by C. L. Polk
I passed by the cells that held the First Ring, interrupting the pastimes of the men and women who had ruled Aeland until Queen Constantina had closed her fist. They read. They wrote. They listened to music on hand-cranked audiophones. Dame Joan Sibley glared at me while she stabbed a needle into tapestry canvas stretched on an oak frame. Sir Johnathan Blake pointedly turned his back on me.
The dead were here too, garbed in the stuffy clothing of the past decades, gazing at the living invaders of their cells. I climbed higher, each prisoner rising in power with my steps. I faltered at the empty, luxury-stuffed cell that belonged to Sir Percy Stanley but climbed onward, toward the highest cell of all.
My father awaited me from his place at the table, a half-eaten luncheon pushed out of the way of his journal and the newspaper.
“You came.”
I had. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t need him.
My father closed his journal, screwed his pen shut. “Have you eaten? It’s quail in butter sauce.”
The tip of my tongue curled as if the delicately herbed sauce was in my mouth, all the flavors of a beloved dish haunting my tastebuds. “I’m not hungry.”
He folded up the newspaper. “Tea, then? I admit that I could use the company. The Amaranthines toured the tower this morning.”
“So you met them.”
“Prince Severin was with them. A woman, two men. An amanuensis and a bodyguard to the woman, from what they carried.”
“Did they speak to you?”
Father’s teacup clattered as he set the delicate glass vessel down. “I don’t see how anyone could take one look and not see how uncanny they are, how implacable and cold. They hate us.”
“They hate what you did.”
Father gave me a look full of reproach. “I taught you better than that. You know the old stories. They’re lovely creatures, but still monsters.”
“Not monsters,” I said. “Just dangerous. It seems they’re treating you well. You have everything you need. Your comfort is seen to.”
“I know you didn’t come up here to make sure I was comfortable.” Father pushed his chair back, fingers laced over his belly. “You want something from me.”
“I want something from all of you,” I said. “The storm of the century is breathing down our necks.”
“No.”
He said it quietly, but it still slapped my cheek. “No?”
“Queen Constantina needs to understand the cost of locking us up like this,” Father said. “It pains me to refuse you, but in this we are united. How do the commoners put it? We are on strike.”
“People could die,” I said. “Don’t you care about that?”
“Very deeply. But Constantina refuses to see what she’s done without proof. She needs a dose of reality. Ask me for anything else.”
If he wouldn’t give this, I was sunk. “There’s nothing else.”
One side of Father’s mouth quirked up, a gesture so like Miles I had to swallow a gasp. “You want to know how to gain a solid footing with the remaining Invisibles.”
“I can handle it.” Oh, chaos and void, why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut? Why did I tell him everything, still?
“Don’t try to win them over. Don’t make deals with them. Don’t make promises. You can’t deliver anything yet. You don’t have that kind of power.” He tilted his head and sighed. “But you already did. What did you promise?”
I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
“What did you need so badly you made a deal you don’t know how to keep?”
He rose from the table, as if he could ruffle my hair the way he did to show that he wasn’t angry, just sad. And it worked. I spilled the truth, just as I had when I was his fledgling.
“Ray’s too popular with the Invisibles. They were in the middle of electing him Voice when I showed up, and then when everyone was bickering at me, he declared his support.”
“And they fell in line,” Father said. “They belong to him. And he wanted to be Finance Minister.”
Even trapped up here, with nothing but a tiny window and the daily papers, he knew the shadows and secrets of the Invisibles. “That’s exactly what he wanted.”
Father nodded. “Don’t try to win the rest over. You don’t have what they want. And you don’t need them.”
Support of the Invisibles was my first priority! I needed them to follow me. “I do.”
Father lifted a finger, ready to interject his point. “You have Raymond Blake. He’ll tell them to do what you want so long as he thinks you can get him what he wants. Don’t be obvious, Grace. He’ll be waiting for you to try and wheedle his devoted away from his influence. You need something greater than that, something Ray can’t possibly do.”
I hovered near the copper-plated bars separating us. I pressed closer, straining to hear his soft voice. “What?”
“Gain the goodwill and love of the people,” Father said. “The public’s trust. Aeland is a match head, waiting for someone to strike it alight.”
“They’re frustrated,” I said. “They need a champion. Someone who hears them and understands their plight.”
Father smiled. “That’s my girl.”
I hated the swirl of warmth that coiled around my head when he said that.
“Gain the love of the people, Grace, and no one in the Invisibles will be able to stop you.”
I slipped a small pad and a pen from my pocket and started making a list. Reports, appointments with bureau chiefs, and a new idea lifted its head and unfurled—to gain the love of the people, I needed access to the voice of the people.
I had a reason to see Avia Jessup again.
* * *
Movement in the corner of my eye halted my rush down the stairs. White-capped thrushes startled off the ledge of the window, drawing my eye to the sight beyond, down in the execution grounds.
A crowd dotted with the red caps of palace scribes and the stiffened lace collars of court officers gathered around the gallows. A flock of reporters in gray felt hats wielded cameras and notepads, ready to report on the event and fly away to their newsrooms.
