by Anna Bright
She was a lovely girl, but she looked incredibly plain. It was hard to believe she wasn’t doing it on purpose.
Perrault and Cobie took seats together among the freinnen, looking—for once—not to mind one another’s company. Lang sat beside Margarethe, who eyed him like the cat that got the cream. And in the center of the room sat Fritz, at a table for two. The fürst waved a hand at the chair opposite him.
It was impossible not to compare the whole arrangement to Asgard, to its noisy hall, to the high table with Torden and his brothers. It was impossible not to compare Fritz to the boy I loved.
Lang’s gaze dragged at me as I drew out my chair opposite the fürst.
I barely stifled a scream when a rat ran out from beneath the table. It ran along the nearest wall and into the corridor, claws clicking against the scratched marble floors.
Fritz eyed me sharply as I sat, shaking. It took all I had not to look back in horror at Cobie and Lang and Perrault.
I dropped my gaze instead to the setting on the stained tablecloth before me. A bowl of some sort of grain sat at my place; a few slices of toast and a pot of tea sat between us. I tried a spoonful of the porridge, then choked, feeling like I’d tried to swallow a mouthful of cold plaster.
“Millet not to your liking?” Fritz asked lightly. His inflection was cool and elevated, vaguely reminiscent of English I’d heard spoken in Winchester, but somehow squared off at the edges.
I worked down the bite of cereal and reached for a piece of toast. “It’s fine,” I said, hoping I sounded gracious. “How is yours?”
Fritz put his spoon down. “I don’t like small talk,” he said bluntly. “And I don’t know what you think you’re doing here.”
We both jumped, this time, as a third chair was dragged to our table.
It was with only slightly less than his usual finesse that Perrault arranged himself perpendicular to Fritz and me. “Her duty, given your tsarytsya’s invitation,” Perrault answered for me. “Now, we ought to begin.”
Fritz frowned. “Begin?”
“I’ve assembled a suggested list of activities for your courtship,” Perrault said, extending a few papers, the set of his mouth intent. He had faltered before Hertsoh Maximilian the day before. He seemed determined not to do it again.
Fritz whipped the documents from Perrault’s hands, skimming them. “No,” he said flatly. “No, no, and no.”
Perrault frowned. “May I ask why not?”
“I cannot offer the seneschal-elect a tour of the castle, as much of it is in disrepair and not fit to be seen.” Fritz’s cheeks pinkened slightly. Then he leveled his chin. “I have no interest in spending an afternoon on the river; I am occupied with my own pursuits. And a tour of Sankt Goarshausen, outside the castle, is impossible. The tsarytsya rejects the image of us as the town’s benefactors.”
The mention of her sent anxiety jolting sharp as iron in my teeth. “Does she?”
“Yes,” Fritz said, sounding as if he were reciting a lesson. “The common are common because they lack the imagination or ambition to make more of themselves.”
I gaped at him, ready to deliver an invective full of the curse words Skop had taught me or St. Francis’s teachings on poverty or both. Fritz continued before I could.
“Furthermore, the freinnen do not leave the Neukatzenelnbogen,” he said to Perrault. “As Selah will inform you, they only leave their room for meals with our family and to work in their sewing room for a little while every day. The door is locked otherwise.”
“Locked?” Perrault’s head whipped, horrified, between Fritz and me. “The door is—surely you don’t mean from the outside!”
Fritz spoke without inflection. “For their own safety.”
“Perrault,” I said quickly, quietly, leaning forward. “It’s fine.”
Please don’t make a fuss, I begged him silently.
Much as I wanted to be free of the freinnen and their quarters, I wanted more to find out their secrets. I wanted more to find the Waldleute and to give them the weapons they needed. I wanted more for my courtship with Fritz to proceed smoothly, and to escape the tsarytsya’s borders without reminding her of my existence.
Perrault sat back, looking utterly defeated. And again, the sight of my protocol officer stymied filled me with anger.
“What are these pursuits that keep you so busy?” I asked Fritz. Irritation seeped into my tone. “Do you have a previous”—I paused, measuring my words—“attachment the tsarytsya knew nothing about?”
