Blood Rose Rebellion

by Rosalyn Eves

  What would it matter, here, away from prying eyes, if I let him kiss me? Here he was not Romani, I was not a lady. He was Gábor; I was Anna. All it would take was a look, a slight upward tilt of my chin.

  But I kept my chin lowered. I dropped my eyes.

  I thought of Catherine’s ball, how I had traded a kiss with Freddy for months of exile. And I remembered the strange, wild hunger that swept me the first time Gábor kissed me. I did not trust myself. Gábor might be a good man, a remarkable one, but he was still Romani, his life and heritage worlds away from everything I had ever known, everything I had ever wanted.

  A current of air beneath the trees shifted. At once I felt watched, exposed.

  I pulled my hand away, angry with myself for wanting something I couldn’t have, angry at society for dictating those barriers. “I must go.” I scrambled to my feet and lurched away. With the aid of a nearby stump, I mounted Starfire and turned her head toward home.

  I did not look back.

  Nearly a week passed before I heard anything from Gábor. I walked in the gardens with Grandmama, practiced Hungarian with Noémi as I accompanied her on her rounds, rode with Mátyás, and tried to read Gábor’s silence. Was he angry? Offended? Perhaps he thought himself well rid of me.

  When the summons came, I pressed the scrap of paper to my breast in relief. My lessons would continue, and perhaps I could salvage something of our friendship.

  Still, I insisted Mátyás accompany me, both for propriety and as a buffer against any potential awkwardness.

  Gábor waited alone at our usual spot, studying the brook a few feet away with an intensity it did not warrant.

  I selected a fallen log for my seat and fussed with my skirts, trying to ignore the heat rising in my cheeks at the sight of him. Mátyás plopped down beside me.

  “Today,” Gábor began with no preliminary greetings, “I’d like to see if Miss Arden can use the magic already stored in a talisman to summon light.” Still, he would not look at me.

  There was a long silence. Miss Arden, he said, but he spoke about me, not to me. My heart clenched tight.

  “Miss Arden—are you tired of our spells? We do not need to continue.” Gábor’s voice was clipped, precise.

  I made an effort to speak normally. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  Mátyás waggled his eyebrows at me, and I elbowed him in the side. He tumbled off the log, laughing. Gábor glowered at both of us.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. Sorry for Mátyás’s folly, for my own. Whatever intimacy Gábor and I had shared, I had ruined.

  Gábor held out his hand. Sunlight played across his palm. “Watch.” The light in his hands seemed to coalesce, intensifying until he held a miniature star in his hand. I reached out to touch the light, and it splintered apart. “Now you. Reach through the magic in the talisman to the essence of the sunlight.”

  I closed my eyes, envisioning the magic as a tenuous string linking my heart to the air brushing across my skin, and curled my fingers around the Romani talisman I wore. I needed this to work. That need was a tangible thing, a weight against my breast, a prickling of tears at the back of my throat.

  The sunlight warmed my palm. Essence, I thought. Connection.

  I was so focused on my spell that Izidóra’s voice near my ear made me jump. I had not seen her coming.

  “Gábor! It’s Duci. The baby is here, but she is not breathing right. And Mama’s spells aren’t working.” Izidóra’s eyes were wet, her face pale.

  Gábor sprang up, our lesson forgotten. “My sister’s baby. She’s come early.”

  I stood as well. “Noémi will help, I’m sure of it. Mátyás and I will fetch her and bring her to the camp.”

  He shook his head. “Mátyás can’t come with you. Men are not allowed near the birthing mother. It is bad enough we bring gadzhe women into camp.” He met my eyes at last. “Thank you.”

  I felt a flash of relief that Gábor was speaking to me again, and then Mátyás helped me mount and we rode headlong to Eszterháza.

  Once we’d explained everything to Noémi, she paused only to collect her satchel from the stillroom. I hesitated near the horses.

  “I should stay. If you have to cast a spell, I’d only be in the way.” Or worse.

  Noémi clutched my hand. “I’ve never been to the Gypsy camp. I can’t go alone. Come with me.”

