by Rosalyn Eves
William shook his head. “The Circle is more your enemy than the Hapsburgs. They are the ones who limit your magic, who encourage the Hapsburgs to limit your rights for fear you will grow strong enough to challenge them.”
As Mátyás translated their words, my sympathy grew. I knew what it was to have your life determined for you. In their complaints, I felt all my old chafing against my mother’s strictures.
I asked Mátyás, “Are they not afraid of the Circle, or government censors?” Any of the Luminate in the café might be a spy.
Mátyás laughed. “The Circle members are fools. They think all plots require secrecy and midnight meetings. They see no danger in our open discussions.” He sobered. “Perhaps they should. There is suffering enough in Hungary to rouse even the faintest heart.”
“It’s not only the Hungarians who suffer,” Gábor said to me. “It is still legal to take a Romani child from her family and raise her to an apprenticeship far from her home.”
A young woman sitting near me said, “Kossuth Lajos hopes to see such laws changed. He would abolish the serfdom, and make proper concessions for the Romani. And Jews. And anyone else who suffers under current laws. But first Hungary must break away from Austria and the Circle’s power. At present, we are entirely subordinate: we lack our own government, our own laws, our own Circle. Not even all our aristocracy are Luminate, because the Austrian Circle will only allow Confirmation to the wealthiest of Hungarian nobles.”
I warmed to her immediately. I liked the calm intelligence of her voice, the openness of her face, and—it must be confessed—the elegance of her gown, brightly embroidered with the stylized flowers of Hungarian kézimunka.
“Kossuth!” William scoffed. “He is a tame sort of radical. All fuel and no fire. He won’t challenge the Circle.”
“He is still our best hope.” The woman’s cheeks flushed.
Gábor added, “I think Kossuth’s policy is best: we should exhaust diplomacy before we fight.”
Petőfi shook his head and tapped his chest. “We are Magyarország’s best hope. And so far, talk has achieved nothing. We must act: drive the Circle from Hungary, demand our independence from Austria.”
“But in the months I have spent in Buda-Pest, all you have done is talk.” William’s lip curled.
Petőfi frowned. “We wait for the right moment.”
“You don’t wait for a moment; you create it.” William looked at me. “Miss Arden could help us, if she would only break the Binding.”
Could I? If William were right, breaking the Binding would weaken the Circle, perhaps destroy it outright. The Circle’s control and maintenance of the Binding was their primary source of power. Without it, though they might attempt to continue regulating magic, they would lose that leverage. An influx of magic outside the Luminate class could well shift the balance of power away from the Circle. Without the Circle to support it, the Hapsburg government in Vienna must release its stranglehold on Hungary, on the people and places I was coming to love.
The poet followed William’s gaze, his mustache twitching as his lips turned down. “A girl?”
I crossed my arms. “You should not dismiss me because I am only a female. Even a small dog can bite. And,” I added, remembering a scientific conversation I had overheard between Mátyás and Gábor, “a microorganism smaller than the head of a pin can kill a grown man.”
“Brava!” The young lady beside me clapped her hands.
Gábor murmured, “But having power does not always mean using it. The Binding is a large spell and a dangerous one. My grandmother believes that it contains monsters. She may be wrong, but breaking a spell without understanding what you unleash is madness.”
Monsters. A woman with a third eye, a golden man with shifting faces, shadows scuttering across a field, clawed hands dragging me through darkness. For a moment, Gábor’s doubt set my mental scales trembling. Herr Steinberg had also warned me. Then I thought: none of the creatures harmed me. Likely, Gábor’s warnings stemmed only from Romani superstition. And Herr Steinberg was less than trustworthy: his position in the Circle was only as secure as the Binding spell.
Mátyás laughed. “I should rather like to see Anna take on a massive spell.”
“We don’t have to break the Binding to petition for more independence,” Gábor said. “Kossuth—”
William cut across him. “Nonsense. Consider the evidence of the past centuries. Petitions alone have never spurred change. The Circle simply ignores them. We haven’t the leverage we need to make them listen. But we would be strong enough if the Binding was broken. Only look at the colonists.”
