The Midnight Bargain

by C. L. Polk

  “Is that a spirit?” Harriet asked.

  “Yes,” Beatrice said. “A luck spirit. That’s how I won so much at cards. That’s why I was not trampled to death by my horse.”

  “Because the spirit served you,” Harriet said in a small voice.

  “Because Nadi was my friend,” Beatrice said.

  “I didn’t know,” Harriet said. “I only knew what I was supposed to. That it was dangerous. That it was wrong. That spirits are amoral, capricious, and wicked. That you had to have great strength to control them, to tame them to do good. I didn’t know why you would trespass so. But—I took it from you. Your magic. Your friend. I’ll never, never forgive myself.”

  Beatrice watched Harriet cry as if she were floating above it all, watching from the dispassionate view of a dream. She had to say something. Soothe her sister. Comfort her. “What if I forgive you instead?”

  Harriet shook her head. “You can’t.”

  “I can if I wish. After the wedding I will sail for Valserre; I won’t return until your bargaining season. And then only if I manage to birth a son.”

  “He’s taking you away.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want a bargaining season,” Harriet said. “It’s a lie. All of it. Lies in silk ruffles, lies in perfume—I hate it.”

  “You may hate it,” Beatrice said. “But don’t forget that you used to love it. You were going to be the star of the Assembly Dance. You were going to have a dozen suitors—”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “All right,” Beatrice said. “Let’s just lie here, then. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do right now.”

  Harriet settled next to Beatrice. She closed her eyes and slept, the kind of sleep that follows a soul-emptying cry. Beatrice looked at the cloud-painted ceiling and watched the light slowly fade into darkness.

  She had given up love for this. For this. Beatrice touched the collar at her throat. Her future. Her prison.

  She had given up love for this.

  No. She would not give up. She couldn’t just drift through this dull, washed-out shell of a life. There had to be a way to free herself, and she had only one chance—the fitting with Miss Tarden. She knew what the modiste wanted; she would gladly trade it for her freedom.

  Clara was a snorer, and when she had snorted and growled for Beatrice’s slow count to one hundred, she moved an inch away from her maid. Nothing. An inch more. Still she rasped and breathed, and Beatrice slipped out of the bed and stood for a frozen terrifying minute, waiting for her to wake.

  Nothing. Her maid slept on, and Beatrice stole out of her bedroom, quiet as a spectre. :Nadi. If you’re nearby, grant me luck.:

  Not a single stair creaked under her weight. The foyer was empty, lit by the low flame of a single lantern. She scurried across the cold marble tile on bare cat feet and gripped the doorknob of Father’s library, listening for the scratch of writing, the soft crackle of a turning page, the way he hrmphed and mused to himself as he read and worked.

  Only silence, and she turned the knob all the way before pushing the door open a fraction, a foot, wide enough to pass into the dark and silent room, only a slice of light from the foyer’s lamp drawing the shapes of Father’s desk.

  She had no candle. She couldn’t sense the grimoires among three walls filled with shelves, her volumes resting within. She dared open the door a little wider, tiptoeing to the hearth, where the smell of ashes and seasoned wood reigned. She slid her fingers along the mantle, feeling for—ah! The octagonal base of a silver candlestick. Another foot of groping found a striker-box. The rasp of the striker, the flare of its flame—she touched the light to the candle’s wick and tossed the spent stick in the hearth. She sighed and turned to survey the bookshelf.

  She had seen where Father had paused to shelve them. She lifted the flame to survey each title. None were what she sought. No. Not that one. Where is it? Where were her books?

  She tried another shelf, reading over the titles. Nothing. They were gone. Gone.

  A whisper of sound from outside.

  Beatrice gasped and blew out the candle, hiding her light—and conjuring the smell of beeswax smoke curling into the air to betray her. Caught. She was caught, there was nothing she could do but watch the library door swing wider.

  Mother stepped through the doorway, her hair bound up in rag curlers. She regarded Beatrice in silence. The collar lay against her throat; the white linen sleeping shift glowed in the faint light of the foyer’s lantern.

  Tales of Ijanel and Other Heroes, by E. James Curtfield, rested in her hand.

