Blood Rose Rebellion

by Rosalyn Eves

  “I…I only wanted to see you. To hold you, like this.” I felt him smile against my hair.

  My mouth curled in response, though only the darkness saw it.

  “I heard voices,” Freddy said. “You weren’t seen?”

  “No.” I remembered the conversation I’d overheard, and the bubbles in my stomach popped all at once. I drew back. “Freddy, why is there rioting in Manchester? And who are the heretics? I thought they were those protestors we saw in Hyde Park, wanting to be rid of Luminates entirely, but one of the men said my father was a heretic. I don’t see how that is possible.”

  Freddy was quiet for so long I began to fear he would not answer. At last, he drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose.

  Perhaps the kiss was meant to convey his affection, but all I sensed was the patronizing note. “Let me try to understand.”

  In the distance, a bell tolled the quarter hour. Freddy turned toward the house; the faint light thrown our way illuminated the smooth planes of his face.

  “We should go.”

  “Go?” For a moment my mind raced with wild ideas of flight to the border, to Gretna Green, where runaways could marry without a formal license.

  “I promised your sister I would watch her performance.”

  “Oh.”

  When I did not move, Freddy held his hand out to me. “Come. Surely you wish to see Catherine’s charm-casting?”

  As Catherine’s charm-casting was unlikely to be anything less than perfect, I had no wish to see it. Freddy and I had never talked of my magic—or lack thereof—but he must know. Everyone knew, even strangers in my father’s garden. He should have guessed how much it would pain me to witness what I could never have. That he could not see my reluctance, somehow, led a cold fear to curdle in my breast.

  Besides, I had no way to enter the ballroom unseen.

  As if he read my thoughts, Freddy added, “I’ll sneak you inside.”

  It seemed churlish to keep refusing. I stood, my long skirt falling in heavy folds around my ankles. “Very well.”

  Freddy muttered a spell, his hands inscribing an arch in the air. A shimmering bit of air split like a torn seam: a portal. I’d never seen one performed before. Only the Lucifera Order could manipulate space, and my family were Elementalists or Coremancers.

  When I hesitated—spells were sometimes unpredictable in my presence—Freddy took my hand. “It will be all right.”

  At his touch, a kick of excitement sparked through my body, tamping down my momentary fear. Freddy tugged my hand gently, guiding me into the portal. The light blinked in and out around me, and then we were through. We stepped out of the portal into a shadowed alcove, partially screened by a potted tree. I wondered if Freddy had spied this out beforehand, prepared for just such a contingency.

  The room was stiflingly hot after the garden, despite the rose-scented breezes that circulated. Tiny droplets of water, like so many winking jewels, hung suspended above our heads by Papa’s magic, joining and then separating in intricate patterns over the assembly.

  Peering around the tree, I saw Catherine in her white gown at the heart of the room. My parents and grandmother were nearby, my father’s face flushed with wine, my mother’s pale with tension. Mama knew, as I did, that no matter how lovely Catherine was, failure in this moment would compromise her marriage prospects. No nobleman would want a wife who could not ensure that his heirs carried magic. Except Freddy. Though we had not talked about marriage in so many words, Freddy had often hinted at it. His willingness to overlook my lack of magic only confirmed my belief in his open mind, his generous heart.

  With a final squeeze of my hand, Freddy strode forward to stand by my father, and Catherine’s face lit like a bonfire. As Catherine closed the distance between them and rested her hand on his arm, spikes of dread shot up and down my spine.

  My father spoke. “Lords, ladies, exalted members of the Circle.” He nodded to a small cluster of men and women standing near my sister, tonight’s chosen representatives from the powerful coterie who controlled Luminate magic. “Thank you for joining us. This is a momentous occasion. It is the night my daughter Catherine leaves behind her girlhood and becomes a woman, the night she becomes a full Luminate of the Elementalist Order. I trust you shall be as dazzled by her debut spell as I have been all these years raising her.”

