Despite the monumental importance of the vote, I intended to put in a full day at the shop. I skirted Fountain Square; a small crowd already gathered, red caps conspicuous in the throng, ready to hear the results of the vote. Ready—I took a shaky breath—to respond to it. I wondered what Niko was doing today; not staying idle, most likely.
But there was nothing for me to do. Not today. I had fulfilled my role in the tableau as it had unfolded, as well as I could. As I walked to work, I let myself settle into the comfortable monotony of a morning routine, trying to put the debates driving a rift through the city from my mind.
I caught the scent of smoke first, wending its way up Bridge Street and strengthening as I approached the commercial street that housed my shop. I quickened my pace—was the scent coming from my district, my street? Which of my neighbors was affected? I didn’t allow the panicked thought to emerge fully formed—that it could be my shop—and instead dodged a street cart selling pastries and a woman balancing a load of strawberries as I continued with single-minded purpose.
The smoke grew thicker as I rounded the corner onto my street. I was shoved to the side as a wagon from the fire brigade careened toward the source of the gray cloud, water sloshing in fat barrels and the volunteer firefighters already prepping their pumps and hoses.
I used the wake the wagon created as best I could, though the pedestrian traffic in the street quickly meshed together again, their curiosity over the miniature disaster unfolding somewhere nearby less pressing than their daily business of hawking wares and buying what they needed for their larders.
My footfalls quickened along with my breath as I grew closer to my shop—the smoke was thicker here and, to my dismay, the fire brigade’s wagon had stopped.
“Sophie!” I slowed and looked for the speaker. Emmi rushed out of the crowd and gripped my arm with bruising intensity. “I was early, it was already—your neighbor helped me call the alarm.”
I let her pull me toward my shop, mute as I realized that smoke was pouring from two broken windows. The firefighters, volunteers from the district who had left their day’s work for a small bonus, had already broken the lock from the door and ferried hoses and buckets inside, but I knew it didn’t matter now. Everything inside could already be destroyed by smoke if not by flames themselves, and if not, most of my fine fabrics couldn’t stand up to the water.
My neighbors gathered close behind, concerned, I was sure, about my losses, but also still worried that the flames could leap the walls separating our shops. There were no firebreaks in this part of the city—a blaze could get out of hand quickly. We all watched in silence.
Of course, I couldn’t figure how it had started to begin with. I hadn’t been in the shop early this morning; no one had, as far as I knew. Alice had a key, but she was nowhere to be seen yet, and Emmi and Heda couldn’t have been inside. We hadn’t even lit a candle or lamp the day before, and of course there were no fires in our stoves this time of year. A stray spark from outside? Had I slept through a thunderstorm in the night?
The buckets sloshed as the firefighters turned them, draining all the water into the hoses they had dragged inside. The smoke was growing less dense, and one of the men manning a pump motioned that they were done. The fire hadn’t spread.
“Is the owner or the proprietor here?” a gruff voice called from the doorway.
My throat was gummy with dry smoke, but I managed to answer. Emmi let go of my arm, and I wove my way forward alone.
Then I saw it, scrawled in crude lettering with runny paint on the stones in front of my doorway. Politicking Witch, in an orange-leaning red, impossible to miss. I scuffed my toe on the stones, not believing what I was seeing.
“Miss?” The speaker who had called me to the doorway wasn’t a volunteer firefighter but an officer in the city’s garrison forces. “I need to take a statement and ask a few questions.”
I nodded, still fighting the smoke in my throat and now a lump of angry tears that threatened to wash the smoke away.
“When were you here last?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Early evening. Six hours after noon.” I had been wrapping and sending final packages, and by something just shy of a miracle, I had taken our paperwork home, to reconcile my income and expense accounts.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“And were there any open flames—”
“No,” I snapped. What a farcical question. “There weren’t any broken windows, either,” I added. Had the windows blown out from heat inside the building, I would have expected to see glass on the stone walk outside. There was none.