  Mother put her finger to her lips. She took the candlestick from Beatrice’s hand, and pressed the faded blue volume into her daughter’s grasp. She laid her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder, and in the darkness, lifted her face to plant a kiss on her daughter’s cheek. Then silently, she replaced the stick on the hearth and went out of the library, leading her daughter back to the chamber where Clara still snored.

  The smell of breakfast made her sick. Beatrice turned her back on the tray and tucked her face under the covers until Clara took it away. She let Clara dress her in a gray cotton jacket and a printed cotton skirt, a riot of strange flowers and visiting butterflies. She slid her feet into pillar-heeled mules; her hands covered in gray kid gloves. When Clara left the room to take the tray down, Beatrice slipped the grimoire into her pocket, where it hid under the fulling cage and pulled on the waist tie fastened beneath her stays.

  “Beatrice?”

  “Coming,” she called, and made a hasty job of following.

  She waited on a bench in the foyer, her chin tucked in so the brim of her hat hid her face. She pretended to read a novel—a miniaturized volume that fit in a maid’s reticule and waited for the fiacre to arrive.

  They were to visit the dressmaker and fasten the token seams that would make the dress finished, having successfully warded off the bad luck that came with finishing a bridal gown before securing a proposal. Clara carried the buff-colored case that protected Beatrice’s gown, but Beatrice kept her eyes on the page.

  She set the book on the bench just as the footman by the door opened it. “Your carriage, Miss Clayborn.”

  “Thank you.”

  The carriage set to take her to the dressmaker’s and back. Beatrice kept her head bowed even though it made her feel as if the collar strangled her. She took Clara’s arm and glanced at her maid-companion, cast in the role as her jailer.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Beatrice said.

  Clara offered her arm for support. “I’m right here beside you.”

  She and Clara descended the stairs to the promenade, where the driver bent to set a boarding block next to the dip in the carriage wall. Beatrice put out her hand, but the driver had turned away to inspect a bit of the harness. Beatrice sniffed and made the climb by herself.

  Clara settled beside her, the set of her mouth small with annoyance. “This driver is so rude. I shall not tip him.”

  Beatrice shrugged. “If he saw something wrong with the tack—”

  “Perhaps.”

  Then the driver hopped up to his bench and the carriage lurched forward, its single horse already at a trot. They would come to the dress shop too soon, with the driver in a hurry like that.

  Beatrice dreaded standing on the hem-box in the dressing room, robed in the green satin gown dyed with the sixteen herbs of love and fertility. She would stare at her collared reflection as the needlewomen finished hems, fastened buttons, and secured the seventy-point lace on her sleeves. They would tell her she was beautiful. They would look away from the collar on her throat, but they would whisper about it—and speculate on her indiscretion—to the others when she left the shop. And then dinner with the Maisonettes, where, if the Skyborn had any mercy, Beatrice would choke to death on a bone. She was moving too fast to her future. It was rushing toward her, blades drawn.

  No. She had a grimoire, and Miss Tarden wanted those more than anyth
ing she possessed. She could secure her help—let her slip out the back and run. She eyed Clara, the urge to tell her poised on her lips.

  “What is it?” Clara asked. “Miss Beatrice, you look so peculiar.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” Beatrice said. “I can’t do this.”

  Clara’s expression furrowed into concern and sympathy. “But there’s no way out.”

  “But what if there is?” Beatrice asked.

  Clara stared at her, indecision writhing over her face. “What do you mean?”

  “I could run,” Beatrice said. “I want to run.”

  Clara’s eyes widened. The fiacre lurched to a stop. They were at Tarden and Wallace. The driver jumped down from his seat. Beatrice paused to allow him to assist her, but he circled his horses, inspecting their necks.

  Clara made a disbelieving noise. “Really!”

  Beatrice stared at the driver now. His broad hat blocked his face, and the driver’s neckerchief was raised over his nose and mouth. All she could see was the dark brown skin of his hands that could have meant Makilan, South Sanchan, any of a dozen countries. But something flared in her heart at the sight of him. Something about his shoulders, the tilt of his wrist as he held the cheek strap—

  “Come, Miss Beatrice. Think nothing of it. We must—” Her words hitched on a sob. “Come, now. They’re waiting.”

