The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  We sat side by side through dinner, hardly speaking. I couldn’t produce any words; he could only produce two.

  I’m sorry, he said, again and again, in whispers and with looks.

  I’d been a fool to choose him.

  I’d never risked telling Peter how I felt, always afraid of his reply. Proposing via official channels had felt safer, somehow.

  Why hadn’t I seen that public rejection would only hurt worse?

  What, I wondered, makes one person want another?

  I knew why I wanted Peter. I had speculated for so long on whether he cared for me, carried the hope of him for so long, I hardly knew how to break it apart and examine it.

  The only thing left to wonder now was what made a person stare into a proffered heart and say, No, no, thank you, not for me.

  After dinner, Peter’s parents left the hall, making quiet, polite excuses. I met Peter’s eyes, searching for an answer, trying to trace the path to destruction my hopes had taken.

  A flush crept up Peter’s light brown skin, and as he dipped his head slightly, his laurel wreath slipped a little in his tight black curls. He stood wooden and awkward, fingers clasped behind his back, shoulders rounded. A mere two feet away and a world apart from me.

  The gap between us taunted me.

  I thought I understood him. I thought we were friends, that I could ask him things. But his refusal had stolen my voice. I couldn’t ask the only questions left to me.

  And the person in front of me was a boy I barely knew.

  “I just wish you’d told me when it was just the two of us,” I whispered, staring at my shoes.

  Peter hitched up a lean shoulder, his light brown eyes baffled. “The thing is, it never was just the two of us, Selah.”

  The words stung me.

  They didn’t merely remind me that I’d been avoiding Peter these past few weeks. They meant he’d been totally blindsided by my proposal.

  I saw now I’d been hoping he’d answer my question without my having to be brave enough to speak the words. But he’d never even suspected that I would ask. He had never thought of me as I had endlessly imagined him.

  And perhaps, more than that, I’d never known him as truly as I’d wished I did. I’d been hoping, not believing. Imagining, not knowing.

  I dropped my eyes, avoiding his confused gaze, taking in safer pieces of the boy I adored. Rounded shoulders. The soft shell of his ear beneath his laurel wreath. His hands, clean and slim and white-knuckled with disquiet beneath their dark complexion.

  I would never hold them. And they would never hold me.

  Peter disappeared through the trees, and I watched him walk away.

  Then Daddy crouched beside me, eyes gentle in his thin, drawn face, and took my hand.

  We couldn’t truly get lost among those milling through the damp, green hall, but as the candles burned low in the trees, the party had seemed to move on and forget me. My father gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, sweet girl.”

  My parents’ love story was one I knew well. My grandparents had been less than amused when the wealthy Savannah princess they’d invited to visit brought a sharp-tongued nun along for company. But that nun had become my godmother, and Althea told me Daddy fell for the girl from Savannah the first time she smiled at him.

  Momma had been his solid ground, and he’d been her open sky. I wondered if anyone would ever see me that way.

  I’d been blind enough to think Peter had.

  “Is something wrong with me?” I finally asked.

  “Oh, honey.” Daddy stopped me, hands on my shoulders, weary eyes serious. “You are everything you ought to be. Everything, and more. And that’s nothing compared to what I know you’ll be someday.”

  He pulled me into a hug, and I wanted to weep against his chest like a child at the sharpness of his ribs. “Daddy, are you feeling all right?” His too-large jacket muffled my words. “You look like Alessandra’s got you on a diet.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t you fret about me. I’m just getting old, that’s all. Don’t need as much to keep me going anymore, since you do all the work around here these days.”

  I huffed a weak laugh. “You aren’t old. And don’t be silly. You do a lot.”

  “Well, I ain’t young.” He sighed. “You hear all that racket last night?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe I’m imagining it. But I don’t think I’ve slept through the night in weeks. Always seems to be so much noise.” Daddy pressed bony fingers to his temples. The band had struck up again, a boisterous song with a heavy drumbeat. “I thought it would help.”

