The Midnight Bargain

by C. L. Polk

  Faced with no good options for conversation, Beatrice remained silent. A pair of glossy gait-matched black prancers settled into a brisk trot under Ianthe’s guidance. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and watched the road, keeping her expression carefully neutral. The setting sun warmed their backs and cast long shadows on the road before them. Beatrice watched them stretch over the road, echoed by their own thoughts.

  They had been caught. They had lied. Ianthe had forbidden his sister to pursue magic any further, but they had to find a way. If Ysbeta didn’t give Beatrice the grimoire with the ritual to summon a greater spirit, their path went no further than the summoning of lesser spirits and their small favors—enough to get them locked into collars for the rest of their lives if they were caught, but not enough to free them, no matter how clever they were. They had to find a way around Ianthe’s restriction. There was no time left for either of them.

  Beatrice stole a glance at Ianthe. He knew she had successfully conjured a lesser spirit. He was permissive. He meant to allow her the liberty of her magic. He believed in planning his family. He was her best choice—even if it meant losing the chance to bond a greater spirit. It would save the Clayborns. Shouldn’t she give this up? Wouldn’t it be better if it were him—sophisticated, generous, and kind—where any other man would leave her trapped inside the dim, nothing world of the warding collar? He was the best man anyone could ask for, and all this secrecy, all this risk, would end.

  But Ysbeta didn’t have a man like Ianthe. Ysbeta faced nothing less than the obliteration of everything she wanted. Beatrice couldn’t give up. She couldn’t leave Ysbeta to her fate. They had to find a way.

  Ianthe turned his head, showing her the devastating sight of his face in three-quarter profile. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Please ask.”

  “It’s indelicate.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Beatrice promised.

  He looked away, embarrassment rippling across his face. “Does my sister fear the marriage bed?”

  Beatrice blinked. “You were right, it is indelicate. But in truth, I don’t know.”

  Ianthe’s shoulders came down. “Because if that’s all it is—”

  Beatrice huffed. “That is not all it is. She shouldn’t be herded into marriage like this.”

  Ianthe waved one arm in a circle that encompassed the world. “But women do it all the time. They marry. They have children. That’s the point of marriage.”

  “And we die in childbirth all the time,” Beatrice said. “And what if she just didn’t want to have children?”

  Ianthe scoffed. “But it’s—”

  Beatrice pounced. “Natural?”

  He went silent, frowning at something over Beatrice’s shoulder. “Are you saying that you don’t want children? Is that why you’ll risk your life to chase magic?”

  “I am not saying that,” Beatrice said. “But if I’m to do what I want to do with my life, then I can never have children. And what husband would accept that? Would you?”

  Ianthe looked away.

  Beatrice folded her arms. “You see, then.”

  “But you can’t have what you want! You need the support of the chapterhouse to attempt it. You need a mentor. You need training—”

  “I have no way to gain that support. No way to receive that training,” Beatrice said. “The only way I can do this is alone.”

  “I can’t stand by and watch you destroy yourself, Beatrice!” Ianthe shook his head and looked away. “I can’t do it, not for you, or Ysbeta either. Face the facts. You cannot have what you want.”

  “What if I could?” Beatrice said. “What if I knew the mystery? What if I knew how to conjure the greater spirit of my choice, what if I could succeed?”

  “This is no time for imagination and games. You need to stop this before it’s too late,” Ianthe said. “I’m not ready to know the mystery, and I have trained for years with every resource, with the best mentors, with the favor of the chapterhouse and the companionship of the lesser spirit Fandari. If you attempt this, you will die—but not before the spirit possesses you and destroys your family.”

  “Do you think me unafraid?” Beatrice asked. “Do you think I believe myself invincible? I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I should try—”

  “You should not try!” Ianthe shouted.

  The horses sped up, and he soothed them back down to a jog. “Beatrice. Please. I know you have had impressive success with conjurations. If you were a man, you’d be an initiate of the rose—”

  Beatrice didn’t want to hear what she would have if she were a man. She didn’t want to be a man. She wanted to be a magician! “But I am not a man.”