“No.” Fritz took another spoonful of millet. “I don’t have time to waste courting. I’m an inventor.”
I cocked my head. “An inventor?”
“Yes, an inventor. I build things,” Fritz said, long-suffering.
“I’m not an idiot. I know what the word means.” My mind was racing. I thought of my radio, abandoned on my bed aboard ship, and the beginnings of an idea formed in my brain. “You said your sisters go to their sewing room every day. Do you have a studio, a workshop . . . ?” I asked.
“Yes.” Fritz’s tone was guarded. “I’m there most afternoons.”
“I’ll visit you there,” I said, not a question. “I won’t touch anything. I won’t get in your way.” I turned to Perrault, nodding firmly. “Perrault will make the arrangements.”
“Yes,” Perrault agreed quickly. I didn’t think I imagined the flash of gratitude on his face, pleased to have some of his position restored. Across the room, the freinnen began to rise, and I made to follow them, trying to look more confident than I felt.
The day continued in much the same fashion. The freinnen slept between breakfast and lunch, where I ate in silence as Perrault and Fritz argued over when, exactly, I would intrude on the fürst’s workshop.
That afternoon, Cobie and I accompanied the girls to their sewing room, a dilapidated salon full of moth-eaten chaises and frayed carpets, where they spent the afternoon adjusting hemlines, pleating skirts and sleeves, beading bodices, and mending tears. It explained, at least, why their attire was as worn as the rest of the court’s but cut to more current fashions. Cobie and I sat a little ways off to talk privately.
“I’ve never been much of a seamstress,” I said idly, trying badly to patch the rip in a pair of my trousers.
Cobie shrugged. “I’ve never held a needle in my life. Except one time when I had to sew a gash on Will’s leg.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Cobie shrugged. “He didn’t care how pretty the stitches were, so long as he didn’t bleed out.” She paused, frowning, as Margarethe and Ursula examined the delicate beading on a lilac-colored gown. “It’s funny,” she said.
“What?”
She shook her head. “They keep so little company. Why do they bother about the way they look?”
I shrugged. “There’s little to occupy them here. No books. No music. No society. No opportunity that I can see. Maybe it’s just something to do.”
Still. I compared the jagged line of my stitches to the delicate work in Margarethe’s fair hands, evidence of long practice and skill, and wondered if there wasn’t more to the story.
Negotiations continued between Fritz and Perrault at dinner.
I tried to catch Lang’s eye through the meal, searching for any confirmation that his plan was going well, that he had some sort of lead. I expected his gaze to roam the crowds as it had in Winchester, to study the lords and ladies sitting at chipped marble-topped tables greater and lesser distances from the duke and his daughters. Were the ones conspiring with the Waldleute dining with us even now?
But Lang wasn’t watching the crowd, and he didn’t notice my attempts to get his attention, either; he was talking to Margarethe beside him. She was playing with her hair and smiling.
Only the hertsoh was watching me. His eyes were full of a dull and sluggish anger, dark and foul as rot. Leirauh sat at his side, her shoulders hunched.
The tsarytsya who had issued my invitation was far away. But the hertsoh’s scr
utiny reminded me of the fear of watching eyes I’d felt aboard ship. Beneath his gaze, I found myself longing for the relative safety of the freinnen’s room or even the prickly discomfort of Fritz’s society.
I felt, more than ever, how convincing my courtship needed to be in order to keep us safe.
Perrault and Fritz finally agreed that I would visit Fritz’s workshop the next day, the third day of our visit. Thereafter, I would visit him every third day until our departure. The prospect of structure—of support for our mimicry of a courtship—filled me with relief.
I only hoped it would be enough time outside the freinnen’s room to help Lang find the Waldleute.
Perrault paused hopefully as we all rose at the meal’s end. “Perhaps you might also—”
“No.” Fritz turned for the door. Perrault stood at my side, quiet and pale.
I hated that I felt sorry for him, but I did. For all Perrault’s trespasses against me, he had never lied about his intentions.
