by C. L. Polk
“I know when I’ve been hoodwinked. Very well. Let’s pay a call to Miss Robin Thorpe.”
* * *
“Janet,” I said, propping the door wide open. “I’ve had a change in my schedule.”
“Good morning, Dame Grace. I have delivered your message to cancel the sale of your shares in Blake Properties, and I have another message from that reporter, Avia Jessup.”
I didn’t know exactly where Tristan and Aife were, but I had given them plenty of time to hustle inside my office. I let the door swing shut and crossed the office to accept the note from Janet’s hands, tearing the envelope open:
Grace:
APL story is go. You have until 11am to call it off. No second thoughts?
Avia
I slid my cuff back to look at my watch. Fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes, Avia would have the story laid out on the front page of the paper, blasting the tale of deception and greed around the incorporation of Aeland Power and Lights. Included in the story would be profiles of APL’s biggest shareholders, including me.
I had promised Father I would destroy our name if he raised a hand against Avia. This was a message to him as much as it was the beginning of my careful, measured delivery of the truth to Aeland.
“Thank you, Janet. Please rush a reply to Miss Jessup.”
Janet had notepaper and a clipboard ready, and I wrote my note back:
Avia:
Congratulations on another front-page story. The address for the attached is W. 1703 Halston Street.
Grace
The clipboard and Tristan’s key went into an envelope. Janet hid her consternation. I fetched my sable coat and swung it around my shoulders before I wondered if the hem would strike anyone, but it flew free. I opened the door and stood with it propped open, allowing my companions to pass through.
“I’m going out,” I told Janet. “I expect to return this afternoon. Can you get some reports for me about whatever the subcommittee investigating the witchcraft act has been looking at? I’d like to know what they’ve uncovered.”
And if they hadn’t investigated every corner, I would point them in helpful directions. Satisfied that I had given Tristan and Aife enough time to duck out of my office, I stepped into the hallway and began my journey through Government House.
I fastened a sable fur cap over my carefully set waves, listening to the tripled echo of footsteps ringing off the marble. The sound made my heart leap with anxiety. What if someone noticed?
Well, they probably wouldn’t suspect invisible Amaranthines. I smoothed my hands over my coat, trying to soothe my jangled nerves. I was bad at being surreptitious. I didn’t know anything about sneaking about and doing mischief. Did it make your hair stand on end, waiting for someone to raise an alarm? Was it supposed to feel this frightening? If we were caught, there would be so much trouble.
But excitement bubbled inside me too. I was part of a mission to disregard the strictures that kept Aife cooped up in a single wing of the palace. It was an adventure. I was rebelling, just as I had when I’d invited Avia to the ball. I had to restrain my smile as I delivered sober nods to the clerks and scribes traveling the halls. When I reached the front doors, I was ready to jump for joy.
“Well done.” Tristan and Aife emerged from behind one of the massive stone pillars that held up the pediment fronting Government House—a bas-relief of the first gathering of Parliament. Anyone stepping out would assume I’d met them on the steps. Anyone coming in would assume I’d walked out with them. We had made it.
“The carriage will take a few minutes,” I said. “How are you, Tristan?”
“I’m well,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind a snack.”
After concealing himself and Aife for some ten minutes? I couldn’t imagine how much power he could wield, just by himself. But Aife was breathing in great lungfuls of cold winter air, her smile like a small sun.
“I’ve never been so cold in my life,” she said, still grinning, “as I have been in Aeland. All this snow. I wonder what Elondel would look like, if it was ever permitted.”
I blinked. “You have such control over the weather that you can defy winter?”
Aife and Tristan exchanged hasty looks. “It’s never winter in Elondel,” Tristan said. “It’s sometimes cool. Sometimes warm. Rainy, when it needs to be. But never winter.”
Just thinking about it gave me a headache—or perhaps it was the glare of the low-hanging sun, shining in the southern half of the sky. I slipped my hand inside my coat and produced a pair of snow goggles, sighing in relief as the dark lenses soothed my vision. I should have put them on earlier. I was going to have a headache for at least an hour, now.
