Torn, page 22
“Annette tells me you have particular talents that are as impressive as your draping,” she said, with a subtle nod toward the pea-green gown I wore. I flushed, happy to be complimented on my sewing, and then remembered the talents I’d come here to employ. My stomach clenched into a knot, but I smiled.
“Yes. You have been correctly informed.”
“And Viola, the Lady Snowmont, has already hired you for this specific kind of work?”
I hesitated. One misstep and I’d be thrown out—my chances at saving Kristos ruined. Still, I had my rules to adhere to. “Madame Westmere, I must confess—I do not disclose the nature or patrons of my commissions. Even to a queen.”
She clapped her hands with a delighted smile. “Splendid! Annette was right—you are indeed the very image of professionalism. Which I confess I had not expected from a conjurer.”
I didn’t argue her terminology.
“If you would like to discuss your particular commission, madame, I will ask that we do so privately. I will dismiss my assistant.”
“Annette and I wish to confer with you at the same time,” the queen said.
I nodded. “Alice, please excuse us. I’ll have you return to take measurements when we are ready.”
Alice nodded dumbly and let the maidservant hovering in the corner escort her from the room.
“Viola told me what you made for her,” Annette said in a rush. I thought I saw the queen tighten her lips slightly, as if in disapproval. Was she lukewarm on the idea altogether, or was it Viola she didn’t like? The princess and the lady were very close; perhaps the queen didn’t approve of Viola’s influence.
“And you would like something similar?” I asked. I hoped so—if I couldn’t protect her mother, I wanted to make something special, something with a charm that would cling to Annette at all times.
“We would,” said the queen. “Annette will have the same as Viola. For my younger girls, too. And I would like a shawl—something I can wear anytime. Rather poetic, isn’t it? Wrapping oneself in luck?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said, forcing a smile past the bile that the queen’s inadvertent irony brought to the back of my throat. “Quite poetic.”
“I have a new gown for Midwinter Ball—if you can coordinate the wrap with that, it would be ideal. I don’t mind clashing in private, but for a formal occasion, well, I ought to look like I meant to wear the thing—don’t you think?”
“Yes, of course.” I let out a shaky breath—precisely what Pyord had wanted.
“Perfect. Can the shawl be embroidered? The gown is in the eastern style and we have ambassadors from East Serafe in attendance—I have to do something as a gesture for them.” Of course—delegates negotiating the marriage contract between Annette and their own prince. I nodded, encouraging the queen to continue. “Embroidery could tie all the elements together, yes? And you can charm the embroidered designs?”
Or curse, I thought silently. How perfect—all the stitches in embroidery, each infused with dark curses. “Yes,” I said, my mouth dry.
“And you can produce these as soon as possible?” When I hesitated, the queen added, “You must understand, we would not demand such short notice if we did not feel it was imperative.”
My chest tightened and I couldn’t hold my calm smile.
“Despicable, I know,” Annette said, misreading my shock. “But we hardly feel safe.”
“I will deliver everything before the ball,” I promised. “As soon as I can.”
Annette smiled. “Viola also told me about the pink gown you’re making for her.”
“She did?” I said, startled out of my guilt for a moment.
“You’re a genius,” Annette gushed. “If there’s time—Mimi said I could have a new gown made for Midwinter Ball.”
I swallowed. On top of our regular orders, another formal court gown was almost too much. Almost. “We can manage that,” I said.
“Perfect! Well, get your girl back in to measure Annette. You shan’t need anything for me, will you?”
I stared, dumb, at her for a long moment before recovering myself. I was really going to do it, really going to create a cursed shawl for the queen. “Yes, the colors, please,” I finally stammered. “The colors of your gown so I can coordinate with it.”
The maid returned with Alice and was then sent for the queen’s gown. While Annette stripped off the pert striped jacket and quilted petticoat she wore, she told me all about the gown she wanted me to make for her.
