by Amy Ewing
“My mother wouldn’t have minded,” she muttered.
“Oh yes, she would have,” Mrs. Phelps said. “I know you like to romanticize her, but I’m sure she would have wanted a clean daughter as much as your father does.”
For a heart-stopping second, Agnes thought the woman had read her mind; then she realized Mrs. Phelps was just talking about the dirt again.
“But you didn’t even know her,” she said. Mrs. Phelps had been hired after her mother died.
“No, I didn’t, and I can’t say I’m sorry for it. I worked for the Hornes back then. But everyone knew about Xavier McLellan’s Pelagan wife. All those parties she used to throw, the way she dressed . . . I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she was a dangerous woman, your mother. Wild. Unconventional. There were stories flying about that she had used her Talman magic and invoked some goddess or other to trick him into the marriage.”
Agnes snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Well, he started acting strangely after a while, that’s for certain. But then she died and he came back to his old self and that was that. Best to keep the past in the past.”
“Acting strangely?” Agnes asked, surprised. She’d always been so obsessed with learning about her mother, she’d never given much thought to how her father might have been back then. She’d assumed he was simply the same as he was now. “How?”
“They weren’t rightly home much,” Mrs. Phelps said as she worked some gardenia shampoo through Agnes’s hair. “Traveling all the time. And the parties, with foreign foods and all sorts of people—not proper company, if you catch my drift. She was wild, like I said, and it rubbed off on him for a bit. Wouldn’t even deign to have you and your brother born at the hospital in Old Port. No, it was some private facility outside the city, that was the only place that would do for her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Servants talk, my dear. I may not have worked in this house then, but gossip like that travels fast, especially in this city. The McLellans left Old Port together, and only you children and your father returned.” She tilted Agnes’s head so she could look into her eyes and smiled. “But that woman gave us you and Leo, and that’s all that matters. Ah, Hattie.”
The young maid came hurrying in with a bucket of water, steam rising gently from its surface. She dumped it over Agnes’s head, rinsing away the shampoo.
“All right, that should do it,” Mrs. Phelps said. “Up you get.”
She covered Agnes in a big fluffy towel as she stepped out of the tub. Hattie wrapped another towel around her hair and led her off down the hall to Agnes’s room. Leo was lounging in the doorway of his own room, looking as smug as a cat with a fresh kill.
“Father wants to see you,” he said.
“Where did they take her?” Agnes demanded.
“Please don’t fight,” Hattie begged, glancing over the railing to the foyer below.
Leo shrugged. “Ask him yourself. If he’ll even tell you. I’m going to be seeing her tomorrow, though. I’ll send your regards.” Then he sauntered back inside his room and closed the door.
Hattie wanted her to wear one of her nicer dresses, but Agnes did not feel like dressing up to be yelled at. She chose a simple white blouse and gray skirt instead, shoving her damp hair up into a bun. Hattie stuck a few decorative pins in it and laid out a gold necklace with a Solit triangle pendant. Before she left for Xavier’s study, Agnes checked the door to her lab to make sure it was locked. Now that Sera’s hair was hidden inside, she felt herself becoming paranoid.
Her father stood leaning over an open desk drawer when she knocked. The drawer clicked, locking as he closed it.
“Sit,” he said without preamble, gesturing to one of the two hardback chairs facing the desk. Xavier liked to keep his guests uncomfortable in this room. Agnes sat in silence—she knew that no amount of apologizing would help her cause. He would punish her as he saw fit.
Besides, she wasn’t sorry, and she wasn’t going to lie and say she was. Xavier leaned back and studied her. The grandfather clock ticked loudly, and Agnes tried to focus on its steady beat. She felt as though he was looking inside her, peeling back the layers of her skin, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much it unnerved her.
“If only you had been born a boy,” he said at last, and the words were a knife to Agnes’s heart. She knew, of course. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that her gender did not offend him, or that at the very least he wished she would act like a regular girl. Leo commented on it all the time.
But her father had never said it out loud.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said. His stare somehow became even more penetrating.
“No, you aren’t.” He turned in his chair to look out the window. “I have been far too lenient with you. The lab, your behavior, letting Eneas teach you Pelagan . . .” Agnes’s chest seized up. “That ends now. Ebenezer Grange’s father has made a very good offer for your hand, and I have accepted on your behalf. You will meet with Ebenezer tomorrow and make it official.”
“What?” Agnes yelped. She had always thought that when the time came, at the very least she would be involved in the decision. She knew her father would have the final say, but this was cruel even for him. The Granges were a social-climbing merchant family; Ebenezer was a thin, nervous boy whom Agnes had never given much thought to. Now, all of a sudden, she was to marry him? “Father, don’t you think—”
“Do not tell me what to think, Agnes, and be grateful I am not sending you away to a sanatorium for hysterical young ladies.” He turned back to face her. “I should never have indulged you, but I thought . . .” He clenched his teeth, and Agnes knew he had been about to mention her mother. She drew on every shred of courage she had left to ask a question that had been brewing for years.