“If there are monsters,” Petőfi added, “and I have never heard of their existence, they cannot be worse than what we already face.”
Gábor looked as though he wished to argue further, but Mátyás stood up. “This has been an invigorating discussion. But it’s time we returned for tea.”
I swallowed a slightly hysterical urge to laugh. Because tea was, of course, the appropriate response to an afternoon’s talk of treason and monsters.
As we rose, the young woman rose with us. “Wait,” she said, accompanying us toward the doorway. “I am Károlyi Karolina. You may call me Karolina. I very much admired your speech earlier, and I should like to know you better. May I call on you?”
I nodded, strangely shy. I could count my female friends on one hand, and they were all either related to me or in my employ. “I should like that.”
“And you must all come to the ball my sister and I are holding next Monday night at the Redoute,” she added.
“That’s kind of you,” Gábor said, “but I am not certain your friends would welcome me.”
“Nonsense,” Karolina said. “If you care for Hungary, you are welcome.”
“But,” Gábor said, frowning, “perhaps you do not realize I am Romani.”
“What should I care for that?” Karolina said, stepping through the doorway and swinging up her parasol. “We are building a new world, are we not?”
A dark-haired man on the far side of the street watched us as we emerged, his pale eyes intent on my face. Something familiar about him nagged at me, but I could not place it.
His scrutiny shook me. Herr Steinberg had said the Circle would be watching me. Was this man one of their spies? If you attempt to enter the Binding spell, we will stop you. Kill you if we must. A heavy weight settled on the negative side of my scale. Did I value this cause enough to risk my life for it?
Karolina called the next morning. When Ginny brought her card up, both Noémi and Grandmama straightened in shock.
“Is she not respectable? Ought I not to have invited her?” I asked.
“Nothing like that,” Grandmama assured me. “Her family is very old and well regarded. One of the Zichy sisters, you know. Married to Count Károlyi. Only, I didn’t know you knew her.”
Karolina burst into the room, a whirlwind in a simple white cotton dress. Hungarian made, she explained, settling herself onto the sofa beside me. She greeted Grandmama and Noémi. She asked me about my family with genuine interest. When I mentioned that James was at Eton, her expressive face grew pensive.
“My husband speaks of sending my eldest to Vienna soon, but I am not sure I wish to send him. Surely he can be as well educated close to home in his mother tongue. Better, perhaps, away from Hapsburg influence.”
“Yes.” Grandmama nodded, though her eyes were stricken. “It is good to keep a child close to home.”
“And how is your brother faring? Does he like the school?” Karolina asked me.
“Many of the boys are cruel, mocking him because he can barely muster the simplest of Luminate spells.”
Karolina sighed. “I think it is in the nature of boys to tease one another, whether or not magic is involved. Your brother will find his place, I am sure of it.”
“I hope you might be right.”
“I am always right. My sister would tell you so, if she were here. But this is a dou
r topic for a morning call. Tell me”—Karolina leaned forward, her dark ringlets falling across her cheeks—“do you read poetry?”
At the end of an energetic discussion, Karolina sprang up. She had stayed nearly an hour, well past the quarter hour allotted for polite calls. I walked her down to the entryway, where her maid waited.
Karolina kissed my cheek in farewell. “I was right,” she said. “You are a dear. We shall be good friends.”
“Yes,” I said, warmth rising from my toes. It was a novel sensation, to find someone who liked me for myself, with no expectations attached. I rather fancied it.
I opened the door for Karolina, and found Lady Berri perched on our doorstep.
My happiness evaporated.
I introduced the two women. Karolina curtsied and left.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Lady Berri said. “Why? If your papa supports our plan, what hesitation can you have?”
I had many, but I could not list them on my doorstep. I settled for the one I thought her likeliest to understand. “Herr Steinberg said there are members of the Circle who would kill me if I touched the Binding.”