“I was thinking, first, of yellow,” she said. Her jacket came sailing over the screen, catching on the corner. “But I’m not sure—Mimi is wearing pink and I thought we’d look too … I don’t know. Like matching pastel springtime bunnies.” I examined the gown the maid presented to me—it was, in fact, very pink. Draped in the “eastern” style that I knew was an affectation rather than a reproduction of foreign clothing, it had full sleeves, a wrap front, and skirts that looked haphazard but were, in fact, precisely pleated. The seamstress who had made this knew her trade—and knew that the queen would look particularly lovely in the borderline-obnoxious bright pomegranate color.
Despite myself, I laughed. They would look as though they were trying to coordinate if the princess wore bright yellow—and though that would have been sweet for small children, the princess wanted to stand out on her own. “Perhaps blue,” I suggested. The petticoat flopped over the top of the screen.
“Blue is so … commonplace,” Annette said. Her head poked around the corner, beckoning Alice to hurry with the measurements. She scurried to her work with her notebook and measuring tape clutched in hand.
“Blue doesn’t have to be dull,” I said. “Perhaps an icy blue with silver embroidery? For winter?” I heard the snap of Alice’s tape.
“I don’t really care for silver,” Annette said. “I think I look better in gold.”
Of course she thought so—even though her dark hair and white skin made her look like an ice maiden. A winter-blue gown would have been perfect. Alice’s pencil scratched the notepad.
“In that case, perhaps dark midnight blue with gold?” I was less than convinced—it would be difficult to avoid the result looking garish with gold bullion and sequins.
“Maybe.” The petticoat disappeared as Alice reappeared, signaling that the measuring session had ended. “I was thinking about green—a pale sage, maybe?”
I winced. Though pale green was one of my favorite colors, it wouldn’t flatter Annette. I worried it would make her look pallid or even jaundiced, especially under the chandeliers and candlelight of an evening ball. But how to argue with a princess?
“Annette, listen to the seamstress,” the queen said from behind me. I started. “She surely knows her craft better than you do.”
I balked, but Annette just laughed. “All right, Mimi. You win. Sophie, you make whatever you want, and I’ll wear it and look prettier than anyone else there.”
27
ALICE COULD TALK OF NOTHING BUT THE PALACE THE NEXT DAY, but though I dutifully worked on their orders, I wanted to forget the exchange. They may have been princess and queen, but Annette and Mimi—I couldn’t help but remember her as Mimi—were kind, normal people. I didn’t want to curse them. If Mimi had been awful, would it have made things easier?
I admitted to myself that, yes, it would have. As terrible as it was, compromising my principles would have been less horrid if I had felt that the victims were deserving. Pyord certainly did—solely because they were royalty and stood in the way of his goals. Weren’t there more people like me, like Alice and everyone else doing business on our street? I fumed quietly. People who perhaps wanted change but didn’t want to tear the world apart to get it? Why did Pyord and the Red Caps speak for the rest of us?
Not that it mattered—to keep him from hurting my brother, I had to do what he said. So I cut a length of yellow silk and began sketching out designs for embroidery. I couldn’t cover the shawl—not and have time for Annette’s commission—so I mapped out a twining design of vines and buds and leaves, culminating in explosions of blooms at the corners.
I couldn’t work on the cursed garment while Alice and Penny were in the studio—not with the violent side effects I was left with from curse casting. So I started on Annette’s instead, unrolling a length of ice-blue silk taffeta and placing silver trims next to it to test the colors.
“There’s someone here to talk to you,” Penny said. “In the front. Oh, I like that one,” she added, pointing to a silver braid that I also fancied.
“Cut a few swatches of the combinations I have laid out,” I directed her. “And have them sent to the palace.” Penny grinned.
To my surprise, Lieta was waiting for me in my front room. She had never visited me at work, and the lines of worry on her face concerned me. “Oh, Miss Sophie. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.