  Clara led her into the shop, but Beatrice looked back at the driver. If he would only turn around. If she could just see his face. But he moved behind one of his ponies, and what if she were wrong?

  “Telling off a rude driver won’t change anything.” Clara held the door open, and Beatrice stepped over the threshold. A dozen heads swiveled to stare at her. They knew who she was, and their expressions ran from fascinated disgust to pity to the tight-lipped determination to never suffer as Beatrice had. Were any of them sorceresses?

  Only Miss Tarden looked at her differently, and fear shivered in the cords of her throat.

  “Please come with me,” she said. “The fitting suite is ready.”

  Beatrice walked past all those staring faces, past all the doors of the fitting rooms until they reached one in the back of the shop. Miss Tarden stopped Clara with one hand raised.

  “Under the circumstances, it’s best if Miss Clayborn has time alone,” Miss Tarden said. “If you’ll sit in the reception room—”

  “I would never dream of leaving Miss Beatrice’s side,” Clara said. “If she cries, who’ll wipe her tears? It’s a terrible thing. They won’t even allow me to stay with her after it’s done—no. I won’t leave her at a time like this.”

  “I must insist,” Miss Tarden said. “It will only be a few minutes.”

  “Miss Beatrice?”

  He wasn’t even going to let her keep Clara with her? Oh, that awful, awful man. “I would like Clara with me.”

  Miss Tarden’s eyebrows knitted together in worry. “She really should—”

  “I must insist,” Beatrice said. “Or I could leave.”

  Yes. She could leave. Clara held money in her reticule to pay for things Beatrice needed. They could give the whole purse to a cab driver. They could go to Lavan House. Once she found Ysbeta and taught her how to decipher the grimoires by hand, and the spell to reveal their contents by magic, she would find a way to help Beatrice, and—

  Clara firmed her stance. “Yes. We’ll leave. Immediately.”

  Miss Tarden’s expression was pale. “You can’t.”

  “We insist,” Clara said. “We won’t stand for this—”

  Beatrice wrestled the grimoire from her pocket, holding it out to Miss Tarden. “Please.”

  Miss Tarden stared at it. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in its scent. Then she sighed, her shoulders slumped. “I can’t accept it.”

  “But—”

  Miss Tarden turned the knob on the fitting room door. “Please go inside.”

  No! Beatrice backed up a step. “No. I won’t go in there, I won’t.”

  She turned and two women in caps and aprons stood at the end of the hall. They looked to Miss Tarden for direction, and Beatrice’s heart sank.

  “I won’t go in. Let me go. Please. By hazel and chestnut, please, I must—”

  “Beatrice.”

  The fitting room door opened, and Ysbeta stood in the doorway.

  “Ysbeta,” Beatrice said. “You—how did you know to come?”

  It had been Ianthe driving the fiacre! Her friend and her beloved had come to rescue her. “How did you know?”

  “Your mother sent word,” Ysbeta said. “What on earth possessed you to refuse Ianthe?”

  “The reasons seem so stupid now,” Beatrice said.

  Ysbeta shrugged, and Beatrice wanted to throw her arms around her friend. Her friend, who had come to rescue her from Danton and the collar. “Well, I’m here to save you from your mistakes. Will you consent to be abducted?”

  “Yes. Yes. Please spirit me away,” Beatrice said. “How will we leave the shop?”

  “This way,” Miss Tarden said. She opened another door and they moved past rows of dress forms, each one holding a gown in a different phase of construction. The room could have held twenty needlewomen, but they shuffled past empty stools and abandoned needle kits and wound up in the alley, where the same fiacre that brought them to the dress shop now stood.

  “Welcome, ladies.” Ianthe had removed his hat and neckerchief and smiled. “Beatrice.”

  Beatrice fell into his arms. “You came.”

  “Nothing would have stopped me,” Ianthe said. “Nothing.”

  “We still have to make our escape,” Ysbeta said. “Enough canoodling.”

  “Miss Beatrice,” Clara said. “What will you do now?”