  While Papa spoke, Catherine cast her eyes down to the floor and a becoming blush suffused her cheeks. I knew my sister well enough to suspect the blush was charmed. When Papa ceased speaking, Catherine lifted her head. She closed her eyes and began chanting. I couldn’t hear her words, but I could see the delicate gestures of hand and wrist as she laid her spell. The scent of roses intensified, and the lights in the room dimmed, all save a gradual brightening around my sister. The showmanship was part of the performance.

  Catherine opened her eyes, and her illusion began to coalesce around her. Like Papa, Catherine was an Elementalist capable of manipulating wind, water, light, and fire. As her ability to manipulate light was particularly strong, illusions showed her skills to advantage. She’d taken roses as her illusion motif, an appropriately feminine choice that reflected her chosen soul sign, the white rose glittering at her throat. The air behind her shimmered with giant roses, a tapestry of red and white and pink superimposed upon the air. Before her, a steadily increasing glow became a tableau: a beautiful golden-haired maiden, asleep on a bed, a bower of thorny roses surrounding her. I deemed the Sleeping Beauty an obvious choice, but it pleased the crowd. I heard gasps from ladies standing near me, and then a ripple of applause ran through the audience.

  Another illusion joined the tableau: a young knight who rode toward the maiden, only to be ensnared by the roses. The knight faded away, the faintest hint of a skull hanging in the air to mark his passing. I waited, wondering how Catherine would conjure the young prince who finally rescued the maiden.

  More gasps, then laughter. I couldn’t see, at first, what the focus was. I scanned Catherine’s face, and then my family behind her. Finally, my gaze fell on Freddy, and fear ran cold fingers down my neck. This illusion was not all empty air and light. Catherine had drawn a crown on Freddy’s head and placed a gleaming sword in his hand. When Freddy, at the urging of the crowd, stepped forward to the tableau, the thorns fell away from his sword.

  My sister had made Freddy a part of her performance. With all the care Catherine had taken for her spells, there could be nothing impromptu about this. She had planned for it.

  Practiced it.

  Something snapped in me. As the maiden in the tableau opened her eyes and raised herself toward Freddy, I opened my mouth and shouted, a wordless cry that filled the entire hall. Fury pulsed through my blood, seeming to catch at the very air around me.

  A thunderclap of silence followed in the wake of my shout.

  Then pandemonium.

  Catherine’s illusions disintegrated. The roses littering the floor at her feet shifted and twisted into ropy red serpents that slithered away from her and into the crowd. Screaming rippled out from the spot where Catherine stood, aghast at the sudden eruption of her spells.

  Freddy’s crown and sword disappeared in sprays of lightning. He flinched, throwing his arms up to cover his head.

  The hairs on the back of my neck lifted just before the French doors near my alcove exploded, raining glass across the floor.

  An enormous creature of brine and smoke swept past me. Something thin and insubstantial trailed behind the shadow like wings, their tips brushing my cheek in a brittle kiss. It must have been illusion, wrought by the failed spell-path, though I’d never before witnessed an illusion so real, with both heft and smell. The flickering lights of the chandeliers and hundreds of candles lining the wall sconces melted together in a rising wall of flame around the creature.

  Fire flooded the room, an illusion so bright I shut my eyes against the pain of it.

  Then everything went dark.<
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  The air filled with screams. I could feel my pulse beating in my wrists and pounding at my throat. A creeping winter chill stole through the darkness. The smell of roses had been displaced by smoke and frost and the acridness of fear.

  When the energy from the fractured spell finally spent itself and the lights along the walls relit, it was to the entirely indecorous sound of my father muttering “Confound it all!” My mother’s eyes were shut and her hands clasped in prayer. The creature, like the other illusions, had vanished. The members of the Circle, standing in a loose cluster, flicked their hands in the final gestures of a spell. Their foreheads glistened with sweat, their elegant clothing dark and stained with effort.

  Catherine still stood in the middle of the room. But her face turned toward me, her expression icier than the winter-cold of the darkness.

  Behind her, Freddy also faced me, his eyes wide.

  As if Freddy’s and Catherine’s gazes were some sort of compass, the assembled guests slowly shook themselves out of their horror and turned as one body to stare. In the midst of that wreckage, their eyes did not seek the shattered glass windows, or my sister and her failed charms.

