Blood Rose Rebellion

by Rosalyn Eves

  More laughter.

  “The Confirmation spell does not activate some innate gift for magic in their Luminate blood—it simply gives Luminate access to magic. Without the Binding trapping magic, and without the Circle’s tightfisted control of that spell, anyone might be a magician. You might.” He pointed at a young man near the front. “Or you. It is only this spell that keeps Luminate in power.”

  It was strangely hard to breathe. I pressed my hands against my stomach and wished my corset were a degree or two looser. Mama had always taught me that magic was our birthright as Luminates, that our blood called to the magic and justified our superior position in society. If I was Barren, it was only because my Luminate blood was somehow defective.

  But what if this stranger were right? The Luminate class system was built on the premise that their magical gifts made Luminates naturally superior. Take away that premise and there was not, indeed, any reason Luminates should dominate society. I did not want to believe him—and yet I could not dislodge a tiny kernel of doubt.

  A second, more disquieting thought followed on the heels of the first: if the speaker was right, and the Confirmation did not so much awaken magic as grant access to it, what did it mean that not even a Confirmation was enough to give me magic?

  The speaker continued. “We seek an equal world for all—a world where anyone with wit may petition for a seat in Parliament, anyone with will might own and work land, and anyone with aptitude might cast spells.”

  The crowd cheered. Indeed, I might have cheered myself—was this not precisely what Freddy and I wanted?—were his other accusations not so unsettling.

  “Such change is not always peaceful. We demand the end of unjust laws, the unfair perpetuation of magic through the Binding, the inequitable distribution of wealth—and the Luminate may not hear us willingly. We must be prepared to fight!”

  The cheering increased to a roar.

  Someone shouted, “But how shall we fight against magic?”

  The red-haired man turned a blazing look on the crowd. “We will fight with our hands. Our wits. Our swords and guns. And our machines.” He gestured and a lackey flung the canvas off the strange shape beside him. I could not see clearly over the milling crowd, but I glimpsed something shiny, metallic. Then I heard a low hum and gasps from those closer to the object. A woman near me crossed herself.

  “Sooner than the Luminate can anticipate, their world will collapse. In place of jewels, we will give them stone; in place of gold—fire!”

  The red-haired man threw out his arm, and the crowd drew back in alarm. I could see now the metal creature at his side. It was roughly human-like in shape, standing on two thick legs with two armlike appendages. But the face, made of sheets of metal hammered thin, bore the hooked beak of a bird of prey. As I watched, a pair of paper-thin metal wings unfurled and the entire machine erupted in flame.

  It advanced on the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Ginny cried out and stumbled, falling to her knees. Beside her, a little girl began to cry.

  “Stop!” I yelled, a twinge of fear feeding my anger. “Stop this at once.”

  The automaton continued to press forward. In a moment it would be upon Ginny. My fury flexed and expanded, fueled by my hurt at Freddy’s disappearance, my increasing sense of helplessness in the face of my mother’s will. “Stop!” I cried again, trying to push the force of my will into the air around me.

  The automaton faltered and stopped. The fire died as quickly as it had begun. Thank all the Saints that Bind, the red-haired man had heeded me after all. He sprang forward and helped Ginny to her feet, then turned to stare at me, his eyes narrowed.

  I marched toward him, furious. “Is this your revolution? Is this how you hope to change the world—by frightening women and children? For shame!” The pounding of my pulse crept up the side of my face. The edges of my vision blurred and sparkled. “Not all Luminate are the ogres you paint them. Not all are so wealthy, or so powerful.”

  His blue eyes drilled into mine. There was a light in them—not of anger, but of interest. “Who are you?”

  Half a dozen tart replies flashed through my brain, fighting against the expanding pain. “Someone who thinks you should know better. And now, if you are quite finished, I have better things to do.”

  I spun around and the park appeared to spin with me. My impressions grew fuzzy. Mama was not going to be pleased I had made a spectacle of myself in public.

  Again.

  My last conscious sight was of the stranger’s sky-colored eyes, open wide with surprise.

