Torn, page 32
“That hardly seems useful,” he said, fiddling with his bow.
“Who cares about useful? It’s fascinating!” I grinned. “And there may be more to it, who knows? Maybe it’s a love spell of some kind, wrapped up in the music.” I thought of the ballad seller—even if she didn’t know what she was doing, surely her casting had the effect of a few extra coins in her pocket. Theodor’s version of casting could be as useful as mine. “If only I knew more—but I think you might be able to charm a large space, or a whole group of people that way. Eventually. With practice,” I teased.
“Today was a good start, though.” He put the violin back into its case.
A porcelain clock on the mantel chimed. “It’s that late? I have to get back to the shop—oh, Alice and Emmi will already be gone.” Winter’s early dusk pressed against the windows.
“I’ll go with you,” Theodor announced, mistaking my statement for worry about being alone rather than annoyance that there were tasks I knew my assistants hadn’t known to finish.
“To a district of town full of Red Caps ready to hang a noble? Your father would box my ears. No, thank you.”
“He’ll only box mine,” Theodor answered.
“Fine,” I said, and let him call for the carriage. Ensconced in the privacy of the carriage, I leaned into him. It felt like stealing moments from the inevitable when I allowed myself to be happy with Theodor. The thick black of an early winter evening pressed against the windows. I sighed, content for a few short minutes.
“Wait,” he said, his attention diverted to the street on his side of the carriage. We were on the same street as my shop—the same block, in fact.
“What is it?” I asked, watching the light from lanterns and torches bob past us. They coalesced in an undulating patch of light just ahead.
“I don’t like to say ‘mob,’ but it seems to be a rather disorderly group of citizens,” Theodor said.
He was right—as we approached the center of the well-lit mass, I could hear shouting and the strains of a song that I knew the revolutionaries had picked up as a makeshift anthem.
“We have to stop,” I gasped when I saw where they were.
“Absolutely not,” Theodor answered. “I’ve had fencing lessons and there’s a pistol under the seat, but believe me, I’m no match for a mob.”
“You just said ‘mob,’” I said softly. “But Theodor—they’re at my shop.”
He pressed his face to the glass to confirm what I’d already seen—the mob was gathered around my stoop. Anger flared like wax poured on embers. They had made me compromise the most highly held of my values; they had stolen my brother from me—did they have to ruin my shop?
The carriage was forced to slow as we approached the group anyway, and I saw that the woman standing on my stoop and shouting was a stranger. There was something comforting in that—had Kristos been poised to ransack my store, it would have destroyed me. But the sight of this woman with a rock in her hand and pure hatred on her face just roused practical, pointed anger.
“Stop,” I ordered Theodor.
“I’m not sure we have a choice.” He watched the crowd with analytical intensity, then rapped on the roof of the carriage. We had already slowed to a crawl; now we halted.
Without giving myself time to think, I threw open the door and launched myself onto the cobblestones. The impact stung my feet, but I rushed to the front of my shop, throwing elbows when bulkish men didn’t move.
I reached the base of the steps as the woman hurled the rock through the window. “This storefront is just one more way the nobles have infected even our common streets! We should tear it down, rock by rock!” I scrambled up the steps. If they knew that I was at the mercy of the nobility, too, that my shop had been closed because of my ties to the Red Caps, they had already forgotten or didn’t care.
“Stop this!” I gasped.
“What for? This shop caters to the wealthy, to nobles and the elite who benefit from their rigged game. This shop is part of the rigged game,” she added to shouts of acclamation from the crowd.
“This shop employs honest citizens.” I caught her arm as she flung it back to throw another stone. “Would you take their livelihood from them?”
“And who are you to stop us?” she snarled at me and wrenched her hand from my grip.
Who was I? I was a seamstress. I was a charm caster. I worked for nobles, and the rabble assembled here could never have afforded my services. I choked.
I was also Kristos’s sister.