I searched for Avia in the crowd, unable to help myself. But it was the women in white who made me pause in the cold radiating from the glass. One stout, the other lean, their shoulders bowed in weeping. I knew them by their postures: Sir Percy Stanley’s wife, his barely gifted daughter. They stood out of the general crowd near an auburn-haired man who wore no hat, who stood up straight in gray velvet robes, his chin raised to watch the noose swaying above them all.
Sir Aldis Hunter stood still, witness to a traitor’s death.
I laid my hand on a pane, pressing my forehead to the glass. I watched until the executioners marched Sir Percy up the stairs, until they draped the black hood over his face and looped the rope around his neck. Sir Aldis watched every moment, unflinching even when the others averted their gazes as the floor opened under Percy’s feet and let him fall.
Percy’s legs kicked. I covered my mouth, riveted to the smudge of his aura sliding away from his body, gathering into a tiny ball of light floating by Sir Aldis’s head.
When it was over, Sir Aldis looked up and over his shoulder toward the window where I stood, his brand-new witchmark shining. I drew back from the window and pressed a hand to the pang in my chest: a flutter of guilt, a thread of anger, the spilling of relief. My enemy was dead. Aldis had taken his soul—what need did an Amaranthine have for a witchmark?
I didn’t know, but I was cold all over at the execution. Queen Constantina had picked a man to die for the Cabinet’s sins. Once begun, there would be more. Would that soothe the rage of the Amaranthines, or feed it to greater intensity?
It was one more thing to worry about as I navigated the winding halls of the prison and made my way through the wide, art-lined corridors of the palace. The Queen must have ordered Percy’s death. What would it gain her? I hugged myself for warmth in the long corridor that led from the palace to Government House. The people despised Percy
Stanley. They blamed the Laneeri War on him and had nicknamed him “Minister No.” It would be hard to find someone who was sorry he was gone.
But the Amaranthines were opposed to killing. They wouldn’t appreciate what the Queen had done. Severin would have to handle their opinion of the Queen’s move, as if he didn’t have enough to do—
I paused before the door of my office. Avia Jessup rose from her perch on the stairwell, wearing the rakish pinch-fronted hat favored by journalists. The brim dipped low enough to shade one eye, highlighting her crooked smile.
“Miss Jessup.” I gripped the doorknob as she walked toward me.
“I told you I’d look you up if I had another question,” Avia said. “Are you going to invite me in?”
The delicate, springlike scent of peonies brushed over me as she came near. I twisted the doorknob and held open the door. “Please come in. Would you like coffee?”
“I’d love some.” She rested one gloved hand on my shoulder and tugged me a little closer to murmur in my ear, the breath of her words wafting over my skin. “And some music? I don’t think you want this overheard.”
* * *
Janet wheeled in a cart bearing two bone-clay mugs of strong black coffee and a plate of butterbread cookies, their edges leaking caramel filling. She regarded Avia with a suspicious eye but closed the door behind her without a word. A moment later music poured through the air, the sound protecting us against listening ears.
Avia stood in the middle of my office’s sitting room and turned in a slow, awed circle, gazing at the bookshelves filled with sets of identical volumes. “Law books?” she asked. “Oh, thank you.”
I handed her a cup balanced on a saucer. She cradled it in one hand, the gesture trained by years of etiquette drills. She picked up the cup and sipped, watching me over the rim.
I stepped backward, putting a safe distance between us. “They’re records of law and Parliamentary meetings, mostly.”
Avia drifted toward the elegantly carved hearth, basking in the warmth from the fireplace. She smiled in delight at the company of winter birds gathered at feeders outside the windows. “You like birds?”
“My father put those feeders up,” I said, “but I can’t imagine looking out the window and not seeing them. How did you manage to penetrate Government House? There are guards stationed in the rotunda.”
“They took the whole lot of us through. All I had to do was hang back. I’m supposed to be covering the execution.”
“You missed it.”
Avia dismissed it with a shrug. “John Runson will handle it. I thought my time was better spent here.”
“I was going to write to you,” I said. “I have a favor to ask you.”
Avia set down her cup and picked up a cookie. “Oh?”
“The Lower House of Parliament is holding an emergency meeting tomorrow. For the moment, they’re all we have for government. I want to introduce a suspension of the Oil and Gas Consumption Penalty. It’s not fair to charge the people for using gas when there’s no other choice.”
Avia nodded thoughtfully, munching on her cookie. “That means we’re not getting aether back anytime soon.”
I had an answer for this. “Damage to the national network is too extensive, and the weather conditions too extreme to effect repairs. But even charging the people once is too much.”
“True,” Avia said. “You’ll look good to the people, asking for relief. Is that what you want?”
“I want what’s best for Aeland’s people,” I said. “I want to ease their burden in hard times.”
Avia held up one finger, asking for me to wait until she swallowed. She dabbed her fingers on the linen napkin resting under her coffee cup. Her lipstick left a crescent of red on the rim, marking it as hers. “If you really want to do that, you need to stop these crooks from price-gouging at the grocers. A quart of milk is going for seventy cents.”
Seventy cents was a lot, then? “What does it usually cost?”
Avia looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “Dear me, Dame Grace. It’s usually a dime.”
