by M. K. Hobson
Emily and Rose climbed the high narrow stairs to the heavy oak door. No light showed through the leaded glass window. Rose seized the handle of the bell and gave it three insistent pulls. There was a long wait, but finally the light of a lamp bobbed up the hallway and Broward came to the door, silver-templed and forbidding. His face was a mask of unpleasantness—unpleasantness that tempered itself only slightly when he saw that it was Emily who waited on the doorstep.
“Miss Edwards!” he said. He looked at Rose. “What can I do for you at this hour?”
“Mr. Stanton has sent a note,” Rose said, briskly offering an envelope. Broward took it between two reluctant fingers, as if he were taking a soiled handkerchief. Then he opened the door and ushered them into the entryway, which was tall and decorated with classical urns.
“If you’ll wait here, I’ll go wake the Senator and Mrs. Stanton,” he said.
Emily and Rose sat on a pair of chairs upholstered in slippery horsehair. Rose was beside herself at the honor of being admitted into the Stanton family home. She kept looking around herself like a child at an amusement park.
“How refined!” she chattered to herself. “Such excellent taste! Do you know the Stantons were one of the first families in New York? Mr. Stanton’s grandfather was a general in the War of 1812, and Mr. Stanton’s great-great-grandfather was the state’s first attorney general.” Rose paused, giggling as if catching herself being silly. “But of course you know that! You’re going to marry him, after all.”
Emily said nothing. She hadn’t known any of it. It hadn’t occurred to her to research Stanton’s family tree, but she certainly wasn’t going to admit that to Rose.
“Yes, the Stantons are very distinguished,” was all she said.
After a long time, Broward came back down.
“Mrs. Stanton is in the library. Follow me, please.”
Mrs. Stanton was sitting in a carved walnut chair, her back perfectly straight. She was immaculately turned out, having obviously taken the time to dress with great care. Or maybe she just never got undressed to begin with. Maybe she didn’t sleep at all, just wrapped herself in brocade and hung upside down from a rafter.
As they entered the room, the old woman eyed Emily keenly, waiting until Emily and Rose had come to a complete stop in front of her chair before rising to greet them.
“Miss Edwards,” she said coolly, leaning forward. She let her lips hang over Emily’s cheek, not touching it in the slightest, and offered her an embrace that was remarkable only for how far she was able to remain from Emily and still have it seem an embrace. She hissed in Emily’s ear: “You missed my lunch.”
Emily bent her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked up at Mrs. Stanton. “I’m feeling much better now.”
“Yes, it seems you recovered from the plague with astonishing alacrity.” Mrs. Stanton pulled back, stared at Rose up and down, lip curling involuntarily. “I fear I have not been introduced to your … companion.”
“Miss Rose Hibble, of Reno, Nevada.” Rose smiled, extending a friendly hand. “It’s an honor, Mrs. Stanton, to meet the woman who gave Mr. Dreadnought Stanton to the world.”
Mrs. Stanton accepted Rose’s hand limply. Emily saw her try to draw her hand away, but Rose continued pumping it enthusiastically.
“Your son is the greatest man of the nineteenth century,” she said breathlessly. “How proud you must be!”
“Yes, quite proud,” Mrs. Stanton said, finally reclaiming her hand with a little jerk. “Won’t you both have a seat?”
“Such a grand room!” Rose said, looking around the library. “So many books! Did Mr. Stanton read them all?”
“I feel certain he read a great number of them,” Mrs. Stanton said, then turned her gaze to Emily. Emily took a very mean comfort in the look, which indicated that whatever her own failings, she at least compared favorably to Rose.
There was a long silence as Mrs. Stanton withdrew her son’s note from the pocket of her dress. She made a great show of unfolding it. She lifted a small pair of silver spectacles to her eyes and reread the letter slowly. There was a look of amazement on her face that seemed quite carefully cultivated. Finally, she folded the letter back into its envelope and regarded Emily with gimlet eyes.
“Miss Edwards, this letter from my son requests … well, perhaps requests is not the appropriate word … rather, demands that you shelter here for a few nights. Perhaps you can elaborate on the astonishingly scanty explanation he offered in support of this … scheme?”