I had to bank on the fact that they didn’t know that I had renounced him and told him I never wanted to speak to him again.
“I’m Sophie Balstrade, and my brother is Kristos Balstrade. This is my shop. Please leave it alone.” My voice rang out over the crowd, who had grown quiet while I’d scuffled with the woman.
She raised an eyebrow and laughed. “That so? If that’s the truth, why aren’t you on our side? Can’t see the sister of the great Kristos Balstrade sitting idly by, sewing pretties for nobles. That is what you do here, isn’t it? Sell yourself to them?” I heard several shouts of “whore” from the crowd. My shop was a tangible image of collaboration that they could burn like an effigy, and I was the symbol of everything wrong with the system they despised. “Raise yourself above the rest of us by clinging to them?”
“It’s true,” I said weakly. “I am Kristos’s sister.”
“I can vouch for that,” a voice called from across the street. Theodor. He stood on the rail of the carriage, leaning out over the stones below.
“A noble!” someone cried.
“She was with him!” shouted another. I groaned—Theodor’s presence was exactly what I didn’t need. But still my heart swelled that he wanted to help me, protect me.
A rock, certainly intended for my store’s windows, sailed instead toward Theodor. He ducked, and it collided with the paneling of the carriage, leaving a nasty gash across the wood. He retreated inside, and though the crowd shouted, black fear crept through me. I knew he’d reappear—and that he would have a pistol.
Foolish Theodor, I thought desperately. The single shot of that pistol might frighten a few of them, might distract them for a few moments, but it wouldn’t dissipate the crowd. Just drive, I wished fervently. Get away. Trust that they’ll break more of my windows and ruin everything in my shop but leave me alone. I was already banking on that hope.
On the fringes of the group, flickers of light caught my attention. The torches were moving aside rapidly for a hooded man, his strides long and deliberate. My heart jumped.
Kristos.
He swung up beside me on the stoop of my shop, giving me one long look before throwing back his hood. His bold features caught the varying light of the torches in a dramatic pastiche of shadow and color, and his eyes rested on the carriage and Theodor emerging from the door only briefly before he began to speak.
“This is not the revolution we require!” he shouted. The crowd silenced themselves immediately, the hush so palpable that I thought I heard a hundred heartbeats, all at once. Then he continued. “Attacking our neighbors? Throwing rocks and hurling insults at those who make an honest living? Whether they sell to you or to nobles, their earning is honest—not like the nobility who live off our labor.”
Shouts of affirmation followed Kristos’s words, and I sank against the stone exterior of my shop. The woman who had thrown the rocks had slipped away as soon as Kristos appeared. I stared at my brother, seeing him for the first time as all of these people did. He was not my brother, not the child I had grown up with—he was a leader. Just like Pyord said, a natural leader. What a great man he could have been, I thought. In another place, another life—my breath caught. He was trying to create that place, that life, where he could be more than a dockworker, more than a day laborer. I had created it for myself with my skill and my shop—I was lucky. He wasn’t—none of these people were. And so he carved the role of a leader for himself out of the bedrock of their need for change.
He was still speaking, and I looked out over the quiet crowd to Theodor. He had wisely tucked the pistol away, but he stayed firmly in the same spot. Unwilling to leave me.
I mouthed the word silently. “Go.” He shook his head slowly. I pressed my lips together, trying to dull the pounding of my beating heart in my ears.
“We should turn our attention where we can make an impact,” Kristos was saying. “The nobility is our enemy, not one another.”
My eyes widened. Kristos was looking straight across the street, practically daring Theodor to say something, to fight back, to run. I sank onto the cold stone, drawing my knees toward my chest like a frightened child.
The crowd sensed where my brother’s eyes rested and turned to Theodor, too.
He didn’t move. His thin jawline tilted upward, ever so slightly. My breath was ragged and audible, but Theodor inhaled and exhaled so calmly that he might have been sitting in Viola’s salon or in his greenhouse.
