Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  “And do you like watching birds?” Alba’s mouth twisted into a quizzical grin.

  “I can’t say that I do.” I dodged a loose cobblestone. “Are there any albatrosses here?”

  “Albatrosses? No, not this far north, not this time of year. Why?”

  “Something Theodor said once,” I replied. “I was just curious.”

  Alba shook her head. “You two are a strange pair.”

  Like a pair of albatrosses, I smiled silently. If there was any decision I was confident about, anything I felt deep in my bones that I had been right about, it was my engagement to Theodor. Separation from him proved that, absence revealing the ways in which I had molded a vision of life around the shape of him and me together. Apart from one another, the shape felt wrong, hollow in vital and unexpected places.

  We rounded the curve in the cliffside road that led into town. Alba made a face as we approached the neat, ordered, and entirely predictable Rylke. “Fenian towns—they’re all alike. Except maybe Treshka, there’s at least a concert hall in Treshka. And chocolate cafés.”

  “We’re not going to Treshka, though, are we?”

  “Of course not, that would be too fortunate for the likes of weary pilgrims like us.” Rylke opened before us, with its ordered streets, beige brick buildings, and in the town center, a statue of some dull Fenian historical figure. I wondered if there was a different man captured in bronze in every Fenian town, or if they all had the same dour-faced effigy. “But I say that we spend a bit of time at the foundry. See how the order is progressing.”

  Even though I preferred the cold comfort of our sparse rooming house to the fiery heat of the foundry, I followed Alba, walking to the other side of Rylke from the woolen mill. Alba peppered the foremen with questions about every step of the process and nagged the foundry owner’s son—assigned, to his chagrin, to accompany us—about the quality of ore used in various applications. We weren’t to go near the blazing ovens and yawning maws of red-hot iron, though I didn’t need any encouragement to follow that rule.

  The heat in the foundry made me feel like a loaf of bread baking, but Alba showed no signs of waning in her enthusiasm. I slipped away, tiptoeing down the narrow stairs and stepping out into the biting Fenian autumn air.

  The cliffs were lower on this side of Rylke, and tapered toward a small harbor where waves lapped a craggy black sand beach. I considered walking down to the strand, but I knew that might be foolish. I didn’t know the tides—perhaps the water would rush up and leave me trapped, clinging to a sea stack.

  I sat instead on the long benches that the foundry workers used for their tea and lunch breaks when the weather was clear. Now that I had spoken with the mill workers, I felt the eyes of the Fenian foundry workers on me. Instead of keeping my face turned toward my scuffed boots, I began to look at them, noticing their curiosity and silent determination. As a group of foundrymen passed me, dinner pails in hand, they clasped their left fists in their right hands, a gesture I was sure held deeper meaning than I knew but that I understood as solidarity.

  I felt, suddenly, much less alone.

  7

  I SAID NOTHING TO ALBA OF MY CONVERSATION WITH THE MILL workers or the contact with the foundrymen, and we spent another week ricocheting between the foundry and the mill. Another order of wool, this time a rich madder red for the coat facings and cuffs. It was more expensive than the plain gray, but I had suggested and Alba agreed that the impact sharply made uniforms could effect, on both our own troops and on the enemy, outweighed the cost.

  We watched the last of the red wool leave the looms with quiet satisfaction. The wool was finished, the cannon barrels well underway, and Pygmik and its shipyards our next stop on the long tour back to Galitha and her war. Alba chattered about the prospective shipyard bids we would entertain until we reached our rooming house near the center of Rylke’s town square. Our accommodations were as luxurious as anything in Fen, which was to say that they were spare, stark, and coldly but beautifully made. The woods and woolens of the paneling and carpets were of the finest quality, but there were none of the bright colors that Galatines or Serafans favored in their decorations. My room had exactly one frivolous item, a starburst inlaid with mother-of-pearl that hung over the doorway. Alba said it was a half-defunct religious custom.

  I flopped gracelessly on the bed, kicking at my boots. Under Alba’s direction I had been given clothing favored by Fenians, dour gray and blue petticoats, jackets cut narrow and laced over plain stomachers, and a pair of heavy boots. I hated them. Compared to the pert latchet shoes and lightweight silk slippers Galatines wore, the calf-high boots with their tight laces felt like weights. I tore at a knot that had managed to work its way into the lace, finally getting the wretched things off my feet.

