The White Rose

by Amy Ewing

  Tiny red flowers grow up around Sil’s knees. She brushes her fingers over them before they wither.

  “It was a bit easier for me, not having a wanted fugitive as a travel companion.” She shoots me a wry look. “No one was looking for me. Everyone thought I was dead. But I was frightened to be around people. I was dangerous. I didn’t know how to explain what was happening, but things would go wrong around me. There’s a little town outside this forest. I set a store on fire. A terrible wind came and ripped shutters off houses. A little boy was injured. I had to leave.

  “No one knew it was me, of course. No one paid any attention to a dirty, orphaned teenage girl. But I left and came to this forest. I felt drawn to it. For two days, I ate nuts and bark, and drank water from the streams that run through it. But something pulled at me. The deeper I went into the woods, the stronger the pull became. Then I found this old house, rotting away, alone, abandoned. And I knew it was meant for me.”

  Sil looks across the field at the redbrick farmhouse.

  “Why is it called the White Rose?” I ask.

  “I named it,” she says. “It was autumn when I arrived. There was a garden by the porch, all dry leaves and withered stalks. Nothing had grown for years. I stood there, looking at this abandoned wreck, trying to convince myself that it could become my home, that I could find a safe place within its walls. And then a single rose blossomed from a dead rosebush, right in front of me. It was whiter than snow and softer than a rabbit’s fur. And it grew out of nothing. I felt like I could do that, too, I could make something beautiful for myself out of nothing.” Sil shakes her head. “What an idealistic fool I was.”

  “But you did make something for yourself,” I say, nodding toward the White Rose.

  “Yes, yes,” Sil says, as if that were somehow beside the point. “I found I could grow my own food, quickly and easily. I didn’t have to steal. I could sell or barter for clothes and supplies. I set to work fixing up this place.” She shakes her head. “The power was better here. Easier. It didn’t frighten me so much. But I felt . . . isolated.”

  I try to imagine living by myself in the woods for forty years, with nothing but a strange and unknown power to keep me company. I think I’d lose my mind.

  “Then, about three years ago, this girl stumbles onto my doorstep, with a lady-in-waiting of all people in tow. I knew what she was immediately, of course. But she’d never been to a holding facility—Lucien had whisked her away somewhere as soon as she reached womanhood. He’d been hiding her in various places all over the Farm. Her family might have been elevated from living in the Marsh to the Farm, but you can bet the royalty isn’t going to let any Marsh-born girl go untested for surrogacy.” Sil’s eyes grow distant and I wonder what memory is replaying in her mind. “Azalea hadn’t been twisted up like all the other surrogates. I thought I could show her. I didn’t want to be alone with this power anymore.

  “It took Azalea a long time before she felt it. We didn’t know what her scores might have been, but probably not close to yours or mine. She couldn’t use all of the elements—she could only connect with Air. She used to have nightmares that tore up the furniture. She started sleeping outside. Said she liked it better out here, anyway.” Sil smiles and tilts her head up to the sky. “She had a big heart. She was infuriatingly optimistic. For the first time in a long time, I was happy. I had companionship. So when she started talking about saving the other surrogates and how the royalty needed to be stopped, I told her she should be happy that she was safe. Lucien agreed with me. Just about the only thing we agreed on at that point.” She chuckles. “Oh, but Azalea was young and full of hope and had never lived in the Jewel. It hardens you, living in that place. It holds up a mirror and shows you the very worst parts of humanity. It changes people.”

  I shiver.

  “And she thought we could do it,” Sil continues, “that we could use the elements against them, the way they used the Auguries against us. That this was what we were meant for. That was at the time when I was looking to the past, learning our history. Lucien would do anything for Azalea, including stealing documents right out from under the Duchess’s nose. But I wouldn’t hear of any such rebellion and neither would her brother. She was safe, we kept telling her, that was all that mattered.” She rubs her forehead. “I forgot what it was to be young. To be full of ideas, to think it is possible to change the world. I was selfish. I didn’t . . .” Sil swallows and looks away from me. “I believe she allowed herself to be caught, to be tested positive as a surrogate. She knew it was the only way. She didn’t want to live my life, to be stuck on this farm forever with nothing but the wind and the trees for company. She wanted more, not only for herself, but for everyone.”

  “So that’s when you and Lucien teamed up?” I ask.

  Sil lets out a hard laugh. “I wouldn’t call us a team. More like an unlikely alliance.” She runs her hand over the sycamore’s bark. “This place mourned when she died. We mourned her together.” She looks at me. “And now you are here and we have hope again. Hope for our sisters locked away in the holding facilities.” She moves to stand, then stops herself. “What is she like?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “The Duchess. I’m . . . curious.”

  “Oh.” The Duchess is so many things, but my last memory of her is burned into my mind. “She killed my friend. Right in front of me.” My throat tightens.

  “So I created a murderer,” Sil muses.

  “I don’t think you’re responsible for everything she is,” I say.