Go, I begged silently. Just go, get away now.
Kristos glanced at me, eyes narrowing. He exhaled once, a huff of angry air, and raised his arm. I covered my face, terrified to see what he was about to order his people to do.
“Let’s leave this place,” he cried. “Tomorrow is the Midwinter Festival of Song. We’ve long planned to show our numbers at the cathedral when the nobles gather to sing away winter—they won’t sing us away!”
Some in the crowd replied with shouts of affirmation, but most responded only with stony silence. “This is not how we earn the governance we deserve,” Kristos continued. “Arson? Vandalism? We are not street criminals. We are revolutionaries, soldiers in an army of ideals. We will show our force tomorrow and convince the nobility to acquiesce to our demands, to call for truce before war begins. Blood need not stain these streets!” he shouted.
I looked up at him, and he gave me a long look that I couldn’t quite read. Disappointment? Anger? Loss? All of these, or was it only that they were what I felt toward him? Then he swept away, pulling his cloak back over his features, obscuring himself even from me.
He strode up the street, toward the cafés and taverns, and the crowd followed him, dissipating so quickly that it was hard to tell what I’d been so terrified of until I saw the shattered pane of glass and imagined Theodor broken under their hands instead. I stumbled down the stairs, each step as unsure as a toddler’s.
Theodor met me in the street and pulled me inside his carriage. He slumped against the corner.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m useless.”
“No,” I insisted. “You’re not. That was a mob—there, I said it, too.” Neither one of us was ready for humor.
“Do you think he meant it?” he asked after a long silence. “That we might still forestall open revolt?”
I hesitated. “Even if he did, just now …” I thought of Niko’s determination and Pyord’s careful calculations and knew, somehow, that the machine was already in motion, the gears wound too tightly to prevent them from springing forward.
“I’ll never be the man your brother is,” he finally replied.
“That,” I said, my voice teeming with the anger I’d forced back until now, “is certainly true.” Theodor’s face met mine, shocked and hurt. I shook my head and explained, “He’s an awful person. He doesn’t really care about other people.” I forced each syllable through clenched teeth. “He cares more about his ideals than his friends. Than his family.”
“He saved you,” Theodor said. “And, might I note, me.”
“Yes. This time he did.”
“When he speaks, others listen. He’s made of something I’m not, crafted out of leadership when I’m merely born into it.”
“But he’s …” I wanted to tell Theodor everything—that Kristos had forced me to betray myself, that he was complicit in a plot against the king. Instead, I choked my confession back and said only, “He’s lied to me and hurt me.”
“I know,” Theodor said, even though he didn’t know the depth of Kristos’s betrayal. “Let me bring you to my home.”
“It’s not necessary. Just take me home.”
“Not a chance—I’m not letting you stay alone tonight.”
I agreed, defeated and exhausted.
41
THEODOR’S HOUSE WAS QUIET, THE CANDLES OUT, THE ONLY FIRE still blazing the one in his bedchamber, so he took me there and let me sit, shivering in front of the flames. “I—I’ll wake the maid and have her stoke a fire in the other bedroom,” Theodor said. I took his hand before he could open the door.
“Please—stay.”
He sank beside me, sitting on the floor next to my chair. He rested his head on my knee, and I found my fingers stroking his honey-brown hair. “This will all be over soon,” I whispered. It was true—the Midwinter Ball was two nights away, and whatever plan Pyord had would begin. The waiting was worse, perhaps, than anything he had planned.
No, that wasn’t true. Nothing would be worse than civil war in the streets.
I pulled my hand back and closed my fist, letting my nails dig into my palms. I should say something, tell Theodor. But what could I say that didn’t incriminate myself? What could I say that wouldn’t send my brother to the gallows? I couldn’t do that, even after what he’d done to me. I relaxed my hand.
Theodor took it in his. “I spoke to the king today,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier. I—I told him I thought I had a better plan for my marriage than an alliance with another nation.”