  I glanced back to my father, unhappiness curdling in my stomach. “You thought what would help?”

  But Daddy wasn’t listening, and now people were drawing near us—Alessandra, his physicians, members of the court. I felt the private haven we’d shared for a few precious moments collapsing.

  Other people needed his time. Mine was up.

  But the sound of my name halted my retreat.

  “Selah!” My stepmother shook her head, lips pursed. “The evening isn’t over.”

  Daddy cast me a worried glance. “Alessandra, I think the ball can spare her.”

  “But the Council can’t.” Her tone was utterly bare of sympathy. My father’s chest and shoulders deflated. “The Roots—now.”

  “W-wait—” I stammered. But Dr. Gold and Dr. Pugh descended as I spoke. No one heard me excuse myself as Dr. Pugh began rambling about how much better Daddy was looking.

  “Clearly, the treatment is working,” said Dr. Pugh. Dr. Gold nodded brightly, an attempt at a smile stretched across his kind, young face.

  Daddy had told me not to worry. It didn’t look as if his doctors were of the same mind.

  I wanted to press him, to pinpoint when he’d become this worn, fragile thing, like a page in an old book.

  But no one looked at me. I had no one left to question. I could only obey.

  The glass decorations in the branches overhead blurred in my vision as I walked away. And as I pushed through a streaming willow’s branches and out the side door, I finally began to cry.

  Tears streamed down my face as I shuffled down one, two, three flights of comfortless marble stairs, empty but for the echoes of the party. I pressed my back to the cold wall of the bottom landing and fished in the pocket of my gown until the wooden beads of my rosary whispered against my fingers.

  One by one, I choked out the string of prayers Momma taught me when I was a little girl. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Hail Mary, full of grace. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. The beautiful words eased my blistering pain, smoothing me out and untangling my snarled nerves.

  But as my tears subsided, I caught the sounds of quiet conversation—of talk not coming from the ball upstairs. Vague uneasiness rose inside me again, sickly and clinging like fog. The Council meeting in the Roots had already begun.

  If Alessandra came down and caught me crying in the dark, she’d lean into my weakness, press on my bruises in front of the others until they thought me as spineless as she did.

  Slowly, slowly, I crept down the stairs.

  The marble paths between the twisting bases of the trees were overgrown, carpeted with moss and fallen leaves, so my shoes made no noise as I approached the Roots of the great Arbor at the center of the room.

  Conversation ground to a halt as I stepped into the light.

  Da rief sie einen Jäger und sprach:

  “Bring das Kind hinaus in den Wald,

  ich will’s nicht mehr vor meinen Augen sehen.”

  —Schneewittchen

  . . . and she said to a Huntsman,

  “Take the child away into the forest.

  I will never look upon her again.”

  —Little Snow-White

  4

  Potomac’s Council—Secretary Gidcumb, Secretary Moreau, Captain Marshall, Lieutenant Lefevre, Secretary Allen, and Judge Roth—stood cluste
red together. They stared at me, tumblers of amber Appalachia bourbon in hand.

  I’d never attended a Council meeting before, and I hadn’t expected to for many years yet, not until Daddy needed me more. Until he was ready to begin training me in politics, I had expected to be left to my work.

  Evidently, tonight was to be full of surprises for all of us.

  A trio of strange men sat on the far side of the Council table. Their faces were indistinct in the candlelight, their voices pitched low.

  I wrung my fingers, fighting the urge to shrink between my shoulders.

  It was bad enough I was going to be chastised for Peter rejecting me. That’s what this was about, surely. I’d miscalculated, and it looked bad.

  But the Council was elected to help the seneschal steward Potomac’s resources, to oversee its courts and its militia and its administration, small though it was. Did all of them—plus a cadre of strangers—really need to be present tonight?

  “Good evening, Your Grace,” said Captain Marshall, a thick-skulled man with short brown hair. I’d never liked Marshall. Years of military service had apparently taught him only how to mindlessly obey orders.

