Lost Crow Conspiracy (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 2)

by Rosalyn Eves

  I slipped on the shirt and trousers, absurdly conscious of how thin the shirt was, particularly without my chemise beneath it. The shirt was too big and the pants were too wide, but I only needed them to get me to Catherine’s house. The single pair of boots I rejected as far too big. Better to go barefoot. I braided my hair awkwardly—I had not done this since I was a child, and then for Catherine’s hair, not mine—then knotted it at the back of my head before leaving the room.

  I peered cautiously around the doorway, looking for posted guards. The corridor was empty, so I eased myself out. Perhaps my polite host was my guard. Or perhaps the guards were sleeping off their exhaustion from the night before.

  The second corridor was likewise empty, but a pair of soldiers were lounging in the third, and they saw me.

  “Hey!” one shouted.

  I began to run, casting a quick glance over my shoulder. That was a mistake. My braid tumbled down, and they both laughed.

  “Someone was lucky last night, I see,” one hooted. “Damn. Wish I’d thought of that instead of fighting fires all night.”

  “I’d fight that fire!”

  My cheeks flamed. They thought I had spent the night with one of the soldiers. Well, let them. Better they thought me loose than a fugitive. I ducked out a door at the end of the hallway. The daylight was filtered orange; smoke still stained the sky above the city walls.

  It was not far to the glacis—only a few streets. I fled across the road toward the city wall, feeling horribly exposed by all that open space. A shadow passed over me and I flinched. Hunger. But it was only a cloud momentarily blocking the sun. I huffed a shaky laugh and continued, a little more gingerly. A blister was beginning to form beneath my big toe.

  The guards at the gate stopped me, frowning at my boy’s clothes and bare feet.

  “It was the fire,” I said. “My home was burned, and I had to borrow my brother’s things. But my mama is still in the city—I must see if she’s all right.” Desperation lent a convincing air to my lie.

  The guards waved me through. Once I was inside the walls, it took me some time to get my bearings: this was not a part of the city I frequented. I might have asked someone, but in my borrowed clothing I was hesitant to draw too much attention to myself. I looked, at best, like a vagabond. At worst, I might be taken for a runaway. Or a prostitute. I gripped the waist of the pants in my hand to keep them from falling down and forged onward.

  A burst of pigeons from one of the churches thronging the streets made me squeak in alarm. All those wings so close to my head reminded me of the great eagles circling Hunger as we launched upward from the prison. Some two blocks from Catherine’s town house, the blister under my toe burst, and new ones were forming. Every step hurt; every breath burned from the lingering smoke. I passed several blackened houses, and my heart beat faster.

  I did not know if Catherine was all right—or if she would welcome me into her house.

  I knew what my odds would be if she did not. I had no money, no shoes, only a few pieces of men’s clothing. I would not make it far without better supplies. And if the praetheria did not find me, the soldiers would.

  As a point of fact, there was a soldier waiting in the street before Catherine’s house, possibly guarding against looters, probably watching for me. But it was not this that made my breath hitch. The façade of the town house was black and blistering, along with its neighbors. Down the street, I could just glimpse the inky bones of a crumbling building. The fire.

  For a moment I could not move, overpowered by the memory of returning to a similarly blackened home to find Grandmama and Ginny hurt, leaving Lady Berri dead behind me. What would I find here?

  I couldn’t enter where the soldier waited, so I limped around to the mews and crept in through the servants’ entrance. I put my sleeved arm up over my nose to filter the worst of the smoke and made my way upstairs.

  The house was like a mausoleum. I’d never seen it so empty and still. Everywhere there were signs of a rushed leave-taking: fallen chairs, tea dishes left untouched on the salon table, clothing dropped in the hallways near the bedrooms.

  Where was Catherine? Was she all right? Was her baby all right?

  My room was equally ravaged. Most of my dresses and all of my jewelry were gone. I didn’t know if Catherine had taken them herself, or if servants had. Or perhaps looters had come before the soldiers arrived.

