“Who?” Kristos said. His eyes were dark coals in the long evening shadows. “Who?”
I shook. “He ruined everything.”
“Who?” he demanded.
I trembled as I looked at him, knowing the price of naming the guilty man. Knowing it meant rending the fabric of the new country before it had even been fashioned into a government. I could have said nothing, pretended I found Theodor already wounded, already dead.
Kristos knew better.
“Niko,” I whispered.
He turned and plucked his sword from where it hung with the coats and cloaks, a martial interruption to the homely woolens lining the wall. Wordlessly, Sianh followed him, looping his sword belt over his coat.
I lurched forward. “No, you can’t—”
“They’ll be safe,” Viola said, pressing me firmly back against the settee.
“But if they—if Niko—”
“Don’t concern yourself over it.” Annette’s soothing voice skimmed over a tremor of fear, like a mother fussing over a sick child. “Let them take care of it.”
Sianh and Kristos strode out into the night, the door closing behind them with hollow finality. Viola motioned to one of the men stationed in our house as a clerk and gave him concise directions in a low timbre I couldn’t hear. I remained motionless, my vision centered on the door, as though I could bore holes through the wood to the settling darkness beyond, could follow Kristos and Sianh.
Annette brought me tea. I pushed it away. “Drink it,” she said, kind but firm. “You’ll thank me later.”
I thought it a strange thing to say, but after I’d drained the cup, sleep pulled heavy on my eyelids. I slept and woke in dazed starts, through velvet darkness and the glimmers of daylight, and into twilight again, losing track of time until I woke to sunshine in my eyes and my arm asleep under my head.
It was cruel waking to memory, even as the sun poured bright through the window of the room where I had been put to bed. Not the room I’d shared with Theodor—Viola and Annette were wise enough not to make that error—but still, he was there. The furniture he had chosen, the dove gray of the walls, a painting of a brilliantly blooming tropical plant across from the bed. My voice gouged my throat in wordless agony and I buried my cries in a pillow whose case smelled like his preferred laundry soap.
I wasn’t as silent as I’d hoped, because Kristos tentatively shuffled into the room a few minutes later. I stared at him, looking like a madwoman with eyes rimmed red, I was sure, and with fear churning my gut.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Two days.” Kristos swallowed. “Annette thought it best to save you the shock to your nerves by lacing a cup of chamomile with nightbloom poppy. Naval trick.”
“If anyone ever drugs me again, I’ll—I’ll—” I found I couldn’t verbalize the word I had begun to say in jest: kill.
“I’ll be sure to tell her that.”
I waited, not wanting to ask, terrified of the answer, but I finally whispered, “What did you do?”
“We took him into custody,” Kristos said. “Some of his sycophants thought to put up a fight, but Sianh disabused them rather quickly of that idea. He didn’t seem particularly well supported, in any case.”
“You arrested him?”
“Of course. He needs to stand trial. He doesn’t deny anything, for what it’s worth. He said ridding the country of noble and magical influence was necessary.” Kristos sank onto the bed beside me. “Necessary. I hate that damn word. It doesn’t mean what men like Niko think it does.”
I stared at the painting of the blooming flowers, the colors bleeding into each other as tears lined my eyes. “I was afraid you had carried out the sentence yourself. And that I would wake and find the city at war with itself. And yet… a trial could tear us apart, too.”
“We will survive that. Due process, proper order, equal application of the law—” Kristos stopped, and I knew what we were both thinking. That was what Theodor would have said.
I closed my eyes. “I wanted to kill him.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kristos said, “he feels the same way about you. Shit.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry, it’s not the time for jokes.”
“He said as much to me, once.” I sighed.
“He suggested he expected to find you both together. He had a brace of pistols on him when we arrested him. He distrusted your casting, he was convinced you had orchestrated Theodor’s election and had brought those nuns in, too. I—” Kristos broke. “If he had taken you, too, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t know what to do.” He straightened and wiped his eyes. “No, I’m sorry. This is your quiet fortnight, not mine. I don’t get to harass you with my problems.”
“We never really were much for old traditions at the best of times,” I said. “And now? There’s too much each of us needs to do to take a quiet fortnight.”
“No, not you. You—you don’t owe anyone anything. It’s your right.”
I didn’t care about traditions or rights or any other rationale for why it would be acceptable for me to lock myself in this guest room in my dead would-be-husband’s home. I only knew that I couldn’t imagine standing up and getting dressed and going out of doors to meet a world without Theodor in it, not yet. I had remade myself to fit Theodor in my life, unpicked the old seams and let them out, and now there was too much room. My life didn’t fit me any longer, and I didn’t know how to refashion myself again.
I stayed silent a long time, and Kristos didn’t press me to speak. “Kristos?” I finally said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
He didn’t question it. “I’ll find us a different place.”
“Ask Alice to come stay with us. And—maybe Emmi.”
Kristos nodded and left me to the silence.
When I came downstairs the next morning, Alice was knitting in the parlor. “I made tea,” she said, matter-of-fact, as though she had lived in this townhouse her whole life and we had only just discovered her. “Your brother is hiring the porters to move to the new house now.”
“Already?”