  “Good evening, Captain. Gentlemen.” I was relieved my voice didn’t shake. “Happy Arbor Day.”

  Marshall nodded, swirling his liquor, not answering.

  I swallowed hard and moved toward the table, set beneath the Arbor’s Roots. The great Arbor domed overhead, its Roots curling and twisting like a globe around the table and chairs.

  We all straightened at the sound of footsteps on marble—one clacking step moving briskly down the stairs, one plodding tread following after.

  Alessandra swanned into the room, followed by my father, and the Council drew near at a wave of her slim hand, muttering and shuffling papers as they settled into the seats unoccupied by the unfamiliar trio. Secretary Gidcumb, one of the Council’s more competent members, lit the candelabra at the center of the table before he sat.

  “Now,” Alessandra began, eyeing us all significantly. “We all know why we’re here.”

  I bit my lip, bracing myself.

  My smother’s expression of concern was as flawless as the black curls spilling over her shoulders. “Selah, we need to discuss our official response to your rejection.”

  Sympathy pierced the weary fog in Daddy’s gaze. “Alessandra, I think this is something our family should handle in private.”

  “I beg your pardon, Seneschal, but this isn’t a private problem,” Secretary Moreau said smoothly. Moreau wasn’t the blockheaded yes-man that Marshall was. He was slick, manipulative, with a pointy face and shifty eyes like a weasel’s. “The choice of Selah’s eventual spouse is a matter of state. The man she marries will guide her and our country. This is not a job for any woman to take alone, let alone Selah.”

  I stared at the table, drowning in humiliation.

  When I was sure no one was looking at me anymore, I let myself peek up at the three strangers for the first time.

  The first, seated beside Secretary Gidcumb, was gray-haired but carved like stone, biceps swelling under his shirtsleeves. His olive-skinned face was scruffy and unshaven, his gaze a stern gray. I thought he might be Mediterranean, maybe from Hellás, or Anadolu.

  I didn’t know what strangers—foreign strangers, no less—would be doing in a Potomac state meeting. But something about this man calmed me.

  He didn’t look particularly nice. But the austerity in his face amid all the flattery in the room was a relief. I trusted him instantly.

  If sides were taken tonight, I wished he’d take mine.

  “Your rejection was public,” said Judge Roth. “What will this do to your image as our future leader?”

  “Nothing!” My voice was a squeak. “It—won’t do anything. Potomac knows who I am.”

  So did Peter, whispered my treacherous heart, and he said no anyway.

  Captain Marshall steepled his fingers. “You tend to gardens and fields with the women and to the stock with the men. That makes you one of the people. That does not make you their leader.”

  “What will it say to the people that one of your dearest friends declined to become your consort?” Allen added, looking blond and impressive and dubious.

  The second stranger spoke up. “Unless you wanted to lean on the Janesleys—that was the name, yes?—just a bit.”

  This man looked around thirty. He was pale and pink-cheeked and dark-eyed, and I felt an unholy desire to squeeze his hands and feel if they were softer than mine. He looked distinctly pampered beside his weathered companion. But he seemed to inhabit his expensive clothes uncertainly, to cling possessively to his crystal tumbler, as though he thought someone might take it away from him. New money, I thought.

  Alessandra gave him the slightest approving nod of her head.

  “Now, there’s an idea,” Judge Roth said, eyeing the stranger appreciatively.

  “Excuse me?” I gaped at them all, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Secretary Allen and Judge Roth were brothers-in-law, and they were constantly moving money around, constantly scheming. I knew for a fact Secretary Allen had conned Lieutenant Lefevre into bailing him out of a tight spot last year. I also knew Allen hadn’t paid him back.

  “We could make it worth their while for Peter to marry you. Was the problem with the family or the boy?” Roth asked, glancing around.

  “How much would it take, do you think?” asked Moreau. Lieutenant Lefevre bobbed his head from side to side, as though running numbers in his brain. I thought smoke might start pouring out of his ears.