  “Oh, you can bet your boots I am,” Sil snaps. “I told you, her father was damned evil.” She rubs the back of her neck. “I know the other one died. The younger sister. Read about it in the paper. Turned her back on the royalty and everything.”

  “Maybe that was you, too,” I say.

  Sil frowns.

  “Violet?” Ash’s voice drifts across the clearing. I stand up, brushing the dirt from my pants. Sil takes the portfolio and hugs it to her chest.

  “He doesn’t belong here, you know,” Sil says. “He’s not one of us.”

  My spine stiffens. “He belongs with me,” I say.

  “He’ll cloud your judgment.”

  “Like Azalea clouded yours?”

  Sil’s eyes flash. “Exactly.”

  “Well, I’m not you,” I say. And without waiting for a response, I turn on my heel and march back to the barn, where Ash is still calling my name.

  Twenty

  “SO . . . YOU’RE SAYING YOU’RE DESCENDED FROM A RACE of magical women the royalty tried to extinguish?” Ash says.

  We’re walking back to the White Rose. I want to see Raven. But I explained to him what Sil told me.

  “Do you have to say it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you don’t believe me.”

  “I do believe you,” he says. “I mean, it certainly sounds like something the royalty would do—annihilate an indigenous population. I’d like to see those papers Sil showed you.”

  I doubt there’s a chance of that happening, but I don’t say that to Ash.

  “I’ve been thinking about something else Sil said,” I say. “About Azalea. She could only connect with Air. I was thinking . . . maybe the Augury scores actually do tell us something useful. Maybe because Sil and I scored perfectly on Growth, that indicates that we can access all the elements.”

  “That sounds logical. Though I’m no expert on the Auguries.”

  I chew on my bottom lip.

  “What’s worrying you?” he asks. “If you can control the earth, can’t you ask it to bring down the walls? Isn’t that what Lucien wants?”

  “There’s only one of me. This power is incredible, sure, but . . . the walls are so thick. The royalty have guns. They have an army. What if I only get through one wall and find I don’t have the strength? Do the royalty even need the walls to protect themselves?”

  We’ve reached the pond. I crouch at its edge and place
my hand on its cold surface. I want to feel what I felt last night.

  What was it Sil had said? That we must embody the element in order to connect with it.

  I become the water.

  My skin goes slippery again as I join with the pond. It ripples inside me, glassy and bright. I push out across it, and I am the wave that rises up, high over our heads. Ash gasps, and the wave and I come crashing down, spraying him with a fine mist.

  I take my hand away and look up at him, suppressing a giggle.

  “Sorry,” I say, as he shakes drops of water from his hair.

  “You know,” he says, taking my hand to help me up, “at Madame Curio’s, they liked to keep us in competition with each other, all the time. Book a big client, and you’d get a certain number of points. Master a skill, and you’d get more points. They kept a big scoreboard up in the main hall, with a record for each companion. Earn enough points and get a reward. They didn’t want us to be a unified front. They liked keeping us separate.”

  “Oh,” I say, not quite knowing where he’s going with this.

  Ash senses my hesitation and smiles. “That’s what you need. A united front.”

  “Of what?” Right now, the united front seems to consist of three surrogates, one lady-in-waiting, a companion, and a royal son. It’s a pretty ragtag bunch.

  “A united front of surrogates.” Ash shrugs. “I mean, wouldn’t all the surrogates be capable of this power? If you are all descended from ancient warrior women?”

  I gasp. Several things seem to click together in my brain all at once. I think about what Sil said earlier, how Azalea could only access Air, not the other elements. I think about the incinerator, how Raven and I put the fire out together. We were stronger together.

  The highest concentration of surrogates is in the Marsh, in the holding facilities. Four facilities in four key locations, north, south, east, and west.

  We don’t need to break down the all walls. We only need to get inside one—the Jewel.

  “Lucien!” I shout. My feet feel rooted to the earth. I grab Ash’s arm. “You’re a genius,” I say.

  “What is it?” Lucien comes storming out of the house, followed by Garnet and—my heart squeezes—Raven. She’s wrapped in a thick quilt, and Garnet keeps one hand at her back, as if he were afraid she might collapse at any moment. She looks tired, but healthy. Alive.

  “How are you feeling?” I say.

  Raven smiles at me, her old smile. “It’s like this fog has been lifted. Like a weight is gone. I feel . . . clear. Not the same as before but better.” She shoots Garnet an irritated glance. “You can tell him to stop hovering. He’s worse than my mother.”

  “You collapsed on me last night,” Garnet says. “I’d like to stay within catching distance.”

  It hits me then that Raven is no longer pregnant. The threat is gone.

  “What did you call me for?” Lucien asks. He’s changed back into his lady-in-waiting garb.

  “Are you leaving?” I ask.

  “I have to get back to the Jewel,” he says. “Garnet is coming with me. It would be poor form to miss his own wedding.”

  Garnet grimaces behind Lucien’s back.