Alice shook out her knitting and rolled it around her yarn ball—a sock, I saw, as she stabbed her needles through it. “There’s a house requisitioned from the nobility, nice place overlooking the river, perfect as one of the governor’s houses. They’ve got three houses near one another, close enough to the city center for official business when needed.”
“But then the governors will need them—”
“Of course, you didn’t know.” Alice paused. “Your brother is one of the governors now.”
“Kristos! He—he refused the nomination.”
“Yes, but…” Alice cleared her throat. “After what happened,” she continued with deft avoidance, “with two vacant seats, the council asked if he would reconsider. So that at least one of the army’s earliest leaders would be one of the new Republic’s governors.”
“I see.” I let out a shaky sigh. It should have been Theodor. Anger surged at the stinging injustice of what Niko had done, taking Theodor not only from me but from Galitha. “I think I’ll take that tea now.”
66
WITHIN A MONTH, ALICE HAD OBTAINED A PERMIT TO REOPEN the shop I had given her. She insisted I take it back, at first, but I refused. It was hers by rights both legal and ethical, and I found when I considered taking up shopkeeping again that the prospect leeched too much memory into it. Even a new shop, a new location, and new wares would have been haunted by my old life. She moved into the apartment over the shop, as proud to have her own business as she was to have a better home for her and her mother.
More, I didn’t care to leave the apartment I’d carved out of my brother’s house. Every corner, every coffeehouse and tavern, every broadside churned out of the bustling printers across the city thrummed with gossip about the trial of Niko Otni. The evidence was exceptionally clear, but the political drama of it jolted through the city. A few loyal followers held tight to
Niko’s cause, but the assassination didn’t have the effect he had hoped. He might have guessed as much—what gossip I couldn’t avoid suggested that no one else had been willing to take the pistol in their own hands.
“It was like an opera,” Sianh said as he took dinner with me in my sitting room the evening after Niko insisted on testifying in his defense. “Serafan opera. All stabbings and impassioned orations as to why the blood was a necessity and the blade a friend.”
“You said I would enjoy Serafan opera,” I said, pushing a ruby-red radish around my plate. It left a deep pink stain on the white china and I stopped abruptly. “I don’t think you’re selling it very well.”
“One does not attend the opera for the plots,” he said. “The music brings life to even the most wooden of stories. Otni saw himself as singing an aria, I think, but it lacked a certain… believability.”
“You think he was lying?”
“Hardly, no. I think he had attached himself to a falsehood so completely he thought it was the truth—that a man of noble birth could not possibly lead a new Galitha.” Sianh paused and set his knife and fork down, balanced with gentle precision on the rim of his plate. “I do not think it likely the jury will find him innocent of the charges.”
Hanging, then. And another man would be dead, a casualty in the Galatine Civil War. Even if hanging was just, even if the guilty verdict was well-earned, I wasn’t sure I could stomach any more death. I nudged my plate away from me. “I would rather not talk about it any further.”
Sianh complied with the dexterous conversation that had made him a success in the Warren in Isildi, though I would never have told him that. He produced a set of silver dice from his pocket and taught me a simple game of wagers, and kept me distracted enough until late in the evening that gallows and juries were the furthest thing from my thoughts. The next day, I started a new gown from fabric Kristos had left for me and had the bodice nearly complete before I thought to wonder if the jury had come to a decision late in the afternoon. When I met Kristos at the door, he didn’t need to say anything—the painful peace in his bearing told me Niko was guilty.
Penny finally made her way into the city, wearing the still-unnamed infant in a neatly wrapped cocoon as she bustled around the house. She threw herself into making it as homey as possible. Though a grand estate in the classical Galatine style, and far larger than anything Penny, Kristos, or I had ever lived in, it was a victim of the war, too. Its three stories were almost bereft of furniture, the curtains had been torn down for fabric, and several rooms’ rich wood floors and silk walls were marred with claw marks and stains where a pack of dogs had gotten inside.
Penny prodded me into helping her with friendly jokes and frequent nagging, though I didn’t tell her that the main reason I consented to leaving my rooms was because I felt guilty watching her try to strip wallpaper and polish floors while tending the infant.
“I wonder who lived here,” Penny mused as we tore down a ruined panel of silk. She teetered on a stepladder but refused to stay firmly on the floor. The baby slept soundly in a basket nearby.
“One of the Ladies Pommerly,” I said, ripping a section of the silk as we fought with it. “Which is why I don’t feel badly at all living here,” I added.
“The Pommerly family was one of the worst, wasn’t it?” Penny rolled a length of stained fabric around her arm. “Along with—oh, what was that admiral’s name?”
“Penny, you just lived through the single most historic event in centuries of Galatine history, and you can’t remember that admiral’s name?” I laughed. It felt strange, rusty and thick, yet welcome. “Merhaven. His name was Merhaven.”
“That’s right.” She hopped from the ladder. “Well, they certainly left in a hurry. The larder is a mess.”
“The dogs didn’t leave much,” I said. I didn’t add that I knew that this particular member of the Pommerly family had not escaped the city.
“What are we going to do once we get this down?” Penny asked. “We haven’t the same fabric lying around, I’m sure.”