He sighed. “I have to ask.” He glanced at the words splayed across the sidewalk with no change in emotion. “If you want to survey the damage, I can accompany you inside for a few minutes.”
“It’s safe?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “Not technically, until the Lord of Stones’ office sends someone to certify it. You rent?”
“Yes,” I replied. From a nameless owner who managed his assets through a countinghouse. “Do you notify him, or do I, or…”
“Doubtless he knows already. But yes, the Lord of Stones’ office will notify him.” He gestured toward the gaping doorway. “Do you want to take a look?”
I nodded. I had to know—were all my fabrics destroyed? They were an investment, a deeper investment than I knew how to recoup. They were the core of the assets I intended to pass on to Alice. My chest tightened as I stepped through the door.
The front room was a charred mess, but I had expected this. Fire had lapped up the sides of the counter and destroyed the finely upholstered chairs I had bought to outfit our consultation salon. The slate bearing the list of orders was cracked from the heat, and half of it lay in shards on the floor. Gathering the last resolve I had, I walked into the back room.
There had been one gown, draped on a mannequin, in the front of the room; I knew immediately it had to be sent to the trash bin. The silk was charred and the linen lining had burned clear through. The fire had licked up the sides of the room, consuming some cotton kerchiefs and caps, but these works in progress weren’t my main concern. The bolts of fabric on the far side of the studio, shelved by type and color, were irreplaceable.
I turned slowly, afraid of what I would see.
The shelves were untouched.
The flames had gnawed away at the counters and work-tables on either side of the shelves, and had torn the bolts of fabric lying on the worktable in the center of the room to bits, but the dozens of silks and cottons stowed in the shelves appeared unharmed. I hurried across the room.
“Be careful—the floor may not be stable,” the officer called. I ignored him and thrust my nose against the first bolt I found. A faint scent of smoke, but I was sure it could be salvaged.
The gold of the charm I had set into the wood glowed as I stood, shocked, in front of the minor miracle. I traced it with a timid finger, terrified and awed by what I had done.
I met Alice and Heda when they arrived for work and sent them home quickly with assurances that I would send a messenger soon. I had a few days’ worth of wages in my pocket; I doled these out despite Alice’s protests that they would be fine without the charity. I ignored her. The fire had quite possibly ruined my plans of passing the business on to her, and certainly put them all out of work for several weeks, at least.
I pushed fear and anger into a hollow place in my gut and forced myself to stand tall as my neighbors wandered back to their shops and their homes. Most offered me quiet condolences, more than one taking a long, uncomfortable look at the scrawled epithet on my doorstep. I held my chin up and purposefully avoided letting my eyes land on the crude writing. It wasn’t the truth; there was no point in acknowledging it.
But it was unavoidable. Someone—probably a decent-size group of someones—had believed so strongly that I had overstepped my bounds, that my intentions were evil, that they had sought me out to harm me. They didn’t set out to discredi
t the Reform Bill or to engage in some debate on its merits, but simply to strike at me. My shop, my sewing, my life’s work for years; they knew where to aim their attack to hurt me. I wouldn’t cry now, not in the street, not where someone who hoped to wound me could see it.
With no work to do and a thick red tape tied over the gaping hole of my shop’s broken door, I walked back toward Fountain Square.
The bells in the cathedral tolled; it was barely midmorning. I didn’t expect the vote for hours, so I settled quietly under the shade of the flaxwood poplar, still dropping seeds shrouded in minute clouds. I watched the ebb and flow of the people, how the crowd slowly grew in size. The sun crested at noon, and a ripple of excitement passed from the edge of the square toward the center.
The shouts could have been in celebration or anger; I couldn’t tell from my corner under the tree. I leaned forward, craning my neck along with the others nearest me to hear what was being passed, person to person, a moving arc of voices across the square.
