by Rebecca Ross
Why did it hurt, then, to think of one I didn’t truly know?
Shoving the letter into my pocket, I leaned back and felt the scalloped leaves of the hedge stroke my hair, as if the plant were trying to comfort me. I should not be dwelling on fragments of my past, pieces that did not matter. I needed to think of what was to come in eight days, when the solstice arrived, when I should master my passion and finally receive my cloak.
I needed to be reading Cartier’s books, pressing the words into my memory.
But before I could so much as twitch my fingers toward the pages, I heard a soft tread on the grass, and Oriana appeared on the path.
“Brienna!” she greeted, her black hair captured in a tangled braid to her waist. Her brown skin and arden dress were speckled with paint from the endless hours she spent in the art studio. And while her dress told of enchanting creations of color, mine was boringly clean and wrinkled. All six of Magnalia’s ardens wore those drab gray dresses, and we unanimously loathed them, with their high collars and long plain sleeves and chaste fit. To shed them soon would feel passionate, indeed.
“What are you up to?” my arden-sister asked, closing the gap between us. “Has Master Cartier driven you to frustration yet?”
“No, I think it’s the other way around this time.” I stood and took the books in one hand and looped my other arm with Oriana’s. We walked beside each other, Oriana petite and slender compared to my height and long legs. I had to slow down to remain in stride with her. “How are your final paintings coming?”
She snorted and gave me a wry smile as she plucked a rose from a bush. “They are coming along, I suppose.”
“Have you picked which ones to display at the solstice?”
“Yes, actually.” She began to tell me which paintings she had chosen to display for the patrons, and I watched as she nervously twirled the rose.
“Don’t worry,” I said and eased her to a stop so we could look upon each other face-to-face. In the distance, thunder rumbled, the air swelling with the scent of rain. “Your paintings are exquisite. And I can already see it.”
“See what?” Oriana gently tucked the rose behind my ear.
“That the patrons will fight over you. You will bring the highest price.”
“Poppies, no! I do not have the charm of Abree, or the beauty of Sibylle, or the sweetness of Merei, or the brains of you and Ciri.”
“But your art creates a window into another world,” I said, smiling at her. “That is a true gift, to help others see the world in a different way.”
“Since when did you become a poet, my friend?”
I laughed, but a clap of thunder swallowed the sound. As soon as the storm’s complaint quieted, Oriana said, “So, I have a confession.” She pulled me back along the path as the first drops of rain began to fall, and I followed, mystified, because Oriana was the one arden who never broke the rules.
“And . . .” I prompted.
“I knew you were here in the gardens, and I came to ask you something. You remember how I drew portraits of the other girls? So I can have ways to remember each of you after we part ways next week?” Oriana glanced at me, her amber eyes gleaming in anticipation.
I tried not to groan. “Ori, I cannot sit still that long.”
“Abree managed it. And you know she is constantly in motion. And what do you even mean, you cannot sit still that long? You sit all day long with Ciri and Master Cartier, reading book after book!”
I pressed a smile to my lips. For an entire year, she had asked to draw me, and I had simply been too overcome with my studies to have the leisure time for something like a portrait. I had lessons with Cartier and Ciri in the mornings, but then come the afternoon, I typically had a private lesson with Cartier, because I was still struggling to master everything I should. And while I sat through grueling lessons and watched the sunlight melt across the floor, my arden-sisters had the afternoons to themselves; many days I had listened to their laughter and gaiety fill the house while I flogged my memory beneath Cartier’s scrutiny.
“I don’t know.” I hesitated, shifting the books in my arms. “I am supposed to be studying.”
We rounded the hedge’s corner only to plow into Abree.
“Did you convince her?” Abree asked Oriana, and I realized that this was an ambush. “And don’t look at us like that, Brienna.”
“Like what?” I countered. “You both know that if I want to receive my cloak and leave with a patron in eight days, I need to spend every minute—”
“Memorizing boring lineages, yes, we know,” Abree interrupted. Her thick auburn hair sat free upon her shoulders, a few stray leaves caught within the curls as if she had been crawling through the bushes and brambles. She was known to practice her lines outside with Master Xavier, and several times I had watched her through the library windows as she tossed and turned on the grass and crushed berries to her bodice as fake blood, projecting her lines to the clouds. I saw evidence of mud on her arden skirts now, the stain of berries, and knew she had been in the throes of rehearsal.
“Please, Brienna,” Oriana pleaded. “I have drawn everyone else’s but yours. . . .”
“And you will want her to draw it, especially after you see the props I found for you,” Abree said, wickedly smiling down at me. She was the tallest of us, taller than me by an entire handbreadth.
“Props!” I cried. “Now, listen, I do not—” But the thunder came again, drowning out my weak protests, and before I could stop her, Oriana stole the books from my hands.
“I’ll go ahead and get things set up,” Oriana said, taking three eager steps away from me, as if my mind could not be changed once she got out of earshot. “Abree, bring her to the studio.”
“Yes, Milady,” Abree returned with a playful bow.
I watched as Oriana dashed across the lawn, in through the back doors.