“Couldn’t you send me to live with my grandmother? I wouldn’t be such an embarrassment in Pelago, and perhaps . . .” But the words died on her lips. Agnes remembered what Hattie had said, that Xavier had turned to stone with anger when he’d discovered she was gone. She saw it happening again now. One hand curled into a fist and his eyes narrowed a fraction. Otherwise he was completely still.
“You think sending you to that godforsaken country to live with your witch of a grandmother will make you less of an embarrassment?” His voice was slow, deliberate. “I thought you were the smart one, Agnes.”
The knife in her heart twisted.
“Mother would have wanted me to know her,” she blurted out.
Xavier slammed his fist down on the table, rattling his fountain pen and making her jump. “You do not know what your mother would have wanted,” he snarled. “And you certainly don’t know the first thing about Ambrosine Byrne. You think your grandmother is some kindly, gray-haired schoolmarm? Think again, Agnes.”
Heat rose in her cheeks, because to be honest, that was exactly how she’d pictured her.
“Tell me about her then,” she said. “If I’m so stupid, enlighten me.”
“I did not say you were stupid,” Xavier said. “If I had to choose a word, it would be naive. You romanticize Pelago, and your mother, and her family. The Byrnes are not what you think they are—they are selfish and greedy. They are arrogant. You have created a world that doesn’t exist. You are living in this world and you must abide by its rules.”
“I wouldn’t have to romanticize Mother or her family if you talked about them,” Agnes said. She knew she was pushing her luck, but she couldn’t help herself. What did he mean by selfish and arrogant? Maybe he was making up a tale to dampen her desire to know the Byrnes. Eneas had called her grandmother formidable, which made her seem like a woman of stature. Agnes had always pictured her as someone noble and respected.
She was sick of getting only bits and pieces of information. The spectacular unfairness of it all was making her irrational. “Mrs. Phelps said you and Mother used to travel all the time together. That you threw parties here with all sort
s of people. She said you were different then.”
Xavier’s face had become a mask, but Agnes could sense some strong emotion pulsing beneath it, and she immediately regretted bringing the housekeeper into this discussion.
“Mrs. Phelps hasn’t the faintest idea what she’s talking about,” he said coldly. “She was not in my employ during that time.”
“If you truly want to shatter my illusions about Pelago,” Agnes said, “you’d let me see it for myself.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know why,” Xavier said.
“Because it would look bad for you,” she grumbled.
“It would.”
“But you’re working with a Pelagan!”
“A man. And Kiernan has skills and assets that I need. You do not, and sending you to Pelago would be a mistake of epic proportions.”
“My mother would have wanted more for me than Ebenezer Grange,” Agnes insisted. “And she would have let me have some say in the decision at least!”
“Enough. You will do as you are told and there will be no more discussion of your mother.”
“Why not? Why can’t I know anything about her? What are you so afraid of?”
Agnes knew instantly that she had crossed a line. She felt something snap in the air between them.
“Go to your room.” Xavier’s voice was like iron, his face dark as a beet. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Now. No dinner. Go.”
She didn’t hesitate. She flew through the doors and up the stairs, past a bewildered Hattie, and nearly plowed into Swansea. She didn’t stop until she had collapsed onto her bed.
“So what’s the punishment? Miss Elderberry’s Finishing School again?” Leo was standing in her doorway, grinning. Agnes felt a stab of relief that her father had not told her brother she was engaged. When one of them was punished, it was a McLellan sibling tradition for the other to gloat. But this was different. This wasn’t time away from her lab or etiquette lessons or finishing school. This was the rest of her life.
“Honestly, I don’t know why he keeps sending you there,” he continued, oblivious. “Perhaps Larker Asylum would be a better fit. . . .”
“Go away, Leo.”
“Agnes . . .” He frowned and took a step into her room. “I’m—”
“What?” she snapped. “You’re sorry?” She snorted. “I can’t believe you just let Branson hit her like that.” She hadn’t meant to bring up Sera, but she found it was easier to be angry about that than to think about Ebenezer Grange.
“What was I supposed to do?” Leo said. “It’s not like I hit her myself.”
“No, you just snapped her up in a net, that’s much better.”
“If you remember correctly, you helped me find her.”
“I didn’t know she was there!”
“Neither did I!”
They stared each other down, and Leo must have seen something in her expression, because his eyes narrowed.
“What’s really going on?”
“Nothing,” she said. She could feel the tears welling up, and she tried to blink them away.
“Come on, you’re a terrible liar. What, is he padlocking your lab for the rest of the year?”
It pained Agnes to think that although Leo had been the one to suggest it, even he had not thought Xavier would marry her off quite so abruptly.
And just like that, she saw understanding click behind his eyes. The one thing that would make her this upset. The one punishment she would not want to joke about.
“Is it . . . are you en—”
“Don’t say it.” The tears were coming, she couldn’t stop them, and she had never let Leo see her cry before. “Please, just . . . leave me alone.”
“Agnes, I . . .” His arms twitched like he wanted to comfort her, and that made everything worse. She wrenched off her shoe and threw it at him, missing his head by inches and hitting the door instead.
“Get OUT!” she screamed. He cursed and vanished.
