and toddler, the nameless little girl was shy and sweet, but this changed with the arrival of the nanny.
Ma Dane had been struck by the glimpse of the eerie being in her study that day with the wet nurse. She had not expected the child to look so much like Asha. The resemblance was uncanny despite the freakish, silver coloring, and it led her to assume that her temperament would be similar—difficult. She decided that the child would need a firm hand or else her fate would also be the same. What would become of Ma Dane’s reputation then? The standing she had bought, fought for, and dreamt of. The child would need a firm hand or else she would ruin everything.
And so the nanny arrived. Her résumé promised harsh discipline and her last place was in the house of one of the State Leaders who had five young, jostling boys, which made her seem the perfect person to control the child. Ma Dane sent for her immediately and the woman arrived two days after the wet nurse departed and perhaps if it had been just a day, or if there had been a crossover period, then things might have been different. But it was not and it could not be helped.
The amethyst-eyed baby had not spent a night away from her wet nurse since she could remember. The sudden separation upset and confused her and she cried to herself all the dark, warm night, curled in a corner of the lonely nursery. A long, solitary day followed in which she was visited at mealtimes by a maid evidently petrified to be in her presence, and then passed another gloomy night. By the time the nanny arrived, the amethyst-eyed toddler was weak with neglect and loneliness. She had not stopped whimpering since dawn and that was how the nanny found her: cowering under the wet nurse’s empty rocking chair.
“The child is down here?” the nanny had asked, following Ma Dane down a long corridor on the third floor.
“Yes, that is correct. We keep her in Master Eli’s old nursery. I had a suite of rooms prepared for his birth, but they were not finished in time and he had to spend a few days in here after he was born. The room is sufficient for the needs of this child.”
They stopped before a plain door and Ma Dane took a key from a pouch about her waist. Her fingers were trembling although she was trying hard not to show it. When she met new staff, she liked to be as imposing and haughty as possible to terrify them into submission right away, but this was proving to be difficult. Anything that concerned the amethyst-eyed child caused her nerves to jitter. She felt like a girl again, dressed in the ancient tatters of a fashion long gone, who was laughed at in the street.
“Does the child need to be locked in?”
“She has a tendency to roam about the house if left to her own devices and it upsets the servants.”
“All unruly ways shall be punished.”
But Ma Dane scarcely heard what the nanny said. She unlocked the door and marched inside, and at first she did not see it, but then she caught sight of a wary little face beneath the rocking chair, and she sucked in her breath. The thing was biting the nail of its thumb in that achingly familiar way.
“I will leave you to become acquainted,” Ma Dane barked, sweeping out of the room and shutting the door hastily behind her. In the empty corridor outside, she leaned against the wall for a moment to regain her composure, the back of her neck slick with sweat.
In the nursery, the nanny squared up to the thing trembling beneath the rocking chair.
“I am Nan and I want you to come out immediately.”
If the baby had been wary, she was now petrified and could not have moved if she had wanted to. She hoped desperately that her wet nurse would return and stared hard at the dark wooden slates of the floor, wishing to awake from this nightmare.
“Come out. This is the last time I will tell you.”
A moment later, a clawed hand swiped beneath the rocking chair, grasping the doughy arm of the toddler and wrenching her out in one yank. She did not have time to cry or even take a breath before she was confronted with a cratered, thick face hissing into her own.
Nan smelled of crumpled tissues and floor polish. Her limp gray hair was raked into a twist on the top of her dome-shaped head and her sagging skin resembled dribbled wax. Ma Dane had been pleased to note her horrific presence, thinking that she was just the sort of woman who could have controlled Asha, if indeed anyone could have.
“From now on, you shall do as I instruct. You are lower than a servant here. You are a dependent, is that clear?”
The child gazed back at her in mute shock.
Taking silence for disobedience, Nan thwacked her across the thigh in a sharp, cutting slap.
Tears sprang to her violet eyes.
“When I am speaking to you, you will give me the sign of respect.”
Grabbing the child’s left hand, she shoved it against her chest.
“Is that clear?”
The amethyst-eyed child did share the same temperament as Asha— Ma Dane had guessed that much correctly. But had she been cared for and shown tender affection, the child would have been merely headstrong. In fact, her initial shyness would have worked in her favor and she could perhaps have been single-minded but sensitive. As it was, this would not be the case.
Cruelty soured her. Nan was used to treating spoiled little darlings who were lavished with adoration from their parents and sorely in need of a commanding presence. The amethyst-eyed child had no one else in the whole realm and Nan’s savageness squashed her. She was shown no mercy.
There was not one striking incident that did it. There was no sense that she had been pushed past her limit. Rather, it was a slow burn of brutality that could only head in one direction. It started with the sign of respect—the child would press her left hand to her chest and stab the nails into her skin, creating tiny mauve crescents while inwardly hating Nan and clenching her teeth to bite back screams of rage. This progressed to snubbing her nose whenever Nan was not looking, which filled her with secret glee. Then she began moving Nan’s things around the nursery. Not hiding them, because that would be too obvious, but rearranging items enough to make it difficult.
Emboldened, she went further: not answering right away, not signing respect until told to, not brushing her hair, and so on. Eventually the child rebelled altogether and began sneaking out of the nursery whenever the opportunity arrived.
And every smarting slap that she received as punishment, every strict reprimand and nasty insult, was worth it. She would not stop misbehaving, for she could not bear it otherwise. Having escaped, she would scurry through the corridors of Rose Herm unnoticed, spying on the servants and, in particularly bold moments, on Ma Dane. At first this was enough to satisfy her rebellious urges, but soon she craved more. She began venturing into the grounds of the mansion and it was around this time that she first met Owaine.
Owaine had heard of the strange child, as all of the servants had, but he had never seen it. The maids often liked to whisper at mealtimes in the lower quarters of curses and demons and bad luck, but he took little heed of them. In fact, he barely spoke to anyone except to command his stable lads and to exchange a few polite observations with the gardeners. He found the outside servants easier to mix with than the house servants if he needed company, and the feeling was mutual. The house servants thought his lilting accent comical and difficult to understand. They found his manners rough and peculiar, but they did not expect much else from a Hillander.
Owaine’s homeland was many miles away, in the opposite corner of Pervorocco—a long distance from any city and different in feel, smell, and taste from Sago. In spare moments he dreamt of moist, green hills, cool fog, and the smell of drenched earth. He longed to return to his homeland, but grief and poverty had brought him to Sago to seek work and he feared returning. As stable ma
nager at Rose Herm, he could send a wedge of sticks home each moon-cycle to his daughter, who was cared for by a relation in his village. He missed her dearly, but he told himself that he was better off staying at Rose Herm.
His job kept him occupied and his rooms in the stable loft meant that he was rarely away from it. Owaine was a skilled horseman and the tang of horse sweat and the scent of hay were his constant companions. They were also what brought the amethyst-eyed child to him.
One morning he was grooming the carriage horses as usual when he saw something flickering in the shadows of the opposite stall. Comrade, Pa Hamish’s riding horse, was whickering softly and he could hear the soft swish of straw being shuffled.
Frowning, Owaine clicked his tongue and whistled, wondering if one of the hunting dogs had gotten in there again. Comrade adored petting and would let anyone and any animal into his stall. He had not exactly turned out to be the show horse Pa Hamish had hoped for.
Owaine approached the stall and peered over the half door, expecting to see a dog or one of Sago’s street cats that often prowled the grounds for pickings. Instead, two violet eyes stared back at him.
“Urgh!”
He jumped, causing Comrade to flinch and stamp his hoof in frustration.
Owaine pressed his thumb and index finger together firmly and tried to calm his beating chest. The maids’ stories flew into his mind and he swallowed hard. Gathering his courage, he peered over the half door once again.
The child had buried her face against Comrade’s lean ebony leg, wrapping her silvery arms around his knee. She looked so vulnerable that any misgivings Owaine harbored ebbed. She was wearing a pair of slacks that did not fit and a frilled boy’s shirt with deep creases.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said in the soothing lilt he reserved for skittish colts.
She peeked at him with one curious violet eye.
“I won’t hurt yur.”
She stared at him.
Owaine wandered back over to the carriage horses and began muttering a Hilland folk song. He picked up a currycomb and started working the knots out of the first horse’s tail.
Winds of blight that tear the earth,
Rain that spills the rights of birth.
Gods that weave our spells divine,
Protect these ancient hills of mine.
He heard a shuffle of straw and glanced over to see the child standing on the other side of Comrade’s stall. He had not even heard her slide the bolt and open the half door.
“You remind me of Ma, girly,” he said. “She were yur size when I left, but I ’spose she’s bigger now.”
The child stared at him and bit on her thumb.
He turned his attention back to the knots and waited. From the corner of his eye he saw a pale shadow creep closer. A moment later, he looked over his shoulder and saw her standing a yard or so away, watching him closely. She had a dark purple bruise on her temple that looked tender and sore.
“What happened there?”
She recoiled from him with a whimper.
“Hush, yur. Hush.”
He moved back over to the carriage horse and carried on brushing. After a while he turned his head and saw her standing beside Comrade’s stall again, cradling the horse’s head in her arms and hugging his muzzle to her chest.
“He’ll take any amount of that. Yur could stay there all day if yur please.”
And she did. After that she came back whenever she could escape the nursery, keeping the horseman company while he worked.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Circus
In the spring of her twenty-fourth season, the amethyst-eyed child learned how to escape Rose Herm’s grounds. Hitherto she had started to bolt the nursery on a daily basis, spending her time in the company of Owaine or prowling the vast, ornamented grounds of the mansion, climbing trees and playing solitary games in the punishing heat. Nan kept the child’s escapes a secret from the rest of the household, since her pride could not stand the tarnish of failure. Her place among the house servants was high; they feared her for her appearance and her reputation. They respected her for keeping that freakish being in check, and she enjoyed her elevated rank.