  I limped across the room to the wardrobe. Removing a petticoat, I began to tear it into strips. I’d seen Noémi bandage wounds a few times: how difficult could it be?

  Several long minutes and a few unmentionable words later, I’d managed to wash my poor feet with the remaining water in my vanity table pitcher. After dabbing the open blisters dry, I wound the petticoat strips around them. My feet were now unsightly messes, twice their normal size, but the blisters were no longer exposed. I had some vague sense that I needed to keep them clean or infection might set in. I hoped I’d done enough.

  I hobbled back to my dressing table and peered into the mirror. My doubled chimera faces peered back before merging into one. I looked awful: pale and drawn, dark circles beneath my eyes, sooty grime ground into the pores of my face. I plucked at my fraying braid.

  I’d be safer traveling as a boy. The soldiers were looking for a young woman of quality, not a farmer’s son. And a young woman traveling alone opened herself up to insults. I removed the baggy linen shirt and wound some additional lengths of petticoat around my chest, binding it as tight as I could to obscure the swelling of my breasts, feeling as though I had unmade myself. I was soft and loose through my core, where I had been used to support from my corset, and tight through my chest.

  I went back down to one of the salons, searching for my sewing basket. Retrieving my sewing shears, I returned to my room.

  I took one last, long look at my hair, rippling in dark waves over my shoulders. I loved my hair, both worn long or in a crown around my head. Drawing a deep breath, I hefted the thickness in one hand and began to cut, scissors sawing through my hair.

  The long locks rained down around my feet like dead things. I blinked, hard. After everything that had happened, everything I had lost, I would not cry over a paltry thing like shorn hair.

  Surveying myself in the mirror, I saw a stranger: a boy of average height and average looks, with bewildered dark eyes. And though I knew it was necessary, knew I must disappear, I could not help feeling lost. This Anna Arden who stared back at me in the mirror with the hair of a boy: who was she?

  Before I left, I ransacked the house. Nearly everything of value was gone, but I found some smoky bread, hard cheese, and a small knife in the kitchens, and a pair of boots large enough to fit my bandaged feet in a servant’s room.

  Back in my room one last time, I took a sheet of paper from my desk. I held the pen for a long moment before setting it to paper. There were so many things I wanted to write: accusations against Franz Joseph for being too cowardly to stand against his mother, a defense of my actions, an apology to Catherine. But I limited myself to merely describing the conversation I had heard in the praetherian camp. I signed the letter and sealed it.

  I carried the letter to the Hungarian embassy. It was a delay I could ill afford—every minute I spent in the city increased my risk of being found—but I could not flee without sharing what I knew. I hoped too that I might hear something of Catherine. Or William.

  Approaching the gate, I ran through possibilities in my mind. I might leave the letter with one of the guards outside the embassy. Or perhaps with a servant just inside, if the guards would let me pass. But as I weighed my options, a carriage pulled up, and a well-dressed couple emerged from the embassy.

  My mouth went dry. Catherine—and Richard.

  My sister looked well, if pale. Richard held her arm solicitously, murmuring something to her. Her gaze swept across me, unseeing—then flicked back. I managed a minute wave. Her eyes narrowed in confusion, then settled on my face. They widened a fr
action.

  Richard ushered her toward the carriage, but she paused. “Dearest, would you see what is taking my maid so long? I thought she’d be down here by now.”

  Richard said something I did not catch. Catherine shook her head, and Richard went back into the building.

  Catherine watched him walk away, then turned to me and beckoned. “Boy, will you carry a message for me?”

  Obediently I edged toward her. When I was near enough, Catherine whispered, “What has happened to you? You look…” She trailed off, and I touched my hair self-consciously.