Lady Berri laughed. “Herr Steinberg always did enjoy talking like a villain in a melodrama. You needn’t worry about him, my dear. I can keep you safe.” She patted my cheek and surveyed the sky. A storm brooded over the horizon, already pushing dust down the street. “I shan’t come in just now. But don’t think you can put me off forever. When you decide, find me at the Hunter’s Horn.”
On the evening of Karolina’s ball, I passed Gábor in the hallway, on my way to the drawing room. He carried a sheaf of papers toward the study, but he paused when he saw me. A shadow flickered across his face.
“Well? Will I do?” I held out my skirts in a mock curtsy. Ginny and I had spent the better part of two hours preparing for the ball. Karolina had warned me that everything was to be in the Magyar style, so I had commissioned a dress that laced across the bodice, golden ivy climbing beside the laces and sprawling across the full green skirt.
“Anyone would be honored to dance with you.” His lips tugged upward in a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
Would you? I wanted to ask. I could not read the look in his eyes, and it troubled me. I wanted him to admire me, to say something more to me than the bare dictates of politeness. His plain trousers and light cotton dolman registered. “You’re not coming? Karolina made sure to invite you.”
Gábor’s lips curled again, that smile that was not a smile. “It’s best if I stay.”
All afternoon I had entertained visions of the two of us sweeping across the ballroom together. Those visions crumbled, and a sharp, stabbing ache took their place. “You shall be missed,” I said, careful not to let my words betray too much, then swept past him to the drawing room where Noémi and Grandmama waited.
Mátyás and Noémi were arguing about Mátyás’s sporadic attendance at the university.
“They will expel you,” Noémi said, digging her fingers into the sleeves of his coat. “What is so important that you risk your future? Sitting in cafés talking about revolution?”
Mátyás shook off her hand. “This is my future. What future does any Hungarian have, restricted as we are by the Hapsburgs and the Viennese Circle?”
“You have options,” Noémi said. “You’re Luminate. You can study in Vienna. Or Paris.”
“And what sort of patriot would I be to abandon my friends and my country? Hungary deserves better than this.”
“And your sister? Do I not deserve better? What kind of future shall I have when you are killed?”
Mátyás didn’t answer. He marched out of the room with thinned lips to see if the hired carriage had arrived. It had, so he returned to escort us downstairs and help us in—nearly dropping Noémi in the process—and we were off.
The vehicle carried us beside the raised walkway of the Korzó along the Duna. Buda Castle soared above us on the far side of the river, lit by some Luminate spell: the elegant rococo façade of the central wing rising up over the flanking wings, the endless rows of windows reflecting blank eyes across the water. Behind the castle, the Buda hills slumbered like folds of black velvet.
Eventually we reached the Quay, the semicircular row of white stone buildings in the Italian style, with their classical pillars and porticoes. When I descended from the carriage before the Redoute, the public ballroom ornamented with baroque lavishness, my entire body was taut like a violin string. I could not bear a repeat of the ball in Vienna.
Mátyás put an arm around me. “Don’t be nervous, Anna. I’ll dance with you, even if no one else will.”
I forgot my nerves in trying to bat at him. Mátyás laughed and skipped out of reach.
The walls of the ballroom were draped with great swags of Hungarian colors: red, green, and white knots everywhere. Even the dances reflected the nationalist theme: the orchestra played circle dances, like the quadrille and a csárdás much like the one I’d danced with Mátyás at Whitsun night. The entire evening I did not once hear the strains of an Austrian waltz. The guests spoke Hungarian almost defiantly, and the few conversations I heard begun in German were quickly hushed.
There was no overt magic here, not like the wild phoenix at the Viennese ball. Only minor charms to keep the air circulating and cool, to keep the flowers from wilting and to heighten their scent. The women wore gowns, like mine, covered in exquisite Hungarian handwork; the men were resplendent in traditional embroidered dolmans and satin-lined mentes.