She got up, slammed the door shut, then went to her bed to retrieve the hidden photograph. Her mother’s face was blurred through her tears.
“Why did you have to leave me?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t you be here to protect me from him?”
Her mother only laughed. Agnes wiped her nose on her sleeve.
Engaged. It didn’t seem real. Tomorrow she would meet with Ebenezer Grange, the man who would be her husband. Her entire body rejected the idea.
She lifted her gaze to the book with the letter inside it and a steely determination set in. She was just as much a Byrne as she was a McLellan, goddamn it. What had Mrs. Phelps called her mother? Wild. Unconventional. Well, so was Agnes.
She grabbed the book off the table and headed to her lab. She would write this essay. She would book a ticket to Pelago and leave as soon as possible—Eneas would take her to the Seaport tomorrow without question. She would meet her grandmother and attend the interview with the university Masters and she would live her own damn life the way she wanted to.
She took the jar with Sera’s hair out from where she’d shoved it in the very back of her supply cupboard and carefully unscrewed it. She sterilized a set of tweezers, then laid the hair on a slide and put it under the microscope, turning the magnification to 10X. She peered through the scope and saw nothing more than a strand of blue hair. She increased the magnification to 20X, then 50X. The hair was the most perfect color blue she had ever seen—she’d called it cerulean before, but really it was much richer. Like a cloudless summer sky. She was so awestruck by the color that it took her a moment to realize something was missing.
Agnes increased the magnification to 100X and gasped. There were no ridges or overlapping scales on the cuticle to protect the cortex. This strand of hair was entirely smooth. That didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how hair worked. She took it off the slide and sliced it in half with a scalpel. Pinching it carefully with the tweezers, she held the cross section up under the scope.
The medulla, or the core of the hair, was nearly impossible to see—Agnes had tried when she studied her own hair, with dismal results. But in the center of Sera’s strand was a tiny light that pulsed like a star. She sat back and placed the hair on the slide again, rubbing her eyes. Hair was made of dead cells, but Sera’s hair seemed to be alive. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it was important. The Masters at the university would never have seen anything like it. She began to scribble in her journal, writing down her observations and thoughts, jotting down notes about how she might test its properties.
She felt a twinge of guilt that the hair had not held any answers that would help Sera return home, wherever that might be. But Agnes had her own prison to worry about. She bit her lip, hating that she could not be more helpful, loathing the idea of leaving the girl in her father’s clutches.
She worked until well past midnight, when she finally collapsed, exhausted, into bed and sank at once into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
16
Sera
WHEN SERA CAME TO, SHE FOUND HERSELF INSIDE A large crate with wide slats. There was a chain wrapped all the way around it, and no matter where she kicked or pushed, the wood refused to budge.
“Let me out of here!” she screamed. “Mother Sun, hear me! Help me, please!” She fell back against one of the slats, hot tears filling her eyes. No one answered her. The only sound was her labored breathing. Light was coming from the ground a few yards away, an odd purple-pink glow. Slowly, her eyes adjusted, and she was able to take stock of her surroundings.
She appeared to be on an elevated platform made of dark wood, with thick red curtains hanging on either side of it. Mossy banks grew up at its edge, dotted with luminescent pink, purple, and orange flowers that provided the light.
At the back of the platform, the wood vanished and a garden had been planted, thick grass and tiny flowers growing among spry saplings. In the center of the garden stood a slender tree, its bark silvery white, with leaves of jade
inlaid with blue veins that made them look turquoise. The saplings were not nearly as magnificent in color, plain brown trunks and green leaves.
For some reason, Sera felt the tree seemed sad. Its branches were bent like it carried a heavy load, and there were markings on its trunk that looked like a face frowning. It was not a very big tree—she would be able to reach its topmost branches if she stood beside it on her tiptoes. She wondered what it was doing here, inside . . . whatever this place was. And the moss and flowers too. Why would the people of Kaolin grow moss and trees inside?
And what was she doing here? What did they want with her?
She shuddered, recalling the events of the previous evening. The low-voiced girl was actually a male named Leo—Sera had realized it when she saw him in the daylight. Males looked sort of like females, except they had no breasts and were taller and hairier and meaner. She touched the spot on her temple where the other male’s fist had crashed into her skull. Sera had never been hit in her whole life. It had hurt so much, but the magic in her blood had healed the bruise, leaving her skin smooth and unblemished so that only the memory of the pain remained.
The one person who had shown her kindness was the girl called Agnes. Sera had been hesitant to offer up her hair, worried that Agnes would try to steal her magic like the humans on the last planet had, but it was only hair, not blood, and Sera had felt she needed some kind of help if she was to ever have any hope of getting home.
But Agnes wasn’t here now, and Sera didn’t know if she’d ever see her again. Her pulse quickened, her mind turning over her options, the slats of the crate closing in on her. The truth was she had no options. She was trapped. Her City was far away. And she couldn’t even speak the same language as these people. Her green mother had said the Cerulean could communicate with those on the planet, but Sera couldn’t see how. Was there some secret, lost over time, some ritual or practice that would unlock the barrier of communication?