  There were a pair of red silk slippers in my trunk, an incongruous find in the storehouses of Alba’s order, and when I discovered that they miraculously fit my large feet, I claimed them. Slipping into the lightweight silk and leather soles induced a sigh.

  Alba rapped on my door and swept in before I could answer. “Good, you’re still dressed.” She glanced at my feet. “Mostly.”

  “Supper already?”

  “I’ll bet you’ll never guess what’s on the menu.” The scent of fish wafted thick from the inn’s kitchen. I’d never had so many iterations of fish in my life—fish stews and baked fish and thick slabs of fish seared brown on the outside and still raw in the center.

  Tonight was golden haddock, which flocked to the waters off Fen in the late summer and autumn, braised in butter and spices. “Do Fenians eat any other kinds of meat, aside from fish?” I asked the innkeeper’s daughter, who worked in the kitchens.

  Alba translated, chortling quietly as the girl answered my question. “By midwinter the ruby sailfin are running, and those are just delicious. And cod and silver herring and all sorts of mackerel—oh, and shark in midsummer. They gather to eat the seal pups,” she said, via translation through Alba.

  I turned back to Alba. “Did you not translate my question correctly?”

  Alba suppressed a laugh. “My translation was perfect. You have your answer.”

  I wasn’t ready to sleep after dinner, and the sun still hovered far from sunset. Nights were shorter here in summer than Galitha’s were, though I understood that winter days were truncated and the nights long. The inn’s windows were hung with thick curtains to block the light for the benefit of weary summertime travelers. Fenians, however, seemed to revel in the full length of the autumn days, at least as much as Fenians reveled in anything. From my window overlooking the sparse garden outside the inn’s back door, I saw late evening picnics and fishing parties, and the occasional wagon loaded with young foundry workers and laundresses, rattling over the uneven roads.

  They seemed happy, I thought wistfully, as I watched a gaggle of young men and women with baskets over their arms, traipsing toward the center of town. It was no Fountain Square, I thought. No public gardens. I sighed. The gardens would be beautiful as late summer turned to fall, roses in their final blooming and a blaze of zinnias and weeping hearts and purple fireflower. Even in the midst of war, I thought, nothing would stop the gardens from blooming.

  Unless, of course, they’d been burned to the ground or razed or shelled out by artillery fire. I blinked back sudden tears at that thought, at the catastrophe that destruction of the gardens meant—that the city had been overrun.

  I pushed the panic back, as I did every day. Galitha was an ocean away, and since I couldn’t know any better, the Reformists and the Royalists simultaneously had the upper hand. Kristos and Theodor were alive and dead, the possibilities balanced in tandem. No, I thought firmly. They are alive. The Reformists hold the city, they hold fast in the south.

  Hold fast, I repeated to myself.

  Though the sun still filtered through the garden and into my window, I was exhausted. I drew the thick curtains closed in our room, stripped off my boots and wool clothes, and burrowed my head
under my pillow to drown out the light and the thoughts barraging me even as I fell asleep.

  It was black and silent when I woke again.

  “Get up!” A firm hand jostled my shoulder into the thick featherbed. I reached out and gripped the wrist, twisting it in a newfound instinct of self-defense. “Let go, mercy of the Creator—Sophie, it’s me, but get up!”

  I released Alba’s wrist and swung the covers away. Cold air buffeted me instantly, and my teeth began to chatter. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But someone is throwing rocks at our windows, so I presume there is either something of import about to happen, or something already has.”

  “Do we open the window?”

  “Is there a better alternative?” Alba snorted, and drew her thick woolen bedgown tighter around her shift.

  I was already wearing a quilted bedgown and petticoat to sleep in—I couldn’t shake the damp cold of Fen even between featherbeds and wool blankets. I padded to the window and cracked the shutters, just a sliver.

  A figure stood in the middle of the garden below, another rock primed to toss in his hand. I squinted into the pale moonlight, threw wide the shutters, and opened the window.

