“Mia, you know that ice is more difficult to create than water? We’ll begin with that. I want each of you to concentrate on ice and add this bit of a flick to the wand movement. You’ll find that you have better results.” All six of the girls began trying to create the ice. There was a bit of trouble with spurts of cold water erupting from their wands.
Mia predictably managed ice on the second try, and Ella was close behind. Lizzy and Beth, who had little talent for creation, started playing piano so that there would be appropriate noise coming out of the room. Sarah managed snow before the end of class, while Mia progressed to ice sculpture. Professor Fain put a freezing charm on the icy renditions of flowers and birds. “They won’t melt and the staff can use them to decorate the house.”
Lady Anne nodded. “Thrifty use of power. Now, I’ll just take the circle down, and we can start the dancing lessons.” Ethan Fain groaned and bowed out. “I’m no dancer Lady Anne. I believe I’ll go see what Mr. Dempsey is doing at the stables. The repairs sound fascinating.” He ignored her glare and practically ran for the door.
Lady Anne snorted. “Well girls, it seems we are on our own…” The girls practiced a line dance for another hour, until they were too famished to continue. Everyone retired to the drawing room and they were served a large meal as a tea. Lady Anne must have warned the staff because it wasn’t a light meal with lady sized portions of scones and cookies. Stacks of thick meaty sandwiches, bowls of nuts, piles of pastry, and finally a substantial tea cake completed the meal.
So it went for most of the week before the ball. Lady Anne found an appropriate place to practice and an excuse to keep the servants from wandering in. Professor Fain took them through as much as possible as quickly as possible. They were drained and weary after each practice session. Lady Anne ordered two teas a day. “The girls are still growing you know!” Mia often indulged in a short nap in the afternoon. Professor Fain seemed generally pleased with their progress.
“Keep your wand a little higher, that’s it!” Mia flushed as she finally produced silk after three hours of practice. She was sweating, shaking, and her eyes were crossing, but there was a bolt of sapphire blue silk on the floor. Bolts of other types of cloth (the results of hours of work) lay beside it.
Mia plopped down in the middle of the floor and put her forehead on the cool marble. That felt much better. Professor Fain and Lady Anne were quickly beside her, offering food and tea. “Sip this Mia; you’ll be fine in no time.” Lady Anne was holding a cup to her lips. This annoyed her, since she was perfectly capable of holding the cup herself. She indignantly tried to hold herself up and take the cup, but her body wouldn’t respond.
She felt much improved after the tea, and Professor Fain offered her some cookies that she consumed with more speed than grace. “We pushed too far this evening. You can’t do that to yourself. This is second and third year work. When you start feeling tired you need to slow down. It’s like over-working a muscle. If you try too hard you won’t be able to do anything the next day.” Mia was absently stroking the created bolt of silk. Professor Fain sighed and went to fetch a full meal for all the girls. Keeping them working for three hours was too much. Mia was fine after the meal, but Professor Fain insisted on keeping the practice sessions down to an hour and a half after that.
***
Greatlady Imogene arrived two days before the ball in a dark carriage. She was a stately looking woman: her face had the stone-like quality that so many older wand wielders had. It was unlined but unmovable. Her hair was silver, except for two black streaks that swirled in her upswept hair, giving it the appearance of some sort of odd candy cane. Her black silk gown was as stiff as her face; it was encrusted with a fortune in jet beading. She carried a black cane set with an opal and fitted with silver, in the manner popular with young girls a century before, much as the current fashion dictated that one always have a fan at formal functions. She obviously didn’t require it, for the cane spent most of its time held in two hands across her body. Mia had the uncomfortable impression that the Greatlady might decide to rap someone across the knuckles with it at any moment.
Her granddaughters greeted her enthusiastically and she hugged them both before saying “Miss Amelia, thank you for inviting us to your Midwinter festivities.” Mia smiled and muttered something polite about the honor being hers and asked if she could show the Greatlady to her rooms. Greatlady Imogene nodded graciously, and Mia showed her to a grand room with the best view in the house: it overlooked the same formal garden as the ballroom.
The gardener, Sebastian, had outdone himself for the party. Barren rose bushes were decorated with green mage lights no bigger than the tip of a child’s finger, while glittering fungi grew in oddly geometric shapes in reds, blues, pinks, purples, and golds to replace the roses in a riot of color. Hearty evergreens were shaped like woodland creatures in different poses, and then decorated with tiny gold mage lights. The effect was enchanting.
The house was just as beautifully decorated. Greatlady Imogene declared herself charmed. “It’s beautiful but not overdone, absolutely spot-on for a young girl’s first house party. I’m impressed.” Mia gave the credit for the décor where it belonged: to Lady Anne and Mrs. Wallace. It was rather nice. Evergreen boughs hung over doorways and windows tied with wide gold ribbon and laced with red berries for color. Scented beeswax candles were burning to add light and make the house smell divine. The ice sculptures that Mia, Sarah, and Ella had produced were sparkling from different corners. Ice lilies decorated every flat surface in bowls of snow; they glittered and added their fragrance to the atmosphere.
The Greatlady turned her steel grey eyes on Mia. “Beth told me that your guardian would be attending.” Mia nodded. “Lady Anne is chaperoning the ball, but my guardian, Emma Faithling of Forestreach Village will be here a few days after the dance. I was hoping she would be able to stay for the entire three weeks, but there was an outbreak of Warbling Weakness in the village and she had to treat it before she came.” The Greatlady nodded. “Serious business that. I always keep a supply of wren’s hair on hand. My son had a terrible case of it when he was thirteen.” The lady’s eyes took on a far away look. “I had to come back to the estate to see to him, despite my duties at the library. Sang for three weeks, and his voice was breaking at the time. Made the chickens stop laying for miles around.” She chuckled in remembrance. That flash of humor moved her face slightly, and Mia finally saw the resemblance between the lady and her granddaughters.
The Greatlady’s addition to the household did not stop the lessons in Creation, or the girls’ search for information on the council members. There were many distractions of course: the local wand wielders were invited as guests at dinner almost every night, all anxious to meet the heir of the estate. In fact, common dinner conversation elicited quite a bit of information. Vivian was especially deft at extracting intelligence from visiting wand wielders while playing cards.
“Apparently, when Greatlord Wilkins found out, he cut them off without a copper. Lady Wilkins is sending her daughter a small stipend every month to help, but they’ve never seen their granddaughter.” Vivian was relating that latest bit of gossip she’d heard at the card table. Lady Wilkins had the bad luck to have a daughter who had not inherited enough magical ability to go to college and had married a tradesman. Greatlord Wilkins had been angry enough to legally disown her. (The process of disowning a family member involved stacks of forms and depositions. In these modern times it was rarely used except for the families of violent criminals.)
They were gathering reams of information about the local wanded population. Unfortunately, most of it was minutiae. Mia wasn’t particularly interested in how many rams Greatlord Hopper had sold this year to pay off gambling debts or how many fields Greatlord Prosper had standing fallow at the moment. She’d never wanted to know all the dirty little scandals that their families were involved in. She wanted to find out who might be willing to kill younger wand wielders to protect their own
power. They weren’t getting even a hint of anything like that. None of the Greatlords seemed to care what was happening outside their personal jurisdictions. The Magus hadn’t called the entire council to session in years, so they didn’t even talk that much to each other. No one had, or seemed to want, an overall picture.
Chapter Fourteen
Madam Reece came for a final fitting the day before the party, speaking with the maids about proper ornaments for the ball, and particularly inquiring about the flowers in each girl’s hair. Lady Anne’s personal maid, a stern-looking woman named Perkins was going to oversee the additional staff.
Lady Anne fretted over the lack of proper lady’s maids. “Not that the girls who are going to help aren’t talented, but a lady’s maid trains for years before one of these balls. Thank goodness they’re all so young. No one will really expect them to be perfect…” Perkins quietly assured the lady that the girls would be in good hands and continued sorting through the magical bag for the ivory fan to match her mistress’ gown for that night.
The preparations for the ball began as soon as Mia woke up. The maid, another of Madam Reece’s many relatives, was very gentle: the tweezers, exfoliating potions, eye-lash lengthening spell were not. The smell from her room should have been enough to ruin her appetite, but she managed to eat a few bites before the nail-buffer serum was applied.
The maid brought up another lady-sized meal at lunch: Mia was used to much larger portions, but she tried to keep the disappointment off her face. After all, the beautification spells she was performing weren’t that difficult. They didn’t burn nearly the amount of energy that a transfiguration spell did, much less creation.
Ten hours after her beauty regimen began, she stood in front of a full length mirror surveying the result. To her intense surprise, there were no bloody spots on her brow from the tweezers, no scratches along her cheeks from the exfoliating potion: not a single visible bruise! She did wonder how she was supposed to dance with powders on her lashes and cheeks. Surely that stuff was going end up all over her white gloves…
***
Mia stood in the receiving line greeting her guests. Her hair was swept into a twist with miniature purple roses inserted here and there. Her gown was a pale lilac, with a lace overdress. It was totally unlike the blush creation that Sarah wore, the pale green gown that Vivian had chosen, or the cream silk that Ella sported. The twins were wearing pale blue of course.
Professor Fain’s quick comments about how she was holding up were the only respite she had during the hour-long ordeal. She did get the opportunity to meet Lord and Lady Powers, as they arrived with the headmistress. His bright blue eyes stared out of an unlined face but her snow white hair showed their true age: they were two of the oldest wand wielders left in the City bounds. They took her measure in the thirty or so seconds that they were able to spend together in the receiving line, and then they parted, with the Powers following Headmistress Villanova to the refreshment table.
Mia was already weary of meeting her guests by the time that Greatlord Chilton arrived. Seeing him three guests down the line, Lady Anne whispered in her ear. “It looks like Greatlord Chilton accepted the invitation and did not remember to send the card! Drat…I’ll have to arrange something at dinner. He’s half stone-mad anyway, so no one will take offence…”
He moved slowly and took Mia’s hand. She tried to smile. Stone-mad or not, Chilton was the College’s representative to the council. It wouldn’t do to make a bad impression.
Lady Anne made the introduction.
“Greatlord Chilton, this is Amelia Rusticov…”
The Greatlord batted the Lady’s hand away irritably. “Don’t be daft girl, I know very well who Amelia Wellington is!”
He turned his head to the side and gazed intently at Mia. “I must say, Mellie, I’m not sure I care for the change of hair color…had a mishap with a potion again, have you? You should ask my Audrea…the wife’s a dab hand with potions…” He looked around as if he expected to see his wife, who from all reports was confined to their estate for her own stone-madness. Mia watched in horror as he seemed to realize where he was and that his Audrea wasn’t there. He stepped back and something stirred behind his eyes, though his facial expression never changed. “Pardon me…I seem to have mistaken you for someone else young lady. You must be the granddaughter.” He looked down his rather large nose. “I hope we shall see more decorum from you than your mother has shown. Where is Alexandra?”
Mia took a deep breath. “Greatlord, my mother has been dead for fifteen years.”
The Greatlord’s eyes pinned like a falcon’s. “Not possible. Mellie would never allow that. Where is Amelia?” His mind seemed to slip away again. “I suppose she and Audrea are in some corner for a nice gossip. We poor men are left to our own devices again.” His smile held some of the charm he must have had as a younger man. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet Mellie’s granddaughter. I’ll just toddle along and find Audrea.”
Lady Anne took his arm. “I think she felt ill sir. I believe she is at your estate.”
As the lady walked him away he blustered “Poppycock! I hate parties. Never go to them except when my wife makes me…where is Mellie? She’ll know how to settle everything properly…”
As the final guests entered the ball room, Lady Anne released her, and she was able to rush to the refreshment table for a glass of punch to wet her parched mouth. It didn’t help her horror at the Greatlord’s madness. She didn’t really expect it to.
She was finishing her punch when the first gentleman on her dance card claimed her for a set. Lady Anne was calling the dances. The first one was a country dance; one Mia was quite fond of. Her partner missed a turn and glanced her foot, but he apologized sincerely, so she forgave him. She successfully finished the set and managed another dainty cup of punch before the next set was called and she was swept away again. Next year she was increasing the time between sets and the size of the punch glasses.
If her partners had been boys that she knew well or people whom she had something in common with, the dances would have been the stuff of her girlish fantasies. As it was, she spent most of the night dancing with young men with the proper breeding who were told to ask her to dance by their mothers. It wasn’t exactly the way she had hoped she’d spend her first ball.
Between the second and third set the Headmistress walked up to Mia and her current escort, a young man whose name she couldn’t remember without checking her dance card. The headmistress hinted that she was thirsty for two minutes before he caught on and grudgingly went to get the ladies a cup of punch. The headmistress immediately steered Mia toward the open double doors of the veranda, where Greatlord Powers and his wife were waiting. His ancient blue eyes seemed to see through her. “It’s a difficult thing, to have a conversation at one of these events.”
His lady nodded. “Not that it matters, dear. I have a bit of sight, you know, and we’ll be seeing you again, not this upcoming summer, but the next. Don’t bother writing; we’ll have a bed ready for you when you know the questions to ask. Our estate is a bit of a trip, so pack for a couple of weeks.” The old wand wielders nodded their stone-like heads and ambled away from the veranda. They disappeared into the garden holding hands.
The headmistress cocked her head to the side. “When you know what questions to ask? I think she’s worse than the Oracle. I hope you have better luck when you visit their home.” Mia found herself agreeing with the headmistress’ implied disapproval.
The boy returned with the punch a few minutes later. Mia drank hers with relief; the headmistress sipped hers twice with obvious distaste. “I’d forgotten how sticky sweet this stuff is! I believe I shall go to the card room and have a cup of that excellent tea you mentioned.” Mia, who hadn’t mentioned tea at all, smiled and encouraged the headmistress to sample any sort of hospitality that her home provided. A moment later she was swept away by the next person on her dance card, another old blood boy whose name she couldn’t rememb
er.
Lady Anne beamed at all six girls from the sidelines, and occasionally from the dance floor. She spent most of her time making introductions and seeing that everyone had a partner. Mia had barely been able to say a word to her friends during the entire ball.
Professor Fain rescued her during the supper dance, so she was at least assured a dinner partner that wouldn’t ruin her appetite. He grinned when he saw her relief and the liberal use of her fan. “You’re very popular.” She snorted softly, aware that it wasn’t lady-like to do so. “I’d prefer to sit out a dance or two and have partners who were actually interested in talking to me. Some of them haven’t said a single word beyond pleasantries, and they were the more enjoyable ones…”
Seventeen Stones Page 23