“She’s in danger, Mrs. Stanton!” Rose blurted. “Terrible danger, from all types of—”
“I believe I addressed Miss Edwards,” Mrs. Stanton said to Rose. Her eyes were as green as her son’s, but colder than the deepest part of the coldest ocean. Even Rose—whose buoyancy was typically sufficient to lift her above even the most pointed dismissals—could not escape the crushing weight of the old woman’s disdain. She curled back in her chair and turned red.
Mrs. Stanton turned her cool green eyes back to Emily. “Is this true, Miss Edwards? Are you in danger?”
“Yes,” Emily said. “Mr. Stanton felt that I would be safest here. But I don’t want to be any trouble. Maybe I should go to a hotel.”
Say yes, Emily prayed, during the woman’s long silence. Please say yes.
“No,” Mrs. Stanton said finally. “Of course you must stay here. My son’s note indicates that he will come for breakfast in the morning and explain everything.” She paused. “What kind of danger are you in, precisely?”
Emily pressed her lips together and cursed Rose for her prattling nature.
“Things are unsettled at Mr. Stanton’s Institute,” Emily said carefully. Mrs. Stanton waited for more, but Emily did not offer it. Mrs. Stanton turned to Rose.
“Perhaps you can elaborate, Miss Hibble,” Mrs. Stanton said. “You appear to be intimately acquainted with the circumstances.”
Being invited to speak, especially after the sharp rebuke she’d received previously, worked like a tonic on Rose. Her cheeks flushed eagerly.
“They want to hurt her because she’s Mr. Stanton’s fiancée, of course! They will do anything to get to him.”
“They?” Mrs. Stanton said.
“Rex Fortissimus and his thugs,” Rose said, her voice dropping low. “He’s a despicable cad. There’s no depth to which he will not stoop. Of course it’s all lies … that awful garish red color … you know, they say red is the most grabbing of the colors. That’s why Fortissimus used it, of course—”
“Used what?” Emily broke in, looking between Rose and Mrs. Stanton. “What are you talking about?”
Clumsy guard stole into Rose’s gaze.
“Oh, you haven’t seen it?” When neither Emily nor Mrs. Stanton gave any sign of understanding what she was referring to, she looked uncomfortable and shifted in her chair. “Well, never mind then. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Rose, if it’s something about Mr. Stanton, you have to tell me.” Emily said this too fiercely, forgetting Mrs. Stanton and the need for propriety. She did, to her credit, restrain herself from taking Rose by the shoulders and giving her a shake.
“It’s nothing, honest.” Rose hastened for safer subjects. “Poor Mr. Stanton! He’s bearing up as well as he can, of course, but I must remind him to eat. He’s a shadow, an absolute shadow—”
“Why on earth are you concerned with my son’s appetite?” Mrs. Stanton asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I am helping him as his secretary,” Rose said proudly. “He needs people around him he can trust. He can’t trust any of those magisters of his, I can tell you that. They’re a rebellious, treasonous lot. Half of them have thrown in with Fortissimus, but it’s finding out which half that’s presenting the problem …”
Emily listened with more interest, and even Mrs. Stanton seemed to have lowered her customary shield slightly. Rose, sensing her audience’s focused attention, leaned forward and continued in a conspiratorial tone.
> “What’s worse, Fortissimus has been recruiting students away right and left, offering them apprenticeships at his Agency. And some of the professors have left, too. But of course, there are many who are loyal to Mr. Stanton. And Mr. Stanton is doing everything he can.” She paused. “I swear, I don’t know why he doesn’t send Fortissimus packing like he did the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste!”
“I don’t think he has enough power to do that yet,” Emily said.
Rose looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and dismay. “Not enough power? What a thing to say! And to hear it from you, Miss Emily—well, never mind! We shall stick by Mr. Stanton until the very end. We shall not believe any of the lies Fortissimus puts out about him!”
“What lies?” Mrs. Stanton said.
Rose pressed her lips together again, adjusted the intricate flounces of her dress. It was clear that she knew something that no force on earth could induce her to reveal. The naked cherubs on the mantel chimed three times. Rose stood quickly.