I couldn’t help my shock. “That’s outrageous.”
“That’s why we need price caps. Most people pay a mark a month for the smoke tax, but the food situation is utterly criminal.”
I studied her. “Jessup Family Foods owns the biggest grocery chain in Aeland.”
“Why, so they do,” Avia said.
Aha. “And your uncle Albert, who sits in Parliament for East Kingston-Birdland—”
She nodded. “—will throw a fit at the very idea. But if you really want to help Aeland, this will save more people more money.”
And it would poke her estranged family in the eye. I didn’t like Albert Jessup. Getting a dig in for Avia’s sake made me feel like I was defending her. “I’ll do it. Would you run a story in tomorrow’s paper announcing my intent? I’ll have a messenger deliver the particulars to you by end of day.”
She grinned and set her cup down. When she straightened up, she lifted her camera. “They’ll praise you in the streets, Dame Grace. It might soften the blow for the real story.”
I set my coffee cup on the cart and stood for the brilliant flash. “Is this the matter that brought you to my door?”
“Yes. It’s…” She bit her lip. “It’s possibly incendiary. No. It’s definitely incendiary. It concerns your father, and your grandfather.”
I took a sip of coffee to buy a moment. “What is it?”
“I found the articles of incorporation and the minutes of the first official meeting of the board for Aeland Power and Lights.”
She drew photographs from the satchel at her hip. I scanned images of the original documents, properly hand-scribed as all legal records must be. I skipped over the carefully written words to find the signatures at the bottom, a suspicion boiling in my middle.
Grandpa Miles’s name was on the document, just under King Nicholas’s signature. Father’s was the third signature on the list of original shareholders. The other photograph was a record of how many shares each investor had purchased. Grandpa Miles’s and Father’s shares were considerable.
I lifted my head to watch Avia’s expression. “What’s this about?”
“Most people think APL is a Crown corporation. The presence of the crowned lamb on the company seal certainly implies that. But it’s functionally a monopoly, because the owners can use the government to preserve it. Do you mind if I smoke?”
I gestured toward the smoking set on the low table in front of the settee while I scrambled for a way to dissuade her. “Don’t you think that story would only serve to agitate already unhappy people?”
“Well yes, I do,” Avia said. “But if I’m looking into it, someone at the Herald probably had the same idea. They’ll find this information—and since your grandfather’s dead and your father is in the tower, you’re the one who’ll take the blow. I know a thing or two about how the bad actions of one’s father reflect on his children.”
She had been the Jessup heiress, next in line to receive a fortune and an empire. The papers had called her the Sugar-Sack Princess and had followed her glamorous hijinks with breathless admiration. Sometimes her escapades succeeded in distracting the press from the ongoing struggle between the company and their workers. It wasn’t like inheriting the helm of a nation, but if anyone was in the position to understand, it was her.
I swept a hand through my hair, breaking the careful wave set my maid had styled that morning. My hair flopped into my face, and I gritted my teeth. “I have no idea what to do about this. It should be a Crown corporation. But I don’t think the nation’s treasury can buy these shares back from the owners—and with the network’s catastrophic damage—”
“It might be the right time to talk about it.” Avia leaned on the mantel, her weight on one foot. “If you look at the names on this shareholder list, most of them are in the tower right now. The crown could confiscate those shares, couldn’t they? It’d be a blow to your fortunes, t
hough.”
“No. No, you’re right again, but proposing that would get me shot,” I said. “Do you want a job in my office? If I had someone ferreting out all the skeletons in all the closets, I could really do something about setting Aeland right.”
Her answering smile ignited an ache in my heart. “I like the job I have,” Avia said. “What do you say to this: I run the story with what I discovered, and quote you as acknowledging that the deal was crooked from the start? Then I’ll float the opinion that the shares should be confiscated. It’s blood in the water, but you’ll look sympathetic.”
“You would do that for me?” I stared at her with wonder.
“You’ve got a tough job,” Avia said. “Do you know, you’re the youngest person ever appointed Chancellor?”
“Yes. But really. Why?”
“I saw you in the hall before you saw me.” She came closer, moving in slow, deliberate steps. I stood where I was, heart in my mouth as she came within arm’s reach. “You looked so troubled, alone with your thoughts. You’re carrying too much. And when I confronted you with a scandal that would light Aeland on fire, you admitted that what your family did was wrong. It’s more than what I did in your shoes.”
Warmth spread over my skin at her word. “Maybe you can help me set Aeland right anyway. I know people are unhappy. They want the sun to rise on a better Aeland. I want that too—and that means admitting wrongdoing where I can.”
Avia tilted her head and shifted her weight, and somehow she was scarcely a foot away. “What about the wrongdoing you can’t admit?”
I really had to watch my tongue around her. “Some things are … Solace, everything’s hanging by a thread. There are secrets I have to keep, Miss Jessup.”
“Call me Avia. Or Avey. Friends call me Avey.” She skimmed one hand down my arm, soothing and warm. “Sometimes secrets won’t be contained, no matter how hard you try. I’m not the only one looking into the strange happenings Aeland has suffered since the first of Frostmonth.”