  With some misgiving, I remounted Starfire. The two of us rode together through the town and into the fields beyond. Gábor met us just outside the Romani camp. The tang of woodsmoke filled the air, and wind hissed through the tents. The camp seemed strangely deserted: no children shouted, the campfires smoldered untended. Perhaps everyone had been sent away, for privacy.

  Keening rose above the wind, and I shivered. Or perhaps the Romanies could feel, as I did, the stillness in the air of something gone awry.

  Starfire snuffled against my shoulder, and I shooed her into the meadow. “I’ll wait here,” I said to Gábor and Noémi. I could not risk breaking spells that might save a child and its mother.

  Gábor turned to Noémi. “Romani custom dictates only a few women are allowed to be with the mother, to protect the baby. No men are allowed—and certainly no gadzhe. Izidóra knows you are coming, but my older sister may be alarmed. You’ll need to work quickly. My mother and grandmother have gone to gather plants for a salve, but they will return soon.” His warning hung unspoken: they will not approve.

  I watched as Gábor led Noémi to a nearby tent. He scratched at the side, and Izidóra appeared, her face white with strain. She murmured something to Noémi, who nodded and ducked inside after her. Gábor returned to me, his lips set.

  “Noémi is a good healer,” I said. “If there’s anything to be done, she’ll do it.”

  “I know it,” he said. “The villagers all look up to her.”

  Silence sprang up between us. I tried not to hear the cries spiking from inside the tent. If this is what it meant to birth a child, I was no longer certain I wanted one.

  I snuck a glance at Gábor. His eyes were on the horizon beyond the meadow, anxious and unfocused.

  I put my hand on his arm, and he jumped. “I’m sorry,” I started, then paused. I wanted to undo the stiffness between us, but I could not say I’m sorry I did not kiss you. “I’m sorry your sister is suffering.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment.

  A snatch of song carried across the air to us. Gábor stiffened. “My grandmother.”

  “So soon? But there hasn’t been enough time for any sort of spell to work.”

  “I’ll try to delay her. Go warn your cousin.”

  “But—”

  Gábor was already gone, striding through the meadow toward the trees. I looked back at the tent, my stomach cramping.

  I couldn’t do it. If I interrupted Noémi, I might ruin her spell as surely as if I’d broken it. Gábor would understand that. And as long as he kept his grandmother away, Noémi would not need a warning.

  As the minutes crept past, I began to relax. Soon, Noémi would be finished, the child would be well, and it would not matter if Gábor’s grandmother returned.

  But then a woman emerged from a clump of trees on the other side of the camp, a basket of herbs over one arm. She didn’t appear to see me. She strode through the camp, her gaze focused on her destination—the tent where Noémi worked.

  I had to stop her.

  Propelled by a terrible instinct that something dreadful was about to happen, I started forward.

  “Bitte!” I called, my feet snagging in the matted grass. “Stop! Do not go in!”

  The woman turned a startled face to me, then shook her head in anger. She didn’t slow, so I sprinted forward, intercepting her just before the tent and throwing my arms around her.

  The tiniest buzz of magic brushed against me and I froze. Noémi’s spell. The woman shoved me away, and I fell, gasping at the impact as my shoulder and hip hit the ground. But that slight pa
in dissolved as fear ratcheted through me.

  I scrambled to my feet, trying once more to block the woman’s entrance to the tent. She scratched at my arms and shouted, but I scarcely heard her.

  The buzzing was stronger now, the magic vibrating just beneath my skin, a thousand tiny pricks of pain burning in my blood.

  The Circle ends. The spell was starting to fray. “Noémi!” I cried. “Stop!”

  Too late. A slight catch in the air, then an explosion of heat and light, a conflagration that seared my eyes, even outside the tent. A brilliant intensity of pain, then the light vanished like a snuffed candle.

  Izidóra burst from the tent, a small bundle cradled tight against her. Her eyes were wild, terrified. The Romani woman threw her arms around Izidóra and the infant as if she would shield them.

  My legs would not hold me, and I dropped to the ground.