“Oh, is that the time?” she said. “I must be getting back. And don’t worry, I’m sure Mr. Stanton will make everything all right. You must believe in him.”
Emily said nothing as she watched Rose go. There was a long silence in the room, unbroken until Mrs. Stanton finally spoke.
“I’ll have Broward show you to the guest room, then,” she said.
Emily wouldn’t have rushed downstairs the next morning if she hadn’t been expecting to see Stanton at the breakfast table. But the only Stantons she found seated around the table were the ones she didn’t want to see—the impassive Senator and his sour wife, and Euphemia (munching on a triangle of dry toast) and Ophidia (sipping weak milk tea). Hortense appeared to be missing in action. Just her luck, Emily thought; Hortense was the only other member of the family who didn’t seem to despise her.
“I’ve saved you the morning papers, Miss Edwards.” Mrs. Stanton pushed them toward her. “You seem to follow the news so fanatically.”
Emily glanced down at the headlines. She intended just to scan them for the sake of politeness, but she was shocked to see that the news of the disasters on the Pacific Coast had been supplemented by accounts of similar horrors in other parts of the country—Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky—and even other parts of the world.
“Warlock Experts Surmise Ongoing Problems Are Due to Expanding Earth, with Black Exunge Being Released at Rip Zones,” read a headline in The New York Times.
As Emily read, she was aware of Mrs. Stanton’s pointedly consulting a small gold watch on a chain. After an extended scrutiny of the timepiece, the old woman clucked disapprovingly and snapped it shut.
“One can only assume my son has decided not to join us for breakfast,” Mrs. Stanton observed with astringent crispness. “How very like him.”
Emily did not look up from her papers.
“He said he’d be here,” she said softly. “And he will.”
And indeed, at that moment, Broward leaned in beside her, her reticule in his hand. A soft noise came from within it.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said. “But your bag has been bleating.”
Emily withdrew the slate eagerly, holding it in her lap to evade scrutiny. Her excitement dimmed as she scanned the words Stanton had written: IMPOSSIBLE TO GET AWAY … CAN’T EXPLAIN … FORGIVE ME …
“I do hope that is some kind of magical gimcrack,” Mrs. Stanton said, interrupting Emily’s furtive examination of the slate. “We haven’t room here in town for livestock.”
Emily gave her a glimpse of the slate—long enough for the old woman to note the leaping lambs but not long enough to read the message written on it. She’d be damned if she’d give the old battle-ax the satisfaction.
“It’s just a toy,” she said. “It lets us send notes.”
Mrs. Stanton knitted her brow, as if the idea of lambs—or perhaps toys—pained her. She inclined her head toward her husband.
“How utterly puerile,” she murmured, her voice carrying like an opera singer’s.
The Senator, obviously accustomed to ignoring his wife completely, did not comment. Emily lifted her chin.
“He’ll be here tomorrow morning without fail,” she said brightly. But no amount of brightness was sufficient to mask the dark worry she felt. He’d looked so completely lost in that crumbling office, surrounded by the hallmarks of failure. And there was nothing she could do about it except sit here in this house, surrounded by people who didn’t want her, and pray that he would have the strength to prevail.
Using her napkin, she quickly wiped the slate clean, then laid it in her lap, where prying eyes couldn’t read the words she wrote on it. ALL IS WELL. HAVE CHALLENGED YOUR MOTHER TO A GAME OF HORSESHOES. WILL INFORM OF RESULTS. Then, slowly and with care, she added the words I LOVE YOU. She stared at the slate with a low heart. The sentiment looked so small and uninspired when written.
She was surprised when the words vanished from the slate, as if erased by an unseen hand. The slate baaed softly as new words appeared on it.
I LOVE YOU, TOO, Stanton’s handwriting read. BE CAREFUL. MOTHER CHEATS.
With a secret smile, Emily tucked the pencil away and returned the slate to her reticule. Now, speaking of horseshoes—what the hell was she supposed to do here all day?
As if reading the question in Emily’s face, Mrs. Stanton lifted a teacup to her lips.