“No. We’ll have to have the walls painted. Maybe verdigris,” I said with a sly smile.
“I don’t care how stylish it is, that green is far too bright for indoors! It would make a fine calash or pair of shoes, but to be surrounded by it? Ugh!”
“Alice specifically suggested verdigris,” I said, another laugh working its way to the surface.
“She did not!” Penny giggled.
The baby roused and began to cry, her little face red with the exertion of so much sudden volume. “She’ll be hungry again,” Penny said, deftly lifting the little bundle and pulling her breast over the top of her gown in one motion. “Greedy little thing,” she cooed as the baby latched hastily.
“She’s nearly a hundred days old. Isn’t it time she had a name?” I asked, gathering the scraps of soiled wall covering into a bin.
“We were thinking about that,” Penny said softly. “We’d like to have a little party here for her naming, the way Kristos said Pellians usually do.”
“Kristos has never been interested in what Pellians usually do before,” I said. Perhaps having a baby changed that, and now there was something about himself he wanted to capture and save for her, before it was too late. “Emmi could help with the arrangements, if you like. Oh, Lieta would be over the moon to come, too. She loves babies.”
“That would be wonderful,” Penny said. She paused, then pressed on. “We picked a name, but I want your blessing. If it’s not all right with you, we’ll pick something else.”
I stopped picking up stray bits of silk. “Of course,” I said, confused.
“Theodora,” Penny said quietly. “We’d like to name her Theodora.”
The room looked suddenly tight, too bright and too condensed, and I realized it was because my eyes were overflowing with tears. “Yes,” I said softly. “That would be perfect.”
67
WE MANAGED TO PAINT THE FRONT PARLOR AND THE FOYER IN time for Penny and Kristos to hold a naming party for Theodora. Emmi spent all morning in the kitchen with Penny, teaching her to make sweet almond pastry and gami, which translated roughly as glop in Galatine but was a fragrant paste made of herbs, nuts, and oil that Emmi paired with dainty charred flatbreads.
“This is delicious,” I said, wiping some gami from my chin. “To think, I never liked Pellian food. I’m beginning to think my mother didn’t know how to cook.”
“She definitely never made anything like this,” Kristos agreed. “Remember that spinach pie?”
“That was terrible.” I laughed.
“She probably didn’t salt and towel off the spinach,” Emmi said. “Here, have a pastry.”
“The baby would like to eat again,” Lieta said, finding us in the kitchen. She had spent all morning holding the infant, who took to Lieta’s bony arms like she’d been born there. “And your first guests are arriving.”
Penny took the baby to nurse once more before the party, and Kristos and I greeted Viola and Annette, who arrived early with arms full of gifts. More guests arrived, from the council members Kristos felt obligated to invite to the old friends from the dockyards he used to work alongside. Lieta had coached Kristos and Penny in the simple ceremony, and now sat keenly attentive to the proceedings.
Penny presented the baby, whom she had changed into the red silk gown I had made for the occasion, its long skirts hanging to Penny’s knees when she held her. A matching quilted cap tied under still milk-damp double chins. She slept soundly in her mother’s arms.
“This is my daughter,” Kristos said, for once stilted formality taking the place of his easy banter. Lieta nodded, encouraging.
“I have named her Theodora,” Penny said, to a quiet murmur of appreciation from the gathered crowd. I saw Annette wipe her eyes and Sianh swallow, very deliberately.
“It is a good name,” Kristos recited, his eyes bright and his voice quavering. The rote words of the simple ceremony finished, they paraded her aro
und the room, introducing her by name to each guest.
We then gathered around a simple table of food, and Sianh cracked open a bottle of Serafan spirits. “We toast with a strong drink for a baby, so that she might grow strong, too,” he said.
Theodora woke, cried, ate, and slept again like clockwork, much to the delight of everyone gathered, and consented to being held by stranger after stranger, some more adept at bouncing a baby than others. After a couple of hours grazing on Emmi’s delicious food and sips of Sianh’s exceptionally strong drink, the guests began to leave, one by one.
“I’ve something to ask you,” Kristos said, when only we were left gathered around the remnants of the food. Kristos slathered gami on his flatbread, scraping up the last bits remaining in the crystal dish.
I sighed and passed my flatbread to Penny, who lobbed her plain flatbread at Kristos’s head.
“What was that for?”
“Next time let the mother of your child have the last of the gami,” I suggested.
“I didn’t realize!” Kristos hurriedly offered his bread to Penny, who passed mine back to me.
“What did you want to ask?” I prodded. “If it’s sharing this almond pastry, you’re out of luck.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking,” Kristos said. “No, it’s the council. Remember we said that we were going to have to have some legal framework for casting? We need your help.”
“I suppose I can offer my expertise,” I hedged. Reentering the fray of politics filled me with apprehension. Without the partner I’d had in Theodor, I felt lost.
“Yes, good, of course. But there’s more, too. The council thinks it would behoove us to open some sort of office not only for policy but for training. They’ll give you space out of the university. It would be combined with a sort of advisor to the council position, I believe.”
I nearly dropped my pastry. “What gave them the idea I would ever consent to that?”
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