“Oh, come now, Brienna,” Abree said, the rain fully breaking through the clouds, dappling our dresses. “You need to enjoy these final days.”
“I cannot enjoy them if I worry that I will become inept.” I began to walk toward the house, yanking the ribbon from my braid to let my long hair unwind about me, running my fingers anxiously through it.
“You are not going to become inept!” But there was a pause, which was followed by, “Does Master Cartier think you will?”
I was halfway through the lawn, drenched and overwhelmed with the impending expectations when Abree caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and spun me about. “Please, Brienna. Do the portrait for me, for Oriana.”
I sighed, but a small smile was beginning to touch the corners of my lips. “Very well. But it cannot take all day.”
“You really will be excited to see the props I found!” Abree insisted breathlessly, dragging me across the remaining strip of lawn.
“How long do you think it will take?” I panted as we opened the doors and stepped into the shadows of the back hall, soaked and shivering.
“Not long,” Abree replied. “Oh! Remember how you were helping me plot the second half of my play? The one where Lady Pumpernickel gets thrown in the dungeon for stealing the diadem?”
“Mm-hmm.” Even though I was no longer studying dramatics, Abree continued to solicit my help when it came to plotting her plays. “You don’t know how to get her out of the dungeon, do you?”
She sheepishly blushed. “No. And before you say it . . . I don’t want to kill her off.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That was years ago, Abree.”
She was referring to the time when I had been an arden of dramatics and we had both written a skit for Master Xavier. While Abree had authored a comical scene of two sisters fighting over the same beau, I had penned a bloody tragedy of a daughter stealing her father’s throne. I killed off all the characters save for one by the end, and Master Xavier had obviously been shocked by my dark plotting.
“If you do not wish to kill her,” I said as we began to walk down the hall, “then make her find a
secret door behind a skeleton, or have a guard shift his allegiance and help her out, but only at a twisted, unexpected cost.”
“Ah, a secret door!” Abree cried, linking her arm with mine. “You plot like a fiend, Bri! I wish I schemed like you.” When she smiled down at me, I felt a drop of remorse, that I had been too frightened of the stage to become a mistress of dramatics.
Abree must have felt the same, for she tightened her hold on me and murmured, “You know, it’s not too late. You can write a two act play in eight days, and impress Master Xavier, and—”
“Abree.” I playfully hushed her.
“Is this how two of Magnalia’s ardens behave a week before their solstice of fate?” The voice startled us. Abree and I stopped in the hall, surprised to see Mistress Therese, the arial of wit, standing with her arms crossed in blunt disapproval. She looked down her thin, pointed nose at us with eyebrows raised, disgusted by our drenched appearance. “You act as if you are children, not women about to gain their cloaks.”
“Much apologies, Mistress Therese,” I murmured, giving her a deep curtsy of respect. Abree mimicked me, although her curtsy was quite careless.
“Tidy up right away, before Madame sees you.”
Abree and I tripped over each other in our haste to get away from her. We stumbled down the corridor into the foyer, to the mouth of the stairs.
“Now, that is a demon in the flesh,” Abree whispered, far too loudly, as she flew up the stairs.
“Abree!” I chided, slipping on my hem just as I heard Cartier behind me.
“Brienna?”
I caught my fall on the balustrade. My balance restored, I whirled on the stair to look down at him. He stood in the foyer, his stark white tunic belted at his waist, his gray breeches nearly the same shade as my dress. He was fastening his passion cloak about his neck, preparing to depart in the rain.
“Master?”
“I assume you will want another private lesson Monday after our morning lecture with Ciri?” He stared up at me, waiting for the answer he knew I would give.
I felt my hand slide on the railing. My hair was uncommonly loose, falling about me in wild, brown tangles, my dress was drenched, my hem dripped a quiet song over the marble. I knew I must look completely undone to him, that I looked nothing like a Valenian woman on the verge of passioning, that I looked nothing like the scholar he was trying to mold. And yet I raised my chin and replied, “Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.”
“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.
He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.
But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a genuine smile—although I liked to imagine it might have been—as he bestowed a curt bow of farewell. I watched him pass through the doors and melt into the storm, wondering if he was being merciful or playful, desiring that he would stay, relieved that he had departed.
I continued my way up the stairs, leaving a trail of rain, and wondered . . . wondered how Cartier always seemed to make me want two conflicting things at once.
TWO
A MAEVAN PORTRAIT
The Art Studio was a chamber I had avoided since my first failed year at Magnalia. But as I tentatively entered it that rainy afternoon, my wet hair wound in a bun, I was reminded of the good memories that room had hosted for me. I remembered the mornings I spent sitting beside Oriana as we sketched beneath the careful instruction of Mistress Solene. I remembered the first time I tried to paint, the first time I tried to illuminate a page, the first time I attempted an etching. And then came the darker moments that still sat in my mind as a bruise, such as when I realized my art lay flat on the page while Oriana’s breathed and came to life. Or the day Mistress Solene had pulled me aside and said gently, Perhaps you should try music, Brienna.
“You’re here!”