I wished she hadn’t been so deferent—I knew from observation if not from direct proximity that Pellian custom respected age, not status. But Lieta was meeting me here, a Galatine milieu, and seemed ill at ease doing so. “Grandmama,” I said, hoping that I was using the respectful familiar term correctly, “what’s the matter?”
“I need help,” she nearly whispered. “The new taxes—I wasn’t expecting them, and I owe the surgeon money, he pulled my tooth last week, and—”
“Wait—new taxes?”
“You don’t know?” She sank onto the bench by the door. Lieta looked frailer than usual, her gray hair working its way out from under her kerchief. “They’ve levied a new tax, to pay for the new soldiers and patrols in the city. On the markets.”
“They’re taxing the markets? But not us—” And then I understood. The vendors at the markets were mostly poorer farmers, tradespeople who could neither afford nor negotiate for a permit to open a full business, and immigrants, especially Pellians. The disenfranchised. The people who bred revolutions. This tax would punish them. I seethed—it was not only unfair, it was stupid. Lieta had never fomented revolution with her little stall selling teas and tinctures and charms, but those who did would only be fueled by this decision.
“How much do you need?” I asked quietly.
“I couldn’t ask for money—I came to ask for work. I can sew a little, or run packages.”
I shook my head. “Take this. No—it’s right. You’re my elder.” In Pellia, a woman Lieta’s age would never have been expected to work. Her family would have supported her through her last years. Galitha City was a harder place. I poured a dozen silver coins into her hand.
“No, this is too much—I only owe the surgeon two—”
“I have a feeling times may be harder before they’re softer,” I said. “Keep the rest in trust, and help the others if they need it.”
She nodded in thanks, and I thought of something else. “Lieta, don’t take this the wrong way, but—you’ve been casting charms far longer than I. Do you know of anyone who … who casts curses?”
Her eyes grew wide. “It’s best not to speak of curses. To even speak of curses is to smell a demon’s breath.”
“I know, but I—an acquaintance is studying the ancient practice, and—” I stopped. Not too much, I cautioned myself. “I wondered if you knew of anyone who had. Of what might have … happened to them.”
“Once. In Pellia. In the next village. There was a woman they said could cast a curse. I don’t know how she did it. But after her lover left her for my aunt’s daughter, things happened. Goats that died, for no reason we could find. And my sister lost her baby. And hailstorms on the wheat fields—but we never knew, of course, if it was the woman’s curses.”
“What happened? To her?”
“Probably dragged away by demons if she was cursing us.” Lieta shrugged. “No, I remember. She married a man from the port city, Hyta? No, you wouldn’t know it,” she reminded herself—I had never lived in Pellia and was as ignorant of its geography as I was of Serafe’s or Kvyset’s. “Never heard from her.”
I had almost expected another of my mother’s dark tales of stabbings or suicide, but Lieta’s story was comforting. A curse caster could, maybe, start over again.
Lieta felt the weight of the silver in her hand, and hesitated. “I can’t repay you right away.”
“When you can,” I said, too aware of her pride to tell her to forget the debt. She slipped outside, and I wasn’t surprised to hear shouting at the next corner from a crowd of Red Caps, railing against the new taxes.
Already feeling heavy, I almost cried when a message arrived from Pyord, demanding a meeting at the archive. Sunset. I sighed.
I folded the silk for the queen’s wrap even though I wanted to throw it in the fire, and set out toward the archive as the sun melted into the horizon. It was a clear evening, with a clear night ahead, and it was developing into a bitterly cold one. He couldn’t be asking anything more of me, could he?
I stepped into the echoing building’s atrium, and though I didn’t see Pyord, I knew where I should look. The cozy little room at the back of the building.
I picked my way past carts stacked with books and patrons making frantic last-minute notes before the library closed, and nearly ran into Nia.
“Sophie!” She caught my hand and dipped quickly in for the awkward double-kiss embrace. “I didn’t realize you were a regular patron here.”
“I’m not,” I answered too quickly, then covered. “I just had some … professional research to do.”
