Torn, page 28
“Still, what do you think? Up to your professional standards?”
“Well, there’s no good luck charm stitched into it.”
He shook his head in mock dismay. “I knew there was something missing.”
“Viola’s done a lovely job decorating,” I said, steering the conversation away from charms and their cousins, curses. I’d had enough of those.
“Yes, she deigned to use some greenery I brought from the public gardens. They were trimming back the trees along the river walk, and I snagged a few.” He grazed his fingers along the bright red dogwood stem nearest him. The tenderness of his touch, his minute attention to the plant, sparked a deep ache as I watched him.
I broke my gaze from him and looked around the room for Nia, but she wasn’t there. The guests were still milling about, tasting cheeses and sugared fruits laid out on platters. She wasn’t late, I told myself calmly. I just hoped we would be able to steal a moment in private to discuss her translation.
Pauline spotted me across the room instead, and trotted over. Her teal gown was trimmed with gathered sheer organza, and she looked like ocean waves when she moved. “Marguerite is debuting a new piece tonight,” she said by way of greeting before she dove in for the double-cheek kiss.
“Another?” Theodor asked. “She is quite talented. Any hints about it?”
“Just that she’s saying it’s inspired by winter.” Pauline rubbed her hands together as though she were cold. “Though what’s inspiring about winter I couldn’t say. All it inspires me to do is bundle up and huddle by the fire.”
“Sophie says winter is an excellent business model,” Theodor said. I laughed politely, but the recollection of the conversation was bitter.
“Did you bring your violin?”
“I did, but I doubt anyone wants me to interrupt Marguerite’s music with the caterwauling I call playing.”
“I’d very much like it,” the tiny dark-haired woman I recognized as Marguerite the harpist answered. “We had a grand time playing folk songs last time, didn’t we?”
“We had fun. Let’s not be too quick to assume those listening were pleased with me,” Theodor said, but I could tell he was flattered. The role of learned, cultured gentleman fit him well, and he basked in it. I slipped back, conscious that this was his milieu, not mine. Perhaps, I thought, scanning the room, this could be my opening to slip away to some quiet corner to wait for Nia.
“You just rosin up your bow when I tell you to,” Marguerite said, laughter in her pale green eyes. “But for now I think I had better get started.” She dipped a little curtsy and took her position on the dais Viola had set up, seated next to her harp. I moved toward the back of the room, but Theodor caught my arm.
“I’d like it very much if you would sit with me,” he said.
“I’m not sure that’s such a wise idea,” I replied. Marguerite tuned the harp; I disentangled my hand from Theodor’s.
“I’m not sure what I said before, but I realize I must have hurt you. I am sorry, and I want very much for you to sit with me.”
“You didn’t say anything, and me being hurt is not your fault,” I whispered back. Viola glanced at us with a raised eyebrow. “Now, we should sit down before we provide the first act to this performance.”
“Quite right. Please.” He gestured to the settee beside us—the only seats left in the room. I nodded crisply and sat. Theodor looped an arm behind my shoulders. I leaned away.
Marguerite’s white silk gown and pale blue overdress didn’t do much to encourage an impression of stature, but the moment she put her fingers to the strings she was the only person in the room. Even Theodor beside me melted away, and I was transfixed by the sounds undulating from the harp.
The notes were slow at first, long, delicate chords that lingered and faded before another set was introduced. Then the notes began to cascade and chase one another, like wind in the trees or snow swirling between branches. The piece crescendoed like a blizzard and dipped back into graceful quiet like a frosty night. It made me think of the frozen waterfalls Theodor had shown me, of the cold peace under those willow trees.
A final note hovered in the air as though suspended, and then Marguerite cut it off. She was a small woman next to a harp again, and the room erupted in honest applause.
I realized that I was not only leaning forward but also clutching Theodor’s hand. I released it, blushing.
“I take it you liked it?” he said, pretending to rub life back into his fingers.