“You aren’t normally like this, Perrault,” I said softly as I watched Fritz’s retreating back. “Usually, nothing breaks your stride.”
“This is Shvartsval’d,” Perrault said simply.
“Yes, but you stood up against Konge Alfödr. Surely Hertsoh Maximilian isn’t any more frightening than he is.”
I wasn’t sure what I was needling him for. Perhaps it was just that I felt useless and trapped, and I saw that he did, too, and I wanted a little honest company.
“Alfödr is a hard man but a virtuous one,” Perrault said, fingering a curl that had fallen in his eyes. He shook his head. “Asgard is a hard place, even a cold one, but not an evil one.”
“And here?”
“Katz Castle is a ruin.” Perrault’s eyes wandered the mildewed ceiling, the dusty chandelier, the picked-apart floors. “It is rotting from the inside out.”
11
“Tea? Wine?” Margarethe offered, clasping her perfectly manicured hands. I had returned with Cobie to the freinnen’s room, trying to shake off Perrault’s grim pronouncement.
“Tea for both of us, please,” I said, nodding at Cobie. We’d agreed on tea.
Margarethe’s eyes brightened in her thin face. I wouldn’t have known her first smile was false if this one wasn’t so genuinely relieved.
When the tea came, I was already in my pajamas, curled beneath my covers. I didn’t want to spend another night on top of a dusty bedspread, and they’d notice if I moved later. I thanked the girl who passed me my cup and saucer—one of the twins, Hannelore, they’d called her—and pretended to take a long drink. Pretended I didn’t feel them watching me like a pack of wolves.
We’d chosen tea over wine partly because the teacups were opaque, the better to fool them.
After that first sip, the sisters seemed to relax. They drifted around the room, talking to one another, rummaging through their wardrobes. When I was sure none of them were watching me, I poured a little of the tea out onto a black shift I’d left on the floor beside my bed.
We’d also chosen tea because it wouldn’t leave behind a telltale smell, as alcohol would.
After that, I pretended to get sleepy. I yawned, wriggling beneath my covers.
“Tired already?” Leirauh asked, drawing up her legs beneath her ugly, oversized dress. Her blue eyes were reluctant, almost guilty.
She ought to feel guilty. I wanted to smack the look off her face.
Instead, I nodded, and let my eyes sink closed.
I could have sworn I heard the exact moment Cobie followed me in feigning sleep. The whole room seemed to still, then burst into a flurry of excited whispers.
The freinnen kept quiet awhile, but their voices soon rose, careless and eager alongside the rattle of hangers in their wardrobes, the clank of hair tongs on the fire. I wondered at their bravery—or foolhardiness—at speaking old Deutsch when the tsarytsya’s language was meant to reign supreme within her Imperiya. I wondered what it could possibly mean.
I peered at them through my lashes, beneath my arm.
Hannelore stood behind her twin sister, Ingrid—or maybe Hannelore was the one sitting?—wrapping her hair around a curling iron and chattering relentlessly. Two other sisters, Greta and Johanna, daubed cream on their faces before one of the mirrors, debating the merits of a pink satin evening dress. Both girls were soft-figured and pretty, with light brown hair like Margarethe’s and high cheekbones like Ursula’s; the gown would have suited either of them.
Nearest me, Margarethe and Ursula had cornered Leirauh in front of a mirror. Margarethe seemed to be threatening Leirauh with a pair of sashes, one indigo, one violet, as Ursula rattled jewelry around in a box.
I watched on tenterhooks. I fought to keep my breathing even as the freinnen finished dressing, then walked toward my end of the room, past the foot of my bed, and beyond the edge of my vision.
What were they doing? I tried furiously to remember what lay behind me—a few broken-down dress forms, I thought, and the privy, but nothing more. I couldn’t see the girls, but I could feel them, clustered together just out of view. My heart raced, fearful, anticipating what they might do next.
There was the scrape of wood against wood, and the click of keys and tumblers in a lock, and the creak of hinges. And then, with a soft clack of high-heeled shoes against flagstones, the room went silent.