Tristan and Aife slid matching pairs of snow goggles over their eyes, and Tristan pointed. “That one’s yours, isn’t it?”
A pumpkin orange sled and four matched grays pulled into the drive. We descended the stairs together, climbing into the black leather bench seat. I gave a West Water Street address, and George took us on a route that zigzagged the steep hillside dotted with enormous houses, built to shelter grand-aunts and first cousins and entire packs of niblings.
We passed by shops open for business, corner dining halls and public houses, then switched direction on the next block, easing our way down to the flat, colorful streets of Central Riverside’s main shopping promenade, traveling along Water Street.
Everywhere I looked—on oldsters, on children, even on shop awnings and light poles—yellow ribbons fluttered, each one a silent message of liberation, reparation, and conciliation. I should have expected it. While black Samindan Aelanders were slightly better off than the average white Aelander, being more highly represented in scholarly and professional fields, more Samindan citizens had been convicted for witchcraft by a significant margin. This was the heart of the movement that wanted justice and equality for all.
Neighbors cleared the walks in front of clan houses with wooden exteriors painted yellow or green or sky-blue or orange—bright and cheerful against white snow and brilliant blue skies. West Water Street was lined with sleds—many of them bearing the lamb and scroll of the Parliamentary fleet, manned by drivers in tall hats and black coats. There were politicians here. I glanced at Tristan and Aife. Aife shrugged.
“I wanted to meet them.”
That made sense. I would greet Jacob Clarke and his committee inside the wide, maroon-red clan house with windows full of curious faces. Thorpes, all of them, watching as William helped Aife out of the sled and onto the hard-packed street.
Almost as one, the Samindans bent in respectful bows, hands over their hearts to relay deep respect for the Grand Duchess. Shoveling walks, indeed—I inspected the men and women outside the clan houses and recognized the posture and bearing of soldiers and guards on every one of them.
Aife touched her heart in return, and smiles broke out among the makeshift security force spread throughout the street. I led our party up a cleared sidewalk, and my headache throbbed to a different rhythm as the house’s shadow protected us from the harsh glare of sunlight on snow.
The door swung open before we had even set foot on the wide, wraparound porch that skirted the main floor of the clan house. Music heralded a wizened, white-haired man who stepped out on the greeting rug in his slippers and held the door for us. Aife shook hands with him, and his decades-lined face went serenely happy.
“You are welcome in this house,” he said. “Have you eaten?”
* * *
The smells that carried on the warm air of the house were enough to make me moan. Rich, complicated spices, slow-cooked meat, the smell of baked bread and burnt sugar—I could have wept. I had anticipated perching on the edge of a parlor chair, politely taking no more than two cookies. Instead, I would sit down to a full luncheon and a belly full of home cooking.
We left our footwear at the door and followed the old man—the eldest of the house, who only answered the door for the most esteemed guests—through a double-wide hallway. Hundreds of p
hotographs of Thorpes—depicted alone, in pairs, in clumps and assemblies—stared solemnly at me, their gaze following even as I moved away.
The music grew in volume and clarity as we ventured deeper into the house. A string ensemble played with skill and precision in the front parlor to a quiet, appreciative group of listeners, the voices of their instruments winding around each other in harmony and countermelody. I recognized the cellist as Ramona Thorpe, who had entertained all of Kingston with her wireless performances. She kept her gaze on the music in front of her, however, so I kept moving.
We passed parlors full of men and women in conversation with Elected Members. Member Clarke was here somewhere, of course, but as I counted and named each of the Parliamentarians in attendance, I tallied them against a mental list. This was Clarke’s coalition, but it was more than that. This was the committee who had investigated the origins of the Witchcraft Protection Act—the committee expected to stand in the domed rotunda of Government House and announce their findings to the press later today, after they had taken lunch in the home of a noted abolitionist.