“Yes. I—it was as though I saw precisely what Marguerite wanted me to, felt what she wanted me to feel.”
“She’s a genius,” Theodor agreed with an amiable smile.
“Well, are you going to join me?” Marguerite called from the dais, gesturing to Theodor and two others, a lady and a gentleman seated together across the room from us.
“I was promised punch first,” Theodor retorted, and everyone laughed.
“Then you’re in luck,” said Viola, and opened the door to the hallway to let in a pair of maids carrying the largest punch bowl I’d ever seen. Punches were common enough in the cafés and taverns, served in simple earthenware bowls. But this—Viola’s giant tureen was a sculpture adorned with stags and lions and a huge eagle—
“Oh!” I gasped in surprise as the maids backed away from the bowl and Viola adjusted a hidden dial on the side. It was an exact replica of the centerpiece fountain in the city square, and as she fiddled with the controls, it began to run like the fountain. Steaming red punch flowed from the open mouths of intricately scaled fish, and rivulets of punch washed down the flanks of the stags.
“The fountain in the square is frozen,” Viola announced with a theatrical curtsy, “but mine is running nicely!”
I glanced around the room again. Nia was still missing. A dark fear crept out of the pit of my stomach. What if Pyord knew she was coming here? She hadn’t told him about our meeting, had she? Had he found her translation? My teeth worried my lips.
No one else had noticed her absence, or at the very least no one had commented. “Theodor,” I began, “Nia—wasn’t she supposed to join us tonight?”
Theodor shrugged. “Must have gotten distracted by some old scroll in the archive,” he said.
But the archive closed at sunset. It was black as coal outside, soft and pressing against the windows. I shook off the concern. She wasn’t bound by oath to come to the music party, or to bring me my translation. I’d inquire about her address and call on her, or just visit the salon later in the week.
The maids filled cup after cup, and we passed them from person to person around the room. It smelled faintly of citrus and cinnamon, though I wasn’t surprised when I tasted it that the base was strong red wine.
“The Snowmont family recipe,” Theodor said between sips. “I have a feeling the secret is using good wine.”
“Wrong,” Viola said, popping up behind us. “I use cheap wine in the punch.”
“Do you really?” I laughed.
“Certainly—for one, what a waste of good wine, throwing sugar and grapefruit and oranges and rum in it! But for another, the flavor isn’t as mellow in cheap wine. It works better to balance everything else in the punch.” She toasted us with her cup. “My father taught me that.”
The thought of a lord fine-tuning his punch recipe with cheap swill made me laugh. But maybe there was something deeper to Viola’s family punch recipe—something about ordinary wine forming the base of something extraordinary made me think of Kristos’s impassioned speeches that the working class was the base of our nation.
Kristos—he could still be in danger. My visit had affected nothing, as I had heard nothing more from Pyord. Now Penny had been arrested, and who knew what the future held for my shop, even if the closure had been lifted. I set my glass down, not sharing the blindness that allowed the rest of those gathered to laugh over punch in the face of the dark reality pressing against the seams of everything they knew.
Theodor’s gaze followed me as I crossed the room and pushed aside the heavy curtain of the window. Snow fell softly on the street outside. True to form, Theodor appeared beside me in a moment.
“There’s something wrong.” It was a statement, not a question. “More, I take it, than whatever I said in the greenhouse.”
“I promise, it was nothing you said. I’m—” My voice caught. “I’m worried about my brother.” It was true—but it was so much less than the truth.
“I know,” Theodor said. “I was thinking how my sister cried when my father told us all about the plans for me to go to the States in a few weeks, and how really wretched it was of him not to tell you he was sailing off.”
I forced a small nod of agreement, even though Theodor was empathizing with a lie.
“I don’t have to play if you’d rather talk, or I could take you home.” His hand rested lightly on mine.
I managed a smile. “No, I want to hear you play. And going home would just remind me that Kristos isn’t there.”