  Consciousness came back to me in fits and starts. First voices, then glimmers of light. My mother’s jasmine scent floated on the air nearby.

  “Anna is young, Mária. I’m sure she intended no harm.” My father.

  “She is old enough to know she should not meet a man alone in the gardens at midnight. I did not teach my daughters to behave like…like a common trollop. And now this! Escorted home by a strange man—a radical, no less!—after fainting in the park.”

  “Mr. William Skala,” Papa murmured. “Clever enough to be dangerous, but he did the right thing bringing my girl home.”

  I heard a rustle of fabric and pictured Mama’s impatient shrug. “Something must be done with Anna. She cannot be allowed to stay here. The gossip alone would follow Catherine to every event of the Season.”

  Something must be done with Anna. As if I were a particularly thorny problem, not her child. I kept my eyes closed, though I was fully conscious and my head was tilted at an awkward angle against the sofa back.

  “Would you have me take her back to Arden Hall?” Papa asked.

  I pictured our estate in Dorset, the green growing fields and the faint salt tang in the air on clear, windy days. I had learned to name birds there, and catch fish with James. Arden Hall belonged to the tightly circumscribed world of my childhood. London belonged to my present, and, I hoped, my future. I did not want to go.

  A brief pause, as Mama cogitated. “No. There is only one thing to be done. Lord Markson Worthing must be made to marry her. I refuse to let shame and scandal spoil any more of Catherine’s debut.”

  Hope surged up in me. Marry Freddy? I knew this was a routine solution to young women in my predicament, but I had not believed Mama would allow it. Somehow it seemed too much like a reward for bad behavior.

  “I do not like it,” Grandmama said, tapping her cane. “I do not think he will make my granddaughter happy. Let her come with me to Hungary. I should like to see my country once more before I die.”

  Hungary? That was half a world away. I could not go.

  “Happy?” Mama said. “That is not my concern. If Anna is respectable, she must be happy. And Hungary is too far for an old woman and a young girl to travel alone.”

  My breath slipped out in relief. I would be happy with Freddy, though perhaps not entirely respectable.

  “It seems to me,” Papa said, “Lord Markson Worthing has something to answer for. What business has a grown man with courting one sister in public and encouraging her younger sister—a girl not yet out—to meet him in secret? And I mislike the Circle’s new interest in Anna. Lord Orwell wants to study her. I’ve put him off, though I’m not certain how long I can do so.”

  “Perhaps you should let him. We would not want—” Mama broke off. “Anna. I know you can hear us.”

  I cursed her Coremancer gift, hoping she would not read my surliness in the midst of my lingering pain. I coughed and fluttered my lashes for effect, then sat up slowly. Mama and Grandmama sat on the matched chairs by the window in the Green Drawing Room, where Freddy and I had sat only the day before. Papa stood just beyond them, one arm slung across the marble mantelpiece.

  Grandmama smiled at me. “You are better?”

  A legion of tiny dwarves were excavating my skull with pickaxes. “Yes,” I said, wrestling a smile onto my lips. “I am better.”

  “Anna,” Mama sighed. “I need not tell you your behavior
last night was shockingly inappropriate. You shall be confined to your room until we have settled things.”

  I swallowed the tightness in my throat. Was it such a crime, to kiss the man I loved?

  “We will do what we must to salvage things. Your father will speak to Lord Markson Worthing. The Circle willing, he will marry you.”

  “Mária,” my father began. “I do not know that—”

  Mama shook her head, the tight curls at the sides of her face quivering. “I will not discuss this further. We will all do what we must. You will speak to Lord Markson Worthing, and Anna will marry him.”

  The door burst open. Catherine stood for a moment in the entrance, temper bringing a high color to her face. She must have been listening at the door. “Anna cost me the moment I have worked for my entire life. And you reward her for this?”

  The hard contours of Mama’s face softened. “I am sorry, Catherine. If Anna does not marry Lord Markson Worthing, her reputation will be ruined—and yours, by association, will suffer.”

  Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “You are making Anna marry Lord Freddy because she kissed him? Unchaperoned?”

  Mama blinked, once, as if it pained her.

  Catherine lifted her chin, but she did not seem triumphant, only determined. “Why should Anna have Freddy, then? By your logic, I should marry him.” Her chin lowered, her teeth flashed white in a smile. “You see, Freddy kissed me first.”

  Following Catherine’s shocking declaration, Mama wept, Papa shouted, and Catherine stood straight and unmoved. She did not once look at me, though I could see in the stiff line of her jaw what she was thinking: You took from me what I wanted most. Now I will do the same to you. It did not matter to Catherine, particularly, whom she married so long as he supported her study of magic and her position in society. Freddy would do nicely.

  I said nothing and let the tempest rage around me. In the end, Mama decided Papa must speak with Freddy, offering him first Catherine and then me. One of us should marry him.

  I slipped from the room when the talk turned to logistics: when and where and how. I stumbled upstairs to find James in the corridor by my room with a book of poetry.

  “Hello, Jamie, my love.” I tugged at one of the dark curls tumbling into his eyes.

  He batted my hand away. “What happened last night? Everything feels off today.”

  I tried to laugh, to lighten James’s worry, but the sound caught in my throat. “I snuck downstairs to see the charm-casting and got caught. Mama was quite angry. And then this morning I went for a walk without permission—all the way to Speakers’ Corner.” I pushed my smile wide, hoping James would think it was all a lark.

  A smile finally glimmered on his thin face. “I should have liked to see the charm-casting. What was it like?”

  I thought of the shattered roses and the strange shadowy creature. Freddy kissed me first. Had he kissed her, I wondered, while they practiced for Catherine’s spells? “Being Catherine, the spells were of course flawless.”

  “What were her illusions like?”

  “Roses. The Sleeping Beauty.”

  James wrinkled his nose. “Typical. But none of that explains why Catherine acts as though her favorite dog died.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I hesitated, wrapping my arms around my middle. I got caught kissing Freddy. Catherine kissed Freddy. I fainted in Hyde Park. A revolutionary brought me home. The chilly April air hugged the walls of the corridor.

  “I’m not a child,” James insisted. “You don’t have to protect me.”

  But I did. I had failed to protect him once, when I had let that magical fire from my Confirmation wash over him, and I would live with that failure all my life.

  His health had declined after our collision: already small and thin, he had become what Mama called “fragile,” prone to chest complaints and weeks where he could not rouse himself from bed. Even the best Animanti healers could not seem to help him. When James was eight, his Confirmation had been prefaced by a private consultation in Papa’s library at Arden Hall. James told me later that the Circle member had not wanted to Confirm him at all, saying it would be dangerous to give such a frail child magic. But Mama, her Coremancer gifts heightened by concern for her only son, had insisted. A compromise was struck, and James was Confirmed, but granted access to such a limited amount of power through the Binding that his spells were virtually nonexistent.

  Mama had not said, in so many words, that James’s sham Confirmation was a judgment on my disgrace, but I knew. My heart pinged. My fault.

  “I broke her spells,” I said, coming back to the present. My words dropped in the air like stones.

  His eyes widened, the pupils narrowing to tiny dots. “What will happen to you? Will Mama send you away? Will the Circle punish you?”

  I ground my teeth in vexation. I should not have told him anything. I should have known this truth would only make his anxiety spiral higher. “Nothing will happen. The Circle has already spoken with me. And, as you see, I am still here. Would you like something to eat? I was about to ask Ginny to fetch a tray.”

  “No, thank you. I must get my studying done this morning. Papa’s promised to take me to the menagerie this afternoon.” But his eyes, when they met mine, were full of misgivings and not anticipation for the promised outing.