  “It’s not that I believe you are incapable because of your sex. And in a different world—”

  “I live in this one,” Beatrice said. “There’s no sense wishing I was the child of another star. I have to choose what to do here.”

  “How will you choose, Beatrice? And will you think of the people who love you when you do it?”

  “I think of my family every day.” Beatrice clenched her fists, sweaty inside her gloves. “Do you imagine that I do not? My family teeters on a precipice. If I fail them—”

  “Then do not fail them,” Ianthe said. “Do the right thing.”

  “Ianthe.” Beatrice turned in her seat and had to tilt her head to shade her eyes from the sinking sun. “Please understand that while I have argued with you all the way down the highway, I am torn in two.”

  “Then choose,” Ianthe said. “Use your wisdom and choose. Please.”

  “I could do as you say,” Beatrice said, her voice low. “I could just give up. I could accept my fate—and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, in the end—isn’t my mother happy? Isn’t your mother? But Ysbeta cannot make the compromise that I face. She is resolute. Turn your thoughts to helping her.”

  “It’s the question of what you will do that freezes me in place. I have the means to stop Ysbeta from pursuing higher magic. I can’t stop you—and thinking of what could happen to you chills my blood.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do. Beatrice. If I could solve this for you—”

  “You can’t,” Beatrice said. “There are only three things you can do—tell my father what I’m doing, help me, or step back and let me decide. Which is it?”

  Ianthe drove the curricle in silence, navigating street traffic as they trotted along Triumph Street.

  “I won’t tell your father,” Ianthe said. “But you’re in danger, and I don’t know how to make you see it.”

  Beatrice raised one hand to her throat. “I understand the danger.”

  Ianthe shook his head. “If you did, you’d end this.”

  She understood the danger. But now they knew how to find the women of the hidden path. They had only been forbidden to be alone together in privacy. Nothing said about them riding through town, seeing the sights on Thornback Street.

  They would get help, and just in time.

  He halted the horses in front of Beatrice’s townhouse. “I don’t like arguing with you. But think about what you’re doing. I’ll see you at the Blossom Ride.”

  Beatrice nodded to him and let the footman help her down from the carriage. The front door swung open, and Harriet stood there, her face a picture of distress, her eyes leaking tears.

  “Why didn’t you come home?” Harriet demanded. “How could you—half the servants are out searching for you!”

  “What? But I was with Ysbeta and Ianthe, as I said.”

  “You were only supposed to be gone until after lunch,” Harriet said. “You were supposed to come back and help me pick a dress for tea.”

  “What has happened?” Beatrice asked, but her younger sister grabbed her arm and yanked her inside, sniffling and sobbing.

  Harriet shook her arm. “You missed tea, you missed dinner—where did you go?”

  “Lavan House,” Beatrice said. “Ysbeta
had to go home early, and I—”

  “And you couldn’t leave a note? Didn’t you think we would— This is your fault,” Harriet said, her voice furious and low. “Everything’s ruined.”

  Beatrice stared at her sister. “What is ruined? It was only a few hours. I didn’t realize I would be gone so long—”

  “But you should have left a note! You should have let us know! And then I wouldn’t have—”

  The room went cold. “Wouldn’t have what?”

  Harriet’s shoulders rose. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. I feared the worst.”

  Beatrice grabbed Harriet’s chin and forced her to face Beatrice’s gaze. “What did you do?”

  “I had to,” Harriet said. “Sneaking off to the beach in your shift, cheating at cards—what if you’d lost all control and—”

  She didn’t. She couldn’t have. But she knew already. She knew it from her sister’s downturned mouth, from her refusal to look Beatrice in the face.

  “Oh! You couldn’t wait to hang me out to dry.” Beatrice let go of Harriet and planted her fists on her hips. “You told! I can’t believe you would do this to me!”

  “You’re so selfish! You never think of how we’d feel if you’d come to peril. You never think of what you’re doing to the family!”