I was tired of all the things I had to do, all the balls I had to keep in the air. When we stopped at a chamber with two hearths and a conference between Robin Thorpe and Member Clarke, our host rose to her feet and smiled.
Bows, and a grave exchange of nods between me and Member Clarke. Robin rang a bell to signal everyone to come and sit for lunch in the clan’s dining hall, a gracious room with silver-and-crystal chandeliers hanging from the mullioned ceiling. A staggeringly long table with enough room for everyone spanned the length of two chambers. A set of young Thorpes acted as ushers, bringing us to assigned seats. I was near the foot, with Member Clarke at my right hand, and the white-haired old man who had let us in took the seat at the foot of the table.
Other children brought in platters of food even as we shuffled about getting seated, and dishes started passing hand to hand the moment the last guest sat down. Samindans put all the courses on the table at once, rather than serving them one at a time, and I had a sugar-crusted brandy custard in my possession before I had laid down a bed of sweet-pickled cabbage to hold delicately fried fillets of star-back trout. The food kept coming, passed to my hand by Elder Thorpe. I was taking too much. Everyone was.
I spread slow-roasted garlic on a slice of goose breast and got down to the business of eating. Forks and knives clicked on bone-clay plates. Goblets and stemware thumped on the bare, silvery wood. Grunts and sighs of satisfaction sounded around the long table as we sampled dishes, swooned over flavors, and filled our stomachs. I ate every last scrap of trout—and looked up in surprise as the Eldest slid another piece on my plate, nodding. “Go ahead and eat, girl.”
Had anyone else noted my appetite? Member Clarke regarded my emptying plate with some bemusement, but plenty of Thorpes were already helping themselves to more.
We ate without need for dinner conversation. Eldest kept filling my plate, grinning with every one of his ivory teeth, gesturing for me to go on. He gave me pickled beans, and I ate all six. He slid another slice of goose breast on my plate, offering me sweet mustard sauce to spread on top. He laid down another fillet of the beautifully spiced fish. I broke open a crusty roll and used it to catch every last drop of sauce on my plate, echoing the actions of the Thorpes, and Eldest lifted a ceramic bowl of roasted skirrets.
“Oh please, I beg you, no more,” I said, and the bottom half of the table burst into laughter, Eldest included. It made the aching across my scalp flare, but I laughed with them.
At last Robin rose from her place at the other end of the table, lifting a glass. “Welcome, all of you. It is my profound honor to introduce the Blessed Grand Duchess Aife, heir to the Throne of Great Making.”
Applause rained from clapping hands. Aife smiled and stood up. “Thank you for inviting me. And thank you for your efforts in abolishing the law that turns the gears of horror in Aeland. I have brought you Dame Grace Hensley, an ally in the push to bring freedom and safety to the starred ones.”
She had what. What. She lifted her hand and I rose to my feet, buttoning my jacket even as I scrambled for something to say.
“Ahoy.” I smiled around the table. “Thank you for inviting me to your wonderful home. And thank you, Eldest, for stuffing me full of fish.”
I searched my mind while the assembly laughed. “I haven’t yet read your findings, but I have done a little poking around myself. The Witchcraft Protection Act is a bad piece of legislation, based on questionable evidence—and, I believe, poisonous greed.”
The assembly nodded, a few murmurs of “That’s right” and “I knew it.”
Now I had to put my foot on the tightrope. “I am with you, esteemed friends of the Lower House. If you wish it, I will attend your press conference this afternoon to stand beside you in support, but the Queen is not disposed to striking down this law.”
A Thorpe dropped her napkin on her plate. Her aura was smooth, generic, noticeably unremarkable. I dragged my gaze away and kept talking. “She believes that it will harm Aeland to admit there is no merit or truth to the idea that witches present a danger to society, and my voice in Parliament is merely the instrument delivering her will. She must be convinced to agree with your findings, or she will force me to vote against my conscience.”
Smiles faded. They had wanted me to defy Constantina. I hadn’t said what they wanted to hear. But Aife, still standing, picked up her goblet and drained it.