“Very well, I’ll rosin the bow and pass out cotton wadding if anyone would like to plug their ears,” he said.
Before he could begin, Miss Vochant hurried into the room and caught Viola’s arm. “My lady,” the maid whispered loudly. Viola rose, but before she could follow, a trio of uniformed city soldiers marched into the room. The oldest of them took Viola by the hand and pulled her into the hall.
Theodor’s brow constricted. “That’s the Lord of Keys,” he said. “And I’ve never seen him look quite like that.”
I gripped the windowsill behind me. They’d discovered me. That had to be it—someone had caught Pyord and he had ratted me out, someone had followed me and put together the pieces, Penny had told them something about me when she was questioned, Kristos had been discovered and everyone knew I was his sister … The possibilities churned like the river during a spring flood.
But Viola’s scream of shock told me it had to be worse than that.
Theodor pulled me closer to him, instinctive and protective. I stood, rigid as a board, and with growing trepidation.
The Lord of Keys entered the room, Viola standing behind him in the hallway, trembling like a leaf.
“Lady Nia has been found dead in the river.”
Pyord. It had to be—and it was my fault. My fingers hurt from their unrelenting pincer hold on the windowsill. I couldn’t move. I had asked Nia for help and she had been killed. I knew he had me followed, and I’d been careless. I’d allowed Nia to be vulnerable.
I was so horrified I couldn’t even cry, as most of the other ladies in the room were doing.
“She was dressed for an evening out,” the Lord of Keys continued, “which indicates that she was coming here as she had intended.” I saw Nia, dressed in one of her brightly colored orange or yellow gowns, the fabric twisting and rippling in the water like flames. Drowned flames. “If anyone knows her whereabouts before the incident, if she might have been meeting someone, alert us at once.”
I shook. I knew. I knew everything. But there was no way to tell the Lord of Keys without endangering Kristos. A horrible thought passed through my mind, selfish but terrifying—after my visit to Pyord’s office, it was even possible that murdering Nia was a message to me. Don’t force my hand. Keep quiet, it seemed to whisper between the voices around me.
“This wasn’t an accident?” Pauline asked, piping up like a timid mouse from the corner.
“No,” Viola’s father said simply. With Pyord, I knew, there were no accidents. Morbidly, I wanted to know how he did it. Was she stabbed? Shot? Poisoned? Did Pyord have one of his men kill her, or had he done it himself?
It didn’t matter. Even if Pyord killed her, she was dead because of me.
Theodor held me up even as I realized I was sinking against the window. “I’m taking you home,” he said. I let him lead me from the salon.
36
“YOU DON’T NEED TO DO THIS,” I WHISPERED AS THEODOR HELD my hand in the carriage.
“I think I do,” he replied. He held up my hand, which was visibly shaking. “I saw Nia last week—I hardly know what to think.”
I knew exactly what to think, but I shook my head. “I’m afraid,” I said without meaning to. Theodor moved closer to me, but I still felt cold. The carriage wheels made a hollow echo as we crossed a bridge—over the river, I realized, looking down. The river was broad and choked with silt here near the sea. The brown eddies and whorls carried leaves and scraps of paper and one dead catfish past me. The river never stopped moving—it slowed here near its mouth, but it couldn’t be halted. Pyord’s plan felt that way now. I couldn’t stop him from whatever he planned at the Midwinter Ball, or anything that followed it.
Pyord still held my brother. I had finished the shawl. I had no leverage. I could end up in the river just as Nia had. Theodor could be condemned to the same fate. I couldn’t stop it.
“I’m not going until after Midwinter,” Theodor said.
“What?”
“To the Allied Equatorial States. I’m not going until late winter. And now, after what happened to Nia, perhaps not at all.” He glanced out of the window. A knot of Red Caps loitered by a tavern. I turned my face from them. “A diplomat’s daughter killed here—it doesn’t help us maintain our international allies.”
“Is that what you’re thinking about?” I demanded.