Thanks to Mátyás’s student friends, I did not lack for partners. I danced with a banker and a doctor, an apothecary and an aspiring valet. I even, daringly, danced with a young Jewish man. After supper, I whirled across the floor with the poet Petőfi Sándor, who apologized for doubting me at Café Pilvax. I told him how much I enjoyed his poetry, and we ended our dance very well pleased with one another. Mama would certainly not approve of the egalitarian mix, but I liked it. No one marked my missing soul sign. Here I was like any other young lady, dancing with a string of charming suitors.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Karolina asked me halfway through the night, sliding her arm through mine. Her tousled chestnut curls bore witness that she too was enjoying the dancing.
“Very much.”
“I am glad,” Karolina said, smiling. A golden falcon necklace, wings spread wide and diamond crusted, sparkled around her throat. Petőfi had worn a similarly shaped pin in his neckcloth.
My gaze swept the room, workingmen and workingwomen swirling through the dances in company with poets, artists, and Luminate. I had dreamed of something like this once. As the dancers flashed past, I noticed what I had not before: how very common the falcon motif was, nearly every third gentleman sporting it on his coat.
“The falcon?” I asked, nodding at Karolina’s necklace.
“The turul bird. He led our first parents to the Carpathian valleys and a new empire—and, God willing, he will lead us to victory and independence again. Here.” She unfastened the chain and held it out to me. “I want you to have it.”
I stepped back. “I could not take it from you.”
“I think it belongs with you—as you belong with us. A true Magyar patriot.”
William had told me in Vienna I would never be accepted by Luminate society. Perhaps he was right. But this night had shown me there were other societies, better societies, that might welcome me and others like me, and James, and Gábor. A ballroom was not the real world, I knew, but it reflected real possibilities.
Something kindled in my heart, stirred by the memory of a starving girl on the streets in Vienna repulsed by magic, a Luminate squire willing to use magic to kill a Romani boy, a woman dying in poverty, a serf boy whipped in a field. Something gallant, perhaps reckless.
This time, when Karolina held out the necklace, I took it, fastening it about my neck and letting the still-warm gold settle against my skin.
These people—my people—wanted to remake the world into s
omething better, something more egalitarian and open. And I could help them do it, without violence or bloodshed. You are something else entirely, Herr Steinberg had said. He was right.
I was different.
But that difference did not mean I was weak or helpless. I had learned to fear my ability to break spells, but it did not have to be a curse. I could choose to see it as a gift. I could embrace my own power.
I could change the world.
The weights in my head shifted, then settled.
Approaching Lady Berri’s hotel the following afternoon with Ginny, I felt rather more like the faltering hero of an epic poem—Byron’s Childe Harold in the shadows of the Alps—than a young lady paying a call on her countrywoman. My courage of the night before had evaporated. And though the Hunter’s Horn was a staid, neoclassical hotel located in a mew off Váci Street and the afternoon was warm and bright, darkness seemed to cling to the cornices of the building.
I took a deep breath and entered. A red-uniformed porter led me up to Lady Berri’s room, on the second floor of the building. Ginny waited in the lobby below, fortified with a dog-eared copy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels.
The room where Lady Berri received me was almost overpoweringly opulent. Gold leaf bloomed across the carved ceiling above my head, and the gold was echoed in the vivid yellows and browns of the Turkish carpet beneath our feet. Plush red velvet covered the chairs and couches, and crimson-and-gold brocade curtains hung by the windows.
“Tea?” Lady Berri asked, holding up a white porcelain teacup with a delicate pattern of forget-me-nots. The subtlety of the design appeared out of place in the bold room.
“Thank you.” I doubted my ability to swallow anything, given my suddenly tight throat, but the prosaic activity of holding a teacup might help me stay grounded. That is, if I did not spill it all over myself.
When I had seated myself on a high-backed chair, Lady Berri said, “How may I help you, my dear?” Her small, catlike smile suggested she already knew why I had come. The words were only a formality. “Have you decided?”