  Noémi stumbled out of the tent. “Anna. Istenem. Anna!” Her face was white. “Binding Saints save us.”

  Gábor came rushing toward us. “What happened?” His eyes flickered from his sister to me, curled on the ground. “Are you all right?”

  I put my palms against the packed dirt to push myself upright, and my eyes snagged on the talisman I wore.

  It blazed with light.

  Gábor crouched to brush his fingers across it, then launched a string of sharp-edged words. He turned to my cousin. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know. I had cast one spell, to ease the baby’s breathing, and was casting another to warm her when the spell seemed to snap. All the magic broke from it.”

  An older Romani woman stumped toward us, her face dark with anger, her breath coming in harsh jags. She stopped before me, her shadow falling across my face and still-trembling hands. In that half shadow, the talisman blazed even brighter.

  The woman swooped down and grabbed my wrist, ripping the talisman from my arm. She held it close to one eye, pressed two fingers against it, and then began shrieking. I threw my hands over my ears. I could not seem to stop trembling.

  When she’d finished, she shouted something at Gábor, then stumped off again. The other Romani woman—Gábor’s mother?—ducked into the tent. A low murmur of voices emerged, one steady and soothing, the other thready and broken.

  Noémi helped me stand, then turned to Gábor. “What is going on?”

  He would not look at me. “My grandmother believes that an infant’s soul is not fully tethered when it is born. That is why only a few people are allowed to attend the birth, so they will not accidentally steal its soul. But the spell you cast—my grandmother believes that when the spell broke, the magic was pulled into Miss Arden’s talisman, along with some of the baby’s soul.”

  Noémi’s eyes widened with horror. “Surely that’s not possible.”

  Gábor shook his head. “For all that you Luminate say differently, we still do not know everything about how magic works. I have seen that our talismans gather more magic near births and deaths. Who is to say that the exchange of a soul does not release magic into the world? Or that a soul is not somehow connected to magic?”

  Bile burned in my throat. “Do you believe your grandmother?”

  “I don’t know. Grandmother understands more about magic than anyone I know. If she says it is possible, it must be.”

  “I’m desperately sorry,” I said. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Will the baby be all right?”

  Noémi said, “I think she will heal. I can’t speak for her soul—I know nothing about that. But why should you blame yourself? You did nothing.”

  “I—” The words nearly choked me. “I broke your spell. That’s what I do. I break things.”

  “You didn’t mean to,” Noémi said, her voice so gentle it brought tears stinging to my eyes.

  Gábor looked at me as though he had never truly seen me before. “What are you, Anna? No Luminate could break a spell like that, not without casting a spell to counter it.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest, trying to still their trembling. A terrible fear stole over me. I had hoped the shattered spells I left in my wake were the result of something I did, because I could learn to undo my actions. But if the broken spells were driven by something I was, how could I undo my own nature? And what, in all the Circle bound, was I?

  “We should go,” I said to Noémi.

  Something shifted in Noémi’s face. “The broken spell—that’s why William wanted you to go to Sárvár. To break a spell there—maybe even break the Binding.”

  I nodded. “I won’t, of course.” Noémi still had not moved, so I started walking away from the tent, toward the meadow where our horses waited.

  “Someone asked you to break the spell at Sárvár?” Gábor asked sharply, and I stopped. “Stay away from there. The magic that leaks from that spell is fouled.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “You saw something Whitsun night. A fene, maybe, a dark spirit of illness and destruction. I don’t believe your appearance along with those creatures is all coincidence. Don’t go to Sárvár. If your friend is right and you can break that spell—if you can break the Binding—you could destroy us all.”

  A rumble of voices stopped whatever else Gábor meant to say and dissolved the tart words on my tongue: I already said I would not do it. Gábor’s grandmother was returning, a half dozen Romani men behind her.

  “No,” Gábor whispered.

  “What is it?” Noémi edged closer to me, her arm slipping through mine. The group formed a loose circle around us, trapping us among the tents.

  “My grandmother has brought the Elders.” He listened for a moment. “To judge if we have harmed my sister or her baby.”