  Every eye in the room was trained on me, half hidden behind a flimsy plant.

  “Anna! What have you done?” Catherine’s wail soared over the crowd.

  “Nothing,” I said, though I choked on the word. What had I done? My shadow self—all the dark desires I tried to keep buried—had surfaced. I had let her rise, riding on a wave of fury. I had wanted to destroy something: in that fractional moment before the illusions shattered and dread swamped me, I had felt something perilously close to joy.

  I flung myself away from the inadequate shelter of the potted tree and pushed through the murmuring crowd. The room seemed to swirl and swoop around me, colors melting together as paints on a palette. I took a deep breath, thrusting my arms out for balance. I would not faint.

  The crowd’s eyes were like so many insects on my back, crawling and uncomfortable. I reached the jagged mouth of the broken window, and, after stepping cautiously over the shards of glass, fled into the welcoming night.

  By the time Papa caught up with me at the far edge of the sculpted lawn, my head was pounding in time with my pulse. Pain spangled at the edges of my vision.

  “Anna.”

  I could not look at him. I did not want to read the disappointment in his face.

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Trees rustled in the wind, shadows moving against shadows.

  “Hmm.” He did not press me, as Mama would have. “You must come in. There’s a chill in the air. And the Circle representatives wish to speak with you.”

  My heart sank. The Circle comprised the most powerful Luminate in England. Though officially tasked with preserving the Binding spell that held our magic, regulating spell-casting, and aiding in national defense, unofficially the Circle had fingers in nearly every branch of government. The same was true of most European nations, though I knew from Papa’s lectures that the Circle’s strength varied in proportion to the monarch’s power. In England, Queen Victoria, a powerful spell-caster in her own right, headed the Circle. In France, where the Circle had saved the nation from Napoleon’s depredations, the Circle’s rule was absolute, the Bourbons merely puppet kings. And while the powerful Maria Theresa had once dominated the Circle in Austria-Hungary, her Hapsburg descendants had been steadily losing ground to the Circle following her death.

  And these were the individuals waiting now to speak with me.

  I followed Papa back to his study, resigned to the inevitable. Mama and Catherine huddled together on the settee, Catherine glaring at me with reddened eyes. I guessed the other two individuals to be members of the Circle: an older gentleman with a forehead permanently grooved in a frown, and a dumpy middle-aged woman. Grandmama was not there—doubtless the drama had sent her to bed with a headache.

  But where was Freddy? I wished I were back in the garden with him. I wished I’d never agreed to watch Catherine perform.

  But I lacked the magic for even one small wish, and so there I stood.

  My father hastened to introduce the two members of the Circle. “Lord Orwell, my daughter Anna. Anna, Lord Orwell leads the Coremancer Order.”

  I curtsied. Lord Orwell cleared his rather phlegmy throat. His watery blue eyes traveled over my person, but clearly found no pleasure in the exercise.

  “Lady Berri, my daughter. Anna, Lady Berri heads the Lucifera Order. Lord Eldon, head of the Elementalist Order, could not stay.” He did not need to add that Queen Victoria, who headed the Animanti Order, had not been present to begin with. My father’s cheeks were still flushed, but the light in his eyes had vanished. I tried, and failed, to read his expression. Was he angry? Afraid?

  There were four orders of spell-casters among the Luminate: Coremancers, like Mama and Lord Orwell, capable of discerning and influencing thoughts and emotions. Elementalists, like Papa and Catherine, who manipulated light and nonliving elements. Animanti, who influenced living things and might, depending on their gifts, speak with animals or heal injured tissues. And the Lucifera, rarest and most powerful, who shaped forces: gravity, electricity, magnetism, sometimes even space, as Freddy had done earlier when crafting his portal. I studied Lady Berri with new interest.

  “Charmed,” Lady Berri said, smiling at me, and then chuckling at her own mild pun. Her soul sign, a sleek leopard, prowled incongruously where her plump neck melted into her shoulder.