  I wished Papa were not so set on sending James to Eton in the fall, believing invigorating studies would compensate for James’s limited magic. But though James was nearly as passionate about classics as Papa was about Luminate history, Papa had forgotten how cruel boys could be to those who were different. Freddy might laugh and insist the ritual humiliation of new students toughened them, but such treatment would destroy James. I knew firsthand how a weak Luminate fared in a world that revered power above all. And I was protected some, because I was a girl and not so much was expected of me.

  “James,” I said, “you don’t have to go to Eton. Mama would hire a tutor, if you asked.”

  “Papa wants me to go. And I cannot stay here forever.” His knuckles were white on the spine of the book.

  “But it would be safer—”

  James cut me off. “Safe? Maybe you want that—to stay forever at home, trapped with Mama. But I want more than that. I want to learn things. I want to meet new people, see new places. I can’t do that if I don’t at least try.”

  “I don’t want that either,” I said softly, but James was already shuffling away. As I watched him go, Catherine’s smug declaration slithered snakelike through my thoughts: Freddy kissed me first.

  How could I shield James from heartbreak when I could not even protect myself?

  If I had thought much about it, I should have supposed my first proposal would be a romantic thing: whispered words spoken in a garden, or, more formally, an offer delivered on bent knee in a sunny drawing room.

  I would not have expected it to include nearly my entire family.

  We were all assembled in the Grand Salon—me, Mama, Papa, Catherine, Grandmama, Freddy. The salon was my least favorite of all the rooms in our London town house, barring only the austere chapel: the white walls with silver trim, the fussy statuary on the marble mantel over the fire, the stiff chairs meant to encourage good posture and discourage comfort. Mama sat ramrod-straight beside me on the cream chaise longue, as though determined to enforce my good behavior through her own rectitude. Catherine sat primly on her other side.

  At Mama’s orders, I was arrayed in a gauzy white muslin dress, though whether as a prospective bride or virginal sacrifice, I had not yet determined. Papa faced us, as did Freddy. Grandmama sat just beyond me, in a chair near the low fire. I suppose Mama thought it would be more difficult for Freddy to wriggle out of his obligations if there were witnesses.

  Freddy had arrived late, nearly a half hour past the time Papa had bid him to call on us. He removed his hat and settled himself easily, smiling at all of us and remarking on the dampness of the weather.

  My
pulse stuttered under his smile. I still hoped he might find a way to explain everything. Perhaps Catherine had lied, though it seemed unlike her.

  “Er.” Papa cleared his throat, set one booted foot over his knee, then set it back down again. “Thank you for calling, Lord Markson Worthing.”

  “Your note said it was urgent.”

  “Er. Yes. That is—” Papa broke off.

  “It is a matter of my daughters’ reputations,” Mama said, throwing a scornful glance at Papa. “Anna was seen kissing you in the garden. And Catherine says you kissed her. Is this true?”

  Freddy’s eyes flared wide with shock. I felt sorry for him. It was never pleasant to be ambushed by Mama.

  “Catherine—that is, Miss Arden—told you?”

  My heart dropped. He did not seem sorry for having done it, only for having been caught.

  “It is a bad thing,” Grandmama said, tapping her cane on the floor for emphasis, “to be misleading two young women, and sisters besides.”

  “You must do the right thing,” Mama said.

  “The right thing?” Freddy’s voice was light, yet his posture was anything but. His shoulders were rigid, his eyes flickering around the room, landing on everything save my face. He fiddled with the rim of his grey hat.

  This was not the stiffness of a man in love, trying to summon his courage. This was the stiffness of a man who would rather be anywhere save here.

  “You must marry one of my daughters,” Mama said. “Whichever you like.”

  Whichever you like. I swallowed the hysterical giggle bubbling in my throat. I wished Freddy would cast a Lucifera spell making the floor open beneath me. Heat washed up my neck and burned in my cheeks. I studied the carved lily patterns in the carpet so I would not have to watch Freddy’s reaction to Mama’s words.

  “Ah.” A long, uncomfortable silence settled in the room. Freddy broke it at last. “I am, of course, flattered you would consider me as a possible husband for either of your lovely daughters. But, unfortunately, I am not the marrying type.”