“Antique and foreign sewing techniques?” Nia brightened. “Of course! There must be old manuals or sketchbooks here.”
I had never considered that those kinds of books might be buried here. I might spend time reading if there were treasures like that hiding on the shelves. “Exactly. I’m, ah, meeting with the curator to inquire.”
“You’re heading in the right direction—he was talking to my tutor in the back. Once they get going, it’s too technical even for me.”
I considered something I hadn’t before—Pyord wasn’t the only person in the city who could read Pellian. Who knew what modifications to the curse magic he’d described might be present in those books I couldn’t read? Could there be a way to lift a curse, or divert it? Could I finish the shawl, let Pyord confirm with whatever back-alley caster he paid to ascertain my work, and then rescind the curse?
Pyord wouldn’t tell me, but perhaps someone else could. “You—you must be exceptionally knowledgeable in Pellian,” I said.
Nia feigned modesty. “I am quite proficient, yes. Aside from my tutor and some of the academics at the university, I am likely closest to fluent in the entire city.”
“I had hoped that perhaps—perhaps you could help me.”
“Learn Pellian?” She raised an eyebrow. “Whyever do you want to do that?”
“Not learn, precisely. But the only written work on … my particular gift is in Pellian. I had wanted to learn more about it.”
“You must understand, I am far more interested in the art and culture of ancient Pellia than I am in magic.”
“Of course—I just need the words translated. Nothing in depth, I’m sure.” I wasn’t so sure.
“I thought you were quite skilled already,” Nia said. “What else is there to learn?”
I didn’t want to reveal specifics—that I wanted to see if charms or curses could be undone. Not yet. “There must be more theory than I learned,” I said instead. “I was just taught by my mother, and only the practical application. Not how it works.”
“Hmm,” she said, considering this. “I suppose I could translate for you if the curator can find the right books for us.”
I smiled as though surprised, as though happy. I still wasn’t sure—she seemed oddly reticent, but that could be for any reason, including not wanting to spend time in the archive reading work that didn’t really interest her. “Let’s meet tomorrow afternoon,” I said, eagerness bleeding into my voice. Pressing anyone, let alone an important diplomat’s daughter like Nia, for her time felt uncomfortable, but I worried that any delay and it would be too late.
“All right, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nia said, her saffron gown illuminating the dark halls of the archive like a candle.
I slipped past the last row of shelves and saw Pyord, deep in conversation with a man in a sharply tailored black suit of clothes. Even the cuffs of his shirt and neckcloth were black. Either he was in deep mourning or he was supremely eccentric.
“Ah, Sophie,” Pyord said as he saw me, even though I was trying to shrink into a shadow. “Please allow me to introduce the curator of the Public Archive, Maurice Autland.”
The man had a face like a barely fleshed-out skull, but his smile was kind and his greeting warm. “Miss, so lovely to meet another of Pyord’s students. Two in one day—I am quite a lucky man!”
I stopped myself from emitting an audible gasp. Nia had left her tutor with the curator—her tutor was Pyord? Of course. I could have smacked myself, if Pyord hadn’t been watching my every move with perceptive eyes. Nia studied Pellian. Pyord was, by his own boasting, a premier expert in the language. I forced a smile.
“It’s very nice to meet you, as well,” I choked out.
“I hate to cut short such a scintillating conversation, but Sophie and I must get to work,” Pyord said, and the curator bowed and took his leave.
As soon as the door closed behind us, Pyord smiled. “This is all coming together better than I had hoped,” he said. “Your visit to the palace was a long one.”
I swallowed anger. “Stop having me followed. I will not be tracked like an animal. I will not stand—”
“You’ll do as I say.” Pyord’s voice was like ice, and the room took on a chill despite the roaring fire in the hearth.
“I can’t work if I’m frightened,” I lied through clenched teeth, “and men following me frightens me.”
Pyord just laughed. “Should I get a woman to do it? Or perhaps a little boy. Are you scared of little boys?”