“Can you hear?” I asked a tall man next to me, his red cap perched at a jaunty angle.
He shook his head and elbowed his way forward; I was only pushed back farther. I stood stock-still, my heart hammering in my chest, the heat suddenly almost too much.
“It passed!”
The shouts finally reached our side of the square, and the tall man’s cap was in his hand, thrust into the air, one of many miniature banners waving under the brilliant sunlight, and around me, the press of human bodies erupted into a unified cheer.
All of the air went out of me at once. My personal loss was a speck in the sea of triumph around me, one tear diluted into an ocean of laughter and shouts and broad, confident smiles. All the months of work, all the scorn I’d felt under the scrutinizing eyes of nobles, all of it paled and faded under the sun-soaked joy in the square.
I sat down, hard, on an unforgiving bench, trembling and, I realized as the tears coursed down my cheeks, sobbing. Someone handed me a faded purple-print kerchief; I thanked them, but they’d already moved on, toward the jubilation at the center of the square. Women and men climbed the fountain, waving and shouting and splashing diamond-bright streams of water into the crowd.
I had been willing to give up anything for Galitha, for reform, for the future of the country. And even if I had lost everything, even if the shop could never be salvaged, even if I could no longer give Alice and Emmi and Heda secure employment, even if the success I had built was erased—it was worth it. It had meaning.
I stood, still shaking, and watched for a long time, watched the work of months culminating in joy. Then I slipped away from the celebration.
17
BRILLIANT RED AND WHITE STARBURSTS EXPLODED ABOVE THE harbor, raining sparks amid cheers from the shore. I opened the curtain of Theodor’s bedchamber wide, taking in the panorama of a dozen fishing boats and small merchant ships taking turns launching fireworks from their decks.
“You wish you were at the celebration?” Theodor asked.
“Not really,” I replied. I didn’t care for the press and heat of large crowds, and the assembly at the docks was certainly the largest Galitha City had seen in recent months. Elections for the committees replacing the Lords of Stones, Keys, and Coin were set to take place within the fortnight. Even more revolutionary, the Council of Country, to govern alongside the Council of Nobles, would be elected before autumn. Riders had been sent to every corner of Galitha with the procedures the moment the vote had passed, so I imagined that in other towns and villages, along the coast and in the river valleys, there were smaller but similar celebrations.
“I feel as though we ought to have done something,” he continued. “A small party, a reception, something.”
“I suppose I didn’t want to jinx anything by planning a party,” I said.
“I didn’t want to consider the outcome of the vote at all,” Theodor confided. “I didn’t quite believe we could do it.” He took my hand. “I do mean we. You—you’re in that bill as much as I am.”
“You mean law,” I replied with a creeping, unbidden smile. “We ought to at least drink a toast.”
“I could use a drink,” Theodor replied with a wry smile. He rang for a maid. “I don’t suppose either of us feel much like celebrating after what happened with your shop today. You do think…”
“It was written plainly. Arson, aimed at me.” I held up my hands. “It’s not what’s important today. Or, frankly, tomorrow or any day after that.” The victory today was not the end of our struggle. It was only a waypoint, still on the uphill climb. The revelers in the city’s harbor and filling her taverns and streets were pouring beer and punch in celebration, but would the cheering crowds be disappointed as change rolled out slowly, faltering as nobles and commoners bickered and fought over legislation in their respective councils? I watched the fireworks stain the sky red; the colorful display, meant as celebration, seemed almost foreboding.
And though the streets rang with cheers, there were certainly common people at home tonight, upset at the turn of events. Counter-reformist protests had cropped up in Fountain Square, surprising even me with their varied participants. Fear of change motivated even dockworkers and bargehands, and something coarser, too. Some of the pamphlets circulating the city following the bill’s passage suggested a subversive Pellian takeover, or at least an unhealthy level of influence by Pellians. It didn’t matter that most of the participants had been Galatine born and bred; Niko Otni and Kristos Balstrade were still well-known names, and then of course there was the noxious Pellian enchantress marrying the prince.