  An answering smile tickled the corner of my mouth, but I suppressed it. That three of the most powerful Luminate had come to Catherine’s debut meant they suspected Catherine had great promise as a spell-caster. I didn’t doubt it: Catherine had studied magic with an intensity most young ladies reserved for their suitors. I glanced at my sister and guilt washed over me. I hoped I had not entirely ruined her chances.

  Though in theory most Luminate had equal access to magic through the Binding spell, in practice it was not always so. Casting spells, particularly large ones, required a focus and attention to craft that many people lacked. Thus, Papa was a relatively gifted Elementalist, but Mama had never progressed beyond basic-level spells: her debut spell, her soul sign, common Coremancer charms.

  Young men might demonstrate their power during their years at Oxford or Cambridge. But for a young woman, there was really only one opportunity to impress the Circle: at her debut.

  Small wonder my sister wept. I squashed an impulse to comfort her; Catherine would not welcome my pity.

  In any case, I had greater things to worry about at the moment. Namely, what two of the most powerful Luminate in England sought with me.

  “What is this about?” I asked, summoning false confidence. “Of what am I accused?”

  Lady Berri smiled at me. “No one has made any accusations yet.”

  Returning her look but not her smile, I said, “Experience, my lady, has taught me that when I am summoned to my father’s study, it is because I am blamed for something.”

  She laughed—a loud, jolly laugh that turned into a cough when Lord Orwell scowled at her.

  “Someone in the ballroom tonight disrupted Catherine’s charms.” Lord Orwell looked at me when he spoke.

  “It was not me.” But I remembered the shout that grew out of my terrible anger, and my blood ran cold.

  “You were not supposed to be there at all. I told you—” The words burst from Catherine like starlings from a bush. “I told you to stay away, or you would ruin everything. And you did. My charms were destroyed, all my prospects of happiness…” She trailed off, blinking hard.

  Mama put her arm around my sister’s shaking shoulders.

  Lord Orwell spoke. “It is most unusual. I’ve never seen charms come unraveled quite so spectacularly. The casting was solid. There was no reason for the magic to come so…unbound.” His mouth pursed around the last word with distaste.

  Spells were miscast, sometimes
. I did not know much of the theoretics of Luminate magic: my magic lessons had been tacitly dropped after my disastrous Confirmation eight years earlier. But I did know that spell-casters drew power for their spells from the Binding, an enormous and ancient spell that held magic as a dam held floodwaters. The Binding existed in an ethereal dimension that lay over our world like a veil, so Luminates never had to reach too far to summon power. Spell-casters employed spells to draw out the magic, using their words and gestures and will to direct the shape of the charm, as a canal channels the route of water. A spell with insufficient will or inaccurate gestures might misfire, sometimes inconsequentially, sometimes tragically, depending on the size of the spell and the degree of the miscasting. Power, once summoned, had to go somewhere, and if the caster could not control it, the magic might take its own form. But Catherine would not be so common as to allow any degree of inexactness.

  Something else had happened tonight.

  Lord Orwell continued, turning his attention from me to my father. “I cast a survey spell, after the chaos from the broken spell settled. The point of disruption was clearly your younger daughter.”

  Cold prickled up my arms.

  “Impossible.” My mother’s voice was sharp, but I heard a darker note—fear?—behind the words.

  Lord Orwell’s eyebrows rose again. Lady Berri pressed her lips together, but the look she cast at me was not unsympathetic.

  I turned away, knowing what my mother would say and bracing against it.

  “It is impossible,” my mother repeated, “because Anna has no magic.”

  In the darkened glass of the window, the shadowy faces of the others scrutinized me. And there it was again, that doubled reflection of my face, as if I were divided against my own self.

  “Has this been verified?” Lord Orwell asked.

  Lady Berri said, “The girl’s diagnosis is written in our records. Her Confirmation did not take, and the Circle officiate certified the diagnosis of the girl as Barren.”

  My cheeks burned with the memory. A Luminate’s Confirmation was meant to bind a Luminate to a particular order, activating the gift for magic in her blood and enabling her to draw power out of the Binding for use in spells. It was supposed to be a solemn, holy day, the start of one’s magical career.