I looked down into his upturned face, the firelight playing games in the shadows it cast. “What plan is that?”
“An alliance with our own people.”
I slid off the chair and knelt next to Theodor. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I suggested that marrying a person without a title might assure our people that we truly do have the best interests of the entire country in mind. That we are not so insular. It’s only one idea, of course—a wedding can’t resolve a revolution. But he said he would consider it. It was part of a larger conversation—how to stop this insurrection before it escalates any further. That takes precedence, of course, over anything else.”
I turned and looked into the hearth, at the coals radiating heat and the flames licking the logs. I knew from my charm casting that a little light could go a long way. It could even, perhaps, begin to mend the relationship between the nobility and the common people. “It’s a lot to consider,” I said. “For the king and for me.” All of the fears I had held, for years, stitched tight to the idea of marriage itself, weren’t resolved by marrying a noble instead of a commoner. Yet I was weary of being guided by fear—fear for my brother’s life, fear for the coming revolt, fear for my own safety. Theodor was the only part of the patchwork of my life that seemed guided by hope instead of fear, light instead of dark.
Theodor gripped my hand. “I—I’m sorry. I should never have assumed.”
“You had to assume a little,” I said with a smile.
“I won’t assume any longer,” he said quietly, gathering me to him, wrapping my body in his arms. “I want you to tell me what you want.”
I sank into him and traced his chin. Stubble had begun to soften the line of his jaw. His fingers—deft, deliberate fingers—waited expectantly at my waist. The hazel of his eyes brightened to green in the firelight, and I knew what I wanted. Desire bloomed thick and heady within me, and I took his face between my hands and kissed him.
“I want you,” I whispered in his ear, kissing the soft space just behind it, delighting in the gasp it drew from Theodor. “I want you always.”
He stood, pulling me up with him. “And I, the same.” Carefully, methodically, he removed each of the pins that closed the front of my gown, lacing each sharp point back through the fabric, and then pulled the gown from my shoulders. I reached behind me to untie my petticoat, but he stayed my hand.
“I want to do it,” he said, untying each skirt and gathering them in a bundle of silk and cotton. Then he found my staylace and slowly pulled it through each eyelet, his fingers tracing my back in the gap between the boned edges of my stays. The corset fell to the ground, still shaped like me. My shift drifted, translucent and unshaped, away from the curve of my body.
“I wanted to see all of you,” he said. “Even though your clothes are so very much a part of you, I wanted you without them. With nothing between us, nothing brought in. Just two people,” he said, dropping his ceremonial sword on the chair and shucking the coat with his family’s device pinned to it.
“Everyone wears a shift and a shirt,” I said, touched by the metaphor inherent in our clothes. “Noble and common alike.”
“In that, we are all the same.”
“Your linen is finer than mine,” I whispered, taking his shirt ruffle between my fingers.
“Then let’s take it off,” he suggested, and pulled me into his bed.
42
AS IF IN DELIBERATE CONTRAST TO THE UPHEAVAL OF THE NIGHT before, the streets were quiet the next morning, as was the shop, giving me ample time to practice lifting curses. I had given my assistants the day off for the Festival of Song, as was customary for small shops like mine. Most of the city usually gathered in Fountain Square and on the broad avenues to “sing away winter,” a custom so old no one remembered where it came from.
This year only a few carolers roamed the streets, their sparse numbers feeling all the shabbier given that no one was stopping to listen to them. Stubbornly, the nobles carried on with the liturgical service at the cathedral, despite the crowds of Red Caps I knew had gathered outside. No one interrupted me and my needle and thread as I worked and unworked curses past midday and into the afternoon. I grew more proficient, but it was still a slow task. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, plucking the whole curse from the queen’s shawl. Worse, I couldn’t figure out a way to see the shawl. Midwinter Ball was the following night, and I would have wagered my shop that Pyord planned to attack the royal family there.