  “I do! I wasn’t in danger! You wanted to tell on me. You took the first chance you had!”

  “You could have been possessed!” Harriet hissed. “You could have—oh, I can’t even speak of it!”

  “Good. I’ve heard enough from you. How could you do this to me? How?” Beatrice stalked past her sister, the rat, the chattering, backstabbing rat, and headed for the library door. How was she going to mend this with Father? Would he even speak to her? Would he even see her face?

  “Please!”

  That was Mother, shouting loudly enough to be heard through closed doors. Beatrice picked up her skirts and scurried across the tiled foyer floor. She pressed her ear to the wood and listened to Mother’s sobs.

  “She’s our child! You must let me find her; we must know what’s happened! Take it off, Henry, I beg you. I beg.”

  Beatrice’s fingers flew to her throat. Mother meant to find her with magic. Mother knew enough magic to—what? Did she know how to conjure?

  “What are you doing?” Harriet demanded.

  “Shh.” Beatrice held up a quelling hand and pressed harder.

  “We can’t take that chance,” Father said. “What if my son slumbers inside you?”

  Beatrice shivered. They were still trying for a son. A boy, who could take the helm of the Clayborns, attend the chapterhouse, and raise their fortunes with magic and political connections, better than merely bartering daughters. If Mother carried a son, Father would convince himself he didn’t need Beatrice.

  But listening to Mother beg twisted in her heart. Father was no magician; Mother had chosen the man she loved over the chance to raise her prospects. And now, because of choosing that love, she had to beg to use what the Skyborn had given her by right.

  “It will be just like the last time, when you wouldn’t consult the spirits about the orchid expedition. What if there was a son, you said, and plunged thousands into worthless plants.”

  Harriet came closer. “Beatrice—”

  Beatrice waved her hand, as if a gesture could make tattling younger siblings vanish. Father had released Mother from the warding collar before? Mother knew the lesser conjuration. Beatrice’s hands went cold. Father might love Mother. He might smile every time he laid eyes on her. But Mother should be on her feet. She should be casting by sigil and sign to search for her child. She was a sorceress, and she was begging on her knees before a powerless man.

  “It’s been six weeks since your courses,” Father said. “I can’t risk it.”

  “It won’t hold. None of them have! Beatrice and Harriet are our only children. We can’t risk a real daughter for a possible son.”

  Harriet scurried to the door, pressing her ear to the wood, but she misjudged the distance and thumped her head against it. Beatrice winced at the sound, and at the silence on the other side of the door.

  “Harriet,” Father called. “Open the door, if you please.”

  Caught. Beatrice shot a glare at her sister, twisted the doorknob, and stepped inside.

  Mother was on her knees, her hands fisted into Father’s weskit, tears soaking her face. Father’s expression melted from relief to red-faced, brow-knit anger.

  “Beatrice! Where have you been?”

  Beatrice dropped a hasty curtsey. “Lavan House. Ysbeta took a mood, and I went with her to cheer her up. I should have sent a note, but she was most upset—”

  “You’re safe,” Mother said. She picked herself up and threw her arms around Beatrice, squeezing tighter than her stays. “We didn’t know what had become of you. We didn’t know if you were hurt or lost or—”

  If she’d run away, after learning the truth of the warding collar? “I’m here, Mother. I didn’t mean to be gone for so long, it just happened—”

  Harriet slipped into the room. “It’s all right. Beatrice is safe. Please don’t punish her.”

  “Harriet,” Father said. “Go out and shut the door.”

  “But Father, it’s all right, I was wrong, please don’t—”

  “Shut the door,” Father repeated.

  Harriet retreated. The door swung shut. Father stood on the other side of his desk and regarded Beatrice, unspeaking.

  Beatrice tried to find the right words, but what explanation could she give for her actions? “Father, I—”

  “Lord Gordon called on me today to pay his and Ysbeta Lavan’s debt. And when you didn’t come home, Harriet told me something I can scarcely believe of my own daughter.”