  Gábor’s mother emerged from the tent to stand beside his grandmother, her arms crossed.

  “Tell them to let Noémi go,” I said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

  Gábor’s mother stepped so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my cheek. “Csönd legyen!” Be silent!

  Gábor’s grandmother spat a tangled string of words I didn’t understand and shook the talisman in the air. Gábor translated, but from his hesitations, I sensed he omitted the worst of what was said. “She says you both are without shame or honor, coming to our camp to steal away the baby’s soul.”

  “We came to save the baby,” I said. “We never meant to hurt anyone.”

  Gábor turned back to the surrounding circle of men and started to speak. One of the men cut him off, shouting, and Gábor pressed his lips together, his expression uncomfortably grim. Gábor’s grandmother spoke again, and the men listened in silence, some crossing their arms, others fingering their mustaches. When she finished, each man spoke in turn. The eyes they fixed on us were hard and cold. I shivered.

  Gábor would not look at us as he translated. “Whatever your intentions, you put the baby at risk. They find you guilty of theft, and you are hereby banned from this camp.”

  “Are we not allowed to defend ourselves?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I told them you meant only to help. But don’t be angry with them—our clan rules exist to protect us from gadzhe who have not always been kind, and I went against those rules to bring you here.”

  His mother wailed as he spoke, a thin, keening sound that slit through my ears and pierced my heart. She must be grieving her granddaughter, as she could not regret our banishment.

  Noémi tugged at my arm, her face burning red. “Let’s go.”

  My chest burned too, part angry that Noémi’s kindness should be treated so brusquely, part horror-struck that Gábor’s grandmother might be right about the baby’s soul.

  Gábor led us away from the camp. He shoved his hand through his hair and studied my face, his eyes dark and soft and wide with an emotion I could not read. It might have been sadness. Or fear. “The first night you came to our tents, my grandmother was terrified, claiming you would destroy the Binding. I did not believe her. Sometimes she sees true, but her sight is unpredictable when she has been drinking.”


  Hurt and fear and regret and grief tangled in my heart, and so naturally I covered them with anger. “No doubt you regret everything about me. I would apologize for my very existence, but alas, you can hardly expect me to wish to undo that.”

  “I don’t regret you,” Gábor said softly, and an entirely different sort of heat flooded me.

  But then he spoiled the effect by adding, “I’m only afraid for you, for what you don’t know about yourself. Until you know who you are, your powers master you, not you them. This is why gadzhe cannot master Romani magic: they lie to themselves.”

  “I don’t lie to myself,” I said, but I knew even as I spoke that I lied. I had hidden from myself how much I wanted to be with Gábor, seeing it only now as I might never see him again.

  “I can’t teach you anymore. I thought there was no harm in it, as long as we weren’t caught. I was wrong.”

  Noémi stared at me. “What was he teaching you? Oh, Anna. Not Gypsy magic!”

  “Not Gypsy,” I said. “Romani.”

  Gábor continued, “It’s no good, Anna. I’m sorry.”

  Anna, he said. Not Miss Arden. I should have been pleased by the intimacy, but all I heard in it was farewell. “Wait.” And before I could let myself weigh the consequences, I threw my arms around Gábor. He smelled of sunshine and grass, and I wanted to hold him forever. But Noémi watched, and already his family gathered, waiting for us to leave.

  “Thank you for trying to help me,” I said.

  “I wish I could believe I had helped you,” he said, holding out one hand. “May you find every happiness.”

  Trying to ignore my falling heart, I stripped off my glove and took his hand. I wanted to feel the slow burn of flesh against flesh. I held his hand for as long as he would allow me. My fingers were strangely weightless when he let go, as if I had lost an anchor.

  I watched Gabor walk away, memorizing the long, lean line of his body and the easy grace of his stride. Regret tasted sour in my mouth. I should have kissed him.

  Noémi linked her arm through mine. “I am sorry, Anna.” The understanding in her eyes nearly undid me. I blinked against tears and lifted my chin. We marched toward the meadow.