  “I have an idea,” I say. “I don’t think I’m enough, on my own. You want me to essentially destroy pieces of the walls surrounding each circle, to integrate the populations of the Marsh and Farm and everything, so that this whole city can fight together. But it will take time to get to each of them. And we don’t know whether I’m strong enough. What if I can only break down part of one wall? Or what if I get hurt in some way? Then you don’t have anyone to help.”

  “Violet, I don’t—”

  “No, listen. I assume you have Society members in each circle, right?” Lucien nods. “So let them take care of their own circles. Fight the royalty where they’ve set up their puppets, in the Bank and the Smoke and all the rest. Let the circles fight for themselves.” I remember the Thief, how well he knew the East Quarter of the Smoke. “Why mix up the circles so quickly? I agree it has to be done, but let’s pull out the royal roots first. Then we can all break down the walls together.”

  “And what about the Jewel?” Lucien asks. “Who will fight the royalty where they live?”

  “The surrogates,” I say confidently.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Ash was telling me about the necessity of a unified front. That’s what we need. They have an army of Regimentals. I think we need to fight them with an army of surrogates.”

  “An army of surrogates?”

  “There is so much potential locked up in those holding facilities,” I say. “We need to get to them, show them what they are capable of.” And who they really are, I add silently. I think of what Sil said to me earlier, about the Paladin being guardians of this island. “I think it’s what we were meant to do.”

  “How do you plan to get into the holding facilities?”

  I frown. “I’m not sure yet. But I know every inch of Southgate. And I know many of the girls there. I think they’ll trust me. So you need to bring three girls here, from the Jewel. One from each of the other three holding facilities. The ones with the highest Growth scores. If the Growth score indicates compatibility with the elements, then we’ll need the best we can get, the ones who can access the highest number of elements.”

  “And once I’ve rescued three more surrogates, and you have trained them in this power, how do you propose to get a whole host of surrogates to the Jewel?”

  It comes to me in a flash, the most obvious answer sitting there all along. A smile plays on my lips. “We’ll use the Auction.”

  “Yes,” Raven says, nodding.

  “I don’t get it,” Garnet says.

  “The Auction,” I explain. “The trains to the Auction House. We have to get as many girls on those trains as possible. And then the royalty will unwittingly get us into the Jewel. We won’t need to break down that wall. The royalty will bring us inside it on their own.”

  Garnet whistles through his teeth. “I’ll give you credit, that’s pretty brilliant.”

  “The Auction isn’t until October,” Lucien points out. “That’s months away.”

  I bite my lip. He’s right. How long can we risk waiting? I worry again about Hazel being tested. We need to end the Auction before that ever has a chance to happen.

  “It’s a place to start,” Ash says. “Coordinate attacks within each circle with the Auction and the royalty won’t know what hit them. I’d suggest the Regimental barracks and the magistrate offices for starters. Maybe even the banks. They can’t fight everyone at once, not if they’re being attacked from within their own walls.”

  Lucien shoots him a disdainful glance.

  “It’s a good idea,” I insist.

  Lucien sighs. “I suppose you have some surrogate or other in mind to be rescued from the Jewel.”

  I nod.

  “Another friend?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “But I think she’s exactly what we need.”

  And I tell Lucien about the lioness.

  Twenty-One

  “HOW’S OUR STAR REVOLUTIONARY DOING?” GARNET’S voice is tinny through the arcana, which floats above Raven’s shoulder.

  She’s perched on a pyramid of hay bales. Two weeks at the White Rose and she’s changed into a new person—healthier, happier.

  “Outstanding,” Raven says. “Violet’s a natural at this.”

  I become the air.

  I accept the element, dissolving into weightless molecules that scoop up the individual strands of hay littered on the barn floor. They hang there, suspended. I can feel each of their tiny weights. I float them over to Raven, and they circle her like oddly shaped planets orbiting a sun.

  She claps. Ash chuckles from where he stands brushing Turnip, Sil’s horse, who had been called Horse until Ash started taking care of the animals. Turnip is the nickname he gave to Cinder as a baby.

  “She should try embroidery,” Garn
et suggests. “Or knitting. You know, challenge herself.”

  “Or maybe she should start collecting miniature tea sets,” Raven says with a smirk. “So she and your wife can have little crafts parties.”

  “I’ll have you know, Coral has exactly two hundred sixty-five of those things. Trust me. She’s counted. To my face. I had to sit there and smile while she gave me a whole presentation. I mean, it’s a ridiculous obsession, but you have to admire her determination.”

  “Color me impressed.”

  “I’m going to pretend that wasn’t sarcastic.”

  Raven talks to Garnet more than I do. They love poking fun at each other. I think he keeps her sharp. He reminds her of how she used to be.

  “I thought you called for a reason,” Raven says. “Anything to report from the Jewel?”

  The strands of hay fall to the floor as I release the connection with Air. I want to be fully present for this conversation.

  “I haven’t seen Lucien since the wedding,” Garnet says, “so I don’t know what he’s up to. My mother has some plan up her sleeve, but no luck getting it out of her—and I can’t very well pretend to have a sudden interest in surrogates.”