But Nan had run out of punishments for the child. Smacking her no longer worked and neither did shouting or cursing. The child’s silver skin was riddled with deep, plum bruises from pinches and punches and kicks. Nan had told her that she was the scum of the realm so many times that it no longer had any effect. The child would stand and take it all with the most infuriating blank expression, and then the next day she would find some way of escaping again. She climbed out of windows, created distractions and slipped through the door, stole keys, and hid. Nan was beginning to crack.
The child took pains to avoid everyone except Owaine when she wandered about the grounds. She was old enough to realize that her appearance caused others shock and horror, so she snuck around like a pale shadow. For a while, her favorite pastime was to find a way into the drawing room and crouch under an armchair, watching the visitors Ma Dane had over for tea. This was how she learned words other than “wretch,” “monster,” and “demon.”
She would crouch until her whole body was numb with inertia and stare at the exotic creatures that inhabited that room. They flew in with puffs of potent scent that clogged the warm air and made her drowsy. Their olive décolletages were powdered with sweet talcum like delicate frosting and their swollen, extravagant dresses pooled in folds about their slippered feet. They would enter the room stiff and cool and slowly wilt in the sticky Sago day. The child, too, would be damp with sweat by evening and then she would creep out as she had crept in, find a fountain in the grounds, and wallow in its soothing chill before Nan eventually found her and dragged her back inside.
It was in the drawing room that the child heard about the circus and decided to escape Rose Herm’s grounds for the first time. The Coo-se-Nutoes were visiting as they often did, before the Shap-se-George and after the Crit-se-Prom, and the child was squatting in her place under the armchair beside the cavernous fireplace that was never lit. This was the best spot because no one ever sat in the creaky antique chair and it gave a full view of the visitors and Ma Dane.
The child had always known instinctively who the round, bloated woman was. Though she had seen her but a few times, Ma Dane’s small brown eyes, thin lips, and dark hair were familiar. The child watched her with interest, but mostly she liked to watch the ladies and particularly the Coo-se-Nutoes, who were the loveliest of all.
Ma Usa Coo-se-Nutoes was almost the same age as Ma Dane and as tiny as the latter was large. Ma Usa had two beautiful daughters, Peony and Bow, with unusual black hair, soft features, and graceful airs. Often, if she could not escape the nursery, the child would stalk about the dank room, trying to imitate their gliding walk.
Listening to their chatter and gossip over syrupy tea and sweetmeats, the child would hear about dances and fashions and marriages. On this particular humid morning, she learned of the circus.
“You must have heard of it,” said Ma Usa. “Did you not feel the spells? They caused havoc in our kitchens.”
Ma Dane sipped from her tea and the bone china looked strange in her thick fingers. “We have already had the usual ones for this time of year,” she replied.
“But that is just it!” burst out Peony. “The usual circuses have not come this year, they have been put off by—”
Ma Usa cleared her throat and Peony quieted.
“The rouge spells you have felt are all from one circus,” explained Ma Usa. “The Beautiful Spectacular has created havoc on its own. They say it is a phenomenon: magic that has never been seen before.”
Ma Dane shifted in her seat. “I had not heard of this,” she said. “And I assumed that few circuses would try crossing the borders in the current political climate. They are a rather tired tradition, I think.”
“But the circuses are part of our history!” squeaked Bow.
“They are an import from The
Neighbor,” replied Ma Dane coolly. “And especially dangerous considering the guerrilla warfare surfacing in their capital.”
“You cannot think that is serious?” said Ma Usa, setting down her cup. “It is a group of anti-Magical extremists and The Neighbor has seen and squashed hundreds before.”
“Sago cannot risk appearing to sympathize with Magical immigrants, whatever happens in The Neighbor.”
“Then, you do think it serious?”
“I dined with a few State members three days past and they certainly are considering the matter of great importance. If I had known of The Beautiful Spectacular, I would have said something.”
“But the Houses have welcomed circuses every summer for thousands of seasons!” cried Peony. “It is just a glorious show!”
Ma Dane turned her bulk on the girl. “We Houses do not welcome political turmoil. We have more sense than that.” Her eyes pointed to the golden amulet hung proudly on the opposite wall.
“But—” began Bow.
“In fact, the State is so set against breaking peace with The Neighbor that I doubt they will look kindly upon magically sympathetic leaders that intend to appeal in the forthcoming poll . . .”
All three visitors blushed and shuffled their slippers.
“Ma Dane, you know we are always very grateful for the support you have given my husband over the years.”
“Good. I’m sure Pa Coo-se-Nutoes would not want to support the . . . the . . .”
“The Beautiful Spectacular,” muttered Peony.
“Yes. I’m sure he would not want to support something that endangered his position. In fact, I shall ask to visit it with him today to be sure. The whole thing seems very suspect to me. We do not want a repeat of the Red Wars.”
Ma Usa flinched.
“Has it—is it that bad?”
“It’s critical. The Neighbor has played a dangerous game,” Ma Dane spat the words. “It has gone too far with its University of Magic and military force. The backlash was inevitable.”
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