I kept still for ten long breaths, ten shuddering heartbeats, afraid to move. And then Cobie sat up, swearing. “Where did they go?”
12
“I have no idea,” I said, giving Cobie a significant look. “I don’t speak Deutsch, remember?”
“Let’s not mention it to the freinnen. Element of surprise and all.” Cobie grinned and climbed from underneath the covers.
I cast my gaze about the room, baffled. They hadn’t gone out the door; I’d heard one bolt falling open, not ten. Besides, they’d moved the wrong way, beyond the end of my bed. I stared in the direction they’d gone: there was nothing there besides the door to the privy and another wardrobe.
The privy was a few chamber pots, basins, and two bathtubs; it seemed an unlikely point of exit. But that wardrobe—none of the freinnen ever used it.
I drew near, and a humid draft swirled against my skin, warm and damp in the stale bedroom’s air. The doors were cracked open. And beyond were the beginnings of a corridor in the same gray stone as the rest of the castle.
The girls obsessed with clothing had sneaked out through a wardrobe. I gave a disbelieving laugh. “Their room has a secret passage.”
“That’s impossible,” Cobie said at my back. “The duke would never have given them this room. He would have known—”
“Not necessarily.” I opened the doors a bit wider. “This castle is old—Fritz said parts are in ruins. I’m sure there are things about it the hertsoh doesn’t know. Or the passage could have been blocked, but the girls cleared it. In a place with this many secrets . . .” I trailed off, my eyes meeting Cobie’s.
She shook her head slowly and withdrew to poke around the room, stopping to fiddle with a black gown on a dress form.
I sighed exaggeratedly. “Cobie, why does everything have to be black with you?”
“Black is easy,” she said absently. “Black doesn’t stain. And black always matches.”
“Matches what?”
“Other black things.”
“This.” I plucked up the pink satin dress Greta and Johanna had been debating and held it up to her. “This would be perfect on you.”
Cobie cringed. “Why pink?”
“Why not pink?” I exclaimed. “Wear what you want to wear, but surely you can afford to be impractical about color when the garment’s this impractical already.”
Cobie reached out to touch the dress, its smooth fabric filmy over her calloused fingers. “They were going to a party,” she said after a moment. “Their accent is different from what I grew up hearing. But I don’t think I got it wrong.”
I set the dress aside and leaned against the
wall, thinking. “How could it possibly be worth it, sneaking out at night to go to a party? What would the tsarytsya do if she found out?”
Cobie shrugged. “I don’t think the tsarytsya pays much attention to what’s happening out here on the edge of the Imperiya.”
I wanted to believe that, but I feared it was wishful thinking. “What about their father? Wouldn’t he punish them?” Cobie gave a single, short laugh. “What?” I demanded.
She put down the makeup brush she’d been examining. “Selah, sometimes you make it easy to forget you’re eighteen and not a hundred and eight.”
I put my hands on my hips. “What does that mean?”
“You’ve never sneaked out of your house?” Cobie asked, arms outstretched. “Never gone out past bedtime to see friends or someone you had a crush on? Never done anything you weren’t supposed to do?”
I pursed my lips, thinking. “I forgot to tell Daddy one Easter I was going to the vigil at Saint Christopher’s. He nearly had the guard out for me, he was so worried.”
Cobie squinted at me. “No, I was wrong. You really are a century old.”
I swallowed hard, staring at my pajama pants. “Well.” I hesitated. “There was England.”
She stilled and sat on her bed, across from me. “England,” she sighed. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”
“It does,” I agreed. “I’ve kissed a lot of boys in the last month, Cobie.”
“Two isn’t a lot,” she countered. “Two is a perfectly reasonable number of people to kiss when you’re essentially on an expedition to find your lifetime kissing partner.”
“Well, when you put it that way.” Slowly, as if against my will, I walked back to the wardrobe door. Cobie came to my side, and we exchanged a silent glance and crept into the hallway.
The stone corridor was damp and echoing, lined with flickering lamps like those in the rest of the castle. But this one sloped downhill.