  “Hyrd?” I whispered.

  “Bad news, must hurry.”

  “I’m coming,” I said.

  “Wait,” Alba hissed. “Who is he? What if he means you ill?”

  “Now you’re cautious,” I countered, throwing my cloak around my shoulders. “He’s one of the mill workers. He… made my acquaintance, he and several of his comrades.”

  “Comrades. Like-minded folks, then?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Then I’m coming, too.” We made as little noise as we could tiptoeing down the hall and outside. The night air was bracing, and I started shivering almost immediately despite the heavy wool cloak.

  “Hyrd, this is Alba,” I whispered quickly. “Alba, Hyrd.”

  “I am aware of the Kvys holy lady.” He nodded once in greeting. I would have laughed at his title for Alba if his eyes hadn’t been so serious. “You are in grave danger, Lady Sophie.”

  “What’s the meaning of that?” Alba asked crisply. Her manner was efficient, businesslike, but I could sense the tremor of fear behind her clipped words.

  “Some of the rylkfen talk. They say you spread unrest.”

  “I’m sure I do, but I promise it’s entirely unintentional,” I said with a forced smile.

  “This is true enough. They know that they will find no proof of their fears. But they want their factories running smoothly again. They do not believe we are—how do you say?” His brow creased. “Capable, yes. Capable of resisting on our own. They think you are causing it, even though they have no proof. But they know, as well—you cast charms.”

  Deeper cold than even the damp Fenian night seeped through me.

  “What does that matter?” Alba asked, even more clipped than before.

  “They will bring charges. Tomorrow.”

  “False charges,” Alba said. I bit my lips together, clamping my trembling jaw shut.

  “It may not matter. If enough of the rylkfen are against her.”

  My teeth chattered when I tried to speak. “How do you know this?”

  “A servant in Master Hendrik’s household. They met there, tonight, the rylkfen of Rylke. They talk very loudly while she served the wine.”

  “Men like that never consider that the people they keep under their thumb don’t like being squashed,” Alba muttered. “Very well. I believe you. Go, get away now, before you raise anyone’s suspicions being here. Wouldn’t do to get caught conversing with some local revolutionary, would it?” She shot me a knowing look and dragged me back inside before Hyrd had turned the corner.

  “Well then. Get dressed. Something to travel in. Boots. Not those damn slippers.”

  “Alba—”

  “Trust me.” She whispered through clenched teeth, and I could barely make out her face in the dim lamplight. “I have an idea.”

  8

  I DRESSED QUICKLY, FOR ONCE THE COLD OF THE MEAGERLY HEATED inn supplanted by a deeper, more invasive chill. My throat tightened and my teeth clamped around my tongue, finally ceasing their chattering. To be accused of casting here in Fen—accused of sorcery and witchcraft and abomination—would mean immediate imprisonment and a very serious trial. Though I couldn’t imagine how any accusers intended to prove my magic without using and admitting to use of magic themselves, a guilty verdict meant execution—drowning in the waters off Fen’s dark cliffs.

  The thought of the white crests closing over my head and the cold deep swallowing me whole prompted me to move quickly, and I plucked fresh stockings and a wool petticoat from my trunk, dressing in the dark without a thought to whether the ensemble matched. As I laced my jacket closed, the bodkin caught on an unraveling eyelet and tangled with the silk floss; I simply forced the dull-pointed needle through the fabric like a pin through a cushion to finish later.

  “Where?” My whisper was too loud in the silence, stark and bright in the dark.

  “I have an acquaintance who can help us.” Alba shouldered a small pack and handed me a coarse linen market wallet. “Bring spare socks.”

  With haphazard haste, I threw spare shifts and stockings into the market wallet, swept my correspondence and notebooks into the bottom of one side of the sack, and, knowing Alba wouldn’t waste time arguing, tossed the slippers on top. A thin, nasal exhale was her only comment on the choice.

  Nothing else in my trunks was of any particular value to me—some lucky chambermaid would, I hoped, claim the drab clothes for her own wardrobe. I glanced once more around the room, ensuring that I hadn’t left anything incriminating. No letters, no notes on charm casting, no logbooks detailing charmed yardage of wool. Then I drew my thick wool short cloak around already shaking shoulders and followed Alba into the night.