I glanced across the room to see Oriana readying a place for me, a new streak of red paint on her cheek. This room had always been overwhelming with clutter and mess, but I knew it was because Oriana and Mistress Solene made their own paints. The longest table in the room was completely covered with jars of lead and pigments, crucibles and earthenware bowls, pitchers of water, chalkstone, stacks of vellum and parchment, a carton of eggs, a large bowl of ground chalk. It smelled of turpentine, rosemary, and of the green weed they boiled to mysteriously render pink paint.
Carefully, I wended my way around the paint table, around chairs and cartons and easels. Oriana had set a stool beside the wall of windows, a place for me to sit in the stormy light while she drew.
“Should I be concerned about these . . . props Abree is so excited about?” I asked.
Oriana was just about to respond when Ciri entered the chamber.
“I found it. This is what you wanted, right, Oriana?” Ciri asked, leafing through the pages of a book she held. She almost tripped over an easel as she walked to our corner, passing the book to Oriana as she looked at me. “You look tired, Brienna. Is Master Cartier pushing you too hard?”
But now I did not have time to respond, for Oriana let out a cry of delight, which drew my eyes to the page she was admiring.
“This is perfect, Ciri!”
“Wait a moment,” I said, reaching for the book. I plucked it from Oriana’s hands. “This is one of Master Cartier’s Maevan history books.” My eyes rushed over the illustration, my breath hanging in my chest. It was a gorgeous illustration of a Maevan queen. I recognized her because Cartier had taught us the history of Maevana. This was Liadan Kavanagh, the first queen of Maevana. Which also meant she had possessed magic.
She stood tall and proud, a crown of woven silver and budding diamonds resting on her brow as a wreath of stars, her long brown hair flowing loose and wild about her, blue dye that Maevans called “woad” streaked across her face. Hanging from her neck was a stone the size of a fist—the legendary Stone of Eventide. She wore armor fashioned like dragon scales—they gleamed with gold and blood—and a long sword was sheathed at her side as she stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding a spear.
“It makes you long for those days, doesn’t it?” Ciri asked with a sigh, peering over my shoulder. “The days when the queens ruled the north.”
“Now is not the time for a history lesson,” Oriana said, gently easing the book away from me.
“You don’t intend to draw me as that?” I asked, my heart beginning to pound. “Ori . . . that would be presumptuous.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Ciri retorted. She loved to argue. “You are part Maevan, Brienna. Who is to say you have not descended from queens?”
My mouth fell open to protest, but Abree walked in bearing an armload of props.
“Here they are,” she announced and dropped them at our feet.
I watched, stunned, as Ciri and Oriana sifted through pieces of cheap armor, a dull sword, a dark blue cloak the color of midnight. They were props from the theater, no doubt smuggled from Master Xavier’s stash in the dramatics wardrobe.
“All right, Brienna,” Oriana said, straightening with the breastplate in her hands. “Please let me draw you as a Maevan warrior.”
They all three waited, Oriana with the armor, Abree with the sword, Ciri with the cloak. They looked at me, expectant and hopeful. And I found that my heart had quieted, thrilled by the thought, my Maevan blood stirring.
“Very well. But this cannot take all day,” I insisted, and Abree victoriously whooped and Oriana smiled and Ciri rolled her eyes.
I stood still and patient as they dressed me. The portrait would only be from the waist up, so it did not matter that I still wore my arden dress. The breastplate enclosed about my chest, vambraces about my forearms. A blue cloak was draped about my shoulders, which made my stomach clench as I inevitably th
ought of my passion cloak, and Ciri must have read my mind.
She stood and liberated my hair from its bun, braided a small plait, and said, “I told Abree to choose a blue cloak. You should wear your color. Our color.” Ciri stepped back, pleased with how she had arranged my hair.
When an arden became impassioned, their master or mistress would present them with a cloak. The color of the cloak depended on the passion. Art received a red cloak, dramatics black, music purple, wit green, knowledge blue. But it wasn’t a mere marker of achievement and equality, that the arden was now on the same level as their master or mistress. It was a unique commemoration, a symbol of the relationship between the master and the arden.
But before my thoughts could become too entangled with cloaks, Sibylle rushed into the studio, drenched from the rain. A jubilant smile was on her face as she held up a crown of white flowers. “Here!” she cried, slinging water and attracting our attention. “This is the most starlike crown I could make before the rain came!”
Indeed, all five of my arden-sisters must have been in on this portrait ambush. But Merei, my roommate, was the only one missing, and I felt her absence like a shadow had fallen upon the chamber.
“Where is Merei?” I inquired as Sibylle brought her flower crown to me.
Sibylle, graceful, buxom, and coy, set the crown upon my brow. “You look like you could take off a man’s head,” she said, her rosebud lips opening with a wide, satisfied smile.
“Can’t you hear her?” Abree responded to my inquiry, and held up a finger. We all fell silent, and over the tickling of rain on the windowpanes, we could hear the faint, determined song of a violin. “Merei said she is furiously working on some new composition, but she’ll come as soon as she can.”