“No. I’m thinking about how she was always willing to go over my research with me, how she gave me seeds from her family’s garden. I haven’t even planted them yet.” He pressed his mouth into a thin line. “I’m sorry, Sophie, but I can’t—”
“It’s all right,” I said, finally gripping his hand in return. “Take me to the Stone Castle,” I said, resolution building back in my voice after the shock of hearing about Nia. “I have business there.”
“Business? Please, Sophie, don’t make me leave you alone after this.”
I searched his hazel eyes. Something in them made me agree. “If you want to come with me, you may.”
The carriage drew to a halt in front of the imposing Stone Castle, once a fortress, when Galitha City was young, now a barracks and a jail.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said, reticent even now to let Theodor see the business I had to attend to.
“Of course I don’t have to,” he replied, hopping out of the carriage as nimbly as a squirrel. “I want to.”
Somehow, the thought of arguing with a clerk in front of Theodor made me more nervous than facing them by myself. I couldn’t trust myself to stay calm, not to break down in tears or shouts of anger. I gathered my nerves and marched up to the counter blocking the rest of the Stone Castle from the vestibule. A thin-lipped, tired clerk of the guard drummed his fingers on the dark wooden surface.
“You are holding my employee here, and I ask for her release. I will pay her bond if need be.”
Theodor, hovering behind me, coughed. I ignored him.
“Name,” drawled the clerk.
“Mine or hers?”
He looked up at me. “Hers,” he said after a confused pause. “Her name.”
“Penny Lestrouse.”
He flipped slowly through a stack of papers. The rustle of paper tracked like the second hand of a clock, methodical and impossible to hasten. I gripped the counter, frustration mounting. Theodor wisely kept his distance.
“She’s being held in block B6,” he announced, as though this meant anything to me.
“Yes?”
“Political block. I can’t release her without confirmation paperwork from the Lord of Keys.”
When Viola had argued for my shop to reopen, why hadn’t she argued for the release of my employee? Why didn’t she care more about Penny, cold and scared in a dark cell, than about my shop? I was important enough, elevated enough to help, but not a mere commoner like Penny?
She hadn’t even thought about it, I realized. It wasn’t cruelty. It was blindness.
“She is a girl. She works for me. She’s—she’s not dangerous.”
The clerk just stared balefully. “I can’t release anyone from B6 without paperwork.”
“What about an order from the Duke of Westland?”
I didn’t know until that moment that one could feel furious and relieved, grateful to someone while despising what they did. The clerk scrambled to his feet—he would stand for the Duke of Westland, but not for a seamstress. He would shuffle his papers at breakneck speed and find the order for release for Theodor, but not for me.
“Let me see that,” Theodor ordered. The clerk handed him the stack of papers—block B6 intake forms—with shaking hands. Theodor flipped through them, locating Penny’s and setting aside several others. “These are all girls under eighteen years of age,” he said, gesturing at the dates of birth entered at the top of each page on the pile. “Why are they being held?”
“They are political adversaries,” the clerk replied weakly.
“I’ll be speaking to the Lord of Keys about this,” Theodor said sternly, as though he were in control of the situation. His wide eyes told me that even he was surprised. “These girls will be released under my order, tonight.”
He watched the clerk fill out each order, and signed them himself. I wondered if there was any risk for him, what political capital he was expending to release these girls and Penny, if any. A guard led all of them from the dark hallway beyond the vestibule moments later, and Penny met my eyes with new understanding imbuing her surprise at being released.
“You?” she asked, standing a few leery feet from me.
“I tried,” I answered. “It was Theodor, actually, who—”
“Of course it was,” she said caustically. “I should have known it would take the influence of a noble.” I wanted to argue with her, to implore her to be more gracious, but she was right. I had done nothing. I was purely ineffectual here, and the system only bent for the nobility.
“At any rate, I will come by to collect my pay by the end of the week,” she added.
“What? Penny, I’m not firing you. I have no reason—”