  Alba didn’t speak as we cut through the inn’s sparse kitchen garden and slipped down a narrow alley that reeked of yesterday’s fish. The ruts in the bricks were indiscernible from shadows in the cold moonlight, and more than once I tripped, earning terse exhales and a firm hand from Alba, who somehow managed to sail over the uneven terrain without so much as a stumble.

  The alley widened into a road and sloped downhill, toward Rylke Cove. Ships bobbed in the moonlight, cold water lapping their sides. One of these, then, to retreat.

  “Alba, where…?”

  “Tsk!” She clicked and shook her head. Silence, then. Silence, and trusting that she knew what she was doing.

  I saw why—a Fenian Night Guard patrolled the street ahead. In a thick gray greatcoat and miter cap, carrying a halberd, he kept watch over the intersection of two major streets near the center of Rylke’s wharfside district. Strict decency laws kept the Fenians from carousing in taverns all night, or gambling, or even being out without official business past midnight. The Night Guard ensured compliance and watched over the rich storehouse of merchants’ goods near the wharf, as well.

  He turned on his heel, crisp and deliberate even though surely he believed no one was watching. Alba’s exhale was white mist in the moonlight. The cloud of her breath said what she couldn’t: We were trapped here as long as the Night Guard patrolled this intersection.

  She turned to me, eyebrow rising into a question. I bit my lip and tried to calm my thoughts into coherence, knowing what she asked. What could I do? My casting wasn’t like the magic in a folktale, with sorcerer’s invisibility spells or fairy sleeping dust. I spun some good luck from the ether, the bright gold winding around my fingers like yard. Alba squinted; I knew her vision for the charmed light was poor, and I drew more, stronger magic into the charm. She saw it and nodded.

  I unspooled the charm, looping it around us as though tying us together with good fortune, forcing it to nestle into our cloaks.

  “Now,” Alba said. She strode down the street as though she belonged there, absurdly, in the middle of the night in a silent Fenian city. I m
atched her stride if not her self-assured gait.

  The guardsman saw us approach—we were impossible to miss—but didn’t shout or threaten. I breathed some relief; Alba’s bluff and the charm were working so far. I kept a tight handle on the charm in my right hand, clenching my fist into my skirt.

  “Drats-kinda,” he said as we moved closer. Something like halt or who goes there, I guessed, but the delivery, though official, was not threatening. Still, the moonlight glinted off the blade of his halberd.

  Alba prattled off a few lines in Fenian, which sounded to me like indecipherable Kvys. He nodded, then squinted at me. Alba chattered again, drawing his attention.

  Still, he glanced back at me, eyes curious, searching. A Pellian woman in Fen—a curiosity, certainly. Perhaps more.

  He quizzed Alba, questions tilting the cadence of his voice, his eyes still on me. Alba smiled broadly, and I intensified the charm. Luck for us, safety, swirling in a ring around us.

  It wasn’t enough. I knew it wouldn’t be, as the guardsman kept scrutinizing us. Darkness built at the edges of the charm, the sparkling black deeper than the night. Curse magic. I hadn’t asked it here, but I wasn’t entirely surprised to see it, like an unwelcome but familiar acquaintance at the door. I pushed it back, keeping it carefully away from the pale glow of the charm, then pulled at it as though pulling yarn into a ball from a skein, looping and turning, but it fought me.

  The charm had perhaps kept him from arresting us at once, but I sensed it was reaching its limits even as Alba remained calm and resolutely patient with the guard’s questions. I hesitated, then tied off the charm, letting it continue to pulse around us unbound. Out of my control and poorly anchored to the wool of our cloaks, it would quickly dissipate, but I turned my attention to moving the curse away from us, keeping those loose tendrils of darkness from encroaching on Alba and me.

  I pushed the ball of curse magic away from Alba but, in my struggle to control it, cast it toward the guardsman instead. It collided with him like a blob of jelly enveloping a bit of toast, seeping into his greatcoat with tenuous hold on the fibers.