  Beatrice’s back went stiff. “I’ve been careful.”

  “Tell me exactly how you won so much money at cards. The truth.”

  Beatrice licked her lips. “I was lucky.”

  “The truth!” Father roared, and his fist thumping on the desk made Beatrice jump. “You conjured a spirit. You made a bargain with it. Say it!”

  “Father, you only gave me fifty crowns,” Beatrice said. “Only fifty, and the stakes were ten crowns a point. I could have come home hundreds of crowns in debt. It would have ruined the family.”

  “The finances of this family are my concern. If you had come to harm playing with conjuring . . . If you had been caught cheating! I am the one who decides what risks we take, Beatrice.” Father buried his face in his hands, shaking. “But you are safe, even if you have come within a hair of ruining this family. With selfishness, with outrageous behavior—it ends now. You will leave playing with forces you don’t understand immediately. Is that clear?”

  Beatrice’s throat ached. She had been caught. “I didn’t want to drive us deeper into debt. That was all!”

  Father went redder, his face pinched with ire. “That is not all. You have willfully abandoned proper womanly behavior. If it comes out that you are dabbling in higher magic . . .”

  He huffed out a breath and began again. “But it will not. You will be married, as swiftly as possible.”

  There was still one chance. She was going to wait until the damage was done, but there was no time for that now. Perhaps she could bargain. “Father, I could help you,” Beatrice said. “Like Mother does. I could keep learning. If I remain unmarried and become a mage, then you could always have the assistance of a greater spirit. Together we could—”

  “Cease this nonsense immediately.” Father cut off her words with a sharp sideways-chopping gesture. “Never speak to me of such a thing again. It’s unnatural. It’s unheard of. To think my daughter would even countenance something so outlandish! It ends now.”

  It couldn’t. It couldn’t! But if Father wouldn’t be tempted by the service of a greater spirit, if he was resolute about her being married . . . the shards of her dream lay scattered before her. She had no choice.

  Beatrice hung her he
ad. “Yes, Father.”

  “I should confine you immediately. But there is another way. You have one chance to mend this.” Father held up a square of soft blue paper. “We have been invited to attend a party on the Shining Hand. If you stand a chance of securing the likes of Ianthe Lavan, I must allow you to attend your daily life as if this hadn’t happened.”

  Did she? Did she have a chance with Ianthe, after how they spoke to each other on the ride from Lavan House to Bendleton? It didn’t matter. She and Ysbeta still had a way to continue their pursuits. “Yes, Father.”

  “However, after the Blossom Ride is over, this party will be the last invitation you will accept as an unattached woman. If you are not engaged by the time we disembark, I will choose someone for you. Do you understand?”

  All her plans crumpled. The party at the Shining Hand was in two days. How could they be ready to become magi in two days?

  It was over. Harriet had ruined everything. Beatrice would be married; magic would be taken from her. The only kindness Father had allowed was the chance to secure Ianthe’s hand.

  But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? Ianthe would let her out of the warding collar sometimes. Maybe she—no. That wasn’t freedom. That was permission.

  How could she open her hand and let magic fall from her grasp?

  “Answer me.”

  “Father. Please. I can help—”

  “That’s enough.”

  Beatrice hung her head. “Yes, Father.”

  “Clara will sleep in your room at night.”

  So she would have no privacy, no chance to hide anything. “Yes, Father.”

  “You will go straight to bed after the search of your room is complete. Or you can tell me where you have hidden your ritual tools, and you may have dinner first.”

  Beatrice clenched her fists. She was caught. But she hadn’t climbed the ladder to the attic in days. She knew the casting by heart; chalk and candles didn’t matter anymore. “They’re in the attic,” she said.

  Father nodded. “That’s an honesty befitting my daughter. Sit here. I will return.”

  Beatrice sank into a chair, trembling. The game was up. Father’s footfalls echoed on the stairs. Beatrice leaned into her mother’s embrace as she buried her face in her hands.