  Catherine continued. “I’m leaving Vienna. Richard doesn’t believe it’s safe, not with the fire and riots and rumors of war—he’s sending me home to England. He’ll be back in a moment with my maid. We haven’t much time—and you must go. Somewhere safe. If Richard knew I had seen you, he’d report you himself.” There was a curious thickness to her voice. Her fingers reached for me before she caught herself and pulled them back. Was my sister crying? My own lip began to tremble. Catherine could not cry: if she began crying, I might never stop. There was nothing for us beyond this moment but good-bye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For making a mull of things, for never thinking of how my actions might affect you, for trusting where I should not have.”

  She drew back, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hands. “You do not get to hoard all the blame. Since you disappeared I have been thinking. Of you. Of my baby. How I should feel if it were my child and not my sister who acted as you have done.”

  She took a slow, shuddering breath. “I may not agree with everything you did. But I believe you acted from your convictions, and I respect that. I am sorry I did not support you as I ought to have. Had I been more understanding, you might have confided in me sooner. Had I been less jealous of you, for coming here and trying to change the world after I had exchanged all my Luminate ambition to become a wife, I might have kept you safe.”

  “I do not think even you could have saved me from myself,” I said, my voice wry, and Catherine gave a choking laugh.

  I took a deep breath. The guards were beginning to notice us, the fine lady talking too long to a street urchin. “Will you take a message to the Hapsburgs for me? Tell them the praetheria are engineering a war—they want us to fight one another, and they’ll attack when we’re weak.” I handed her the letter I had written.

  “Are you certain of this?”

  I nodded.

  “I will ensure Richard and Lord Ponsonby know.” Catherine rested her hands on her stomach. “You are not alone, you know. The people who have loved you, love you still. And there will be others, wherever you go, if you look for them. We are not meant to be alone. Promise me you will search for people to help you.”

  I nodded, though my heart was not in it. I had already lost everyone who mattered: Grandmama, Mátyás; now Noémi and Gábor. By day’s end Catherine would be gone too. Whatever Catherine believed, that loneliness was sharp and piercing—and it was my life.

  My sister took a small purse from her reticule and pressed it into my hands. “Send us word when you are safe.”

  By the time Richard emerged again from the building with the truant maid, I was already scuffling my way down the street, on my way out of Vienna at last.

  If I could but evade the Hapsburg soldiers and the praetheria long enough, I might begin to figure out how to reconstruct the shambles of my life.

  Strong emotions are nearly impossible to sustain for any length of time. For the first few hours after leaving Catherine, I walked with my nerves on high alert, scanning the sky overhead, braced for the sweeping shadows that meant Hunger had come back for me. By the time the close-clustered houses of Vienna had given way to sporadic homes and sprawling farms, exhaustion and cramping pain in my feet had dulled some of my watchfulness. I stopped in the shade of some alder trees not far from the road and pulled out a hunk of bread and cheese wrapped in brown paper.

  I leaned back against the trunk, sighing a little. The tight knot in my stomach refused to loosen, so I picked at the bread and listened to the insects buzzing in the meadow behind me. The slowly descending July sun slanted through the trees, warm against my bare hands—and wrong.

  One’s first day of exile should be a gloomy thing: heavy, lowering clouds. Thunderstorms on the far horizon—a fitting presage of one’s life. To have sunlight instead seemed somehow a mockery. I supposed I should have been grateful I didn’t have to walk in the rain, but I couldn’t summon the energy.

  I needed a goal, some destination other than simply away. I couldn’t stay in Austria or in Hungary, and England was out of the question. Where had Noémi gone, following her dreams of Mátyás? To the Hungarian plains, I thought. It was as good a direction as any. Perhaps I could find her and put to right one thing in the muddle I’d made of my life. Then I could disappear.

  I tried not to examine too closely the thought that Gábor had also headed toward the plains, looking for the King of Crows.

  Hooves pounded down the road before me, a cloud of dust rising in their wake. I sat up straighter, the green-with-gold-piping uniforms visible even through the haze. The distinctive crested helmets marked them as Austrian cavalry, rather than the friendlier Hungarian hussars. I squashed an impulse to hide—it was too late; they had surely seen me, and hiding would scream my guilt more loudly than anything else.