The maid returned with a bottle of sparkling wine. “To the future,” Theodor said as he raised a delicate cut-crystal coupe.
“Whatever it may be,” I said.
“We know one thing,” he said. “We’re in it together.”
As it turned out, Theodor didn’t need to plan a party to celebrate the passage of the bill at all. Viola arranged, in her characteristic refined excess, a grand fete in a closed section of the public gardens. It was no surprise that most of the nobles and other guests sipping wine and sampling tiny iced cakes decorated with rose petals were the bill’s proponents and members of Viola’s salon. Much of the nobility were quietly sulking or openly complaining about the vote. Others had made quick retreats to their estates to spend the rest of the summer. Even though the bill had gained a majority, it was clear that the results disappointed many, and that even some of the nobles who had voted for the bill felt compelled by threats of another revolt rather than pure ideals.
“Lovely choice of location,” I said to Viola as she greeted us.
“It was the closest I could get to throwing it specifically for Theodor,” she said. “He doesn’t want any attention on him, but faint mercy, it’s his doing.”
I agreed that Theodor deserved the largest share of the credit, though I deferred to the line we’d practiced earlier. “Everyone who petitioned, argued, and voted for the bill should be celebrated.”
“Good gory offal, he’s turned you into a councillor, too!” Viola laughed and plucked a glass of sweet honey-colored wine from a nearby table. “Are you quite ready for the summit?”
“I’m trying to finish a cotton gown or two before we leave, but I’m not sure I’ll be successful.” I didn’t add that I was also scrambling to try to salvage the shop for Alice, though the fire commissioner had shaken his head and proclaimed the building a total loss. The likelihood of finding a new location so quickly was slim, and without one, I couldn’t transfer my license to Alice.
“Quite wise of you,” Viola said. “The climate there is much different from even Galitha in summer. The heat is beyond your reckoning, and the humidity. If you’d like to borrow a few things, I’d be glad to send some lightweight gowns along with you.”
“It’s a lovely offer,” I said, “but you forget that I’ve done sewing for you. The shoulders in your gowns will be too narrow for me.”
“Your build is so regal,” V
iola said.
“Or like a Pellian ox.” I laughed. “I’ve been making over a few cotton gowns, and I have my chemise gown. That seems appropriate for summer anywhere.”
“Indeed, and a bit of a comment on affairs here, besides. You aren’t nervous, are you?” she asked.
“Of course I am! I have no idea how to behave at a Galatine function half the time, let alone an international summit. I’m just a plain Galatine seamstress with Pellian parents and the shoulders to match,” I replied.
“You are far more than that,” Viola said. “You’re the betrothed of the Prince of Westland. If you want one bit of advice, remember that and act the part.”
Annette and Theodor joined us. “I’m ever so pleased,” Annette said, her voice dripping sarcasm, “to discover that Admiral Merhaven will be joining us at the summit.”
“That old hay bale with legs attached?” Viola snorted.
“He said that Viola’s portraits were inferior to the previous court painter,” Annette confided. “That was three years ago and she’s not forgiven him.”
“My work is not inferior!” Viola set the glass down, the wine inside churning toward a tsunami under her trembling hands. “He only said that because I paint in the new style, the natural style. And because…” She huffed instead of adding the second reason.
“Why?” Theodor asked, brow tightening. “I always thought it was just that he didn’t agree with the less formal styling.”
“I’m a woman!” Viola threw a pale blue linen napkin at Theodor, hitting him square in the face. “You are such an idiot sometimes.”
“I had no idea,” Theodor replied, setting the missile back on a nearby table.
Viola rolled her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’ve addressed any of those particular injustices and inconsistencies in your blessed Reform Bill. Coverture. Inheritance. All the unfair property laws privileging anyone with extra flesh between their legs.”
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