“Do you sew, Miss Edwards?”
Emily contemplated the question. Certainly she sewed. She used to sew patches in Pap’s overalls. But she didn’t figure that was the kind of sewing Mrs. Stanton was referring to. She lifted her right hand, the one of ivory, regretfully.
“I’m afraid not,” Emily said.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Stanton with a frown. Emily wasn’t sure if the frown was because she didn’t sew, or because she’d lost her hand, or because she was so badly bred as to admit both of these things. “But I suppose you read?”
Emily flushed hot under her collar; Mrs. Stanton had already asked her that question once, and knew the answer full well. But she nodded anyway.
“How extravagantly fortunate,” Mrs. Stanton said. “Perhaps we could have some more Wordsworth after breakfast.”
Emily cringed. She hardly knew the words were on her lips before she said, “I’m sorry, but I must … go out.”
“Go out?”
“I have an appointment downtown,” Emily lied. She wasn’t sure where the lie came from, but it was a blunt and convulsive response to the thought of having to read Wordsworth to Mrs. Stanton all morning.
“Certainly someone should accompany you,” Mrs. Stanton said, giving Euphemia a pointed look that Euphemia did her best to avoid by scrutinizing a crumb on her napkin. “Being that your life hangs in the balance under the Damoclean sword of some kind of unspecified danger.”
Silently, Emily cursed Rose once again.
“Rose may have overstated the case a bit,” Emily said. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe, and I’d hate to be any trouble—” Then she had a flash of inspiration. She lowered her voice. “It’s a banking matter.”
Ever since she’d earned twenty thousand dollars from Professor Mirabilis, Emily had learned that money was a ready excuse for any occasion. Whenever she spoke of it, people shuffled their feet and looked away, as if she’d spoken about her drawers. She knew that banking matters were private, and that no one would interfere with her if she had to go out to attend to one.
“Farley can take you,” the Senator said gruffly, not looking up from behind his paper. Farley, Emily assumed, was the name of some ancient Stanton family retainer, a grizzle-pated old man with his back bent from bowing and the custom of twisting his hat around in his hands.
After breakfast, Emily went upstairs. She hadn’t really had a plan in mind when she’d made her excuse for an escape—her only thought had been to avoid Wordsworth and all those semicolons and larks. But now, as she thought about it, a plan formed in her mind. She needed to find out about those hair sticks. Miss Jesczenka
said that there were Faery Readers near someplace called Chatham Square. So that’s where she was going.
Tucking the hair sticks into her black silk reticule, she hurried downstairs to where Farley was waiting. Far from being a bent old graybeard, Farley was actually a nice-looking young man with bright red hair. He wore a ridiculous green livery that made him look like an overgrown leprechaun. He touched his cap and gave her a smile.
“Where to, miss?” he asked, as he handed her into the carriage.
Emily cast a glance back to the Stanton house, so solid and respectable. She gave him the address of the bank where she had her money on deposit. She didn’t know New York well enough yet to know if the bank was anywhere near Chatham Square, but at least it would take her away from here.
They drove through the bright morning streets, beneath tall stone edifices and past old wooden buildings that hinted at the city’s long history. Within a few minutes they arrived before the bank’s sober facade of white marble. Farley unfolded the step and extended a hand to help her down. When she did not descend, he looked at her quizzically.
“Miss?”
“Mr. Farley, this is going to be a great shock to you, but I have no banking to do.”
“No banking, miss?”
“No. I have another errand. One I would prefer the Stantons not know of.” She knew that she was skating on thin ice. She remembered stories from Ladies’ Repository in which women had been blackmailed by carriage drivers who’d been entrusted with secrets, but she didn’t quite know what other choice she had. Give the man the slip and hire a different carriage? He’d gossip about that, too, if gossip he would. There seemed little alternative.
“You need to go somewhere else, miss?” His voice was low and conspiratorial, but with a friendly cast to it. “I can take you wherever you require.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Emily said. “I don’t really know where I’m going.” She leaned forward. “I need to find someone called a Faery Reader. I’ve been told that I might find one around Chatham Square.”