“Then she will listen to me,” Aife said. “I will summon the Queen to me. She will not refuse me. And I will make clear my wish to see an end to the monstrous practice of imprisoning witches for life.”
Now the assembly cheered. It thudded across my scalp with a bright, red-tinged thud—and a dazzling, crystalline distortion bloomed in the center of my vision. I pressed my fingers against my temples and closed my eyes. The dazzle spun on the red-black darkness of my eyelids.
Oh no. Oh, oh no. I reached out, sending my perception westward. How had I missed the signs? I wasn’t at the Western Point, but I didn’t need a weather kite for the vision I beheld—
Clouds. Great, thick, spiraling clouds spinning around the empty, unblinking eye of a storm. Vast and pitiless, it stretched farther than I could see.
Another storm, as bad as the last one. Worse. Standing at the table and swaying dizzily, I opened my eyes to dozens of people watching me.
“My apologies,” I said. “I suddenly don’t feel well.”
I bent my knees, aiming to retake my seat, but the headache redoubled. It struck so hard I heard myself whimper in pain before I landed in the chair and my vision went gray.
I didn’t pass out. If I had, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so badly to hear the shocked exclamations that ringed the table.
“Quiet,” Robin said. “It’s hurting her.”
She rounded the table and pulled my chair back and away so she could kneel in front of me. “Squeeze my fingers.”
I cracked open one eye so I could find them.
“Good. Smile. Make a smiling face. Good. Now say ‘Just Truth Youth Dust.’”
I repeated the words, my eyes still shut. “What are you doing?”
“Checking for cranial paroxysm. Good news. You’re not having one.”
“It’s a dazzle headache,” I said. “I get them sometimes.”
“So you need dark and quiet?” Robin asked. “Amos. Get a pair of snow goggles.”
Amos’s scampering feet thumped away, and then back. Robin handed me the goggles. “I think you should take something for the pain.”
The lenses were a deep-smoked gray, and it was almost enough to dial down the pain. Treatments for dazzle headaches made me groggy, but I could stand that.
“Please,” I said. “And if I could have a word?”
“Up you get.”
I felt gangly and huge next to Robin, who led the way into a tiny, windowless room. A narrow iron bed crowded one half of the room; the other side housed locked ca
binets. Robin produced the keys and soon had a thimble of sweetish-smelling tincture under my nose.
“Samuel’s Mixture?”
“I didn’t think you wanted any morphine,” Robin said. “It’ll take the edge off, at least.”
I took the thimble and choked it down—honestly, the attempt to sweeten it made it infinitely worse—and Robin answered a soft scratch on the door.
“Eldest wants to know if the lady needs ice,” a high, too-loud voice asked.
“Thank you, Amos, but we’re fine. Go and tell Eldest we have it in hand.”
The door clicked shut. Robin sighed. “Go, Amos.”
Footsteps thumped away.
“That should start working soon. What did you want to tell me?”
“There’s a storm coming,” I said. “Worse than the last.”
The floor creaked as she shifted her stance. “Worse.”
“Warn your Circle in Riverside,” I said. “I don’t know if you have anyone who can sense it yet.”
“That’s why the headache?”
“Yes. It happens fairly often. I’m used to it.”
“All right. Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
“It hurts to think,” I said. “Please tell your people to be careful. I can send details of the storm’s heading—”
“We can do that,” Robin said. “Thank you for telling us.”
“You probably didn’t need me to,” I said. “I can see the snow didn’t fall so hard on Riverside.”
“It was kindly meant,” Robin said, “and you were mindful of keeping our people a secret.”
“I’ll be glad when all this is over,” I said. “All the secrets. They’re exhausting. Persecuting people to keep those secrets. It’s horrible. It has to end.”
Robin closed cabinets and locked them. “How do you think it will happen?”
I bit my lip. Miles trusted Robin. She was a leader in the action against the government. “I think there can’t be any real progress while our monarch doesn’t want it.” I could barely manage to whisper. “I hope Aife can sway her opinions.”