  Most of the troop rushed past, but one of the soldiers pulled up beside me.

  “We’re looking for a young lady, possibly traveling alone or in the company of monsters. Have you seen anyone matching this description?”

  Yes. In my mirror this very morning. I shook my head. “Is she in trouble, sir?” I pitched my voice low.

  He laughed shortly. “She is trouble, more like. There’s a price on her head. Look sharp now, lad; there’s a reward if you find her.”

  I fumbled a salute, and the soldier dipped his head before riding after his mates. I collected the remains of the crumbling bread and stowed it in my knapsack, my heart still thudding. I had been careless, but I would not be so again.

  I left the road, heading east across the fields.

  *

  It took me five days of trudging to reach the reedy fringes of a lake, sleeping in inns when I could afford them (though the small supply of coins Catherine had given me dwindled rapidly)—in the fields or barns when I could not. A grey heron lifted into the air at my approach. I dropped to the ground and watched it disappear against the sky, my hands clasped loosely in my lap in something akin to prayer. I knew this lake: Lake Fertő, or the Neusiedler See, which spanned the border between Austria and Hungary. I was not far from the Hanság, not far from Eszterháza.

  Not far from home—though I might never know home again.

  It was dangerous to come here, where I had lived all last summer, where I had met Gábor, where Grandmama had died. Anyone who knew my past might look for me here.

  But I had seen no soldiers in forty-eight hours, I had been alone for longer than that, and the hunger for something familiar was so strong I could nearly taste it.

  I walked along the outskirts of the lake, far enough out to avoid the marshiest spots, close enough that the glint of sunlight on the water was always in sight. Twice I stopped to hide at the sound of voices, but it was only ever hunters, intent on their prey and not the least interested in me. My feet burned with the constant rub of new blisters, but I had become more adept at ignoring the pain.

  I was not entirely foolish. I skirted through the woods near Eszterháza rather than following the road, and I spent the waning hours of afternoon watching the palace. No soldiers came or went.

  When night fell, I found the door with the weak latch leading into the corner study on the ground floor and let myself into the house.

  No alarm of any kind sounded. Though I had written to János bácsi after returning to England, I had not been brave enough to ask what had happened to his magic. I didn’t know if the missing ward m
eant he had grown careless or he simply lacked the magic now. I crept up the stairs to the second floor, where I had seen a glow of light.

  I was nearly to János’s favorite salon when I heard the clatter of dog nails on parquet floor. Oroszlán. Noémi’s vizsla rounded a corner and barreled toward me. I sidestepped just in time, having no intention of being buried by the dog as I had been the first time we met.

  János stumped into the corridor. “Confound you, kutya, what has gotten into you this—” He stopped, brandishing his cane like a weapon.

  “Get out of my house.”

  “János,” I said, pulling off the cap I wore and ruffling my short hair. “It’s me, Anna.”

  He squinted at me. Oroszlán snuffled around my feet.

  “You look like a boy.”

  I sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, you’d best come in and tell it to me.”

  I followed him into the room, where a small fire burned in the tile stove despite the heat of the late-July evening.

  János sat in his favorite seat, and I took the one beside him, my heart pinging as I remembered how Grandmama used to sit here and exchange gossip with her cousin. He listened gravely as I told him about the Congress in Vienna, how I had tried to defend the praetheria who had helped us win the battle in Buda-Pest, how I had angered the archduchess and she had set a price on my head.

  I did not tell him why my life was forfeit: that I had used Mátyás’s death to break the Binding spell. János would hate me, just as Noémi did.

  János poured me tea and handed me a sandwich, which I ate with more relish than it deserved. “I wish I could keep you here,” he said. “I owe as much to Irína.”

  I shook my head. “Grandmama wouldn’t want you to put yourself in danger for my foolishness. I’ll be all right. But I could use a horse.”