  “Whatever she wishes,” Ysbeta said. “You have two choices, Miss Clara. You can raise the alarm and betray Beatrice. Or you can wake up drugged in the fitting room alongside Miss Tarden.”

  “Or you can get in this carriage and continue to be my maid-companion.” Beatrice clasped Clara’s hand. “Come with me, Clara. Even if it’s just to get a good reference from me—Father won’t give you one, but I will.”

  “I will come, and I will stay.” Clara picked up her skirts and clambered into the carriage. She raised her chin, challenge in her eyes. “Just try and stop me.”

  “Hurry,” Miss Tarden said. “This is no time to delay.”

  “Very well, Clara. I commend your loyalty. Everyone on board, now.”

  Clara picked up her skirts and climbed into the carriage. Beatrice took one step in Miss Tarden’s direction, offering the book. “Take it.”

  “I couldn’t.” Miss Tarden shook her head. “They’re priceless.”

  “I insist,” Beatrice said. “I have learned all I can from this one. You must have it. Only promise me this. If another ingenue comes to your doorstep in distress, help her.”

  “I will,” Miss Tarden said. “Now hurry.”

  Beatrice climbed into the fiacre at last and took a seat on the bench. Ysbeta turned to her, scolding. “I told you to meet me at your cabin before dawn.”

  “I wanted to, but Father insisted on leaving immediately.”

  “Because you were stupid enough to—”

  “We should get moving,” Ianthe said. “You have your draught?”

  Miss Tarden nodded. “It’s in the tea.”

  “Remember—you had tea with Beatrice, you must have fallen unconscious, and when you came to, Beatrice was gone.”

  “I should have helped you earlier,” Miss Tarden said. “Now hurry. The girls will be back from lunch soon.”

  Ianthe hopped into the driver’s box. The carriage lurched into motion, and Beatrice smiled for the first time in days.

  “Thank you.”

  Ysbeta huffed. “You idiot. Why did you say no?”

  Ianthe looked behind him. “She had her reasons.”

  “Stupid reasons,” Ysbeta insisted. “I told you to meet me. I was going to tell you my idea that night. All you
had to do was be sensible, but that was too much to ask.”

  “What were you going to tell me?”

  “That I think I know how to solve your problem.”

  “You should have said that in the note.”

  “I expected you to keep your brains in your head. I expected you to have a shred of sense,” Ysbeta said.

  “We’ll speak of it afterward,” Ianthe said. “Under your seat is a small box. Inside that box is a key that will release the collar from around Miss Clayborn’s neck. May I ask you to use it?”

  “How did you get my collar key?”

  “Your mother sent it by messenger last night,” Ianthe said.

  Beatrice could have wept. “I wish she were here. I wish I could tell her how much she’s done for me.”

  “I know she knows,” Ysbeta said. “Come on. Mother and Father are in Bendleton, but they’re supposed to be home for dinner. We need to be gone by then.”

  “Where are we going?” Beatrice asked.

  “The sanctum. It’s time to do the ordeal,” Ysbeta said. “Ianthe, drive faster.”

  CHAPTER XX

  The sun shone warm on Beatrice’s face. She touched her bare neck and a delighted frisson shivered her skin, cooled by the breeze playing all around them. The rich smell of cattle and sheep wafted toward the sea, and Beatrice twisted her fingers and spoke the fleet-foot rhyme to the fiacre’s sturdy-looking pony. The carriage sped immediately.

  Beatrice laughed and hugged herself. Free! She picked up the hateful collar, wincing at the sharp whine that she could hear whenever she touched it, and flung it down the cliffside. “Never will I permit anyone to put me in such a thing again,” Beatrice said. “Never. I will fight to the death for my freedom.”

  :Beatrice!: Nadi cried. :Beatrice, you’re back! I couldn’t talk to you. I could only watch.:

  :Oh, Nadi,: Beatrice said, and burst into tears. Everything was back to normal. She was a runaway, she was free of the warding collar, she was a magician once more . . . and there was Nadi, her spirit, her friend, returned to dwell inside her.

  :You’re sad.:

  :I’m mixed up,: Beatrice said. :I am so happy you’re safe.: