by Morgan Rice
It was a long way from what he’d worn at the ball, but it still—
“Oh,” Sophia said, biting her lip. “I’ve just realized that all I have to wear is my ball gown.”
Sebastian smiled at that. “I thought about that. It isn’t much, but…”
He lifted a dress from a pile of clothes. It didn’t have the shine and shimmer of the ball gown Sophia had stolen, but it was still more beautiful than anything she’d ever owned. It was a deep, soft green that seemed like the mossy carpet of a forest floor, and part of Sophia wanted to leap out of bed to try it on, regardless of the fact that Sebastian was still there.
She barely stopped herself in time as she remembered the mark on her calf that proclaimed what she was to the world. Perhaps the makeup from last night had held, but Sophia couldn’t take the risk.
“It’s all right,” Sebastian said. “It’s normal to feel more embarrassed by the light of day. You can try it on once I’ve gone.”
“It’s lovely, Sebastian,” Sophia replied. “Far more lovely than I deserve.”
It’s not a tenth as lovely as she is. Goddess, is this what being in love feels like?
“You deserve far more,” Sebastian said to her. He came forward to steal one last kiss from Sophia. “Feel free to go where you want in the palace. The servants won’t bother you. Just… promise me that you’ll still be here when I get back?”
“Afraid I’ll turn into mist and float away?” Sophia asked.
“They say that in olden times, there were women who turned out to be spirits or illusions,” Sebastian said. “You’re so beautiful I could almost believe it.”
Sophia watched him go, wishing all the time that he didn’t have to. She stood, washed using a ewer of water, and dressed in the dress Sebastian had brought for her. There were soft brown slippers that went with it, and a light caul that went over her hair to shimmer in the sun.
Sophia slipped into it all, and then started to wonder what else she was supposed to do. On the streets, she would have gone out and started to look for something to eat. In the orphanage, they would have had chores for her to perform by now.
She set out into the outer rooms of Sebastian’s suite first, seeing the spots where her clothes had fallen last night. Sophia put them away neatly, not wanting to risk losing the few things of value that she had. She found that a servant had left hard sausage, cheese, and bread in the outer chambers, so she took a few minutes to have breakfast.
After that, she looked around the rest of the suite of rooms, taking in a collection of preserved eggshells that had probably come from across the sea, and a painted map of the kingdom that looked as though it had been painted before the civil wars, because it still showed some of the free towns as independent spaces.
There was only so long that Sophia could stay in one place though. The truth was that she didn’t want to just sit there alone, waiting for Sebastian to come back. She wanted to see what she could of the palace, and truly experience the life that she’d somehow talked her way into.
She stepped outside of Sebastian’s apartment within the palace, half expecting someone to pounce on her the moment she did so to tell her either to leave or to return to Sebastian’s rooms. Neither happened, and Sophia found herself able to wander the palace easily.
She used her talent to keep away from people, though, not wanting to risk being caught out doing the wrong thing, or being told that she didn’t belong there. She avoided the spaces that had the most sets of thoughts in them, keeping to the empty rooms and corridors that seemed to stretch on for miles in the kind of tangles that could only result from hundreds of years of construction and reconstruction.
Sophia had to admit, it was beautiful there. There didn’t seem to be a wall without paintings or a mural, a niche without either a statue or a decorated vase filled with flowers. The windows all had leaded panes, usually with stained glass sending different colors of light spilling across the marble floors as if an artist’s paints had been overturned there.
Outside, Sophia could see gardens of breathtaking beauty, the wildness of the plant life tamed in formal rows of herbs and flowers, low trees and shrubs. She could see a formal maze out there, the bushes there higher than Sophia was tall. She started to walk with more purpose then, deciding that it would be pleasant to be able to go outside and enjoy the gardens.
The only thing that stopped her was the sight of double doors with a sign above them, proclaiming the presence of a library.
Sophia had never been in a library. The nuns of the Masked Goddess claimed that they had one, back at the orphanage, but the only books Sophia had seen them with were the Book of Masks, the prayer books, tracts printed by their order, and a few brief works on the subjects they claimed to teach. Somehow, Sophia suspected that this library would be very different.
She pushed at the doors more in hope than expectation, suspecting that this would be something so precious that they would lock it away from her, never allowing her anything close to access.
Instead, the oak doors swung open with well-oiled grace, letting her into a room that was everything she could have imagined and more. It stood on two levels, with one layer of shelves topped by a mezzanine level containing yet more.
Every shelf contained book after leather-bound book of all shapes and sizes, crammed together so that Sophia could barely believe that so many might exist in one place. A large table stood at the heart of the room, while nooks held chairs that looked so comfortable Sophia would gladly have curled up and slept in any one of them if she hadn’t been so excited right then.
Instead of doing that, she set off around the room, pulling out books at random and checking their contents. She found books on everything from botany to architecture, history to the geography of far-flung lands. There were even books containing tales that seemed to have been entirely invented only for entertainment, like plays, but written down. Sophia had the vague feeling that the masked nuns wouldn’t have approved of that.
That was probably the main reason she picked one of them, settling into one of the chairs and reading a tale of two knights who were stuck fighting one another until a long-dead lover came back from the grave to tell them which she loved the most. Sophia found herself engrossed in the words, trying to make sense of all the places it spoke about, and caught up in the idea that someone could conjure another world with nothing more than paper and ink.
Perhaps she got a little too caught up in it, because she didn’t pick up the thoughts of the approaching group of girls until it was too late. When those thoughts told her exactly who was approaching, Sophia huddled down in her chair, hoping that the book she held would serve as enough of a shield that she wouldn’t be noticed.
“I’m telling you,” Milady d’Angelica said to one of her cronies, “someone drugged me last night.”
“That sounds terrible,” another said to her, while all the time her thoughts told Sophia that she was enjoying the other girl’s predicament.
“Who could have done it?” a third asked, although her thoughts said that she knew exactly what her friend had intended with the prince, and she assumed it was just a mistake.
“I don’t know,” Angelica said, “but I do know that… you. What are you doing here?”
Sophia realized that the other girl was talking to her, so she stood, setting her book aside carefully.
“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” Sophia asked, taking a moment to look the other girls over. Today, Angelica still looked beautiful, in a riding outfit that said she might have been determined to catch up with Sebastian if she didn’t also look a little green with the aftereffects of her poison. Of her two companions, one was shorter and plump, with medium-brown hair, while one had almost black hair falling to her waist, and was taller than Sophia.
“Why would I have anything to say to you?” the other girl countered, but she kept going anyway. “You took something last night that should have been mine. Do you know who I am?”
“Lady d’Angeli
ca,” Sophia answered promptly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your first name. Still, I’ve heard that your friends call you Angelica anyway, so shall we stick to that?”
It was probably a foolish tone to take with her, but Sophia had seen how this girl was with anyone she considered less important. Sophia couldn’t afford to back down, because that would leave her seeming weak enough to prey on. The orphanage had taught her that lesson, at least.
“You think we’re friends?” Angelica shot back.
“I’m sure we could be good friends,” Sophia answered, holding out a hand. “Sophia of Meinhalt.”
Angelica ignored her proffered hand.
“A mysterious stranger who just happens to show up in time for the grand ball,” Angelica said. “Claiming to be from the Merchant States. You think I wouldn’t know if someone like that had been in the city? My father has interests there, and I’ve never heard your name.”
Sophia forced herself to smile. “Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention.”
“Perhaps not,” Angelica said, her eyes narrowing. “But I will now. You think it will take me long to learn everything about you?”
I’ll write to… I don’t know who I’ll write to, but I’ll find out.
Her thoughts didn’t sound as certain as the rest of her, but even so, Sophia froze at the threat. She forced herself to think.
“And because you can’t find any records in a destroyed city, you’ll denounce me?” she asked. “Why, Angelica, if I’d known you would be so jealous, I would have introduced myself sooner.”
“I am not jealous,” Angelica snapped back, but Sophia could feel it rising from her thoughts like smoke. “I just want to protect Prince Sebastian from gold-digging adventuresses.”
He’s mine!
The strength of that made Sophia take a step back. “Well, that’s very kind of you,” she said. “I’ll be sure to mention it to him when he gets back. I’m sure he needs protecting from the kind of person who would, for example, try to poison him to trick him into bed.”
Angelica reddened at that, and even she couldn’t make that look good.
“I’ll find out who you are,” she promised. “I’ll destroy you. I’ll leave you selling yourself on a street corner.”
Sophia forced herself to stalk from the library, even if it was a place where she’d been planning to spend the rest of the day.
It was all she could do not to shake while she walked out.
Trouble, she sensed, was coming—and these palace walls no longer felt so safe.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kate couldn’t ever remember feeling as though she was a part of a family. No, that wasn’t true, because she had her sister, and that connection was like a constant comfort at the back of her mind. She had vague images and flashes of things before the orphanage, too. A smiling face looking down at her. A room where everything had seemed much larger than a child’s tiny form.
She’d never had this though: just sitting around a table with a family eating stew and bread, feeling as though she fit in with the rest of the people there. Thomas and Will were laughing. Even Winifred seemed happier than she’d been when Kate had arrived, but that was only to be expected. She’d come as a thief; she stayed as someone who could help around the forge.
It probably helped that Will was there too. His presence seemed to make everything better, relaxing his mother and making his father happy that he was safe. Kate just liked to watch him, and thinking that made her glance away in embarrassment.
“Are you going to be home for long?” his mother asked.
Kate saw Will shake his head.
“You know it doesn’t work like that, Mother,” he said. “The free companies don’t sit around for long. The wars over the Knife-Water are getting worse. Havvers fell to the Disestablishers and the True Empire contingents one after another. Lord Marl’s company was paid to put down an uprising in the Serralt Valley, and found that they’d formed a bandit company to rob everyone they could.”
“It sounds dangerous,” Winifred said, and Kate could hear the concern in her voice. Kate couldn’t blame her. She wanted to protect her son.
Kate wanted to hear more about the excitement of being a soldier.
“What’s it like, being part of one of the companies?” Kate asked. “Is it different from being a regular soldier?”
Will shrugged.
“It’s not so different. There are only so many ways an army can work,” Will said. He sounded a little like he was trying to convince himself. “Although the kingdom’s standing army isn’t that large anyway. It has always just relied on the loyalty of the company commanders, and the ability to buy their services.”
That didn’t sound like too good an arrangement to Kate.
“What happens if someone offers more?” she asked.
Thomas answered that one. “Then you get half your army switching sides in the middle of a conflict, but the dowager’s ancestors were always able to outbid their enemies, and it’s better than what happened in the civil wars.”
“With a big central army slaughtering the people,” Will said. “I don’t think that the Assembly of Nobles would allow that anymore, although Prince Rupert has built up the army a little.”
Kate saw Winifred shake her head.
“Enough talk about wars, and violence, and killing,” she said. “It doesn’t make me feel safe to know that soon you’re going to be going back out to all that cruelty, Will.”
“It’s safe enough, Mother,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “Most of war is waiting around. The companies avoid one another where they can, and Lord Cranston is always cautious about where he commits his men.”
Kate wasn’t entirely happy about that. “I was hoping for tales of adventure.”
“I’m not sure if I have many of those,” Will replied. He obviously saw her face fall. “But I have a few. I’ll tell you them some time when Mother isn’t going to be worried by them.”
“I worry every time you go off to fight,” Winifred said.
They kept eating, and all Kate wanted to do was find excuses to ask Will more about his life. Strangely, he seemed just as interested in her.
“So, you’ve only been helping my father around the forge for a day?” he asked.
Kate nodded. “I… showed up last night.”
“She’s a thief,” Winifred corrected. “Was going to rob us of everything we had.”
Kate sat very still as the other woman said that. She could see that Will’s mother still didn’t entirely like her, and she guessed that it had a lot to do with the way she’d shown up at the forge. She couldn’t help feeling, though, that it might have something to do with other things: with the talent she had, and with the mark of the indentured on her calf.
“Not everything,” Thomas said, obviously picking up on Kate’s discomfort. “And she’s been a hard worker since, Winifred.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Kate could see enough of the woman’s thoughts to know that it wasn’t dislike so much as mistrust. She wasn’t sure what Kate was going to do next, and it didn’t help that Winifred didn’t trust those with her gifts as much as her husband did. Kate pulled back, not wanting to pry where she wasn’t wanted.
“This sounds like too interesting a story to ignore,” Will said. “Kate, you’re going to have to tell me more of it. Maybe… we could go into the city later, together?”
Even without pushing at Winifred’s thoughts, Kate could pick up her shock at that.
“Will, I don’t think that’s—”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Thomas said. “The two of you should go out together.”
Right then, there was nothing that Kate wanted more.
***
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just leaving the forge behind. Kate still had to show Thomas her work on the sword, making small adjustments as he suggested that the tang would need to be thicker with metal, and the taper on the edge less square.
Kate got around it by slipping off when she wasn’t watching, although Thomas was. He nodded in what seemed like permission. That was good, because Kate didn’t want to risk upsetting him.
Will was waiting for her in the courtyard, and Kate could see the excitement written in every line of him there.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. “Did you want to wash up first, or—”
“Why?” Kate countered. “Do I not look good enough to go out with you like this?”
“You look wonderful,” Will said, and that was strange in itself, because Kate wasn’t used to compliments. Sophia was the one people complimented, not her.
“Good,” she said. “Besides, I think your mother will try to keep me here forever if we don’t go now.”
“Then we’d better go,” Will said, with a laugh and a look back toward the house. He reached out for Kate’s hand, and to Kate’s own surprise, she let him take it.
They walked down toward the city, and it was clear that Will knew the way expertly, in a way that Kate didn’t. He led the way down broad streets as the sun started to fall, and Kate found herself watching all the people who thronged through the streets as they walked. Most of them were just people on their way back to their homes, but there were street entertainers too: a man walking on stilts higher than Kate’s head; a pair of wrestlers who fought to throw one another in a sand-filled pit.
“Where are we going?” Kate asked.
“I thought we might go down to one of the theaters,” Will said. “The Old King’s Players are performing a version of The Tale of Cressa.”
Kate didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t heard of either the play or the players, because she assumed that it was something everyone who hadn’t been brought up in the House of the Unclaimed would know. Instead, she went along with Will as he led the way to a large, round, barn-like building painted on the outside with gaudy scenes. Already, there were people gathering there, waiting to be let in by the players, who stood at the door to collect a penny entrance fee.