  “No,” I said. “No. Absolutely not.” The only thing worse than not marrying Peter would be coercing him, and his own sense of honor would surely forbid such a thing. The councilors stared at me, displeasure clear on their faces.

  I wanted to melt under the table and crawl to my room. I wanted to cry. I wanted to shake them all by the shoulders, these men who had never felt their agency or reasoning dismissed out of hand.

  “You must marry, Your Grace,” said Captain Marshall, brows knit. “And soon. You are eighteen, a grown woman, and Potomac is not a large country. We rely on you to set the example for our young people, in matrimony and in bearing children. And you are ill-equipped to become seneschal without a husband to lead and advise you.”

  They took my shyness, my privacy, for weakness. I gulped down my embarrassment, a bitter pill. “Captain Marshall, I fully intend—”

  But once he’d gotten rolling, Marshall was loath to stop. “England abandoned Potomac because their empire grew weak at the fringes.” He eyed me sternly, as though I were a soldier who’d shown up for inspection in a wrinkled uniform. “But we survived their abandonment because our ancestors did what they must. And now, so must you.”

  I knew our history as well as I knew my duty. But duty had felt different when it had looked like Peter.

  I sensed clouds gathering overhead, vultures circling close. But I couldn’t read what they foretold.

  Something was coming. I knew it. I just couldn’t make sense of the omens.

  Once upon a time, Godmother Althea had told me, the Old World sought out the New, poachers and pilgrims and adventurers and conquerors pursuing glory and gold and space to breathe. And they had found some of what they wanted. But they hadn’t stayed forever.

  The future does not roll in great waves, she’d said. It comes in a thousand tiny moments, turns on hinges too small to see, follows a winding path carved by yeses and nos that change the world.

  Europe taxed and took what it wanted, retreating from the New World only after the Old claimed all its attention—when Bharat, far away in Southeast Asia, began to press back against the men who came first for commerce and coercion and then to outright conquer. When distance and cost made us more trouble than we were worth.

  A thousand tiny moments. A winding path of yeses and nos.

  I wondered how different my life would be if the New World colonies had pushed back instead of being squ
eezed thin in Europe’s grip. If we had been the ones to revolt instead of Bharat. If, when abandoned by English overlords cheerfully declaring our “independence,” someone other than my ancestor had been the one to save our starving, depleted colony and become our first seneschal.

  I wondered how different my future might look if Peter had said yes tonight instead of no.

  Bharat’s revolt had meant the beginning of the end of the British Empire—and, for a time, of all empires. After England’s resources were decimated in Bharat’s war for independence, Europe’s enterprising crowns abandoned their imperial pursuits in the New World and the Old, determined to stay within their borders and stay afloat.

  But Britain was not the last empire to seek to cover the earth. If the reports were right, the Imperiya Yotne—the endless swaths of land conquered by the country of Yotunkheym—was a gaping mouth and a bottomless stomach, swallowing more territory in Europe every year.

  I shook myself, tried to focus.

  I wanted to serve Potomac. I wanted to marry.

  But the tides of history weren’t mine to command. And neither was my own heart. Or anyone else’s.

  “Bharat, al-Maghreb, and Masr balance the Imperiya for now. But we cannot perpetually count on great foreign powers to slap the tsarytsya’s wrist away, should she reach beyond Europe’s shores,” Marshall finished. “Who will you choose, Seneschal-elect?”

  “There’s no one else,” I said, staring at the Council table, my voice barely above a whisper. “There was only Peter.”

  I lifted my gaze and met the eyes of the third stranger.

  The last and youngest of the trio sat the tallest of the group. His tanned face was smooth and unwrinkled, set with an upturned nose and bowed lips. No silver threaded his dark hair, but his expression was grave, better suited for a much older man.

  His thick-lashed dark eyes were a little dismayed, studying me as I studied him. I glanced away.

  “Give her time,” my father said quietly. “And, in time, perhaps we can look elsewhere.”

  Daddy smiled, and I imagined the day he’d met my mother. A stranger who’d become his wife.